Friday Creature Feature - Muffin Heeler

Her cry chills you to the bone. 

Her mere presence can send grown men running. 

She is the queen of all she sees as long as she can see it. 

Her wrath is legendary. 

And she's three years old.

That One Kid..

The cousin of title character Bluey, Muffin is a fan favorite among the adult Bluey connoisseurs. She's the kid that when we hear is coming over we put all the breakables somewhere safe and are ready for at least one meltdown during the visit.  She's the kid who's screaming in a princess costume at Disneyland with at least one parent scrambling to get her whatever will make the noise stop. 

And we love her for it.

Chaos Incarnate

Muffin is three years old, which means she is full of energy and has little to no concept of people outside of herself. She wants what she wants right now and she's going to take it or throw a fit if she doesn't. Muffin is strong-willed towards the adults and children in her life alike, seeing no reason to treat one group different from the other (An equal opportunity monster). Besides being able to drift like a pro street racer, she doesn't have any special abilities or powers that a normal 3 year old human child would have, except she's a dog—which in the Bluey universe makes her the equivalent to a human. 

Muffin has three notable episodes where her chaos is put on full display. The first, The Sleepover, Muffin is trying to get away from an afternoon nap and shows up to the Heeler house exhausted, which is code for drunk in the episode. She proceeds to destroy anything within arms reach and ruin Bluey and Bingo's games, culminating in a high-speed chase in a pedal car with a stolen lawn flamingo. The episode is so unhinged compared to most Bluey episodes that it almost feels like a clip from another show spliced in, like Family Guy or Rick and Morty. This is Muffin taken to the next level as she has lost whatever filter she may've ever had from lack of sleep. 

The second Muffin episode, Faceytalk, the girls are playing on a Skype style app with their cousins but Muffin refuses to share with her little sister, so her dad puts her into time out. Muffin gets ahold of her dad's phone and her sister and cousins are treated to front-row seats at Muffin's frantic chase through the house, which climaxes with her accidentally dropping the phone two stories into their pool. Another unhinged episode, the first person view of Muffin running gives us a little insight into what life is like at Muffin's house, and since her little sister is completely unbothered by proceedings, we can assume that these chases are a regular occurrence. 

The last Muffin heavy episode is Granny Mobile. We see the return of two other fan-favorite characters, Bluey and Bingo's granny personas Janet and Rita, with Muffin taking on her own grouchy granny Gladys. Muffin gets into an argument with a real life grouchy granny, who either doesn't realize that Muffin is a child or doesn't care, but haggles with Muffin over the price of an electric scooter. Muffin saves the day by negotiating up and getting a great deal on it, helping the real owner go on holiday with her newfound funds. 

Not the Villain

One of the best parts about Bluey is that the kids are kids. They're not the exaggerated versions we caught in Rugrats, or the completely sci-fi versions we got in Codename: Kids Next Door. they're kids, with kid personalities and kid foibles. Muffin as an agent of chaos works because she's not one of the main characters so she's not an ever-present conflict like Angelica was. She doesn't overstay her welcome and isn't a constant problem, she's one that's around just enough to make life more interesting. 

Most episodes she's in, besides the ones mentioned, she's not completely unhinged, despite the occasional outburst. Usually she gets along well with everyone, plays with her cousins and sister, and just enjoys being a a kid. Muffin is what we wish we could still be as adults: wild, a little crazy, and not afraid to get what we want. 

Even if results do vary...

-JOE

Judge Doom - Disney's Most Terrifying Villain

The other night I was doom scrolling TikTok before bed (my normal ritual) when a clip from this year's Disneyland Halloween party came up showcasing the new villains appearing at the parade. 

And my blood runs cold. 

It's the Judge. 

All Black and All Business

For the uniniatied, Judge Doom is from Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?, a pinaccle of animation that holds up to this day. The villain, played by the usually delightful and everyone's wacky grandpa Christopher Lloyd, is a law enforcment official tasked with keeping the antics of Toon Town from getting out of hand. His solution: a mixture of "turpentine, acitone and benzine", called the Dip. It's an acid that liquifies Toons, effectively killing the immortal creatures perminently in the most gruesome way possible. 

Judge Doom, with his black frock coat, hat and glasses that make him look like a somehow even more goth version of Alucard from Hellsing, is a menacing figure all to himself. The thing that first tips him from basic villain to childhood trauma enducing nightmare is when he slowly lowers a Toon shoe into the Dip and we watch it die slowly as it's disolved. He then brings out his hand covered in what is presumably ink (but is definitely coded as blood) and flexes it for Bob Hoskins. Now remember this was in 1988, long before the argument about violence in cartoons would really take hold with The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bevis and Butthead. As children we had never seen anything like this till now. 

Oh, but it got so much worse. 

