#i love evil!stampy so much
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I FINALY GOT A MOMENT TO WATCH THE LOVELY WORLD FINALE IM SOBBING AND CRYING JADORE THESE SILLY LITTLE GUYS !!!
stampys little speech at the end got me sobbing so hard especially since i recently moved for uni
the place doesn’t matter the people do :’)
adore that veeva and the parrot joined them as they where heading out can’t wait to see the fanfics for that lol as much as i love her being a badass evil silly she deserves to have a happy time making a new place with all of them love her v much
can’t imagine being HTT though man’s got what he thought he wanted for 10 years but now he’s king of a Barron kingdom that’s another kind of loneliness
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stampy’s lovely world is the so called ‘evil’ or ‘hels’ version of hermitcraft. but most of the evil clones live far beyond the square of land that stampy has made home, and have thus never found their way into our lives. some evil people, like hit the target, evil xisuma, and helsknight, have found their way to the main area/teleported form the main area/ was warped through a cloning machine.
AHCAICOAOVUSI OH MAN THE NOSTALGIA
I absolutely adore this headcanon/au. I don't have much to add, since it's been a good few years since I watched any Stampy, but I love the implication that HitTheTarget is a hels version of someone.
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So with in the hope au eryn being in stampys lovely world would he interact with some of the others? like the helpers maybe both new and old or if not the old helpers he just hears about them from stampy (and probably squaishey when/if they hang around LW) and also from the things they’ve helped build and made like Lee’s room behind the painting and squids and Amy’s rooms. And also people like the lunar friends and hit the target. And on the topic of eryn in stampys lovely world do you think he would find any of the things stampy does is strange like putting signs in a garden, his time traveling fiascoes if he ever learns of those, or just how his arch nemesis’s just after his dogs?
ok i have been trying to put my braincells together to answer this so thank you so much for the ask i'm sorry if this is incoherent:
stampy isn't all there. sqaishy and squid both vanished a while back, and he hasn't had any company since so he started making up the helpers and then. suddenly eryn arrives and starts asking questions. he asks why stampy is talking to himself and why he insists on only eating half stale cake and why he writes stranger's names on the signs in his garden and why he has so many dogs (also how the hell does he keep track of all of them?)
when hitthetarget shows up, and he will, eryn is almost amused at how tame this guy is. he is evil in a terribly cartoonish way, like badboyhalo, but stampy clearly is genuinely scared of him. so eryn plays along. they help stampy and, to their surprise, they start to learn the history of the world, they finally find out that stampy wasn't lying about having a spouse or a best friend, or about leebear or about literally anything. they were just gone by the time eryn arrived.
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More Lovely World+ Headcanons
Disclaimers
I accidentally posted this before the list was completed, so the contents of the post below the cut may still change in the future when I think of new ideas
Character =/= actor. I’ll be sticking with exclusively MC!verse interpretations of characters for this post, and meta concepts will be given in-universe explanations -- if anyone responding to this post makes this weird™, I will not hesitate to punt your ass into the sun
So yeah, this post is also half a fanfiction in itself because I just can’t sit down and write proper content for once these days
Due to the implications across several series that various Worlds are connected, I will stick to a mixture of canons -- the Lovely World takes place in a shared universe with Feather Adventures (very heavily implied in Sqaishey’s songs, but never outright stated, and Stampy makes no mention of Feather Adventures in the SLW), Finnball’s Kingdom (mutual acknowledgement of existence), etc.
If you read several certain TV Tropes pages, you’d probably find some of these headcanons and theories familiar... because I helped contribute to those pages
Hybrid AU(ish) -- and y’all know what that means :)
For this post... NO BETA, WE DIE LIKE STAMPY’S DOGS IN THE FIRST 220 LOVELY WORLD EPISODES
Lovely World (Angst with a hint of Fluff, Stampy exclusive)
In the Hybrid!verse, the SLW was established to be a safe space for hybrids... and it works :)
It's kind of obvious that Stamps is a cat
He has slightly better night vision if he switches into cat eye mode
He would still need glasses on his human side -- cats don't have the best resolution when it comes to vision and definitely don't have 20/20 vision -- inspired by a WMG by @madamegemknight (the full colour human vision was pure luck -- normal cats are what humans would call colour-blind)
Enhanced hearing, the whole purring thing, perching, lessened fall damage… just cat quirks, I guess
But he isn't immune to creepers and phantoms
But then let’s get back to canon...
Like I mentioned in some previous posts, HTT attacks were definitely traumatic
Stampy still makes baked potatoes the way Veeva Dash liked them when she was a Helper and now it’s just plain sadness central
An attack that turned out to be more traumatic than I originally anticipated was Ep375, Evil Plan -- because it lines up with at least part of Stampy’s behaviour in Sqaishey’s song Jungle, which takes place not long after the episode (see the Fridge pages on TV Tropes for both the SLW and Feather Adventures for details)
Ep526, Saving the World is surprisingly dark... and its aftereffects: Stampy checks up on his Helpers more often after that. And from what I can gather from the episode, it’s implied that he definitely took some of HTT’s accusations to heart, and he’s scared of becoming the tyrant HTT speaks of...
Ep670, Hacked is the meta episode and here’s to explain the meta: HTT and Veeva Dash managed to gain access to and steal the Heart of the World -- which is like a control panel / command block thing that controls the players’ permissions and world settings. Having access to the Heart is like being made into an moderator or even admin of a server, or the host of a console world (Stampy’s always had access to it but he doesn’t use it much these days)
Ep683, Darkness was one of the less dark attacks but I’m pretty solid on the idea that Stampy’s Elytra is clipped after getting shot down (even if he did eventually regain stability in flight, the aerial battle ended shortly afterwards)
He's definitely obfuscating stupidity. Definitely. You can't fight a war for 8+ years and still be an absolute dumbass. He just prefers to stay oblivious sometimes because it takes less of a toll on his psyche and mind to be “innocent and naïve”. Yeah, he is definitely a bit oblivious but not to the point of utter stupidity
Some non-HTT angst: Stamps still visits his dogs' graves on their deathdays. You can cry now
Sometimes Barnaby crawls into bed with him... I reckon it’s the PTSD thing
But then there are the “days off” -- basically spent on maintenance and farming... sometimes you just want them to catch a break and do something that’s just soft/slice of life/domestic
And the marriage applies in the SLW too, since the SLW is in a shared universe with Feather Adventures, and the marriage is canon there (Sqaishey mentions it in Ep308 on her end)
Sqaishey + Feather Adventures
Obviously, Sqaishey’s a duck, and hybrid!Sqaishey has wings but cannot fly
When their initial world, Quacktopia, crashed, they lost the ability to fly -- their wings were too damaged/weakened by the loss of their World, and they had been determined to regain their ability to fly since (and they succeeded in Feather Adventures because of them getting Elytra in Ep212, Search for Wings)
The Elytra basically helps stabilize their flight
The Elytra that Stampy got for Xmas in 2017 was given to Sqaishey as a present so that they could fly in his World, which is why Stamps had to go out of his way to get his own Elytra 3 years later
They have waterproof feathers!
