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oldtypenewtype · 4 years

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7 years ago I had this article professionally translated. 1986 is considered to be one of if not THE defining years of the medium. In this article Newtype intervies 21 anime industry leaders to discuss what’s wrong with the industry, ways it can be fixed or just their gripes with with it all. A true snapshot of some of our anime heroes while they were younger.

*reposting article altogether in one post.*

アニメの予言者21人

21 Prophets of Anime アニメ大予言'86 Grand prophecy of Anime ‘86 今、アニメ界に求められているのは、こんな企画だ！私はこんな企画を出す！1986年のアニメ界をリードする21人が業界の問題点と自らの解決策を語る。これを読めばアニメの未来が見える。 This is the project needed by Anime world now! I propose this project! 21 leading personnel in Anime world in 1986 talk about problems in the industry and their solutions. You can see the future of Anime by reading this.

Page 46 & 47

(Article Title)

1985 was a flat year in the animation world. Let’s ask the hit makers who hit the home runs on how to put an end to this situation.

HAYAO MIYAZAKI (writer and director of “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”)

(Blurb)

What are the animated works that the young ones, the ten year olds to fifteen year olds want to watch? Doors will surely open if you keep them in mind.

It’s unthinkable that new hope can come out of TV when one episode from a TV series needs 3500 cells to be drawn. On the other hand, in movie theaters as well, there are no films that will mobilize moviegoers other than anime fans. I think that filmmakers have forgotten the basics of selling movies. Collaboration films intended for overseas markets are all the rage, and even though I want the fans who are in Japan to see these films, they can’t and all I’m left with is frustration. Only deterioration can come out of this situation. Actually, there isn’t even one anime today that is aimed at older kids in elementary school to kids in middle-school - the very kids who should be watching anime. (The anime available now) is aimed at younger kids at elementary school and then jumps straight into anime for college kid anime maniacs. It’s a tough time for fifteen year olds who are put aside by society. Twelve year olds to fifteen year olds are the kids who need the most comfort and yet the situation now is that they get their comfort from handheld video games. Those who produce animation are losing sight of their targeted audience. The remaining anime fans are making anime that they want to watch, and this is a symptom (of the present situation) that is beyond redemption. This is why video animation is still backward in terms of its production, and only its format is new.

If one has an earnest approach, children will definitely react. This is a real example - in a run-down middle school, in his morning greeting, a new principal said, “I don’t determine a person’s value by his or her grades or appearance”. Miraculously, all misbehavior was gone from that day’s afternoon onwards. What children want has always had just one theme - an adventure that saves the mind and heart.

(Caption for illustration at the top of the page)

The hero “Pazu” and heroine “Sheeta” from “Laputa: Castle in the Sky”. Mr. Miyasaki comments that “For a young lad, living at all times in itself is an adventure. The reason why Japanese adventure novels are boring is that the hero (in these novels) makes a living out of going on an adventure.”

SUGII GISABURO (executive director of “Touch”)

(Blurb)

What people want nowadays can’t be found in data. What is the secret of the hits “Night on the Galactic Railroad” and “Touch”?

Honestly speaking, if anything, I genuinely make animation to match my desires, not thinking that today’s animation is trending towards this way, or future animation should be this way. In other words, I think a great deal about my daily life, figuring out what is lacking and coming up with desires felt by everyone else. I just happen to be a person who creates, so I vent out those accumulated desires and discontent and let them combust in my work.

My works are quite heavy in terms of cycle and tempo, whether it be “Night on the Galactic Railroad” or “Touch”. I sometimes think if this kind of heaviness is ok or not. But that is because I have a desire for this heaviness, and also because I have this easy pleasure within me. Instead of work that is borne out of being hung up just on data, I think work that is borne out of my inner natural desires is more acceptable to people. In the meantime, “Touch” will be shown as an hour and a half movie in the spring so please look forward it.

ISAO TAKAHATA (producer of “Laputa”)

(Blurb)

Movies that make the mind and body come alive are what’s important. As for me, I am trying my hand at my first live action film. I am shooting a documentary.

I think nowadays, the thing that a lot of people working in anime has forgotten is the excitement they felt watching adventure movies when they were kids, the kind of excitement that even your body moved spontaneously. In that sense, I think that works such as Hayao Miyazaki’s films should be brought out to the rest of the world and after (producing his) “Nausicaa”, I am still producing. When kids’ minds are liberated, there’s no reason to think that they won’t spontaneously move. In this day and age dominated by computer games, a lot of kids’ play involve just using the brain and nerves so I’d like them to experience things that energizes the blood and makes the body dance. The difficulty is, I think it’s a difficult time now to have a situation in place wherein you let them experience adventure. If you can’t make people believe in the world portrayed onscreen, you can’t pull viewers into the adventure onscreen.

It’s not that I’m not doing my real job as a producer. I am now producing a live action documentary movie set in Yanagawa in Kyushu. It is about how our Japanese ancestors developed towns which utilized waterways. There is also a part in the movie that has graphic illustrations using anime. It’s less than 2 hours and is slated to be shown after the summer.

MAMORU OSHII (scriptwriter and director of “Angel’s Egg”)

(Blurb)

This is a warning!! Please reduce the number of collaboration animes before Japanese animation is annihilated.

If I’m going to be severe about it, I’d say that I want all collaboration animes gone.

Those who work in big studios and places with systems in place may not feel a sense of crisis yet. But in the case of freelance animators like us who work together and put together a workplace and disperse once our anime is done, a part of our actual work is outsourced. Recently however, the small video studios and finishing studios that we outsource to are loaded with collaboration work. Japanese animes can’t compete with collaboration animes in terms of profit so when that happens, we just have to rely on the goodwill of the studio bosses, or make them feel the same way we do with regards to the contents of our work, or by chance see an opening and aim for that, or appease them or plead with them. We can’t work in just that kind of a situation. That’s why it’s almost impossible to make highly compact and solid animes in Japan now. Even without going that far, it’s almost impossible to make even decent animes in the country today. In fact, anime TV series are almost all in shambles, and I can’t even be optimistic about the video quality of the anime we have now. In this kind of situation, I can’t help but seriously think if next year, our ideas can be made into anime.

(Caption for illustration at the left side of the page)

A girl from Mamoru Oshii’s original video anime “Angel’s Egg” (drawn by Seikou Nakura). Mr. Oshii revealed that he is having a hard time because there aren’t enough animators to make even just one anime video.

YOSHIKAZU YASUHIKO (director and screen director of “Arion”)

(Blurb)

I haven’t decided yet on what I will make after “Arion”. I will not take part in the new Gundam series.

I am very busy now with screen work for the anime “Arion” which will be shown in theaters on March 8th. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m conscious of the fact that this is my anime for 1985. Therefore, I haven’t decided yet on what my anime will be for 1986. I feel like I want to take a break for a year.

“Arion” is quite restrained for an anime to be shown in movie theaters. I’m happy that this movie is being touted as “the” main animation movie this spring but conversely, it’s a shame that there aren’t a lot of big anime movies for theaters. It’s already been decided that “Arion” is going to be shown in top-class movie theaters throughout Japan. It just shows how much anime has received recognition. I’d like to wait for animes that will pick up on this trend.

With regards to anime TV series, I was in charge of character design for “Z Gundam” this past year but I’ve decided not to be involved at all in the sequel’s new series. I think it’s better to relegate “Gundam” to the younger animators, starting with Hiroyuki Kitazume, who have grown so much in their craft. Now I sincerely think, if only someone as good as Kitazume were around eight years ago to help with “Gundam”, I would’ve been saved…

(Caption for illustration at the bottom of the page)

The heroine “Lesfina” from “Arion”, which was produced, character designed and screen directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. This is the drawing touched-up by Mr. Yasuhiko. As we have discussed in a series of character designers in last month’s issue, he breathes life into his anime characters, showing genius capabilities.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch it!

MASAMI YUUKI (manga artist)

As a rule, the three things I’d like to see are: “something that isn’t originally from manga”; “robot animation that isn’t dark”; and “in one year, a collaborative anime by Osamu Dezaki and Akio Sugino for release in Japan”. I can watch TV anime while casually lying around but I’d like anime that I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off of the screen, something that is both easy to watch and amusing. And as written in other magazines before, I’d like to see Mr. Hayao Miyazaki’s version of “Atragon”! (Translator’s note: “Undersea Warship” in Japan)

YUUKI KUDOU (actress and singer)

I’d definitely watch anime that’s fun to watch, anime that will make me happy. At any rate, I’d like a hero on the side of justice who will beat the hell out of the bad guys and put them in a bind.

RYOKO YAMAGISHI (manga artist)

If there were an anime like Disney’s “Fantasia”, I’d watch it!

Pages 48 & 49

(Article Title)

Major producers from each of the anime/production companies talk about their hits for 1986 and foresee what their companies will be producing

KENJI YOKOYAMA (Toei Animation Co.)

(Blurb)

The new hit TV show Gegege no Kitaro from the fall of 1985 which received top ratings reflects modern times.

This is what I’ve been thinking with the third conversion of Gegege no Kitaro into animation. One is the change in children’s thinking with regards to ghosts/monsters. Of course “Ghostbusters” and “E.T.” have influenced this change, and now kids consider ghosts almost as pets. So in this way I think that if you match the present mood and go in the direction of lighter anime, you’ll be able to create different things from before. Children’s lives are too managed now, so they’d want an outlet to vent too. And in a society that has too many things and where, if you have the money, you can buy anything, things like the Toyoda Company fraud scandal and shady investment journals can also be construed as monstrosities. This anime has this overall theme: In the ideal world of Kitaro, monsters, people, animals, grass and trees should all co-exist so I thought I’d have various new approaches within the anime.

As a new endeavor, our company is going into video anime. It’s called “Amon Saga” and we’re not just going to sell it in video format, (I’m also hoping) we can show it in any movie theater even for just one week otherwise it’ll just be too sad. Especially with regards to original works with names that aren’t well known, I think it’s dangerous to rely on just one production studio. After “Konpora Kid” ends, beginning February, we’re planning on animating “Kinka”, a serialized manga in the weekly magazine Shonen Jump.

(Caption for illustration on the left side of the page)

A figure from the very popular “Kitaro”. They can’t keep up with the demand for a ghost eraser that they’ve produced and now it is a hit product. It’s also been decided that there will be new movie releases for this anime in the New Year and in the spring.

EIJI YAMAURA (Nihon Sunrise Co.)

(Blurb)

Find common ground with your viewers and defeat this lethargic mood!

Sunrise has now expanded into six studios and at any given point in time, we plan to work simultaneously on two to three anime TV series, video anime, anime for movie theaters and collaboration anime. Overall, anime today is manga magazine-driven, so our question is how far can we go in staying on an original anime track. Robot animes have vastly decreased in number, so conversely, I think this is a chance for us to come out with epoch-making anime. I’d like to make anime that will allow us to seriously converse with our child viewers.

TOSHIMITSU SUZUKI (Artmic Co.)

(Blurb)

Making anime that will be understood by the whole world! The robot anime boom is shifting from transformation-type robots to robots that merge into one.

Speaking of Japanese products in the international market today, mechanical products come to mind. This is also true in the animation world since Japanese robot animes are extremely in vogue. Especially in the American market, they already have transformation-type robot animes, so animes that have robots that merge into one are new to them. We’ve already exported “Beast King GoLion”, following that, (we’re going to export) “Dancouga Super Beast Machine God”.

We at Artmic plan to make animation that can be exported to foreign markets and we also are also keeping in mind to configure these anime with universal values. The video anime “Gall Force” is the first step in that direction.

NOBUO INADA (Tokyo Movie Shinsha Co.)

(Blurb)

Our track remains the same - making collaboration animes for foreign countries but we also have new anime.

I can’t necessarily say that the present state of anime is good. But the passion for anime during the anime boom of “Gundam” and the like was an anomaly so I feel that the state of anime now is the real one.

As you may know, not only do we make anime for Japan but we also produce anime for foreign countries. It’s a difficult situation for us now to concentrate on anime just for Japan because of production costs. It can be said that Japanese anime should be improved from the very basic level.

In 1986, we plan to have “Little Nemo” and in the fall, an anime for movie theater release by the duo Desaki and Sugino. At any rate, we’re doing our best.

JUNZOU NAKAJIMA (Nihon Animation Co.)

(Blurb)

We’re aiming for improving the quality of our masterpieces and we’re also trying our hand at new anime!

As you may know, our company has mainly been making masterpiece animes for more than fifteen years but I think we’ve made a habit of making similar anime. But we’ve been able to improve on our animes’ degree of perfection precisely because of the buildup of our experience in animation. We’re also working hard on our technology, and on the authenticity of our masterpieces. At any rate, we’re trying to make anime that is still interesting to watch even after five or six years have passed. Next year, we plan on making “Pollyanna” after “A Little Princess Sara” ends, and a new SF series called “Space Sagittarius”. We’re also going to have one TV special around May.

HIROMICHI MOGAKI (Tsuchida Production Co.)

(Blurb)

Just like what we did in “Tsubasa” and “Kimengumi”, we’re adding our original flavor to animation adapted from manga!

Even with regards to animating manga, the time when you aren’t creative when adapting something is over - just like our approach to our anime “High School! Kimen”. In manga, the fun is enclosed in a comic cell. Differing from that, we were able to bring out fun that moves freely (in the anime format). (Our decision to) put two episodes in one anime has also been well-received. We are also planning to have an anime TV series next year but all will depend on how long “Captain Tsubasa” will last. Captain Tsubasa’s storyline is that the finals will end in March, and the European leg will begin. This will catch up with the manga version’s storyline so I’m thinking of making a new one or taking a temporary break.

MASAYASU SAGISU (Eiken Co., Ltd.)

(Blurb)

Please watch the cooking scenes in the manga “Oishinbo” animated in a live-action format.

The anime “Sazae-san” is going to be seventeen years old. I think that the things that last for a long time are not manga for boys or manga for girls but manga for adults such as “Sazae-san” that has a family theme. But there aren’t many of this kind of anime today.

There has been a lot of SF space anime but nowadays it’s quite possible for kids to go to space someday. But the world of “Sazae-san” where the grandma, the grandpa, the old maid and the troubles they encounter while living together is farther than space in today’s world of nuclear families. Conversely, this makes Sazae-san’s storyline fresh.

For next year’s anime, we are developing our plans to animate Mr. Shinji Wada’s manga “Pigmalio”. We’d also like to do SF action animes, and a totally new genre - animating Big Comic Spirit’s serialized manga “Oishinbo”. Following a ten-year cycle, monster animes might come out next year but we’d like to try out new genres.

HIROSHI KATO (Ashi Production Co.)

We are developing original videos for the anime “Dancouga”

Our company has concentrated mainly on original anime and we are continuing with this direction in 1986 and beyond. Even though our animes are popular, I don’t know why we are edited a lot. Even “Dancouga” which originally had fifty-two episodes was reduced to thirty-eight and the final story was changed. We are going to sell a one and a half hour video in March and we’d like to include the real final story in it. Seventy percent of animators in Japan today are working on collaboration anime. The pay (for collaboration anime) is more than double, so we have to do something about it.

TOSHIHIRO NAGAO (Kaname Production Co.)

I’d like to see different kinds of SF anime. “Windaria (Once Upon a Time)” is the first step in that direction.

Generally speaking, I’d like to go with polar opposites - simplistic anime that has funny gags and anime that explores heavy themes. I think our company would like to take a short break after “Windaria” ends and then we’re going to do a lighter anime. We’ve also talked little by little about producing an anime TV series, but can we really do it with the present situation? Companies we outsource to are doing a lot of collaboration anime and we don’t have the confidence that we will win the price war and if we dabble in (anime TV series) incorrectly, it will be a death blow. With this situation, it seems like we will be concentrating on video anime for now. With regards to the direction of our anime, we’d like to consider doing SF anime with our own touch and foray into different parts, for example, making modern anime like “Radio City Fantasy (Machikado no Marchen)” that merges footage and music.

(Caption for illustration on the left side)

“Mujigen Hunter Fandora”, one of the original video anime from Kaname Production Co..It is said that the second part will be released in March.

YUUJI NUNOKAWA (Studio Pierrot)

(Blurb)

“Magical Emi, the Magic Star” will end in February. We’re working on the anime that will follow this.

Ever since our “Dallos” anime, anime in the video anime genre have increased, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to foresee what’s ahead. But I feel our viewer base will return to children after the continuous increase in anime fans.

In our animes’ genres, it seems that we foray into unprincipled things but through trial and error, we are at that stage where we are aiming for our own style. In 1986, we plan to stop producing transformation-style anime after “Emi” and we are now working on an anime with a witch theme, with a nod to our very first anime. We have also decided that we will make a sequel to “Rumic World”.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch it!

MIKI TORI (manga artist)

And yet there are only a few animes wherein you can feel each anime’s distinct character. I understand that anime is a group effort, but like manga, the director’s tastes dominate. If the time comes when the writer can say “that is good but this is also good”, I think that anime will become more vibrant.

AKIO YOSHIDA (manga artist)

If I’m going to watch, I might change the channel if they’d revive anime like the long adventure animes of Toei. It would feel just like watching the movie “Mothra”.

YUKI SAITO (actress and singer)

I was in a manga research group when I was in high school so all I watched were anime from Sunrise. I like “Gundam” and “Ideon”. If there were anime in that vein, I think I’d be obsessed again.

Pages 50 & 51

(Title)

A Glance at the Anime World: The Hit men and their Predictions

SHOJI KAWAMORI

(Blurb)

It’s important to have interesting anime that will be universally accepted!

I haven’t really watched TV anime these past two years. Once you get rid of a habit, it’s not good. Once you distance yourself from anime, you won’t even be able tell which anime is good and which is bad. It’s scary to think that I’ve been watching anime by force of habit.

I also haven’t watched that many video animes to be fussy about it but I feel that video animes have become closer in form to manga. I can’t say though that it’s already at the serialized manga level, but it’s just a matter of time. But if you’re going to make video anime and you don’t make it differently from TV anime, it will be a waste. Probably change the design a bit…just like what Mr. Oshii is doing. Once your attempts go beyond the realm of attempting things and once you’ve achieved something basic, I think we’d probably be able to see the direction of video anime for the first time. If I were to create video anime, I’d like to make a short sixty minute one, something that is highly concentrated and can’t be fully “digested” in a TV anime format. Sixty minutes is too short for a movie and too long for TV, and I think it is a length that is untapped and put aside.

Compared to video, TV’s strong point is that you can make serialized anime on TV. Nicely put, TV is a medium wherein if you don’t have “ordinariness” (badly put, “mass appeal”) you won’t succeed so in this sense TV is a more demanding form of media than video. I also don’t like the trend wherein anime that don’t appeal to the masses are turned into video anime. I think that video anime should also have universal appeal.

For 1986, if there are proposals that come my way, I’ll do them. I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do.

TOMOKO KONPARU

(Blurb)

With regards to video anime, I have “The Super Girl” and I’d like to try my hand at a new kind of animal anime.

Anime is said to be on a low note right now but I think that the number of anime being produced now is just right because there was a time when the anime that was being produced went over the production capabilities of those in the anime world. I even think that the number should be reduced by just a little bit more, but only if the quality is improved. It seems that 30 animes will be released in 1986, but I think that in terms of quality, (those that aren’t good) will be culled.

I don’t have any children yet but as a housewife I don’t think that anime has a bad influence on children. Since I was little, I myself grew up watching anime. Even now, from the standpoint of someone making anime, I don’t want to forget about the children. But on the other hand, I also think that mothers who just park their kids in front of the TV to watch anime isn’t good either.

The anime following “Hai Step Jun” will be “Maple Town”, an animal anime but I don’t want it to be anime with just “good” characters in it. I want to try making anime for young girls, which will be a new thing for me.

ICHIRO ITANO

(Blurb)

There must be anime that only young animators can do!

I think that mass media has a very strong influence on children. I want people to be more conscious of that. I feel that anime that is being made today just to make money is overly increasing - animators don’t question things, or assert themselves. An extreme example is the Lolita complex boom of late. If a person is being shown something like (a Lolita anime) from way back (from childhood), that person’s imagination takes precedence instead of the ability to adapt to another human being, and stress builds up as a result. I think we should oppose this current reality, and as for myself, I plan to try different things. I wonder what I’d be able to do before I turn thirty-five, and I also think that you can learn from failure.

MITSURU KANEKO (MK Productions)

(Blurb)

The computer is absolutely infiltrating the anime world.

It’s possible to think that in the future, the possibilities of computer graphics will first be used in the industrial fields. For example, the depth maps of the Japan Coast Guard just have numbers on them now but if you input these numbers into a computer, you’ll be able to see valleys (under the sea) that continue for miles as video images. And if this (technology) presses forward, for example, there is an (American) masterpiece special effects movie called “Fantastic Voyage” wherein they (physically) made the sets and then shot the film but in the future, you can make the movie set by inputting data in a computer.

Speaking of another side (of this technology), take the example of video images shown on large screens that have been demonstrated at an expo. Just like what was shown in the expo, video images and 3D images shown on dome-like screens can only be made using a computer.

