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bolddeducktionneverfails · 5 years

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Launchpad’s Association With Della Duck: Ballads of Dangerous Chemistry

Part 1 | Part 2 || Part 3 | Part 4| Part 5 || Continued from Part 6

One of the many things I've noticed in DuckTales is that certain elements from earlier episodes tend to return in the later portion of the season. Sometimes as a running gag or an Easter egg, but other times, they end up revealing to be an important concept that's extremely relevant to the story.

The Season 1 finale was a good example of this: The boys hijacking Donald's Houseboat in the pilot to go to Cape Suzette comes back as Donald wanting to move there when the boys no longer want anything to do with Scrooge. The bag of marbles Scrooge gave the boys when they first arrive to the mansion comes back as a way for Scrooge to reminisce about having them around. The silly cutout of Gyro from "Beware of The B.U.D.D.Y System!" is seen floating around in the underwater lab after the area was destroyed by the shadows.

Sometimes it doesn't even take that long for the early elements to reappear; they can be contained within the episode itself by giving us hints in the very beginning of it and later come into play towards the ending. Scrooge was right from the start when he blamed Glomgold in "The 87 Cent Solution!" and the ending of the Darkwing Duck series finale basically foreshadowed the entirety of "The Duck Knight Returns!". If Della paid attention as she was attempting to fix the rocket on her own, she would have known about Gold Tech way ahead of time.

Two years ago at the D23 Expo, it was announced during the DuckTales panel that Duckworth was already shown, but no one had found him yet. Many of us searched around for the butler dog and every character we guessed was rejected by the show-runners. It wasn't until "McMystery at McDuck McManor" that Duckworth was revealed to be the ram-headed spirit we've been seeing in the intro! The answer to the mystery was right there in front of our faces! But we didn't realize it because the appearance of the person we were looking for was altered.

Bᴇғᴏʀᴇ Dᴜᴄᴋᴡᴏʀᴛʜ’s ʀᴇᴠᴇᴀʟ, ʜᴇ ᴡᴀs ʜɪɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴀᴛ ᴀ ᴄᴏᴜᴘʟᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇs ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ʜɪs ʟɪᴋᴇɴᴇss ᴡᴀs ᴏʙsᴄᴜʀᴇᴅ: Tʜᴇ ɢʜᴏsᴛ ᴄʜᴀsɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ᴋɪᴅs ɪɴ Mʀs. Bᴇᴀᴋʟᴇʏ’s sʜᴏʀᴛ , ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʜᴏᴛᴏɢʀᴀᴘʜ ᴏғ ᴀ ғʟᴏᴀᴛɪɴɢ ᴏʀʙ ᴏғ ʟɪɢʜᴛ ᴏɴ Wᴇʙʙʏ’s ʙᴏᴀʀᴅ

Sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇʟʏ ᴇɴᴏᴜɢʜ, Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ ᴡᴀsɴ'ᴛ ᴘʀᴇsᴇɴᴛ ɪɴ "MᴄMᴀɴᴏʀ" ᴀᴛ ᴀʟʟ ᴅᴇsᴘɪᴛᴇ ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ ɪɴ ᴀ sᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀɴsɪᴏɴ' s ɢᴀʀᴀɢᴇ...

This proves that we don't always have to look too far to figure things out, so, after thinking about amnesia, I had to take another look at "The Ballad of Duke Baloney!". It features a confirmed case of the condition and a good example of applying one similar character to another.

The episode begins with a flashback to the happenings of "The Shadow War!", a pretty significant event. Glomgold fails to prevent his shadow from flying off and ends up falling into the marina. He loses consciousness and is eventually found by two fishers, trapped in their fisher net. He can no longer remember the whole ordeal that caused him to take on his false Scottish persona and reverts back to who he used to be: Duke Baloney.

The name Duke Balony, derives from a completely different character named The Duke of Baloni. He comes from an old Carl Barks story that predates Glomgold's character and was the first to be titled "Second-Richest Duck in the World". The show-runners used this similarity as a part of giving an in-universe explanation to why Flintheart Glomgold went from South African like he was in the earlier Scrooge McDuck comics, to Scottish like he was in the original DuckTales series.

Four months later, after Flintheart is reported to have gone missing, Webby and Louie stop by Bait 'N' Such to find him as a completely different person: His demeanor is much kinder, he talks with a different accent, he sports a real beard and now wears a fisherman outfit.

Speaking of which, Duke and LP share a lot of similar colors. Even Young Duke wears teal and green; something that was mainly exclusive to both Launchpad and Della.

The kids aren't exactly sure what to think. Was this really Glomgold? Or were they mistaking a random stranger for him? Was he genuinely suffering from amnesia? Or was this another one of his crazy schemes? As they try to figure out his true intentions, they discover Duke has a suspicious, gold money clip in his possession. This causes Webby and Louie to start an investigation where they discover Duke Baloney's records are non-existent and Flintheart Glomgold's records do not extend past his arrival to Duckburg in the 80's.

Meanwhile, Duke's evil persona slowly starts to re-emerge after one of Scrooge's fishing boats roll into the dock. He can't remember Scrooge's name, he can't even remember his face when they meet, but he suddenly grows negative feelings towards the boat and he's not exactly sure why. He starts coming up with elaborate plans to outrank it and he ends up having a dream full of subliminal messages about his past.

As Duke starts to question who he really is, he notices that Webby and Louie are out at sea as a thunderstorm is approaching. He plans to go out and rescue them but a boat crane hits him on the head, causing him to fall into the marina much like he did before. It's in his second time of unconsciousness where he remembers why he started his Scottish persona in the first place: When Duke was a child, Scrooge failed at teaching him a sense of self reliance by only paying partially for his shoe shining services. Feeling cheated, he secretly stole Scrooge's money clip and vowed to do whatever it takes to out-best him at everything and steal his title of "Richest Duck in the World".

When Duke comes to at the surface, he reverts back to his evil ways. He displays this as he tricks Webby into giving him her hand only for him throw her out of the boat to make room for himself. The other fishers are very shocked to see their friend act like this.

Glomgold makes his way back to his office to reclaim his company from Zan Owlson and to challenge Scrooge with the fiscal year bet. Scrooge refuses until Glomgold taunts him with the money clip he had stolen from him. McDuck becomes surprised, and angry, that his greatest rival has a significant connection to his past.

So, if Launchpad has amnesia, what could Glomgold's situation be telling us about his?

Glomgold's amnesia was tied to a big event as well as LP's could be if he was involved with the cosmic storm.

Glomgold goes missing in the sea, an environment that is very similar to outer-space.

Following his disappearance, Glomgold ended up looking like a different person with a new profession. Launchpad is completely unrecognizable to Della in spite of many signs that they could have something to do with each other's backgrounds and there are also possible signs that he might not be a legitimate airplane pilot.

Glomgold had Scrooge's money clip on him. Maybe LP has some sort of mysterious item or something like a scar or a birthmark that could help prove that he's the father.

Information on both Duke and Glomgold is extremely limited. Launchpad's records probably don't go very far either.

Duke's sudden hatred for Scrooge's boat reminds me of Launchpad's sudden attachment to Dewey. The triplet hasn't done much to or for Launchpad prior "Terror of The Terrafimians!”; he caused a trap to dump a pile of snakes onto Launchpad without apologizing. Dewey doesn't show any concern towards him until he comes back from his search in "Gander"...and yet, Launchpad established him as his best friend. He may not even be sure why he does. I've been theorizing for the longest time that Dewey could be reminding him of Della.

In the Theme Song Takeover, Launchpad sings about being on the Houseboat with Dewey specifically without acknowledging that Scrooge, Donald, Huey and Louie are there too. He did a similar thing in “Jaw$!” when he simplified Huey and Louie as “Dewey’s Brothers”. Aside from giving us potential clues about Della, Issue 18 highlighted Launchpad’s friendship with Dewey as well. When he realizes the severity of the tsunami alert, he immediately grabs Dewey and wants to head to safety instead of thinking to grab both Dewey and Webby at the same time. The retail incentive cover for this issue features a bunch of Dewey photos with Launchpad facing them.

Duke has a dream full of symbolism revolving around his Scottish persona. Launchpad’s line in “The 87 Cent Solution!” when Scrooge causes Gizmoduck to accidentally shoot the Sunchaser with a torpedo, reminds me a bit of this. He said the situation reminded him of every nightmare he’s ever had....why is he having dreams of accidentally hitting Dewey with the plane? What does this mean? Is he afraid that there will be a day where he hurts someone he cares about? Has this already happened in the past?

Was the mishap reminiscent of what happened during the cosmic storm? Scrooge accidentally causes Gizmoduck to fire his torpedoes (lightning?), they hit the plane (spacecraft?), smoke fills the vehicle (radiation clouds?) and he comes close to hitting someone he cares about (Della?)

After seeing the boat, Glomgold's old ways start to creep back into his mind. I think after being exposed to Della's presence for the first time in years, Launchpad will start to act a bit like his older self and do things that Della will recognize.

Glomgold had to get knocked back into the sea to return to how he normally is. Will Launchpad have to have another stressful incident or head injury to help him remember who he was?

There's a line from "The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!" where he says "NO! This is not the end of Launchpad McQuack! It WILL be by plane crash, or not at all!" Was that possibly hinting towards this?

Duke actually says a line a bit similar to this where he says “All I need to know, is that I came from the sea...and I’ll die buy it...”

A thunderstorm was involved and a rescue was underway, just like how Della could have been trying to rescue the father while she was caught up in the cosmic storm.

Glomgold's beard gets zapped with lightning from the storm, burning it into nothing. Launchpad possibly implied that he himself survived a lightning strike of some sort.

This episode was about a villain turning back into a good guy after losing his memory. Did Launchpad use to be a bad person? Or someone who was generally good, but made a bad decision? Or just unknowingly caused a bunch of bad things to happen? If Launchpad was the reason behind Della taking the Spear, then it’s partially his fault for Della getting stuck on the moon, losing her leg, Donald and Scrooge's separation, the boys growing up financially unstable without a mother, the depletion of the Money Bin, almost making Scrooge go bankrupt, Scrooge's retirement and depression, the family splitting up for a second time, Donald being sent to jail and the upcoming invasion. Even if the incident was beyond his control, he'll still feel horrible about causing such a chain reaction.

Not really counting on this, but if amnesia caused Glomgold to revert back to his original accent, could breaking out of amnesia cause Launchpad to revert back to his? In the original DuckTales series, Launchpad had more of a Northeastern accent. There are certain points in the cadence of Della's voice that reminds me of how Launchpad speaks in the reboot; more notably when she slips into a lower register

"Iiiit's fiiiine, I'm sure the flavor will wear off soon…"

"I've activated my distress beacon, so you can pinpoint my location and COME GET ME."

"I bet the boys have hatched by now... I'm not even sure what they look like…"

"I was gone for a decade and everyone was just fine…"

Glomgold's change in voice was brought on by copying off of Scrooge. Perhaps Launchpad is emulating Della in that way as well.

There are a few other lines in this episode that reminded me of some lines Launchpad has said in the previous season:

When Duke shares his crazy plans to outdo Scrooge's boat by over-fishing, Mann makes a comment.

"...But it's like you always say, 'sharing is caring'."

Duke takes a moment to think about this.

"That does sound like me...or does it?"

This reminds me of the scene in "The Spear of Selene!" where Scrooge orders Launchpad to get the plane back in the air after crash landing on Ithaquack. Launchpad responds.

"Sorry, Mr. McDee, gotta figure out what this flashing red light means. I always say: Better to be safe than... whatever the opposite of safe is!"

He then looks off to the side with uncertainty afterwards, like he's not exactly sure where this phrase came from, but he could have sworn he said it at some point.

"Yeah, I do say that.”

But then Scrooge fires back.

"WHEN HAVE YOU EVER SAID THAT?!"

Could this little break in character be implying that Launchpad was a safer person at some point in his life?

When Duke notices Webby and Louie out at sea when the storm is about to start, he begins to speak.

“I'll save ya! Or my name isn't--”

But then he gets hit with a crane and falls into the water. This reminds me of LP's quote in “The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!” when he's trying to help Scrooge win his parents’ approval. In disguise, he says

“He's a real family man or my name isn't Launchpad Mc...Donald Duck.”

We all know he isn't Donald and he was close to saying Launchpad McQuack wasn't his real name.

This may not count, but When Duke reached out to Webby and said “Give me your hand!”, it reminded me of when LP said the same thing to Dewey in “B.U.D.D.Y” as well as Scrooge in "Last Crash" when he's going after Dewey outside of the plane. Duke pulls Webby into the water and the limo rides over a rock causing Dewey to come out of the self-driving car and fly out of LP's grip.

After developing my new theory about Della and Launchpad's connection, I later realized how the two episodes I’ve been zeroing in on the most, are next to each other in order of production. One dealt with the ideas of genetic mutation in a space-like environment, combined with the concept of going on a secret trip to meet up with a family member and a lover. Then right after that, there's the idea of someone having amnesia after a big event causes their long absence and then struggling to figure out who they really are when elements from their past start to seep back into their life. A connection between the two is looking very likely. Both stories were set in aquatic places and may have even occurred around the same time. I came across a theory that Huey, Dewey and Launchpad visited the Mid-Atlantic ridge while Webby and Louie went fishing, which would explain why they weren't present in the other's episode. __

If Launchpad was affected by the cosmic storm, what else could it have done to him aside from changing the way he looks?

I've put together a list of abilities he may have gained from this:

Immortality

In "The Most Dangerous Game...Night!" Louie tells Huey that he's convinced Launchpad is immortal due to the amount of plane crashes he's survived. LP doesn't respond to this comment and later refuses to answer Huey about how he survived the Tower of Infinity when it collapsed.

I think there's enough weight to Louie's remark for it to be more than simply a one-off joke because there are multiple times where he's shown to be pretty resilient. Launchpad can get sick or hurt, but he recovers incredibly well to injuries and has, as Fisher said when he was describing Duke, "a freakishly high tolerance for pain".

After the snakes from the Atlantean trap bit him, he brushes the situation off like it's not a big deal. He's hindered by the venom, but he's still conscious enough to climb down the bridge when it breaks (for the most part) and helps Webby to lie to her grandmother by posing as a Swedish person. When Glomgold announced that he's about to blow up the city, Launchpad’s facial swelling suddenly goes down and he’s well enough to quickly drive the sub to safety. Also, when Launchpad returns to the Sunchaser after looking for Ziyi, a bunch of arrows are pierced through his armor and he has an eye-patch over his eye. He’s winded by having to run to the to the plane in time and escape the danger he went though, but he isn’t wincing from his injuries. He isn’t really fazed by them at all.

Sᴛᴏʀᴋᴜʟᴇs sᴇᴇᴍs ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴀ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇʜᴏʟᴅᴇʀ ғᴏʀ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ ᴡʜᴇɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ʜᴇ's ɴᴏᴛ ᴘᴀʀᴛɪᴄɪᴘᴀᴛɪɴɢ ɪɴ ᴄᴇʀᴛᴀɪɴ ᴇᴘɪsᴏᴅᴇs. Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs ʜᴇ ʀᴇᴘʀᴇsᴇɴᴛs Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ's ɪᴍᴍᴏʀᴛᴀʟɪᴛʏ ɪɴ ᴀ ᴡᴀʏ.

Strength

“The Missing Links of Moorshire!” is a good example of Launchpad’s strength. Towards the end of the episode, he’s shown to lift Huey, Dewey, Louie, Webby and Scrooge with ease. Even earlier in the episode, he’s able to push a water-logged golf cart out of a lake, which on average is somewhere between 900 to 1100 lbs when it’s dry.

The cosmic storm may have increased his strength, but the workout equipment in his room would indicate that he needs to maintain it to a degree. Maybe it's a Hercules-type situation; even during his weaker points, he’s still pretty strong, but working out just makes him even more abnormally strong.

