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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales: Woo-oo! Review! or From the Top

Hello all you happy people! And to those of you just joining this blog, welcome I review ducks, other animated shows and comics... and today’s review is special for me. For a number of reasons. For starters it’s a reminder how far i’ve come. See I always wanted to be a reviewer, ever since high school when a friend showed me a certain online reviewer whose now dead to me, and opened me up to a world of much better reviewers who i’m still fans of to this day, and ones who came after them , and after that and so on and so on. I so badly wanted a community to belong to I struggled to be a youtube reviewer but frankly lacked the talent or self confidence back then to try, so my attempts over the decade were a series of stops and starts. Of me starting to find my niche writing only to stop because I hated myself so much, and still struggle with that, i’d tell myself I could never do it, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t funny enough and no one cared. I kept shutting myself down AGAIN AND AGAIN, for far too long.

But that all changed a year ago next month: I’d long been a fan of the Ducktales Reboot. I was caustiously optimistic when it was announced. The optimism came from a deep abiding love of scrooge as a character despite not having dove into his comics that deep, I didn’t have an easy way at the time, thanks to life and times and what comics I had read, and was excited to see a fresh reboot closer to the comics with my eternal boy Donald Duck back in the main character. The caution.. came from the fact that at the time we’d gotten a string of bad to medicore reboots: Teen Titans GO, Powerpuff Girl, and Ben 10 which started pretty meh but has turned into alirght from some of the later episodes I saw. I wanted to be hyped to all hell but I had no proof this wasn’t going to be another dumbed down reboot. Then comic con came, the first teaser poster dropped, and my skepticism died.

It was perfect: a barksian art style with it’s own twists! Donald full on display! And best of all the triplets FINALLY had not only unique outfits but personalities! I’ve long went on in my reviews about how much that annoyed me and while it worked for the barks comics ever since then it’s just felt like a waste to have three characters there.. and not even the SLIGHTEST difference.

My anticipation only grew with the full trailer, the promo posters as more and more info showed how good this series would be, how unique it’d be, and how much tw as taking what made the comics great, giving us a better distalation of that while still being very much it’s own beast. And once this episode dropped.. that faith was unfounded. Woo-oo! is without hyperbole, one of the best pilots i’ve seen, one that introduced the entire main cast perfectly, gets the series tone and mission statment out just right and in general set the stage for one of the best shows of the 2010′s (and 2020′s, even if it only lasted a year and some change). Wheras Teen Titans GO actively tried to take a dump on it’s source material, they thankfully have stopped that but it dosent’ make those early years any less grating, Ducktales was a breath of fresh air that honored the past while making i’ts own future. I tried talking about it but it was all in other failed attempts at reviewing: solo podcasts, my breif second video review career.. stuff no one rightly cared about and I just couldn’t get the hang of.

So this is where we loop back to last year: I decided to finally try and cover it one more time, not realizing this would be my last chance as it came out anyway, and since I was doing text reviews but my output had slid in the new year, I decided to review Season 3 as it came out. If it bottomed out I could always stop.... and I just never did. I kept going, eventually finding new fans, a patreon (The other one’s an old friend of mine), and not only got paid doing what I love.. but found some peace. I reviewed other shows as they came out, covered things i’d wanted to cover for years like life and times, scott pilgrim and x-men,. I covered other shows as they came out, found people willing to talk over my opinions and found my niche at long last.

So that’s why the long speech folks: After almost a year of reviewing i’m properly covering the start of something that made me happier than I had been in a long time and gave me hope during one of the worst periods of ALL our lives. Something i’ve wanted to cover since I finally got started last year, and something truly amazing. So i’d be honored if you’d join me under the cut as I talk about the genesis of one of the best series Disney has ever put out.

Behind the Scenes Stuff: Most details I could find were sparse. it took going back to the first month the show came out and looking at a LOT of unrelated questions to finally find out Frank and Matt outright pitched the show. This dosen’t suprise me as both are huge ducktales fans with Matt having drawn his own duck comics as a kid and Frank taking it an extra mile having sang the theme song in his first grade talent show, worked it into his vows and got his first daughter’s first word to be “Woo-oo”. It’s very clear this show as a labor of love for them something they dreamed of Disney made possible.

Otherwise I don’t have much on the genisis of the show: It was in the earliest ideas going to be a revivial but Frank and Matt both decided against it , deciding it’d be unfair to expect kids from 30 years after the original to know the source material, and instead just starting it over outright, which was the right call especailly with Alan Young’s passing.

Design wise I found quite a bit of concept art thanks to one website, and it’s incredibly intresting. This is why i’ve really gotten into art books: I like seeing this early stuff what characters used to be, figuring out or outright hearing from the creators mouths why they changed it that sort of thing.

Starting off we have some early designs for Donald, with him wearing the sailor suit as a kid but his Quackshot outfit as an adult, something I honestly wish they’d kept but get why they changed it: The iconic sailor suit both helps contrast him with della and fits his reluctance to adventure in season 1 more. I still wish that they worked the Quackshot outfit in somewhere, but they worked in so damn much, it’s hard to complain> Though I probably will make a list of “things I wished they’d worked” in at some point and i’d be lying inf I siad my mind wasn’t currently turning the gears to figure out how to work this into a fanfic. Oohhh maybe as Dewey’s outfit as an adult but blue, obviously.

Next we have Donald settled more into his final apperance as well as the boy’s first outfits. As you can tell from both of these the show originally went more with the classic art style before getting the one we’re familiar with now, one I love by the way and was made to combine a classic cartoon style with the visual of the comics. Donald originally had his classic outfit before they transitioned to the more barks style one, a good call.

The interesting bit though is obviously the boys original outfits which i’m honestly bummed didn’t make it for Huey and Louie, not so much Dewey minus the visor. I do get the changes though: The hoodie Dewey had fit WAY beter on Louie, and the lumberjack shirt didn’t quite fit the nerdier huey. Still look nice. Dewey’s is okay, but only the visor is something I really gregret them removing same with louie’s fedora. It would’ve been neat ot keep the hat thing, but have each hat be unique. Likely they simplified things to make animation easier and simply removed the hats for some reason, but it’s nice ot see these more detailed original drafts and it is VERY interesting to find that differentiating the triplets was something planned from the earliest concept art. Though given Matt and Frank said in interviews they wanted a more natural family feel, it’s not a huge surprise.

Scrooge like everyone BUT the boys thus far, naturally also had his original outfit at first, but like he ended up doing in the series rotated a bit, if not as much in the final product. We also see a protoype for his final design, the old coat but with a jacket over it in the last image. I also notice Donald seemed a lot more like his old comics self in the concept art with quackshot!donald.

Like everyone else, Webby and Launchapd were originally their 87 deisgns, though Launchpad’s slightly diffrent jacket and green scarf were changed from the start. Webby is the closest to her 87 design, and as shown in the previous Lena concept art from my “Spies Like Us and Dime after Dime” double feature, she still had her new personality. More on that in a bit.

Finally we have Flintheart, whose design is a bit diffrent from 87: He was a chub from day one it appears, though they’d exagerate it, and his beard was a bit longer at first like his other incarnations.

Beakly is largely unchanged form 87, only given a coat, which would gradually be mofidied, much liekt he boys into her current outfit.

As you can tell Beakly, Webby and Launchpad were all there from day one as they wanted them from the original ducktales just updated.

Production wise they wanted to go handrawn, chose the style they did to have something close to the comics that felt classicly aniamteda t the same time, I feel they succeeded and wanted a show that felt like the original. I do think this show has it’s own feel but it does feel ducktales. I badly hope for an artbook at some point though as this show probably hada LOT more intresting concept art. Seriously Disney I will PAY YOU to look at your neat art. Please.

So they created a fully formed world and put the characters in it, wanting it to feel like the world had existed before and had throughly been explored and letting our young heroes be the watson to Donald and Scrooge’s holmes.

Finally Della was indeed part of the initial pitch and a core idea from day one as every family has secrets and Della felt like one that had been lurking around the fringes of the story for 80 years. The rest of the production stuff i’ll weave in as we go but first one last stop, the STELLAR voice cast, none of whom outsideo f Tony i’ve talked about before sooooo...

The All Star Cast

The casting was outstanding here, with Matt admitting the cast brought a LOT to the characters, especially Ben Schwartz whose taken on Dewey was so unique and intresting they actually rewrote some of his dialouge for the pilot to fit this version better. This is far and away one of the best casts in western animation, most coming from comedy backgrounds and one or two coming from a voice acting background, but all bringing their absolute best. And since our main 8 are all in the pilot let’s run them down along with Keith Ferguson shall we?

Playing everyone’s faviorite billionare scotsman and one of the very few to ever do so, we have David Fucking Tennant. David was their “First and only choice” and for good reason: David is a talented actor with a MASSIVE amount of stage, tv and audio drama credits. His biggest and best known role is playing the 10th Doctor on Doctor Who, which while not my faviorite (That’d be matt smith, as he’s both the one I came in on and hte one who got me hooked) he’s still VERY close second and damn talented and I need to watch more of his tenure. Outside of that just to condense it to his ongoing roles on stuff and bigger roles: Filmwise he’s had starring roles in the Fright Night remake, You, Me and Him, Fish Without Bicycles and Bad Samartains, and is set to do a voice for the upcoming Loud House Movie, which excites me to no end.

TV wise where most of his roles have been he got his first big starring role on the Telly with the BBC Mini series Taking Over the Asylum in the late 90′s. He’d go on to make a career out of doing mini’s for a while, also taking part in He Knew He Was Right, The Quatermass Experiment Remake, Casanova, Secret Smile.. and Blackpool. I saved Blackpool for last before we move into the Who era as if you’ve never heard of it.. it’s REALY fucking weird. It’s a jukebox musical about a man who wants to make Blackpool, a real city, into the new vegas and Tennat plays a cop investigating a case around the guy and also trying to get with his wife because they used to date and because our lead is philandering jackass. That’s already kinda nuts.. but then you get to the fact the songs are sung OVER the original songs instead of making a new version of them. It’s surreal to be sure but if you can find it it’s worth it for the handful of good numbers and how weird it looks and you can find clips of the songs on youtube if your intrested. Here’s a starter.

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Your also welcome. He’d go on to play Detective Alec Hardy in Broadchurch to critical aclaim as well as be a part of it’s short lived american remake, would play the Fugitoid in tmnt 2007, Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, one of his few post who roles i’ve seen or heard besides Scrooge and easily some of his best work he NAILS that purple bastard perfectly, would make his own show Staged about a fictional version of himself putting on a Stage play that’s still ongoing, and is currently , along with Ducktales as it wraps up, the voice of Lord Commander on Final Space, with the character returning this season judging by the trailers to fan delight and terror. He’s a VERY talented actor and voice actor and I do hope he goes on to do more and more voice work in years to come as, with his background in radio, he was born for it.

He was also born for this roll, playing Scrooge perfectly and easily matching Alan Young in quality, not a small feat and i’ts VERY obvious why he was their one and only choice.

Next up is another legend, Tony Anselmo who we’ve talked about before when I covered legend of the Three Cablleros: He’s been Donald’s voice since shortly before Ducktales, hasn’t done much else but given he’s THE voice for the character and this show let him show off one hell of a range with teh voice, he dosen’t really need other credits. The man is a treasure and I fear loosing him one day and fear for whoever replaces him as they have a LOT to live up to.

Getting into the triplets, we’re going by age so starting off we have Huey, voiced by Danny Pudi. Like most of this cast aside from Toks Ogladyve and Beck Bennet (Who I probably HAD seen on SNL but didn’t really know or look out for him on there till after Ducktales), I not only knew Danny but was a huge fan of his going in. This is due to his breakout role on the glorious sitcom Community, which sadly only had a handful of i’ts cast show up on this show. I mean you got Lin Manuel Miranda I’m sure Donald Glover would’ve said yes too. He grew up with Ducktales. Regardless his role as meta guy Abed was easily the best of the cast on that show, with Glover as troy a very close second and the two working at their best as a duo. Outside of that he’s had a few roles being a regular on Powerless, which I forgot existed and currently on Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, and shockingly hasn’t done a ton of voice work. And given his performance as huey was one of the best parts of this show he REALLY, REALLY SHOULD. Please Danny. He’s also a loving husband, father and surprisingly a marathon runner. Never would’ve guessed.

Next up is SNL Alumn of 9 years, Bobby Monynihan. Bobby is naturally best known for that, my faviorite role of his being Ass Dan. That’s right bitch you know he’s going to live fore..

ASS DAN 1981-2021

He’ll be back. Outside of SNL he’s done a bunch of minor roles. He’s currently on the tragically mediocre sitcom Mr. Mayor, and voiced Panda on We Bare Bears. Hopefully he keeps up the good work as he deserves better than he’s gotten and Ducktales proves it.

Finally for the triplets we have a rising star in voice acting, Ben Schrwartz. At the time Ducktales launched, I was a fan of his from his roll on parks and Rec as Jen Ralphio, aka older scummier Dewey.

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Outside of his historic recurring role here he played a main role on House of Lies, a show I need to go back to, and has done other live action rolls but has REALLY hit his stride in voice acting. He started with voicing Randy Cunningham in Randy Cunningham 9th grade ninja and since then has hit the ground running: He was Rutabega on Bojack, Josh on Bob’s Burgers, and went on to complete the trifecta of blue nostalgic characters after voicing dewey by voicing Leo in Rise of the TMNT (and having one of the most unique and intresting versions of the character to play) and reprised the roll for the upcoming film. And of course he hit it HUGE by playing Sonic in the suprsingly fantastic Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and will do so again for the sequel and might even take up the roll for the games now Roger Craig Smith has retired. We shall see. Point is this guy’s at the top of his game and Dewey is part of that. Like with his brothers I can’t picture anyone else playing him.

Rounding out the kids is Webby, played by the wonderous Kate Micucci. Kate is a lovely talented woman who mostly showed up in smaller parts, was part of the musical duo garfunkel and oates which even got their own tv show, and is currently a fairly prolific voice actor with this being her best known roll. I also had a bit of a crush on her once can you tell? Regardless besides absolutely nailing it as Webby she’s voiced Julie Kane in the crimnally short and even more crimnally not on Disney+ Motorcity, “Irma” in the 2012 TMNT cartoon, and the fact that “Irma” is in quotes should tell you how big a waste I felt it was having her NOT actually be Irma, despite Kate’s massive talent, the fact that Irma hadn’t been in anything since the 87 cartoon, and the fact that for added “Fuck you audience points” her krang form was voiced by Gilbert Godfried, who I love but whose casting feels like they wanted to make the twist as grating as possible. Good job there.

Anyways her second biggest voice gig was as Sadie on Steven Universe, which took WAY too long to show off her absolutely tremendous singing voice. She started voicing Velma Dinkley in the mid-2010′s and has since, voiced Milo’s sister Sarah on Milo Murphy’s Law, Dr. Fox on Unikitty, and most recently voiced a sentient present on close enough who did this.

So yeah quite the career and like Ben she probably has a long and storied career in Voice Acting ahead.

Next up is Beck Bennet as everyone’s friend Launchpad where he excels. He’s best known as a castmember on SNL outside of this, and shockingly hasn’t done a ton of voice work. The only other time i’ve caught him is in the same season of Close Enough as Luc, aka dude-bro satan. But like eveyrone else here who hasn’t done a lot of voice work so far or has been more selective I defintely hope he keeps going with it as he’s amazing. He and Ben will be co-starring on MODOK in May so i’m excited for that.

Last up for the main cast is Beakly, voiced by Toks Olagundoye, who I hadn’t heard of before this show and hasn’t done a lot outside of the two season sitcom the neighbors, the aliens one not the really terrible looking one, and a stint on Castle, but like everyone here deserves much more and if Beakly is any indication, really should stick with voice acting.

Last up is Keith Ferguson as only he could as FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD, whose a staple in the voice acting community ever since 2000, and has had a TON of roles some of which I was unaware with him. Given Frank worked with him on Wonder Over Yonder, where he voiced Lord Hater to perfection, the two clearly have a close working relationship. He also has a close working relationship with Wonder creator Craig McCracken and has worked on all of his post-powerpuff girls show, voicing Bloo as his first major role, something I never would’ve guessed, and currently voicing Papa G on Kid Cosmic.

Outside of Craig and Frank, he played both Karate Kid and Nemisis Kid on Legion of Super Heroes (Which really needs to come to HBO Max), Deputy Durland on Gravity Falls, and Thunderbolt Ross on Avengers Earth’s Mighteist Heroes. He’s damn good and deserves the world for Glomgold alone and i’m glad Craig rung him up again as so far through my watch of Kid Cosmic he’s great.

So with our cast in place, our past in place and you all likely ready to get on with it already let’s dive into the episode:

THE EPISODE: Part one Woo-Ooo!