In the Lovely World, they still help out behind the scenes even though they're not an official Helper anymore -- they help with resource gathering and offer off-camera assistance
Even though they don't appear on-screen these days, they're basically the current second in command in the SLW, which explains how they're able to tell Barnaby to follow her during their 2017 April Fools video
Stampy also totally helped them build the time machine they used in Quack If You Wanna, and it’s implied it functions better than the one Stampy has in his not-so-Secret Base (it’s portable and travels with the user through time, for one)
x
#stampys lovely world#my post#stampylonghead#stampylongnose#stampy cat#stampy#mcyt#mcytblr#lovely world headcanons#long post#feather adventures#sqaishey quack#sqaishey#me irl#16 february 2021
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you mentioned a while ago that you wanted to make a wonderquest rewrite - what would you change if you did end up making one and what would you keep the same?
OKAY so
No Flunkey and Lackey. I hate them, they don't exist anymore.
Maybe they can stay actually, if they had to, but I'd make it so that they lost their wonder in some sort of event that happened and that's why they're like That.
I'll focus on the second season because that one I like more am better with the characters.
Priscilla is more upset this season and more prone to snapping and getting mad, because in the original she's just mildly upset that Rama, her sister whom she loves dearly, has gone Fucking Evil
Rama's angry because Priscilla won the contest that made her the leader (??? I can't remember) of the Hall of Wonderers. She was disqualified for cheating and stealing an idea from Priscilla but she denies that she did.
Priscilla tells them that the crown is incredibly powerful and makes the wearer stronger.
That's how she got the plan. Actually the Mysterious Shadow (M.S.) had the plan and gave it to her. Priscilla points this out as a kind of "you didn't even come up with your own revenge plan, why do you think that we'd believe you'd come up with your idea" etc etc.
Rama is like, "they just gave me the time machine!!!! >:[" and throws a tantrum
The season will probably go on pretty normally, although some of the more out there beats will be toned down, and instead of Rama taking every idea for herself (because. What.), she just sabotages enough of the inventor's ideas that they give up, so the message is more "don't give up" and less "please for the love of God stop sending me stolen art trying to get into the love garden"
Also a lot of the paradoxes and hypocrisy are brought up, but out of earshot of Priscila because Everyone Is Scared Of Her But Won't Admit It™
At the end, Priscilla tells them to go back and time and stop Rama from turning evil and that's when one of our two heros™ is like. Fuck that, no way, that's wayyy unethical.
Maybe Keen has been sucking up to Priscilla this whole time and here he's like no? I like that.
In the middle of the arguing Rama appears in her time machine and is like, I'm here to do a villian monolouge
To everyone's (and no one in the audience but that's ok) surprise, Priscilla jumps up next to Rama and starts yelling at her, saying that she's a villian™ and that she should have never started inventing.
Priscilla reveals that she was MS the whole time! She was jealous of the fact that Rama was quicker at picking up inventing and was worried she might get the crown and be the leader of the hall of wonders instead of her.
Priscilla uses the crown to bring the whole fucking building down
Everyone escapes and during it Stampy saves Rama from almost dying from a pillar because idk he always seems a bit too cowardly for my taste in WQ
Outside, they see the flash that indicates that the time machine has been used. Rama slumps over and starts apologizing for her ignorance and they start to make a plan to clean up this whole mess.
But then Stampy notices a red mist appear around Rama's eyes for a second, something he recognizes as time magic.
Before he can react, Rama tears up their plans and a bright flash in front of them indicates that time travel just took place.
When they open their eyes, yep! Priscilla is there, standing next to a grinning and now very much evil Rama in front of a time machine.
Priscilla says that she went back in time and sabotaged Rama's first invention (her rocket boots which, yep, are now gone)
Now Rama idolizes Priscilla and basically does whatever she says.
After being cut off like fifteen times, Rama gets a chance to speak and starts a noticeably worse and lazier monologue than the ones she has done in the series before.
During this monologue she starts to slow down while talking about her plan and Priscilla's plan, realizing that is was Priscilla who stole her plan.
This gets her angry, and she starts yelling at her, saying that it wasn't fair that she got all the credit for something she came up with.
In a rage, she attacks the time machine, and in a flash, she's gone. (off to the Time God!)
So while Stampy and Keen quickly knock off Priscilla's crown and chase her away, Rama does some Actually Complicated Shit to become whatever they called the time police or something, showing that she is no longer lazy and is actually very intelligent.
Stampy and Keen are trying to find out where Rama came back when there's another flash and boom! There she is! Flying!! In her boots!!! That she made!!!!
She explains that she fixed the timeline and, after she's filled in, is given the crown to become the rightful leader of the hall of wonders.
Priscilla is still out there, so if you want a season three, there you go!
Actually wait maybe Priscilla fucked up Flunkey and Lackey's sense of wonder because they figured out too much
Yeah I like that lets go with that!
#stampylonghead#stampylongnose#stampy cat#mineblr#minecraft#stampy's lovely world#wonder quest#wq#was this a swap au that became a rewrite? perhaps#was i listening to copycat by Billie Eilish while making said swap au? maybe#please ask me about this I would like to talk about this
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AU idea 3(WIP-ish)
CREDIT TO: @music-bear42
Basically, Stampy is evil in this AU instead of HTT. Most versions of this AU I saw have only Stampy being evil or all of his helpers being evil. So I decided to try putting my own spin on this sort of thing
Stampy does still have helpers in this AU. However, I decided that he would only have the old helpers with him, while the newer helpers are with HTT and Veeva.
Making Stampy evil has taken a while for me to figure out, but I decided that his bad deeds were done as an attempt to make his lovely world "perfect" or a utopia, but kind of becoming an authoritarian dictator in the process. HTT and Veeva are still former helpers in this AU, but they left him and started up a resistance movement after managing to figure out what he was trying to do.
The older helpers(Lee, Squid and Squaishey) do stay with Stampy for the most part. However, I decided instead of killing them off, they would eventually be redeemed by HTT and Veeva after a while, with Lee being the most difficult person to get on their side, due to his intense loyalty.
Squid is still the kracken in this AU, but he embraces his role a lot more enthusiastically, and sinks ships a lot more frequently. Especially the ones that belong to Stampy's enemies. His redemption arc would likely involve HTT saving him from drowning after a failed attempt to sink his ship, and maybe talking to him for a bit before returning him to the lovely world, which allows him to think a lot about his actions and the things he's done while with Stampy. After some intense consideration, he leaves Stampy and joins HTT.
Squaishey is another one of the helpers. She is probably the first helper to be redeemed, most likely leaving after being sent to spy on Hit the Target and the others and realizing that they might have a point.
Lee is the last person to be redeemed. This likely requires help from Squid and Squaishey to accomplish, since he has been with Stampy the longest and is extremely dedicated/loyal to him as a result. It takes ages for everyone to convince him to join them, and they probably achieve it because of the new helpers knowing how much Lee cares about him, and convincing them that if they peacefully got him on their side, he could help get Stampy to improve things, so they would no longer have to fight him or potentially kill him.
As for the newer helpers, Polly working at the north pole is probably how she knows that Stampy and the old helpers have done some really bad things in their attempts to make a perfect world, so she joins HTT and Veeva to try helping Stampy and the others change their ways. William was probably already friends with HTT before this happened, so he was already able to figure out what was wrong with Stampy or he was just really loyal to HTT. Fizzy joins them a lot later, probably as the result of being rescued from Stampy, but similarly to Polly, probably disliked the idea of fighting.
After redeeming all his helpers, the group all starts working on a plan to convince Stampy that what he's doing isn't right, which is much easier now that his helpers can help them out. How they do that is currently unknown and tbh I'll let ya'll decide or suggest how or if that happens.