Agility

As seen in “Shadow War” and “Duck Knight”, LP is a very capable fighter. He has good reflexes, allowing him to dodge most attacks. Even though the venom from the snakes impaired him, he was still able to defend himself from Glomgold’s henchmen. In “Last Crash”, he ran on top of falling items to keep himself from falling out of the plane. And when he was fighting off the shadows on top of the plane, he never lost his balance.

Speed

I'm not really sure with this one, but in "Game Night" Launchpad was able to make it over to Louie and Huey after getting struck with the shrink ray. Perhaps this was ignored for convince, but running fast would explain how he was able to survive the collapse of the Jenga tower.

Aquatic Respiration

I think this is starting to become more apparent. After "Whatever Happened to Della Duck?!" aired, I started to wonder if Launchpad may have used Oxy-Chew when he went to visit Oceanika. But after "Friendship Hates Magic!"....I don't think this is the case. In the scene where he's drinking pea soup through a silly straw, one of the peas gets stuck and he struggles with it until his face starts to turn blue. He faints and all the air in his lungs exits his body before face-planting into his bowl. Then he makes a muffled inhaling noise without choking…

Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ sɪᴛs ɪɴ ғʀᴏɴᴛ ᴏғ ᴀ ᴘᴀɪɴᴛɪɴɢ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ sᴇᴀsɪᴅᴇ ᴀs ᴛʜɪs ɪs ʜᴀᴘᴘᴇɴɪɴɢ.

In “Neverrest”, Launchpad keeps his mouth open as he falls into the hot spring and doesn’t gasp for air when he bursts out of it. When he comes back to the lighthouse in "Depths", he simply resurfaces with no problem. He isn't panting for air until he has to climb up onto the platform, which can be a bit tiring after staying in the water for so long. So, uh...I guess Launchpad has gills somewhere on his beak...? Granted, if he did have Oxy-Chew at some point, he could have ended up swallowing it; I mean, that stuff is pretty powerful when you chew it alone, but I'm leaning on mutation with this one.

Electrical Powers

After getting caught in a cloud full of radiation and lightning, it would make a ton of sense for Launchpad to have some sort of connection to electricity. But what kind of connection exactly? Can he generate his own? Can he bend and levitate metal objects to his will? Does he serve as a special conductor? It's really hard to tell since there aren't any on obviously examples, but perhaps there could be something with the latter option.

The ending to “The Spear of Selene!” was very baffling. During my first viewing, I thought Launchpad was scared to leave the plane for some reason, but he ends up disassembling the plane; preventing the family from leaving and bringing him out in the open. Then, during my latest viewing, I realized that the plane isn’t simply taken apart, it looks like it was ripped apart. The pieces are damaged...one of the engines are chipped and dented, one of the propeller blades are also chipped, the tail of the plane has a cracked wing, the control board is all dented with the yoke snapped off...was he really that obsessed with figuring out the problem that he couldn’t just use tools to separate the plane properly? This made me wonder if there could have been an explosion from inside of the Sunchaser. Could another lightning bolt have hit the plane and it was strong enough for Launchpad to react to it? The first time the plane was struck, he’s quickly able to engage a control to stop it from affecting the plane.

The plane parts don’t seem to have any burn marks on them and Launchpad’s clothes aren’t singed or anything, so perhaps there was a different kind of electrical mishap or something that resulted from another side effect of the cosmic storm.

Sixth Sense

Maybe this is purely for meta humor, but LP seems to have this underlying fourth wall-y awareness. At the end of “Moonshire”, the camera is gone, but he still faces the audience and addresses the lesson to be learned. He then undercuts himself as if he didn't want us to know how insightful he is.

In "Terror of The Terrafimians!", he questions if Huey, Webby and Lena were the only three missing from the group when Magica technically counts as a fourth person.

Good Hearing

You would think that after constantly hearing the sound of breaking glass and denting metal on a daily basis, it would take a toll on Launchpad's hearing, but he seems to be a good listener.

Even though we weren't able to see his reaction to Scrooge's story about the Spear of Selene, he must have heard it in spite of being all the way on the other side of the plane and being sorta barricaded by a bunch of stuff to help balance the weight. If the boys informed him about what happened, he would have taken their word for it when he was talking over the intercom in "Shadow War", not point out how they’re the ones who blame Scrooge.

After "Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!" aired, I've been trying to figure out how Launchpad knew that Della was in the houseboat. She wasn't being very loud and he said "Thought I'd come over to introduce myself," implying that he knew about her being in there and stalled afterwards. He could have seen her as she was walking to the other side of the pool to board the houseboat, but it would have to have been somewhere where she wouldn’t have been able to notice him. Maybe looking out the window from inside the house. If not, he could have heard her in the boat as he was passing by. She didn’t start talking until around the time he came over, so if this were the case, he would have already known whose voice it was coming out of the houseboat. If he knew about Della being in the mansion this whole time, why did it take him so long to talk to her?

Weight Manipulation?

Part of me sorta wonders if LP has the ability to make himself lighter when he needs to be; holding back so he won't hurt anyone. This would explain things like how Scrooge was able to save LP from falling out of the plane in “Last Crash” without dislocating his shoulder and how Webby was able to knock LP down in “Shadow War”.

But then again, determination, anger and stubbornness act a bit like super powers to some of the characters. It gives them a boost of strength when the stakes are high and allows them to do things they wouldn’t normally be able to do or shouldn't be able to do based on their body type. Scrooge was able to throw everyone off of him in “87 Cent Solution”, and enjoys swimming around in one of the most heavy metals in existence. Huey dragged LP back to the log in “Only Child” even after he wasn’t able to lift any part of that log. He was also able to lift three kids along with his uncle in “Moorshire” and was strong enough to keep the demon dog at bay in “McManor”. Then there's both Drake and Jim who can go through a bunch of injuries and still get back up after them.

This guess, along with the others I've discussed in this list, might just be part of cartoon logic and isn't meant to be an indication of anything outside of humor or convenience.

The Ability to Be Manipulated?

As I was putting this list together, I suddenly thought: If there's a Greek connection to the cosmic storm, what if Zeus is able to manipulate LP similarly to how he was able to manipulate Storkules with the siren? If Launchpad does have good hearing, what if he heard the siren and that's what caused him to destroy the Sunchaser? Launchpad loves music and, as seen in "Sky Pirates", gets easily distracted by it. The plane was fine when Donald was trying to leave the lightning barrier, but then after the singing and fighting continued, it's in shambles.

Zeus used the siren because he knew it would affect Storkules directly. Scrooge, Huey and Louie were not affected by the singing after later taking their hands from over their ear...holes. Dewey, Webby and Selene couldn't be affected because the temple was way up high on the island. The Sunchaser, however, was located right around the corner. Since Zeus wasn't affected by the siren either, perhaps there's something in the lyrics that affects immortals who rank lower than himself.

Back in April, I observed the Spear manual scenes in “Whatever Happened” and noticed that “DT-87” and “DT-18” were mentioned. These are abbreviations for “DuckTales 1987”, the year the original series came out and “DuckTales 2018”, the year Season 2 premiered. The numbers “7-15”, “7-16”, “7-18” and “207” were also featured.

“207” as well as the other 7’s refer to “Whatever Happened”’s production code, so I figured 15, 16 and 18 were also referring to other Season 2 episodes that might relate to 7. So far, Episode 15, "The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!" and Episode 16, "The Duck Knight Returns!", have provided things that could be leading up to why Della took the Spear and how it could have to do with the father. Launchpad was present in both episodes, and both shared some similar themes.

Episode 15 opens up with a thunderstorm storm. Gizmoduck is facing off against an evil scientist named Dr. Atmoz Fear, who's taking advantage of the storm by using one of his devices to manipulate the lightning. When he tries to zap Gizmoduck with it, it reminds me a bit of Gyro and his shrink ray in "Game Night".

Dʀ. Aᴛᴍᴏᴢ Fᴇᴀʀ sʜᴀʀᴇs sᴏᴍᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀs ᴡɪᴛʜ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ: Hᴇ ʜᴀs ʀᴇᴅ ʜᴀɪʀ, ᴀ ɢʀᴇᴇɴ sʜɪʀᴛ, ᴀ ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ᴍᴀsᴋ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀs ᴏғ ʜɪs ғᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀs ᴀɴᴅ ʟᴀʙ ᴄᴏᴀᴛ, sᴇᴇᴍ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴏғ LP's ғᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀs ᴀɴᴅ ғᴜʀʀᴇᴅ ᴄᴏʟʟᴀʀ.

After the villain is defeated, Fenton meets Gandra, someone else who also works in the scientific fields. Unlike Fenton, who's more professional with his work, she's more on the rebellious side. A similar thing can be said about Della and Launchpad when it comes to aviation.

Fenton schedules a science date with Gandra, but he's very hesitant to call it such. If Della took the Spear because she was trying to save the father and failed, I can see her being very hesitant about getting back into a romantic relationship.

On their way to pick up Gandra in the limo, Launchpad conversates with Fenton by going down a list of special someone’s he’s previously dated. A couple of mentions in this list caught my attention; the first being how Launchpad claims to have dated a clone of himself. I think this is a meta thing we aren't supposed to take seriously. Because...why would this be suggested if a legitimate clone of yourself is basically your twin sibling, your child or somewhere in-between that...? Maybe it’s just me, but he blinks rather oddly right after he says this. There's also a pause as he stops the limo and begins to furrow his brow. Either he’s thinking really hard about everyone he's dated or he's a bit confused to where these more weirder memories are coming from.

What makes it even harder to take this clone claim seriously is that this is the same character who thinks Fenton is an actual robot because of the Gizmo suit and who also confused someone for a yeti in “Neverrest”. The word "clone" does have a non-literal meaning, so if we consider this and break it down...LP previously dated another goofy pilot who tends to wear teal and green, has a positive outlook on life in spite of all the hardships they face, never gives up, loves adventure, loves family, and doesn't like the idea of being replaced...?

I’ve joked to myself in the past about Della sort of being a female version of Launchpad due to their colors and how they have a similar way about themselves. Della's character pre-dates Launchpad but she was never described as a fearless pilot until the "Family Ties" comic was released in 2014, twenty-seven years after DuckTales debuted. (This comic is where the reboot got its inspiration for Della's character and story arc.)

If LP really does have amnesia, he can’t remember Della as a person, so it would be easy for him to consider her as a copy of himself. Scrooge made it extremely difficult to get information about Della after she went missing so anything that Launchpad is emulating from her had to be based on knowledge prior to that point.

Another reason why this could be a sly reference to Della is because every time we get information about Launchpad’s love-life, we’re always given something that can be traced back to Della: Della isn’t a deadly ninja, but Ziyi’s situation in “Gander” involved her disappearing and possibly leaving her offspring behind. (I’m assuming Ziyi was being referred to due to the order of the list and being the only previously mentioned lover with an Asian background. Perhaps she has some Japanese origins as well as Chinese.) Della isn’t a forbidden mermaid, but Oceanika’s situation in “Depths” involved her calling out to Launchpad in a sing-song manner, wearing similar colors to both Launchpad and Della, and ended with Launchpad returning with a golden spear and trio of color-coded sea creatures that come from eggs. One of Launchpad’s lines in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” involved his true love giving him “eleven planes a-flying”. Regardless of how strange that statement was, it still planted the idea that there are two Launchpads, which technically, may be true persona-wise.

Tʜɪs ᴍᴀʏ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ Tʜᴇᴍᴇ Sᴏɴɢ Tᴀᴋᴇᴏᴠᴇʀ, ᴀғᴛᴇʀ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ ʜɪᴛs ʜɪs ʜᴇᴀᴅ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴏɢᴏ ᴄʀᴀsʜ, ʜᴇ sᴇᴇs ᴀ ʟᴀʀɢᴇʀ ᴠᴇʀsɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ʜɪᴍsᴇʟғ ᴏᴜᴛsɪᴅᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪɴᴅᴏᴡ. Nᴏᴛ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴛʜɪs ʙᴇ ʀᴇғᴇʀʀɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴛᴡᴏ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ ʜᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇ sᴛᴏʀᴍ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ɢʀᴏᴡ ʙɪɢɢᴇʀ ᴛʜᴀɴ ʜᴇ ᴡᴀs ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀsᴛ.

The second mention in Launchpad’s list of lovers that caught my attention was the talking cloud of energy. Similarly to the pause after talking about a clone, he gets cut off right after he says this. A cloud of energy is basically a cloud full of lightning and that reminds me a lot of the cosmic storm. Since the cloud had the ability to talk, could this claim be based on a memory of Della trying to contact him while he was in the cosmic storm?

Fenton and Gandra’s date takes place at night in Gyro’s underwater lab. The moon is mentioned and it’s likeness is sort of shown through the string of lights used to decorate the room. Outside of the lab’s window is a starfish that is colored with a shade very close to Fenton’s purple shirt. He sits on the side of the table where the creature is located. The scenery is reminding me of the sea-space connections the show has been making. The starfish not only reminds me of stars in general but how the blue starfish attached to Launchpad at the end of “Depths” was a similar color to Della’s teal scarf. I’ve noted in another post that the starfish could have to do with Della because it also shares traits with Dewey and he’s constantly being compared to her, but what makes Della even more like the starfish is her ability to adapt. She lost her leg, but she was able to make a new one. Starfish can regenerate their limbs when they lose them.

When Fenton shows Gandra his Fentonium project, he described the invention as "An innovative generator from a mild-mannered source." If Launchpad has any electrical powers, this makes me wonder if they'll eventually be put to scientific use.

It’s later revealed that Gandra is a spy working for Waddle. Her main objective for going on a date with Fenton was to get him to say his Gizmoduck passcode to activate the nanite serum she made for Mark Beaks. For Gandra, the nanites gave her the power to deliver electrical shocks. For Mark, the nanites enhanced his body by giving him a muscular physique, a more prominent chin and gruffer voice to go with it.

Tʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴄᴇᴘᴛs ᴏғ ᴇʟᴇᴄᴛʀɪᴄɪᴛʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇxᴛʀᴇᴍᴇ ᴘʜʏsɪᴄᴀʟ ᴛʀᴀɴsғᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴs sᴇᴇᴍ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ɪɴᴄʀᴇᴀsɪɴɢ. Tʜᴇ ᴍɪᴅ-sᴇᴀsᴏɴ ᴛʀᴀɪʟᴇʀ ғᴏʀ Sᴇᴀsᴏɴ 2 ғᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇs ᴀ ᴄʟɪᴘ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴀɴ ᴜᴘᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ ᴇᴘɪsᴏᴅᴇ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ Hᴜᴇʏ ᴛʀᴀɴsғᴏʀᴍs ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴀ Sᴜᴘᴇʀ Sᴀɪʏᴀɴ ɪɴsᴘɪʀᴇᴅ ᴠᴇʀsɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ʜɪᴍsᴇʟғ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀ ʟɪɢʜᴛɴɪɴɢ ʙᴏʟᴛ ʜɪɢʜʟɪɢʜᴛ ɪɴ ʜɪs ʜᴀɪʀ. Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ ᴀɴᴅ Mᴀʀᴋ ᴀʀᴇ sʜᴏᴡɴ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇғᴏʀᴇ ᴛʜɪs.

After the secret plan unfurls, Fenton turns into Gizmoduck. He responds to Mark's mutation:

“You've always been a monster, but now, you are a literal monster!”

This reminds me a lot of the monster stuff in "Terror". I always feel weird when I try to make sense of that portion of the plot because I feel like I haven't figured it out yet, but something is definitely going on. Since that episode has aired, there have been multiple cases where a character is considered a physical or figurative monster and whether that makes them a good person or a bad person. And there's always an "M" alliteration tied to it:

Mole Monster and McQuack in “Terror of The Terrafirmians!”

"I can't believe my best friend is a mole monster..."

"Wait...am I a mole monster? But I'm a good guy! Then that means...mole monster can also be good guys."

Magica and Monster in “The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck!”

"They'll turn on you; call you a monster!

“You’re the monster here! And I know just the hunter to take you down...”

