Yesterday I got to talking about cartoons with someone else, and I remembered one of the best cartoons ever made. It was called Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates. The premise is kind of a hard sell. As a kid I remember not liking it because it was very different from versions of Peter Pan I was used to. However, as I grew older, I also grew to appreciate it more. A big thing this cartoon does differently from other cartoons is how it interprets Captain Hook and Peter Pan. Peter Pan is the "hero" but he has a lot that most would not call "good." He is arrogant, self-centered, and he very often starts conflicts as well as ends them. One episode I particularly remember, Hook's crew (without Hook's knowledge) actually talk to Tinkerbell and hatch a plan to trick Hook into thinking Peter Pan can't be killed, that way Hook will give up on his grudge and decide to leave Neverland. When Peter Pan learns of this plot he does everything to ruin it, because he *wants* Captain Hook to stay in Neverland! Captain Hook, also, is given a much more complex character here. He is still a pirate, and that still implies a level of amorality, but he also has his own strange sort of honor system. In one episode, he puts aside his fight against Peter Pan in order to teach the Lost Boys about Shakespeare, whom Captain Hook respects. He will also usually leave people alone if they've done him a good turn, or have nothing to do with his conflict with Peter Pan. (and it is very much Hook vs Pan--it is made clear several times that the pirates and the Lost Boys don't actually hate each other, they're just following the wishes of their respective leaders). The stories, also, love to play with what all is possible in Neverland. Mermaids, books that come to life, there's a girl who lives in the moon.... the writers took the potential of a fairy-tale setting like Neverland and ran with it. So why have you not heard of this series? Essentially, copyright. In the 2000s, a lot of Fox's assets got sold to other companies. One account says that Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates is currently owned by Disney, but I've also heard it might be owned by TMS (who were one of the production studios involved). Both companies have their own version of Peter Pan, and would not want to put out a competitor's version. It somehow still got one DVD of five episodes in the UK, and a box set of half the series in France, though both of these are hard to find (and the France set does not have English as an option). The entire series is on Youtube, and fans have done good remasters visually... the problem is the audio. A lot of the audio comes from old recordings off of television, and it can be hard to understand what the characters are saying (particularly Captain Hook, who used a lot of colorful language). My hope is that broadcast masters turn up in some private collection and are used as the basis of a fan release, or else that we can talk a company like @discotekmedia into giving this show an official release. It is just criminal that one of the best works of art in western animation canon got unfairly buried by corporate egos. youtu.be/PlgEH2IAKHI

Today I learned that Doctor Who has ended... again. Of course, Doctor Who had previously "ended" in 1989, then gotten a movie in 1996, then finally got a regular TV series in 2005. Doctor Who is one of the rare cases where I discovered both the original version and the reboot at basically the same time. I still wound up preferring the original, because despite being a kid's show the writing felt more "adult." 2005-Doctor Who had entertaining stories but it felt more "juvenile" in a lot of ways. In particular, it keeps telling us the Doctor is smart, but it was one of those shows whose idea of "smart" is "basically magical." It was still a blast, up until the end of the Tennant Era. I found the writing got worse around the Matt Smith era, and that was when I stopped watching. From what I've heard, the show just continued to get worse. Anyone reading: What was your favorite era of Doctor Who?

One thing that bothers me in a lot of fiction: Whenever Gods or "Higher Realms" are introduced, they tend to be just humanity with a different coat of paint. This kind of stuff is okay in something like Dragon Ball (which isn't supposed to be taken seriously) but even in something like the Elric stories which are trying to be weird and cosmic, Law and Chaos are just two dudes with a difference of opinion who end up duking it out. I've always thought that Gods, if they communicated with us, would tell us things you wouldn't expect and which humanity wouldn't think of.

I miss when novels had appealing covers:

Something I'm curious about. As an American, I feel like during the 1980s, America had better cartoons than Japan did. Though I'm aware there's a lot of Americans who would disagree with me. I wonder about Japanese people though? If there's any Japanese posters reading this who saw American cartoons during the 1980s.... whose output did you like better, Japan's or America's?

For those who say, “It’s just fantasy.” I spent 11 years at Ensemble studios giving historical verisimilitude to games and proving that players liked it. I’m fine with the fantasy parts. I just think it’s more fun if the history parts seem authentic.

