#and then one named John cause he's like a Generic Action Hero Man

[pinkpuffballdude]

E and H for OC alphabet soup!

anon. I'm losing my mind actually. I have Zero ocs with either an H name or an E name. what the fuck.

#I had to open a notepad doc and write them down AND THERE'S NONE. QUE. #I HAVE SO MANY C AND K AND J ONES!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! #two Seperate ocs named a variation on Jack. goddamn. #and then one named John cause he's like a Generic Action Hero Man #he's an asshole I love him #anon I'm so sorry I'm tempted to make a dude and name him Ethan just for you #....... actually. #asked #*Man springs fully formed in my mind* #I need a plot for this man I'll come back to this

[historyhermann]

Supa Team 4 Season 2 Spoiler-Filled Review

Supa Team 4 is a computer-generated superhero action-comedy series. Malenga Mulendema is the series creator and co-executive producer. Trigger Fish Animation Studios, known for the recent animated series Kiya and the Kimoja Heroes, and Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, and various television specials and films. The first season was released in July 2023.

Reprinted from Pop Culture Maniacs and Wayback Machine. This was the sixty-second article I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs. This post was originally published on January 14, 2024.

The second season picks up where the first one left off. The four protagonists (Temwe Chiti, Komana Mwinga, Zikomo "Zee" Phiri, and Monde Wamunyima) are trapped in an abandoned mine. They are confronted by Bad Magz (voiced by John McMillian) and fellow villain Prof. Greenthumbs (voiced by Abena Ayivor), with the former angry they keep ruining his plans. Mama K (voiced by Pamela Nomvete) can't get in touch with Team 4 and thinks the Principal Nkwashi (voiced by voiced by Abubakar Salim) is up to something, until he admits he only wants to help Temwe (voiced by Kimani Arthur). The heroes use makeshift weapons and detain Prof. Greenthumbs. Mama K helps them escape, but not before Bad Magz photographs the van. Later, his assistant Ms. Prudent confirms that Zambinite was there. He is intrigued by the ring on Mama K's hand. And that's only the first episode!

The kidnapping of the four protagonists impacts all of them. It may have heightened Temwe's jealously toward Zee (voiced by Nancy Sekhokoane). The latter results in them "switching places," so they can recognize each other's struggles. There is no doubt that the kidnapping deeply impacted Komana (voiced by Zowa Ngwira). Later, she is comforted by Monde (voiced by Namisa Mdlalose). More directly, photographic analysis causes Bad Magz to track down Chi (voiced by Chi Mhende), a blind man who is Mama K's comrade, and snatch a computer, blueprints, and disc, even as he lets Chi flee. Also, this episode shows Temwe and Zee sympathizing with each other's struggles. That's something you don't always see in TV series.

Bad Magz is one of the most devious villains. His public form, Lee Magadzee, is outwardly an African nationalist who wants to return power to "the people." Later, he flirts with Monde's sister, Likando (voiced by Chipo Chung), who holds him to his promise to end load shedding. Putting aside his somewhat developed hacking skills, he can be harsh toward his subordinates. For instance, Alley Gator (voiced by Yinka Awoni), finds the Zambinite for him. However, Alley Gator wants to be with Prof. Greenthumbs instead.

The actions of Team 4, in Supa Team 4, are reactive. They resembling the Pretty Cure in the franchise of the same name. Team 4 fight villains, save people from sinkholes (called by Ally Gator), and promise to support one another. They don't face the one behind everything. Bad Magz is not a villain equivalent of Bell in Power of Hope: PreCure Full Bloom, a mysterious guardian angel who traveled back in time to prevent a town from being destroyed by humanity. The consequences of his actions matter little to him. He agrees to freeze Zambinite because it is combustible. This mineral gives off a bad smell before energy is extracted. He ignores Pro. Greenthumbs before she points out the hazardous and toxic waste byproduct.

Bad Magz's harsh managerial techniques bleed over into his feelings for others. In the fifth episode, he plans to go on a date with Komana's sister, Likando, which the girls of Team 4 are happy for. But he stands her up! This makes her suspicious of him (she only knows him in his public persona of Lee), and his secrets, and mysteries. She even points out that secrets, like those of powerful people, always get out. This causes Komana to investigate and discover that Storm Drain (voiced by Ashley Zhangazha) is freezing the Zambinite.

Komana is the first one, of Team 4, to be openly suspicious of Bad Magz's public persona. Monde refuses to believe her. Likando's love of Lee causes her to assist him, throwing her logic out the window. This directly parallels Click. He is unhealthily obsessed with Temwe after the third episode. Clearly, the lesson is that obsession with other people can cause you to lose sight of what is important. Later in Supa Team 4, this all comes to a head, for Bad Magz, Komana, and Team 4.

Bad Magz sees everyone as toys to be manipulated. He says gaining control of the Mayor will be "automatic" with Likando's trust. In his public persona of Lee, he promotes "Magz Power" as the "solution" to the power cuts in Lusaka. He claims it will end load shedding and blackouts. He challenges his scholarship recipients to sign up, as many people as possible, for his Magz Power system, saying those who bring back the most signatures get an internship at his corporation. This too-good-to-be-true presentation makes Komana a willing pawn in his scheme. She is unaware that this power source has toxic waste as a byproduct (conveniently not mentioned by Lee). She sees the internship as a way to advance her own career.

The sixth episode is one of the best in Supa Team 4. There's a parallel between Komana's dad suffering from asthma and Lee turning on his "alternate energy source" which fills Lusaka with light. In one case, he is suffering from a chronic health condition. In the latter, Lee is hiding the truth behind an action which casts him as a "savior." Whether he is directly aware of it or not, he is responsible for Alley Gator dumping toxic waste, from Zambinite processing. Written by Gloria Huweiler, and directed by Valentina Ventimiglia, this episode is outwardly cynical of demagogues. While people in the crowd chant "power to the people," Bad Magz thinks of ways to gain more power for himself. Undoubtedly, he is worse than Huey Long.

The final two episodes raise the stakes. In the first of these episodes, Komana abandons Team 4 so she can work for Lee, distressing her teammates. The remaining heroes put together the pieces. Without a doubt, they are worried about the people of Lusaka. People are coughing, scratching themselves, have rashes, and inflammation in eyes. As a result, everyone is leaving because they are sick, in what looks to be a commentary on COVID-19. This is more direct than the "missing" episode of Cleopatra in Space, entitled "Quarantine".

In episode seven, Komana wants to warn Lee about toxic waste from the Zambinite. She is shocked out of her role as a willing pawn. She learns that he lied about his past. As a result, she comes to the conclusion he is behind everything. This happens at the same time as Mama K. She sees Bad Magz in front of her before he kidnaps her. In a parallel development, the girls decide to bust into his corporation. Likando agrees to give the contract (which gives Lee full rights to the city's electric grid) to Lee personally.

In the final episode, the girls fight against Prof. Greenthumbs (and her monster). Mama K and Chi are in Lee's office. Mama K calls him a "monster" and "worse than a villain." The truth is finally revealed. His mother was in the Intelligence Agency of Zambia. His real name is Limbani. He claims that Mama K "made him" who is is today. Elsehwere, Monde reveals her hero identity for the first time to someone other than her fellow teammates: to her sister Likando. Both agree to talk about her hero identity later.

He is confronted by Team 4. They demand he turn off his power source, saying it is hurting city residents. Instead of listening to Team 4, he ignores them and continues his own agenda. He blames Mama K for causing the memory of his mother, Towela, to be erased. Following this, he places the device on Mama K's head, allowing him to access her memories. While they are horrified, Team 4 can do nothing. It is only when the memory showing Towela was mind-wiped by Chusi that he realizes his mistake. He uses the same device to restore his mom's memories. She recognizes Chi and Mama K and tearfully embraces Lee. Following this touching scene, Likando rightly punches Lee (for being a lying jerk). She has the police arrest him.

Of course, this is not the end. In a strange juxtaposition, Prof. Greenthumbs' ZambiMonster causes a cave-in, and captures Komana. I found it awkward to have this after an emotional moment which could bring you to tears. In any case, Lee shows that he is not fully a villain. To the chagrin of Prof. Greenthumbs, he saves Komana (he recognizes her voice) after Greenthumbs' monster explodes. He frames his next steps as an attempt to amend his past wrongs. He says he will do whatever he can to fix things. In a coded manner, he hopes that Komana's spirits aren't dampened. However, no one believes his declaration at face value.

In many ways, Lee's declaration is one of restorative justice. Traditional / retributive justice systems are clearly stated throughout this series. They are symbolized by police arresting villains and keeping them behind bars. Surely, there are laws that have been broken, villains who broke the laws, and methods for punishment of said lawbreakers. Lee is attempting to repair the harm caused. He knows who has been harmed and how he can repair or address those harms. In response to one of the key questions of restorative justice ("who should address or repair the harms?"), that person is clearly Lee.

Lee will likely face criminal punishment for what he did and may face his victims. He is on the road to understanding the impact of his actions on other people, taking responsibility for his actions, comprehending how he harmed people, and behaving with basic respect for others. It would allow him to become a better person. This would make Supa Team 4 one of the few series which depicts restorative justice principles, apart from Steven Universe.

The episode ends with her teammates showing their camaraderie for each other. They comfort Komana. Everyone supposedly has a "happily ever after." The villains are locked up. The corrupt mayor is arrested. Likando runs to become the next mayor of Lusaka on an anti-corruption agenda. Komana's device makes the city's energy clean, and green. It runs on Zambinite but does not produce toxic waste. The episode closes with all of them meet at headquarters where they welcome Komana back. Mama K boldly says everyone is worthy of redemption (not sure this is entirely true). Chi says that Lee is trying to right his wrongs.

I also liked that in this series, characters such as Marjory (voiced by Celine Tshika) appear to be on the road to villains. She blames everyone for ruining her party (including Team 4), and causing well-known performers, like Click, to depart. The fourth episode emphasizes this. She said she disliked Team 4, even though they saved her, and harshly commanded the majorette team. Everyone else on the team picked Monde as captain instead. This left Marjory, under a lot of pressure from Principal Nkwashi, behind.

Although Monde comes up with a new routine, she tells her fellow teammates that even though Marjory bullies them, it isn't right to bully her back. The episode ends with Monde and Marjory, having a heart-to-heart about working together as a team, and they use this to take down the hypnotizing rapper, Snap Back (voiced by Sne Dladla) and saving them all. Marjory later apologizes to Team 4.

There is the possibility of a third season. In a final scene of the episode, Chusi says he is back, after 20 years. He declares he wants Lusaka to burn. He fades away, into the smoke. It is a bit of a cliffhanger, akin to the scene with the Triumverate in High Guardian Spice, a series which should receive a second season. A second season may focus on fighting with Chusi and Lee's attempts to rebuild the city from the damage he caused. Perhaps it could resemble the aftermath-of-victory concept that is present in Steven Universe Future, where the protagonists have no villains to fight, but are trying to make the world (and universe) better.

Although I liked this series, my enthusiasm was severely dampened, as compared to season one. It came at a bad time. Other anime series such as I'm in Love with the Villainess (ended on December 19), Kizuna no Allele (ended on December 21), Spy x Family (ended December 23), Stardust Telepath (ended on December 25), and The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess (ended on December 30), were ending. This series seemed too compressed. It should have been longer.

I wish 1-2 episodes were released weekly rather than a huge episode dump on December 21. This method makes clear that Netflix cares little about the creators, fans, or anyone else who worked on Supa Team 4. Furthermore, the binge model itself is a detriment to creativity itself. It encourages crunch conditions to complete series. If two episodes had been released a week, Supa Team 4 could have finished by January 11. If one episode had released a week, it could have finished by February 8. That would have been preferable.

Supa Team 4 can be streamed on Netflix.

© 2023-2024 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

#supa team 4 #netflix #animation #covid 19 #cleopatra in space #reviews #pop culture #youtube #binge model #steven universe #high guardian spice #black animation #african animation #obsessive love #retributive justice #restorative justice #Youtube

[jojosdiaryfiles]

Thoughts on Chapter 1 of Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House."

Word count 952

For support, please don’t hesitate.

Dreams keep us sane in the face of reality. But what happens when our supposed hero turns out to be the villain? Those were my initial thoughts after reading the first sentence.

I found it peculiar that the first character introduced was Hill House. Is Hill House, despite being inanimate, the main character, as the novel is named after it? Will Hill House be the hero, the villain, the culprit, or the victim? Hill House has existed for 80 years and may continue for another 80—who built it, why is it in this specific location, and, most importantly, why was it abandoned yet kept alive? If Hill House was human, I'd see it as a character who is only alive because of its power—a stone amid woods. However, what was the cost of its power?

Dr. John Montague is the second character introduced. He studied philosophy, but his true passion is investigating supernatural occurrences. I think he'd be a deceiver who'd use any means to attain his aims while maintaining his social standing. I'm curious what he'd choose if he had to pick between his social position and his aspirations. Though a proud man, he compromised for his aims, indicating that he is more concerned with long-term goals than short-term comforts.

Dr. Montagues’ work on the cause and effects of psychic disturbances in a house brings him to Hill House. I feel like the author's stating that he thought himself careful and conscientious would be one of his undoing. The doctor seems calculative, and he knows this about himself. What if this leads to overconfidence?

Eleanor Vance has been caring for her sick mother since she was 21. I understand our obligation to our parents, but putting her life on hold for 11 years? Why didn't her mother urge her to get out there and live her life? Why couldn't she find a way to balance caring for her mother and living her life? I believe she became overly accustomed to that way of life. Aside from their unlikable traits, I believe she despises her immediate relatives because it is easier to despise them than it is to hate herself for putting herself in a cage. Freedom was what led her to Hill House.

Theodora strikes me as a free-spirited person with a sharp memory. A free-spirited woman with the moniker Theo. Her journey to Hill House was motivated by her curiosity and pettiness. I found reading about Theo and her friend's squabble amusing; they were petty, and I had no doubts that they would become friends again, if not stronger. Sadly, she left.

Luke Sanderson, I think, is a good-looking man who is a menace to his aunt but generally reasonable. The doctor perceived in Luke an instinct for self-preservation; I hope to see this in action. He is forced to go to Hill House; I guess he should have been less of a menace.

---------------------------------------

Back to Eleanor. Eleanor’s reaction is what happens when people push too much. No matter how passive a person might be, if one pushes too hard, he or she will fight back. Fighting back is part of survival; this explains why she was surprised by her own action. I am curious how their reaction will be when they find out that she took the car regardless. I think they would throw her out. A real family will be understanding, but so far they haven’t acted like one.

Eleanor is curious and observant, but I've noticed that she doesn't always make the crucial first move. I also wonder if she spent some of the time caring for her mother with her head buried in books because her imagination is tuned to a realm of fairy tales. She is remarkably innocent for a woman of 32; perhaps being cut off from the outside world may have prevented her from seeing the evil that permeates it.

I liked how Eleanor's happiness was conveyed without the author explicitly saying it. It was obvious from Eleanor's descriptions of her surroundings. She romanticized her surroundings and appeared enchanted by everything. I also observed that she was easily sidetracked and has not yet mastered the skill of compromising. She takes her commitments seriously, which could work against her. Although she believes herself to be socially awkward, she has so far been the first to strike up a conversation and is perceptive of social cues.

Why do I have the impression that I haven't seen the last of "the man"?

"Since the gate was so clearly locked—locked and double-locked, chained and barred," honestly, who in his or her right mind would try to break into a deserted, towering house in the middle of nowhere?

The last character introduced is the very cheerful, accommodating, and welcoming caretaker, Dudley (note the sarcasm). For now, while I think Dudley might be a threat, I don’t think he would be as much of a threat as he tries to be. (Empty gallons make the loudest noise.)

I wonder why her cheerful disposition did a 180 as soon as she saw Hill House. Is her subconsciousness warning her, or is she just projecting Dudley into the house?

In chapter 1, we are introduced to the characters, their lives before Hill House, and their reasons for coming to Hill House.

I'm guessing chapter 2 will be about them finally meeting and reacting to each other. I'm curious how Hill House will react to suddenly having people other than sour Dudley in it. It should be fun. I’m excited.

If you've read it, what are your thoughts?

If not, do you want to?

For support, please don’t hesitate.

#tumblr #booklr #bibliophile #books #aesthetic #horror #art #words #library #sunday #booklover #black and white #writing #pictures #reading #DrinkingWords #literature

[mark-xeen]

Missed Opportunities In GLTAS Due To It’s Cancellation

Sinestro becoming an antagonist

Razer becoming a blue lantern

Razer and Aya’s reunion

John Stewart not appearing

Also a callback or follow-up joke regarding his name.

The possibility of Katma appearing as well due to her role in both John’s and Sinestro’s stories. 

Sinestro gaining his yellow ring and forming the Sinestro Corps 

The Sinestro Corps War

Parallax appearing and a potential possession episode/arc with Hal and all the fallout it could cause for both the character and Corps itself.

More appearances and information on Ion and the other entities as well. Especially with all the craziness that can come with their possessions/influences.

Predator appearing, with maybe a more PG appropriate name, and his crazy but well-meaning actions in regards to Carol and Hal’s love life/problems.

Ion and his connection with Aya getting explored more.

Possible appearance of Ophidian and callback to Orange Lantern Hal with the revelation that Ophidian can influence people by being near or touching its battery.

Since she appeared in a GLTAS related sketch, Arisia making an appearance- hopefully without the disturbing romance Hal this time.

In fact more of the alien GLs appearing; Sodam Yat, Leezle Pon, Isamot Kol, Varth Sarn, Boodika, G’Nort, and all the others.

Kyle appearing

Alan Scott and his kids appearing.

The Spectre appearing and the potential conflict and drama he could cause while possessing Hal. For one, Razer’s past actions did blow up a planet and killed at least one person, resulting with the spirit trying to kill the latter while bonded to Hal. This could lead to an interesting and terrifying situation for both parties involved.

The Interceptor crew coming to Earth and learning/dealing with all crazy Earth stuff including

Crazy and dangerous Earth supervillains such as Hammond and Black Hand with the latter making a reappearance for Blackest Night.

The existence of meta-humans and their confusion and reaction on how some humans could have superpowers and abilities while others don’t.

Interactions and reactions to some of super heroes including:

Batman: a man who dresses as a bat to scare criminals who have no bat-like abilities or powers. Maybe a one punch reference.

Superman: the shock that there is a living Kryptonian as well as another fellow survivor of a destroyed planet for Kilowog.

Flash: Hal’s best superhero friend on Earth surprising the crew with his super speed and getting into a debate/argument on who was the “bad” influence to Hal; Sinestro or Ollie.

