#i appreciate the muppets on a much deeper level than you

[holywoter]

oh my god does taliesin's shirt say 'i appreciate the muppets on a much deeper level than you'

[driftlessarearev]

Critic’s Notebook: Random Thoughts on the Barbie movie

Via “Why should you be the one to give in, you ask? The answer is simple: As the greater and more dedicated Muppets fan, by all rights the CD is mine. Plainly and obviously, I appreciate the Muppets on a much deeper level than you do.” — “I Appreciate the Muppets on a Much More Deeper Level than You” from The Onion (2003) “If you love Barbie, come see this movie. If you hate Barbie, come see…

[maybetheyregiants]

I Appreciate Homestuck On A Much Deeper Level Than You

1/22/22 12:00PM

--------------------

Dennis, Dennis, Dennis.

This bitter eBay bidding war has gotten out of hand. Why should we tear each other apart like this? Yes, the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff hardcover has not been available online since 2013 and is highly sought on the collector's market. But is that any reason to drive the price north of the $92 mark, with two days, seven hours, and six minutes remaining, no less?

As I have said repeatedly, let me win this auction, and I will happily let you scan the bonus material for your own use. Just let me get my book at a fair and reasonable price. If we had joined forces on this, I could have used the "Buy It Now" feature and saved us both a lot of money—money that could have gone toward those rare Dave Strider vinyl figures we both want. But look where your pride has led us.

Why should you be the one to give in, you ask? The answer is simple: As the greater and more dedicated Homestuck fan, by all rights the book is mine. Plainly and obviously, I appreciate Homestuck on a much deeper level than you do.

Please recall, if you will, the night I first showed you Act 5 Act 2. It's bad enough that you hadn't grown up loving the act, but afterwards you called it, and I quote, "funny." Not "a deeply spiritual and highly personal statement of ambition tempered by ethics," but "funny." Was it "funny" that The Signless refused to Judas his race to a corrupt dictatorship, even though it meant giving up his life?

I never should have let you go to the kitchen for more Pringles during Vriska's big "Heroism" speech to John —the emotional apex of the comic. But as bad as that was, Dennis, you've committed far worse sins. And I think you know what I'm referring to. To call Hiveswap superior to Homestuck amounts to nothing less than blasphemy to true Homestuck fans and all other sensible people. Hiveswap, as you well know, is the first Homestuck project made after the departure of Hussie. How can it be the best when it is missing the man who was the heart, soul, and voice of the Homestuck universe, Mr. Andrew F. Hussie?

This is not even to mention the absence of Hauntswitch.

Hear me now: Andrew Hussie was Dirk. Lalo Hunt is a Hussie impersonator. Admittedly, a damn talented one—her Dirk, in particular, nearly captures the neuroses and intellectualism of the original—but the equal of Hussie? Step back from the brink, Dennis.

If you like visual novels so much, you need to get yourself a copy of Namco High and see how the real Jane does it. Or the transcendent Psycholonials. Or even To Be Or Not To Be. Anything but Pesterquest, for God's sake.

Mark my words, history will record post-Hussie Homestuck products as distinctly inferior. On that I would bet my ultra-rare autographed copy of the pioneering graphic novel Whistles: The Starlight Calliope.

I am trying to contain my Karkat Vantas-like frustration at your arrogance, but how can I speak reasonably to a man who prefers the plodding Bard Quest to the delightful, far more imaginative Problem Sleuth? Do you really fancy yourself some kind of expert Homestuck archivist just because our local convention doesn't carry Homestuck merch, forcing me to rely on you to scan the old tarot cards for me when you visit your friend who gets the For Fans by Fans booth in New York?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only copy of The Homestuck Epilouges read by you is the online version, which you read only for the Meat route. It's bad enough that you would be more swayed by that metanarrative trainwreck—a painfully gushing love letter to a sub-par literary tool—than you would by me, a genuine fan. Adding insult to injury, you probably haven't even read the other route in that very story. Why, I bet you couldn't tell John from Jake if your life depended on it.