In this way, the spotlight is now aimed at anime as a means to (showcase technology). Animation’s possibilities will also become limitless as it will need to respond to the diversification of people’s demands.

(Caption for illustration on the right side of the page)

This is Cindy, a young girl from a biker gang in the anime “Megazone 23 Part 2”. Mr. Yasuomi Umetsu’s character design is original, as personified in this drawing. This anime has a different kind of appeal compared to Part 1.

KEISUKE FUJIKAWA (scriptwriter of the anime “Once Upon a Time” or “Legend of Fabulous Battle Windaria”)

I researched and compared the recent trends, the trend in fans’ consciousness about anime and anime programs and from around last year, it seems like the age of wanting “salvation” has come. I think that in so many ways, we are being stifled and we are seeking breakthroughs. I think that how anime as a medium is going to lift this issue up is going to be important. Even “Once Upon a Time”, which we will show in 1986, takes up issues of the present times. I’m putting emphasis on what I will say to the youth of today through SF that has stories of people in it instead of just hardcore SF. For this year and the next, I’d like to dig into aspects of the youth in different ways. I’d like to make anime that makes viewers think that there is something out there that matches their present selves perfectly.

(Caption for illustration on the left side of the page)

This is Anasu, the heroine of “Windaria”. Illustrated by Ms. Mutsumi Inomata, this character personifies the pure themes of Mr. Fujikawa’s anime.

YOSHINOBU NISHIZAKI (producer)

(Blurb)

I’d like to make a video anime that will be a preview of a movie theater anime

With regards to “Odin: Photon Sailor Starlight”, I didn’t make excuses and I haven’t commented on it but there are clear reasons why that movie ended in failure. That anime was originally a one-hour program, twelve episode TV anime - in other words, it was an anime made to be aired for twelve hours. I think there was a big mistake in the producers’ thinking that they could digest this into a two and a half hour movie.

I used to say that after 1955, there wouldn’t be a hit anime made for movie theaters. The same thing is about to happen in the video anime world. If the overproduction of low-quality anime continues, there will definitely be a backlash. It seems that the most basic idea during planning anime has been forgotten. And this basic idea is this: things expressed through anime must rouse people’s imaginations.

We’re planning on releasing an anime for movie theaters on July 9, 1986 based on “Desler”*. But before that we’re planning on selling a promotion video about the movie in April. In making this video, budgetary issues, which have always been a concern in video animes, have been set aside so I’m planning on making it in the same high-quality as the movie. I’m also thinking of releasing a trailer of the movie at the same time.

*Translator’s note: Desler is a character in the anime “Space Battleship Yamato”.

(Box at the lower left side of the page)

If there were animes like this I’d watch them!

FUJIHIKO HOSONO (manga artist)

I like the works of Mr. Hayao Miyazaki. I heard that he said that he wanted to make an anime about the Period of Warring States (in Japanese history) so if that anime is made, I’d definitely want to watch it. Personally, I’d also like Mr. Miyazaki to make ninja anime. With regards to other animators, I like Mr. Mamoru Oshii, the one who made “Beautiful Dreamer.

SHOJOTAI (a singer/actress trio)

Reiko: Among animated characters, I like Peter Rabbit. I’d like Peter to guide me into a dreamy nature scene.

Miho: I really like Phillips. I’d like to plunge into a world adventure with a kitty cat.

Tomo: More than anything, I like Snoopy. I’d watch any number of animes with Snoopy in it. I’d like to watch happy animes.

#anime #newtype #21 prophets of anime #translations #translation #translation project

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eldritchsurveys · 4 years

Text

865.

Are you still in quarantine/under stay at home order? (if you're taking this during Covid-19, that is) >> No, the governor’s executive stay-at-home order ended in June. Personally, I still stay at home except for weekly grocery trips and trips to the Wayland house because... well, where else am I going to go? Aside from take walks.

Has stuff been opening back up where you are? >> Eh. It’s been kind of confusing. Many restaurants are still closed / doing takeout, but I’ve heard that they’ve tried opening bars back up, which sounded completely dumb to me, like... of all places? but whatever. Most stores are open, I believe, with mask-wearing encouraged (I say it like that because it really is just a suggestion. There are no actual consequences for walking into a store without a mask, unfortunately, so some people still do it).

What have you missed most that you haven't been able to do due to Covid-19? >> I’ve mostly missed J. Gardella’s Tavern, which was on its way to being shut down anyway because they’d been bought out by some gastropub fuckers. But because of the executive order, I never got to go there for a last round. :( Also, I miss just being able to go downtown etc and walk around and do stuff. In general.

What state do you live in? >> Michigan.

Do you personally know anyone who has had Covid-19? >> No.

Have you had it? (or think you might have?) >> I have not had it, nor do I think I have it. Sometimes I get paranoid because there’s apparently quite a few “non-obvious” type symptoms that have gotten connected to COVID infection (like digestive issues), but, whatever.

Do you know anyone who is a healthcare worker? >> No. Sparrow works in a podiatrist’s office, but that’s not really the kind of healthcare worker I think this question means.

Have you still been working these past few months or not? >> I don’t work, period.

If you weren't working, are you still in school? >> No.

What is/was your major in college? >> ---

Or if you're not in college yet, what do you want to study? >> ---

If your school closed due to Covid-19, do you miss it? >> ---

What are you most excited about when life goes (somewhat) back to normal? >> I will be glad when we can stop wearing masks. You know, in like late 2021 or whenever. Because it sure won’t be any time soon, I can tell that much.

Did Covid-19 impact any major plans you had for this spring/summer? >> I didn’t have any major plans. All my ideas for the summer were pretty minor.

Do you collect anything? >> No.

What's the name of your favorite restaurant? (chain or local) >> Long Road Distillery.

What is your favorite thing to order when you eat there? >> I don’t remember, we were only there for dinner once but I immediately fell in love with the menu (and the drinks, by god).

Have you still been able to get food from there during Covid-19? >> Yeah, they have online ordering and curbside pickup. They make cocktail kits, too, which is cool.

Are you planning on eating there anytime soon when they reopen? >> Oh god, yeah. Definitely not any time soon even if they do reopen sooner than I think is safe, but... yeah.

Have you discovered any good new music during quarantine? >> I discover new music all the time.

What's a new song you've been loving lately? (not necessarily newly released, just something you've recently discovered) >> Heard a cover of Huey Lewis and the News’ Stuck With You by Twelve Foot Ninja recently that I thought was fun. Honestly, that song is just fun no matter what, though.

Have you been able to keep in touch with friends during this time? >> The majority of my social interaction was online anyway, so.

What is your favorite Starbucks drink? >> ---

Do you prefer Starbucks or a local coffee shop? >> I prefer local everything.

What was your favorite TV show when you were a kid? do you still ever watch it? >> ---

Have you been watching a lot of movies during quarantine? >> No more than I would be usually, since my daily life didn’t change as dramatically as most people’s did. But yeah.

What is your favorite Disney movie? >> Lilo & Stitch.

Do you have Disney plus? >> Nope.

Are you a fan of Hamilton? >> Never seen it.

Are you planning to watch Hamilton on Disney plus? >> No, because I don’t have Disney+...

Have you seen Hamilton live? (Broadway or elsewhere) >> No...

What is your favorite musical? >> Phantom of the Opera.

Have you watched any musicals online recently? >> No.

What was the last live performance you went to before quarantine? >> The last live performance I saw was the various acts at the Endless Night Vampire Ball in October.

What was the best concert you've ever been to? >> I’ve been to too many concerts to answer this.

Do you volunteer anywhere? >> No.

What is your favorite movie on Netflix? >> ??? There are... so many movies on Netflix.

Did you relocate due to Covid-19? >> No.

What is one positive thing about the past few months for you? >> I’m not sure.

Do you prefer streaming music or buying it? >> I stream it. I can’t in any way afford to buy the amount of music I listen to.

Do you use Spotify? >> Yeah.

What was the last book you read? >> The last book I finished was Making Friends With Death.

Have you been baking during quarantine? >> No. Sparrow did when she was furloughed.

What is your favorite thing to bake? >> I don’t like to bake.

Do you enjoy doing crafts? >> Eh.

Have you ever done crafts for money? >> No.

Do you shop on Etsy? >> Yes.

Have you ever sold anything on Etsy? >> No.

What song are you listening to right now? >> None. I thought about putting some on and then I forgot.

What genre of music is your favorite? >> ---

Can you speak any foreign languages? >> Not fluently.

What is/was your favorite class in school? >> ---

Who was your favorite teacher most recently? >> ---

What is the lock screen and home screen on your phone? >> Lock screen is a shot of Sam from Death Stranding. Home screen is from a live performance of Phantom.

Do you play Animal Crossing? >> Sometimes. Sparrow plays it more than I do, but even she’s stopped playing it as much because of that whole “get your island to a 5-star rating!” bullshit. It’s just aggravating.

Do you have any pets? What kind? What is/are your pet(s) name(s)? >> Sparrow has a cat and his name is Spooky.

what is a song lyric you love? >> Right, I’m definitely not going to think of that off the top of my head right now.

Have you done anything recently to support Black Lives Matter? >> No.

Are there any songs you feel transport you to a world that doesn't exist? >> They transport me to worlds that do exist. Just not on this plane.

What songs do that for you? >> Wardruna is good for it. But there are plenty of others, I’m just not trying to think of them all right now.

What is your favorite ethnicity/cuisine of food? >> Can’t choose.

What are some popular things that you don't like/aren't interested in? >> TikTok is one. Sparrow loves it and I watch the videos she shows me, and I don’t hate it or anything, but I would never download the app myself. Just not interested.

When was the last time you got a haircut? >> I last cut my hair... uh... a week ago? Roundabouts.

What was the last movie (or musical) you watched? >> The last movie I watched was The House That Jack Built.

What was the last movie you saw in the theatre? >> Birds of Prey.

How soon are you planning on going back to work? (If you've been off) >> ---

What is an item you own that means a lot to you? >> I finally got my Death Is the Road To Awe t-shirt and it means a lot to me because of what it references.

Do you have a favorite t-shirt? >> No.

What other proshot musicals would you love to see streaming online? >> *shrug* Haven’t thought about that.

What is something you're looking forward to? >> This heat wave to be over. I’ve had to skip so many daily walks because it’s just so hot so early lately.

How do you plan on celebrating Covid-19 being over, whenever that is? >> The problem with this idea is that... it’s not that simple? From what I understand, it’s not like one day we’re all gonna say “that’s it! we’ve officially eradicated this virus from the earth and we will never have to worry about it again!” I’m guessing it’s going to be a slow process of reopening with a lot of false starts and rollbacks (as new waves crest and protective measures have to be re-implemented). Even that first day that I go out to a restaurant is probably going to feel really weird and even a little “wrong”. I’m not sure how much celebrating is really going to be happening.

#surveys #survey #random survey

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filipino-lesbian-pierre-curie · 4 years

Text

#SoThatWasAutism Masterlist

I am making another list for all the symptoms I have observed and some instances. This is for when the quarantine ends and i can get a diagnosis.

1. Stopped talking for 6 months after I had already started talking.

>>I was a year old I believe.

2. Poor motor control until now. Exercise doesn’t help. Practice masks it a bit but if I am not prepared mentally it all goes away.

>>Elementary to college

3. Echolalia as my means of communication.

>>That one time my classmate congratulated my friend on having better pay for nurses with the joke “Tumaas na sweldo niyo :D” and....~10 seconds later I repeated the exact same thing when I spoke to my friend.

>>Saying milk the entire day when I was 2/3 years old. Saying “kun kun” the entire day.

>>comfort words

>>saying decapitated the entire day

4. Low verbal days when I just want to stop talking. (I’m learning sign language so I don’t have to talk on days like these.)

>>College, online classes

>>pain after speaking a certain number of words/certain sensory overload/certain social interactions

5. Bad grip control

>>Drop stuff until now. Can’t play basketball. Can’t hold bowls.

6. Can’t see the expression of person, doesn’t know how to respond at all.

>> online classes, using messenger or text

7. I do rely on some facial expressions to determine what someone is feeling, but those expressions have to be extreme.

8. Can’t do interviews. It’s like talking to Wikipedia. I can’t talk to anyone comfortably without echolalia.

>>Nursing interview. Trial immersion in the hospital where I made the client so uncomfortable.

9. No hugs unless well planned or expected

10. Eye contact? I’ll do it for 3-5 seconds or for forever. Take it or leave it.

>>Even in online classes.

11. Isolating conversation. These conversations make me want to just stop talking forever.

12. Happy hand flapping and rocking in math class!

>>College only

13. Texture and taste sensitivities.

>>Mushrooms except for the white, stalked ones. Anything mixed with mushrooms also out.

>>Olives

>>Tofu in hot food.

>>Pork blood, livers, smooth muscled organs

>>Raisins in bread and pastries and rice.

>>Bamboo shoots and water chestnuts

>>Canned tuna

>>Anything smoked.

>>food must be separated unless I know they taste good together.

14. Unnecessary harm towards animals.

15. Talking to trees and cats because i had few human friends.

16. Frustration when schedule is disrupted.

>>hate going on impromptu trips.

>>Planned weekends being derailed.

17. Ate peanut butter sandwiches and baby milk for 6 years for lunch everyday.

18. Increased breakdowns with more complex social interactions. Increased also with extreme facial expressions.

>>SHS and college

19. Not understanding an entire conversation.

20. No kissing the cheeks until now. If someone does this I wipe it off after a maximum of a minute.

21. Love lists. Lists are orderly.

22. I don’t hear compliments or criticism until I remember ~two days later or until someone repeats it.

23. If I don’t know how your brain thinks, I cannot understand most of the things you say or do. At all.

24. I want friends but I can’t make them or carry their game.

25. Daydreaming to an extreme.

>>I used to think I was the only human in a world full of robots and the robots were all controlled by one person. Sometimes I was the only robot in the world full of humans and I had to hide that or else they’d kill me. Another where I felt like the only person in a fishbowl and other fishes were looking at me. Either that or feeling like the media rep of a sociopath because I couldn’t show how I felt well (Latest is gr 10/11, earliest at 3 yrs old)

26. Ok I’ve had extreme attachments to any autistic or autistic coded characters.

27. Mirroring whatever my conversation partner is doing.

28. Used to bully my current best friend, didn’t know why though except that everyone was doing it. Still horrible.

29. Don’t understand social conventions but I know if I don’t mirror someone I trust i will start lying on the floor or something similar.

30. Lining up my toys all the time.

31. If I’m really tired or happy I will not mask. I will stop talking and only use my echolalia to communicate or take everything literally.

32. I always abide by the reasoning of predetermined rules and/or theorems. If something is not in that “manual” I can’t cope or act accordingly.

33. Modesty aside, I’m the only one who remotely understands my autistic cousin. He’s just a kid but at least he makes sense. Also, he likes looking at fans and I think I like that too.

34. I will stop talking/ moving my lower body if overstimulated.

35. I had staggered eating in 2nd grade. I couldn’t keep anything down so I grew so thin. I think it’s because we changed the brand of bread from Gardenia to Pullman and something about the texture and name threw me off. Imagine eating a pulled man. Disgusting. I still cannot eat Pullman bread until now.

36. My writing is only readable because I work so hard on it. In reality it looks like snakes.

37. Repetition is <3

#tw harm #cw harm #tw bullying #cw bullying #autism #eating disorder

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tanadrin · 5 years

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hey *whispers* hey. hey. i saw your post in the wow tag. i would read THE SHIT out of your interpretation of wow lore. i have homework right now but i think i might just read through your blog a bit. the characters have always been such a high point for me (listen. i know knaak did a lot of shit. but you can pry Krasus from my cold dead hands he was EVERYTHING to middle school me) and i feel so conflicted over what theyve done to the characters - sylvanas, anduin, everyone. would love ur take

You might be a little disappointed, most of my blog isn’t about WoW (it postdates my WotLK raiding/RP guild phase, and I’ve only just recently got back into it with Classic). Lots of opinions on WoW characters below the cut.

I actually don’t hate Krasus as a character. He’s fine, he’s not a Designated Idiot Ball Carrier like some of the others are. In re: the dragons generally, I don’t like the simplistic thing WoW lore does a lot where one faction leader going bonkers turns the whole faction into baddies for no apparent reason, because all political entities are monoliths except when they’re not. I’m also not a huge fan of how crowded the, erm, metahuman bureaucracy on Azeroth has become in the lore–like, the Keepers and the Dragon Aspects serve similar roles, and the lore could have done fine with one or the other, and the dragons were here first (and Ysera and Alexstrasza are BAMFs), and so should get to stay.

Sylvanas is bae, obviously, and Sylvanas as Warchief was a terrific move plotwise. I think it’s a pity they had to kill Vol’jin to do it (because I am also very here for Warchief Vol’jin), but she is obviously the more interesting choice. Speaking of Warchiefs:

Thrall doesn’t have the Green Jesus Marty Stu quite as bad as some people think, but he does kinda have it, and I don’t see them grappling quite with the fact that he done fucked up. Like, not only did he install a Warchief who should have had all smart members of the Horde tugging at their collars nervously when he started his rule, Garrosh turned into a Sha-summoning Old God-corrupted, casual-atrocity-perpetrating maniac, not to mention all the bullshit on Old Draenor I do my best to forget about lest my blood pressure spike. We don’t really get a satisfying mea culpa from Thrall for that, and then his response is to fuck off to fiddle around with the Earthen Ring for a bit, before retiring to a farm in Nagrand. Keep in mind, one of the whole reasons the Horde came together in its current shape in the first place is because of the charismatic, hopeful figure of Thrall. It ran the very real risk of splintering under Garrosh for good (ESPECIALLY after the murder of Cairne, RIP Cairne Bloodhoof, you were too good for this world), and even the most unifying successor (which I think Vol’jin was) didn’t have Thrall’s inclusive, unifying vision. Sylvanas doesn’t, either, and even more, is sort of low-key hated by everybody else, so while I don’t think she’s a maniac like Garrosh who would recklessly divide the Horde, she’s also not, I am forced to admit, necessarily the ideal Warchief from a political standpoint.

Even if he didn’t return to the post of Warchief, Thrall had a moral obligation after the Garrosh debacle to try to help hold the Horde together and heal the divisions his negligence caused. At least to throw his support behind Garrosh’s successors, and not to pretend that Deathwing’s death meant everything was OK forever, job done. And if he wasn’t going to do that (and he has excellent motivations for not wanting to do that!), I think the consequences of that have to be explored. I think some people would blame him, and be justified in doing so. I think somebody like Varok Saurfang, who has had decades of experience with the damage bad leaders could do, would rightly be a little pissed, even as he sought Thrall out for help, that Thrall had let the Horde he built languish under subpar leadership. Thrall has been selfish–and that’s great, because he desperately needed some character flaws more significant than “cares too much” and “believes in people a lot.”

Anduin: better than Varian, still a little bland? Varian was a Professional Idiot Ball Handler, who seemed to do stuff not out of a coherent conception of his character, but just because the plot required a Generic Human King to do it. Plus there was all that stuff with the cloning and the kidnapping that never really made any sense. I like Anduin’s optimism; I like that he feels like a thoughtful, reasonable guy, who’s doing his best in often-impossible circumstances. I feel like they could show him being a little more frustrated sometimes, though, and a little pissed at people like Jaina who obstinately refuse to do the strategically correct thing even if it means setting aside their resentments for a bit. Disclaimer: I play almost exclusively Horde toons, they may address this better in the Alliance quests in WoW.

But oh man, besides the Draenei, I hate most what they did to Jaina. Jaina was that rare jewel, an optimist in a world whose setting demands perpetual chaos. Yes, yes, Theramore and the mana bomb, I’m not suggesting she should be made of stone, but it breaks her character to have her suddenly go from someone trying to forge a lasting peace between the Horde and Alliance in WC3–to the point where she would see her own father dead–to someone who now blames the whole Horde as one no exceptions for what happened at Theramore. Should she struggle with grief and pain and anger? Absolutely. But she should deal with them in more complex ways than “now I am become the mirror image of Daelin.” Nevermind that even if she did that she should at least regret not listening to him back in WC3. (Do they address that in BFA with the introduction of Kul Tiras? Idk, I haven’t played BFA at all yet.) It seems like Jaina’s role now is to be the Person Who Hates The Horde, and honestly, that’s a tired trope. It’s just not interesting, it has no nuance, it has no interesting outcomes. You could maybe get away with it with the generation of leaders from the Second War like Daelin and Genn who knew the Orcs only as the fel-corrupted servants of the Burning Legion, but it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together than the current Horde is a very different animal politically and strategically, so even if you hate the Orcs with a burning passion, that is not going to transfer to the Tauren, nevermind onetime allies like the Blood Elves.