And He Talked JUST LIKE THIS

Now we really enter spoiler country but the film is over 30 years old so live with it. We find out that Judge Doom isn't only the person who is comitting all the murders and framing Toons for them but that he himself is a Toon and is trying to get the deed to Toon Town so he can bulldoze it and get a freeway, and that he's the Toon who killed Bob Hoskin's brother by dropping a piano on his head. This revelation comes at another traumatizing point when Doom is slowly run over by a road roller flattening him like a pancake. He then and he starts talking in a high pitched voice with red glowing eyes,  performing general Toon stuff like getting squished flat and stretching. Picture all the fun stuff Bugs Bunny and the gang used to do but what if they were doing that to a person who couldn't bend and stretch, it would be the makings of a horror movie. Judge Doom is eventually killed by, once again, slowly melting in a pool of his own Dip while he cries out in pain. 

Thinking about it, this movie has a lot of people dying slowly. Are we sure this is a children's movie?

Now He's Back

I know I talk a lot about Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but I think until recently I'd mostly blocked out Judge Doom from my memory, because as a kid I remember being absolutely terrified of this monster. Interestingly I don't think it's because of what he'd do to me but what he'd be willing to do to the innocent and fun-loving Toons I'd grown up loving and which were featured in this film. Remember this is the film where Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse were featured prominently together, and where Dumbo gets fed peanuts through a window. Doom wasn't just willing to displace them by evicting Toon Town he wanted to slowly melt it in acid and revel in the screams of the anthropromorphic flowers and birds. This dude was sick. 

The Disneyland Halloween party now features Judge Doom standing on a platform on the trick-or-treat line, interacting with guests like a nightmareish stage magician, complete with his own little magic trick. In front of the waiting crowd, Doom will pull out a struggling Toon shoe, open a vat of Dip, and just like in the movie slowly torture the creature to death. 

Fun for the whole family, right? 

No wonder I had nightmares that night...

-JOE

Horror Video Games vs. Horror-Themed Video Games

 As is well documented by my friends, and my therapist, and the authorities, I love horror. As is also well documented I love video games. So naturally people will ask me if I love horror video games, and unnaturally I have to answer them with a "Eeehhhhhhhh... Not really". 

Because of course I have to have a complicated opinion about everything. 

Jump Scares

My issue with most video games with the horror genre attached to them is that they rely almost exclusively on jump scares. That's the thing where the character is wandering around a dark house and then BAM! Scary clown. In good horror films jump scares act as a way to startle the audience, make them jump and then lead into some action, thus they are used infrequently. They're like adding cheese to give the meal that extra touch. In horror video games, jump scares are all they're is as far as scaring the player, so it's like handing someone a plate with a pile of shredded cheese and telling them bon appetite. 

Plenty of people love these types of scares, hence why Five Nights at Freddy's is now a massive multi-media empire and why we got like 5 Grudge movies, but for me jump scares aren't fun, they're anxiety inducing. I'm already an anxious person, so after 5 or 6 jump scares in the course of 20 minutes I'm a wreck, and that's not what I want to be when I'm doing anything, so hence why I'm not into horror video games. 

What I am into is horror THEMED video games. 

Theming 

Does anyone remember those old typing tutor games you'd play in school to increase your typing skills? Do they still have those anymore or our kids today born with the innane skill to type 60 WPM like how cats are sometimes born knowing how to crap in a litter box? Anyway there's a version where the words are used to kill zombies so the faster you can rattle off a sentence the faster the hoards go down. That's what I mean by theming. The gameplay is still the same as the one's on the old school computers, but there's gore and zombies so I have it in my Steam library. 

I love a game where the horror genre is there but it's not trying to scare you, it's there because it's cool. Another example is the game V Rising. It's a standard hack-and-slash-loot-craft-boss affair but the twist is that you're playing as a vampire out to become the next Dracula by turning the entire countryside into a 7/11 Slurpee buffet. You build your castle with all gothic architecture and you terrify the peasants as you plough through them looking for supplies. It's fun not just because the core gameplay is fun but because you get to actually BE a vampire. You're the big bad guy at the end of a quest. You're the guy in the giant cape spouting long monologues to damsels in gauzy dresses. That's fun because you get to be the big bad in the horror movie rather than the victim (Until you go up against some of those bosses, in which case just call me Daphne). 

Another one is the terribly named Project Zomboid where you are a dude who wakes up on day one of the zombie apocalypse and you have to see how long you survive before succumbing to the elements, starvation or the hoards. That's it, there's no story, no NPCs no victory state. Your character will die at one point, the goal is to see how long you can last by building a bunker, finding and then growing your own food and water, and picking up abilities on the fly to make your new world work. They're are people who have made it years in game without dying (My personal record is two weeks). The fear is subtle if at all, because it's not from "Surprise there's a zombie!" but in "I need food but what if that house has a whole ton of zombies in it?" That's interesting. 

To Scare or To Be Scared

Horror to me isn't just about fear. Horror to me is the exploration of the forbidden, of the unknowable, and asking the questions humanity should not ask. The invocation of fear is a subjective one, since I literally can't remember the last time a horror film actually scared me beyond some annoying jump scares, yet I am always finding new ones to love because of how fascinating the questions they ask or the worlds they create are. I'm the same with video games. I don't necessarily want to be scared (though if you do find a video game that's scary without leaning entirely on jump scares hook a brother up) but I revel in being the bad guy having to take down heroes en masse, or seeing how long I can survive as the side character in someone else's epic zombie drama. I want to be part of the horror, not sitting outside of it waiting to be jumped at. 