The final insult, though, was that time you made fun of me at Ken's house for saying that the [S] Terezi: Remem8er flash of Act 6 made me teary-eyed when I read it shortly after Sept. 11. That, plus your admission that you stopped reading after Game Over. Am I to believe that someone who's never experienced the profound "Do You Remem8er Me" musical number is entitled to outbid me on a Homestuck book? The five representative comics in the Homestuck Volume 1 book are simply not enough for you? You honestly feel you deserve to own the "Nancho Party arc" in print more than I do? Try again, Tavros.

As we both know, this is about more than just a book. Throughout the years I've known you, you have consistently failed to give Homestuck it's proper due. Who taught you to read morse? Who taught you and or expression? Who taught you the data structures you enjoy to this day? Homestuck did. And you thank it how? By not even being able to distinguish the real Dirk from the new one? To a legitimate fan, the difference is incredibly obvious, almost as clear as the one between the post and pre retcon Vriskas (don't get me started).

I swear on Nepeta's grave, I will not stand idly by while you sow the seeds of animosity and discord between friends. Can't you see that you should have matured beyond this kind of behavior years ago? I urge you to overcome your foolish, Kankri-Vantas-incomprehensible grandstanding and let stand my bid for $92.50. Such is my advice. I am now done talking to you.

Oh, and regarding your MSPA forums post of a month ago: Your fanventure is not a "perfect" simulation of Problem Sleuth. Among myriad other errors, Diamonds Droogs is a non-canonical character who made his debut in the donation panels in extra episode 13 and never appeared in the original comic.

Now grow the hell up.

[utilitycaster]

Okay and now I'm listening to The The Adventure Zone Zone (ie, the Q&A/post-mortem/whatever for The Adventure Zone's latest season) and it is talking about how they (Travis, but also Griffin in his past GM roles) found that the story felt best when they had the least control over it, but also the listenership sometimes got the most frustrated at those times, and this is fascinating.

[shimzus-a]

BASICS 

name: sen  pronouns: she/her zodiac sign: i don’t believe in astrology, but my birthday is in may ! taken or single: single :-)

THREE FACTS 

i’m a walking trifecta : i have three majors, three part-time jobs, & at one time when i was taking in-person classes was the president of three student organizations ! i also speak three foreign languages. two years ago i studied abroad in tokyo ! i attended a tea ceremony while i was there, which is the main reason i gave kiyoko’s family a tea business. i love muppets.

EXPERIENCE 

platforms used: tumblr, discord preference: tumblr, by a long shot ! gender: kiyoko is actually one of my first female muses, but since i’ve started writing her i’ve been able to connect with female muses a lot more than i used to. least favorite face(s): ???

FLUFF/ANGST/SMUT 

fluff: love it ! in the past, i used to ship a LOT of characters together. i still do, but right now i really enjoy the ships that i have for kiyoko & i think that having a small amount makes the fluff worth it. if i was overwhelmed with fluff, i’d probably hate it ... but a small, manageable amount is perfect.

angst: probably my favorite genre to write. angst-- or what i prefer more, conflict ( mental, physical, emotional, etc. )-- is the perfect context to explore character development. because kiyoko is such a quiet character, when i write angst with her it allows me to explore her personality on a much deeper level than other plot types do. in some of my threads with hale ( who i love <3 ), we get to explore our characters feeling 1) unsure of their relationship with the team, 2) threatened / distrusting one another, & 3) arguing domestically. all of those are insightful threads that i appreciate because they allow me to dig deeper into kiyoko >:)

smut: i have never really written explicit smut before, so i don’t know that i’d necessarily be comfortable with it on tumblr. i think that nsfw headcanons can be fun to write, & i’m fine with discussing it through discord, but on tumblr ... eh. i tend to focus on high school ! verse kiyoko here, & i will never write underage smut, so tumblr is really not the right place at all. post-timeskip, maybe i’d consider it, but again, i’ve never written it out in a thread before so i don’t know.

plot / memes: clearly, love them. plots give you more time to make an interesting thread that you won’t want to drop, & memes allow you to explore your character with more depth in replies ( although i’m probably biased because i LOVE long answers when i receive asks ). pls plot with me ! 

tagged by: @unblume​ tagging: please feel free to snag this from me !