Gul’dan: oh my god the time travel plot was so stupid. Did the whole universe get duplicated in the alternate timeline? Since travel between the universes is cheap and easy that means there’s a whole nother Burning Legion with a whole nother Sargeras out there that’s still a huge fricking threat! Not to mention a whole nother Azeroth! Did just Draenor get duplicated? That doesn’t seem to match up with the fact a lot of the Burning Legion characters in WoD seem to be parallel universe versions of Burning Legion villains we already know, but it’s not directly confirmed or disconfirmed. Is it some sort of weird Bronze Dragonflight timey-wimey thing that doesn’t have its own independent reality? Ok, fine, but obviously this alternate Draenor has enough of an independent existence for us to visit it again and see what it’s like decades later, not to mention bring some of the people there back. Gul’dan was a fine, if one-dimensional villain but bringing him back from the dead was dumb, dumb, dumb, in a setting where death often feels meaningless and seems to be reversible at random. And the general incoherence of magic in the setting combined with the perennial incoherence of time travel plots (Gollum voice: *we hates them!*) really just reduced WoD to a quivering mess of plot holes, like febrile fan speculation made manifest.

Tirion Fordring: good example of a purely heroic character done well, which WoW has few of. I think because he actually has challenges to overcome, and he doesn’t feel like an idiot.

Bolvar Fordragon: Literally did not know or care who this guy was until the Wrathgate cinematic, but what they did after that with his character was terrific, 10/10.

Malfurion, Tyrande, Illidan: These characters all bore me to tears. My WotLK main was a druid, and I’m a big fan of the druid lore, so I wanna like Malfurion, I really do, but he’s just so dull. Partly because it doesn’t feel like he has any real limitations on his power, just whatever the plot demands he be able to do or not do at any given moment, partly because he just feels like a stiff-necked scold. Tyrande is even more one-dimensional. Illidan is pure 3edgy5me, and the demon hunters in general feel like they get to be too cool to actually traffic in any of the pathos of what should be their emotional equivalents like the Death Knights and the Forsaken. It’s like, “oh man, my life is so tormented, I have these bitchin’ horns and tattoos, and I’m, like, totally immortal, here, hold my rad sword thingies for a second.” At least with the Death Knights you get the feeling that being a Death Knight is a genuinely miserable experience, so there’s some genuine conflict at the heart of the class: sure, you play as a hero, but not the kind of hero you’d necessarily want to be. Demon hunters are just pissed they don’t get to sit at the cool kids’ lunch table, and Illidan genuinely acts like a giant asshole and then gets self-righteous and whiny when his friends and family are like “Dude! Stop being such an asshole!” There’s room for a prickly character, who’s a dick, but who’s our dick, and maybe that’s what they were going for, but Illidan is just the worst.

Azshara, Lady Vashj: The Naga were a giant fucking mistake. A symptom of the inability to let backstory stay backstory, to have to resurrect and retread the same events over and over again that plagues serials when lesser writers without original ideas get let loose on them. Settings like WoW (like Star Wars, like Star Trek, like Dune) are whole universes. You should be expanding the borders, making them feel bigger, more fine-grained, more alive, not beating the same major characters to death over and over again. The ancient Kaldorei are way more interesting as a lost past and a lesson in hubris than fish-snake-people who live under the sea.

Also, water levels are dumb and I hate them. This applies to coral-and-shellfish themed zones regardless of whether swimming is involved.

Cho’gall: I loved the “insane nihilist death cult” reincarnation of the Twilight’s Hammer Clan in World of Warcraft, and Cho’gall as the many-eyed crazed ogre mage with two heads was great. Would much rather have more Cho’gall than Guldan 2.0.

While I’m on Cataclysm: one thing you don’t often feel in worlds like WoW is the possibility of real defeat, because for extradiegetic reasons, it’s impossible to truly lose in any long-lasting way (or, in quests like Battle for the Undercity in WotLK, they just… don’t let you, which feels dumb as heck). I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, a world where the bad guys won, and all the worst things the good guys feared came to pass. I think this is one reason I loved the original interpretation of the Draenei so much, because we saw in Draenor what that really looked like. It was bleak, and it was poignant, and even though it was set within a silly melodrama, it actually moved me. Cataclysm did something similar with the postapocalyptic time-travel instance (time travel being used well for once in WoW!), where you saw that Deathwing’s victory wasn’t just an abstract possibility, but a thing that could actually happen. It made the possibility of defeat feel more real, and it gave you a taste of that same bleak, poignant feeling: this, it said (just for a moment!) is what failure looks like, an Azeroth without life, without hope, in which everything you ever struggled for was utterly in vain. And that motivated you to work even harder to prevent it.

Alleria, Turalyon: “You last saw us in WC2, and since then we’ve been fighting a thousand years (subjective) of endless war against the Burning Legion and been irrevocably changed by the experience” is actually pretty great! But if I were going to rewrite WoW lore, I would make that a thousand objective years and set the final victory over the Burning Legion in the future, at a time when the Alliance and Horde have made a durable peace, and Azeroth has moved on from decades of endless war. I think there’s a real problem with trying to make the player one of the heroes that brings down Sargeras for good because it’s *such* an epic battle, but it’s a massively multiplayer game. Making every player the grand master of their class order was bad enough, but when you are obviously playing out entirely different diegesis from everyone around you, even if you didn’t have problems like sharding and a glut of phasing and cross-server activities and instant teleportation to dungeons, it really feels like a single-player RPG with a chat function. I mean, conflicting diegeses is always going to be a problem with questing-based MMOs, but suspension of disbelief worked when you were plainly one person embedded in a larger effort, like in vanilla, BC, and WotLK. But “you are one of thousands of people who is the Best Warrior Ever and sole Leader of the Warriors, and who has the Only Artifact Weapon that somehow also has thousands of copies”… yeah, that just doesn’t work for me. I feel like I’m being pandered to, and not in a fun way, like with the Pandaren.

Sargeras: I like that they retconned Sargeras to have a better motivation than “demons made me nihilistic.” The idea of a void-corrupted titan being something so terrible a member of the Pantheon would shatter worlds to prevent it is interesting. But the Void gods still feel… kinda non-threatening? We don’t see them actively working to threaten anything we really care about, the Void is mostly a pretty passive abstract force like the Light, and in general I feel like the setting isn’t really dualistic, but er… trialistic? Is that a word? In that there’s a three-way opposition between the Void, the Light, and the Nether/Arcane, from the perspective of which each is the opponent of both of the others, but that’s never laid out explicitly anywhere.

#wow #wow lore #world of warcraft #sylvanas #thrall #jaina proudmoore #warlords of draenor was the WORST #and Legion wasn't much better plotwise

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toaarcan · 5 years

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Sonic X, Sonic Heroes, and IDW, or: How a bad anime from 2004 spoiled a comic from 2019.

Now, I haven’t been following IDW Sonic all that closely. I get regular updates from Nemesis via Discord, and additional info from some of the Tumblrs I follow that are invested in it, but I don’t really have a desire to touch it myself. Here’s why.

There’s a multitude of reasons for this. Starting with the background of Sonic Forces wasn’t really a good place to begin from, and being based on present-day game lore in general was always going to hurt it, mainly because SEGASonic canon is currently a confusing mess of retcons brought on by Iizuka taking the J.K. Rowling approach.

Wait, no, he’s just saying stupid shit that contradicts previous canon, not trying to score woke points and hoping nobody notices the frankly terrible stereotypes and TERF tweets. Iizuka is taking the Greg Farshtey approach.

Added, as anyone that’s had experience with my opinions will tell you, I started falling out of love with Ian Flynn’s writing somewhere around Issue 200, and moved to outright dislike during Mecha Sally, and to make matters worse I started noticing that some of the flaws in the 200-247 era were also present in the 160-199 era, retroactively making those harder to go back to.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I kept up with Archie for the SatAM cast. SatAM reruns back in 2004 were my Sonic, moreso than anything else, and even now I still have way more attachment to those two seasons of animation than I do to most other aspects of the franchise, warts and all. So Archie providing me with additional content for said characters was a major draw for me. I’d generally put up with a lot just to get myself more SatAM content.

That in itself is a large part of why I fell off the Archie train during Mecha Sally. The entirety of the SatAM cast were removed from the regular lineup, just leaving three SEGA characters with their personalities stunted, even if that didn’t make sense in-universe. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So being written by someone whom I no longer enjoyed the writing of, set in a mess of a canon with a thoroughly shite game as the main basis, without the cast I read the previous comics for gave me little reason to invest in IDW Sonic. It wasn’t for me, I’d just keep reading Transformers and move on.

Then MTMTE/LL ended with a heart-twister and Ex-RID ended with a giant Unicron-shaped fart, and the new comic is dull as fucking dishwater and started by killing off one of my favourites, who was also one of the franchise’s confirmed LGBT characters. So now IDW is getting none of my money. Which is good because I’m broke.

Tangents aside, my lack of interest wasn’t something set in stone. If it turned out that the comic was actually really good, then sure, I’d try it. I was up for being proven wrong. But so far, I haven’t felt compelled by the responses from the internet. If anything I’ve been more turned off.

I could talk about how zombies are really fucking boring. I could talk about how SEGA’s recent confusion over what to do with Amy has combined with Ian’s need to include a Sally-esque character to make IDW Amy into Sally Lite. I could talk about how Ian seemingly fundamentally misunderstood everything that was cool about Neo Metal Sonic and somehow managed to reduce him to a boring Eggman minion in an arc where Eggman was out of action due to amnesia… But I won’t.

Instead I’m going to talk about how the comic has done something that would legitimately make me think twice about picking it up even if the FF were to debut tomorrow.

Yeah, I would pass up a SatAM fix because of this, that’s how much this ticks me off.

Now, I presume that if you’re reading this, you have a favourite Sonic character. And you probably feel pretty strongly about how your favourite character is portrayed. If they get a bad run in a game or two then you probably get a little salty about that. Tails and Knuckles fans in particular, as of late, seem to be the ones getting the short end.

Well, my favourite character in the entire franchise is Emerl the Gizoid. I will take Gemerl as a worthy substitute, they’re basically the same character. And the comics have been doing them dirty since the Archie reboot.

(Sidenote: I will be referring to Emerl with male pronouns from this point on. The Maria-soul thing isn’t as widely known as I’d like it to be, so I’m going to compromise for the sake of keeping the focus on the actual point)

However, not everything about this can be laid at the feet of Ian Flynn. Arguably his portrayal of said character is merely a symptom of a long-running issue that has plagued Sonic storytelling for roughly 15-16 years now.

But before we get into that, let’s get into something important: Why Emerl is my favourite Sonic character.

Part 1: Emerl in Sonic Battle, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Gizoid”.

This game doesn’t get enough love.

Now, I totally understand why it doesn’t get enough love. There are game design choices, like the grinding and the repetitiveness of the story mode that really drag it down, and because of that, Battle can become a slow-going and tedious experience, and that’s a real shame, because the story that’s hidden in this game is a thing of beauty.

Like most Sonic games from the 2000s, this game introduces a new character to join Sonic’s list of friends. Unlike the games that aren’t SA2 and Sonic Rush, this new character is actually good (This is hyperbole, Omega, Silver, and Shade were fine too).

Emerl enters the story as a mute, barely-functional robot that doesn’t do much of anything for a while, and only seems to come to life when Sonic locates it and attacks it. However, as the robot absorbs more Chaos Emeralds, slowly a personality starts to form, largely pieced together from other characters’ traits.

Emerl, as he is dubbed, is initially childlike and naive, but as he grows he develops a sassy streak, and his speech becomes a lot more developed. Maturity sets in, as Emerl grapples with his own nature, particularly the legacy he carries from the ARK, and Shadow’s ongoing turmoil with regards to the whole “Living Weapon” deal. Ultimately he becomes a hero, following in the footsteps of his mentor, parental figure, and closest friend, Sonic.

That’s right, Sonic, not Cream, is Emerl’s closest friend. We’ll get to that.

But this heart-warming story of Sonic becoming a dad for a robot doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite Shadow and Rouge finding a way to neutralise Emerl’s destructive Gizoid programming, Eggman has a way to reactivate it anyway, driving Emerl into a berserk rampage. This is kind of the one sticking point I have with the game’s plot, Eggman shouldn’t have been able to do this after Shadow and Rouge neutralised Emerl.

Additionally, while Emerl was on the ARK getting Maria’s soul crammed into him, Gerald also added a self-destruct mechanism that would trigger if he ever went Ultimate again.

So with Emerl quite literally exploding with all the power of the Chaos Emeralds, but his destructive programming forcing him to turn Eggman’s latest Death Star knockoff on Mobius/Earth/Sonic’s World, Sonic races up to confront his mecha-child, and things take a turn for the Old Robot Yeller.

In a moment that really deserves more attention, Sonic confronts his own child on the bridge of a space station, while Emerl is running on the power of the Chaos Emeralds and outputting more energy than he can physically take, and they fight. In the space of thirty seconds, they have a ten-round knock-down, drag-out brawl, and at the end, Sonic stands triumphant. Without using a single transformation. Yeah, that’s how powerful this guy is, that’s not travel speed, that’s combat speed. Looking at you, Death Battle.

It’s not really clear whether Sonic outright defeats Ultimate Emerl, or just survives long enough for his opponent to reach his limit and self-destruct, but the end result is the same. Sonic cradles a robot that became his own child over the course of the past few weeks, someone he raised from a baby-like state into a mature and heroic individual, and Emerl looks up at him and asks “Sonic… am I going to die?” And despite Sonic desperately trying to get him to keep it together, Not only does Emerl die, but he’s aware that the end is coming, and bids farewell to all of his friends as Sonic pleads with him to hold on. Shadow is equally distraught, his only friend with a connection to the ARK, someone he can call a brother, someone who carries the soul of his deceased sister within him, is dead.

Emerl: “Sonic I don’t feel so good.”

Like it’s canon that Eggman basically murdered Sonic’s kid.

And goddamnit this ending hits me hard. It frustrates me that Eggman was able to pull a means to drive Emerl into his Ultimate freakout mode out of his arse, but other than that, it’s so gutwrenching, I love it.

Gamma’s story from SA1 gets a lot of praise on the Internet, but for me, this is even better. It’s like Gamma’s story, but if Gamma was actually central to the plot of the game and the characters other than Amy gave a shit about him, and gave a shit about him for longer than a single cutscene, after which they are never mentioned again. Hell, due to Chaos Gamma being a thing, Gamma gets more love from the other characters in Battle than he does in SA1.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.

Part 2: (Sonic) Anime was a Mistake, or: “Sonic X ruins everything.”

I’ve made my dislike of this anime quite clear in the past. The characters are flanderized, Sonic is a B-lister in his own damn show, the villains are weaksauce or boring or both, the plot is only remotely close to good when its cribbing from two videogames which told the stories in question better, and for the first two seasons the entire show actually revolves around not Sonic, but the least relatable audience surrogate ever made. The third season would continue to include him, but shove him (And everyone else) to the side in favour of a Pokemon whose only move was “Flashback”, making audiences the world over question why he was even there in the first place.

Oh, and it also near-singlehandedly destroyed the thin shreds of character development that Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman had received in Sonic Adventure 2.

All four of these characters had been significantly enriched by the then most recent console game. Eggman had been revealed to be motivated by an admiration for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, but in the same game learned that Gerald had lost his marbles and programmed the ARK to smash into the planet and kill everyone on it, probably including his surviving family, i.e. little baby Ivo Robotnik. Gerald betrayed Eggman posthumously, and it’s clear from Eggman’s interactions with Tails during the credits of the game that this is giving him a lot to think about.

Knuckles is a weird case because most of his characterisation in SA2 is conveyed via… the lyrics to his rap music. Yes, really. He gets minor growth through the cutscenes, most notably in his decision to shatter the Master Emerald early on. Having already reassembled it once after it was broken in SA1, he’s now confident that he can do it again, so is willing to break it to prevent Eggman or Rouge stealing it. Via the rap lyrics, however (Yes I just wrote that), we also learn that Knuckles is slowly warming up to Sonic, gaining a greater respect for him, that he is more in-touch with his history and ancestors after SA1 (Though fortunately not in a Ken Penders way), and that he’s also struggling with feelings for Rouge, a plot element that went completely out of the window after this game.

Tails and Amy, however, get it the worst, as both went through arcs in SA1 that are followed up on and expanded in SA2. Amy had come to the conclusion that she didn’t need to rely on Sonic for everything, and that she would make him respect her as a hero in her own right. And while Amy is clearly in way over her head throughout the events of SA2, she still makes a significant difference, not only freeing Sonic from his cell on Prison Island, allowing Tails’ invasion to be a distraction and stealing a keycard to facilitate it, but of course, she later saves the world by motivating Shadow to join the fight to stop the ARK drop.

Tails had a similar plot, about learning to believe in himself as a hero, without having to rely on Sonic, and in SA2 he gets to prove it, not only partaking in the same rescue operation as Amy and fighting Eggman on even footing, but effectively taking command of the heroes and becoming their new leader, and for the first time, Sonic defers to him.

And then Sonic X came along and fucked it all up.

Eggman became a clownish antagonist with no semblance of nuance, and he actually got off the easiest.

Knuckles became a loud, dimwitted loner who got tricked by Eggman constantly, which would go on to be his personality for the rest of the franchise, ultimately culminating in the travesty against all sense that was Boom Knuckles.

Tails was reduced to a wimpy taxi driver, incapable of doing anything without his giant mecha plane to sit in. This was largely exacerbated by the presence of Donut Steele, who usurped his role as Sonic’s best friend and sidekick for two seasons, a problem which only got worse in the third season when Donut Steele suddenly became a genius inventor too, encroaching even more into Tails’ territory. Tails did get himself some more focus in S3, but only to make googly eyes at the Pokemon, a role which frankly could’ve gone to literally anyone else and would have made no difference on the plot. I would say that Tails being involved in a romance story at all is weird, but given the comics and Boom the weirdest thing about this latest tragic love story for the kid is that the Pokemon was actually close to his own age, because outside of this it really does seem like Tails goes for older ladies. Though she did turn into an adult at the end so I guess that counts?

But Amy arguably got the worst of it. Not only was her crowning moment in SA2 taken away from her and given to Donut Steele, but the poor girl had her promising character arc cut short and replaced with an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on Sonic, combined with a violent temper and an eagerness to smash anything that displeased her, Sonic included, with a giant hammer. Her admiration and crush on Sonic were warped into her being a possessive, mean-spirited stalker, whom only got away with it because she was an anime girl and therefore it was cute rather than creepy.

I want to take the time at this point to stress that stalking is not okay, under any circumstances. A girl obsessively following an older guy and threatening him and everyone around him with violent assault if they ever so much as imply that he isn’t interested in her is not cute, it means it’s time for a restraining order. Sonamy is not cute.

Now that I’ve swatted that particular hornet’s nest with a cricket bat, let’s move on!

I’ve always found it ironic that, despite being the adaptation with the most oversight from SEGA and Sonic Team, and the most endorsement from them too, Sonic X had easily the worst characterisation of any of the shows at the time. But, for all its faults, I can’t blame everything that went down in the aftermath on it. It had a comrade-in-arms. Mediocrely-written arms.

Part 3: Partner in Crime, or “Sonic Heroes also ruins everything.”

Sonic Heroes has a lot to answer for. And I mean a lot. It was the beginning of the franchise’s obsession with references to the classic games, it codified the really awkward ages for certain characters, and it seemed to be dedicated to completely unpicking everything established in the Adventure duology.

Shadow’s sudden resurrection is one thing, at least they had the graces to include a means to preserve his sacrifice via having him be an android, the blame for that not taking should be laid at the feet of his own game.

But the rest of the cast? Ohhh boy. Sonic’s still fine, he didn’t change much in the Adventure games, but then there’s Tails. Despite all the development he went through in SA1, in this game he needs to turn to Sonic when Eggman returns, and honestly this whole setup could’ve been fixed if Tails sought Sonic out not for the sake of having him lead the charge, but rather simply to recruit him into the counterattack he was already planning. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the game Tails is almost as wimpy as his X counterpart, not helped by the voicework he’s given. No offense to William Corkery, who was probably like six when he recorded his lines, but this what you get when you choose actors via nepotism, rather than talent. But at least he does something.

How about Knuckles? As the other side of his derailment, Knuckles just turns up in this game, buddy-buddy with the characters he was only just starting to warm up to before, and blatantly not caring about the Master Emerald until Rouge mentions she’s going to steal it at the end. This will combine with his becoming a dumbass in Sonic X and become basically his entire character for… ever. Even in Forces, where he’s supposed to be doing slightly better as the leader of the resistance… but he’s a dumbass, and even Ian Flynn, who kept Knuckles as competent and intelligent in the Archie comics (Making the best version of Knuckles we’ve had in forever), kept this ongoing in the IDW comic. The Forces prequel portrays him as deciding to become leader of the Resistance (To an empire that hasn’t actually formed yet) purely to be a glory hound, and then goes on to establish that he was basically a figurehead while the real work was done by Amy, of all people.

And speaking of Amy…

Yeah, poor Amy is basically her Sonic X counterpart. But worse. I didn’t think that was possible, but at least X’s Amy seems to care about her friends. In Heroes, we’re treated to an equally violent and stalkerish Amy, who ostensibly starts searching out Sonic because he’s implicated in the abduction of Cream and Big’s pets, but when they actually catch up to him, Amy clean forgets why she is looking for him in the first place and tries to force him to marry her. Despite being twelve.