-JOE

Reaction to DC's Future Announcement

 In all my friend groups, I'm the superhero guy. I used to collect the comics religiously, I've seen all the movies, I know all the lore, I'm the guy that everyone turns to after the after-credits scene and asks to explain who the purple guy is with the glove. So naturally since James Gunn announced what the plans for DC is going to be in the future, multiple friends have turned to me asking my opinion on it. 

Well, let's go through the announcement and go over what they're talking about, shall we? 

Consistency

Okay I get the need to determine what's set in what universe. Marvel's been very clear about what is and isn't canon where DC has been all over the map with where everything is, so I like this. My worry would be that we get another Ezra Miller situation where a performer can't stay out of the tabloids and they have to recast across multiple platforms, but hopefully DC learned its lesson. 

Shazam and Flash

These have been slated for a while now so I'm glad they're going to use them as part of the reboot, though I wonder how much needed to be changed after the fact in the films to make this happen. But also: WHEN IS SHAZAM GOING TO FIGHT BLACK ADAM?!

Blue Beetle

They've been pushing the new Blue Beetle for years now, which gives me heavy Miles Morales/Spider-Man vibes but not in a good way. Where Miles was received well because he was a version of a popular superhero portrayed by a person of a minority, this is the same thing except: Can anyone whose not a hardcore DC fan tell me who the last Blue Beetle was? Young Justice tried to make the new Blue Beetle interesting but even they've stopped using him. 

Aquaman 2

Let's not even get into the train wrech that's been going on behind the scenes with this one, save to say that if Aquaman 2 is even the least bit coherent I'm going to die of shock. 

Creature Commandos

Are you people serious? We're going to do a comic book from the 80's that was basically Avengers meets Monster High? I guess we haven't learned our lesson from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that this just doesn't work cinematically because these characters each have such a massive cultural footprint that watering them down for a team is an injustice to them and just creates a massive mess but here we are. 

Waller

Viola Davis has been one of the best things about the DC films, so yeah let's keep her rolling around. The Peacemaker franchise is not something I could see letting kids watch so if these guys end up teaming up with Superman down the road they're could be some awkward questions around who these people are and why we care. I'm glad to see Davis coming back though. 

Superman: Legacy

And of course during this part of the presentation they show an image from Superman: All-Stars, the only Superman comic to win any awards in decades. With all the media focused on Superman's kid out I'm betting anything it's going to be a Superman/Superman Jr situation. 

Lanterns 

True Detective but with Green Lanterns... I don't even want to imagine what the budget on this thing is, and if the special effects aren't James Cameron's Avatar level it is going to be roasted by every geek in this solar system. Never forget the Green Lantern movie starring Ryan Reynolds and the digital train wreck that thing was. 

The Authority

Hay you know what this franchise needs? Even more unrecognizable characters to clutter everything up! Yaaaay! Seriously though adding these fools in is going to be DC's version of the Eternals mark my words. 

Paradise Lost

Game of Thrones but on Paradise Island... Notice he said the birthplace of Wonder Woman but did not mention Wonder Woman. I'm envisioning Gotham where they kept hinting and foreshadowing at stuff we already know about but ended up becoming a giant teasing waste of time. 

Brave and the Bold

Of course it's about Damien Wayne. You can't do anything without having Damien Wayne crawl out and start talking about how he's an assassin. I'm convinced that the whole Superman's son thing only came about so that Damien could have a playmate. As a Robin he's always been.... A thing... I get why Gunn would love him but I'm not all that excited for yet more Damien Wayne stories. 

Booster Gold

I've got to admit this one actually looks fun since I like Booster Gold and loved the old Justice League: International comics where he hung out. This could be really funny depending on who they cast as Booster and who he has to bounce off of. 

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Who is this universe for exactly? Marvel succeeded by appealing to young and old alike, but this sounds like a space horror drama and I doubt the year it comes out many little girls are going to want to dress as PTSD riddled depressing Supergirl. 

Swamp Thing

And we round off with, of course, Swamp Thing. Haven't we tried this 2 or 3 times before and it didn't work? Every time there's talk of a new DC anything somebody always mentions bringing Swamp Thing into it and every time they do he's a bust. Put Swamp Thing back in the swamp and leave him alone. 

Obviously besides a couple small sparks I don't have a lot of hope for the DC cinematic future. I want to note though that none of this is from superhero fatigue. I've been binging the X-Men cartoons lately and played Marvel's Midnight Suns all the way through and am still hankering for more, what I'm saying though is that this announcment didn't light my superhero heart ablaze like it should have and I sincerely hope that the more that Gunn promised will do that or else this whole thing is going to be in more trouble than the Justice League can bail them out of. 

-JOE

10 Disney Scenes that Live Rent-Free

So with the success of my last rent-free post, I figured I'd do one exclusively for my favorite mega-corporation: Disney! 

