#I was just remembering how edgy comics I read as a teenager were a lot more entertaining

[djsherriff-responses]

Hazbin Hotel suffers from an identity crisis where it wants to be this crude and super sexual cartoon that doesn't hold back on edgy humour while it also wants to tackle sensitive topics and be taken seriously , but it doesn't commit fully to either nor does it have any idea how to balance the two

And the end result is a story where you're supposed to be upset about an annual purge while the victims of the purge are cannibals who kill each other for lols 24/7

#Hazbin hotel critical #Vivziepop critical #Still haven't watched past episode 4 but I think this is basically the show #And how it handled certain topics #I was just remembering how edgy comics I read as a teenager were a lot more entertaining #While also being much more offensive than hazbin is #Rambles

[beesmygod]

What are some of your favorite pieces of art/ art that has made you think a lot?

this is such a cheesy cop-out answer, but there's a lot of things that im going to struggle remembering because of 1. how situational the experience was (as in, the context in which i experienced the piece) 2. how wide the word "art piece" is. 3. the great fortune to have been born to parents with strong artistic sensibilities and a love of travel/education. so these are like. really weird and specific but maybe thats the way it should be:

let's start with the most overly dramatic: st. paul's cathedral in london has guided tours where they take you into rooms and let you mill around before moving to the next one. my family took a trip overseas as a really, really big special vacation to celebrate my sister and i graduating from high school (we're not twins, we just combo'd it after she graduated) that i was too brain-broken and teenage to fully appreciate. its a beautiful cathedral but i was in my edgy internet atheist stage and refused to be impressed by it until i stood over a grate in the floor. through the grates you can see the crypt that you visit next. but standing over the grate, someone below started to sing something hymnal and very catholic. and i realized i was the only one who could hear it because of the crowd chatter. and it made me feel, in the moment, so special and so lonely in a way that i still think about, a lot. it was for me only. divine providence.

a date with adam to a place i had no idea existed but he had been to before: the bad art museum, which is split over like 3 different buildings in a bizarre way. we only went to the one where you have to buy a ticket to a movie as entry and it was some truly lovely bad art and made me sad how inaccessible it was but resolute about my love of the nuances of uncelebrated anti-art masterpieces. then we watched "assassination nation" and it was fucking terrible. great date.

reading the theory regarding the "venus of willendorf" being a self portrait as a 20-something year old and running into the bathroom to take my clothes off and look down at myself and having my mind blown. not just by how much i instantly understood it, but because of the tugging feeling on my heart when i feel that strand of history connecting women artists driven by that unknown compulsion to create for creations sake!

similarly, seeing artemisia gentileschi's work next to her fathers and realizing how much she outclassed him in every single way and feeling the tugging feeling again, but this time with a dark woe of realization of how history minimizes achievement and talent when it eases a narrative

reading jane erye's descriptions of herself and her approaches to her plights and for the first time feeling like someone had walked a path that i currently found myself lost on.

reading 1984 as a middle schooler and becoming so angry at the ending i threw the book across the room (something i had never done before and never did again in my life) and stormed out of my room to complain to my mom lol. IT REALLY UPSET ME!!!

reading les miserables for the first time and weeping piteously for days after the ending and having it impact my brain so hard it re-wired how i think about the concept of "legacy" and what it means to matter in the world and how love is nothing without the courage to stand up for it. and that mercy should, and will, always supersede unwavering justice (hard lesson to remember, maybe im due for a re-read)

sneaking into my parents room to read the books i wasnt supposed to yet as a really little kid lol. my mom used to get "dykes to watch out for" in a newsletter she was subscribed to! but i didnt read those bc they were dumb relationship comics for grown-ups. i wanted to read about opus the penguin and lee iacocca, as if i knew who that was. my mother's comic collection was the single most influential constant in my life. knowing that i was exposed to bill watterson's commentary about his own work via the big collections my mom owned probably explains a lot about what's wrong with me. but she also had a lot of berke breathed before he fully wussed out

the general experience of playing a video game that you arent supposed to/when you arent supposed to is probably one of the most freeing means of meaningless rebellion as a kid that everyone should experience. i used to be up playing pokemon past my bedtime under my covers with a huge heavy rubber flashlight i stole from the kitchen and had to replace every morning without getting caught once i was done with it. god, the days before backlit screens we had to get really fucking wild with it. in high school i would wake up at 5:00am, sneak into the computer room where the ps2 was and play an hour of FFX bc its the longest fucking non-persona game in the world, stop playing before my mom woke up at 6:00am and sneak back into bed. if i hit a part where i couldnt save i would just turn the screen off and come back to it tomorrow lol. secrets......

reading the "pictures for sad children" arc about paul, who is a ghost, finally losing it and going on a rant about how it has never mattered how thin a computer screen is. they were right and reading it helped me articulate and understand a growing feeling of restless frustration at the world around me that i felt singular and alone in. im glad that last i heard that artist is doing ok. i hope they recognize the incredible value in their work as imperfect as they perceived it to be. i do not think they would be happy to know that their old work was impactful, but i hope they realize that what people are able to tease out of their work is meaningful, at least to me it is. ill transcribe the comic rather than repost it i think: paul [while smashing electronics]: "have i told you about [bam] how nerds destroy the world take conspicuous consumption as a lifestyle choice and combine it with early hardware adoption and you have great swaths of gadgetry out of stock because they're incrementally better than the last model and there are landfills full of functioning electronics wasted time, resources, money, etc. the best part is that these things were never necessary it has never mattered how thing a computer is." [smash]

this is too long. i like art.

#art #long post

[scholarlypidgeot]

What got you into writing?

Tale as old as books, I guess, is that I loved to read when I was a kid. I must've been 9 or 10 when I wrote a full story about my siblings getting their own horses and winning a race with them- it wasn't great, but I remember having fun with it. My mother gave me a healthy diet of classic and fantasy genres with some of the historical American Girl style series and horse books mixed in, plus my childhood special interest in dinosaurs and dragons.

To my continued embarrassment, my first serious storylines took place on a comic book roleplaying forum when I was a teenager. I had my overpowered Mary Sue phase there. It was all clean, and most of the people there were super casual. I still consider some of them "internet friends" even if we don't talk much anymore. The most words I've ever written for a project outside of school were for that website- a knockoff SCP Foundation specifically, but I had lots of other characters. Again, it was fun, and that's what matters to me now looking back.

Prism originated during my edgy teen vampire phase. I cannot tell you why I like the concept of vampires so much. I literally can't. It's just fun, the way dinosaurs and superheroes were and are fun. But my first attempt at an actual novel was the first phase of Eva's story. Way more gory, with way less of an understanding of how writing and the real world work. Patrisia, specifically, didn't come until my first semester of college, and combining all my storylines came with examining medieval story collections - Canterbury Tales, the Decameron, etc. College is also where I really sat down and read and enjoyed Gothic horror for the first time, which has also influenced my writing style.

...I'm starting to ramble lol, but in summary, what got me into writing (and is keeping me in writing) is the fun of the craft. On the one had I have a story I need to tell. On the other? Despite all the stress and executive dysfunction, once I get going, I love the process. It makes me happy. And that more than anything is what matters to me, because if I can make myself happy with this, maybe I can make somebody else happy too in the future.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Ummmm I feel like someone should...DO something about Sandra and Woo at this point. As of strip 1316, I'm sensing the content is beginning to get a bit...questionable?

So, in a vacuum, "teenagers look at porn and get embarrassed" isn't a particularly weird premise for a joke (and I suspect people would be less weirded out if it were boys looking at pictures of naked women), and S&W is a lot less weird about kids than basically any anime. And yet...

Ring ring

I think the reason Sandra and Woo comes off as uncomfortable so much is that they don't do "Character gets horny and does a stupid" so much as "Character sees something sexy or is told about something sexy hypothetically happening offscreen and gets uncomfortable". It's basically "Anime boy getting a nosebleed at seeing a boob", but made PG for the kids. It's not that Zoey finds a Playgirl somewhere and talks about how much she finds dicks gross while scooting closer and closer to it, it's that she's being made to look at sexual content, and teenagers being forced to view sexual content, even by other teenagers, is gross.

Ring Ring

It also doesn't help that the strip isn't funny at all. A "Penis-themed top trumps deck" is supposed to be comedically over the top, but it's just weird and fetishistic and "adult" in a way that even like a porn magazine isn't. It's much more of a bachelorette party thing than something you'd have seen when you were a horny teen yourself, and also I kept reading it a penis-themed top Trump's deck, like it was entirely Donald Trump erotica. What's the joke here even supposed to be? "Zoey says she thinks penises are gross but one of of 52 she kind of liked"? lmao? Without a solid punchline there's nothing to distract us from the creepiness of the premise.

Ring ring

And I think the writer even kind of knows all this because he has Zoey explicitly state that this is too wacky for her to feel sexually harassed. But if you need to interrupt your joke so that Zoey reassure the audience she's not being sexually harassed that bad by your protagonist, you might need to re-evaluate if your protagonists are irredeemably terrible, and it certainly detracts from the cutesy "Remember how cringe being a horny teenager was" vibe this comic is generally going f-

Ring ring

Excuse me a moment, that's my discord calling, it must be very important if they're calling me while I'm in the middle of a post.

Yes, Commissioner Discord? Zoey is a thespian? Well it's good for her to have a hobby I suppose but I don't know what acting has to do with this strip that's so- Yes? No? Oh, she's a-

Oh, she's a lesbian?

She's a lesbian and the premise of the strip is Larisa making fun of her for not being attracted to penises and forcing her to look at pictures of penises?

Good.....God! It's worse than I thought, Anon. This comic strip isn't just badly executed and a little uncomfortable, it's homophobic! And while you could devil's advocate that the creepiness is an unintentional side effect of a moderately edgy joke that's badly executed, it's a lot harder to call the homophobic element accidental. There's something problematic underfoot, anon!

#Sandra and Woo

[tehmoonofficial]

if the sibs wrote books, what do u think theyd be about

:0 COOL QUESTION

Luther - science fiction novel!! It would have nothing to do with Earth, it would be a totally different section of space. His writing style can barely hold all of his imagination for new tech and planets. His narration voice would be quiet, with an observational joke here and there. He tries not to kill people in books unless it’s absolutely necessary. Ben, Vanya, and him all LOVE writing. Unfortunately they never really talked about it when they were little D: He uses real scientific facts in his writing whenever he can.

Diego - BADASS ACTION NOVEL. He would probably write a super-detailed heist story, hoping that it gets turned into a movie eventually. He subtly writes a part that Allison would be perfect for ;D. All his characters have names like James Stone and pretentious book readers make fun of him for it, but kids end up really liking it. Diego meant the books to be for adults, so when his fanbase becomes about the same as the superhero group, he’s shocked but keeps on writing and doing well.

Allison - autobiography, or something artsy! I see her going either way with that: describing how she became famous (and leaving out rumors), or making a collage sort of book with pictures of beautiful cities, clothing, animals, and textures. As a celebrity, she likes to dip a little into everything, and invest in lots of things. So, she could also write a business book or maybe even a cookbook!! It could borrow a little from recipes she learned off of Grace dfjgdfh :D OR: She could even talk about some of the missions she went on as a teenager! Claire liked them, so she figures others will, too. 

