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turtlethon · 1 year

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“Artless”

Season 7, Episode 5 First US Airdate: October 2, 1993

The Turtles clash with a pair of intergalactic art thieves.

“Artless” is the fifth episode of the “Vacation in Europe” side season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Doug Molitor returns to the series as the writer of this adventure after an extended absence, his prior contributions being “Beware the Lotus” and “Four Musketurtles” back in season three.

Continuing their journey through Italy, the Turtles arrive in Florence, where April reports from the monastery where Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper. Watching in addition to our heroes are an alien couple, floating blobs Dob and Yikum, who happen to be passing through our solar system and decide to acquire the painting for themselves. As April quizzes Professor Marco about the restoration work needed for the painting, it’s surrounded in pink light, vanishing seconds later.

The Turtles discuss retrieving the painting, though Michaelangelo fails to see what makes it so important. Splinter of course is a noted fan of the Rennaissance masters, having named the Turtles after them, and takes his students out onto the streets of Florence with a view to educating them. Despite attempting to keep a low profile, our heroes attract the attention of a group of sightseers who mistake them for movie stars. (Mikey remarks on the absurdity of this as “who’d pay to see a movie about us?”, a gag that probably landed much more effectively in 1990 – when this episode was written, and the first TMNT movie was breaking records – than it does for anyone watching in the US in 1993, months after the poor showing of the third film.) The group are eventually able to lose the onlookers, meeting up with April and explaining to her their intent to help track down the missing painting.

Elsewhere, a pair of museum guards are horrified to find themselves face to face with a pair of enormous aliens in the shape of Dob and Yikum. The men open fire – notably, with real weapons instead of the laser blasters often used by police and the military in TMNT - but their ammunition has no effect. Both guards flee after being physically ejected from the building.

Splinter follows through on his plan to educate the Turtles about the work of their namesakes, taking them to see Michelangelo’s statue of David. Strategic camera angles are used in close-up shots to get around rendering a fully nude man in the show (in wider shots, the offending details are simply omitted). The statue begins to glow at the same time Dob and Yikum arrive, now smaller in size than when they confronted the guards. They announce that they’re from the planet Lookra and intend to take the statue for themselves. The Turtles step in to stop them but are thwarted by a forcefield and having their attacks easily brushed off. Splinter intervenes and is also quickly dealt with. Dob and Yikum shrink both themselves and the statue of David down as the Turtles are sent flying through the roof’s glass dome. This ascent only lasts so long, and our heroes begin falling, about to meet their demise upon hitting the streets of Florence as the first act concludes.

The Turtles are still plummeting when act two begins, with Donatello producing a rocket pack from his shell to break their fall. Our heroes land on the side of a roof, sliding down before finally arriving at ground level, a group of onlookers waiting for them. This time the crowd is considerably less friendly, all of them acting on the assumption that the Turtles must be responsible for the recent art thefts. April and Splinter – who for some reason wasn’t sent into orbit earlier – arrive in the Turtle Van, providing the green teens with a means of escape.

April replays her own report in the back of the van, recounting the recent theft of another statue, this time Donatello’s depiction of St. George. With thefts of pieces by Leonardo, Michelangelo and now Donatello all taking place, a pattern seems to be taking shape. Each work of art was reported on by April prior to being stolen, hence the assumption is that Dob and Yikum are monitoring the news broadcasts. With that in mind – and given that April will be reporting on the works of Raphael next, in Rome – the Turtles hatch a plan to strike back.

The green teens don robes as they sneak into Vatican City. After waving them goodbye, April is accosted by a distraught Vernon, who declares he’s been “a nervous wreck” since her disappearance while they were in Florence, and that their next broadcast will begin momentarily.

Based on April’s research, Raphael’s mural “The School of Athens” is the most likely target for the two aliens. The Turtles arrive to find it already missing, and noting a crowd of screaming tourists, determine that their foes are now in the Sistine Chapel. There, Dob and Yikum are seen discussing the possibility of taking the whole roof back with them to sell on to other aliens. Splinter attempts to reason with the raiders, but to no avail; the Chapel begins glowing with pink light, heralding its imminent teleportation. We get a rare moment of interaction between Peter Renaday’s most prominent characters next, as Vernon arrives with April and Splinter pleads with both to flee the area; Vernon remarks that while he can handle shockwaves, “It’s giant rats that freak [him] out”. April finds herself tossed into a crowd of tourists, separated from both her co-worker and Splinter.

The Turtles are transported to underground catacombs near Rome, where they again confront Dob and Yikum. After the alien couple learns of their names a misunderstanding unfolds, wherein the Turtles are mistaken for the creators of the stolen artworks. Our heroes attempt to turn this to their advantage, representing themselves as the Rennaissance artists and asking for their works to be returned; this backfires, as Dob and Yikum are keen to take the creators of the works back to their own galaxy.

As act three opens the Turtles are placed in stasis, stripped of their weapons. The team try and reason with their captors, pointing out they’re not the actual Rennaissance artists, but these pleas fall on deaf ears, with Yikum declaring that the Turtles can produce “nick-naks” for them back on their home world.

April drops a coin in a fountain as she wishes to be reunited with her friends, and moments later Splinter arrives to greet her. After April bemoans that the two aliens are too powerful to be defeated, the mutant rat points out that “the secret of martial arts is to turn your foe’s very strength against him”. With that in mind, he has devised a way of hitting back. Later, April and Splinter are seen convincing Vernon to help with a news broadcast at the coliseum. This attracts the attention of Dob and Yikum, who lift the entire structure, but the energy required places an enormous strain on their equipment. This allows the Turtles to break free of the forcefield restraining them and escape through the warp field, arriving in the coliseum.

Having been stripped of their weapons – please ignore the fact that Raphael is still drawn with his sais – the Turtles suit up with gladiator weapons mounted within the coliseum. Dob and Yikum arrive to confront them, hurling bricks and weapons at our heroes. With their systems overloading, the two aliens are briefly captured but escape again, the Turtles heading off to confront them once more.