So here's my ADHD/caffeine/sugar fueled journey through the Disney animated universe! :D

So This Is Love and The Transformation (Cinderella)

I love the 1950 animated Cinderella movie to death, so this movie gets two slots. The first one is when Fairy Godmother transforms Cinderella's dress. The animation alone is just incredibly beautiful, and after everything Cinderella's been through this was a deserved glow-up. 

The second is the song So This Is Love. I will find myself singing this in the shower when I'm in a good mood. And yes, I know that Cinderella and the Prince exchange maybe three words before they dance and then fall in love but the song is just so pretty and also indicative of how Cinderella is appreciating what she's feeling in the moment. The animation is also beautiful in this scene (Seriously can we please go back to watercolor backgrounds?) and I love Lady Tremaine getting blocked at every opportunity. 

9: Part Of Your World Reprise (The Little Mermaid) 

I already mentioned this in my other post but I don't care this is a good enough scene to mention twice. 

8: Ohana Means Family (Lilo and Stitch)

No they're not all songs, some of them are moments. And of course, Lilo and Stitch is going to be on this list. 

This is near the end of the movie where Stitch convinces the alien ambassador to let him stay on Earth. Stitch explains in his limited English what family is, and how he has found a family in Lilo and Nani. 

It's little and broken, but still good. 

Yeah, still good. 

7: You Came Back (Beauty and the Beast)

Beast's death scene is so full of emotion. Beast is surprised that Belle came back, and here Belle is finally able to understand that she does love the Beast. She had already loved him but I don't think she realized it until now. It is in this moment that the Beast finally understands what it means to love and be loved in return. 

6: Dress in Drag and do the Hula (Lion King)

So far all these moments have been romantic, poignant, and general feeling tuggers. This one though is none of that. It's just a quick line and an impromptu musical number that makes me giggle every time. I use it whenever I can, which if you're creative can be quite often. 

Also this is literally the only time I like Timon and Pumbaa

5: Happy Happy Birthday (The Emperor's New Groove)

Can we all just agree that The Emperor's New Groove just nailed it? I love everything about this movie but Yzma is my kindred spirit. An angry old lady who is done with everyone and this scene is a perfect example of that. As a distraction, Kuzco sends the servers at the little diner to sing happy birthday to the villain and her reaction is just glorious. 

4: Party Crashing (Sleeping Beauty)

Nobody can make an entrance like Maleficent, the Dame of All Evil. When we first meet her she's crashed Princess Aurora's christening, put out because she wasn't invited. She's a terrifying presence, without ever really saying anything overtly threatening, just being there is enough to make everyone's skin crawl. This is how I want to enter every room for the rest of my life. 

3: Todashi is Here (Big Hero 6)

At the core of Big Hero 6 is grief, something that everyone can or will some day have to relate to. Hiro is trying to extract vengeance on the people responsible for his brother Tadashi's death. In one scene Baymax reveals that he has videos of Tadashi trouble shooting his robot, showing Hiro that his brother lives on through his creation and the memories Hiro has of him, and that by turning Baymax into a weapon of vengeance dishonors his memory. This is also when Hiro breaks down crying, truly embracing his grief. 

2: Senior Psychopath (Aladdin)

Another moment that makes me giggle is when Aladdin comes back from his trip to the North Pole to find the palace in chaos and under Jafar's evil control. When Aladdin meets up with the Genie, well the scene speaks for itself.

1: I Won't Say (I'm In Love) Hercules

Ugh I think everything on Disney+ lives rent free in my head honestly, these are just 10 that I could think of right now. I didn't even touch Out There, God Help The Outcasts and Hellfire from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or Tarzan, or every scene with Cruella DeVille, so I'm going to put up the song that I sing to myself often to remind myself that just because I've been burned before it doesn't mean that I'll be burned again. 

Plus this song tho

-JOE

D&D Class Breakdown: Sorcerer

 For new players, it can be hard to choose your first class. For veteran players, it can be hard to choose a class and not fall into stereotypes everyone's seen a thousand times. So now I'm going to deconstruct the 5E Player's Handbook classes (Sorry Artificer, you'll come later) and talk about what works, what doesn't, and some interesting ways to play the classes. 

I won't be going into game mechanics as much as I'll be going into roleplay. 

Let's talk about Sorcerers! 

What Is a Sorcerer? 

Now we get into the arcane magic users, AKA sorcerers, wizards and warlocks, we have to ask: What's the difference? In most fictions the the three words are used interchangeably but in Dungeons and Dragons each is a distinct class and mislabeling one for another is a faux paus you do not want to make at the table. I usually don't get into the game stuff so early but with the magic users I have to just so we know what we're talking about. 

In game, sorcerers gain their access to magic through their bloodline, meaning someone in their family once upon a time was a dragon, demon, angel, eldrich abomination etc. and now they've been blessed with the magic gene (Don't think about the logistics on how this happened. It'll just ruin your day).

Historically sorcerers are like the demigods in Greek and Roman myth, children of a god or other mythical creature and a human and are therefore blessed with powers (We also won't get into how that happened). Celtic myths talk about people who have fairy blood in them, dating back to some weird ancestor that disappeared down a rabbit hole or was replaced with a doppelganger while still an infant, and now they are good at growing plants. To this day we still contribute ability with genetics, as anyone who's done their family history and found anyone of historical significance on the family tree will remind you every time you come in contact with them. We expect the children and grandchildren of great people to themselves be great, even if Albert Einstein's great-grand nephew just wants to play Fortnite. 

