#there is also a protagonist from an extremely obscure cartoon

[thebigpalooka]

So I finished the first batch of Sonic Prime and I just ... 

Below the cut for spoilers and WAY too much text.

Bottom line, I'm not mad about it, but I just really did not enjoy it, and getting almost no joy from the experience disappoints me more than anything in the actual show disappoints me.

In fairness, multiverse stories are never my favourite because you have to spend so much time getting oriented and reintroducing characters, and then generally by the end of it, either the whole adventure never happened or nobody but the protagonist remembers most or all of it.

I KNEW that's what it was gonna be tho, so I was prepared for that much. But my GOD, is it all a huge time sink. It feels like it just never ends; genuinely felt my heart sink a couple times when I realized that we were about to retread the same ground with zero progress having been made. And normally I wouldn't care, it's a cartoon show. But the thing is, 'Prime' ACTS like it's trying to get things done, and then just doesn't.

So far as the general premise, they actually attack it in a really interesting way, but things move SO painfully slow, it's incredible. Far too often, the plot only moves because the show chooses to dole out a little dribble of information that is probably just a flashback we should've been shown chronologically in the first place, but just weren't. Episode 5 feels especially bad; it's Thorn/Amy swinging her hammer at Sonic for about fifteen minutes and then they just wrap it all up because the episode's almost over. They show us a flashback of 'Prime' Amy only when it's necessary for the story to make any sense and not a moment before, so it has zero emotional weight. And as for the conflict between Thorn and the Scavengers, I kept waiting for there to be some sort of twist but there was no twist, it was literally just, she got mad at them, and they started calling her 'The Monster' just to obscure her identity from us, the viewer, for about five minutes. AND we get to see the same flashback of everybody wasting fruit twice. LOL.

The characterization in general is extremely ... random, I guess? Sonic feels a lot like Movie Sonic, and I love Movie Sonic so that's fine with me. But it really feels like nobody gave much of a shit about the characterization of any of the variant characters. It really feels like they're all more or less whoever or whatever is convenient, and the show puts little effort into really establishing any core traits for them to then echo or subvert. It’s especially disappointing, for me personally, when it comes to Amy. Like, Rusty Rose is interesting - although I find some aspects of Rusty Rose icky, in the implication that she doesn't have free will, but whatever, it's not that deep - and she’s heartless and cold. That's not like Amy at all, and the show takes note of that - good! - but then Thorn is actually fairly similar to 'Prime' Amy, and Black Rose is just ... Amy, but a pirate. So...okay? Nine feels the most like a fully-developed 'what if Tails grew up all alone in a dystopia' character, but then Tails is feral for no apparent reason in the Jungle world, as if we just don't have time for him to be important at all, while Knuckles and Rouge are just... sort of themselves in each zone. Themselves with different hangups, but basically themselves.

And speaking of Rouge - idek what they're doing there. She's not offensive, but she's not Rouge either, she's just, another shipmate. It's almost like they wanted normal Amy, but also wanted hostile Amy and just gave all the lines Amy would normally say, to Rouge.

I suppose it all comes back to a feeling of half-baked...ness. There's lots of individual elements that are really interesting and fun, but they never feel especially purposeful as a whole. New Yoke, for example, has a very 'what if Sonic never existed'/Back To The Future 2 vibe, but the other worlds, thus far, have no obvious 'hole' Sonic has left, nor do they even, apparently, have any Eggman/Eggmen threat at all, so it doesn't feel like that theme really goes anywhere. And NONE of the possible themes do, so far. I don't think shows have to have a moral to be interesting, but Prime acts like it's got something to say about friendship or trust or responsibility or heroism, and yet it kind of hasn’t quite decided what that is, or why I should care about any individual version of the characters or the worlds they live in. It just feels like 8 episodes deep, events unfold as an endless series of “And then - ! And then - ! And then -!” but without any sense of building tension. It’s like the story itself is floating through the Shatterverse. I hope at some point it finds its footing and figures out how to get itself home.

SO, that’s my thoughts on Sonic Prime and idk if anyone will actually read them, but I suppose I needed it all out of my system.

Partly because: for all of that, for ALL of that, I DON’T hate this show.  It looks great! The music is fun! The voice acting is stellar! There's moments that were exciting!

I REALLY LIKE the fact that the plot is building towards a ‘worlds collide' thing instead of a series of one-and-done, quantum leap episodes, although that also means fewer unique settings. I was VERY EXCITED to realize that Shadow's actually gonna get to participate even on a minimal level, and in spite of my complaints, I AM still hopeful that we'll get to see some development between characters as things go on. I do think Rusty's interesting and was happy to see her get a turn as a sort of miniboss. Several scenes, like Sonic's first fight with Babble, fight with Shadow, and talking with Nine, were really good and fun. And despite all my complaining, I really want to know what happens next. 

I just wish I felt energized instead of pretty exhausted.

That’s all.  I must cease.