Klaus - comic books! I feel like if he wanted to publish a story, it would be similar to Gerard’s own stories, and Klaus definitely looks up to all the comic book artists and writers. He creates his own superheroes---not working for a pre-existing character group---and it’s definitely a little bit edgy and odd. He doesn’t try to be edgy on purpose, but he doesn’t believe in making everything sunshine and rainbows, and in fact he tries to get a lot of dark humor out of his comics. They get a sort of cult following (LOL), so they’re not really mainstream but the fans that appreciate it know quite a lot about the comic. I think that Klaus likes to draw, so he designs all the panels himself. Klaus isn’t very well off, so the art is mostly black and white, with dashes of red and blue. It ends up looking very modern and minimalist, which gets him lots of awards even though he was just trying to save his markers FSJSFHS

Five - THICK scientific books. He publishes all his theories about time travel for the world to read. Most people don’t really understand all the giant numbers and jumping to conclusions JDFGHJGS. So, he ends up being roped into writing a smaller, word-based book that explains all his thoughts in regular sentences. It’s around 300 pages, but his writing voice is very impatient and it starts off with dumbing things down but grows in difficulty as you read. It ends up being quite entertaining to read, because it feels like you’re actually sitting down and talking to someone who really has Better Things To Do but will settle on talking to you as long as there’s something for him at the end. He doesn’t really care about money as long as he can survive, but it becomes a sort of inside joke of his readers that he’s addicted to coffee and they try to bring it up during book signings. He HATES book signings and often inscribes with things like “Go away. Sincerely, Five Hargreeves” and people EAT IT UP. They think it’s a public personality thing, and try to purposefully annoy him. He has snapped several pencils and once ripped a page out of his book and shoved it into somebody’s mouth to shut them up.

Ben - kids’ stories. I think that Ben would really, really love kids and want them to be as happy as possible. So he makes picture books! The drawings are pretty simple, and combine photography with doodles. They all have some sort of moral, but also cute little jokes and simple language. He doesn’t use big words, and especially not hard-to-pronounce words, because he remembers from his childhood that Diego didn’t read as much because of his speech issues. 

Vanya - Well, she already has her Burn Book dfgjhdfg. I can see her composing music and sharing it with the world! She never earns much money off of music unfortunately D:, but loves to do it anyway. OOH, maybe she would write a musical! And then get famous! It would have lots of representation in it, and it blends songs into dialogue. Her music style would be slightly jazzy, but relying on classical instruments for the most drama. Think something like Frozen’s music.

Thanks again for the ask!! This was really fun!!

#ask #tua #Anonymous #not a meme #tua hcs #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves

[thattimdrakeguy]

New 52 TEEN TITANS #3 Read Along - The fact this got made is still shocking.

It’s been a while since I done one of these. It’s probably been since last year or so. This isn’t so much of a formal review where I try my best to explain why something doesn’t work, with tons of back references, or interviews, and contexts, and such. I might do some of that, but I’m mostly just writing this along the same time I continue to read it.

I’ve already done the first two issues, and if I can I’ll link them in the post somewhere.

Basically, this series gets about everything wrong about the returning Core Four for this reboot. They made Cassie the tomboy a “girly” thief, Conner the punky flirt a creepy emotionally numb stalker, Tim the insecure dork a super genius that blew up part of a freaking skyscraper, and Bart the teen with an attention span problem into an arrogant jerkwad loudmouth.

With the origins later given in the series, the boys are revealed to not reaally be the characters we knew at all in a more literal sense. This Conner is a clone of an alternate version of Jon, not Clark and Lex. This Tim Drake, is literally only Tim Drake in name only, as that’s the name this teen got in witness protection. And this Bart Allen, isn’t even related to Barry.

So these are versions of the characters that are them in literally name only, bar Cassie (sadly). Although, they’d later retconned Tim’s origin back (which doesn’t make sense). But what else can I compare them to but the originals?

--

A really common criticism of this series, and one that’s pretty dang valid in my opinion. Is just how unlikable everyone is-- or at least the Core Four, because I feel like we can all be honest and say that most people just read this for the Core Four, and sometimes Bunker. (Like Bart’s condescending here. Like “I’m Kid Flash, girl.” Maybe I’m just reading it too 1940s, but it comes off as really dickish.)

I mean seriously, how many people do you know talk abut Skitter? The original characters that Lobdell came up with are really hit and miss for me, mostly miss. Because I find Skitter so forgettable, that even though I’ve read the first few issues of this series just for entertainment value, I still forget she exists. She could’ve been so much more interesting, but he just doesn’t give her much.

To me, a good character has a personality that you can notice, grab onto, and have lots of unique stories with, that simply work, not even because it causes a great drama, but just because the perspective the character will have in any situation depending on the circumstance will be interesting.

Which is one of the reasons why I find Tim an interesting character, because his perspective is one that’s very interactive with any given circumstances but will still work for me. An insecure, super hero fanboy, that’s doing his best to be brave, but is secretly scared, with the cleverness to do things, but the anxiety that he can’t. Which the circumstances they give him, like having to make sure he proves he should be Robin, having parents at home, not feeling like he’s good enough, constantly seeing others better them him. It’ll just make him an interesting perspective to read from that won’t get too repetitive in any way that interferes with the enjoyment, because there’s a lot of levels you can take his harsh feelings, or things to interact with, that it won’t always be predictable what’s going to happen with him, and you want to read to see more.

With this series and quite a bunch of other original characters made, they have soap opera writing. Which works with fleshed out characters like the iconic 80s incarnation of the Teen Titans, but when the new characters don’t have a well-formed personality that you can really grab onto and gain constant interest and intrigue from, you just have a lame duck.

When your main character’s traits are “I’m angsty and sad”. No one is going to be able to invest themselves with that. They need to be more third dimensional and genuine to make them a character you want to pick up each issue for.

This series even with the old characters fails at that, by making them into absolute butchered heaps of rotted rump rather than their full personalities.

At least the art is pretty creative early on in it’s second page, I will give it that.

--

Then there’s Bunker--

--who I really want to like, but just can’t find myself enjoying.

A lot of these characters I’m unfamiliar with I want to like. They’re minority characters with very interesting concepts, but writing so flat that it ruins any chance of paying attention to them. A common curse when it comes to POC and a bad writer like Lobdell.

But Bunker actually has a personality, but the reason why I can’t find myself attaching myself to him is because he feels like an uncomfortable stereotype character. An outdated one that you’d see in the 80s or 90s to either seem inclusive or use as a joke rather than a true deal character.

Bunker is a flamboyant, religious, fashion involved, gay, Latino. Something that feels like you’d really bet he wouldn’t be if he wasn’t gay or Latino, because it’s just all based in stereotypes. Like if the pages weren’t colored, and you didn’t have the context he was gay, you’d probably still guess what he’s supposed to be just because of how much they involve stereotypes with him.

However, despite the stereotypes, he is the one most people can remember from this series beyond the core four, because he at least has a personality, and they actually try to build up a unique mystery to him, that would make you want to continue to know them.

And there is something about his confidence and religious beliefs, and determination that does feel very genuine, and makes you actually like him despite the stereotypes.

You want to know what makes you able to tell he’s a better made character than the other relatively new, to straight up new characters? You can actually talk about him, and have a lot more to say about them then his backstory, two personality traits, and angst. Even if his personality seems limited at first, they still write it in a way that’s genuine enough that you can get more out of it, a lot like what I was describing with Tim earlier. 

He still feels like a character that you could write a solo about, and with a good enough writer and personal life, would actually make for a very rereadable series, because you just enjoy seeing him on his journey, because it won’t always be the same exact things. He has loyal personality traits about him, but depending on his circumstances, it won’t be the same side of him you’re seeing, and it won’t feel contrived. He has potential to become a true third dimensional character, and not one that just feels like he looks like one, but isn’t really.

But that depends on where the writing goes with him-- and I can’t remember where it goes. But take away the dated stereotypes and there’s actual good potential with Bunker. Making your character feel like another decade’s minority caricature is kind of a turn off when it comes to feeling comfortable reading them.

Which is why some don’t tend to like him.

--

There’s not a lot to say about this quick page of Cassie, besides the fact they make her come across as apathetic and nuts. She’s also mildly sexualized given it looks like she’s posing for a fashion shoot and not just closing a door, which feels pretty typical of the team that made this book.

--

And because of Lobdell’s bizarre writing and tone changes, I don’t know if this is supposed to be taken as serious or comedy, because of how abrupt it is, and how a fight broke out right after and we find out the old guy is Tim somehow convincing someone he isn’t like-- 15? I think he’d be either 14 or 15, not because that’s how Lobdell intended him to be, because I believe in a now lost interview he said Tim was “probably” 16 or 17. However, they didn’t settle on Tim’s age till Damian was near thirteen, meaning Tim would’ve been either fourteen or fifteen here, depending if Damian was eleven as I remember, or ten at the start of the New 52.

And here’s some more out of character Tim, because New 52 is what you get when you skim through Red Robin without any context, and being edgy is still really popular with the teenage demographic at the time.

This is a Tim that blew up a building, is an incel towards Cassie, and is overall an arrogant prick.

How Lobdell thought anyone thought any of a good idea is beyond me, but I figure he’s just not self-aware enough to realize that he just made one of the most unlikable protagonists I’ve ever seen, and absolutely bastardized who was once a mega-fan-favorite.

Although, this is pretty cute and in-character. It’s something that definitely fits in with a classic Tim comic, but down let this make you think Lobdell knows how to write Tim, because he makes it really obvious all the time that he doesn’t really.

--

And that’s basically everything relevant that happens in this issue-- not a lot when you actually read it, and not just me spouting off the proverbial mouth as I try my best to mentally process this freaking comic.

Conner doesn’t even show up, most likely because he was the only one with a solo, that Lobdell was also writing (you can probably guess accurately what the quality of that was too).

A lot of it is just more of the same, and it’s tedious, although it’s tedious nature is not so much on Lobdell, as he’s said in interviews before that it was editorial or a publisher (I can’t remember to be honest) that made him not have them previously know each other. So he had to work from that.

Which goes to show just how much DC knows how their characters and teams work, given the reason why Young Justice worked so well was because Tim, Conner, and Bart, already had stories where they duo’d up, and teamed up before they were even official. Which allowed them to have a preconceived friendship, they could build dynamics that were naturally built off of their unique personalities, which made everything feel natural and good to go when they did have an official team comic.

Here you have a Tim, that’s supposed to be very much a rookie of only one year, acting like he’s the greatest protégé talent ever, searching out for metahumans and coincidentally running into them, just to make some kind of story that would explain them being together for a team.

I’m not saying they have to redo the duo stuff again, because I’m pretty sure most readers already know their dynamics, and as for new readers, it doesn’t take a lot of time to say “We’re just good friends that like hanging out” does it? They have issue zeroes for each comic for a reason, they could’ve easily had a nice summary there if they wanted.

New 52′s obsession with trying to fit everything they can in, but have everyone still be relatively new, made everything a mess.

Like isn’t it weird that Superman only started being a super hero FOUR YEARS before Tim was? Doesn’t that sound entirely too squeezed in?

Then because they messed with the characters so much it works less for old readers as well. Like they have Tim, only a year in, acting like all the out of character elements of Red Robin, with an origin that’s a Bizarro styled mirror of his original one, with nothing that made him the popular character he used to be.

Same for the others.

New 52 is partially scary, because it shows just how little they know about what made them work.

I’m not against reboots in comics as a concept, they do need some modernization, and clean-ups every now and again, but you have to keep what works in there, or else the reboot will be a total failure. And paint-jobs and fan service like Rebirth aren’t gonna work either, when the heart of it all is still just so bad.

All this is a lot easier to say in hindsight, but DC Comics really has to work towards remembering their mistakes if they actually want to get better again. They’re doing a bit better at it, as forced and contrived as it can be sometimes. So they are getting somewhere.

But this is only the start of a Didio-less era. Looking like good things are coming, and little presents that truly make it seem true, is something that’s only going to last for a little bit. They have to still do the work, and learn what worked for their characters in the first place, and reremember who they all are.

Otherwise sales will just get worse again.

But I’m genuinely hoping they’ll at least begin to learn from mistakes. No one gets a win otherwise.

--

Oh, and he’s the entirety of the fight advertised on the cover. “Red Robin vs. Bunker”.

They stop fighting right after this.

It’s the comic book equivalent of clickbait if I’ve ever seen it in my entire life.

