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doodlebeeberry · 4 years ago

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Rusted Fuel Line

Ruby discovers that the van is, in fact, a mess

you know how they said that Ruby fixed the van? like how they said that bubble grows aloe vera? yea that fact has not left my brain

i apologize in advance for knowing nothing about cars or car repair

(ao3 link in source)

She held the flashlight between her teeth, shining it up into the exposed underbelly of the van. She shifted her jaw carefully, moving the light in minute increments to turn sections of the shadowy mass into an only slightly clearer tangled mess of thin metal pipes coated thick with filth and nuts trapped in place by years of wear, neglect, and rust. Small beads of sweat crept down her smooth sides, cutting through patches of dirt and muck that clung to her. Despite the lateness of the day and the slowly setting sun, the air remained humid and heavy with the summer’s heat. Gas-scent was all she could catch, and small drips of it dribbled from the rusted fuel line onto the red gem below. Ruby hummed.

“Is it broken?” Bubble called from somewhere out of view. She’d been the one to notice the line of fuel trailing behind the van that afternoon, more than halfway through return trip from the nearby market, goodies for themselves and their friends in tow. Now she paced slowly around the van, if the shadows cast by her legs were any indication, awaiting Ruby’s verdict.

Broken was a bit of an understatement. The poor van was a mess. Several screws and bolts had corroded, some of them nearly past recognition. The exhaust pipe bore a few cracks and holes, some seemingly filled by little more than old peeling glue, and all across the undercarriage was a layer of dirt and dried-out salt that had been steadily wearing the whole assembly down. And that said nothing of the fuel line, which had rusted through almost completely, large gashes and cracks spilling fuel out onto the ground below. Quite frankly, the sight almost made her afraid to check anything else.

Instead, she counted it a miracle the thing had been able to start at all, not to mention get them out and back without killing them, and wiggled out from underneath. Bubble stared down at her once she emerged, the last dregs of sunset shining through her, distorted

“Uhh”—she plucked the flashlight from between her teeth—”do you remember the last time Pencil got it checked?”

“I—” Bubble paused, thinking. She hummed as she tried to count the years before realizing,

“I don’t think she’d ever brought it to a garage before...”

Ruby sighed.

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

She sat up as Bubble winced slightly.

“Is it that bad?”

"A bit worse actually?” she rubbed the back of her head, somewhat sheepish.

“There’s a lot of broken pieces down there. Probably a lot under the hood too, though I haven’t looked yet.”

“Oh.” Bubble fidgeted, downcast. The area was sparse for other people in general, so the odds of finding an actual garage anywhere nearby were almost comically slim. Even if they did find one, the cost of repairing the damage would be an issue of its own. Ruby stood, brushing off the grime.

“Yeah, but it’s ok, I can fix it!” She beamed at Bubble, who looked back, curious and seemingly just a bit skeptical.

“You can?”

“Mh-hm! That’s why they call me car-fixing Ruby!” She struck a confidant, if somewhat goofy, pose. Bubble chuckled.

“Why do you have so many nicknames?”

“Cause I’m good at so many things, silly, like how you’re plant-growing Bubble!” She threw an arm around her shoulders, careful not the press her sharper edges to her sides.

“Nobody calls me that?”

“Well, I’m gonna start calling you that. It’ll catch on.” She winked. Bubble blushed. The matter of the van was dropped, at least for the time being, as they chatted, night much too close to work.

Ruby, quite frankly, wasn’t so sure she could fix it. At the very least, she wasn’t as sure as she claimed to be. She knew how to do general car maintenance, change the oil, clean the air filters, that sort of thing, but the more complicated problems were a bit of a challenge. One of her family members—the specifics of who was lost on her—tried to teach her how to do more complicated repairs years ago, but she’d hardly learned to do more than replacing spark plugs before she’d left home to compete. She knew she lacked the knowledge, let alone the experience, to tackle it all, but they were already low on options, and she refused to let Bubble down after swearing she could.

So mid-morning the following day, as fluffy clouds drifted sleepily past the sun, she trotted up to the damaged van and popped open the hood. It took a few tries to lift it, the mechanisms having long been left unused. Once she did, a great plume of smog followed, soot turning her face from red to grey and sending her into a fit of sneezing and coughing as it passed. She waved it away and, after regaining her bearings, looked inside.

She had her work cut out for her, that’s for sure.

#this was just a quick bit of practice between other stuff so i forgot bubbles accent rip #anyways mechanic ruby rights #bfb #bfdi #battle for dream island #bfb ruby #bfb bubble #bubble bfb #ruby bfb #writin and ravin #hhh why wont the new editor show me my tags >:|

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years ago

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Hoo Noo Shmoo?

Never let it be said that this blog is flagging in its enthusiasm for flogging horses so dead they’re found in the glue bin at Office Max.

To whit, the Scorsese vs MCU brouhaha.

Bottom line: Scorsese is right. As well made as MCU movies are, they ain’t cinema, they’re glorified commercials to sell MCU product.

