Justin_Case001

After finishing Littlest Pet Shop, I immediately dove right into LPS: A World of Our Own. (Relatively) spoiler-free. Basic premise discussion only. No specific story stuff. AWOOO is just a short spin-off. It's not a full show. Just one season, and the episodes are half-length. 11-ish minutes a pop. But there's 52 episodes in the season, so it works out to the length or one normal season. However, it's not really feasible to do any complex stories with such little bite-sized time block to work with. It's just a fun, cute, fluffy, simple show. I mean, I said the same thing about original LPS, but this one is extra fluffy, cute, and simple. No arcs, no development. But hey, it's also kind of a no-expectations, no disappointments type situation! Having no arcs and no real development means that you're not going to be hoping for any particular storyline to go a certain way, and you're not going to be disappointed by anything. I said spoiler-free, but the truth is that the show is unspoilable because there's nothing to spoil. No stories. This is even more of a show about nothing than Seinfeld. The basic premise is kinda stupid. It's a new cast of pets, and they briefly explain that there exists a magical world just for pets which they can travel to and from via a portal, and time doesn't pass while they're in there. So, they can stay as long as they please and then hop back to the human world and it's exactly the time when they left. They never addressed whether they age while in the magical world or not, so who's to say if they're actually immortal and can stay in the magical world for a thousand jillion millennia or something. This premise is literally the laziest, silliest, most contrived plot device I've ever experienced, and the logic of it breaks down immediately if you start to analyze it. There is absolutely no attempt whatsoever to explain the existence of the world or create any kind of magic logic or continuity or anything like that. Equestria this is not. They just wanted and an excuse to have a pets-only show and slapped together a way to do it in 2 seconds. I kinda think it would have been better if they had dispensed with the portal to the magical world idea altogether and just had it be all animal world like Equestria, but I understand why they didn't go that way. They specifically wanted the characters to be pets, not just animals. They all have human owners, and they regularly crack pet-related jokes about them. Those are the criticisms. The good points? The characters are delightful, adorable, and incredibly charming. Edie the parakeet gave the ponies a run for their money for cuteness. I actually liked them better than the pets in regular LPS. They were so much fun to watch. It's such a shame that the show was only an appetizer. I really wanted a full show with these characters featuring arcs, development, the whole nine yards. I think there was enough potential for it. Not nine seasons like Pony, but perhaps four full seasons like LPS. Though incredibly light on storytelling, this series did give us what has to be one of my favorite characters in all of fiction: Jade. Jade the cat is so friggin awesome. Brilliant voiced by Ingrid Nilson (Maud ), Jade is the perfect cat. She's a little similar to Maud in some ways, but she's not weird and socially awkward like Maud. Jade is anti-social, but not awkward. Jade is laid back, aloof, and jaded, which I have to think is where they got the name from. Her shtick is that she couldn't care less about anything, which makes her totally cool. Deep down, though, she actually does care, and will begrudgingly tag along on adventures and help her friends, despite complaining every step of the way about having to leave her warm bed. Jade cares deeply for her friends, despite acting like she doesn't care about anything or anyone. Jade has a scathing, bone dry, razor sharp wit that she always uses at the perfect time. Cool doesn't even begin to describe her. The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing that in some ways, she's almost like Rick Sanchez in cat form. Jade actually made me like myself 1% more. I am aloof and jaded myself, and I've always hated myself for that (and for many, many other reasons.) I've always wished that I could be more excited, passionate, fun-loving, and enthusiastic, partly because I've always felt like those are the kinds of people that others like and want to be around. But Jade is the one I'd want to be around, and I love her so much that it made me think that maybe, just maybe, my qualities aren't as off-putting as I think, and there may be some people out there who would see me the way that I see Jade. Maybe.... I just wish that Jade could have been in a full series. Oh, the things they could have done with her if they'd had the time and opportunity for proper arcs and character development! Tis but a dream... Despite the shortcomings, great series with a truly great theme song to boot, and totally worth it. I mean, let's be honest, it's worth it for Jade alone.

