Whether I can enjoy a movie theater experience is a roll of the dice. Like. I was completely fine after seeing a sweeping scifi epic with sound so cromchy it made the theater screen ripple in places, but a movie about a dog that I saw in a smaller theater left me really overstimulated and burnt out and on guard. Wild.

bodies bodies bodies. also im older.

i’m a different person but also the same kind of person. i still read webtoons lol. anyway i wanted to write some things about bodies bodies bodies because it’s getting complicated but i dont want to be witnessed, but also do. you know. also yes i know this movie is a hundred years in the past i dont care im talking about it

i wish bodies x3 wasn’t poisoned by lena wilson’s review - i think it deserves to be criticized and stand on its own. i also don’t really like how she reviewed it - like, they weren’t really. wearing sexualizing clothes, so to speak? 95 minutes of advertisements for cleavage feels egregious for a movie that really only has like, 5 minutes total of a pool scene

that said: onto my criticism

i think bodies x3 either needed to lean into the black comedy/absurdity more or into the satire more. i honestly sincerely think that a slasher was a great idea for a movie genre that needed an update - the high strung energy of being in a - and i know i sound like an old man - “hyperwoke” environment is very interesting, combined with - as many people have said - the kind of constant surveillance state we exist in. and the way that pushes people who might otherwise be normal assholes be like, nuanced assholes.

so, in my opinion, either it needed to poke more fun at how much we’ve pathologized ourselves. but then there’s also serious stuff, like how sophie says her friends learned she got sober and then went on with popping champagne and snorting coke. like, she has a point! even if she is the one that decides to be around them, and has bad commitment issues, and is a deeply bad girlfriend, it’s absolutely wild that nobody stopped to be like, maybe this isn’t how we should be treating our newly rehab-ed friend. and we only kind of have that language because therapyspeak is so prevalent.

but then on the other hand, there’s david, who literally accidentally slits his own throat because he’s having a stupid one-sided pissing contest with greg. that’s like... comedic. it’s hilarious that because he just cannot get over his masculinity being threatened to the point he accidentally kills himself and kicks of this paranoia fuelled nightmare. but - and i truly cannot emphasize this enough - this is also in a movie where sophie, who is terminally incapable of sincerity, sincerely makes a point about being triggered by people she’s kind of codependently attached to.

i guess maybe i think bodies x3 doesn’t decide whether it wants to be sincere or satirical - which is fine, i’m not demanding that every single movie has an easily digestible or even clear throughline to still be entertaining or good. but because it never leans into one or the other, it’s just vaguely confusing. i don’t want bodies x3 to reinvent the wheel or anything, but i also don’t want tradition.

i still really like it - in part because there’s a lot of new talent that i think would be a shame to put it down. i just think that - like do revenge - it’s very confused on how updating the movie would really change its dynamics. and, to be quite mean, i think it’s the boomerification of millenials. i think they haven’t quite figured out what gen z is about, and as a terminally online gen z, that’s a real shame.

p.s. i dont care if greg was innocent the way people keep slobbering over his existence is weird. he’s like double their age. he should’ve said no to alice lmfao the fuck

The House (Netflix 2022) [specifically the last like 3-4 minutes of story 2] has broken me so now Tumblr must become home to my philosophical justification for the movie’s themes and ideas

So this is all stuff that I came to after watching the whole movie and listening to the entirety of the ending song, which I think genuinely puts the whole movie into perspective.  the first story we see the house’s creation and we see how Mabel’s family is given it, its furnishings, the lavish fabrics for making things, as well as daily extravagant meals completely for free. They have everything they could possibly want, but as we see through the story it takes everything away from Mabel’s parents and causes the family to become alienated from each other before ultimately they and everyone in it are consumed, only Mabel and Isobel escaping to an unknown fate.  In the second story we see the rat put everything he has into the house to fix it up, he makes it look immaculate, but ultimately he gets nothing out of it until it consumes him and he becomes little better than the bugs he’s been fighting so hard to keep out [up until they take form in the bloated rat bug family squatting in his house] and destroy what little remains of his sanity.  The third story we see Rosa following the same trend, she wants to pour all she has into the house and fixing it up, ignoring both the tenants she cares about and the impending disaster of the flood outside for this dream of something more. It’s only when she lets go of this pursuit and chases after those close to her, investing in them that she is free and achieves the movie’s only seemingly happy ending.  I think all of this is the dramatic throughline of the movie because of the ending song, “A House is a Pile of Bricks” is a pretty chaotic song that has lines like “This house... i dont know what it is” as well as repeating that line, a house is a pile of bricks a lot, and especially with a line like “Come look at my massive collection of bricks” it gives me the impression that the movie is saying something about the nature of extravagance. It doesn’t matter that Mabel’s family were given the house for free with all the furnishings and plentiful meals, it doesnt matter that the rat redid the house so incredibly, it doesnt matter that Rosa was trying to redo the house to restore it in the apocalypse, a house is nothing but a shell for things to happen inside of, you need to remember that and forget about what might seem appealling and flashy, Mabel’s father had said they’d be the talk of the town living there, the Rat thought his efforts would be enough to impress people to buy it, Rosa thought she could attract better tenants, but ultimately none of them were right and none of them were happy, because the house is just a pile of bricks, no matter what you do to it. 