Y’know when Amy said she wanted to marry Sonic in SA2, she was joking, right?

This is why I find the idea of Amy being the real leader of the Resistance frankly absurd: Because the only time she led anything, it was a team that consisted of herself, a small child, and a man less intelligent and aware of reality than said small child, and she completely forgot their actual objective the moment she set her eyes on Sonic. Add in an unfortunate stint of very poor eyesight that got less and less understandable with every instance, and we got Amy’s rough personality for the next decade.

While Knuckles mostly stagnated at the same level of stupidity during that time, Tails got worse and worse, losing all of his badass traits with every game, a factor only increased by the “Sonic only” mentality costing him playable status, until he reached his nadir in Forces, cowering in terror from Chaos 0, and crying out to Sonic to save him, despite knowing full-well that Sonic was captured already. Amy, meanwhile, limped along at the same level until about 2014, where it seemed someone at SEGA finally realised that A) Having the only female character you regularly use be a pink-coloured gender-bent version of your male hero whose only function is lusting after said hero doesn’t and shouldn’t fly in this day and age, and B) violent stalkers aren’t cute, and dropped this trait. Unfortunately, this has been more of a lateral move than a fix, as, much like Antoine in the comics, they forgot to give her anything substantial or fitting after she lost her negative traits, leaving her a bland and dull character, and when you’ve had a character be consistent for ten years, even if they were consistently bad, then changing it without cause or warning is still going to be jarring and awkward.

Part 4: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, or “Why the fuck did this happen?”

As I said in Part 2, Sonic X was made under heavy oversight from Sonic Team, and was heavily endorsed by them at the same time. There were promos for the show inserted into Sonic Adventure DX, a few episodes were released on GBA cartridges, and it received a long-running comic from Archie that ran alongside the main book, even after the show had ended. Additionally, characters that debuted in games from 2002-2004 were restricted from appearing in Archie’s main book for years afterwards (Which will become relevant later). The third season was commissioned solely off of the response to the first two, and primarily overseas response, hence why the original sub was never aired in Japan.

Sonic X was huge. And with that in mind, it’s plain to see that the portrayals of the characters in Sonic X were intended by SEGA. Yeah, all that horrible characterisation was intended as the vision for the franchise going forwards, and subsequent games were adjusted to match it.

And unfortunately, not only did this have a serious impact on the main cast of the games, but it had an even worse effect on Emerl.

Part 5: Emerl in Sonic X, or “Emerl vs. ‘Emel’”

Sonic X’s original mission statement was to adapt Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Battle. Why they skipped Sonic Heroes, despite Shadow being a major player in Battle’s story, I don’t know.

For whatever reason, the show took a full season to actually get to the first game adaptation, SA1, and instead spent the first 26 episodes on bland episodic “adventures”, in some kind of strange reverse-Isekai series. However, once it got there, the adaptation work was fairly faithful to the source material, which the exception of Donut Steele’s being crammed in to the plot. However, he mostly followed Big around, and since Big was the least involved in the game’s plot, he didn’t disrupt too much.

Sidenote, after 26 episodes of filler, the actual SA1 adaptation only lasted six episodes.

SA2 was likewise only six episodes, but with the exception of Amy’s big scene, it likewise wasn’t too bad. Tails suffered this time around too, which is somewhat surprising since he was mech-dependent in the anime anyway.

After some more filler, which introduced the Chaotix and then did nothing with them, Emerl finally made an appearance, albeit they got his name wrong.

‘Emel’ looks like Emerl, and somewhat works like Emerl, but might as well be completely different. ‘Emel’ stays completely mute for the entire time he’s around, never advancing much beyond Emerl’s initial silent, pre-first Emerald persona. He does get better at fighting, but he’s limited to only absorbing a single skill at once (Except for when he isn’t).

Dispensing with Battle’s interesting, rich, and heart-twisting plot, Sonic X instead has ‘Emel’ linger in ensemble for three episodes, before condensing the entire game’s premise into a two episodes of really bland tournament arc, where Sonic himself doesn’t actually fight and we get two rounds of Donut Steele being a dick to his friend and his father.

‘Emel’ wins the tournament, and is given a Chaos Emerald, and just when you think it might kickstart him becoming an actual character, instead it just drives him insane and he immediately becomes a pathetically weak version of Ultimate Emerl. After kicking the crap out of the entire cast, he is defeated by Cream and Cheese, because even though he can take on Sonic, Knuckles, and Rouge at the same time and win, along with Tails, Amy, Donut Steele and everyone else, he… can’t handle two opponents at once.

This is stupid.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about Sonic’s relationship with ‘Emel’, and that’s because he doesn’t have one. The wonderfully-written parental bond that these two characters share in the games is completely excised, and instead the focus is put on Cream. Bare in mind, Cream is so inconsequential to the actual game that she doesn’t even get mentioned individually in Emerl’s dying speech like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow do. Instead she’s just grouped in with Amy.

This is also stupid.

And as a result of this, it means that what is arguable base form Sonic’s most impressive feat just doesn’t happen in the anime, instead Emerl dies because he is lightly kicked a bit by Cream. Yeah, unlike the Advance games, Sonic X’s Cream is not an unstoppable engine of destruction, she’s basically just a small child who can sometimes fly.

Instead of Emerl’s tragic speech and Sonic’s desperate attempts to keep his son alive, we get treated to a prolonged scene of Cream crying over the death of her “friend”, something that is probably meant to tug at heartstrings but doesn’t because Cream’s voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

And Shadow isn’t even there! He doesn’t come back until a third of the way through Season 3, and never meets ‘Emel.’

This is really stupid. And, for those keeping track, that means of Sonic X’s originally commissioned 52 episodes, and the full series run of 78 episodes, a stunning total of seventeen of them were actually adaptations of the games that the series was supposed to focus on, leaving us with 61 episodes of what might as well be filler.

And, unfortunately, that franchise-wide initiative had damning consequences for Emerl.

Part 6: Gemerl and Sonic Advance 3, or: “An incomplete resurrection.”

So, Gemerl. I know his name is apparently G-Merl now but fuck that I’m calling him Gemerl. If the comics can do it then so will I.

Gemerl is the worst thing Eggman has ever done to Sonic. Like, there is no contest. Some of his other schemes might be more destructive and generally evil, but in terms of personal pain inflicted, nothing has topped this.

Eggman salvaged Emerl’s corpse, and brought him back to life as a mindless murderbot under his control. So not only did he kill Sonic’s robo-son, but he also brought him back as a weapon.

Come the conclusion of the game, Gemerl predictably betrays Eggman, steals the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic, and goes on another rampage. I have… headcanons about this fight, but that’s something to worry about later. What’s important is that, once again, Sonic is victorious, and Gemerl’s defeated body plunges into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Tails is able to bring Emerl back properly this time, presumably using the Chaos shard that was left over at the end of Battle’s finale. So, it’s all a happy ending, right? Sonic has his child back, Shadow has his connection to his history restored, and Emerl is alive and well, right?

Wrong.

See, the vile spectre of Sonic X rears its ugly head once more, and sabotages this conclusion. Gemerl doesn’t return to Sonic, in fact we never see him reunite with his father. Instead, Sonic X’s version has enough clout now to take precedence, so Gemerl is now Cream’s playmate.

Bear in mind that Emerl’s idea of a fun game is all-out combat against his friends, and Cream doesn’t like fighting (Even if she’s really good at it in Advance 2 and 3).

And then he never shows up again. Even when Cream is part of the game’s plot, like in Rush or Generations, he’s not there, and most egregiously, in Sonic Chronicles, where Cream is not only an active player in the plot, but so are Gizoids, the creators of said Gizoids are the main antagonists, and Emerl himself is mentioned… Gemerl is not there.

But he did make it into the comics, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Part 7: Embargos, knock-offs, and misused tropes, or: “Ian Flynn dun goofed.”

For a long while, Emerl/Gemerl was barred from the Archie comics, due to the Sonic X embargo, and when it was lifted, he didn’t appear until the reboot. We did, however, get a suspiciously similar substitute in the form of Shard.

Shard was the original Metal Sonic, but when he was brought back and rebuilt for the Secret Freedom arc, he was given a colour scheme ostensibly derived from Metal Sonic 3.0, but one shared with Gemerl, and a personality that was a lot like a watered-down version of Emerl’s own.

On some level I can understand Ian’s decision to bring back Metal Sonic v2.5, rather than use the character that seems to have been an inspiration for this new incarnation in some way. He’d need a fully-formed Emerl, necessitating a skip over the whole story, since there wasn’t room for an adaptation during the Mecha Sally arc that the Secret Freedom story was framed within. Heck, for all we know, the similarities between them may simply be a pretty sizeable coincidence.

But then the reboot happened and Gemerl finally joined the comic cast. And to say it was underwhelming would be an understatement.

You’ll notice that I said “Gemerl” rather than “Emerl”, because his entire story was indeed skipped. The events of Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3 had both happened already. This wasn’t Ian’s decision, as far as we know, his intention was for the comic to start over from the beginning. However, due to the interference of Paul Kaminski, who wanted a softer reboot, Ian was forced to fill the characters’ active histories with a large chunk of the games’ stories. Battle and Advance 3 were among those that had already happened, so Emerl made cameos in both incarnations via flashback… which unfortunately led to a plot hole.

See, Advance 3 and Sonic Unleashed are rather difficult to keep in the same continuity, because both share a common plot element: The world breaking into seven pieces.

For a long while, it was generally assumed that the handheld games and console titles were only semi-canon to each other. This avoided the awkward question of “If the Gaias were already there, why didn’t they emerge when Eggman broke the planet in Advance 3?”

Ian shoved them blatantly into the same continuity, and gave no attempt to explain what was different about the Advance 3 world-break compared to the Gaia incident, which served as the backbone to the reboot’s three year long Shattered World Arc. Why didn't the Gaias wake up during Advance 3? Because that's now a question we have to ask of the comics' world.

When Gemerl finally showed up doing something other than yard work for Vanilla (Despite allegedly being Cream’s friend, Cream spends all her time with the rest of the cast, and Gemerl is basically Vanilla’s maid), it was to get effortlessly dispatched by a brainwashed Mega Man with a terrible name in the extremely lacklustre Worlds Unite event.

This one was more than a little bit of a slap in the face, considering that Emerl and Mega Man are very similar in concept- robots that can copy the abilities of other characters- but Emerl is demonstrably more powerful. Now, if Ian had established that Gemerl had been nerfed when he was rebuilt, either by Eggman or by Tails, that would be fine. But he didn’t. In fact, Gemerl is given the title bubble “Super Gizoid”, implying that he’s stronger than a regular Gizoid.

Worlds Unite is generally pretty bad for having its corrupted heroes easily curbstomp every other character around, to the point that the only thing that can stop them is each other, but in Gemerl’s case it really serves no purpose.

This is the only thing that he actually does in Worlds Unite. He shows up to get beaten up and make Mega Man look stronger. That’s it.

This is something that TV Tropes refers to as “The Worf Effect”, a trope wherein an established powerful character is defeated easily by a new character, in order to demonstrate the latter’s power. Now, there’s nothing wrong with using this trope, but please note that I said establishedpowerful character, which Gemerl wasn’t.

At the point that this comic released, Gemerl’s last appearance in any Sonic media was over ten years prior. None of the comic’s intended target audience would remember him, and they wouldn’t know why defeating him was impressive. And this was, in addition, a terrible way to introduce him to new fans. Though the worst part is easily that this was unnecessary. Mega Man had already defeated everyone else, and had established his power pretty well just on them, and he was about to get removed from play permanently in the next issue. There was really no reason to throw Gemerl under the bus for this.

He made one more appearance in the event, getting controlled by the Zeti along with every other robot, and after that he got bopped on the head and just flew away.

Later, he’d make another appearance in the Panic in the Sky arc, and while his portrayal was far from the worst thing about Panic in the Sky, it only adds to the issues caused by the previous showing.

Gemerl makes one appearance, and promptly gets pinned down by the Witchcarters and Team Hooligan. Bear in that one of those groups are the joke villains who nobody takes seriously, and the other are a gang that was defeated by Tails before he met Sonic.

Archie Gemerl was a character who only existed to lose to villains in a vain attempt to make them look better, and that’s legitimately all Ian ever did with him, which makes me wonder whether he disliked the character. And it didn’t even make the villains look good, when you think about it. For anybody that was actually the intended audience for this book, Gemerl had no significance. He was just a robot that got beat up all the time. But for anyone like me, who does remember the games he appeared in, it stands out, not as good writing, but as a blatant narrative device and misused trope.

In this situation, I would simply rather Gemerl never appeared in Archie. At all. If Ian wasn’t going to give him time to shine, or at the very least be an adequate member of the supporting cast, he shouldn’t have used him at all.

Part 8: A Fresh False Start, or: “Wait, how did this get worse?!”

And now we arrive at IDW.

The one nice thing I can say about Archie Gemerl is that at least his personality was mostly on point. He read like a generally accurate take on the character that Emerl was at the end of Battle, which is what he’s supposed to be.

The same cannot be said for IDW.

In the pages of IDW, Gemerl acts like the most generic robot. He speaks in emotionless, stilted sentences with little in the way of actual grammar, leaving him to read like a poor man’s Soundwave, or Soundwave in one of those comics where the writer can’t decide whether they want him to speak normally or adopt his speech pattern from the G1 cartoon, so they just sort of do both.

Emerl pretty much never talked like this, as far as I can recall. His speech development is much more reminiscent of a child learning words, and the only time when he did adopt a more robotic speech pattern, it was a clue that he was slipping back into his destructive programming. He only spoke like a generic robot when he was in mindless destroyer mode.

He gets thrown for a loop by a simple logic flaw, unable to reconcile “Protect Cream and Vanilla” with “Don’t kill the zombots”, and has to be talked out of killing everything around him, when the entire point of Gerald’s modifications to the Gizoid was to make him a bringer of hope rather than destruction, and give him a compassionate heart.

The part of Battle’s story where Cream imparts a pacifistic mindset doesn’t frame her as being right. In that part of the game, they are cornered and under attack by hostile but ultimately mindless drones, and when she convinces Emerl to stop fighting, he almost dies. It’s Cream that learns the lesson there, that sometimes fighting is okay.

This character is already compassionate, he shouldn’t need to be talked into not killing the zombots by a small child, nor should he need her to point out that they’re innocent people who have been made this way by Eggman, because he was made into a killing machine by Eggman twice, and the first time he did die because of it. The character that lay dying in Sonic’s arms, scared and bidding his last goodbyes to his loved ones shouldn’t be the one experiencing this struggle when Omega is also in this arc.

That’s it, really. He’s not Gemerl. He’s a second, less goofy Omega. And it boggles my mind that, despite getting Gemerl’s character, if not his combat abilities, down almost perfectly in Archie, Ian is now subjecting us to this travesty.

Like with the Archie example above, therein lies the crux of why the steady decline of Emerl/Gemerl that began with Sonic X is pushing me away from IDW: I don’t want to read Ian’s take on this character, because, to me, No Gemerl is better than Badly-Written Gemerl,

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, either. Way back in 2016, when I complained about Ian’s portrayal of Gemerl in Panic in the Sky, I said that the way he handled characters that I liked tended to make them the least likeable parts of the stories he wrote. As well as stating my dislike for his handling of Gemerl, I also stated that I used to really like Fiona Fox, moreso in concept than in execution, but under Ian’s pen she was largely an insufferable antagonist, little more than a trophy to make his pet recolour look better, and almost every story she was in only added to the “List of reasons she needs to stop lying to herself and just start the redemption arc already”. Additionally, I said that I didn’t want to see him bring back Neo Metal Sonic or Mephiles in any context, and we got the former, and it was exactly as bad as I thought it would be.

So, that’s basically why I don’t want to read IDW. That’s why, even if the aspect that was a big sticking point for me back when the comic launched was to be undone soon, I still probably wouldn’t pick it up. Because I don’t want to see my favourite Sonic character continue to be written badly by a guy that should know better, and has done better in the past.

If he were simply screwing up Gemerl’s personality the first time he wrote him, I would file it away under the same category as “Emel”, but the fact that he’s done better before, in a book where he had greater restrictions on what he could do with the characters, really settles this as an interest-killer for me.

Well done, Mr. Flynn. I legitimately didn’t think you could make me actually miss SEGA’s tighter control, but you somehow managed it. I would be impressed if it weren’t so sad.

#Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic X #IDW Sonic #Archie Sonic #Emerl #Gemerl #Emerl the Gizoid #Gemerl the Gizoid #Critical #Sonic Heroes

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smallnico · 5 years

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Does Sofiya like a specific kind of tea aside from just sugary? What's her family like? Why does Dom (presumably) like tropical print shirts? What are Lani's top five countries she would be banned from if she got to choose which ones? What's Chris's favourite sport if any and why? What got Candace into baking? Is she competitive at the bake sale? What are Erol's opinions on sci-fi as a genre? Would Leandro star in a musical and if so what kind? What does he think about musicals in general?

sofiya’s favourite kind of tea is milk tea, but when she drinks other kinds, she adds a lot of sugar and milk. she doesn’t really have a preference aside from preferring less caffeine, as she has a low bitter tolerance and is paranoid about setting off psychotic symptoms. i, personally, know that you need a lot more caffeine than anyone should reasonably digest in order to cause said symptoms, but sofiya does not, or at the very least, she’s so worried about it she refuses to even chance it.

how her family is depends on which family you’re asking about! her current family consists of the theatre dads -- her biological father miko and her not-yet-legal-unmarried-stepfather theo -- and her two honorary siblings -- theo’s estranged-but-reconnected daughter grace, and beau, a former student of his who he got legal custody of a few years back due to Circumstances. they’re a weird family, the members of which adopted one another into their lives at some point and just ran with it. they have a surprisingly natural and healthy family dynamic, all things considered, with the exception of grace, who is newer and less on board with the whole situation (she really only considers their house a temporary place to stay, though she warms up quickly to beau and miko). sofiya really likes grace and frequently tries to engage her and persuade her to be less mean and intimidating. it doesn’t really work. sofi’s one of a few characters in the group who wasn’t born in canada! she and her dad are russian-ukrainian, with her dad having lived and worked in russia most of his life, and having moved to ukraine after sofiya was born in order to live with her and her mother. sofiya’s dad and mom were in a tumultuous relationship from the start, and it only got worse after sofiya was born, since she was kind of an accident. she remembers her mom being cold, bitter, and deeply unhappy, when she wasn’t having spells of paranoia and intense emotional outbursts. miko and sofiya’s mom split on good terms when she was ten, then he took custody of sofiya and they moved to canada.

dom does like horrible loud shirts, yes. there are a few reasons for this, but none of them are very compelling: he’s gay, he likes thrifting, he likes that vibrant energy, and they make him feel better about himself. he has about a half dozen equally questionable fashion choices in his wardrobe, and a handful of quieter clothes he wears when he really needs to do laundry.

honestly, the only reason lani hasn’t made this list is because she’s allergic to planning ahead. her chaos is the sort that comes from impulse rather than conscious thought and self-awareness. i think it takes a lot to be banned from a whole country, but i also believe lani’s the kind of presence to somehow manage to do it by a colossal series of spontaneous mistakes. she has been suspended from school before, and she has been kicked off the bus on at least three separate occasions. if she had to choose a country to be banned from it’d be australia, because she’d think it’d be hilarious to be banned from a country that used to be where the british shipped criminals.

chris used to play rugby in high school. she initially got into it on a whim, but really committed to it after it became the thing to finally persuade her dad to say no to her -- see, she really wants to rebel and used to act out a lot more than she does now that she’s a bit more mature, but it’s hard to rebel against your parents when they spoil you unconditionally. her main sport is now kickboxing, for purposes of self-defense and good cardio, but she’s still a fan of rugby and women’s soccer in particular. she refuses to watch men’s soccer because she vocally thinks it’s overrated.

baking is candace’s go-to de-stressing activity. she’s a fundamentally high-strung person, so this means she got really, really good at it. for a long time baking was the Thing She Did For Herself, though it eventually got folded into the miasma of taking care of her younger siblings while her mom worked full time and late into the night. she’s kind of a duty elemental, though she hates being passively obligated to take care of people more than she hates anything in the world, except when people bring premade store-bought goods to bake sales. (”it’s lazy, it’s lying, and it’s disgusting”, she says. “some of us got up at five in the morning to make sure their homemade cinnamon bread rose and got into the oven in time to be warm for this, you animals.”) she loves her siblings, but literally the second they got old enough to take care of themselves, she left for university and resolved to never have kids of her own. she now truly bakes for herself, though she usually ends up bringing stuff in to the theatre and to parties, because baking a tray of delicious hazelnut chocolate cookies is absolutely no good if you can’t share them with the people you really want to be friends with. she does stay hyper-vigilant of everyone’s dietary needs out of habit.

erol really enjoys it, but only a certain kind of it. they see science fiction as a genre that should be fundamentally humanist, it should say something about human nature, rather than just being fantasy in space or “hey look at this cool robot”. they’ll get snitty and correct you if you say star wars is science fiction (”it’s space opera, it’s a whole and fundamentally different genre!”) but they’ll accept that star wars exists. erol’s more of a star trek kind of person for sure, but their real love of the genre is classic science fiction, your isaac asimovs and your phillip k dicks and your ursula leguins. overall their taste in literature skews toward either “shit you’ve never heard of” (which if i’m being honest, when i write erol, i just make up on the spot) or “classics that you’re allowed to be a snob about”. they haven’t read a piece of genuine young adult literature since they were 13 and read twilight. they refused to admit they enjoyed it for years, and now they’ll defend its place in the literary canon, past the point where any reasonable person would cave to the popular insistence that it’s just a book for teens that blew up and that’s Fine.

leandro fucking loves musicals and would kill to star in a big one. he’s actually a good singer and performer, too, so it’s not a far-fetched dream for him, though round river doesn’t put muscials on very often. they’re more expensive than non-musical stage shows to make good quality, and not all of the cast members can actually sing, so whenever they put on a musical, they have to bring in... the choir.(horror chord) leandro and erol are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the sorts of shows they prefer, with erol preferring thinky highbrow stuff, and leandro being completely swept up in spectacle and drama and performance. he’d make a great phantom, according to himself. in the two musicals round river’s put on while he’s been around, he was billy flynn in chicago, and kenickie in grease. when i did my little heathers fancast (which is outdated, sofiya can’t sing and neither can lani), i set leandro to play jd.

thanks for asking! :>

#smallnioc #janetofficial #the askbox

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casper-has-a-cat · 6 years

Text

refuses caretaking (but needs it)

WARNING: descriptions of vomit below!

read the warning!

okay, you’ve been warned! please enjoy the fic!