This'll be a quick one for a change. Y'know what really grinds my gears? When characters on tv, especially cartoons, are cutting onions. Yes, it makes your eyes water, ok, but cutting onions doesn't make you SAD. It doesn't make blubber and sob and go "WHAAAAAA HAAAA HAAAA HAAAAAAA!" It doesn't make you bawl like Rainbow Dash when Tank died. ... or... hibernated... or whatever.

I had always imagined my theme song being this: Pretty sure the real title of this song is "The Drifter", but every upload on youtube just calls it "Shadow's Theme".

TL;DR: Littlest Pet Shop is a good show. If you like MLP (and if you're reading this, then you obviously do), then you'll like LPS. If you're interested, go watch it before reading this blog. This is going to be a spoiler-ridden discussion of Littlest Pet Shop. I gave LPS a shot because the animation and art style is extremely similar to FIM, and about half of the staff from FIM worked on LPS. I wasn't disappointed. It's quite good. It's no Pony, for sure, but good. I recommend it. The series follows Blythe Baxter, a teenage girl who, for some unexplained reason, has the ability to talk to animals. In this universe, all animals talk, but humans can't normally understand them. Blythe can talk to them and they can talk to her. Everyone else just hears the expected animal barks, chirps, and chatters, but Blythe hears human language. She lives in the big city with her single, windowed dad. Though it's never explicitly stated, her mom is obviously deceased. Blythe works at Littlest Pet Shop and has various adventures and capers with her pet friends, as well as human friends. Unlike Pony, LPS is low-stakes. Very low. Like, zero stakes. By that I mean that there are no villains, no battles, no existential threats, and no world-saving. It's just average, everyday life adventures, albeit slightly more exciting than the average person's life. I'd equate it to Hey Arnold!, but with a dash of fantasy thrown in. It's basically a girly Hey Arnold! if Arnold had Fluttershy's animal whispering ability. It's just light, cute, simple, fluff. Not much in the way of arcs. But there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes cute, simple fluff is nice. It's low-stress. There wasn't really any way to screw it up because nothing really happens. The only antagonists to speak of are Blythe's rich, spoiled, bratty classmates, the Biskit twins. They pick on Blythe and try to make her life miserable when they can, but they're not evil monsters. Just jerks. Basically S1 Trixie with no magic. Actually they're most like Veruca Salt. It's like if Veruca had a twin sister. Ugh. *Shudders* It did annoy me a bit that the Biskits always got away with their bullsh*t with no accountability. There wasn't any redemption arc, either. They were just b*tches to the end. LPS has the occasional musical number like FIM, but unfortunately nowhere near as good. For the most part, the songs were unnecessary and forgettable at best, and annoying at worst. There were two decent exceptions: Just Stay Here Forever, and Just Unplug. Those were good. And the opening theme is good, too. Other than that, meh. The pets were cute and enjoyable to watch, but I honestly liked watching Blythe with her human friends much more. My favorite character besides Blythe herself was her Korean classmate and BFF, Youngmee Song. She was freaking adorable. Funny thing, when Blythe first said her name, I was so confused. I didn't realize that it was a name, and I thought Blythe was talking about her younger, past self. Y'know how, like, people will sometimes engage in the therapeutic exercise of writing a letter to their younger self to... like... tell them it gets better or something. I thought it was something like that, but the context made no sense. I figured it out pretty quickly. I just loved Youngmee. Another nice touch was Blythe ever-changing outfits. She's an aspiring fashion designer, and thus her outfits and hairstyle change in every episode, which is extremely refreshing and impressive for an animated show. That's a lot of extra assets. That detail was much appreciated. Perhaps one of the greatest moments in television history, though, was when Blythe dressed as Applejack for Halloween. It was actually one of those costumes where it looks like you're riding the animal, but your legs are