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pinesfamilyguidetotheweird · 1 month

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There's something I wanted to share, something that kinda saved me from my several burnouts with Cipher's Will.

The existence of Expy characters.

Basically characters that are either loosely or (usually) deliberately based off an already existing character.

I have technically made one already for a Hazbin Hotel fic. I say technically because the character design was not mine, but was shown briefly in the pilot: a hispanic looking demoness who was present during Charlie's interview. I loved her design and decided to make a fic based around her even though she didn't really have...anything to write about. So, I based her off the La Llorona legend with a bit of Blue Diamond in terms of feeling great lament and making other sinners cry in her woe.

When I remembered this, I decided to write characters based on ones that I liked.

I figured if I did this, I'd have a bet more freedom because I felt so much pressure with the crossover characters as I wanted to add basically everything that was connected to that character and it was part of the reason I was burning out.

The beauty of expies to me is to take these characters and kinda give them a new breath of fresh air, especially since they're based off my favs.

I'm not really sure if you can call them OCs...then again, originality is kinda hard to come by.

Plus, I've been wanting something specific and those specifics fit the already existing characters, buuuut...(reasons above). Not only that, but I was gonna be upfront about it anyways, sooo...

Really though, I'd like to use these characters outside of Cipher's Will and I'm gonna do just that.

Rimona Ethon-Jess

She is a singer and supermodel and daughter of a lesbian couple. I've based her on Garnet from Steven Universe. Really, the only differences between these two is Rimona's lack of Gems on her hands, future visions (or rather she might have some level of clairvoyance, just not the level of Garnet), and a third eye (though she does wear a bindi at times for meditative purposes).

She has two adoptive kids, Twig and Molly Westwood.

Yes, those are the names Anne used for her 'Shut In' story. As for the surname, its a reference to Humphrey Westwood (who's basically a human expy of Hop-Pop...shoot, remember the Curator?). Now, whether or not these characters are related is up to you. Twig is set to be Dipper's new friend usually with his return to the Falls (whenever that happens) whereas Molly kinda does her own thing, though she does become a fan of McGucket labs.

Next up is another character based on a character in Steven Universe, Glenn Finnegan.

He's a robotics prodigy from Ireland and a four-limbed amputee. He's also a freelance hacker and a gamer and has built a little robotic companion, plus a few pet plants.

Yet another character based on a Steven Universe character, plus others, Alexei Akoyevich Agapov

A slightly effeminate Russian-Japanese retired ice skater now cafe owner. He has a bit of Pearl's personality and body type and a bit of Fai D Flourite’s personality and fences as a hobby. He lives with his long term boyfriend.

The next character is interesting: Marilyn Rosenstein.

Yes. THAT Marilyn Rosenstein mentioned in Journal 3. I started to generate an idea that Marilyn was already an existing character and just so happens to share a lot in common with Eda (hell, I think Eda is an expy of Ryoko Hakubi), even with how she looked and that's how Eda was able to blend in. Heck, Marilyn also just so happens to be a witch too (albeit of the Earth variety). She lacks a golden tooth and curse, though. Now...Did Stan meet Marilyn first or was it always Eda? You decide!

Similar to Rimona, Marilyn has also two wards, two anthropomorphic wolves named Fenny and Yue.

Fenny is the youngest of the two, being slightly younger than Gideon, and Yue is around the same age as Wendy and her friends. Fenny and Yue aren't related to each other, though Yue was found with Fenny. Fenny is physically similar to King Clawthorne and can be demanding at times and likes to go on adventures. As for Yue, they're like a mix between Loona from Helluva Boss and Amethyst, though a little more on the brooding shy side, similar to Loona.

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Annnnd, that's about it!

I do have original characters that...I'm not entirely sure if they could be expies too, lol.

Here, let me share a few.

Seiko Habutai

She is shown in the first chapter of Back in the Falls. I kinda wanted her to be almost the opposite of Wendy (more ladylike and proper, the Ojou-Sama, if you will), but that doesn't stop her from getting dirty if she has to be.

Ashe

A dark skinned elf, who is also set to be a friend of Dipper. Speaking of elves, they are different here from what is shown in media. First off, the tribe Ashe is from is kind of a hippie type of group (basically how I would imagine elves could be portrayed in Gravity Falls.) The other is actually something that isn't used often in any media, the elves (or at least Ashe's race) are hollow inside. Like, there is nothing in their bodies. No bones, no organs, no soul. Nothing. ...I'm sure that not a lot of angst will come about this for Ashe...

Professor Esther Ratselgast

She's mentioned in the second chapter of Back in the Falls. She was Ford's Quantum Physics teacher back in college. Somehow still alive despite her advanced age. She's also dressed in clothes that seem out of the Victorian era. She is currently working for a man named Adair Samler. Speaking of...