In the Game

Sorcerers in Dungeons and Dragons are usually the outsiders in the group. Their power manifests in youth and most of the time they're left to figure out magic on their own. Take the backstory of any of the X-Men and find and replace the word "Mutant" with the word "Sorcerer" and you'll have most of the common backstories. While the sorcerer doesn't have to do much to acquire their magic besides being born, they are limited on the number of spells they know. Since Dungeons and Dragons tends to have a lot of combat, this means that the sorcerer usually knows spells that are of a "do damage to as many people as possible as fast as possible" variety. Sorcerers can also cast the most frequently in a day without needing to recharge their mana batteries so they're usually used as the damage dealer in the group. 

Most players who pick up the sorcerer tend to go the mutant route, making the sorcerer the outcast of society because they were born different, or because they remind their families about how weird great grandpa Albert dated that succubus back in the day. It doesn't help that one of the subclasses for sorcerer is the wild magic sorcerer, which has to roll on a random magic effect table every time they do something cool to see what wacky/detrimental effect befalls the entire party. 

Breaking the Trope

Roleplaying as your favorite X-Men character but with magic can be fun, but the diversity of the class means that they're can be so many more interesting options to try out. Here are a few ideas.

Controller: Instead of focusing on damage spells, focus on spells that effect the enemies in different ways. Cast Grease and knock an enemy squad prone, or use Enlarge/Reduce to disorient the enemy and give your party members a better advantage. 

Illusionist: Things aren't always what they seem, and when you're a sorcerer illusionist things never are as they seem. Turn any situation to your advantage by confusing and tricking your opponents with illusions. A good illusionist can win a battle without ever dealing damage. A great illusionist can avoid the battle altogether. 

Showman: Bards don't have to be the only class who like to put on a show. Be a magician but with real magic, always willing to leave your audiences stunned and amazed and your enemies enthralled until you hit them with that perfect fireball. 

Famous Sorcerers

Elsa and Rapunzel (Disney) I'm just going to list them both together. Both gained their powers from something in their lineage, Elsa from her mom's honoring the spirits and Rapunzel from her mom drinking tea made from the magic sunflower. 

Benders (Avatar The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra) In the series people of different nations are born with the ability to manipulate different elements. As demonstrated in Korra when people move from those areas their children still have the predisposition to have the bending abilities of their native homes, as demonstrated with Mako and Bolin, brothers whose parents were Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom and who each became a bender from one of their respective parent nations. 

X-Men (Marvel) Okay I've danced around it long enough: Mutants from the X-Men franchise are basically sorcerers due to their powers coming almost strictly from their genetics. 

-JOE

Friday Creature Feature - Demogorgon

Normally our Friday Creature Features are explorations of the history of a monster in their fictions and just us gushing about our favorite non-humans, but I want to go in a different direction with this one: I want to talk about why the Demogorgon from Stranger Things is not the same as the one from Dungeons and Dragons and why that's an absolutely wonderful thing. 

The Differences Out of the Way

Okay it's already been talked about how the Stranger Things flower made of flesh and teeth is not the same as Dungeons and Dragons two-headed baboon demon with tentacles for arms. The reason it's called the Demogorgon in Stranger Things is because it's the monster the kids were fighting against in their Dungeons and Dragons game when all the nonsense with Eleven and the Upside-Down landed at their doorstep. The two creatures have absolutely nothing in common on the surface, except both were defeated by a bunch of pre-teens (if barely).

Now Demogorgon don't appear that much in Dungeons and Dragons. I've been playing for over 20 years as both a player and dungeon master and I think I've only used the thing once (I had a magic Saw type trap involving magic circles, high level demons and a Deck of Many Things.) Stranger Things has brought the obscure monsters into the spotlight, so now a Dungeons and Dragons supplement features stats for Mr. Bitey Face and the Magic: The Gathering Demogorgon card featured a shadow of the Stranger Things monster instead of the baboon thing, so Demogorgon has become a new staple in the game.

Cosmic Horror Monsters

Stranger Things is considered a cosmic horror (Or Lovecraftian horror) story, a signature of which is that we just don't know how the universe truly works and thus as humans can't handle it. I would've been disappointed if the boys had ridden their bikes over to the library and found the monster in some pop-up book about ancient Samaria, or if the monster was exactly like the one in the Monster Manual. Either case would mean that the kids would know what it is, that it can be beat, and how to beat it.

The characters in cosmic horror are unprepared to deal with real monsters. They usually spend most of the plot trying to convince themselves that these things don't exist (Hopper in season 1) or when finally faced with the creatures completely overwhelmed by the realization that monsters are real that they can go completely insane (Let's face it, Joyce is not okay at this point). The kids name the creature the Demogorgon, and subsequently the Mind Flayer and Vecna because these monsters are the closest reference they have to describe the horrors they're seeing in reality, despite the fact that they are not a 1:1 comparison to the monsters in their game.