#stampy#stampylongnose#stampy au#au ideas/concepts#stampy's lovely world#stampylonghead#Lee#Squid#hit the target#veeva#squaishey#William#Polly#Veeva#fizzy
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Recap: Cast Four – 22/23 & 26 May (Part One)
On Wednesday and Thursday I saw Cast Four for the first time. I came out of those performances unsure how I felt about the cast and the changes to the show. There was a lot that I didn’t like, and I didn’t feel excited about the year ahead at all. Looking back now, I was exhausted when I was watching those shows. I didn’t take much in, and when I was trying to write my recap I knew I was missing a lot. I felt neither passionate about nor proud of what I was writing.
So on Sunday I got another ticket and tried again. I ended up sitting further back than I have in a year and a half, but also in the second most central seat I’ve had in a year. And it helped.
I’ve always found that sitting close to the stage you focus on the action close to the front a lot more. It’s difficult to get the depth of what’s going on. When you sit slightly further back it’s far easier to take in the choreography, and what I was unhappy with on Wednesday and Thursday was largely the choreographic changes.
My Sunday seat gave me a view like I was looking at a model box of the show — it was the sort of view the show was designed to be seen from. All the shapes came out, the lighting, the details of the movement, plus it was an absolute gift of a show. I fell in love with portrayals and changes I hadn’t been certain of, and fell even more deeply in love with the things I’d already enjoyed.
So, without further ado, here are some thoughts about the new portrayals we’ve got (including our first cover of the year — the wonderful Gordon Millar as Karl etc.), followed by a recap of Sunday’s show, combined with thoughts from Wednesday and Thursday.
Because this got exceptionally long (my second longest recap ever), I’ve split it in half. Part One is below, and Part Two can be found here.
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David Mara — Station Master
If I had to pick anyone to step into Martin’s shoes, it would have been David. He was great in every role I saw him cover last year, and he was great in this role too. I like the strange whistle he does at the start of the scene — it reminds me of someone else who used to do proper signalling style whistles — and it’s fun to watch him looking with confusion at the boys as they chat in their corner (although I am concerned by how much he must overhear). I can’t wait to see this scene develop over the year.
Lucy Mangan — Myrtle
I think Lucy’s going to be a really excellent Myrtle (and I can’t wait to see her cover Delphi too). There were some great over the top little touches to her portrayal. When she did ‘the weeping after he was taken’, she cried once then stopped, cried again then stopped, then one of the boys started trying to talk so she held a hand up to stop him while she cried a third time. It’s ridiculous little details like that, which make me most excited to see her again.
Blythe Duff — Professor McGonagall
They honestly couldn’t have found a better person to take over from Sandy. Blythe is the first McGonagall not to have the Maggie Smith look, but that actually made me love her more. It was her warmth and charm and sparkle that made her feel like McGonagall, and I would probably fight to the death for her already.
Her Trolley Witch was also gorgeous. I’ve seen many Trolley Witch debuts over the years, and even ones I ultimately come to love have felt disappointing first time round, but not this one. She captured the right feeling of ancient, authoritative power so perfectly. I cannot wait to see her again.
Gordon Millar as Karl
Our first cover of the year, and what a good one. On Wednesday and Thursday he went straight onto my ‘must watch’ list, so a big part of me deciding to go for a ticket on Sunday was the desire to see him.
His Karl is actually quite sweet (which I think stems from Gordon being a lovely, funny human being), but in the St Oswald’s scene Gordon’s character is an absolute — to put it bluntly — dick. He’s a bully, a nasty piece of work, and it really helps the scene (more on that later). I also loved Gordon’s Krum a lot. This one has great movement (like seemingly everyone in the cast), and I cannot wait to see more of him.
Luke Sumner and Emma-May Uden as Yann and Polly
I feel bad lumping these two together but in the show they really did come as a pair. They were perfect fake, popular, nasty individuals. I’ve never hated Yann and Polly more, and I mean that in the best possible way. They were just the sort of people who would bully Albus and Scorpius, and I loved it.
Ronnie Lee as Craig
My heart belongs to Ronnie. There was just something so likeable about him. Sometimes Craig feels like a little ray of sunshine, and that’s just how it should be. Also, I appreciate the boldness of someone who’ll full on lie on the death table, with both feet in the air, so it looks like they’ve been blasted off their feet and are falling to the ground in slow motion. That was an excellent death.
Another thing I noticed about Ronnie was his dance talent. There was a Mackley-esque fierceness to his Death Eater dance, and he was just generally brilliant at the movement. This whole cast is so noticeably strong on the movement — possibly the strongest so far.
Also, while I’m talking about Ronnie I have to mention the other two members of the most adorable trio of Slytherin boys ever — there’s Gordon, as mentioned above, and Duncan Shelton. They had some chants going on in the first task, some excitable stampy feet, and just lots of general sweetness. I can’t wait to get to know these three better. They’re going to be brilliant.
Kathryn Meisle as Umbridge
One of our very first Hogwarts foreign exchange students. I thought she did a really good job, and I particularly thought her Petunia was good. Also, she did a little skip when she was going off after telling Scorpius he was ruining Voldemort, which was just the perfect touch of sweet, girlish, disgusting Umbridge.
Madeleine Walker as Delphi
I had two first impressions of Madeleine as Delphi. First, I don’t know how many of you have seen Puffs, but in terms of attitude and eyeliner she looked just like Megan — like she’s trying to be edgy but is actually just a nerd. My other first impression, related to that, was that Delphi was exactly the sort of person that Albus and Scorpius would want to be friends with.
She’s awkward and nerdy and has the same vibe as they do. It’s easy to see how well she’s playing them, especially in Part One. But at the same time, once she’s revealed her true self she doesn’t change much, and there’s something very creepy about that. This person who seems so harmless and nice has all this evil lurking literally right under the surface, and she holds very little of herself back.
It should also be said that at some point this year, Madeleine is going to deliver the wildest Torture Scene we’ve ever had. Even on Sunday she absolutely blew me away, and it’s only going to get better. I’m so excited.
Michelle Gayle as Hermione
I liked Michelle‘s Hermione. She had a bit of the know-it-all vibe, and her Hermione felt quite young. There was this obvious relation to book Hermione that worked well. I particularly liked her scene in Harry’s office right at the start of the play. She felt like Harry’s friend from the books. I also think that she’s got a lot of great thoughts about the character, and I can’t wait to see her engage with them throughout her performance and develop them over the year.
She made a great attempt to play Delphi Polyjuiced, which I really appreciated. That was a big highlight from her. It’s surprising how rare it is to see the adults actually try to replicate what the kids are doing (aside from Jamie B, who’s a master of the art).
Rayxia Ojo as Rose
Rayxia’s back, and it’s wonderful. Her Rose has always seemed so grown up and mature, and next to Dominic’s Albus she feels particularly so, just because she looks so tall beside him. It’s weird because in all the ensemble scenes she’s one of the shortest people around. Anyway, it’s great to have her back in the show, she works wonderfully with Michelle (there’s a similarity of character there that’s really nice), and I can’t wait to see more from her.
Ryan Mackay as James
I’ve seen Ryan as James a few times before, and always enjoyed him, but he seems to have come into his own with this cast. He particularly owned the Lily and James death scene, and it was uncanny how much he and Dom looked like brothers when they were standing near each in the opening scene. I also adored his Cedric, particularly on Sunday, and he has a very fine background moment in St Oswald’s that I truly think helps make the scene palatable. I’m so pleased he gets an expanded role with this cast and seems to be flourishing with it.