[dykegonzo]

i rlly do need that onion shirt that says i appreciate the muppets on a much deeper level than you bc. yeah..

[skullrock]

Han, how pumped are you for the muppet show coming to Disney plus today? I am anxiously awaiting its drop so I can binge and cry about how I miss my childhood

i don’t have disney plus so i won’t be able to enjoy <\3 extremely jealous of all who can watch but this gal will be hanging out in her “I Appreciate The Muppets On A Much Deeper Level Than You” and watching muppet caper for the fourth time 💅🏻

[starstuffandalotofcoffee]

you ever read someone’s posts and just know that if they ever read the seminal Onion article “I appreciate the Muppets on a much deeper level than you” they would take it seriously

[movienotesbyzawmer]

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

December 8: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Source: Blu-ray release, the box set with all six Lucas-era movies (2D)

Surely the most eagerly awaited movie ever, right? We were all absolutely bonkers in anticipation of this. I was a movie theater manager at the time, and although my theater didn't play the movie, we all got invitations to advance screenings. That was a fairly normal occurrence but it was a big deal to see this movie before it came out. I think I saw it about a week and a half before the big release. And although my initial reaction was actually largely positive, I did observe at the time that the best thing about it was that I got to see it before everyone else…

…but I also observed that the second best thing about it is that the visual effects were a monumental achievement. CGI had never been done to that level. It's normal for movies to look like this now, but it wasn't in 1999, and I’m sad that that fact is lost on modern audiences. Okay, pressing play now.

I kinda get chills at the intro. So classic. This music. Before it actually opened we weren't even sure the same music would be in it.

Opening crawl is like "well there is a dispute about trade route taxation so they send some Jedi to sort it out". The idea is kinda like, "at the beginning of this story things were not as dramatic as they would eventually get". Okay fine.

Very quick "I have a bad feeling about this" fan service in the first couple of minutes.

The Asian-talking bad guy aliens on the blockade ship are all CGI and by modern standards they look a teeny bit dated. BUSTED!!

0:05:45 - quickly we get to the first action scene. No dawdling. But the robot chatter is a little childish-seeming.

The rolling droids! Those are a cool idea.

The first establishing shot of Naboo - very beautiful! Give 'em some credit, yo.

So we've seen holo-calls of Darth Sidious and of Senator Palpatine, and of course it's the same guy. Were we not supposed to figure that out? Seems like it would be super obvious to everyone.

Battle droid army rollout on Naboo, more impressive visuals, but some of it doesn't hold up to modern standards. And yet, so what.

Ugh. Jar Jar. He says "exqueeze me". Neat CGI effect for 1999, and probably not as awful as people say, but it feels like a forced character. "We gotta have a comic relief character that will be kid friendly and will make for a cool toy."

Then they go underwater with neat breather devices, and the underwater city looks plenty neat.

"Yoosa in big doo-doo dis time". I feel like I'm not the intended audience for this dialogue.

The quirks of the boss leader dude in the underwater city always struck me as more creative than some of the other character design dealios. That mouth thing he does.

The planet core is all underwater ocean world. Neat idea, though I suspect physics wouldn't work in the way we're seeing. If you care so much, maybe just go read about physics instead of watching a space adventure.

Less than 20 minutes in and there's another exciting action sequence with the underwater monsters. I suspect George Lucas was pretty proud of getting down to business like that.

Modern day CGI sea monsters would look better than this, but try comparing 2019 CGI to this, and then compare this to 1979 effects. Yeah. Uh huh. See? That's what I'M saying.

The queen and her minions… I don't remember exactly what the deal is. They're all, or mostly, played by Natalie Portman… is there a switcheroo happening?

Whatever the case, there's a missed opportunity here to get us to like the Queen. At this point in Star Wars, we had been effectively seduced by multiple charming characters. But instead this Queen has all the soul of a neatly folded napkin.

"how wude", ugh. GL was very pleased with this "catchphrase". The rest of us not so much.

0:27:45 - Darth Maul emerges onto the holo-call! Good bad-guy reveal.