We begin with a shot of a seagull flying overseagulls, a nice way to establish how this world works and how it bends expectations. They’d have to wait till season 3 to get a duck next to ducks but given that gag is one of the best of the series, it was worth it.

Inside a house boat we meet Donald, Huey and Louie and get a sense of their personalities: Donald is panicked trying to get to a job interview and insists the boys wear life vests, showing his overprotectiveness and responsibility exclusive to this version. Louie stresses that Donald wear a suit instead of his normal clothes to properly impress the interviewer, showing his skill at people reading and manipulation, and Huey is making a nice, if messy, breakfast with a heartwarming message showing his heart and dedication. After finding out said Babysitter was sent to the wrong address, the boys TRY to hustle him out to stay alone.. only for Dewey to blow the scheme by starting the boat too early, letting Donald know he’s been had. Huey’s attempt to lie about it is of course the classic “Who’s Dewey?” Dewey’s caught wiring the boat and Donald throws them in the car, with Donald livid and the boys upset as their chafing at his constant overprotectiveness.

Both sides aren’t wrong. tThe boys DID do something reckless, putting an old woman in the desert and risking their home just to go on a joyride. What they did was wrong.. but the boys AREN’T wrong for getting annoyed that he won’t let them DO anything and overly hovering over them when they CAN handle themselves as we’ll see. WE now know why: he lost their mother and his sister to her and scrooge’s recklesness. While he got therapy for his anger it’s clear he never properly got help about Della, and thus overcompensates by trying to keep what he has left of her alive. He means well.. but to them it comes off as him being manically overprotective with no good reason. They get into trouble because it’s the only way to DO anything away from him. He’s trying so hard not to loose them he almost has by the time hte series starts, and it’s telling that when they get context in Last Crash, they appricate him more from then on. They do love him, but their frustration is understandable even if what their doing is pretty damn stupid. But their also 10 and Donald’s the grown adult in therapy who should’ve dealt with this or tried to at least by now.

So with no other options Donald sets a course for McDuck manor which excites the boys who have heard of Scrooge McDuck and his exploits, each rattling off something they heard him do that fits their personality (Dewey picks him fighting a stone monster, Huey picks him uncovering a hoax and Louie picks his swimming in money. ) As Donald tries to get them to simmer down, they wonder what he’s up to

He’s up toooo.. depression. He’s in a room with his board, watching them with utter hate and sadness as they talk about cutting the invention and aviation departments. This scene plays ENTIRELY differently after the final two episodes of the season. Before it still plays well as Scrooge clearly resenting being stuck in a boring board meeting, having lost everything that made him him and just having lost his passion for life. Now? It plays as a man utterly disdainful of the men who made him give up on his daughter. While as far as he knows they did it to save his employees from his company collapsing, we know better now... and seriously where IS the rest of the board they just vanished after the Season 3 premiere.

I don’t mind only one being fleshed out, unlike the triplets we only NEED the one I mind that they just never explained it and still haven’t. Hopefully the finale will.

But back on the plot, it now plays as Scooge just full of hatred for them, knowing they had to do what they did, even if they weren’t emebzlling but still hating them and himself. He’s likely not even paying attention anymore because he just dosen’t CARE: he has all the money int he world.. and it couldn’t bring him his daughter back. As he sadly puts the coins he was fiddling with back and says see you tommorow he can’t even close the vault without a struggle. As we’ll see later the strength never left, it’s not like he stopped execrising.. but he has nothing left to fight for. Nothing left to care about. He could adventure agian so far.. but without Della or Donald, as we’d learn two seasons later the reason he enjoyed it again... what’s the point? He has nothing left except his money.

This is also a nice parallel to the final Chapter of LIfe and Times. I always felt the first half of woo-ooo was a spiritual adaptation of chapter 12 of that: Scrooge meets the boys for the first time and with their help, and Donalds in the story< Webby and Launchpad here, he regains his passion and more importantly his family after driving them away> The how is very different: he did in life and times due to sinking to his lowest point morally, then cruelly dismissing his family when they tried to welcome him home and bury the hatchet despite what he’d done. Here.. he made a HORRIBLE mistake, one that wasn’t entirely on him but still cost him everything and spent the decade instead of stewing or making more money trying desperately to undo it. The end result is the same, a dried out husk of a man with nothing left to loose and no will to gain anything.

This husk has launchpad though whose introduced as his driver and while good with subs and planes.. isn’t great on the road. After that though Donald pulls up hoping to drop the kids off before Scrooge arrives. Naturally this being a cartoon and Donald having tempted fate with that Scrooge shows up telling him to jettison that Jallopy at once. And finding out who it is, apart from asking how Donald is and Donald doing the same, dosen’t sway him. The boys however freak out after finding out Scrooge is Donald’s and there uncle, with my faivriote bit of that being Dewey exiting the car via a window and rolling across the roof back in. Amazing bit of animation. Wish I had a gif of that.

Donald makes the situation plane and angry and asks “Can you do that without LOOSING THEM”. And scrooge is so painfully disarmed by his reminder of his past mistakes and the fact his surrogate son still resents him, that he agrees before realizing “Shit I have to watch children now don’t I” as Donald drives off. As you probably guessed, this is another scene that plays differently in hindsight, if not by much: It still plays as two men too stubborn and bitter to reconcile.. but now we know the why behind both their rages it feels even sadder. They both lost the person they cared about most but as it sadly happens in real life both have dug in their heels to reconcile, both feeling their right when neither completely is. While Donald was right to be upset at scrooge and della for what happened, and is mostly taking it out on scrooge because he’s the one left... he’s held onto his anger for 10 years instead of going to help when he’s unemployed, living in a dilapidated houseboat and trying ot raise three children alone and could’ve used what help scrooge would give. Scrooge is right to be upset that Donald is just selectively ignoring everything he’s done to save Della, but is too stubborn and prideful to apologize for what he DID do wrong and feels that’s enough to make up for it when , while it is enough that donald should forgive him, still dosen’t mean he dosen’t have a lot to apologize for. Both are just too angry and too much alike, as much as it woudln’t seem so, to settle with each other and see too much of what they lost.

So the kids follow Scrooge.. who forgets to open the door, and Beakly lets them in. It’s a nice subtle bit. After some silence, Bentina TRIES to get her old friend and now employer to talk to them, but he naturally refuses and they do the talking, asking tons of questions.. and Dewey ends the conversation by accidently pressing the “imply he USED to be something rather than is something right now “ button

So Scrooge throws them in the twins old room, and Beakly gives them some marbles. You will give them b ack they will be counted. But another subtle touch I missed the first time is there... her sad look. She clearly doesn’t want to do this, but she has to play this carefully or else he might get mad and fire her on the spur of the moment. He’d obviously hire her back, where else is he going to get an ex spy who will both clean for him AND be his bodyguard and security. It’s a very small pool. Mostly because Beakly probably killed most of the other people who’d of fit that description during her spy days.

Scrooge meanwhile is still rattled by Dewey’s statment, wondering if he really is a “used to be” instead of a “never left”. The fire is starting to spark again.. he just needs more kindling. And more kin.

Meanwhile Louie and Huey marvel at Dewey’s “Brilliant’ breakout plan: hit the door knob with the sack of marbles til lit breaks. To be fair, they’ve known dewey as long as they’ve been alive and even by season 3 after he’s taken several levels in badass and cunning.. he still crashed a plane because his brother well-meaningly called him basic, and thought being nearly sacrificed the most times was an accomplishment. This is the best he could do and you all know it. It also works, so they can’t fault him for that... though he’s quickly kidnapped as are they. They wake up after the commerical break in a room with pure darkness, hung from the celing with a mystery person asking who they are and who they work for before Louie calls out for “uncle scrooge”... so she claps the lights back on and..

Well close. But it is Webby, who cuts them down, fangirls over meeting the nephews and asks who the evil triplet is. They all point to Louie who shrugs it off. I mean it was funny enough the first time but at this point I know he’s running several fradulent charites, almost all scamming his uncle. He’s earned that title. Webby puts them on the big board and then when asked they find out she’s Webby, her granny Beakly is housekeeper. She then asks the big questons “Are we friends now?” “If we say yes will you let us live?” “Ha good one new best friend”

She then explains she dosen’t get to leave or anything even eat a hamburger. The boys are moved by this and Louie asks what she does for fun. She leads them to the vents and while Huey and Louie are a bit relcutant, Dewey naturally goes first pointing out it’s better than the marble room. They agree and are on their way.

Okay unpinning that pin, the crew conciously updated Webby and Beakly as neither really had a lot of purpose in the original. It was also to conciously add more actiony females to the main family lineup, as both creators, both being fathers, preferred someone their daughters could look up to and would enjoy watching. Not someone perfect but someone intresting instead of someone who often got Kidnapped and whose main charactrisitcs were “Sweet and GIRL STEROTYPE” So cleverly they KEPT her being girly, having a skirt, liking ponies. .but also gave her all the training and skill of one Cassandra Cain, a sheltered background and an adorable personality that kept the sweetness but added her probably having killed a man at some point. It worked as Webby is one of the best parts of the show.

Likewise Beakly was upgraded from fuddy duddy housekeeper, to badass former secret agent whose also a housekeeper, and bodyguard and confidant to scrooge. Demonstrated by her talk with him as he tries to put on his diving suit and go after the jewel of atlantis, having spotted the signs to go after it in the paper.. and wanting to prove a child wrong. Beakly points out the flaws in this, and tries to get him to connect to his family. Having lost hers, it’s easy to see why.. though the how’s a mystery.. for now i’m guess. We’ll see in the finale. But she’s Scrooge’s concisence and the one who can easiest reign him in, to the point two episodes directly have our heroes have to NOT call her or else the plot was end, but have that worked into the plot so it works. She’s the calm in his storm and hte one person he needs more than anyone else even if he dosen’t always realize it. He calls family “nothing but trouble” just as Dewey passes overhead.

So naturally as Webby shows off Scrooge’s old treasures in a mysterious room, while the other Siblings are rightfully impressed, Dewey dismisses it as “fake” because he’s being a little shit, and they agree after seeing Donald, not knowing his reputation. The cutaway to him struggling with a stapler does not help> it’s only when Webby accidnetly uneleashes Captain Peghook, a vengeful ghost after scrooge, who gets his hand on a ghostly sword do they realize this time the monsters are real. Huey also accidently wakes up Manny, the headless manhorse!

Things somehow get WORSE as Scrooge finds them.. but is in no state to argue and as our heroes duck and Huey tries to divise a plan.. Scrooge get’s his spark back once agian.. it’s starting to become an ember now... and he charges in despite Dewey’s cries of “No come back your old!”. It then gets VERY badass Scrooge: Oi! Beastie! What's it gonna take to shuffle you off to the afterlife? Captain Peg-Hook: The head of Scrooge McDuck! Scrooge: [cracks his neck, flips his cane around to wield like a sword] Would you settle for his hat?

Now that is how you show how badass Scrooge is in a few lines and gestures. HE proceeds to take both out, as they’ve now teamed up, easily, tricking peghook into cutting off the head of a statue of him in the area, throwinng it at him and finsihing the ghosts buisnesss (”I should’ve been more specifiiiicccccc”) and then giving Manny the head, earning him a loyal employee for life. So our days saved, the kids have faith.. and Scrooge is still pissed. He also reveals this isn’t a treasure room but the garage in what’s easily the best gag of the first half, possibly the whole special but one iconic moment is very close in that one. Webby concedes what about the stack of old magazines or the hose or.. okay he’s probably right. He berates them only for the kids to fire back, pointing out he threw them in a room, they just wanted to spend time with him... but it’s only Dewey throwing his words back in his face that pisses him off. Scrooge bellows at them to get out, clearly having internalized everything with donald into rage and trying to justify pushing eveyrone away instead of working at it... but this dosen’t have time to actually work, nor would Beakly actually throw three children out on the curb, as he hits a mystic gong.. the third time it’s been hit. And after realizing it’s already been hit twice Scrooge is faced with Pixu, the gold hutning dragon! And guess who has a giant bin of it wanting to snack on? Scrooge naturally climbs on the thing and the kids naturally want to follow, with Webby getting her first development by proudly announcing “I’m going to eat a hamburger” then explains the metaphor. They just need a pilto.. and as Launchpad has been saying but I forgot to add in “I’m a pilot”

So we get a GORGEOUS bit of Scrooge riding the dragon over the city, getting banged up as he does before finally being thrown off.. only for the kids to catch him with the planes help and try and come up with a plan. Scrooge overcomes his anger at them not staying put, especailly since Webby brings up the right weakness: as a wise man once said...

So they need some.. like say the Medusa Gauntlet Scrooge had in the garage.. that Louie naturally stole. Huey and Webby eyeroll him but they have what they need.. and Huey brought the hose and quickly comes up with a plan, tying scrooge in, and swinging him to Pixu. The kids hold on tight, Dewey calls his family awesome and our heroes win the day as Scrooge turns the dragon to stone, slips and falls.. and then GRACEFULLY dives into hte bin, showing off his diving skills and his badassery. The day is saved, the gauntlet and the dragon go in the bin for safe keeping and Scrooge calls the kids trouble.. and chuckles fondly. “Curse me kilts how i’ve missed trouble”

He’s impressed: Huey’s quick thinking, Louie’s pickpocketing, Dewey’s drive, and Webby’s magical knowledge all saved them. For once. .he’s happy again. And for the second time in life it took his family to remind him why he does this and show him the true fun of adventure: Getting to share it with those he love. And he finally has people to love again. He has family back, kids who look up to him and want to learn from him again, a REASON to adventure. Money and treasure and eveyrthig couldn’t bring della back.. but he at least sees now that whiel they certianly couldn’t.. they can bring him closely with what he has left. She’s gone, for now.. but she left behind three great kids who could use a mentor and Beakly brought him a fourth. And he just found out he has a pilot. The ember.. is now a raging flame. Scrooge is back. Because i’ts not the money or the glory.. it’s the thrill of it, the discovery.. and the family that makes adventuring worth while and he’s learned that lesson again. So he calls Beakly to clear his schedule.. forgetting she you know PUT A FUCKING PIN INTHE WALL the last time he asked her to play scretary and the onlyr eason she dind’t drive over the choke him to death, is that she’s probably happy he’s back on track.

Back at the interview Donald is stapled to the wall and gets the job.. not as an accountant mind but his employer needs a sailor.. and his employer is FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Oh boy.

Part 2: Escape To/From Atlantis First the last bit of background I saved: Originally, Fenton and Gyro were supposed to show up here, starting a gag of Fenton showing up but not being named until “Beware the B.U.D.D.Y. System!”, setting up the sub. But the crew decided this took too much away from the focus on the duck family. The not naming him gag was also dropped, and I have two reasons why: Their given reason, which is it’d take up too much time and a logistical reason: While they gave a heartfelt pitch to Lin-Manuel Miranda, as frank wanted a strong Latino superhero to combat the lack of them on film, Frank and Matt probably thought they woudln’t get such a huge name or at least prepared for it.. and were delightfully suprised when Lin happily and tearfully agreed. So they likely scrapped it so they could properly promote the biggest name in their voice cast. Honestly it was for the best and they still go to do the idea with Drake in “The Duck Knight Returns!”, where it worked much better than it probably would have with Fenton.

We open with the Glomgold Industries Employee Training Video! Encourging IP Theft, making things cheaper and general scumbaggery, and claming your the world’s most beloved scottish billionare. IN short the perfect introduction to everyone’s favorite insane, fake-scottish, scheming, egotistical , short sighted billionaire. As i’ve made transparent before, I fucking love the reboot version of Glomgold and he’s easily one of my favorite parts of the reboot. They clearly needded to find a new place for Glomgold in the grand scheme of things as the show was more about globetrotting adventure and family and less about getting contracts or bets about whose bigger money and more about family. While they DID do a classic bet storyline with season 2, it’s clear the old glomgold was just a bit too stiff to properly fit into this new zanier and deeper universe.

So they instead remolded him as a half insane, knockoff scrooge, someone who PURPOSFULLY modeled himself after the guy to try and one up him, and instead of being a fairly low pitched schemer, was a bombastic idiot whose schemes were half baked, whose name was on everything he made, and whose only thing bigger than scrooge was his glorious ego. In short he was perfect for this series and perfect to show up way more often as a bumbling thorn in Scrooge’s side.. but one who COULD be effective in the right circumstances, as to not make him completely pointless. Keith was likewise the only person I could see in the roll now as with Hater he had a history of playing bombastic, egosticial morons, and made Glomgold into the enjoyable ball of ego, bombs, sharks and shouting we know and love. Some people didn’t take to this version after a while... I’m not one of those. I loved him here, I love him now, and he’s every bit as good in season 3 as he was at the start. He’s also wearing a kilt mcduck A KILT. A bit that’st STILL funny four years and 70 some episodes later.