Green Arrow: The crew meeting Ollie and learning that Hal is the more responsible/reasonable one compared to Ollie’s even more rebellious and anti-authority attitude.

Martian Manhunter- Kilowog and other alien GLs reacting negatively towards him and revealing that Martians and GLs don’t normally get along real well.

Just them learning how much of a crazy and danger prone planet Earth is in general. 

Tom, Hal’s non-superpower bff, appearing

The Jordan family appearing and Hal’s complicated history and relationships with his family

Airwave III (Hal’s cousin) would’ve been interesting and funny as both are mask wearing superheroes and are both named Hal Jordan.

Blackest Night possibly as a season 3 or 4 arc.

Nekron and the Black Lanterns appearing

The science director becoming a villain and finally getting her undead blue butt kicked for all the stuff she did.

Evil Star and his starlings appearing with any one of his evil plans would make for a decent adaptation. Especially since one Blue Lantern’s backstory involves him which could lead to more Blue Lantern stories with Blue Lantern Razer getting involved as well.

Also his origin story involving him killing his race which could put him at odds with Kilowog

Indigo Tribe appearing and their creepy origins.

Simon Baz appearing- Seriously why hasn’t this man gotten an animated appearance yet?!

Krona reappearing as an antagonist either as an energy ghost or physical being and doing evil for science or vengeance.

More Guardian secrets and problems i.e. First Lantern, imprisoning Parallax in the Central Battery, and much more.

Alpha Lanterns and all the potential problems associated with them and the Guardians

More alternate universe traveling with Earth-2 and Earth-3 being must haves.

Hal encountering his evil counterpart Power Ring and a fight breaking out could eventually lead to…

Jessica Cruz appearing, preferably as Power Ring first then a GL. 

The Controllers appearing along with their GL knock off group, the Dark Stars. If the writers and/or directors don’t want the Guardians to turn evil, then this group is perfect for “Guardians who gone too far with establishing order” plot point as they’re the ones who make powerful and dangerous weapons that could easily fall into the wrong hands when they’re not trying to copy the Guardians.

The Qwardians as well as the possible escalation that would culminate with them working with/for Sinestro.

More Larfleeze appearances and maybe have him learn he has a long distant relative in the form of G’Nort.

#green lantern #green lantern the animated series #GLTAS

[nordleuchten]

24 Days of La Fayette - Day 8

Now, this one is interesting folks! La Fayette received fan-mail … more or less. (Note, the letter war originally written in French. The text is and the scanned copy of the letter are an English translation (probably done by John Laurens).)

From Charlotte Bentinck to La Fayette

[Hamburg 8th December 1777]

Sir

I hesitated a long time before I yielded to the extreme desire of taking a step, in appearance rather singular-to address to you who are in the remote region of America, a Letter signed with a name which will not even be known by you-but recollect Sir that Sentiment and Glory alone induced you to quit the most brilliant situation in Europe; and condemn if you dare, a person who without having it in her power to do as great actions as you, is however determined by the same principles on this occasion. The late Duke of Tremorille my Grand Uncle, was the happy spouse of Mary Magdelane de La Fayette: this seems to give me a kind of title to address you. I have lived beyond half a Century, without ever imagining that to belong by chance to the greatest princes, could for a moment flatter the vanity of a reasonable being-but to have the honor of the least proximity to such a man as you are, appears to me, I confess a glorious advantage, and whence it is impossible for me not to derive a delicious vanity. Besides you defend a cause Sir, which is that of Humanity. It does not become a female to decide the rights of Sovereigns and Nations ‑‑ we have often been accused of too great a fondness for heroes; I detest Conquerors. I abhor Tyrants, I would sacrifice the few remaining years of my life for the illustrious Washington. Ancient and modern history have made me acquainted with a number of brave Warriors; but he is the only one I have ever known, that answers the idea which I have of a truly great man who unites to genuine heroism, humanity, equity, disinterestedness; who hating war, carries it on from duty and necessity; in a word a man, whose character I should have thought the brilliant fiction of a poetical imagination; and which I must have seen in order to believe its possibility and existence. To snatch oneself at an age like yours from the bosom of felicity to go and attach oneself to such a guide, is perhaps to equal him. The Excess of Veneration, of Esteem which I cannot refuse to Virtue, forces my hand to pay him this feeble homage. We live at a time when men are scarcely sensible of great actions. I date myself from an age, in which they made more lively impressions.

America has however in our pretend Republic of Hamburg, where I reside, many zealous partisans. I have a small number of friends, people of worth, sensible minds, who resort to my house, as to the Temple of a more than Demi God; of the Hero of Liberty and Humanity -the great Washington-to bring their Vows, their fears, their admiration, their hopes to the Altar of honor and Sentiment which I have consecrated to him. You share in all these tributes of the heart. It is impossible that great minds such as yours can feel an indifference to them. But what cruel Uneasinesses, this noble and interesting cause makes us experience. We pass weeks, and months in suspense-at every instant some threatening news overpowers us-and even our consolations are uncertain. If you are touched with the Justice which I do you, if you deign to confess the honour which I have in belonging to you-if the purety of motives which animate me appear to merit some consideration-be so generous as to make acceptable to your illustrious General, the Tribute which sensible and worthy hearts Address him from the midst of another world-and which perhaps he will not judge unworthy of him. His happy fellow Citizens scarcely make more tender vows for him than we do. May it please heaven to listen to them. May a Nation still exist on earth, possessed of Liberty, happiness and Virtue.

The second Request which I take the liberty of making you, seems still more indiscreet-but the feelings with which I am animated get the better of me. I cannot resist continual anxiety for yourself, your Chief, and 13 United States, exposed to the Malice of British Brokers, & to the repetitions of Gazeteers of every country-we are in too much perturbation here. Have the charity for people who are attached to you, to acknowledge by a line the receipt of this letter which I entreat Mr. Franklin to convey to you and the answer to which may come the same way-and be so good as to order your Secretary to add a few lines, to inform me that you and the General are in good health-that all is not going to ruin, and that we need not despair. It is not Curiosity, it is Sentiment, Zeal, the purest affection which animate us-we do not desire to be informed so much as to be tranquilized. Be as careful of yourself Sir as your Courage and the noble Task which you have undertaken will allow. Remember that an amiable Wife, an illustrious family, a whole Nation expects it of you. There is perhaps only one Marquis de Ia Fayette, only a single Nobleman of his age and birth capable of doing what he has done. Does not that alone render him more pretious.

Pardon me I entreat you. My abuse of your leisure, my justification must be in your heart, or my cause is lost without resource. I have the honor to be with the most distinguished esteem Sir Your &c.

Charlotte Sophie Countess Dowaager of Bentinck

born Countess of Aldenberg

#24 days of la fayette #marquis de lafayette #lafayette #la fayette #american revolution #american history #french history #letter #charlotte sophie countess dowaager of bentinck #1777 #library of congress #founders online

[batarangsoundsdumb]

yet another ask dump yeehaw!

do you ever think that jay's mother was one of those bitch who believes in horoscope and tarots and things like that and so he believes in these things too, or it is just me projecting?

sheila haywood took one look at jason's birthchart said 'nah this won't do' and left.

Wait, but what happens when the justice league does find out that Bruce and John fucked? Lmao it sounds like it would be hilarious, really, I don’t want a justice league that doesn’t make fun of Bruce for like his entire life.

barry runs out of the meeting immediately and comes back with an entire sti testing kit. diana fully seriously wants bruce to get tested while bruce is sitting there like 'come on guys, you're being ridiculous, i already checked twice'

john is standing in the corner clearly offended while bruce is just like 'don't even say anything, constantine, you fucked a shark'

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

on the one hand, good for him, on the other hand, bro, how do you still have a secret identity when your superhero name is just your last name,,,,

Your fic on ao3 was GOLD PLEASE CONTINUE I loved Dinah's cameo btw ( @purple-vixen

thanks so much! i already continued but this ask is like 10 years old because i'm a notorious procrastinator (also yes! i love dinah so much aahhhhhhhhhhhh)

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

bruce internally: holy fuck holy shit holy fuck holy shit holy fuck holy shit holy fuck holy shit holy fuck holy shit bruce externally: get out of my city, alien

AHHH ur multimedia fic is the only thing that brings me happiness anymore continue it forever pls

uhh thanks, but can't continue it forever because my attention span is that of a toddler on crack on a good day and i can't function without at least 10 things going on at the same time and music in the background

Oi, so I'm getting into dc and watching batman the animated series, and they use fruitcake a lot. Which I thought was very funny and wanted to share w you - Denilla

wait like fruitcake (food) or fruitcake (derogatory) ?

young justice 🤝 teen titans slut shaming batman

tim drake and dick grayson to their respective teams 'you guys stop it, that's my dad'

Happyhoganon: If an eighty year old Batman had fought crime in Gotham City for decades and the only threats to him and the city lately are a wheel chair bounded Penguin, your usual purse snatchers and a few con artists popping up every now and then, how well could the Dark Knight do in maintaining the peace in Gotham despite him being just somewhat fit to do that as an elderly man (which says A LOT given how old he is)

uhh he'll probably do what my grandpa does and that is ruthlessly prank them until they die of shame.

in the death in the family interactive movie there's an ending where Jason is tasked with raising Damian and he decides he's gonna raise Damian to take down the waynes and al ghuls which uh maybe isn't great BUT the idea of Jason raising Damian... PRICELESS. CHAOTIC. I just need more people to know about this :)

yes i saw that wow holy shit but jason would accidentally drop damian on his head one (1) hour in and jason just yeets him into the lazarus pit.

Headcanon: The Penguin has a really hard time fighting any of the Robins because of his avian obsession means there's always a small part of his mind that's like "Birb. Child. Protect" ( @subspacecadet )

as soon as dick becomes nightwing the penguin is like 'you know what, fuck this dude' and shoots at him.

Y'all talking about King Shark dating Constantine, let's not forget about John literally hooking up with Satan

listen there's a clear difference between monsterfucker and satanfucker in that king shark is literally a shark and satan still looks like a normal dude

Does everyone in Gotham think Batman is a teen dad?

everyone in gotham thinks batman has been around since gotham was founded, but they do think that bruce wayne is actually a teen father and dick grayson's biological dad.

why. why would you do that fancast when you know it will only hurt people

what? i loved my fancast it was really well done. i did it with good representation in mind and i really managed that with alfred pennyworth being ✨italian✨

Seeing james charles a jason gave me psychic damage how dare you i need to wash my eyes

well that's a you problem isn't it?

do you think dick grayson thirst tweets about nightwing just to annoy his family/cause problems on purpose in general?

he thinks nightwing is hot, next question.

holy jiminy cricket batman, its as cold as the good lords ass crack in here!!

i- what? this is why i don't fuck with english expressions it's way too goddamn weird

Brooooooo, your teen dad!Bruce au is soooo good. I've got brainrot.

Honestly if you ever write anymore, I'd read that shit twice. Sign me the fuck up. Good stuff, Good Stuff.

uh yeah i'm thinking about writing a fic, but i have exams coming up and i don't wanna fail because that would suck. but after i'll certainly be writing more tho

your teen dad AU is so great! bruce acting like a big brother for all of like a week before he's telling everyone about his son. what if in the AU dick meets the JL because they need to rescue him? maybe he's in trouble/kidnapped at a gala and bruce starts calling for JL. clark finds him and has to fly with dick to bring him home - that's how dick and clark meet and superman becomes dick's fave hero. he goes around the manor thinking he can fly with a red blanket draped around him like a cape.

actually- if you want a young dad! bruce fic with like that kinda stuff(just with damian) go check uhh- in for a penny by cdelphiki. it's really good and bruce is like 24/25-ish. (and dick's there!!!)

This account has solely convinced me that Tim is a trash goblin ( @hamilcat-and-magic-turtle )

because he is. that boy has slept in dumpsters on multiple occasions even if he is the son of a billionaire.

Okay but when you said victory dance I did think of the whole justice league defeating the big bad and then they all start flossing

well that's exactly what hal jordan does and that's why batman uses a gun now. no but the victory dance in my opinion is like the 'we're all in this together' dance from high school musical.

The horrors in Invincible s1 was nothing compared to the comics, I cant wait for s2

oh well okay, i mean i personally react to horror and violence by laughing awkwardly so i can't wait to be called a monster for accidentally laughing at a mass murder.

I'm currently watching Batman: The Brave and The Bold and- Bruce is just talking about Oliver like he's an old love (@nightwings-kid)

okay im going to watch that lmao that's totally and completely in character for him tho.

The invincible comic is like super gratuitous with its violence so much so I'm shocked the show was able to adapt it in a faithful way! Anyway had the show been live action it absolutely wouldn't have the same impact as it does as an animated show and I'm so glad so many people agree with me on that

also because a live action casting would've been like uhh amanda stenberg for amber, the dude- the guy from the supernatural but with a mustache for omni-man, and scarlet johanssen for debbie grayson

Debbie grayson is a milf, yes. You're welcome for the invincible propoganda, now you can questions your life. Bruce def seems like the perfect father next to Omni-man. Like they really took a rip off justice league and I was like well, now I'm attached even tho I was like hah I know who they're supposed to be. And then bam- death gore death gore gore gore sad Mark grayson just had to have daddy issues. Why does every character have daddy issues. I'm sick of the attacks

because daddy issues make a person arguably funnier, that's why i'm not even remotely funny (haha good dad flex). i liked that it was dark contextually, but not in the colouring, bc i hate when it's like 'uh yeah graphic murder and now a shot so dark you have to sit in a dark room and squint at the screen to faintly see the characters. (like dcau ugh)

About the Wayne insurance, for a moment I thought you would put the video with moans over the waves.

i mean- i could've done that, but rick rolling seemed more family friendly.

Its the first time in forever that im surpise rickrolled, i usually expect it. Congratulations (i really should know better this is tumblr)

i get rickrolled so often but i actually like the song so i dont really give a fuck

Actually, my information about Damian and John's kids is outdated because it was revealed that the old men telling the kids stories about the Supersons were actually Jon and Damian the whole time. I was blinded by my thirst for Grandpa!Bruce Wayne but I was wrong... I liked my version better, tbh (@artemisa97)

fair enough. but i'd honestly like to see damian and jon getting together, just because it's a really fun dynamic and their friendship was really cute when they were kids. (also idk maybe it would be nice to have one (1) main batfam/superfam character that's not cishet)

How am i JUST finding your blog skdskfkd you're so fucking funny and ur takes are hot

i thought u were calling me hot :( but youre not :( crime detected (but lmao thanks)

So I have depression and I swear that your memes are one of the few things that have made me laugh so thank you 💛🥺 (@katekanebadass)

aw you're welcome, and i hope you're doing okay!

The metropolis memes are so funny, I love them 💀😌

i think metropolis is also so fucking funny it deserves more attention imagine having your entire police force being upstaged by an alien from kansas and his kids

as an american i feel your complete lack of knowledge of us geography is just so sexy (platonic) ❤️

thanks so much (i also don't know any other geography, i'm not kidding, like you can tell me you're from hungary and it will just blank, there will be nothing that comes to mind)

In the DC universe they don't say "Can't have shit in Detroit" they say "Can't have shit in Gotham"

this just reminds me of that guy whose porch got stolen like the steps to his door, and i'm thinking of people living in gotham and waking up without a front door and going "can't have shit in gotham"

honestly all i know about chicago is the bean, so. what would gotham's famous sculpture be?

gigantic gargoyle statue in front of one of the police precincts because a villain thought it was a smart way to keep the police inside, but it's too heavy to move.

why tf do people go on about how batman "works alone" or how he's the "lone wolf" when he like 38290202 members in his family

bc people think it's cool that a grown man in his 30s has no friends or family instead of calling it what it is (sad)

Bruce is gotham's sugar daddy

why would say something so controversial yet so brave.

my favorite batfamily fanfictions are the ones where they use their shitty codenames, unironically, in any context

dick: gerard way are you in position, gerard way are you in position

tim: for the last fucking time, my codename is 'totally not count olaf' this week, abbafan 3000

dick: shut up my codename isn't 'abbafan 3000'

dick: it's 'abbafan number 1' and you know it

I have a feeling Tim drake is ur favourite batfamily member but okay u don't have favs if u say so ok

i mean he is, i won't deny it. but i love each and every one of the batfam just the same, i just have a weak spot for short dumbass nerds, because i'm a short dumbass nerd.

Omg i fuckin love boy meets world too fam shsjkfk

bro boy meets world was the shit!!! it was just fire and awesome and so fucking great like bro. it was so good im not even going to be accepting criticism

you know I find the whole "joker completes batman" thing a bit disgusting considering the horrendous stuff the batfamily went through because of the joker and let's not get started on the "joker has a point" thing like yeah he's this cool complex villain but he's absolutely batshit crazy

like yes! i get what you mean the joker just fucking sucks man he doesn't do shit for batman's character or the batfam he's literally just annoying as fuck. like the joker has a point' shit is so stupid. i will accept 'magneto was right' because he fucking was and i think he didn't do anything wrong, but joker? he's just like that. he's not even cool and complex he's just a weirdo with a bleach kink at this point.

ALSO YOUR RACISM POST- SO TRUE BESTIE

thanks bestie, i'm glad you agree.

in today's essay of why I think cass should become batman- I was thinking Tim would probably be the most efficient batman in many ways but I also think he wouldn't want to be batman tbh none of the batfamily members would want to be batman because they're trying to outgrow him but cass is the one who wants to represent the symbol that is batman

absofuckinglutely i will say it again and again that cass represents the batsymbol more than anyone in the batfam, in batgirl (2000) she literally didn't care about anything else than bruce's oath to not kill, she thought the batsymbol was more important than anything in gotham. she's just an excellent character because her motivation to not kill is not 'i'm scared i can't come back from it' or 'well my dad says no murder so i'll go along with it' but that she's killed somebody as a young child and she never wants to kill a human ever again and that's so fucking beautiful for a new batman like yes.

need more cass, duke and tim inclusion in gothamite memes

yes yes, a tall order of cass, duke and tim coming up in 1-14 business days

oldest to youngest batfam members cus I'm confused as shit

okay order of being taken in: dick, jason, tim, cass, damian, duke order of age: alfred, bruce, dick, cass, jason, tim, duke, damian (though cass and jason are around the same age general consensus is that cass is a little older)

I'm so confused Steph is a redhead?? like how was it that hard to get this right? the source material is literally right there and free

cw is jared, 19

do you receive anon hate? if so, how do you deal with it

uh no, i'm not remotely popular enough to get anon hate and i also don't say a lot of things that would attract anon hate, but i do send anon hate to @the-real-peter-parker because he forgot about the specialists from winx club

Wait how many languages do you speak??

uhh- 5 if you include latin, but that's a dead language and i'm really bad at it. but english, my native language, german, and french also, tho german and french not fluently.