Adair Samler, the last OC I'm willing to share right now (this has gone on long enough as it is)

He appears to be a middle-aged man with silvery hair and small glasses. He's the current director of the Oregon branch of the ALMA Foundation (GF equivalent of the SCP Foundation. I will say that some of his inspiration is that of Ozpin from RWBY, by being a little bit mysterious.

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And there we have it! Similar with the Expy characters, I'm gonna use these OCs outside of Cipher's Will if they are needed in that story.

#gravity falls #oc #original character #expy #rambles

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thisbelongsto-nohbodys · 2 years

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Percy Boonchuy Headcanons:

Percy is the one who usually helps both compose the music, design and apply the makeup for school productions.

Percy loves attending Comic/Anime Conventions, he's helped his Moms and Siblings with designing cosplays since he was 4-5.

Percy is a big fan of the horror, superhero and fantasy genres.

Percy has appeared in a couple of films/shorts both Indie and Studio productions a few of them alongside Humphrey Westwood who's become his acting mentor.

except for the Humphrey mentorship I say yes to all of this (sure Humphrey might still be friends with Anne but Anne wouldn’t want to use her connections for that outside of an autograph, an appearance at a party or sneak peak tickets to upcoming movies). Good headcanons

#ask #percy boonchuy #90snostalgia311

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jcmarchi · 2 months

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Professor Emeritus John Vander Sande, microscopist, entrepreneur, and admired mentor, dies at 80

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/professor-emeritus-john-vander-sande-microscopist-entrepreneur-and-admired-mentor-dies-at-80/

Professor Emeritus John Vander Sande, microscopist, entrepreneur, and admired mentor, dies at 80

MIT Professor Emeritus John B. Vander Sande, a pioneer in electron microscopy and beloved educator and advisor known for his warmth and empathetic instruction, died June 28 in Newbury, Massachusetts. He was 80.

The Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), Vander Sande was a physical metallurgist, studying the physical properties and structure of metals and alloys. His long career included a major entrepreneurial pursuit, launching American Superconductor; forming international academic partnerships; and serving in numerous administrative roles at MIT and, after his retirement, one in Iceland.

Vander Sande’s interests encompassed more than science and technology; a self-taught scholar on 17th- and 18th-century furniture, he boasts a production credit in the 1996 film “The Crucible.”

He is perhaps best remembered for bringing the first scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) into the United States. This powerful microscope uses a beam of electrons to scan material samples and investigate their structure and composition.

“John was the person who really built up what became the MIT’s modern microscopy expertise,” says Samuel M. Allen, the POSCO Professor Emeritus of Physical Metallurgy. Vander Sande studied electron microscopy during a postdoctoral fellowship at Oxford University in England with luminaries Sir Peter Hirsch and Colin Humphreys. “The people who wrote the first book on transmission electron microscopy were all there at Oxford, and John basically brought that expertise to MIT in his teaching and mentoring.”

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1944, Vander Sande grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. He studied mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1966, and switched to materials science and engineering at Northwestern University, receiving a PhD in 1970. Following his time at Oxford, Vander Sande joined MIT as assistant professor in 1971.

A vision for advanced microscopy

At MIT, Vander Sande became known as a leading practitioner of weak-beam microscopy, a technique refined by Hirsch to improve images of dislocations, tiny imperfections in crystalline materials that help researchers determine why materials fail.

His procurement of the STEM instrument from the U.K. company Vacuum Generators in the mid-1970s was a substantial innovation, allowing researchers to visualize individual atoms and identify chemical elements in materials.

“He showed the capabilities of new techniques, like scanning transmission electron microscopy, in understanding the physics and chemistry of materials at the nanoscale,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at DMSE. Today, MIT.nano stands as one of the world’s foremost facilities for advanced microscopy techniques. “He paved the way, at MIT, certainly, and more broadly, to those state-of-the-art instruments that we have today.”

The director of a microscopy laboratory at MIT, Vander Sande used instruments like that early STEM and its successors to study how manufacturing processes affect material structure and properties.

One focus was rapid solidification, which involves cooling materials quickly to enhance their properties. Tom Kelly, a PhD student in the late 1970s, worked with Vander Sande to explore how fast-cooling molten metal as powder changes its internal structure. They discovered that “precipitates,” or small particles formed during the rapid cooling, made the metal stronger.

“It took me at least a year to finally get some success. But we did succeed,” says Kelly, CEO of STEAM Instruments, a startup that is developing mass spectrometry technology, which measures and analyzes atoms emitted by substances. “That was John who brought that project and the solution to the table.”

Using his deep expertise in metals and other materials, including superconducting oxides, which can conduct electricity when cooled to low temperatures, Vander Sande co-founded American Superconductor with fellow DMSE faculty member Greg Yurek in 1987. The company produced high-temperature superconducting wires now used in renewable energy technology.

“In the MIT entrepreneurial ecosystem, American Superconductor was a pioneer,” says Chiang, who was part of the startup’s co-founding membership. “It was one of the early companies that was formed on the basis of research at MIT, in which faculty spun out a company, as opposed to graduates starting companies.”