Full disclosure: I should know, since I wrote for G.I. Joe, Transformers, and a host of other toy-based syndicated animation shows. I’m happy with the work I did, I can point proudly to specific episodes I wrote that aspire to be more than mere half-hour commercials…

…but they ain’t art.

They ain’t art, despite our aspirations to do the best job we could, because ultimately we creators were not allowed to create what we felt best for our stories, but what Hasbro deemed vital to their sales.

(The closest we got to art was when Hasbro cancelled The Inhumanoids toy line in mid-production of the TV series, and said we could finish our broadcast commitment however we saw fit so long as it didn’t result in an FCC complaint. As a result, we went nuts.)

My Hasbro / Sunbow experience remains a highpoint of my creative life, so I’m not denigrating the talent, skill, ability, spirit, and enthusiasm of those making MCU movies.

…but they ain’t art.

Now, those who love MCU movies think Scorsese’s comments are a slam against them.

Welllll…no, not directly.

But they do underscore how popularity -- especially of media designed to push product -- is a faulty measuring stick for artistic merit.

Case in point: The Shmoo.

Wuzza shmoo, you ask (and thus proving my point)?

Shmoos were extremely popular in the late 1940s. Part of the wonderfully wacky world cartoonist Al Capp created for his hit Li’l Abner comic strip, shmoos represented a parable on American consumerism, modern day geese laying not mere golden eggs but birthday cakes with candles a’blazin’.

As Capp described them:

They reproduce asexually and are incredibly prolific, multiplying faster than rabbits. They require no sustenance other than air.

Shmoos are delicious to eat, and are eager to be eaten. If a human looks at one hungrily, it will happily immolate itself -- either by jumping into a frying pan, after which they taste like chicken, or into a broiling pan, after which they taste like steak. When roasted they taste like pork, and when baked they taste like catfish. Raw, they taste like oysters on the half-shell.

They also produce eggs (neatly packaged), milk (bottled, grade-A), and butter -- no churning required. Their pelts make perfect boot leather or house timbers, depending on how thick one slices them.

They have no bones, so there's absolutely no waste. Their eyes make the best suspender buttons, and their whiskers make perfect toothpicks. In short, they are simply the perfect ideal of a subsistence agricultural herd animal.

Naturally gentle, they require minimal care and are ideal playmates for young children. The frolicking of shmoos is so entertaining (such as their staged "shmoosical comedies") that people no longer feel the need to watch television or go to the movies.

Some of the more tasty varieties of shmoo are more difficult to catch, however. Usually shmoo hunters, now a sport in some parts of the country, use a paper bag, flashlight, and stick to capture their shmoos. At night the light stuns them, then they may be whacked in the head with the stick and put in the bag for frying up later on.

Of course, in the original strip continuity, the shmoos were quickly eradicated, driven to extinction by food packagers who feared bankruptcy.

It was a sharp, biting message, and one that looked critically at both insatiable consumerism and capitalism’s claims of superiority.

Capp, of course, was too savvy a marketeer himself to eliminate the shmoos entirely, and so he provided for one breeding pair to survive…and for the shmoos to make repeated appearances for the rest of Li’l Abner’s run.

Shmoo mania ran rampant with shmoo dolls, shmoo clocks, shmoo games, shmoo candy, shmoo snacks, and shmoo apparel.

The money truck basically backed up to Capp’s front door and dumped its load on his porch. Shmoos proved insanely popular and it seemed the mania would never end…

…except it did.

To mangle metaphors, you can only take so many trips to the same well before your audience starts asking “What? Beans again?”

And then, in a fickle flash, it’s over.

I’d be hard pressed today to find anyone younger than the boomer cohort who ever heard of Al Capp or Li’l Abner unless their school or community theatre presented the Broadway musical adaptation of the strip (the show remains popular with amateur theatrical troupes such as high schools and colleges because the huge cast of Dogpatch citizens guarantees everybody who tries out for the show will land some part in it).

For all their popularity and merchandise and media impact -- songs on the radio, big spreads in weekly news magazines -- the shmoos left virtually no cultural footprint.

(Full disclosure yet again: I wrote for a Scooby-doo knock-off by Hanna-Barbera called The New Shmoo and it was a piece of crap, abandoning the whole consumerism point of the original shmoos and making them -- or just “it” in our case -- a pseudo-funny dog sidekick for a squad of mystery solving kids. And it wasn’t a piece of crap because we didn’t try our best, it was a piece of crap because the shmoo was treated as ubiquitous “product” under the misconception that of course everybody younger than Joe Barbera would recognize the name and love the character so deeply that they’d simultaneously develop amnesia about what made the original character so appealing.)

Product.

That’s what one of the most brilliant, most poignant, most spot-on commentaries on rampant consumerism and ruthless capitalism ironically reduced down to. Product.

There’s a line in Jurassic Park that resonates here: ”Life will find a way.”