I can’t stress enough that I don’t hate this show, and if you love it, I don’t think you’re wrong. I hope you DO love it, and I’ll be DELIGHTED if everyone adores this experience more than I did. I’m happy the show exists, hopeful I might like later episodes better, and I hope it does tremendously well.

And I hope I get more Amy content.

I love you, BYYEEE

#sonic prime #rant #ramble is more like it #sonic the hedgehog #calling it a review feels too pretentious

[a34trgv2]

Top 10 Worst Main Characters In Cartoons

#10. Kick Buttowski (Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil): Kicking off our list (no pun intended) is the one trick pony of a character that is Kick Buttowski. His character begins and ends with him wanting to do extreme stunts. That'd be fine for a 7 minute short as a tribute or parody to stuntmen like Evel Knevel, but for an animated series? His shtick gets old very fast and he's nothing more than a blank slate of a character.

#9. Lincoln Loud (The Loud House): A smug, narcissistic brat, Lincoln treats his sisters like a means to end at best and a pain to live with at worst. Not only does he show contempt with them on a daily basis, but he's also not afraid to humiliate and take advantage of them to stroke his own ego. Would you believe this kid's named after one of the greatest Presidents of all time.

#8. Katie Mitchell (The Mitchells vs The Machines): Nothings makes me hate a movie more than how hatable the main character is. Katie is selfish, annoying, ungrateful, and not even remotely funny. She has this bitter and resentful attitude towards her father when they were once best friends, and the way she makes this story about her is very condescending. If the movie had been about her as a child and putting her relationship with her non-tech savy father to the test, maybe I'd sympathize with her more, but as a teenager ready for college, she's just a brat.

#7. Nancy Clancy (Fancy Nancy): I now know how Dora's detractors feel after watching Fancy Nancy. Nancy is such an obnoxious, pampered brat that talks down to the audience like we're pesents and always acts like a fancy life is the best life. She's very rude, selfish, and narcissistic, all of which are qualities you're NOT supposed to have when trying to be fancy.

#6. Miriam "Mimi" Mortin (What About Mimi?): No, this gif isn't from the villain of this obscure show. It's from the main protagonist...and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Mimi is a stupid, selfish, and annoying kid who makes simple problems worse by going overboard with her plans and throwing her friends under the bus. She's also very irresponsible and oblivious to the fact that she's no better than the show's designated spoiled brat, Sincerity.

#5. Kai (The Hollow): The one character that singlehandedly makes the show worse, Kai is everything Adam and Mira DIDN’T need on their journey. He's whiny, selfish, short-tempered and a big, fat coward. Whenever there's danger, his first and only instinct is to head for the hills instead of helping his friends. He also needlessly starts arguments with Adam because Heaven forbid 2 guys have a normal conversation together without it turning into a shouting match.

#4. Kiff Chatterley (Kiff): What do you get when you put Mimi's personality in a squirrel who's dumber than a sack of acorns? You get Kiff! She's selfish, annoying, stupid, irresponsible, and overdramatic over the simplist of things. What puts her above Mimi on the list is Kiff is the 4th irresponsible main female character I had the displeasure of sitting through after I specifically said I was done with these types of character. The character's a bigger waste of time than watching a worm try to crack open a safe.

#3. Molly McGee (The Ghost and Molly McGee): If you thought Dee Dee from the last 2 Seasons of Dexter's Lab was a headache, you might want to where a helmet when being in the same room as Molly McGee. She's annoying, inconsiderate, loud, obnoxious, and really stupid. She never thinks before she acts and every time she opens her mouth, she never shuts up. The worst part about her is the fact that Scratch can't just leave her because he put a curse on her, meaning he's stuck suffering with the audience listening to this chatterbox.

#2. Oscar Peltzer (Summer Camp Island): It boggles my mind how Hedgehog, nevermind ANYONE, would be friends with this kid. Oscar is selfish, annoying, inconsiderate, and stupid. He goes through Hedgehog's personal stuff, cheats at games and gets lost in the city. He also has a bad habit of not thinking before he acts, making him all the more annoying and stupid.

#1. Apple and Onion (Apple & Onion): No need to imagine a show with 2 annoying side characters as the main characters, because it already exists. Apple and Onion are easily the worst characters in Cartoon Network's history. In addition to being annoying and stupid, they also lack basic chemistry with each other and are painfully unfunny. What puts them at #1 though is Apple's fatphobia and Onion's complacency to said fatphobia. Need I say more? -.-

Conclusion: These cartoon protagonists are not only bad role models, but they're also just badly written. Whether they be annoying, stupid, irresponsible, or selfish, trust me when I say you DON'T want characters like these as the protagonist of your show/movie. Either audience's will mistake them as villains, or they'll just tune out. Dishonorable mentions go to Fei Fei from Over The Moon (I've talked enough about that brat -.-), Bloo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (I wouldn't have blamed Mac for not visiting Foster's anymore after the birthday party episode), and Rick Sanchez from Rick & Morty (would've made the list, but I don't wanna give Rick & Morty any more attention than it has already). Thanks for reading, and I'll see you soon ;)

#reblog #share #like #follow #animation #comedy #disney #cartoon network #the hollow #netflix animation #top 10 list #summer camp island #apple & onion #the mitchells vs the machines #the ghost and molly mcgee #what about mimi #kiff #disney kiff

[mythgirlimagines]

Well, my good Anons! Tuesday is here and so is this new talentswap! Introducing Myth, the Former Ultimate Fanfiction Author!

