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partyinthemysterymachine · 4 years

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🌻🌻🌻🌻 🚜 it's like a little garden!

hello lil garden <3 im gonna pick all the floweurs :3

there are like two dreams i remember pretty vividly: one, i had stigmata. (fun fact: i’m a jew) i woke up and i could feel the pain in my palms and feet. i was like. maybe in fifth or sixth grade. everything happens when i’m 13 or 14 because i have exactly zero memory and Bad Brain Disorder Origin Years just makes everything a sad mockery of mashed potatoes

the second dream i remember vividly was essentially that i discovered a door to Wonderland (and listen here u lil shits: i’m not a big Wonderland person, not even a Mad Hatter kinda gal despite whatever my past has said about me, and also my Jervis Tetch is super valid and prob one of the best out there you’re welcome) in this honestly gorgeous old mansion. the kind that’s just. tons of dark wood, narrow halls, winding and yet there’s a lot of natural light, like gorgeous. and i found a door to Wonderland and holy fucking shit

what i would give to actually find a door to that Wonderland, bye y’all peace it’s been a gas but i gotta run

so after i left i wanted to go back, and i had a rough time finding the portal and ok long story short it turned out i had to go deal with a unicorn cult (it was more intense than that but hey, cults amirite) in order to get the reagents to go back to Wonderland and i suddenly found myself falling in a huge cave and the spirit healer from WoW was there so that says a lot about where i was in my life at the time

still tryna go back to Wonderland

i made this guy in Sims4 and he’s really fuckin cute and i named him Lane Morgans. i’m gonna put his tag on this post so maybe you’ll go take a look at him and see how amazing he is but i’m just gonna jerk myself off here too

(also sidenote, Salutations (my farmer in sdv, also top notch) is his uncle and when i wrote up his first char sheet i fucked up his last name bc his last name can’t be Morgans, but i’ll give him another one Soon(tm) (no i won’t))

Lane is a retired rollercoaster engineer who is now writing romance novels. he’s doing absolutely amazingly and his twitter a mess in a good way. he wishes he was Chuck Tingle’s bff. his novels aren’t modeled after Tingle’s (hehe), he writes very well rounded, interesting, and diverse romance that doesn’t take itself seriously. because i do what i want, he’s pretty well known and on several bestsellers.

he’s like in his 40s by now i think and he’s a late transitioner. he’s a divorcee (he and his ex wife are really good friends it’s all good) and he had his son Ellis awhile back (who is just a whole dutch cookie tin of crayons and then some). at a singles mixer he met a gardener who would be his future husband and everything is amazing now

also side braids and ponytails run in the family i guess

(actually Salutations has been side ponytail like all his life and Lane was enchanted by it so he side braids. Salutations is very proud)

i still think about it honestly i was really into keeping up to date with junk food news and food product for a while there but the popular sites were starting to piss me off with their rating systems and reviews like holy entitlement and superiority complex, batman! so i dropped out of it, like the only one that is still super valid is onsecondscoop.com tho it’s been a real hot minute since

i have a lot of my parents’ vinyls and that includes The Beatles white album with some water damage bc i guess my dad knocked something over at some point but also the good stuff like Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt, America, Seals and Crofts, a lot of musicals, James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens (now Yusuf), Earth, Wind, and Fire, Marvin Gaye and more!!! (and i left a whole shitload in chicago too) and it’s very telling about my musical tastes.

i had ordered Arctic Monkeys’s AM album and it skipped on No. 1 Party Anthem and some other song and so i was like :\ and ordered another and you’ll never guess,

a few songs stand out to me:

Gordon Lightfoot’s Approaching Lavender

Seals and Crofts’s Hummingbird

Fleetwood Mac’s Silver Springs

James Taylor’s Never Die Young, Line ‘Em Up, Shower The People

(the Fleetwood Mac and James Taylor songs are specifically the ones i was introduced to with, as in the Live versions of Silver Springs and Shower The People)

for those who don’t know i’m also a huge Enya fan (LOTR was good to me) and Dark Sky Island was sick af btw, and also Donna Lewis’s entire Now In A Minute album is pretty fuckin close to my soul

however probably my favorite song, most sacred to me, hard to explain it but just the. whew the memories attached is I Love You Always Forever

furthermore a song that still really creeps me out (that also has an origin story attached to it) is 98 Degrees a cappella cover of She’s Out Of My Life (yep! still no thanks)

i grew up around a cappella since my mom is like a lifetime member of the Sweet Adelines womens a cappella organization or w/e so yeah and i’m not ognna link this on bc it’s a bitch to find just by itself, but Lida Rose from The Music Man is also a fist clench...