The thieves are performing repairs on their equipment when the Turtles arrive at the catacombs in their van, with Leonardo declaring that “First we’ll take back [our weapons], then we’ll take back that artwork!”, which would make a lot more sense if the team weren’t drawn emerging from the van with their weapons. A battle unfolds in which the team begin doing damage to the alien technology. This concludes only when April intervenes, informing everyone that this battle is over “a bunch of worthless junk”. Splinter steps in to point out stickers placed on each item declaring that they were “Made in the Crab Neubla”, each of them a forgery rather than the genuine article. Concerned at being seen to be frauds on their own world, Dob and Yikum are convinced by Splinter to return the artworks.

Later, Splinter reveals to the Turtles that the stickers were placed on the items to convince Dob and Yikum the artworks were forgeries. Meanwhile, April carries out a follow-up report on The Last Supper with Professor Marco, who is horrified to find the sticker still present on the painting, believing this to be an indicator that “Leonardo was a space alien!”

“Artless” is perhaps the strongest episode of the Vacation in Europe arc so far, a step up in terms of both production values and storytelling compared to the outings that preceded it. In the wider scope of the series villains other than Shredder are almost invariably underwhelming, usually some schmuck – typically a gangster or a scientist – flanked by two goons who winds up with a machine, ray gun or another macguffin that the Turtles need to deal with. None of this applies to Dob and Yikum who represent the kind of far-out villains more in keeping with the fantastical aspects of the series, and present the team with a meaningful challenge. I’m not convinced there would be much mileage in them making a return appearance after this, but as a one-off they provide a welcome break from the norm; as we established in the Turtlethon entry for “Venice on the Half-Shell", attempting to integrate Krang’s usual plots to revive the Technodrome into these European adventures, which are focused much more on art and history than on scientific themes, simply wasn’t working.

“Beware the Lotus” was the forty-seventh episode of the series and the last time we looked at a story contributed by Doug Molitor, all the way back in November 1989. Approximately one hundred Turtlethon entries have been and gone since then (counting only the actual episodes and not supplemental material), though given that the Vacation in Europe episodes only appear here due to being broadcast as the first half of season seven after gathering dust for years, that doesn’t really count for much. Mr. Molitor will provide one more script for the show, “Turtles on the Orient Express”, later in this odd little stretch of the series.

NEXT TIME: The Turtles arrive in Portugal for “Ring of Fire”!

#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #TMNT #TMNT 1987 #1992 #1993 #Vacation in Europe #Artless #Dob #Yikum #Dob & Yikum #Dob and Yikum #Ninja Turtles #Turtlethon

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the-final-sentence · 4 years

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And a healthy dose of good fortune for us to escape with our lives.

Anna Lee Huber, from An Artless Demise

#Anna Lee Huber #An Artless Demise #lit

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thebookbreeze-blog · 5 years

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Historical Mystery reviews by Roberta Rogow

An Artless Demise(A Lady Darby Mystery) by Anna Lee Huber (Berkley, 2019, $16.00) brings Lady Keira Darby back to London, the scene of her first husband’s criminal activities that still haunt her, even after her second marriage to Lord Darby. It’s 1831, and the horrendous deeds of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh have sent the people of London into a panic, suspecting anyone and everyone connected…

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#TheBookBreeze #An artless Demise #Death at the Selig Studios #Death of No Importance #Roberta Rogow #The American Agent #The Black Ascot

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beenovel · 3 years

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Bee’s TBR List

Key:

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🖋️ - books I want to annotate

🍯 - books I’d be rereading

🍋 - books my mom really wants me to read

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Classical Mythology A to Z - Annette Giesecke, Jim Tierney

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Folklore And Symbolism Of Flowers, Plants, And Trees - Ernst Lehner, Johanna Lehner

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An Unexpected Cookbook - Chris-Rachael Oseland

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The World Encyclopedia Of Knives, Daggers, And Bayonets - Tobias Dr. Capwell

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The Country Diary Of An Edwardian Lady - Edith Holden

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Botanical Shakespeare - Gerit Quealy, Sumi Hasegawa Collins

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Plant Lore And Legend - Ruth Binney

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The Big, Bad Book Of Botany - Michael Largo

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Useless Magic - Florence Welsh

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The Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia C. Wrede

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Botanical Folk Tales - Schneidau

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Floriography - Jessica Roux

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Celtic Tales - Kate Forrester

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And In That Universe, I Memorized My Heartbeat - Louisa Goodey

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Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett 🍯

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1984 - George Orwell 🖋️

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Macbeth - William Shakespeare 🖋️

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Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 🍯🖋️

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Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde 🖋️

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The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 🖋️

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The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 🍯🖋️

The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 🖋️

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Indian Love Poems - Meena Alexander 🍯🖋️

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Norse, Celtic Mythology & Runes - Sofia Visconti

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Greek Mythology - Liv Albert, Sara Richard

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An Artless Demise - Anna Lee Huber

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Good Omens - Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett

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House Of Salt And Sorrows - Erin A. Craig

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Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust

Girls Made Of Snow And Glass - Melissa Bashardoust

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The Love Interest - Cale Dietrich

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Huntress - Melinda Lo

Ash - Melinda Lo

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Of Fire And Stars - Audrey Coulthurst

Of Ice And Shadows - Audrey Coulthurst

Inkmistress - Audrey Coulthurst

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The Priory Of The Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon

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Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch - Rivka Galchen

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The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

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To Kill A Kingdom - Alexandra Christo

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The Lord Of The Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

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Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Blood Like Magic - Liselle Sambury

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Books I already own:

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Akata Warrior - Nnedi Okorafor

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Flyte - Angie Sage

Physik - Angie Sage

Queste - Angie Sage

Syren - Angie Sage

Darke - Angie Sage

Fyre - Angie Sage

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Seraphina - Rachel Hartman

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Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo

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Hunting Prince Dracula - Kerri Maniscalco

Escaping From Houdini - Kerri Maniscalco

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My Plain Jane - Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows

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The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow 🍋

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Labrinth Lost - Zoraida Córdova

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Battle Mage - Peter A. Flannery 🍋

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Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen 🍋

The Peach Keeper - Sarah Addison Allen 🍋

Lost Lake - Sarah Addison Allen 🍋

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Theft of Swords - Michael J. Sullivan 🍋

