OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD: where we complain about popular things in media we don't like to feel better about ourselves

[Booyakasha]

I liked seeing Elton John kick the crap out of some baddies in the dumb second dumb 'Kingsman' flick. It was fun, and funny.

Elton John's a knight. Of course he'd dust off the old dukes and fight bad guys. It makes total sense. Yeah.

[Booyakasha]

...I was always very slightly bothered in SMB3 when a Big Bertha would eat Mario.

Every other death would just have Mario jumping off the stage, you know? Because it was literally a stage. The game opens with curtains rising. It's a play that you play. Having Mario get swallowed whole makes it a little too real.

[Booyakasha]

I'm a little bothered whenever they show a half-octopus thing in the media. Ursula the sea-witch is a half-octopus, as is Donald in the Little Mermaid portion of Kingdom Hearts. And the Sharktopus.

I mean, I understand design trumps practicality, or whatever, but in cephalopods (octopuses and squids, and...like, cuttlefishes and nautiluses), the tentacles invariably surround the mouth. Ursula doesn't make sense, nor Donald. The Sharktopus has two mouths and zero anuses. We see Ursula eat. Does she poop? Is having to poop out of one of your mouths the kind of thing that might compel you to become an evil sea-witch?

Ursula has a rad villain song. Could she harmonise with herself out of her butt-mouth? That must take extraordinary self-mastery. I can make sounds with my butt, but any harmony that results is incidental. I certainly couldn't solo Lakme's Flower Duet. And even if I could, I probably shouldn't.

[Apollo the Just]

I really, really, REALLY **** hate it when people herald Pixar storytelling as the **** pinnacle of writing in animation. Are their movies bad? No. But they're also formulaic as ****. Here, get ready, I'm about to spoil like 8 different **** films for you in one easy sentence, writers HATE him:

Spoiler.

The guy you thought was the good guy was actually the bad guy!!!!!

Pixar characters tend to be more like symbols than characters, their animation is spectacle but there is often relatively little depth to it that makes them feel truly alive. What they do is good but it's far from the be-all end-all of animated cinema and I am sooooooo tired of their works being the only things ever acknowledged in popular consciousness.

The overall view on Pixar as being the **** gods of animated movies has actively soiled my enjoyment of some films that I otherwise really enjoyed (Coco and Big Hero 6), because I enjoyed them, but I also am critical of them and definitely like other films better (How to Train Your Dragon, Kubo and the Two Strings, and The Book of Life, for example). The Pixar approach is excellent at throwing you for a meaningful loop on a first watch and making commentary on a certain topic, but not necessarily pushing the boundaries of what animation can DO, not developing 3-dimensional characters, and not pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone.

Pixar is good but please acknowledge that other creators are doing more interesting things. jfjdkjklfdjlfjlsj i am so stupidly angry about this for no reason

(related I'm really glad spiderverse got acknowledged last year, even if I don't care about comic book and superhero stuff I'm glad someone else doing something exciting got that attention)

[Deepfake]

I really, really, REALLY **** hate it when people herald Pixar storytelling as the **** pinnacle of writing in animation. Are their movies bad? No. But they're also formulaic as ****. Here, get ready, I'm about to spoil like 8 different **** films for you in one easy sentence, writers HATE him:

Spoiler.

The guy you thought was the good guy was actually the bad guy!!!!!

Pixar characters tend to be more like symbols than characters, their animation is spectacle but there is often relatively little depth to it that makes them feel truly alive. What they do is good but it's far from the be-all end-all of animated cinema and I am sooooooo tired of their works being the only things ever acknowledged in popular consciousness.

The overall view on Pixar as being the **** gods of animated movies has actively soiled my enjoyment of some films that I otherwise really enjoyed (Coco and Big Hero 6), because I enjoyed them, but I also am critical of them and definitely like other films better (How to Train Your Dragon, Kubo and the Two Strings, and The Book of Life, for example). The Pixar approach is excellent at throwing you for a meaningful loop on a first watch and making commentary on a certain topic, but not necessarily pushing the boundaries of what animation can DO, not developing 3-dimensional characters, and not pushing themselves beyond their comfort zone.

Pixar is good but please acknowledge that other creators are doing more interesting things. jfjdkjklfdjlfjlsj i am so stupidly angry about this for no reason

(related I'm really glad spiderverse got acknowledged last year, even if I don't care about comic book and superhero stuff I'm glad someone else doing something exciting got that attention)

Pixar have felt formulaic ever since their first film, tbh. I'm grateful they don't burst into song every minute to avoid any real plot like most Disney does, but they're definitely very samey feeling.

