#Quarx

[asian-character-of-the-day]

Day 362

Today’s Asian character is Jennifer Quarx/Jenny Quantum from DC Comics!

She is Singaporean-American.

[coverpanelarchive]

The Authority #2 (2007)

[theauthorityvol1]

hmm i don't know if i actually think he'd wear shorts and stupid socks

[rivetgoth]

A Plea for CGI

I feel like the last bastion of defense for CGI as an art form sometimes dude. CGI fascinates me so much. As a kid it felt so wondrous and unlike anything I’d ever seen. The dancing bear in Teletubbies was the first instance of CGI I ever remember seeing and it enamored me unlike anything else. It felt like genuine magic. I felt similarly about Tiny Planets, which genuinely felt like it transported me to an alien world. Later on as a kid I stumbled onto the Madagascar tech reel Easter egg on the DVD and it was the scariest thing I’d ever seen. It scared me so bad I couldn’t be in the same room and I was scared to turn off the television. I stayed in my bedroom until my dad got home because I knew he’d turn the TV off if he walked in and saw nobody watching it and I didn't want to be out there until I knew for sure the television was off and the reel wouldn't still be playing. I couldn’t sleep for days after seeing it and I was literally scared of DVD menus for fear of accidentally stumbling onto something like that again. Blooper reels for CG films absolutely terrified me, it was like genuinely nauseatingly scary. The “You’re not perfect” Courage the Cowardly Dog bit was similar.

I don’t think I’m an anomaly for finding these examples scary, a LOT of people did (the former one is full of commenters saying it scared them as a kid, the latter is literally meant to be scary). But the thing is with CGI, despite that it never stopped having this sort of wonder to me as well. When I was a kid CGI still felt uncommon enough that any time it was employed it felt really magical. It felt like I was seeing into a world that didn’t actually exist. I think its ability even in its earliest forms to be implemented into live action media, or its ability to have strange three dimensional properties when used in fully animated films, gave it this sense that it could be used to bring things to life in a way that couldn’t be done before. Like, I recognized even as a kid that the dancing bear didn’t look REAL. But it also looked three dimensional. It looked almost dreamlike to me.

I think the history of CGI as an art form is just so fascinating. I remember how fascinated I was reading about the CGI of the 80s and 90s, as it began to move beyond being an oddity that computer scientists could use to demonstrate tech and found some mainstream and wider spread usage. Tony De Peltrie (1985) was the first CGI human to express emotion and objectively he hasn’t aged well, he looks super creepy as does almost everything about his short film, but it fascinates me that he was so well received and touched people’s emotions in spite of that. The human ability to connect with something so alien in every way—stylistically, but even in terms of the art form being used, which was still absolutely brand new—is so interesting. The fact that the Canned Food International Council commissioned a commercial to be done fully in CGI in 1984 and it was referred to as so realistic you “couldn’t tell if it was animated or not” when nowadays it’s surpassed by PS1 video game graphics is so fascinating. The entire implication of that moment in the history of art, advertising, aesthetic. Maybe most fascinating to me is the short series Quarxs from the 90s utilizing CGI in one of the most bizarre ways I’ve ever seen to this day to bring to life cryptobiological organisms. Really insane looking stuff using really limited technology. The creator of Quarxs, Maurice Benayoun, writes theory on virtual reality, including some really interesting stuff about the human relationship to the material and virtual world that is most definitely reflected in Quarxs.

Nowadays I turn to Severed Heads as an example of one of the most fascinating recent uses of CGI to intentionally evoke the uncanniness of older CG and bring to life the music through a visual accompaniment. “Tiny Wounded Bird” (2016) is hard to watch even as an adult, it feels like in the best way it strikes so much uncanny fear that would've ruined my life as a child. It was the first time I saw someone fully, intentionally evoke those fears in art—I think it’s so fascinating the way CGI evokes the uncanny valley so easily for so many, and Tom Ellard was clearly aware of this. Tom Ellard, the artist behind Severed Heads, has worked on the cutting edge of technology to make unabashedly uncanny art in both visual and auditory forms since the 70s.

I see people suggest the uncanniness of CGI has to do with early or pre-textured CGI looking almost corpse-like, but I always felt like it was something else, it's not just CGI People Look Creepy. I think it’s just so, so, so foreign to the eyes. It exists in a three dimensional plane that should be similar to ours but isn’t quite ours. It can emulate the human body but also contort it in any way imaginable. The blooper reels I mentioned being scared of as a kid show these fully three dimensional beings with limbs elongated far past the physical possibility of a real body, eyes popping out of the head. Shadows having to be implemented manually, AI trying to figure out how physics work for thousands of particles of simulated hair. It's sterile and it's incomparable to really anything else. CGI is an entirely new artform, unique from any other that exists. It's literally creating a whole new plane of reality. I think it should lean into that more.