Rise of Empire - Michael J. Sullivan 🍋

Heir of Novron - Michael J. Sullivan 🍋

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Traitor to the Trone - Alwyn Hamilton

Hero at the Fall - Alwyn Hamilton

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Guardian of the West - David Eddings

Sorceress of Darshiva - David Eddings

The Seeress of Kell - David Eddings

Demon Lord of Karanda - David Eddings

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The Gilded Wolves - Roshani Chokshi

The Star-Touched Queen - Roshani Chokshi

A Crown of Wishes - Roshani Chokshi

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson 🖋️

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Romeo And Juliet - William Shakespeare🖋️

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Died in the Wool - Ngaio Marsh

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@claraofthepen

#books #tbr #tbr list #*cries*#so many books #so little time #hopefully this list will become obsolete #someday

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starkerforlife6969 · 4 years

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Starker - Reward

It’s a world rife with magic and monsters. Full of fantasy and witches and fate.

Tony cares little for those. He’s an inventor. A mechanic. An artist. He hones his skill, his craft, every day for twenty years, and then another twenty years. Worn and scarred, fingers thick and nimble, tremble-less. He knows little of magic and monsters. Of fantasy and witches. Those things that change and shape the world.

He uses his craft and he earns his power.

He’s a court favourite. The King likes him well-enough. That’s as much as anyone really likes Tony. Well-enough.

“You’re too tough. Too sharp. People don’t like that.” His mother had warned, even as she smoothed her fingers through his hair.

He hadn’t heeded her advice. His eyes had been on her loom. “There must be a better way,” he had said, “for that to work. So you don’t have to weave the cloth yourself.”

There is little to be said of gallantry. Heroes who have slain monsters come into the golden halls. They show King Brock the latest head of some nymph, or some great, long lost treasure, but in the end they must go on other adventures.

Tony, a court favourite, has a place in the palace always. A little wing to call his own. When he asks for iron, he is given iron. When he asks for silence, people hush.

Of course, when Rumlow demands an invention, or a maze to house some monster, Tony has to stop the whirrings on his mind to tend to those whims. He does not fight that. HIs mother was right, he’s rough and sharp, but he is no fool.

So, when he’s summoned for the King, he sets down his welders tools and follows the guards. He chatters at them, trying to see them rile, but they only smile tightly. Something weighs on them.

“Stark,” Rumlow beams, too encouraging, “men, leave us.”

The guards disappear. Smoke in the wind.

“My lord.” Tony doesn’t get down on one knee. But he inclines his head and Rumlow lets him have it.

“I have a task for you.”

“Name it, sire.”

“Years ago, I was shipwrecked across the strait.”

Tony nods. A sea-farer, perhaps a boat, a new oar. He can design something. Plans start to form in his head.

“I was given refuge upon a tiny island. It housed a demi-goddess. I lay with her.”

Tony waits. It doesn’t click. He doesn’t understand.

“It has become apparent that she had a child. My son. His name is Peter. He is mortal, but his blood, I believe, carries some trace of the gods. Because of this, they give him favour. My heroes have not been able to slay him. The seas that should kill, full of sirens and monsters, give him way. I have sent assassins and witches, and they fall prey to his charms.”

“Magic?” Tony asks, intrigued and a little disgusted. The petty foulness, the ease of magic. The fact the King is trying to kill his own blood, that is of little consequence. There are at least a dozen princes and princesses that flit about the kingdom now. Bloodshed will come once Rumlow dies as they battle for the throne. One less contender should shorten the battle.

“I had hoped it was magic.” The King sighs. “I fear it is him. He is…” the King sneers. “Beloved. They fall to him. Pledge their allegiance as if he were already their King.”

“I don’t understand.” Tony confesses, a hardship. “What would you have me do?”

Here, Rumlow smiles. Like the monster that prowls beneath the palace. “I would have you kill him, Tony. Don’t you see? You’re the only one who could. Who would not fall for his doe-eyes or sweet words. You are hardened. Use your mind, that cunning tool, or any of your inventions, and slay him. I can promise you rewards.”

Tony nods, already exhausted. This is not his domain, but the sooner it is begun, the sooner it is done. “What about the ire of the gods? You said they have given him favour. Will this not beget their anger?”

“Gods are fickle.” The King waves him away. “I have a hundred lambs all ready to be slaughtered for them. Pilgrims ready to visit their temples. I have had a boat prepared for you to leave this evening. I have heard from Cleo that Peter dwells on an island off her shore. My men will guide you.”

Tony grits his teeth a little at the lack of control, but it is a familiar ache. “And what proof of his demise? His heart?”

The King laughs at that. “You speak like a solider, Stark. I do not need proof. I will trust your word and the darkening skies.”

It goes unsaid, of course, that failure means death.

***

Tony likes sea-travel. The allusion of freedom on that endless horizon. The rough work of rigging. The smell. He used to pour over his father’s atlases, used to dream of travelling the world.

He has made himself content with Rumlow’s palace. The golden walls. His inventions.

They reach the island swiftly. The seas are much calmer. It must be Peter’s presence.

“We can go with you no further.” The men say. “Rumlow forbids it. He believes Peter would affect our minds.”

Tony wades through the water to the craggy edges. Rocks black with wet, gulls screaming.

“Sailor, let me help.” Comes a voice, soft as a siren, and Tony looks up and sees- him.

For it must be. Gold eyes. Eyes of a god. Traces of that divine lineage, but so devastatingly mortal. And it’s devastating, because Tony knows he cannot kill such beauty.

There’s no magic, but it feels like it. Carved like one of Romanov’s marble statues. It’s hard to believe such a thing could be part Rumlow.

He takes the lily hand, bronzed with sun, and lets himself be pulled up.

It’s but a boy. Not old enough to command armies. Barely a man.

“Peter.”

Peter smiles at him. “It never fails to surprise how many know my name. Where do you travel from?”

“From your father.”

Peter nods. He helps Tony manoeuvre the slippery rocks onto the sandy beach. There, he stoops to collect perfect white shells. “He would see me dead.”

“Yes.”

“I do not desire his throne.”

