Friendly Reminder.

Friendly reminder.

Fandom has gotten very…proprietary over the years and now is a good time as any to remind y’all that you don’t own the source material.

Creators are under no obligation to make your ship canon, redeem your problematic fav, or write their characters in a way that lines up with your headcanons.

You are playing in someone else’s sandbox, so don’t get your tailfeathers twisted when the creators don’t drop their plans for their product to conform to fandom demands.

On Villains and Motivation

Since Cleanup Crew obviously isn’t written in the gag-a-day format like many if not most other webcomics, it’s given me a lot of opportunity to think about storytelling. And since I realized I have a ready-made blog for the comic here, I figured I’d file some of my thoughts here as they occur to me.

Having played every Mario Bros. RPG through Bowser’s Inside Story, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the big flaws of these games is the villains.

More specifically, their lack of motivation.

Now, we can talk entertainment and characterization until the cows come home, about how much fun they are to watch, but the simple fact of the matter is that a villain needs a WHY, and no amount of plans or goals, the how and the what, will make up for the fact that there’s literally no reason for any of these villains to do what they do. This failure of characterization steals context and meaning from their actions.

Take Grodus, of The Thousand Year Door. As impressive as his organization is, as clever as the plot and storytelling are (that game does such tricks with the fourth wall that the couple of times it breaks it directly just barely limp along), it’s really hard to get invested in the villains because Grodus simply has no -drive- to accomplish his goals, no reason to do what he does. Given the fact that he’s a robot with a noble title and a pretend magic staff, his lack of even a token backstory is rather jarring.

On the other hand there’s Count Bleck of Super Paper Mario (which we will pretend is an RPG for conversation’s sake), who suffers from a broken heart and intends to solve that problem by committing a rather exagerrated form of suicide. THAT is a motivation, something Grodus is severely lacking. In fact, Super Paper Mario gives a lot of character to its villains, judging from what you can dig up about O'Chunks and Nastasia. Now, Dimentio hasn’t got any stated motivation, but this is deliberately done to emphasize his mystery – the game very obviously knows what it’s doing as far as the villains are concerned. (On a side note, the only real problems I have with Super Paper Mario are that it’s just a little too impressed with itself – to start with, the story is addicted to waxing melodramatic – and that it’s not actually a Mario story. It’s really about the game’s original characters – Mario has literally nothing to do with anything, Peach and Bowser are involved only for the sake of a joke, and Luigi has more involvement with the plot than all three combined, only because he’s the villains’ patsy).

But the rest of them, Cackletta and Fawful and the Shroobs (we’ve already discussed Grodus, and you could say the same about the Shadow Sirens) are devoid of motivation. You can see this in how they’re remembered less for their stories and more for their gimmicks. Cackletta is remembered primarily for being 50% of Boobser Bowletta rather than her desire to screw around with the all-powerful Beanstar; Fawful is bonkers and has a speech impediment, and “crazy narcissist” is not a decent motivation any more than “evil” is one, and then there’s the fact that the guy has no real plan except to set himself up as the local bigshot until he decides to destroy absolutely everything just for the heck of it. The Shroobs almost have a motivation that you can reverse-engineer by studying their actions (do they *need* to prey on the Mushroom Kingdom?), but putting the burden on the audience like that is bad writing for lazy authors.

This failure to motivate the villains is especially notable in Smithy, who argues with the heroes as if Super Mario RPG had an Honest to God *theme*. Smithy’s got enough going on that you can almost piece together the motivation that should be there. He wants to take over the Mushroom Kingdom as a stepping stone to ridding the world of wishes (which suggests that it’s no accident that Exor broke the Star Road on the way in, nevermind the fact that his minions have all been collecting the pieces), but why? Well, for most of the game, all the information on Smithy is at best second hand, suggesting he’s taking a leaf out of Orcus’ book, but when we get to finally meet him face to face, we realize he’s been busy the whole time. Smithy has been building his army piece by piece, by hand, and then delegating responsibility so he can keep building. Smithy is a craftsman, achieving his goals through the work of his hands, definitely -not- making wishes to get what he wants the easy way. All this together suggests that Smithy has some kind of enmity with the stars and their habit of granting wishes, a hatred so strong that he’s willing to conquer entire planets to get a shot at completely shutting them down. But after that, everything else would be pure speculation.