I think CGI as a tool is extremely oversaturated due to all sorts of issues within the entertainment industry around the desire to rush products, the lack of unionization and worker protection, corruption from the top down causing companies to rely on it heavily in the least imaginative and most predatory ways. But that’s not the fault of CGI as an art form, which is still only a couple of decades old—Again, Tony de Peltrie, first emotive CGI human, is only about 40 years old. The first television series less than that. The first movie only about 30. This is BRAND NEW technology. We are in the earliest of earliest stages of CGI experimentation. History will look back on CGI and not view 2024 as notably distant from Toy Story’s release in ‘95. I think it’s only in the past few years that we’ve seen mainstream film really try to use CGI for something genuinely brand new—Trolls in 2016 creating an entire world comprised of textures that wouldn’t exist in such a way in real life (like felt ground, cotton ball clouds, etc), Moana (also in 2016) using computer generated blacklight and neon for the Tamatoa sequence, Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 absolutely changing the game with its use of comic book stylization that looks nothing like anything that came before it, followed by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish in 2022 implementing something similar to evoke a storybook feeling and experimenting with intentional drops in frames per second (there’s a cool video about it here that covers some of this). But these new and inventive attempts at CG, all less than a decade old, would not exist without the decades leading up to it. Terminator 2 was an extremely significant breakthrough in animating liquid. Finding Nemo over a decade later was a huge technical breakthrough for animated underwater environments. 1991 to 2003, 12 years spent learning how to make a computer animate water, and Finding Nemo looks plenty dated now. The first realistic digital fire was shown off in my all time favorite animated short, Peedee Meets the Dragon, in 1989! Only 35 years ago animating fire was in and of itself a feat! Toy Story in 1995 famously used toys as protagonists because humans were still difficult to animate—Only 29 years ago HUMANS still couldn’t be consistently animated in CGI. The Incredibles would be THE FIRST ALL HUMAN CAST that Pixar would attempt, and that was in 2004, almost a DECADE later. All the weird uncanny experimental stuff are building blocks to something so much greater than we can even imagine. I really believe that.

So like, yeah, the homogeneity of CGI in the industry right now is frustrating. The industry-standard willingness to exploit digital artists for rushed, cheap, and unregulated third party work is disgusting and genuinely abhorrent. But man, I hate seeing CGI itself shit on in the same breaths that these criticisms are made. So much fundamental misunderstanding of what it is and what it can do as an art form and such a lack of genuine desire to see it continue to evolve and progress. To be blunt a decent amount of it is just straight up nostalgia, and often very rose tinted nostalgia. “Things from my childhood looked better.” Sometimes it’s genuinely being misinformed—Tons of movies that get heralded as being traditional animation or practical effects… still utilize some form of CGI. I also think there’s something to be said about the fact that I believe the current trend of using CGI for hyper realistic effects in big budget live action films is genuinely a misusage of the medium and a complete failure to actually utilize CGI in any meaningful way (looking at you, live action Disney remakes). I love practical effects and I love traditional animation, but I don’t see why they need to be at odds with CGI. The best and most visually striking movies with the greatest visuals tend to recognize that and utilize a blend of the strengths of more than one of these mediums—Though interestingly, Courage the Cowardly Dog remains one of the only examples I can think of that uses CGI as a form of mixed media INTENTIONALLY. As in, not to look hyper-realistic or to replace/accompany practical effect or traditional animation, but to squarely be intentionally meant to be read as CGI in order to evoke a specific tone, functionally using CGI as a punchline the same way one would use live action shots in a show like Spongebob. I'm sure others have done it, but it doesn't appear particularly common.

That’s my last note: I really want to see CGI utilized more with both its strengths and weaknesses taken into account. Back to “Tiny Wounded Bird,” which makes use of the way models of the human body can be reskinned and manipulated to the point of being unrecognizable, a succinct but evocative visual theme for a song about pride and suffering. But I want to talk about another older CGI short film that does something similar, Polly Gone from 1988.

Y’all, I’m literally switching from my phone to my computer to type this out because this matters a lot to me.

EVERYONE writes Polly Gone off as absurdism. That goofy "Early CGI Was Horrifying" video writes it off as "a shitpost," which half the damn commenters on the artist's upload are quoting, annoyingly. The VintageCG Youtube account cruelly calls it "The second worst computer animation ever produced." It finds its way onto r/OddlyTerrifying and similar subreddits not unoften. You guys. Polly Gone is directed by the artist Shelley Lake, who has made this statement about her work:

"The artwork that comes from the world inside is the culmination of my mind’s eye–a fantasy world where, through my imagination, anything is possible. I enthusiastically partner with intelligent machines and together we create an artificial reality. A simulated world of superheroes, erotic men and women, wireframe meshworks, anatomical investigations, cybernetic creatures, phantasmagoric depictions of impossible people, places and things. Although these artworks often resemble our photo-real existence, these creations are utterly unreal and sometimes uncanny." (X)