So "Padme" is a different character, the story is clear on that. Just saying.

The salvage shop dude with wings, he just hovers, I like that.

And then we are introduced to Anakin Skywalker. It is very, very wooden acting. I know it's hard to get good kid acting, but it SUPER SUPER SUPER drags this movie down. Most of his lines sound like he's parroting a grownup who said "say this line just like this…"

The big city planet, Coruscant! Quick look at it, but it's impressive.

Buncha story development about "well we need a plan to get off the planet, blah blah blah flimsy excuse for everything to hinge on a pod race". Fine, but feels like corporate storytelling.

"There was no father". Kid is totally Jesus. Wait, do Christians hate this movie for being kind of flip about immaculate conceptions?

Actually, Anakin's mother is managing to convey some emotion. A shot of her face as she realizes her kid is going to do the dangerous race does a lot with some subtlety.

0:55:35 - Pod race sequence starts. The arena looks very cool, a lot of cool alien and ship designs too. The two-headed announcer effect looks a little poorly integrated.

This pod race sequence… there is seriously TONS to like about it! Hard to take notes during it because it is so fun to watch.

And some of the humor edited in that breaks up the intense racing action… actually works! The whole thing, with its super energetic editing, cool ship design stuff, and even the overt references to Ben-Hur, it's all plenty satisfying.

Ewan McGregor is all "why do I sense we've picked up another pathetic life form?" It feels like a super-uninspired, unsuccessful attempt to give a little personality to at least one character. EG tries to grin a teeny tiny bit and just can't even quite manage it.

1:16:55 - Whoa, just like that Darth Maul shows up and it's a light saber duel! Doesn't last long but it's fun that that happened.

Sometimes Jake Lloyd's performance kind of works when he doesn't have to talk. Like when he looks flummoxed by not being on a hot desert planet any more.

The shot with Terrence Stamp at a strange angle, with the sky traffic of Coruscant in the background, I like it. Just all the shots of Coruscant, totally lovely and you gotta appreciate how advanced this was for 1999.

1:24:40 - First scene of the Jedi Council, so first appearances of Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson. Was Yoda still a muppet when this was first released, and then made CGI in this Blu-ray release? Looks like solid CGI at least.

The Senate. Super neat design for how that chamber looks & works.

I should note that during this viewing I'm starting to suspect for the first time that Amidala, or whoever is in Amidala garb, is played by Keira Knightley but with Natalie Portman's voice dubbed over. The makeup job is disguising who it is. Am I right about this? Did everyone else know that all this time? I've always thought NP just played both parts. But the deeper I get into the movie, the less "Amidala" looks like NP.

Anyway, we're now at the part where "Padme" steps forward and is like, actually I AM QUEEN AMIDALA, doesn't that BLOW your MIND, I am in PLAIN ROBES and my DECOY is in NICE CLOTHES AND MAKEUP, HOW you LIKE me NOW. If the decoy was pretending to be Amidala this whole time, it's worth noting that she seems to have Queen skills down. She should apply for Queen jobs.

1:45:45 - Imagery now recalling Spartacus. I've always liked how the setup for this Naboo land battle looks.

What's happening now is suddenly lots and lots of battles. The Jamaican-talking Naboo water city people fighting the robots (which just unfurled rather elegantly from the big nose ships), the protagonists fighting in the palace/city, and the space fighter battle stuff. Still the droid army stuff is the most fun to watch.

Oh! Scratch that, Darth Maul is here and now we are about to get this super excellent light saber fight! It is awesome, and it's accompanied by the only memorable musical theme that originated in this movie. It's got a choral part!

But there's all this dumb, infantile comic relief shit with Jar Jar accidentally bumbling into being helpful and Anakin accidentally bumbling into being an awesome fighter pilot. The mixed tones in the pod race sequence worked… but it's too dumb for this ending sequence. Lucas was clearly like "cutting between four different fights will be so intense that I can diffuse it with some really shitty humor and the audience will be like ‘oh thank you I needed that’".

1:56:40 - I love this tense break in the light saber fight while they're separated by energy field things.