[Booyakasha]

So, this is a very minor thing, but I like it when a song stops on a dime at the end. It feels very precise, very clean, very measured. I like that better than having the music fade out, and much better than having the music just kind of fall apart at the end. Like, the tempo decreases, the melody dissolves, and the band does a big sting to finish it off? Not my thing. It isn't horrible, it doesn't ruin a song, but it just feels off somehow.

[Apollo the Just]

OK I have to admit.... I have a sort of fondness for mystery writing that STILL USES the "enhance image!!!" trope in the year 2019. Like, people have been calling out that complete bull for 20+ years by now, enough that there is sufficient media that makes FUN of the very trope because that is Not How Stuff Works At All, that any time a writer in this day and age goes "yep lol let's do that" i'm just like............. I have to almost admire the audacity, you know?

Like, I still hate it, but it's such a power move that I can't even be that mad about it anymore. They KNOW by now that it's a dumb trope that no one takes seriously, and they're using it anyway.

I've taken to just convincing myself that "the image was super high res all along and they're just zooming in for additional detail that was already there and already sufficiently recorded" at this point

[Booyakasha]

So. Here we have Agatha Heterodyne, a beautiful princess, going absolutely apef*ck bonkers. Looking fit to bust. She's mental, man. It's rad. Agatha gets good and het up, homey. She's so goldang sick and tough I can't even believe it. She's the best.

And so. Why doesn't Disney ever let their princesses look mad, bad and crazy? Full-on mean and berserko? It fits, sometimes. Closest we've ever got is Merida (EDIT: or Jasmine. Possibly Belle, from the real flick). They're pretty good, but they ain't no Agatha.

I mean, wouldn't that damn 'Let it Go' sequence have worked better if gross Elsa had had a "I am going to murder everybody" scowl on? She never looks furious. Let's see her madman! Mad, man! Show me your war-face! Rage for me, pussycat!

Elsa's pretty evil, and Disney didn't give her a single good old-fashioned Rita Repulsa laugh. Not one. It's dumb. Let your villains go nutzoid, man. Let 'em have fun. Like why the hell even be a villain if you can't have an insane cackle about it. That's half the goddamn appeal----------flipping Captain Planet the bird, laughing your ass off as you escape in your coal-powered rocket ship. Ughh.

[EDIT]Disney could learn a thing or two from Marvel. Jubilee is "resting bitch-face" personified, and Kamala Khan isn't far behind. Why doesn't Disney take these things up after buying them for a million billion bux?

[Booyakasha]

...I rewatched an episode of 'Captain Planet and the Planeteers' earlier, and it's just as garbey and wank as I remember it being.

There are no ecovillains. A person would literally have to be more pointlessly stupidly evil than Satan, Hordak and Palpatine combined to murder the planet he lived on. It's so stupid.

This is why we have Antifa. People childishly making Rebel Alliances and Dumbledore Armies to combat supervillains that don't even exist. It's stupid.

It's so, so blisteringly stupid.

There is no Guild of Calamitous Intent, no Brotherhood of Evil Mutants no more. I don't have to go out and fight the goddamn Ratzis, because my grandpa kicked their asses seventy years ago! Stop it! Stop! Acknowledge a win! Do the Lambeau Leap, and then be happy! What is wrong with you?!?

I'm fine with the Planeteers themselves (Ma-Ti is my spirit animal), and I will concede the show had its heart in the right place, but just in general it sucks. And Captain Planet can go eat a grilled crap sandwich, the gross green-mulleted smiling paedo sleaze that he absolutely is. Pig-disgusting. Creepy. He's a kiddy-fiddler, I guarantee you. He's scary and horrible. It ain't right. I mean, Looten Plunder must have a backstory, if he hates Captain Planet so much. 'You'll pay for this, Captain Planet'? One assumes Captain Planet killed Plunder's entire family, then cooked and ate their corpses right in front of him, if Plunder decides to destroy the world in retribution. Magneto isn't as pointlessly universe-hating as that, man, and he went through the Holocaust.

What did Captain Planet do to Dr. Blight that made her so bitter and empty and sad? It must have been nightmarishly evil. I don't even wanna think about it. Like, it must have been so evil that even I can't wrap my head around it. Did he do a Nagasaki specifically on her? Why else would she hate the planet so much? Who's the real villain? You have to wonder.

[Booyakasha]

...Huck Finn is awesome. Tom Sawyer can eat a big old bag of sh*t. That is all.