She KNOWS it's uncanny. She knows it's weird. And her work is, explicitly, intentionally, and, honestly, blatantly, engaging with the weirdness of this medium to deliver messages in ways surreal, fresh, bizarre, and off-putting. I don't know what exactly her intentions are behind Polly Gone, but I would very strongly make a case for it being about women's roles in society, or at least that being a perfectly viable interpretation, especially if you do a 5 second deep dive into her body of work exploring themes about female bodies, sexuality, kink, and queerness. Her synopsis on her own Youtube page for this short is: "A day in the life of a robot." Consider watching it through a feminist lens. Consider how uncanny and dehumanized this animation is of an expressionless, mechanical humanoid--in a dress, in lipstick, with breasts--that zooms around its futuristic house doing mundane chores. Consider the name being a feminized version of the word "polygone." Consider this oddly cool OddlyTerrifying comment:

They're joking, but they're not: This is a short film from the EIGHTIES, seven years before Toy Story would be the first full-length CGI film. Shelley Lake received both a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Sciences degree in the 70s. This is artistic experimenting from someone with years of experience, this is making use of the strengths and unique facets of computer generated animation that cannot be replicated through any other means, and it is not purposeless nor does it deserve to be written off as "a shitpost." And it's not asking you to look past the CGI limitations, it is wholly embracing them.

I want to see more CGI play with this. I think it was a mistake to veer CGI in the direction of trying to disguise it as something that it is not. I think it can work as an accompaniment to other effects, sure, but I don't think its sole purpose should be photorealistic lions emoting less than their real world counterparts singing covers of Elton John songs. I wish CGI wasn't devalued and I wish people would engage with it as a unique art form of its own.

[brokentoys]

you look at ed's video/vhs collection and he has quarxs, jesus of nazareth, how it's made, aerosmith live texas jam '78, and faces of death all together. what's ur reaction?

[crazythatcounts]

Flark wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the situation, to be honest.

All of this was done on sort of a lark, to be fair to him, so his preparation had been fairly minimal. He’d been bored with the usual grind - that was the start of it. Working in the Intergalactic Department of Space Vehicle and Transportation was not exactly a pleasant job - most people thought the whole process of registering space fairing vehicles unpleasant, and Flark knew better than anyone that most of the regulations in place that people found abhorrent were in place due to a singular planet or underdeveloped species and hardly mattered. There were occasional planets that just needed a little extra protection, that was all, but that meant the rules surrounding them never came up for the usual Class One species he interacted with on the daily. It all made sense in the long run, but Flark could only explain that yes, he did have to have proof of solar emissions on all vehicles logged before he was allowed to issue renewals due to the fact that Space Lane RF5, which most people didn’t even use, went through the Quarx system and the Quarx system was naturally predisposed to solar flares, so many times before it became the worst part of his day. And like most of his coworkers, when he expressed that he was starting to burn out, it was suggested he find something fun to do and offered the usual Company Catalog of Recreational Activities.

Thinking back, he wasn’t really sure why he chose hunting as his sport de jour. His Uncle was a hunter, or at least had been last they’d seen each other, and maybe he’d just latched on to something familiar. Flark hadn’t see his uncle in roughly three-hundred years, which was a decent amount of time for his species, so he wasn’t even sure if his Uncle still went out. But it seemed better than solar wind rafting, or any of the other sporty sort of adventures the Company Catalog offered, free of charge. The benefit was that he didn’t have to pay a dime to go – it was “company enrichment”, meant to keep the overworked satiated in any way they could, but honestly, most people weren’t going to complain about free multi-week vacations – but the downside was that he didn’t actually get to pick his destination. Or his quarry. Or anything else that really mattered. He was just given a leaflet on the planet, a ticket for the spaceport, and a departure time.  

“Oh, Lou!” The woman next to him cried out, flailing her fleshy right appendage at the other near her. Flark watched, trying to figure out how things had gotten to where they were, but nothing really stood out. He had, when his trip started, dutifully boarded the Company Shuttle after doing his minimal research, and let himself get shipped off to, of all places, a little nowhere planet called Earth. Now, Flark was familiar with a lot of planets – he had to know the regulations for most of them, after all – but even he was a little lost when it came to Earth. What he did know was very little: Earth was a Class Four planet, meaning it was inhabited by sentient, and often violently reactive, beings, but those beings hadn’t achieved any meaningful spaceflight and didn’t look like they were going to do so any time soon. He’d seen the reports of their “moon landing”, which he honestly thought was kind of cute – they’d been so proud to step off their front porch, after all, but they clearly had no idea what was waiting for them past their own system – but he’d been warned that, cute though they may have seemed, there was something dangerous to them. Otherwise, however, the information was sparse, as most people didn’t visit. The stories he’d heard ranged from the weird to the downright terrifying, and a lot seemed entirely unbelievable – humans poison themselves for fun, he’d been told right before leaving, among other things. Humans live very short lives, and somehow drive to make them shorter by killing each other, another coworker had said. But nothing had prepared him for actually coming face to face with a human in the first place.