A few days back I (probably) made people angry by talking about my issues with Zelda. Another Nintendo franchise I always found overrated is Pokemon. Unlike Zelda, where I do have a nostalgic connection to the earlier entries, Pokemon I didn't like even when Gen 1 first hit (the games, anyway... I did like the anime for awhile, but now it's tough to go back to). To do it in a simple list format: 1. This is gonna get people jumping down my throat, but the core premise always bugged me. No matter how you slice it, it really is a series about kidnapping animals and forcing them to battle... or if you're going for a completionist playthru, collecting them just so you can leave them in a box. 2. When the games first launched, they felt outdated even when they were new. Before Pokemon Red and Blue, you know what other RPG had a battle system of 1v1-only battles? The original Dragon Quest--a game over ten years older. 3. The games are so dead-brained (yes I did try later gens to see if it ever improved). People complain about grinding in RPGs all the time, but in Pokemon it is literally all you do. It took a few entries for them to even add *equipment* to the games! Plus the battle system is your standard rock-paper-scissor. I've heard that in Player-vs-Player matches it can be more strategic, but I'm not sure how. 4. The stories are really boring most of the time, and the few games that do introduce an interesting element never do anything with it. 5. For that matter, the Pokemon World never really clicked with me. It feels painfully artificial. I get that these animals are helpful, but that doesn't explain why literally every occupation and business is a "Pokemon-Something" and why this world is so obsessed with the critters to the extent that even the one time you visit an amusement park, it's Pokemon-themed. Like yeah, in the real world, we have animals, and SOME specifically animal-themed occupations (like people who train seeing eye dogs)... and SOMETIMES we have things like movies that star dogs... but it's not *literally every movie*. If you went to the Ferris Wheel in a real Amusement Park and all the carriages were Doghouse-shaped, and there wasn't a good reason for it, you'd have questions. I could expand on this point, as it kind of is one of my main issues, but that's outside the scope of a twitter post. 6. With the games especially, it always kinda miffed me that they weren't open-world. Usually I don't have a dog in the linear-vs-nonlinear race, but Pokemon's premise most times is literally that you're playing as a blank slate player avatar whose one stated goal is to win a cockfighting league... why does that necessitate that I have to visit the cities in a specific order? It also sucks from a gameplay perspective. For example, I like Meowth, so when I played Blue I really wanted one, but since the game is linear, I have to fill my party with crap I don't care about (like Nidorino or Rattata) to hold me over until I reach that point of the game. And that's just kind of lame. Anyway, that's my rant for now.

I'm seriously almost considering just sitting out this season of Fortnite. The Sprite extraction stuff is just so terrible and drags down the game. How did Epic ever think this was a good idea?

Thanks to the youtube channels @basemntbrothers and Rndstranger I heard about a Japanese sci-fi novel series called GDleen.... unfortunately, it isn't available in English. There's probably a bunch of good Japanese stuff I can't read... a lot of mystery novelists come up too.

Normal people: worrying about AI and robots. Isaac Asimov in 1942: "Actually, let's just hardcode some ethics into their operating systems so they literally cannot choose violence." The most ignorant among us have had their lack of education weaponized against all of America. If you want to rule a people, make them police themselves.

So here's one thing I hate about social media algorithms. While I'm a nerd, I like more than one thing. Sometimes I like video games, but I have moods where I just can't stand them. So I turn to books, or black and white movies, or some new interest altogether. But algorithms can't work with this. So instead I'm bombarded with video game stuff 24/7 and that actually makes me not even want to play video games. Like, it would be nice if Youtube would take the hint and show me more booktubers, or more in the vein of whatever random subject I googled last week. Of course, even when it does, a lot of slop artists have the problem of only ever talking about a limited range of subjects. I'm known to be an animation fan but I don't think I could survive a 24-hour analysis of Looney Tunes.

For some reason, whenever I'm on social media, the algorithm keeps dishing me up videos or posts about Zelda games. This is especially weird as I don't even like Zelda, as I said before: x.com/jispylicious/status/20…

It may just be that today is one of those days where I'm just in a bad mood and I don't know why, but.... I'm starting to wonder if I should sit out this season of Fortnite, or else stick only to the alternative modes. The Sprite mechanic is just so dumb.

It's funny that Koei, a company who did a bunch of games about oriental history, also did a game about the American Revolution. It's weird that this is the only American Revolution game I've ever heard of... on consoles at least. I think I've heard of a few more on PC. Leave it to Japan to be the most American.

It turns out watching anime can be a good way to build vocabulary. For example I now instinctively know that anything with the phrase "Satsujin Jiken" in its name is probably a murder mystery.

I somehow have never seen Liberty's Kids before. I will say this... its the newest member of the "best theme songs ever" club. It gets me to thinking, they don't really make edutainment cartoons anymore, and this is also the last show I'm aware of that is about the American Revolution. youtu.be/S7qRZmHLobQ