So we meet Gabby McStabberson and the Smashnikovs as they and Donald file in, though Donald is busy wrapping up a call with Scrooge, who assures them he has a low key day planned.. while in the sub getting ready to go to atlantis. And nearly drowning when Dewey tells Launchpad to dive while he and Scrooge are still up top. Cue credits.

So on the sub we get our setup for the two main plots for the episode: While the main thrust of everything is Scrooge taking them to Atlantis, each leads to a diffrent plot. Louie talks to Donald and lies entirely about their day, worrying Webby.. who then reveals she just didn’t tell Beakly she took off or where she was going and encourages her to call and lie. To save time, i’m going to cover this subplot now minus the conclusion as it’s pretty simple and this review is already a day behind. Louie wants her to lie so she dosen’t worry, which is oddly sweet.. still a bit greasy, but it’s clear he means well and it shows in his own way the boy cares about Donald: Sure he’ll lie to the guy, and set up a fradulent charity to scam him.. but he also knows not to worry his dad-uncle and kows Donald is better off thinking their safe than knowing the truth. Granted it also prevents consequences for Louie.. but he’s not playing here here. He gets nothing out of Beakly not knowing the truth or helping some girl he just met, he’s just being NICE in his own twisty way. It’s a nice show of his depths: While louie will lie, cheat and steal Eddie Gurrero style, he does have a caring side underneath hit. He can read people well and while he primarily uses it to manipulate people, we’ll see time and time again that he can use it for good too and to help those he cares about. He’s nothing but supportive the whole plot, and even when he says “you can’t back that up” it’s more worrying about her and having a bit of crack than actually being a dick.

So Webby tries lying, but is about as good as Huey is at it, saying “I’m at a friends house nothing, then makes up a clearly fake name, then says their only talking in swedish for a grandpa. Launchpad DOES help, but only by accident and snake venom. We’ll get to that. As I said this wasn’t the most complex plot.

The main plot is our focus episode for dewey. In theory each of the kids was supposed to have one in the first five episodes: Dewey here, Webby in Daytrip of Doom, Louie in Great Dime Chase and Huey in Impossible Summit of Mt. Nevverest!. Given the last one was horribly delayed, he instead got Terror of the Terra Firmians, which in hindsight wasn’t the best spotlight episode for him. But it’s a good system; Introduce them all in the first half of the pilot then slowly focus on each one. So now Idoloizing Scrooge, Dewey is desperate to be his sidekick and be seen as an equal and is in deep denial as scrooge instead has them all buckle up for a 17 hour ride and when Dewey questions the route, which skips the direct path.. but is clearly marked with monsters, Scrooge just snaps at him and shuts him down and disapoints the boy who only wants to prove himself to Scrooge.

Naturally though, telling someone with that kind of need for attention and validation to wait goes poorly as he redirects the map while Launchapd is distracted.. and we find out WHY the trip is 17 hours as the direct route nearly gets them killed by mer-ducks, krakens and some sort of storm elemental. Dewey is bummed it didn’t work and annoyed to realize he’s just lumping them all together like Huey pointed out earlier. Huey is also delightful here, having brought travel bingo and sea shanties, clearly used to trips with his other uncle. And adorably taking after him.

But Dewey’s deversion has done more than make him even MORE determined to prove himself to Scrooge whose just trying to NOT loose the son of the daughter he lost...

The Merducks have taken up residence in the bathroom, so they have to make a pitstop. Scrooge, CLEARLY forgetting how to take a trip with children, wasn’t prepared for this but they find a frieghter and make a stop. Naturally it’s GLOMGOLD’S freighter, where his sub took off from, and he and his minons including Donald find Scrooge using the bathroom.. and the boys to Donald’s rage. Unfortunately saying ‘I’ll kill him” to a raging sociopath who takes that as a sign to kill ALL of them, isn’t a smart move.

So while Donald tries to plan to keep his family alive, said family arrives in Atlantis with a great bit of Scrooge trying to give a big speech only for them to see it first and ooh and ah. They touch down in the city.. which is flip turned upside down. Scrooge notes hti is odd but is able to read the hieroglypchs even upside downa nd notes there’s tones of deadly traps and that they shoudl stay back and..

Huey: Dewey ran in as soon as you said traps.

So while Scrooge tries to prevent dewey loosing his head, Donald prevents launchpad loosing his and makes up an excuse about “if their dead now we can’t tourture them later” to cover his ass. Glomgold is impressed. Dewey is Dewcipointed that the traps are upside down, though he does trigger some snakes that get launchpad. He’s fine just delirious. And possibly slowly dying but the fact he’s lived this long is a miracle. Maybe that’s why he’s missing for most of season 3 part 2, the snake venom caught up to him and drake and fenton need to find the cure. Anyways the rest of the party stays behind while Scrooge chases after Dewey, who naturally runs ahead AGAIN.

Donald ducks out to use the bathroom, as Dewey tries the old dance through the laser grid routine.. but forgets the part where your supposed to actually avoid it, leaving it to an unseen Donald to stop the fire traps from barbqueing his boy. IT’s a really awesome sequence that shows off Donald’s still got it even if he dosen’t want it. Scrooge naturally works smarter not harder and simply ziplines above like a badass and berates Dewey when he tells him he took “The easy way”

“Why would you want to take the hard way?” The argument that’s been brewing all episode bubbles up and once again both sides have a point: Scrooge rightfully points out Dewey’s being reckless, has no experince and needs to listen to Scrooge and learn something. Dewey claps back that Scrooge isn’t TEACHING them, just teling them to get behind him while he does things instead of trying to actively mentor them. He outright told them he was going to teach them so while Dewey’s been a wee bit overbearing, he’s right in being disappointed that Scrooge instead just wants them to be safe. I see it as his subconscious acting up: He wants and needs the kids along and is right ot keep them safe.. but is too scared to properly mentor them after what happened to Della and is just trying not to loose anybody. His methods have been right, to keep them safe.. he’s just been so determined to save them, he can’t properly TEACH them so he won’t have to forever or explain WHY. And given the First Adventure shows that while protective he did eventually let Della and Donald pull their weight.. but here he lost so much between adventures.. he just can’e bear loosing them. Dewey also rightfully points out he just lumps them together which in any other version wouldn’t be an issue, until the reboot I had no idea which one was which here? They have distinct outfits and personalities and you had 17 hours to actually get to know them. Probably less given the shortcut but still, several hours at a minimum. It’s things like this that make the series work: while there’s plenty of internal conflicts, at their best their nuanced ones, where if one character is clearly in the wrong they have a reason, and if both are right both are also a bit wrong, versus the original where it’d be scrooge or the boys grabbing the asshole ball at times (Not always mind you but when they did it was insufferable.

However they don’t have time to argue as the bridge goes out and Glomgold finds donald.. and another way around as a result and gets to the treasure first. Scrooge notices they have donald but once again Dewey charges in

“Unhand my uncle” “No” “Okay wasn’t prepared for that”

Naturally both sides are a bit livid, Donald for dragging his boys into danger after being part of the reason his sister is on the moon right now, and Scrooge for working with one of his greatest eneimies.. though Scrooge has less ground to stand on because as Donald points out “I can’t keep track of ALL of your sworn enemies” I mean he has lived like .. 200 years. That’s a long enemies list and Glomgold, while the most persistent, isn’t exactly the most dangerous they probably encountered. Given the guy’s an artist with Bombs and Sharks that does say a lot about how badass Scrooge is.. and how incompitent glomgold usually is. He’s just having an on day today I guess.

Glomgold naturally holds Donald hostage, takes what is suppsidley the jewel and leaves them to drown to death, hitting a wall to let it start leaking. HIs minons run into the rest of the heroes and a fight breaks out while naturally Donald, after even more naturally getting his ass stuck in a hole, literally, rails out at Scrooge for doing this telling him “I knew I couldn’t trust you and” “This is the spear of selene all over again”

Scrooge’s only response is “I was not responsible for the Spear of Selene!”

Dude you still paid for the rocket. While Della shoulders most of the blame, SHE choose to take an untested rocket, SHE choose not to come back during the turbulence YOU still built it and hid it from donald and didn’t make sure she couldn’t just take off in it. Your both to blame. And as I mentioned earlier to the least extent but still an extent, so was Donald telling his grown, adult sister whose as stubborn as she is what she could and couldn’t do. He had the right idea and was the only person trying to be an adult here in this situation.. but he still took the wrong approach with stopping her. Still he got far more ground to stand on than Scrooge, who also took his nephews out. Dewey stops both by pointing out that while yes Scrooge took them on an adventure he’s been doing NTOHING but keeping him safe and most of it was his fault which disarms donald a bit. Though Dewey is quickly distracted.. but for once by an obersvation: the gem glowing above thaem that glowed when they entered... and since the city got flipped turned upside down.. THAT’S the real jewel. Dewey asks Donald ot let it flood so they can get it and begs his uncle to trust him despite his doubts which he does. They get it and everyone’s okay and even more when they reunite with the others they find they’ve handily beaten them. To me this is where donalds walls go down a bit: he realizes he’s been smothering the kids, and that while he may hate his uncle for good reason... he’s not going to make the same mistake with them and while he lied.. Don probably realized if Scrooge had been honest Donald would never have let them go. He can trust him.. and he can trust his kids will be alright without him.

So Glomgold naturally leaves his minions to die, but our heroes manage to make it to the sub, and Gabby asks if they can bum a ride. Not wanting to do any murders they agree. On the surface Glomgold is showing off his jewel, only for Scrooge to upstage him second’s later with the real jewel, and point out his is “nice but defintly cursed”... and right on cue Glomgold gets dragged off with an octopus and let’s off his first “Curse you mcduck!”. Scrooge offers clean water and power thorugh it, for a price because of course he does, and has offically made his grand comeback.

We get back to Webby’s subplot, as she’s confronted by Beakly.. who naturally being a former spy easily figured it out immieditely but is only upset her grandaughter lied to her. And even at that she dosen’t raise her voice or anything about the matter, knowing it’d only make her feel worse and getting that her grandaughter needs to see the world and that much like donald, she walled her up to prevent loosing what little she had left. And since being with Scrooge is safe as with her, she can go with him anytime just tell her first kay? They hug. Awwww.

Donald likewise apologizes, admitting that whatever has passed, he misjudged his uncle here and while not forgiving him yet, is at least willing to let him back into his life and into the boys.. on holidays and stuff at least. But fate forces his hand.. or rather his 10 year old nephew-son having left the engine on and neither having turned it off, meaning his boat goes boom and is in no liveable condition. But Scrooge has the space in his heart and mansion for them.

So as we close the kids help move the artifacts all around the house instead of just the garage while Launchapd drops the boat. While clearing out Dewey notices the painting from earlier.. and finds part of it was flipped over...

“Mom?!”

Now keep in mind, while nowadays Della’s inclusion in the show is one of the most famous and treasured parts of the show.. back then this was a fucking shock. Disney never really cared about the boys mother and outside of one comics story never really went into what happened. So the fact she was not only an actual important part of the plot but we’d find out was a HUGE wham moment and left my jaw dropped after seeing the episode. Like I would with the finales I had read no spoilers and had no idea this was coming but damn was it a huge and welcome suprise and how far they’d take it and how much they’d flesh her out was an even bigger one. Easily one of the best big reveals i’ve ever seen. The only better one I can think of from this series itself... is the end of season 2. But that’s for another time.

Final Thoughts on Woo-Ooo!:

This two parter/hour long special.. is still one of the episodes best and easily one of the best pilots. It does slow down a bit in pacing in the second half, but otherwise is just an immaculate , beautiful pilot movie that introduces and fleshes out all 8 main characters, maybe Launchpad the least but enough to still work, gives us some big mysteries to work out, and even throws in Glomgold’s first apperance. It sets the tone, reverent and adventuerous but also with it’s own weird and wacky sense of humor and world building, and universe perfectly. I .. don’t have much else to say really it’s just THAT good and really worth checking out. If you somehow haven’t seen it go watch it and if you haven’t seen it in a while might be worth a rewatch before the finale. The absolutely perfect start to an amazing ride.

Next on the Della Arc: Dewey and Webby try to figure out where Della is while Louie learns a valuable life lesson and pisses off a killer robot along the way.

Next on the Blog: Amphibia Season 2 is back!

Until then if you liked this review follow for more and if you could please support me on patreon. Even a buck a month helps and juicy stretch goals give you na incentive to contirbute. We’re 5 bucks away from 20 dollars a month which means a review of super ducktales and a Darkwing Duck review EVERY. MONTH. So contribute now! Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure.

#ducktales #wooooo #woo-ooo #scrooge mcduck #webby vanderquack #donald duck #dewey duck #louie duck #huey duck #bentina beakley #launchpad mcquack #flintheart glomgold #della duck #disney channel #disney xd #disney plus #ducks

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topaziraphale · 5 years ago

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I am never one to shame people for their preferences but I just find it so incredibly boring that "sexy dominant demon" made its way into this fandom. I don't know, I just feel like reducing Crowley to the very thing that he tries so hard to embody is not it. His struggle with vulnerability and wanting to be taken care of but cannot let people in is a big part of his character, and I love when fanfics or art delves into that. This is just my take, though.

I agree. I try not to yuck other people's yums, mostly because fandom and headcanons are just for fun and, at the end of the day, nothing will change what's already there in the text. Headcanons are there for fun, and honestly, it really is fun to do. That's why we're all here, after all! Who am I to tell someone what to think?

But while I won’t demand anyone think the way I do (i mean, who does that?), that doesn't really stop me from personally getting bored and even annoyed when a fic makes Crowley only ever the mean-dark-sexy-evil demon he dresses himself up to be. Or when he's way too extremely-ultra-soft-and-sensitive and can't do anything without Aziraphale and needs his love in order to function. I, myself, don’t see the fun in these, for more reasons other than “That’s not how he would act, wtf?”

This, uh, ended up getting really wordy because I have no self control and I never had buddies to rant about this meta to, so this is my outlet. The rest of it is under a cut. I’m apologizing in advance. You definitely weren’t expecting this much of a response, I reckon.

TL;DR - I don’t like reductive headcanons for Crowley because they undermine the entire point for his character existing in the first place and it therefore makes him boring.

Before I get into it, I can't bring up the purpose of Crowley as a character without also including Aziraphale. Crowley, as he stands right now, would arguably be equally as pointless without Aziraphale there with him. And the same goes vice-versa. They complete each other - they were originally one character that got split into two, after all.

The story of Good Omens is commentating on the nature of human morality. Morality, as we know, can be gray, and messy, and confusing. Sometimes it really depends on how you look at it. What one person will see as evil, another will see as righteous. That’s just how humans are. And the entire concept of Morality cannot exist without being prefaced with the binary that is Good and Evil. That’s where Aziraphale and Crowley come in. They’re basically a giant metaphor for all that.

At the end of the day, they’re just a fun, interesting way to visualize the nature of human morality. They’re here to help build one of the main themes in the story. Their existence as an angel and a demon symbolize the Good and Evil binary, but it is their choices and actions that alienate them from the other angels and demons and thus make them more complex as characters, that truly completes the entire metaphor for morality.

This is probably why they’re not humans. The message with them wouldn’t be as unique if they were. Making them an angel and demon reinforces the symbolism and removes the gray bias that making them human would cause.

That’s why they’re interesting enough to exist in this story as main characters despite doing virtually almost nothing to really impact the chain of events.

My point is, Aziraphale and Crowley cannot represent morality in this special way if they’re characterized to be just like any other demon or angel.

If they’re characterized that way, then they aren’t serving the purpose they were created for. And if they can’t do that, then what’s the point of having them? It’s not like they have many actions that directly impact a major aspect of the storyline - and the ones they do have could probably be worked around. At that point, they’re just here for the aesthetic. That doesn’t make them interesting enough to be main characters.

That’s why I tend to not like those types of headcanons that simply reduce both Aziraphale and Crowley into exactly what they’re expected to be. Crowley can’t be as interesting as he is if he can’t be the symbol he was created to be. He can’t be that symbol that if he isn’t An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards. He is interesting BECAUSE you expect him to be a suave, sexy, silver-tongued handsome devil that is truly evil - but in reality, he’s actually a really nice person, has a soft spot for humanity, and is kinda dorky at times.

Headcanons that make him a stereotypical mean sexy demon, or the ones that overdo his softness and vulnerability disturb the balance that he’s got going on. He’s practically someone else at that point. Crowley in canon part of a really interesting set up and dynamic - to change that dynamic by changing his personality into something that ultimately works against the key components that make it work in the first place simply makes him more boring of a character. That’s why I have a really tough time getting into those particular fanon interpretations of him over the ones that are closer to canon.