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BACKSTORY AND TALENT

Growing up, Myth wasn’t very good at expressing herself via facial expressions or body language. Because of that, Myth didn’t have many friends growing up, besides Wyre. She quickly turned to cartoons and video games to fill the hole left in her heart. One day, Myth’s English teacher advised her to use writing as an outlet for her emotions. By her high school years, Myth has already amassed a large fanbase for her vast amount of fanfiction that touches even the most obscure of fandoms. Although her fanfiction runs the gamut of subject matter, she primarily focuses on romance and shipping, with LGBT dynamics being a major theme in most of her romantic works. She is currently chaperoning this year’s batch of Ultimates and Jr. Ultimates on their journey to Kibo-Con Ultimate. They also happen to make excellent references for her fanfiction.

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RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Moral Compass

As hard as it is to believe, this rowdy juvenile delinquent runs one of the strictest disciplinary committees in the country. Wyre would regularly prevent others from picking on Myth, and they remain the best of friends well into their college years. Myth regularly looks up to Wyre for her assertive and expressive attitude, and she reminds Myth of those anime student council president characters mixed with a shonen protagonist.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Idol

As the lead vocalist of the famously-elaborate pop-rock idol group DaTenshi, Scar embraces the whole “Fallen Songstress“ persona that got Scar her fame in the first place. As much as Scar tries to stay true to her persona, her persona regularly cracks to reveal an overly-concerned mom friend. Myth views Scar as this odd combination of a School Idol, a Team Mom and a Chuunibyou, which makes for a weird combination of anime tropes.

Fusion Anon, Ultimate Soldier

Myth has consumed a ton of media about the military and if the media proves true, there is no reason for Fusion to appear as well-adjusted and confident as he carries himself. Fusion regularly tries to convince Myth that he is fine and that the war was all in the past. But Myth is an observant soul, and can tell that Fusion is close to breaking. Myth is, to put it lightly, really concerned for this poor lad. Just what is under his Team Dad facade and his garish camo clothes?

Fusion Anon II, Ultimate Biker Gang Leader

With Fusion II’s sassy and flippant attitude, topped off by her fashion of tall boots, long skirts and popped collars, there is no mistaking Fusion II as the leader of “The Divergence”, one of the largest girl gangs in all of the country. It is also extremely clear to Myth that her cool-headed and sarcastic demeanour is all but a coping mechanism, caused by living in a harsh environment, surrounded by equally harsh individuals. Truly a shining example of both the Sukeban trope and the Deadpan Snarker trope.

Just Anon, Ultimate Affluent Progeny

As the scion of the “Lagomor Corp”, one would expect Janon to be cruel, merciless and hardworking. But while Janon could be described as cruel and merciless, he is definitely not hardworking in the slightest, preferring to shirk his duties in favour of catching some Zs, which was very clearly caused by everything in life just being handed to him on a silver platter. However, Janon has one weakness: adorable fashion icons. That did not go unnoticed by Myth, much to the dismay of the Tsundere magnate.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Programmer

When Myth was told that an Ultimate Programmer would be chaperoning the Ultimates with her, Myth was expecting an Introverted Shut-In NEET. So imagine Myth’s internal surprise when this aspiring thespian with a volume problem who calls herself “THE SPECTACULAR SPARKLE” claimed to be the Ultimate Programmer. Despite their contrasting personalities, Myth and Sparkle probably are the closest when it comes to their interests. The two girls very quickly bonded over their shared interest in JRPGs, DND and isekai anime.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Detective, and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Martial Artist

As crazy as it may sound, Myth actually forged quite the odd bond with both Egg and Wet Sock, aka. The Freak Twins. Despite their violence-obsessed personalities and their tendency to constantly stick cursed and well, freakish comments into otherwise normal conversation, Myth managed to look past that to find wise and strong individuals, which was helped by Myth’s interest in gory mystery series and martial arts-based anime and video games. In fact, both twins seem to have grown a thing for Myth, because she was the first person they met that could handle the two of them.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Fashionista

Ever since Curious was in diapers, they have been educated in the art of fashion and cosmetics by their family. Curious has been modeling for a variety of high-class brands. Whether male, female and unisex clothes, Curious managed to make even the most garish and tacky clothes work for them. Despite the completely different domains of their talents, Myth and Curious quickly bonded over their similar polite and stoic demeanours. However, Myth can’t help but sense emptiness in Curious’s eyes every time they do a photo shoot. A Stepford Smiler perhaps?