Monstro and M’Ma in "Who Is Gizmoduck?!"

"Eres un monstro, Diego!"

Monster and Mitzi in "The Depths of Cousin Fethry!"

"She's not a monster, she's a Mitzi!"

Moon Mite and Mother in "Whatever Happened to Della Duck?!"

“The mite isn't a monster, it's a mother!"

In an earlier post, I began to wonder if it would end up circling back to Launchpad since he's the one who started it. I thought maybe he'd feel like a monster in a figurative sense for accidentally abandoning his kids, but now it could also be something involving his genetic mutations. Maybe even a betrayal or theft of some sort since those concepts seem to be lingering in the background.

With all these M's going on and the high possibility of Launchpad's foreign names being used for Huey and Dewey, perhaps Launchpad's real name is Maxwell as in his Danish name, Max Motor. Joseph as in his Spanish name, Joe McQuack could also be another possibility. Since HDL went from more outlandish names to more plausible names, it's likely Launchpad's real name is something more standard.

Lᴀsᴛ ʏᴇᴀʀ, Dɪsɴᴇʏ ʀᴇʟᴇᴀsᴇᴅ ᴀ sᴇʀɪᴇs ᴏғ sʜᴏʀᴛs ᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ Wᴇʙʙʏ Rᴇᴀᴄᴛs, ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ sʜᴇ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜ ᴄʟɪᴘs ғʀᴏᴍ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ Dɪsɴᴇʏ Cʜᴀɴɴᴇʟ ʀᴇʟᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴇᴅɪᴀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴅʀᴇᴡ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴀʀɪsᴏɴs ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴɢs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟʟʏ ʜᴀᴘᴘᴇɴᴇᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ sʜᴏᴡ. Dᴜʀɪɴɢ ʜᴇʀ ʀᴇᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ Bᴇx's sᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ ғʀᴏᴍ Aɴᴅɪ Mᴀᴄᴋ, sʜᴇ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴀʀᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴏ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ ᴀs sᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ ᴡʜᴏ's "ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴛᴏᴏ ᴍᴀɴʏ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs". Tʜᴇɴ ᴛᴏᴡᴀʀᴅs ᴛʜᴇ ᴇɴᴅ, ɪᴛ's ʀᴇᴠᴇᴀʟᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ Bᴇx ᴡᴀs ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ Aɴᴅɪ's ᴏʟᴅᴇʀ sɪsᴛᴇʀ; sʜᴇ's ʜᴇʀ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ. Tʜɪs ᴄᴀᴜsᴇs Wᴇʙʙʏ ᴛᴏ ᴡᴏɴᴅᴇʀ ᴡʜᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴀᴛʜᴇʀ ɪs.

When Fenton and Gandra make amends and try to come up with a way to stop Mega Beaks from wreaking any more havoc, Fenton points out that in spite of Mark's body being altered, he's still the same weak, ego-fuel person underneath those alterations. A similar thing can be said for Duke; even after he forgot about his Scottish persona, he was still Flintheart Glomgold and this became evident as he began to revert back into him.

When Mega Beaks is able to catch the Fentonium-laced paddle ball Fenton throws at him, he's amazed.

"Wow, I never actually caught a ball before! Well, who's the loser now, coach DAD?!"

This is the second time someone's father was mentioned in the episode. Before the date, M'ma mentions Fenton's father when she gives her son his suit to wear. Perhaps Della has one of the father's belongings that she'll pass down to her sons too.

___

Episode 16 was about two different people sharing the same alternative persona: Jim Starling as the original Darkwing Duck and Drake Mallard as the new one. Jim is outraged that he’s being replaced on a new Darkwing production after years of trying to make a comeback. Being disappointed by the gritty direction of the reboot, Launchpad sees Drake in a negative light and agrees to help Jim sabotage the movie. It was supposed to be for the greater good, but when Launchpad tries to go with the plan and lock Drake in his own trailer, his heroism is questioned. Drake isn’t a bad person and it turns out that he’s a huge Darkwing fan much like Launchpad himself. Was crushing the dreams of playing his childhood hero the right thing to do?

Once they find common ground, Launchpad devises a new plan where all three of them work together to help make a Darkwing Duck movie that new and old fans can enjoy. Unfortunately, Jim is too full of obsession and desperation to finally give the show a proper conclusion, that he becomes selfish. He ignores Drake when he tries to propose LP’s new idea to him and locks him away. He then refuses to follow the script and ends up destroying the movie set with his defiance. Drake soon breaks free and challenges Jim, leading Darkwing into fighting with himself. Launchpad tries to snap Jim out of it and remind him of the hero he’s supposed to be. While it does cause Jim to literally reflect on what he was becoming and helped him to save both Drake and Launchpad from the surging lightning tower before it exploded, it ultimately wasn’t enough. The one who was presumed to be bad turned out to be good, and the one who was presumed to be good, became bad, leaving Darkwing as both the hero and villain of his own story.

Ok, so, there’s a lot of identity struggle going on along with frustration over getting replaced after years of trying to get back into the spotlight. This seems like more supporting evidence that Launchpad will be faced with a situation where he’ll be confused about who he really is, but could this also be hinting that Della might go a little too far with her rivalry against Launchpad?

A lot of DW episodes so far seem to contain LP’s fear of being fired...but he’s considered honorary family; it’s hard to imagine Launchpad getting kicked out to take a permanent leave to St. Canard in this continuity. Launchpad wasn’t working for Scrooge in the original Darkwing Duck series because it took place in an alternate universe. Even with DW’s world integrated into the reboot, it’s still DuckTales at it’s base. It wouldn’t feel right for Launchpad to suddenly get removed from the main cast. I think similarly to Drake, Della will find some common ground with LP before anything is able to get out of hand.

When Dewey expresses his ideas to make the Darkwing film better, he mentions aliens, Megavolt and lightning towers. When Jim threatens to zap Alistair Boorswan with Megavolt's lightning ray, Launchpad steps in between them; willing to get hit to protect the director. Drake displays a high tolerance for pain as he survives a box of explosives going off, getting a piano dropped on him and getting zapped several times.

As Dʀᴀᴋᴇ ɢᴇᴛs ᴢᴀᴘᴘᴇᴅ, ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴀ ᴠɪsɪʙʟᴇ ᴄʀᴀᴄᴋ ɪɴ ʜɪs sᴋᴜʟʟ; ᴀ sɪɢɴ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʜᴇ's sᴜsᴛᴀɪɴᴇᴅ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀᴅ ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ.

...ᴡᴀɪᴛ ᴀ ᴍɪɴᴜᴛᴇ, ᴡʜʏ ᴅɪᴅ Dᴇᴡᴇʏ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ ᴀᴄᴛᴜᴀʟ ᴡᴇᴀᴘᴏɴs ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ?!

An artificial thunderstorm is created when Launchpad turns on the rain machine to stop the movie set from being on fire. When he delivers his speech about how heroic and important Darkwing Duck is as a character, he stands in front of one of the lightning towers. At the mention of the word "light", there's an upsurge of power as the camera pans from Launchpad to the top of the tower. The structure sends sparks everywhere, but Launchpad is completely unfazed by this and continues his speech.

A tattered image of the moon and a starry sky hangs in the background as this is going on... could this scene be proving that Launchpad has some degree of electrical manipulation? Is it only evident when he's extremely passionate about something? If this was purely the result of the rain machine being activated, wouldn't it have taken a much shorter time for the lightning tower to react?

Tʜᴇ ʟɪɢʜᴛɪɴɢ ᴅᴜʀɪɴɢ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ's sᴘᴇᴇᴄʜ ɪs ᴄʟᴏsᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪɢʜᴛɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ᴏɴ ɪɴ "Tᴇʀʀᴏʀ"'s sᴜʙᴡᴀʏ ᴄʀᴀsʜ. Iɴᴛᴇʀᴇsᴛɪɴɢʟʏ ᴇɴᴏᴜɢʜ, ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴀ sᴘᴀʀᴋɪɴɢ ғɪxᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴏɴ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ's sɪᴅᴇ ᴀғᴛᴇʀ ʜᴇ ᴇxɪsᴛs ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴡʜᴇɴ ʜᴇ ʟɪᴛᴇʀᴀʟʟʏ ʀᴇғʟᴇᴄᴛs ᴏɴ ᴡʜᴇᴛʜᴇʀ ʜᴇ's ᴀ ᴍᴏʟᴇ ᴍᴏɴsᴛᴇʀ ᴏʀ ɴᴏᴛ, ᴛᴡᴏ Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ's ᴀʀᴇ sʜᴏᴡɴ.

When Jim and Drake notice the lightning tower is growing unstable, they both run towards Launchpad to save him. In a hassle to be heroic again, Jim pushes both of his fans out of the way and suffers from the explosion. The rescuer is believed to be dead but he's alive and takes on a new persona: Negaduck. The event figuratively turns him into a monster.

So, there's a rescue, an electrical based event, survival from that event, a re-branding of oneself and someone is considered a monster. If Launchpad truly is responsible for blowing up the tower, he's the one who "killed" Jim. Drake blames himself, kinda like how everyone blames Della for the Spear incident when it could have been due to her going after Launchpad.

Wʜᴇɴ Dʀᴀᴋᴇ ᴀɴᴅ LP ᴀʀᴇ ᴘʟᴀʏɪɴɢ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ DWD ᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ғɪɢᴜʀᴇs, Lᴀᴜɴᴄʜᴘᴀᴅ ᴘʟᴀʏs ᴀ ᴠɪʟʟᴀɪɴ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴄᴄɪᴅᴇɴᴛᴀʟʟʏ ᴋɴᴏᴄᴋs ᴏᴠᴇʀ ᴀ ᴄᴜᴘ ᴏғ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀ, ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟʟʏ ʟᴇᴀᴅs ᴛᴏ Dʀᴀᴋᴇ ʜᴜʀᴛɪɴɢ ʜɪs ғᴏᴏᴛ.

This episode made me realize a loose pattern that seems to be going on with two similar character that rival each other. One pretty much stays consistent (Scrooge, Lena, Drake), while the other goes through a major change that emulates the other (Glomgold, Violet, Jim). There’s usually an event and or a disappearance tied to their change (Scrooge’s Africa visit, the Shadow War, the tower explosion). The changed character is seen negatively and could be considered a monster. And at some point, one of the rivaling characters realize that the other has a significant connection to their past (The money clip, the amulet, the table signing).

I think Della and Launchpad could be following this pattern too. As noted by Scrooge in “Nothing Can” and “Raiders of The Doomsday Vault!”, Della’s hasn’t really changed at her base. Thus, making Launchpad the one who has most likely gone through a major change. Launchpad was established as Della’s double when she considered him to be her replacement and views him negatively. We know for sure that one of them went missing during an event and there’s enough potential hinting to suggest that they have a significant connection in their past.

Tʜᴇ ʟᴀᴛᴛᴇʀ ᴘᴏʀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀᴛᴛᴇʀɴ ᴡᴀs ᴘʀᴇsᴇɴᴛ ɪɴ "Lᴀsᴛ Cʜʀsɪᴛᴍᴀs!" ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴇɴᴅɪɢᴏ ᴡᴀs ʀᴇᴠᴇᴀʟᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇ Gʜᴏsᴛ ᴏғ Cʜʀɪsᴛᴍᴀs Pᴀsᴛ. Iɴ sᴘɪᴛᴇ ᴏғ ʜɪs ᴍᴏɴsᴛʀᴏᴜs ᴇxᴛᴇʀɪᴏʀ, ʜᴇ ᴡᴀs sᴛɪʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ sᴀᴍᴇ ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴsɪᴅᴇ.

Another number featured in the Spear’s manual was “800”. I couldn't figure out what it could mean at the time, but it could stand for "Friendship Hates Magic!". WDTV press has it listed as Episode 8 in order of production. This episode featured concepts of taking a dangerous risk to bringing someone back from the unknown, Launchpad bonding with a co-worker, possibly displaying one of his special abilities, hinting towards “Duck Knight” and the idea of someone who was thought of as being gone but they’ve actually been hanging around this whole time. When Lena is back to her solid form, Launchpad appears soon after the magical clouds of smoke begin to clear.

The number 17 is missing in the sequence that was highlighted in the manual. Perhaps there's something secretive about Episode 17. Or maybe the plot could be dealing with something or someone that’s missing. It could be when the family realizes Donald is missing or how his jail time is going on the Moon. It could also be something regarding the father; like Della opening up to the boys about him. I guess it could mean that this episode isn’t relevant to Episode 7, but that feels a bit less likely.

In my next post, I'm going to discuss how the arrangement of a scene can give us subtle hints about the future; starting with a closer look at Donald's family photo wall.

Are you up for even more reading? Continue here.

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troominmoll · 6 years

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"i feel like being bitter and listing off all the things that the 90s show changed about the original stories" as a relative newcomer to moomin-related stuff, i'm curious... what *did* the 90s show change??

*rubs hands because I love being insufferable*

(Minor disclaimer that this is mostly done in good nature. I understand almost every show that is adapted from existing content is gonna change stuff to suit their story-telling needs. But I am annoyed that some who praise the 90s anime think the new series is bad simply for doing things differently when that show, and nearly every one prior to it, has also put their own spin on things.)

There are 24 episodes of Tanoshii Moomin Ikka (plus a movie) based on the books by Tove Jansson, and I think 11 based on the comic strips she wrote. It would take a long time to cover every single detail in every single episode, so I am mainly going to discuss those that have changes I find more significant, disappointing, personally distressing, or just plain baffling.

(A second disclaimer: I have not read any entire comic stories past the point where Tove stopped working on them. There are some episodes based on strips created exclusively by her brother Lars, The Vampire and Artists in Moominvalley being two examples. I will be skipping those, as well as Bouken Nikki episodes, as I have yet to thoroughly watch each one on account of so few being based on Tove’s work and the headaches they induce lmao. Nitpicks from fans who have read Lars’ strips in full are welcome.)

Now without further ado, let the fussing begin~

01 Spring in Moominvalley: This follows the basic storyline from the first two chapters of Finn Family, but with some notable changes. Snufkin at this point woke up from hibernation along with the rest of the family, Little My had yet to be introduced, and Snork - a child like the rest of the main cast - lived with his sister and the rest of the kids in the Moominhouse. The entire subplot of him being an inventor is merely an invention of the anime.

Moomintroll, in the book, spends a lot more time in transformed body. As he believes his friends are playing a new game when they fail to recognize him, he makes up a story about being “The King of California”. He repeatedly pretends to insult Moomin (himself), and in a touching display of devotion his own friends beat him up to defend his honour.

02 The Magic Hat: Continuing on with a scene based on the later half of chapter 2, we see Moomin rescue Snorkmaiden from the Ant Lion, and along with Snufkin, decide to trap him in the magical hat. In the original story however, Moomin and Snork trap the him. This was rather unprovoked, though Moomin cites a moment from a previous book (read all about it in The Moomins and the Great Flood!) where the Ant Lion allegedly kicked sand in Mamma’s eyes. The gang then takes the hat back inside for more “experiments”, and after making a mess, the adults decide it best to dispose of the hat in the river.

Much like in the story, the hat is soon recovered by Moomin and Snufkin, though a chapter where they hide it in a cave and and end up frightening the Muskrat (who uses it as a shelf for his dentures) is absent. It then continues to the scene where Moominhouse is briefly overgrown with plants. Aside from this happening sooner than it did in the book, and the premature appearance of the Hobgoblin, and the missing Mameluke hunt, and the part where all the children play in the jungle, I think it’s pretty true to that chapter!

03 Discovery of a Wrecked Ship: First off, I wanna say I’m mostly including this episode on my list just to make it clear that Snufkin’s random sexist comments towards Snorkmaiden and Little My are missing from the book. There is a chapter where him and Moomin go ambling up some rocks, but “the girls” are thankfully absent from this scene.