#derpy answers #crowley #aziraphale #good omens #good GOD IN HEAVEN THIS IS A LONG RESPONSE #anon im sorry for making you read an entire freakin essay if you even read this far #hope it was at least a tiny bit interesting?#either way I got my feelings out there so now I have a post to link back to #anonymous #derpy analyses #<- starting a new tag for when i go overboard with meta ig #also i realized as i was typing this that this is probably why i'm so picky with human aus #as well as the fics with dark!crowley or dark!aziraphale #welp

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mi4017 · 4 years ago

Text

SILENT VOICE (KOE NO KATACHI) 2016

I’m a sucker for slice of life shows, i love it for the same reason i like comedy!

they’re lighthearted, give a feelgood vibe - with a colourful cast of characters that normally have very nice interactions - a kind of fun you can only see characters have, not real people.

usually I'm not big on anime... its just not a media that i grew up with and have no nostalgia nor personal interest for. I can completely see why others enjoy it, but its just not for me: and I think that’s a completely fair and respectable point of view.

but dang... this film is beautiful.

Koe no Katachi / Silent Voice (2016)

When a grade school student with impaired hearing is bullied mercilessly, she transfers to another school. Years later, one of her former tormentors sets out to make amends.

i think conceptually - this is a really nice story. redemption is a theme i feel always has a special place in storytelling, there’s something about watching the protagonist overcome the difficulties they’ve had in their past, and come back a better person because of it thats so rewarding.

I think that’s due, in part, to the way everyone thinks of themselves - humans are naturally very doubtful, and self-deprecating: the fastest to point out their own flaws. i don't think i know anyone that is genuinely happy with who they are, with everyone ashamed of some part of themselves, and their pasts.

however - the context of redemption is an important factor. there’s unforgivable acts that cause immense damage - so much so, that no matter how different they are, they can't bring themselves to forgive what they’ve done.

personally, i agree with the mentality that the victims of situations should be the factor that dictate whether the act is forgivable or not, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can forgive yourself.

the film centres around a boy named Shoya Ishida, who bullied a deaf girl named Shōko Nishimiya, when he was a kid - and is seeking to make amends for the way he treated her.

in the film, this is down-played, with it taking up about ten minutes of the film, as an opening segment.

I’ve both read the manga, and watched the film. The way each version is handled differently yet still tells a similar story, with the same cast of characters is a point of interest to me, and i think each version has it’s charm.

if you're interested, i personally prefer the manga version - it’s much grittier, and makes scenes from the movie a lot more understandable, due to missing content - the tone becomes understandable.

Shõko transfers to Shoya’s school, and instantly things change - with classes having to accommodate for a student, with a disability. this annoys Shoya, and his friends, and to ‘get back at her’ as they see fit they begin to tease her.

Shõko wears hearing aids, and Shoya learns that yanking them out will entertain both him and his friends. A female student, Naoko, also leads the way in ostracising the deaf girl.

Shõko does everything in her power to fit in, communicate and make friends, but due to her disability she is ultimately forced to spend her time alone. this unfair treatment seems absolutely barbaric - but the sad reality is that it happens.

i personally have a few audibly-impaired pals, and it’s upsetting to watch the way they’re treated. People find it difficult to communicate with them, and in essence - due to not enjoying the time they spend with them, isolate them. this is, of course, a generalisation based on my experience - i think that this is what makes my friendship with them feel unique - a percentage of the individuals i encounter have very few connections, which makes their bond with myself feel more significant.

Shõko is targeted by Shoya, and his gang - who pour water on, trip her up, and rips out a number of her hearing aids: one time so forcefully her ears bleed.

He is scapegoated as the only bully in the class despite how many of his classmates have contributed to Shõko’s suffering. Due to this, his friends turn their attention on him, and the torment they inflicted on Shõko is now being flipped on himself.

we skip over the next few years of Shoya’s life - they pass, as nothing noteworthy happens. Shoya lost everyone, now he can’t look anyone in the eyes, which is visually represented by x’s over the faces of all the students at school.

He’s alone. but accepts this as his punishment for what he did to Shoko.

i think this is one of the aspects that sold me on the film: the second you see what Shoya has become you instantly understand he’s truly changed. he’s gone from a spunky kid, swaggering down the halls with tons of friends to this sorry state.

he's resentful for the way he treated Shõko, so much so that he’s considering killing himself - conveyed by the simple and chilling way he cuts out the rest of a calendar after the date he chooses to die.

after reuniting with Shõko, the rest of the film follows the new relationship they build, along with the reactions of their old classmates.

“What I have given a lot of attention to when portraying Shoya’s position and circumstances was to portray Shoya as an individual character – to carefully understand and stay true to the intentions of what he saw, what he felt and what actions he took. I have tried to build the character so that Shoya will be able to act as himself, no matter what the circumstances,” - Yamada.

It’s hard to argue that Shoya is not worthy of redemption: he works for years to pay back the cost of the hearing aids, he almost kills himself, he accepts his own isolation and misery, and he reaches out to Shoya to make amends and help her wishes come true.

I walked away from the experience truly contemplating a lot of things. to all the people out there who picked on me at school, the ones who made me feel like shit and hate myself.

i forgive you.

and i hope one day - you can do the same. forgive yourself

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evieveevee · 5 years ago

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What We Lost: Returning to Tumblr in 2020

On December 17th, 2018, Tumblr banned 'adult content' across the site, marking the end of an era. The ban was the result of a cavalcade of issues which reportedly made maintaining NSFW content unfeasible for Tumblr. Now, it's 2020. I'm back on Tumblr, and I can't help but meditate on what we've lost both on Tumblr, and across the globe in 2020.

Part One: Tumblr and Adult Content

*Things we lost to the flame Things we'll never see again All that we've amassed Sits before us, shattered into ash

— Bastille, "Things We Lost In The Fire"*

A bit of personal history: Tumblr was the primary community I used in various forms from 2012 onwards, associating with various fandoms, doing what I could to design interesting things. The various communities I was involved in intersected with social justice communities, and eventually I dug into those further and tried to learn to better myself in the process, starting along the path to becoming the person I did.

Part of that process was also learning to love my own body, a thing I was not particularly good at and still struggle a bit with nowadays. One of the ways I did this was by making 'adult content', or more plainly, pornography. It was a unique opportunity to experiment with femininity and sexuality - something I'd been very closed off from as part of my upbringing - in a supportive, fun environment. Experimenting with my self image first in this way, in semi-private, led to me experimenting more publicly and eventually embracing aspects of that as part of my day to day life. That's right: making pornography was part of what led me down the path to figuring out I was trans and embracing that part of me.

Making porn on Tumblr was a great time; the adult content creators and consumers community on the site was largely supportive of queer people and sexuality, different body types, all manner of things. It was - in my experience - a healthy and fun place to be, and certainly one of the better places you could be on the internet for a visual medium like pornography. Tumblr's format made it easy to share both adult content you made yourself, and stuff you were curating. Vex Ashley wrote that "this sharing was so desperately vital for women and other marginalised people whose sexualities are often overlooked or infantilised in media about sex in preference for the tastes of the traditional porn consumer – the straight white guy" in a eulogy and love letter to Tumblr's adult content communities.

Tumblr's format remains novel to my knowledge as well: the notion of having a large image-focused feed which also allows for easy sharing and curation, gorgeous, high resolution pieces and photos to be uploaded with relatively little compression, custom arrangements of photosets, and personalized theming of your blog. There was, and remains, lots of potential for expression on Tumblr., and its focus remains unique. Twitter and Mastodon's focus is on what's written, Wordpress doesn't have the sort of interlinking of blogs that Tumblr does, and Facebook is... Facebook (read: evil).

I think the novelty of that format is what made the announcement of the ban on 'adult content' so impactful. Even looking back at the framing of it is gross: the post posits that 'adult content' is something which is negative, and says that removing it is working towards a 'more positive' Tumblr. There appears to be an attempt to try and strike a balance in allowing conversation about sexuality and such, but this is the killing blow. A huge portion of the community, including countless queer and furry artists, needed to find a new home online.

3 months after the ban had hit, traffic had reportedly dropped off 20%. Recent data from SimilarWeb, the outfit which published that initial data, shows that visits to the site have dropped off a little bit more, but have stayed otherwise pretty consistent. August 2020's data shows about 317 million visits. [1] In other words: any hope that this move would allow Tumblr was dashed. A massive portion of the userbase deleted their accounts after archiving them; Tumblr and the internet at large had lost a massive, vibrant chunk of community, and it was completely in vain.

I lost contact with a bunch of those folks I was following on Tumblr for years. The mass exodus left both people who wanted to find and share artwork and adult content and the people who made it completely adrift. Years later, some artists are still picking up the pieces. Archaic policy like SESTA/FOSTA being brought into the picture has left very few standing when it comes to adult content, Twitter included. Who knows how long that will last? If something happens to change the way that Twitter handles adult content, for example, what options do casual creators like myself have?

Fortunately, platforms like OnlyFans exist. But even those are at potential risk from legislation like the EARN IT Act, not to mention the danger this poses to Twitter and to the internet at large. OnlyFans and its ilk, as they exist right now, are fantastic for sex workers because they offer pay-gating and a variety of features to make sure sex workers get paid. But they leave those of us who want to be able to curate the content they enjoy or casually create their own content freely without real options, and without real community.

We stand to lose a lot, and as always people in the margins will be the ones most impacted: the queer, the people of color, the disabled; all will suffer greatly if adult content is found without a home. Media dealing with queer themes is enough to be considered "adult content" by some and it's not hard to imagine what we could be staring down the barrel of here.

What have we lost in eliminating platforms like this?

Part Two: 2020 and the World

*These are the things The things we lost The things we lost in the fire, fire, fire.

— Bastille, "Things We Lost In The Fire"*

Meditating on what we have lost seems to be a running theme for the year 2020.

January: New Year's Day. In Aotearoa New Zealand, smoke covers the skies from a fire a literal ocean away. The Australian bush has been on fire, part of one of the most and it has turned the skies of a nation not it's own orange at midday, across thousands of kilometers. What did we lose in those fires? What stories and history? What wildlife, what species? What will remain afterwards? What will grow anew?

April: Aotearoa New Zealand hits the peak of COVID-19 related lockdown with the entire nation moved to Level 4, meaning that nothing except truly essential services, such as roadworks, pharmacies, and supermarkets were open. During that time, I thought a lot about how some of my favorite small shops were doing; the bakery with astonishingly good pies, the charming dollar store which always has a few things that catch my eye, the coffee cart near one of the local parks every morning. As a nation, Aotearoa acted early to deal with COVID-19 with a strong hand, and it was risky for all of those small shops across the country. What would we come out the other side of the lockdowns having lost, both in terms of human cost and cost to the places around us?

May: Following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin, massive protests against police brutality, racism, and white supremacy break out across the United States of America. Daily protests have continued to the time of writing in some cities. George Floyd is one of 781 people killed by police in 2020 at the time of writing in the United States alone [2]. 1099 people were killed by police in 2019 [3]. What incredible lives and stories have been lost in the process? Are those stories being told now? How do we prevent this from happening again? (Hint: defunding the police will be a start, and supporting the cause now is a good choice too.)

It is now September: The incompetence of the US Government has allowed COVID-19 to spread beyond control, leaving tens of thousands of deaths in its wake; lives and stories which must be remembered and their stories carried on by others. The western coast of the United States is on fire, blanketed in smoke and ashes. Massive west coast cities like San Francisco gain an apocalyptic feeling as the skies turn orange, like they did for me in January. Friends of friends lose everything in small Oregon towns. The costs of the prolonged fires will be paid by people all up the coast; it's their health outcomes which will suffer. What will we lose as a result of this in the future? What can we do to make things better?

I want to be clear: this is not a comprehensive list, and is centered around the things that me and my social circles have been aware of and talked about. Even with that consideration, we have to reckon with massive, ongoing, and far reaching concerns. The loss felt as a result of all of the above issues is staggering, and far reaching, and we must fight to ensure that loss is not in vain. Voting alone is not going to solve these concerns, and there's more to concern yourself with than any one person should have to cope with. There's not a magic bullet to solve all this stuff though.

Rather than pretend that I have one, I want to propose a couple things to close this out: one bit of advice, and one plea for yourself and others.

The advice: pick your battles carefully. Pick issues you want to focus in on, and fight for those things to make things better where you live, and in your social circles. Choose things to care deeply about first. Keep caring about them.

The plea: think carefully about the questions I've asked throughout this piece, and think about the things in your life and communities that you have lost. Think about how to make sure those losses are taken with you and learned from; to take lessons learned and better yourself and the people around you. Think about the things you don't want to lose, and how to fight like hell for them.

Move forwards to something, and some place better than where we are now. Stand united with the people around you, and press on.

*Do you understand that we will never be the same again? The future's in our hands and we will never be the same again.

— Bastille, "Things We Lost In The Fire"*

If you enjoyed this piece and want to support my work, please contribute to my Ko-fi. If you are interested in re-publishing this piece on another site, please contact me either here or via my business email.

References

[1] Data provided by SimilarWeb; accessed on 15/09/2019 at 5:30am. (https://www.similarweb.com/website/tumblr.com/)

[2] Data provided by Mapping Police Violence (https://mappingpoliceviolence.com); accessed on 15/09/2020 at 4:08am NZT

[3] Data provided by Mapping Police Violence's (https://mappingpoliceviolence.com) database, downloaded on 15/09/2020 at 4:08am NZT. Count obtained using the following formula:

=COUNTIFS($'2013-2020 Police Killings'.F:F,">=1/1/2019",$'2013-2020 Police Killings'.F:F,"<1/1/2020")

#tielwrites

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quu-kii · 6 years ago

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Jake Gyllenhaal Filmography Ranking

My personal ranking of all Jake Gyllenhaal movies from October Sky onwards with some brief thoughts on each of the movies. Honestly the exact number ranking of these movies is probably not super accurate and could be liable to changes, but I tried my best with the ordering.

Amazing Tier (My favorites)

1. Brokeback Mountain - This is such an emotional and heartbreaking movie. I knew it was going to have a sad ending going into it, but still I was not prepared for how strongly it hit me in the feels. And it’s not just the ending that is sad; you can tell that the love between the two leads is doomed from less than the midpoint of the movie, and it keeps going downhill from there. Overall, I think the movie is a perfect tragic love story. As well, there’s this very subtle and natural feeling to the whole movie that is difficult to describe but works really well. There’s just something truly special about this movie that makes me want to place it as the #1 best of Jake’s movies.

2. Nightcrawler - A highly suspenseful movie with an amazing lead performance by Jake as the sociopathic lead character Lou Bloom. Jake is really a big part of what makes the movie great, as he is such a strong focus of it. Lou acts so off, but it’s just impossible to take your eyes off him, and he is so interesting to watch since you keep wondering what he will do next. The other part of what makes this movie great is the writing and dialogue. There are just so many memorable and great lines, especially for Lou. Along with these factors, the subject matter of the movie, that of the career of selling violent news footage to news stations, is pretty unique, and there are some interesting ideas and themes in the movie as well relating to success and the news media. Overall I really love this movie. If there’s one thing I would say I might not like about the movie, it is the music. It can have an uplifting and hopeful vibe in dark scenes, which lessens the tense mood of some scenes. But I understand that the music was made to reflect Lou’s mood in the scene, which is a very interesting decision in itself and helps add to Lou’s character, since you can notice the contrast between how disturbing the scenarios he is in are and how Lou himself feels in such scenarios. So I at least admire the music for this aspect.

3. Enemy - A tense and psychological movie. I really love the heavy and surreal atmosphere of this movie, added to by the yellowish filter which is present throughout the whole movie as well as the score, which is ominous and used to amazing effect in the movie to enhance the dark mood. Also, I think this movie is both enjoyable when taken in at face value, being about a man who finds that there is a doppelganger of himself, and when looking deeper at what the “real” story is, taking into account the symbolism and various small details placed throughout the movie. It’s an interesting movie to think about due to its openness to interpretation. And lastly, Jake does a great job playing the two lead characters in the movie; despite the characters looking the same, they give off quite a very different vibe.

4. Spider-Man: Far from Home - My favorite MCU movie. I love so many things about this movie: how it deals with the aftermath of the Blip in a light way, how it deals with Peter Parker’s character after Endgame and his desire to just be able to have a normal life, the overall story, the setting being Europe and having this fresh vacation feeling, the fight scenes, and of course Mysterio. Along with this, it has great music (especially Mysterio’s theme) and probably the best mid credits and post credits scenes in the MCU due to their plot relevance. All of the characters are very likeable too, from Peter and all his classmates and teachers to others like Nick Fury and Mysterio, which is important to me since likable characters is one of the most important aspects to me in any kind of story. This movie was such a pleasant surprise after Endgame, which was a great disappointment to me. Also, this movie is special to me because it’s how I discovered the awesomeness of Jake and thus indirectly the reason why I watched all his movies and made this list in the first place. I’m not sure if a future MCU movie can top this for me, but who knows.