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Gambler

Despite being praised for their poker face in tournaments, off the poker table, Nerd is a short-tempered and callous jerk, who constantly overreacts to otherwise inconsequential slights. Unfortunately for Nerd, he fell for Myth and he fell hard. Myth is no dummy, so with a perfect poker face every time, she manages to constantly torment Nerd with mind games and lewd comments in an effort to get him to confess. Will Nerd use the poker face he perfected since he began the art of gambling, or will Myth’s eternal poker face manage to conquer even the most trained? Truly a Showdown of the Ages.

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Swimmer

As the underdog of his school’s swim team, Eldritch Anon’s small and frail build belies a streamlined shape and a flawless and speedy technique while in the water. Eldritch also has a paranoid and cowardly demeanour, and can and will dive into random bodies of water to avoid interacting with others. Much to Myth’s dismay, Eldritch seems to be the most scared of her. Eldritch seems to under the belief that Myth isn’t even human, when that simply isn’t the truth. She is just a girl who has trouble expressing herself. Myth wonders what could have gone wrong in Eldritch’s life to make him have such a vehement distrust of other Anons.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Lucky Student

Acting like someone straight out of a sports anime, no matter how many times her luck puts her into trouble, Dream always manages to get out of them with her head held up high. She might not be the Ultimate Volleyball Player like she wanted, but she always tries to stay positive, regardless of her title. Myth can’t help but feel as though at least part of Dream’s optimism is merely a facade to combat her feelings of inferiority to the other Ultimates, who got in with actual skill. That definitely would explain her Passionate Sports Girl personality, along with her hardworking attitude to the point of overexerting herself.  

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Baseball Player

The other passionate sports fanatic on the Kibo-Con roster, Iris is well-known by baseball fanatics for her fast and hard swings that earn her baseball team, “The Comets” their unparalleled winstreak, as well as her adorkable and optimistic personality when off the diamond. Because of her social butterfly personality, Iris tries her best to interact with and understand Myth, or at least, the Myth beneath the constant poker face. Myth can’t help but applaud Iris for trying to look past her robotic face and mannerisms and learn more about her. 

Purple Anon, Ultimate Clairvoyant

Having been raised by a traditional family skilled in the art of fortune telling, Purple is by far the most skilled of her family, with a 66% percent accuracy rate to her fortunes. Purple, similar to Myth, is a massive wallflower, regularly cowering behind larger Anons. When Purple actually manages to open her mouth, her prose and vocabulary is about as purple as her hair.  Luckily, Myth is well-versed enough in the language-arts to actually understand what Purple is trying to say to others. Because of that, Myth kind of functions like Purple’s personal translator, simplifying her vocabulary for the less-intelligent Anons.

This Talentswap series centers around a stoic wallflower managing to become the Anon’s personal therapist. She came her for inspiration and references, and returned with a better understanding of her fellow chaperones and chaperonees.

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APPEARANCE

FicAuthor!Myth wears swirly opaque glasses to hide her eyebags earned from several sleepless nights. She wears her short dyed-purple hair into two short pigtails. She holds the pigtails in place with a pink scrunchie for the left and a blue scrunchie for the right. She wears a black hooded-jacket over a pink t-shirt, and has a matching pink backpack slung over her shoulders. She wears black sweatpants with a purple stripe on the opposite sides of each leg and purple sneakers. On her head, she wears a black beret that matches her jacket and sweatpants. On both the backpack and beret are pins from an assortment of fandoms.  ——————————————————

PERSONALITY

One of the major differences between FicAuthor!Myth and Romantic!Myth lies in her emotional range. While FicAuthor!Myth is fine-tuned when it comes to other people’s emotions, she isn’t very good at identifying or expressing her own emotions, whether through facial expressions, body language or tone of voice. FicAuthor!Myth’s face and vocal range is stuck in a constant monotone. The only way that FicAuthor!Myth can truly express her current emotions is quite obvious; via writing fanfiction that correspond to her current emotional state. However, beneath the monotony of her face and voice, FicAuthor!Myth is almost exactly like Romantic!Myth in personality; being kind, supportive and at times, a massive tease.  —-—————————————————

What do you think of FicAuthor!Myth, as both a talent and a series idea? I’d like to encourage other Anons to comment here with their opinions on it!

-Fusion Anon

—

Writing for my emotions is so accurate you don’t even know-

Anyway, love this version of me a lot!

#submission #anon #fusion anon #art #not my art #my evil twin #fusion anon ii #iris anon #dream anon #curious anon #just anon #sparkling anon #purple anon #wet sock anon #egg anon #eldritch anon #anon nerd #anon scar #i speak #anon kg #talentswap tuesday

[lauralot89]

lauren please tl;dr about old-timey shows you like that no one else talks about

WE’RE GONNA TALK ABOUT CLONE HIGH, KIDS

(If this is not old-timey enough or obscure enough, let me know and I’ll find something else to talk about)

The show aired in Canada in 2002, but it didn’t get over here in the US until 2003, when I was thirteen.  It was the only MTV cartoon I ever watched.