Now, I admit that this sort of thing’s not easy. Bowser’s generally easier to write than coming up with new villains wholecloth, insofar as he comes with the motivations built-in, like “FINALLY succeeding where he’s failed so many times before” and “sticking it to Mario once and for all”. I generally tend to ignore the “romantic interest in Princess Peach” motivation that he’s occasionally saddled with, because the implications are creepy in ways that make “Asmodeus covets Sarah” look Appropriate for All Audiences. I’m generally more favorable to the idea that Bowser takes an interest in the Mushroom Kingdom because he’s spent his whole miserable life a corner of Hell and the Mushroom Kingdom is a place of beauty and plenty and Her Highness may figure in his eyes as an emblem of all things beautiful, hence his fascination with her, since he only knows ugly things. You could get some serious mileage if someone spent five minutes figuring out a halfway decent motivation for the King of Awesome.

Something like, say, “somebody invaded his castle and stole something from the treasury, so now he’s driven to get it back and punish whoever had the gall to penetrate his fortress security and make a goon of him and his forces”.

And now I have spent entirely too much time writing about Mario characters.

How to Backup your Tumblr

I was just semi-complaining that I was still looking for a decent way to backup my +6k posts without having to use paid services or even just wordpress (which has an import from tumblr tool that asks for permission to access your blog and also make posts), when I decided to actually put some effort into my google search.

Results were positive: I have successfully backed up my blog*

*By which I mean: everything that I have ever posted. Not included: drafts, queue, likes, followers, following, comments, notes, chat.

I followed this method (word by word), and now have a 450 MB folder on my computer with the name of my blog on it containing:

1. Folder “Archive” (contains .html files listed by month) 2. Folder “Media” (contains gifs and images, mine has +1k files in it; might contain also audios but I have no way of confirming that because I’ve never reblogged an audio post from this blog) 3. Folder “Posts” (contains single .html files, each one a post; I have +4k files in it) 4. Folder “Theme” (contains only my avatar, but it might be a matter of if you have personalized themes or not) 5. .html file “Index” (by opening it it will give you the archive of your blog organized by month; clicking on a month will open up the archive for that month, and you’ll be able to read all the posts for that month as if you were on your blog**, except sans your theme graphic, with each page containing 50 posts)

**I can see gifs, links, embedded videos, tags, number of notes (but I can’t open up the notes, clearly), text is also correctly formatted.

So yeah, in case anyone wants a very quick way to back up their blog, it took me less than 10 minutes.

P.S. I didn’t have any issue, but to be on the safe side always check for spyware and virus threats before and after downloading anything.

57K notes View Post

brotherjaybird

6 years ago

Does Tom King hate Superman, or something? I don’t read the guy’s work regularly, but between this and Batman scoring a home run against Superman’s pitch a few months ago, I can’t help but notice some definite Supernerf in King’s work.

muthafugga replied to your post: You, Tom King: Harley Quinn could take out the…

Are you fucking serious? Is this a thing that actually happens in that comic?

It’s officially Thanksgiving in the USA

Time to smell the gravy, marvel at your auntie’s pretty place-settings, and listen to the 5edgy9me once-a-year intellectuals crawling out of their local Starbucks like zombies from the damn grave, moaning

C̪̹͉͔͔̳̕h͈̼̯̥̭̗̍̒ͧ͟ṙ̠͍̹̈̄̈́͗ͥ̅͟i͎s̸̭̣̬̼͚͊̊ͨͬ̈́̅̚t͍͌̏̏͐͞o͈̐̉̓͐̅p̮̞͟h̦e̶͌ͪr̬̻̩͕̱̎̌ͩ͗ ̐̔͏͕̲͉̺͕Ċ͉̰͕̹́̊ͯ͆̓̾ͅo͇l̮̟͡ů̱͖̬͙ͣ̓͋̆̎m̧ͫb̵̠̲̗͂u͎͗s̟̤̭̼͕͈̃̉̒̔ ̖̹̗͔̮̱̯ͭ̅̋̆ͯ̽̍w̱̰͈̰̔̃͆́͋͌a͚̮̬ͮͨͤͬs̩͖͙̬̟̦ͫ̓̀ ̝̰̼͇̹̲͑̉̿̽͒͞a͔̬̮͠ͅ ͙͙͇̖͇͛͞m̠̲͖ͯͫ́̿ͤ͜u̪̪͖̮͂ͪ̎̽̚r̰̜ͪͩ̀ͫ̅d̬̹̲ͯè͖͇̦̖r̝̀è̯͙͈̻͖͓̪͌ͤ͑r̵̭͖̖̋ͥ̂ͅr̸̭͎͈͑r̞̫̀̔̅r͎̖̿̑̒͠r̬ͬ̄ͫ