#Tim Drake #Robin #Red Robin #Bart Allen #Kid Flash #Cassie Sandsmark #Wonder Girl #New 52 #Teen Titans #DC Comics #Only tagging them because odds are those are the only tags people will check

[maxsmusicmacrology]

Artist Profile: Toby Fox

Many of you may be most familiar with Toby Fox as “the guy who made Undertale”, or maybe as “the guy who made Megalovania”. The latter is actually a surprisingly useful way to think of the man, as the journey of Megalovania is wound very closely to the journey of Toby Fox. Just trust me on this part.

In the mid 00’s, Fox was a teenager frequenting Starman.net, a popular forum for the game EarthBound and the other titles in the Mother series, under the username “Radiation”. He created two ROM hacks of the game, releasing the first one in 2006, but his much more successful and influential hack was the EarthBound Halloween Hack, a submission to a 2008 Halloween-themed competition run by Starman.net.

After Fox rose to popularity, he went on to say that he’s not very proud of the hack, and in a deleted 2016 tweet he referred to it as a “bad rom hack with swears”. Having played through it, it’s an apt description- several of the fights are incredibly unbalanced and the villain drops a few slurs- but I don’t believe the hack should be entirely written off either.

In 2008, hacking new music into EarthBound was incredibly difficult, so both composing original music using the EarthBound soundfont and getting it to play in the game was an impressive achievement. While the game certainly has the usual Halloween aesthetic, full of pumpkins and zombies and ghosts, the real horror of the game is psychological, creating a much more fascinating story than a traditional halloween slasher. The final villain is consumed by grief after the death of his son and the estrangement of his wife, becoming a broken man who turns to violence— which are the exact same themes that would later be explored through Asgore when Fox would go on to make Undertale.

Anyway, this was the first and original appearance of Megalovania.

In 2009, Andrew Hussie launched his webcomic Homestuck on mspaintadventures.com, his fourth and final work to be published on the site. It ran until ending 2016 (with Epilogues launching a few years later), and is best known for having possibly the worst fandom in modern history until people started losing interest in 2013. Its second most notable characteristic is how heavily it embraced its online medium, including not just text and images but also gifs, animations with music, and even little interactive games. Over the comic’s seven year run over 500 pieces were written as part of Homestuck’s discography by a variety of artists, and while only a few dozen were included as part of the comic, all of them were made available online through Bandcamp under the Homestuck umbrella.

Toby Fox joined the music team in 2010 with two contributions to the comic’s fourth album, and from there he went on to be their most prolific contributor. From 2010-2016 Homestuck published roughly 90 of Fox’s songs, and he also hosted and managed a contest that led to nearly 60 fan contributed pieces being published. After Homestuck ended, Toby Fox went on to be one of the composers for the various spin off titles: Hiveswap Act One, Hiveswap Friendsim, and Pesterquest, so it seems he has no intent to leave the Homestuck universe anytime soon.

Undertale’s soundtrack was highly praised through its use of leitmotifs (and trust me, I’ll be talking about that plenty later on), but some of his tracks written for Homestuck make even better use of their motifs and reach some fairly complex heights. This video goes through Descend, which ended up during a critical moment during the early comic, and lists the twenty seven songs sampled during.

Of course, these aren’t just empty motifs for fun. The characters introduced thus far all have various themes associated with them, each motif bringing to mind the characters, their factions, and their histories. This is musical storytelling done through completely instrumental songs, and it is fantastically done. Several of his tracks do this, Jade’s medium entrance theme Umbral Ultimatum samples three songs she’d already appeared in, and his final track for the comic’s main run was a glorious melody of several prior battle themes.

Anyway, in 2010 he published the second appearance of MeGaLoVania, which was used during the [S] Wake animation and appeared on a 2011 album.

In 2012, Toby Fox contributed to an EarthBound fan album called “I miss you”, organized by bandcamp user sleepytime Jesse. He contributed four tracks, including Fallen Down (which would later feature in Undertale) and a remix of Megalovania. This isn’t a major milestone in his career like his EarthBound hacks or Homestuck, but I think it says a lot that he loves EarthBound and its community so much that he’d compose songs for a small fan album.

In 2015, Undertale came out and took the internet by storm. Like it or hate it, it was everywhere you looked for a while, from every gaming channel covering it to endless quoting on Reddit or Tumblr. Fox made the majority of the game himself, which of course includes making the soundtrack. There are a total of one hundred and one songs, and it would not surprise me if every single one of them (except Megalovania) was tied to all the others through some web of samples, remixes, and motifs.

Oh yeah, the third version of Megalovania is here, once again featuring as a final battle theme.

Once again, Fox uses motifs expertly as a form of storytelling. Let’s take a look at the track ASGORE, which is entirely created from other songs. The opening is bergentrückung, the intro theme that plays before the battle starts. That flows into Heartache, the battle theme of his ex-wife Toriel, showing that even after she left him, she’s still important enough to be part of his main theme. It also includes the Game Over theme, guiding the player to remember that it was his voice encouraging to continue playing when they failed, urging them forward only to reach him, as well as Undyne’s theme, who looks up to and idolizes him without knowing the truth of who he is.

The entire game is like this. If the player decides to turn evil, they gain a genocide motif that appears in some of the genocide-only bosses. The true final boss is foreshadowed through His Theme during important moments. Undyne and Alphys end up dating in the true ending, and in the genocide run Undyne resurrects herself from the brink of death while Alphys’s melody plays.

Fox’s music makes itself special by being so connected. His songs call back and call forward to other songs, making each of them important in some way or another. The Homestuck and Undertale soundtracks feel holistic, they’re not just “songs that happen to be written by the same guy”, they’re united soundtracks where every song has a greater meaning than just the scene they play over. Hell, even the Homestuck and Undertale soundtracks reference each other, and not just through Megalovania. Another Medium from the latter soundtrack samples Doctor from the former, and the final battle theme Collide samples Death By Glamour.

He’s currently working on his new game Deltarune, the first chapter of which (and its soundtrack) are available for free on PC and various consoles. The music already slaps, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Anyway, the fourth and (as of now final) version of Megalovania was included into none other than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, added into the game alongside a Sans costume for Mii fighters.

This, in my opinion, is nothing short of incredible. Toby Fox went from a Nintendo fan who made a “bad rom hack with swears” for a game he liked, and now his music is appearing in one of the largest gaming franchises of all time. Shoot for the stars, everyone.

I think this is the part where I’m supposed to give a track listing, but come on, you’ve been reading. 90 Homestuck tracks and 101 Undertale tracks, plus everything before and after and in between. Fortunately, his page on the Undertale wiki has his entire discography listed, so I’m going to take the easy way out and link that.

https://undertale.fandom.com/wiki/Toby_Fox#Discography

He has done and has planned a few other projects, but I think the right place to end off is by mentioning his contribution to Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, the Battle Tower theme. This is notable not only for being an awesome song that he composed for a massive franchise, but because it samples one of his early contributions to the Homestuck fandom. I am of course talking about The Baby Is You, an “opera” he wrote as a fan contribution to protest forum rules, which was subsequently banned from even being mentioned on said forum. Not only is this another example of all Fox’s projects fitting in with each other, it’s also a nearly decade-old callback to an obscure edgy joke he made and then hid as an easter egg (or an afikoman for you Jewish folk) in an official Nintendo title.

And I think that’s beautiful.

#toby fox #earthbound #homestuck #undertale #nintendo #radiation #artist profile #music

[popculturebuffet]

Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle: The Mighty Elves (Comissoned by WeirdKev27)

Well well boys, we’re back to Jingle Belle with another kevmission, though per his request i’ll be getting back to Life and Times Of Scrooge McDuck at long last. I also have some other stuff planned and all that, but for now, let’s focus on everyones faviorite elfen hellion as we dive back into Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle. 

I covered most of the behind the scene’s stuff last time so in short in case your just joining us, since this one’s got a bit more stuff to tag: Jingle Belle is an indie comic book character created by animation god Paul Dini, the daughter of Santa Claus and the Queen of Elves who acts like a standard rebellious teenager sterotype and causes trouble for her dad.  Last time I touched on the character a good two days ago, we looked at her first appearance, where she sent her family to Family Therapy. At the time I’d ONLY read that story, and hadn’t gotten that far into Jing’s world just yet. As you probably guessed despite plugging a decent amount of time into re-reading the rest of Scott Pilgrim (shout out to my good friend Mike for the early christmas present), on digital and in color and into the Switch port of the first Fire Emblem, I still got 2/3 of the way through the omnibus Kev gifted me of almost all her stories up to 2018′s The Handmade’s Tale.  Honestly not a lot has changed from the pilot.. while Jing’s designs changed a bit, she’s still more of a rebellious hellion, and while Santa’s no longer a slut shaming jackass, he’s still hard on her while her mom tries to keep the peace, The humor’s still edgy, if toned down enough to support returning whenever Dini felt like it but it’s largely the same for better or worse.  Overall the stories haven’t been bad but have been a bit reptitive to read in one giant omnibus. This really is down to the format they were made in: These were one off stories spread months apart meant to be picked up off the shelf with no real ongoing stories or character development and only some slight worldbuilding here and there. In short not bad stuff, just clearly not built to be collected in a huge omnibus like it was and not the first comic collection i’ve encountered with this problem and definitely not the last. 

That being said the stories are creative and still well put together. It is Paul Dini and he has wrote pretty much every story collected here with few exceptions, so it’s still good stuff, just as I said clearly not meant to be read all in one block like i’ve been doing. And today’s story happens to be one of my faviorites so far, breaking the formula up a bit by having Jing do something a bit diffrent and also involving hockey, a sport this story made me realized might actually intrest me on some level.. if in part due to letterkenny. 

God bless those two handsome idiots. So let’s ice up or skates, get those letterkenny refrences at the ready and see what the Mighty Elves have to offer. 

We start at Hockey Practice for Santa’s Hockey Team, The Elves, the kind of sentence that makes me really happy to type for money. Santa’s team is naturally for this kind of story and what the title references, are the last place in the bi-polar hockey league their in.. presumably ran by commissioner bi-polar bear. 

Again, I really love this job and that i’m actually getting paid for this this go round. Anyway, Santa’s team isn’t all that agressive because.. well i’ts a team coached by Santa, why would they be? But Santa’s still proud of his boys... as for his girl on the otherhand he gets a call and we soon find out via mugshots Jing dragged her two friends, up from just one in previous stories, to an air force base, somehow got arrested for hitting on enlisted men, not a crime, and stealing and crashing a helicopter, very much a crime.  Naturally Santa isn’t pleased, so we cut to a few days later where he’s letting her friends off making robo kitties, damn I want one of those now, while leaving Jing to do the packaging, though like most stern but fair dad’s he admits he dosen’t like punishing her and is right in saying there’s more to do with her summer vacation than you know, piss off the military. Santa needs his flight clerance dammit. Jing complains there isn’t much to do but feed the reindeer and make toys to which I say.. really santa? You haven’t set up anything else for your eleves to do? Making toys is their job. Build a fucking movie theater. And at the very least if not for them than for your bored and rebellious daughter to distract her from doing crimes. She’s still likely got a few hundred years of teenagering left, give her something else to do other than piss you off.  Santa does have a least a little something: Hockey! Which Jing’s cousin Rusty has taken up. Rusty showed up in the first story but I kind of glossed over him, he’s basically Jing’s Dorky cousin she frequently abuses. Not really much more or less to him. Jing isn’t on board mostly because their team always looses, to the other teams: The Penguins, the Polar Bears, The Snow Leopards and the Eskimos because they don’t really have killer instinct, which yeah is kind of necessary for hockey. To her..

But during her rant she does show Santa she’s got genuine talent for the sport, so he makes her a deal: Do a little favor for him, and she’ll swap that for making toys.. it’s a deal.. one she soon regrets but hey. 