AND IT WAS GLORIOUS.

The conceit of the show is that shadowy government figures for reasons never fully specified decided to make clones of dead historical figures, and said clones have grown to high school age by the time the series starts.  Our protagonists are Abe Lincoln, Joan of Arc, and Gandhi, and other major characters are Abe’s crush Cleopatra, and her jerk jock boyfriend, JFK, as well as the high school principal Mr. Scudworth and his robot, Mr. Bultertron.  Yes, there is a clone of Jesus, though he’s not a frequent character.

Weirdly, aside from the historical puns or episodic plot about a character trying to follow the example of their real historical selves (like the episode where Joan starts hearing voices), the show mostly is a typical teen comedy that doesn’t really focus on the clone aspect.

(There is a pretty great visual pun, though, in that Marie Curie’s clone is deformed because the source DNA was irradiated.)

But anyway, it was a fantastic show.  It was hilarious, and gave us what I consider to this day comedy staples such as “Let’s destroy property to show how much we appreciate the team!” and “You see the pool?  They flipped the bitch!”

Not to mention “Nothing bad ever happens to the Kennedys!”

You want a show where Marilyn Manson sings about proper nutrition?  You got it.  You want a show where the “beautiful all along” makeover includes sci fi gore and vampire fangs?  You got it.  You want a musical episode parodying Pink Floyd’s The Wall with Jack Black singing and kids getting high off of raisins?  You got it.

I feel like this video speaks for itself.

Also there’s the great moment in the film festival episode when Joan makes some weird art house film that no one understands except Freud.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Laura, this show sounds amazing!  Why was it ever cancelled?”

Because the world is cruel, my friend.  The world is a cruel place where Family Guy has 16 seasons and Clone High only got one.

Actually, the reason for the cancellation is that India as a whole was extremely offended by the show’s portrayal of Gandhi, to the extent of a massive public fast in protest and the threat of MTV’s license to broadcast in India being revoked.  Viacom/MTV offered the idea of a second season without Gandhi, and the show creators pitched “two potential versions of a second season [which] included one that made no mention of Gandhi's absence, and another that revealed that the character was, in fact, a clone of actor Gary Coleman all along, and the show continued as normal.”  Both versions were rejected, and the show ended.

On the bright side, you can now watch all of the show on Youtube and Will Forte did briefly get to voice Abraham Lincoln again in The Lego Movie.

#Clone High #anon #ask

[theoscout]

do not reblog

There's a channel called misha miraculous who uploads ancient film reels about a character named Whirl, who looks like a fantasy version of an anglerfish. He's a MASSIVE JERK for a cartoon, and I'd say he was made in around 194x (AFTER wwii). Acts like Woody Woodpecker does. According to his creator (Paul), he's a berberoka. Paul was originally aiming to be a horror artist to try and put the trauma he's suffered through life into artwork, however at the time most publishers only published horror comics of a particular style. Paul couldn't make his drawings that style, but he tried very hard and was left with a series of drawings that looked the same. Realising he could get into animation instead of horror comics, he repurposed the stories he had written about Whirl (real name Whirlpool but no one aside from Paul knows that) and began to make short films about Whirl.

Whirl is obviously a villian protagonist that people aren't intended to sympathise with. Instead, according to Paul, they are intended to sympathise with the people he hurts along the way. Paul said in interviews in the reels that sometimes there are villians in life that you can't escape from no matter how much you hate them or wish you could, and he wanted his work to show that. But he also wanted to show that said villians could be beaten and weren't invincible. Paul explains that berberoka in mythology are cryptids that would suck the water out of swamps and let all the dead fish lie at the bottom, to lure in fishermen to collect the fish. Once they were within range the berberoka would release all the water and attack and eat the fishermen while they were struggling with the influx of water. He designed Whirl to look like an anglerfish because they too lure in their prey before eating them. Whirl was never seen directly killing anyone in the cartoons, but he was a tricky kind of sadist who liked to pull people into playing awful kinds of games. (Whirl is magic and goes by whatever gender suits him at the time btw) She would do things like make miraculous inventions that in secret would make the lives of the person she sold them to far worse.

Whirl's inventions were like Wile.E.Coyote in terms of absurdity, but the difference was that they almost always worked perfectly until the victim figured out a way to turn them against her and escape his influence. So Whirl was quite a bit darker than most cartoon protagonists at the time.

Paul said that he had based Whirl off many people he actually knew, and that he didn't feel confident enough to write other central characters. He had anxiety which gave him self confidence issues and often led to him thinking of only the worst case scenarios which he would then fuel for his cartoon series. He argued against people who thought that having a berberoka as a character in a cartoon would be too dark for audiences by saying that the brothers Grimm would write tales far darker than what he did, and people tell them to their children all the time anyway.

