Mothers Are OITNB

The first episode of the third season of Orange is the New Black is called "Mother's Day". Not only does it work as a description of the episode, it is a summation of the series' major themes: the inner lives of women. Traditionally, women are defined by their maternal instincts. A woman is either Medea or the virgin Mary. Orange... takes that trope, plays off it, and subverts it.

Inappropriate Kids' Cartoons Adaptations

Source

Most people probably know by now that the only similarities the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic has with the eventual franchise is the character names and the concept. This got me think about what would happen if I applied the concept to a few other unsuitable sources.

My Little Cthulhu

My Little Cthulhu is a touching tale set in the eldritch city of R'yleh. The major characters of My Little Cthulhu has the Deep One Cthulhu and his five friends, fellow Deep One Dagon, the Avatars Hastur and Nyarlathotep, and the Outer Gods Shub-Nigurath and Tsathoggua.

The series will be constructed for five seasons. Of course, the first few seasons will be simple enough, though they will become more unknowable during the course of the series (with the exception of Nyarlathotep, who will grow more knowable). Finally, the series closes with the sinking of R'yleh, and the sextet splits up to save their world from humanity. 

Loony Thrones

Loony Thrones is a slapstick anthology based in the slapstick world of Westeros.

There are three regular segments and countless recurring:

1. The struggle for power in the centre of Westeros. The fighters in this region utilise weapons like anvils and mallets. 
2. The border of Westeros. The humans constantly have their plans backfire onto them!
3. The laboratory of Essos. Two dragons live there, and they try to take over the world. Eventually a girl named Dany joins the cast, but we don't talk about those years. 

The Toxic Crusaders

"Toxic Crusaders is an animated series based on The Toxic Avenger films. It features Toxie, the lead character of the films leading a trio of misfit superheroes who combat pollution."

-Wikipedia

Yes. This was a real thing. It really can't get any worse, so I will leave you with that. 

An Update On Charlie Hebdo

I actually managed to pick up an issue of Charlie Hebdo a few months back (early April). It was blathering on about "les terroristes Islamique" (seemingly every other cartoon was about Muslims). Though this urge is understandable, they seem to have forgotten that one of the three police officers who died in the Charlie Hebdo was a Muslim.

Since I last reported on it, Charlie Hebdo has received a PEN award. This is an implicit approval of its incredibly racist content. There is no way around it: Charlie Hebdo is a racist publication, and it has been approved by the biggest cartooning awards.

And again, France is not the bastion of free speech it was painted as after the Hebdo attacks.

Related:

• In the Mideast, as in France, satire is a weapon against extremists
• No, we’re not all Charlie Hebdo, nor should we be
• Why Charlie Hebdo attack is not about Islam
• This Attack Was Nothing To Do With Free Speech — It Was About War
• Why I'm Protesting PEN's Award For Charlie Hebdo
• Everything the Hooded Utilitarian wrote on Hebdo
• The Aesthetic Failure of 'Charlie Hebdo'

The Vocabulary of ASOUE

I have a theory that Lemony Snicket's adjectives slowly get more complicated. So, let's test this theory out:

1. The Bad Beginning (2)
2. The Reptile Room (8)
3. The Wide Window (1)
4. The Miserable Mill (4)
5. The Austere Academy (10)
6. The Ersatz Elevator (11)
7. The Vile Village (6)
8. The Hostile Hospital (3)
9. The Carnivorous Carnival (12)
10. The Slippery Slope (7)
11. The Grim Grotto (5)
12. The Pentultimate Peril (9)
13. The End

Data was based in how commonly a word was used in English, found through Google Ngram. I disagree with a few of these, but I haven't tampered. 

As the Bauldelaires' journey becomes more uncertain, so does the vocabulary Snicket uses. We are as mystified as the siblings.

Despite this, there are outliers. There's a brief rise in complexity at books 5 and 6. These two books are where the mystery of VFD kicks off, and are quite plot-heavy. This makes them very oblique (though fascinating). With The End, Snicket forgoes use of an adjective. This signifies that, like the Baudelaires, we have no hope of knowing what is happening.  

In Another Galaxy...: "Marvel is for everyone*!"

I wrote something for Special Snowflake. It's called "Marvel is for everyone*!", and I like it. It's about how the MCU's lack of female characters is fucking up young girls. You should check it out.

The Thin Line Between Offence and Respect

This is an exchange between a native American woman and a white man in Adam Sandler's Ridiculous 6; see if you can guess which character is which. Recently, a group of native Americans-including the film's cultural advisor-walked of the set of Ridiculous 6. This does not bode well for the film. At all.

"Just the same Tip": Gender Fluidity in Baum's Oz

L. Frank Baum's mother-in-law was a radical feminist, and she influenced his work greatly (if you're interested more on this particular aspect, Sally Roesch Wagner has a book on this called The Wonderful Mother of Oz). This contributed to the gender fluidity of his work.

Sad Puppies, Sad Days: Reactionary Views in Nerd Culture

Nerd culture has taken a swing for the reactionary recently. First it was Gamergate (praise be to Our Lady Sarkeesian), then it was God Gave Comicsgate To You, Shirtstorm, Metalgate (which thankfully never took off), God Gave Comicsgate To You II, a myriad of minor controversies with the suffix -gate mixed in between, and now the Scandal of the Sad Puppies. The Sad Puppies are a group of conservative science-fiction enthusiasts who want science fiction to go back to how it "used to be" and stop being so goddamn progressive. They are willing to do whatever it takes to take the world of sci-fi back-and they have formed a voting bloc in this year's Hugo Awards.