Jing naturally makes an ass of herself pretty quickly beating the shit out of Rusty with her dad repremanding her and threatning to throw her off the team if she has another outburst like. That is until she runs into the Huskies Coach, Stan. 

I mean i’ts a hairy old man who makes a side bet with Santa Claus despite it technically being against commission rules, might as well be. So Santa tells Jing screw it, as long as it’s the opposing team violence is a-okay.  And naturally our first target is the world famous hockey player, aka snoopy aka a snoopy stand in. And being a big fan of peanuts i’m a sucker for a good peantus parody. Doubly so since Dini did his homework, and as I’d remembered and a quick google confirmed “The World Famous Hockey Player” was indeed one of snoopy’s many personas.

 Not that it was much of a stretch: just about any time snoopy played a sport he was “the world famous X player”, but still it’s a nice little nod. Not so nice is Jing within seconds slamming him into the air and under a Zamboni and getting sent to the box for it naturally. So clearly she’s the shorsey of this team, all chirps and ultra violence. 

Snoopy is thankfully still alive, if barely, though he’s off course been through much worse.

But while in the Box jing helps advise the team and a presumed combination of her beating the shit out of the other team’s best players and her team now not only having something to inspire them but a strategy means the Elves win for once! Santa and Jing share a hug, though Santa advises her not to go for his wallet, it’s still a sweet moment as she’s genuinely invested now.  So we cut to..

Okay Hank Ribbon seal is genuinely one of the best things humanity has made but as for Quiki I just... wow that joke is mildly racist at worst, confusing and unfunny at best. I mean... it really just makes no sense on any level and that’s with me not knowing a lot about hockey, but knowing just enough to know Kathy Lee Gifford existed. Just.. what even was that? I know Paul can do better than this.. because as my first review outlined he wrote a LOTTTT of Tiny Tune Adventures including my favorite episode. He also wrote most of the best Joker episodes for BTAS, so it’s not like the guy CAN’T be funny.. so I have no idea how he could fail so hard with this. Just.. what is this. Who thought this was funny? what was the joke? 

That.. utter bafflement aside, this newscast is used to push things ahead as the elves are on a winning streak, having also beaten the Polar Bears and the Penguins.. though weirdly we DON’T get a cameo by this guy despite having already had Snoopy show up. 

That’s my boy. But yeah there’s only two teams left with this, the Eskimos and tonight’s matchup the Snow Leopards, aka snow catgirls lead by Tashi Ounce, who Jing met at the winter games last year and lost too and thus has a whole rivlary thing going. In a really nice moment Santa stops to make sure Jing is okay going into the game. 

It’s part of why I REALLY like this story: Santa instead of just being disapointed in his daughter genuinely bonds over her over something and Jing shows she has a softer side to her. It’s some good character stuff, helps shake up the normal formula nicely. Back to the usual though she and Tashi naturally go at it, phrasing, and fight the whole damn time, with Belle eventually scoring the winning goal. Though noticably while Tashi is just as competiive as belle and lost this time.. she’s fine with it, knowing she’ll win next time and congradulating the opponent.  But before she can leave the rink, Tashi is approached by a mysterious figure with an offer and we cut to said figure’s lair... it’s THE BLIZZARD WIZARD! dun dun dun!.... yeah I haven’t introduced him the Blizzard Wizard is.. well exactly what he sounds like, as well as the former ruler of the North Pole. He enslaved everyone there to do his bidding and was essentially, a butt till Santa showed up, united all the various animals and kicked his ass. Since then he’s been reduced to basically a rankin bass villian, lurking near bye and scheming to get petty revenge on Santa for it. So essentially....

Minus the tragic backstory. He offers them a deal: The championship cup for him defeating the elves. As he puts it the cup symbolizes hard work, respect and team work.. i.e the things their throwing out to get payback. Tashi wants none of it, but the blizzard wizard has his slush minons capture her and with the rest willing to sell out, he gets to work. 

Bliz snows out the eskimos, and brings up accusations of Santa gambling, which he gets away from by.. having his wife donate the money real quick don’t ask just go. But he has a waiver signed by the other coaches so their playing his goons. But Jing isn’t phased and Santa asks her to give the lockeroom some inspiring words. 

10/10 no notes. But naturally Bliz has a sneaky trick up his sleeves.. to win.. specifically a hot french canadian player which.. makes jing fall to pieces flirting with him and makes her entirely ineffective. Okay time out.... huh so this is the timeless void known only to zack morris, that girl from the reboot I haven’t watched, and Regis Filbin. But yeah while I wouldn’t expect Jing to slaughter the guy it feels out of character for all she’d do is to giggle like an idiot instead of making a move. She’s been established as forward and knowing what she wants. I’m not against her being distracted by this it’s just the how that feels off especially since the opening reinforces this. She hit on air force guys. She’s not going to just be giggly and awkward. Jing may not be the most complex charcter but she’s better than this. Aside from the baffling Kathy Lee Gifford gag, this is the only thing I really don’t like abotu the story, and it lasts two pages before it’s resolved and in a 22 or so page story, that’s a good chunk of it spent on something that isn’t funny and that’s out of character even within story. That being said it dosen’t drag the story down entirely, still a good story. Just a bit uneven is all. 

But unsurprisingly Tashi escapes her earlier imprisonment offscreen to let Jing know not only the full extent of Bliz Whiz’s machenations, i.e. that the other coaches are in on it, but that the hockey player is really just one of Bliz’s minons uner a glamour. WIth that knowledge Jing asks why she’d help and Tashi shows her inner honor beneath the whole rival deal, pointing out she wants to win from a GOOD team next year. With the jig up Jing pulvirzes her former crush, claims to have been under a spell (no one byes it) and the elves clean house and win. Super fuckin shooter. As for Bliz Whiz he tries to steal the trophy but instead gets booted into the snow leopards box, phrasing... it doesn’t end well for him. 

And yeah while he comes back eventually, some how, apparently, for most of the stories after this he’s just.. dead. He was killed and then his remains eaten. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

But Jing admits she had fun, she and her dad bond and we get one last gag as he assumes she learned not to showboat only for her to block everyone else in the team photo. Falalallal we’re out. 

Final Thoughts: As I said, one of my faviorites. It’s really well paced, has a good premise and only one part drags at all and only that part and one gag really don’t land. The rest of it is really funny, nice and touching, and overall a nice shakeup from these stories usual pattern of “Jing getting into hyjinks”. While she DOES here, her and her dad are literally and figuartvely on the same team, and she does show a sweeter side genuinely bonding with her dad and it’s nice to see them actually enjoy each other’s company for once. It’s a nice change of pace and one I wish more of the stories had. I’m not saying they all have to be holly jolly but i’d be nice if more of them had a bit of heart to them is all. Tis the season and all that. Still for what it is, it’s a fun ride and I highly recommend it. We’ll probably see her again sometime this season but that’s a bit off.  For now coming up I have some ducktales to tell, a chapter in a man’s life story that’s long overdue, a holiday mess I wish I didn’t have to clean up, and in the distant future.. an old friend to reconnect with. Until then if you liked this review reblog it, comment etc all that good stuff, and you can send me asks with suggestions fo ra review or direct message me, or ask for my discord, to comission a review yourself. Until then, happy holidays. 

#jingle belle #paul dini #comics #comic reviews #santa claus #christmas #hockey #letterkenny #snoopy #opus #blizzard wizard #tashi ounce

[eternaleve]

I’ve spent the course of COVID lockdown cycling through hyperfixations while also trying to engage in some much needed therapy (lolsob), and I’ve been essentially encouraging myself to try and do more things I can enjoy without feeling shame. Anyway, that’s a short way of saying I decided to blog about all the music videos of Depeche Mode for reasons of science.

The science is that my basic premise is that most of the videos are pretty bad in ways that I find to be pretty strange. Full disclosure is that I spent my teen years being a huge Cure fan and there’s an overlap there? Of songs with very niche high-concept ideas that don’t necessarily map onto a model of popular music but found mainstream success in the rise of new wave music in the wake of the collapse of first wave punk and amplified by the creation of music videos and music video TV. And I owned all the Cure music videos and played them on my iPod Nano because I was a very strange child. But to get back to my central thesis, many of The Cure’s videos are very stylised and fun and memorable in ways that are good. And yet, despite existing in the same sphere and having an overlap of fans, the music videos for Depeche Mode mostly stay bad until the end of the eighties, a fact I will prove by watching them all.

Can you tell that I am bored because i have lost my job and my mental health is making me fixate on strange shit currently because that is absolutely the case right now

Speak & Spell

Dreaming of Me (Feb 1981)

The single art is really lovely - the red/yellow contrast is very striking against the white, and I really love the design. Hey remember when people used to go out and buy singles and you would appreciate them and the work that went into them? I don’t think I’ve bought a physical single since I was about sixteen. I used to buy them from the Woolworths music department because it was cheap and all my friends worked there, so they had a pretty lenient attitude about what exactly constituted paying for things. Woolworths policy of only hiring teenagers is probably what destroyed their business.

Anyway, Dreaming of Me did not chart super well, getting to number 57 and having no official music video - or actually getting onto the album. It wasn’t included on Speak & Spell in the UK until the 2006 re-release. So, there was no music video for me to look at…

Apart from this video I found from local TV in 1981 to promote the song. It’s a maybe-music video. Because music videos had only been around for about six years and MTV didn’t exist until later in the same year, my guess is that Mute Records were pretty cautious about putting money into a medium that might cost more than they would get in publicity. That’s only a guess. I don’t have a crystal ball for forty years ago. 

Anyway, here are some children recording music.

If i was 19 and someone offered me a recording contract I would have taken it without thinking (like i took on all those student loans without thinking through any consequences wompwomp) but now I am nearly thirty I watch this and think, ‘These children shouldn’t be outside unaccompanied’. The passage of time has made a fool of me.

They go bowling and play Space Invaders which, hey, still sounds like a great night out to me, but I’m guessing that because this is very clearly aimed at teenagers the TV producers didn’t want to encourage teen drinking by showing them performing a gig at a club night.

I call it high fashion. The all-grey really sells it.

This reminds me so much of a advice column in teen magazines - when they’d have problems set out in a little faux-comic strip of still photos? ‘My best friend stole and read my diary’ ‘My crush found out about how I feel and now he’s going out with my best friend’, that sort of thing. That is also a classic carpet pattern. I think my grandma’s living room had that carpet. 

The video is very naive! It’s the sort of thing we would all see now on Youtube from bands just starting out and it is wild to me that this went out on TV. It’s very un-glossy and normal, the stuff that bands put out on YouTube now because of DIYness.

New Life (June 1981)

This is also a really great piece of single art. It’s very bold and striking - it would definitely be the standout record in a sea of other 7’’ released the same week. It also doesn’t particularly match the tone of the single but eh, it looks pretty cool. New Life did much better than Dreaming of Me and got up to number 11 in the UK singles chart. Still no official music video, but the charting meant that the band got onto Top of The Pops! ToTP was cancelled when I was a wee baby teen, because the BBC decided to stop caring about yoof viewership and promoting music was circling the drain everywhere as streaming hit, but it was the place to promote music so was definitely a sign that You Had Made It.

So, last video was silly and made by children, but now they’re wearing see-through mesh shirts, leather trousers, and leather hats with a design that I am a little bit dubious about. I grew up on the oi/punk scene and let me tell you about how many first wave punks wear iconography of bad regimes for faux edginess reasons because I met a LOT of them in my time.

Oh boy do i have thoughts about that hat. It also looks like a Leather Daddy hat which, well, let’s leave that thought to one side. Most ToTP performances were lipsynced. Playing things live would sound weird in the studio, be picked up strangely by the audio equipment and the cameras, so 99% of performances were mimed to the single. Now, some acts would deliberately play up to the pretence and refuse to act like they were doing anything that corresponded to the song - The Jam, The Communards, and The Cure are literally the first examples that come to mind who would just… not do anything close to pretending it was real. 