Dominic Short as Albus
Sometimes when I watch someone play a character in this show for the first time I feel an instant comfort in their portrayal, and that was how I felt with Dom. It was a mixed blessing because I felt so comfortable and confident in him that I didn’t pay him as much attention as I should have done (there was lot to take in), but I really loved him. Thankfully, on Sunday I get to pay a lot closer attention to him, and he absolutely blew me away. Even from near the back of the stalls his expressiveness drew me in.
His Albus has a certain happiness to him. He’s less broken than the last couple have been. There’s genuine jubilation in his portrayal at certain moments, like when he casts some of the spells successfully and when they figure out how to get a message to Harry.
There are many moments when he reminded me vividly of Sam’s Albus (which will never be a problem), and I loved the flashes of anger and emotion. On first viewing I felt that he was quite a young Albus, especially after Joe whose Albus was quite mature and surprisingly thoughtful. However, on second viewing he felt a lot more self-aware, and there was some real tenderness there. Some absolutely beautiful moments.
One of my favourite things about him was that in Part One he feels wrapped up in his own problems, and you can clearly see the spiral from an enthusiastic boy looking forward to going to Hogwarts to an angry, miserable, withdrawn young man by fourth year. The transition scene was perfectly played in that regard.
I really was very impressed by him. I think he’s the Albus they’ve been trying to cast since the show opened. He has Sam’s fierce anger and prickliness, with Theo’s emotion, Joe’s humour, and an ability to adapt and change to what’s going on around him. We’re only at the start and already he’s sparking my imagination and making me desperate to see more. This is going to be the most excellent year.
*
So, with those first impressions out of the way, let’s get into some changes and great character moments.
Opening and transition scene (Act One, Scenes One to Four)
The weird thing about a first show, especially one in which the person playing the Sorting Hat is staying the same, is that for the first few seconds nothing feels different. It could be any other show. But then the first member of the ensemble walks out and you realise that everything has changed.
There’s a new bit of choreography in the first scene that I was pre-warned of but of course completely forgot about until it happened, so it took me by surprise. The Sorting Hat (who now wears glasses as part of his costume – fun facts) stands in the middle of the stage and manipulates the people around him. There’s a whole group that he diverts with a flash of light, a man he turns round with a gesture, and he makes the woman at the front of the stage walk round her suitcase.
As someone who loves the Sorting Hat, his role in the play, and what it means, the whole interaction felt a bit random. It’s obviously a flashy opening to the show, with a bit of magic, but I’ve never seen the Sorting Hat as a manipulator. I’ve realised recently that he’s a protector and guardian of the boys (particularly of Scorpius) in the same way that Hagrid is a protector of Harry, and he’s also the bringer of magic to the show, but this doesn’t seem to add anything to that. If anything, there needed to be more of the manipulation – there were only three interactions, so it didn’t actually make that much of an impact on someone seeing it of the first time. To me it ought to be go big or go home.
On the second viewing I realised that technically bringing Harry onto Platform 9 3/4 could count as one of the manipulations (it’s got the same sound effect associated with it), and I also realised that he never seems to touch a group that has Delphi in. So maybe there is some meaning in there if you dig a bit.
The first big line change is Lily’s line in the opening scene, which is no longer ‘Are they here? Maybe they didn’t come’. It’s not her wondering whether the Granger-Weasleys are late, and lamenting that they’re always late. Thankfully this isn’t a line from the epilogue, so the change doesn’t really have that much impact. It’s another of the random changes that we now see throughout the show – ones that don’t really make much of a difference, and it’s unclear why they were made.
In this opening scene, seeing Dom and Ryan side by side showed how perfect their casting as brothers is. They look so similar, particularly in face shape.
Watching this cast for a second time from a distance let me appreciate a really cool James moment properly for the first time. When Albus is being sorted, James and Scorpius are on complete opposite sides of the stage, perfectly symmetrical, and they’re the only two people in the crowd picked out by a spotlight, which illuminates both their faces. It’s like Albus’s Sorting is visibly tearing him between his family and his new best friend, and it lets you see both their reactions perfectly — James’s bewilderment and Scorpius’s disbelieving excitement.
Going back to the opening scene, we got to see the first glimpse of Dom’s Albus before anything happens to him. There’s a youthful joy there. He laughs at Ron’s jokes and seems to be relaxed around his family. He’s genuinely excited to be going to Hogwarts. Until he gets there…
There are directions throughout the transition scene that with each passing year, Albus gets more withdrawn and miserable, and that’s just how Dom played it. You could see the process of Albus becoming increasingly demoralised with life at Hogwarts, and it was wonderful. Right from the start, Dom had such ownership over Albus, putting his stamp on the role, and even just the first scene made me excited to see him in Part Two – it was an excellent start.
In the first show everything was technically perfect, but in the show on Sunday, the fire didn’t work on the Incendio trick. However, Dom’s cover for it was perfect, and added something to the character. He just sighed very heavily and sort of threw his hands in the hair as he said he didn’t expect it to work anyway. I never realised before how that line is so open to all possibilities.
The next few obvious changes came in the transition scene: Scorpius now offers Rose a rose in London (is it a trick rose? It looked like it had a collapsible stem to me), also, when the boys’ potion explodes, the kids around Albus and Scorpius flop forwards instead of bending backwards. And then, of course, you get the wand dance.
Dominic was so bold in the wand dance, which I really enjoyed. Nothing was held back and everything was extended and gone for. There was actually lots I loved about the new choreography in this scene too (I think it was one of the biggest successes of all the changed elements). There are lots of circles and lines, and my favourite moment was when all the other kids circled round Albus, leaning in and looming over him. I also liked that he got a moment to fit in and help the others – just a brief flash of success, that must be all the more painful for being so fleeting.
The new wand dance begins with a big flashy trick – the current shot of fire now connects up to a sort of flaming rope on the ceiling, so that brief spark flies all the way from the bottom to the top of the stage. It ends with the usual red smoke, and one of the other kids taunting Albus: “Even his wand wants to be in Gryffindor”.
To briefly backtrack, I need to give a quick shoutout to Dom’s “I stayed for your sweets” from Sunday. He did a little dad dance as he said it, and I can only describe it as like he was milking a cow. A little up and down motion with his hands, fists clenched. I know it sounds weird (this show has made me write some very bizarre descriptive phrases) but he made it work, even if he did look like a ridiculous nerd doing it.
Blanket Scene (Act One, Scenes Six and Seven)
I really liked the introduction to Delphi in the scene before the Blanket Scene. Her conversation with Albus is really sweet, and she curtised to him before she went off to talk to Amos (the first of two curtsies in the show — the second was to Scorpius when he called her The Augurey).
One of her finest moments was when she shook hands with Harry and looked at the scars on his hand. You could feel her reading ‘I must not tell lies’ and mentally calling him out for lying right in front of her. After all, he does know about the Time-Turner, she knows he does, and she also knows that he’s lying to Amos. It was such a powerful, silent moment of judgement. A gorgeous little detail.
In the Blanket Scene itself, I adored how Dom’s Albus interacted with his siblings. Because I was so far away for the Sunday show I couldn’t actually see or hear Albus laughing at James’s antics, but I could see his shoulders bouncing from the laughter. And then when Lily comes in looking for her Potions book, Albus holds his hands up to say it’s not his fault. It’s only when Harry comes into the room that he finally sits down, perched on the edge of the bed, and from that moment he never really relaxed or seemed comfortable. His space had been invaded, and he tensed up almost immediately.
Once they got into the scene itself, we found an angry Albus, who wasn’t afraid to raise his voice and fight back. At no point did he seem even close to accepting the blanket, and there was an expression on his face that said that he hated his dad’s reasoning for giving it to him. He knew the gift was all about Harry, and he detested it right from the word go.