Sickness worked itself into Zeph's bones gradually enough that he almost missed it.

He'd woken up with aching muscles and sensitive skin, but he didn't think much of it, assuming it was a side effect of lack of sleep. That's what he blamed the nausea on as well, after he ate lunch. At some point during class he obtained a mild headache, but that was just another symptom of lack of sleep.

Or so he'd assumed.

Zeph was in the middle of leading a club meeting when he realized, quite suddenly, that he had been wrong. His presentation was cut off with a muffled retch that left the rest of the club members in confusion. Zeph coughed in embarrassment, regretted it immediately, but tried desperately to make up an excuse anyway.

"Um, anyway, I'll–" His stomach churned and Zeph shuddered. "Fuck."

There wasn't time for an explanation. He walked out of the room as quickly and as nonchalantly as possible, then sprinted towards the bathrooms.

He didn't make it.

His stomach clenched and its contents spilled over his lips and into a small puddle on the floor.

This was a nightmare, really. The anime club was composed of his fans - if they saw him like this, well… it wouldn't be the end of the world, but it would be the end of Zeph's YouTube channel, his fame, everything he'd worked for. He could picture it now, one of them walking out and calling to the others to come watch in some grotesque fascination, to offer help but then post a video of the ordeal later. A video of him vomiting on the tiled floor of a university building. Yeah, there was no way he could live that one down.

He needed to hide his face as soon as possible.

Zeph stumbled over to a garbage can, but his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't get the top off of it. It was the plastic kind with a vertical flap, and unless he could get the top off, there was no way it would be of any use. Unfortunately, there just wasn't time to figure it out.

Just as he realized that there was a latch on the back, Zeph's throat filled with rancid puke. He tried to clench his mouth shut as tight as he cold, but a second heave made that impossible. He was still fiddling with the top of the garbage can when a massive projectile stream of barf rushed out of him. It splattered the bottom of the trash can as well as Zeph's feet and he groaned. His head was starting to feel too light, and he was tempted to lean against the wall and just let himself make a mess, but just then he was able to undo the latch.

The top of the garbage can fell the ground with a loud noise, but Zeph paid it no mind. More sick was gushing out of him even before the first wave was over, so he ducked his head into the trashcan and leaned heavily against the side of it, trying his best to stay on his feet.

"Ze– Oh, Zeph…"

Zeph cringed. He knew that he was lucky to have had even this much time in private, but still. He coughed and kept his eyes downward, trying to ignore the awful smell of garbage, hoping that he could somehow keep his nausea at bay until he was alone again.

As soon as he felt a hand on his back, Zeph squirmed away from it's touch. "Don't," he managed, voice strangled. "Fuck off."

The hand was withdrawn quickly. Zeph focused on the feeling of relief he felt, rather than the fact that he missed its warmth. There was a sigh.

"Sorry, I– um, I gave the rest of the club an activity to do with each other, so you don't have to worry about that. We should– we should move you to the bathroom and then I can tell them to go home."

Zeph's head was spinning so bad. He was gonna be sick again, and soon, he could tell. He only vaguely recognized the soft voice as belonging to Addie, the relatively quiet boy who'd offered to help with the club, apparently out of the good of his heart. As much as he appreciated Addie's distraction in this moment, Zeph didn't buy it. He assumed Addie was yet another one of his love-crazed fans, albeit a bit more subtle about it than most.

Still, the kid was right. Zeph needed to get to privacy. But he needed to puke again first.

"Fuck off," he repeated. He hoped that was enough to get Addie to leave, because he couldn't wait much longer. One more whiff of the rank garbage beneath him and he lost it again.

"Just let it out," Addie said gently, and Zeph knew he'd failed. Sure, Addie seemed nice enough, but this would surely be all over the internet tomorrow. When he was able to, Zeph spat, cleared his throat, and shot Addie the most vicious glare he could manage.

He almost regretted it when he saw the seemingly genuine look of concern on Addie's face. Almost.

"I'm going to the bathroom. You can do what you want, but please, leave me alone," Zeph stated firmly. It was best to be blunt with this kind of thing. He didn't wait to see Addie's reaction.

It must have taken an hour of sitting on the gross public bathroom floor for Zeph to empty his stomach completely. By then his whole body was numb, shaky, and slick with sweat. He stumbled out of the bathroom with his thoughts running rampant. How was he going to get home.

"Zeph!"

Zeph's reaction was to, quite visibly, flinch. Had he been caught? It was after 8 pm by now, who else but a crazed fan would have waited for him this long. He whirled around to see none other than Addie.

"Fuck." Zeph started to walk away quickly. This kid was persistent, that was for sure.

"Wait, wait, please, I–"

"Didn't I tell you to leave me the fuck alone?"

"I– yes, but– I just– I was… worried," Addie eventually stuttered out. Zeph's lack of an immediate response seemed to give him confidence. Or maybe he was just rambling nervously. "Zeph, are you sure you can make it home like this? I mean, do you have someone who can pick you up? A roommate or something? I don't have a car, but– off!"

Addie had run right into Zeph's back, evidentially so focused on catching up with his quick pace that he hadn't realized Zeph had stopped in his tracks. It was something Addie had said that had done it. A roommate or something?

No, Zeph didn't have a roommate, but that wasn't what had made him stop so suddenly. Actually, his lack of a roommate was public knowledge - at least, to his fans it was. He'd heard them bragging about their knowledge of him to one another in hushed whispers, but this piece of information wasn't even worth mentioning - they all just knew. He blinked, and turned to face Addie.

"Hey, are you– you’re not a fan?"

Addie frowned. "A what?"

"A fan of mine– that is, you don't follow me on YouTube?"

Addie laughed, not so much with pleasure but surprise. "Uh no, sorry. I'm not on YouTube much. I could be, of course! I mean, I should check out your videos!"

"No!" Zeph was shocked. "No, no, that's not– that's not my point. I just– why were you so nervous, talking to me, just now and when we met?"

Addie put a hand to the back of his neck and stared at the ground, smile lopsided and awkward. He shrugged, then looked up, almost as if he knew that Zeph needed to see his eyes to confirm that he was being honest. "I dunno, I just thought you were cool, I guess. I mean, you're in charge of a club with so many members. I didn't even know you had YouTube fans! Now I'm even more nervous," he admitted, chuckling a bit.

Maybe it was the fever getting to him, but Zeph believed Addie's words. It didn't feel like sucking up. He wanted to believe Addie. His gut told him that he'd regret this tomorrow, but Zeph pushed that suspicion aside. He didn't have many other options right now, and frankly, his gut was out of whack at the moment anyway. Just barely, for the first time in who knows how long, Zeph chose to trust.

send me an ask!

@monthofsick

#tw vomit #gamer squad #zeph #addie #sick zeph #caretaker addie #my writing #cas ocs #novemetober #emeto #sickfic

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yelloweyes2 · 6 years

Text

This is just a personal opinion, so, please, don take it as nothing more than that.

As I’ve said in some ocasion before, I’m not a shipper; I never went through ship video-analysis or posts, and it wasn’t my interest to look for it either. Up until I met Jimin and Jungkook, I’ve never considered supporting or even thinking about two real persons as a couple, if they were not out publicly about it. In a personal level, I’m very familiar with asian culture and history; my favorite writer is Yukio Mishima, and that implies I’m aware of the social and cultural treatment homosexuality has received in Asia. I also love manga and anime since I was a kid. I’m inmersed in kdramas and kpop, and I know how idols and fanservice work, the same way yaoi and shonnen ai have become widely popular, as a way to escape the suffocating moral restrictions of the daily life of many asian countries.

As many other people, I started listening and watching BTS songs and mvs; then, I was curious after subscribing to their channel, so I started watching the Rookie King and Run episodes, Bon Voyage, the dance practices, the vlives and all kind of material available. I became a fan. I fell in love with all members, discovering their incredible talents, their lovely personalities, the hardships they faced, their brotherhood. I noticed how close they were; very different from other kpop grous, in the sense that they really care for each other and they work together, not against each other for the spotligth. They are a true family and I’ll never doubt that all of them love each other. But after a while, I started noticing that Jimin and Jungkook relationship was a bit different from the rest.

There were subtle things, little details then and there. The way they look at each other; the hands that remain in touch a little more than necessary, the jealousy... I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I realized there was something more than friendship between them, but when I saw Jungkook resting his head in Jimin’s shoulder and closing his eyes, without a care in the world, as if Jimin were his safe place, his home; that was the last straw, the moment that convinced me that they were real.

After that, I rewatched many videos, I started paying more attention, I tried to see if there were similar behaviors with other members, I tried to remain unbiased. I didn’t want to become a shipper, because I used to consider it disrespectful and childish. But it was so different with Jimin and Jungkook! The more I watched, the more convinced I was that they were indeed romantically involved. It wasn’t fanservice. I saw some videos from other shipps and I could clearly notice the difference. Yes, all of them love and care for each other, they do things together, they share clothes, they inspire and help each other through hard times, and they share a big amount of skinship. Young western fans and people not familiar with kpop and asian culture might be confused and think some gestures are intimate or coupley, and sometimes they can’t separate fanservice from real moments, because the concept is nonexistent in western culture. But what Jimin and Jungkook do is completly different from what they do with the rest of BTS.

Today’s Burn the Stage episode couldn’t make it more clear. When Jungkook was at the verge of fainting, Jimin was the only member who stayed by his side. It wasn’t the leader, Namjoon, or Jin, the elder, or Tae, his close friend. The staff requested all personal and members to give Jungkook privacy, but they didn’t even doubted for a second that Jimin should be there. In fact, Jimin was there from the very begining: when the others went to see how Jungkook was doing, Jimin was there, helping strecht his legs, and he stayed the entire time until he recovered. If that doesn’t clarify that their relationship is special and different from the rest, I don’t know what else, but this is only one of many other things that have been pilling over since long ago.

The GCF in Tokyo, every awkward interview when they talk about that trip and the other members look so done, the “all night-buddies”, the constant praise, the “sky and people” pictures, the simple fact that Satellite Jeon exists, the “let’s go baby” that let all karmys shook because the word he used is only reserved for couples and has no equivalent in english, the stares. You can dismiss one or even two or tree things, but when you have a consistent situation and these kind of things keep happening, while you can’t see the same treatment being a repeated act with other members, then you can’t ignore it. You can’t deny they do have a special relationship that goes beyond friendship.

Finally, I would like to adress a frequent claim other shippers use against Jikook. They say BigHit is forcing those moments, even the trip and other situations when they are out of camera. Well, aside from the fact that RM and other members have stated several times that they enjoy creative freedom, and they always had support from the company, taking also in consideration how close they are with their producer (Bang Si-yuk) I think today’s episode has a moment that proves what kind of company is BH: they payed for Suga’s college tuition, when he was only a trainee that could have been replaceda dn BH itself was still a little company struggling to survive. They care for the members, and they respect them. Unlike many other idols, BTS is not forced to participate in tv shows regularly, and after a short period in their beginings, they are not forced to do public fanservice acts, like kissing or sharing intimate touches. Bighit is not that kind of company.

Well, this is just my take in all this matter. I don’t claim Jikook is real for sure, because we can’t see what happens behind cameras all the time; but what we have seen until now, make me believe they are really in love with each other. It’s not something big, not a loud and obvious moment that proves it definitly, but I know how a man in love looks and behave, and they both have all the symptoms.

#kookmin #jikook

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jsml-universe · 6 years

Text

The Story of Xanxus

After re-watching episodes 64 and 65, my opinion of the Ninth has dropped. Significantly. Good job Timoteo. A+ parenting right there. I dislike you more than Iemitsu right now. I hope your recovery is long and hard.

There are just some things that don’t quite add up in the Varia arc so I did some digging and paid closer attention to the in between pieces of dialogue throughout the anime and manga. After lots of pondering, I’ve decided that this is basically how the REAL story behind how the battle against the Varia came to be...

Xanxus is a young child. He was born in and grows up in one of the poorest slums in Italy. His primary caretaker and only family member is a single mother who is so mentally ill that she’s delusional. Literally. Sane people have difficulty in poverty enough as it is. Can you just imagine the kind of damage that background alone can have on a person’s psych?

Xanxus was born with the orb flame/flame of wrath, but he didn’t manifest it until he was an older kid. When he shows his mother, she’s convinced that she had a love affair with the boss of the Vongola and that Xanxus is their child. Like, WTF?! She renames her kid (because his first name might not have even been Xanxus with the whole ‘I named him Xanxus because the two X’s prove he’s meant to be Vongola Decimo’ logic) and then just gives him away to an old man, a stranger she claims is his father.

Then what does Timoteo do? He lies. He backs the poor delusional woman’s logic up. Big Mistake #1. He tells Xanxus not only that he's his biological son but lets him think that he can one day succeed him as the Vongola boss. Where is the logic in that? Answer: It must have been for manipulative purposes because there is absolutely NO purely charitable reason why you must adopt a random child on the street that just happens to be endowed with a very powerful flame and fool him into believing a lie about his lineage so that he'll dedicate his life to Vongola.

At this point, Timoteo could have rectified his mistake and taken Xanxus aside as soon as he’s adopted into the Vongola famiglia and explained the true situation to him. Sure, it would have hurt Xanxus a little but Xanxus is very mold-able and impressionable at this age. I can only assume that Xanxus must have been about 9 or 10 years old when he was adopted by the Ninth because Fuuta is also 9 and child Xanxus certainly didn't look younger than Fuuta.

When telling Xanxus’ backstory, Squalo immediately jumps to Xanxus’ time growing up in Vongola and says that he took to the mafia like slipping a hand in a well-fit glove. He was selfish, ruthless, easily angered, and powerful. I’d say, that’s only logical. Growing up in extreme poverty means being in a constant ‘survival-mode’ and ‘got to take care of myself’ state of mind. Food, shelter, and safety means being creative and assertive. I think it’s safe to assume that Xanxus had little to no education while growing up. If he did receive any, it was definitely sub-par. He was thrust into a foreign culture and had to adapt quickly. He had to change the way he talked, his body language, learn social etiquette, master his flame powers. His mother is no longer mentioned so I assume that he never had contact with her again. Despite his willingness to leave his mother, I’d think that, that would also have some impact on his psych as well. A significant adult figure in his life had just left him. She was completely cut out of his life as quick as the snap of his fingers. With the additional lack of a biological father, I’d say that this qualifies Xanxus for psychological issues regarding child abandonment (which is defined by the loss of one or more parent).

Problems that arise from kids who’ve experienced this include:

-low self-esteem

-anxiety and/or anger management issues

-problems regarding attachment...either difficulties forming attachment, or over attaching oneself with fear of being abandoned again

Now, on first glance, Xanxus doesn’t appear to exhibit any of these symptoms with exception to the anger problems. I respectfully disagree.

Xanxus fully embraced his adopted family. He’s busied himself with making himself useful and important in the family. He quickly established his place in the mafia and made every point he could to loudly declare that he was the Ninth’s son, as if needing to constantly reaffirm to everyone and also to himself that he belongs.

He has approximately 7 years to not only catch up but surpass his brothers and peers in education, fighting skills, and leadership skills. That kind of jump only happens through diligence and hard work, no matter how much talent one has. And speaking of talent, Xanxus is a genius. He really puts all of his skills, talents, and energy into helping the famiglia who raised him and saved him from the "trash" of society. Xanxus was raised, having an unhealthy and incomplete understanding of people’s “worth.” His idea is that a person is “worth” more based on social status and achievement. Being the “bastard son of the Ninth” was okay for him because he worked to prove himself as the best of the best and he believed he had the right to the “throne of Vongola” so to speak.

So, now we’ve got a checklist:

-Grew up in slums

-Raised in the mafia...the world of crime...and participates in the darker side of it too (ex: assassinations)

-No trustworthy adults in life...absent biological father, crazy and unreliable mother, mafia boss adopted father who also happened to tell some pretty major lies

-Has abandonment issues

...Yeah, you can bet that Xanxus has serious difficulty in trust and dealing with betrayal. So when he finds out that the truth, how does he react?

Exactly as expected. Everything has crumbled. His entire worldview shattered. He believes he’s worth nothing, that he’s back to being trash again. And his “father.” whom he trusted, lied about his identity, past, and future plans.

Xanxus's anger here is completely understandable. Now a coup? Going a bit overboard for most normal people. The Vongola and especially Xanxus are NOT normal people. If you look at it from the perspective of a 16-year-old teen with a rough past and massive anger management and fear of abandonment issues who's just been betrayed by his "father" and lied to about his place in the mafia family who raised him...yeah. Coup doesn't sound so far fetched after all.

Then when he finally confronts the Ninth face to face, his so-called father tells him that he's going to kill him for his rebellion. Xanxus’ isn’t surprised, angry, or dismayed by that statement at all. Timoteo has just validated how Xanxus perceives the Ninth views him: not as a real son but as a tool to be used and manipulated because he has a powerful flame and then disposed of when the cost of keeping him around is too high. Then the Ninth freezes him in ice for 8 years. Timoteo likes to tell everyone that Xanxus was just "asleep" for eight years. Are you kidding me?! Your "sleeping" technique damaged your adopted son so much it left permanent scars covering his entire body. You think that didn't hurt like hell? Tsuna encased him in ice for only a few minutes and when the ice melted, Xanxus collapsed to the ground. His strength was so gone that his Varia guardians had to physically put the ring on his finger. All this after only a few minutes in that Zero Point Breakthrough technique and this hasn't even touched on the psychological damage that Xanxus has been through. I’m pretty sure that seeing Tsuna's Zero Point Breakthrough technique, so soon after he was JUST freed, was really traumatizing for Xanxus. It was the technique that got him infuriated and lashing out at the teen when both were already exhausted from fighting.

Think the story can’t get much worse? Think again. After 8 years of being frozen and locked away in the dark basement, the ice is melted and Xanxus is released. There’s ongoing debate between fans about Xanxus’ age. Was he 16 or 24 when he was frozen? I’m going with 16. Yes, I know that Squalo says that he “grew into adulthood” but this is the same story where Tsuna and his guardians call a 15-year-old Lambo, Adult Lambo, too. The term “adult” is rather loosely applied in the KHR universe.