This is not that. It is very earnest and awkward and serious, which sort of makes it very sweet.

Just Can’t Get Enough (September 1981)

Right, that is shibari, isn’t it? I’m not blind, am I? It’s a very striking image that 99.9% of people would not recognise other than being a striking black and white image. 

I don’t think I can overstate how… innocent, in a way, this point of time was? As in the general level of knowledge about non-conventional stuff in the wider public at large. As in my mother, an almost teen at this point, saw George Michael walking with his boyfriend in central London and had no idea he was gay until he came out. It’s actually the widest cultural gulf I can think of between her teen years and my teen years because I was very aware of queer people from a young age.

Anyway, moving on, I feel like it bears repeating that this song fucking slaps. It’s the last single to be written by Vince Clarke and the last single until 2006 to be written by someone other than Martin Gore. This is one of those songs that just works on every level. Can you imagine coming up with this for the first album of your band? That blows my mind. It’s so overpoweringly good that it was probably for the best that it was saved for last - coming out the gate with a guaranteed fucking banger was been the nail in the coffin for a lot of other eighties synth/electronica bands. They scored a huge hit and then nothing after that managed to be as good or meet the hype. Depeche Mode had built up a far bit of radio play and interest before dropping this which turned out to be very good in the long run!

This got to number 8 on the UK charts and the first to get a music video! It is the only one with Vince Clarke. Full disclosure in that I had this song on my iPod through downloading the video to my computer (that’s how we got songs without using stuff that would give us viruses because i got a ton using bearshare for rare cure demos) and I remember watching the video, all of sixteen years old, and thinking, ‘Man, all these people look so grown up, compared to me, I can’t wait to be an adult!’.

Twelve years have changed my view, somewhat.

Look at this little baby man. Were you in one of my A Level classes - as in, ones that I have taught, not ones that I have been in.

Vince Clarke, however, has had a significant glow up in the six months and now looks like he is the bouncer in a leather bar. This is the One Adult in the room.

Ahh, I see it’s Open Mic Night at the local leather bar. You know what I was saying about how teens in the eighties tended to be significantly more naive about what we might call certain signifiers? Because what this outfit says to me, a queer woman in 2020, is susbstanitally different than to my mum and her friends watching this when it first came out. She would read this as ‘This is totally rebellious and cool!’ while I go ‘Someone just joined the university kink club and spent all their bursary’.

I don’t remember the member of Blazin’ Squad that wore a slave harness. (Now, there’s a reference that shows my age. A Blazin’ Squad reference in the year of Our Lord 2020. Hoooo boy.)

I read somewhere (that I can’t find now because, of course I can’t) that these are the band’s girlfriends and I always remembered that because it made me think, lol, same. One of my closest friends is the Head of London, so she’s in every band in London and if she’s not in yours yet give her time, and my partner was in a locally successful metal/hardcore band for about a decade and being connected with any sort of band means you will be helping out hugely behind the scene constantly. I have held lights, moved speakers, picked up instruments, been in music videos, and have bought tearaway trousers and glowsticks for gigs. You get called in to help all the time which is a lot of fun, so that fact always just stuck with me. It also makes sense financially because then you don’t have to hire any professional backing dancers, you can rely on people who will happily do it for free (while looking pretty rad while doing it!).

Anyway, the band look like those generic raiders that you run into when randomly walking across the map in a Fallout game.

I love awkward choreography in music videos. It feeds me.

Filming a night out provides A) Great footage and B) Can be done for limited overheads, leaving more money to be put into promotion. 

I always like seeing this sort of footage in music videos. I tend to see a lot of it, given the DIY punk scene, and it always charms me. I am easy to please. And all those women have the most amazing eye makeup that makes me super jealous because it all looks so good.

That hat is on point. This looks like a still image for some sort of cyberpunk big band style swing revival that, sadly, lives only in my dreams.

It took me so goddamn long to screenshot this shot probably because i was also blasting dream nails whoops

Anyway those are my reactions to Speak & Spell’s one solitary music video with some other things thrown in and this took me way too long. I make myself laugh though, that’s the main thing. I will do A Broken Frame… at some point. I think I have a bunch of vinyl for A Broken Frame? My mum actually bought all the singles for that album and I stole most of her collection years ago. I will have to search and see what I can find.

#depeche mode #speak & spell #i make myself laugh #and that's the main thing

[autolenaphilia]

The Cybersix comics

So now i’ve read most Cybersix comics that are available in English scanlations. Mainly Pharmadan’s stuff. 

And it is very different from the cartoon adaptation previously reviewed here, very different indeed.

Anyway, the comics were created by Argentinian creators Carlos Trillo (scripts) and Carlos Meglia (art), in the early 1990s. And yes, i do think of them as Carlos & Carlos or the the two Carloses.

The premise is one i recognize from the cartoon adaptation. It is about the superhero Cybersix, a product of genetic engineering that has rebelled against her evil creator and fights the other products of his mad science, led by his clone son José.Her cover as a male literature school teacher named Adrian. She finds a friend in Lucas, the school’s biology teacher, with who she also sexual/romantic tension. Her allies include another product of the villain’s mad science, Data-7, who has the body of a panther and Julian, a street urchin she adopted.

But the approach the comic book source material took to this is very different. The cartoon tv show is meant for children, even if it is on the darker side for such things. The comic is clearly meant for adults, and has a transgressive attitude with lots of violence and sex. And it is still almost 30 years later very shocking and offensive, it certainly was to me and I still kinda liked it. The word “problematic” has been much abused, but it still applies.

You could compare it to something out of the 90s “dark age” of American super hero comics, but to me the tone reminded me of artistic, provocative and very sexualized European comics, like something out of Métal Hurlant.

I’m therefore going to leave the rest of this review under a cut. Also it is getting kinda long. This might be a good point to put out some content warnings, ignore them at your own risk.

Content warning:: Discussions of: violence, racism, nazism, racist caricatures, sexualization of women, prostitution mention and (most disturbingly) sexual themes involving underage people (ick)

(most of this applies to the comic if you decide to read it, it can be worth checking out, but replace “discussion” and “mention” with just depiction, so be prepared for that.)

For one thing, the villain is clearly a nazi scientist who escaped from Germany to South America after the war. He is even named Von Reichter (the cartoon goes with Von Richter). This gives the comic a strong political edge. I don’t know exactly how controversial Argentina’s former status as a haven for escaped Nazis is in that country. But it probably is very controversial. Taking that subject in a critical manner might very well have been a genuinely brave move on part of the creators.

There is also the violence you might expect from a superhero comic. José is a particularly brutal villain this time around. Although Cybersix is remarkably non-violent. When she draws the sustenance she needs vampire-like from Von Reichter’s creations, she avoids killing them.

Concerning Cybersix’s gender, the comic doesn’t have the ambiguity of the cartoon. This time, it’s clear what her gender identity is, Cybersix is a woman.

Her male identity is merely a disguise. Adrian Seidelman is a person who dies in a car accident who looks kinda like Cybersix, who has no legal status, and therefore she decides to steal his identity.

Cybersix remains an interesting character, but i frankly prefer the ambiguity of the cartoon.

Her questioning of her own humanity due to her origins was also in the comic and is a strong theme in her internal monologue here.

Interestingly from a gender perspective, she has this need to prove to herself that she is not just human, but specifically a woman.

II is hard to avoid the subject of sexuality when talking about this comic, for it is almost omnipresent here. Cybersix is a very sexualized character. Her costume design is far from the worst example in comics, but like so many superheroines still designed with titillation in mind.

I found it hilarious that the comic’s actual explanation for the costume is that Cybersix stole it from the wardrobe of a literal sex worker. (the reason Cybersix broke into her home is that she was actually a Von Reichter creation that had infiltrated human society).

But this comic goes beyond most american comics and actually shows Cybersix naked surprisingly often. Her relationship with Lucas gets fairly explicit. If you find the crop of these panels odd sometimes, it’s because I’m trying to avoid showing something that breaks tumblr guidelines.

But the sexualization of Cybersix is actually a minor problem. The nude panels of her are almost quaint, like watching an old movie from the 70s which doesn’t bother to cutaway when a couple gets undressed. It isn’t really that disturbing, especially compared to the creepy sexuality in the rest of the comic.

I didn’t mention Lori in my review of the cartoon. She is one of Adrian’s students who in the cartoon has a crush on him. That is kinda a disturbing theme in itself, but in the cartoon it is no big deal, because it is fairly toned down. In the comic, she is much, much worse.

She is obsessed with Adrian and very explicitly wants to have sex with him. Remember, Lori is a teenage schoolgirl. She also doesn’t care much for the concept of consent. For example, she mails Adrian her nudes unsolicited, and that is about the least worst thing she does. I’m not saying that isn’t terrible in itself, it is just that Lori does way worse things in this comic. You can understand this gets very uncomfortable to read about very quickly.

To be fair, while the trope of the sex-obsessed woman is often a male fantasy, it is very possible that Lori is supposed to be disturbing, rather than sexy. She is even drawn in a rather grotesque manner.

José is even worse. He has only the body of a child, but the mind of a man, including sexually. It isn’t nearly as prominent part of his character as it is with Lori, but this also becomes disgusting rather quickly, for obvious reasons. And then Lori and José meet and do it, oh my god. Although José’s sexuality is almost certainly meant to be creepy.

(because the world is full of people who can’t read properly I probably need to say: no, i don’t support pedophilia even if I think this comic also has its positive sides. Also, even though I can’t really speak for them and they have both passed away long ago, I’m pretty sure Carlos & Carlos didn’t support pedophilia either, if you can even call what horrors that go on in this comic that. Depiction in fiction doesn’t equal endorsement and all that.

This might be obvious from everything I written, but i have seen bad misreadings of what people write and the resulting misinformation spread so quickly on the internet, that writing out the obvious might be necessary. )

I must also talk about the depiction of race in this comic, which is odd. There are two important characters here, who are for lack of a better word, racialized.

One is a black man who saves Cybersix from Von Reichter when she was a child. She regards him as her father. The other is Miao Yashimoto, a Japanese private detective. His sister is kidnapped by Von Reichter, who forces Yashimoto to act against Cybersix, but he eventually becomes her ally.

Now describing them here, it doesn’t sound bad at all. That’s because their personality and role in the story isn’t the problem, it is how they are drawn. They, especially Yashimoto are very much racist caricatures. Yashimoto even has the stereotypical buckteeth. I won’t show you for obvious reasons, but you can always look up this comic yourself.

What is odd about this is that the intent clearly isn’t hateful. These are both heroic characters and the comic has a more or less explicit anti-racist message. A nazi is the villain for a reason. It is just that the creators clearly don’t realize the way Meglia drew these characters is not appropriate.

What is even weirder that Yashimoto was adapted into the cartoon, complete with buckteeth. And that was a show was made in Canada in 1999. Very strange.

Overall, the comic is very different from the cartoon and I have no idea why they picked this edgy adult comic as source material for.a tv show for children, but they did. It is surprisingly faithful to the comic in many ways. The premise is pretty much the same, only it is executed in a very different, child-friendly manner. I would argue that the cartoon is in many ways more enjoyable and accessible than the comic. The attempts of the comic to provoke its audience are often not successful, or maybe rather too successful.

As you can probably tell, my feelings on this comic are complex. I care not for the creepy sexuality or the hamfisted attempts to handle race. So I don’t know if I can recommend this comic. You do need a strong stomach for all this.  But despite all that, there is still much to like about this comic  The art is great; very evocative and atmospheric.

And the writing can be that too. Cybersix is still a great character. Her origin story, her existential angst and her difficult love story with Lucas are just as compelling if not more than in the cartoon.

Sadly, this comic is not widely available in English.The scanlations made or collected by Pharmadan is the most extensive and what I read so far. There is a person here on tumblr, who tried to continue scanlating them  but they seem to have fallen prey to tumblr’s asinine content rules.and doesn’t seem to have been able to go elsewhere yet.