To teach them is to know them

While Yurek left MIT to lead the American Superconductor full time as CEO, Vander Sande stayed on the faculty at DMSE, remaining a consultant to the company and board member for many years.

That comes as no surprise to his students, who recall a passionate and devoted educator and mentor.

“He was a terrific teacher,” says Frank Gayle, a former PhD student of Vander Sande’s who recently retired from his job as director at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “He would take the really complex subjects, super mathematical and complicated, and he would teach them in a way that you felt comfortable as a student learning them. He really had a terrific knack for that.”

Chiang said Vander Sande was an “exceptionally clear” lecturer who would use memorable imagery to get concepts across, like comparing heterogenous nanoparticles, tiny particles that have a varied structure or composition, to a black-and-white Holstein cow. “Hard to forget,” Chiang says.

Powering Vander Sande’s teaching, Gayle said, was an aptitude for knowing the people he was teaching, for recognizing their backgrounds and what they knew and didn’t know. He likened Vander Sande to a dad on Take Your Kid to Work Day, demystifying an unfamiliar world. “He had some way of doing that, and then he figured out how to get the pieces together to make it comprehensible.”

He brought a similar talent to mentorship, with an emphasis on the individual rather than the project, Gayle says. “He really worked with people to encourage them to do creative things and encouraged their creativity.”

Kelly, who was a University of Wisconsin professor before becoming a repeat entrepreneur, says Vander Sande was an exceptional role model for young grad students.

“When you see these people who’ve accomplished a lot, you’re afraid to even talk to them,” he says. “But in reality, they’re regular people. One of the things I learned from John was that he’s just a regular person who does good work. I realized that, Hey, I can be a regular person and do good work, too.”

Another former grad student, Matt Libera, says he learned as much about life from Vander Sande as he did about materials science and engineering.

“Because he was not just a scientist-engineer, but really a well-rounded human being and shared a lot of experience and advice that went beyond just the science,” says Libera, a materials science and engineering professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, Vander Sande’s alma mater.

“A rare talent”

Vander Sande was equally dedicated to MIT and his department. In DMSE, he was on multiple committees, on undergraduates and curriculum development, and in 1991 he was appointed associate dean of the School of Engineering. He served in the position until 1999, taking over as acting dean twice.

“I remember that that took up a huge amount of his time,” Chiang says. Vander Sande lived in Newbury, Massachusetts, and he and his wife, Marie-Teresa, who long worked for MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program, would travel together to Cambridge by car. “He once told me that he did a lot of the work related to his deanship during that long commute back and forth from Newbury.”

Gayle says Vander Sande’s remarkable communication and people skills are what made him a good fit for leadership roles. “He had a rare talent for those things.”

He also was a bridge from MIT to the rest of the world. Vander Sande played a leading role in establishing the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, a teaching partnership that set up Institute-modeled graduate programs at Singaporean universities. And he was the director of MIT’s half of the Cambridge-MIT Institute, a collaboration with the University of Cambridge in the U.K. that focused on student and faculty exchanges, integrated research, and professional development. Retiring from MIT in 2006, he pursued academic projects in Ecuador, Morocco, and Iceland, and served as acting provost of Reykjavik University from 2009 to 2010.

He had numerous interests outside work, including college football and sports cars, but his greatest passion was for antiques, mainly early American furniture.

A self-taught expert in antiquarian arts, he gave lectures on connoisseurship and attended auctions and antique shows. His interest extended to his home, built in 1697, which had low ceilings that were inconvenient for the 6-foot-1 Vander Sande.

So respected was he for his expertise that the production crew for 20th Century Fox’s “The Crucible” sought him out. The film, about the Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials, was set in 1692. The crew made copies of furniture from his collection, and Vander Sande consulted on set design and decoration to ensure historical accuracy.

His passion extended beyond just historical artifacts, says Professor Emeritus Allen. He was profoundly interested in learning about the people behind them.

“He liked to read firsthand accounts, letters and stuff,” he says. “His real interest was trying to understand how people two centuries ago or more thought, what their lives were like. It wasn’t just that he was an antiques collector.”

Vander Sande is survived by his wife, Marie-Teresa Vander Sande; his son, John Franklin VanderSande, and his wife, Melanie; his daughter, Rosse Marais VanderSande Ellis, and her husband, Zak Ellis; and grandchildren Gabriel Rhys Pelletier, Sophia Marais VanderSande, and John Christian VanderSande.

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eda-in-crocs · 3 years

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Funky new people, love ‘em

#amphibia spoilers #season 3 #Hopediah Plantar #hop pop plantar #Humphrey Westwood #Terri #Dr Frakes #geez tumblr didnt want me to upload these #I've been trying since yesterday #tumblr said no to blue hair and pronouns #too bad tho tumblr I study informatics so I know how to cheat around things #HAH!#anygays new episodes good #I love all the side characters #*evaporates away*

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teartra · 3 years

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My new two favorite person

#ALSO TERRI IS VOICED BY WEBBY VA #I WAS LIKE IT’S WEBBY 🥺#these characters and also dr jan and thai community #and also it girls #they’re so wholesome #amphibia #humphrey westwood #amphibia terri

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sepublic · 3 years

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Sylvia/Hopediah? Grimepop who??? I only know Hop Pop x Humphrey Westwood!

