Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
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I’ve been threatening y’all with more nerd shit rants instead of general life stuff. So consider yourself warned, we’re gonna be talking about one of my big five influences, the 90s Jonny Quest reboot series.
I think my biggest “fandom heresy” for anything that I really like is that, while I watched the entire series, I didn’t really come to LOVE TRAJQ until the second season, and I find Peter Lawrence more smackably smug & Molyneux-esque than respectable. Also, I find occasionally-catty-and-stuck-with-claustrophobia Jessie infinitely more interesting than bland-hypercompetent-girlboss Jessie (also, casting helps, cuz Jenn Hale rules). And I have been largely alone in this perspective. Until someone posted this (to diss this opinion, mind you), I thought that I was pretty much alone in this.
A brave soul, not only speaking truth to season 1 & Peter Lawrence’s BS but also saying nice things about anything JQ related on Bluesky instead of sneering at it in favor of [as] garbage, which is about as required as “be a terminally online hypocritical pseudo-progressive” & “develop a loud & proud diaper fetish” to use the site.
Really, Pete? EINSTEIN? At least half of the first season’s stories were “Scooby Doo con artist but played super straight-faced, with the fantastic elements only popping in at the literal end”. Y’all did the second-worst Jersey Devil story that way! Who'd Pete quote for that mess, Plato?! There’s so many other things that I didn’t really like about the first season, including… the inconsistent & often clunky art style; the obvious toll the bad planning & blown deadlines took on the end product; the tendency of people to blow off said planning/deadline issues as “omg quirky backstory” instead of a sign of horrible unprofessionalism; half-hearted “teaching” moments that have aged like milk (like the tiger); the whole thing they did with Race’s accent/vague race tweak (even if I’m generally a fan of the actor they cast); and hiring a game show host who couldn’t act for the lead role. But that last one makes sense when, upon reviewing, you realize that Lawrence really seemed to think Jessie was the lead character, given how she was written & handled.
There's one person on the Discord & Reddit that is especially obnoxious in their S1 zealotry and basically sucks the air out of the room every time the entire TRAJQ series is mentioned. Always going on about how "strong" (read: flat & defined largely by catchphrases) the characters were, how "intelligent" (read: pompous & occasionally preachy) the stories were, and how "mismanagement" ruined Lawrence’s perfect vision (and not his own smugness & unprofessionalism). That season 2 is nothing but regressive nostalgia bait and only sexists would like it, cuz Jessie wasn't the author's perfect favorite anymore. Whoever they are, they remind me of the dinguses on the JQML that said Kim Possible was "what TRAJQ should have been". As someone who never liked KP cuz I found the lead character to be wholly unlikable and the show built around trying to justify her unlikability by only having "jerk" characters call it out, that sounded about as bad as the "turn Jonny & Benton into Shinji & Gendo" assholes (who are probably all part of the VB cult now). I don’t know if it’s just one loud assclown with too much time or if it’s just the tendency for their appearance to literally kill every TRAJQ conversation upon appearing, but it’s set this tone that I find as repugnant in its own way as the VB cultists.
I will say this - the two recurring villains that they added are the best part of the season. Surd is my favorite kind of bastard, a smug dude with a god complex who just believes that he should be allowed to torment & kill cuz he wants to do it, nothing deeper; even the attempt to give him a “tragic” backstory still painted him as a spiteful, stubborn person blaming the wrong person for his injury and refusing to be corrected. Honestly, him being bound to the CGI segments, which have always been the weakest part of the series, hurt him more than anything. And while I always found cult leader villains like Rage to be “unbelievable” as a kid, I realize that they probably would be genuinely effective. He’s a good example of a villain whose backstory explains his actions without justifying them, and I could see him making his hatred of the Quest family more personal; the whole thing in season 1 where Jessie was supposed to remind him of his late daughter (because OF COURSE) was never used well & had potential for different escalations (wanting to force her into his “heir” or turning on her as his own personal anti-Christ, for example). I genuinely think that the second season trying to write them out was their biggest mistake, but at the same time, there are some obvious windows for reversal there. You NEED more than just one recurring villain. Also, pit the villains against each other! I wanna see Zin versus Rage, personally. What would a dude who wants to rule the world think of another who wants to blow it up instead?