You can mix aguaepanela with aguardiente 😈 and is tasty

okay but now i'm curious if the liquor deserves the 😈 emoji or if that's a you problem. but i googled it and it looks like something you'd take one sip of and then not remember the rest of your evening.

#i love all of you guys so much thanks for all these asks #some of these are literally from march but fuck it #the day tumblr puts dates next to anon messages is the day i close my inbox crawl into a hole and die #it's such a basic task to answer asks but i don't want to bother anyone with asks clogging up their timeline #and if i don't have a funny or good answer i'm like 'uhh okay won't answer it now then' #so this is for you #also i deleted a few asks because it gives me mental pain to see my inbox go over 50 and it's almost at 100 #i was complaining about having too many asks to the-real-peter-parker like months ago and then i had 45 asks in my inbox #now it's amassed to going over 100 twice #but no i love all of you and you're great and you're all fantastic and i lvoe you #muchos kiss kiss #kiss kiss for my kiddies lvoe you #invincible spoilers #dc #dcu #dc comics #ask #anon #bataranswers #i really wanna try aguapanela now i'm gonna see if i can find panela somewhere and review it for you babes #uh yeah that's it #muchos gracias for all your questions babes

[dreamteamfanblog]

Y'know, what I really like about c!Bad and c!Skeppy is that there's kinda never been any question about the fact that they're pretty bad people.

Like, the first plot relevant thing Skeppy ever did was hold the corpse of a mans beloved pet hostage in return for items with Sentimental Importance that he literally never had any stake in and only wanted for the sentimental value they held to other people (damn lowkey might have been the one who inspired dream's revelation regarding the value of sentimentality and that whole plan, good job skeppy, you're the reason the worst tyrant on the server is like that /hj) and while I obviously don't like Dream and literally never feel bad for him when bad things happen to him at this point, that was honestly still kinda ruthless, Skeppy.

The first time Bad ever bothered being plot relevant as well was because he heard about the Manburg-Pogtopia conflict brewing and basically went "Lmao they're ALL losers tho? Liiikkkeeee? Imma go help the Screeching British Toddlers? Or the one and only Alcoholism-Is-Fun dictator? C'mon. C'mon." (paraphrasing for comedic effect but that was kinda the gist and vibe anyway) up until the realization hit him that it'd be so fun to fuck with everyone and ran to go suggest they do just that to Skeppy who was literally just like "bet" instantly and that's how the plan to feed the flames of conflict was born, aka the formation (and naming, even) of The Badlands. Cause it'd be really fun to watch the world burn lmao, and "the most fun we can have here is the chaotic kinda fun~" (bads exact words), like, this is the first time Bad does anything plot relevant and the second time ever that Skeppy's important and they're already out here planning atrocities like it's a game to them.

They spend like the next few months hopping around from conflict to conflict and causing chaos and shit talking literally every other character behind their backs. Even their relationship with Sam and Ant is super dubious and they've been pretty deceptive and flippant with the others all things considered cause like who the fuck cares about....uh....anyone, basically? And like they had Tommy's disc for a WHILE after Tommy manipulated a man into giving it to him for like no reason by holding his pets corpse over his head, and they didn't really know what to do with it. Like. They were like "well we can't give it to Tommy cause that's be boring" and just kinda passed it back and forth in their ender chest and chatted about maybe burning it for the amusement they'd get out of seeing the pain it'd cause Tommy. At one point Dream tries very hard to get them to give it to him and they're like "Nah". They weren't using it for anything, they didn't like, have any plans with it, they just very firmly didn't want Dream to have it specifically because he wanted it and for no other reason, cause like, it's just so funny to see the sheer disappointment on people's faces as their sentimental items sit in your chest collecting dust and you still won't give it to them even tho you don't plan to use it for anything ever. Like. Why do they do this? Because they're John Mulaney kinnies and this is their equivalent of stealing family photos from house parties cause It's The One Thing They Can't Replace. I'm pretty sure they ended up tossing it at Ranboo in the end since the next time we see the Cat disc it's with him and like. One second it's in their enderchest and the next it's with him so i'm pretty sure they're responsible for the fact that he wound up with that actually (i know it's implied dream gave it to him but it was in skeppy and bad's possession and they were pretty apparent about not wanting to give it to tommy or dream at all so like...yeah no i think they knew it'd end up with ranboo when they parted with it, at least). And that raises the question. Why pass on the most important item on the server with sentimental value to many many people and a history of wars being fought over it......to a kid with memory problems and the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair who did not want the disc and was deeply disturbed about learning he had it? Well...probably the same reason they refused to give it to Tommy or Dream to begin with even though they didn't ever use it for anything. Same reason Skeppy went so out of his way to use dirty underhanded tactics to get it. Cause it's amusing.

Then Bad very eagerly agreed to commit atrocities for The Egg and Skeppy wasn't happy. I mean, he didn't have a problem with the atrocities, c'mon, this is Skeppy, but the fact that he was doing them for The Egg wasn't pog. Only Skeppy's allowed to be Bad's muse when he does horrible horrible things. So Skeppy pouted and threatened to leave Bad if Bad doesn't start doing war crimes for him instead of "some dumb egg" again and Bad's like "fiiiinnnneeeeeee" up until Skeppy gets himself infected at which point Bad freaks the fuck out and spirals into....pretty in character actually villainy but this time it's Significantly Less Fun then their earlier actions because this time his Skeppy's not with him. And like. This time Bad decided not to play around as he tortures his friends, tries to manipulate people, attempts to murder children, just full on decides he's cool with sacrificing everyone to the egg, y'know, the works, though in his defense, as I said before, this time he did do it so Skeppy would hang out with him again instead of for the lulz like before.

And like. They're actually fullstop some of my favourite characters in the whole server BECAUSE they're just very Blatantly not good people. They hardly even pretend to be or try to put on much of a show for other characters, honestly, they are just unapologetically Like That.

Of course, they're not completely lacking depth. Like, there's no way to make em' look good or justified or like they even THINK they're decent people. But that doesn't mean they don't have compelling and complicated motives/ideologies/personalities. I mean i'll be real their fixation with one another is absolutely fascinating. Like. A lot of the time they're so lacking in empathy and decency and morality overall but then they see each other and a flip is switched instantly. I mean don't get me wrong the unapologetically cold chaotic energy isn't lost when they're together (in fact it's often highlighted and fueled by the others presence) and they can be very bitchy and petty with each other. But there's never been a moment of doubt in my mind about how completely devoted to one another they are. Bad has stated in no uncertain terms that there's one side that matters to him and that side is Skeppy. Skeppy being consumed by the egg very much reads as a sacrifice as well and I guarantee he wasn't making that sacrifice for Puffy or Ant. Bad would later willingly follow The Egg all in a desperate attempt to get Skeppy back. They matter so much to each other, hell, maybe even more then is normal/healthy all things considered, as if all that empathy they're lacking towards everyone else somehow all went to the other. And I mean even beyond the depth of their relationship, their ideology itself is an interesting one. You don't really see many characters who very blatantly and openly are here to do bad things because it's fun for them. With most characters there's always some sob story. Some poor attempt at justification. Some insistence that they're totally doing the moral thing. Skeppy and Bad...don't do that? I mean, as I said before, they're incredibly unapologetic and unabashed and don't at all seem to think their behaviour is wrong most of the time. But they're lacking in that attempt at convincing the world they're really the heroes that most bad guys have. Their reasonings range from that they're having fun to that they're annoyed with the other characters to that they feel like the other wants/needs them to do whatever it is they're doing. But whatever it is they almost never seem like they feel the need to justify themselves to anyone unless it's a ploy to get the other person to do something for them. They know they're not Good Guys or saving the world or whatever else, they know they're selfishly motivated, and they....don't see the issue with that nor are they particularly interested if others do most of the time. They're self aware enough, they just don't give a shit. There are a few one off moments where this has slightly wavered but for the most part...not really? And that kind of ideology in of itself is really interesting.

Plus I mean stepping back from the Character Analysis intrigue, I just kinda lose my mind with excitement when they get particularly mean/devious because they're just really cool okay? Like i'm not actually rooting for them generally, but sometimes in the moment when they get particularly into the Watch The World Burn And Laugh attitude i'm like "oh, fuck, pop off i guess-". Something about the mixture of how competent they can be, how intensely they care about each other, how immoral/unempathetic they tend to be, and how little they care despite knowing about that last aspect, all end up being really cool to see and I just love these characters so much whether they're Committing Atrocities For Their Own/Each Others Amusement or Committing Different Atrocities Out Of Love For One Another; Angst Edition.

also the fact that their lives are linked is really interesting and like i kinda wanna know how/why that happened and if it's like something the characters chose to do or if they were born that way or if they were somehow connected some other way later in life or what cause like that's a really unique thing they did there and i feel like that doesn't just happen with people for no reason usually actually.

#dream smp

[thevindicativevordan]

Mongul

Wanted to chat about another Superman Rogue who has been around a while: Mongul.

Background

Now this guy enjoys something of a mixed reputation. On one hand he, unlike many other Superman classic Rogues, has actually been in some good stories. There’s the iconic For The Man Who Has Everything by Alan Moore which is the perfect encapsulation of his core character traits. There he’s a hulking brute, with enough raw power to go toe to toe with Superman and actually hurt him with physical force alone. He’s crude, making misogynistic comments to Wonder Woman, and gleefully reveling in the conquest he plans. Yet he’s also clever, using the Black Mercy to incapacitate his foe, and has an air of faux affability to him that only adds to his menace. 

It should come as no surprise that an Alan Moore story is still Mongul’s best showing, but there are other stories worth mentioning as well. There’s Superman: Exile, the first meeting between the Post-Crisis Superman and Mongul and personally one of my favorite Post-Crisis Superman stories. There’s Mongul’s debut Pre-Crisis issue where he and Warworld first appear. There’s his attempt to hijack the Sinestro Corps during the Johns era of Green Lantern. Finally there’s his usage in Bendis Superman, which has been the first time in ages he’s been treated as a serious threat, and given an interesting way to serve as a contrast as Superman.

So why does he suffer from a mixed reputation? Well...

He sure does look familiar doesn’t he? He was created by Len Wein and Jim Starlin, and Starlin you might recall was the creator of Thanos, who was a ripoff of Darkseid. So Mongul is a copy of a copy, lacking the grandeur of Darkseid and the ambition of Thanos. He and Apocalypse are both cast in Darkseid’s mold, and have both gotten one really great and iconic storyline that guarantees they’ll stick around, but have also not traditionally fared well outside that one story. Also like Apocalypse:

He has a really bad habit of jobbing and being used by writers to prop up their characters. Jurgens used him to prop up Hank Henshaw in Reign of the Supermen and Henshaw again along with Zod in the Rebirth arc Revenge!, giving him a reputation as a joke. He also got killed by Sinestro pretty easily during his coup attempt.

Besides that he’s also unfortunately been treated as a generic tyrant for Superman to beat up, lacking much in the way of characterization, or in being a meaningful contrast to Superman beyond “Superman uses his strength to serve others, Mongul uses his to oppress them”. For a while I kind of wrote him off as a lost cause, someone that really didn’t offer anything as a Superman opponent beyond that one Alan Moore story. But recently I’ve changed my opinion; I’ve come to believe Mongul does in fact serve an important purpose and should be treated as an essential part of the Superman Rogues Gallery. Part of this turnabout was caused by really enjoying his usage in Bendis’ Superman run, which caused me to do a reread of Mongul stories, and got me thinking about who Mongul is, what he’s about, and what role he plays.

What Role Mongul Plays

A crucial realization hit me while I was rereading Mongul stories: Mongul is The Bully of the Supermythos.

He’s the guy who doesn’t delude himself into thinking he’s the hero like Lex does. He doesn’t consider himself above petty emotions or notions of right and wrong like Brainiac. He doesn’t have a sympathetic background like General Zod does. He’s the guy who enjoys pounding people into the dirt, who doesn’t mask his desire to lord over the populace behind pretenses of noble intentions. He’s gleeful as he crushes his enemies beneath his heel, he’s petty in that he enjoys forcing people to fight for his amusement, he’s dangerous in that while Darkseid can be bargained with, Mongul is always going to prefer to take what he wants via force and is powerful enough to do just that. In other words, he’s the exact kind of guy Superman started out wanting to take down, just living in the cosmic space where Superman can actually kick his ass without it feeling like punching down. 

That core ethos, beautifully summed up in All-Star Superman, is in direct opposition to Mongul’s entire lifestyle. When the United Planets starts to form in Bendis’ Superman, Mongul is outraged, not just because it may pose a threat to him, but because the very idea of the “weak” uniting into a stronger whole downright offends him. He runs Warworld to cull the “weak and unfit” of the universe for his own amusement and entertainment, the petty schoolyard bully who has turned a planet-sized Death Star into his own playground, and he climbed to the top via crushing anyone that stood against him with his own two hands or outwitting them with his brain. He’s got no time for others who think they can rise above their station in life without the physical/mental power to back that desire up. If Superman believes that everyone is capable of greatness, Mongul is a firm believer that greatness is the sole purview of the very few (and really only himself). 

This core conflict allows writers to bring back the bully hunter of the Golden Age and early New 52 t-shirt and jeans Supermen. Here’s a guy, a foreign ruler no less, who is actively oppressing people. We get to enjoy seeing Superman taking on a foreign dictator because he’s off in space instead of doing so here on Earth where thorny parallels to American interventionism abroad would be raised. Superman can be the Champion of the Oppressed again, and that’s always something I enjoy seeing.

I’d also like to bring up why Mongul was originally created. Len Wein wanted a foe for Superman who could match him physically. In other words, Mongul is like Doomsday if Doomsday actually had a personality. Mongul offers the opportunity for deeper exploration of Superman that Doomsday can’t. We know this literally because Mongul’s best story isn’t just a slugfest between the two the way Doomsday’s is. For The Man Who Has Everything is one of the best explorations of just how damn lonely being the Last Son of Krypton is for Kal. Exile explores the ethics of Superman’s no kill rule, his belief in the sanctity of life, his struggles to hold onto that belief in the face of the cruelty of others. His usage in Bendis’ run is to illustrate just how fragile the United Planets is, how easily it can break apart, and how hard Superman is going to have to strive to make it work. PKJ used Mongul in his Future State Superman: Worlds of War stories to show the lengths Superman will go to liberate others, his defiance in the face of Mongul’s attempts to break him. There’s an opportunity for psychological evaluation of Superman when Mongul shows up that just isn’t there with Doomsday. That alone is reason to keep him around, but he also brings a bunch of cool shit in addition.

Cool Aspects Mongul Brings to the Supermythos

He’s got a Death Star that doubles as a gladiator coliseum, where we get to see Superman compete with other gladiators from across the cosmos. Mongul lets Superman channel that Conan brutality in a very entertaining way, putting Superman in a setting where he’s facing lots of foes who can go up against him with raw strength and numbers alone. 

It’s a place that channels that pulp science fiction that Superman was borne from in a very entertaining way in my opinion. Also they should set a Superman video game there (but that’s another blog post). The gladiators are also useful, either as oppressed prisoners for Superman to liberate, and showcase directly how he makes life better, or as bloodthirsty mooks that can actually challenge Superman without dimishing him.

The Black Mercy is an awesome science fiction concept. While it’s been overused in relation to Mongul, it’s also the embodiment of the unknown wonders and threats of DC Cosmic. In the right hands it’s a great tool for exploring characters’ psychology. 

Bendis and Fraction reestablished that the name “Mongul” is a legacy one. The current Mongul is from a long line of Monguls, the sons killing their fathers when their fathers show weakness. Given how Rebirth has established the importance of legacy to Superman with Jon, something continued by Bendis, this may be a very crucial aspect to play off of. The way “Mongul” as a mantle is assumed is a dark contrast to the way the “Superman” mantle is taken up by others after Clark. Exploring the Mongul father-son relationship in contrast to the Clark-Jon relationship may be in the cards for the PKJ run given Mongul will be the first classic Superman Rogue appearing in PKJ Action. If not I hope some other writer will take a chance to explore the way the two contrast and compare with one another because it could be very interesting.

What I Would Change About Mongul

I think there’s already a pretty damn solid base to build off of with Mongul, but some aspects that I would play up to better establish him as separate from both Clark and Darkseid:

Making him more of a hedonist. This is a guy who eat, drinks, and fucks, and enjoys himself while doing so. He loves being a bad guy and isn’t “weighed down by his sins” or any such nonsense

Showcase his knowledge more. Mongul is smart, he’s been all over the cosmos, he learned about Warworld and the Black Mercy, show that he knows other dangerous secrets as well. Weapons, planets, florua, fauna, Mongul knows stuff not even the Guardians do

Establish some underlings. Instead of having Mongul job, use some of his gladiators, elite ones raised above the riffraff who can pose a threat and hold off Superman while Mongul accomplishes his goals

Appearance wise I’d like to make him look more different from Darkseid. I’d want to draw on dinosaurs for his look. If you need to justify it, just have another son replace the current Mongul and become the new Mongul, or have Mongul modify himself with enhancements in order to beat Superman

Mongul is cool and brings a lot to the table, DC just needs to stop treating him as a jobber and more as a legitimate threat. I was happy with how Bendis used him, and I am hopeful that PKJ will continue to treat him well. He’s a villain who actually has stories that showcase why he rocks, and not just cool ideas that have never come together like other Superman Rogues. Hopefully he’ll get more opportunities to showcase that.

#superman #mongul #dc comics #alan moore #brian bendis #phillip kennedy johnson #len wein #jim starlin #warworld #future state

[aion-rsa]

Mortal Kombat Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

https://ift.tt/32FL0Or

This Mortal Kombat article contains spoilers.

There’s a new Mortal Kombat live-action movie out on HBO Max, and it comes after nearly 30 years of games, cartoons, and movie adaptations. With such a long history to pick through, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the new movie has more than a few easter eggs and references to the series’ most famous moments and characters. Why wouldn’t there be? Why even make a new movie if you’re not going to throw your fans a bone or twenty exploding skulls?

We’re keeping track of all the neat easter eggs that fill the 2021 film, from obscure character references to loving nods to the games’ most gruesome Fatcalities. Here’s what we’ve found so far:

Kombat Jargon

Cole Young rightfully notes that “Mortal Kombat” is spelled incorrectly. Series creators Ed Boon and John Tobias each have their own explanation for the spelling. Boon claimed that “Combat” was a workshopped name for the game and someone added a K to be weird. Tobias said that the K was there just so they could trademark the term.