So then they discover an abandoned boat and the rest of the episode is padded with scenes where they repair it. A charming spectacle, I’m sure, but also absent from the book as the boat they find is already in pristine condition. Shame that Snufkin never got to share his idea for the ship’s name, (it was Lurking Wolf aha ha ha) but that might be for the best.

07 The Suitcase: As seen in episode 06, Thingumy and Bob arrived in Moominvalley. They bring with them stolen goods and and the mother of Grimace, who seeks to recover said goods. Snufkin, once again letting everyone down, decides that a gentle female should speak to them about the contents of their suitcase and soon Snorkmaiden is assigned to the task. Instead the book features a trial sequence, which really helps hammer in the metaphor. Everyone takes part and Sniff acts as prosecutor of behalf of the Groke, who appears and is willing to trade the treasure in exchange for the magical top hat (NOT a pretty scallop).

08 The Hobgoblin’s Magic: Moomin hears that his wondrous wooden woman has washed up on the shores of Moominvalley. But when he rushes to the beach, he finds nothing but sand and disappointment waiting for him. This sends him spiraling into a brief yet no less deep depression which is cured only when Thingumy and Bob share their contents of their secret suitcase. The novel was much more reasonable however. He was saddened by the loss of Snufkin who had skipped the valley for the first time, promising (as we all know) to return on the first day of Spring.

And then there is a fabulous summer party thrown by the family after the recovery of Moominmamma’s handbag. This part is true to the story, at the very least. But the party in the book is much more fantastical, with dancing, music (from America of all places), punch served in darling sea shells, and everyone - right down to the tiniest forest critter - is invited, and gets to make a wish when the magic man arrives.

09 An Invisible Friend / 10 The Invisible Child: I wouldn’t say that these episodes, featuring the famous character from Tales of Moominvalley, have any life-ruining changes from the original story. But since no episode is complete without a bit of drama, or a pointless cameo from Snufkin, a scene where Stinky traps Ninny with the intention of having her assist in his robberies has been written in. And Little My’s comment regarding the aunt in the English dub, where she states “I hope you told her she hurt Ninny’s feelings!” seems uncharacteristically gentle in comparison to her asking if Too-Ticky “bashed her head in”.

13 The Last Dragon on Earth: As mentioned in the entry above, some episodes will include new subplots or elements for the sake of drama and action. This episode is another example of that, but otherwise it has only minor tweaks. Snufkin states that “the cards” have told him he should leave Moominvalley early if he catches x number of such-and-such a fish, but that storyline is exclusive to this show.

14 Our Neighbor is a Touch Teacher: This episode is based on snippets of the comic strip “Moominmamma’s Maid”, but scraps the storyline containing the titular character from the strip, which is nearly all of it. Instead, it is entirely focused on the Moomin’s new neighbor, Mrs Fillyjonk, a strict and uptight mother of three.

After the Moomin’s welcome party leaves Mrs Fillyjonk fearing for her life, she forbids her children from playing with the Moomin brood. They sneak away anyway. A bunch of death defying stunts happen, courtesy of Stinky. Mrs Fillyjonk plans to leave the valley, but the kids have none of that. This is almost an original story, save for the existence of a party.

16 A Close Encounter with Aliens: Once again we have an episode based on the comics. It follows the basic plotline of the Moomins caring for a stranded Martian child. But a lot of wackiness was cut for time, including invisible Moomins pranking valley residents, a flying fire brigade, and Moomin shrinking down with Mamma, who later bites a Fillyjonk child. Time used for an inserted chase scene with Stinky (one of many across the tv series) feels could’ve been better spent on some of the fun stuff mentioned in my previous sentence.

17 A Change of Air: And yet another comic-based episode, this one taken from “Moomin and Family Life”, which happens to be my personal favourite comic so this analysis may sound bitterer than others. The episode cuts the beginning of the strip, where we see a lonely parent-less Moomin contemplate suicide before being reunited with his long lost Moominmamma and Moominpappa. The comic is a completely different entity from the books and adjustments must be made, so this decision is understandable. But the following choice? Less so.

The episode instead starts with Pappa complaining that nothing exciting ever happens, and I won’t remind him of the events from episode 16 because everyone brings that up. Stinky overhears plans of doing something to entertain him, and during the night makes a set of giant footprints leading to the sea. Whereas in the comic strip, the “giant” prints are innocently left by Snufkin who was wearing boot too big for he gotdamn feet. He nearly perishes for this grave mistake.

Strips where Moominmamma and Moominpappa hang out in a cave, Moomin sheds a few tears tears, and Snufkin offers some half hearted words of comfort provide a basis for following scenes in the episode. But antics with Moomin and friends trying to foil Aunt Jane, who angrily travelled to the Moominhouse after being pranked by Pappa, are sadly missing.

24 Hurry Up Snufkin: The part where Snufkin meets and later names the forest creature Teetywoo, is based on the short story “The Spring Tune”. There are many potential gripes one can have about such a brief scene.

A lot of the dialogue between the two characters reflects what is said in the short story, but what the episode sorely lacks are Snufkin’s feelings. Gone are his shouts and snaps, his grumpiness about being disturbed, his regret when he lashes out, his desperation to find Teetywoo again. His famous line “I’ll come when it suits me” is “cried violently”, making me wonder how it ever became an inspirational quote (oh wait I know). In favour of portraying Snufkin as cool and chill, the anime sometimes ends up making him look more like an emotionless bump on a log.

The plotline of Snufkin being late to return because he is trying to compose a new song has been cut, on account of either his lack of talent or lack of music budgeting.

25 The Lighthouse / 26 The Day the Lighthouse Lit Up: These episodes actually combine elements of two different stories: the comic strip “Moomin and the Sea”, and the similarly titled novel “Moominpappa at Sea”. Lacking most of the typical shenanigans from the strips, or bleak themes from the book, these episodes feel more like a slightly above-average family outing.

The episodes seems to lean more towards the comic, where Moominpappa takes on the job of lighthouse keeper as inspiration for his writing, and Moomin is terrorised by an equally frightened ghost. Too-Ticky unfortunately is missing from the episodes, alone with the scenes where she shares some spooky suggestions with the spectre, and where Snorkmaiden fakes her own drowning to help Moomin feel brave.

Borrowing from the books, we meet both the former lighthouse keeper and a little boy named Toft, who apparently got very lost on his way to auditions for a “Moominvalley in November” episode. The episode scraps the element from the book of Moominpappa making the entire family miserable because he has some deluded fantasy about protecting and providing for them on his own, as well as a heart wrenching subplot involving the Groke, which I will not spoil for those considering reading it. But know this: there will be tears.

28 The Floating Theatre / 29 The Lost Children / 30 Midsummer: This three-parter is based on “Moominsummer Madness”, which is kind of an interesting book. Taking place smack dab in the middle of the series, we see it move away from the more lighthearted tones of the early stories, and begin the shift towards the less fantastical and more serious themes of the later books. But it isn’t quite there yet. And being written around the time Tove still worked on the comic series, some parts of the book would not seem out of place if drawn in her strips.

The most noticeably difference between the original story and anime episodes is the change of the cast. With the number of characters and subplots happening at once in the book, it was inevitable that some unlucky sod would get scrapped from the story - three sods in fact, by the names of Mymble, Misabel, and Whomper. Sniff is inserted into the story, and references to Mr Fillyjonk, the stage manager and Emma’s late husband, are removed.

Snufkin and My’s subplot is changed and cut quite short, beginning with the element of the two not knowing each other. His assault on the park keeper seems to be done for the sake of rescuing the children more or less imprisoned in the park, but book Snufkin simply took joy in breaking the law. The episode lacks great scenes of him trying to take care of the 24 little children; doing things like making silly noises, threatening to drown himself, and exposing them to second hand smoke.

With a small handful of characters missing, the plot of the play Moominpappa writes greatly differs from the book. And say goodbye to the ending chapter, where the reunited Moomin family flees the police and gets chased all the way back to Moominvalley.

45 Moomin Builds a House: This episode is based on the comic of the same title. Although it cuts the story quite short, what is left in is relatively close to the original. Except for the insertion of Snufkin, but I am not offended because that adorable laugh made his appearance worthwhile.

59, 63, 68 Adventures of Moominpappa: And here we get to the episodes based on “The Exploits of Moominpappa”. The first few changes I’d like to point out are a little less notable. As Mrs Fillyjonk was already more established in the show, the Hemulen aunt becomes a Fillyjonk. Edward is a silent character, the Nibling child that Pappa and co look after is absent, and everyone gets real ugly colour palettes.

Next, as you may know, the original books don’t really follow a solid timeline and canon changes in between stories. So in an attempt to make more sense, the young Mymble that Moomin meets is Little My’s mother, rather than her sister. But strangely, Moominpappa’s other friends are no longer the parents of Sniff and Snufkin. Why those two were still so enraptured by listening to his story is unclear.

Comet in Moominland: Finishing off the list is a movie based on the story of the same name. Being the first in what is considered the “main” book series, there are bound to be differences in how characters are written. But there is no difference here more worth talking about than Snufkin.

As I’ve already mentioned before, he is portrayed in the anime as more relaxed. He is the older and most mature member of Moomin’s group of friends, and tends to be reserved in expressing his emotions. For the sake of presenting Snufkin as a responsible figure, he never teaches the gang his favourite game: rolling boulders down cliffs, an activity which almost results in multiple casualties. We never hear his story about disrespecting a police officer, and his subsequent prison break.

But Snufkin in the earlier books is very much a child like the rest of the main cast. He is playful and talkative, being described as bringing “gaiety” to their adventure, and is always thrilling his friends with epic tales from his travels. He is not shy about expressing himself, he is shown to have some sadness about having no parents and cries his wee heart out upon sees the dried up ocean.

Other changes may seem more innocuous by comparison, snipping a party scene and river raft ride, and including Little My. But with the lack of a noticeable personality for a key character, and some of the action scenes, much of the movie just feels like a boring hike home.

In short, yeah. As you can see I’m pretty passionate on this subject, especially when it comes to Snufkin’s characterisation. Anyone who wishes to discourse Moomins with me is welcome.

#ok most of this was meant to be written funny and it was fun for me #but you can probably tell which points i got more carried away #there were a few episodes i wouldve covered ex aunt jane but i dont enjoy them as much and couldnt make their entries funny #moomin #mine #Anonymous

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inexchangeforyoursoul · 6 years

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I’ve had a chat with ~someone~ and guessed it was The Time to publish this rant... SO. Speaking for both Jasper and Hendrik: what the FUCK was that (also beware of post game spoilers I guess)

I may not have continued to watch streams and LPs after the first Mordegon fight, but from what I’ve gathered from various posts and sources, Act 3 gives everyone a more-or-less happy ending, and then there’s that. Not to mention this ‘everyone’ almost definitely includes not only totally innocent people like Michelle, but also the mother who sacrificed fucking people to her ex-son, and Mia, who was literally in the exact same fucking boat as Jasper. (Speaking of which: out of everyone monsterified in any way or form, only Jade seems to remember what has happened to her to a degree- and she’s the only one who was not under the direct influence of Mordegon, SO... similarly to Mia and Carnelian, Jasper also must have little to no recollection from the past 15 to 25 years, but that’s a rant for another day. Someone really hates Heliodor’s top knights... one is fucked in every way, and the other cannot live a single decade without encountering something gravely traumatizing smh.) Time travel shit is hard to write, but DAMN, is this a fucking mess, especially considering everything else.

Like, okay, let’s start with the basic problem regarding these two dumbasses: Jasper has always been a little shit. We know that. But while mischievous, he’s also perfectly fine giving love and attention to people he likes, even if he's rather roundabout in expressing it. Seeing how diligent and eager he was to better himself while clutching that pendant, I’d say he’s one of those people who care a little too much about the people who count--- and feeling un- or underappreciated is the thing that can twist him into an attention hungry beast. tl;dr: he does expect the important people in his life to return the attention and care in due time, otherwise he becomes a ticking bomb and things will spiral out of control eventually. Now, what makes this complicated is that he’s too subtle in expressing himself in the first place, and will never be the one to walk up to someone with a “we need to talk”; thus, his needs or disdain go unnoticed by people like... well, Hendrik. I love that man as much as anyone else, and he’s super, if not comically heroic, but damn is he an absolute idiot when it comes to personal relations, not to mention his almost robotic hulk-smash tunnel vision when it comes to Carnelian. Chivalrous to a fault, indeed. (I actually like that this is treated as a problem, because it damn straight is. Hell, prioritizing work over everything else is a fairly important catalyst in things ending up the way they are. It is the reason he blindly trusts the king even after finally realizing something’s really wrong with Jasper, and why latter had drifted away until the distance became an unsurmountable chasm. (I kind of see the husband&wife sidequest for the coral to be a good parallel to this situation ngl))

Let’s not even complicate things by raking the king into the equation as a likely father figure to both of them who had apparent favoritism going on, and what effects Mordegon taking over him had on Jasper, shall we? (I personally prefer the option of him approaching Jasper soon after the fall of Dundrasil. With Jasper being one of the smartest people in the game, (if not THE smartest motherflunker around,) maybe he even noticed something was off. Which, may I add, makes him the only one who could notice once Jade was gone. Get those two out of the picture, and you’re SET, man.)

To summarize, one’s too roundabout, the other’s too dumb, and this is why these two will keep talking past each other fiveever. Not even a mermaid’s whole, entire lifetime would be enough for these two to sort things out on their own, which is why they’d need an outsider to nudge them in the right direction. The only two who are in the active position to do so are the Hero and Mordegon. We’ve seen how latter plays out- the Lord of Shadows is much more invested in manipulating people’s weaknesses into killing their friends and family (see also: Mia). So it would be on us to kick them in the shin, right? Except we get no fucking options to do so.

The worst part of it is how easily they could have gone with more insteresting shit. I’ve seen some PC mods already regarding costumes, and you know what? Dubbing problems be damned, I’d give my lunch money tenfold for a mod that gets you a mentally unstable monster tamer Jasper for Act 3 into the team instead of Hendrik who’s forcibly mordegonized instead, even though I don’t have the game, and likely never will. Just this one change is a good enough setup to easily throw a decent storyline together, no??? I bet it wouldn’t be hard to keep the ultimate uberboss for after this shit as a nice bonus, either.

Let’s not even get started on the party dynamics. He’d be suspicious of the Luminary and expect to be used and thrown away as soon as he’s outlived his usefulness, bacause apparently that’s all he’s good for... but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Cat fights with the other Black Mage material Veronica? Yes. Chatting with Sylvia about Hendrik being as thick as a brick wall both physically and mentally?? Hell Yes. Hitting it hilariously well off with Serena and bonding over shit like being lowkey savage and cakes??? HELL FUCKING YES. Him and Erik not even remembering who this other motherfucker is so they can start on decent terms? They are basically the dog and cat type of the same person so it would be a fucking treat to watch that mess unfold. (in case it wasn’t clear thus far: I’d rather take an altered Act 2 with an Act 3 on top; still post-apocalyptic and somber, but with better outlooks, and healing time for wounds. Just... striking a better balance of hope and despair, you feel? Not everything has to be 90% perfect or 90% depressing.) And JADE, guys, JADE. She could just be the missing link to break Jaspers LVL 99 Mistrust Barrier and make all those other things possible. Apart from maybe Rab, she’s the only one around who knows him to an extent; it would give her some of that much needed active character development, AND be a display of her diplomatic skills as a soon-to-be-ruler. Two birds with one fucking stone, I tell ya. Just thinking about this makes me feel robbed.

Also, party members mean pep powers. Some sly shit with Erik. An ultimate Charm Nuke feat. Jade&Sylv. A Double Re-Vamp where he beats up shit with former while everyone watches in horror. One last power exclusive for the last boss where Hendrik joins the two of them that’s referencing Heliodor’s two headed eagle.