One of the things I noticed about Dom’s Albus was how he always shrank back, never holding his ground. He ended up occupying parts of the stage that people don’t normally go to – only by a few centimetres sometimes, but it was still noticeable. In this scene he was pushed well back beyond the bed, and again in the final scene he hid among the graves, keeping a physical distance from Harry. In this particular scene it worked really well, the shrinking away, closing himself off, as Harry got more heated. I also loved that he said the final line of the scene the original way round: ‘No luck or love for me then’.
Dom’s is one of the angriest Blanket Scenes we’ve had for a while. He really explodes, and it’s wonderful. He fully unfolds the blanket when he describes it as mouldy, and gives it a look of disgust that Harry is so upset by.
St Oswald’s (Act One, Scene Thirteen)
I have now seen the new St Oswald’s three times (once on Broadway, twice in London), and I still can’t say that I’m convinced by it.
At first I hated it. With a passion. It starts off alright, with a biscuit palace appearing onstage, then quickly descends into something quite distasteful. The stage direction in the script for this scene is about magic being done for fun. It’s supposed to be joyful, people who can do magic because they love it rather than having to do it for work or study. It should be colourful and vibrant, as well as chaotic.
What we get is certainly chaotic, but as the employees of St Oswald’s play various tricks on the residents, there’s an uncomfortable feeling to the scene. There’s not a nice spirit there. Previously the scene has been hilarious and delightful. Now it’s just mean, and borders on elder abuse, which just isn’t necessary. The scene could have been remade without going anywhere near that territory, and I do think it’s a serious misstep. Not to mention the fact that some of the tricks are so juvenile and fake (one lady gets stuck inside a sofa, with a pair of legs that are so clearly not her own sticking up in the air).
On Sunday, my third viewing of it, however, I did start to see sort of what they were going for, and there were a couple of redeeming features. When you sit close to the front it’s difficult to see the choreography going on towards the back of the stage, so sitting further back allowed me to see Ryan’s role in the scene, and I loved what he brought to it.
His staff member has a very brief role in proceedings, but I think it’s essential. While Gordon was bullying the residents (which he did with incredible viciousness), Ryan was looking utterly horrified. There was an expression on his face that just said ‘this is so far from okay, I’m not doing this’, and that was the point when he exited the scene.
It was really good to see someone in character acknowledging how bad what was going on was, and showed a self-awareness that I hadn’t realised was there before. There was also the fact that at the end of the scene, when the nasty staff member gets his comeuppance (he ends up holding a teacup that’s spilling over with fire), the residents of St Oswald’s all started dancing and enjoying themselves. Those two things combined really helped me with it, and I think with further viewings I might come around to accepting it.
It is still frustrating to have to work so hard on it though. I’ve always loved this show for its artistry and joyful magic, and this scene feels like an unnecessary step away from that. What was wrong with the original, very funny, perfectly good spirited version of the scene?
Around the map (Act One, Scene Seventeen)
The scene where the adults talk around the map, trying to work out where Albus and Scorpius might be, is always a bit of a dark horse of a scene. It doesn’t feel that important, but there’s always so much fascinating character work going on there. And so it was in this show.
I caught Harry and Ginny having a silent conversation, in which Harry told Ginny not to mention what he said to Albus. I’m pretty sure that was because he didn’t want Draco to know, and if he had to tell Hermione he’d rather tell her in person. And yet of course Ginny brings up an opportunity for him to tell everyone. It made it feel almost as if she was betraying him, which did actually work.
There’s a lot of conflict during the show between Harry and Ginny. It’s hidden because their relationship is so strong and they do spend so much time interacting. They obviously love one another. But Ginny does find Harry’s actions difficult to swallow sometimes. She calls him out on them. And that tiny interaction in this scene really laid the groundwork for that.
Ginny’s priority throughout the play is Albus. Harry is a grown man who can look after himself, and while she loves him, she knows that Albus is by far the more vulnerable party here, and she’s going to fight every step of the way to find him and help him. In this scene, getting Harry to admit what he’s done is the best way of achieving that, so she makes it happen. She doesn’t actively tell everyone what Harry’s role in Albus’s disappearance was, but she puts him in a position that enables him to tell the truth.
To know that that came from a silent conversation between the two of them was so fascinating, and it added an extra dimension to the journey they take through the rest of the show. We could not be more lucky. Jamie and Susie are such fantastic actors, and the thought they bring to their characters is game changing.
Opening of Act Two (Act Two, Scene One)
Here were a couple of changes that I loved straight away. Before in the dream sequence, young Harry has been haunted by a single, ghostly hand, and that’s still the case. Except in the new version, by the end there are three hands reaching for him.
This might be a bit random, but I really liked the fact that there were three hands, not four. The odd number threw things off and added to the creepiness of it. There was something even more unnatural about the dream. And actually what I noticed throughout the show is that in the moments that are meant to be unnatural and wrong, tiny bits of choreography have been tweaked to make that vibe feel so tangible.
The other great thing about this new version of the dream is that Harry finally does look like he’s wet himself. It’s a detail that should have been added years ago, but I’m glad it’s here now. Also, Harry’s clothes are now genuinely too big for him. They look like adult’s clothes, just the way they should. Those little things make all the difference.
The adults visit McGonagall’s Office (Act Two, Scene Three)
There were so many reasons to love Blythe as McGonagall, but one of my favourites came in this scene. As they were leaving the office to go and find the boys, she saw Ron with the napkin tucked into his top, and reached across to take it off him with a tut. It was so brusque and no nonsense, plus it hinted at her familiarity with him and the others. Although she holds power over them (even Hermione) by virtue of being one of the most wise and respected figures in the Wizarding World, this group are also colleagues in a sense — fellow soldiers who have fought through a war together — and the respect goes both ways. Respect and fondness. Almost a familial bond. It was such a sweet little touch.
Expelliarmus Scene (Act Two, Scene Four)
This is one of the big trick scenes that can go wrong, but I’m pleased to report that it didn’t in either show. There was an air of confidence from both Madeleine and Dom, and the trick worked really smoothly. Being able to pull that one off with such panache must take guts, especially first time out, and they did a great job. In fact they were both very good with the magic throughout.
Another excellent Delphi moment came at the end of this scene (only in the first show — sadly it wasn’t repeated on Sunday). After she kissed Albus on the cheek, Scorpius did his normal flailing routine in front of her, and she was having none of it. She rolled her eyes and, from several metres away, did a fake little ‘mwah mwah’ in the air, roughly directed to either side of his face. It was sarcastic, impatient, and designed to let him know that he needed to get out of her way fast, which he did. It was a great way of handling his ridiculousness.
Bane and the search for the boys (Act Two, Scene Five)
One of the little details I noticed during the opening of this scene, when everyone was searching the forest, was that Harry wasn’t quite alone when he started calling for Albus and Scorpius. On Wednesday I assumed this was just because the ensemble were a little bit slow getting off the stage, but it was the same on Sunday too, and I was really pleased. I liked it as a sign of Harry’s desperation. Even amongst all these other people helping him, he starts shouting for his son. No waiting for a private moment. No embarrassment. Just his guilt and his need to get his son back safely.
First Task (Act Two, Scene Seven)
If anyone was afraid that the First Task might be a little quiet without the Mackley, Josh, and James Phoon show, you needn’t be. There was plenty of chaos going on, enough to make it difficult to watch the main action.