inside just walking. Actually, that scene didn't really happen, per se. It was a ghost story that Blythe was telling the pets on Halloween. So, she imagined and described herself as riding Applejack, and we got to see it. Point is, AJ was in the show. Mind blown. Another wonderful moment came in an episode where Blythe was entering one of the pets in a dog beauty pageant. Blythe (voiced by Ashleigh Ball, remember) got carried away with the competition and for some odd reason started channeling one of the other competitors who happened to have a country western accent. Blythe normally sounds like a slightly higher-pitched, slightly smoother Rainbow Dash, and she transformed into Applejack right before our ears. It was glorious. And it wasn't the only time something like that happened, either. Buttercream is a female bunny voiced by Cathy Weseluck, and in one episode she gets mad and competitive, and her tough side comes out, and she transforms into Spike. That was amazing as well. I definitely could have done with the character's heads being just a tad smaller, but I did appreciate that they routinely made self-aware jokes about their oversized heads. This show plays a bit fast and loose with physics and reality, which is to be expected, but it's a bit too much for my taste at times. I am not at all averse to over-the-top slapstick cartoons if that's the whole foundational vision, like Rocko's Modern Life, one of my favorite cartoons of all time, but I don't care for it when shows appear to take themselves relatively seriously, but then stray too far from reality. LPS takes itself just seriously enough that the physics breaks annoy me. What grinds my gears the most is actually the show's repeated tendency to disregard time when it comes to the characters completing projects. We very frequently see one or two teenage girls accomplish in an afternoon what it would take a large, professional work crew at least a month to do. That annoyed me. Pony did its fair share of that, but not to the same extent. and unicorn magic went a long way towards patching those plotholes. One other thing that annoyed me for most of the series was the fact that Blythe kept her animal whispering ability a secret, even from her closest friends and her dad. Why do these things always have to be a secret?! Like, seriously. Blythe did finally tell Youngmee the secret, which was a very exciting scene. Unfortunately, they didn't do enough with it afterward. They had a couple of scenes later in the show when Blythe translates for Youngmee so she can talk to her own pet, but not nearly enough. That was a bit of wasted potential, in my opinion. My one any only big wishlist item for the entire show was that Blythe tell her dad the big secret. Her dad, Roger, was portrayed as a bit of daft, bumbling goof, but at the same time a highly devoted, loving father who was incredibly attuned to his daughter. He would definitely understand and not judge her. They were extremely close, and thus it annoyed me that she didn't seem to trust him enough. I wanted Blythe to tell him so badly, and I even had my own vision for how I wanted it to go--something that I never imagined they would actually do. I was beginning to think that my only wishlist item would go unfulfilled, but then the writers surprised me, and magic happened. In the series finale, Blythe finally tells her dad about her ability, and his response could not have been better. He simply said, "Yeah, I know. I've known all along." Exactly what I wanted him to say. They read my mind! This was instantly refreshing--finally a cartoon character that's not an oblivious idiot. (Take that, Marinette and Adrien. ) I mean, her dad really should have known, too--it was something that would have been abundantly obvious to any parent who isn't completely blind to their child's life. So, after her initial shock, Blythe asks him why he never said anything, and he replied, "Because I knew that you would bring it up in your own time, when you were ready." I personally don't think that it's too much of a stretch to read this scene as an allegory for a gay kid coming out of the closet. This single exchange completely changes the context of the entire show, elevating it from just good to spectacular, and gives a whole new meaning to the theme song lyric, "We can be who we want to be."