Tony smiles a little at that. “I don’t think it much matters.”

“Maybe not.” Peter’s eyes appraise his form. Tony puffs like a bird. “You’re no sailor. What are you?”

“An inventor.”

“An inventor.” Peter breathes, looking up at him in awe. He says the word with sacrilegious reverence. “What a gift my father has given me. I have been searching for an inventor my whole life.”

Tony itches to touch him. His skin prickles with a strange desire to taste. He’s had lovers in the past, in the endless escapades of youth, but Peter would be the only one that Tony would remember. “Hardly twenty years then.”

Peter laughs like music. “Will you help me?”

“Do you command me?”

“Of course not.” Peter humms, his eyes sparkle. “The God’s command. King’s demand. I am neither.”

“You are both. Son of a king and a goddess.”

“Bastard son of a king, and of a demi goddess.” Peter bows his head. “For some reason people help me. I cannot say why. I appreciate it, but I do not expect it. Your king would have you kill me.” Peter looks up at him. Eyes glazed like honey. Lips like wildflowers. “Will you?”

Throat dry, Tony croaks: “No.”

“I would ask for your help. Will you?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” Peter whispers, genuine, artless. He is pure, an unwilted flower. He could command strangers. Unite enemies. “I need a boat that would withstand the river of the underworld.”

Tony recoils from this. Unnatural. “I deal with inventions, not magic.” He spits.

“They are one.” Peter insists gently, but sees Tony’s face. “You build. I’ll do the magic.”

“You can command magic?”

“Barely. Basic charms. The ingredients are kind to me.”

“As is all of life, it seems.” Tony quips.

Peter’s smile is indulgent. “If that were true, I would need no ship.”

“Who are you collecting from the underworld?”

Peter’s eyes scan over the horizon. In the distance, the boat Tony came on bobs. Peter tilts his eyes to the sky: the countless, silent, watching Gods. “Later.” He vows.

Tony believes him.

…

He seems older than his face suggests. In the same way Gods that saw the beginning of the earth have scarce a mark of time upon their face.

Tony wonders if it is his divine blood.

A ship to withstand the underworld needs to be very slim indeed. The rivers below are narrow, sharply turning. Tony cuts and shapes the wood, methodical in his work.

Peter, meanwhile, gathers roots and strange plants, grinds them into paste, spreads them onto the wood planks and whispers. They glow under his touch, seep into the wood. “Protection,” Peter will say after one, “courage,” after another, “safety”, “resistance”, “resoluteness”, “fierceness”.

In the evenings, Tony is led to Peter’s home. It’s a small castle, grand in it’s own right, teeming with treasures but empty of attendants. They sit before the hearth and Peter brings out salves, and rubs Tony’s hands; eases out the splinters and sprains of the day’s work.

“There is no need.” Tony insists, though the sight of Peter on his knees before him is one that will haunt him.

“There is every need. You do me a great kindness.”

“This is my reward?”

“No.” Peter hums, “this is my reward.”

His fingers unfasten the belt of Tony’s britches, the hot, wet mouth tight and stomach-lurching. It’s all Tony can do to breathe, jerking in his chair, sparking with pleasure.

When he’s finished, Peter tucks Tony away. Cleans him up. “Is there a deity you worship?” He asks, and Tony wants to say you but knows the gods would scorn him for it.

“Hermes is well-travelled.” He says instead.

“I will ask him to give you favour.”

“There is no need-”

“You say a lot about need.” Peter laughs, airy, nymph-like. “I suspect you understand very little of it. Your own are so tightly bound within you. I do not need, but would very much like you in my bed tonight. How is that?”

Tony’s throat is dry, blood already hot. “That is well.” He whispers.

A smarter man would delay the building of the ship. Spend more seasons with Peter on this island.

But the only thing that can rival Tony’s passion for the boyy, is his desire to work and invent.

As he sands the boards, he notes the cove they take shelter in. The shadows that hide them from the gods of the sky. “Who,” he says quietly, the waves lapping at their toes, “do you seek to bring from the Underworld?” A parent, who has died? A dear friend lost in battle? Worse- a lover. Tony almost could not bear it.

“I will bring an army of the undead,” Peter says, and Tony drops the block of cinder from his hand. It clatters to the deck. Peter continues to hum, binding rope with moss for strength.

Tony must be deceived. But there is no lie anywhere in Peter’s body. Just slim, muscled, beauty.

“Do not look so shocked, mortal.”

“Mortal?” Tony croaks.

Peter laughs. Musical. “I confess to you then. My mother was no demi-god. She was Zeus’ first born. I am no human. I’m more powerful than that.”

“You are not a god.”

“And grateful for it. Gods cannot go into the underworld.”

“You want war. Against who?”

“Rumlow. I will take his city. I will rule Attica.”

Tony laughs in disbelief, trembling with fear. He has been taken here for a fool. This is no kindness. This boy is vicious and cruel, like any God. “Attica cannot be united-”

“An army of the undead will unite them. The fates have written it. Led by me.”

Tony turns from him, shaking, eyes stinging. “I thought you good. I loved-”

Peter is before him, hands gentle on his face, smoothing through the inventor’s beard. “You love me with your mortal heart, dear sweet, Tony,” Peter whispers, kissing him. Melting into him, seeping into him, taking him over. Tony feels the eagerness against his thigh. Wants to jerk away but cannot bring himself to. He clutches Peter tighter. “I will reward you for it.”

Peter’s hand slips into Tony’s trousers. Tony is hard. Throbbing. But he resists. “I want no reward from you who brings such bloodshed.”

The boy, not a boy at all, laughs. Even as his hand works at Tony, spreading wetness, teasing, touching all the right ways. “This is not your reward. Your reward is much greater,” his teeth find Tony’s ear, nipping. “I will make you a god.”

Tony moans, Peter works him harder, he’s shaking, closer, trying to resist. “M-mortals cannot be made-” he gasps for breath, “-into gods.” He knows little of magic, but he knows that. Peter is pressed flush against him, hand moving between them.

“It must be written in Fate. I chose you, Stark. I had Rumlow choose you. I orchestrated it all. You are fated to be a God. Inventor who trapped the Minotaur, it is your destiny. You will be powerful and eternal and you will be mine.”