now on a more depressing note but one i have mention, Spice Girls’s Viva Forever is uuuhhh hhhhhhhhh hhhhhhnnnnmmmmmmmmmmm

anyway my dad used to travel overseas for work and when i was younger he went to Germany (and he’d go back there several times after) and he brought me back my first jar of Nutella. naturally i lost my entire shit, and imagine my surprise when Nutella got really big in America lmao he’d brought that jar home like. uh. 7, 9 years prior?? idk guys, ages and math, but it was funny to me

best fucking gingerbread recipe is by Nigella Lawson and i found it in her book How To Be A Domestic Goddess and it’s right fucking here ur welcome

i’m definitely one of those people who picks a book with a cool cover, reads a couple pages and then decides if i’m taking it or not and that’s how i found like so many good books

ask me about The Passage series and how i am both in love with it and kinda mad (also lmao @ the failed TV show y’all fuckin dumb as hell)

#ches writes #oops this got hella long #does a little jig #ok i think it's about bedtime #i love u <3 #adreamingofguns

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dcarevu · 5 years

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Batman TAS: Mad as a Hatter

“Why don’t you go do something useful like… Oh, go jump in the river.”

Episode: 27 Robin: No Writer: Paul Dini Director: Frank Paur Animator: Akom Airdate: October 12, 1992 Grade: B

I was in high school when Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland showed up in theaters, and like almost everyone I knew, I could not have been more excited. I really loved the Disney version, and considering that the man involved with Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, and more would be giving us his take on it right as I was starting to move toward my emo-scene phase, it was a dream come true. Even now, on paper, this seems like the perfect recipe, doesn’t it? But I think most of us can agree that it just didn’t meet expectations. The first time I watched it, I wouldn’t admit to myself that I wasn’t a fan. It was dark, and strange, and Tim Burton + Alice in Wonderland. Everything I wanted! As a developing emo kid, I was supposed to like it! The reason I bring this up is because Batman the Animated Series being fused with Alice in Wonderland seems like another fantasy-combination that would have no way to turn out subpar. Mad as a Hatter is an episode that, for the most part, actually gets a lot of praise. Alas (or, for the sake of the pun, Alice), maybe the idea seemed a little bit too easy, making it easier to over-shoot, missing the mark. This is another episode featuring a crazy set-piece at the end, but it is also another episode that was handed to Akom. Christ, why. Of all the episodes. All the episodes. Why is it some of the ones with the highest reliance on visuals? This episode involved not just complicated, creative visuals, but incredibly weird ones as well that needed to be animated just right to not look like subjects from one’s fever dreams. You wanna know how that turned out? Well, I heard an, “Oh my god!” from Char as the walrus and the carpenter made their appearances. While that did make me laugh quite hard, and Akom definitely got the weirdness down, it should have looked like intentional weirdness. Beyond the animation, the story is actually decent. It is Paul Dini, so what can you really expect. But even here, I would not call it A-level material. Some strange dialogue/delivery choices, and other leaps of logic/strains on the suspension of disbelief take away from it and leave me feeling extremely neutral.