Ah, and there’s the obligatory face-off with Hendrik... and Carnelian, I suppose. Might keep the old dude around to make sure mr knightiest knight no-brains orders... anyway. That shit. That shit would be 100% psychological warfare directed at Jade and Jasper. And actually Evil™ Greg (aka Hendrik, sorry, I love that nickname from a JP playthrough) could totally bring out the receipts on both of them. It wouldn’t even be OOC because A: he spent time with baby Jade, and B: Mordegon knows like 99% of Jasper’s emotional baggage anyway. That shittalk would work like a charm, and dig under the lad’s skin, I tell ye. And past the humiliation and hurt, Jasper would also get fucking pissed and just tackle Hendrik to the ground before punching the fuck outta him, because feeling betrayed or not, even he knows that Hendrik would never, ever say something like that to his, save Jade’s face. It would be to no avail as our Wall of Meat could kill p much anyone by just flexing on their neck... But that’s also a perfect moment to pull an “if only there was someone who loved you” that would rattle everyone’s jimmies in- and outside of the game.

Man.

(I seriously don’t expect anyone to program this shit on the spot, but I may or may not be halfway done with some more-or-less episodic fic chapters that I also may or may not finish sometime, and y’all are free to contribute yourselves, too)

#dq11 #dqxi #dragon quest 11 #dragon quest xi #dragon quest #rereading this reminded me how pissed I was when writing it lmao #wall of text

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ancientbrit · 4 years

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Natter # 6 7/26/2020

I love books. I have a passion for them - always have. My parents were the catalyst really. My Dad would read to my sister and me when we went to bed; stories from a huge volume of The Brothers Grimm and Aesops Fables with fine, thin pages and wonderful, colored plates by Arthur Rackham, protected by sheets of parchment. You could lose yourself in the tales and those wonderful illustrations; we did and I wish we still had that book. We would go out for long walks in the countryside and always packed along a couple of books on birds, plants, and animals for identification purposes. My Mother would take us to the public library, a 213 bus ride away to Worcester Park and we would ride back home triumphant with tales about Mumfie the Elephant and others. Books were always welcomed as birthday and Christmas gifts amongst others and when a public library was set up in our village I was one of the very first to join and I took out a book entitled “Tropical Aquarium Fishes} by William T Innes I had that ook exclusively for over a year. The library was within walking distance along Anne Boleyns Walk so it suited me very well. At school when the class was made to stand and read aloud one by one around the room, when it reached my turn I could never find the place because I was always about three pages ahead. I couldn't stand the slow pace that reading out loud produced. I began to develop a taste for adventure books where the same characters were repeated in subsequent volumes, such as in Arthur Ransome's children's book series, starting with "Swallows and Amazons." I always thought the illustrations were sort of crude sketches but the stories were great. I bought a set for my kids but somehow they never seemed to appeal to them. During the war, American comics were really desirable and they were hard to get. A little girl who lived just around the corner had relations in the States who would send her most of the popular comics of the day - be worth a fortune now no doubt. We found out about this and soon we had developed a bartering system - English comics for American comics. One of the American comics characters was a boy who was always getting into adventures & scrapes and getting out of them by building various things. What used to fascinate me about this was at the bottom of the pages were instructions on how to build the things that he had used. How to build a passenger rail car with lighted windows from an old shoebox, or a searchlight from a shaving soap container. That phrase "how to make...." has stayed with me for all my life and it still has the power to draw me in; I love to make things. Much more on this later. I became involved and interested in mechanical things and my Uncle Jim next door had a wealth of interesting gadgets which he used to shower on me. Old clocks, crystal sets, old firearms and on. I loved all of these and started taking them apart to see how they worked. Some I even returned to working condition. But eventually, prime movers and engines of all sorts started to take precedence and it peaked when our next-door neighbor on the left, at whose engineering company I later worked on Saturdays, took me and his daughter, Mary, to the Model Engineering Exhibition in London. I don't think Mary had any interest what so ever but I was in seventh heaven, looking at all the model steam locomotives, engines and everything mechanical - and they all worked, they weren't just pretty static models, they were actually miniature pieces of engineering and not long after this I started to subscribe to the magazine “Model Engineer” which I would read avidly from cover to cover, even the ads.This quite naturally led into yet another type of book and ended with my favorite author of all time - Neville Shute.

Mr Shute was a qualified engineer who was involved in the disastrous R-100 & R-101 airship designs between the wars at the same time as the Hindenburg was flying between Germany and New York. Airships turned out to be dead-end technology and the only thing remaining of it in England are the two massive hangers which used to house them. When I joined the RAF I visited this station and at that time they were the biggest single-storey buildings I had ever seen. Mr Shute continued in the aeronautics field by starting his own aircraft manufacturing company - Airspeed, which produced one twin-engined aircraft - The Oxford. This was a conventional passenger aircraft and was quite successful, but it wasn't what he was looking for really and he started to write fiction. His early works did not involve engineering, but I guess that the old saw - write what you know, finally enabled him to write winners, with four of his books having been made into winning films, all of which I have seen. In one period he flew his own aircraft to Australia, which became special to him with some of his best stories taking place there. But in my opinion, his best by far was his final story, completed and published not long before he died. It was serialized in the national press and a few months later the book appeared on the street, it was "Trustee from the Toolroom." This book had everything for me. It centered around a humble little guy, Keith, living in a suburb of London, whose mission in life was designing and building engineering miniatures and describing the building process in a model engineering magazine.His sister had married well to a wealthy naval officer and they had a little girl.

Just after the war, England was still rationed until about 1954 and the whole economy was geared towards earning dollars to pay off the huge dept owed to America for all the munitions and food they had sold to England when our backs were to the wall. One of the strictures placed on Brits who fancied traveling abroad at that time was that you couldn't take more than $500 out of the country. This naval officer and his wife wanted to emigrate to Canada in their yacht, leaving their little girl with Keith and his wife to be sent for when they arrived.They had a problem in they had converted his wife's jewelry into negotiable diamonds and wanted his brother in law to help him hide the diamonds in the yacht, which he did. Making this a bit shorter, the yacht foundered off an island in the Pacific and Keith considered it his job to get out there to try and recover the diamonds for the little girl. Not having the money, through contacts he had made writing for the magazine, he was able to scrounge a trip by air to Honolulu, from an airfield just along the road from where Jean & I lived. From Honolulu he picked up a lift from a weird guy who had sailed from the USA in a boat he had built himself. There is a lot more to this story, but after locating the diamonds he ends up landing in Seattle and driving down to Portland where he helps a timber tycoon with a problem he was having building a clock that Keith had designed. The whole story was extremely satisfying for me, touching so many points with which I was familiar and I must have read it at least a half dozen times. The films that were made from his books were:- "A town like Alice", "No Highway" (starred Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich), "On the beach" (Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner) and "The Pied Piper" (Monty Wooley). "On the beach" was a rather grim story about the aftermath of Global Nuclear War, which was a distinct possibility at that time. I have almost all of the books he wrote with the exception of a couple from very early days - still searching for those. Yet another writer of future aftermath stories was John Wyndham who wrote The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken wakes and Chrysalids - all cracking good yarns which I happen to have as a book containing all three stories. This is another that I have read multiple times; I also have Kindle, a present from my son, which I have used occasionally, but it is not the same as holding a physical book in my hands. Books are - special and I like the fact that I can go to one whenever I feel like it and take down an old friend and feel instantly at home. All you need is a comfortable chair and enough light to read by and you are satisfied. I also like the fact that there is no battery to go down! Your fearless leader, trying to maintain some sort of contact with you all. Stay safe and hopeful - it WILL all come right one day! Gordon

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chroniclesofawkwardness · 5 years

Text

Ants

“Dave Matthews Band (DMB) was barred from playing in Chicago after the incident,” she said.

My thoughts immediately went back to my college dorm room, the last time I’d listened to DMB with any consistency. Ants Marching from Under the Table and Dreaming was one of my favorite songs the first 1000 times I heard it. I couldn’t understand 80% of the words Dave sang (OK, more like 95%), but through the years, Ants Marching became instantly recognizable to me. Wherever I heard that horn and drum beat, I was neither happy nor blood-boiling angry. I didn’t want to smoke or immediately run for another beer either.

I couldn’t help wondering if the guys in the band felt the same way about the song after playing it so many times. Had become their American Pie (Don McLean), a song that, if not played live, could mean blood in the streets? Or did they always give the people what they thought they wanted, just to keep themselves and their audience at least anatomically awake between self-induced altered states of consciousness?

I’m long-removed from a college dorm room, but I sometimes feel like a marching ant even today. I probably look like one in the windshields of the cars that have to wait to turn as I cross the street on my way to work every morning. If I’m lucky, there will be a long line of cars that can’t immediately make the right turn they so desperately want to because I’m doing my thing. If I’m really lucky, the cars at the back of the line start honking their horns at each other out of frustration because they can’t see who the holdup is: me. I love it when, after I’ve safely crossed, cars at the front of the queue speed up, their drivers either pissed for having lost thirty to forty-five seconds of their in-a-hurry-to-get-nowhere commute to my deliberate stride, or incredulous that people like me still use their legs to move rather than their own overpriced and oversized machines of choice.

Driving in on this highway All these cars end up on the sidewalk

Fortunately, not all of the animal kingdom moves about in SUVs Can you imagine two pseudo alpha male giraffes in Gold’s Gym t-shirts getting in a car accident because, instead of keeping their eyes on the road, they were too busy gawking at their phones because one of the penguins texted some nude photos of the newest female giraffe the whole zoo had been talking about? Some long-necked SOB forgot to activate the lane departure warning feature in their Escalade.

Anyway.

Like most of their animal kingdom counterparts in zoo confinement, humans can wander around absently, until something jolts them from an all-too-natural, blissfully unaware condition. Case in point would be the humans on an architectural boat tour that time in 2004 when a bus driver in a DMB convoy inexplicably decided to empty about 800 gallons of shit and god knows what else from the bus’s septic tank at the precise moment their boat passed by.

Poopgate was born.

Recently, I was also caught blissfully ignorant until I found a tiny ant making his way across my bedsheets one morning as I was making my bed. I thought it was odd to see just one ant, but I really didn’t put much thought into it. I just figured he’d partied too hard the night before, gotten roaring drunk on high-fructose corn syrup, and separated from his friends. Little did I know how close his friends were.

I’ve lived in my current apartment for almost a little over years. In all that time, it never occurred to me to clean underneath my oven. When you cook as much as I do, bits of chopped onion, severed celery, or minced-but-meant-to-dice mushrooms can fall through the crack that is the space between the countertop and the oven. There’s always been a small margin for error.

The tiny ants looked like bits of food or sauce that had splattered out of a pan and onto a virgin surface when I’d had the heat of the stove on too high for too long. Their purpose seemed singular: get over that (what probably appeared to them to be a) wall. If one had gotten lost in my bedroom, dozens if not hundreds had gorged themselves on the leftover buffet on the floor beneath my oven, and now, their corpulent asses were trying to showcase remarkable agility by scaling the wall between two separate counter spaces in my kitchen, like Marines battling the logs of an obstacle course. Only I couldn’t tell the Senior Drill Instructor ant from the confused ant-equivalent-of-testosterone-filled recruit ants.

Does his teeth, bite to eat and he’s rolling

It’s amazing how the perceived crisis of the ant invasion made me spring into action. Crises or any kind of stress had a funny way of snapping even my porn-addicted brain out of a Saturday morning post-ejaculation fog.

They all do it the same They all do it the same way

“How dare these ants force their way into my home. I’m going to kill them all,” I told myself. I could feel again, but I truly wanted nothing more than for those ants to be dead and gone so i could go back to cycling between my addictions to porn and living for the weekend. I knew the ants weren’t on my lease, so I wanted them out, as much to avoid being charged for unreported occupancy of my apartment as having hundreds of pairs of tiny eyes watching what I really did when the blinds were closed.

Hell, who was I kidding? At my addiction’s lowest point, I was engulfed in such a love affair with the performers on the screen that it might as well have been just the three, four, or five of us there: me, the computer screen, and however many people happened to be starring in whatever eight to twelve minute clip I’d either stumbled upon, or known I’d wanted from the moment I woke up in that morning. I knew the ants were there, but I still had to get my fix, no matter who else was watching.

She thinks, we look at each other Wondering what the other is thinking But we never say a thing And these crimes between us grow deeper

I evicted the ants fairly quickly thanks to help from a neighbor who had some over-the-counter insecticide, the maintenance staff who moved and finally cleaned under my oven, and the pest control company that treated my place amid the carnage of dead insect bodies frozen in miniature yet permanent Jesus Christ poses after betraying me one too many times.

I may have overcome the ants, but it’s taken much longer to overcome Saturday mornings’ post-ejaculation fog. I try to fill my time with creative endeavors instead of flying off the handle whenever a real or imagined tragedy happens, such as spilling coffee grounds gymnastics-style behind my washer and dryer, or having the washer decide to go out walking because I got greedy and filled it with things that would force it to go off balance instead of delaying my gratification until another, smaller, less intense load.

I shouldn’t need tragedies of invasion or violation to stir me into action. I too can remember being small, playing under the table and dreaming. I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from ever seeing that first porn video. I wish I could tell my younger self how many hours his future self would spend consuming porn, feeling like shit inside, then feeling just good enough to do it over, and over and over again.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The first thing I did when I started my weeklong vacation from work yesterday was to start the stopwatch on my phone. Not because I wanted to have some immediate temporal value attached to any Porn Masturbation Orgasm achievement, but because I wanted something I could use to hold myself accountable. Something to remind myself of the time I could be and have been spending doing other things. I’ve always had the antlike scale-the-countertop intensity, but I lost it slight of it in a fantasy world of 34 DDs, reverse cowgirls and superhuman stimulus cocks that might as well have come (pardon the pun) out of comic books.

Now I’ve set out to get it back.

Take these chances Place them in a box until a quieter time Lights down, you up and die

Right on Dave. I imagine people in Chicago are still salty about poopgate, but at least I’ve grown beyond associating marching ants exclusively with my college years. Some might say that’s progress, yet I know I’ve got a long way to go.

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asterinjapan · 7 years

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A very hot cool day: Tokyo Disneyland

Hello after a very long day at Tokyo Disneyland!

I am a spoiled brat considering this was my fourth time in as many years, and actually seventh if you count DisneySea, oops. Anyway, so I figured I wouldn’t take that many photos – I eh, still took about 300, ahem. In my defense, my new camera is truly a blessing and I now finally have decent pictures of the evening parade, but you’ll see those later, haha.

The park opens at 8 AM, but considering it’s open until 10 PM, I wasn’t in any rush to make it in time for the opening. I woke up a little after 7, got up at 7:30, and realized belatedly that that landed me right into morning rush hour, oops. I waited out two subways because people were being pushed in – but the third one was pretty okay, all things considered. I eventually was able to take a seat, I mean, come on! Rush hour in Japan! Okay, probably not a lot of people on a Monday morning going to the transfer station to Disneyland, but still.

From there (Shin-Kiba), it was a quick ride to Maihama, the station that connects to Disneyland. The station’s tune is actually It’s A Small World, which, thanks, I really wanted stuck in my head right from the beginning, haha.

As it turned out, I had managed to pick the hottest and sunniest day so far to go to Disneyland. That sounds nice until you realize that means it’s at least 32 C, and with the sun shining bright, it definitely felt hotter than that. Luckily I was prepared with my fan, summer hat, sunglasses and sun cream, but I did end up sticking to every surface, ew. Oh well.

Two steps into the park and I was immediately sprayed by a water hose, courtesy of Donald freaking Duck. Thanks, duck, this camera was not cheap but okay. Luckily no harm done, and I was quick to run for cover so I could take pictures from the distance from the current small parade, the summer festival one.

That’s the thing about Tokyo Disneyland: it’s Disney, but because it’s in Japan, it tends to incorporate typically Japanese festivities. Two years ago for example was the Tanabata festival, which means Mickey and co walk around in summer kimono. Not a sight you see very often in the American cartoons or Dutch comics, huh. Naturally all the merchandise is exclusive too, and it makes for a fun and unique experience.