As it’s custom for the Mortal Kombat announcers to say who won each match, Kano takes care of this himself when he kills Reptile and smugly says, “Kano wins.”

When Kung Lao kills Nitara, he notes, “Flawless victory.” That’s what the announcers say in-game whenever someone has a perfect round. At least it’s used correctly here, unlike the original movie, where people would say, “Flawless victory,” in regards to fights where both sides took blows.

There are many deaths in the movie, but only Liu Kang announces, “Fatality,” like in the game.

Scorpion and Sub-Zero

Bi-Han killing Hanzo Hasashi has been depicted many times in Mortal Kombat media, though canonically in the game Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. The version in this movie more closely resembles the events of the animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge. The big difference that sets this movie apart from the others is the fact that Hanzo existed centuries ago and not in the present. That, and the depiction of Sub-Zero as pure evil. While Bi-Han is no saint, his killing of Hanzo is usually depicted as strictly business. In the games, the murder of Scorpion’s family is the doing of Quan Chi, who uses the tragedy to manipulate Scorpion into his service.

Outside of his feud with Scorpion, Sub-Zero’s villain status in this movie more closely matches the origin of Erron Black, the anachronistic Wild West gunslinger who first showed up in Mortal Kombat X. Centuries ago, Shang Tsung felt threatened by a potential challenger in the Mortal Kombat tournament. He hired Erron Black to assassinate the threat, and in return Tsung would teach Black the secrets to living for thousands of years.

Scorpion pulls off his classic Toasty Fatality, which also turns his mouth into charred bone. Scorpion’s always had this weird situation going on with his face where sometimes it’s flesh and sometimes it’s just a skull. Here, we get a bit of both!

Sonya Blade and Jackson Briggs

On Sonya’s research wall, there’s a book excerpt on a Native American tribe called Matokans, focusing on shamans and warriors. The clipping mentions a tribe member known as “the Night wolf.” Nightwolf is a character (and title) introduced in the third game. He strongly resembles the sketch included in the clipping. “Matokan Warrior” is one of his variations in Mortal Kombat 11.

Also on the wall is a photo of a sculpture of the Mayan God of War, Buluc Chabtan. In Mortal Kombat lore, this is the Outworld warrior Kotal Kahn, who for a time ventured into Earthrealm and was worshipped as a god by the Mayans. The character was introduced in Mortal Kombat X when he took over Outworld in the aftermath of Shao Kahn’s death. While still barbaric, his rule was considered more progressive than his predecessor’s.

While Sonya’s rings attack is treated as a superpower here, in the games, it’s treated as more of a high-tech wrist weapon.

The subplot about Sonya’s worth due to her lack of dragon tattoo could be interpreted as a commentary on how the original movie handled Sonya in the third act. Shang Tsung kidnapped her and chose to make her the finalist in the tournament, which everyone treated as a fight Sonya could never win in a million years. The way the original movie turned Sonya into a damnsel in distress annoys many fans to this day.

The origin of Jax’s metal arms has been told many different ways through the decades. He’s lost them at the hands of Baraka, Ermac, a Special Forces goon, and Goro. This is the first time Sub-Zero has been responsible.

Jax splattering his opponent’s head with a clap of the hands is a Fatality he’s had since Mortal Kombat II.

Kano and the Black Dragon

Kano has trouble using the GPS to track Raiden’s temple. This is probably a callback to the original movie, where Shang Tsung’s Island caused Sonya’s compass to go haywire.

Kano’s face gets clawed up, and later he’s able to shoot a red laser from his eye socket. In the games, Kano has a metal plate over his eye, giving him that laser ability.

The heart rip was Kano’s Fatality in the first game. He’s since introduced many variations of it.

The Black Dragon is brought up a few times. A scummier offshoot of the terrorist organization the Red Dragon, Kano’s group has included such characters as Kabal, Jarek, Kira, Kobra, Erron Black, and Tremor.

Kabal blames Kano for why he’s stuck in his respirator-based costume. In the games, Kabal was a Black Dragon member who left the group and became a cop. During the events of Mortal Kombat 3, Kabal was burned alive by Kintaro. Kano actually saved Kabal and hooked him up to the respirators in hopes of recruiting him. Shang Tsung tried to use magic to heal Kabal’s lungs, which gave him super-speed as a side-effect.

Kano refers to Raiden as “Gandalf” and considers his comrades’ magical attacks as “Harry Potter shit.” Fitting that Kano’s references keep with properties owned by Warner Bros.

Kano’s overall story here is a lot like the ’90s comic book Mortal Kombat: Rayden and Kano. In the comic, Rayden (they spelled it differently back then) attempted to hire Kano to help destroy Shao Kahn, as he was the descendant of a hero who liberated Outworld long ago. Kano ultimately betrayed Rayden, just as he betrays his teammates in this movie.

Liu Kang and Kung Lao

Kano refers to Liu Kang as “MC Hammer” due to their shared love of puffy pants.

Liu Kang brings up Master Bo’ Rai Cho, a character introduced in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Bo’ Rai Cho (a play on “boracho” meaning “drunk” in Spanish) is an Outworld warrior who sympathized with Earthrealm and chose to protect it from Shao Kahn. Being from Outworld, he could not enter Mortal Kombat without it counting against Earthrealm. Instead, he’s dedicated thousands of years to training Shaolin warriors in hopes of one of them winning the tournament and ending Outworld’s streak. He mentored Liu Kang and Kung Lao firsthand.

Kung Lao mentions being the descendant of the original Kung Lao. The Great Kung Lao was a Shaolin monk who regularly defended Earthrealm in Mortal Kombat. He even defeated Shang Tsung at least once. But his streak came to an end at the hands of Goro. Later games revealed that the modern Kung Lao is a reincarnation of the original.

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Liu Kang is able to get the better of Kano by spamming the leg sweep. This is a reference to a very annoying tactic in the early games.

The way Kung Lao kills Nitara is similar to his Fatality from Mortal Kombat 9, the difference being that, in the game, the victim is cut apart crotch-first.

Kung Lao dying to drive Liu Kang’s story forward is a regular trope in Mortal Kombat. Lao’s death first came in Mortal Kombat 3. But in the Mortal Kombat 9 reboot, Kung Lao went on a major winning streak during the retelling of Mortal Kombat II, but then Shao Kahn grabbed him from behind and snapped his neck. Liu Kang reacted by punching a hole through Kahn’s chest.

Raiden’s Temple

The paintings depict the Great Kung Lao standing over a beaten Shang Tsung. Kung Lao is probably the victim of the painting of Goro tearing a poor guy in half. Other images show Bi-Han murdering Hanzo and the rule of Shao Kahn, the true villain in the Outworld invasion.

One painting shows Argus and Delia, protectors of the realm Edenia, watching over the prone body of a bearded man with some kind of war going on in a cloud above. This man appears to be one of their sons, either Taven or Daegon. Both were put in a slumber as part of a prophecy/contest to stop Armageddon, an event where so many Mortal Kombat characters were at war that it threatened to destroy reality itself.

There’s a fan on display belonging to Kitana. Kitana is Shao Kahn’s adopted daughter and brainwashed assassin. She tends to betray Outworld and align herself with Liu Kang. Strangely, while she isn’t in this movie, her clone Mileena is.

Shang Tsung and Outworld

While Reptile has been around since the first Mortal Kombat game, the design used for the movie is based on Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. Like in the game, Reptile’s abilities include invisibility, an extended tongue, and acid saliva.

In the games, Nitara first appeared in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. She’s depicted as a loner and manipulator who wants to bring back her lost vampire realm. A very random choice to be sure, but she also had a cameo in Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge, so somebody out there really digs her.

General Reiko was first introduced in Mortal Kombat 4 as one of Shinnok’s henchmen. He was given an extremely vague ending that had him running into a portal to parts unknown, but certain home ports expanded on it to show him putting on Shao Kahn’s mask, suggesting they were the same person. This was later handwaved away as Reiko just really liking Kahn’s mask and wanting power for himself.

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When Reiko was brought back in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, he was given the giant warhammer as his weapon stance.

When killing Kung Lao, Shang Tsung tells him, “Your soul is mine!” That hammy quote was Shang Tsung’s go-to threat in the first movie. Also, eating souls is Tsung’s go-to Fatality in just about any game.

Goro threatens to tear out Cole’s spine. While that is more of Sub-Zero’s thing, it’s also the iconic Fatality that Mortal Kombat is remembered for. Fellow Shokan warrior Sheeva also has a spine-ripping Fatality in Mortal Kombat 11.

Johnny Cage

The movie ends with a teaser for Johnny Cage, who will presumably appear in the sequel if that project happens. In the final shot of the movie, we see a cropped image of a movie poster for Citizen Cage, one of Johnny’s many established movies from the game’s lore. The poster shows him wearing his large “CAGE” belt buckle, which was introduced in Mortal Kombat 9. That makes it all the more likely that he’ll have “JOHNNY” tattooed across his chest.

There’s another movie poster to the side that we can’t see too much of other than it having “Fist” in the title. Going on the games, this could be The Gist of My Fist or Dragon Fist.

Let us know in the comments if we missed anything!

The post Mortal Kombat Easter Eggs and Reference Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[im-the-punk-who]

Can I ask your opinion on Woodes Rogers?

Oh boy. Oh boy, howdy. I mean you can.

So, uhhhh the first time I was really thinking about Woodes Rogers as a character besides just being a little bitch boy was after I read Sage Street’s meta where he talks about the ways in which Rogers mirrors James in the early seasons/pre-series. And that’s pretty much how I see him. 

(On a side note, while I don’t agree with everything he has to say, I highly highly recommend Sage’s meta because it brings up some really interesting parallels and scenic cues, and particularly the meta on the S3 finale just....makes me scream a lot. Some of the painting stuff can get a bit reachy because as someone who works in theatre and has friends in film, some of the parallels is likely more ‘the set designers thought this would be cool’ than a directorial choice but like, it’s still awesome to see.)

But back to Rogers. So, personally, I think he’s a little bitch boy, but that has more to do with the fact that the show sets him up as the upholder of civilization and oppression, in direct opposition to Flint - who seeks freedom and an end to persecution based on society’s morals and whom I personally vibe much more with. Character wise I actually think Rogers is pretty interesting in that, like all the Black Sails villains, he is a complex character. He is sometimes humorous, sometimes charming, and sometimes straight up unwilling to listen to anyone’s voice but his own - hello, Eleanor! (And, yeah, I’m aware that’s how a lot of people describe Flint. It’s purposeful.) While I don’t like him, I appreciate that about him.

He has a backstory that makes it clear what his motivations are and how he reacts when faced with adversity - he hates chaos and wants order and is willing to compromise his own civility if he thinks it will bring an end to those things. In my personal opinion the reason he wants so badly to bring Nassau back in line could be that he thinks it will help him get over the loss of his brother - who died in a random act of chaos and cowardly violence. (And whose name was Thomas....) Like Flint, he is fighting in the memory of someone he idolized. 

The show underlines the similarity between them when Rogers says “All I have done here is finish what you began. I am now what you were then. And without you there would be no me.” 

Here, he is setting himself up as the continuation of James McGraw. Which is super hella rad, since we know that Flint views himself as at least partially a wholly separate persona from James McGraw. And that we’re led to believe that ‘James’ died or was buried when Thomas was taken. While I don’t think Rogers knows the full story I think it’s likely he has a pretty good picture. I’ll direct you to this post where I bring up the fact it’s likely he and Peter were working together on the pardons(and also because I assume Eleanor told him about James being McGraw as she found out during the Charlestown plotline).

Also:

“Everyone is a monster to someone. Since you are so convinced that I am yours, I will be it.”

“If you insist on making me your villain, I will play the part.”

Rogers!! Stop!! Get your own lines!!

I know a lot of people like to compare him to Thomas, and while I think we were meant to see the parallels(hi, they’re both put in green!), I disagree he is meant to mirror what Thomas would have been. In fact, if anything, he is Thomas’ foil, even as he mirrors James. 

Flint even points out this difference: 

“No one is being hanged. No one’s even being tried. Just as you wanted. Just as Thomas Hamilton wanted. So what is it that you’re fighting for that I’m not already offering?”

“Thomas Hamilton fought to introduce the pardons to make a point. To seek to change England.”

Aside from the classic “I want my Thomas back you sonofabitch.” vibe of Flint’s full answer, this is the difference between Rogers and Thomas. While it would ultimately have the same effect as Rogers’ actions - to bring Nassau back to heel - I think it’s important to recognize the intentionality of both characters as it illustrates not just who Rogers is, but also Thomas.

The reason Thomas wanted to offer the pardons was to make a point that pirates are still men deserving of forgiveness. To “offer forgiveness to any man who would seek it.” He is not coming from a point of control, but of freedom. To offer to these men a way forward.

Rogers is offering the pardons as a way to bring Nassau and the pirates back into civilization but we never actually hear him offer a suggestion of what they’re to do afterwards. And indeed, with how he runs Nassau when he has it, it seems he’s much more concerned with keeping control than in offering any meaningful change to the people he governs. 

Rogers is, in essence, exactly what James was talking about all those years ago when he said “Put a man on an island, give him power over other men and it won’t be long before he realizes the limits of that power is nowhere to be seen. And no man given that kind of influence will remain honest for very long.”

This is underlined in so many ways, from his scene with Berringer about ‘dark men’ to where he wants to accept the pearls he knows are from the Spanish gold, to when he straight up threatens Madi with the death of someone close to her in order to try and force her into surrender.

So, I think he’s a really cool character in that he underlines things about so many of the other characters.

However, Rogers is also a little bitch boy and I hate him because he’s is both a little confused and does not have the spirit. :) 

He is everything Thomas and James were fighting against instilling in Nassau - the very thing Thomas realized isn’t the way a good leader should act. Rogers falls very much under that Hobbesian view of The Social Contract - that a monarch or person in power has absolute sovereignty without needing to give value to individuals needs or wants(literally every interaction he has with Max, hi!), whereas Thomas falls much more in line with John Locke, who says that in supporting the needs of the individual, we support the state by default.

(And I can and will go on another whole tangent about this view of Locke vs Hobbes and how it’s a theme throughout the whole show, I can, I will, please don’t let me.)

Rogers is a fantastic villain for S3 and S4 because he illustrates all the ways that civilization puts down revolution and keeps people in line - right up to how his actions ultimately cause Silver to betray the cause and sell out his own friends for a personal safety that is only marginally implied - and still leaves those on the outskirts oppressed! 

Wow! Black Sails! Stop!!

And even though he as a character was eventually defeated, Rogers’ motives and ideas were actually instilled by the very rebel leaders who fought against him! It’s his treaty Rackham and Silver get the maroons to sign! It’s his version of civilization that is imposed on Nassau and the Maroon island even as he himself is ‘defeated’. 

And isn’t that a kicker? 

That Rackham in particular thinks he’s victorious because they’ve defeated the bad guy, but then he goes ahead and uses his plans, proving that it wasn’t the revolution or freedom or Charles’ idea of living free he was supporting at all but his own personal narrative of victory! What a sellout! What a direct parallel to how even progressive-seeming leaders will almost always sell out the ideals of their constituents for their own benefit! Boy, howdy!!

And I know fandom likes to throw him under the bus as all that is wrong with civilization - call him a little bitch boy and cheer his defeat. I know that he and Alfred Hamilton(and Peter, to an extent) get to be the villains in the narrative so our ‘heroes’ Silver and Rackham and even Flint can be put in opposition to them but like - that’s not the point. That’s not the point, that’s not the point, that’s not the point!

The point is that these men were tools of the empire - tools that were incredibly effective! They succeeded! Rogers succeeded in bringing civilization to Nassau. And in doing so he forced the pirates to choose between their own loyalties - he divided the camps until victory seemed hopeless and that is exactly how history generally works in terms of continued oppression. 

Hell, that’s exactly how current political events are happening right now. It’s a tried and true method of oppressive governments to pin things on one particular person (Woodes, or, y’know, Trump?) and say ‘if you defeat this person, your revolution has been successful’ while silently just going ahead with the plans of those people’s ideals anyway. It’s not the people who are the villains. It’s the ideals they perpetuate. 

All this is to say that I don’t feel particular malice towards Rogers other than that I feel towards all the characters who ultimately uphold oppression because I think Rogers is another great commentary by Black Sails on how we get so distracted fighting for what feels good that we can ultimately end up becoming exactly what we thought we were fighting against. 

(”A man casts his vote for the same reason he does anything in this life. Because it feels good.”)

And finally, he’s definitely a little bitch boy for how he treats my girls Eleanor and Madi (and Max) and I would absolutely cross the street to punch him for that alone. :)

#someone: asks a question they think might get a two or three paragraph answer #milo: writes an entire fucking essay oh my god please shut up #black sails #woodes rogers #black sails discourse #long post #honestly god this is so long i have so many more thoughts too like #could write literal essays on how black sails illustrates #EXACTLY how revolutions fail #and why power is so easily shifted towards oppressors #how all the characters(YES EVEN JAMES) demonstrate this #GODODDDDDDDDDDD STOP #many thoughts head full #and this isnt even BRINGING UP his interpersonal misogyny and bullshit with eleanor lmaooo #Anonymous

[popculturebuffet]

The Critic Valentine’s Day Double Feature (Pilot/Sherman, Woman and Child)

Vivia Jay Sherman! Viva Quebec! Viva Valentine’s Day! And Viva WeirdKev who as happens for a good chunk of my content payed for this wonderful double feature for one of my favorite shows.  The Critic was created by Al Jean and Mike Reis of The Simpsons fame, a comedy team supreme. While I knew the two wrote for the simpsons, more on that iin a minute, I had no idea just how many classics the two churned out: There’s No Disgrace Like Home, Moaning LIsa, The Telltale Head, The Way We Was, Stark Raving Dad (Sadly tainted by it’s guest star being a horirble monster but that’s not their fault), Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington, the treehouse of horror segments The Bart Zone and Clown Without Pity (The second of which may be my favorite treehouse of horror segment), and later coming back to write the story for one of my all time favorites Round Springfield and to outright write the classic “SupercalfragalisticexpalliDOHcious”.  And to his credit Jean would later go on to write some classic post-golden age simpsons episodes during his tenure as producer: Lisa’s Sax, Mom and Pop Art, and Children of a Lesser Clod, which is notable if nothing else for this gag. 