“I will be a god, and you not- you will die.” The thought is arresting. “I will have to continue without you.”

“There are tricks,” Peter grins, “Goddess of beauty is charmed by me. She will keep me young and beautiful forever. I will do a favour for the Underworld harpies. They will not take my soul.”

“What is this favour?”

“Do not fret,” Peter coos, licking Tony’s lips, grip merciless, taunting, Tony’s so close. Hips thrusting. “I have taken care of you now, have I not? I will give you all you desire. Every invention to make, all the means. I will care for you and not ask much in return. Let me do so for eternity. You can release, god.”

Tony cries out, does as he’s commanded.

An eternity. Ruled by Peter. A mystery wrapped up like a kindness. He’s hungry for it. He is no fool, Peter will ask for few, but terrible, things in return. Inventions that will turn Tony’s stomach. Wings of wax to trick a father and a son. A sea-spider to eat good sailors. A poison sword and arrow to destroy demigods. And he’ll make them all. Just like he’s made this ship. He’ll obey.

And if he’s good, Peter will reward him.

#starker #tony x peter #greek mythology #gods #monsters #inventor tony #god tony

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paullicino · 3 years

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On French Toast: A Recipe for Revolution

My Patreon is two years old this month and I wanted to celebrate with something both a little special and a little silly. I finally learned how to make my favourite food during the latest lockdown and I want to share my particular take on it with you. Bon appétit.

What you will need (makes 2-4 slices of French toast, scale this if necessary):

A heating surface (stovetop, hob, flame etc.)

A pan

A toaster (though using the pan for toasting works in a pinch)

A bowl

Butter (or margarine)

Bread (sliced recommended, though you can try other kinds, from baguettes to bagels)

Quarter cup of milk

One egg

A sweetener (sugar or caster sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, etc.)

What you may optionally desire:

Fruit

Syrup

Savory sides (bacon, hash browns)

Garnish

Strength of spirit and a determination to make the world better

A guillotine (for slicing)

Begin by lightly toasting whatever bread you’re going to use, imbuing it with a gentle firmness that will match your own stoicism and strength of character in facing the many challenges ahead.

Look out at the world. Look inside toward the very core of your soul. Steel yourself.

Continue by melting butter in a pan over medium heat, thinking about how, in a culture that teeters and totters, flails and falters on the very edge of existential, political, environmental, sociological and even epistemological failure, in a society that staggers slovenly toward its disintegration and demise, there is but one saviour that has the power to check our collapse. Muse on how we have but a single hope, a single champion, a single Samaritan that can and that will bring us back from the brink. Understand that we have a secret weapon. Know that we have French toast.

Whisk together the egg, milk and any flavourings or sweeteners in a bowl, while considering this world of falsity, of fakery and facades, where the truth has wilted and withered, hanging limp in the still, cold and stale air that has long lost the wild winds of change and which now shudders with nothing more than the sound of dead and hollow notes of too little regret released far too late. Dip the bread into this mixture, safe in the knowledge that French toast remains our constant confederate. When all else fails, it will be the one thing we can rely upon. It is the final and the ultimate, but also the emotional and the spiritual. The only salvation is French toast.

How long you dip the bread for is just one of your many very particular decisions. Do not let it soak for too long, otherwise you will create a limp and overly forgiving companion of meagre character and little backbone. Do not be thrifty, for this is the attitude of the miserly bourgeoisie, born of hoarding and jealousy.

On a planet gone mad spinning through an empty and uncaring universe, place the now wet bread in the pan, noting that French toast remains the constant by which all can be measured and the fundamental from which everything will be rebuilt. As basic as hydrogen, helium and oxygen are eggs, milk and bread, and certainly almost as abundant. Together they combine to shape matter, give life and create joy. The first and greatest virtue of French toast is this transcendent simplicity, this holy trinity more foundational than any science or spirituality.

Fry the bread as if it were a pancake or slice of bacon, flipping it once its forgiving fluidity becomes the same firmness found in those who have faced adversity. Find a texture that matches your personal preference, perhaps one that mixes a solid crust with a gently yielding body.

Celebrate how, from this simplicity, all glory is grown. How French toast emancipates us. How it enlightens. How it emboldens. How it is a dish of the working people, food that could be made in almost any home, a meal that requires only the most rudimentary of tools and the simplest of ingredients. How, in the event of an apocalypse, whether under burning skies, surging waters or crumbling mountains of ash, French toast could still be consumed amongst the ruins. How it could be the energy that fuels humanity’s revival, shared and spread by word of mouth even when all other knowledge is lost. How, when the revolution comes, French toast will be the food of the uprising, the food of the proletariat, the food of the resolute. How, its loyalty unwavering, it will be consumed by the chosen in either their moment of triumph or in their moment of regret, feeding their elation and their exuberance, or their languishing and their lamentation. How bread, milk and eggs will become the working people’s new troika, replacing blood, sweat and tears, epitomising liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Remove the bread from the pan and garnish or supplement according to taste, perhaps adding sliced fruit, coating with sugar or drizzling with syrup. Be ardent in the unwavering belief that French toast is not only the true equaliser, but also the true test of skill, for in spite of the apparent artlessness of its three core ingredients, it is truly a food forged in technique. It is a meal defined by its details, a canvas upon which any person can unleash their artistry. Whether they express themselves in sugar or cinnamon, in whisking or folding, in their choice of bread or addition of fruits, their French toast is not only a mirror of its creator, but an insight into their very being.

Serve warm and with pride, as I do, for I know that French toast will be the last thing I see before I die. It will shine in the sunlight, held aloft and fluttering in the breeze. It will be shot into space, to travel beyond our solar system and carry our message to the stars. It will be etched into our monuments and woven into our legends. It is itself a statement that requires no extrapolation, no punctuation, and yet it speaks for us all, endless and eternal, and will exist even beyond time itself, when all other things have collapsed in on themselves under the infinite weight of nihilistic nothingness.

Lament.

Then continue onward, regardless.

Made, of course, with the support of my patrons on Patreon. Thank you!