Hop Pop out here collecting an entire polycule like Anne, but with MORE people-

#amphibia #amphibia hop pop #hopediah plantar #amphibia Humphrey #Humphrey Westwood #meme #memes

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random-bi-writer · 3 years

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My Reaction to Escape to Amphibia

Missed the beginning cause Lunch so this took long.

Spoilers for those who haven’t watched the episode.

I’d be surprised if those two aren’t dating.

I...can’t believe I never questioned that. How did no one questioned that the portal device is a music box?

Terri no, get those pretzels from your own money.

Stop no. I don’t want to be reminded of a potential Anne and Darcy fight.

Whoa, Anne attacking got me back to Anne and Sasha’s fight in the s2 opening.

Corruptianne Foreshadowing~

WHAT THE FUCK?! THAT’S ILLEGAL! MATT EXPLAIN!

Or...why don’t you just bring them along?

POLLY DID YOU STOLE THOSE?!

Wait, the Boonchuys have how many credit cards?

Crossover Flashback.

Anne looks so done at her parents.

Jesus, Mr. B. Stop with the love eyes. (that’s cute though but also disgusting cause my dad does this too.)

POLLY NO

Anne, why do you have Molly Jo’s number?

I like it when children are involved with infiltration. It reminds me of my chilhood favorite movie; Spy Kids.

Terri and Dr. Jan interactions alone remind me of two characters of this show. I’m trying to remember who.

Anne finally talks about half of her feelings!

Damn, I did not need to called out like this.

If those two ever started dating, they’re gonna cause a lot of crimes.

Okay, that was badass.

Lmao, also Corruptianne Foreshadowing~

Geez, I do like some Corruptianne Foreshadowing moments but this is a bit too much. If Disney let it’s shows have blood, all these guys would be dead.

“It says pull.”

Oh those two are going to be in jail a lot if they ever dated.

Bro, that’s not gonna work.

Anne. Anne’s the battery isn’t she?

I thought she was gonna bitch slap him.

Anne: I am a kid, what’s your excuse?

Lmao, that was so random. I don’t blame him for being surprised.

Oh so the human allies didn’t join, probably a good cause of the government.

Like father, like daughter.

Oh that is heartbreaking to see.

#amphibia #anne boonchuy #mrs. boonchuy #mr. boonchuy #sprig plantar #polly plantar #hop pop plantar #dr. jan #terri #ally #jess #molly jo #humphrey westwood #i can't remember the old lesbians names

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mysteriesofmarcy · 3 years

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Theme song group shot

So, the first thing I noticed upon rewatch of this week's pair of episodes is that we've now been introduced to every character in the earth group shot near the end of the theme song. We've got Dr. Jan in front, Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy on the right, the IT Gals and Panda-tron on the left, Humphrey also on the left, Sara Murphy Terri on the right, and Mr. X and Jenny in the background by their ice cream truck.

Now, everybody in the photo is currently an ally to the Plantars except Mr. X and Jenny. I should also note that Dr. Frakes is not present in this shot, despite appearing in this season, and that she is decidedly NOT an ally. Make of this what you will, but my interpretation is that this is a group shot of everybody who will help the Plantars on earth. This also means two more things:

It feeds into the theory that they will eventually come around and help the heroes, even if only to ward off Andrias's invasion.

We won't be introduced to any more important characters from now on. As in, next week is where the real fun begins. (Or maybe Froggy Little Christmas is just a one-off holiday special like The Shut-In, and the real fun begins in the following episode.)

#amphibia #amphibia season 3 #dr jan amphibia #mr boonchuy #mrs boonchuy #it gals #pandatron #humphrey westwood #terri amphibia #mr x #jenny amphibia

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Amphibia Weekly Season 3 Reviews and Analysis: Hollywood Hop Pop and If You Give a Frog a Cookie: The Calm Before and After The Storm

Hello all you happy people! I’m Jake, I review stuff and things and i’m almost done with Amphibia for the year! Next Week’s Christmas episode marks the end of this half of the season and of new episodes for what will likely be months. Probably sometime in spring, though maybe not as early as last time given they also have to squeeze in big city greens and owl house. Unless they decide to try and just burn off the rest of owl house inconspciously because it’s “not with the disney brand”. Which is code for “WE let one homophobic shitweasel have too much power apparently so now this is going away. “ HOpefully fans, including my close friend @jess-the-vampire will keep up the fight. Seriously I just wanted to give her a nod for fighting hard and long for this and currently working on stickers to help the cause. It means a lot to her and I support that and this. We need more dammit.