Tell me very simply what part of his character you think sticks with the average viewer and fundamentally sets him apart. What exactly is his purpose? What is generally characteristic of him? With every iteration of him being so vastly different and yet so subtle, it's actually no wonder no one knows exactly what to make of him. Even having watched all iterations. In a general, big picture kind of sense, the statement "Fred has no personality" is absolutely valid. He is not much more than "the guy" who some writers desperately try to write some edge into once in a while.

"What exactly is his purpose" his original purpose was to exist as an all-american white boy that parents would have approved of, to contrast the subcultures the rest of the gang represents. He was the leader of the gang to start with for this reason.

"What is generally characteristic of him" definitely his seriousness. He is always 100% genuine, straightforward, and serious about everything he does, leading him to be the straight man in some cases, and the butt of the joke in others. He treats every situation with the same judgement and wants to be taken seriously and respected.

Which ties into his role as leader. He is the leader because he knows how to divide and conquer, because he knows his friends' skillsets, and because he's deeply loyal to them.

Shaggy and/or scooby is not the leader because they 100% dont want to be. Velma is not the leader because she works better behind the scenes, analyzing from a distance, and wouldnt enjoy being the head of the group (and they all listen to what she says anyway bc shes smart and they trust her). Daphne is not the leader because she is too reckless and works better as a force of nature that the others set loose. Fred IS the leader for all the reasons i mentioned.

He feels responsible for everyone else's wellbeing. If one of them gets hurt, he would blame himself. Cause he's the leader and everything falls back to him, in his mind. All of the things I've mentioned here are throughlines in his character thru the entire history of the franchise.

To answer your question, i think a lot of people think of him as bland and/or selfish is because of a number of reasons

They only remember sdway from when they were young (this ties into the stereotype that daphne always gets kidnapped even though it really doesnt happen THAT often)

The writers for the 2002 movie went with the above interpretation that he's a blank slate and borrowed some of pup fred's personality to make him a stereotypical self-absorbed chauvinist leader who takes all the glory

People watched the 2002 movie and just went with that

Cultural perception being warped because scooby doo is one of the most well-known franchises in the world so ofc people are gonna get stuff wrong about it. A similar thing happened to captain kirk from the original star trek when he got remembered as a womanizer.

Fred Jones is definitely the most Conventional out of the gang if you wanna generalize. But if a character has a personality that doesn't fit within the stock tropes, people will compartmentalize. The same thing happens to Daphne.

So i think, to some people, he DOESN'T stick out, because theyre expecting things to be a certain way, or they insert narratives to make it so. The same way people would think of Mario or Mickey Mouse as being bland, general characters. But that doesn't mean the canon supports that. It just says more about the fact that people grow up and stop caring about cartoons, or assume a franchise like this can't have more than one or two good characters. It's much easier to assume things w stuff this universal

Launch?

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like them: I think the main appeal to the character is that she doesn’t take any shit from anybody.    The blue version of Launch is pretty passive, but she also knows that anyone who messes with her for too long is going to have to deal with the blonde version.

To go a little deeper, I think there’s an enigmatic quality to Launch that draws people in.   We have no idea why she changes hair and personality when she sneezes, and we don’t know where she came from or what she was up to when she dropped out of the Dragon Ball story.   This sort of ties into something I’ve always maintained about the Vegebul ship: the main fascination lies in how much we don’t know.    The audience is left wanting answers, and has no choice but to invent those answers for themselves.   

I decided to look for information on sneezing in Japanese culture, just to see if I could find some insight into the character.    I had a hunch that there must be some figure of speech about a volatile person changing moods as often as they sneeze, or something like that.   What I found instead was the superstition about a sneeze meaning that someone must be talking about you.    I didn’t think this had anything to do with Launch, but then I found out the superstition goes a little deeper.    If you sneeze once, then someone must be saying something nice about you, but if you sneeze twice, then someone’s saying something bad about you.  