Be that as it may, it was flipping hot already barely past 9 AM, so I fled into Pirates of the Caribbean. They handed you a treasure seeking map to celebrate the new movie, but it relied on QR codes, and I didn’t have an app installed on my phone and Disneyland doesn’t have wifi (I know, right?), so I wasn’t wasting my data on that. It was too hot to go treasure hunting in the park anyway.

The line outside was non-existent and inside was the cool relief of airconditioning – I was so happy that I was almost disappointed when it was already time to board the boat, haha. I really do love Pirates though, and this time I finally remembered when the drop would be (and I was still scared, because I am very obviously a thrill seeker and one drop in an indoor boat ride is enough to send me into a near-frenzy, oops).

After Pirates was the Enchanted Tiki Room, which is technically aimed at kids I guess, but screw that, the songs are adorable and I love Stitch. Also, airco again here, haha. I kind of fled from indoors attractions to the next, to escape the heat. Next up were the Philharmagic (in which Donald messes up Mickey’s orchestra, because you can always count on Donald Duck to mess things up), which is still my favourite attraction, and then the Haunted Mansion, which I do really love. Also, it helps with the cooling! In Japan, they tell ghost stories in summer instead of winter, because the scary stories are supposed to give you the chills, get it.

It was around lunch time then, so I went into the King and Queen of Hearts’s place (Alice in Wonderland). The queue was the longest I had that day actually, pff, but the food was good! And heartshaped, haha.

I was still kind of melting, so I fled to Pirates again and then bought a giant iced coffee to sip in the shadows,while mentally preparing myself to go back into the park again. Yikes, I wasn’t going to last in this heat. Thankfully the wind started to pick up, and with my blood mostly replaced with iced coffee, I dared to venture to the parade route.

The parade is – the same as the last two times, oops, I’ve been going to often. I still took a bunch of pictures because hey, new camera! So uh, now I have 3 different photo sets of the Happiness is Here parade, oops.

It was sort of bearable to walk around now, so I took a scenic route, took some pictures, went window shopping and then went into Peter Pan’s Flight, another favourite, because I don’t go to Disneyland to do things I don’t like, duh. After that, the Haunted Mansion was supposedly a 13 minute wait – I laughed because haha, thirteen, but it was in fact a 13 minute wait, whoa.

It was starting to get dark out, so there was barely any difference inside or outside the attraction, haha. I had about half an hour to find a good spot for the evening parade, Dreamlights, which should have updated (finally – it’s been more or less the same since my first time here in 2010).

And it was! Granted, the majority of the floats are the same, but some were definitely upgraded and a couple of new ones were added, most noticeably floats for Tangled and Frozen. I was super happy and took a bunch of photos with my shiny camera, which I really love, because none of them are blurry. I finally have good shots of Dreamlights! Whoo!

I was getting pretty hungry though, so I went to the Blue Bayou, which is one of the most expensive joints in Disneyland, oops. Ah, nothing like serene silence with crickets chirping and screaming in the distance (the restaurant is inside and looks out over the Pirates attraction). It’s super fancy and I got a dish with lobster, lalala. Actually, I still think it wasn’t that ridiculously expensive – I’ve had lunches more expensive than this in the Netherlands, and that was outside of attraction parks.

After merchandise shopping, I went into Philharmagic again to end the day with, although then I noticed that there were like 5 minutes to spare – and the Pooh’s Hunny Hunt attraction was still open, so I quickly rushed in. It’s a fun ride, but it’s super popular and it’s just not worth it to wait over an hour in line (the line runs outdoors). Now though, I could just walk in and almost immediately hop on! Nice. (I’m not sure what’s in that honey by the way, but things sure get trippy near the end. Pooh are you okay.)

Now it was really time to go, as it was 5 past 10 PM and all attractions had closed. That was a much longer day than I’d been expecting in this heat, but luckily the wind took off and the sun sets pretty early here (yay, no daylight savings!). But it was tons of fun, I’m really happy with my photos, and I’m super full with good food, haha.

More food tomorrow as I’ll be going to a theme cafe (Final Fantasy, for those of you that play games), and probably not a lot else since the weather is going to be bad. The cafe is in Akihabara, which also has a store I wanted to visit for specific merchandise, so more shopping it is then! I’ve definitely not spent enough money already, oops.

Good night for now and see you tomorrow!

#japan 2017 #report #report: japan 2017 #places: tokyo disneyland

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wbwest · 7 years

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New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/04/28/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-42817/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 4/28/17

So the big media news this week was the announcement of the DC Comics streaming service, which will be the home of the long-delayed live action Titans series, as well as the third season of the Young Justice cartoon. Other than that, very little else is known about the service. Most fans suspect that it’ll have the entire DC library, including animated films, older cartoons like Justice League, and live action series not currently on The CW/Fox. That’s a bit ambitious, though.

youtube

I’m reminded of how the concept of UPN was introduced to the public, with ads that touted all of the classic television that Paramount had given us over the years: Family Ties, Cheers, Star Trek – did this mean that this new network would become the exclusive home for those shows? No, it instead meant we were to brace ourselves for Love Boat: The Next Wave and Shasta McNasty. I get that same feeling here. DC has a great slate of animated films, and some classic animated series, but I think this might end up the hub for newer, untested properties. Take the Titans show for instance. TNT passed on that thing. TNT! They know drama! Sure, it’s produced by Greg Berlanti, but I feel like if it had any real promise, it wouldn’t be relegated to a digital platform that’s not Hulu or Netflix. Same with Young Justice. Sure, it had a following, and the reasons for its cancellation vary depending on who you ask, but expecting the fans to shell out for yet another streaming service isn’t exactly a gesture of goodwill. I’m not paying CBS to watch Star Trek, and I ain’t paying DC for this until I get some more details. Right now, though, it’s a typical DC announcement, where they rushed to announce before a lot of key aspects were in place.

Speaking of DC, NBC basically cancelled Powerless this week by removing all upcoming episodes from their schedule. It’s not a big surprise, as the entire cast deserved better than that show had to offer. In all honesty, I feel like the ties to the DC Universe actually hurt it. If they wanted to do the whole Workplace Comedy Set In A Comic Universe thing, then it probably would’ve worked better with generic superheroes and villains created just for the show. Sure, they mentioned Batman, and the Wayne family plays a pivotal role (which I also had problems with), but they showed Crimson Fox TWICE. CRIMSON FOX! Just mentioning Superman or Wonder Woman isn’t enough. Hell, they can mention those characters on The Middle and it wouldn’t violate any rights or copyright laws. No, this was a big case of Show, Don’t Tell and the show never really had a strong hand when all the cards were on the table. At least this frees up Ron Funches and Danny Pudi for bigger and better things.

youtube

I loved Kingsman: The Secret Service, so I am ALL IN for Kingsman: The Golden Circle. To be honest, I’m probably looking more forward to this than Star Wars Episode 8. Apparently, Kingsman is forced to team up with their American counterpart, Statesman, so it should be interesting to see how the teams play off each other. And I’m really hoping for some extreme American stereotypes. Based on Channing Tatum’s cowboy agent, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

In other movie news, Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner are rumored to be up for the roles of Pumbaa and Timon in Disney’s live action adaptation of The Lion King. I like both of these guys, but I really don’t even know why this movie is being made. I mean, sure, putting The Lion King on something is basically the same as printing money, but the recent debut of the lackluster The Lion Guard showed that there’s a limit to how much you can mine from the property. I haven’t seen the live action adaptation of The Jungle Book, but I guess this will be like that? I mean, the whole thing is animals. How are they gonna do this? Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it just feels like Disney is out of ideas for the moment.

We got a trilogy, y’all! In a surprise move, M. Night Shyamalan tweeted that Glass would be released on January 18th, 2019, serving as the sequel to both Unbreakable and Split. I really enjoyed both of these movies, and it feels like M’s finally got his groove back, so this should be good.

In news that will only matter to you if you’re a Cornell alum, all-male a cappella group The Cayuga’s Waiters have been kicked off campus for hazing. And let me tell you, this couldn’t have happened to a shittier group of douchebags. When people think of a cappella, they always think of lame kids who probably did show choir in high school. And, in most cases, they’d be correct. The Waiters, however, were cut from different cloth. Originally a subset of the Cornell University Glee Club, they were basically a lewd fraternity that occasionally sang songs. Around 25 years ago, one of them wrote “We Didn’t Go To Harvard”, a parody of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, and they’ve pretty much been coasting on that ever since. Their offstage behavior rivaled that of actual rock stars. For example, they got kicked out of a charity concert when one of their members reportedly peed in the corner of the stage. And while there were a few good guys in that group, the core members were THE WORST. They were basically a singing Duke rape scandal waiting to happen. According to news reports, the hazing included making new members take naked ice baths and having them rub IcyHot on each others’ balls. Considering they got shut down, I’m thinking there was more serious stuff that the paper couldn’t print, like elephant walks or something. Anyway, good riddance to bad rubbish. Bet they wish they’d gone to Harvard now!

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

Captain America: The First Avenger director Joe Johnston will direct The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair

Sony has given the Masters of the Universe film a December 18th, 2019 release date, but McG is no longer attached to direct. None of this matters, though, ‘cause this movie is never getting made.

Speaking of Sony, they’ve reportedly fired Dr Luke, and I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS! But there’s no way I’m putting them in a blog post, for them to be dissected and taken out of context.

One of the former Bachelors killed a dude. Nah, I don’t know his name or care enough to look it up. Bachelors are just as replaceable as Duggar kids. He will be forgotten again soon enough

Jeff Goldblum will reportedly return to the land of dinosaurs in the Jurassic World sequel.

Riverdale’s Reggie Mantle will be recast prior to season 2, as actor Ross Butler is committed to Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, which is close to being renewed for a second season

Star Wars Episode IX’s release date has been revealed as May 23rd, 2019, which shifts the franchise’s releases out of the month of December

Darius “Eddie Winslow” McCrary posted the above pic, asking folks if they’d want a Family Matters reunion. Considering they both look like shit here, I’m leaning towards “no”

Speaking of TGIF reunions, Perfect Strangers stars Bronson Pinchot and Mark Linn-Baker reunited for Chiller Theatre Expo last weekend in New Jersey. Cousin Larry has aged appropriately, but Balki clearly discovered Crossfit/discount mail-order steroids.

Jeb Bush and Derek Jeter are in a group trying to buy the Miami Marlins. Hey, it’s better than ending up on Dancing with the Stars!

Next fall, Steve Harvey’s TV talk show, Steve Harvey, will move to Los Angeles, and will take on a new format as Steve.

With this week’s series finale of Bates Motel, A&E announced they’re abandoning scripted television and moving to a reality show model.

Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in this week, but nothing really had the West Week Ever. Try harder next week, America!

#A Cappella #Batman #Comics #Cornell #DC #Movies #Music #Pop #Star Trek #Star Wars #Television #West Week Ever

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spydre · 8 years

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Libertas Shrugs

via Zach Wienersmith, SMBC Comics

Today, the Statue of Liberty shrugs.

Some of you have family somewhere overseas. I do not.

I do not, because four generations ago my great grandfather came here while his sister chose to stay behind. Her name, to the best of our knowledge, was Peltia Wollach (née Winokur) and she was lucky enough to die before the Shoah. As far as I could tell from the records digitized by JewishGen.com from Bialystok, Poland, and from documents in Yad Vashem, everyone else was murdered. Her husband Itzchak, and (I believe) five children - Chasia, Riwka, Tauba, Avram, and Jehoszua.

I am lucky that my ancestor, Szimon Winokur, came here in 1925. I am also lucky that he was white. If he had been Chinese, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 would have kept him out.

He brought his family here. One of his sons, my grandfather, was a small business owner. His son, my father, received a free education in New York, then went to Caltech. My father was, until his retirement, a doctor in a small town in Texas. He has six children - One is a Christian pastor. One is an executive director at a medical technology company. One is a conservative political philosopher, one is a chief technical officer in silicon valley, and my little sister is a doctor in Louisiana. I’m the one black spot on this record because I write books for a living.

We are all here, all contributing to this country because in 1925, a boat passed Ellis Island and nobody told the ill-clad funny-accented people in it to turn around because they were too poor or not Christian enough, or that they hadn’t been vetted properly. You all know the poetry - give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. The green lady’s tablet doesn’t say a thing about whether those huddled masses were Chinese or Muslim or Jew or Arab. And, it specifically enjoins us to take those who yearn for freedom. It doesn’t say take a highly educated European or Indian on an H1-B visa. It doesn’t say take a Christian or a rich business owner or a diplomat.

But, look east, and you can see Libertas shrugging. There are weights around her robes, and her torch is flickering in New York Harbor.

And the politicians who had the poverty of spirit to diminish her poem by knicks and cuts, and now slashes, could at least have the honesty to add their caveats and fears to the tablet she carries before it sinks to the bottom.

This nation is supposed to have been founded by pioneers. People like Franklin, who defied a Crown. People like Lewis and Clark who went west, not knowing exactly what they’d eat or what they’d find. People like Teddy Roosevelt, who took a bullet, then smiled through a speech.

We’re supposed to be a culture of people who are rugged and risky and independent. And yet, when you are more likely to be killed by a shark attack than a terrorist, we are told that we need protection. We are told we should be afraid. And the people who are telling us we need to be afraid are the very people who benefit most from our fear. Fear is their currency. Don’t make a deposit.

I want to quote at length from the book The Moon is Down, by Steinbeck, written in the midst of World War 2. This passage is from the end of the book, when Mayor Orden is going to be executed for not capitulating to the conquering authority. The people of the conquered city have gotten access to explosives from the British, and the conquering enemy (in the person of Colonel Lanser) wants the mayor to tell his people not to use them.

The Mayor spoke proudly. "Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but - I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver." He smiled apologetically. "You see, it is an easy thing for me to do, since the end for me is the same."

Lanser said, "If you say yes, we can tell them you said no. We can tell them you begged for your life."

Doctor Winter broke in angrily, "They would know. You do not keep secrets. One of your men got out of hand one night and he said the flies had conquered the flypaper, and now the whole nation knows his words. They have made a song of it. The flies have conquered the flypaper. You do not keep secrets, Colonel."

From the direction of the mine a whistle tooted shrilly. And a quick gust of wind sifted dry snow against the windows.

Orden fingered his gold medallion. He said quietly, "You see, sir, nothing can change it. You will be destroyed and driven out." His voice was very soft. "The people don't like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir."

Lanser was erect and stiff. "My orders are clear. Eleven o'clock was the deadline. I have taken hostages. If there is violence, the hostages will be executed."

And Doctor Winter said to the colonel, "Will you carry out the orders, knowing they will fail?"

Lanser's face was tight. "I will carry out my orders no matter what they are, but I do think, sir, a proclamation from you might save many lives."

Madame broke in plaintively, "I wish you would tell me what all this nonsense is."

"It is nonsense, dear."

"But they can't arrest the Mayor," she explained to him.

Orden smiled at her. "No," he said, "they can't arrest the Mayor. The Mayor is an idea conceived by free men. It will escape arrest."

Steve Bannon, who is now inexplicably advising the president on matters military, reportedly said he wanted to bring our entire system crashing down. But our system - our system of free people who do not want or need to be ruled - is like Mayor Orden. It can’t be destroyed, because you can’t destroy an idea. The idea may be silenced. It may leave its home, for a time. But, as long as people can think, no idea can die.

The Statue of Liberty may step down from her podium, she may sink below the surface, but will still be there. And, when the moon is up, you will see her shining through a rippling surface, ready to stand again.

I should end on that note, but I want to close with something pragmatic, because this can’t all just be talk. Barney Frank - the first openly gay congressman in US history - gave an interview to New York Magazine shortly after he retired. He said something that I’ve never forgotten:

I believe very strongly that people on the left are too prone to do things that are emotionally satisfying and not politically useful. I have a rule, and it’s true of Occupy, it’s true of the gay-rights movement: If you care deeply about a cause, and you are engaged in an activity on behalf of that cause that is great fun and makes you feel good and warm and enthusiastic, you’re probably not helping, because you’re out there with your friends, and political work is much tougher and harder. And I think it’s now clear that it is the disciplined political work that we’ve been able to do that’s won us victories. I am going to write about the history of the LGBT movement partly to make the point that, in America at least, this is the way you do progressive causes.