So with that this is one of our last episodes and with it we finally get introduced to the rest of the characters from that shot in the intro with all the supporting cast from this season.. and get a change to it. Clearly Matt wanted to rub salt in the gaping wounds from last time, so Marcy in the tank’s been replaced with Marionette Marcy. Which took a long time to figure out as coming up with a name is hard.. and the fandom as a whole settled on “Darcy” which.. just dosen’t work given you know THIS happened to make that

I’m all for goofy nicknames, but there’s a limit and that limit is a 13 year olds screams of pain to make that version of a character exist.

This also once again brings up my longstanding fascenation with Disney Intros, how they used to NEVER change but disney’s become more and more opena nd thus we’re seeing intros reflect the whole show more and more often or get small but likely costly cosemtic changes to hide spoilers. Which still begs the question: Was Star Vs unable to change intros and thus kept posseed ludo LONG after he stopped being the big bad, or were they just lazy. You make the call.. mine is the former because the rest of seasons 3 and 4 strongly agree with my assement.

But being in the final lap of this part of the season, it has me sitting back and reflecting a bit, though i’ll save it in full for next episode as it COULD adress the only two complaints I have left. For now we get a nice calming batch of episodes after.. well see above for burning teenager. Wallace Shawn heartwarmingly supports Hop Pop’s dream, the most fabulous secret agent in existance returns, one of my favirite voice actors and the female equilvent to my keith david obsession joins the cast, and we get Cree Summer hamming it up in a voice she dosen’t get to use as much. A fun time is had by all before presumably next week kicks us in the testicles and runs off for a few months. So join me under the cut for Hollywood, Mad Science and Cookies, as well as a full analytical review with spoilers.

Hollywood Hop Pop:

Much like Spider-Sprig, this one’s a breather episode. While the former was ease us into the hellscape that was “Oliva and Yunan”, this one’s to ease us out of it and back into normal episodes for a sec. Sort of like a sandwitch with two halves of a crossant for it’s bread and a still living snake covered in mustard for it’s filling.

Given the show’s newfound LA setting it was really a matter of “when” rather than “If” the show would visit Hollywood given Hop Pop’s love of acting set up last season, one of the very few things during the road trip arc that actually advanced the story or characters. The others I can think of being the skipman, which we’ll get to next ep, frobo, polly’s episode and finding out Wally’s backstory. That arc continues to be a giant waste of time and good concept to me and could’ve been shrunk by a few episodes so we got more time with Marcy before...

Exactly. The fact she’s likely going to be gone an entire season makes keeping her out of focus last season during the Newtopia portion even MORE baffling than it already was.

Anywho, Hop Pop’s acting dreams were a nice bit of depth to his charcter, showing he didn’t ALWAYS want to be a farmer despite being so dedicated to it. Now granted, we still haven’t gotten the connective tissue for that, which frustrates me to no end, but it’s still more than “was born and died a farmer”, instad painting a picture of a kid who wanted to act but came to see his family leagacy as his calling, even if he still never regretted becoming a star. It may be the good foundation for a possible prequel. Hint hint Disney HINT HINT.

But to me it was just a character trait and not something that needed full resolution.. only for matt to give it one in this charming ep that was utterly heartwarming.

Our heroes are visiting Hollywood since Anne is being a good host and all. The Plantars have likely seen even more movies now their not limited to whatever Anne happened to have on her phone, been to a theater.. now it’s time to go to the holy land of filmaking. Hop Pop is naturally star struck, especially upon finding out as anne puts it we don’t just love actors here “we worship them as gods”... I mean given the altar I have for keith david hidden in my crawl space I concur.

So despite you know, being on the run from Mr.X... who Anne knows by name

I did go back and check the clip of his meeting Anne’s parents: he DID flash Mrs. B his creditals, so them knowing his name is plausable.. but it still feels clunky to have her just abrubtly state a character name that Mrs. B MIGHT know from the guy flashing his badge for two seconds.

Anyways, our heroes had after Hop Pop who runs around starstruck before bumping into Humphrey Westwood, an old man who happens to look almost exactly like him except human. He’s played by WALLACE MOTHERFUCKING SHAWN.

Granted Mr. Shawn does a LOT of voice work, smaller rolls like this one, so it’s not a massive shock he’s here but it just highlights how absolutely stacked the guest cast is this year. The other two years weren’t lacking, the shows always had some of the best talent, but this season has added Wayne Knight, Ankia Noni Rose (And shame on me for not pointing out that she and Keith David are reunited in a disney project, and might even come face to face (Probably not but a man can dream), Dana Davis, Kate Micucci (We’ll get to that), Cree Summer (Ditto), RuPaul, Brad Garrett, and now Wallace Shawn. And ther’es even great new additions like On Braly and Brian Sounalouth who arne’t as big names, but slap just as hard as all these sizeable guest names. The show is going above and beyond to nail the finish and bringing in everyone they can to do so. And it is WORKING.