Great Tier

5. Nocturnal Animals - A harsh movie with an interesting structure of having two main stories, with one of the stories being a story within the main story (I will call this story the 2nd story for brevity). I think the 2nd story is where the movie really shines. This story was so tense and much more interesting to follow compared to the main story, and Jake portrayed the emotions of anguish and despair so well in it. It’s also interesting to think about how the 2nd story links with the main story, which gives more depth to the overall story of the movie. I find this and Brokeback Mountain to be the most emotionally harrowing of Jake’s movies, which is definitely a compliment since I admire when a work is able to make me feel so strongly. Also, I have to note that I disliked that there was a random jumpscare in the middle of the movie. It doesn’t lower my opinion of the movie, but I really don’t like jumpscares and did not expect one in this movie.

6. Source Code - A really solid sci-fi movie about Jake’s character repeating through a time loop. It is the only Jake movie to make me cry due to me being a sucker for tragic scenarios involving time loops/parallel worlds. It was just a very engaging movie to watch due to the intriguing premise and the very good execution of said premise.

7. Zodiac - I didn’t know that this movie was based off true events until almost the end of it. So the whole time, I was expecting there to be a conclusive ending when there was no way this would be the case, since the Zodiac killer case to this day hasn’t been solved. Because of this, I felt initially disappointed about this movie from a story perspective, since all the clues from the movie seemed to lead to nothing. This is my biggest “flaw” about the movie (and it’s not really the movie’s fault), but this factor aside I really liked this movie. Jake, RDJ, and Mark Ruffalo are all great in it, and I love murder mysteries so much, so the story had me hooked on this alone. It’s so interesting to watch the characters piece together clues for the case and try to unravel the mystery, as well as seeing how the case progresses (or well, doesn’t progress at times) over the years. Also, this movie just feels really good to watch; as in, the scenes and shots flow together so well. It’s a great movie overall I think.

8. The Sisters Brothers - A western with a kind of laid back feel to it. Also supposedly it is a comedy, but I found it not funny at all. It’s not that I see the movie attempting jokes and find that they don’t work; it’s more like I don’t see the attempt at humor at all, unless maybe it’s kind of a weird dark humor thing. Anyways, I really like this movie, and it’s mostly because I really like the main four characters and their dynamics with each other. Jake does a great job playing his character John Morris and has an accent which is pleasant to my ears, though I was sad that he (as well as Riz Ahmed) wasn’t in the movie more. Even though I was watching the movie for Jake, I found myself liking John C. Reilly’s and Joaquin Phoenix’s characters, the two leads, a lot as well. It’s a movie that shines because of the characters for me.

Very Good Tier

9. Donnie Darko - A pretty unique coming of age story with sci-fi elements. I’m still not sure what to think of this movie, though I think I liked it. Some of my favorite scenes are where Donnie goes off on these rants about what he believes to be the truth. These scenes are amazing to me.

10. Prisoners - I actually find the story of this movie to be not that great. However, what elevates the movie is Hugh Jackman and Jake and their amazing performances. Funnily enough, I found myself siding with Hugh’s character and against Jake’s as they both simultaneously tried to solve the case. Also, this movie is just really exciting and engaging to watch and is maybe one of the easiest to recommend movies on this list due to these factors.

11. The Day After Tomorrow - This isn’t a very deep movie or anything, but it’s a really solid disaster flick in my opinion. I love the visuals, and Jake is such a cutie in this movie, a factor that really elevates it for me.

12. The Good Girl - It looked like a comedy or something from the outside, but actually this is a rather bleak movie. It’s one of the duology of the Jake-being-into-older-married-women movies (and the much better of the two for me). I find this movie pretty underrated.

13. October Sky - It’s an uplifting and inspiring movie, and I love how Homer’s relationship with his father is portrayed here.

14. Okja - I love the stylized vibe of this movie. Jake isn’t in the movie that much, but I really like every time he shows up. He goes full wacky here and it’s fun to watch.

15. Brothers - Tobey Maguire is the real star here. I think he was great in the movie and I could really feel the emotions of his character, especially after he comes back from the war and is in a troubled state of mind.

16. Stronger - A good based on real life movie about a survivor of the Boston Marathon Bombing. Jake does a great job as usual, and I think the emotions of the story came through well.

17. Wildlife - A really simple and subdued story about a family, but I think it works well in the movie. It has a very quiet and natural feeling to it.

Ok Tier

18. Demolition - A quirky feeling movie about a guy trying to deal with the death of his wife. The scene with Jake dancing in the city is my favorite part. Also I thought Jake’s friendship with the kid in the movie was a highlight.

19. Bubble Boy - It's kind of a dumb movie with some maybe offensive humor, but I thought it was pretty enjoyable regardless. Jake is so adorable as the main character Jimmy, and it was fun to follow his journey across the country and seeing all the interesting characters he meets.

20. Proof - I thought it was pretty good, but then the movie ended just when I thought it was starting to ramp up the story to the conclusion. This factor brought the movie down for me.

21. Life - The monster design for this movie was pretty cool, and I liked the ending and the general space horror vibe. However, I didn’t feel much for any of the characters.

22. Everest - It was ok, but I wasn’t really into any of the characters here.

23. Southpaw - I think this movie is very impressive for Jake’s resume, considering how he trained a lot and learned boxing for it. However as a movie itself, I didn’t really feel much for it and felt like it wasn’t doing much special in the story department. I liked some of the parts in the earlier half though.

24. End of Watch - I just wasn’t feeling this movie. Maybe it was the found footage style or something. I feel a bit sad about not digging this movie since I see it is generally one of the more well liked ones in Jake’s filmography.

25. Jarhead - I really don’t like the vulgar tone throughout this movie, but I do like the general story and message. Also the movie looks really good.

Not That Great Tier

26. Velvet Buzzsaw - I love Jake’s character Morf so much as well as the general premise. However the movie itself wasn’t too great: I found most of the characters besides Jake’s to be unlikable, and also the movie felt cheap. It’s very disappointing since the concept for the movie (horror in an art gallery) seems so promising.

27. Prince of Persia - This was the first Jake movie I saw back in the day around the time of its theater release. I have to say I find this to be Jake’s weakest acting performance out of all his movies. For me, good acting is when the actor feels very natural as the character and is somehow magnetizing to watch. But for some reason I did not get a very natural vibe from Jake as Dastan in this movie. I do think he looks very beautiful in this movie though with his long hair, so that’s a big plus. The story of this movie feels pretty cliché and kind of lifeless in a way, but I still liked it alright.

28. Highway - I don’t really like the sleazy tone of this movie. However, I think Jake is very adorable in this movie and has this pure wide-eyed vibe about him (despite him being a drug dealer and sleeping with prostitutes and such).

29. Rendition - I found this movie to be aggressively boring for the most part. There’s this subplot which I was unsure why I should even care about until a reveal near the end of the movie, when it was too late to start caring at all. However Jake in a bloody shirt towards the beginning of the movie makes for some good screencaps and gifs, and I learned about the term extraordinary rendition through searching about it after the movie.

30. Moonlight Mile - I guess this movie might be considered technically good because it tells the story it sets out to do fairly well, but I just found it very boring. There is a part towards the end with Jake’s character being very emotional which I really liked.

31. Lovely & Amazing - It's actually decent, but really not my type of movie. It’s the 2nd of the duology of the Jake-being-into-older-married-women movies.

Just No Tier

32. Accidental Love - I actually enjoyed the beginning parts of this movie (though what’s with the constant dutch angles in the earlier parts?), and ironically it is around the point of the introduction of Jake’s character where I felt like it started to nosedive. I felt my soul slipping away and my IQ dropping by the end of the movie.

33. Love & Other Drugs – I really, really don’t like this kind of raunchy sex comedy movie. That’s all.

#jake gyllenhaal #text #brokeback mountain #nightcrawler #enemy #spiderman far from home #nocturnal animals #source code #zodiac #the sisters brothers #donnie darko #prisoners

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joyofcrime-elinorhigh · 6 years ago

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Watamote Review: (Oh, The Cringe)

"Beware that, when fighting cringe, you yourself do not become a cringe lord yourself.. for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche: 1886 -(Probably) -(Don't Google it)

Hello there, everybody. My name is JoyofCrimeArt, and the word "cringe" is definitely thrown around a lot these days, to the point where some say that the word is starting to lose all meaning. "Oh, you like some band or movie that I don't like? That's so cringe, lol." No, Damn it! I'm sick of all of it! I'm looking for true, unadulterated cringe, in it's purest form! The type of cringe that makes you unsure if you should laugh or cry. The type of cringe that makes you question if our species evolutionary process is going backwards or forwards. That is why I am on a quest to find this cringe, for the good of science! So today in my journey to find the most cringe thing ever created (other than myself, obviously) we will be diving head first into the deep end of the cringe pool, as we head to Japan once again to talk about the 2013 anime series Watamote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWOTQRduHeA

(Yes, I'm using the ending credit song here. I know people love the shows opening, and while I think that the song on it's own isn't that bad and the visuals are really nice, the heavy metal doesn't really match the show in my opinion. Couple with the clever lyrics here, I find this song a better representation of the show, and much catchier.) Watamote (Aka: No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys' Fault I’m Not Popular! Aka: No Matter How I Look at It, This Series Really Needs a Shorter Title.) is a twelve episode anime series based off of the manga by the same name written by two writers who both go by the pen name Nico Tanigawa. The series follows the misadventures of main protagonist Tomoko Kuroki, a very socially backwards teenage girl who's about to enter her first year of high school. Being unpopular in middle school, Tomoko decides that high school is going to be a fresh start for her, as she decides that she will not only become the most popular girl in school, but will also get a boyfriend as well. Things do not turn out that way and hijinks ensue. Seems like a fairly standard, if not somewhat bland premise, right? Well you might assume that at first, but what if I were to tell you that this show handles the subject in such a unique and creative way, that it was actually able to became one of my personal favorite animated series of the decade so far? Why is that, you ask? Well, let's dive in and find out. Let's start by talking about our main character, Tomoko Kuroki. Tomoko is a first year high school student who dreams of becoming popular and getting a boyfriend. However, there are two big things that makes this hard for her. The first thing is that she is not a very friendly person. She's bitter, cynical, and even a bit demented at points. She has her soft moments, but in general she tends to assume the worst in almost anybody, and holds a lot of resentment for people who are more socially skilled than she is. The second thing is that Tomoko is HEAVILY implied to suffers from a surprisingly fairly realistic depiction of social anxiety disorder. At the start of the series Tomoko is completely unable to talk to anybody outside of her own family. These two facts, particularly the latter, are what makes Tomoko's goal of becoming the most popular girl in school such an enormous challenge, and Tomoko trying to break out of her shell serves as the main arc of the series. Social anxiety disorder is not a topic that I've seen covered very much in other forms of media, and I can't think of any other series that covers it in the way Watamote does. But I'll get to that a bit later. There are some other side characters, but honestly there aren't that many. There's Tomoko's younger and stoic brother Tomoki, who has to put up with Tomoko's annoying antics. There's also Yu, Tomoko's only friend from middle school who now goes to a separate high school. While she too was unpopular in middle school, unlike Tomoko she actually was able to reinvent herself when she entered high school by dying her hair blond and hiding her love of anime. She acts as a good contrast to Tomoko as a reflection of what Tomoko wants to be. There's also one other character who comes in near the end of the series, but I can't really talk about her to much without getting into mild spoiler territory. All of these characters are good in there own right, but other then them the show is mostly about Tomoko. This is clever as by keeping the cast of side characters small, it helps drive the point home about how lonely she really is due to her social anxiety. Resulting in about eighty five to ninety percent of the shows "dialogue" to actually be Tomoko's internal dialogue, as she talks to herself about whatever situation she is in. I've never seen a show do something like this before and it's really an interesting thing to do. It ties the audience much more into Tomoko's struggle by truly making the series her story, and her's alone. However, this means that the entire series does rely on you liking Tomoko as a character. If you don't than there isn't much else to latch on to. Episodes of the show are pretty formulaic. They almost always center around either Tomoko coming up with some kind of hare brain scheme to get more popular or involve her being forced to act in some kind of social situation. Often times the plots do not act as much of a "linear plot" as much as a series of short vignettes that center around a theme. Like episodes four, where the plot is that "it's raining" and we get several different segments of Tomoko doing stuff while it's raining. Or episode seven, where the whole plot is just Tomoko doing several things during her summer break. It's a pretty unique format that I haven't seen many other times before and makes the episodes feel less like a coherent stories and more like just moments of Tomoko's life. I really enjoy this way of storytelling, as it makes the stories seem a lot smaller. That might sound like a bad thing, but I think it helps ground the world and the characters, and makes it feel more relatable. It makes the stories feel like something that could actually happen in real life. Now despite how depressing this show might sound from my description of it, it is still a comedy. It's just that it's a very dark comedy. Most of the jokes in the series coming from Tomoko's failure to understand the way that people are suppose to act socially, or the leaps in logic she makes when it comes to her schemes to become more popular. This often results in what is known as "cringe comedy" or as what I like to call it "Oh God, please stop." comedy. This is a style of humor that this show has perfected to a t. Every situation that Tomoko finds herself in is uncomfortable to watch, in the best of way. It's actually a great show to watch if you are socially awkward, cause then you can say, "Well hey, at least I'm not THAT bad." Unless of course you are that bad, in which case you really need to question your life decisions.

THIS IS THE STUFF WE'RE DEALING WITH, PEOPLE! Tomoko's plans are always doomed from the start, to the point where failure is an inevitability. This actually provides an interesting viewing experience in a strange kind of way. Most of the time in good stories a character will think of a plan that is just crazy enough to work. You as the viewer will be unsure of whether or not the characters plan will work or not and that's how the series builds suspense. But Watamote's plot structure doesn't work like that. The plots of Watamote function less like conventional stories and more like a car driving into a brick wall. What I mean by this is that whenever Tomoko comes up with any kind of plan to become popular you know form the very beginning that it's going to fail. The schemes are so disconnected from any kind of reality that it's obvious to anyone who isn't Tomoko that the plan won't work. An example of this in the episode six where she tries to become more attractive by playing dating sims game, due to the fact that she believed that by being aroused by these games, her body would create more feminine hormones, and those hormones would make her more attractive. And that's not even her dumbest plan she has in this series! You know from the start that this plan makes absolutely no Goddamn sense, but then you have to sit there for the next six to ten minutes and watch it fail. You have to watch the metaphorical car crash unfold. The show definitely has a niche style of humor that won't be for everyone, but I personally can't get enough of it. Now, while the show has gotten mixed to positive reviews from fans and critics, those who do dislike the show site a major problem with the series being how it deals with the topic of social anxiety. Many say that the show does not tackle the topic with much tack or grace, as the series is basically about laughing at how miserable Tomoko is because of her illness. Not to mention the fact that pretty much no adult in the series tries in anyway to actually help Tomoko through her problem. Not even her parents. Many argue that this show is taking the subject to lightly. Honestly though, I disagree with this analysis, and honestly I have no idea where they would get this idea from.

Oh, Tomoko! You're so CRAY CRAY! Ha Ha! You see, it's funny because social anxiety is hilarious! Okay, in all seriousness, I can get that complaint. Heck, now that I think about it, I honestly don't think this story would have been able to air if it came out in America due to the way it handles the issue. So the question becomes "is this show offensive to people with social anxiety disorder"? Well, I don't think so. The show does play a lot of the social anxiety stuff for laughs, but it is also played for drama as well. Tomoko's whole character arc is about her learning to cope with her condition while also trying to conquer it. And while I don't have social anxiety disorder (Though I am EXTREMELY introverted, so take of that what you will.) I think that the story would be very inspiring for someone who does have it. Watamote is a lot like an TV-MA rated version of the comic strip Peanuts, (hear me out, here!) Like Charlie Brown Tomoko is a character that the world is just out to get. She tries her hardest, but from the very beginning we know that failure is inevitable. But Tomoko never stops trying. And when she does have even the smallest of victories it feels all the more satisfying. Because Tomoko does change over the course of the twelve episodes. The change is very gradual, but as the series goes on she does become more and more confident speaking around other people, and it feels like a real accomplishments, even though it's clear at the end of the series that she still has quite a way to go. Even her motivations change over the course of the series, going from "Wanting to be the most popular girl in school and having a boyfriend" to "Just wanting a boyfriend" to "Just wanting to have a friend." It shows the struggles that comes with anxiety, but it also shows that with hard work you can rise above it, even if it's only one step at a time. For a comedy driven show it actually has a lot of heart behind it. And it's this heart that I think keeps the show from being just a show that uses social anxiety as a punchline, into a series that really treats the issue with the respect it should be treated with, albeit in a comedic way.