Jar Jar running from bomb sphere things, that's a reference to Buster Keaton in The General, right? If so… Cocky, GL. Real cocky.

Obi-Wan can't catch up because of the energy barriers, so he just has to watch Qui-Gon get stabbed to death, that's all very nicely done.

2:01:00 - Okay now they're saying the decoy wasn't a decoy, except no that was just a trick, oh mercy this movie is just too smart for me

The light saber fight continues minus Mister Dead, and it's still exciting and intense.

In the course of just screwing around, Anakin blew up that bad guy ship which made the droid army stop working. Okay fine… but wait, was that the actual climax of the movie? Because dude, that does not compare well to the destruction of the Death Star.

But then Darth Maul gets bisected so there's that.

Ends with that funeral, followed by an obligatory parade. Pretty to look at, but doesn't feel as merited as the throne room stuff after the death star blowing up. It's totally trying to be that.

You know what it feels like? A PILOT EPISODE. It's got those qualities that are like, "here are the basic elements that we're making really obvious so you'll decide to produce more episodes, just trust us we'll elaborate on some of it and it will be better, come on just give us the money".

(next: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones)

[utilitycaster]

Hello I would love to hear you thoughts on Caduceus and his arc. Clay is the only character who’s story has made me cry genuine tears (when he got his fam back) and I feel like his nuances and the changes he goes through tend to be overlooked a lot, exactly because of how quietly they happen.

Of course!

So as Taliesin said a few times and as I've pointed out, Caduceus (and Molly for that matter) was intended to be a static character. Obviously this is an impossibility in D&D because things happen and you cannot control it and moreover I am sure Taliesin is aware of this, so it's more that the intent was to have a character who did not feel they needed to change, possibly in contrast with Percy, who absolutely felt he needed to change. A self-proclaimed static character still needs a reason to be static: Molly's philosophy was, as notably stated on talks, "Life's short...do something to a bagel" and more generally the lack of need for change came from this sort of aimless and benevolent-when-convenient hedonism. Caduceus, on the other hand, is secure in his purpose. He has known who he was supposed to be for his whole life, and he embraces it, and sees no reason to change, until he absolutely has to, and even then he is deeply reluctant.

Caduceus is about what happens when your comfort zone and guiding principles themselves fold in on each other and are like "hey. expand us or else."

I think a lot of people have rightfully noted that from his appearance through the Xhorhas arc, Caduceus sees the rest of the Nein as mourners, and that's within his comfort zone. Sure, there are some moral quandaries at the docks of Nicodranas, but he's able to get through that (in part because he's in the Mighty Nein but isn't personally stealing the ship, in part because of Jester's talk with him). I think it's also worth noting that while Caduceus is extremely insightful he is not superhuman (super firbolgian?) in that regard; it is the insight borne of being someone who is there for mourners and so he has a good eye for emotions, less so for motivations, and a lot of the Nein's motivations early on escape him.

The first wave of big changes happen in Bazzoxan and the immediate aftermath. First, Fjord confides in him and asks for advice - and Caduceus is used to giving advice but I'm not sure he's ever had to offer religious practice advice, as the people he would have interacted with would have either been the sketchy people of Shady Creek Run, or else people already faithful enough to seek the Blooming Grove. And second, the party finds itself directionless for a time; there is no pressing business or better ideas and he cannot hide his own mission behind someone else's, so he voices his recommendation that they come clean to the Bright Queen, and then they go to the kiln.

Caduceus's relationship with Fjord I think is useful to bring up in a sense of contrast, in that Caduceus is incredibly good at helping Fjord through a crisis, because Caduceus is trained for crisis - but it gets much hazier once Fjord is out of said crisis and as it turns out has a very different relationship with the Wildmother, and I think this comes up to an extent when they talk in Rexxentrum. I think Caduceus, for all his talk of nature's violence, struggles with the concept of nature being malevolent or having goals - it just is. Whereas Fjord is much more comfortable with the idea of nature perhaps being a force that is itself a threat, or deceptive, and more generally with the idea of nature as somewhat unknowable and full of mysteries. I don't think Caduceus's personal view of nature ever changes, but I think his ability to process that he doesn't have the answers even in the areas within his comfort zone improves, and this is something of an inflection point with regards to him acknowledging new perspectives on his own comfort zone.