Children's Fears

In my The Thing I Love About Stranger Things post I talked about how my favorite part of the show is the cosmic horror and how the kids drifted between mildly entertaining to "get off my lawn". I do love how the horror is seen through the eyes of the children, who still see the world in terms of good guys/bad guys and monsters. They know that when monsters show up, you figure out their weaknesses and take them down. The father of cosmic horror H. P. Lovecraft never put children into his cosmic horror situations because I think they would've figured out his horrors too early and ended the thereat with a well-aimed slingshot instead of going slowly insane surrounded by thinly veiled racism. They named the monsters and in doing so took a tiny bit of fear away from them and decided that if they have a name there must be a way to stop them.

That's just good writing.

How the (Muppets) Christmas Carol Saves Christmas

As is well documented I am not a big fan of the so-called holiday season. I could go into it but I'm trying to avoid things that needlessly raise my blood pressure as well as my urge to burn things so let me tell you about my favorite Christmas movie: The Muppets Christmas Carol.

And yes, The Nightmare Before Christmas is an extremely close second, but only because I usually watch that one on Halloween. 

Humbug

I actually love The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in all its various iterations. For me it's more of a cautionary horror story with Christmas as more of a backdrop. Scrooge needs to learn to change his ways and Christmas is the best time to show him what is truly worth living for (More on that later) but remember Scrooge was a jerk all year, not just at Christmas. 

The Muppets portrayal is my favorite Scrooge, and that's saying something considering other titans who have taken the role like Alistair Sim, Sir Patrick Stewart, and Scrooge McDuck to name a few. Muppets Christmas Carol has Michael Caine, the charming British actor that stole our hearts as Alfred Pennyworth in the Nolan Batman franchise. Here not only does he portray a great Scrooge, despite seemingly to be absolutely delightful in real life, but he plays a hard no-nonsenses Scrooge around the Muppets. He has no problem flinging some poor Muppet man out his door while he's begging for an extension on his mortgage or nailing Bean Bunny with a Christmas wreath. 

Juxtapose this with Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island (Seriously why aren't they making more Muppet movies based on classic literature?!). In it you can tell Curry is having a wonderful time playing with the Muppets, and it's a joy to watch, but he's also the villain and any tone of threat from him is completely lost as he hams it up. 

Tiny Frog

Here's the part of the film that for me seals the deal and warms my own Scroogy heart: Tiny Tim. I will argue that the lynch pin in Scrooge's conversion is when he sees the Cratchit's youngest son and how hard he has it in life yet never lets his hardships get him down. As opposed to Scrooges, Tiny Tims for me are hit-and-miss, as they are usually healthy looking kids handed a crutch and a flat cap and told to smile (Except in Scrooged where Tiny Tim is emotionally traumatized and doesn't talk, an interesting take since the film takes place in contemporary times).

Here Tiny Tim is played by Robin the Frog (Bet you didn't know he had a name--read a book!) who is physically smaller than most of the other Muppets, including his three siblings who were made for the film. Tim's size and the persistent cough make him look especially vulnerable, but the part that guts me is when he starts coughing. Now of course in this film Bob Cratchit is Kermit the Frog and thus of course his wife Emily is the Supermodel of the World Miss Piggy. They didn't really change Piggy's personality in the film, making her just as loud and extra as she usually is (She wears her purple satin gloves with her poor Londoner dress and threatens to punch Scrooge off her porch--note to self, make fan post about Miss Piggy) but when Tiny Tim starts to cough she immediately softens and helps him to his chair. There's something about the loud boisterous takes no-nonsense character softening so fast for another character that breaks my heart because it shows how much the character loves them to let down their guards and show genuine love. This happens twice, first when Tiny Tim comes home and gets overexcited about Christmas dinner and second after his adorable song (We haven't even talked about the music in this thing which is pure FIRE). Before this, we see Scrooge kind of getting into the spirit of Christmas with the Ghost of Christmas Present but that was more of seeing the fun he'd been missing out on, but seeing Tiny Tim and hearing his song Caine visibly softens as he realizes that a majority of this child's suffering has been caused by him treating Bob Cratchit like garbage. 

The real icing on the emotional cake that is the Tiny Tim scene is when he asks the Ghost if Tiny Tim will live, to which the Ghost replies "...If these shadows remain unaltered, the child will die. But if he's going to die then he better do it-and decrease the surplus population!" Here the Ghost throws Scrooge's words right back in his face, making the miser realize that this child is one of the people he so callously dismissed and condemned to death earlier that day. 

The emotions reach their lowest with the Ghost of Christmas Future where they show the family mourning the loss of Tiny Tim. Miss Piggy is actually shown crying in this scene. Now I've watched every Muppet thing ever created and I don't think in any other time in history Miss Piggy has ever once cried over anything, so there's a gut punch if ever there was one. All the light and happiness that used to be in this household is dimmed and Scrooge gets to see exactly where his actions will lead him if he stays on his course. The tombstone scene is nothing compared to seeing Miss Piggy cry. 