The show treads a careful line into dipping into "torture porn" territory (Which, for anyone who is not aware, is a term often used to describe a show that features one character suffering over and over again for no good reason. BTDubz, we also learn is one of Tomoko's kinks.) What I mean is that as an audience member you want to watch the main character succeed in there endeavors. However, Tomoko fails ninety nine percent of the time. The series could easily dip to far and end up becoming too depressing and mean spirited. But luckily there able to carefully avoid this my making almost of Tomoko's suffering is caused by internal forces, not external. No one actually bullies Tomoko for her condition, or anything. it just that most people don't know she exists. If Tomoko could actually just talk to someone instead of overthinking things she wouldn't have a problem making friends at all. This stops the series from coming across as overly mean spirited. Because it is Tomoko, or more specifically her condition, that makes her life hard. Not anyone or anything else. Tomoko life is separated from all of her peers, and the show cleverly illustrates this by having a lot of the background characters being drawn without faces. Because, to Tomoko, there just a faceless mob. That and it probably helps cut cost on the character design budget-

Also, the fact that Tomoko is such a jerky character also helps the series feel less like a torture porn. Cause while obviously you don't want Tomoko to suffer, it is a lot easier to watch a lovable jerk suffer compared to someone who did nothing wrong. I mean seriously, look at the way Tomoko talks about her only friend Yuu in her internal monologue!

She's such a jerk! But because we know what she goes through it stops her from becoming to unlikeable...For the most part. That leads me into some of the flaws with the show. While I do really love this show a lot, I believe that everything has pros and cons to it, and it deserves to be talked about. Just keep in mind though that many of these flaws are kinda nitpicks, that don't distract too much from the series as a whole. Sometimes Tomoko can come across as to mean spirited and unlikeable. The bit before the train scene in episode four is probably the worst of it, though there at least she does learn that she was wrong. The show also has a tendency to reuse music from previous episodes, which while not that bad does get fairly noticeable as the series goes on. The series also has a lot of references to both Japanese pop cultural references and references and Japaness culture in general. For some reason a lot of the Japanese brand names or anime series that are names dropped in the series are censored out in the sub? It's weird because there not removed like they are in the dub, but they'll have one or two letters blocked out. I don't get the point. But yeah, a lot of those jokes went over my head, and would probably work better if I knew more about day to day life of a Japanese youth. Also the ending of the series is kinda lackluster. I'm not going to go into spoilers, but Watamote is based off of a manga. A manga that is still running today, so they didn't really have an ending they could adapt. And it's kinda clear from the feeling of the finale that the people behind the anime didn't really know what to do when they got to the end of there twelve episode run. The finale isn't really that bad to be completely honest, but it does feel like a very abrupt end written by people who where just kinda guessing what the ending of the manga might end up being like. Also, while I don't see this as a flaw, this show will not be everybody. This show will make you feel uncomfortable. A lot of scenes are really hard to watch, just due to how intentionally awkward they are. I kept out A LOT of the really cringy moments from the show out of the review as not to spoil them, but trust me. It gets truly hard to watch at some points. This is Butch Hartman's YouTube channel levels of cringe! (Okay, that's a lie, nothing is that cringe. Sorry Watamote.) It's both the shows greatest strength and greatest weakness. The humor is both very unique but also very niche, which is why while this show was fairly successful when it came out, I would find very few people other than myself who would call it one of there favorite anime series. Now, it's time to talk about the age old debate. How should you watch the series, Dubbed or Subbed? Well, honestly, I don't really care. It's your life man, As long as you're not hurting anybody what do I care? But if you wanted my opinion, I'd be happy to share it with you! Since most of the lines come from Tomoko she'll be the big deciding factor. For the sub we have the performance of Izumi Kitta. Ms. Kitta nails the role of Tomoko in my personal opinion. She has such a meek and high pitched voice that it really sells the emotional scenes in the series. When Tomoko is forced to talk to someone in the sub her voice is at a near inaudible whisper, which really does help give you the sense that Tomoko is truly unable to communicate with most people. In the dub Tomoko is played by voice acting legend Monica Rial. Her take on Tomoko's voice is less cutesy and is a lot more nasally, which does work as an interpretation. She captures the comedy moments really well too. However, I feel like she isn't as good at capturing the moments of anxiety as well as Kitta, and due to Kitta managing to pull of the comedic and the touching side I think her take is the better version. No offence to Monica Rial though. I do love the fact that her version of Tomoko sounds like a cross between Renge from Ouran High School Host Club (Who she also voices in the dub) and Peridot from Steven Universe. THAT'S A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN I TELLS' YA!

So in the end, should you watch Watamote? Well, I think it depends on who you are. The series won't be for everyone. It's brand of humor is very unique, and will likely turn a lot of people off. But I think if you're the type of person who likes weird, uncomfortable humor they'll be something for you here. ESPECIALLY if you're shy or introverted. There will definitely be a part of you who will be able to relate to the show, even if you're not exactly proud that you related to it. The series is also only twelve episodes, so it isn't that much of a commitment. It's really a shame that it's only twelve episodes though, as they only ended up adapting about three and a half volumes out of the still ongoing ten volume run. They could of done more if they wanted too. But then again, leave them wanting more as they say. (That way you can force them to buy your manga set...) The series can be found subbed on Crunchyroll for free, or on Hulu if you already have an account. Unfortunately the only way to find the series dubbed legally is on DVD or blu-ray sets, and those are about thirty bucks on Amazon here in the US. However, depending on your financial situation it may just be worth it...(But God knows I don't have that kind of money!) If this review got you at all interested consider checking the series out. So that's my review of the anime series Watamote. What do you think of the series? Which moment was the hardest to watch for you? Tell me all that in the comments down bellow. I'd love to start a conversation, even if you don't necessarily agree with all of the points I've made. Please fav, follow, and comment if you liked this review, or if you have any suggestions for any other reviews in the future. Have a great day. (Interesting fact. Whenever I'm at work during my lunch break at work I will either go to the bookstore that's right by my work establishment or I'll just sit in the break room reading my volumes of Watamote mangas by myself while trying to make it so my co-workers can't see what I am reading. THIS SHOW IS SO ME AND THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING-) (I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/Watamote-REVIEW-Oh-the-Cringe-698766244 DA Link

#Watamote #no matter how i look at it it's you guys' fault i'm not popular!#anime #review #cringe

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thesteamhat · 7 years ago

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the making of Something Old, Something New TLDR: Paintings are Essays and stories of their own creation. This is how I Fan art. Fantasy Art is more than just dragons and wizards. I owe a lot of my integrity to the work of Wizards of the Coast. If you don’t want to read it, thanks for being an audience, if you like this piece as much as I do, maybe consider buying a print HERE So now and then, very rarely in recent times, you make the piece you are most proud of, what makes pieces like this, to you, so important is often they act like little essays of what’s going on in your mind captured in your visual artistic abilities. Firstly, I only found out I was a part of the @lightgreyartgallery Gallery, Link HERE (<= CLICK IT, there are some AMAZING artworks in there and I am humbled and honored to be amongst some of them) about 20 days after I should have, I had roughly ten days to make this piece happen. But this piece has been rattling around my head for a very long time, for multiple reasons I have wanted to paint my reimagining of Wurmcoil Engine for several months now, taking influence from Old Phyrexia moreso than it’s more smooth styles now, the old grimy exposed biomechanical monstrocities they were when they first struck fear into the multiverse of Mtg. And I have loved drawing gnarled monstrous teeth since I was like, 14 and found my first salvation from the Anime style black hole, with the work of Dave Allsop. The piece clicked after a while of me researching angels and their less common eldritch appearance, I love angel mythology because it’s some of the first cases when Fantasy Art as we first would understand it, was born, when artists, with patronage from the church, began to capture the more mythological visuals in a realistic believable way, these were the stepping stones towards imaginative realism, and with this classical painters began adding realism to images of the Minotaur and Gorgons. Naturally tribute goes to Frazetta and his pulp colleagues for making Fantasy Art a valid genre of Art, but Angels and Demons have their seats at some of the earliest forms of what we now know as fantasy art. In this there are many scriptures that make the ranks of angels far more than just winged humans, ranging to anthropomorphic shoggoths of wings and animals to 6 winged seraphim covered in eyes and the strange mechanical flying objects of the ophanim or thrones. In taking inspiration for these and looking up eldritch angels, finding the obvious references being made with the Eldrazi as they stretch between @bugmeyer art and the Angel Eldrazi of Shadows over Innistrad. Suddenly my speculative Vorthos fired up and I couldn’t stop thinking of this simple story I wanted to tell. So, there’s a fairly obvious storytelling theme a lot of my work recently, it’s an inevitable marriage of what I want to draw and paint from what’s inspiring me, and a drive to improve the storytelling purposes of illustration, there’s an easy way to tell a story visually and that’s through duality. Duality is simple, it’s a clear and obvious conflict presented to an audience, old vs new, mechanical vs natural, good vs evil, light vs dark or simple, Thing vs ANOTHER Thing that isn’t the first Thing: This was sort of struck on when I found the work of @gallerygerard and I was hooked, there’s a lot of pieces depicting smaller warriors facing off Balrogs or Giant Wolves and the narrative being presented is inescapable, so yeah, I wanted to be able to do that too. So this piece is definitely not the last of something like this I’ll do, I hardly think I’ve mastered the simple diorama of this at all, but this piece was definitely all because I started pushing for that. (also helps that I can make some money off designs like this because they make killer playmats.) So before I get to Magic and it’s influence on me... I need to talk about Paint. I am not a painter, every time I have attempted to mark a canvas or board with wet or traditional has failed horribly and I escaped to the confines and safety of digital from a young age, on the upside it’s definitely saved me a LOT of money avoiding paint, but truly, I never really have touched it all again. But then I gave a good proper look at the work of Ryan Pancoast, Steve Prescott and the Man who taught me about colour, Jesper Ejsing . I have SO much respect for their work, nothing comes close to how much a piece inspires me as seeing it in physical paint, there’s a strange sort of magic (hehe) with the bravery of what is being done with a brush to capture wholly what makes a piece unique when it’s literal material smeared, dabbed and layered on a canvas. I tried to capture this by making the design intricate and filled with visual eccentricity and natural texture, as well as using the literal shape of marks made to really push the values to try to tell a bolder narrative with this piece. I cannot list the ways I think I failed at this, but I only want to learn and keep practicing when a piece like this comes just a little close to capturing that magic. An additional mention on the artists above, the pure bravery of making work that looks so perfectly not of this world in an industry plagued by stoic realism is nothing but inspiring, I truly want to achieve as Elsing puts it: “a window looking into another world.“ Interestingly I struggle with fan art, every now and then there’s a thing I like at the time so I make something to celebrate it, I however often lose interest before making it an actually good ‘to my own standard‘. Magic allows me to still stretch my own creative wings, my own imagination being allowed to play amongst an established universe that no other Fan Art allows me to. Magic’s art direction told me it was okay to be a bit weird. It’s no secret that I aspire to work on Magic the Gathering art, to give contributions that could only come from myself and aren’t just attempts to be ‘that kid who makes art that looks like it was made by Prescott/Ejsing‘ so the eclecticism there, while attempting to learn the secrets their work holds and putting it into my work. I love the fact that through the years I’ve seen work come out of Mtg, that has truly allowed artists to put their own unique vision into a game with such a flowing world. To follow the gushing about Mtg, this card game has had a massive effect on my development, whilst it’s definitely John Howe’s Smaug to be the piece that opened a door to me to Fantasy Art, it was also a little card called Vizzerdrix from Starter, that fully made me fall in love with Magic’s art, that made sure that one of my aspirations would be to make art alongside pieces like it. Once I’d grown up a bit Magic’s art and art direction allowed me to discover artists, some already mentioned, that would show me how it’s done: Throughout my portfolio in the past I have made little attempts at the sharp lighting and texture of a Tyler Jacobson facet or the bold journey of colour through an Ejsing and the brave shape of a Raymond Swanland . And I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that Magic has taught me both a love of games and the value in just going outside and meeting someone new, and having a conversation with someone over our mutual love of slinging spells, beating people’s faces in with an array of creatures and the elegant game of drawing and flopping cards. I love that whilst I needed it to be there for me, Magic was, from the fact that when I’ve been at my lowest darkest moments, I could go out and enjoy playing Magic with someone, to the marvelous time of becoming more aware of challenging myself with more diversity to my characters and worlds, Magic’s art and story seemed to agree. Thank you Magic. So here’s this piece, what I see as my way to pay tribute to 25 years (that’s almost my age) of Magic the Gathering, it’s only a whisper of it’s effect and influence on me whilst I am hoping it feels as awesome a piece as I feel it is right at this moment. This month is insanity for me, my participation in the Gallery is a true first, my partially developed tabletop game Disastles is making massive progress over on Kickstarter (please take a look at that HERE) and that product and the relationships it’s making are laying the groundwork for something to be announced in the near future which is literally a career moment for me. I needed to just talk about this exact moment in time and I am so happy that I have this piece that’s just a small snippet of my life where a lot is going on, as in every life, and it’s just (as Fantasy Art almost always is) a lot more than a monster fighting another monster. Thanks for reading if you did I tried to share a lot of my influences both for context but especially because if you like art, you owe it to yourself to know some of these names and see their work, I owe so much to them myself

#my art #blog #art blog #mtgart

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thecartoonarchivist · 7 years ago

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Weekly Spotlight #4

Week number 4 of the Weekly Spotlight! I apologize for the wait; I’m still working out the kinks in my schedule.

Alrighty! So! Our weekly spotlight winner is:

*an even more vibrant drumroll!*

My Life as a Teenage Robot

I have a lot of fond memories of this show, as I’m sure many others do. Before sitting down and rewatching a couple episodes, from what I remembered about it, it was a little bit of an odd-ball. It always skirted this line of being accessible enough that the average viewer could relate to it while also being straight up bizarre enough to remember just how different this world is from our own. This show would mix the 1950′s aesthetic with science fiction concepts to cement itself, at least in my mind, alongside other animations such as Meet The Robinsons, George Shrinks! and, oddly enough, Samurai Jack. It was a slice of life, mixed with action and adventure, and some elements of horror? Which... ended up distinguishing itself from other similar “crime fighting teenagers” like Kim Possible, Teen Titans, or W.I.T.C.H. As a result, this show dealt with a lot of common problems and themes that teenagers faced in very odd ways, all under the guise of an action, sci-fi show.

So let’s have a little bit of a history lesson, shall we?

Back in the late 90′s, Nickelodeon began to host a show that was called Oh Yeah! Cartoons which has been called TV’s biggest animation development program ever. Dozens of filmmakers were contracted by Nickelodeon to create 7 minute cartoons that would be spliced together into a half-hour time-slot. This “show” would then air on television and depending on the approval ratings of the audience, these cartoon shorts would then be commissioned into a TV show for Nick. Producing nearly 100 of these cartoon shorts, this “animation laboratory” would jumpstart many individuals’ careers in the industry such as Seth MacFarlane, Vincent Waller, Dave Wasson, and Butch Hartman.

One such individual would be a man named, Rob Renzetti with a short titled, My Neighbor Was A Teenage Robot. Due to very high approval ratings, Nickelodeon commission for the show and would later on be titled, My Life As a Teenage Robot. It aired in 2003 and was eventually cancelled after 3 seasons (ironically) due to poor ratings.

So for our premise!

Jenny (or, XJ-9, as her mother calls her) is a crime-fighting, superhero robot who dreams of being a teenage girl just like other human beings. However, she has to juggle her duties as a superhero and her social life as a teenager, which leads wacky shenanigans, problems, and overall, grief for Jenny as she attempts to fit in. She’s partnered with her friends Brad and Tuck as they tag along on her adventures, and she even has an admirer named, Sheldon, who tries to woo her in his own awkward way. She fights monsters, aliens, and a robot queen named, Vexus who is trying to recruit Jenny her robot world the planet Cluster Prime, while also dealing with the Crust Cousins who are out to destroy Jenny’s social reputation. Can a girl ever catch a break?

These episodes are broken up into 2 eleven minute segments with problems that are usually resolved by the end of the episode. There isn’t so much of a “continuity” per se, but there are episodes that reference earlier ones so while you can dive right in with any old episode you want, I’d keep in mind which one I’m choosing.

So on the whole how did this series hold up?