This was the scene that made me fall in love with the trio of Slytherin boys – Ronnie, Gordon, and Duncan. They were simply wonderful, and absolutely adorable. They had a little chant that I couldn’t quite catch (I think it might have been Cedric related), and then there was some excitable chanting of Krum’s name when he was announced. Also, Ronnie kept stamping his feet to emphasise his applause, and it looked like the three of them were having a whale of a time.
On Sunday, when Gordon was in Hufflepuff, Ronnie went on a Josh-style excursion to visit him, which was very sweet. When he got back to Slytherin there was a lot of hat stealing and Krum chanting and just general chaos.
Hospital Wing (Act Two, Scenes Eight and Nine)
Albus had a little nightmare while Harry was talking to Dumbledore. He didn’t thrash around as much as Theo used to, it was quite contained, but he was definitely bothered by something going on in his head. There’s something nice about an Albus waking up with a shout of his dad’s name. Even after everything, he still subconsciously loves and needs his dad.
Another little detail from this scene was that this Albus actually ate some of the chocolate. It’s always fun to note who does and doesn’t (Joe very much did not).
One of my favourite Dominic moments came in the scene after this one, when Albus tells Scorpius that he can’t speak to him anymore. He was sharp with Scorpius, but it seemed to be driven by his desire to at least try and do what was necessary to make peace with his dad. However, he was certainly not happy about it. After he’d told Scorpius they’d be better off without each other, he turned to his dad to say ‘okay?’ It was spiteful, spat out, as if saying ‘are you happy now?’ As much as he wants his dad’s affection, he hates the things he has to do to try and get it.
Staircase Ballet (Act Two, Scene Twelve)
This was the first scene where I really noticed the difference in height between Jonathan and Dominic. I obviously knew that Jonathan is the tallest Scorpius we’ve ever had and Dominic the shortest Albus, but there’s something about seeing it in person that makes it all so much more real.
The two boys came together at the top of the stairs (the point when they’re standing side by side, and Albus is trying to avoid Scorpius’s eyes) and there they were. Tall and tiny.
The other thing I really loved about this staircase ballet came from something I’ve noticed before. While Scorpius moves through Hogwarts with ease, from staircase to staircase without a thought, Albus hits dead ends and has to wind his way through the school. It’s like the school accepts Scorpius, but is rejecting Albus. And in both these shows, when Albus walked out from the wings to climb the staircase and meet Scorpius in the middle, he was faced with the wrong end of the staircase. Instead of having steps leading up, there was an unattainable ledge high above him. It was just another sign of the school shutting him out. Another barrier. Sometimes he must feel that he can’t possibly get anywhere – even the building is against him, let alone the classes, his magic, and his fellow students.
Library Scene (Act Two, Scene Sixteen)
I don’t remember much from this scene on Wednesday, but Sunday was vivid, so let’s talk about that. In fact, let’s just talk about Dominic.
In every scene, but in this one particularly, his body language alone carried right to the back of the theatre. While Scorpius was yelling at Albus, most of the time he was on the verge of stepping forward. He wanted to interrupt, to defend himself, to just say something, maybe even apologise. He was constantly on tiptoes, half stepping forward, half rooted to the spot, shoulders hunched, Time-Turner cradled in his hand.
Then Scorpius started talking about his mum, and that was when Albus finally stopped trying to interject. He stepped back, bowing his head. He seemed to shrink, and all the fight went out of him until there was just despair.
When I first saw Dom’s Albus I thought he might be selfish, but on Sunday I realised just how self-aware he is. Especially in the library scene he was so conscious of everything he’d done and said, and what Scorpius was directing at him. It was heartbreaking to see him crumble like that. And when he got onto his apology there was such softness to it, but also power, this drive to let Scorpius know the truth. It was such a beautiful apology, and I’m so pleased that by Sunday Dom had already found Albus’s softer side, because (probably down to nerves) that was the one thing I was lacking on Wednesday and Thursday.
The other big thing to talk about in this scene has to be the hug. I don’t even know if it can be described as a hug, because there wasn’t much of the boys holding onto each other. While Dom did attempt to do some hugging, Jonathan just draped himself over Dom’s shoulders. He was hanging off him, arms dangling down his back. Only very briefly did Scorpius actually pat Albus’s back, before they parted. It was one of the most awkward disasters of a hug I’ve ever seen. I loved it.
Act Two ending
A couple of little things to finish off Part One:
McGonagall absolutely embraced ‘I solemnly swear that I am up to no good’. She did the most epic wand swish, and was really going for it. Rebellious McGonagall might be my absolute favourite thing to come from the show.
When the boys are under the lake, they now have wild static hair. I noticed it first because I spotted how wild Dom’s hair was. Then I noticed that Scorpius’s wig was sticking up. It took me a second to twig that it was because they were meant to be underwater. At first I thought it was a nice touch, but then I realised that, because the hair doesn’t move like they’re underwater, it kind of just looks like they’ve been attacked with balloons backstage. Also, I feel really sorry for Dom who has to brush that mess out before he can go and have lunch. A little puff of wind or something to make the hair move might make the whole thing more effective. It’s difficult to tell. But for now I guess I’ll just be entertained by how wild they look.
Umbridge did a very creepy skip as she went off after telling Scorpius about Voldemort Day. It was chillingly perfect; just the right amount of gross girlishness.
The Dementor on stage left is wild. Both on Wednesday and Sunday it kept pogoing up and down like mad. I kind of love it. It’s very excitable.
*
So that’s Part One. Click here for Part Two and a little bit of summing up >
#Harry Potter and the Cursed Child#Cursed Child#hpplayldn#Cast Four#Dominic Short#Jonathan Case#Jamie Ballard#Susie Trayling#Madeleine Walker#My writing#Notes from the show#Keep The Secrets#I really love this cast#they're great#also sorry this took so long#in my defence it's my second longest recap ever...
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Nobody Asked for it, you got it
Fic Recommendation list :D
Like the title says no one really asked for it, but I felt in the mood to do one so why not? Lots of fandoms are here, so feel free to read through and see what there is that catches your interest ^^
There are links to both FanFiction and ArchiveOfOurOwn ;)
Minecraft: Story Mode
Movie Mode - The first Watching the Game fic on FF (and one of the only 3), Movie Mode is a well written fic by @Toni4eyes, who captures the characters in an amazing way. In-Progress
The Return of the Lost - If you’re favorite episode is 6, then this little capturing moments of Stampy, Stacy, and Dan’s lives is absolutely for you. It’s very sweet, and though it’s currently only six chapters long, this fic by MitziRae is sure to capture you hook-line-and sinker
Building Blocks - If you love imagining the Old Order adopting the New Order, than look no further than this fic written by @raintagwasalreadytaken. Honestly, all of her fics deserve to be on this list, but due to conservation of space I’ll just link this one and let you guys discover the rest of her works on your own
Hybrid: Cinematic Mode - Similar to Movie Mode in the fact that it’s a watching the game, this piece by @arizaluca is simply stunning. Featuring the gang watching, not the original game, but in fact an alternate universe of Ariza’s (a hybrid universe).
Rebel of Sky City - You love writing or drawing that Sky AU for MCSM AU Month? Then Rebel of Sky City, written by shielddrake42 needs to be your next stop. Featuring Jesse, the daughter of Isa, and Lukas, the son of Milo. Need I say more?