Okay, so after that paragraph above was written, I went and took the screenshots from my DVD. I was surprised. The DVD looks so much better than the Blu Ray here. This was the case with The Clock King too, and I fear it is starting to seem like a pattern. I think it all comes down to the Blu Ray release looking too clean, and way too bright at times. Because of course, the DVD is in lower definition. Shadows are lightened so that we can see all of the imperfections of Akom’s drawings. Smudges and dirt are removed, giving the people a plastic look at times. It’s not the way the show was meant to be watched (as I said, probably VHS would be my preferred way of viewing if that were feasible). This puts me in an interesting spot, because I paid near $100 for the set, and also, some episodes look absolutely phenomenal. But is it worth it when some look like absolute crap? The great-looking shows look godly. The mediocre-looking ones look horrible. I was ready to tear into how Mad as a Hatter looked and rip it a new one, but now I do not think that would be fair. No, the animation here isn’t perfect. But it’s passable. And I think that’s worth something given the frequency at which I complain about Akom. At this point, I have watched up to Robin’s Reckoning. From here, I honestly might start using the ol’ dvd’s again. It’s unfortunate, but if I go back to specific episodes that I love later on, then I’ll use the Blu Ray. Remember, I am watching these with Char who has never seen the DCAU before. I want the series to make the best possible impression, and even with the best plot ever, a bad-looking episode can make a disappointing episode. Merely getting the episodes at a higher definition, but leaving them dirty and dark would have been my preferred solution. Anyway, back to talking about the episode itself (and yes, this does slightly affect how I see the episode. At first I was giving it a C. But I think I’ll have to bump it up to B territory).

We start with episode with some cute-ass mice, only to then be introduced to a face that a mother would have a hard time loving. Jervis Tetch, aka The Mad Hatter, is a character-design, alright. I think I know what they were going for, though. He has this kooky look that makes him stand out from every other character. He certainly looks like he could play someone from Wonderland. But the problem I think comes from Akom (ironic given that last paragraph, huh?). This design could probably work, but he has such an odd model, so I think they had a tough time animating him. Or maybe he simply does not translate to movement very well in general, and there was a problem the moment his model sheet was created. Regardless, he can be pretty tough to look at sometimes. Other times, though, he does have that level of whacky which I would hope would be in an episode based on Alice in Wonderland. But we see that Jervis is working on some mind-control technology while also being smitten for a girl that works in his office named Alice. Unfortunately, Alice has a boyfriend, and like many sociopaths in real life, Jervis is not okay with this, taking matters into his own hands. First of all, her name being Alice is kinda stupid, and Char agrees. It takes parallels a little bit too far, and Char noted that it would have been more subtle if her name were something like Alycia. Alice is one of the only people that Jervis feels is nice to him, so if we follow the most sound of incel-logic, she owes him her heart, mind, and body. Not only is she nice to him, but, again, her name is Alice. And it would not surprise me if this were a main factor of why Jervis is into her. He has an Alice in Wonderland poster in his office, he takes her to a theme park of sorts that has a section which is themed after the book, he owns a Mad Hatter costume (or perhaps he obtained this from the park), he quotes the book regularly, etc. He is clearly obsessed. When we reach the point where he mentions that it is one of his favorite stories, it’s like, “Wow! No kidding!” He is not quite wired into reality, likely developing this obsession at an early age to escape from life’s burdens. But Wonderland has burdens of its own.

Jervis ends up using these mind-control cards that he created (another Alice in Wonderland-related thing) to make people basically do his bidding. He first uses them on two thugs attempting to rob him and Alice, forcing them to climb up on top of a bridge and jump into the river. Batman catches notice of this through a police broadcast, and to my surprise, the show mentions a possible suicide in progress. How often do you hear a family cartoon like this use the word “suicide”? I think this is the only time I have ever heard it, despite references occasionally popping up in shows like Spongebob. He then uses more cards on his coworkers, Alice’s fiancé, and Alice herself, creating an army of Alice in Wonderland-themed warriors to defend him from Batman when Batman finds out what’s going on and sets after him. He wants Alice all to himself, and is willing to do whatever possible to obtain her. The final battle takes place in the theme park, the big set-piece of the episode. It’s got some great looking background paintings that 100% capture the tone of the book. It is a shame that the animation done by Akom couldn’t hold up to Radomski’s work. We have moments such as Batman balancing on top of the walls of a playing card maze that I wish stressed me out a little bit more. But because of how stilted the movement is, Batman never really seems like he is having a tough time keeping balance, even though we clearly see him struggling. The fight scenes could also be much better, with more impact felt. The odd costumes that most everyone is wearing makes for some really distorted-looking characters, and it’s clear that not a lot of time was spent making them look quite right. At the same time, though, between the subject material, the gimmicks, the overall surreal nature, and the background art, it is still a lot of fun to watch, even if it is in a more campy way. It is not an episode to be taken extremely seriously. This can be a problem with Batman. The tone can fluctuate greatly from episode to episode. At the beginning, it did not matter as much. Right away we had varying quality and seriousness. I mean, we went from On Leather Wings to Christmas With the Joker. But now we are getting gothic masterpieces like Two-Face, so episodes like Mad as a Hatter feel jarring as hell. It is an episode I enjoyed more on second watch as I gathered screenshots. I loosened up and let myself have fun with it.