I’ll leave you with my favourite panel from the comic:

#cybersix #cybersix comics #carlos meglia #carlos trillo #pay attention to the content warnings please #comics made by men named carlos

[fba-art]

Just out of curiosity, why don’t you like young justice??

aight, so i knew i was gonna wait to respond to this ‘til i had some time to explain.

and i want to start out by saying that i don’t think Young Justice, as a property, is a bad show. in fact, i think it’s a show that had GREAT potential. i watched every new episode via livestream every saturday lol. and now, i’ll be honest when i say it’s been some time since i’ve rewatched it, and i’m always open to changing opinions. a few years back, i wanted to give it another, fresher perspective and dove in for a rewatch, but ultimately didn’t finish. i don’t remember my reasoning exactly, but i recall being disappointed.and it’s funny i received this ask this week, b/c my friend and i were planning on giving it another rewatch for shits and giggle after finals ( sober or not is tbd ).

but so, here’s where i stand on the show.

i started watching YJ when it was abt 5 episodes into s1. and i binged those first five and stick to my guns that holy SHIT 1-3 are bomb as FUCK. super strong start! Independence Day will never not get me SO HYPE and remind me why i fell in love with DC’s teenage heroes in the first place. it’s so… youthful. a fun conversation for another time.

and now, when i started watching YJ, it was like four months into my making my TT!Kid Flash rp blog, and two months after i’d gotten into reading comics; when i found out Wally was like a biG DC CHARACTER, NOT JUST AN OLD CARTOON ONE-SHOT, i went EVERYWHERE to get my hands on more about Wally West. ironically, the first purchase i ever made from a comic store was a silver age Teen Titans tale, issue #2 of TTY1, and two issues of the old Young Justice comics ( still some of my favorite comics to this day; more on that later ).TL;DRi saw a commercial for YJ, ft. my fave DC char and my fave comic title and went “HOSHIT”.

as the episodes pushed the show’s plot along, it was fun and explorative of a more intense side to the idea of a group of superteens in the DCU. and again, very TEENAGER-Y, which i say in the BEST of ways, considering that was the target audience as well. but, as part of that audience at the time, one of the things that had started to bother me was the character relationships. yeah, i was loving on most of the main cast at the time, but for the first half of the season, the team’s supposedly-close friendships were pushed to the backburner ( EXCEPT for KF and Rob’s, which was one of the only things that got me through the season ). the first season WAS about straining relationships. the social drama was palpable. you NEED conflict in your plots, and char-v-char is especially fun. but i remember feeling like there was little bonding. they were a group of acquaintances, learning to co-habitate the same space- not to say that they didn’t seem like friends, but there was a lack of balance between “teens being professionals in their field” and “teens being immature teens”. both were squeezed in, but both consistently felt forced.

which brings me to the next point: forcing relationships without developing them!i wasn’t sure why i was supposed to care about Roy, like. At all. the team always bringing up that they trained alongside him, grew with the guy, and then??? nada, except when the plot needed edgy tantrumy angst.then there was spitfire. i ship spitfire now, but the ENTIRETY of s1 i was SO FRUSTRATED, because all those two did was bicker. wally was pretty foul to artemis, who was also just plain mean to wally. and i say this with the two of them as my TOP FAVE CHARS.and don’t get me STARTED on the best char on the entire team, KALDUR’AHM!!!! who was shit on by EVERYONE– fandom and plot, alike. actually, i do recall in my last rewatch starting two tallies of everytime kaldur was DISRESPECTED and TREATED LIKE GARBAGE BY TEEN AND ADULT CHARS, versus everytime he was treated respectfully. this boy was BRUTALIZED through s1.m’gann and conner, too– a cute concept, but borderline cringey, even creepy, at times. i was rooting for supermartian. i was. but it was like the writers didn’t know how to write a slowburn. the idea was honestly better on paper than in execution.

the YJ spinoff comics filled in a lot of these gaps, i’ll admit. it explored the chars, their relationships, and their behavior in ways the show seemingly didn’t have time to do, and i LOVE the spinoff series. but i also firmly believe that you shouldn’t need a second media to fix the first. it’s capitalistic and no fun.

through the duration of the show, there were also issues such as the hiatuses. i don’t recall them coming with much warning at a time, nor sticking to much of a schedule. i don’t actually remember what they were for, either. but, before and after each of (three?? was it three?) hiatuses, the showrunners would introduce a new character during a new arc, give said character some liners or plot fodder, and do away with them for the rest of the season ( i.e Rocket, Zatanna, Garth and Tula, etc. ).

i have some other, nitpickier issues– why was wally That Way, why was clark Like That, how come bruce was the ENABLER the entire time, etc– but many can be argued as whether they affected the show as a whole or not.my actual biggest problem was the direction.the director.Greg Weisman.bc idk what the hell he was doing half the time, and i don’t think he knew, either. the writing wasn’t GREAT, but at least it was consistent. Weisman truly had a marketable property, a fan favorite, and one of CN’s best running shows at the time. but between the hiatuses, the writing’s faults, the insufficient character development, and a HUGE ego thanks to his fanbase, Weisman was unable to uphold the integrity of his show. there was both fan-pandering, AS WELL AS consciously going AGAINST fans’ wishes. there was that whole “Ask Greg”-thing, too, where he would get back to a fan once every blue moon and answer background questions about the show’s universe, which became a scene of hot debate. Greg Weisman became the JK Rowling of DC, and lost a lot of my respect with his lack of damage control, and impulse control.

then, with the very inception of the show– and i don’t actually know if i can blame weisman for this or not, but i wanna know who pitched it, otherwise– the show’s CONCEPT. why was Young Justice made with this particular cast of characters, cherrypicked through DC history, aged down or revamped or just cut-and-pasted where they didn’t fit? why was its concept, “COVERT TEAM OF ADOLESCENTS WITH SUPERPOWERS WORKING TOGETHER WITH LACK OF SUPERVISION”? why was the show called “Young Justice” when what they wanted was the TT v3 comics? WHY DID WE NEED TO TURN SUPERMAN INTO THE UNAVAILABLE-FATHER TROPE????? questions that will forever remain unanswered. that’s a lie, i can answer most of them, myself.but all in all, a show with great potential that failed in execution.

season 2, i actually enjoyed more than season 1– it felt like there was more of a handle on the story and cast, alike. did i approve of season 2 and what went down? debatable. but that’s a very subjective view. objectively, season 2 flowed better than season 1, but still didn’t follow through on subplots, nor resolved relationships or even characterization ( m’gann, girl what the fuck?? ). very little team bonding, save for, once again, two chars out of the whole team. again, another season of SO much potential, but one that fell short.

its pros, however– i really enjoyed the darker themes, getting darker as time went on. there was a lot of tragedy in s2, and different perspectives and walks of life to watch through different lenses. a much more diverse cast, and very different conflicts to tackle. i was impressed. i don’t think all the controversies were resolved, but i also wasn’t quite as upset that they weren’t; open-ended conflict is frustrating, but is a great lead-in to another season.

————which, for better or for worse, we weren’t supposed to have.i personally would’ve rather the show ended there, not quite on a high note ( are u fucking kidding me fjaoisdfjoaifio waLLY, this was during the n52, too ), but with a concrete END. of course there was more to explore, the world they’d built was a big one, but we didn’t need to.

i was literally just yesterday chatting w my sis, bc after school lets out, we wanna watch season 3. i really do. i’m upset that there is one, but i do wanna know what happens to my faves. and, on top of that, i’ve been meaning to do one BIG rewatch, anyways, to get me set up for s3. as a student of film, it’s a huge philosophy of mine to rewatch EVERYTHING and go in with the intent of giving it a fresh start and a clean slate– both medias i love, and medias i hate. it’s important to analyze pop culture critically, and even things that aren’t good can still be enjoyable.

for me, Young Justice wasn’t a phenomenal show to begin with, from its technological side to its creative team to its politics, and i stopped enjoying it pretty early on. but, that isn’t to say it didn’t accomplish GREAT things, and isn’t UN-enjoyable; it has its moments. also i would DIE for most of the cast, i fucking love the characters.

i don’t think anyone is wrong for liking Young Justice. i try to stay in the loop about it, and form new opinions based on whatever information is out there until i can get ahold of the source material. and, i do like aspects of the show. but ultimately, it just isn’t my cup of tea. 

#Anonymous #LONG post under read more #rambley. sorry about that it's 1 AM

[blazehedgehog]

What do you think of Thundercats: Roar?

It kind of bugs me how many people are jumping to that show’s defense. Not because I personally think it will be a bad show; I don’t have much of a stake in the Thundercats race. I apparently loved the show when I was 4 or 5 years old, to the point where I had a Liono action figure with the plug in his back and the light up eyes.

But I was too young to still remember anything about it nowadays, outside of that blooper reel that gets passed around. It was probably just a glorified toy commercial, just like a lot of the other bad cartoons we loved in the 80′s.

I also did not watch the 2011 reboot by Studio 4°C – that’s a combination of me just straight up not watching much actual TV these days, and the fact that Cartoon Network apparently buried the show pretty hard on the schedule. It sounds like even if you wanted to watch it, finding out when it was on was nearly impossible (a problem some Cartoon Network shows still face, seven years later)

The best I can really muster is I picked out an 80′s-era Thundercats comic from the “freebie” pile at a flea market once. Even then, I’ve never actually read it. (It’s this one.)

So, really: I don’t care tons about Thundercats.

But there’s a lot of people perched on high horses suddenly moaning about the “unwashed masses” who would dare complain about a children’s cartoon. “Look at how I hold my nose in the air! I’d never be caught DEAD doing such a thing! I LIKE the new Thundercats, because that’s what big strong mature adults with NUANCED OPINIONS do! Unlike you PLEBS!”

And that’s basically as gross as the people they’re complaining about, if you ask me. Because, like:

The first point these people make is that it’s “for children” and adults shouldn’t care. If that’s the case, why did they go through the trouble of reviving an old, dead franchise? Kids today don’t know what Thundercats are. Kids in 2011 didn’t know what Thundercats were. You could leave the franchise buried and create an entirely new show and kids wouldn’t know the difference. If you’re not going to service fans of the original, then why are you going through the trouble of digging it up at all? It’s a waste. 

At this point we should also just stop putting up the defense that “because it’s for kids, adults aren’t allowed to complain about it.” Cartoons have been for more than just kids for a while now – with shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Adventure Time, Steven Universe and more, we’ve been deep in the era of the “cross-generational” cartoon for more than a few years. The idea that “once you grow up, you stop watching cartoons” died a lot longer ago than I think some people realize. And as these shows have proven, you actually get a lot of wiggle room for what can still be considered a kids show while still staying enjoyable for older viewers. I don’t think anyone is seriously asking for gore and sex in Thundercats!

Another point I’ve seen raised is that this is also what’s happened to other franchises, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Transformers. That’s true – but most of those examples are of things that have had near-constant representation. We’re coming up on our sixth incarnation of the Ninja Turtles on TV (seven, if you count the anime separately from the 1987 show), and that’s not even counting the different movies and comics that represent them. The turtles are also kind of known for having a multiverse, facilitating wildly different versions of those characters. The same could be said for Transformers. That’s not true of Thundercats. You had the original 80′s series and you had the failed 2011 anime reboot. Full stop. Does that really mean it’s time to reinvent the wheel? Given how upset some people apparently are, probably not. 

I’ve also seen some people say that “at least it’s something new in the franchise.” Is “new” a substitute for “good,” now? If that’s the case, every Sonic game ever made must be great.  

The most typical follow up to the previous point is usually, “Don’t judge it too early.” And my stance has always been: if they’re showing trailers, if they’re out there doing promotion, then there is literally no better time to judge something, because they’re trying to sell it to you. You have every right as a consumer to refuse that. If something smells bad, there is no reason you actually have to taste it to validate your revulsion.  