Fingerpainted Bruises - Also by @toni4eyes, unless you’re like CaptainSparklez and think Radar is evil (still laughing about that from his walkthrough btw) then stay away. But if you’re like the other 99% of mcsm s2 players, and think Radar is a precious bean whom Jesse should adopt to make Ivor a grandpa, then you MUST read this fic, as well as its sequel Makeshift Band-aids
Danny Phantom
Jack’s Wish - Who doesn’t love a good reveal story? Well this one, although perhaps not the BEST written, is still one of the best plots I’ve seen.
Frequency - Yup, another reveal fic. Expect it from me alright? I’m freaking addicted to them. This one has a bit more of an eavesdropping plot, but it’s still pretty good.
How to Train Your Dragon
To Start Anew - Hasn’t been updated in three years, but it’s time travel. ‘Nuff said.
Justice League (the cartoon, not the new movie)
Privacy - It’s cute, just...just read it alright?
Legend of Zelda
Dimensional Links - Ever want all of the Links to meet up? Wish granted right here. It was updated this year so I THINK it’s still going, but don’t quote me on that.
The Wolf - The fic you all wanted the moment you played/watched Twilight Princes, even if you didn’t know you wanted it.
Warriors
Different - A fox growing up as a cat, learning she’s a fox, and all hell breaking loose. I’ve been reading this fic since my early days on FF (when i was twelve.)
Tigerclaw’s Second Chance - Exactly what it sounds like, a Time Travel piece in which Tigerclaw is given a chance to change things
Resilience - This is a really good fic involving a Windclan kit being taken to Riverclan, becoming a medicine cat, and lots of other crazy things.
Young Justice (show not comic)
That Torturous Thing Known as Time Travel - Read somewhere private so WHEN you start laughing, no one thinks your crazy ;)
Look into the Future - Exactly how it sounds
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Weaver of Silk and Dreams - There are no words that can properly describe this amazing alternate universe, so just go and read it for yourself.
Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir
The Marinette Project - Pure fluff and romance involving MariChat, Adrienette, Ladienette, and LadyNoir. Quite possibly the best and sweetest Ladybug fic I’ve read. Bring your toothbrush.
Coco
Remember Not to Forget - READ. THIS. IMMEDIATELY AFTER WATCHING COCO! THIS NEEDS TO BE THE SEQUEL!!!!!!!
I’m into Fitness - ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Movie Night - Kinda rushed, but still hits all the right points. Also (as far as I’m aware) the first watching the movie fic for this fandom, so give it some slack ;)
Trolls
Piece by Piece - Single Gray Dad AU that is just the cutest thing ever <3
Move on Up - The ending is really rushed (at least for me) but this is a really cute Breek fic (branch x creek) and a really clever soulmate au
Ninjago
Blood is Thicker than Water, but so is Sludge and Tar and the horrible coffe dad tried to make one time - Do I really need to say anything?
The Pain in our Tears - Just a cute little headcanon that I totally agree with
Crossovers
They’re Us -- Young Justice meets Justice League. Hasn’t been updated in a while, but still worth your time reading.
Lean on Me - Smurfs Meets Trolls, with the cutest crossover pairings to ever exist. 66 Chapters and still going strong. (does have some chapters you may want to skip, but there ARE alternate versions on FF)
Bluetiful - The inspiration for Lean on Me, this is probably the only Smurfs meets Trolls fic rivaling with Lean on Me for best fic award.
Green Ninja - All of the Lego Movie worlds combined (Lego Movie, Lego Batman Movie, and Lego Ninjago Movie) focusing on Lloyd (green ninja) and Ma and Pa Cop. It’s much better than I make it sound ;)
Brick by Brick - Teen Titans meets Young Justice, in the form of mind-swapping.
Whooo that’s a ton of fics xD Took literally over an hour to write this lol
#fic rec#mcsm#danny phantom#warriors#httyd#young justice#justice league#trolls#smurfs#coco#mcu#zelda#lego universe
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The Only Thing ‘The Simpsons’ Predicted Is Our Stupidity
If you’re on the internet, you’ve seen the articles. YouTube videos, bargain basement listicles, and social media profiles all ring out with the same refrain: The Simpsons predicted this. Donald Trump’s election, the COVID-19 pandemic, 9/11, murder hornets, and even the explosion in Beirut are all fodder for the shittiest parts of the internet’s favorite content mills.
After 30 years and almost 700 episodes, The Simpsons has become a source of prophecy. It is, of course, all bullshit. When The Simpsons have gotten the future right, it’s only because the show was a razor sharp satire of American life that imagined the worst possible outcome for comedic effect. The Simpsons obviously didn’t have a magical ability to see the future. It’s just that there’s so much of it, people on the internet can splice frames of it together to tell whatever story they want. If it did accidentally predict anything, it’s because our reality is now stupid enough to resemble a cartoon satire of American life.
Like all good satire, The Simpsons held up a mirror. Audiences were scandalized when it premiered in 1989 and they understood that they were part of the joke. But they laughed and kept laughing. Thirty years later, little has changed and many of those early The Simpsons episodes still hit.
Bill Oakley was a writer and a showrunner on The Simpsons during what some fans consider the show’s prime, roughly seasons four through nine. Oakley keeps up with the growing lists of purported predictions and even has them broken down by category.
“Category one, which occurs extremely rarely, is legitimate things we did predict,” he told Motherboard in a Zoom call. “Category two is stuff that just happened in history that people are unaware of because history repeats itself. They aren’t predictions of any sort. Three is just complete bullshit which is usually when somebody pastes two or more old scenes, usually from different shows, together.”
The theory that The Simpsons predicted the Beirut explosion is a typical category three.
“The Beirut one was particularly egregious,” Oakley said. “It was from two different shows and it in no way predicted the Beirut explosion, it just predicted an explosion.”
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Simpsons as prophecy has come in waves. The first real wave came after 9/11 when fans pointed out supposedly secret messages coded the first episode of season nine, “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson.” In a quick sight gag, Lisa holds up a magazine with a $9 fare to NYC. The $9 is next to Manhattan skyline and the Twin Towers.
But the articles about Simpsons predictions really took off when America elected Donald Trump the President of the United States. In a 2000 episode “Bart to the Future,” Lisa is President and she references the budget crunch she inherited from President Trump.
According to Oakley, this is the only category one prediction he credits.
“‘Always predict the worst, and you'll be hailed as a prophet,’” Oakley said, quoting his comedy hero musical satirist and math genius Tom Lehrer. “Back then, it played as a joke because people were like, ‘Oh, that’s preposterous.’ As [writer Dan Greaney] has said in the past, the reason he picked Trump is that it seemed like the logical last step before hitting rock bottom.”
And here we are at rock bottom.
According to Chris Turner, a journalist and author of Planet Simpson, an academic deep dive into The Simpsons satire and impact on pop culture, one of the reasons The Simpsons has become a source of prophecy is that it’s popular and there’s a lot of it. It’s the same with Nostradamus. The French prophet wrote a book of poetry called Les Prophéties where he vaguely predicted the near future and commented on current events. There’s so much of it and it’s so vague that Nostradamus’ name has become synonymous with prophecy. Every decade, people find new ways to explain how his work predicted their present.
“You have a show that’s been such an institution in western culture for the last 30 years now that it takes on an aspect of parables or Bible stories,” Turner said. “They are these stories that people just come back to again and again and again for new interpretations and new meanings. In the age of gifs and memes, there’s a ton of stuff there to be mined.”
“With almost 700 episodes, there’s an infinite amount of material to choose from,” Oakley said. “There’s probably nothing that you couldn’t say The Simpsons predicted.”