For a lot of us, in recent times politics has gotten a lot less fun and a lot more scary. I know we have to buoy each other up, but I say this as a professional writer of jokes - let’s take politics to an even less fun place.

When I heard about the immigration ban, the first thing I did was to order 400 sheets of paper, a giant roll of stamps, and a bulk box of envelopes. I will be writing letters as frequently as possible to all of my representatives. And, if they do not stand against this prodigy of indecency, I will personally donate to whoever opposes them. And, if Trump defies a federal judge’s order, I will join those calling for an impeachment.

You cannot arrest the mayor.

Zach Weinersmith

January 29, 2017

PS: I’m declaring this document public domain. Feel free to share any way you like.

#FreshWebs #fbstatus

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reece75gordon-blog · 6 years

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Oscar Health Rolls Out Its Business Item Oscar For Business

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showupgoupla · 6 years

Text

Do Comedians Need Record Labels? by Jay Whitecotton

edited by Al Bahmani

Are you debating releasing an album? The idea of recording an album may be very overwhelming and you may be at a loss as to how to proceed, but I’m telling you- You can pull this off. Before making any decisions or signing any contracts, collect as much information as you can before you both regret and literally pay for it.

Fair warning, this is going to be as thorough as I can be, trying to cover angles you might not have even considered. There will most likely be some run on sentences and editing mistakes because I tend to blank out anytime I’m doing something that feels like work. Avoiding work is what attracted me to Standup in the first place and I’m not the most disciplined of people.

Also - I’m told visuals help break up the monotony of long posts so I decided to use the same picture of Jon Hamm and a German Shepard mix to ease your reading experience.

Let’s start here:

Should you record an album?

It's on you to know whether or not you’re ready. Just please be ready and don’t be the ‘I have three hours of material’ fraud carrying pounds of notebooks, but struggles to fill a fifteen-minute spot with consistent laughs.

Do you need something to sell on the road?

Clubs are paying less and less, no longer putting up Features in hotels, and having something to sell is almost a necessity just to cover gas. Headliners are even feeling the pinch trying to scrounge up more credits just so clubs will feel comfortable booking them over rising YouTube stars or that host of the Mr. Sexy Murder Podcast.

Do people want this?

Having an album feels cool and may con your parents into covering your rent while you pursue your dumb dreams, but nothing is going to put you down to reality harder than when you do all this hard work just to find out the eight friends who always ask ‘when’s your next show’ and never go – can’t seem to justify paying $10 for your ‘art’.

(Let’s all take a second to reflect on all the idiot musicians who are in the same boat, but with thousands of dollars of burdensome equipment they have to lug around. Lol art sucks)

Finally

Are you actively being sweet talked by industry and label heads looking to profit on all the years of work you already did by yourself? This is your best sign that you are ready. When industry leeches smell a hint of hope and money on you, ya know you have a shot of making a go at this.

Label vs. Self-Distribution

First the positives. If a label can’t contractually guarantee you plays on Sirius/XM radio and expose you to a large audience of new fans with contractually agreed payments for advertising and marketing in places that will get you seen – then you don’t really need a label. (Most don’t really do these things)

Here’s the nitty-gritty. I’m telling you from experience and with the same level of lazy blindness when it comes to taking control of this side of the work that – you don’t need a record label. In fact, most people don’t need record labels. We live in the future. If you’ve already recorded and edited an album, you can put it out on all the avenues the labels use and get 100% of the profit from your laptop.

“But Jay, doesn’t a Label sound cool to consumers?”

Get over yourself. No one cares anymore. You just want things that sound cool to give you validation. Fuck your validation. It’s not real. Just be good, it’ll be fine.

“But Jay, a label will promote me to a huge fan base! I’ll get new fans and lots more places will book me!”

Nope. That’s not really what they do. They may promise that to you and something like Comedy Central Records may be a giant boon, but if Comedy Central is releasing your album, you’re probably already getting exposure on the channel or getting writing work and in no way reading this.

Very few labels exist for ‘the love of comedy’. It’s about money. Labels make a money from a few physical sales, mostly digital sales and plays and some by getting the comics to buy their bulk physical copies through them.

Here’s the digital breakdown.

There’s a thing called Sound Exchange. And when your comedy gets played, a fraction of cents gets divided into two piles: The Producer and The Artist. Periodically you will get a check (usually quarterly) and the Producer will get an equal amount separate from you. Both checks are equal in amount. (I have a friend signed to one label who doesn’t even get his artist check. That goes to the label as well and it’s becoming a thing he has to try and legally negotiate with them about. There’s a ton of free-floating confusion about this stuff, ask questions)

The money is based on your popularity and for some it’s great, others not so much. Most people tell me the pay seems less and less every year. It’s almost like these streaming services are designed to profit off the artists as well as the general public. WEIRD!

Here’s what this means. Basically – you as an individual have a ceiling of worth. When you release your album – the first three days is when you will pretty much get all your sales. You’ll promote it, you’ll have toured and built up a fan base interested in buying it, and when you release it – all their enthusiasm will come together in a big sales push to support you. After that – they move on to the millions of other shit in their lives. Welcome to the future! It’s a pool of nonsense swirling with illusion and you’re a drop of water.

The Label will have got their heavy cut purely on your years of hustle and work, then pretty much move on to another because that’s their grind.

You see – while you get that Sound Exchange, they also get one AND another for as many artists as they can gobble up. It’s not in their financial interest to take the time and help you build your fan base.

It’s in their interest to profit off you doing that work and the hundreds of other comedians trying to do the same thing for themselves. You understand? You get one check, but their goal is to get hundreds.

That’s the game.

If you’re still looking for a Label to validate you, look at the Label’s previous history of artists and promotion. How many likes or shares do their posts get? Chances are – you get way more. That means the Label is most likely profiting off of you more than you from them. It might be a silly thing to view social media likes as a barometer of interest to some, but really – you know what a post advertising your album with three likes on their page vs. 200 on your own personal page means.

Look at the roster. Ask people you may know about their experiences. Research how often the Label’s been sued. Seriously, that’s a thing. I almost released on one label that had a giant roster of my favorite comedians, only to find out most were one-and-done and more than a few ended up in court over the label’s shenanigans.

The Contract:

No contract is the same as the other and I’m not a lawyer, but here’s some sample verbiage you need to familiarize yourself with as to what it means to your career.

“Recording Costs and Procedures. Each LP will be recorded at the sole expense of Label. Recording expenses shall include engineering, production, equipment, tape, editing and mastering expenses. None of these expenses will be charged to Artist’s account, nor will they be recouped from Artist’s royalties. Subject to any necessary third-party approval, Label will be allowed to record any performance of Artist during the Term, provided that Label gives Artist at least seven days notice of its intent to record.”

What this is saying is that the label will take on the cost of hiring someone to bring all the necessary equipment to record your performance and then spend the time to edit and master it. You won’t ever be out of pocket for these expenses. This is a good and worthwhile thing as getting the best sound is crucial. However, what if the label hires someone who’s not good at this? Just because someone has a mic or two and a soundboard doesn’t mean they know how to record a proper standup show. I’ve heard many a mix where the audience is super quiet and the comedian very loud. This usually means that the sound person just mic’d up the comic and let the audience laughter bleed into his direct track. It’s lazy, poor quality and also doesn’t involve that much actual “mixing”. Ask to hear the specific person recording’s previous work.

Just because they’re a professional Label, doesn’t guarantee you a professional recording! I’m looking at you Rooftop Records.

You need to make sure there’s a stage mic and that it’s recorded directly into the board, an area mic above the audience to capture their laughter and two mics towards the back wings of the crowd. Why so many? You want to get the best mix between the crowd and the comic to sound fresh on your album, but also able to tweak in the mix in case you need to hide an annoying weird laughter, somebody’s coughing fit, or worse – a drunken girlfriend trying to be supportive by answering all your rhetorical questions. All shit that can happen. All shit a proper sound engineer and label should expect if they actually care about you. Ask for it in your contract.

“Ownership of Recordings and Underlying Works. All Recordings made by Label and released on any LP under this Agreement will be deemed “works made for hire” under the United States Copyright Act, and Label shall be the sole and exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in the Recordings, including all copyrights and reversions in the Recordings delivered by Artist under the terms of this Agreement.”

This means the Label owns your recorded material.

“Label, its successors, licensees and assigns shall have the exclusive worldwide right in perpetuity, to manufacture, sell, distribute, exhibit, publicize, market and advertise the Recordings by any means and in any format.”

The Label and anyone who buys their catalog can do whatever they want with it. It means if they want to put you on their ‘Now That’s What I Call Farts Vol. 5’ compilation – they can. You’ll still be owed money for listens and sales, but the label has this option. The keyword here that you have to be careful about is “in perpetuity” – that means forever. Permanent. You as an artist have the right to put a timetable on this. You can negotiate clauses. Just know, the likelihood of being on a NOW Farts compilation is highly unlikely.

“Notwithstanding the foregoing, Artist will retain all copyrights in the original material (i.e., all jokes, stories, comedic and other material included in Artist’s performance), provided that Artist agrees not to re-record any of the same material contained on LPs produced hereunder for release as an audio-only recording until 5 (FIVE) years shall have passed from the termination of this Agreement. Label will be the ‘publisher’ of the material and entitled to collect the publisher’s share of any analog public performance royalties payable to the publisher of the material. Artist will receive its own share of analog and digital public performance royalties and digital master public performance royalties directly from its affiliate performing rights organizations.”

Ok – this shit is important. It says that while you own your own words and act, if you re-record any of it again in a 5-year window, the Label is owed money. Which makes sense – why would they record you if you were to just put out other versions in a year? The “audio-only” is important as it gives you the right to film the material if you get that opportunity.

Say HBO gives you an hour special, or SeeSo rises from the dead to feast on your act – you SHOULD be good to go to record your act for video, but if they make an album out of it you may be stuck in litigation and have to pay the Label to buy yourself out. This could turn into a motherfucker. Ask questions. Write it down.

Look harder at these words: “until 5 (FIVE) years shall have passed from the termination of this Agreement.” Ask when the termination of this agreement ends. If there’s no set date - then that 5-year window doesn’t really matter. Its five years AFTER you both decide to end the agreement. Is it the date of release? The date of recording? This matters because – and this seriously happens – if you record your hour and they drag their feet in releasing it. That means they still own your material even if it never gets released. That’s that magical “in perpetuity” coming to fuck you. It’s a predatory language in a contract and if you’re currently stuck in one – may give you a legal way out of a bad deal. Again – not a lawyer, but you see why you may need one to go with the ‘convenience’ of a Label?

STORY TIME: say you record twenty minutes opening for someone else’s album recording and they get you to sign this deal saying they could get you some extra money if you’d like from online streaming. However – they never put it out and you don’t think twice about it because you’re a comedian, not a business nerd. Then – years later and after no communication with the label, your career starts to explode. You’re getting TV show stuff and decide to record your full hour and feel excited, but guess what – after years of silence, suddenly the Label dude announces that he owns that twenty minutes he oft handily recorded years ago and you can’t use any of it for the proper album you’d like to release. Not only that but for some reason, there was a clause in the contract you didn’t notice because “TL/DR” and now you owe the label three hour long albums! You know – that thing we all can just write and do. Then imagine you have to pay the Label that did nothing for you to let you go and because you seem successful, the asking price to buy you out suddenly becomes thousands and thousands of dollars.

This happens.

Now let’s look hard at the Term of Agreement.

“The Term of this Agreement will begin on the date on which it shall have been signed by both Label and Artist. The agreement will run for up to two (2) contract periods, one initial period, during which Artist will deliver one LP (LP1) and one (1) optional periods during which, if the option is exercised by Label at its sole discretion, Artist will deliver an additional LP (LP2). Within one year from the release date of each LP delivered hereunder, Label shall notify Artist in writing of its intent to exercise its option to record the next LP. The Term of this agreement will expire either: 1) nine (9) months after the release date of the last released LP; or, 2) when Label declines to exercise its option to record the next optional LP, whichever comes first.”

The word “period” is vague here. What measurement is a “contract period” much less two of them? At the end, it says “The Term of this agreement will expire either: 1) nine (9) months after the release date of the last released LP” meaning that it's over – only after the album is officially released. Meaning – in perpetuity – if not released. The other is a Label option for a second album after you record the first. That means the label can hold you to a second release even if you didn’t like how they handled the first, which may screw you if say you get interest from Comedy Central. Especially if you’re buyout clause from your agreement doesn’t have a set price like say $500 and a pizza.

Funny story. The above excerpt is from a contract that was sent to me by a stand-up record label. When I verbally agreed to work with them, I had specifically stated that the deal would be for one album with an artist option for a second. Meaning whether or not the process sucked or was good, I had the option to record another with them or not. However – they wrote it in the official contract as their option instead. Meaning I could be trapped in a bad deal owing them the second album.

Just because you agree in person means nothing if it’s not written down to reflect your spoken agreement. Always put it in writing.

Artist’s Additional Rights.

“Artist’s Right to Purchase Copies from Label. Artist may also purchase an unlimited number of non-royalty bearing CD copies of the Recordings from Label for purposes of resale by Artist for Artist’s personal or promotional use at the price of five dollars ($5.00) per CD and ten dollars ($10.00) per LP, if manufactured by Label, (the “Artist Discount Rates”). Notwithstanding the foregoing, Label agrees to provide thirty (120) copies of the CD to Artist at no charge.”

This is about the physical copies. It means that if you’d like to sell them after your show you have to buy them from the Label. This is helpful because the label pays to have them made and you can sell them. However, $5 a copy? They are literally fucking you. There’s a whole bunch of services that charge way less to manufacture CD’s. (seen some as low as a $1 depending on quantity) Services the Label goes through themselves! That $5 is just another way the Label can profit off the comedians work.

Here’s a fun fact! It’s 2018 – who buys CD’s anymore? Do YOU buy CD’s? From experience, I’ve seen comedians sell less and less physical albums every year. Everything is about digital now. The audience wants to stream it and could give two fucks about physical copies after shows. They want T-Shirts. It sucks, but it’s true. Stand Up Comedy was invented by the T-Shirt companies to move product. If any label tries to push you into buying CD’s from them at $5 a pop – suspect everything they do.

Back story: In my contract, I negotiated down to $3.25, but found out from other people on the Label they were paying $5 while some were paying $3. This is shady shit and the Label head got super pissed we were talking to each other about it. Remember – If a Label head doesn’t want you talking to other artists about their contracts then they are trying to fuck you somewhere.

Digital Download Royalty Rates.

“For each individual track from the Recordings (a “Single”) or complete album sold or streamed via Digital Download, Label will pay Artist a royalty equal to fifty (50%) of Label’s Net Receipts from such sale(s). Label’s Net Receipts are defined as Label’s gross receipts from Digital Download sales of Artist’s Recordings, less any distributor charges for upload or file maintenance.”

Digital sales are everything you’re going to make here in the World of Tomorrow. That’s the bulk of what you get from iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon, the whole bit. Here it says you get 50% of Net receipts from online sales.

Quick lesson: Gross sales are the grand total of all sale transactions reported in a period, without any deductions included within the figure. Net sales are defined as gross sales minus deductions.

Here’s what you need to iron out.

“…less any distributor charges for upload or file maintenance.”

Say your album is sold for $10. Well, iTunes can take 30 to 40% of your sales just for hosting it. That means you’re immediately making $6-7 on your album. Cut in half with the Label, 3 to $3.50. Think about this hard. Half your sales are going to a Label just because they spent an hour uploading it to a distribution site. Did the label bring you any extra sales or were they all from the audience you already created?

Did you not have the hour in your life to do it yourself?