Moving on! This is the part where I got ticked off because I made some additional connections. Mammon says there were 7 dark spots in a circle and that he/she had no idea who actually released Xanxus. The first time watching this series through, I wasn't really paying attention and thought that the Varia members had stolen the rings and freed their boss. Turns out that's not the case. It's even worse. It's never explicitly revealed in the anime and manga who released Xanxus but my bet is that it was the Ninth. As the current boss of the Vongola, it's only safe to assume that he and his guardians inherited the complete Vongola rings from their predecessors and therefore he'd still have the full set. Plus, he knows all about the Zero Point Breakthrough technique so it's also safe to assume that he's the only one who knows how to counter it. So now we have the Ninth melting the ice after nearly a decade and what do you know? He tells Xanxus that he needs to do something to redeem himself. He needs to reunite with his Varia officers and go to Japan to challenge the REAL Decimo canidate. They can't kill them and they can't be too harsh on them because otherwise the battles will end before they can get to the Sky ring battle, which is the most important one that MUST happen for it all to work. Come on, you don't really think that the Varia DIDN'T hold back on their strength when fighting some talented but newbie civilian teenagers? Xanxus, probably still mentally a teenager, having been freed from an ice prison, and desperate at a chance for one last shot to become Decimo, accepts the deal. Unbeknownst to Xanxus, there was never a chance for him. Timoteo sets this whole rings battle up knowing exactly how it's going to end. He knowingly created the battles knowing that the outcome would be his adopted son, collapsed on the ground with more scars and spewing blood from his mouth and nose whilst Tsuna and the rest of his guardians would be exhausted and on the brink of death. After the battle and it's clear that Xanxus has no chance at being Vongola Decimo because the ring rejects him, he gives up the rights and the Cervello have a private conversation with Xanxus lying on the ground in defeat. The Cervello the sole supervisors of the entire battles...from an Agency which serves only directly under the Ninth! It's a really brief scene but this interaction with the Cervello had always puzzled me previously. With the light that the Ninth is the one who freed Xanxus and set up this whole Varia battle fight to manipulate Xanxus into thinking he might still have one last chance at leadership and creating a driving force to make Tsuna to accept his role as the future Decimo, this makes so much more sense: Xanxus: It's...gone...according to...your wishes...you were...right...are you...happy now? Cervello: You say that, but...we do not have wishes nor do we predict anything. Everything was already decided. Your role in this is over. Xanxus: ... ...that cunning old man... Cervello: Thank you for doing your part. With this, the ring contest battle has now ended. And to think that the Ninth had the gall to play the victim here. And you know what's sad? He does actually see himself as the one who is burdened with heavy choices that must be made for the "good of the family." Timoteo, I hate your guts, you manipulative old coot. Go retire already!

#xanxus #character analysis #behind the cradle affair #khr #katekyo hitman reborn #timoteo #cervello #zero point breakthrough: first edition #psychology #the real story

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confused-stars · 6 years

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Light of the Seven - Chapter Five: A little slice of happiness

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Taako was making breakfast. Waffles. Crêpes. Eggs Benedict. The full deal.

Food was his and Lup's way to pay each other back when the other did nice things for them. And Lup making sure he ate after last Thursday's shift only made it logical that Taako would be the one to make breakfast today.

Lup and Barry had been out for date night last night, not for work, but Barry looked just as tired as he would be been if he'd caught a mafia boss the night before.

He didn't even react to Taako standing in the kitchen when he walked in around 8:30, aside from humming appreciatively when Taako turned and pressed a cup of coffee into his hands. A shitload of milk and no sugar. Pretty much the exact opposite of how Lup liked it.

"Mornin', Barold. Have a nice night?" Taako smirked at him. He'd shared an apartment with Lup up until six years ago, and that meant he was more than well informed about how the end of date night usually went. No wonder dear Barold was as tired as he was.

Barry glared at him and made a noncommital noise. The shower got turned on and Taako could hear Lup's muffled singing from the bathroom. She was the morning person to balance out him and Barry. If Taako wasn't so used so it and Barry wasn't so incredibly in love with her, it would be annoying to both of them.

Now though, Taako was actually awake. Well, he'd already had his coffee at home, after all. He wouldn't have left his apartment without at least one cup.

Taako hummed along with Lup's singing and pulled the fridge open. "You guys have any orange juice?"

Barry's head raised from the table he'd been resting it on and he yawned. "I'll ask, gimme a sec." He got up and walked over to the bathroom wall, putting his hands against it and pushing his head right through. There was a scream. Then: "Stop screaming, it's me! Are we out of orange juice?"

Barry pulled his head back over and frowned at Taako who was doubled over laughing, clutching the counter to keep himself up.

"Fuck, Barry! Does that... does that count as using your powers for good?"

Barry looked slightly sheepish as he waited for Taako to calm down. "Guess I should've used the door. She never freaks out when I just pull back the curtain and hop in."

Taako threw a handful of flour at him. "Too much information, Bluejeans."

"You've seen and heard worse!" Lup called from where she was emerging from the bathroom, hair sopping wet and wrapped in a bathrobe on top of the pajamas she'd apparently just slipped back into. She walked over to give Barry a kiss on the cheek as he wiped the flour off his glasses.

"Smells amazing, Gandalf," she said, leaning in to pick at the pile of hot waffles.

Taako slapped her hand away. "Wait 'til I set the table, you animal." He'd long given up on making her stop with the wizard nicknames. It was slightly harder to come up with fire based nicknames, honestly. Most of them just sounded too cool to work for teasing.

Barry hurried to set the table instead as Taako taste tested the eggs and nodded to himself, holding out the spoon for Lup.

She tried a bite and frowned in concentration for a moment, then grinned widely. "Perfect, bro. As always."

"Of course it is." Taako huffed, pretending that he didn't need Lup's approval. She just laughed.

Famous chef or not, if Lup didn't think a dish was good, it wasn't good enough for Taako either. Everyone knew that.

"So, what's up today? Any plans?" Taako asked, setting down the waffles and eggs on the table.

He took a seat next to Barry who was still moving a little slow as if not fully awake yet. He should be, after that quick trip to the shower. His hair was still wet.

Lup's, too, but she was already using one hand to blow dry it with a gust of hot air, and the other to shovel waffles into her mouth.

It was nice, Taako thought as he transformed his orange juice into go-gurt, to use their powers this casually around each other when they had to hide them from everyone else. They didn't need to know he'd been aiming for chocolate milk.

It was a sleepy Sunday morning, none of them bound by work or hero stuff, and Taako called for some twin plus nerd bonding time. Lup and Barry had been dating for over nine years, almost as long as they'd all had their powers, and weirdly enough it hadn't taken Taako long to welcome Barry into their family.

He was like a brother to Taako, ugly jeans and nerd shit and all.

Once either him or Lup finally got over their awkwardness and decided to pull out the ring that both of them carried around in their pockets, Taako would start referring to Barry as a brother even outside his own head.

It was always nice to go out with both of them. No one ended up feeling like the third wheel, and Lup and Barry were such a sickeningly sweet couple that Taako couldn't even be jealous if he tried.

Sometimes Lup would be cheesy on purpose to annoy him, in true twin fashion.

Whenever he heard her use "Barry-Bear" he promised himself that if he ever ended up in a long-term relationship like that he'd be chill about it.

Until then he could only tease back.

"Oh, my beautiful Barold," he sang, hooking his arm into Barry's as they walked down the street towards the park. "It's such a delight spending this perfect Sunday with you and your handsome face! Every moment I have to be without you is a struggle!"

On Barry's other side, Lup huffed. "I do not sound like that. At all."

Barry shrugged, clearly trying not to laugh. "Well…"

Taako was prepared for the impact as Lup shoved her boyfriend right against him.

"You're not supposed to side with him! He'll only get worse if he gets encouraged!" she complained, and Taako laughed.

"Barry has been on my side this entire time, dear sister. Our evil plan is to make your life a living hell full of bad puns and surprise hugs."

Now Lup and Barry laughed along with him. Taako felt his heart swell as he looked at them. He loved his family so much. He wouldn't tell them out loud, but they knew.

When he met Lup's eyes her grin softened into a smile. She'd read his thoughts. "C'mon, let's go feed the ducks."

It was a shame Magnus wasn't here. Magnus loved ducks almost as much as he loved dogs. Maybe he just loved all animals starting with D? Taako would have to check his stance on dolphins.

But sadly, they'd all decided not to hang out outside of superhero work. Lup and Barry were dating, so they were an exception, and no one could deny Taako and Lup's relation, but the others steered clear from each other as much as they could.

That way, it would be harder to find the others should one of their identities be revealed. Lup wasn't a big fan of that arrangement, but Taako agreed with Davenport that they could never be too careful. He didn't want to put Julia in danger, for example. Or Mavis and Mookie.

Precautions needed to be taken. None of them wanted their identities to be revealed, but for some there was more to it than just their own lives. Being a superhero wasn't all helping people and being celebrated. It was dangerous as fuck, too.

None of them were almighty.

Taako's transmutation power went haywire sometimes, and it always exhausted him if he used it too much.

Lup quite literally burned herself up, and she always had to rest for a long time if she went too far with her powers, her symptoms similar to a fever.

Merle's healing powers weren't strong enough to fully heal a mortal wound, but enough to make someone last long enough to get proper help, and his plant controlling wasn't nearly as impressive in the city as it was out in the wild when he was surrounded by nature.

They all had flaws. They could be defeated, and Taako didn't want to let them forget that. Confidence was nice. Caution saved lives.

Before college, and the light, and the powers, he hadn't allowed himself to care about anyone but Lup. Now he had more or less unwillingly stumbled into this huge, warm, dorky family. And he didn't want to lose any of them.

"Hello, Sir!" Taako blinked, shaken out of his thoughts, and turned away from where Lup and Barry had amassed a whole flock of ducks and pigeons they were feeding with bird seed.

Angus McDonald, nerdy kid and amazing cook to be, was sitting under a tree close by, a book open on his lap. He waved at Taako.

Taako waved back. "Hey, Ango!" He left the two lovebirds to walk over and sit next to the little boy. Honestly, Angus was a pleasure to teach, much better than the adults he usually had in his classes. He soaked up knowledge like a sponge and tried so hard to do everything right. Sadly, he didn't seem to have much of an instinct for cooking, but they'd only had one class so far. No great cook had started that good. It was a bumpy road, full of cuts and burns and onion cutting tears, but at least Angus had the best teacher in the world.

"What'cha reading?" Taako asked, looking down at the book.

Angus smiled. "Caleb Cleveland! It's my favorite book series, about a boy my age who solves crimes!"

Adorable. Fuck.

Taako leaned his back against the tree. "You like detectives?"

People were looking over at him suspiciously, and if Taako cared any more he'd worry what this looked like to others, an adult man approaching a lone little kid in the park.

Angus didn't seem to be thinking about that at all. He grinned. "Yeah, I wanna be a detective when I grow up. Actually I-" He broke off, looking down at his lap.

Taako looked down at him, a little confused. He didn't understand kids. Angus was okay, but Taako still had trouble reading him. "I think that's a really cool career choice. You'd be catching bad guys, just like a superhero."

"Well... not quite like that." But Angus was smiling again. "Is that your sister over there?" He pointed at Lup who was laughing at a pigeon that had landed on her head.

"Actually I have never seen that woman in my entire life," Taako deadpanned, feeling a surge of pride at himself when Angus started laughing.

He sounded like an adult a lot of the time, but his laugh was high and clear like a little boy's should be. Carefree.

Alright, Taako, stop with the projecting already.

"She looks just like you, Sir, that was a bad lie," Angus said, pressing a hand to his side, a little breathless.

"She's just a dedicated fan." Taako ruffled Angus' hair. "I gotta go check on them, wouldn't want those pigeons to eat poor Barold. I'll see you in class on Thursday?"

Angus nodded enthusiastically. "Of course, Sir! I even had my grandpa buy me some less fancy clothes for the kitchen!"

Taako gave him a thumbs up. Then he looked around. "He here?"

Angus bit his lip. "Uh… no, Sir. He doesn't leave home much. I have a babysitter, but she dropped me off here so she could go watch a movie." He shrugged.

Taako nodded his understanding. Angus came from a different world than Taako, financially, but… Taako could very much relate to adults not giving a shit.

You don't have to give a shit either, his mind reminded him, You're not his family.

But Angus didn't have a Lup to cheer him up and make him feel warm inside.

Taako would give him some of that, if he could. He wasn't a particularly warm person, but food could do many things that people couldn't.

He'd make that little boy happy, even if he wouldn't be caught dead admitting that he cared.

#taz #my writing #today is a fluff day

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tube-thoughts-blog · 7 years

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tube thoughts vol. 7

zero stars - terrible, 1/2 a star - dull, 1 star - folly, 1 1/2 stars - lacking, 2 stars - fair, 2 1/2 stars - decent, 3 stars - terrific

Rifftrax presents "Cool As Ice" --1991-- *Snow aka Justin Bieber gives Bella Swan goosebumps and crotch-rocket road rash.* 3 stars with riffing or running from zero to 1 star without

"Dumb and Dumber To" ---2014--- *Sloppy seconds.* 2 stars

VH1 --sneak peak-- "Suave Says" --2014-- *A "thrilling" inside look into the post music career, current evangelical motivational speaking venture, and wealthy domestic drama of a one hit wonder pop star from wayback in 1991. Gerardo aka Rico Suave.* 1/2 a star

"That's My Boy" (2012) *Topics like underage student and teacher sexual relationships and incest are dealt with maturely by Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, and Vanilla Ice. Of course not, but this isn't even creatively controversial or riotously raunchy in any remarkable way. It's just another formulaic Adam Sandler movie that hits all the same notes as usual.* either zero stars or 1 star

The Tom Green Show -Rogers Community Tv- -The Comedy Network- (1998) *Bemused, pertubed, fumed. These are just a few of the reactions Tom illicits from anyone not in on the joke.* 2 stars

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of Laughing in the Dark *"Pick the right door, and you'll go free. Pick the wrong door, and there he'll be." He being a cigar puffing, nightmarish, funhouse clown.* 3 stars

"Housebound" ---2014--- *"An active mind in an inactive environment." The Brits make a superbly spooky mystery with dry and subtle humor.* 3 stars

"Chonda Pierce On Her Soapbox" (1999) *Folksy entertainment variety and jubilee from a real life Peggy Hill.* 1 star

Buckmasters -Young Bucks- "The Misadventures of Bubba" (1992) *Near fatal hunting accidents hilarity with a Jim Varney caricature.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

"Dancing Outlaw, Jesco White" (1991) & Jesco Goes to Hollywood (1994) *''Sorrow, hatred, and madness. '' "If you wanna get to heaven, you got to raise a little hell."* Heaven for Jesco is dancing at Elvis' star on the Hollywood walk of fame and guest starring on Roseanne or huffing fumes.* 3 stars

Fargo: The Crocodile's Dilemma *"What's the policy? See, I'm sort of a student of institutions." Billy Bob Thornton can play indifferent malice like no other.* 3 stars

15 Storeys High: The Sofa *Lord Snooty's couch, club card, co-opting of other people's conundrums, and crisis 'cause he can't stand to be cuddled.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

12:01 Beyond-- Christmas Special 2014 -------------------------------

*World Friendship Society - Please Just Go (music video)* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Le Passage (movie trailer): More badass than Home Alone and Rambo.* 3 stars

*Lobo for the charity "Socks for Tots" gently used socks for children at Christmas at the North Pole. Lonely odd socks for lonely odd kids.* 2 1/2 stars

*Ninja, the Mission Force: "Clam chowder can only mean a ninja challenge."* 2 1/2 stars

*Lobo argues the Holiday Blues with his potted plant, Ms. Mittens.* between 2 & 2 1/2 *

*Fleischer Studios - Superman - The Arctic Giant: A kaiju nearly destroys Metropolis and swallows Lois whole.* 3 stars

*Treevenge: sentient x-mas trees turn the tables on crass Christmas celebrations and begin tearing the merry folk to shreds.* 3 stars

*Lobo fills holiday stockings full of leftover Halloween Candy.* 2 1/2 stars

*Lobo meets Ro-Man the Robot Monster from the 1950s B sci fi movie, at the north pole, and suggests he kidnap Santa Claus.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

*Reverse Pharmacology: Incredibly hilarious imagined symptoms of a placebo taken by medical test subjects under lab conditions.* close to 3 stars

*Pueblo Sleep Solutions presents 'The Bedtime Bruiser' (commercial)* 2 1/2 stars

*Don't Open Till Christmas (movie): Scotland Yard is on the case of serial slayings of Santas.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

*Lobo gets an 8 track player for X Mas* 2 stars

*The Lobo (DC Comics character, not the guy from the 12:01 skits) Paramilitary Christmas Special: The Easter Bunny hires the meanest bounty hunter in the galaxy to hunt down and take out the fat man and his elves.* 3 stars

*Sleigh Runner: The Communist tradition of Christmas is put to an end by a Eastern European Rob Zombie lookalike cowboy killer.* 2 1/2 stars

*Happy Holidays to all the fans of the New Mission Impossible (tv series).* 3 stars

*"This Christmas forget milk and cookies. He wants blood." TWo Front Teeth (low budget movie trailer). The elves in this flick look pretty nightmarish and the characters, especially the black cowboy, look interesting. Interest peaked.* 3 stars

*Republic Pictures Serial -The Crimson Ghost- Chapter 3- The Fatal Sacrifice: The Crimson Ghost's hideous high wire act.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

*The metal band HEMI perform the song Dust to Dust live in a club.* close to 3 stars

*Neon Harbor presents Space Ninja the animated movie: A cyber dystopia mixed with feudal Japan. technology and swordplay eyecandy-gorgeous must see for me.* 3 stars

*Ro-Man mistakenly beheads Santa for Lobo who claims no responsibility for the death of the mythical character.* 2 1/2 stars

*Action International Home Pictures presents the "Gruesome Holiday shocker." "Elves" starring Grizzly Adams (retro movie trailer)* 3 stars

*Vinegar Syndrome presents on Blu Ray "You Better Watch Out" aka "Christmas Evil": And they've added a beautifully twisted painted portrait of the movie's tragic hero on the box art.* 3 stars

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

Tales from the Crypt: The Ventriloquist's Dummy *Pathetic weirdo and hack ventriloquist comedian Bobcat Goldthwait's idol Don Rickles isn't really a retired, bitter legend of ventriloquism. He's actually a prisoner of his own responsibility to keep his beautiful-woman-hating, conjoined twin freak brother from ever killing again.* 3 stars

Freddy's Nightmares: Deadline ----------

*Writing obituaries does seem like the typically morbid Summer job that a Springwood teenager would have.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

*Springwood, where suicidal teenagers wish they were dead so that they can be reunited with their ghost bff(s) and douchebag, ponytailed dreamlovers.* 2 stars

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

Red Shoe Diaries: Safe Sex *A smooth talker brings a sad, vulnerable business professional lady in out of the rain, and she still makes him wear a raincoat in bed. So, so, softcore stories sent in to a personal ad's post office box and then picked up and retold by shadowy anywhere North America David Duchovny character, which is nice trimming for the show, but damn is the sensitive lite soul torch singing background music awful. I prefer a cheesy, solo saxophone over this -Lifetime For Women lyrics- boner killing tripe.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia" (2006) *I'm a sucker for Los Angeles noir settings, slaughtered pretty girls like Laura Palmer, and conspiracy art like Alan Moore's From Hell.* 2 1/2 stars

Transparent: season 1 -episode 1 *Three self absorbed siblings can't see past themeselves enough to be aware of their father for what he truly is and themselves for what they might actually be. The conservative side of me wants to say that this is more of liberal Hollywood's agenda to undermine traditional America by saying everyone secretly wants and would be happier with an alternative lifestyle. Also, I can't remember the last time I saw so many aesthetically interesting (not exploitive or trying too hard to be sexy) glimpses of comfortable nudity.* 3 stars

Weird Science: Cyrano DeBraniac *"The savage game of sexual attraction" requires all of one's synapses to be firing and it doesn't hurt to have a time and space manipulating genie, who's also sexy, to unzip Einstein's undead brain out of the fourth dimension.* 2 1/2 stars

Thundarr the Barbarian: Den of the Sleeping Demon *A pair of clumsy junior adventurers, and their huge bird friend, help rebury a genetic research monstrosity that was given a high voltage reawakening.* 3 stars

--- Swamp Thing: The Dark Side of the Mirror

*Everyone in this town is so stupid and easily manipulated that Arcane could have probably just walked up to the new determined district attorney, at dinner in a fancy restaurant, and shot him in the head, instead of genetically mutating the musclebound moronic deputy into a Swamp Thing double assassin.

The town formed an extremely enraged mob, in a matter of minutes, and even the longest running protagonist human characteron the show (Jim's mom) is willing to throw her morals aside for blind vengeance.

Thank goodness Jim's brother Will, the new female lead Kari Wuhrer, and Swamp Thing are decent characters.

I'm glad for the upgrade from Jim to Will. Will is a better character and it gives the show more of an adult cast and less of a Timmy fell down the well and needs to be saved, each week, routine.

Still, some of the acting is low quality from the extras.