Now, of course, there are some people on the production staff that are getting death threats over this show. That sucks! But also the internet has started using “death threats” as some kind of a measuring stick for how awful nerds are, and that’s kind of weird to me. A lot of those death threats are probably coming from the types of reddit/channer people who tell their friends “kill yourself” on a daily basis because they think being edgy is funny. Grognards who think that disrespecting personal boundaries equates to humor is nothing new, and they should be rightfully ignored, not glorified. In a sense, putting a spotlight on them is giving them exactly what they want (attention). They may seem like the loudest voices in the room, but they are also a minority. Never forget that.

Similarly, just because someone does not like Thundercats Roar does not also make them part of the grognard team.

Personally, I don’t like the look of Thundercats Roar. The stylistic trend (the so called “calarts” or “toonboom” style) was pretty obvious a few years ago, but it genuinely did not bother me because the shows produced in that style (Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, OKKO, etc.) seemed to be very beloved. Now, seeing it applied to Thundercats, that’s what makes me start rolling my eyes, because it clearly does not fit in with what came before it. That’s a bad first impression.

If you like the new Thundercats, that’s fine. But you shouldn’t be using that as a platform to pitch yourself as better than those who don’t like it.

#questions #cartoon network #thundercats #calarts #steven universe #gravity falls #gumball #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt #transformers #cartoons #Anonymous #question

[wxldchxld]

OOC Rant: 

So rather than spend my day finishing drafts on all my blogs and working on completing Victarion’s setup, I binged the Umbrella Academy. Mostly because I was (surprise surprise) an enormous MCR fan as a teenager, and in fact I met my first girlfriend through their online MCR forum, which I frequented regularly. I was kind of a die hard. 

For the most part I was really pleased with UA though I have to say that’s mostly because it’s so pretty. Like a lot of shows try to make shit dark and edgy by using dim lighting and shit, but the entire first season was filled with beautiful, surreal imagery that made it very engaging. And while I was disappointed that they didn’t even begin or end with one MCR song, the music was brilliant. Starting out with violin shit from Phantom of the Opera? Oh that shit is my JAM. I felt in general they had strong characters and actors that did pretty well. Especially Ellen Page,  Emmy Raver-Lampman, and Aidan Gallagher (and child actors usually annoy the SHIT out of me). Were there cliches? Yes. Was is really cheesy in some places? Yes. But... superhero shit is so overworked rn that there was no way it wouldn’t be, and I don’t think that was what GW was even going for. He didn’t want 100 percent original. He just wanted to see the genre through his own “lens” as he put it.

So there was a lot I liked. Which I need to point out because as a big MCR fan, I know what they’re like and I don’t want this to turn into a bloodbath if somehow it makes its way into the tags.

What I didn’t like was the LGBTQ representation. Well---that and the weird adopted brother/sister romance but that’s beside the point. The point is that I was really shocked by Klaus. Certain scenes, especially in the first episode, imply that he’s a gender fluid character, and it’s later explicitly shown that he prefers relationships with men (though we haven’t been told he’s explicitly gay as far as I know). He’s also a drug addict, family fuck up, comic relief, tragic-sassy-scene-kid cliche. And he’s the only LGBT representation we get on this show. That’s not ok.

First off, I didn’t read the comics, and I don’t plan to because I find comics really annoying to read anyway. I don’t know if he was in relationships with men in the comics, and I don’t care. So don’t give me bullshit over “they’re staying true to the source material.” It doesn’t matter if he was gay/bi/pan in the original series, it doesn’t matter if that was ok when it was written, all that matters is that right now in the current climate, LGBTQ people don’t want the fuck up character to be their only representation in a show/book/movie.

Second, this could have very easily been solved by just---adding more representation. Rather than Patrick, Allison could have been in a failed relationship with another woman, and they could have still done her weird romance arc with Luther. Rather than the dude whose name I literally don’t remember because his character was so forgettable, Vanya could have been seduced and manipulated by another woman. Rather than the sexy female cop, it could have just as easily been a sexy male/trans/nonbianary cop Diego dated and it wouldn’t have mattered. This problem was an easy fix. Hell Page is a lesbian woman!!! She would have been willing to play that part, I’m sure. 

Third, this feels really fetishy. I can already see the straight girls writing horrible hurt/comfort category yoai bullshit on Ao3 and if it hasn’t started I’m positive it will. Do you know why? Because Klaus is the type of character they fetishize. Look at Bucky Barnes, look at Loki, look at the people in super hero movies that are the focus of those fics and tell me that Klaus doesn’t sit at the apex of that category. It’s not ok. 

Look I’m sure that Klaus’ character has something to do with Gerard’s own struggle with gender identity, and I understand the circumstances that surrounded him as he was writing UA that likely influenced the character that came out of it. Because if he doesn’t scream Black Parade I don’t fuckin know what does. But that doesn’t make it ok that he’s the only LGBTQ representation in the show.

What scares me is that while I haven’t looked at any official numbers I can see this show having a large teenage audience, as well as the older audience that likely tuned in for similar reasons that I did. The visuals, the characterization, the plot, it’s all very appealing to a teenage audience. And we need to be careful how we portray people in minority communities on shows with large teenage demographics.  

This character is literally plagued by tortured spirits. That’s not ok when you have people who believe LGBTQ kids have demons inside of them or are literally mentally ill. I was told the latter growing up and it did serious damage to me as a person. This sort of material is the stuff facebook moms and pastors quote mine for their sermons that they use to indoctrinate the parents of young children. This stuff is perfect for their fear mongering. 

I’m not going to touch on it in depth because this post is about LGBTQ rep specifically, but the way they portrayed his drug habit was also really upsetting to see. Addiction is a disease that can devastate lives and the “if you just suck it up and get over it” message really disgusted me. Again, it sends a bad message to kids that might be in a situation where they’re using drugs. You don’t just tie someone up in an attic to go through that shit by themselves. It’s very dangerous.

And yes, Klaus got sober by the end of the season, which was great, but I don’t have any hopes that he’ll stay that way or that his dynamic in his own family will change, and that doesn’t change the fact that they already spent a whole season like this.

Overall I’m really disappointed that I don’t see more people angry about this. I’m also really disappointed in Gerard Way, who I would have thought would have been more sensitive to these sorts of issues. And I’m shocked that Ellen Page, as vocal as she is about LGBTQ issues hasn’t said anything about how potentially harmful how this character is portrayed is.

#ooc #mun rant #with my last few hours with wifi i'm choosing to go off #very mature and productive of me #umbrella academy spoilers #idk if this needs a spoiler tag bc #i don't feel like i spoiled anything

[fardf150]

okay, i think i got most of it. i'm a little hazy on the details, but this is what i can remember about homestuck being Problematic.

so, for context, homestuck was a webcomic started in 2009. it ended in 2016. especially in the earlier parts, it can get very "edgy" in humour. this is not a comprehensive list of shit that's problematic about the comic, just what i remember, and what's fresh in my mind since i'm re-reading it for a Project. it was very popular in the early 2010s, especially on tumblr (i was part of the fandom when i was a teenager, and despite its problematic aspects, i do still have a lot of nostalgia for the community aspects of it)

there's some examples of "autistic" being used as an insult. in context, it kinda makes sense since it's a race of trolls based off... well, internet trolls. but is still pretty gross to a lot of people, so there's that.

iirc there's quite a few examples of homophobic slurs in the comic. again, later it's understood that the character that said them did it because he was confused about his own sexuality, but still pretty gross.

there's a whole ass character in the comic created to make fun of "sjws", going so far as to have a whistle he blows whenever he gets "triggered"

the main human kids are "aracial", but in one panel where they're drawn as being White, one of them says that they were feeling "caucasian". this was later changed to say "peachy" instead, but yeah that happened.

there's this one racist stereotype of a character, that's basically just the "sexy japanese schoolgirl", also gross as hell.

i can't confirm this since i haven't gotten to that part in the comic yet, but i'm like 99% sure there was lynching imagery in it too.

aside from this, when a popular youtuber made a video about the history of homestuck, the people behind homestuck threatened legal action against her. there's also a load of shit with some patreon controversies and the like, which are covered in said video (a brief history of homestuck, by sarah z. the legal shit is also explained in the follow-up video homestuck sent me a legal threat, and then it got worse)

tl;dr, homestuck is a webcomic that has a kinda shitty creator and definitely fell victim to the trends of the time that it was created. i wouldn't say it's any more problematic than a lot of the other popular media at the time, and it was actually hugely comforting for a lot of young queer people at the time since it openly showed same-sex relationships. i'm sure there's more i could dig up about it, but that's what i know. hope it helped!

i don't know how to respond to most of that but. thank you :)

#that cleared some things up but i'm now more confused about hs than ever #sounds... uncomfortable but not completely irredeemable

[dannyphantomrpg]

Visual Aid: 14 PHAN-TASTIC Facts About Danny Phantom!

Edit: I have no idea why tumblr is flipping out. If you click to Keep Reading, the punctuation is fixed. ???

Hey Hart Phans! I'm going ghost! Or it's "goin’" without the "g". Goin' Ghost. I'm goin’ ghost! You guys like this? Is this is a cool hoodie or what? Check this out. This is based on my Danny Phantom 10 Years Later design. And if you're good, if you're really nice and leave a nice comment in the comment section below and give me a like or subscribe, I just might leave a link in the description below so you can get one of these yourself.

If anyone has the link to the 10YL hoodie, I’ll leave it here.

Fourteen years ago, this week, Danny Phantom premiered on Nickelodeon. So we're gonna do 14 awesome things about Danny Phantom.

Number one, it's a show about teenagers. Danny, Sam, and Tucker - all teenagers in a high school. A lot of shows centered around kids in elementary school, kids in preschool, but not a lot centered around a high school. And I think a lot of kids in their teenage years when they first encounter Danny Phantom really responded to it really well because Danny was going through the same things they were going through, you know? Dealing with girls, dealing with boys, the high school dance, bullies, all those sorts of things. Danny Fenton was going through the same things a lot of the audience was going through. I think that's really why Danny Phantom resonated with a lot of kids and why it still resonated with a lot of teenagers today.

Number two, relationships. Danny Phantom is an awesome show chock full of relationships. And what's cool about that is, you know, everybody loves great characters who have great relationships because that makes it easier for the audience to relate to them. Danny's relationship to Jazz. She loves him but treats him like a little brother until she finds out he's got ghost powers and then she wants to be part of his super team. Danny's nerd relationship with Tucker. They're the best of friends. Danny's relationship to his bumbling, ghost-fighting parents who don't realize that their son is the ultimate ghost prize they've been searching for. And finally, Danny's relationship to Sam. I mean, Sam and Danny start off as really good, close friends and as the show builds, their relationship builds as well. And it finally ends in Phantom Planted where they fly off into the sunset and we're all left wondering, do they get married? Does this relationship continue? What happens to Danny and Sam? And that's awesome. Cause people want to know. Do you want to know? Let me know in the comment section below.

Number three, ghost powers! I mean, how many cool characters you can think of have ghost powers? I can name a few. There's Deadman, from DC Comics, he could sort of take over people's bodies, and he was dead. There's The Spectre from DC Comics who's a big, huge, otherworldly ghost no one can really relate to, but he's kind of cool, I guess. There's Phantom Girl from Legion of Superheroes who... no one's really ever heard of. There's Casper the Friendly Ghost, who... is friendly. And then there's Ghost Rider who rides a motorcycle and isn't really a ghost. He's got, like, a flaming skull head and a chain, so anyway. But Danny had all these cool powers. He had plasma blasts, he had a ghostly chill, and could shoot cold out of his hands because ghosts give you a chill up your spine. He could turn intangible and go through walls, he could grab you and turn you intangible and pull you through walls. All these really cool things and not a lot of other characters have had powers as cool as Danny Phantom.