@sixpenceee has already joined in the festivities of hilariously bad revisionist history with this little gem:

‘Cept Christopher Columbus never actually set foot on American soil – And Thanksgiving has nothing to do with him.

Thanksgiving in the USA was officially adopted as a holiday during the Civil War, though it had been off-again-on-again celebrated since 1621 – This is thought to be the famous ‘Pilgrims at Plymouth’ Thanksgiving.

Originally, it was celebrated because of a particularly successful harvest was managed less than a year after the Pilgrims first settled the Plymouth colony with the few surviving members of the journey from Europe. This sort of feast wouldn’t happen again until a bountiful rainfall broke a treacherous drought in 1623.

Only one or two other colonies celebrated similar days of thanks, and all of them were related to farming practices. Natives frequently attended these meals. Indeed, the first Thanksgiving saw about 90 Natives join in on the festivities.

That might not sound like a lot initially, but keep in mind that there were only 50 Pilgrims there, so the feast was almost 2:1 Native.

Now, with respect to ‘Genocide’, lemme learn you some knowledge..

Claims of Native genocide by the Pilgrims mostly originate from happenings during the 1637 Pequot War – Also known as the Mystic Massacre.

Essentially, in the area the Plymouth Pilgrims had settled, there were a few major warring Native bands. Specifically, the Pequot, the Mohegan, the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Algonquians.

Basically, the Pequot sucked. They were the most powerful tribe, and were constantly trying to expand their territory – Even before the Pilgrims had come. They regularly raided the Wampanoag and the Algonquians, and bullied the Mohegan and Narragansett. When the fur trade started up, they tried to scare all the other tribes out of competition.

This led pretty much all of the tribes in the area, with emphasis of the Mohegan and Narragansett, to ally with the Pilgrims when shit started to go down.

The Pequot seemed to have the least resistance to the foreign bacteria the Pilgrims brought in, and it weakened them a lot, leaving the other tribes and Pilgrims the ability to reclaim or take over a lot of their land.

About 700 Pequot died during the war. A great deal of them were also taken/given to the other tribes as slaves.

A great deal of the bullshittery surrounding the settlement and colonization of North America comes from people who are unwilling to admit that Natives were brutal with each other… That they were just these awesome, no-socialist hippies that just sang songs and ate berries all day.

I don’t just think that’s dishonest, I think it’s pretty derogatory.

I remember vividly a time I was on a long busride in my home of British Columbia, which has a very high Native population. I was seated next to an Aboriginal man from a Kwakwaka'wakw band and he told me, very proudly, about his tribe’s impressive archive of ancient weave records depicting a great victory over neighboring tribes leaving 600,000 of them killed by the Kwakwaka'wakw warriors, who were greatly outnumbered. I would find out later that Kwakwaka'wakw were known headhunters and cannibals.

Once again, Thanksgiving was celebrated very sporadically, and certainly not as a consistent holiday, until the Civil War.

Thanksgiving never had anything to do with the Natives, other than their participation in a mutually-beneficial relationship with people who genuinely appreciated their help, and thus were willing to share what little food they had with them. It was about farming and harvesting, and later about peace and reconciliation.

We here in Canada celebrated Thanksgiving back in October, but I’ve always liked the story of American Thanksgiving better. To me, all of it’s incarnations have represented unity in one way or another – Different people working together to make everyone’s life better. Whether that be the Natives and the Pilgrims, or the Northern and Southern States.

People just being good to each other, if only for a little bit.