Now for more on Paul and his family. Paul Fernsby was the middle child of a pair we shall call Mr and Mrs Fernsby. Their oldest child, Sean Fernsby, passed away around 5 years ago due to organ failure caused by severe stress and alcoholism. Their youngest child, Carrie Fernsby, is a mechanic. She struggled frequently in her job and school due to the stronger gender discrimination there, and as a result had to share a home with Paul in order to be more financially stable. Mr and Mrs Fernsby are AWFUL people. They aren't evil, they're the kind of insufferable pricks that think they're morally above everyone and that they're always right. Sean always wanted to be a dancer, for instance, but Mr and Mrs thought that was a job unsuitable for a man and refused to let him dance, instead forcing him to cut contact with all of his friends and force him to study to become a mechanic. Carrie and Paul both strongly believe that this played a major role in Sean's fall into alcoholism, but Mr and Mrs are still in denial. They insist that they *extended* Sean's life, and that Sean was just unhealthy to begin with and that a life on the stage would have killed him quicker. So they haven't learned anything about his death. What's more, despite opposing Carrie's early attempts to be a mechanic and trying to force her into being an obedient housewife for a future husband, when she finally got successful they took all the credit for her success and said that she was delusional and complained too much.

As for Paul? Well, Paul's a special case.

From a young age he had a special gift. The ability to see and hear things that no one else could. As a child he would frequently point out ghosts and fey that he occasionally saw in gardens or staring from nature reserves from a distance away, but no one else saw them so he kept his mouth shut. Originally his parents would yell at him for drawing when he could have been studying, so as a teenager he left offerings for the fey and asked for advice. And one day... something ancient and powerful began to answer him.

The creature identified itself as a pelagic god, but more specifically a ghost of one. According to the creature, it was once extremely powerful and was a tyrant of the land with it's powers thriving off the spread of fear. but eventually the people who once knew about it moved or passed away and it faded into weakness and irrelevency. So in exhange for making people fear it again, the god would grant Paul the power to live life as he pleased. Paul knew enough about fey to keep himself safe, and he kept the god a secret from everyone. The god didn't care what was going on in the cartoons, only provided that people feared her avatar. And Paul could provide for that just fine.

Eventually, Paul felt safe enough to confide in Carrie about the existence of the god, and Carrie built a special machine that would allow the god to communicate easier with people. They set very strict rules about how much communication there was, because neither of them trusted the god enough to let it close to them. Plus, with the success from the cartoons, the god was growins stronger.

The god granted Paul with massive viewer success the stronger it grew, and a lot of luck. No one knew about its existence, but the fear and awe from the cartoons would be enough to sustain it. Though they worked for each other in a mutually beneficial way, they still held a great deal of mistrust. Paul did not trust the god and some of her suggestions to problems he had were extremely disturbing. Plus, she had threatened to curse a number of people who 'got in the way' of Paul, and Paul had retaliated by threatening to stop producing the cartoon if she did that. Meanwhile, the god had been asking for Paul to reveal its existence so that more fear would be caused, or commit a crime, which he obviously refused.

Actually you know what? Forget the stuff I wrote about the pelagic god earlier, I got something that makes more sense.

Paul nicknames the deity the Unsiren because sirens are mythological creatures who sing to lure people onto rocks to drown, and the deity is a creature that screams from a cave to frighten away people and warn of dangerous currents. Unsiren was the deitiy who lived by the sea and was associated with fear, loud noises and the ocean. The tribe who lived there were constantly in danger from the sea, which they relied on for food but was too unpredictable for them to approach safely. Due to the geography of the underwater coastline, the tides were extremely unpredictable at random times of the day with little to no pattern. Think of the Bolten Strid from Britan- an innocuous looking stream which is actually a massive canyon filled with rapids that sucks you under and kills you the moment you set foot in it. That was how dangerous the water around the coast was.

But there was one way to tell about the danger. There was a cave in the side of the cliff, and at certain points when water would rush through it a certain way, the sounds produced sounded like whispering or roaring from some terrifying beast. At first the tribespeople feared the unseen creature, but eventually they learned to intrepret the noises of the ocean into ways that would lead them to fish safely. Their explanation for the sounds was that a massive creature who was too frightening to look at was trapped behind the raging rapids by some malicious fey, but then learned to use its frightening voice for good by warning people of the dangerous tide. So they prayed to the sea cave and the monster murmering behind the rocks to be there to warn of any changes in the tide, and would throw offerings of food into the sea in order to earn its favor.

But centuries of erosion meant that eventually, the sea cliffs that mutilated the dangerous currents and gave the sea cave its voice no longer existed. So with that, the stories of the great beast hiding beyond the rapids began to fade away, and so did their desire for the Unsiren to speak for them. The stories began to grow increasingly obscure, until one day the tribe went to war with invaders and suffered heavy losses. The few who still retained knowledge of the beast beyond the cave no longer existed to spread the story, and the creature faded into a strange purgatory.