Eh, I complain about the downsides to the Steam type model, but I'd still rather do that than buy optical discs again. The thought of going to a store or ordering a disc from Amazon or wherever, then opening it up and putting it in the damn disc drive... that's like, omfg, cave man days! I really, really like not having to put optical discs in my 'puter and switch 'em out when I want to switch games. Plus, I can't count the number of times when my friends will be playing a game I don't own, but I want in, so I just buy it right then and there, download it, and I'm literally in the game with them within 15 minutes. I mean, that's sci-fi level luxury right there. So, I mean, I don't want to go back to physical media, at least not for computers. Just wish they didn't change things on us so much. Now, I always buy console games on physical disc, but I only use console for single player games, so that's simpler. I feel really dubious and squeamish about buying games through the online Xbox or Playstation stores. I don't trust them not to just decide I don't own them and can't play them one day. Not as worried about that with Steam.

Hmm. How about... Ingrid Nilson? As Maud. That would suit me. Either that or Steve Blum. As Vincent Valentine.

Oh, add a little more CO2 to it, I guess.

It's hard either way. Gonna quote myself here: the grass isn't greener; it's dead on both sides of the fence.

Wow. 100 friggin' episodes. Never thought I'd get this far. There sure is a lotta sh*t that annoys me! Well, this momentous occasion deserves something special, so here's something that really, really, REALLY grinds my gears: constantly changing modern games. This is probably going to be a polarizing, controversial issue. Pffft. Oh well. This is just my opinion and perspective. I f*cking hate how all games today are constantly updated and changed. I miss the days of finished, completed games--the days of physical media, the days of cartridges. Now, I don't actually miss the physical media--I much prefer downloading games on Steam or GOG, but what I miss are the days when games were released in a finished state, and then stayed that way. I despise how games are perpetually changing now. Every game is in an unfinished, ever-evolving state. Everything is in constant flux. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is safe. You can't count on anything. No matter what game it is, everything could change tomorrow. That feature you love so much? Could be gone tomorrow. Your favorite weapon? Could be nerfed into the ground tomorrow. Your favorite map, stage, or tileset? Could be gone tomorrow. NOTHING IS SAFE. It's like you can't even buy a game anymore--it's more like you're buying... idk... like a season pass to a theme park where any ride could be torn down or changed at any time, because it's their park, not yours. That's games today. It's not your game, even though you bought it. It's a season pass to their park. My friends and I love Sanctum 2. It's one of our favorite multiplayer games. It's a FPS/tower defense game. We used to have such a slick combo. (You don't have to actually know what this means to get the point.) We used the mind control tower and orbital laser to devastating effect. We had an almost unbeatable strategy. It wasn't overpowered (imo) because it was a finely honed and practiced strategy that we had invented and perfected over a long period of time. It was awesome, fun, and hilarious. Then, after years of the game being out, the devs nerfed the mind control tower into oblivion and made it virtually useless. Our strategy was dead. The game was never as much fun since. We also love Risk of Rain. Both of 'em. ROR2 is amazing, and another of our favorites. A recent update to it (possibly the one you see in the banner picture) supposedly nerfed and killed one of our favorite aspects of the game. As of time of writing, we haven't tried it yet, so we don't know the damage. I'm afraid to see. I f*cking HATE this world of gaming fear--living in constant terror that the next time you log in, your favorite game will have been wrecked. While you were asleep, the devs came in and took a hammer to everything you loved about it. It's not f*cking fair. IT'S BULLSH*T. Alright, let's hear the counter arguments--but, but, but, but, game breaking this and OP that! BALANCE! Yeah, fine, whatever. I get it. I don't really object to minor balance tweaks, particularly in pvp games. But there's a huge difference between tweaking some numbers to be more fair and outright gutting, removing, or destroying your favorite weapons, abilities, builds, etc. That debate aside, I just feel that there's something highly unethical about buying a game, ostensibly owning it, then having it ripped apart and changed, sometimes years, sometimes a decade later. I tolerate it with something like Warframe (one of my favorites) because it's a free-to-play model. It's a double-edged sword and there are aspects that annoy me for sure, but there's also some really cool aspects to the constantly-evolving multiplayer model, too. I tolerate the aspects I don't like, and it's fair for the devs to change it because I don't own it. It's free. And if you choose to make some in game purchases, you do it with informed consent that things may change. But when you buy and own a game, that's different. It's not right for them to rip apart and change sh*t years later in a game you own. You know what that's like? That'd be like if you bought a painting, hung it on your wall, then one day, unannounced, the artist breaks into your house and completely changes the painting because they decided they like it better this way. Could you imagine that? Would that be acceptable in any way shape or form? Of course not! Well, that's the world of modern games, and I f*cking hate it. I know, I know--the solution is to just buy GOG. They can't update it if you just play offline with everything local and DRM free. Yup, yup. That's true, and that's why I do that with many games, but that's a lot harder to do with multiplayer games. It's really inconvenient to get an online group together that way. Steam is is just so much easier for multiplayer, especially with the Friends integration and all that. Not to mention than not everything is available DRM free on GOG. Skyrim on PC, for example, is a Steam exclusive for some bullsh*t reason, despite Oblivion and Morrowind being on GOG. It just sucks being beholden to whatever the devs (or Valve for that matter) want to do. The devs and Valve giveth, and they can taketh away. Every single feature of every single game now has to treated as "enjoy it now while you can," and inevitably everything changes, and then it's "whelp, it was fun while it lasted." I desperately miss buying a finished game and being able to count on it staying the same. Every time I log into Steam and see that everything I loved and was accustomed to changed, I just wanna: And that, dear ponies, is what grinds my gears. See you next time.

