Mod Post: Off Topic-Tuesday

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The UK has been hit by some severe, by our standards, temperatures, with some parts of the country hitting -16C last night, and more to come (or less, depending on how one views temperatures I suppose).

Protests continue in both Myanmar (over the military coup which was, in a surreal 2021 moment, caught on camera by someone recording a fitness video ) and Russia, following the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

"Impeachment 2: Democratic Boogaloo" gets underway today. Enjoy?

The Pope has appointed a woman to a key position in the Catholic Synod of Bishops, which is a first for the role

Mary Wilson, one of the co-founders of The Supremes has died aged 76

The makers of Cyberpunk 2077 have been hit with a ransomware attack

WandaVision episode 5 managed something quite breathtaking, something that I think warrants it's own NoScans post, so please don't post spoilers in this thread.

For those who wondered how "Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie" got as bad rep as it did, there's an interesting bit here about deleted scenes which might have made it hang together more... a bit... possibly... or not... probably not.

Catching up on Jurassic Park: Camp Cretaceous" season 2. Still surprisingly dark for a show of this sort, but it does seem to be doing more interesting things with the concept of Jurassic World than the movies did, like "What would dinosaur behaviour be like if they're NOT being governed by humans?")



Random question: What was your favourite kids show as a kid (Not what you might have reapprised since then as a grown up, but as a kid, what did you race home to watch, whether it's good or bad in retrospect?)

Comments

[owlbrigade1]

Knightmare and The Girl From Tomorrow were two of the must see kids tv show when I was young. When I was even younger, pre-school, ChockaBlock and Pigeon Street. I'm not sure what that all says about me though.

On the more depressing side, another one for the coup list is Haiti which is pretty much doing exactly the Trump thing of refusing to accept the end of his term in office and trying to rule by decree too.
https://www.theroot.com/unrest-in-haiti-as-president-rejects-call-to-step-down-1846223959

[llordllama]

Knightmare was a stone cold classic, yet I remain baffled how Mrs Llama never managed to watch it. Pigeon Street - especially the episode with the UFO was nicely surreal at times. Oh, and I once appeared on screen with Fred 'Chockabloke' Harris in an OU programme (so there's my pretty lame claim to fame!).

I remain disappointed my PC doesn't make noises like Chockablock.

[owlbrigade1]

This might just be me being a massive nerd, but that sounds like a pretty awesome claim to fame to me.

[llordllama]

Right, that's going on the CV then :) (he was very nice as I recall!)

[icon_uk]

I mean, it's not Johnny Ball (who I've never met but really would like to) but Fred "Ragtime / Micro Live / Figure it Out" Harris is a pretty good claim to fame to me!

[llordllama]

Ditto on Johnny Ball, one of my childhood heroes! Mrs Llama used to work in BBC radio as a graduate trainee and periodically reminds me of the cult heroes she met. Scrambling under Willy Rushton's desk to detangle his microphone is my personal most jealous name-drop for her :)

[icon_uk]

Oh yeah, I'd envy that, Willy Rushton was a genius, I can't believe it's been 25 years since he died.

This remains my favourite routine of his

[malurette]

Favourite kids show was Once upon a time, Life--sadly no amount of "but Moooom it's not a mere cartoon it's education! it's science!! how am I going to become a doctor if I can't learn even basic facts about the human body??" could circumvent the "no TV on school days" rule.

[iamrman]

The other week Comixology had a sale on Star Wars Epic Collections. I went a bid mad and got ALL THE STAR WARS COMICS!!

Any way, I finally got around to reading them and I have to say the classic Marvel Star Wars comics were a bit heavy going. It didn't help that Roy Thomas was the writer of the issues adapting A New Hope. He has an annoying habit of over-explaining things and depowering female characters. Things did get better when Archie Goodwin started writing though.

[leahandillyana]

I loved Sailor Moon when I was little. Unfortunately, it aired at 2pm, which was when I usually finished classes, so by the time I got home I almost always missed the episode.
My internet connection is so bad due to the weather that I cannot finish my work task in a plausible speed. I have to sit nearly the whole day in front of the screen to do things that normally take me three hours to do.
Shopping centers are closed, which means that the only (large, chain) bookstore with interesting offer in the town is closed too. Supporting local businesses is a noble cause, but the bookstores in my town only sell school textbooks, entrance exam preparatory materials, picture books for children learning to read, low brow catholic literature, and you are lucky when you find a bestseller or two. You CANNOT order books by any other publisher in them. Meanwhile, any package takes a full month to travel the 100 miles from publisher to my town and even then I gotta go to the main post office to claim it, as post doesn't deliver in my area anymore. It's always a guess whether there's anything for me or not!