The Unsiren isn't evil, but she is frightening by nature. She will go for the hard truth over any sugarcoated encouragement any day, and isn't afraid to speak up. Paul's ability to see into her realm and speak with the inhabitence there interested her greatly, and so did his desire to create. She made a deal with him to prevent herself from dying completely: provided that he could create a series that carried on her life's work, she would reward him with safety and stability whenever she could.

Her life's work was simply warning people about danger. More specifically water related dangers, but she could adapt to that. Paul designed Whirl in mind as a personified representation of the dangerous currents which now no longer existed, choosing him to be a berberoka because that seemed like the best fit. And Whirl's cartoons were made to warn about a variety of dangers, to children and adults. Abusive relationships, kidnappers, dangerous situations, peer pressure etc. The Unsiren had an avatar within the cartoon series, but that wasn't Whirl as the audience might be lead to believe at first. Instead, she's the narrator character. The voice of reason that usually goes unlistened to until the very end. The one who existed in title cards, and as a kind of voiceover narrating the episodes sometimes while using Paul as a medium. No one figured out how Paul was able to make himself sound like that, not even him.

Paul still didn't fully trust Unsiren at first, but she acknowledges that it was wise on his part. After all, it's in her nature to be frightening. Even if she is anything but evil.

#posting for convenience's sake here #my writing

[myfriendpokey]

zine thoughts pt 2

where do you sell videogames? zine fairs, children's book stores, used record marts, from the trunk of a car like rudy ray moore, on etsy or on craiglist, with flyers on the wall of the local chip shop or library. through awkwardly hammered-together handmade electronic systems or the reverse, turning your game into a jumbled set of paper text and graphical fragments which can be sold in boardgame stores as some kind of reconstruct-the-narrative puzzle. you could make one-off bespoke games or game simulacra for movies that want to depict some kind of videogame being played onscreen without having to go through the licensing rights. you could ghost-develop games for wealthy people to put their names on ("american mcgee presents my life with princess diana by donald duck"). you could develop training games for the military-industrial complex, ha ha ha ha. you could get funded by the CIA to ensure the medium of videogames remains sufficiently arty and rehabilitated to function as propaganda for capitalism... i mean we already know they were involved with the paris review and iowa writer's workshop and all that jazz so they gotta have least a couple people on the payroll already, right, and we will all be treated to some very entertaining revelations following the inevitable freedom of information act request 15 years down the line. you could try connecting with the little self-contained fan communities for things like touhou, fnaf, undertale, m-minecraft, like those renaissance artists who had to drop their patron's face in the background of some religious scene except in this case it would be one of the homestuck guys. you could make "trainers" for more popular games, or demos that could show how they "feel" without a $60 investment. you could sell small games as assets for larger ones that want to have some kind of in-universe  playable arcade system without having to invent a whole new game from scratch. you could just make extremely specific forms of pornography, maybe not the worst option even, just make sure the very artistic sequences of the protagonist remembering his dead wife are broken up every now and then with scenes of him unhinging his jaw to swallow and slowly digest another, smaller sad games protagonist whole (with rumble function for controllers!!!). you could make games for all the people who are still on windows xp or earlier or have some kind of arcane video card setup that prevents them playing anything other than that one preinstalled pinball game. you could try selling them at street vendors. you could try learning another language and making games for non-anglophones that don't sound like an english-written game that was localised without much thought after the fact.   you could make games for kids in the hopes that they sexually imprint on them enough to support your erotic oil paintings of the characters 10 years later, just like nintendo. you could make an extremely interesting and thoughtful videogame and then offer not to release it if the donation threshold is met, thus sparing people the emotional obligation of having yet another thing on their should-play-this-eventually list. you could develop games with some bewildering system of in-game and real-world currency interactions and then sell it to the mob as a way to launder money. you could make videogames that robots record themselves playing to upload en masse which are then watched by other robots as part of some weird, ungraspably abstract SEO economy, or better yet make robots to make the videogames as well. you could make virtual cemetary plots either private (downloadable exe) or public (hosted on the server) with their own customisable mood-themes and weather settings (dark, stormy, remember-you-will-die; sunny, quiet, circle-of-life etc). you could make prosperity orbs. you could make games for office workers or call center staff which resemble excel documents or phone system frontends from a distance. you could make games which really ARE excel files, some dense collection of interlocking hidden formulas that change to display text and ascii characters as you tab your way through. you could probably talk your way into "adapting" any of those old IPs that still float around long after anyone stopped having any particular thought or feeling about them at all, like the flintstones or ziggy or something, maybe do like those 1960s superhero cartoons where they just filmed panels from the comics - just break a 2d flintstones cartoon into constituent elements and have them hover around in a little cutout diorama that you fly thru, possibly explained in-universe as representing the 4-d vision of the great gazoo. you could make games that play themselves, for the depressed. you could become a ghastly serial m**derer where after each crime you upload a new game to itchio which will reveal the  name of your next victim, and costs only $9.99, and of course everyone buys and plays it because the police have put up a reward for solving the crime because they can't get past the dinosaur on level three, and all seems lost until some plucky young computer student who found the game on a friend's hard drive manages to solve the riddle hidden within the game's structure, following the clues, to an old castle, she knocks on the door, it's opened by, yes, it's will wright, wearing a wizard outfit, who tells her that by dint of solving all the puzzles she is now invited to join that mysterious organization known as "The Elect" which is assembled from the finest minds in all game design with a view to secretly controlling the world economy (via "werewolf blood", somehow), that she need only complete the ceremony by sacrificing one untutored soul, he holds out an ornate knife, she hesitates........