Carols from The Christmas Carol

Okay now that I'm out of my emotions and have stopped crying over a frog puppet let me end this with one last note about the music: It's amazing. The Muppets are famous for their big bombastic musical numbers culminating in kick lines, but here the songs are different. They're still fun but they're more subtle, honoring Christmas and the story without distracting from the flow. A number like Cabin Fever from Muppets Treasure Island or Happiness Hotel from The Great Muppet Caper just wouldn't work in the story of the Christmas Carol. 

I don't have the vocabulary to describe why I love the songs so much, so what I will do is post my favorite Muppets Christmas Carol songs below and hopefully the songs themselves can be enough to get my point across. 

-JOE

Wednesday - Mysterious and Spooky

Ugh I needed this. 

Right as everything started growing lights and every speaker started spewing songs with sleigh bells, a black hole of hope lead me through this dreary bright holiday season- and it was lovely. 

The Addams are back. 

New Take

For the uninitiated, The Addams Family franchise reaches back to the first TV series in 1964, where it was a satire on the nuclear family. The show portrayed the Addams as being odd, participating in then unusual practices of tending poisonous plants, keeping insects as house pets, participating in yoga, and training with martial weapons. The joke wasn't that they were weird, but that they were weird and happy about it, able to live in society as strange but harmless weirdos and not care what others thought. 

Fast forward to 1991 where they family is revived with two films, which modernizes the family. Here not only is the family weird but there's an air of slight danger to them, making jokes about bodies being in the house and hinting that murder might be on the table somewhere. This darker Addams family is the version most people are now familiar with, as it solidified Christina Ricci as the daughter Wednesday, Anjelica Huston as the mother Morticia and Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester. 

2019 saw another revision of the Addams in a cartoon movie, once again modernized for the current age. Here they introduced more magic elements like crystal balls, but toned down the murders for a younger audience. Despite it getting mediocre reception a sequel was made which was received with less than positive reviews. 

Okay now we come to Netflix's Wednesday and we need to ask: What are we bringing to the table this time. 

Tim Burton. We're bringing Tim Burton. 

Finally. 

Addams High

Wednesday follows the titular Wednesday Addams as she navigates her new school, Nevermore High (Think of a mix of Monster High and Riverdale). Where we've seen the Addams clan vs the regular world, here Wednesday has to confront the rest of the weird world and learn to find her place in it, all while getting tangled up in a murder mystery worthy of her hero Edgar Allen Poe. 

Wednesday herself is recharacterized as a sort of goth Daria, being an anti-social writer with a penchant for threatening her fellow classmates with violence. Even among the other outcasts she's seen as an outsider because instead of fellowshipping with those that don't fit into the mainstream she chooses to alienate them as well. 

The Daria comparison isn't just for the sarcasm and writing affection, it's with how the show Daria is set up as well. Without spoiling let's just say that despite herself Wednesday finds herself to be wrong, that maybe she does value others more than even she thinks. 

The sarcastic unhappy girl archetype is the voice we need to look at our modern world and call it out on the nonsense that it is. It started with Christina Ricci's Wednesday in 1991, moved onto Daria, then onto the Teen Titans Raven in the good iteration of the series, and now it's back to Wednesday here. We need someone who is willing to call us out on our vapid society, even if we don't change as much as the characters would want us to. 

Death, Violence and Black

Wednesday, unlike its recent family friendly predecessors, is definitely more for adults than for kids. While the blood and guts is not even as close as it could've been (They're are werewolves and yet nobody is disemboweled How disappointing...) and the show has no gratuitous sex or nude scenes. Despite the subject matter and genre the show leans more towards the 1991 films, which is a welcome change from most recent horror shows which I can only recommend to my most gore addicted friends and family. Wednesday is a fun and safe adventure into the darkness without needing to call your bishop about later. 

-JOE

The Best Batman

Let me be transparent here: On this platform I've called Batman a Mary-Sue, uninteresting, and an example of toxic masculinity. And I still defend each of these positions, but I do have a blind spot in my Batman critique: 

Kevin Conroy. 

Every complaint I've ever had about Batman disintegrate in Conroy's portrayal. His recent passing has called me to reflect on the times he's portrayed the Dark Knight and how his performances over the years has shaped the character into something that is still worth championing for and why despite my own opinions he is still, in my eyes, a hero. 

Spoilers for a whole mess of Batman stuff. 

Batman: The Animated Series (BTAS)

BTAS was the first introduction to Batman for 90's kids (Unless your parents were cool like mine and let you watch the Michael Keaton ones). Painted on a black background, fighting a Joker voiced by Mark Hamill, Conroy gave us a human portrayal of Batman that was ahead of its time for children's cartoons. Here we got a Batman who could also be the millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, one who felt things more than righteous anger, including fear and mourning. 

Two pieces stand out here: One was when he was doused with Scarecrow gas and was in a hallucination that his parents survived, and that he was not Batman. There's fear echoing in his voice as he quickly realizes that it's not real and fights to escape back to reality, despite knowing he'd be giving up a dream life he always wanted and deserved. It echoed an episode in Justice League: United when under the influence of the Black Mercy Superman had to make a similar decision. We get an example of Batman being in a situation where he has to fight with his mind rather than his skills, and how much it hurts to see everything he's going to lose. 