And I am guilty of the biggest fanbase sin by saying that I found season 1 Jessie more tiresome & story-breaking than empowering. The dominant conversation around her handling as a character has been “she was a role model & inspiration in season 1, but they gave her flaws & put her in danger, so season 2 is sexist & bad” for YEARS. I remember the same stuff I see on the fandom Discord (where I lurk) being said on the old JQML Yahoo mailing list. And I’m sorry, I’ve always found a character, especially a female character, designed as “role model” first & everything else second to be BORING. At best (at worst, see my comments about Kim Possible). She’s emblematic of the big problem with season 1, which is that the cast feel very flat. Except for her (who had "good at literally everything"), they were largely defined by catchphrases or dialogue about them more than their own actions. The only person who shows a flicker of non-stock personality is Hadji, cuz he gets moments of sarcasm. That’s it. Jessie was the WORST, though, cuz she had no personality. Just a checklist of “things to be good at to be a role model to girls everywhere” and the rest of the cast boosting her as The Bestest regularly. I don’t use the term “Mary Sue” lightly (mostly because it’s been misapplied to the point where it means “female lead”), but S1 Jessie fits the original definition of “character added to an existing cast who is better than everyone at everything & beloved by all around her, characterization be damned” almost perfectly.
Characters need flaws. Flaws are the cracks in the proverbial soil, where seeds of personality get to grow. Acting like Jessie was the only character to suddenly no longer be flat or to make any mistakes in the second season is willfully ignoring everything else around her - y’know, the stuff that’s existed for decades. Benton is brilliant but naive & easily trusting; Race keeps getting his past relationships (and not just romances) thrown in his face; Hadji has a bad habit of falling for the wrong women and biting his tongue when he shouldn’t; Jonny is impulsive, gets in over his head routinely, & is shown to consider himself “dumb” compared to his friends. This season is up there with the Bill Loebs Comico run for making the JQ characters feel like people with layers. OF COURSE the girl who reflexively goes tsundere for her two guy besties & gets tired of being reminded about her dad’s iffy past is gonna fit in better than “checklist of blah role model traits”. I really don’t get the mindset of “has flaws, therefore sexism”, unless the people doing it latched onto the whole “role model” thing as little kids & just never mentally moved past that. Also, miss me with that "they turned her into a damsel in distress" bullshit; she had PLENTY of the same treatment in the first season (starting with the very first episode), and it’s not like any of the guys were never in the same position. Having one character exempt from all threats because something something empowerment is lazy writing.
But like I said, I’m an outlier for the TRAJQ fandom. I don’t consider Peter Lawrence to be some unimpeachable genius (exact opposite in fact); I prefer the Mook style (which has always reminded me vaguely of Lee Moder or Jeff Moy’s art from roughly the same era) to the overly realistic one S1 was supposed to have, when they could afford the better animation studio; the only shipping that I care about is maybe the handsome dads, and that’s FAR behind numerous other more interesting friendly/familial relationships. There’s probably more things escaping my mind. It’s disappointing that the version of JQ I’d love to see revived the most never will, be it cuz the Toonami frat has thoroughly poisoned the well for the past 25 years or cuz a certain VA couldn’t behave himself like an adult or just because the audience that might be there for it would be mad it’s not the bland failure that was cobbled together after their visionary auteur blew years worth of deadlines. At least now I’m seeing a re-appraisal and more people aligning with me, but it’s still kinda bittersweet to love something everyone else insists is “bad”.
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This week’s video rec is on a particular drum that I’ve been repeatedly beating like a wind-up toy on crack on this blog, and that is that the current online world has a serious problem with uber-righteousness & refusal to grasp basic concepts like “nuance” or “change”.
Honestly, the only addition I’d make to the video is that it’s not just Gen Z doing it. The absolute WORST examples I’ve seen have been from people in their mid to late 30s, who either never reached maturity past that high school activist mindset or willfully regressed to it. But yeah, it’s been bad, TikTok made it worse, and it just keeps amping up until you have (as I have seen) people acting like they’re in the right for sending suicide prompts to others over a disagreement or gloating about people losing jobs in this horrid market solely cuz they had the nerve to work for a company they’re boycotting.
It’s created a culture of constant fear & constant judgment. As one comment put it, it’s “using authoritarianism in the guise of progressivism”, and all it’s gonna do is make everything worse. So seeing pushback like this is not only welcomed but necessary before it becomes irreversible.
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Lightning-squared round! Cuz I have thoughts.
I cannot put into words just how depressing it was to hear my mother - a grown-ass woman - say that the YouTube shorts I send her now & then are “too long” compared to the stuff she watches on FB/Reels.