Le créme de sour y unyon. Though I actually prefer Lays Stax to Pringles. Believe it or not, I actually wrote an essay for English class in jr high school arguing why Lays Stax are better than Pringles. Got an A.

So, Kyoshi, you might recall in your blog tearing apart Elden Ring that I mentioned that I have a friend who raves that it's the best game ever made. Well, that same friend of mine, his number one favorite song of all time... is... Ghost Love Score by Nightwish. Mind. BLOWN.

Every so often, just for a larf, I like to look up what the most viewed videos of all time on youtube are. If you just google it, you'll find several sites that post these stats. As far as I am aware, there is no real-time counter like the world population or US national debt clocks. It's just lists of the top ten or twenty most viewed videos as of the time of posting. I haven't thought about it in a long time, though. Been busy. Last time I checked was... oh, about eight or so years ago. Sometime in 2014 sounds about right. I remember it because I was living in a different house at the time. Back then, the most viewed video of all time was a pop music video by... um... I wanna say Lady Gaga. If not her, somebody similar. It had about 350 million views. That was mind-boggling at the time. I think every single video on the top ten list was a music video intended for adults and/or teens. Mostly pop. You know what the most viewed video today is? You're never gonna get it. Oh wait, I guess I gave it away in the title and picture. Yeah, it's a children's song called Baby Shark Dance. Thar she blows, but ye be warned, tis not for the faint of heart: Yup. That's it. Over 10 billion views. 10 billion. That's billion with a B. The view count is 1.25x the population of Earth. Just try to wrap your head around that for a second. And keep in mind that most people in the world probably haven't seen this video. I mean, think about all of the people in the world for a second. Think about every person who would have no interest in this video, and no reason to even know it exists, not to mention all the people who still live in poverty and don't even have access to the internet. I think it's safe to assume that the majority, probably vast majority of all people on Earth have not seen this video, and it still has significantly more views than there are people on the planet. That's wild and kinda scary. Circa 2014, the most viewed video had ~350 million views. Now, just eight years later, the most viewed video, which was uploaded after that, in 2016, has 10 billion. Actually, it's 10.47 billion. The insignificant decimal amount, the change, is 470 million, more than that video from 2014. It's just insane. It's hard to even comprehend. This dramatic increase definitely speaks volumes about us, doesn't it? I realize that there's more people on Earth today than in 2014, but not that much more. That surely can't account for much of the difference. This change says something significant about our habits. We're spending way more time online, and it's continually increasing. And obviously, the fact that the most viewed video is now for young kids says something else of consequence. In fact, a lot of top viewed videos are now for kids. In 2014, I believe every video on the list was a pop star music video, and now at least a third in the top twenty list are for little kids. It's just blows my mind that this kid's video has more views than Earth's population, and there are many more on the list in the billions as well. What is happening?! Obviously, parents must be parking their kids in front of these videos everyday and just playing them on a loop to keep them entranced and shut them up. This ludicrous amount of screen time can't be healthy. The fact that we're online, and that kids in particular are online that much more than just eight or so years ago is staggering and quite frankly a little frightening to me. So far I've mostly just been talking about the sheer view count, but let's talk about the actual content of the video for a second. "Baby shark, baby shark, do do do do, mommy shark, mommy shark, do do do do"? ... Seriously? That's what gets 10.4 billion views? You're sh*tting me. That's just sad. I mean, why can't the most viewed video at least be something good? Okay, now, don't get me wrong--I'm not ripping on it just because it's for kids. I mean, look where we are right now. I love cute, colorful, girly kid's stuff, but, well, I mean, this shark thing is just stupid. I'm not saying it's stupid just because it's for kids. No, I'm saying it's stupid because it's stupid. It's devoid of any kind of real talent or creativity or cleverness. It's just empty, pathetic fluff. I didn't even make it all the way through! I only made it as far as daddy shark before I couldn't stomach any more! I mean, something can be intended for kids and still be good! Obviously. Duh. But this... this is garbage! Why is it so freaking popular?! Why would any kids want to watch this when you could watch any song from freakin' MLP G4?! Or Littlest Pet Shop?! Or freaking anything else?! Ugh. I don't get it. Okay, okay.... okay.... so that paragraph was just my little silly rant and opinion. I mean, y'know, I'm not trying to dump on anyone who actually likes this, but I don't understand it. And here's the thing--I realize it's for a younger audience than FIM, but there's plenty of content for little, little kids that's not so dumb. I think Sesame Street holds up well and isn't such a cringefest. Mr. Rogers was a daily staple for me as a really little kid, and I actually watched a bit of it recently for some context before watching the recent documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, followed by the Tom Hanks movie, It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and I've got to say that, even though I have no interest in unironically sitting down and watching an entire episode of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood today, the show holds up, and is definitely not a cringefest. The point being, young children's stuff can be good, but this shark thing is, in my honest opinion, a piece of crap. Well, anyway.... I guess that's it. Nothing more to say, other than I think we should get our kids away from the screen more.