So yeah the guys are legends and were right to start their own show under Simpsons producer James L Brooks over at ABC. The show followed the adventures of film Critic, Jay Sherman, a parody of film critics with high brow tastes, impossibly high standards, and a huge opinon of himself, having won the pultizer at least once.  Despite this he was also constnatly spat and shat on by society, divorced, lonely, depressed and eats like a thousand pigs combined in some horrific science accident. And given the last three parts describe me, as well as my profession of b eing a critic, naturally I love the guy and this show. I’ll get into his cast as we go as the first episode does an excellent job of introducing the entire cast so there’s no sense repeating myself.  But the show’s style I can and will talk about: It’s basically Golden Age, i.e. season’s 1-10, simpsons, but with more pop culture refrences and movie parodies, since the show would often feature multiple on Jay’s show coming Attractions and took place in the celebrity hot spot of new york and was a love letter to the city.. and sometimes a hate letter but only when those digs at the city would be funny, which to be fair depsite never having been to or lived in new york most really are. That’s the series key asset: while a LOT of the jokes haven’t aged well as a lot of the celbreity refrences are dated as are some of the movie parodies, most are hilarious wether you get what their making fun of or not and to me tha’ts a good parody: where knowing what their making fun of HELPS, but you can laugh regardless. The show had the charm and pace of the Simpsons while having it’s own unique style and cast that was just as charming and I love it dearly.  The show sadly only lasted two seasons, with ABC canceling it after one, and Brooks having it moved over to FOX, which was a good idea and lead to what’s probably my faviorite simpsons episode, a Star is Burns. Ironically despite you know, the show being created by two simpsons writers, backed by one of their producers and perfectly in line, creator Matt Groening was against the idea, publicly ranted about it to the press, and generally was an ass about it. Look I love the guy and even Brooks, Jean and Reiss were all nice enough in thier criticsim of the guy, but sitll very much understandably pissed off. .and i’m with them. 

It gave what’s again, my faviorite episode and what is not a “30 minute add” but an episode that easily stands on it’s own and also you know, pokes fun at itself for being a crossover a few times. You don’t need to see the critic to enjoy it, and episodes most iconic gags, Boo-Urns, Man Getting HIt by a Football, Senior Speilbergo, all don’t involve jay. And again the shows were not at all dismilar: While the critic was it’s own thing it still had the simpsons sense of humor and pacing so I saw it more as a petty rant against having a crossover in general more than a legit critcisim. Especially since Groening had no such complaints decades later with the family guy crossover after both shows had all tehir talent surgically removed and had the gall to NOT remove a cheap shot at Bob’s Burgers. And yes i’m still bitter about seeing that in a promo for the special, Bob’s Burgers is fantastic, to the point that now, in a fabulous case of history repeating itself, it’s got it’s OWN show like the critic made by talented former crew members using a similar but sitll throughly unique comedy style , The Great North. My point is that controversy pisses me off, and The Great North is spectacular go watch it while you read this. 

So yeah the Critic is awesome, me and Kev are both fans, and there are plenty of romantic episodes abound as the show digs into Jay’s love life quite a few times and has episodes about his son’s first love, his boss finding a wife towards the end of the series, his parents rekindling their spark and in what’s easily my faviorite episode, his sister dating a grunge rocker. So there was no shortage of choices but the choice made was brilliant.. and i’m not saying that because i’m being paid to, as my review of splatter phoenix’s first episode in darkwing duck and woops should show, paying me does not guarantee that I have to LIKE what your paying me to review. But here I did and he pointed out the first episode of each season, with season two being a soft reboot that while keeping the premise and supporting cast changed a few things around and added two new main characters, and both involve jay finding a new love intrest and intorduce a lot of the cast. I found him to be right, so where we are and after the cut i’ll dive into the good and bad of both episodes and see what changed inbetween seasons. 

That gag will make sense.. later. Right now it’s time for our very first episode, the show’s very first episode as you could probably tell by the title. 

Pilot:  The pilot starts with Jay getting touched up by his Makeup Person Doris. Jay is played by legendary comedian John Lovitz, who this show gave me a deep and lasting appreciation for. Lovitz was at the time best known for his 5 year long stint on SNL, and film wise is best known for Three Amigos, the Brave Little Toaster, The Wedding Singer and Rat Race. Sadly while I do geninely love the guy.. he has been in enough crap to destroy the New York Sewer system, as everyone needs money and sadly not everyone appricates the talents of John Lovitz like I do. 

So naturally he’s also been in The Stepford Wives remake, Grown Ups 2, The Ridiculous 6, Eight Crazy Nights, North, Benchwarmers and Benchwarmers 2: Breaking Balls. Yes that’s an actual movie, though it’s already better than the first one for virtue of not having Rob Schnider and David Spade starring in it despite.. that title. The irony is not lost on me that Lovitz has essentially made his money starring in the kinds of films Jay was forced to see for his job.  Still a VERY talented, very lovely man.

Before we get to our next voice actor up, no profile of Jon would be complete without mentioning that time he slammed Andy Dick’s face into a bar. To make a very long story short, Lovitz was friends with the late great Phil Hartman, who even did some voice work for this very show, whose wife who had severe drug and mental ilness killed them both. Phil had told Lovitz he saw Dick give his wife cocaine, so after Phil’s tragic murder when Lovitz and Dick ended up on the same show, Lovitz ended up exploding at the guy out of grief and blamed him for her death, but later apologized like a gentleman.  Living up to his name though Dick later went up to Lovitz at a restraunt Lovitz owned and said “I’m giving you the Phil Hartman curse, you die next”. Granted he was drunk but still...

Naturally Lovitz banned the guy and Lovitz later demanded an apology when the two ran into each other when they ran into each other at Lovitz regular gig at the comed store. Dick not only refused to apologize even when Lovitz put him against a wall, but said it was because “you blamed me for her death”... which was a decade ago with change by this point, the actions of a man GREIVING for his best friend whose wife’s relapse you caused which inadveradntly lead to her and her husband’s death, and something HE APOLOGIZED FOR. Naturally Lovitz took this how you would and did what we’d all like to do in general and broke the shit out of his face and only didn’t do more because they were seperated. IN short this man is a hero and I wil lbring up this story at every opportunity.  Doris was played by the late voice actress Doris Grau, a script supervisor who worked on a LOT of films as one , the most notable I could find on wikipedia being Clue. This is a fact I just learned today but boy if it isn’t neat. Grau mostly did aditional voices for shows, most notably Ducktales and the Simpsons, where she played Lunchlady Doris, and of course this show. Still she seemed like a very funny and talented woman and it’s sad she’s gone.  The two start the series mostly sniping at each other and while that never ENTIRELY goes away, Doris gets more supportive after a spotlight episode where she and Jay bond and Jay thinks she might be his mom. And while she’s not this surprisingly sticks and for the rest of the series while still not above making potshots at him on occasion, she’s far more supportive. She also informs him she’s out of spray on hair “I’m bald and ugly, get more!”. This show is naturally comedy gold and a lot of it relies on Lovitz sense of timing, though the rest of the cast aren’t slouches but we’ll get to them as we go.  She ends up putting a hat over him and we get our first film parody, Rabbi PI starring Anuld, which is alright. Not one of the series best but passable and gets the gimmick of having film parodies on jay’s show across, which was a nice way to set it apart from the Simpsons. Jay reviews it on the Shermometor, a gimmick jay hates and that disappeared by season 2, giving it a bellow zero to the ire of his boss Duke Phillips.  Duke is one of the best parts of the show, an unhinged southren billlonare who was a modeled after Ted Turner, down to the mustache, who built up his fried chicken franchise into a multimedia congrlomorate and is also mildly nuts, though that part would be more of a thing in season 2. In season 1, he’s mostly there to make Jay’s life hell, with about half of the seasons episodes having him either fire jay or put his job in jeapordy versus 2 the next season. He’s still not unfunny, but most of his best stuff is in season 2 when Charles Napier’s allowed to cut loose a little more and the character wasn’t shoehorned into just being a clueless executive.  Charles Napier is a longtime character actor who showed up in TONS of films and tv shows too many to list.. and trust me with some of the lists of credits before and after this that’s saying something, his biggest voice rolls being in this series and Men and Black the Series as Zed. But needless to say he was ALWAYS this awesome and sadly passed in 2011.  Jay’s guest for the day is Valerie Fox, an up and coming actress whose first film kiss of death is coming out soon.. and whose age is an engima and it’s only a problem because if she’s 20, like the episode mildly suggests giving her starting career and her voice actress being that age, then this gets really gross as jay is 17 years older than her then. But given she looks older than that and sounds certainly older than that, i’m going more with 30, since she looks more like it, and sharon stone, who she’s mildly based on given she stars in a basic instinct knockoff and does the leg thing, was 32 at the time of basic instinct.  Valerie is voiced by Jennifer Lien, aka Kes from star trek voyager who I only know about because of reviews done by SF Debris and Allison Pregler. She was the childlike love intrest of Nelix, the ship’s resident pain in the audience asses who made them BEG for early seasons wesley crusher and who once, and I saw footage this wasn’t SF Debris exagreated, lunged at a crewmate in a jealous rage, unfounded by the way since Tom was AVOIDING kes depsite being attracted to her as he just wnated her to be happy and to not mess up her relationshpi, and screamed “i’ll kill you!”. Point is she hasn’t had a huge career, but was still worth noting and does a fantastic job here. Again I did not realize she was that young at the time by her voice, and that means she did a great job. 

So Jay’s smitten with her, finds her super attractive and she asks him out.. but to the show’s credit, and Jay’s he does try to rebuff her because he knows ther’es a conflict of intrest there.. but ends up giving in. However at least the show not only is upfront that there’s an issue here but that ends up being the thrust of the last act. Granted there’s still some.. questionable stuff like when she does the basic instinct leg cross and he says “can we get a shot of that”, which no.. Jay.. no you can’t. Ewwww. Seen far worse, like It’s Pat, which was a VERY real SNL sketch about people trying to guess the titular pat’s gender because that’s not creepy or invasive even for the time. And they made a movie out of it because Wayne’s World was popular forgetting that Wayne’s World, one of my faviorite movies by the way and one I need to cover here sometime this year now the thought’s occured to me, was a labor of love, with a talented director and actual ideas from it’s two leads who actually fleshed out the character versus a concept that was NEVER funny to begin with and has gotten down right horrifying with age. And wasn’t I talking about the Critic? Not the abusive jackass mind you, Jay Sherman. 

Ah yes so Jay takes Valerie to a date at Lane Riche, the rich jackass where we meet Vlada, a vaugely european man whose your typical hollywood suckup. As Jay puts it in a later episode  Vlada: I love you too Jay: You only love my money Vlada: That’s true but it is a love that will never die.  He also naturally scoots Jay to a less nice table in the Critic’s section once Conan O’Brian shows up... which WAS supposed to be a different kind of joke, as at the time Conan was just a writer on the simpsons and SNL, but now given he has a decades long career in late night and famously said fuck you to NBC during that whole Tonight Show debacle, which netted him his own show on TBS, it comes off more as the kind of self deprciating gag Conan makes about himself. So in other words it’s actually funnier now? 

As for the critic’s section that’s a part of the series I’ve neglected to talk about so let’s do that: The kind of critic Jay is, one who plays clips of the movie and reviews them.. on television. And were usually academics who looked down on popular film, the kind Siskel and Ebert popularized, and both suprisingly had a huge guest apperance in season 2 and even reviewed the show on their show. This kind of film criticism just dosen’t exist on tv that i’m aware of anymore, and mostly lives on with internet reviewers , many of whom were inspiried by critics like this, and who range from acadmeics to average joes to some mixture of both. It never went away just simply went to a younger generation. Some of which squandred it and somehow still have a career like certain abusuive jackasses i’ve mentioned enough with that one gag a few paragraphs ago. Point is it’s a much more varied and different game now so the critic ended up as one of those shows or movies where the main characters very job feels like an artifact of it’s time, like our heroes in Wayne’s World hosting a public acess show, when nowadays they’d just put it up on youtube or the entire idea of a UHF station in well.. UHF. It’s not a BAD thing, just something to note. 

But the date goes well as Valerie shows she’s really into jay and even takes him oggling her in stride, though we do get an utter classic of a gag when Jay says something about women being drawn to him.. and cue an old woman asking to rub his nonexistant hump for luck “You hunchbacks are all alike”. She does so anyway to his understandable annoyance. 

But the two go back to Jay’s place, talk about his acomplishments including a pulitzer and then well.. the obvious happens they go to bed together and the next day after Valerie is horrified at his just woke up fac,e he gives her an easy out but she’s fine with it. It honestly shows just how low the poor guy’s self esteem is that he just.. assumes a woman will regret having slept with hima nd walk out and while played for laughs it really gives a clear look into Jay’s mental state: He’s so full of self loathing, not helped by the world being out to get him, that it’s really oddly endearing. And VERY releatable.  The two are interupted by Jay’s son Marty. Marty is played by the very recognizable and very wonderful Christine Cavanagh, who sadly passed away in 2014. She voiced Chuckie Finster, Gosalyn Mallard, Oblina, Dexter from Dexter’s Lab and the titular pig from Babe. She decided to retire in 2001, so while her career was only about a decade she made quite the impact and is sorely missed. Unsuprisingly her usual voice is perfect for the very awkward Marty, who Jay asks to tell eveyrone about the beautiful woman in his bed especially his unfaithful and utterly loathsome ex wife ardith. 

This scene demonstrates two problems. The first is just the pilot as Jay’s kind of sleazy. While Jay being thirsty wouldn’t go away, especially in the episode Lady Hawke, it’d be made more awkwardly endearing. Here there are moments of him just plain being creepy like the aformentioned oggling, which while not bad in itself, if a bit awkawrd, also has him creepily muttering to himself while doing so which removes any charm or relatability and just sends it straight into needing 10 showers just to wash this scene off. The rest of the series would just turn him into a bit desperate at worst.  It also explains why the only other romantic story the guy has in the season is a pastiche of misery. Thanfully this would be GREATLY adjusted next season but we’ll get to that. 

The other problem is just the tone... we get a good half a minute of Marty talking about how he calls Ardith’s boyfriend “Uncle Al” because he likes him a lot.. to his dad’s face. And granted his dad is being creeptastic this episode but the early episodes just pile on the Jay hatred by the world a bit thick, to the point one episode puts him as “worse than hitler”. Granted the audience is full of idiot teens who have no idea who hitler is, and the gag is kinda funny, but it makes my point: Jay is just utterly shat on by the world, and while he does get a few wins, most are undercut by something awful and it gets taxing sometimes. The guy is just too loveably pathetic to hate, too relatable even as a teen and not snobish enough to be really loathsome or WANT to see him knocked down by the world. It’s not overwhelming enough to ruin the first season, it still has good episodes but this episode does highlight a LOT of these problems.  He does get to spend the day with val though, dancing outside the trump buliding, seriously even back then he was a joke and his lack of money half the time was well known.. how did the last four years happen, and they tell each other they love each other. I’d aww if I didn’t know how this ended.  So jay relates the good news of how he feels to his best friend, Jeremy Hawke, played by Maurice LaMarche. LaMarche is one of the most talented voice actors alive, a master of impersonations paticuarlly orson welles, who was naturally brought on board because they knew they were going to need a lot of celebrity voices for the film parodies and needed one or two guys to do them to keep it cheap. The guy is like most of this cast a legend in the industry, having voiced the Brain, Squit, Dizzy Devil, the Human Ton, Big Bob Pataki, Egon Spengler, Sleet,  Kiff Kroker, Headless Body of Agnew, Morbo, Various other Futurama characters because that list is long, Mortimer Mouse, Blue Falcone, Father, Yosemite Sam, Vincent Van Ghoul, Doctor Doom, Abradolf Lincler, and Odval. Point is the guy has been engranged in my childhood and adulthood and will probably even after he’s gone come back from the grave to do some voices. He even got the part of Jeremy Hawke here because he happened to do a REALLY good australian accent depsite not being australian. Jeremey was a combination of paul hogan, the star of the Crocodile Dundee movies and at the time sex symbol and at this time known anti semite Mel Gibson. Obviously neither of those refrences has aged paticuarlly well, but since hollywood ALWAYS has room for a super hunk from australia, just ask Chris Hemsworth or before him Hugh Jackman, the character still works and his breakout role, Crocodile Ghandi is so ludcrious it works. I.e. a white australian man playing the mahtma and saying before he brings peace “First a tasteful shot of my bum for the ladies. Jeremy, while sometimes increidbly oblvious, is still a fairly nice easygoing guy and an extremley loveable character. And whie Jay worries about Valrie meeting him because he’s sex on a cracker she ignores him and jay gloats for a bit, paticuarlly with the great bit “take your genatalia right back to australia”. And while Jeremy’s happy for him he tries to reign Jay in when Jay talks asking her to marry him.  As Jeremy later relates on Jay’s fire escape “Bubala, i’ve learned there’s two things you should never do: Marry an actress and wear blackface to the naacp image awards. Two things I found out the hard way. “

So Jay takes her to meet his parents and finds out he’s adopted.. and their also rich. Jay’s waspy parents are his cold and overly honest mother Elanor, played by  Judith Ivey, his kooky dad and THE best part of the series Franklin played by Gerrit Grahm and his loving and free spirited teenager sister Margo played by Nancy Cartwright.  Okay (cracks knuckles) here. we. go. Judith Ivey is a tony wining stage actress and has also directed numerous plays and is mostly known for her stage work but I know her from Designing Women where she played BJ in the last season. Garret Grahm apparently shows up in a lot of brian depalma movies, including Beef in phantom of the paradise, a lot of tv work and to my shock the asshole dad from Child’s Play 2. Another thing I genuinely love I wasn’t aware an actor or actress from this series had a part in.  Finally there’s Nancy Cartwright, who you DEFINTELY know from the Simpsons, where she plays Bart, along with Nelson, Ralph, Kearny, Database, and Maggie, and Kearny. Other credits include Pistol Pete, Mindy from Animaniacs, Chuckie Finster picking up for Christine Cavanagh ironically enough, Lu and Rufus from Kim Possible. She’s a talented lady and i’m glad sh’es still around. Whew. 

Okay so yeah I do love the shermans and fraknlin is again easily the best part of an already excellent series and unlike Duke that’s in full display here, with him saying, when his wife mentions they were going to give jay back at one time, “Son if I’ve said it once I said it a thousand times.. who are all you people. “ and he’d only get better. Sadly he’s NOT in sherman woman and child. Our loss really. But he’s in pretty much every other episode of season 2 thankfully and most of this season so eh, fair trade off. Also we get the classic line, after Jay says he’ll love valrie even when he’s decaying in the ground, his mom quips “Cna’t we go one meal without talking about your rotting corpse?” Though Eleanor understandably thinks Valarie is using jay for a good review. Margo suspects her of the same and takes her on a horse ride, though all she can gleam is that Val genuielly loves jay and welcomes her to the family.  Jay however does decide to duck out of the inteview by faking sick, which leads to a really sweet moment where Valerie visits him and they dance, in a hilaroius but oddly sweet parody of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and King Dork. Despite the title and the song insluting him a LOT it’s still just endearing. This is a problem but we’ll get to in just a moment WHY all these touching moments are a problem.  So naturally things don’t go that well for Jay as Duke has a tape of the film sent to him “My shrink was right: GOd does hate me!”