I’ve mostly given up on my hate-read (largely cuz the creator has given up on it themself), but every so often I’ll see one of its entries pop up on TV Tropes of something that never made it into the work or even the creator’s Discord (which has its own “Word of God” page on TVT cuz that’s where 99.9% of the story & themes would be siloed, never reaching the work itself). And it just reminds me of WHY it went from a series I genuinely cared about following to a hate-read that I only want to see how far off the pier it rolls. I don’t think that the creator did these entries themself, but between their Discord being full of THAT kind of fan & their one friend who constantly simps/promotes/white knights even the mildest criticisms for them (hence the absence of names here), there are a lot of people who’d happily do that dirty work for them. But MAN, it’s a good thing this isn’t a professional work made for an actual publisher, cuz that kind of stuff is pathetic.
Nothing puts me off a musical faster than learning it was massively popular on Tumblr at some point. That kinda tells me everything.
It probably says a lot about me that I get irrationally angry at those Burlington Coat Factory ads that have music that’s ripping off “Everybody Everybody” by Black Box, right up until they awkwardly change it to sing their new slogan. Seriously, just buy the song rights.
Uma update! Is it just me, or is it way easier to boost your stats in the Unity Cup scenario than in the URA Finale?
Exedra update, too! Not gonna spoil it, but the reveal of the next new character was a deep cut that genuinely surprised me. Also, looks like the latest part of Crescent Memoria gave a preview of duo units coming eventually.
For the record, the single worst Jersey Devil story ever on TV was from The X-Files, cuz they decided to “explain” our state cryptid as generation after generation of feral humans that are apparently ALL the result of drunken Piney rape. Every single generation, for over a century. That’s someone’s bad AO3 work, there.
Footnote to the main piece: Honestly, all of the comics have done a really great job with the Jonny Quest universe. Recently I re-read the Dark Horse TRAJQ books, and those did a good job of mixing what little good was in the 1st season with connections to the original series. And my disappointment that one bad actor who likes to lawyer up when he’s not running scams is the biggest obstacle to the Comico books getting reprinted once again annoys me. Also, ANY time now, Dynamite, feel free to announce another JQ series…
Oh God, I’m gonna have to ask Reddit something, aren’t I? All cuz I don’t know how to change the color/coat patterns on a bulldog amigurumi I want to make & can’t find any sites/videos with a how-to. If they were condescending answering an Excel question for work, I can only imagine how they’ll be for a hobby…
There’s apparently a bunch of people trying to “cancel” Frankie Fey. Cuz doing lighthearted but ultimately respectful videos on weird online art history is another thing the internet’s finest thinks is “alt-right-coded”.
"How to arrest human development at age 8 while letting bank accounts mature to age 35" might be one of the best descriptions of so many gigundo-brand fans (in this particular case, Disney adults). We all have our things we carry with us through the years, but for every person who does it because they respect the creativity of the works/creators themselves, there are just as many or more who do it for the logo attached to them. This is a great video looking at Disney Adults as an example of “fandom/brand loyalty as religious proxy”, but they’re certainly not the only ones doing it.
Today in “Reaching The Ending of Threads But No Bombs Fell To Justify It”, apparently there really are “Adulting 101” college courses on things like how to do basic house chores or prioritize your spending. Y’know, stuff people used to learn in exchange for allowances?
Anyone who puts the name of the Tumblr Cowboy anywhere near the name of Bret Hart and not in the true & correct “unfit to borrow Bret’s hair gel, let alone share the ring with him” manner needs to be swirlied.
I always hated the “misery lit” trend of the late 90s-early 00s, and I’m glad that time has shown that my disdain for this sort of self-righteous voyeurism in book form was legit. Also, so many of these were just con artists and/or plagiarists. And that they usually did what this case did and pose as a very real, very marginalized demographic that they very much weren’t, made it even worse. Just a whole wave of even worse Beatrice Sparkses, given a stage by a daytime TV grifter with a taste for misery porn.
There’s a radio ad for some shady attorney where the guy (who has an accent inexplicable for the Philly area) starts shouting “DO YOU WANT IT? DO YOU WANT IT?” in the same cadence as a certain very famous, very secondhand-embarrassment internet video. Same accent, even! All I’m saying, IYKYK. Ask someone who watches Smiling Friends, they’ll probably have the same reaction to the ad once they hear it.
I know it started as an anti-AI thing, but thanks to the people most likely to see something like a PFP switch as “making a difference”, I see one of those Clippy PFPs and know that I’m going to hear the dumbest thing humanly possible.
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Anyway, that’s another week done. Hopefully next week won’t be as bad as I get the feeling it will be, but you can’t just assume anything will work out anymore.
Please enjoy this cat pic showing a rare moment of peace in the one location in the house where the cats like to scrap for dominance the most - the foot of my bed, as I’m trying to settle in for sleep.
One of the very few times they’ve been together like this without any war meows and/or attempts at humping. I’m proud of them.
See everyone next time.
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