Feels like they used the stunt man from the fight scenes to do the lines, to save money, when it would have been better to switch him out for a real actor.*

between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

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

Paranormal State: season 1 -episode 17 *A wild goose chase for the legendary Mothman. The leader of PRS probably doesn't realize how much he comes off like X Files' Fox Mulder as he keeps repeating the phrase "I want to believe."* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Kolchak, the Night Stalker: The Sentry *"Don't linger in the shadows." It will "rile the bile" about lizard-men living deep within the earth where corporations and shadowy government organizations are storing their darkest secrets. The most daring reporter,ever, of tabloid monster mysteries makes his last (documented) stand down there.* 3 stars

"Room 237" (2012) *"The past doesn't exist." But film historians, and fans, are still dissecting the ghost of Stanley Kubrick and the symbolic filmic events surrounding the almost mythical Overlook Hotel.* 3 stars

Lucio Fulci's "Conquest" (1983) *Cro-Magnon man was ruled by a cruel dominatrix / naked lady performance artist / new-age goddess, along with her band of fanatical furries. That is until Ronnie James Dio & Luke Skywalker changed things. Conquest establishes itself apart from other low budget and dumb sword & sorcery flicks, of the early 1980s, with its dreamlike aesthetic and gore-crazy practical special fx.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

"Begotten" (1990) *Imagine a super 8mm National Geographic hallucination of twitching, early 20th century mental patients being tortured and abused in the ruins of a 19th century pastoral southern gothic wasteland lurked over by pre-modern-civilization tribal sacrificial rites that are even more hellish and nightmarish than actual pagan practices predating contemporary times. Black mold on the walls of farmhouses with sun peeled paint and holes in the tin roof where the sound of dripping rain and viscus is constant on rusting metal surfaces that lie just beyond open rock quarries crawled over by lepers, in rags, dragging shaved and mutilated Christ-like figures who spew black stigmata from their weeping eyes and mouths.* 3 stars

Squidbillies: Taint Misbehavin' *A dying Dan Halen requires the citizens of Dougal County to join him in the paradise of the afterlife. Granny and Early get giddy because they mistakenly believe they're going to a resort town in Tennessee, when they're actually heading for the ancient Egyptian land of the dead.* 2 1/2 stars

Workaholics -2015 Season- --preview trailer-- *Some Comedy Central money went into a 2 minute parody of the new Mad Max movie, popular crime tv shows like Sons of Anarchy, strippers, bullet porn fx, and "cool" explosions.* close to 2 1/2 stars (for the misguided effort)

Hannibal: Apéritif *The mongoose meets the cobra.* 3 stars

Jonny Quest: The House of the Seven Gargoyles *An icy fate for an acrobatic dwarf creeping around a castle posing as a gothic statue and trying to choke his unsuspecting victims.* 3 stars

Dr. Who (4th Doctor - Tom Baker): The Android Invasion *A Benedict Arnold astronaut returns from being lost in space, now brainwashed by aliens carrying a shipment of human replicants and a deadly virus.* 3 stars

Farscape: Jeremiah Crichton *Crichton becomes a castaway on green planet inhabited by a tribal, and somewhat peaceful people, although there is some jealousy when the daughter of the chief becomes smitten with Crichton. After spending part of a cycle looking for Crichton, Rigel and Dargo find him all scruffy and weather beaten. In a Return of the Jedi C3PO twist, Rigel is the tribe's prophesized messiah and the three must save these exiled, forced by forcefield to be primitive people, or else be sacrificed themselves due to stupid politics and a conspiracy of priestly hierarchy.* 3 stars

Bob & Margaret: For Pete's Sake *Bob's brother is a pretentious tv chef, and when he gets a gig in India, Bob and Margaret have to look after his two annoying brats.* 3 stars

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Dark Music *The power to control demonic forces, living in the root cellar, lies in the sounds on the radio. A tired of being picked on paperboy uses this knowledge to payback the scummy metal-head bully next door and his mean, little sister.* 3 stars

"The Initiation of Sarah" (1978) *This feels like a hazy 70s tv movie version of Carrie the college years. Two sisters pledge and go through the occult like Greek sorrority ceremonies. The good looking one gets picked by Morgan Fairchild's meangirl sisters and has to be cruel to the other. The timid one has her telepathic powers exploited by a witch wannabe Shelly Winters in the rival plain Jane house complete with a maze backyard.* between 2 1/2 & 3 stars

---Thrashin'--- (1987) *Square jawed Josh Brolin is too straight laced to be taken seriously by skatepunks in the 80s L.A. skatescene. The leader of a gang of Lost Boys also wants Brolin to stay away from his out of town and just visiting, Idaho pretty tomato younger sister. It hits all the right notes for an 80s extreme sports fun adventure flick.* 2 1/2 stars

Tales from the Crypt: Fitting Punishment *A cheapskate ghetto mortician is willing to cut corners no matter the cost to human decency. He embalms using dirty tap water. He buys cheap coffins from China. He clips out the gold and silver teeth of the deceased. He even blames his orphaned nephew for being a financial burden and cripples him, then sells his Air Jordans to pay medical expenses. When that's not enough, he murders him and saws him a foot shorter above the ankles so that he can stuff the boy into a cheap coffin for Chinamen.* 3 stars

Hill Street Blues: Film At Eleven *Llama stolen from the zoo and almost used in a slumland apartment voodoo ceremony. Cops style film crew documenting the precinct. Herman Dracula, alledged wannabe vampire. It's funny until he commits suicide in his private cell. Ballistics confirms that they've found the handgun used in the near fatal shooting of officers Renko & Hill. Relief comes with uncertainty. It's raining in the police station, the roof is leaking and everyone is getting the flu because of it. This show can't help but end on a melancholy note due to all the lingering emotions. Rollercoaster, as usual.* 3 stars

Tru Tv- --South Beach Tow-- --Bernice's Top 20-- *"Best of" countdown of fake reality show beatdowns by an angry black woman?* 1 star

Botched: Vagina Bomb! *The same network (E!) that encourages viewers to idolize trainwreck celebrities and their fake bodies, also exploits sick individuals who've butchered their own bodies in order to achieve that phony Hollywood dream. Of course this show is under the guise of "fixing" plastic surgery mistakes, but the client/patient usually receives even more body enhancements and still looks like a nightmare.* either zero stars or 2 stars

True Detective: The Long Bright Dark *Heathen homicide in a hick shit-haven where if one doesn't parrot the standard beliefs of others, and oddly speaks in a stream of consciousness like Cormac McCarthy, then one's peers tilt their heads and cock their ears like a confused dog in misunderstanding and disbelief.* 3 stars

---- New Year's Movie Marathon ---------------------------------

Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs: Time Runner (1992) *Spoilers, for The Force Awakens, ahead. Be Warned. Years after Return of the Jedi, Luke is having a midlife crisis and skynet is using star destroyers to blow up Los Angeles. So he travels back in time to the Washington Canadian border getting in ugly rental car chases with human looking alien Rae Dawn Chong and gunning down well armed baddies, along side the goofy deputy from Twin Peaks, & watching their hilarious death throes. All while making sure Senator Palpatine can't prevent Seth Rogen and James Franco from nuking North Korea thirty years in the future. Make sense?* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: 12 To The Moon ---plus--- "Dream to Design" -short- *The woman of the future visits the satellite of love and turns the robots crow and tom servo into kitschy househould appliances. meanwhile, the united nations of nasa proves earth's worthiness to the lunar neighbors.* 2 1/2 stars with riffing and between 1 1/2 and 2 stars without

Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" *A depressed Da Vinci with his wings clipped by the dulled scissors that society can no longer cut all the red tape with.* 3 stars

Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" *In my life of relative ease, I watch this movie on my cheap consumer electronics provided for me by workers in horrible third world conditions.* 3 stars

"Starry Eyes" (2014) *Ambition. Attrition. Ascension. All the way from Hooters Girl who can't get taken seriously at low-grade movie auditions to transforming into a Hollywood harlot comes at the price of one's soul taken by the Satanists who run the movie industry and helped sanctified with blood and betraying those closest also climbing the ladder.* close to 3 stars

"Messiah of Evil" (1973) *What if, after Thanksgiving, America honored the Donner Party Massacre by having Black Friday be masses of mad people tearing into raw red meat at supermarkets? This flick is like the eerie calm before an apocalypse. Too weird, almost, to describe, and if one tried to, a bug would appear on their tongue and they would cough up insects and lizards.* 3 stars

"Strange Days" (1995) *"Memories were meant to be forgotten. They were designed that way." Let old acquaintance as well. 20 year old predictions about the new century, by James Cameron, are still pretty relevant. Questions about the abuse of police force. Urban upheaval and riots. Voyeurism being a social media (though it's not as seedy as it's imagined in this movie).Things James Cameron got a little off are plenty too. Musicians stopped being, for the most part, political messengers. Trainwreck skank rock queens like Courtney Love aren't nearly as talented as James thinks or as worth going through hell over, but they're still a huge part of the media's obsession. Found footage and virtual reality may just be entertainment fantasy, but the themes in this movie are played out daily on actual viral videos.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

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

Max Headroom: Academy *What if corporations had their own legal systems? What if a death penalty trial was turned into a tv game show? Viewers of the HLN network sort of get to experience this. What if criminal profiles were assigned to innocent people who fit a certain stereotype? Wait a minute....* 3 stars

Joe R. Lansdale's "Cold In July" (2014) *A considerate and well adjusted family man has to stand his ground, on shaky legs, but isn't in the overzealous camp of his hometown neighbors who wanna pat him on the back for it. He never feels right about the incident and his remorse pulls him into a world of Dixie mafia killings, Texas Mexico border crime, and a friendship with a flamboyant and dogged private detective and the deeply burdened man who mistakenly stalked the family man's family when he was wrongly convinced the family man slayed his son in the stand your ground incident. In a bizarre twist, the three men come together to help the deeply burdened man solve his burden of putting down his wayward son who's making snuff films with hookers. It reminds me a lot of William Devane's "Rolling Thunder," another revenge flick with a lot of bitter sorrow and dark themes.* 3 stars

The Tom Green Show -Rogers Community Tv- --The Comedy Network-- (1998) *Tom is an absurdist comedian who can sometimes be traditionally clever in his humor. He drinks purple koolaid with a cult who worship an alien version of Jesus Christ's brother, he ruins an Elvis impersonator street performance and almost gets his ass kicked for it, and he continues to try to prove he's the biggest idiot in the room.* close to 2 1/2 stars

The Prisoner: The Schizoid Man *The Village have number 6 convinced he's twice the man he was using an uncanny double.* 3 stars

Game of Thrones: season 3 episode 7 *"People work together when it suits them, they're loyal when it suits 'em, they love when it suits 'em, and they kill when it suits them."* 3 stars

"Under the Skin" (2013) *Scarlet Joe Handsome is an enticing alien, in a black wig and brightly painted lips, driving around Scotland, in a pedo van, indifferently observing all the quiet, everyday human suffering and luring horny, confused men back to her abandoned building / nest / spaceship(?) --where they step sinking into a surreal black pool of liquid.* either 1/2 a star or 2 stars

American Horror Story- -Coven -The Replacements *Sober Santeria. What other show is going to have a pothead, white trash mom molest her patchwork monster, back from the morgue, college boy son? or let a juicy and morbidly obese black virgin finger herself in front of a minotaur? not many spring to mind.* 3 stars

Gargoyles: The Edge *Zanatos uses the steel clan and a Tony Stark type tech gargoyle suit to frame the real gargoyles for the museum heist of 'the eye of Odin,' in order to have the cops chasing them all around town and scare them into coming back under the wings of his 'protection,' which would have the gargoyles inprisoned in a research lab.* 3 stars

Rifftrax - Total Riff Off - Man vs. Monster *"Meeting the channel's factual quota, we now return to the bullshit." Rifftrax skewers another one of those pretentious explorer douchebags, from National Geographic Wild, that are always trying to turn a simple creature of nature into a tall tale monster.* 3 stars with riffing 1 star without

Son of the Beach: With Sex You Get Eggroll *satire of sex slaves and sex jokes, both smartly done.* 3 stars

Carman -Yo Kidz! -The Vidz *Gnarly Jesus dudes, hip musical kids, and cumbersome cat costumes.* 1 star

Morton Downey Jr.: Cults *A man who once had a cult-like tv audience examines mind control organizations and self-help pseudo-religions.* close to 3 stars

Mel Brooks in "High Anxiety" *Side-splitting neuroses.* 3 stars

Tales from the Crypt: Korman's Kalamity *A cartoonist's monstrous creations come to life after years of nagging from an abusive spouse and his recent forced use of an experiment male potency medication.* 2 1/2 stars

"Al-TV" -April Fools Day 1984 *"I could just watch videos all day until my brain turned to mush. Couldn't you?" Weird Al takes over MTV from its bland video disc jockeys and turns the channel into the absurdity it should be.* 3 stars

"Traxx" (1998) *"Be good, be gone, or be dead." Shadoe Stevens is one tough cookie as he parodies every 80s action hero vigilante and western cowboy cliche come to clean up a Troma version of a Texas town in one of the weirdest, left field comedies ever.* 3 stars

Hippies: Protesting Hippies *Simon Pegg tries to spark a Y2K revival of the comedic rebelliousness of The Young Ones with a Britcom That 60s Show.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Northern Exposure: Pilot Episode *A "Jew, New York doctor" finds unspoiled land, wildlife, hell... even people (patients) "just waiting to be fondled" in middle-of-nowhere, Alaska.* 3 stars

X Files: Space *Otherworldy phantom sabotaging shuttle missions. A study on how stifled and subdued the space program has become.* 2 1/2 stars

"Freaks, Nerds, and Weirdos" -MTV (1994) *MTV NEWS looks at Generation X's social outcasts like nerdy hipster college kids, quirky celebrities, and alternative musicians and they talk about their struggles with being different from "the norm." Ironically, the show is framed with commercials featuring beautiful skin care and fashion model young people bragging about how great it is to be one of the in group of the beautiful ones.* 2 1/2 stars

"The Myth of the American Sleepover" (2010) *The last bittersweet days of Summer and the pre-conceived notion of sublimity for a group of suburban teenagers. Indie movies about the adolescent rite of passage to adulthood aren't as fun as exploitation flicks about the same thing, but the delicate and thoughtful manner in which the subject matter is approached allows for more personal reflection for the viewer.* close to 3 stars

Turner Classic Movies: Beneath the Planet of the Apes *Twice as bleak of an ending as the first.* 3 stars

--- "Bates Motel" (1987)

*After spending his youth in the looney bin with Norman Bates as his father figure, Bud Court (Harold & Maude), and a great casting choice, inherits the Bates Motel from the deceased Norman whom he carries around in an urn afterwards.

With the help of a spunky squatter (Lori Petty) and a Morgan Freeman esque handyman, he reopens the falling apart eyesore and deals with the rumors of the place being haunted and the fast moving yuppies of the 80s who wanna exploit the property to keep with the changing and advancing landscape of the times.

Tonally a weird mixture of maudlin and mockingly humorous. Whoda thunk they could take a legacy of a Hitchcock suspense thriller and throw in one those feel good fixing up the place montages, a Happy Days 1950s teen ghosts dance party with a dreamlover angel Jason Bateman, and Scooby Doo villain plot twist?*

either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars

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"An Evening With Bobcat Goldthwait, Share The Warmth" (1987) *Bobcat chugs two six-packs of TAB and then proceeds to frighten uncomfortable laughter out of a group of yuppies in a nightclub.* 2 1/2 stars

"Beyond Vaudeville" (1986-90s) *Best of a weird NYC public access variety show with guests and acts like Grandpa Munster, Tiny Tim, "the Edith Bunker of massage," climbing Harpo's ladder with Wavy Gravy, Burt Reynold's fantasy Turkish woman (possible delusional stalker), Greg Brady, the arm and the giant from Twin Peaks, the theme from the Flying Nun on spoons, Rock Around the Clock in Yiddish, an Underdog / Dracula enthusiast / interpretive dancer, and many other pathetic bizarre folk. Sammy Davis who?* 3 stars

Morton Downey Jr.: Central Park Squatters *A heated shouting match between freaks and fascists over the issue of gentrification.* 3 stars

"Scoundrels" (1982) a Cecil Howard adult film *"Life's too fucking short." Ron Jeremy is the long dick, long suffering dad, just like Kevin Spacey, in a sexually frustrated slice of American Pie.* 3 stars

American Horror Story -Murder House- "Rubber Man" *"What is it about being dead that makes me so horny?" Hysterical lady troubles.* close to 3 stars

"The Guest" (2014) *A psychotic super-soldier gone awol and come to roost with the troubled family of a fallen comrade. Pulses like an homage to 80s action movies in the vein of John Carpenter.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Justified: season 1 episode 1 *Bluegrass Helter Skelter.* 3 stars

Chrisley Knows Best: The Great Outdoors *Chrisley reluctantly takes his sons camping at the lake, while wishing he were more like his hero Oprah and scaring his 8 year old with the legend of Jason Vorhees.* 2 stars

Comic Book Men: Ghostbusting at the Stash *Sitting around ye ole podcast table and sharing spooky stories about things like the Jersey Devil.* 1 star

"The White Buffalo" (1977) *Charging out of Hell and into Heaven were men like Wild Bill, Crazy Horse, and Charles Bronson.* 3 stars

Kung Fu, the series: Dark Angel *Words lost, eyes blinded, and riches not found, but, at the same time, roots replanted, senses regained, and faith restored.* 3 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Invasion U.S.A. (feature) & A Date with the Family (short) *Rigid dinners with loved ones, or heavy drinking with a group of barflies, is a great opportunity to discuss how every American should do more in their part to combat the Red Menace.* 3 stars with riffing 1 star without

"My Mom's A Werewolf" (1988) *An underappreciated housewife goes to the pet store to get a flea collar for the family dog, and winds up having the mom jeans charmed off of her, and replaced with fur, by a hair-piece wearing lycanthrope (John Saxon).* 2 1/2 stars

Freddy's Nightmares: Black Tickets ------------------

*A young Brad Pitt runs over himself running into himself running away from his problems.* 2 stars

*Having a baby is hellish, even if Brad Pitt is the daddy.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

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

USA Up All Night -with host Rhonda Shear -Valentine's Special -----------------

*Lovers Lovers (feature movie): Neurotic & horny 30 something year old professionals in the city of Angels. It's like a softcore version of Seinfeld.* 2 stars

*Starburst California Raisins style commercial where the Starburst candies get taken to the bad side of town called Twisted Town.* 2 1/2 stars

*The Girls of Paradise (phone sex commercial): 3 stars

*Rhonda hangs out in the honeymoon suite with a amorous bell boy who has chest hairs a plenty.* 3 stars

*Twix commercial parodies the plane crash movie "Alive" in a funny scenario where one guy tricks the other into thinking they're being rescued so that he can have both Twix candy bars to himself.* 3 stars

*Rhonda tries to get a honeymooning and arguing couple's bride out of her hotel room bathroom.* 2 1/2 stars

*Free brochure for TV Parental Ratings guidelines* 3 stars

*"Mel" (taking his name from a PayDay caramel candy bar wrapper) calls up a phone sex hotline to talk to the horny chick about covering her in peanuts and creamy caramel in a funny PayDay commercial.* 3 stars

*"Every day people like me and you are proving why the 'Psychic Solution' is so popular." Obvious payed employees of this phone scam network give false testimonials about their amazing experiences talking to phone psychics.* either zero or 3 stars

*"Imagine being forced to make love. Now, imagine thousands will die if you dont. Will she? Won't she? Or will she just kick some ass?!" La Femme Nikita preview for an upcoming 1997 episode. Haha.* 3 stars

*Rhonda coaches sweet talk to a dumb husband who gets all her amorous advice lines all wrong.* 3 stars

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Weird Science: Magnifico Dad *Mom gets her birthday wish for dad to turn into male supermodel hunk Fabio.* 3 stars

Son of the Beach: Silence of the Clams *"The beach is meant for solitude, not senseless orgying. Cancel Spring Break or else."* 3 stars

Thundarr, the Barbarian: Fortress of Fear *A many eyed wizard wants Ariel as his bride.* 3 stars

Swamp Thing: Silent Screams *"Eye of the hurricane, listen to yourself turn. World serves its own needs, Dummy, serve your own needs." Arcane is selling eco-terrorism to the highest bidder. First in line to be served, shadowy agents of the U.S. government, and they're willing to sacrifice a small, swamp town to test the effectiveness.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Jonny Quest: The Invisible Monster *Turn off the life light, don't let it shine or else be taken in by the hungering Pac-Man esque ghost of an animated mass of energy. Look out, because it's a one-eyed, giant, purple, people-eater.* 3 stars

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Super Specs *Do "They Live" or is it just an April Fool's Day trick of the mind thanks to a phony trick gifts shop's surprisingly effective super specs glasses?* close to 3 stars

Friday the 13th, the series: Shadow Boxer *A bum fighter uses cursed gloves to separate his dark side from his body and sends the shadow out to stick it to his opponents.* 3 stars

Paranormal State: season 1 episode 18 *Penn State freshman lions turn themselves into fraidy cats with the passing around of campus legends and the playing of an ancient Japanese ghost story game called '100 Candles.'* 2 stars

Penny Dreadful: season 1 episode 1 *For a moment, I thought Frankenstein and his monster were going to passionately kiss on the mouth. It was weird.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital: season 1 episode 6 *"He eats disease. He likes to be scratched behind the ears. He's horrible, beautiful." 3 stars

The Outer Limits: If These Walls Could Talk *CGI Ryan Reynolds. He's not Green Lantern. He's possibly a 'Casper' or at the very least a molecular anomaly. His mom can't let go of the mystery around his disappearance and his frequenting of a so-called haunted house. She's a paranormal believer. She swears she hears him crying out in the haunted house. She befriends a pyschic phenomena debunker. They get drunk, share their hearbreak over the afterlife or lack thereof. They stir up spirits or at least a cold case crime scene. They learn about the mystery behind a previous owner who was a reclusive scientist and find his hidden room complete with strange meteor. It ends with them covered in ectoplasmic goo.* 2 1/2 stars

"Father Guido Sarducci Goes to College" (1985) *Vatican City versus Disneyland.* 2 1/2 stars

Tales from the Crypt: Mute Witness to Murder *Some enchanted evening, you may meet a stranger. And some enchanted evening, you may witness a brutal murder. That enchanted evening may damage the psyche.* 3 stars

Red Shoe Diaries: Double Dare *Necessity is the mother of virtue. A business professional lady needs the thrill of an erotic game of show and tell via fax machine dirty messages and flashes of bare flesh across facing office building windows with a sexy stranger, but she can't take it to the next step and cheat on her husband in person.* 2 1/2 stars

"Computer Beach Party" *Weirdly played, and ridiculously overdubbed, dorky sex comedy that maybe comes close to deserving cult status.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

Total Riff Off: Animals Behaving Badly *Horny deer. Smoking ape. Rascally raccoon. Pooping cheetah. Shoe humping tortoise. Horny dolphin. Indian woman breastfeeding a calf. Chicago city coyote. rat infanticide, and the classic panda attacking jacket guy.* 3 stars with riffing between 2 and 2 1/2 stars without

"RoadRacers" (1994) a Robert Rodriguez film *David Arquette as a scumbag greaser, James Dean wannabe with Salma Hayek as his main squeeze. Sounds unconvincing, but somehow they pull it off. Also, great tunes from the era of rockabilly, decent villains like the town asshole cop William Sadler, and Deadwood's Saul Starr as the sci fi and sinful thrills obsessed sidekick.* 2 1/2 stars

Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" (2014) *Maybe the best ever use of scripted reality in dramatic entertainment. Following two siblings for over a decade as we watch them grow and deal with their movie parents a psychology student-into-teacher mother (Patricia Arquette) and their sometimes deadbeat other times often extremely caring and liberal-slacker poet papa (Ethan Hawke), along with step siblings, abusive drunk stepfathers, plus all the growing pains and life steps that happen along the way to young adulthood.* 3 stars (for achievement in the portayal of life) or zero stars (for every character being so unlikeable)

--Starz-- --The Missing: episode 1 *A wrenching, quiet, and moody look at the frantic hours around parents dealing with the disappearance of a child and how the effects of that trauma are still haunting them, and others involved with the memory, years later.* 3 stars

American Gothic: Damned If You Don't *Dang ole' tornado of the soul.* 3 stars

"Din of Celestial Birds" (2006) *inherent iniquities* 2 1/2 stars

True Detective: Seeing Things *Pussy, fantasy, illusion, delusion, hallucination, justification, nightmare, and revelation.* 3 stars

X Files: Fallen Angel *Toxic cover up and lies with an official seal.* 2 1/2 stars

"Night Dreams" (1981) xxx *Bound by wild desire, Dorothy LeMay fell into a ring of fire.* 3 stars

--- MTV's True Life: I'm Preparing for the End of the World

*An obese, and (from how he's presented on this docu show) low i.q. suffering, young father moves his pregnant wife, two young boys, and yummy pet rabbits & chickens to an isolated farm in the mountains.