[skjam]

"Star Blazers" was a big part of my life at a certain point, perhaps foreshadowing my anime fandom. I was a bit too old for Sesame Street when it began but enjoyed watching it with my little brother.

Cold here too, but I may have to go outside at some point anyway.

Over at my blog, I look at the first half of the new live action Lupin: http://www.skjam.com/2021/02/08/tv-review-lupin-dans-lombre-darsene-part-1/

[kamino_neko]

Robotech.

I was fucking obsessed with Robotech as a kid. And as a teen. Less so as an adult, but it's still foundational for me.

I can trace my anime fandom, and at least one kink back to it. >_>

[viridian5]

Roy dying blew my child mind. That could happen in a cartoon?

[cyberghostface]

As a kid I loved the 90s Spider-Man cartoon. That was my introduction to Spider-Man.

[onsokumaru]

In kindergarten, it was definitely Grendizer.
In elementary, probably M.A.S.K.
In middle, it has been Saint Seiya first, the DBZ.
But Wingman soon became my absolute favorite, to the point I even purchased my first mangas, in japanese (it was a time of darkness way before translated manga became available)

[icon_uk]

I know of most of those (Saint Seiya especially of course) but I'm not familiar with Wingman.

[onsokumaru]

It's about a teenage boy who is a huge fan of tokusatsu and dreams to be a super hero. It comes true when he gets powered by a magic note and then he fights to free an extradimensional world from the bad guys.
All full of humour and fan service. (the author is better known for Video Girl, I'S and Zetman)

Fun thing, the MC had the same name as me (in the localized version of course) and his crush had the same name as my crush. (He was more successful than me, though.)

[cainofdreaming]

I think the one that I most religiously followed, of actual kids shows (I kinda got into TOS at pretty young age, but I guess that doesn't count), was Once Upon a Time... Life.

[synnerman]

Dating myself... like a lot.

The Tarzan animated series from the 1970's including when it was wrapped up in "The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour" and "Tarzan and the Super Seven" on CBS Saturday mornings in the late 1970's. Filmation has always done highly detailed barely clothed men and my very young self was just fascinated with the program. I watched it religiously. After Tarzan came Blackstar, and then He-Man, but Tarzan always has that space in my heart.

Tarzan let me know I was hella gay.

[icon_uk]

I grew up with the Tarzan cartoon too, though it wasn't part of an hour, it was an isolated show. I didn't know what rotoscoping was until I saw that show, and one of my older siblings explained it to me. :)

As for my gayness, well, Freddie in Scooby Doo laid some ground work, and when the time came to choose between watching Lynda Carter in "Wonder Woman" or Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson in "The Hardy Boys", I realised I was maybe not making the same choice as most of the boys in my class at school were.

(I'd mention Burt Ward's Robin, but I eventually realised that was less me being gay and more me being gay and having a kink ;) )

[silverhammerman]

My family didn't have cable when I was young, so I missed out on a lot of mainstream hits and mostly watched reruns of Frasier, which explains a good 50% of my personality as an adult. I did manage to watch the 90's Spider-Man on occasion, and it remains central to my vision of what the character is supposed to be like (though at the time I was always very annoyed that the nerdy Peter Parker was built like a linebacker, it's only as an adult that I understand Peter Parker is canonically a hunk).

I wrote an article for ComicsXF about Frank Miller's Ronin if anyone is interested in reading it. It comes out a some of the research I did in grad school about that book, trying to foreground the most accessible way into a book that I think is overlooked but really revealing about Miller as a creator. No one talks about Ronin and I think they should.

I remember hating the Turbo movie as a kid, and despising the child member of the cast. I was a child who was not at all interested in stories about other children.

[tripodeca113]

I've finished watching Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated, with my brother. The best thing about the franchise as a whole is the way Fred says treasure. He flips back and forth how he says it, adding variety, and since Frank Weller started voicing Scooby he says it to. We've also been watching the older shows. We've seen them meet dead celebrities and characters from Scooby Doo knockoffs.

I watched a video about a certain internet figure. I may have my short-comings as a person, but at least I have the emotional maturity to not fundamentally misinterpret children cartoons, and can comprehend more adult storytelling.

Apparently the remaster of Mass Effect 2 will remove some of the creepy fan service. But only some of it.

I started playing Watch Dogs 2 again. How quaint it seems. I do hope the fact this game was made by a massive corporation doesn't undermine anything. Still it's a lot more enjoyable tonally than the first game ever was.