“Lou! Take a picture!” The woman – and he was fairly sure the human in front of him was a woman, though Flark wasn’t entirely positive; his species didn’t practice sexual dimorphism in any capacity, as most Class One species eschewed the idea of gender long before they’d reached multi-system spaceflight, and thus he was unpracticed in telling, but he heard the human next to her using the appropriate feminine pronouns and figured woman was close enough – intoned, her voice both a pleading yowl and a nearly feral hiss at the same time. The man – and again, Flark was out of practice, but he figured the attempt at machismo was a good marker – shook his head, lifting a proto-lens capture device up to his face and pressing a button, which clicked balefully at him. Flark had no idea if the device had even captured a good image, and honestly was a bit concerned that they weren’t concerned about the quality – his lens capture device, strapped to the “spectacles” he’d been told to disguise it under, showed him every image he wanted to take before he took it. He’d been told ahead of time that humans were borderline primitive, for being sentient, but he didn’t realize it was that bad.

“Hey,” The woman, who was short, squat, and looked maybe a bit too feral for Flark’s taste, turned to him. He’d done as advised and disguised himself; he was in a floral shirt with flowers he didn’t recognize, but thought might be poisonous, even thought he was assured they were customary clothing accessories, and a pair of leg covers that didn’t actually cover his entire legs called shorts, and he’d grabbed a visual-transfuser from the spaceport on his way out, which he was grateful for. His usual appearance was twice a human’s height and too fuzzy to explain, and he was warned explicitly on boarding that humans were hyper-reactive and would bite anyone that didn’t fit their worldview. He wasn’t sure how effective their bites were, considering their teeth were relatively round, but he also didn’t want to risk whatever diseases they might have carried. Besides that, regardless of his quarry, there were enough humans on the planet that attracting the attention of one’s ire was not necessarily advised. “You want us to take your picture, mister?” She asked, of him, and he stared, blankly, back at her, only half hearing.

He didn’t really know how to respond to her, especially because of the fact that the catalog said he would be hunting humans, not hunting with humans, and that left him reeling. But regulations had changed, and when he’d landed, the spaceport had explained that, due to the Sentience Act of Galactic Travel, any sentience still counted towards being a protected species. The Catalog was, unfortunately, outdated, but, he’d been told, he’d still get the hunting trip he wanted. He was, instead, to be saddled with a troupe of humans – a hunting club, they called themselves – that were experienced with the sport and would assist him in his vacation. They would provide the equipment and the quarry, and he had no worries.

He was still worried, however. There wasn’t much like being told the predator you’d psyched yourself up to shoot and then probably run screaming from was actually going to be the thing that handed you a weapon.

“Leave him alone, Mariam.” The man, likely called Lou, shook his head at Flark, the aggressive sneer on his face reminding Flark why humans had, at one point, been a good sport to hunt. He’d heard a lot of rumors that trying to kill one was nearly impossible if it didn’t want to die, and the way the man sneered at him had Flark believing that fact quickly enough, though the roundness of his face said maybe there were some humans that were exceptions and most were a bit easier to handle. “He’s one-a them spacepeople. He probably don’t know what a picture is.” The man rolled his eyes, clearly implying that Flark was the least sentient of the group, and Flark didn’t correct him. Better to be thought a fool than become a side show to someone who couldn’t even understand how to operate a Class 2 hyperlane bike. But, he thought, he might as well be friendly.

“It’s fine.” He said, his voice so soft compared to the grating yowl the others had. He was in a group of four, three men, or at least what he thought were men, and the one woman, all dressed like they were readying to go running through the woods like feral beasts, with clothes that blended into the surroundings and thick laced boots. They were in a primitive vehicle that they’d called a truck, which made Flark wince every time it sputtered. He could smell the particles it was releasing, and if he’d been brought the thing to clear it for travel, he would have suggested it needed to be scrapped on emissions alone. But he could see why they needed it – it was quick, and it handled the empty, yellow terrain around them like a champ. “My eyes are enough to observe, but I thank you for asking.” He tried a smile, which felt weird with his disguise. His mouth didn’t feel like it opened enough, or maybe he’d spread his lips too far, considering the look the woman gave him in response. Humans had such weird proportions, with tiny mouths and tiny eyes and tiny ears – no wonder they had a hard time leaving planet.

“You ever hunt a buffalo before?” The other man in the back of the truck asked, quietly. His voice was very different from the others, but Flark wasn’t surprised – one of the in-flight infographics on humans he’d seen was about the truly broad regionalism of their voices – though he liked how softly the other man talked. The third sat in the cab of the vehicle, occasionally pulling a very primitive communication device to his face and watching for something in the distance. Flark could tell he was the one trying to find these buffalo, though he wasn’t sure how. Lou chuckled.

“Third time. First time with th’missus, though.” He said, gesturing to the woman. Flark didn’t know what missus meant, but the woman’s happy smile told him it was a good thing, at least. “Loved the first two trips so much I couldn’t help but ask her t’come along. What about you, spaceman?” Lou turned, and Flark was caught off guard briefly at the question. He wasn’t from Earth, they were aware of this – opening their boarders to intergalactic travel was one of the tenants of protection, after all, so they all knew he was from another planet, just not the scale or scope – and he couldn’t tell if they thought he’d been before, or if they just assumed every planet had buffalo. Lou scoffed – clearly, the disguise didn’t hide facial expression and Flark had made some kind of face at the question. “You even know what a buffalo is?”