[Booyakasha]

The Star Wars Special Editions are a disgusting fiasco, about on par with the colourisation of 'It's a Wonderful Life'. From a moral standpoint, Lucas had no right to go back and change sh*t. They weren't his movies. They might have been his property, he had the legal right to do it, but goldangit--------like go right ahead and draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa, why not, while you're defiling masterworks.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again-----------'A New Hope' was saved in editing. Lucas' original cut was an absolute bust. His editing team fixed it, sewed the silk purse from the sow's ear. They made 'Star Wars'. I mean, Lucas had the idea, he sowed the seed, but his colleagues made it into a masterpiece.

So thirty years later Lucas sh*ts all over them and 'corrects' the 'mistakes' that made him a billionaire. I mean, I am frankly amazed that Kasdan is even willing to talk to Lucas at this point, let alone work with the sumbitch. Yeah, 'Empire' and 'Jedi' were worse before the Special Edition. Bite me.

Nevermind 'Han shot first'. Rightly, it is 'Han shot, and Greedo never did, because he was an idiot'. Han outfoxed him easily---------it was a defining character moment. Han was George Lucas' macho fantasy back when he was a sad nerd Jew kid gettin bullied endlessly in school, and so he did the scene right in '77, and then thirty years later he chickened out and made a pussified crybaby version of the scene to cater better to the kids who never were bothered by it. Because, obviously, on the playground, you had kids going, "gee, it'd be fun to play 'Star Wars', but Han Solo is an evil murderer. Could we play 'Full Metal Jacket' or 'Apocalypse Now' or 'Battle of Algiers' instead?" Clearly that happened all the time. Ugh.

[Apollo the Just]

...I rewatched an episode of 'Captain Planet and the Planeteers' earlier, and it's just as garbey and wank as I remember it being.

There are no ecovillains. A person would literally have to be more pointlessly stupidly evil than Satan, Hordak and Palpatine combined to murder the planet he lived on. It's so stupid.

This is why we have Antifa. People childishly making Rebel Alliances and Dumbledore Armies to combat supervillains that don't even exist. It's stupid.

It's so, so blisteringly stupid.

There is no Guild of Calamitous Intent, no Brotherhood of Evil Mutants no more. I don't have to go out and fight the goddamn Ratzis, because my grandpa kicked their asses seventy years ago! Stop it! Stop! Acknowledge a win! Do the Lambeau Leap, and then be happy! What is wrong with you?!?

I'm fine with the Planeteers themselves (Ma-Ti is my spirit animal), and I will concede the show had its heart in the right place, but just in general it sucks. And Captain Planet can go eat a grilled crap sandwich, the gross green-mulleted smiling paedo sleaze that he absolutely is. Pig-disgusting. Creepy. He's a kiddy-fiddler, I guarantee you. He's scary and horrible. It ain't right. I mean, Looten Plunder must have a backstory, if he hates Captain Planet so much. 'You'll pay for this, Captain Planet'? One assumes Captain Planet killed Plunder's entire family, then cooked and ate their corpses right in front of him, if Plunder decides to destroy the world in retribution. Magneto isn't as pointlessly universe-hating as that, man.

What did Captain Planet do to Dr. Blight that made her so bitter and empty and sad? It must have been nightmarishly evil. I don't even wanna think about it. Like, it must have been so evil that even I can't wrap my head around it. Did he do a Holocaust specifically on her? Why else would she hate the planet so much? Who's the real villain? You have to wonder.

So like, I'm not arguing against the point that Captain Planet is stupid and its villains are stupid, but the fact that the owners of major corporations who are the biggest contributors to polluting also buy out politicians to avoid getting regulated to stop that polluting is kind of actual real-life eco villainism.

Again. The show is bad. And I'm not entirely convinced they were trying to go for incredibly thoughtful real world commentary. But like..... tbh there are legitimately rich and powerful people IRL who honestly seem like they could give less of a **** about the world they live on tbh

--

ok guys i really hate mystery writing whose plot twist is bigger than the media it just renders everything that happened completely pointless and there is only like 3 examples I can think of that managed to pull it off in a way that made it worthwhile

[Booyakasha]

I'm just saying there's a difference between, like, a polluting corporation, and Skeletor. Skeletor wants to take over Eternia, not destroy it. A supervillain who wants to wreck the planet he lives on...that's not relatable. You can't have a charismatic villain whose motives make no sense. Like, people sign up willingly with the Joker's crew, and with Cobra. What possible incentive is there to get on board with Hoggish Greedly? 'Join up with me! (*snort*) Help me destroy the world you live on for minimum wage! Maybe if you're really lucky, Captain Planet won't kill you! Hah hah!' (*snort*)

It's dumb to put a laughing mask of supervillainy on this. Real-world evil is insidious. People don't be evil, they do evil, slowly and subtly, until the world is crap. It's not a bad thing that 'Captain Planet and the Planeteers' existed---------as I said, it had its heart in the right place. But having ecovillains makes it incredibly reductive. Captain Planet can punch Verminous Skumm-------can he punch corporate greed, or ignorance, or third-world poverty?

