It's been fascinating seeing the reaction to the poll. The Destiel fans seem to think their ship deserves to stay popular and relevant just because... it used to be popular and relevant, I guess? Reading these tags has such a flavor of entitlement, it's really something.

It's like they're not realizing that the standards for what qualifies as good representation, or even a good show, have shifted in the last 10 or so years. Not realizing that a lot of people who were here back then, like me, never cared for Supernatural, and don't agree it was important at all, and would not be interested in celebrating it. Not realizing that other fandoms have been happening around them, and that some, like in the case of Mobile Suit Gundam, have legacies that reach back to decades before Supernatural was even on the air.

Destiel is such a product of its time. It's a fanon ship that, as I recall, was strongly disliked by its show's staff, acknowledged only because the fans demanded it so much. The ending of Supernatural was widely mocked, and the show is now mostly remembered as that meme people learn the news through.

Sulemio meanwhile had the full, joyous support of its staff, and was canon since the first episode of Gundam Witch. The whole show's plot revolved around this pairing. The Gundam franchise hit record sales numbers during and after the show. Sulemio brought hundreds if not thousands of new people into the mecha audience, and got many of them interested in the hobby of building Gunpla. Suletta and Miorine being canonically married even stood out politically, because gay marriage is not legal in Japan.

Is this not progress? Is this not worth celebrating? Why cling to the old and busted when the new hotness is doing such great things?

"Be serious", they say. But I am serious. I've been serious the whole time.

Maybe it's not for me to understand.

something about the wave of Alfred Molina thirst makes me think of that "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny" essay. shan't elaborate right now but give me a moment.

I'm sorry, the what essay?

so glad you asked

it was this article, "We All Simp for Alfred Molina" by Chingy Nea, that made me think of it, particularly this paragraph that one assumes the Nea must have composed whilst drooling like a cartoon wolf:

it's Nea's appreciation for Molina's physicality, specifically the fond attention drawn to his visible paunch, that made me think of R.S. Benedict's essay "Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny." it's a good read but also a long one, so I'll summarize: Benedict posits that current standards of American attractiveness stem from post-9/11 anxiety - "When a nation feels threatened, it gets swole," she writes - and has created a national mentality of bodies as commodities to be honed to perfection without indulging in any of the pleasure a body can bring, a vessel disjointed from any sense of self and meant only to be looked at with awe.

she opens particularly by noting the very particular brand of sexless-ness that pervades mainstream media, leading to action heroes whose beautiful faces and implausibly sculpted muscles are attractive in theory but also seem to exist in a world apart from anything like genuine sensuality. their bodies are inhuman in their perfection, and this comes at the cost of doing anything as human as fucking. to quote:

Benedict mostly speculates about the neutered nature of DC and Marvel's movie characters, but they're hardly the only blockbusters falling into this trend. Alison Wilmore's "Why Doesn't The Rock Get to Make Out More Onscreen?" calls attention to this with a particular focus on Disney's new Jungle Cruise movie, describing Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt's roles as "characters who are to Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen as Funko Pops are to people," with their inevitable kiss playing out "as though they’re dolls whose heads are being smashed together by a child enacting a rudimentary idea of passion."

similarly to Benedict's point, Wilmore notes that "There’s a striking divide between the body that Johnson is so famous for and the characters who are supposed to inhabit it... his characters rarely if ever seem to take pleasure in this physicality beyond its capacity to intimidate and serve as a spectacle."

and by now you're probably saying okay Makenzie that's swell, but what the fuck does this have to do with people thirsting over Alfred Molina? well, look at him.

take in the tits and paunch Nea loves so much, and compare Molina's body with the kind that have dominated the biggest movies of the last decade or so, since the MCU set the tone for the future of the superhero genre. Quoth Benedict again:

Molina's Doc Ock isn't bland; he has character in the form of features that are, increasingly, written off as too ugly or undesirable for film. I think the reason people may be reacting so strongly to him nearly two decades after the movie's release is that a pretty-normal looking body has now become a spectacle unto itself, by virtue of being so normal.

the current crop of superhero stars are exercised, waxed, dieted, dehydrated, and quite probably steroided into something the average person could never achieve on their own, a body that's fun to look at but is ultimately alien to anything most people will ever experience. whereas what we're looking at with Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is something like a body that many people actually have, a body that many people have known and loved, a body that, frankly, many people have had sex with - certainly more than have ever had sex with, say, Chris Evans' Steve Rogers all hairless and shiny fresh out of getting shot up with super soldier serum.

it's a sexy body because it's a palpably human body, in a genre that increasingly shuns exactly that.

plus, you know, those are just some nice tits.