So anyways, back on point: Humphrey is a vetran actor, having put his nose to the grindstone for 45 years hoping for his big break. It hasn’t happened yet but he’s not giving up either and he’s nothing but friendly to Hop Pop. And in most acting based stories you’d expect for him to stab HP in the back.. but no. He accepts this out of towner and welcomes him, and it’s the sweetest thing, even more when Humphrey gives Hop Pop his audition slot> He’ll have other chances.

Said Slot is for a commercial, something Hop Pop dosen’t realize as they don’t have those back home. He mostly nails the audition, but is almost let go for lack of a catchphrase.. until he lets out a

And thus gets himself an ad Campaign, with Anne accepting it because he says it was a play and Humphrey congradulating him. While he didn’t get the part he’s just happy for someone else. God this man is amazing.

Anne isn’t happy the next day to find Hop Pop’s commerical, which they shot that day because

Is now on all the channels and is pissed off while Hop Pop and the rest of the family are utterly thrilled with Mr and Mrs B even adorably appearing on the banister.. because they have an upstairs now? Probably always did I just never noticed the stairs before. Look over the past few weeks i’ve seen a killer robot, a baby riot, grime in hop pop’s bed, a food truck do a rail grind, a possum, a museum heist, a huge battle with the entire thai community of this part of LA, so gals being girlfriends and making robots, Mrs> B go thor on a motherfucker, Ru Paul as a secret agent and a teenager get horribly possesed by a sentient ai hive. It has been a lot of fun but also a lot. So forgive me for not realizing Anne’s house had more than one level despite it being obvious in hindsight.

Anyways their all cute on the Banister talking about how they know someone famous and Mr. B wondering if they shoudl charge rent.. then REALLY wondering if they should. Mr. B no. He also muses that because Mr. X is a busy goverment agent surely he won’t be watching tv. Cut to the obvious joke of Mr. X indeed taking time for himself to watch TV. We also get a peak at his personal life and it is adorable

He has a snazzy robe, an alien themed kitchen (Unsurprisingly) with all sorts of cool stuff I wish I had frankly, two posters of Ru Paul in drag race for m as a nice little nod , and the frogs from last time who he’s since adopted. Awwww. I know I know he’s trying to dissect our heroes but awwww.

So naturally he gets wind of this and easily finds out what Studio the commercial was at.. which wouldn’t be a big deal, he took HUMPHREY’S spot and thus they have his address.. but the Plantars happen to be heading to the studio as Anne wants to get the Ad pulled before they get found out.. only to find out it’s likely impossible given the campaign has spawned billboards t-shirts, mugs and other fine merch. And I could blame the fast turnaround on just being for the sake of a joke.. but the sheer amount of Tommorowland funkos still clogging up shelves show that companies simply put out a ton of merch and HOPE there’s a demand sometimes. Yet oddly disney STILL hasn’t given us anything for Amphibia. Your priorities disney I swear.

Anyways Hop Pop gets a call on Anne’s phone for his big break, which Anne is against but he plans to go for anyway. It’s even in a Water Tower. Huh, didn’t know the Warners were renting out that space for meetings.. or maybe Nora forced them to. Either is likely. Point is Hop Pop goes to embrace his destiny.. only to find Humphrey. Turns out he’s the janitor on the lot, has been for years. Wow the things he’s seen.. and picked up. I mean wakkos crumbs alone. And he’s once again HAPPY Hop Pop gets a big break. But Hop Pop isn’t... mostly because he’s been struggling all episode with the guilt. Humprhey gave up his big shot.. and Hop Pop took it. And what makes it work is that Humphrey willingly did, has no grudge against HP for his success.. and that just makes it WORSE as HP took it from someone who worked far longer for it.

We also get a great chase sequence with X, the Kids and HP, including fun callbacks for Trantulaman, Suspcsion Island, and the dowtown abby knockoff which dosen’t have real British persons to Anne’s shock.. and mine.

Thus the next part isn’t a surprise: X is once again humiliated as he attacks the tower.. only to find Humphrey, which not only humiliates the guy again (Again just because he’s against our heroes dosen’t make him a terrible person), but gets the FBI a possible lawsuit, something he understandably takes worse. Last time was an easy enough to write off loss.. this time not only hurts the bearu but his reputation as it makes the switch much less obvious.

Hop Pop explains himself to the kids: that Humphrey deserved it more (even thanking HP for getting his break at last), but also admits he put them all in danger... he had his moment in the sun... it’s time for humphrey to have his while Hop Pop apricates what he does have his family. He also wants to direct leading to another out of the cart shove.

Hollywood Hop Pop was a good, nice and fluffy breather episode, which we truly needed. While the next episode isn’t as intense given the last one was....

We as an audience BADLY needed this. Add in Wallace Shawn being as awesome as ever and some fun gags and this was another decent episode. Nothing amazing but again, it was following ^ that so i’m willing to cut it some slack. Onward.