Well, the first several episodes are pretty shaky. Although the visuals were very unique to watch and the soundtrack was entertaining to listen to, I felt that some of the episodes weren’t all that entertaining. The problems felt fairly realistic, or at least believable for a “teenage robot,” however, it was easy to tell that the creators were still figuring out what they wanted to do with this series. What kind of character did they want to make Jenny? What kind of dynamic did they want the support cast to be like? What kind of bad guys did they want Jenny to go up against? And as a result, some of the early episodes suffered in quality. Overall, I felt like the first season, especially a lot of the first half, was simply establishing the status quo of the series. Yet, in spite of this, there were several episodes that I felt that the series really hit its stride and gave a solid balance of uniqueness and familiarity that left me both intrigued for more and very entertained with the product I’ve received.

There were some episodes that left me simply... disturbed. Two of them being Attack of 5 and 1/2 ft. Geek and The Return of the Raggedy Android. Some of you might remember the second one as the skin episode... (And if you don’t, consider yourself blessed...) With Attack of the 5 and 1/2 ft. Geek, Jenny has a screw loose in her arm and solicits the help of Sheldon to fix her problem. Having a large passion for robotics, Sheldon is not only happy to help but also becomes extremely infatuated with Jenny after she saves him. Extremely infatuated. To the point of stalking her. And showering her with unnecessary gifts. The others kids at school even laugh at her and bully her for her newfound “boyfriend.” Jenny is obviously embarrassed and uncomfortable and finds any excuse to get away from him. Eventually, she gets a call from her mother saying that there’s a gang downtown (the Lonely Heart’s Club, btw) which is causing havoc and requires her assistance. With Sheldon following her every move, the gang gets very jealous of Sheldon and Jenny’s “relationship” and kidnaps Sheldon. Jenny has to swoop in and save him, having also finally snapped at having Sheldon being called her boyfriend. She goes off, calling Sheldon creepy, a stalker, and a host of other things that are not only accurate, but legitimate concerns that any other teenage girl would have in such a situation. Sheldon is hurt and in a weird turn of events, he saves Jenny after she gets captured during her rant. The episode ends with Jenny apologizing about what she said and says that maybe they can hang out sometime... as friends. Just... friends. Sheldon goes on to be a recurring character of the series, causing a lot of shenanigans and other problems as a result of his infatuation.

Since the series ended with Jenny never establishing a relationship with either Brad nor Sheldon, many speculate as to which one she would have started dating. Although there aren’t any definitive answers from the team about who would have ended up with, the team appears to favor Sheldon as a candidate. Which... I find very problematic.

Sheldon stalked her, made her uncomfortable, and through the course of the series, lied to her, toyed with her emotions, and caused her much emotional grief. And yet, she’s supposed to apologize to Sheldon for being so “cruel” even though she was voicing some legitimate concerns about his conduct, and eventually end up with him as a boyfriend? Nuh-uh. No bueno. That’s not exactly something you should be teaching little girls. If she is uncomfortable being around him, she shouldn’t be obligated to hang out with him--- even if it hurts his feelings. And by remaining friends with him, she’s using him for upgrades her mother denies; stringing him along with the possibility of being “more than friends”; and overall, setting up an uncomfortable situation for both of them to be in. I don’t see how that’s okay to promote that kind of relationship to any kid. It’s just simple wish fulfillment and for a TV show that will be shown to children, that’s not okay. Keep it in your personal diary, or on your personal computer, because promoting this sort of relationship is extremely toxic and I don’t approve. At all.

Now... the infamous skin episode...

The basic problem of the episode is that Jenny wants to hang out at teenage hotspot called Mezmer’s. However, the owner of the shop won’t allow her in because she’s a robot. Remembering the freakish false skin that her mother designed her several episodes before, she attempts to reuse it after having received several upgrades to make it more believable. And it works! She becomes beautiful! More popular! She even gets to dance with Don Prima, the local heartthrob that Jenny has a crush on! Overall, she’s simply... normal. However, the second-skin seems to have a life of its own and puts itself on in Jenny’s sleep. It coaxes her to be more normal, to stop fighting crime, to focus on her beauty and her looks because that’s what a normal girl does. But once Brad becomes endangered by an intergalactic biker gang that threats destroy the shop, Jenny sheds her new skin and learns to accept herself for all her imperfections and unique personality traits. Because that’s what’s truly normal about her.

This episode was probably the most prominent that I remembered watching as a kid. And for a good reason too... This. Episode. Was. Horrifying! I’m not even kidding! Rewatching this as an adult, I kept thinking to myself “This is a children’s show?!?” One of the first interactions that we see with this new skin is that it claws its way up Jenny’s body while she shouts, “I can’t breathe!”

Later on, we see the exoskin crawl its way across Jenny’s floor and attack her like a snake while she sleeps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJjJmGv6ztY

(The video is pretty poor quality, but it’s the only one I can find.)

What. The. Fuck.

Oh, but it’s alright because she sheds the skin in the end and everything returns to a relative normal.

Except for the fact that the ending implies that the skin takes another victim and survives. Yeah. IT’S A REAL THING.

The message that the episode taught was great. It’s a message that teenage girls really do need to hear: that you have your own normal and that trying to be others’ version of “normal” can end up changing who you really are and up taking away all of the cool, badass qualities that make you, well, you. The problem is that this episode is so terrifying how the hell do you show this to kids?!? The fact that I remembered this episode so vividly despite the fact that I haven’t seen this show since it aired is a testament to the fact that it I probably shouldn’t have watched it as a child. I just... I’m baffled on how this got made! It’s... just... *shivers.*

I mean, questionable episodes aside, the show itself was interesting. The visuals were certainly unique and interesting to watch. The character designs were so original and iconic that going back and watching the original cartoon short, it’s kind of crazy that they weren’t always like that. The soundtrack, sound effects, even some of the voice acting was enjoyable the listen to. As I said before, it has a very 50′s aesthetic with a futuristic twist, which gives it this odd balance between feeling dated but also surprisingly modern. The backgrounds appear to be hand-painted, which is probably the reason for its dated look; I think it was a rather nice touch. I honestly have to give it to the sound effects department for being so on top of the little noises and such for every little movement Jenny made. It really created a sense of life in the character and I really did appreciate it in the small moments. I will have to say though, going back and watching this series, it didn’t exactly age as well as I had hoped. There were some nice episodes that I enjoyed but many of the episodes I found were pretty mediocre at best. Maybe it’s simply because I’ve gotten older and many of the jokes/gags just weren’t funny anymore. Maybe it’s because the characters themselves were simply 2-dimensional at best and dealt with stereotypical teenage problems. I’m not sure but really, I just wasn’t amused. Now, maybe I just need to watch more of this series as it appears to be a bit of a slow burn but really I’m just not that hype to jump on rewatching it.

If I had to rate this show, I’d probably give it a 6.8 out of 10.

I’ll probably sit down and rewatch all of this at some point; after all, it seems decent enough. But really, if I never watch it again, I wouldn’t be too upset. It’s pretty much what I’d call “bubble gum TV;” if I want to turn on something mindless for a little while, I’d probably watch it but I wouldn’t be too invested. It’s just pretty... bland.

I think a lot of people have a bit of rose-tinted goggles when looking at this show and as such, it becomes kind of hard to criticize it. Does it deserve to be forgotten? Not necessarily. But I don’t think that it’s really as great as a lot of people think of it to be.

As for me, I’m gonna put this back in the shelves of my vault to watch one day. But when that day will be? We’ll just have to wait around and see what happens.

[Edit 11/21/118: I’m testing out a new tagging system. Let’s see if this fixes the broken links issues.]

If there are any corrections you’d like to make in regards to this post, please feel free to send me a message with your corrections and I’ll get back to it as soon as I can!

Do you remember a cartoon your friends have never heard of? Got a scene from an animated film that you’re dying to know the name to? Send your questions to The Cartoon Archivist and I’ll see what I’ve got in the vault!

#my life as a teenage robot #nickelodeon #nicktoons #TEENick #SNICK #weekly spotlight #2005~2010 #cartoons #wow this one was popular with nick #I tagged it as 2005-2010 because it premiered during those years #but the thing is that it piloted in 1999 so...#It's just got a weird timeline I guess.

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diegoortizsotobutliteraltrash · 7 years ago

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Design your own blog

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#blogger #blog #wordpress

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rebelsandrulebreakers-blog · 8 years ago

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In Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, Lila and Elena’s experiences through the public education system as well as in their neighborhood and families show how language is both a fluid and powerful source that can enable socioeconomic development for those who have access. Elena is set free from the constraints of her violent, abusive, oppressive, negative, domestic, neighborhood because she had access to language. At the end of the novel we see that language and literacy have quite truly set Elena free while Lila is trapped; Lila has hit the ceiling of her available resources before the finish line, and she is stuck. Elena has broken free, and Lila encourages her to keep going.

A common theme in the novels of this course is that language can give someone the power to describe what is happening to them and around them. The female protagonists we’ve encountered often find themselves stuck because they cannot express what they are feeling. In some cases, such as in Nightwood, the world hasn’t made a word for a particular concept yet. Instead of being a lesbian or simply a woman attracted to another woman, Robin is a freak along with anyone else who can’t find a label that already exists. She can’t even find the words to define herself.

In My Brilliant Friend, though, we see this power in effect when Lila verbalizes what everyone is thinking and trying to suggest about her marrying Stefano. They tell her to be careful about his intentions and how he is courting her, and she responds by saying, “’Look, Marcello tried in every possible way to buy me but no one is going to buy me.’” (Ferrante 242). Lila uses language to voice what is happening to her and that she knows what people are afraid of. Everyone else is thinking it, but she put it quite literally and clearly when she says this.

Though it comes much later (as in, when she writes her story), Elena finally uses language to describe what Donato Sarratore did to her and how it made her feel. “In fact, this is the first time I’ve sought words,” she says “for that unexpected end to my vacation” (Ferrante 233). She uses language to work out why she couldn’t love Nino anymore, or rather why she had to stay away from him even though she did love him.

“Seeing him immediately brought to mind Donato Sarratore, even if they didn’t resemble each other at all. And the disgust, the rage aroused by the memory of what his father had done without my being able to repulse him extended to Nino. Of course, I loved him… I [rackled] my brains: Why do you behave like that, the father isn’t the son, the son isn’t the father, behave as Stefano did with the Pelusos. But I couldn’t. As soon as I imagined kissing him, I felt the mouth of Donato, and a wave of pleasure and revulsion mixed father and son into a single person” (Ferrante 255).

Xuela does the same with The Autobiography of My Mother. The final paragraph is her final confession. By telling the story she is able to conclude that she lived her sad life so that she may survive, and that she did. She uses words to understand herself.

Not only does language have power in itself, but holds a certain kind of weight when it is written down. Spoken word is important but can be forgotten; the written word lives on forever. We see this is Foxfire. Maddy writes down, as Legs suggests, exactly as it happens. Memory cannot compete with the true facts that Maddy records on her typewriter. When she reflects on her recordings, she can relive the true experience. And no one can challenge her because she wrote it down.

In My Brilliant Friend, the written word carries its value in actual money. Lila and Elena realize this at a young age when Lila decides to write The Blue Fairy: “We thought that if we studied hard we would be able to write books and that the books would make us rich” (Ferrante 70). While the girls’ attempt was fruitless, as Maestra Oliviero never takes even the slightest peek, we find out later in the novel that they had the right idea. In chapter eleven, we find out that Donato Sarratore has written and published a book. He is transformed from a man into a poet in the eyes of the neighborhood, and Lila is giddy with the idea that the whole Sarratore family will become rich because of this book.

Even Lila’s shoe drawings are a good example. While they may not be words, Lila drew shoes designs, thus materializing her ideas. These drawings would lead her all the way into marrying a very wealthy, powerful man who could help her family. No one would have listened to her if she would have just described the shoes; she had to visually show how unique and good they were (people also don’t take her seriously because she is not a boy). Stefano and Rino had to see this in order for the shoes to eventually come to be. Writing things down gives power and money (like Maddy and the typewriter).

Elena uses language to describe herself. “As soon as I could,” she says, “I locked myself in the bathroom and looked in the mirror, naked” (Ferrante 96). She uses words that she probably used from society to describe herself (ex. “I got fat). Xuela had this same moment, and maybe all girls have this moment, but Xuela falls in love with her body. Elena is instead ashamed because she is told by people like her mother that her breasts are too big. She looks inappropriate, according to her mother and the boys at school, which she absolutely cannot help.

Another super power of language is that it gives status without explanation. No questions asked. Everyone is impressed when Lila and Elena first go to school and do well in their language courses. The novel doesn’t mention the other subjects like Arithmetic very often because their importance is almost nothing compared to the way people in the town value language and literacy. Almost none of the adults can read, so for a child to be able read is to see a glimpse of a brighter future. Elena’s father, though terribly abusive towards her, takes her to town and is proud of her for maybe the first time after she gets her first set of nines.

“Illiteracy does not occur at random but is typically the plight of poor and powerless people, and it is a fundamental manifestation of the problem of social inequality” (“Women and Illiteracy”). The people in Elena’s neighborhood are illiterate because they are poor, so for Elena to learn how to read and write means that maybe she can become something more than poor.

We see this idea of status in literacy again in chapter five when the girls are beginning to talk about their feelings towards boys: “’Why do you say no’” Lila asked [Elena] in dialect. I answered unexpectedly in proper Italian, to make an impression, to let her understand that, even if I spent my time talking about boyfriends, I wasn’t to be treated like Carmela” (Ferrante 103). Elena knows that she, Lila, and Carmella are all guilty of discussing the same subject matter, but she believes speaking properly will elevate her and will somehow justify the “petty” talk. She’d be talking about the same thing regardless, but depending on how she says it will push her up or pull her down on the socioeconomic ladder.

This leads me to my next point, which is that language is fluid. Very often throughout the novel, we hear Elena say things like “I said in Italian” or “she said in dialect” to express the tone of situation and of the person speaking. Why does it matter in which language the character is speaking? And why would they choose to speak better or worse depending on whom they are speaking to? Nino expresses himself in Italian more so than in dialect, and this is attractive to Elena (Ferrante 215). Just how in chapter eighteen she says she wants a boy who wears pants, she wants a boy who can speak the way people richer than her do. Pants means manhood and manhood means class. She speaks in dialect when she wants to relate to her peers but in Italian when she wants to rise above them. Fluidity of language represents the way people, Elena, can shift between social classes.

Language also helps people communicate. A problem for characters in the novel is that they cannot express how they feel, and this resorts to violence. “Numerous studies have reported that more education for women results in fewer children per family, less infant mortality, marriage at a later age, healthier children, and better reared and educated children.” (“Women and Illiteracy”). Children are the future, but if they grow up with violence in an absence of language, they will grow up to foster the same.

Women are often the victim of the violence, and this of course correlates to literacy as well. Women are truly an abused group, and while it might be nice for them to use language like Elena does to escape, they can’t due to lack of access. Lila is our prime example. “We sense early on that Lila will stay trapped in her world, and that Elena, the writer, will get out” (The New Yorker). She has the intelligence and the will to rise above the neighborhood, to escape the trap of eternal domesticity, but she can’t because 1) she doesn’t have the money and 2) she doesn’t have the encouragement or assistance from her teachers like Elena does (because of who her family is, something over which she has no control). When Elena mentions Lila to her teacher, her teacher responds “if one wishes to remain a plebian, he, his children, the children of his children, deserve nothing. Forget Cerullo and think of yourself” (Ferrante).

Women, especially women in poor neighborhoods, don’t have as much access to education. In chapter 15 when Rino decides he will pay for his sister to go to school, his father asks him “why should your sister, who is a girl, go to school” (Ferrante 69). Such a statement says so much about the world these characters live it.

Language gives strength. It gives excitement and motivation to Lila when she has access, and it gives Elena freedom because she has more. It gives these characters the ability to describe what is happening to them and in the world around them. It even allows Elena to have a better life than anyone in her family or neighborhood could have dreamed. The issue is that Elena is the only one who got to truly reap the benefits of literacy. Lila hit a wall, as many women in literature and in life do. It’s been proven what a better world we would have if women could read and write, but we can’t make that change until they have access. Lila’s experience shows reality, and Elena’s shows hope.

- Catherine DeBuys

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sally-mun · 8 years ago

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As someone who hasn't, wouldn't, and won't be experiencing Major/Minor (or whatever it was called) could you perhaps analyze more specifically some of the things you felt were missteps more in depth, so others who decide they might want to make a visual novel or even just a story, might be able to avoid the same issues? I realize this might not be your area of interest, but I'm always interested in these kinds of analyses.

Man, where do I even begin.

I suppose I should start by saying that this game could have been fine; I don’t necessarily hate this game for the story, even if I think it’s uninspired. I play lots of point-and-click games and usually enjoy them (even the stupid ones) so long as they have merit in one area or another. But that’s the core of the problems with Major/Minor: It has NO merit to work with. Its construction shows absolutely no understanding of this genre of game design. Or of writing. Or of entertainment in general. Or of simply respecting one’s audience.