Both of these articles are worth a read, but this post sums them both up pretty nicely.

got my first positive review lads :)

Ok I now have one (1) thought to add to this sorry for any typos I'm wearing two (2) wrist braces.

So, another thing about Molina's physicality is that he is a stage actor. I've noticed that stage actors, because of the fact that stage is about the 'single take' and there are no cuts, no post-processing, no close-ups, coupled with backstage being communal and stage acting generally having this higher requirement for the present and the reality of inhabiting a human body in a physical space, means that stage actors are a presence on screen that is more magnetic and more sensual, not even sexually just inhabiting the senses.

And not only that, but when you're backstage you have to get comfortable with your nudity and everyone else seeing it real damn quick, because unless you're in a really modern theatre building (not very often, most theatres are pretty old and labyrinthine), the space backstage is limited, and there are sometimes super-fast costume changes required. Theatre, also, has always been far more rauncy, liberal, and risque than cinema. There was never a Hays Code for theatre, and the MPAA has no power there.

So I would be surprised if a significant part of how Molina carries himself isn't to do with the fact that he's a stage actor, and has had vastly different training and experience with that intense 'you inhabit every inch of a body' self-awareness without the societally-normalised shame or intense discomfort with one's own body--a lack of anxiety that the viewer twigs as intensely attractive (after all, confidence is the core of 'sexy' as a concept).

this is an excellent and insightful addition, thank you for typing through the pain!

I know I'm a bit late to saying this but frankly if I found out a secret society of magic-users were just playing nonsense sports and making up slurs for the rest of us instead of helping us out with famines or leukemia I think I'd apply for a job with my local witch hunters

me in the group chat: hey. bad news guys

gc: oh no. you did it again didn't you

me: yeah. i got lost in the beauty of a gif of a dragon from the early 2000s again. sorry

Scyll issue

They always understood the assignment, we just didn’t get it.

So I had a massive realization about Peni Parker after watching ATSV. Originally many were mad that she was super different in her movie debut which I get going from her clear Eva inspiration to just being anime.

When she briefly appears in “Across” she looks more accurate. (just being depressed)

A lot would think that she’s now gonna stay like this to fix their error but if you get to the end of the film…

Her smile and drive restored. Why is that? 

Cause they were never trying to make her Eva, she was based on Gurren Lagann the whole time. Her jacket being made up of Simon’s color scheme inverted. She even LITERALLY wears it on her sleeve. Like they really wanted to make sure we got it this time.  

Look at the mech when you put them side by side. But this isn’t even the kicker…

She’s doing the iconic Gainax pose at the end of the film. On top of her mech with something loose to epically flow in the wind. *chefs kiss*  Yes she’s crossing her arms I went frame by frame.

The reason I like this is cause in mecha the protag always goes through depressing stuff. That’s what Eva is built around. So by taking her in that direction she’s now a love letter to genre, Eva being included in there rather than being the only thing referenced.

Also with this knowledge the Spot looking kinda similar all of a sudden…

Wait it’s all Gurren Lagann? Always has been. With that in mind, you know what that means with him right around the corner.

TL;DR: Peni was a reference to Gurren Lagann the whole time which is just a love letter to everything mecha. 

THEY UNDERSTOOD THE ASSIGNMENT SO HARD, WE JUST DIDN’T GET IT.