Food for thought. Do you get your digital sales back after the agreement is over? Or does the label get 50% of your online sales (again the bulk of where you’ll make money) in perpetuity? This is a real thing that can happen if not written out. For instance, if you eventually get your album rights back – how will the Label transfer all your future sales back to you?

There’s a whole bunch more to this process, but essentially these things above are what you need to really get your head around. Some of you reading this may already be in bad contracts. You may have a few outs, depending on state laws and the verbiage. You may have good legal reasons to get out of it and take your career and art back into your hands from predators and dream fuckers. Talk to other comics, work together, it’s not that hard and most of you have nothing to lose.

They’re the ones with something to lose and us talking publically about these issues is how we protect ourselves from frauds.

Own your own hard work and make sure the people who get behind your talent are pushing it forward, instead of bleeding it out for their own profit.

It sounds like you hate Labels, are you bitter?

I don’t hate labels, I hate frauds. My first album was put out by Sure Thing Records based out of Austin, TX. Not only are they good friends of mine, but also genuinely doing it for the sake of comedy. They gave me a great deal and were completely upfront with me about all the ins and outs, plus they had already signed comics I loved and respected. It was the perfect situation and if anyone asks me privately, I would recommend them wholeheartedly.

For my second release, I did it by myself for two reasons. One, because Sure Thing and I couldn’t match our release schedules (they put all their energy/promotion into one release at a time and were already releasing another) and two, I wanted to research how to do this alone specifically to show others who may not have had the options I had (or considering working with leeches), how to take control of this themselves.

It's crazy how there are so many options for comics to do this and yet we’re still resigned to banging our heads with car doors at the mere sound of handling business.

But Jay, how do I know if I can record an album by myself?No problem. Let’s go through that beat by beat.

Recording and mastering

Do you know musicians? Podcasters? People who record with mics and equipment? Ask around. Get on Facebook and ask if anyone can help. This also helps in seeing if the general audience is hyped about you even doing an album. You will find plenty of people to talk to who’ll probably be down to do this. I was fortunate and had a friend named Jess who did professional commercial editing. He asked for $50, but I ended up paying him more because he was incredible and as obsessive as I was about the mix. Mastering is very important, but you can get that done later in the process. Stay tuned.

Pick a venue according to your audience needs.

If you work mostly clubs, you’ll know which ones would love to have you record in their space, but keep in mind they’re pretty much bar/restaurants. You may not want the sound of waitresses barking orders or a random bridal party fucking up your shit. For my recording, I found a bar that had a separate basement that was carpeted so the sound wouldn’t bounce around like a warehouse. It fit 50 people comfortably and maxed out at 75.

Plan on two to three shows (four is most desirable).

Hopefully, you got your shit down and can do a full hour, but that said – mistakes happen. Bad things always get in the way. Sometimes you’re sharper the second show because you were able to get your rhythm in the first. Or better yet – maybe you knock it out of the park the first show and can really relax and not be stressed out for the others. Maybe you think it sucks. You’ll probably think it sucks until you listen to it later and realize its fucking rad. Then – after tons of listens you’ll hate it and yourself again.

Promote.

Maybe do a suggested donation instead of an admission charge. You want the people who support you to come out excited to hear you record. Say it goes to pay for the recording. It's more legit then being one of those gofundme assholes.

After the recording.

Listen to it and mark notes if and when you hear a mistake or want to edit something out. Listen to all the shows. Pick what feels right. Do what matches your voice best. You or your editor can mix the tracks together on almost any audio program like Garageband, etc. Listen to it – take long breaks then come back to it. Don’t rush, you want to be proud of this thing that’s going to be in perpetuity. It’s your words, it’s your craft, whose hands do you want it to be in? Once you’re satisfied with the mix you’ll need to master. GET IT MASTERED. This makes the audio even without extreme volume peaks and quality for professional distribution.

I have my album and track listings, now what?

You’ll need art. Put out the call on Facebook. Ask around, you probably know tons of artists or just use a clean headshot. I’ve designed tons of ideas on my phone just working with apps and being creative. Know anyone with photoshop skills? Put out the call, you’re friends want to help. Just don’t be too needy and reciprocate back. We all got to support each other. I was lucky to randomly scroll through Facebook and discover Brett Brock. He’s my favorite human being and a fantastic artist.

How do I self-release this thing I’m sick of now?

There’s a ton of options and a lot of people have used sites like Tunecore and CD Baby. Both have their strengths and easy to research, but I’ll just cut the bullshit and recommend Distrokid. It was the simplest process, the best priced and gave me the options I needed for comedy. You literally upload your album and they host it for $19.99 a year. To put this into perspective, other places charge 2-3 times more to do the same thing. More perspective? No problem. For that $19.99 you can upload all the content you want, while the other places charge for each individual upload. Meaning that if you wanted to release multiple EP’s instead of one album, you still only pay $19.99 a year. Or pay $50 and Distrokid will never take it down if your membership lapses or you die. It’s kind of rad.Still want physical copies? No problem, there’s a ton of businesses who ship from everywhere in the country. I used https://www.affordablesound.com based out of Austin, TX and they were easy to work with. The price depends on the quantity you print, but keep in mind – people don’t really buy them anymore.

Release Strategy

Ok, here comes some realities. What do you want out of this release? Only you can decide this. When you upload to Distrokid you can choose literally 150 or more platforms to put your album on. If its just about exposure then click all the boxes and have a drink, you’re done. If its about sales then I’d suggest not putting it out on Spotify or Pandora streaming sites as it means people will choose to do that over paying the $9.99 for your work. Later on, go ahead and steam it as you like. I waited a year myself, but before that I personally wanted to set a value to what I produced and genuinely feel streaming lessens the public’s perception of what you do.

The fact is people don’t really want to pay for shit. Also - most of the people I know are broke, but that said - its up to you what your album is worth. There’s nothing wrong with saying your work is worth $10 and then putting it up on YouTube etc after a year as you move on to the next project. If your goal is to rank on iTunes, then make that push and promote the hell out of it on release day. I did that for my first album and got the #1 credit that pretty much no one cares about and does nothing for your career. For my second release, I first went through Bandcamp before Distrokid. I got paid quicker and got to see who and where was buying the album. It rocked, was easy and they only took 15% of each sale. You have to link it with Paypal and I’d advise paying the $10 to go with Bandcamp Pro. This will help you keep it from being a streaming release (and you can cancel after your sales die off). However, most people would rather click the ‘Buy’ button on iTunes and Amazon instead of filling out the credit card information on Bandcamp so eventually, you’re going to have to put it up through Distrokid anyways. You have options. Above all else make a list and look at what resources you have in your own community and decide for yourself what direction you’d like best to go. When do I see money from iTunes, Amazon, etc?

If you are on a label or doing it solo it takes 3-4 months to get your sales information back (unless you exclusively go through Bandcamp). Distrokid keeps track and will help you get paid. Do you work for Distrokid?

No. It was just so easy and convenient to use especially for standup that for the price and speed of service, I was pretty grateful they were an option.

Is this post just a way to promote your own shit?

Nope. This isn’t one of those dumb marketing things. Its just information for you to use or not. No twitter handles or links here.Most likely I’ll go back and edit this as more people either correct me or provide extra information that’s helpful to comics.

I hope this helps.

Jay Whitecotton is a stand Up comedian from San Antonio, TX now living in Austin. He’s written columns for magazines without any journalistic credibility – toured professionally as a guitarist, despite no lessons – and sold a script that was never made into a movie… – He likes dragons. His album “Hi, Lonesome!” & “Monster Ballads” are available on iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon and wherever fine albums are found.

#standup comedy albumrelease recording labels record label distribution jaywhitecotton

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theexperiment-hq-blog · 7 years

Photo

Clark Kent / Superman, played by Lee

OOC Info

Name: Lee again

Age: 21

Pronouns: all any

Triggers: (redacted)

Second Choice Character: n/a

Discord: (redacted)

Muse Name and Alias: Clark Kent, Kal-El of Krypton, Superman

What is your primary canon(s) for this character? Superman: American Alien comic

Approximate Age: 29

OTPs, BroTPs, NoTPs: My main ships for the character are Clex, Superbat, some Dick/Clark fun and ofc him and Lois. Big BroTP with Bruce and other League members. NoTPs n/a

Give us a bulletpoint outline for what your character’s history might look like:

Home planet of Krypton destroyed, Kal’s parents Lara and Jor-El we’re scientists who saw the coming destruction but ultimately were not listened to by their people or the council of Krypton. In a last ditch effort, they sent away their newborn son in a small space capsule pre-programmed to Earth’s coordinates. Knowing Kal would grow stronger and more powerful there than the home population. Hoping to ease the burden of him being an outcast since he’d be a “god to them”.

He crash landed in a field in Kansas, near the small rural town of Smallville. Adopted by Martha and Jonathan Kent, a couple previously unable to conceive and praying for a miracle child. Kal, who they named Clark, was their miracle. Martha quick and stubborn enough to easily convince Jonathan that instead of calling anyone, especially the government, they needed to protect this child. Hide the evidence that he came from space.

It soon became evident as Clark grew that he was far from normal. A toddler lifting furniture, never getting sick, thankfully to worrisome parents, unable to be harmed.

In early elementary school aged, Clark had his first accidental flight. Shooting through the roof of their farm home and in a panic Martha grabbed on to his ankle, propelling them both up. It’s only when she nearly slipped and fell that Clark managed to get more of a handle on himself. Her talking him into attempting to get them to move down, only resulting them both dropping. Luckily no one was seriously injured. Next instance with flight had him stuck hoovering above their fields. Jonathan enlisting the help of a neighbor with a small plane to swoop over and retrieve their son. Spurring some cuter moments of trial and error between the father and son until Clark learned to have a better grip on this particular ability.

He had a near idyllic childhood, parents who loved and supported him, space to run and roam and grow on the farm. But was haunted by his differences and the secrets he had to keep about them. The feeling of being so alien compared to the rest. But after lashing out on a mirror in a drive in, his father’s speech on “not being a jerk” hit home deep in Clark. Someone had put the effort and work into making that mirror, delivering it, hanging it up. And he’d destroyed it and a wall in a matter of a second. He didn’t want to be a jerk. Even if he was sort of miserable.

As a teenager, a string of brutal murders took place in Smallville. A good handful in the town new that Clark was special, and applying that small pressure for him to find the culprits, to help, weighed on him. But when he’d found where they were, Clark didn’t go to the police with the information. He showed up himself instead. A confrontation that ended in him for the most part accidentally melting the arms off one of the criminals. Three criminals were put in intensive care, describing their attacker as “a demon with red eyes”.

Shortly after highschool, Clark won a free plane ride. Taking it as a chance to finally get out of Smallville and “spread his wings” a bit. The plane crash landed in the ocean near a party boat of Bruce Wayne’s. Only Bruce wasn’t on board and Clark was quickly mistaken for the elusive birthday billionaire. Slipping into the role for a weekend trip until they docked, Clark met and mingled with a gaggle of ‘Bruce Wayne’s fake friends’ one even being Oliver Queen. Having a brief (and drugged) encounter with Deathstroke before slipping away once they made landfall.

In college, Clark was accepted into an internship at the Daily Planet. Their first challenge assignment being a summit meeting of Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen and Alexander Luthor. He scored inside scoop interviews with Queen, Luthor and Bruce Wayne’s then young ward, Dick Grayson. Being inspired in a multitude of ways to really step up in the world. As well as discovering Batman’s secret identity…and stealing his cape. Teaming up with Lois Lane and her exclusive on Bruce Wayne to write a Global headline

Superman’s first major appearance / superhero adventures clad in an acquired batman cape, goggles, helmet and a House of El painted bullet-proof vest. A vest that didn’t fool Lois Lane. Clark had his first notable bad run in with Parasite, who when thrust into the bay shrunk back to a man that muttered one thing “Lex Luthor” spurring a tension filled interaction that would set the tone for his future relationship with the cooperate powerhouse and arch-nemesis.

It wasn’t until he was 24 that Clark ever heard the word Krypton. Flying out into space after an argument with some friends, he was picked up by some members of the Green Lantern Corps. They didn’t give him anymore information outside of that. Later, when a space mercenary, Lobo came into town was when Clark finally discovered more about his home planet and true origins. As well as showcasing the true extend of his strength and powers to the world. Thereby solidifying himself as a Global figure and hero.

Justice League formed in order take on a greater threat to mankind (Darkseid?) Superman spends his days busy juggling his duties as Superman and maintaining his career as a journalist for the Daily Planet.

Interview (Must be answered in character, third person, including both narrative and dialogue. Answer these as if you’re responding to a roleplay reply. Feel free to write as much as you like, but make sure there’s at least a good paragraph for each.)

What would it take for you to switch sides? (hero to villain; villain to hero; neutral to either) “No.” Sound. Resolute. He had to be. “As long as there is life in my body, i will try and do what i feel is right. I owe it to humanity. To be their beacon.” The shine of the alien fabrics catching light on his symbol. It’s more than just an S. “But more importantly, i owe it to my parents. Both sets. To help shape and be apart of a better world, one that won’t fall victim to Krypton’s many mistakes. And to be the good person Ma and Pa raised me to be.” Clark cleared his throat, trying to distract from the strong and seeping emotion he felt when thinking of his parents. His birth planet. His home here on Earth.

How would you describe yourself? How would your friends describe you? How would the public describe you? “It depends on who in the world you ask. But i like to think that most are able to see what i do for what it is. To look over the ‘what ifs’ and see me for my actions. The world may not always agree with me, and i may not always see the clearest picture for what it is. But I will *always* do my best. For truth and justice. For the little guy. Like it or not, i’m a symbol for something bigger than just one man could ever be.” He distantly realized he wasn’t looking anywhere in particular anymore. Lost in his own answer. In trying to layer it with as much of his truth as possible. Blinking and a soft smile as he came back. “As for my friends? Well they’ll call me a big caped idiot. A boy scout. A dangerous one at that.” a lightness of his features while he thought of Bruce. As much as the man and his darkness, the depths of it, scared him. He was also a quiet inspiration. And an ease to his mind. Someone to keep him in check should Clark ever lose sight of what was right. “I seem to recall being called an obnoxiously caped loser in good nature a time or two. And myself? Well i’m just..i’m just a man with a lot a free time, trying to do one good deed a day.”

If you could gain any superpower/swap your superpower for another, what would it be and why? Clark looked down at his hands at this question. Wasn’t sure what to say. He had all the power anyone could want. And well, most of his life he hadn’t necessarily wanted them. Growing up, what he wanted most? Was just to a regular kid. *Normal.* But he was expected to answer. And as a member of the press himself, he knew how frustrating it could be when someone glossed over your questions. “I think.. I think i’d want Diana’s badassery. Does that count?” A small, apologetic smile.

What is a secret you have never told someone? If there was one choice in your past you could change, what would it be? What should he say here? A secret he’s told no one. Not his identity, a good handful of people know. That feeling he remembered all too well, how close he’s come to doing what was easy instead of what was right. To crumbling under the weight of everything awful he’s seen in this world. In others. That dangerous notion of taking matters into hand in a way that no person should. He just stared back down at hands again. The power, strength he knew was behind just about every cell in his body. *I never asked for all this.* “A secret? Sometimes..in dark moments, I worry that Luthor and others were right. That my being here and standing up so boldly only further inspired some of destruction and villains we see today.” A choice in his past to change. *Maybe..maybe working more with the police during the hostage situation in smallville. The way he permanently scarred those men*. But they had deserved it. Perhaps underestimating Luthor. Barging in hot headed when he should have thought things through. “We all make mistakes. All anyone can do is learn from them and look forward.”

If you had one day where you could do anything you want, free of consequences, what would you do? Clark gave a longing sigh. A happy look as he contemplated that. “I think i’d take Lois out, someplace nice. Quiet. And we’d be able to relax. Maybe a bubble bath and a book. Resting easy without worrying about well, the weight of the world. League responsibilities. Super-villains and alien invasions. To just be able to be a regular guy for a day. Now that sounds nice."

Extras

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