#French toast #food #Patreon #liberté #égalité #fraternité #recipe

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freedomartspress · 4 years

Text

Three Poems — Tongo Eisen Martin

Kick Drum Only

All street life to a certain extent starts fair

Sometimes with a spiritual memory even

Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even

Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far

My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/

White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards

-all overcome and reauthored

The garbage is growing voices

Condensed Marxism

modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive

Underpass in my pocket

because I am a deity

or decent bid on the Panther name

revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists

or muted stage of genius

A merciful Marxism

Disquieted home life

Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person

Who is relaxing next to a gun

I stare at my father for a few seconds

Then return to my upbringing

Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks

Revolution is damn near pagan at this point

You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant.

Wants a pen cap full of bullets

Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight

I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity

My only change of clothes prosecuted

The government has finally learned how to write poems

shoot-outs that briefly align…

that make up a parable

white bodies are paid well, I posit

do white men actually even have leaders?

all white people are white men

white men will only ever be metaphors

all I do is practice, Lord

A rat pictures a river

Can almost taste the racial divide

Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber

Knows who in this good book will fly

I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord

Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain

We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win

A city gone uniquely linear

Harlem of the West due a true universe

“I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said

so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation

My rifle made of tar

My targets made of an honest language

This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining

Writing among the lesser-respected wolves

Lesser-observed militarization

Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming

lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection

I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem

in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”

standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade

bay of nothing, Lord

nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism

and the last of the inherited asthma

children given white dolls to play with and fear

facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings

I can hear hate

And teach hate

And call tools by people names

And name people dead to themselves

no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon

carving the equator into throats soon

I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord

pre-dawn monarchy

friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste

minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders

my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge

For these audiences

I project myself into a ghost like state

For these gangsters, I do the same

every now and then, we take a nervous look east

Sleep becomes Christ

Sleep starts growing a racial identity

do you ever spiral, Lord?

has the gang-age betrayed us?

be patient with my poems, Lord

So much pain

there is a point to crime…

There has to be if race traitors come with it

Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?

Better presidents than these have yawned at cages

Have called us holy slaves

Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries

Baby, I don’t have money for food

I have no present moment at all

I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money

I go to the railroad tracks

And follow them to the station of my enemies

A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative

All over the united states, there are

Toddlers in the rock

I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket

And why blood agreements mean a lot

And why I get shot back at

I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway

White skin tattooed on my right forearm

Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed

into a rat-infested manhood

My new existence as living graffiti

In the kitchen with

a lot of gun cylinders to hack up

House of God in part

No cops in part

My body brings down the Christmas

The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets

Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark

Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration

the waist band before the next protest poster

By the way,

Time is not an illusion, your honor

I will return in a few whirlwinds

I will save your desk for last

You are witty, your honor

You’re moving money again, your honor

It is only raining one thing: non-white cops

And prison guard shadows

Reminding me of

Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill

A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise

A new lake for a Black Panther Party

Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders

Pharmacy doors mid-slide

The figment of village

a noon noose to a new white preacher

Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile

-All in an abstract painting of a president

Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?

The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars

A cold-blooded study in leg irons

Leg irons in tornado shelters

Leg irons inside your body

Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses

That sundown couples

made their vows of love over

opaque peach plastic

and bolt action audiences

Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science

Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists

My arm changes imperialisms

Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies

Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums

Artless bleeding and

the challenge of watching civilians think

“terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”

“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”

Modern fans of war

What with their t-shirt poems

And t-shirt guilt

And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,

I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life

The Chicago Prairie Fire

First, I must apologize to the souls of the house

I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only

Pill bottle, my name is yours

Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists

Teeth of the mask now

Back of the head of the mask now

New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces

Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family

I am not creative

Just the silliest of the revolutionaries

My blood drying on

my only jacket

just as God got playful

the police state’s psychic middlemen

Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses

An un-Medgar

Blood of a lamb less racialized

or awesome prison sentence

Good God

Elder-abuse hired for the low

dog eat genius

Right angle made between a point

On a Louisiana plantation

And 5-year old’s rubber ball

3 feet high and falling

like a deportee plane

to complete my interpretation

(of garden variety genocide)

I am small talk

about loving your enemies

A little more realistically

About paper tigers

And also gold…

I need my left hand back

I broke my neck on the piano keys

Found paradise in a fistfight

Maybe I should check into the Cuba line

Watching the universe’s last metronomes

some call Black Jacobins

Just wait…

These religions will start resigning in a decade or two

Some colorfully

Some transactional-ly

In a cotton gothic society

Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too

Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter

Which poem houses souls

Which socialist breakthroughs

Breakthroughs like ten steps back

Then finally stillness

Stillness

Then stillness among families

a John Brown biography takes a bow

I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk

I remember childhood

Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning

Scribbling on an amazing grace

I rented this body from some circumference of slavery

Remember being kicked out of the Midwest

Strange fruit theater

Lithium and circuses

Likeminded stomachs

The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…

with opioid tea

Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket

Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries

My mother raised me with a simple pain

A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather

Or first-girlfriend gravity

Police-knock gravity

Mind-game gravity

Or revolution languishing behind

The sugar in my good friend’s mind

“The difference between me and you

Is that the madness

Wants me forever”

A pair of apartments

Defining both my family

And political composure

Books behind my back

Bail money paved into the streets

Playing:

Euphoria

Cliché

Bracing for the medicine’s recoil

Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends

Black Jacobins

Underground topography

Or grandmother’s hands

Psychology of the mask now

Teeth of the mask again

—

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book of poems, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award.

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davidmann95 · 5 years

Note

KH dlc trailer?

Thank you, adudewholikescomicsandotherstuff, for always giving me the excuse.

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youtube

So odds and ends aside (interested in what Dark Form’s gonna be. Given Oathkeeker seems to also have something akin to Ultimate Form, is it some kind of equal and opposite deal? And GOD do I hope I don’t have to go through Critical Mode and get Proof of Times Past to unlock it, or anything else major here for that matter), the takeaway here seems to me that it’s doing the main thing I didn’t want this to do, but in a way that has me now incredibly interested.