Ok, so, I'm going to do some GENERALIZATIONS about mythology and folklore here, and in my experience when you make a GENERALIZATION about mythology and folklore there is always some PEDANTIC SHITHEAD who tries to treat it as though you made a UNANIMOUSLY TRUE STATEMENT ABOUT THE ENTIRE BREADTH OF MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE IN ALL CULTURES AT ONCE, and then tries to "Um, actually!" you with one obscure counter-example so they can get that sweet endorphin rush of feeling smarter than someone else on the internet. It is also one of my biggest pet peeves when someone does that, so I'm typing this paragraph to preemptively tell anyone who does that to this post that I am personally sending a demon from hell to eat your toenails tonight. As soon as you sleep he's going to slip his clammy fingers under your sheets, tenderly caress your feet, envelop one toe at a time with his grimy mouth, and slowly suck the nails off your toes. And they'll never grow back, either.

Ok, now to actually answer this question. The Wolf Man popularized what is currently the most popular take on werewolves - namely, that a werewolf is a person who involuntarily transforms into a wolf (either a normal wolf, a wolf/human hybrid, or a monstrous wolf beast) based on some sort of stimulus/trigger, such as the full moon or excessive emotional turmoil. By day they're a normal person, by night they're a ravenous beast.

While there are examples of this take on werewolves appearing in fiction before The Wolf Man came out (The Werewolf of London is a werewolf movie with the same rough premise that came out about a decade before), they were by no means the most popular/dominant take on the monster. There are, of course, dozens if not hundreds of variations on the werewolf concept in mythology and folklore (like that one that went memetic on here a while back, the Wulver, who turns into a wolf-headed man at night that gives people anonymous gifts of free fish), but GENERALLY SPEAKING, two were the most common: the Garwolf, and the Bisclavret.

(I am using these terms because when I first heard this distinction articulated at an academic conference, those are the two terms the speaker used, so don't come at me with the "Um, actually, that only refers to one specific story" bullshit or some other pedantic nitpicky criteria).

The Garwolf is the most common take on a malevolent werewolf in literature, and is explicitly a witch who transforms into a wolf in order to commit violence more easily. The witch does so by wearing a belt or cape of wolfskin, or by spreading a special salve on their body - either way, these transformation trinkets are generally provided by The Devil or some other evil spirit. The Garwolf is conscious of their actions while in wolf form, a murderer who commits their crimes in beast form both to hide their identity and to increase the gruesome spectacle of their kills.

The Bisclavret is the most common benign take on werewolves in literature, being a person who, for reasons that often aren't explained, has to transform into a wolf routinely. To do so, they take off their clothes, and they can't transform back into a human without first getting back into said clothes. The two main Bisclavret stories I know - Marie de France's "The Bisclavret" and the Arthurian tale of King Gorlagon - concern bisclavret werewolves whose wives discover their secrets, steal their clothes, and leave them trapped in wolf form. In both tales, the bisclavret is discovered by a king while hunting, and the king takes note that while the bisclavret may be a wolf, it acts more tame and intelligent than any trained hunting dog, and quickly adopts them as a loyal pet. In time the wife of the bisclavret goes to visit the king/noble at court, at which point the bisclavret acts predatory for the first time ever, snarling and biting at her. Realizing there must be some reason for it, the king/noble uncovers the truth, returns the clothes to the bisclavret, and punishes the unfaithful wife. What we take away from this is that a bisclavret werewolf is still human in mind while in wolf form, transforms reluctantly/against their will, and wishes to be purely human (or at least not lose humanity while in wolf form).

The Wolf Man essentially combines these two modes of folkloric/literary werewolves into one, giving us a human who is reluctant to transform because their wolf self is a vicious, dangerous monster. Like the Garwolf, they are a terror and a blight upon the world, but like the Bisclavret, their transformation is not by choice and they are trying to keep their humanity despite it. What The Wolf Man adds is the lack of conscious control in wolf form - there is no human intelligence behind the modern werewolf's actions, just a vicious, malevolent beast bent on killing as much as possible. It's a take that combines the dramatic elements inherent to the two main folkloric werewolves and heightens it by mixing them together with an extra new ingredient, and the result is incredibly compelling - I think there's a reason this mode of Werewolf story became the dominant one, to the point where werewolves who work differently than The Wolf Man feel like they're subversive and new even if they're explicitly in the older mode.