My second set of Fullmetal Alchemist DVD's has arrived. It's odd I thought I'd reach a point of major divergence from the manga, but then afterwards it went right back to adapting the original story. Sure it was a bit looser in places, but it was still there.

[janegray]

1)Been playing a lot of Fallout: New Vegas lately. Forever shaking my fist at Bethesda for only giving Obsidian 18 months to make the game, so that they had to cut Benny as a companion. Benny is my favourite character in a cast full of characters I adore and I would have LOVED to keep him as a companion.

Also forever baffled at female fans who insist on trying to put a good spin on the Legion, aka the "females are subhumans who are only fit to be constantly forcibly impregnated to produce a steady supply of babies for our army until their bodies give out and they die of strain" dudes.

Like, male fans whitewash and excuse the hell out of the Legion too, but female fans in particular are as if black people defended the KKK. The fuck?

2)Uncharted 4 is a masterpiece and its ending made me cry tears of joy.

3)All intros of TV shows should not just have the name of the actor over the character, but the name of the character as well. It takes me forever to memorise the names of the cast in new stories, and it would help immensely if I could read them every time I see the opening.

[lissa_quon]

HEY NEW VEGAS - my one true fallout love.

There's so many cut details and companions in that game, Ulysses was IIRC also supposed to be some sort of companion. I was never a big fan of Benny, but hey I respect someones gotta like him.

Yea- there's so much weird love for the Legion and I don't get it. Especially as a lady type - I just hate them so much. I would meticulously upkeep one of their officer helmets and wear it all the time as an FU. But at least I can point at them and go "this is what they did - this is what they do - this is WHY they do it - and I hate them." Which is more solid writing than the Bethesda Fallouts where we still have years of people scratching their heads over just WHAT the hell was going on.

[janegray]

I kind of love that the Legion is so horrifically evil.

Because I'm a goody-two-shoes who feels bad about hurting NPCs' feelings, I always end up playing some kind of Paragon and holding back. I know it's just a game and they are just pixels, but I still feel bad if they are sad. That's why I can't play Grand Theft Auto or even Saints Row at all, I feel terrible about hurting the civilians.

But there is something to be said about the excitement of letting go, of slaughtering without mercy. And the Legion lets me do that completely guilt-free! They are the character equivalent of tearing a newborn puppy from a crying child's arms and eating it alive in front of him. They are so ridiculously, insanely evil, that exterminating them en masse is exhilarating. I had so much fun searching for Legion settlements with my bro Boone and burning them to the ground.

This is why I'm happy that their original plan to make them more shades of gray had to be scrapped for lack of time. No way Todd, I don't want a morally gray Legion! I want the guy who enslaved a tiny orphaned child after murdering her family and forced her to give him her teddy bear so he could burn it in front of her while ranting about how females are subhuman. I want that so I can have a great time rending him limb from limb!

I actually got an ask lately asking me why I'm so fond of Benny. I plan on writing a meta in the next couple of weeks or so. When I do, would you be interested in a link?

[victory_or_death]

Because I'm a goody-two-shoes who feels bad about hurting NPCs' feelings, I always end up playing some kind of Paragon and holding back. I know it's just a game and they are just pixels, but I still feel bad if they are sad.

This is an unusual usage of "...on s_d it's never just you...", but here we are.

[kamino_neko]

I'm glad they didn't make the Legion 'morally grey', because they're fucking slavers, and I'd have been infuriated by the game/even more infuriated by the fandom trying to make me think they have a point. This is how I am concerning the Institute in 4, too.

(Now, the Brotherhood in 4, I am pissy about them cutting something that softened them, and on my last run used a mod that imperfectly reinstated it - you were supposed to be able to remove Maxson as Elder and get the genocidal shit off the table...as it stands in vanilla, the Brotherhood are just bad guys, not the flawed heroes I'm pretty sure they're intended to be in all the first-person era games.)

[janegray]

Eh, much as I love games, they DO have a tendency to try and pretend that horrific pitch black shit is just shades of gray.

It's why I could never warm up to Arcade, the Fandom's darling. His quest made my blood boil. Acting as though the Enclave remnants, who are completely unrepentant about belonging to a Nazi-style organisation that attempted to perform ethnic cleansing across the planet, are just chill dudes who did a oopsie, and his father the Enclave officer was a great dude and he can only ever dream of being half as heroic.