Discworld & Narrative Causality

In Discworld, "stories are important" (Witches Abroad). They wrap themselves around people, play riddles with them, and shape their lives. A witch in a gingerbread house always has an unfortunate ending, a girl skipping through a forest in a red coat always meets. Nowhere is this more evident than in Witches Abroad, a tale of two powerful women fighting each other through stories. An evil queen forces people to obey the narrative, on threat of death.

The Importance of Weird in Discworld

Let's get this straight: to me, weird is a genre that encompasses anything that could not happen in our world (it's straight-up weird that mixes genres). Terry Pratchett used weird in one of the best ways I've seen.

Comic Book Superheroines

What comic book superheroes do you think are overly-sexualised? The one that's thrown out a lot is Dick Grayson-discounting his costume, which shows less skin than pretty much every female superhero ever, the first covers of latest efforts (by creative team) for Grayson and Wonder Woman are so different.

Source 1: Wonder Woman #36

Source 2: Grayson #1

Pop Culture & Class

James McAvoy's anxiety "about a society that doesn't give opportunities to everybody from every walk of life" reminded me of a few other recent comments about art and class: Julie Walter's and Judi Dench's in particular. This was only further compounded by a thinktank's analysis of Grammy wins over the last few decades: the study concluded that music was the whitest it had been in over thirty years (while not all white people are privileged, they are more likely to be a higher class than minorities).

Selma (On Historical Inaccuracies and Race)

I haven't yet seen Selma, but I know of the fuss raised by two aides to President Johnson (also the custodians to his library?? Why is that a thing). So obviously, they have no potential bias about this. In basic form, the two aides believe that Selma portrayed President Johnson unfairly (I guess saying that the FBI bugged King, Johnson was more interested in Vietnam than civil rights and the Selma-Montgomery march was King's, not Johnson's, idea-all true, by the by-is unfair now).

My Muppet Show (or, A Fantasy Reboot)

Dear whoever (or should I say whatever? In case you're Gonzo. Or a gonzo journalist),

Obviously, you're rebooting the Muppet Show. How could you not? A vaudevellian-variety-talk-something show full of "frogs and dogs and bears and... whatever" is ripe property for rebooting, even if a movie was only made last year. So, in some sort of order, I have a list of demands for you:

Dreams of Sleeping Past (Midday): On Superhero Movies

Superhero movies bore me. That's not to say they're unworthy of being Art or Culture or whatever the term is today (god knows I don't judge on that-in my pantheon of good stuff, an obscure children's fantasy rubs shoulders with Pale Fire, a dramedy-musical with Wes Anderson): I've just never watched a superhero movie without falling asleep.

"Je suis Charlie": The Artistic Value of Charlie Hebdo

Source 1: NSFW. Captions read "Mohammed: A star is born!" "The film which shook the Muslim World". Mohammed's speech bubble reads"And my ass? You like my ass?"

Before we start, let's get one thing out of the way. France is not the final bastion of free speech: Charlie Hebdo's predecessor was shut down due to a joke about Charles de Gaulle's death (that kind of thing would be legal today, in case you were wondering, though I don't know if the French would be as quick to play that card).

Source 2: Text reads "Tragic dance in Colombey. One Dead."

"I don't know if I should take a husband or a wife": Krazy Kat and Gender

I received Fantagraphics' first collection of Krazy Kat recently and, flipping through it, I was struck by how modern the notions of gender are. At one point, Krazy complains that they "don't know if I should take a husband or a wife" (October 1915). Despite the heteronormative ideals clearly present in that statement, it strikes me as similar to the new genderfluid movement - a movement that aims to free people from the gender binary.

Medium Snobs! & Other Musings Too Unpolished To Put Into A Seperate Blogpost

We all know that there is a contingent among those who consider themselves cultured who believe that certain styles, genres, mediums and the like are somehow 'less worthy' of being literary (I'm talking specifically about the narrative form right now-I have even less expertise in the fine arts than I do in the narrative form!). There has, however, been a kickback recently against this snobbery, to the point that Slate's Music Club declared "bragging about omnivorousness has become its own kind of snobbery". Honestly, I find this snobbery (if it can even be called that) far preferable to the old kind of snobbery, which I feel was based in classist assumptions of low and high culture.

I forgot to mention this at the time, but my New Year's Resolution is to post 100 blogposts this year, which is both over 5x more than I did last year, and me posting every 3.65 days. So expect far more posts this year!

Does anyone else find the rapey-ness of Alan Moor's work disturbing? I actually had to abort my reading of Watchmen due to finding it too problematic - not that I was overly enjoying it anyway-I was finding it a slog and, essentially, un-fun. I know it's important and such, but good god To Kill A Mockingbird was much more culturally important and  fun. In case anyone doesn't like my criteria of media having to be fun, I find enjoyment is critical to my enjoyment of media.

And now, I leave you with the immortal words of Kermit the Frog, "write your own ending".

Superheroes' Superpesonality

The title of my post is a lie. Superheroes do not have well-defined personalities, and that's part, or most, of their appeal. Their blankness allows them to be placed in any sort of situation-like how a Wonder Woman comic can be anything from a myth-themed epic to a "hip" '60s adventure set in Greenwich Village. They adapt. Wonder Woman's a particularly good example for this, because she isn't static (not even her origin story, unlike Batman or Spiderman).

Malcolm in the Middle vs. The Middle - Orthodox Filmmakers and Artists

This site purports to provide an "Eastern Orthodox Christian perspective and inspiration on all things media-related & the creative process"-however, it seems to want all families in the media to be exactly like their family (Christian, gender role conforming, and incredibly traditional). Or at least, that's what I can tell from this blog post.