Naturally kiss of death is bad and valrie is bad in it and Jay is left uncertain what to do, but eventually decides he has to do what he feels is right,.. though he does take a picture of her while she’s sleeping. “In case you do leave”

So in a tender and heartbreaking moment Jay is honest, the movie does suck and she’s not good but he does compliment her, for her personality not her body despite his skeevy behavior and say she could get better. Instead when he arrives home.. she dumps him to his face and leaves never to be seeen again while he assumes she’ll come back. And that’s the issue it’s GENUINELY hard to tell if we’re supposed to side with Jay. On one hand he genuinely loves her and does the right thing and on the oth er he’s kinda creepy. It’s a mixed tone that just sorta hurts thing and something the series DID fix after this, as it found a better ballance of the guy being pitable while also still being an ass and ONLY usually being punished when he does something actually wrong, the only exception being Dial M for MOther which is easily the weakest episode of the series. The episode does close on a really funny moment as Jay’s dispondent because “I’m sitting on top of a volcano of rage and I don’t knwo where to direct it”. Marty mentions a new Sylvester Stallone movie where “He plays a concert pianst who” And jay dosen’t even need the rest of that to shout “To the multiplex!” The man is back

Final Thoughts for Pilot: This episode is not bad. It has it’s flaws as I said, mostly in tone, but the series would iron that out and it’s still a great pilot that organically introduces the entire main cast in one episode and really gives us the full idea of who Jay Sherman is. It’s also REALLY funny, as the series should be and it would get better, but i’d still put it over some more awkward first episode like Letterkenny’s “No Reaosn to Get Excited”, even with it’s brilliant ending or Bojack Horseman’s first episode  whose title is way too long to put here in an article that’s already long as hell about about to get longer. But like those series this pilot worked pass the awkwardness and the result is a damn good series. but if you want a better idea of what it became.. wellllllll

Sherman, Woman and Child: So yeah as you can tell JSUT by contrasting images a few things were changed up between seasons, part of it at network instance. The designs were softened , the color palette was brightened with jay being the most noticably alterted between seasons. 

The execs wanted jay a bit warmer, so his face was given wider more expressive eyes and was also scrucnehd down a bit. He was also made slightly less of a jackass, with his elitisim toned down a bit and his creepeir moments gone. For instance he no longer had a split personality/imaginary secretary named ethel. That was actually a thing. It didn’t even really change Jay as a person, this very episode mentions him not liking the Lion King, and he’s still snooty, he’s jusst not as punchable about it and that was for the best.  But the cringe comedy in general was taken down a peg and replaced with more fun weirdness, which wihle present in season 1 really pops more here, especially with Jay’s dad who sadly dosen’t show up in this episode, but at various points dresses up like El Kabong, puts on the mask from the mask (”He did the same thing at Nixon’s funeral”), and blows up famous works of art while babysitting. But yeah things get a bit more surreal like the simpsons from season 4 onward, ironically enough given these guys left to make their own show, and it’s to the show’s benefit. 

But besides a lighter tone, they also wanted two things to hook viewers in: A permenant love intrest for Jay, and an adorable kid character. The former.. was acutlaly quite resonable, as i’td both give jay a “win” as it were, allow the cast to have another femlae character and give him someone else to confide in besides Doris or Jeremy, to give those characters a break. The other was less so and we’ll get into why when we meet her. 

This episode really is a second pilot, reintroducing about half of the main cast. Marty, Elanor, Margo and as I said Franklin are all absent. But their reintroduced soon enough with the fourth episode in both broadcast and dvd order, and my personal faviorite “A Song for Margo, is entirely focused on Jay’s parents and sister, while Lady Hawke has marty breifly at the start for broadcast order and he’s in the frmaing device for Sherman of Arabia in dvd order. So the characters all get a proper reintroduction to new audiences, but it was the right call to NOT shove them into this one, still introducing new people to the new cast, but letting the two new additions to it breathe and get properly intergrated into this universe.. well more Alice than Penny but we’ll get to that. It’s part of why, besides the genuine extra coat of polish aand seasonal changes I feel this is the better episode. 

So we open with Jay on his show and two parodies in a row. The first is a few good men but with Jack Nichelson making fun of Christan Slater for sounding like him even though. they honestly aren’t too similar other than both doing that pause thing a bit. So yeah not their best but the second segment makes up for it “The Nightmare Before Channukah” a parody of the nightmare before christmas that was so beautifully animated and funny, that they actually bumped it up to the season premiere.  But while the parodies are good Jay’s show is once again, this happened a LOT in season one, in jeapordy, being beaten by the Benedictine monk variety hour. Which while the Bendictine Monks are VERY much an artifact of the 90′s a choir of monks that somehow went mainstream, the whole segment is so absurd and wonderful it stands on it’s own and is still funny to me in 2021. Duke comes in anda fter trying to softball things shows the change I mentioned: He’s actually sorry the show is in danger and is genuinely sincere that he’s sad he’ll probably have to cancel it versus season 1 where he was ready to cancel it what felt like every other episode. And I prefer this, where he can still mess with jay or flex his power over him, but is more cordial with the guy and it allows more jokes between the two. 

So Jay’s not doing so good.. and during his crappy day he spots a 30 something woman and her young daughter struggling in the rain and stops his cab to help. And gets maced for it “MMM, Jalapeno”. Though Alice does apologize and Jay does understand as it is New York and she graciously takes the offer. It’s in the cab their properly introduced. Aliice thompkins and her daughter penny who in a great bit punches jay in the nose for not liking the lion king (”rex reed did the same thing”) and then kissing him on the nose in apology (”Rex did that too” And he acompanies them in.. and also gets conked on the head by a potted plant and put in a materinity dress. 

So we get to know Alice and what her deal is: Alice was once married to and supported the career of country star Cyrus Thompkins who was.. less than subtle in his music about how faithful he was

Easily one of my favorite gags of the series if in part for Pat Overall’s delivery. So she moved from Knoxville to New York to prove to her daughter a woman can make it on her own, and proves she’s smart, talented and driven she just needs a break. She seemingly gets one in a man in a bright white outfit who says “this is your ticket out of this rundown flophouse” only for him to cheerfully exclaim “Your being evicted!”... PFFFTT. Cue where the commerical would be

So during this lull in the action let’s talk about Alice and Penny’s voice actresses: Alice is voiced by Park Overall, though for some weird reason I thought she was voiced by Hollly Hunter. Dunno why. Park is an outspoken liberal, supporting my boy bernie sanders in 2016 and in general seems like a fascenating lady. Naturally like with Jay’s parents I know her from something more oddly specific, the sitcom Reba, as I did not realize she voiced alice depsite using a similar voice for her character there, Reba’s best friend Lori Ann.. And while Park TRIED her best.. the character didn’t work out: a combination of it being simply funnier that barbra jean tried to wedge herself into the roll and the fact Reba really didn’t need a horny abrasive sidekick meant the charcter had a very short shelf life and the audience had very low patience for her.  I did like her constnatly insulting Brock as he was not a good person andi t was nice SOMEONE besides Reba actually got to roast him on a regular basis. 

Penny was voiced by the one and only Russi Taylor, who sadly passed in 2019. She voiced Huey Dewey and Louie, Webby Vanderquack, Minnie Mouse, Fantasma, the imcomprable martin prince...

Among tons of smaller rolls. She’s sadly missed. We’ll get more into what they add or subtract from the show in a minute, as the next day at work Jay wonders how to help, though Duke’s interjection gives us two great gags: his “30 second workout” which involvees throwing jay around like a medicine ball and.. well this. 

The man is a legend for a reason. He earned that golden statue. So Jay TRIES slipping alice the money only to give it “To my good friend crazy postman”, and Alice refuses the money due to pride.. even if you know, she has a small child and new york is expensive but Jay finds a better solution, hire her.. even if it’d make it impossible for them to date. For all of one episode. What keeps the power dynamics from feeling EUGUUUUGGHH here is that Jay treats alice like an equal partner at work and dosen’t let their relationship really impact things outside of one episode, and dosen’t use his position to get into a relationship with her nor does she use being responsible for a turn in his fortune for hers. 

And yes turn in fortune, as a makeover and a change of attidue under Alice’s direction, which is utterly amazing to watch and wow’s duke and hte audience, wins back his fans and his job is secure. Duke meets alice and we get more great duke stuff. including something truly iconic...

I want bears who sing for me, doo dah, doo dah. But yeah things are well though Jay ends up admitting to Jeremy he can’t stop thinking about her “Her merest smile is like pedals of the empreror’s bathwater, BATHWATER I TELL YOU BATHWATER. “ So Jeremey encourages him carpe canum “Seize the dog”. He does so.. and the day but instead finds Alice with her ex Cyrus whose trying to win her back. Wuh oh.  Once the asshole leaves, and agrees to give her the night to think, Alice admits the only reason she’s considering it is she has a weakness: his singing melts her like butter on a bagle (”God i’ve been in new york too long”. )  Jay tries to talk her out of it at the critics meeting for “Dennis the Meance II Society” which involves Dennis pulling a drivebye on mr wilson.. why wasn’t this the second live action dennis the meance movie? WHY I ASK YOU. But Jay gets a good idea, as Alice TRIES to tell the asshole to get to stepping (And to see penny often, she’s not a monster), he works his evil song magic.. only for Jay to undercut it with his own amazing song on acordian. “Cyrus is just a virus, he wants to tie you down while your still young. Your potetial, is what’s essential, you could someday be another connie chung!” And that ultiamtely shows WHY jay is the better man. He just wants what’s best for her and dosen’t care if it’s him, he just wants it not to be THIS asshole. He’s not even trying to win her over, which a lot of these gestures creepily lead to. He just wants to help her be who she’s MEANT to be. And that’s why this works better: Instead of a fake relationship built on lust and someone conning the other person, it’s a real one built on genuine chemistry. Also Alice you know dosen’t just.. vanish after an episode but is a permenant part of the cast. I mean she does for the webisodes but we don’t talk about those. 

So our hero undercuts Cyrus one more time  Cyrus: “Loverrrr, without you there’s no other” Jay: Give him a chance he’ll do your mother....

I mean he’s not worng, So Cyus is sent packing and we get a nice romantic moment between the two. 

Final Thoguhts: Sherman, Woman and Child This one is truly excellent. It relaunchs the show on all cyllanders. And frankly Alice was a fine addition to the cast: her own fully fleshed out woman with her own personality outside of jay, who was tough, smart and a good counterpoint and confidant to Jay and it felt like she’d always fit. Penny on the other hand, apologizes to the late Russi Taylor who tries her best, just dosen’t work and feels ultra cloying and out of place in the series and unspurisingly is barely used after this. But overall a better pilot than the actual pilot was already pretty good and a fine pair of episodes. Check em out whenever the series eithe rgets on a streaming platform or pops back up on youtube as Sony’s struck it down... despite not putting it up anywhere i’m aware of. Seriously sell it to HBO Max or Disney I want a reboot. But for now this series is awesome check it out and until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure. 

#the critic #jay sherman #alice thompkins #marty sherman #duke phillips #pilot #sherman mother and child #jon lovitz #the simpsons #mike reiss #al jean #abc #fox #animation #the 90s

[girlobsessed21]

My thoughts on The 100 7x05

Hey, guys,

Sorry for not doing any comments on the last two episodes. I’ve been a little busy and I struggled to connect to the show, so it hindered my enjoyment, but it’s all better now. Liked episode 4 and 5 was even better, jampacked with info and it answered a lot of questions.

Welcome to Bardo

Badass Octavia is da bomb (people don’t say that anymore, right?). When she was captured in episode two, I thought she had lost her fighting spirit, but it’s back, bitches. Well, until she runs into an invisible wall trying to escape. She’s captured and transported to M-cap (whatever that means). Then we get a welcome little flashback to Lincoln but it’s obvious that Bellamy would be the hand reaching out. He’s her rock, like she’s expressed many times.

Unlike John Murphy who is not quite a friend, or family and definitely not a lover. Introducing so many new characters in the final season of a show is never a good idea, because this is the time to wrap up all the stories of the existing ones, but come on, who cannot love Levitt. Even when he first meets Octavia, he doesn’t want to hurt her. Jason, you better not harm one hair on this precious little puppy’s head!

As he binges The 100 through Octavia’s eyes, he starts rooting for her, and he actually gives a damn, unlike most people on this show. He understands her strengths and weaknesses and he makes her see it too. “You’re a warrior to be sure, but your heart is pure.” Wow, what an honest and beautiful line. (Scroll down for my shipping comments.)

So is O and Hope’s fleeting little reunion. It’s amazing to experience this deep loving side of Octavia after her darkness. She’s truly one of the most diverse and developed characters on the series. Now Hope and her resilience is quickly making it to the top as well.

While Hope is trying to send her back home, we learn that memory loss is due to the time dilation. One quick note on this, it’s not linear, there’s no easy equation to calculate it unless you’re Stephen Hawking or Einstein. I don’t think it’s constant either. 10 years on Skyring = 11 days on Bardo = a few minutes on Sanctum. In the current time, 5 years on Skyring = 1 day on Sanctum = 7 days on Bardo. So, it’s clear that the planets are moving, and other factors are playing into the phenomenon. It’s more important to understand the time relative to each planet.

Levitt was the one who tattooed Hope’s code onto O’s back, also the one who planted the note into Hope’s arm. Indeed the kind of man you want on the inside, he even accepts a blow to the face as thank you.

Sheep-ish?

Thirty minutes on the clock and the trio gets led to a congregation to praise the shepherd. I never thought it was Anders, I do, however think it might be Cadogan. The Bordoan’s built the underground forest because they destroyed their planet. Ugh, what’s new? The shepherd herded his sheep from earth to Bardo via the stone. Cadogan and his second dawn cult?

Back to Clarke. So, after last episode I thought ‘the key to winning the last war’ line was an artifice for luring Clarke to disciples, but now it’s clearly true. They’ve located the key and they will win the last war. Levitt was interested in Clarke surviving the City of Light with the flame in her head, they probably assume she still has it. Cadogan burned Becca alive. Could it be because of the flame? Is this all because of that damn little chip that can’t seem to die?

Bellamy is not dead, I repeat, Bellamy is not dead! I believe that memory could be staged or implanted for a reason. Also, there’s no body, he jumped through the bridge. In the promo photos, he wears a ring but his actions towards Octavia seem a little cold and generic. On first watch, I thought it was bad acting but if he was programmed to do this, it makes sense.

Note the sequence of events. Octavia returned 7 days ago and was asked to talk her brother down, but we don’t see the actual scene. Instead we’re shown a memory. They could have implanted it to make her vulnerable and perhaps more susceptible to the procedure. I don’t know, but this theory could lead to Robot-sheep!Bellamy on Nakara, where he’ll encounter Clarke and the gang.

I have to be honest, I really don’t like this character arc for Bellamy. It’s unoriginal and a mime of Peeta’s storyline in Mockingjay. Sorry, but so far it feels like the writers were so over the show, they just wanted to get it done. And that attitude really bleeds into one’s creative concepts. I could be completely wrong, in fact, I hope I am.

Echo spins a Finn

My word, I lost the love of my life once, but I sure didn’t kill anyone. When Echo received that vision of Roan, I was hoping for some progression on her individual arc, they’ve made me care about her, and now we get the opposite. Why? One thing I have to admit, a killer performance from Tasya Teles! No pun intended.

Look, this show hasn’t explored Bellamy and Echo’s relationship enough to make her murder believable. It was the exact same thing with Finn. I wasn’t invested in Finn and Clarke’s connection, so his actions of killing a grounder tribe was more repulsive than understandable. Sure, Echo loves Bellamy and her sole purpose is to save him, but I’ve never truly witnessed their love for each other. They had one or two intimate scenes which cannot compel a deed like this. And in the process, she screwed Hope and Diyoza.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s any coming back from it. She murdered an innocent person in cold blood. That’s sure to open a door to the dark side.  Just look at Octavia after killing Pike and her actions were justified by jus drein jus daun.

Say Sanctum three times slowly and it sounds like… Sanctum

Blind faith

Look, I’m just gonna come out and say this song is getting old. Every episode featuring Sanctum is the exact same thing with different lines. Can we please move on from it, already? Yes, we know the COG want Russel dead, and the adjusters will go to extreme lengths to free Russel and the prisoners are background noise.

I did appreciate Nelson stepping in to try and save the girl, though. Still doesn’t save the fact that it’s repetitive. The Sanctum plotline is really struggling to take shape and I hope it happens soon. Dramatic eyeroll.

At least in the drought of a desert, you can always count on Murphy. “…I say we live and let die.” Typical cockroach line, right, but it’s ironic when he’s the one to step up, even if it is for Emori. Under the magnifying glass it’s the exact same plot as episode 1 and 3. He hesitates to take action, and eventually becomes the hero.

I mean, he saved that poor kid from being burned alive. Can you imagine sacrificing your own child in such a horrific away? Cults are beyond whacked, and, unfortunately, it’s reality that cult members are so blinded by their faith that they do not see rhyme or reason.

How did Murphy fail that test? I didn’t. When Trey named the four pillars, I thought, isn’t rejoice one of them? Surely, a cockroach would have smelled that trap a mile away.

Indra the great

Can we just give a massive round of applause to Adina Porter!!! That powerhouse walk vibrates strength and majesty, damn, she should be a false god, I wouldn’t dare threaten her with or without an army.

Three little words was all it took for her to recognize evil. “There’s a spider on your shoulder.” Smooth. Too bad she can’t kill him. Why not, how many of the faithful are left to cause an uproar? Wonkru doesn’t know it’s Sheidheda, they won’t care, the COG will fall in line and the prisoners will be happy as long as they get their compound. Sorry, I don’t get it and I don’t understand why she doesn’t tell anyone.  Someone please explain?

Granted, JR Bourne as Russel is way better, but I still don’t understand his actions. I hope they explore and explain him more, because he still feels flat unless he knows something of this final war. I’m hoping these two storylines align soon since it’s really driving a wedge between me and my love for the show.

Shipwreck

I’ll start with the easy stuff, Murphy, Emori and the perfect dress gets a heart eye emoji from me. They are so damn cute this season, can they please live happily ever after in the palace?