The Mad Hatter fails to be a sympathetic villain like I feel they might have been going for, but I do enjoy him being so delusional and sociopathic. When Alice mentions her boyfriend, he gets this scary scowl, and you know at that moment that this is no character you want to root for. When Alice’s boyfriend temporarily breaks up with her, rather than attempting to comfort her and being upset over her sorrow, he jumps for joy because he has a chance to finally swoop in (the epitome of an Internet “nice guy”). When she gets back together with her boyfriend, turned fiancé, he squeezes a bouquet of roses in frustration so hard that he bleeds. I think they were able to get away with this portion because maybe the blood could have passed off as liquid from the flowers? Which doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but for the sake of the blood being included, um, sure. It was definitely rose-goo, guys. Not blood at all… And he also blames Batman for why things ended up the way they did, even though Batman had virtually nothing to do with anything until the very end. He decided to mind-control everyone because he was being a spoiled little piss-baby who could not let the girl he supposedly loves be happy. Char did not care for the character, and jokingly mentioned that he was appropriating the Mad Hatter, doing things that he would never do. Like some batshit crazy super-fan who feels sooo connected with a character, but actually doesn’t understand them at all.

Not a perfect episode, but a grower.

See? Cute-ass mice!

Wow, I didn’t realize that we were watching Attack on Titan. (Joke inspired by Char).

The poster on the wall matches the title card/an actual illustration from the book. It’s actually a pretty dope poster.

A variety of shots showing Jervis’ face. See how inconsistent it is? It is a little similar to the Pokémon Drilbur, where it only works 2D. Adding an element of 3D illusion (such as movement) causes it to fall apart.

Oh, sure, go and rob them right after you see Batman drive by. That’s always smart.

“Please, Mr. Hat. Go easy on us.” The delivery here was wicked funny. It was so monotone, and sounded like he was faking.

I quite like this facial expression. His smile reminds me of the Cheshire Cat.

Batman + Taco Bell

I love the panic in Batman’s voice as he tries to stop them from jumping off of the bridge. It shows how concerned he is with keeping them safe.

They were able to animate this shimmer pretty damn well. Then again, how hard could it be?

A very subtle recreation of the illustration/title card.

I don’t think the background here quite comes together, the composition is off. Still neat to look at.

A close-up of the illustration.

Now this is an ugly facial expression. Gross! And it’s not like this was a quick frame. It was there long enough to notice.

This shot has a lovely glow to it. It looks quite nice.

One of the only times they were able to get away with blood. Um. Oops. I meant flower-goo! It’s flower-goo, guys! The blood drips right onto Billy’s face. As if a hit were put on him. Awesome detail.

“Oh, do be quiet!”

Bruce whispers “Congratulations.” in such a goobery way. I love it.

The shadow of the plants shifted in some wonky-looking ways. Also, when the Mad Hatter and Batman both arrive on the scene, she says, “This is getting too weird.” But she says it so nonchalantly. Not the best delivery.

Very sloppy-looking drawings of their faces. These costumes, though.

Cool impact here. He just decimates that wood. I’m not sure if Storybook Land has the safest costumes.

This is some enjoyable stuff right here. I had a lot of fun with this portion.

“Off with his head!” I should have counted how many times this line was said.

Perfect example if how cool the painted visuals are paired with some mediocre animation. Hell, I’m pretty sure Batman’s run was recycled for two of these stills.

Gee, I wonder which cards are going to move. Great Mad Hatter, pose, though. This is what I wish he looked like all the time!

The looming Jabberwock ends up falling on him, ending the adventure through Wonderland.

There’s no reversing the damage, Jervis. You’ll never talk with her again. Was it worth it? Also, his hair totally changed color at one point. Um... Maybe he dyed it?

Char’s grade: D Next time: Dreams in Darkness

Full episode list here!

#dcau #dc animated universe #mad as a hatter #batman #batman tas #batman the animated series #btas #mad hatter #alice #alice in wonderland

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