So that might be what Launch is based upon.   When she sneezes, someone must be saying something nice about her, and she becomes nice in turn.   But on the next sneeze, she turns bad, just as someone must be saying bad things about her.    Really, though, she turns the whole superstition on its ear, because of all people, no one’s ever talking about her while she sneezes.   They’re always watching her with breathless anticipation.    

Anyway, I think it’s her lack of a coherent character arc that intrigues people.   You can sort of piece something together, but nearly all of her appearances in the anime are filler scenes, so it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll be putting more thought into it than the writers. That scene where she’s working in a food truck could mean that she’s gotten her life in some kind of order, but with her, there’s really no telling.  

Why I don’t: I find the lack of hard information about Launch frustrating at times.   I feel like there’s some awesome throughline that I should be able to find that would define the character in some profound kind of way.    Mark Waid could figure it out, I bet.   I still need to read his run on Archie.   He probably did some 4D-chess character study on Coach Kleats or something that would blow my mind.    I’m sorry, this is supposed to be griping about Launch and instead I’m griping about how envious I am of Mark Waid.    Uhhhh... I dunno, maybe she shouldn’t be stealing stuff all the time.  

Favorite episode (scene if movie): I can’t think of anything better than the episode where she’s getting drunk over Tien’s death in the Saiyans Saga.   It’s a great followup to their last encounter, where she wanted him to join her in robbing banks, and he wasn’t interested.   

Death wasn’t that big a deal for TIen in the long run.   He just ascended to the next plane and trained under King Kai, just like how he trained under Kami in the year leading up to the Saiyan invasion.    But for Launch, it’s a big deal, because he’s finally gone somewhere she can’t follow.    And at last, she begins to understand why Tien isn’t interested in stealing money.   

And then... nothing.   She shows up again at the end of the Kid Buu fight, giving zero indication as to what’s happened in between.   What happened to her?   You decide, because Mark Waid costs too much money to hire, and I sure got no clue.  

Favorite season/movie: Probably the Tien Shinhan Saga by default, since her fascination with Tien is probably the biggest character development for her.   And she figures into this weird glitch between the anime and the manga.   See, the manga version of the 22nd Budokai is much shorter, so Launch never leaves the hospital after they take Yamcha there to deal with his broken leg.   You don’t even see her until the final match, where she, Bulma, and Yamcha are listening to the play-by-play on the radio.   But in the anime, the tournament is drawn out over a few days, and she watches all of Tien’s matches in person, and even attempts to murder Chiaotzu.    So it’s a weird deal, which is perfect for Launch.

Favorite line:  Probably the line where she explains what happens to her when she sneezes, since it’s the only concrete evidence that she’s aware of her double personalities.    Blonde Launch sometimes goes “awww, no!” when she feels a sneeze coming on, but that could only mean that she hates sneezing, even without knowing what it means.   But Blue Launch knows she has another self, which means the Blonde one must be aware of this as well.  

Favorite outfit:

It gets no better than the black shirt and army surplus pants.  

OTP: Tien.   There’s so little we know about Launch, so I’m inclined to hang on for dear life to the one thing we do know, which is that she’s very interested in Tien.  

Brotp: None.  Launch is a very solitary character.   She’s the wind.  

Head Canon: Not really a headcanon, but a story idea that I couldn’t really work out, but I thought it might be interesting if Launch’s Launchness was like a physical condition that could be imparted upon other people.   Like, Bulma gets it, and then she ends up alternating between robbing banks and standing around going “Oh my!”  But I wasn’t sure I wanted to reduce the original Launch to that sort of explanation.   “Oh, we know what causes this, and it’s something we can turn off.”   

This may be why I struggle to come up with story ideas for Launch, because my impulse is to try to invent some neat and tidy explanation for Why She Is Like That, but doing such a thing would force me to choose one possibility and exclude any other, potentially better ideas.   

Unpopular opinion: Toriyama forgot about her because there was really nowhere left to go with her at that point in the story.   Once DBZ started, the story became less about Goku’s friends and more about Goku’s family, and Chi-Chi basically took Launch’s spot.   She was introduced as a foil for Master Roshi, and then got a stint as Tien’s love interest, and then the series progressed to the point where Tien and Roshi were both afterthoughts, so of course Launch was going to become even more of an afterthought.  

And this is okay, because this is what happens with supporting characters.   Like I was saying, if she actually stuck around, and showed up in every “All-the-side-characters-watch-what’s-happening-on-TV” scene, I don’t think she’d be as interesting as she is with her long, mysterious disappearances.  

A wish: I hope my next attempt to write Launch goes well.  

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I don’t really have anything to put here.

5 words to best describe them: Enigma wrapped in a mystery.

My nickname for them:  Ain’t got one.