According to Turner, The Simpsons has always had two lives in pop culture. The first is as “this incredibly deep satire that calls out American culture on its excesses,” he said. “But there’s also always been a superficial layer.” The Simpsons was a huge success when it started airing in 1989. It was always a smart show, but it made headlines back then because it was also a crude show.
It may seem ridiculous now, but a 10-year-old boy telling his principal to “eat my shorts” struck some viewers as insidious and disgusting. In a People magazine interview, First Lady Barbara Bush said The Simpsons was the dumbest thing she’d ever seen. “If you weren’t an aficionado during the first four or five years, that was your understanding of the show,” Turner said. “It’s that show with the foul mouthed characters and the boy is unruly.” Turner said that the idea that The Simpsons can predict anything is drawn from this surface understanding of the show.
I loved watching The Simpsons as a kid, and I love rewatching it as an adult. What strikes me most about the show is not the hardline predictions it made, but how it’s dark satire of American culture still holds up. So many of the problems it identified are still problems today.
When Stampy the elephant rampaged through Springfield, he went through the GOP and Democratic conventions. “We want what’s worse for everyone, we’re just plain evil,” the signs in the GOP convention read while people cheer. “We hate life and ourselves, we can’t govern!” The democrat signs read while people boo. When the people of Springfield are faced with a choice between voting for two monstrous aliens, they still can’t break out of the two party system. “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos,” Homer said as a whip cracked into his back.
“The Simpsons is one of a number of examples of the limits of satire,” Turner said. “There’s a tendency to think that by pointing out how ridiculous a thing is, it will somehow fix it. A more extreme version of this is John Stewart and Stephen Colbet’s Rally to Restore Sanity.”
Using The Simpsons as divination is also fun. It helps people make sense of a chaotic world. It functions in the same way a good conspiracy does—picking through the tangled mess of modern life and putting it in order. Qanon isn’t that different. The people who follow Q do their “research” and sort through cultural detritus, images, news stories, and half remembered anecdotes to build a narrative that helps them make sense of the world. It’s funny, but it’s also disturbing that humans can connect the dots of disparate pieces to tell whatever story they want. The Simpsons is just a more visible, and more benign, version of this kind of thinking.
If The Simpsons was ever a warning or prophecy, it was a warning about trusting authority.
“There’s a certain segment of society, a very small segment, that read Mad Magazine or watched The Simpsons and got a point of view and developed a skepticism of what authority figures might say,” Oakley said. “There’s 80 percent who didn’t, never gave a shit, and didn’t pay attention to anything. And those people vote and now I’d say we’re paying the price.”
The Only Thing ‘The Simpsons’ Predicted Is Our Stupidity syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/
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So you know that SLW origins au i made a while ago?
Well I finished the damn 8 pieces of art so let’s begin lol
First up our favourite orange cat man, stampy
As I said in the first post I would give him the feline origin but I didn’t want to just draw him so I gave him the elytrian origin for spice sake
Next up the chaotic elephant, fizzy
He sometimes gets goop on the blocks the gangs using lol
Third up our reindeer that holds one of the brain cells In this world, polly
Instead of the chicken features of a normal avian I gave her magic that does the same thing :)
Next up our beaver who who loves to dig, william
You can’t see it whith the pose I gave him but he has a shulker box on his back lol
Now onto the first of our villains and the holder of the other brain cell, veeva
She’s looking down from the tower. What at? You can decide lol
Lastly the final villain and the one character i gave three origins because plot, hit the target
Not 100% certain of his human design may change it if I draw it again lol
not too much to say about the ghost design apart from its very fun to draw
Finally the last of the lot post reval target honestly this was the most fun to draw cuz I really liked the pose. It looks like he just finished the wither and turned around to gloat before it properly activated, Some good evil bastard energy lol
#shush post resurrection targets pose is totally not based on hog hunt lol#stampy#stampy cat#stampys lovely world#stampylongnose#fizzy elephant#hit the target#william beaver#polly reindeer#veeva dash#stampys lovely world au#long post#lovely world origins au#stampy fanart#fizzy elephant fanart#william beaver fanart#polly reindeer fanart#veeva dash fanart#hit the target fanart
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Record Player Pt 2
by ghost
They had decided to resurrect him about a month ago.
In their last battle with Hit The Target, he had let them kill him. He gave up. Maybe it was seeing Veeva, a potion bottle in her hand, primed and ready to disintegrate his organs. Maybe it was the arrow stuck in his side. Maybe he had just gotten tired.
Whatever it was, he let them kill him. He simply stopped running, stood there, and waited for the glass to shatter against his chest as the steaming liquid burned him alive. William could still remember the broken look on his face.
He had changed. How they didn’t know, but they wanted to give him a second chance. They had been talking about it for about two months, and by early April the only person still against it was Veeva. She finally agreed though, remarking that “if he comes anywhere near us, I get to roast him on a spit and wash my knickers with his blood.”
So Stampy went down to the nether to find him (again). Stampy didn’t tell them the whole story, but from what he had told them, Hit The Target had changed. He almost didn’t want to come back to the Lovely World. He agreed to come back, though, and promised he wouldn’t pull anything. It all seemed rather odd for him.
Now he just stayed in his castle all day every day, and every week, and every month. It was getting concerning. At least, for William it was.
He decided that he would do something, even if it was small. Who knows? It might turn out well.
Trying was pointless.
That was the conclusion he had come to.
Again and again, he had tried the same pointless things, always coming to the same pointless result, stuck in the same pointless loop. He was just going in circles.
At first, Hit The Target had loved being evil, adored it actually, but slowly it had lost his flavour. He had started to get stressed more often, angry more often, and he wouldn’t admit it to anyone but he was sad more often. He didn’t think any of the helpers noticed but Veeva definitely did.
Eventually, it was Veeva who had broken the cycle. When she left, that was when he really started to notice how bad things were. If he continued on alone, he was most absolutely not going anywhere. So he stopped.
Now he was just laying in bed. He found himself doing a lot of that lately. You could call him a professional at it even.
He had built up a sort of nest of detriment around his bed. Blankets and crumbs and wrappers of chip bags. Dirty dishes, dirty clothes, empty wine bottles and even a crusty bottle of ketchup. It was perfect for wasting your non-existent life away.
Every day he would sleep in until around one in the afternoon, pillage down to the kitchen to grab an armful of food that had absolutely no nutritional value, and then go dump it on his bed back upstairs. There he would slowly work his way through pizza roll after hot pocket as he stared up at his ceiling, thinking about the dark, soul-sucking abyss of fate until four in the morning. Charming.
And so he laid, soaking in misery, until one fateful Friday (Was it Friday? He didn’t know. Days didn’t matter anymore), when something changed. There was a knock on the door.
For a solid thirty seconds, he was wondering if he had imagined it. But then he heard it again, a loud, banging nock, resounding through the empty stone halls. He decided that it might be worth getting out of bed over, since it was pretty much the only thing to have happened in a month.
He tried to stand up but then promptly fell back onto the bed from dizziness. Obviously his body had gotten too used to laying down. Once he successfully stood up, he went to the window, where he could see the front entrance down below. Somebody had left a tray of cookies on the doorstep.
The weight of his groan nearly shook the entire castle. It was one of those goddamn helpers again, wasn’t it? Them with their never-ending, bone-grinding, teeth-clenching cheeriness.
But he didn’t have the energy to be annoyed very long. He wasn’t going to give up free food.
#slw record player#stampylongnose#stampylonghead#stampy's lovely world#stampy#william x hit the target#william x htt
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