the question is where to sell videogames rather than how because for the most part we already know how - there are a million more or less instructive articles out there about hitting up conventions or talking to the press, and it's not that they're wrong, exactly, more that they expect to be applied in an environment that no longer exists. but what should preface and qualify the idea of sheer volume swamping the indie games market is that, outside of a few small pockets, there never really was an "indie games market" to begin with - indie games drew and mostly still draw on the existing videogames market, rather than constituting a new one. it's telling that the glory days of indie games were just the ones where they were able to draw upon some of the same privileges larger titles already had in the ability to access that same audience - being frontpaged by steam, say, or making it onto a comparatively closed console platform, or generating earnest thinkpieces... you could say that they were tapping into structures the industry had already built but had not yet occupied to full capacity.

of course there are exceptions and various efforts to set up new economies for small weird interactive things (like patreon, or game bundles), and some efforts to reach outside the existing games audience likely were successful - but when we think of indie games "functioning" economically, whether that means supporting a small team, a single person, or just hitting minimum wage per hours spent, i believe we're mostly still talking about ones which are built around the existing games economy. which is fine, but i think it's also intrinsically precarious in ways which maybe get glossed over in discussions of the "indiepocalypse" - are all those new steam releases really causing a problem or are they just exacerbating a structural limitation which was already always there, a reliance within the indie game economy on a certain lucky-few-ism which just became grossly more noticeable the more disproportionate it got?

of course it's easier to be dismissive after the fact, and my fantasy about "where" to sell videogames is partly a fantasy of them having a location to begin with - of attaining something of the grounded and immutable appearance of the non-digital, as though brick and mortar stores  don't have a relationship to the likes of amazon as basically precarious as any online storefront. and there are also real and obvious reasons why the various videogame audiences all tend to clump together - similarities in terms of the hardware required, the inputs allowed, of visual and cultural reference points, to say nothing of the personal / professional histories of the people involved in each. we are all contained within "the medium"...

so maybe it's also a fantasy of starting to pick apart that conception of the medium. i think small game developers already have more in common with artists or musicians working on the fringes of their respective industries than they do with even moderately successful teams within the same format, and use similar language, engage in similar forms of practice - particularly as near everything  comes increasingly mediated by the digital these days. i think they already ARE working in similar spaces to some extent, whether it's social media sites or digital storefronts or meatspace stores pushed by necessity not to specialise. and without wanting to be paranoid (or moreso than the CIA thing, at least) i think we should be cautious of the way a certain focus on mediumicity can obscure these overlaps.  a "new medium" is one which inherently pushes against the image of one as grouded ahistorically in some eternal human verity or other (where each medium supposedly embodies some different mode of perception / medieval humour / ninja turtle etc) - it is to see firsthand the way in which supposedly eternal, neutral qualities are materially constructed, which includes seeing forms of social organisation and usage become mystified into extrahuman conditions.  and given their basis in technology that includes drawing from wider trends in the use of that technology as a whole - which specifically, in tech circles, can mean more and more tightly interlocking systems of proprietary knowledge and speculative capital, as well as "new mediums" constructed so as to be inseperable from some storefront, website or monitoring technology. i don't think anybody will necessarily break even taking their games to a zine fair (not that they're breaking even now). but i do feel like trying to build networks across those medium boundaries could be more valuable in the effort to build some sustainable environment for these things than any amount of reform within the house that tech built.

[PS: it occurs to me that you could plausibly argue that the very bagginess of medium-centric formulations is what makes them valuable, in forcing many different groups to butt against each other on one platform rather than just disperse into echo chambers. but i think exactly the reverse is the case: nobody really engages with each other's work in artgames because the stakes are simultaneously too small and too large. they're too small in that however much i might be picky about another person's work - and i think it's this vague pickiness or sense of not-quite-right-ness that drives the most searching critiques - it still feels pointless to pursue that instead of the glaring, omnipresent faults of the big AAA players, which means more complaining about far cry for all eternity. and they're too large in that most small game development is so precarious that it's not really worth the risk of knocking someone out of the circle over penny-ante shit. only with both economic security and broad similarity of outlook can a truly vital,  human culture of spiteful cattiness begin... our day will come]

(image credits: Eco Fighter, World Heroes 2 ,The Space Adventure, Nancy)

#zines #vgames #talk talk