I not only didn’t care to see Sora saving Kairi, I was actively against it. What a redundant, artless explication of a perfectly poignant moment of tragedy to close out the game that would be, I thought; granted it’d be neat to see the two of them teaming up against the Lich, but emotionally I thought it would just grind things to a halt. But as presented here? Judging by Sora’s conversations with Chirithy and Namine, the reason the Keyblade Graveyard fights are going differently isn’t because of parallel worldlines or faulty flashbacks or gameplay convenience, but because Sora’s efforts to undo Kairi’s death without the ‘in’ for his heart of his own demise like before are fucking up time. Suddenly this isn’t showing the beat-by-beat of a quest we’ve already seen 7 times and a prelude to the real goodbye, it’s a whole adventure unto itself with enormous stakes and potential consequences. And it sure seems like Luxu is getting involved; I don’t think what we’re seeing is as simple as another Data Fight (though I’d hardly complain if those were there too) given he’s the one highlighted. I’d ask how this will be able to even fit as a self-contained thing, but then again Nomura was referencing Final Mix scenes in II way back in 2005, so the answer is it doesn’t have to be one because Kingdom Hearts isn’t playing by those rules, baby; catch up or get left behind.

Still do hope there’s a Kairi team-up though, and now scenes with her and Sora in here feel like they could have a lot more to them given the added context. Wondering if there’s an extra Secret Boss besides what we’re seeing here (I’m sticking to my theory of going into the Verum Rex game to fight Bahamut for Rex theory), and if we’ve even seen content from both the Limit and Secret Episodes at this point.

#Kingdom Hearts III #Kingdom Hearts III: RE:Mind #Kingdom Hearts #Opinion

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myfriendpokey · 6 years

Text

7 bubsys of the world

1. museum bubsy:

i love bubsy bobcat's ghastly, staring eyes, which look past everything around him, as if he were the dead theologian mentioned in swedenborg - who upon death simply moves without knowing into a new eternal house shaped exactly like his own, but which over time begins to grow dimmer, more transparent, he finds rooms he's never seen before, populated by dead and faceless men, themfurniture and writings fade, until we can only imagine some final increment of ghostliness leads to the awful truth that - - aaah!!

but of course the distance in bubsy's stare comes from a different location, not so much the gulf between the living and the dead as that between the living and the 90s. bubsy looks at us from the depths of a bubsy 3d that NEVER ENDED, that rather than being a temporary and ignoble home for the hovering bubsy spirit (as expressed in various promotional materials) has somehow become the final determining limit for where that spirit can go. bubsy can explore any kind of content, go on any kind of adventure.. once it is re-expressed within the conditions of this mangled polygonal plain..... i think that it's so easy (and so profitable!!) to fall into a sort of idealist conception of videogame history as one of various platonic bogeys (truth! gameplay! mario!) temporarily given shape in base matter before disintegrating to appear in some new form. we don't really think those material expressions have anything to say about their spirits, obviously mario isn't "really" as chunky and polygonal as he is in mario 64, just as videogames as a form can easily be distinguished from any of the various rather sad attempts to embody that form. so it's a real shock to find our credit rescinded and be told, no, this is what you have. bubsy is trapped inside his temporary emblem, inside a world he never made, drifting around haplessly and at last thrust towards that final refuge of the doomed, which is the effort to at least be Cultured. do his unseeing eyes still register a sense of potential alterity in the artwork he consumes, or just the frozen parody of same?

2. personal bubsy:

interestingly very few of the bubsy fangames try to replicate the protagonist's canon personality at face value, very likely because it's unbearable. but maybe also for other reasons. the bubsy games themselves play with the idea of bubsy as either an actor seperable from the gameworlds he inhabits ("bubsy the bobcat in claws encounters of the furred kind") or as at least possessing a kind of bugs-bunny-ish awareness of an audience (who are all those quips addressed to?). but that's within the games' own conception of themselves as exciting blockbuster product - taking them as failures of one kind or another as it's become standard to do converts bubsy's actorliness from that of the starring attraction to a sort of jobbing z-movie shlub, mired in one contractual dispute after another and forced through a variety of ill-concieved ventures. and i say interestingly because as far as i can see there's little to support this good will or sense of implied interiority - i'm not aware of gex, say, or duke nukem being extended the same kind of escape clause from their own insufferability. maybe the sheer unbelievability of what these games are telling us about themselves, as mediated through some decades of bubsy trash-talk, gives them a plaintive quality.

3. omnipresent bubsy:

i made a bubsy bobcat fangame once because i thought it would be funny to have a fangame for a character nobody actually liked. it got picked up and reposted by a bubsy fanblog a few days later ("Added for the sake of Bubsy completeness... man this looks bad... but you can download it XD".)

4. dialectic bubsy:

to clarify: i made a bubsy bobcat fangame because i wanted to be funny, but i also wanted to be annoying. i was interested in the "indie games" scene (as distinct from the rpg maker one) and in 2009 the public face of that was very much High Designist, minimal, meaningful, squares, grids, programming, Passage, etc..

i was making a game for an experimental gameplay workshop open jam and figured since i lacked all qualification for this style of art i might as well deliberately disqualify myself from it and make something that was sort of ostentatiously mired in the same junky, unreflective commercial culture that stuff was trying to escape. so it was partly a tease, but not a very dangerous one. bubsy was so visibly, universally reviled within videogame culture that it was hard to imagine any kind of sincere identification with the character taking place - using that franchise therefore meant being able to convert the ickier associations of the fangame format (unoriginal!! un-"challenging"!! made by and for hobbyists and women!!) into more aestheticised, and also more acceptable, forms of disagreeability ("punk" recontextualisation and deliberate badness, etc). so it's a funny ugliness but also one that relies on a sort of shared, unquestioned sense of what's genuinely "un-touchable" in this artsy context, and of course bonding over mutual agreement on what's beyond the pale of acceptable taste is one of the founding rituals of "gamer culture". i'd never played a bubsy game and probably only knew about the franchise from seanbaby or something like that.