And in Danny Phantom, we had a rule. We were writing the show that none of the ghosts would be dead people. We never wanted to be the ghost of a dead person. We wanted the ghosts to be creatures from another dimension that could take the shape of a human, could take the shape of something, but they would never be a deceased person's spirit. Like, you'll never see Danny Phantom fighting the ghost of Elvis Presley or the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. I should, we should make a cartoon where Lincoln fights Elvis. Let's write that down! Let's do that!

Number four, Danny's parents. And the fact that they don't know that their own son is the ultimate ghost prize they've been looking for. I mean, let's face it. Jack and Maddie Fenton are awesome. They love each other, they're people of action, they, they kick ghost butt all the time, they got amazing weapons. But the one thing they can't seem to figure out is how to catch a ghost and, number two, that their own son is the ultimate ghost that they've been looking for.

Number five, the Box Ghost! I am the Box Ghost! Actually, not just the Box Ghost, but all of the Danny Phantom ghost villains. Let's face it, without a good group of villains, a hero and a show, or comic or whatever, doesn't have a really great chance to shine, and Danny Phantom's villains really give him a lot to play off of. From the comedy of the Box Ghost, to the sultriness and the musicality of Ember, to the sinisterness of the ultimately deadly Vlad Plasmius, and the action and edginess of Skulker. All of these villains really, really gave Danny Phantom this ultimate ability to become an awesome hero and to give the audience something to really, really be excited about and someone to root for.

Number six, the songs. From the opening notes of the Danny Phantom theme song *hums*, you knew that was Danny Phantom. The end credit music is amazing. The music inside the show, where Danny's fighting a ghost, or when a relationship gets really tender, there's a tender moment. The music there is amazing, too. Plus, to top it all off, the amazing song by Ember "Remember" was a great song. People just loved that song and have really responded to it really well. So I think Danny Phantom didn't old have some of the best music in cartoons, but in all of television.

Number seven, the costume. Starting off with just a black jumpsuit, white boots, white gloves, white belt. We ended up adding a logo into the costume, and I think adding that awesome cool D with the ghostly tail and the P inside of it, elevated that simple, normal costume of Danny's in the first season to one of the most iconic superhero costumes of all time.

Number eight, the Ghost Zone. The Ghost Zone gave Danny a whole other dimension, pardon the pun. I mean, not only does Danny Phantom have to fight ghosts in our world, but then we have him the Ghost Zone where he's got to go fight ghosts there are well. And the awesome thing about the Ghost Zone was that we could give Danny pretty much anything we wanted to in the Ghost Zone. It was really a world with no rules. There were some rules. But what was cool about it, we could have anything we wanted to in there. We could have Frostbite's frozen home world, we could have the Ghostwriter's Library, we could have Skulker's island where he chased Danny and Valerie Grey. We could have doors that opened up into any dimension, in any time period that we wanted to. It just really expanded Danny Phantom from being a city-based superhero show to a dimensionally-based superhero show.

Number nine, superhero ideas. Now, Danny Phantom was one of those shows that took a lot of the classic superhero ideas and kind of turned them a little bit inside out and used them in their own way. For example, the secret identity. Danny Phantom had a secret identity like Clark Kent, or Bruce Wayne, or Peter Parker, but the interesting thing is all of Danny's villains pretty much knew his secret identity. And none of Danny's family did. Also, comedic versus sinister moments. Danny Phantom was a great show, had examples of being funny one second and then being ultimately scary and having lives at stake the next. For example, in The Ultimate Enemy, Danny fights Box Lunch, who is the daughter of the Box Ghost and the Lunch Lady one minute, And then the next minute, he's fighting the ultimate bad, evil future version of himself, Dark Danny, from the future. It was a great show and taking those sort of classic superhero ideas and using it in its own way, keeping those ideas pure, but making it it's very own.

Number ten, story length. We watch a half-hour cartoon show, you can tell one one story, have a commercial, and tell another story. Two eleven minutes in the half hour because we did eight minutes for commercials. Little behind the scenes stuff there. But Danny Phantom was one of the first shows ever that told its stories in 22 minutes. We had a long time to tell our story so we'd have the first part of the story, and then an act break, and then the last part of the story. Danny Phantom even had a cold open before the titles. I don't think I've seen a cartoon like that ever since.

Number eleven, the serialized storytelling in Danny Phantom. What does that mean? Well, basically what it means is you'd watch one episode of Danny Phantom, no problem. It made sense. Watch another one, that one makes sense too. But if you watch all the episodes of Danny Phantom in order, they're all connected in some way. Each episode ties into the next because we're always constantly building the story, the characters, and the world as the show goes on. And that was unique back then, that wasn't really done a lot back then. So I think Danny Phantom really paved the way for a lot more serialized cartoons to come out after it.

Number twelve, the voice acting on Danny Phantom. I mean, not only did Danny Phantom have amazing character concepts, and amazing character designs, but the voice acting, I think, brought the characters up to a whole new level. Like, David Kaufman as Danny Phantom, Rob Paulson as Jack Fenton and Technus, Ricky D'Shon Collins as Tucker, Colleen O'Shaughnessy as Jazz Fenton, Tara Strong as Ember McLean, Martin Mull as Vlad Plasmius, Eric Roberts as the Ultimate Enemy Dark Danny from the future, Jon Cryer as Freakshow, and the list goes on and on and on. These characters not only look great, not only written great, but the voice acting brought them up to an incredible level that, I think, that audience still responds to today. And that's why people love the characters of Danny Phantom.

Number thirteen, the awesome phans - P-H-A-N-S. The Dany Phantom phans are legion. They are unbelievable. you're all awesome, and you're the reason this show still lives on and on and on and on. From the original episodes of Danny Phantom on Nickelodeon to my videos, Danny Phantom 10 Years Later, all the stuff I do with Danny Phantom here on the channel. You guys are what makes Danny Phantom special because you will not let the show go away. And I'm here with you 100%. I want Danny Phantom to live on as long as you do. So keep sending me requests, keep letting me know what you want to see as far as Danny Phantom goes. We'll keep doing amazing stuff and keep making you guys happy because Danny Phantom deserves to go on, and you guys deserve to see more.

Ok, and the fourteenth awesome thing about Danny Phantom is... Young Danny Fenton, he was just fourteen. What? Did I say young? That's right, I said "young". A lot of you think it's "Yo Danny Fenton". It's not. It's "young". How do I know this? Cause I wrote the theme song. So I know, and I wrote "Young Danny Fenton", that's what it is. It is "Young Danny Fenton, he was just fourteen". Did I blow your mind? I blew your mind, didn't I? I didn't mean to.

Hey, I'm so glad you guys are phans - P-H-A-N-S - happy 14th Danaversary, to Danny Phantom

#Danny Phantom #14 PHAN-TASTIC Facts About Danny Phantom! #Butch Hartman #reference #these aren't facts #these are opinions #serisouly dude go watch your own show #you listed fourteen facts and got fifteen of them wrong #is he seriously taking credit for cold openings and serialization? #danny phantom isn't really a serial show #he talks like a sociopath! #it's young not yo #i can't believe that's the hill he's going to die on #he dedicated an entire fact to it!

[thattimdrakeguy]

New 52 Teen Titans issue 2 - It’s still a load of feces

Immature I know, but I’m tired, and I’m only reading this, because it’s like The Room to me anyways.

So the first issue of New 52 Teen Titans was total trash right? Like almost bafflingly out of character for the core four.

Thankfully though, this issue, issue two, isn’t as bad.

I mean it’s still bad, but not as. Like thankfully “Tim” didn’t blow up a freaking building up in this issue.

(Tim’s in quotations, because this is no Tim of mine)

It’s still total garbage though.

A large part of the reason this issue isn’t even as bad though is honestly just because not as much happens in it. Probably for the best, because if they did more id probably be more trashy.

After a quick page of Bart (that I’m not showing, cuz I’m not gonna bother, nothing happens) they cut straight to the chase.

Sexualizing teenagers, to make sure you know, that this comic series is EDGY, and that this new Cassie is supposed to be SEXY and HOT, because I’m not honestly sure why. Just, they wanted to sexualize her, either for Lobdell himself (possibly unintentionally), or for a teen boy audience, or maybe even gross men in general, possibly all and more.

They took the tomboy Cassie, and made her a ‘blonde bombshell’ type of character. Which is the total opposite of the purpose of the character. 

Sadly, and awkwardly though, despite how that scene is out of character (or arguably not since these are rebooted versions of the characters, but for the sake of simplify I’m just gonna say out of character, because they don’t act like the versions most people care about, and it’s a detriment to the enjoyment of the comic), this is the only time I like how Tim is drawn so far, because he looks like Elliot from E.T, and I think that’s cute.

Then they continue on within this same page for more total 180 stuff with the characters-

Like remember the scrappy little tomboy go getter? She’s apparently notably girly now.

Stuff like this makes me question if Lobdell either knew how the characters were and wanted to change it for whatever reason, or if he really just didn’t know the characters before taking them on. Maybe someone told him to go the total opposite with the characters though.

There’s only another singular page with Kon again (I guess that’s more than issue 2 of Wonder Comics Young Justice, but at least that Conner acted like himself most of the time).

Instead of the bombastic, rebellious, punk, flirt, we have a numb to the emotion, stalker, because no one acts like themselves in this comic.

“Tim” starts closely coming off like an incel (maybe this is were all those comments about him being one come from. Gotta question how those guys aren’t aware that maybe the Tim that blew up a building wasn’t in character though. Like come on, now), and it’s borderline creepy, because, what did you exactly expect “Tim”? You didn’t do anything to exactly woo her, or anything remotely flirty or attractive. What was she gonna call you?

Later on in his narration too it says this:

Like you haven’t fallen in love with her already? What’s with all the stuff about you being upset you’re only a “good guy” then for? Why do you keep calling her beautiful, and (possibly, cuz it is vague) starring at her chest if you don’t have a crush on her? Do you do this with every girl? I mean it’s natural for teens to be attracted to people, but ya don’t normally go into being upset they aren’t attracted to you as well unless you already have a crush on them.

New 52 Tim really wreaks of trying WAY too hard to make him seem cool though, like he’s vaguely a creep (if not just plain a creep) with the occasionally creepy narration (dunno if that’s intentionally creepy though), but the way they try to make him more like a teenage Batman sort of sets the idea up that he’s supposed to be cool.

He’s tons more confident, and talented, strategic compared to normal Tim at this point in his superhero life. “Tim” knows so much stuff about people, he travels around a lot, he’s rich, he’s a friggin’ natural. This isn’t the relatable dork that Tim was made to be.

It’s like they took the shell of Red Robin era Tim, stripped out the inside, and repainted him to look like something Rob Liefeld would design

In general it feels like a comic that feels like it was made by people who didn’t like the characters and decided to ‘fix’ them. When really the characters just needed a writer that actually cared about them.

Either “Tim”’s an actual creep (which they never delve that much into that I can remember, not like I read the series a lot), or Cassie has an ego about her body.

What would Pre-New 52 Tim say about these actions if the first there is true?

Like you’re going down a line “Tim” that I’m not too fond of. Keep it to yourself, Mister. You’re just lucky they retconned that Trigon stuff to not be as bad as it seemed.

--

I tried finding something good, but the best they got is “Tim” wearing a Green Lantern shirt, because that at least implies he’s a fanboy of some sort. Which is the closest this Tim gets to being in-character.

He’s sort of nice to Skitter, but it still looks like he’s rolling his eyes, and is a bit sort of, brick-wall-ish, as a weird way of saying it. He isn’t really going out of his way to be nice, it’s the sort of nice for his own convenience kind of nice. So that isn’t too Tim-esque really.

At least this one was uneventful I suppose.

#Tim Drake #Red Robin #Cassie Sandsmark #Wonder Girl #DC Comics #Core Four #Teen Titans #New 52 #Kon-El #Superboy