The second is the official appearance of Two-Face. Harvey Dent, the district attorney destined to lose half his face, was friends with Bruce Wayne in multiple episodes before he became the villain, including nearly being killed by Poison Ivy (He's still not over that one). Here Batman has a dream about letting Harvey down, and his parents being disappointed in him for failing to save his friend like he failed to save them. There's a humanity in Batman's voice that we rarely get, a vulnerability that reveals more about why he does it than a thousand "I am the night!" quotes ever could. 

Justice League/Unlimited

In the Animated Series spin-offs, Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited, Batman wasn't alone as he teamed up with six other great heroes. Conroy did not let the others overshadow the Bat though as he held his own with the booming bombastic action the show offered. 

In the Justice League cartoons, Batman was frequently the butt of multiple jokes about his inability to fly, not have powers and that he was a millionaire, all of which he had to grimace at and move on. He would occasionally quip back though, giving us another side to Batman we rarely see: a sense of humor. This is demonstrated perfectly in the Injustice Gang episodes where Batman is captured by the gang of villains, secured in a metal straight jacket, and kept under constant guard. Batman manages to manipulate each of his captors into turning on the others, sometimes with an inflection of his voice showing sympathy, and even seducing Cheetah (What is with him and cat-themed villains? It's like Cyclops and psychics). Under Joker's watch though he decides to make his move, giving them the slip and catching Joker by surprise, saying that he could've gotten out at any time but that "Someone needed to keep an eye on them". He also gets what is probably the funniest gag in the episode when he reveals that he paid the Ultra-Humanite to switch sides, demonstrating that yes, being rich is a super power. 

Now I would love to go over the Ultimate episode where he sat with Ace until she passed away, but the other scene I want to talk about is from the aforementioned episode where Superman was entranced by the Black Mercy, an alien plant that shows you your greatest paradise while it slowly saps the life out of you. Superman manages to lose it only for it to entangle itself around Batman, where we see that his ultimate dream is simple: He's back in the alley with his parents but his dad is beating the crap out of the mugger. The sequence itself has no Conroy, but it's after where the real hit comes. After he gets freed from the plant with the help of Wonder Woman and its used to imprison the villain that brought the thing to earth in the first place, Superman wonders what visions the plant is showing him, to which Batman replies "Whatever it is, it's too good for him.". The line delivery there is everything. It's barely restrained rage, its pain at having just found and lost everything all over again, it's knowing that this is the person responsible. In an already emotional episode, it's the perfect encapsulation of everything that's happened in one sentence. 

Beyond

 

Batman Beyond brought us a different version of Bruce Wayne most audiences weren't familiar with: Old Bruce Wayne. Shown in comics like The Dark Knight Returns and Kingdom Come, this is a Batman who has lost his crusade. Because he's only human, the years of fighting took their toll on Batman and at one point, after a heart attack mid-battle, he had to retire. Crime continued to happen in his absence without him being able to lift a finger to do anything about it, and he became a sad old man in his mansion, not even having the energy to stay on the board of Wayne Enterprises. He finds purpose in the new Batman, Terry McGuinness, who he trains and mentors, thus accepting that while Bruce Wayne may die, his legacy will live on. 

The episode that exemplifies Conroy's chops best is one where Bruce is dipped into the legendary Lazarus pit, bringing him nearly back to his peak performance. Conroy goes from an older and jaded Bruce to a younger and hopeful one effortlessly, and you can hear the difficulty in his voice as he has to choose to return to being old again knowing what the cost of the pit would be if he wanted to keep using it. 

Arkham

The Arkham video game series gave audiences what they'd always wanted: A more serious, darker Batman voiced by Conroy with some of the same emotional beats he had in the show. Here Batman gets to swear as he beats up the villains of Gotham City, but his emotional moments are all the more highlighted as the games could bring across the true darkness of his past and present in all the horrifying detail they could. 

Highlights for me include Batman being gassed by Scarecrow (Common theme here, Batman should think about hiring Scarecrow as his therapist) and having to relive his parents murder. The emotion that Conroy pours into his voice as his adult self transforms into his childhood version shows that deep inside Batman is just a scared little boy trying to save his parents. The second big highlight is during the finale of Arkham City where he pleads with the Joker to let him help him cure the mutation he's dying from, but instead Joker being Joker fights Batman and breaks the cure, and Batman has to watch this man die. You'd think this would be a triumphant moment, but it means that the Joker will never be brought to justice for the people he's killed and can never be redeemed, emphasizing the futility of Batman's mission. Batman says goodbye to him with this sadness, not over losing a friend but from watching any hope for this person die with them. 

Loss of a Legend

While a lot of the things I loved above can be equally credited to writing staff, animators and video game designers, I argue that the voice actors don't get enough credit for the jobs they do. Conroy was a better Batman than any other because he could portray fear and sadness right along with the anger we usually see Batman express (it’s a shame we only got to see him in live action once, during a subpar Arrowverse crossover). We had over 30 years of time with Conroy as Batman, and we were blessed to see how Batman should be done: As a well rounded character with flaws that we can connect to.