Let’s paraphrase that to “Art will find a way” because like life, art is an expression of the creative urge.

Right now, by and large, it’s trapped in the giant all encompassing condom of corporate consumerism, providing fun and pleasure and excitement, but not really creating anything new, to be wadded up and thrown away when the suits are done screwing us.

But every now and then there’s a tiny pinprick in the sheath, and when that happens there’s the chance of something wonderful, something meaningful, something of lasting value emerging.

It is possible for art to emerge from a corporate context, but only if the corporate intent is to produce a work of art for its own purposes. Michelangelo carved David as a work for hire, the local doge commissioning the sculpture because he wanted to impress peers and peasants by donating the biggest statue ever made by the hottest artist of the era (and even then Michelangelo needed to resort to subterfuge to keep the doge from “improving” on his work with “suggestions” [read “commands”].)

The very first Rocky movie was a work of art because the producers focused on telling a simple, singular story about a loser who could only win by going the distance, not by defeating his opponent but by refusing to be beaten by him.

It’s a great cinematic moment that rings true and it’s going to last forever…unlike sequels Rocky II - V where Rocky fights supervillains like Mr. T and a robot (hey, that was the movie playing in my head when I watched Rocky IV and it was a helluva lot more entertaining than what I actually saw onscreen).

The suits castrated Rocky, reducing him from a unique universal cultural touchstone down to…well…product.

The MCU movies are product; rather, they are two-hour+ commercials to sell product in the form of videogames, action figures, T-shirts, and Underoos.

The real art occurred almost 60 years ago when Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko knocked out page after page as fast as they could, drawing deep from the wellsprings of their own interests, experiences, and passions.

(“What about Stan?” I hear you ask. Look, we all love Stan, but truth be told his great contribution to the MCU came in his service as drum major for the Merry Marvel marching Society. God bless him for firing up the fan base’s enthusiasm for the Marvel bullpen’s work, but compare what his artists did before and after their collaboration with him to what he did before and after his editorial tenure at Marvel and it’s clear upon whose shoulders the muses rested.)

As much fun as MCU movies are (I’ve seen about 1/3 of ‘em and enjoyed most of what I saw), I also recognize in them the harm they do.

They are promoted heavily to sell product to raise the fortunes of one of the biggest corporations on the planet, a corporation that holds control over five of the largest, most popular entertainment brands on the market.

To protect their cash cows, Disney chokes potential rivals in their cribs.

Think there’s going to be another Alien or Predator movie now that Disney owns them and Star Wars? Why create rivals to a mega-successful property you already own? (I will be genuinely surprised if we see another Guardians Of The Galaxy movie in light of the faltering popularity of Star Wars in Disney’s eyes; they’re going to want to shore up their billion dollar investment rather than call it a day and let some upstart -- even an upstart they own 100% -- rob them of revenue.)

Disney’s battle plan to choke out all potential rivals leaves no room in the DEU (Disney Expanded Universe) for independent minded creators.

They want competent hired pens who can churn out the product they desire in order to bolster sales of other products derived from those.

(Even more full disclosure: I wrote for Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers as well as some Aladdin and Scrooge McDuck comic book stories.)

Disney’s MCU, for all its expertly executed whiz-bang, is a bloated, soulless zombie, a giant gaudy inflated parade balloon blocking the vision of others.

There’s a scene in the movie The Founder -- a genuine cinematic work of art that comments ironically on the selling of a product -- that applies here.

Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) relentlessly browbeats the McDonald brothers (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch) into letting him replace their real milkshakes with what will come to be known as the McShake, an ersatz product that at best reminds one of what a real milkshake should taste like.

The McDonald Brothers are horrified. Not only does it not taste like a real milkshake, but it goes against the very grain of what they desire as restauranteurs: To provide quality food quickly for their customers, trading value for value.

Kroc will have none of this. To him the customers are simply one more obstacle between him and their money.

He doesn’t see them as the source of his revenue, but as impediments to same.

What benefits them, what nurtures their diets, what gives them pleasure, what trades value for value is completely unimportant to him.

They exist only to make him rich and powerful.

By the end of the film, Kroc has effectively declared war on his own partners, his own employees, his own customers. He recognizes he is not in the business his customers and employees and partners think he’s in (i.e., fast food) but rather in the real estate business, buying land that McDonald’s franchises must lease from him in order to operate.

By the end, he’s not concerned with how well his customers eat, or how well his employees are treated, or how financially secure his franchise managers feel.

By the end, all he wants is the money, and he doesn’t care how his franchises make it so long as they pass it along to him.

As a result, McDonald’s contributes heavily to America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics, advising their employees to take second jobs so they can afford to continue working for them at substandard wages.

Disney’s MCU is a super-sized Happy Meal™ that’s ruining the cultural health of its consumers.

#Marvel #Disn #Jack Kirby #Stan Lee #Steve Ditko #Star Wars #MCU #Rocky #Martin Scorsese #media #movies #superheroes

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