[Apollo the Just]

yeah i can definitely get behind that. captain planet villainism just makes it so comedic that you can't really pretend it is having any sort of decent dialogue on the situation lmfao

[Booyakasha]

So how do Force-ghosts work?

We see Anakin's Force-ghost at the end of 'Jedi', as portrayed by Sebastian Shaw and nobody else ever. Luke sees him there, with Ben and Yoda. Can anyone else see them, or is that Force-sensitives only? If it's Force-sensitives only, why doesn't Leia see them? She must be Force-sensitive. Is it only people you know?

Okay, out with it---------does Anakin's garbagey Force-ghost ever try to tell stupid Kylo Ren that he should stop being such a sh*tlord and worshipping Vader? Anakin's evidently so redeemed at the end of 'Jedi'. Does he make an effort? Obi-Wan hectors Luke an awful lot after he's dead, almost as though he's some kind of good person and benevolent (though deeply flawed) dutch uncle. Yoda shows up to irritate Luke after he's gone. Does Anakin spend any time looking in on his kids, or is he too busy bangin hot Jedi lady ghosts in Jedi Heaven to care a crap?

[steeze]

I get why Togashi has been taking his sweet time writing hunter x hunter but these long hiatus's kill me and I wish he would kick it into overdrive for like 5 years and grind this thing out. It's been like 20 years man. Just feeling frustrated this morning.

[Booyakasha]

So. About the Borg.

Why is every Borg we see human? The Borg have no doubt assimilated a whole bunch of differing dudes. Why no borged-up Klingons, or Romulans, or Cardassians, or Ferengi? Why no borged salt vampires or hortas, huh? (EDIT: Oh, man, a borged Gorn would be scary as heck. Jiminy.)

Did the Borg ever make it to Endor? Did the Ewoks smush a Borg Cube betwixt swinging logs? I wanna know.

[DarkZero]

ok so this is moreso a thing for YouTube videos and stuff but I don't like how a lot of critical analyses of media are geared towards affirming a specific opinion. Videos where the main points are things like "Why X Is A Masterpiece" or "X Is Complete Garbage" are off-putting to me because I feel like I'm being convinced to believe something instead of having the information layed out for me to digest and form my own opinion.

Much more appealing to me is "How X Does Y" styles of videos. Showing off specific elements of the writing/design, examining their goals, what they did to try to achieve those goals, and maybe what could have been improved. It's just interesting analysis that makes you think, and doesn't feel like you're being persuaded.

Also shoutout to that one person whose "critical analysis" of Super Mario Odyssey is just ranting for two hours about completely trivial non-issues and absolutely seething at the teeth about Bench Friends.

[Apollo the Just]

I agree wholeheartedly.

Yesterday I got salty because there was a twitter thread where someone got mad that a "Persona 5 is Style over Substance" video was made. The person got mad because to them this was signifying that Persona 5 being popular means that a movement to **** on it is going to be made and all the criticisms are out of proportion or something? Anyway it was stupid, criticism has a right to exist, there is no point in blindly praising something. The fact that someone got ANGRY that someone out there CRITICIZED A PIECE OF MEDIA is absolutely mind-boggling to me.

THAT SAID!!!! I am also not a fan of the video in question. Namely it's 5 **** hours long. Any coherent point can be made in, like, 40 minutes absolute max. There's no reason for your video essay to be 5 hours long. And people who made it farther into the video than I did said that the tone was very "no offense if you LIKE it, buuut" which kind of comes off as "it sucks tho." It is not the kind of video essay I would watch.

You know what IS a cool video essay series on persona? Someone made a video on the use of blue in persona 3, yellow in persona 4, and red in persona 5. I personally found some of their claims to be a bit of a reach, but I agree with the basis of what they were saying and they made a lot of good points about various aspects of the games. They had a thoughtful argument, presented it relatively objectively, and ended with "if you have other interpretations leave them in the comments." It was the first time in a very long time I've watched a video essay and felt like I actually got something meaningful out of it.

Here's the P3 video. I love their delivery and framing, it actually encouraged me to consider their points but also to challenge them:

[Booyakasha]

The 2020 Steven Universe calendar is far, far better than the 2018 and 2019 versions. Not to say the older ones were horrible, but the art in this one is more eye-catching, more front-and-centre. Better as a whole.

Also, Amethyst is featured in January. Amethyst is the bestethyst. She's sick effing rad-------why wait until June? Sometimes it's good to lead off with your strongest card.