The Wolf Man is also the first really prominent story about a werewolf who infects others with werewolfism that I know of, but there's so much overlap between werewolf folklore and vampire folklore (and also witch folklore) that I'm not entirely sure there isn't a significant amount of folkloric precedent for that aspect.

how does Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde play into this?

It's funny you should mention this because Steven King made an argument that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde should be considered a peer to Dracula and Frankenstein as the trinity of gothic horror novels that redefined classic folkloric monsters for the Gothic genre. specifically saying that what Dracula did for vampires and Frankenstein did for homunculi and revenants, Mr. Hyde did for werewolves.

And he's got a point - firstly, for some time Mr. Hyde was just as famous, perhaps even moreso, as Dracula and Frankenstein. Jack the Ripper was called "a real life Mr. Hyde" by newspapers, the stage show based on the play got adapted several times, he had a movie in the 30s around the same time as Drac and Frankenstein (though it was done by MGM rather than Universal) which in turn got remade in the 40's with big movie star Spencer Tracy in the starring role(s). Mr. Hyde may feel slightly more obscure now because he's not part of the branding that the Universal Monsters got, but he was a big deal.

But you know who usurped his place? The fucking Wolf Man. One could argue The Wolf Man has more in common with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than any pre-existing werewolf story, and it certainly shares the dramatic crux of the novel where a good(ish) man unwillingly turns into a depraved, murderous monster while everyone else is left in the dark about what's actually going on, though The Wolf Man adds the wrinkle of Larry Talbot actually trying to tell people, unlike Jekyll, who tries to keep it a secret - and the fact that Larry tries to warn people only for them to refuse to believe him is, in my opinion, what gives The Wolf Man is special sauce, because the horror of knowing you're responsible for murdering people and that you can't be stopped because no one believes you is so goddamn maddening, and few horror stories, including the wolf man's descendants (and even its goddamn remake) ever bother to include it despite how potent a plot element it is.

...Anyway, the Wolf Man was positioned as the third of the Big Three Universal Monsters decades ago, and has held that position since in pop culture, helped by the fact that werewolves are as big and varied a category of monster as vampires, homunculi, and revenants, while Mr. Hydes remain a very specific one-off monster that doesn't feel like it has the same variety because we can trace it to one singular original source. Still, one can make a strong argument he wouldn't have that place if Mr. Hyde hadn't paved the way for him.

Okay I need to add to the level of iconic impact the wolf man has had on our culture. And here I’m not talking about pop culture; I mean our *actual* culture at large.

For years I’ve been fascinated by accounts of people encountering bipedal canine cryptids, and at the forefront of the study of these cryptids is a woman named Linda S. Godfrey. She’s written multiple books about all sorts of strange creatures, with a focus on anomalous canids, with her work mostly covering peoples accounts of what they say they saw. She’s been doing this for years, and over the course of her interviews she’s discovered that there’s a specific segment of people who claim that the creature they saw is basically the spitting image of the 1941 wolf man, with some slight variations; in particular, there’s a tendency to see the creature as wearing a plaid shirt, which wasn’t in the original movie but seems to have culturally drifted/mandela affected its way into the image of the werewolf. It’s a distinctive enough characterization that Godfrey basically states that when she gets accounts like that, while she doesn’t outright disbelieve people, she tends to err on the narrator being affected by the cultural imagery around werewolves in some way that skewed their perception.

Do with that what you will.

Hell yes, Linda S. Godfrey mention! She's my favorite cryptozoologist.

Well

I didn't

Buying a car

English added by me :)

I re animated a scene from Bigtop burger in the Rankin Bass stopmotion style.

This took a while but I think it turned out pretty neat, though not as good as Worthis imitations. It was my first time doing 3D animation so I learned a lot for my next project, as this was mostly a test to see if I could do the style.

(Edit since this got more than like 5 notes: if you like this kind of thing, consider giving me a lil sub on youtube, it helps me make better stuff and means the world to me! Also thanks for the kind words!)

Wicked Witch Hexadecimal concept by Brendan McCarthy

this is surreal to me

in case anyone wants to cheat on their wife

the gamespoot event