“Yes.” Flark said, his voice still so soft. He wasn’t sure how other humans dealt with their own grating rhythms, considering. But he’d grabbed a field guide and connected to the planet’s internet, slow though it was, when he’d arrived, and done a bit of research. “A bovid species of roughly 2 kinz, or 2,000 pounds, with up curved horns. Classified as an herbivore, meaning it consumes mostly native grass species, and travels in herds.” He shrugged. It was basic information, after all. “Most bovid species I’m familiar with are of the domestic variety.”

“Do not let that fool you.” The other man, nameless and quiet, didn’t have to speak up to cut Lou off – the man had an open mouth, ready to say something, but paused when the other spoke. “You look into the eyes of a buffalo and you will truly understand what it means to see death.” He said, and Lou chuckled.

“Second time out they killed a man.” Lou added, with the tone of someone trying to convey severity but far too hyped up about it to really get it across. “They call these things the black death. Deadlier than lions.” He nodded, sagely, and Flark didn’t respond, because honestly, he was starting to doubt the things he’d heard about humans in the first place. He’d heard them as voracious, predatory, vicious and instinctual, and he could see people being afraid at a glance, but the people in front of him were… pudgy, soft, and didn’t seem to have any natural instinct at hunting. The woman even jumped a little as the truck pulled to a halt, slowly crawling to a stop behind a shaded tree. In the distance, Flark could see the buffalo they’d heard so much about – hundreds of them. They bellowed and brayed and swatted flies and didn’t even seem to notice the truck at all. Lou grinned.

“Spaceman, you want the first crack?” He asked, offering the primitive weapon he’d been caressing the entire ride. It was a thing of wood and powder that Flark was almost a little afraid of, and he shook his head. He wasn’t about to touch a weapon he didn’t understand, not until he’d seen it fired. “Alright by me, then. Mariam?” He offered the rifle to his missus, who clapped her hands far too loudly. A buffalo turned its head, decided it didn’t care, and went back to eating, but something in Flark’s gut stirred. There was something about the easy way the buffalo ate that had him nervous, and he didn’t like it. Prey were supposed to be flighty around the things that killed them, after all.

“Alright.” The man in the back stood up, the entire truck rocking at his movement, helping Mariam out of the truck and onto the tawny grassland below them. The herd was large, but they were close to a small section that had broken off – a mother and a calf, likely, if Flark could tell by size – and the guide pointed Mariam at the set. “One shot, then back in the truck. If you miss, we’ll need to leave and reset.” He said, and she nodded, pressing the rifle to her shoulder. Flark could smell the acrid ozone of the gun long before it fired, the powder on the inside burning away at his nose as it sparked when she pulled the trigger.

Flark expected the shot to find its mark, and the buffalo to drop to its knees very quickly, because that’s how modern arms worked. The weapons he was familiar with burned holes in steel rated for spaceflight, and a living thing would have crumpled. And he heard the shot crack, and even saw the projectile – oh, it used actual projectiles, that was so old it was almost new again – break the thing’s dark skin and likely shatter its shoulder into a thousand splinters of bone. That was the true gruesome nature of guns like those, Flark knew, and why they were outlawed in most civil societies.

The buffalo looked up at them with fury, the pain slow to register but the sensation of disturbance instantaneous, and Flark realized that maybe he’d underestimated what he was hunting.

Mariam squealed, both in delight that she’d hit and some alarm that it wasn’t dead, the guide all but hauling her back into the truck by the arm, the vehicle already going. He was quick, and it was good that he was, because the buffalo bellowed in a way that struck fear into Flark’s heart and started at the car with its head down. It thundered, hooves kicking up clods of thick dirt, blood pouring down its shoulder, the smell of copper and ozone so thick Flark couldn’t tell how anyone else could stand it, and the truck squealed as it peeled away from the tree. For a moment, Flark thought it was over, breathing out in a sigh of relief that they’d outrun such a fierce beast.

Until he looked back and saw the buffalo, eyes bloodshot and full of pure rage, only an arm’s length away from the truck.

“Drive, man!” Lou was laughing, laughing, as the truck rumbled over empty terrain and bounced over rocks and splashed through puddles, the buffalo still in fury filled pursuit. They hit full speed, a speed Flark wasn’t even sure the truck was supposed to be capable of, his spectacles hardly hanging onto his head, the riders bouncing around in the back like untethered crates in a particularly twisty hyper-lane. He could feel the speed against his face, his knuckles white on the seat just trying to hold on. Yet nothing, nothing deterred the buffalo, the pain in its shoulder the only driving force behind its eyes as it raced far faster than Flark thought possible towards them. The guide was shouting in a language Flark hadn’t studied up on, the driver weaving between trees at top speed, and yet Lou was still laughing, holding on to one of the truck’s back supports and whooping like he was in some kind of race and he was winning.