Octabriel vs Levittavia

Now, I enjoy Levitt fangirling over Octavia. I feel like he has a deep sense of her through her memories. If I have to root for an underdeveloped relationship, it will have to be one where the characters share thoughts and experiences even if it is through a sick, sci-fi procedure.

On the other hand, Gabriel and Octavia have immense chemistry, two seconds of them together bends my mouth into an “Aah, cute” pout. This will also add some approval and representation for mixed racial relationships.

I really don’t mind either way as long as they make me care through showing and not telling.

Bellarke

So, if my theory is correct, and Bellamy does end up on Nakara, Bellarke will encounter each other quite soon. Bellamy won’t be himself though, but he might pretend to be Bellamy to win Clarke’s co-operation. Is there hope for Bellarke yet?

Echo is now trotting a dangerous path and Bellamy might be pledged to a cause, so I doubt there will be a happy ending for Becho. Since 7x01 I’ve been thinking that the writers might want to develop something between Clarke and Gaia but if they are separated, is there enough time? Guess we’ll see.

This monster of a review is finally done… If you read through everything, you deserve a gold star! Let me know what you think, till we meet again…

#The 100 #the100 7x05 #the100 season 7 #octavia blake #levitt the 100 #hope diyoza #bellamy blake #echo #john murphy #indra kom trikru #gabriel #bellarke #sheidheda

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 259: Jakku General Hospital

Previously on BnHA: We chilled with Hawks and Twice, who filled us in on the various different facets of Pliff’s plan to fuck over the world. For starters there are like a dozen new bad guys who are each heading different Pliff regiments, just in case anyone forgot that this is a literal army we’re dealing with here. Hawks also reminded us of the fact that Twice can clone basically any one of the bad guys as many times as he wants now, so that’s a nicely terrifying thought to sit and mull over. We learned that once Tomura is done powering up, the villains intend to attack all over the country simultaneously and basically destroy society as we know it. Oh and also kill all the heroes of course. But I think we already knew that. Anyway, so the one bright side in all of this is that Twice naively let it slip to Hawks where Tomura was currently undergoing his Frankenstein procedure. And so the chapter ended with basically all of the heroes in Japan launching a surprise attack in the mountains of Kyoto, while the kids waited on standby to help with the evacuations. And I know that doesn’t sound very safe, but... well... shit.

Today on BnHA: A quiet morning in the Kyoto suburb of Jakku. All is peaceful -- or so it seems. Little does the elderly CEO of Jakku General Hospital (a stand-up citizen, philanthropist, and caretaker of orphans all across the country) know that lying in wait just outside his doors is a group of wicked and immoral HEROES ready to -- okay lol you know what, I can’t. Not sure what I was really going for there anyway. So! Meanwhile in the woods outside the ol’ villain hotel, a second group of heroes led by Edgeshot and featuring several child heroes in training, including KAMINARI WHO WAS LITERALLY JUST BORN YESTERDAY AND SHOULD BE AT HOME IN HIS NURSERY WATCHING PAW PATROL AND NOT OUT HERE IN THE WOODS WHERE HE IS IN TERRIBLE DANGER, is gathered and ready to attack the League’s main forces. So things kick off with Death Arms apprehending the traitorous Slidin’ Go, while elsewhere the heroes bust into Jakku General Hospital to capture Ujiko. Show of hands, who here thinks this is going to go smoothly? ...Yep. Yeah. That’s what I thought.

okay guys, before we get started I’m gonna answer a couple of relevant asks from last week. first:

I’m almost hesitant to talk about this, because I’m paranoid that Viz and co. could pounce on these sites again at any moment, and so I feel like this sort of thing is better left to private messages and discord servers. but I guess one little mention of it won’t hurt. so the site currently doing the scanlations is readheroacademia.com, which has been around for a while. and there are several other sites which also host the new chapters and have all of the old chapters archived as well. kissmanga is a big one which I know a lot of people use, but my personal favorite is readmha.com (idk, I just feel like its layout is... cleaner? if that makes any sense)

also do keep in mind that all of these sites are pretty ad-heavy, so I wouldn’t recommend visiting without a good adblocker at the ready (I generally use Chrome on both desktop and mobile, and have uBlock Origin and Disable HTML5 Autoplay enabled on my desktop browser). that being said, I’ve never had any issues myself

good question! I was actually thinking about doing a weekly follow-up post on Sundays after the official Viz translation comes out, but obviously I did not end up doing that last week lol. so now I’m thinking it might be easier for me to just post any subsequent thoughts/remarks in the following week’s chapter recap, since I’m already committed to doing those anyway and so it makes it harder to flake out

so that said, my one follow-up thought about chapter 258 is that the fan scanlation seems to have mistranslated that whole “AFO’s resurgence” part. in Viz’s version Hawks was instead saying that the PLF’s plans would “throw the world into chaos and enthrone Shigaraki atop the rubble.” and he then referred to Tomura as the second coming of All for One. sooooo, pretty much exactly the opposite of the other translation lol. this is a big blow to my continued effort to search for evidence that AFO is gonna come back and be the final villain, but I am still not deterred. we will continue to fight on until AFO either actually dies, or does come back like I keep predicting he will! please try to work with me a little better here, AFO

one other thing, instead of “New World Movement”, Viz used the same “Vanguard Action” regiment name that was used during the forest training camp arc. Caleb said that the wording (“kaibyaku koudou”) was exactly the same. so I’ll be using that too moving forward. I guess that means that Pliff is still on the menu though, pity

anyway so let’s get started now

so it’s a house... no, holy shit, wait, it’s the house!

THE NEW TODOROKI HOUSE OH MY GOD. ahhhhh lol what the fuck is this. Todofeels coming up to slap me in the face out of nowhere?! here I thought we were gonna just dive right into the Shigaraki raid and the resulting carnage

I’m... not really sure how I feel about this? like, right now I’m not trusting anything Horikoshi does lol. “quiet beginnings” you say? this is just a sneaky new way to bring me more pain. isn’t it

(ETA: I guess “quiet beginnings” also summarizes the other activities of this chapter pretty well. also is that Natsuo’s girlfriend??! at first I thought it was Rei, but those look like quirk-related ears? so Natsu then really is living his best college life huh.)

oh hey everyone it’s a brand new character!

(ETA: wait, is he actually quirkless? or is that just another LIE. you big LIAR.)

I’m so curious what the kanji is for this latest name. can’t wait for Caleb to enlighten us. I wonder if it’s “shi” as in “death”, just like with Tomura/AFO’s name. and no idea at all what “Maruta” means. basically I just want to know if there’s some pun or something, since yet again he’s obviously using a fake alias here

(ETA: so someone informed me in an anon ask that this is a reference to Unit 731, which was a Japanese unit that undertook lethal human experimentation during WWII. basically the people who conducted the experiments referred to their human subjects as “logs” to dehumanize them. and the Japanese word for log is, you guessed it, maruta. so that’s an extremely powerful and disturbing association for this name, and it’s obvious now why Horikoshi went with it.

that said, the anon said that some people were really upset by this name choice, and while I guess I can understand that, I also think that’s kind of the point, though? like, it’s supposed to be horrifying. anyone with a human conscience and any kind of empathy whatsoever should be horrified. and atrocities like that shouldn’t be forgotten, and I actually think that for someone born and raised and living in Japan like Horikoshi to be making a reference to this is fairly ballsy. because my understanding is that, like a lot of Japan’s other war crimes, it was more or less hushed up by the government afterwards, and isn’t really taught in schools or mentioned in history textbooks other than in passing. so while I can understand people maybe finding it disrespectful, I don’t think it was meant as such. it seems to me that if anything, Horikoshi wants people to look into it and be educated about it. and again, obviously he’s associating it here with easily the most reprehensible and morally sickening character in the entire series, which is fitting I think. anyway so those are my thoughts on that.)

anyway, guess what guys? looks like we’ve got ourselves another Star Wars reference! let’s just hope this particular Jakku doesn’t wind up as wrecked as its namesake when all’s said and done. it’s gonna be a loooooong day

you guys. Maruta is such a nice guy

he’s a philanthropist! and he runs orphanages all over the country! wow! what a great person!! and nursing homes as well, where residents presumably die on the regular (of old age and other natural causes no doubt), at which point they are presumably cremated, and I wonder who runs the cremation facilities? I’m sure whoever it is is definitely on the up-and-up

and “quirk-based community healthcare.” I wonder if they’re selective about who they treat based on what their quirks are. all the better to make sure people with particularly strong and/or unique quirks get the specialized treatment they need!

anyway. see, this is more like what I expected. some super dark shit, and finally some answers to a few long-established questions as well, but not without a price. that price being the churning feeling in my gut right now lol. oh man. well I just ate, so that might have something to do with it. but I tell ya, nothing makes you vaguely queasy like trying your best not to think about a massive conspiracy to kidnap and torture innocent children in the pursuit of ultimate power! so anyways I sure do hate this!

fffff like, really hate it. I HATE IT SO MUCH

[reluctantly goes ahead and slides AFO down one notch on my list of people I need to see die the most] well there it is. we have a new champion

so now we’re cutting to a hero briefing!

y’all is that THE SHERIFF. PLEASE. IT’S BEEN SO LONG. BUDDY I MISSED YA

so Nao says he had one of his guys go undercover to investigate, and they found that this hospital’s blueprints included a giant suspicious unlabeled place that nobody knows anything the fuck about

oh my god. you guys. forget Tomura, could that also be where they’re keeping the Noumus?? omg. omg omg omg. omgggggggggggg. omg

-- AHHHHHHHHHH

IF THE NEXT PANEL ISN’T JUST A CHORUS OF EVERYONE IN THE ROOM ALL SAYING “WHAT THE FUCK” SIMULTANEOUSLY, I’M GONNA DEMAND SOME ANSWERS, BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU, HAVING ALREADY KNOWN ALL ABOUT POOR JOHN-KUN AND ALL THIS FUCKED UP SHIT MYSELF, I STILL AUDIBLY SWORE OUT LOUD. AND YOU KNOW WHAT? I’M GONNA DO IT AGAIN TOO, BECAUSE WHAT THE FUCK

come on, is Pixie Bob the only one of you here with normal human reactions or what?!

RIGHT?! YOU ALL ARE LOOKING AT A TINY MOUND OF FLESH WITH VEINY BULGING EYES JUST OGGLING BLANKLY OUT FROM ITS EXPOSED BRAINS. NOT TO MENTION IT’S GOT TWO OF WHAT VAGUELY RESEMBLE EARS, BUT WHAT I’M PRETTY SURE ARE ACTUALLY NOSES?? AND A SEVERED SPINAL CORD TAIL DANGLING OUT FROM BEHIND. ALL OF WHICH IS PLASTERED TOGETHER LIKE A LUMPY MOLD OF CLAY ATOP TWO CHILD-SIZED LEGS, which are wearing fucking sneakers, with fucking velcro and shit. fuck. fuck

lol Nao

oh yes, not difficult at all. I’m sure he’ll come along real quietly. hey, let me know how that one works out, okay

“we have the trauma of Hosu and Kamino still haunting us.” thanks for that reminder. gonna have another city to add to that list real soon aren’t we. preemptive r.i.p. Jakku

oh man you guys. can you feel this tension building up

interesting how he says “destiny.” I wonder if that’s the actual dialogue. at any rate this overconfidence is terrifying and I would really like for you all to stop jinxing shit my dudes

-- WHAT DID I JUST SAY

holy shit. please tell me this is a separate group from the Endeavor group we saw at the end of the last chapter

but that doesn’t make any sense though, because this group has Midnight and Kamui, two of their deadliest and most efficient capture specialists. not to mention Edgeshot the literal ninja who can break into anywhere. so this really should be the vanguard here based on what I’m seeing, but if that’s the case why are the eighteen-year-old Tamaki and the sixteen-year-old Toadette right there with them?? can we not, you guys. can we not

fucking shit. at least they’ve got Ms. Joke there too to back them up. if we actually get to see her quirk in action I can die happy. and so, presumably, will the villains

so the “hospital team” (is that the Endeavor team??) said they’re gonna eliminate the villains’ warping ability, which presumably means John-kun. do they even know it’s him that does it?? they don’t seem to actually know who Ujiko fucking is so I have my doubts?

on the bright side though, it seems like this Midnight team is actually going to be raiding the mansion, and won’t be involved in the hospital raid. but on the less bright side, the mansion is arguably almost as dangerous. :/ that’s where Twice is!! and probably most of the League! but at least they don’t have a dozen Noumus in the basement just waiting to be unleashed

god. people, if we don’t get moving on this action soon I am going to give myself a damn heart attack. this is way too much suspense for a chill Friday night

son of a bitch that guy behind Toadette is Honenuki, I just realized. what the fuck, U.A. ?? “hey kids! guess what! we’re going on a field trip!!” ...

-- NO!!!!!!

IT WILL NOT BE ALL RIGHT!! DON’T YOU LIE TO THEM!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!! Tamaki, fine, okay, he’s experienced, and arguably more powerful than half the people there. Toadette, she’s just a kid, but she also tried to kill Tokoyami back during the joint training arc and I’m still not sure how I feel about that so whatever! Honenuki is probably the most responsible person in this entire group so fine. Tokoyami needs to be there to have a lot of angst about Hawks

but Kaminari. Kaminari fucking Denki. no. no, sir. excuse the fuck out of me. how fucking dare you. he is a five-year-old boy in the body of a high-voltage adolescent. and he’s maybe, just maybe, more powerful than anyone else in this fucking group but that still doesn’t give you the right to put this little baby boy RIGHT ON THE FRONT FUCKING LINES!! holy shit! HIS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!! I DON’T LIKE ANY OF THIS

OH MY GOD

RIGHT?!?!? omg omg omg omg omg

he’s literally wailing “I miss class 1-A” so loudly that it’s echoing all the way through the forest. see now that’s why you DON’T TAKE KAMINARI WITH YOU ON YOUR SECRET STEALTH ATTACK MISSION!! would somebody please point me towards whoever’s fucking idea this was so that I can go kick their fucking ass please and thank you

and here are the rest of them oh my god

Momo, Mina, Jirou, and Kiri at the forefront. okay, fine. this, I do like

so Edgeshot says they’ve surrounded the villains on all sides. man, no wonder they’re so worried about their warping capabilities. this is basically their one chance to capture all the bad guys in one fell swoop. I guess it makes more sense why all their capture specialists are in Edgeshot’s group, then

now I’m starting to wonder exactly what task lies in store for the Wonder Trio’s group, though? because they said evacuation, but is that really all there is to it? it’s no secret that Bakugou, Deku, and Todoroki are the three strongest interns they have. so you’re really expecting me to believe that they put baby Denki there on the front lines and yet plan on keeping their heaviest hitters in reserve? Nao is there more to this plan that you’re not telling us

oh shit Endeavor wants to know where his adopted chicken son is at

it genuinely does warm my heart to see Endeavor worrying about Hawks. I’m glad Hawks has at least one person out there who actually gives a shit about him. even if that person is mister father of the year here. the plot thickens

I wonder if Enji would actually die to save Hawks, if it came to that. which I’m not saying it would. but we all know some fucking shit is about to go down so I’m just having these thoughts here okay!

Nao always looks so tired nowadays. man

so he clearly does know who Endeavor’s talking about, though. one of these days I’d like to get a clearer understanding of what exactly Naomasa’s rank is and how high he is in terms of clearance, because the idea that he’s actually privy to more information than the number one fucking hero is kind of bonkers to me, ngl. this guy is literally just a detective, right?? not even a commissioner or anything. and yet he’s involved in everything. I used to suspect that he might be the traitor lol, and while I’m pretty sure by now that’s not the case, I’m still curious as to exactly what his deal is. does he even have a quirk?? anyways

so now Endeavor is hmphing and stomping off, and meanwhile there are some closeups of Mic and Aizawa

is that a whistle. do you guys think Mic could literally kill a man with his voice. shit. why do I kind of want to see it happen

as for Endeavor, I wonder if he was the one who made sure that his son and his friends weren’t on the front lines with the rest of them. sometimes it’s good to have some influence in these things

looooooool as if on cue

well. that sure doesn’t sound like he intends to keep them out of harm’s way. does he really have that much faith in them??

serious question, why exactly are all of the heroes seemingly so confident that this is going to work? it scares me because it makes me feel like in spite of Hawk’s intel they still don’t have a clue what they’re truly up against

so now we’re cutting to some random street somewhere and WOULD YOU LOOK WHO IT FUCKING IS

Slidin’ Go Suck An Egg. oh how I hate this man

look at him

I hate his stupid face!

OH SHIT

TRAFFIC CONE MAN, ARE YOU FINALLY GOING TO REDEEM YOURSELF FOR NOT RESCUING KACCHAN ON THAT DAY TWO YEARS AGO BECAUSE YOU WERE AFRAID OF A LITTLE SLUDGE? BECAUSE I’M HERE FOR IT! IF YOU WANT TO JUST GO AHEAD AND SNAP HIS NECK, I WILL TURN THE OTHER WAY AND ACT LIKE I DIDN’T SEE, I PROMISE

wow, Burnin’s team really is just evacuating people

I mean they’re obviously going to run into a Noumu, and just like that they’ll be in more danger than anyone, but at least for now it really does seem like the minds behind this raid wanted to keep them relatively out of danger. so yeah, for now I’m gonna chalk that up to Endeavor’s influence that they’re here rather than in the forest with the rest of their class

and here comes the hospital team!

well that answers my question about Nao’s rank. so he’s not even a chief. that really is fucking ridiculous but whatever

and why do I feel like this poor undercover subordinate is mere seconds away from becoming the first casualty in what I think is about to become the most violently snafued situation we’ve seen in this manga to date. like this shit is going to make Kamino look like the fucking state fair. fuck

...

I really wish I could believe that he was about to go down and it really was going to be just that easy

HERE WE GO!!

(ETA: so then they do know that he’s the guy who made the Noumu? including the one that nearly took him out in Kyushu? and they’re still acting like this is going to be a walk in the park? ?? what??)

knock knock, who’s there, JUSTICE

YESSSSSSS

(ETA: sure hope Endeavor’s light here doesn’t go summoning any darkness. welp.)