You just reminded me of something a friend of mine said. He had the perfect analogy for this stuff that I've ever heard. He called it the "bad taxidermy" analogy. So, with regards to when a company resurrects a classic, beloved franchise and butchers the hell out of it, my friend said that would be like if an artificial intelligence reanimated your beloved deceased pet into some kind of uncanny, soulless, robotic husk, and was then surprised when you were upset and asked, in it's own genuine, innocent way, "I don't understand. You loved this thing and I brought it back for you. Why aren't you happy?" Wonderful illustration.

Hey. Y'know what really grinds my gears? The fact that no show, movie, game, franchise, or story of any kind ever has a definitive ending anymore. I'm talking' about the rampant trend of reviving, rebooting, continuing, and resurrecting franchises ad infinitum. I'm talkin' about the fact that no matter what show or movie it is, no matter what story, no matter how it ended, and no matter how long ago it ended, no matter how long it's been resting in peace, Hollywood will still dig it up, resurrect it, and reanimate the corpse like a Frankenstein monster. I don't want to reference a specific show here because I don't want to start an opinionated debate, but I can't count the number of times that a show has had a perfect ending, a satisfying and brilliant series finale, and then they drag it back and continue it, thus cheapening and ruining the ending, because now it's not the ending anymore. I hate when this happens. Moreover, I just hate how completely out of control every franchise is now. I'm talking about the exponential growth of content that's impossible to keep up with. It's nearly impossible to actually consume all of the content in a franchise in order and stay on top of it. If you want the complete story in a franchise, then it's not just a show. Oh no. It's a show, a few movies, a few spin-offs, a Netflix exclusive movie, a CBS All Access exclusive series, a Paramount+ exclusive mini-series, an Amazon Prime exclusive limited engagement series, a series of graphic novels and mangas, a series of webisodes, a youtube exclusive series of shorts. It f*cking never ends!!! Why can't anything, ever have a nice, definitive, final end? Why can't anything just be over? Why can't anything ever be left alone? I just want one thing to be a nice, neat, elegant, standalone series with a definitive finale, and then it's done. No reboots, no revivals, no streaming platform exclusive continuations, no webisode minisode bullsh*t. Just one show and it's over. Why.... can't.... anything... ever... just... ... END.