He didn’t stop laughing, even as Flark realized with dawning horror that if it was, in fact, a race, they weren’t winning anymore.

Flark felt the buffalo catch the truck’s fender with a horn. He felt it lift, like in slow motion, and he felt it start to roll. It wasn’t a closed back, just a canopy to keep the sun out and a set of poles to keep that upright, and he watched with horror as the whole thing rolled and started to crumple. And then it was all dark, just for a moment, the sound of squealing metal and thundering steel and then he was on the ground.

He pushed himself to his feet once he came back around, doing a quick physical check to make sure he was entirely there. Even though he was disguised, he could still feel all of his limbs, so he did a once over based on what he felt. All of his arms? Check, though one hurt badly, like he broke it. Both legs? Also there, though his ankle throbbed painfully. Tail? He couldn’t see it, but he felt it swish, and he’d had it tucked against his better ankle well enough that it seemed alright. He breathed out, turning to first look to his right – the truck was on its head, wheels spinning, Lou on the ground next to it and Mariam a ways away, the driver pulling himself out of the cab and the guide giving him a hand – before looking left, straight into the eyes of the buffalo.

It looked at him, and it huffed. Snot dripped from its wet nose, its eyes red with blood and hatred. Flark stood there, cradling an arm no one could see to his chest, trying not to show it fear in return, because it was clearly dying and it clearly did not care. But it huffed again, and having decided it had been paid what it felt it was owed, turned, waddling slowly back to where its children had been, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. Flark exhaled, falling back to sit down on the ground as the adrenaline left him.

“Whoo!” The cry pulled him from the sudden exhaustion, as Lou reappeared at his side. The man was sporting a spatter of blood on his head, clearly having knocked it hard, and of all things, a grin on his face. “That was fun! They don’t usually catch the truck.” He laughed, and Flark looked at him like he’d lost a head.

“Fun?” He asked, almost incredulously, and Lou snorted, not unlike the buffalo. “Did we not just nearly die?”

“Yeah, but it ain’t fun if it ain’t a risk.” Lou replied, also incredulous, like this was the entire point. As though the act of hunting itself weren’t the sport, but the act of looking death in the face and spitting on it with a laugh. “You wanna hunt something sweet, go hunt fuckin’ rabbits somewhere, spaceman. The rest of us are gonna keep huntin’ shit that’s actually worth the effort.” He shook his head, turning back around, clapping Flark on the back far too hard with a thick, fleshy hand. Flark shivered, because he hadn’t actually touched a human before and didn’t realize how much muscle was under their skin. “Mariam! You wanna try again?” Lou called, Flark all but forgotten, and Flark could hear the hell yeah I do that thing ain’t dead yet! From his place on the ground. He pushed himself to his feet, approaching the guide, who looked at him with as much sympathy as he could muster, having just been in car wreck and knowing the alien’s pain more intimately than Flark probably knew.

“I believe I am done hunting today, thank you.” Flark said, softly, trying to ignore the whooping and hollering from Lou behind him. “I would like to go home now.”

~*~

No one believed his story.

Why would they? Flark knew it was a long shot. Humans hunting things that killed them often tracked, sure, but the injuries Flark had fared were substantial, once he’d gotten to a proper doctor. The physician was surprised he’d survived, and no one believed that the humans had walked away, let alone wanted to try again. Flark was a superior species! If he was injured, surely the humans had to have gone home and died right after, succumbing to wounds they were clearly just too stupid to notice. But no, Flark had explained, over and over again. The humans had flipped the truck back over, driven back to this thing called a bar, and ordered alcohol, like what they used to treat injuries. And they drank it. Happily. While planning go to back out the next day.

“I think you hit your head, dude.” Flark’s coworker snorted. “That’s made up.”

Flark sighed, going back to filing his section 24-33-5 reports and ignoring his coworker’s dismissive shake of the head. It didn’t matter what they thought, anyway. He knew better than to doubt what he’d seen. Maybe, he thought to himself, maybe they didn’t classify humans as sentient to prevent hunting them for the human’s sake – maybe it was to prevent it for his sake.   

All he knew for sure was that he was never going to that hellhole of a planet again.

Turns out, because humans are sentient you’re not allowed to hunt them under intergalactic law… because of this you have now begrudgingly joined some humans hunting club to make your trip somewhat worthwhile

[robotscrytoo]

QUARXS - 12 episodes (English) → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8vpv6ijaGQ

[turtlethon]

“The Starchild”

Season 7, Episode 15 First US Airdate: November 6, 1993

The Turtles try and protect an alien child who has been granted incredible powers.

Season seven of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continues with “The Starchild”. This episode first aired in the US in a double bill alongside "The Legend of Koji".

Donatello is accompanied by the other Turtles as he rummages through junk in a scrap yard, intent on finding new materials for his inventions. The action kicks off quickly today as the team witness the crash landing of an alien starship. Surveying the area after the impact, our heroes wonder whether the pilot is a friendly or hostile visitor, and make the decision to venture inside.