There he rambles about doomsday scenarios and his family assists in setting up booby traps that are more dangerous to themselves than anyone else.

My advice is to lay off the extra bunny, at dinner, and to not homeschool the kids about the proper way to filter goat piss into a drinkable water alternative, but instead to exercise as a family and to get out in society and work towards not ending up with an apocalypse.

Next, we have two priviledged college twins who are so quirky and idiotic that they jokingly form a two person cult where they bother college campus students and the city's homeless population with their pretend rhetoric.

Low point being when they claim to be getting prepared to raise their consciousness beyond the normal soulless zombie, just before tossing a twenty dollar bill into the air for a group of hungry homeless and junkies to wrestle over.*

1 star

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

Morton Downey Jr.: Feminism *Mort and feminist lawyer Gloria Allred go toe to toe and almost mouth to mouth with the sexual tension between them (just kidding).* close to 3 stars

Tales from the Crypt: Television Terror *A t.v. station scores big ratings, when Morton Downey Jr. is murdered, live on the air, while investigating a haunted house.* 3 stars

"Too Young To Die?" (1990) *A trailer trash teen runaway (Juliette Lewis) gets the death penalty for the murder of her soldier guy former lover, thanks to her hick pimp/pusher (Brad Pitt).* 2 1/2 stars

American Horror Story -Asylum- "The Coat Hanger" *Forgiving trespasses. Ian McShane almost seems too good for any show after his iconic role in Deadwood, but he finds one here as a blackly humorous and blasphemous sinner/killer in a setting that keeps getting more depraved and strange. Bucket of KFC chicken and skinning victims alive killer mixed piece joke. Priest drowning at a baptism. Priest crucifiction. The dirty history of pre legalized abortions. Cruel head nun gets on the other end of looney torture. A Nazi butcher / mad scientist seeking aliens because he appreciates their eugenic techniques and getting sent his own Mary with a possible alien seed in her belly.* 3 stars

Hannibal: Amuse-Bouche *"It takes one to know one." A human fungus wants understanding.* 3 stars

Bob and Margaret: Friends for Dinner *"Another domestic dilemma." Bob and Margaret continue to define themselves different from their rude peers, while still retaining a flawed quality that makes them so relatable to the average person.* close to 3 stars

15 Storeys High: The Model *"If she learns to swim, next thing she'll want to learn to drive." A nutter doesn't want his nude centerfold wife to take swimming lessons. Olives on pizza distaste, and a compulsion to pull any wallpaper off the wall -weirdness. Also, the swimming lessons oath includes everyone but practioners of karate and the pop star Sting.* 3 stars

Hippies: Hairy Hippies *The animals of Aquarius are gonna tear your prick off.* 3 stars

Farscape: Durka Returns *"The difference between a knife attack and life saving surgery." The outer space adjustment bureau can turn anyone they want into an attitude corrected slave.* 3 stars

Max Headroom: Deities *When it comes to matters of the spirit, people often forget what it means being human.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Captured Souls *Sometime in the early 90s, the Obamas and their daughter nearly had the life sucked out of them by a mirror-spy-tech mad-science-geezer posing as an ole timey tween boy with a ridiculous hairstyle that was almost as bad as Obama's soul glow mullet of the time.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

American Horror Story --Coven-- "Fearful Pranks Ensue" *supreme sacrifice* close to 3 stars

Red Shoe Diaries: You Have The Right To Remain Silent *A lady cop kidnaps and forces herself on a strong willed guy who won't show her any attention at the gym. I would have laughed if it were a case of her not having any gay-dar.* close to 2 1/2 stars and 1 1/2 a stars for the safe sex sales pitch

Hill Street Blues: Choice Cut *supermarket standoff with a side of beef.* 2 1/2 stars

Fargo: The Rooster Prince *"Savagery, pure and simple."* 3 stars

American Horror Story: Freakshow "Orphans" *The most sympathetic character on the show, Pepper, has a continuation of maybe the most tragic character arc of any character in all of American Horror Story, with a cameo from a character from Asylum.* close to 3 stars

MTV's "Eye Candy" extended peak *Disney channel(?) teen pop idol and now hacker (rolls eyes) in a serial killer stalker show with MTV style "edgy" (crap) aesthetics. The psycho stuffing smartphones in the mouths of victims is unintentionally ludicrous and laughable.* 1 1/2 stars

"Living With Michael Jackson" *"We would wake at dawn and go up in the hot air balloon. I have the footage. It's all very charming and innocent. That's ignorant. Who's the Jack the Ripper in the Room?" Was it exploitive journalist Martin Bashir or delusional Peter Pan wannabe Jacko?* either 3 stars or zero stars

Prime Time Thursday -ABC- Martin Bashir on his Michael Jackson documentary (2003?) *ABC gets a few more nasty kicks in to the wounded weirdo.* 2 stars

The Michael Jackson Interview, The Footage You Were Never Meant To See *--FOX--* (2003)

*"Becareful what you do, because the lie becomes the truth."

Maury Povich pauses from hosting & revealing ghetto / white trash paternity tests to take an investigative behind the scenes footage look at the Martin Bashir documentary on MJ.

An almost propaganda piece trying to repair Jackson's image and justify his strange behavior, but it does shine a light on the deceitful approach of Bashir's manipulative tactics in getting close to Jackson via gaining his trust with comments approving of Michael's generosity and attitudes towards children and Michael's personal life in other ways, and then turning around and only showing the most sensational things in his "Living With Michael Jackson" documentary.*

2 1/2 stars

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The Greatest American Hero: pilot episode "UFO Encounter" *The teachers of troubled teens, those are the real heroes. This show has great music, and I don't just mean the cheesy wonderful theme song.* 3 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: I Accuse My Parents (feature) & The Truck Farmer (short) *Cultivate, refrigerate, exaggerate, denigrate.* 2 1/2 stars with riffing 2 stars without

Son of the Beach: In The G-Hetto *"Read my lips, I'm going down there and I'm going to lick your posse, and I'm going to enjoy it."* 2 1/2 stars

Black Sails: season 1 episode 1 *Blackbeard's snatch. Captain Flint's fluoride smile. Long John Silver's sexy good looks. I doubt these third world bandits were really this stylized.* 2 1/2 stars

Fred Olen Ray's "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers" (1988) *Heaven for guys who like big tits and Hell for guys who don't like to be chopped into little bits.* 3 stars

Hollywood Hillbillies: Headin' For Hollywood *Another internet infamous sensation extends he and his grandmother's 15 minutes of fame by acting as crass and crazy as possible for the reality tv cameras.* 1 star

TLC presents My Husband's Not Gay *These Latter Day Saint women believe that they have it made, because, with another woman, their husband would never stray. I wonder if the LGBT community would stand up for the rights of the "same sex attracted" who don't act on it for religious reasons, or if... ha... of coure not.* either zero or 2 1/2 stars

"Monster" (2003) *A look at someone, on the fringes of life, whose feral impulses sadly couldn't be justified even though she endured a life of inhuman treatment.* 3 stars

Viper: Pilot Movie *Not just a tv show promoting a crime fighting futuristic Dodge motor company concept car, maybe also a question of whether giving career criminals a clean slate of memory is violating their civil rights or not.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

"Midnight Plowboy" xxx (1971) *Welcome To The Jungle as performed by Going To The Country's Canned Heat.* 2 stars

Woops!: pilot episode (1992) *99.999999% of the world's population has died in a fiery hot flash, but a few quirky yuppies survive to yuck it up on a small farm. Cue the laugh track.* 2 stars

X Files: Eve *bloodthirsty replicas* 3 stars

"Nomads" (1986) *Searching too deep beneath the surface of reality, a cultural archaeologist starts being stalked by a skid row spirit-tribe.* close to 3 stars

Manimal: Manimal *Transmutation is not for the faint or feint of heart.* 2 1/2 stars

---- "Tusk" a Kevin Smith film (2014)

*20th century man spent his time doing amazing things, and had tales to tell later.

21st century man spends most of his time talking about ridiculous things.

This time 21st century man accomplishes one of those ridiculous things.

How to go about summing up something like this...

3 stars for the crazy screenplay.

3 stars for the incredible walrus special fx by Robert Kurtzman.

3 stars for Michael Parks' truly demented serial killer / world's most interesting man character.

2 stars for Haley Joel Osment's nerdy twenty something podcast comedy partner.

almost 2 1/2 stars for Justin Long's obnoxious and self absorbed hipster mustached podcast comedian.

3 stars for Justin Long's suffering through hell tortured and experimented on in the most gruesome way possible walrus-man.

1 1/2 stars for all the podcast nonsense.

either zero stars or 3 stars for Johnny Depp's Mike Myers esque eccentric inspector character.

and to finish out the whole whacked out affair, either 1 star or 3 stars for the absurd ending.*

===================================================================

Wizards and Warriors: The Unicorn of Death *Mind over matter. Also, lightning hawks, hawks that shoot lightning.* 3 stars

"Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood" *"One fish two fish red fish blue fish, knick knack paddywhack give a dog a bone, Two thousand zero zero party over oops out of time, my bacon's smelling fine." The Wayans, just off of In Living Color and a handful of blackspoitation movies, take on Boyz in the Hood & Friday with their brand of satire that hadn't quite soured just yet like it would with the Scary Movie series. Somewhat not bad, nowhere as good as say an episode of Chapelle Show, but almost on the level of something like Comedy Central's Key & Peele.* 2 stars plus 3 stars for Bernie Mac's cameo speech

Freddy's Nightmares: School Daze ----------

*No more homework, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks. Just robotic students.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Standard Achievement Torture.* 2 1/2 stars

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

"Ben and Arthur" (2002) *I'm sure that everyone involved with this shot-on-video "movie" had their big, gay hearts in the right place, but the results are so oddly misguided that it cursed the gay rights movement and set queer equality back at least a decade.* 1 star

Tales From The Crypt: My Brother's Keeper *Two guys attached at the ass-cheek, now that's freaks. And it's definitely a wild half of the siamese situation if Timothy Stack is the straight laced one.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Cannon Video: Fifty Fifty (1993) *A couple of "in it for the money" mercenaries find a change of heart and purpose, when they're sold out by the U.S. government after initially being hired to train a ragtag group of villagers to overthrow a cruel dictator.* close to 3 stars

Jonny Quest: Double Danger *monkeying around with hallucinagens* 3 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Operation Double 007 *"Terrorists were a lot more fun back then." Thankfully, Sean Connery's brother, Neil, also didn't try to rip off Highlander 2 or Zardoz.* 3 stars with riffing 2 1/2 stars without

The Prisoner: The General *Blind memorization is a learn-ed way for a slave to show its appreciation to its masters.* 3 stars

Paranormal State: season 1 episode 19 *"Balancing faith and science" as the lead investigator questions whether or not he should debunk a crazy lady's haunting experiences.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Swamp Thing: Walk A Mile In My Shoots *Arcane and Swamp Thing trade places.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

American Horror Story: Coven "Burn, Witch, Burn" *Ask me no questions and I'll tell thee no lie. Mama's little baby love shortenin'. Fry fry fry. Febreeze will get the odors out of any room where dead things lie.* 3 stars

American Gothic: Dead to the World *Denial ain't just a river in Bum-Fuck, Egypt.* close to 3 stars

Justified: season 1 episode 2 *Rhythm, romancin', runnin', and rippin' up the floorboards.* 3 stars

"The Census Taker" (1984) *"An outrageous invasion of privacy."* 3 stars

Hannibal: Potage *Manipulation in Maryland, Minnesota, and the media.* 3 stars

X Files: Fire *amorous arsonist* 2 1/2 stars

12 Monkeys: Pilot episode *Hourglasses of the hydra.* 2 1/2 stars

"The Thirteenth Floor" (1999) *"Hate to see that evening sun go down." Digital virtual deja-vu.* 3 stars

The Outer Limits: Birthright *Senator Al Gore is all about shooting up with supplements and saving the environment by saturating it with methane for his alien race to take over and inhabit.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Northern Exposure: Brains, Know How and Native Intelligence *singing the body electric and fixing the plumbing.* 3 stars

Son of the Beach: Love, Native American Style *firebush and big hose* 2 1/2 stars

Thundarr, the Barbarian: Island of the Body Snatchers *Ariel almost loses her mind and her body in the mystery zone.* 3 stars

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Twisted Claw *Wish in one hand, let a vulture shit in the other.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Eegah! *RRRR! Richard Kiel is really big and really lonely and he wants to rape a gal named Roxy. It's like King Kong set in a resort desert town where a Ricky Nelson reject is constantly rocking out.* 3 stars with riffing 2 without

Weird Science: The Feminine Mistake *The guys get turned into chicks and experience what the other sex has to go through with horny guys like themselves.* 3 stars

Jack London's "Call of the Wild" starring Charlton Heston & featuring "Buck" the dog *Buck worth more than all the gold in the Klondike.* 3 stars

"Ax Giant" *"All strut and no gut." Paul Bunyan puts a cgi sawblade through Grizzly Adams' bear-sized head for eating his blue ox named Babe.* 2 stars

MLK Day Tribute ---------------

Morton Downey Jr.: Racism with Dr. Charles King (2 appearances on the show) *One of the last ballsy, crazy, and passionately confused conversations about race conducted by the media before political correctness closed the door.* either zero or 3 stars

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Abel Ferarra's "King of New York" (1990) *Max Shreck, magnanimous and soulful.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

X Files: Beyond the Sea *Serial killer -Brad Dourif- claims to channel the beyond and a grieving Scully's recently deceased dad. but is he just a coward staying execution?* 3 stars

Lucio Fulci's "The New York Ripper" *quacking misogyny* 3 stars

Red Shoe Diaries: Talk To Me Baby *"You gonna believe your eyes or are you gonna believe me?" Shared feelings and Samson-haired Bud "tries" to be less of a horndog for other women, but he's only a man afterall and after a night at the bar watching a wet t-shirt contest. If his hot foreign accent nympho girlfriend don't forgive him and talk, he's gonna flip his muscle car and go out Romeo style with her in the passenger seat.* 3 stars

William Friedkin's "Cruising" (1980) *assault, alarm, assuage, acclimate, assplay, and arrest* 3 stars

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Girl In Lovers Lane *Drifters and the females who foolishly fawn over them. A Route 66 romantic tragedy.* 3 stars with riffing 2 1/2 without

American Horror Story: Murder House "Spooky Little Girl" *The apparition of the Black Dahlia is misdiagnosed with acute anxiety.* 3 stars

Nic Cage is "Left Behind" (2014) *Bono raptured. U2 concert postponed.* either 1 star or 2 1/2 stars

Freddy's Nightmares: Cabin Fever -----------

*Fly the Freddy skies.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

*Freddy finds his Laura Palmer.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

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True Detective: The Locked Room *Scarred snowflakes* 3 stars

"Night Warning" (1983) *"Fuckin' deviants, the world is full of 'em." Hoop dreams, ''homophobia'', and a hilariously insane Susan Tyrrell.* 3 stars

Svengoolie: House of Horrors *Creepin' on art critics.* close to 3 stars

Tales from the Crypt: The Secret *Blue hued and sweet toothed tale of a wolf boy adopted by vampires.* 3 stars

Charles Bronson in "Cold Sweat" *A History of Violence in a French fishing village with American muscle car action.* close to 3 stars

Viper: Once A Thief *Viper-Man takes a suped-up stroll down memory lane with his delinquent former protege, Robin.* 2 1/2 stars

Son of the Beach: Two Thongs Don't Make A Right *The Devil's butt floss and daddy's B.J.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Betsy Russell is a "Tomboy" *Battle of the sexes in a light-hearted, cheesy reality that's not afraid to get raunchy.* 3 stars

American Horror Story: Freakshow "Magical Thinking" *Weak men and strong women.* close to 3 stars

Paranormal Witness: The Visitors *It's either one of two scenarios for this episode: A) A door to door salesman is duped into believing he's cursed with demons and uses his scientific background, and connections, to explain it. or B) A bored, middle-aged former scientist, and his tech buddies, try to establish a hoax with alledged proof of the paranormal.* 2 stars

The Greatest American Hero: The Hit Car *Heavier than air, heavy like Shakespeare.* 3 stars

"Killdozer" (1974) *Grizzled workmen in an isolated setting sci-fi horror that's similar to and yet almost a decade ahead of John Carpenter's "The Thing."* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Black Sails: Season 1 Episode 2 *Cooking up a kingdom, of reprieve, through barter and betrayal.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Dolph Lundgren in "Dark Angel" aka "I Come In Peace" (1990) *Phantasm's The Tall Man the cyberpunk / heavymetal years, now available on projectile compact-disc, just in time for a White-boy's Christmas.* 2 1/2 stars

Tim & Eric -Bedtime Stories: The Endorsement *Subversive swipe at Sunset BLVD* 3 stars

Puppy-Bowl: Unnecessary Roughness *Puppies wrestling at the "50 yard line" and hamsters overhead in a tiny blimp. This is okay with PETA, yet I can no longer go to my cockfights on Friday nights.* either 1 star or 2 1/2 stars

Kung Fu: Blood Brother *Dignity should not remain surrendered or buried in the mire.* 3 stars

Shaw Brothers: Roar of the Lion *(Traditional Chinese costumes) Lion versus dragon in a kung-fu dance off ceremony that's also comedy gold in a stunt filled comedy filled flick.* 3 stars

Manimal: Illusion *Manimal predicted the Siegfried & Roy tragedy, and Richard Lynch plays a diplomatic immunity villain before Lethal Weapon does the same.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

King of the Hill: It Ain't Over Till The Fat Neighbor Sings *"What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again." In Hank's reality, he loses it when he can't micro-manage any poor decision making that's always hilariously exaggerated.* 3 stars

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Gang Group Dates *Dennis comes unhinged when women rate him, online, as a zero. Frank can't keep Mac & Charlie from offending their blind dates, and he can't keep his cockring from slipping off. Dee's plan to stick it to men by giving them one night stands winds up backfiring.* 3 stars

Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital: Season 1 Episode 7 *Black noises, thirsting voices striking, impeaching.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

15 Storeys High: Blue Rat *All of the energy, none of the fuss, plus a pony.* 3 stars

Paranormal State: Season 1 Finale *A is for anxiety and or African American spirit girl humming to a sensitive, young medium girl.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

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