geekdom – Wis[s]e Words

The geek fallacy — 2.5-jigen no Ririsa

Published on October 6, 2024Leave a comment

Look, it works here because this is fiction, but thinking that just because you all share the same hobby you all should be friends is asking for trouble:

Close-up of Ririsa saying 'I mean, cosplayers all love the same thing! We're all on the same team!'

2.5-jigen no Ririsa episode 14 is about Ririsa wanting to befriend another girl doing cosplay, who in turn wants to befriend her too but is just incredibly socially awkward to the point of disability. In this case therefore thinking that “we should be friends because we both cosplay” works out. In real life, just sharing a hobby doesn’t mean you have anything else in common or even like each other. I’m glad some of the other characters at least pointed this out to Ririsa, that others may dislike her and that this is okay, that she doesn’t have to force herself to like somebody else because they’re also cosplayers. It’s a lesson any baby geek or otaku needs to learn.

Best Superman this century

Published on July 9, 2023Leave a comment

This is honestly the best Superman I’ve seen in years if not decades. He actually saves a cat in this first episode!

Superman, but he’s still discovering his powers and not yet invulnerable is always a ghood setting and having him, Lois and Jimmy be Daily Planet interns is even better. Loved the chemistry between Lois and Clark, who are clearly attracted to each other from the start. What I also liked is that she played as big a part in winning the fight against the giant robots as Clark himself. Jimmy was a bit of a third wheel but he was just as obnoxious as the original version. Which is great. Can’t have a Jimmy Olsen not be annoying.

Clark catches Lois when she falls down

There are tons of little homages and references hidden in this. Lois has a Vicki Vale article up on her bedroom wall. The Newsboys Legion reference. Having Superman fight actual giant robots, like in the Fleischer cartoons. That “who are you” at the end from Lois, surely a reference to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. This seems to be a series that knows its history. Art and animation wise it’s all good. The action scenes all popped and the character designs are nicely streamlined. A good start and I hope My Adventures With Superman can keep it up.

World War III fanfiction

Published on June 4, 2023Leave a comment

If, like me, you were obsessed with Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising as a child growing up during the late Cold War, then Third World War 1987 is the site for you:

I intend to take a multifaceted approach with this blog. Primarily, I want to construct a detailed narrative, and timeline centered on a US/NATO-Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact conflict set in 1987. Attached to that will be a comprehensive account of the global military picture as it was in 1987.

Of course it lacks some of the frisson of Clancy’s original, as a superpower confrontation like this is now firmly in the realms of alternative history rather than a plausible what-if, but it’s still an earnest, in-depth look at what could’ve been. The actual story starts with an NBC news broadcast on April 18, 1987 and you can continue it by clicking on the next post link at the bottom of the page. It’s a bit awkward to navigate as the links are listed below the comments, while related posts show up above it. That minor quibble aside, this is an enjoyable read if you’re a bit of a grognard. World War III fanfic, if you like.

As for how likely such a conflict was during those last years of the Cold War, MILITARY PLANNING FOR EUROPEAN THEATRE CONFLICT DURING THE COLD WAR AN ORAL HISTORY ROUNDTABLE STOCKHOLM, 24– 25 APRIL 2006 (PDF) is essential. Basically a gathering of various NATO and Warsaw Pact military commanders reminiscing about the Cold War, reading it makes clear nobody took the idea of a war actually breaking out between the two seriously at the time. Reading through the testimonies it’s clear that they all took the idea of war seriously and endlessly prepared for it, but never expected it to really happen, as it didn’t. Reassuring to read, even retrospectively.

Scooby Doo without Scooby Doo is just pointless.

Published on January 13, 2023Leave a comment

With all the shows HBO cancelled without ever airing just for tax purposes, why couldn’t this be one of them?

I first learned about this show three months ago when Polygon previewed it and it sounded so horrible already:

The show introduces Velma in her high school years as a bespectacled loser. If two cockroaches copulating in the opening scene doesn’t establish Velma’s tone, the next scene should do the trick: nude teenage girls partaking in physical violence in the gym showers (all while debating the ethical appropriateness and exploitation of blatant nudity in media). Later, the corpse of a teenager is found in Velma’s locker, making her the prime suspect in the eyes of two cops (Wanda Sykes and Jane Lynch). Of course, she has to solve the mystery to clear her name. One problem: Velma hasn’t really solved a mystery in a while, not since her mystery novelist mother vanished from her life. And whenever Velma tries to solve a mystery, she gets harassed by ghastly zombielike spirits.

Taking a kids show and making it all adult by upping the blood, tits and rampant cynicism is the oldest and most boring trick in the book. Going for an origin show is also a bit, ehh, unnecessary. Scooby Doo of all things does not need an origin. Four kids and their dogs traveling America in their own groovy van, in search of the supernatural and only ever finding fakes trying to cheat the local town out of its cash reserves is a formula that just works. You don’t need to dress it up. In this context making the cast somewhat less sixties whitebread is good, but even this seems suspect when everything else in the show is so damn cynical and it’s leaning hard into rightwing memes for its ‘jokes’. But the worst insult is this:

Grandy addressed the brown-spotted Great Dane (not) in the room by explaining that the team thought hard about what it could do to distinguish Velma as an adult show. “What made Scooby-Doo a kid show is Scooby-Doo,” Grandy said. “We couldn’t have a take on it, like how can we do this in a fun and modern way. [Our efforts] coincided with Warner Bros. Animation saying we can’t use the dog!” For Grandy, the omission of the iconic Great Dane accentuates the adult tone of Velma — though who knows what will happen along the show’s serialized journey.

Yeah, that makes sense, to remove the most iconic and recognisable element of the original because it’s nOt AdUlT eNoUgH. It does feel like somebody came up with an idea for an orginal show and the Scooby Doo brand (ugh) was forced upon it.

Executive producer Mindy Kaling meanwhile is if not an outright transphobe herself, certainly a tad too sympathetic to them, so that’s another reason not to waste your time on this show.

Risu: “I’m still okay” knock knock “I’m not okay” — Hololive showcase

Published on April 22, 2021Leave a comment

Posted because I fell from my chair, laughing when I watched this earlier today. What happened when squirrel girl Risu stole mamah Moona’s piggy bank to count the coins in it:

It’s fairly normal for popular media franchise to be exported from Japan to other Asian countries, establishing branches there. And while Hololive’s foray into China wasn’t succesful, it was a logical move considering the potential size of the vtuber market there. Much more unexdpected was the establishment of an Indonesian branch, rather than say a Korean one. Ayunda Risu is one of the three first generation Indonesian Hololivers and she’s just as she appears here, a mischievous squirrel. Her generation mates are Moona Hoshinova, whose piggy bank she stole and Airani Iofifteen, heard late in the video offering seasoning to Moona to make squirrel satah. The first generation of Indonesian Hololivers all live together you see, with Moona being the mother and Iofi the father and Risu as their unruly child. A setup that works well, producing hilarious videos like this. What also makes HoloID stand is that before the English language branch of Hololive was established, these three were the sole Hololivers regularly streaming in English, often doing trilingual streams even, using Japanese, English and Bahasa Indonesia.

Clip created by Holoclip.