First and foremost, let’s discuss visual novels.

The critical difference between a novel and a visual novel is interactivity; a novel is a set and done deal that takes its readers along for the ride, whereas a visual novel invites the readers to be part of the ride itself. The direction of the story is influenced by the player, and this allows them to personally take ownership of later events. It’s the sort of game that tries to put you in the role of the protagonist in the most direct form possible. Like other first-person games your view as a player is exactly that of the character you’re playing, but in a VN’s case it’s like reading a comic book in a choose-your-own-adventure format.

Major/Minor not only fails on both the visual and novel elements, but it also fails when combined as a visual novel.

1) Visual

For the most part, visual novels don’t have a lot of action. They primarily consist of conversations with NPCs and usually take place in static locations. For this reason, both the characters and the environments need to have a lot of personality. Players need to feel like they’re actually having conversations with the characters and that they’ve entered a unique location that sees real use. This is the red, meaty center of how VNs engage and gratify their players.

Designing characters in a visual novel is about more than giving each one a different face; it’s about giving each character enough of a range of actions and emotions to sell the idea that the character is actually interacting with you, and in a way that’s truly unique from every other character. In real life, people do all sorts of crap when speaking: Our expressions change, we gesture with our hands, our posture varies, and sometimes we even have small ticks associated with certain topics or emotions. Between these visual cues and the actual discussions themselves, players ought to know the NPCs well enough to be able to describe them like real-life friends by the end of the game.

This brings us to Major/Minor’s first serious offense: Every character has one face. Typically in a VN, each character has a minimum of half a dozen expressions, poses, and gestures/ticks to match the different emotions they’ll need to exhibit over the course of their conversation topics. The characters in Major/Minor can only make a single expression and pose throughout the entire game, which immediately leads to some seriously disjointed discussions. It’s hard for me to take a character seriously when they say they’re angry with me when the art staring through the computer screen is bright, cheerful, and apparently mid-laugh. Sorry, NPC #672, I really don’t care that you’re allegedly on the brink of tears, because your singular piece of character art is so smarmy and mischievous that I forgot you were trying to tell me something tragic.

What makes this even more annoying is that most of the characters DO have a secondary piece of art, but it’s only ever used ONE time as an introduction to a new character before the game chucks it in the bin and we never see it again. Each character COULD have had at least two expressions if the dev had planned his commissions carefully enough, buuut instead he chose to get two shots that are barely distinguishable from one another so there could be a ~=*FLOURISH*=~ when we see someone for the first time. Granted, two per character still isn’t anywhere near enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than just one! It makes me wonder why he bothered to spend the money on a second image for each character at all, since half of these commissions only get about 10 seconds of screen time. What a waste.

And hey, speaking of wasted opportunities, let’s talk more about the environments! Lots of visual novels don’t spend much energy on their backgrounds, and although that’s usually fine (albeit not my first preference), Major/Minor seriously needed to think more about its settings. For the moment I’ll ignore the laziness of the fact that the backgrounds are generic photos with a blur filter over them; what’s more important is that this game loves to tell us all kinds of random crap about the rooms we’re in, especially during the scenes that take place in Japan. This game would’ve benefited dearly from simply having more detailed backgrounds and just letting us observe the goings on of the room on our own. Y’know, because that makes it more... visual.

Honestly, if it were me, I would’ve taken it all a step further and gone full-blown Ace Attorney on the environments. In AA games, investigating the scene is very important because you have to look for clues. I’m not saying Major/Minor needed to let you hunt for items, but I do think that it could’ve cut a ton of random information from the text by simply letting us inspect the backgrounds. That way the players that want to know what a kotatsu is can find out on their own time and players that already know or don’t care can move on.

Something else that would’ve brought the game a much-needed boost of interest is cut scenes. As noted earlier, visual novels don’t tend to have a lot of action, so when something physical DOES happen, it makes an impact. One way to maximize that flash of excitement is with a cut scene – or at least, the visual novel equivalent of one. A “cut scene” in a VN isn’t typically a full motion video like most video games boast; it still makes use of a static image, but it’s an image whose quality far surpasses that of the rest of the art in the game. Maybe it’s abnormally large and the camera slowly pans across for dramatic effect, or maybe it’s a scene drawn from an interesting angle that isn’t the player’s POV. Some games take this even farther and really do animate their cut scenes a bit (usually on par with a nice animated gif). Lots of VN cut scenes make use of sound effects or action-specific music cues to keep the player emotionally involved with the scene, as it’s a moment that’s out of the player’s control.

Major/Minor, on the other hand, does none of this. Much like the drought of facial expressions, the game simply pelts you with paragraph after paragraph to tell you about the events taking place around you, rather than simply letting you see for yourself and be, y’know, involved. Even a handful of cut scenes that had some real effort put into them would’ve really given this game some pep. Not only would it have kept me engaged as a player, but it would’ve weeded out even more unnecessary narration.

Oh, and speaking of weeding shit out of the text…

2) Novel

The writing in this game badly, badly needed to be edited. Like, so badly it makes me physically hurt from how poorly this text is constructed. I’m not talking about the simple things like misspellings and failed capitalizations, I mean BIG mistakes, like sentence fragments and improper conjugations and completely misusing some words all together. It’s also excruciatingly repetitive. Never in my life have I ever seen prose that recaps itself so frequently – sometimes literally within minutes of the event that it’s reminding you of. It even recaps itself within the same block of text a few times.

It’s pretty obvious the dev never allowed a seasoned editor to proof the text, but it’s so unbelievably bad that I’m not even sure the dev himself ever gave it a second glance. It reeks of being a first draft that was never once revisited; actually, it strongly reminds me of the sort of stories I myself wrote when I was about 13. At that time I wanted so badly to write big, dramatic stories! Stories that had deep themes and lots of intrigue! With a complicated plot and several subplots!! And lots of characters that would all totally be different and completely matter!!!! But the problem was I was so wrapped up in wanting to make my stories big, impressive epics that I stretched myself way too thin and everything came out incredibly shallow. It’s honestly kind of eerie to think back on the things I wrote as a kid while I play this game. The similarities are so striking that I can’t tell if this is something the dev wrote at that age and just never decided to polish, or if he did write it as an adult but has the writing skill-level of a teenager.

But honestly, I’d overlook all the technical flaws and melodrama this guy could throw at me if he would just show and not tell. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the oldest rules in the book when it comes to storytelling, and for good reason: Telling instead of showing is not only fucking boring, but it treats the reader like an idiot. If a writer knows what they’re doing, they shouldn’t have to tell, because they’d just demonstrate those things instead.

For example, let’s examine another huge flaw with the writing: Incredibly shallow characterizations. Early in the game the player meets a character named Rook. Rook is very rude. I know this because the game tells me. All. The. Time. I legit don’t remember how many times the game has mentioned that Rook is rude at this point. The dev seems completely oblivious to the notion that you don’t have to tell the player these things. You can just… write Rook as being rude. Trust me, my dude, I can figure out if a character is an asshole or not. Not only can Rook’s rudeness be demonstrated by how he treats me as a player, but it can be further reinforced by other characters reacting to him in a put-off manner. If you’re so concerned that I won’t pick up on the fact that Rook is a rude person just based on how he behaves, then you’re doing it wrong, end of discussion.

But then, as I said, the characterizations are shallow in general. Everyone tends to have their one basic trope and the story rests on the idea that you know what the character is. None of the scenes go out of their way to really dig into who someone is – which is kind of amazing, honestly, since the prose is so obsessed with making sure you know the most inane and unrelated shit half the time – and even after I’ve known a character for several chapters they still feel like a cardboard cut-out to me.

To be honest, I’m kind of impressed by the sheer volume of ways that Major/Minor fails at showing instead of telling. It tells you what characters are like instead of just letting you interact with them, it tells you about the places you visit instead of just letting you view them, it tells you every single time the characters have a mood shift or expression change because it couldn’t be bothered to give them each more than one face, and it hamfists unnecessary information into the script where it’s unneeded and interrupts the scene – and THEN, it makes SURE you notice that it’s telling instead of showing by repeating those things over and over and over again!

All of this is further exacerbated, by the way, because the dev has no idea how to tell a story in the first place. Even with all the above flaws, I miiight have still been able to enjoy this game if it was just a compelling narrative in any sense of the word at all. I will happily deal with poor construction and telling-not-showing if the story still has some intrigue. Even a flawed story can have a mind-blowing plot and keep you reading just to find out what happens next, right? I thought so too, until I realized that Major/Minor goes SO far out of its way to spoil its own plot that it frequently makes you sit through scenes that you, the protagonist, are not even present for. Yes, in a game that’s built upon being a first-person experience, the story will slam on the brakes and take you OUT of the protagonist’s shoes to make you sit by as an observer to events that probably would’ve been an great reveal later on had the dev just kept his mouth shut.

3) Visual Novel

So the visuals suck and the writing sucks, but hey, lots of games get by without investing much in those areas. Could Major/Minor pull it together and at least give the player an interesting mechanic? Hahahaha no, of course it didn’t. As far as the gameplay is concerned, Major/Minor is so bad that in many ways I hesitate to even call it a game.

The cornerstone of visual novels is making choices. They can range from serious decisions that determine the overall outcome of the game or small cosmetic details, but either way, the core of this gaming style is putting the player in the driver’s seat as often as possible. When playing Major/Minor, however, the player is strapped into a straight jacket, blindfolded, and tossed into the trunk of the damn car. This game is so reluctant to surrender control of the narrative that it’s not uncommon at all to go through entire sections of the game having made no choices whatsoever. It fails so spectacularly as a visual novel that I’d be willing to bet that the dev had never played one before. He is astonishingly disinterested in what makes a visual novel enjoyable to the player.

There’s a principle in game design called Illusion of Control. The goal of this idea is to allow the player to feel like they’re in charge of the game while actually keeping them within strict boundaries. It applies to a lot of games, but it’s especially important in visual novels. Players need to be able to dictate how the story progresses, even if some of those choices make no real impact on outcomes. For example, players can enter conversation trees with NPCs that seemingly offer a lot of control – perhaps the player chooses the discussion topics, or can decide if they want to be shy or snarky in their replies – and yet at the end of the scene there could realistically be no change to the story’s progress. The greater point is that the player feels like they handled the conversation the way they wanted to. This allows them to still feel like they’ve gotten somewhere and that they accomplished something.

Major/Minor appears to scoff at the very idea of this, like the game’s worried you’ll cramp its style if it gives you too much power.The player is allotted no input whatsoever on how the PC treats the other characters, what subjects to discuss, where they’d like to go, how to react to the actions of other characters… It’s truly mind-blowing just how consistently the game misses opportunities to allow the player even the illusion of control. For example, there’s a scene where the player character (PC) is awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the door, and no options are offered on how the player would like to handle this. A better game might allow the player to choose if they want to pretend to keep sleeping, or call out to whomever is knocking, or try escaping out a window, or crack the door open to see what the person wants. Even if it’s an absolute necessity to the plot that this person enters the room, it’s still better to let the player choose, because there are a plethora of ways to redirect each of those options back around toward the character getting in.

Unfortunately, Major/Minor is just too damn lazy to be bothered with gameplay, and the PC just lets the stranger in with no input from the player. Soon after, the stranger attacks the PC, which would again be a prime opportunity for lots of reactionary options: The player could duck! Or the player could punch their assailant! Or maybe they could kick instead! Maybe they’d try to run away or call for help! Buuut no, Major/Minor really doesn’t care what you want YOUR CHARACTER to do, and it’s already decided that you’re going to put up no fight at all and immediately pass out. It’s by far one of the most unsatisfying things I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

The disconnect between the player and the protagonist is so extreme that I honestly don’t feel it’s a fair assessment to refer to the protagonist as the “player character.” It’s not uncommon for visual novel protagonists to speak in the first person, but in most games it feels like the PC is speaking on your behalf because they’re acting according to your will. The protagonist of Major/Minor decides so many things for themself that it stopped feeling like “my” character a very, very long time ago. This character isn’t me and never was; it’s the main character of a book that I didn’t ask to read, who very occasionally pauses to ask my opinion on something.

HEY HOWDY HEY SPEAKING OF PAUSING… If you boot this “game” up for a session, you’d better hope you have plenty of time on your hands to get through it, because you’re at the dev’s mercy for when you can save your progress. Being able to save anytime you want is a staple of visual novels because 1) people read at wildly different paces, and 2) for many people, excessive reading makes them tired. Not only that, but sometimes life just plain gets in the way and you have to pick up and go on short notice. Major/Minor ignores all of these factors and leaves the player relegated to appointed checkpoints throughout the game.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that checkpoints are inherently bad, but they do need to be used very, very wisely. Any game (VN or otherwise) that doesn’t allow the player to save anytime they want needs to be sure checkpoints are reasonably close from any given location, and furthermore that they’re spaced at regular intervals. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, however, the dev flushed that idea down the toilet along with what was left of his common sense and parents’ love. Sometimes Major/Minor stacks save points practically back-to-back within the span of a few minutes, and in other cases I’ve literally played for over and hour before the game finally rewarded me with the option to save.

There’s no discernible pattern or technique that I can detect for when save points are bestowed on the player; you’re not even guaranteed an opportunity to save when the game switches chapters! I would say that I can’t fathom why the dev thought this would be a good idea, but let’s not kid ourselves here, it’s clear that the dev never thought this through in the first place. If he had, he might’ve noticed that players being uncertain about whether or not they’ll be able to save their progress discourages them from playing at all.

Also, before I fully move on from the game design, I just wanted to make a brief side note about the music. To be honest, I turned the music off a VERY long time ago, so I don’t even remember what it sounds like; however, I’ve read that all of the music in the game is from the free assets you get in RPG Maker. I’ve further read that the free assets (both audio and visual) were the entire reason the dev decided to use RPG Maker for this game in the first place, in spite of the fact that there are other programs out there specifically geared toward making visual novels. This is worth mentioning because it further highlights just how lazy this entire game is. It’s not a sin to use free program assets – that IS what they’re there for, after all – but when you ONLY use the free assets and then advertise your game on Steam for being sooo creative and original, AND have the gall to charge $20 for it?? Yeah, that’s a gigantic slap in the face.

Speaking of Steam, you’d think a game like this would’ve been weeded out by the gaming community for being the garbage that it is, right? After all, there’s a ranking right at the top of the page showing the proportion of good and bad reviews it’s gotten, and right now it says the feedback is “very positive.” I will say that I do take community feedback into consideration when I’m thinking about a game that I haven’t otherwise heard of before, and my misstep with this game has definitely taught me a valuable lesson. When I saw that the game is ranked “very positive” and I scrolled down to see several glowing reviews, I felt that was sufficient enough research to know if the game was worth my time and money.

However, upon trying out the game and realizing just how badly I’d been deceived, I did a little more digging. As it turns out, the dev is known for flagging negative reviews as “abusive” and getting them deleted, allowing him to effectively filter out the bad press so long as he can make some kind of a case to Steam. This debacle has taught me that it’s not enough to scroll to the bottom of a Steam page for user reviews, as those tend to be the most recent; what you do instead is click the “Read all [x] reviews” link, as those reviews are sorted by popularity. THIS is where you’ll find the reviews that the community has deemed the most helpful and informative, and in this case, it’s like night and day. ALL of the highest-ranked reviews of Major/Minor are negative, and the numbers are staggering. Literally HUNDREDS of people have ranked these terrible reviews as helpful, and most of them are in the 80-90% range on agreement. You have to load more reviews four times to find even one single positive post, and once you do start getting into the positives, the upvotes are significantly fewer.

SO, in conclusion...

I want to say that’s about all I have to give on this subject, but the sad truth is it’s not. I could probably critique this game line-by-line, moment-by-moment, if I really wanted to. Fortunately for my sanity, I really don’t want to. … Not right now, anyway. I’m sure I’ll lose it at some point and decide to go through and count all the missed opportunities in the game or something, but I won’t be doing that right now, thankfully.

So in the vein of others learning from the mistakes of this game: If you were thinking about buying Major/Minor, don’t. If you bought it a while ago during a sale and were thinking about starting to play it, don’t. If you’re interested in making a visual novel and wanted to learn from this game’s mistakes… Well granted there’s a lot to learn about what not to do, but still, don’t give this lazy, deceptive dev any more money. Learn from this guy’s shortcomings based on the feedback of players. Hell, read or watch a Let’s Play if you really want to experience it first-hand. Just please don’t buy and play this game. As a favor to ME, please don’t buy and play this game.

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#sciver #Sallymun plays Major/Minor #I hope you guys enjoy this because it was not easy #if you know someone who's thinking about this game please show them this post #REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE

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