YOU’RE UNDER ARREST FOR CRIMES OF BEING TOO HORRIBLE TO EVEN FUCKING CONTEMPLATE, LET ALONE JOKE ABOUT! YOU SON OF A BITCH, GET FUCKED

oh my god. we’re really just gonna end it like that. well I guess next chapter we can all play a fun game of “let’s all count the pages until everything goes horribly wrong.” won’t that be a laugh. 10 to 1 the Noumu really are in the secret room and they’re all gonna be set loose by next week’s cliffhanger. remind me to have “Into the Trap” by John Williams cued up and ready to go lol

#bnha 259 #ujiko daruma #tsukauchi naomasa #endeavor #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #all wings report in #lock s-foils in attack positions #may the force be with us #? we've gotta be able to get some kind of a reading on that shield up or down #well how could they be jamming us if they don't know -- #-- if we're coming ...!! #break off the attack! the shield is still up! #PULL UP! ALL CRAFT PULL UP #TAKE EVASIVE ACTION #ADMIRAL WE HAVE ENEMY SHIPS IN SECTOR 47 #IT'S A TRAP #why can I still quote this movie verbatim from memory lol sigh

[cwmoonglum]

Excession & Annihilation

The titular event/object of Iain M Banks Excession is what the author terms an 'Outside Context Problem,' something that Banks characterises as a normally once in a civilisational lifespan occurrence. His go to example via his experience playing Sid Meier's Civilization game series is that of steamships intruding into territories where the dominant civilisation relies on wind power. Both our own histories and those of the myriad doomed aristocracies that I created in Meier's games attest to the fact that such Outside Context Problems often presage societal collapse. Whether this results in colonisation or in renewal, integration of the OCP is a civilisationally generative force that renders preceding political/social structures unsustainable. The power of the Tokugawa Shogunate is invariably weakened by the intrusion of Commodore Perry; Satsuma and Chōshū samurai can assert themselves as part of a world system and appeal to Western powers for aid in reshaping Japan.

'Excession' itself means 'a going out or forth,' and it's easy to read transitional moments in this manner. Equally, we can render it a pun as an expression of ratcheting up civilisational tiers; rather than succeeding feudally the transition exceeds the containing system. Yoshinobu Tokugawa's abdication is a radical disjuncture that precedes not another Age of Warring States where daimyo fillet one another to become the next Shogun, but a moment where the exceeding power of Western technoscience results in a total shift towards new political and social forms.

Such moments are the bread and butter of science fiction. Whether this is in 'first contact' stories where the inhabitants of Earth are invaded/subjected to quasi-religious revelation or the Sense of Wonder school's obsession with confronting the vicissitudes of Deep Time. Banks' Excession is in the end a transitory event/object; a consciousness that transits between universes and cannot be perceived even by the hyperintelligent machines that run the advanced civilisation of the Culture. Definitionally, this cannot be integrated without a shift in what the Culture is for (ostensibly, self perpetuation).

The technowarriors of Alex Garland's adaptation of Annihilation face a similar problem to the Culture's Minds, but react in ways several civilisational stages below. On Earth, in the present day, an alien event/object has crashlanded. Like the Zone of the Strugatsky's/Tarkovsky or M. John Harrison's Kefahuchi Tract, the Shimmer is an area completely resistant the contemporary technoscience. It exceeds our understanding despite years of research and multiple intrusions by (importantly) military forces. Garland presents the Shimmer event/object as a source of mystery, both occluding its meaning and occluded from the civilisation by the military-industrial Tokugawa analogues, 'the Southern Reach' who only see in it their own death. The protagonist, a biologist named Lena, has lost her husband to the Shimmer and resolves to enter it herself. In this, she is a typical science hero who is joined by a cadre of others (an EMT, a psychologist, a physicist, a geologist). Notably, this is the first nonmilitary group to enter the Shimmer; yet Lena is exmilitary, the psychologist is a government employee and all enter armed and armoured in the livery of patriarchal technoscience.

The film follows the logic of a horror video game; the supposed science heroes stagger from one set piece to the next picking up notes left by previous incursions into the Shimmer. They kill a mutated alligator, they watch a recording of Lena's husband slicing open his teammate to reveal a digestive tract that moves like a snake. Being inside the Shimmer is acting upon the very biology of those within it. Lena and the technowarriors accompanying her react largely with horror; the Shimmer represents a boundary violating queerness on multiple levels. The Shimmer is growing. Momentarily occluded from civilisation by explanation of a oil spill, the Southern Reach has internalised its own lie and can only view the Shimmer as an unintelligent polluting event.

Yet, the boundaries it violates are more than geographical or even biological. The Shimmer reawakens the scientists fear of an active Nature outside the control of patriarchal technoscience and modern consumption. Consider that this Outside Context Problem crashlanded in a national park, where Nature is safely contained. The growth of the Shimmer represents a civilisational danger because it will eventually encompass cities, people. Rather than the obedient Nature understood/constrained by technoscience, this mutant strain both acts with and upon the bodies and minds of those dispatched to study it. In fact, like the superconsciousness of Banks' novel it is in actuality an event/subject, violating the normative scientific dispassionate observer by looking back. This provides a neat mirroring of the central thread of Lena's psychology, where she is riven by guilt because of her violation of the boundaries of her heterosexual marriage. Her husband, she thinks, accepted an apparent suicide mission because he observed that she had cheated on him.

It transpires (or is indeed obvious from the title) that Lena's mission is not a mission of integration or understanding of the OCP, but a fascistic attempt to reseal Pandora's box. The technowarriors are dispatched to foreclose on the liberatory mutation offered by the Shimmer (for isn't all evolution driven by mutation?) and reassert the primacy of patriarchy, heterosexuality and military technoscience. Only the physicist on the team accedes to a dialogue with the Shimmer, accepting its action upon her DNA and mutating into a swirl of leaves that is carried away on the wind. For Lena, a filial warrior, the Shimmer's repurposing of human DNA to grow trees in human shapes or give a human voice to a mutant bear is grotesque because it ruptures a technological hierarchy and suggests forms of being-with Nature rather than being-over, using it. Nature, in the Shimmer, is a libidinal force that requires strict control lest it cause hurt like her own libido. Yet, it is notable that the protagonists of Garland's film can only conceive of this new generative model as essentially inferior. It is queerness understood as mimicry and grotesque pastiche.

Nowhere is this understanding clearer than in the climax of the film, where Lena finds the source of the Shimmer. Walking past the high camp decoration of a beach littered with sparkling glass trees, she enters into a lighthouse where an alien object crashed. She finds a video of her husband's suicide, concluding her suspicion that the returnee who looks like him is a Shimmer-generated clone. More importantly, she finds a genital-like hole (replete with pubic hair-like extrusions of plant matter) and descends therein to an alien womb, which generates a mirrored, non-humangendered creature. This creature mimics Lena's movements directly, and is accompanied by musical noises similar to the work of queer artist Arca (indeed the design of the creature recalls the work of her collaborator Jesse Kanda). Lena interprets the touch of this queer alien subject as aggression, even as it lies alongside her and engages in dance-like communication. Pushing her to the floor to rise again in sync, the alien feels more like a child than an invader. If this subject is acting upon Lena biologically, it can only be understood as a laudible attempt at xenocommunication. This xenogenerative biological sharing (think here of the Oankali in Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood) is too queer, can only be understood as penetrative invasion of the patriarchal human subject. For Lena to accept it would be to reenact her infidelity on a civilisational scale. So, she kills it.

Disturbingly, once she returns she claims to the Southern Reach that the alien made no attempt to communicate. She tells a lie to reestablish the boundaries of civilisation, and is rewarded by a parallel chance to reestablish her heterosexual couple form with the clone of her husband. That the film closes with their eyes glimmering in an alien fashion doesn't trouble the patriarchal technoscience of their civilisation; they have integrated the queerness of the Shimmer into heterosexuality and human boundaries.

The OCP is defeated and subsumed by the forces of reaction in a way that is only possible in fiction, foreclosing on the new ways of being with Nature that are vital to reforming and revolutionising civilisation in the same way that queerness opens vital paths to reforming our social and cultural relations. Per Donna Haraway, we are living through 'ongoing multi-species stories and practices of becoming-with in times that remain at stake, in precarious times, in which the world is not finished and the sky has not fallen—yet.' Annihilation presupposes that the only way out is to reassert the primacy of the human, and demand that history = man + tool. Being-with is determined to be perverse, frightening and dangerous; in this the film isn't wrong. But such perversity and terror inevitably overflows any container humanity can build. Nature is on the march, and only the perverse and the queer will survive Her terror. We need to exceed current forms; the alternative is Annihilation.

[daily-millennial]

September 27, 1869:

James Butler Hickok (May 27, 1837- Aug 2, 1876), widely known as the infamous "Wild Bill" of the Old American West, and sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas, responded to a call around 1 a.m. about a band of drunken troublemakers causing a scene at John Bitters' Beer Saloon. These disorderly teamsters, one by the name of Samuel Strawhum, strolled into the saloon that evening exhibiting an acceptable degree of intoxication, as far as Wild West standards are concerned. However, around midnight, the group became violent and destructive. A brawl ensued, and Strawhum and the fellow mischief-makers began smashing chairs, throwing tables, and destroying property. When Wild Bill and his deputy, "Rattlesnake Pete" Lanihan (gotta love Wild West nicknames), arrived to restore order and deal with the rowdy teamsters, Sheriff Hickok asked the not-so-gentle gentlemen to hand over their weapons. Strawhum laughed and drew his firearm, anyway. Acting instantly, Wild Bill shot Strawhum in the head - killing him instantly.

In the 1800s, Hays City operated as a freight and cattle center, but like many Old West towns, gambling was Hays' biggest industry. Hays attracted drifters, soldiers, hunters, cattlemen, and the general riffraff one would expect to find in a town many called "the deadliest place in the West." The people elected the already famous "Wild Bill" as Sheriff of Ellis County on August 23, 1869 for his reputation as a Civil War hero and expert gunfighter. Being quite rough and tumble himself, Hickok seemed fit to lay down the law in a city besieged by drunken violence and petty crime. Hickok was quick to assert his authority as sheriff of Ellis County, and within the first five weeks, he had already killed two men. Despite impressive reputation, residents felt uneasy about his violent and impulsive methods. In just three months, Wild Bill lost re-election to his deputy, Rattlesnake Pete.

However, Wild Bill's brief time as Ellis County Sheriff represents just a blip in his relatively short, but legendary life. Acquainted with such Wild West characters such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Calamity Jane, Hickok holds a distinguished position among American folk heroes. As a lawman, heavy gambler, soldier, actor, scout, and ladies man, Wild Bill was a real Wild West renaissance man. Originally from northern Illinois, Wild Bill traveled throughout the West, making a mark on local legend and local history seemingly every where he went. Like with many infamous characters of the Old West, many of these stories seem too outlandish and exaggerated to be real. Yet, writings from friends and family reveal that he was well-liked by many - and that there is at least some truth to many of these stories.

Libbie Custer, wife of Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, described Hickok's appearance in a way that may have left Mr. Custer feeling a bit uncomfortable. After all, there were rumors of an affair. She described Hickok lovingly: "Physically, he was a delight to look upon. Tall, lithe...he rode as if every muscle was perfection...I do not recall anything finer in the way of physical perfection than Wild Bill when he swung himself lightly from his saddle." Libbie wasn't the only one to comment on his striking appearance. He's described as tall and having piercing gray eyes,and long blondish hair that swept past his broad shoulders. A bartender at Carl Mann's Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory stated that, "A more picturesque sight than Hickok on horseback could not be imagined."

Despite his good looks, and despite his sometimes questionable reputation as a gambler and zealous gunfighter, Hickok became highly regarded for this actions during the Civil War. It is generally believed that this is where James Butler Hickok became Wild Bill Hickok, although the reasons why are not known  for certain. During the war, Hickok acted as a spy and detective, and proved to be an expert marksman. Prior to the Civil War, he also worked at a station on the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved men and women make their way to freedom.

However, perhaps what Wild Bill is most well-known for is his duel with Davis Tutt in July of 1865. The duel took place in Springfield, MO and was fought over the same reasons many saloon brawls and duels were fought over in the Wild West: gambling debts and women. Wild Bill lost a gold watch of sentimental value to Tutt in a game of poker, and while Wild Bill accepted defeat somewhat gracefully - asking Tutt at least not to wear it around him - Wild Bill became furious when he saw Tutt wearing it, flashing it about.

What happened next is what many say is the first recorded quick-draw duel in Wild West history. Hickok, standing seventy-five yards away from Tutt, squared his broad shoulders and set those piercing grey eyes on Tutt. From such a distance, Hickok was able to shoot Tutt through the heart. Tutt's bullet missed Hickok entirely. According to the story, Tutt's last words were: "Boys, I'm killed."

It is from this point on where Hickok's celebrity takes off. Journalist George Ward Nichols published an interview in Harper's New Monthly Magazine that tantalized readers with stories of "Wild Bill" and his impressive gunfighting skills. In the interview, Hickok claimed to have killed hundreds in gunfights. However, the leading historian on Wild Bill suggests a more likely claim, backed up by evidence, that Hickok only killed 6-8 people in gunfights. Hickok stood trial on August 3, 1865, but a jury ultimately acquitted, utilizing the unwritten "fair fight" law in his favor.

Hickok continued to use his celebrity to his advantage. He went on to be Deputy Marshal in Abilene, TX - which has earned him a spot on the Texas Trail of Fame. He even joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show for three months in 1873. But at 39, this rough and tumble renaissance man was starting to feel the weight of life in the fast lane. His eyes were deteriorating, making him useless as a marksman, and his gambling habits were about to catch up with him.

On August 2, 1876, the beloved celebrity, lawman, and Union veteran was shot in the head at point-blank range by Jack McCall while playing a game of poker. McCall lost severely to Hickok the day prior, and while Hickok offered to at least pay for the man's breakfast, McCall, not much more than a local bum, sought his revenge. Days before Hickok's death, he wrote to his wife, Agnes: "If such should be we never meet again, while firing my last shot, I will gently breathe the name of my wife - Agnes - and with wishes even for my enemies I will make the plunge and try to swim to the shore." The hand Hickok had before he was shot became known as the "dead man's hand:" two black aces and two eights. The fifth card, damaged by McCall's shot, is unknown.

Wild Bill embodied all that was holy (and perhaps unholy) about the Wild West. He was rugged Civil War veteran and aggressive lawman. He was a gambler and a perfect marksman, but he was also a lover and a doting husband. The Wild West still possesses an active part of the American imagination. It continues to inspire films, books, and television, and tantalizes us with stories, often fabricated and romanticized, of cowboys and natives on horseback, of rowdy saloons, and of the vigilantes and explorers who roamed the frontier.

If you're ever in Fort Worth, stop by the Texas Trail of Fame to check out Wild Bill's star, and remember the sheriff, marshal, soldier, scout, and husband who earned his place among the other American folk heroes of the Old West in more ways than one.

#history #wild west #wild bill #kansas #texas #old west #this day in history

[oberlincollegelibraries]

The Oberlin Evangelist in Praise of John Brown and the Brave Oberlin Men Who were Executed for Their Stance       Against Slavery

After John Brown raided Harper's Ferry in October 1859, the Oberlin Evangelist published a series of articles that were extraordinarily supportive of Brown's action to stop the spread of slavery. Today, when I think about the necessity of the Black Lives Matter movement and what it was like in John Brown's day, the period when the nation was still deliberating the slavery question, for a small town religious newspaper to publish articles boldly approving Brown's actions while denouncing the subsequent executions of Brown and the men who accompanied him, are both commendable and invigorating to read.

It is clear that not all editors, Henry Cowles, for example, were unequivocal in their support of Brown's actions.  One of the editors, the Reverend James A. Thome, a member of Oberlin College’s Board of Trustees, known in his days for his brilliant oratory skills was explicit in his assessment of the events at Harper's Ferry and its aftermath. Here is an excerpt from Thome’s John Brown; the Hero of Osawatamie; Surgent of Harper's Ferry appearing in the Oberlin Evangelist on November 9, 1859.

Democrats and Republicans are striving to outdo each other in "making capital" out of the affair; the former by representing it as a deep laid plot of the Black Republicans to involve the whole South in a servile war, and the latter by denouncing John Brown and his crazy crew as demons incarnate, and dooming them all in advance of the too hasty law to the halter. All agree in repudiating and decrying insurrection. Of politicians as they generally run, we can expect nothing less than this, nothing better. Christian anti-slavery men, however, must beware how they join in the hoarse clamor, " crucify him, crucify him." If they are more solicitous to commend themselves to God than to court favor with the powers that be, they will think "the sober second thought" and breathe the breath of prayer, before they speak their minds; they will not be eager to echo the loud exclamations of the hour against Fanaticism, Treason, Insurrection; they will rather desire that utterance may be given unto them, that they may speak boldly as they ought to speak. God's hand is in this transaction, and his people should see it, should discern this sign of the times,and should give the nation warning. They should fearlessly proclaim in the ears of the panic-stricken south the natural right inherent in the slaves to rise against their oppressors and achieve their liberties by sword and torch. Our fathers asserted this right and vindicated it; and we glorify them for the insurrection of '76. The sons of such sires cannot, without the basest recreancy, speak evil of the uprising of any oppressed people to gain freedom.

Another article, an open letter from John A. Copeland, one of three African-American young men that accompanied John Brown from Oberlin, reveals Copeland’s thoughts on his own impeding execution and his assessment of the African-American experience in the United States.

Dear Brother, I am, it is true, so situated at present as scarcely to know how to commence writing ; not that my mind is filled with fear or that it has become shattered in view of my near approach to death. Not that I am terrified by the gallows which I see staring me in the face, and upon which I am so soon to stand and suffer death for doing what George Washington, tho so-called father of this great but slavery-cursed country, was made a hero for doing, while he lived, and when dead his name was immortalized, and his great and noble deeds in behalf of freedom taught by parents to their children. And now, brother, having lent my aid to a General no less brave, and engaged in a cause no less honorable and glorious, I am to suffer death. Washington entered the field to fight for the freedom of the American people—not for the white man alone, but for both black and white. Nor were they white men alone who fought for the freedom of this country. The blood of black men flowed as freely as that of white men. Yes, the very first blood that was spilt was of a negro. It was the blood of that heroic man,(though black'he was,) Cyrus Attuck. And some of the very last blood shed was that of black men. To the truth of this, history, though prejudiced, is compelled to attest.

It is true that black men did an equal share of the fighting for American Independence, and they were assured by the whites that they should share equal benefits for so doing. But after having performed their part honorably, they were by the whites most treacherously deceived—they refusing to fulfill their part of the contract. But this you know as well as I do, and I will therefore say no more in reference to the claims which we,as colored men, have on the American people.  (Oberlin Evangelist, December 21, 1859)

To find out more about Oberlin’s relationship with John Brown and the abolitionist movement in general search the Oberlin Evangelist or click on the following links:

The Harper’s Ferry Tragedy

Another Hero for Oberlin?

Bronze Cast Bust of John Brown

Lewis Sheridan Leary