If You Give a Frog a Cookie:

This one does finally tackle something it’s been bugging me the show hasn’t. No not the Boonchuy’s names.. or Sasha and Marcy’s parents... though the Christmas Special should get on those. I’m talking about the fact that the Plantars really haven’t talked about missing home or everyone they know, especially since they left just as a tyrannical dictator was set to wreck up the place and could easily use them as leverage if he wanted via his giant murder canon. Or just blow Wartwood up entirely to spite them. Both seem up his alley. While the show has made it implicit their worrying, what with their race to get home, we haven’t seen any sign of it. Granted that is a weakness this season has had, kind of just.. dancing around the emotional implications of what just happened in general, with Marcy and Sasha’s parents so far non entities despite that making absolutely no sense, something i’ll complalin about more if they don’t show up next episode, and Anne clearly hurt by the betrayals, but not really talking about them. The show dosen’t ignore the impact, it’s clear the plantars miss homne and Anne is trying to avoid her complicated feelings towards her GF’s, but it still feels like a missing piece of the show they’ll hopefully fill in.

Still this one at least addresses the Plantars getting homesick and missing everyone, so i’ll give them that. Hopefully the rest will come. Anyways we open the episode with the yard filled with mud, to Mrs. B’s understandable distress. Anne explains that depression has hit our heroes hard and their badly homesick, so she thought a swamp would help. It did.. but now they’ve sunk to lying around in mud depressed. Been there. So now Anne’s making cookies, “the solution to all of life’s problems” to try and placate them. Mrs. B warns against this: they NEED to accept the reality of the situation and cope with it instead of just being given placebos. Trying to help them feel better is nice but this pain won’t just magically go away. As for why their suddenly depressed I feel it’s because they’ve been there at least a month by this point. It was easy to distract themselves when their might be hope of a way home sooner, they had to adapt to the world and were trying to bond with their new family. There was also the killer robot trying to murder them of course. But now time has set in and it’s very clear they aren’t getting home anytime soon, have no way of knowing if home will even be left when they return, and the realization’s likely hit them like a ton of brick frogs.

Anne decides to keep trying to cheer them up and takes out the cicada cookies... and Mrs. B finds this out after having taken a bite and spits it out.. at jeff. Real love is never having to say your sorry for spitting cicadia cookie on your husband.

The cookies don’t exactly help... nor does the Plantar’s coping mechanisim: a scale model of wartwood with creepy little dolls of everyone, with hop pop even having one he made of himself dance with tiny sylvia and the kids sadly hugging the adorable hand sewn plushie of Bessie.. dammit now I want one of those. Anne TRIES to follow her mom’s advice only to get a call from Dr. Jan who has good news.. and a lead. A local scientest, Dr. Frakes is looking into interdimensional portals and could be their ticket home. That said Jan dosen’t want to take them to see her JUST yet: as she puts it the academic community has a lot of loose ends on it’s fringes. Best to make sure Frakes is safe and sane before they try talking to her.

Unfortuantely the Plantars catch wind of the call and Anne can’t say no to their overwhleming depression so it’s off to the doc they go. Turns out Frakes, who i’m 100% convinced is named after Star Trek TNG actor and David Xanatos Voice Actor Jonathan Frakes, is headquartered in a science center. For those less familiar their basically big places where children go to learn about science in fun ways. I went to one as a kid that was part of Union Station, it was a blast. So it’s no suprised the Plantars are enchanted. The kids there are also borderline feral when it comes to snacks.

After some putzing around our heroes make it to the back, and ask to be let in, finding Frakes assitant Terri. She’s played by KATE MOTHERFUCKING MICCUI, who I hero worship and crush on almost as hard as Keith David and for just as good a reason. She’s done plenty of screenwork, a lot of which I need to see, she’s built up a true talent and resume voice acting having voiced Sadie, Webby, Velma Dinkley for the last decade, and MANY more. So it’s a delight to not only see her pop up here, but in a very sizeable roll, especially since Disney canceled her starring role just as she was set to likely get a season long arc. I”m still bitter about Ducktales cancelation and I ain’t hidin it. Disney needs to learn to let series go on longer than 3 seasons.. or let them finish their seasons.. Disney sucks is what i’m saying you get it by now.

Terri is also the last of the supporting cast we see in the intro, the girl with blue hair. Whose also as it turns out 20 something. Terri also isn’t buying Anne’s very transparent lie that she’s a reporter. Where’s her yellow jumpsuit I ask you? But Frakes buys it.. not because a 13 year old is at all convincing but because as we quickly find out Frakes is a rabid egotist, and is also played by Cree Summers getting to use a voice she honestly dosen’t get to use as much but I recognize from.. somewhere. She’s done a LOT of things. I shouldn’t have to say who voice acting legend Cree Summer is. She’s been at this since the 80′s, shows no signs of quitting and has been great in her ocasional live action roles such as her longstanding role as Freddy, her supporting roll on better things and apparnetly a guest spot on what we do in the shadows which I need to watch. The lady has my utmost respect and has a blast here. She just puts everything into whatever roll big and small and I can’t help but repsect that.