It's also a little before this that we see Caduceus reveal vulnerability for the first real time since his panic attack on the boat right after they stole it, when he confides in The Gentleman. Some of this is a calculated social move, to be fair, but it's a notable step forward.

That said it takes a while to change and he spends a few days post-Rexxentrum doing anything to avoid facing his own mission. It's worth noting that Caduceus is a cleric of the same level as Jester, and could have cast sending before the party ever met up with him, and he never did. So they go to Beau's father and Isharnai first, putting it off as long as he can.

Caduceus's scenes with his family sort of snap all of the above into place, in that his parents are glad he's spent some time in the world and are completely accepting of his desire to keep going for a time. I'm honestly not sure, myself, why he does this because I don't think it's metagaming (ie, it's not Taliesin going 'I can't make a third character') but I think there are multiple valid interpretations. Caduceus's role, as the one who stays at home, is ultimately a self-imposed one.

He sort of mulls on that for the next while, sort of uncomfortably internalizing differing perspectives on deities with the Artagan reveal/Rumblecusp and additionally processing his own deeper relationship with the Wildmother, with multiple visions, and maybe even the fact that nature constantly wants to murder him.

Then we get to Eiselcross and that's when it all hits. I think as soon as he sees the corrupted trees he gets a sense of the scale, that this corruption is not just unnatural but it is ancient and has been a threat for a long time and that staving it off at the Blooming Grove is not getting at the unknown, underlying source (which he probably knew deep down, but as discussed above he does not really love to admit those things to himself). And he realizes that he might need to be the one not just to commit but to initiate violence, as the person with no emotional ties to Lucien via Molly; he finds himself bending his own moral rules for the greater good more; and I think this is when he realizes either that he needs to change, or perhaps that he's been changing quietly and slowly the whole time and has just been terrified to admit it.

The last night at the Blooming Grove before the final push into Aeor is another good look at Caduceus, who, like a number of characters in this campaign, is so very much defined by his ongoing and important familial relationships. We get a brief but heartbreaking glimpse at the state he was in prior to the Nein showing up in the garden, and how he was trying to induce something, anything, to give him direction because he didn't trust himself to leave without that assurance; and his admission, finally, to someone else of that change, that he never wanted to be the person to go on an adventure, that he still has very mixed feelings about it, but that this is his responsibility. And it's that which allows him to confidently say, on Cognouza, that it's time to end this shit.

In short (Clue the Movie voice: too late) Caduceus's arc is someone who has always believed in his sacred, literally god-given responsibility into which he was born, and struggles against the fact that said sacred responsibility ends up being quite different than what he expected but ultimately is able to accept it, and his reward is that he can return to the responsibility he initially embraced, having grown in ways he could not have otherwise.

Now, I think part of why Caduceus's arc gets overlooked is twofold. The first reason is that background arcs are, well, background, and it's quiet and subtle and highly internal and hard to turn into big dramatic moments, which, as a person whose favorite C1 character is Vex, I understand, but also those arcs are the best.

The second, and this is going to sound even more "I appreciate the muppets on a much deeper level than you" than the first, is that I feel a lot of people who considered Caduceus their favorite character did lean into the myth of "superfirbolgian" insight when the fact always was that Caduceus had no interest in the political; did not make Trent quake in his wizard robes in the slightest as was confirmed in the finale; and ultimately wanted most of all to return to his home.

It's a very true and very unique choice and if I may [note: I am writing this so I do what I want] I think a lot of people did not understand Caduceus in that they felt his ending was unhappy for him, and some of this is that people had really stupid takes on the party splitting at the end. I have mixed feelings on the true universality of the Campbellian Monomyth and even more mixed feelings on everyone giving Dan Harmon tons of credit for merely rephrasing it but despite that, Caduceus's arc fits it perfectly (and very literally): comfort zone -> need arises -> unfamiliar situation -> adaptation -> gets what he wants -> at a price -> returns to comfort -> having changed.