Friday, June 12, 2015

Inappropriate Kids' Cartoons Adaptations

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. 

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

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:

A Message From Lee Brewster

While researching a new essay, I found this anecdote:
We died in 1973, the fourth anniversary of Stonewall. That’s when we were told we were a threat and an embarrassment to women because lesbians felt offended by our attire, us wearing makeup. It came down to a brutal battle on the stage that year at Washington Square Park, between me and people I considered my comrades and friends. This was at pride. 
It was the year Bette Midler came to sing “Happy Birthday” for us. It was happy for the mainstream community, but it was not happy for us. They tried to stop drag queen entertainers from performing. It was angry because I had been scheduled for many months to speak at that rally. So I’m stubborn, and I wasn’t going to have it. Because for four years we were the vanguard of the gay movement, and all of a sudden it was being taken away. 
We were being pushed out of something we helped create. I remember this man telling me, a straight man who was my boss at the time, when I was working in Jersey - he said, “Ray, the oppressed becomes the oppressor. Be careful. Watch it.” And I saw it. And I still see it. I literally had to fight my way up onto that stage. I was beat. I got to speak. I said my piece. And I basically left the movement for many years. I didn’t come back into view until the 20th anniversary. And that was with David Isay’s Remembering Stonewall. 
He found me where I was in Tarrytown. I was living and working there. And then along came Martin Duberman and Stonewall. But I was really hurt in 1974. I tried to kill myself. I had 60 stitches on this arm after that incident. And I wasn’t ever going to come back to the movement. But you know who held fast to her word was Lee Brewster. When she got up and spoke after I did, she took off her tiara, threw it into the crowd and said, “Fuck gay liberation!” 
What people fail to remember is, here’s another drag queen who has not been recognized as a hero in our community. She put a majority of the money up for the first march in 1970. Lee Brewster changed the drinking laws for gay men to be able to be served in public at a regular bar instead of an afterhours club. She did this. Lee Brewster, with her own money, changed the laws on the books in New York against criminal impersonation that was held over drag queens’ heads.

There's not much about Lee Brewster online, so I think I'm going to go on another hunt for citations once I've finished this essay.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

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.  

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Tromeo and Juliet - Lloyd Kaufman


There's a scene early on in Tromeo & Juliet while Juliet dreams. For a few, fleeting seconds, it seems as if it could come out of a Swedish sauna porno. But this is a Troma production, and sex is never without meaning; in this case, Juliet's fear of heterosexual intercourse is the meaning. Juliet reaches to an anonymous man's penis, and pulls it out. Not content to be a regular penis, it must be about a foot--and worse, it has a mouth. This was the moment I knew I loved Tromeo & Juliet. (The moment I knew I liked it was earlier--at the reimagining of the "'Do you bite your thumb at me?' 'I bite my thumb, sir!'" scene. You know the one.)

Sunday, May 10, 2015

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.