When Daisy is waxing poetry about how much she enjoyed flying her plane and how she purposefully took the longest route to look at the pretty landscape, I was thinking "you transported armed troops to massacre cities full of innocent civilians, even children, because they were labeled "genetically impure"... Glad you enjoyed the view tho." Or the guy who defended his actions by saying that he only ever shot people who shot him first, neglecting the part where he was wearing the uniform of the army whose entire explicitly stated goal is genocide, so of course their intended victims would attack. Or the one who bitched that because the Enclave lost, America was lost.

Henry is the only one I can forgive, because he is the only one who seems to be genuinely trying to atone. Working to help the mutants regain their sanity and live peacefully amongst humans? Yeah, okay, it's pretty clear he has seen the error of his ways and wants to make up for them.

The others, I shoot on sight.

[kamino_neko]

Yeah, I was never really comfortable with the Enclave Remnants, either. Because...like...everything you said.

That said, I do like Arcade (though not as much as I did before I got to that point in his arc), and think if he'd not been raised on biased stories of the Enclave (say, the Vault Dweller or Chosen One had adopted him or something), he'd have not supported them (I mean, he did end up joining the Followers, and all).

[arilou_skiff]

Wonder Egg priority is great, but fuck is it heavy.

[onsokumaru]

It looks very great, indeed. I've only watched the first episodes of several shows for this season so far, and this is the one I definitely won't drop.

I just tried "Last Dungeon" today but while it is worth some chuckles, (it's like a heroic fantasy OPM), the MC is way too bland.

[zachbeacon]

I’m not sure I can point to any one show because I feel that I, like a lot of older millennials, was raised on TV. Some of it holds up (Batman the Animated Series and the X-Men). Some of it does not (people with strong opinions on how modern interpretations are “ruining” He Man and Thundercats obviously haven’t watched the originals as adults).

Just going off childhood artwork it was probably Ninja Turtles, though. Sure, it was a glorified toy commercial and the cartoon also doesn’t hold up in terms of quality but I loved it. I still love it though thankfully the quality of TMNT media has improved … as long as we ignore the Bay movies … and the Next Mutation.

(I know Rise is divisive but I haven’t actually seen it yet)

Edit: Also shout out to Duck Tales for having the best theme song in the history of television.

[lissa_quon]

Duck Tales was formative for me as a youngin. Gargoyles when I got older. This...pretty much sums up A LOT of my non morbid side.

Managed to finally update a fic that I'd left on hiatus. I feel so bad it took YEARS but trying to begin to explain the situation just sounds like I'm making shit up cause - hoo boy stuff just - kept happening.

Also catching up on the book series The Queen's Thief. Which I read the first two when I was younger and loved and was very baffled to find it only recently wrapped itself up. So I'm binge reading them all.

[bruinsfan]

As a 4th and 5th grader I'd get up at the crack of dawn to sit on a cold concrete basement floor and watch Star Trek: The Animated Series reruns on Saturday mornings. (And Ultraman as well, but since I remember about five seconds worth of that series total I don't think I was nearly as keen about watching it.)

[donnblake]

Speaking of Saturday Morning Cartoons, it seems that Velma is getting her own origins spin-off series? I wonder if Marcie will be included...

[zachbeacon]

So third time we've gotten this for Velma but first without Daphne?

Edit: Apparently its being advertised as an "Adult Cartoon" and that is certainly a choice. Sure we've seen stuff like Mystery Inc that's smarter than the average Scooby cartoon but - aside from porn - "Adult Cartoon" just makes me think of stuff like Harley Quinn and that seems like a weird tone for this. I can't help but think of Mystery Team.

[icon_uk]

"HBO Max has ordered an adult animated series about everyone’s favorite nearsighted sleuth"

I find myself slightly worried about the "adult" part....

[zachbeacon]

The "HBO Max" part is pretty terrible too.

[thezmage]

I agreed, until someone on twitter noted that a TV14 rating might just be what it takes for HBO to be comfortable with a queer character in their Scooby Doo adaptation.

[donnblake]

Eh, I'm just hoping for unambiguously gay Velma.

(The executive producer for Mystery Inc. has gone on record that Velma was always intended to be gay in that show, but the point where she and Marcy were most clearly together was kind of overshadowed by the gang experiencing it as a new alternate universe where their relationships with everyone had been scrambled, and then the series ended).

Not so Good Disney News

[silverzeo]

Looks like the mouse has dissolve BlueSky Animation Studios...

I know that company is not consider the "best" in the business, but they have made at least some decent movies, plus it does shrink the amount of major animation movies out there now...

Heard this cuts into a Graphic Novel based movie about a shapeshifting LGBT character in a fantasy setting...

I think I heard ICe Age is still getting a Disney+ series...