what happened next is more interesting. i'd made a game called space funeral, which was popular enough on gamejolt to generate a fairly active fanart tag and even some fangames, a number of fangames all by different authors and with different approaches. and one of the fangame authors ended up playing my own bubsy fangame and decided to re-include bubsy as a character in space funeral 4 as something of a callback to that. i think (forgive me, i only browse the tag) this slowly became the occasion for some drama within "the community". Words Were Said re. furries and the appropriateness of same within this context, bubsy continued gaining more and more of a prominent role in the new fangame, "new bubsy" was also reimagined as a trans sex worker with an extremely prominent chest, these decisions appeared to be contentious, eventually the developer of SF4 declared that they were sick of the fandom, sick of the original game, and going to start a new project based entirely around their new bubsy character.... all of which is well and good and Culture In Action and frankly i stopped having any opinion about space funeral long before the first fangame came out. but what i'm interested in here is bubsy, and specifically the idea of how the deliberate reuse of the bubsy character acts as a way to thematise and re-engage whatever's felt to be awful, unacceptable, within some specific space. in rip van bubsy that means pushing against artgame's more apollonian efforts with a reminder of the garish, lumpen, unsignifying qualities of most actually existing videogames; in space funeral 4, the ironic repurposing and sexlessness of games like rip van bubsy and space funeral is itself critiqued by a sincere / artless / horned-up reusage of the same material which is similarly "unacceptable" within that framework. the travelling figure of bubsy appears as an index of dissent around the format...

5. negative bubsy:

i think it's a known and documented phenomenon that punk music has a weird, recurring affinity for the purest of pure MOR pop - sex pistols, the clash, nirvana all known abba fans, the minutemen covered steely dan, sonic youth the carpenters, madonna floats across michael azerrad's "our band could be your life" as eerily recurring presence and talisman... all of which might just be a catalog of private tastes. but it's also tempting, given that in seperate ways these were all very self-fashioned, ideological, image-alert bands, to take this taste for pure pop as to some extent deliberate, as maybe part of the same self-fashioning. the very distance of abba from anything approaching punk, noise, art-rock, becomes a reason to like them - they become a kind of model of aesthetic autonomy, serenely detached from any kind of taste or wider expectation - abba are a vantage point from which you can critique punk rock itself. and punks and abba become comrades in their mutual distance from pink floyd("horseshoe theory").

why so many art games about bubsy? there are many perverse or ironic reasons, but i wonder if one of them could be that he occupies something of the same role within the videogames imagination. the idea of a franchise for a character nobody likes turns into an image of art for art's sake. the fact that bubsy is irredeemable from a "meaningful, expressive" perspective makes him useful as a point from which to hypothesize forms of art which deliberately avoid the meaningful or expressive - as in ulillillia's marvellous bubsy 3d videos, which transform the game into a oulipean suite of detached operations.

6. material bubsy:

the recieved idea of the mid-1990s mascot platformer audience is like the old analogy of the pre-revolution french peasant as a man walking up to his nose in water - while the ground is flat, he can persist indefinitely, but come the slightest decrease or pothole he will instantly drown. with the bubsy games as tipping point for the temporary demise of this form. but it's still curious that he was chosen, rather than, say, zool or cool spot, mascots who were "worse" on an objective moral level in that they were literally marketing contrivances to sell snack food to children. the videogames audience is traditionally able to accept any level of ghoulishness of this kind as long as it is presented in an appropriately humble,relateable way - the only sin really punished is that of pride, of getting above your station. so here we have a sort of martyr-bubsy, whose only real crime was not exemplifying videogame industry hubris and cynicism so much as making insufficient effort to cover for it...

well, maybe not, maybe we should honor the "disproportionate" scapegoating of bubsy as a real moment of disgust at the habitual crapness of mass media and avoid that charitable revisionism which is so easily rolled out to brands with the power to outlive many of their critics. but there is a certain fascination that comes with those games blamed for or associated with some kind of crash, collapse - - like the atari ET game, they can no longer be regarded as "just games" operating within some fixed economic niche, they fall partly out of that niche and into the material world, they temporarily dispel the sensed changelessness of the industry. if ET really did destroy the industry it would be the best videogame ever made. bubsy never acquired this glamour, but it means that within the awful pantheon of named videogame characters he's one of the few which can be identified with any kind of negative drive, which gives him a special affinity for hobbyist games interested in tarrying with that drive.

7. official bubsy:

how many bubsys can you shut up? in 2016 a new, official bubsy game was released for pc and ps4, proving once and for all that that is not dead which can eternal lie, and came with a nauseating press-release-cum-interview with bubsy himself in which he ruminates smugly about his ensuing return to planet earth. the fake interviewer glosses the weird and largely negative history of the franchise (bubsy is a "gaming legend", apparently - i can't see anyone described as a "legend" without thinking of those awful laddish testimonials to the likes of boris johnson and raoul moat); bubsy throws in an unexpected jab at "unauthorized indie pixel games and deeveeart portraits", suggesting he's at least seen space funeral 4; the overall tone is that same bullying landlord chumminess of people deposed by scandal who pop up on the chat show circuit five years later with memoir in tow, blandly self-certain about the place they deserve to keep in public life. whatever human meaning had accrued to the franchise - in failure, in the way that failure could be used, repurposed, in wider ongoing arguments about culture - is firmly pushed away, in favour of that strangely anonymous recognition-without-history that constitutes ultimate value for any IP.

but it's also hardly unexpected - nothing dies anymore, even those forms whose only interest was in death, and we're of course not restrained by the threatening (litigious?) distinction between authorized and unauthorized versions of the same wretched official culture. better just to see it as yet another fan-bubsy to add to the catalog- a horrible-undead-persistence-under-capitalism bubsy, a bubsy that now signifies as well as everything else the monolithic stupidity by which "authorized" culture attempts to safeguard its possessions. so maybe we will see this new bubsy start to emerge places as well, an all-new emblem of the negative, emerging where you want it least... a bubsy for our time..!!!

[image tags: bubsy visits the james turrell retrospective, bubsy the bobcat in rip van bubsy starring bubsy, space funeral 4, “rabbid better than bubsy” by shinxboy on deviantart, bubsy animated tv show]

#bubsy

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