The Turtles cautiously wander through the spaceship. Eventually they find themselves face to face with the creature at the helm: a violet-coloured alien child who resembles E.T., a star symbol appearing prominently on his forehead. The visitor greets the Turtles, revealing his name to be Quarx.

A second ship is seen descending nearby, a burly alien named Drako emerging from it. He checks in with his superior, confirming that he has located the “Starchild”. Meanwhile the Turtles attempt to talk to a disinterested Quarx, who flies out of his ship and begins playing with the junk in the scrapyard. The Turtles follow close behind, winding up in the path of Drako as he points a laser blaster at Quarx. Intent on protecting the child, the green teens are briefly able to restrain this second alien, who informs them that he’s pursuing “the Starchild – the most dangerous being in the universe!” Drako retreats to his ship and flies away, leaving the Turtles to wonder what just happened.

At Channel 6, Vernon is seen chastising April for considering leaving the office early on what has been a slow news day. He informs her that “a good reporter doesn’t wait for news to happen – a good reporter can find a story just by looking out his window!” April’s rival is taken aback as he spots Drako’s ship flying above the skies of the city, leading him to wander off without revealing what he saw.

Drako is seen checking in with his superior, an ape-like alien with bright red hair. He informs his boss that while he was able to locate the Starchild his tracking equipment was damaged in an altercation with the residents of Earth, and requests reinforcements.

The Turtles take Quarx back to the Lair and seek guidance from Master Splinter, keeping the child occupied with some of Michaelangelo’s Bugman toys. The Starchild moves on to making a set of bladed weapons mounted on the wall fly around the Lair, the Turtles being forced to run for cover. As act two opens, the Turtles ask Splinter to use his ninja mind powers to stop Quarx’s rampage, but the team’s sensei is powerless to assist, his mental abilities no match for those of the alien.

After dodging their own weapons some more, the Turtles try again to talk to Quarx, who declares that he “just [wants] to play” and flies out of the Lair, refusing to listen to the team as they’re “not [his] father”. Emerging onto the streets of the city, the Turtles decide to use the equipment on the van to track the alien child. Splinter elects to visit the alien ship on his own, his ninja senses guiding him to find a solution to their problem there.

In the van, the Turtles pick up on police radio reports regarding the alien visitor. The team arrive on the scene to find the cops ready to open fire, and step in to try and reason with Quarx again. The Starchild is now hurling cars and trucks around with his telekinetic powers, but is convinced by Michaelangelo to put them down. (In the process, a garbage truck drops its contents on Raphael, who declares that if this happens again he’ll quit the show.) Quarx soon begins messing around again, ramming a pair of police cars into each other before escaping.

April contacts the team via Turtlecom, informing them that a group of spaceships are landing in front of the Channel 6 building. Leo and Mikey head to the station to confront the invaders while Donnie and Raph continue to pursue Quarx.

Outside Channel 6, April and Vernon film the unfolding events, Drako now accompanied by a group of aliens who march through the streets of the city. Leonardo and Michaelangelo arrive on the scene and waste no time in doing battle. Meanwhile Donatello and Raphael find Quarx playing outside a building marked for demolition. His antics have now attracted the attention of the military, who send a tank out to open fire at him. Enraged, Quarx goes on a destructive rampage, destroying the tank and his surroundings. The alien again tells the Turtles they’re not his father before flying away; having failed to reason with him, Donnie and Raph decide to check in with Leo and Mikey.

As Splinter attempts to make sense of the files aboard the alien spaceship, Drako and his allies continue to do battle with Leonardo and Michaelangelo. The group try to escape in one of their ships, but Mikey’s grappling hook – quite improbably – prevents it from taking off, causing a domino effect where the entire fleet is crushed.  

The Turtles reunite and again find themselves face to face with Drako, who re-iterates that Quarx is an existential threat. Our heroes remain unconvinced but are alarmed when a reading from the Turtle Van’s computer indicates that 4000 spaceships are approaching Earth; above the planet, a mothership demands that the Starchild is handed over. If the people of the planet fail to comply, he’ll be killed destroyed, even if this requires the destruction of the entire world.

With only 30 minutes remaining until the alien fleet opens fire, Leonardo presses Drako as to why the Starchild is so sought-after. Drako explains that Quarx has left a path of destruction throughout the galaxy, and that he represents a band of survivors intent on stopping him from doing the same to other worlds, a mission that has continued for two centuries. When quizzed as to how Quarx could have remained a child for so long, Drako reveals that the Starchild wields so much power that he can remain in any form he wishes.

The Turtles engage in a group huddle along with April (and, somewhat humorously, Vernon). After April remarks that Quarx needs to grow up, Leonardo suggests this might be the solution to their problem. Donatello is given the keys to the news van to check in with Splinter at the scrap yard, while the rest of the team head off in the Turtle Van to find Quarx.