Anyways as I was saying Frakes is an egotist, naming all her experiments after herself and feeling science is about naming things after herself. Huh.. so gyro gearloose is a woman in this dimension. Fascenating. Terri shows off that she’s not impressed with her boss or her egotisim, if quitely and snarkily.

Frakes leads them to her baby: an interdimensional portal. Turns out 6 months ago when the calamity box was opened and zapped our golden trio into Amphibia, a surge was sent through the power lines and into Frakes lab as Terri was hard at work and Frakes is rocking out on her skipman. Yes this is where the Skipman came from, as it gets sucked into amphibia as Frakes nearly does and ever since she’s been TRYING to build a portal. Sadly the most she gets are some foggy images of other worlds, one of which does look like amphibia, as she can’t get it to stay. My theory is that she has the right combo of exlectrical surges to create a portal.. but not the power or tech yet to keep it on or properly guide it to a world. And given only Andrias and the Core seem to know how the box works it’s fair a scientest not even knowing HOW the first portal happened and only able to barley replicate it could only get so far.

The Plantars pressure Anne into using the portal, and then guilt her when she refuses on very solid ground, not trusting Frakes for good reason and clearly regretting not letting Jan vet her. While this MIGHT be a way home... it’s through someone who clearly cares more about herself than actually helping people. And given the goverment is after them, that could mean she’d sell them out easily as long as she got public credit for it or something enought to satisfy her ego. But the plantars are blinded by seeing a way home at all and guilt anne into it.

So Frakes turns on the machine and knocks everyone back, getting a brief portal into somewhere. Bunch of shapes and stuff. But it’s not amphibia so the plantars are disapoitned.. and exposed as the blast knocked their clothes off. Shockingly the raging egotist who views science as a means to feeding said ego sees the frogs only as something to disect for her own glory and uses a localized force field to caputre the plantars for disection. Anne dashes off and runs into Terri and gives her the “I need to stop her speech”... and in a nice twist for the genre, where normally the beligured assitant would dicker a bit or worry about themselves.... Terri agrees right away. Science is important but those are innocent people and Frakes has clearly lost it. So Terri helps her get to the other part of the lab, but gets tripped up by some children who sense a granola bar on her so Anne’s forced to hoof it alone.

At the disection lab, Anne tries breaking the window open, and the plantars ar ein danger... till Terri prepares to shut it off. Frakes threatens her both with loosing her job and being blackballed asking if it’s worth it. One yup into my heart later and Terri frees the plantars, allowing them to escape. Frakes takes it as well as you’d expect and grabs a buzzsaw arm, and uses it to chase them. You know.. your threat to blackball someone is kind of empty when you follow it by chasing an elderly man, a teenager, and two children around a place full of kids with a buzzsaw. Just saying. Anne however saves her family with a chekovs gun, holding off frakes while they escape with Terri by throwing some cookies at her. Those kids don’t care if they have bugs in them. Their cookies man.

So as Frakes is slowly devoured by children, our heroes drive off in Terri’s car. Nice of her to give them a ride. Anne calls out the Plantars pointing out she understands, better than anyone, what their going through but they can’t rush this. Doing so got the three of them nearly cut up, and lost Terri her job. The Plantars apologize, realizing they did overguilt her and were wrong. Terri however.. is not remotely phased. Besides the fact that like I said the person trying to blackball her from science just charged through a public space full of children with a buzzsaw , she points out the job sucked anyway and her “mentor” was wrong about science: it’s abotu helping people, not yourself. She also makes an obvious point: the portal SHE’LL build will be more than enough to get a grant. I hear the venture foundation has a pretty nice one. It also once again shows what a big heart this woman has: she just met these people... and she’s fully into helping them get home, without them even asking first. Sure the portal could change the world and it’s worth doing on that.. but to her it’s clearly just as much worth doing because it helps these strangers. WIth thta our heroes pick up yet another helpful ally and some hope of going home.

IYGAFAC was excellent. The Plantars actions, while greasy , were understandable and it nicely sovles one of the overarching mysteries of the series, and in a way that helps our heroes get one step closer ot home. Terri is yet another great addition to the supporting cast, and kate miccui or now she’s shown to be a kind, badass scientest who wants what’s best for people.

Next Time: Mid-Season Finale Yo! Rebcca Sugar Song! The IT Girls Return! Andrias does something that thankfully isn’t sending his master over there! Maybe Anne gives her mom a pin I dunno! WOOOO!

#amphibia #hollywood hop pop #if you give a frog a cookie #anne boonchuy #hopidiah plantar #polly plantar #sprig plantar #humphrey westwood #mr. x #hollywood #wallace shawn #Mr. Wu #Mrs. Wu #Terri #kate micucci #dr.jan #disney channel

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