Drako is unconvinced by the Turtles insisting they can find Quarx, revealing after they leave that he wants the powers of the Starchild for himself. He deploys a group of drones, ordering them to seek out the alien.

Aboard the crashed ship, Splinter shows Donatello a recovered file containing a video log from Quarx’s father, Merrick. He’s seen performing experiments on his son, intent on imbuing him with “extraordinary powers”; this is necessary as their planet is under fire, Quarx being the key to their survival in an interstellar war. Time passes in the video log; later, Merrick is seen lamenting that it’s too late now for their world, and that Quarx is too young to understand their mission. Quarx is now left in a position where he doesn’t understand why he has his powers, his father not around to explain their importance to him, and so he remains stuck in perpetual childhood, but Splinter believes he may have a solution.

Donnie checks in with his team-mates via Turtlecom, encouraging them to try and buy time while he works with Splinter on a solution. Leo, Mikey and Raph head to a nearby playground, feigning having fun to draw in Quarx. This briefly seems to work, but Drako’s drones arrive and open fire. The alien hunter removes his helmet, revealing to Quarx that he too has a star on his forehead as a means of gaining his trust; having lured him in, Drako produces a handheld hypnosis device that freezes Quarx on the spot.

The Turtles tear through Drako’s drones and break his hypnotic control; a furious Quarx then declares that he was tricked and “everyone hates [him]”. (In easily the funniest moment of the episode, Michaelangelo insists that this isn’t true, but Raphael chips in and counters this: “Now hold on, I- I hate him!”

Quarx is set to go on another rampage when his father appears from behind a nearby tree. Merrick informs his son about the true nature of his powers, encouraging him to use them to end war throughout the universe. He assures Quarx that he will be with him always, declaring that it’s time for him to grow up before vanishing in a cloud of smoke.

Beneath ground, Merrick is seen dropping down a ladder into the sewers alongside Donatello. He removes his mask to reveal himself as having been Splinter all along, performing an elaborate ruse. Back on the surface, Quarx is seen transforming into his fully-grown form. He uses his powers to undo all the destruction he caused in the city, before going on to distribute this energy through space, even repairing damage caused to the ships in the armada hovering above Earth. Quarx convinces the assembled aliens to join him in restoring peace throughout the galaxy, before transporting Drako to a prison world. He says goodbye to the Turtles, T-posing as he floats off, Poochie-style, into the sky.

We close the episode out in the Lair with the Turtles each breaking away one at a time as Splinter rambles about the moral of the day, going on and on about how everyone has special gifts and that people need to learn to care for each other. Finally, only Leonardo is left as the team all enjoy their own leisurely pursuits in the living room; Donatello assures Splinter that like Quarx, they will grow up, “one of these days”.

“The Starchild” goes some way in continuing the momentum of “Night of the Dark Turtle”, a rare example of a non-Shredder episode that doesn’t feel like a downgrade. Rarely have the stakes in TMNT ever been higher, with the whole planet facing imminent destruction, which helps in preventing this from resembling a filler story. Quarx is undeniably annoying, his voice provided by guest star E.G. Daily in what amounts to an out-of-control version of the Tommy Pickles character she was portraying around this time on Rugrats.) As with Buffy Shellhammer in “Poor Little Rich Turtle”, Quarx’s irritation factor is deliberate on the part of David Wise, a necessary evil for the eventual payoff of his maturation. This is fine, I suppose, but it certainly doesn’t mean I have to like him.

It’s a minor complaint, but I’m inclined to question the sequencing of this episode immediately after the [intended] season seven opener in “Night of the Dark Turtle”, both stories seeing the planet facing huge alien threats. While I’m the last person to complain about the Turtles taking on big challenges from varied and unusual characters like these, it does diminish gags like Vernon being alarmed by a spacecraft flying past his window when such things are now a weekly occurrence. And that’s before we even get into the fact that he was once abducted by a group of aliens resembling Elvis, and later found himself in a spaceport filled with aliens in Dimension X – would someone who’s been directly involved in as many far-out adventures as Vernon really be that shocked by seeing spaceships shooting around at this point?

You can probably tell that I’m reaching to find things to quibble about here, the show having regained its footing after seven weeks of the Vacation in Europe arc. It’s refreshing to have the entire voice cast back together and the animation back to the level of polish we’ve come to expect during this era. Next time we’ll explore a unique attempt to unify the different facets of the 1990s TMNT franchise in “The Legend of Koji”.

[atlasspade]

Hold on being the change I wanna see in the world

Your welcome

[poiverine]

daddies got called to school, midnighter is not impressed

[dailydccomics]

Midnighter and his baby girl The Authority #27-28

[atlas-authority]

[scogean]

DIVORCE SELFIE!!!!!!

[bxtchfxck]

its her its the 21st century girl

[gaysoup]

JAMES GUNN ANNOUNCED A MOVIE ABOUT THE AUTHORITY?!?

[makotokyoqoku-archived]

*teenagers by mcr plays in the background on repeat*

since my portrayal of jenny q is so different from the comics I thought I might as well redesign her too!!