Maroyasha

Andor Appreciation Day 2 - Everyone Has Their Own Rebellion

1) they reproduce asexually and the children are clones of each parent OR

2) Kermit and Miss Piggy are members of the same sexually dimorphic species, hence the split between their male and female children

In which Captain Amelia (left), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic cat, had hybrid babies with Doctor Doppler (middle), an extra terrestrial anthropomorphic dog, whom also gave birth to the babies

So, Glumshoe and @sailor-lady asked if there was a ritual where they invited a hand to animate their children.

Muppet Babies is canon.

and i dont see any fucking hands.

The muppets are a form of life, perhaps not quite like our own, but one with its own orders and genuses and the like. Robin goes from tadpole to frog stage on Muppet Babies, after all, that’s a biological life process. Note that muppets keep sewing/stitching/hand jokes to a minimum, that’s because they aren’t puppets, they just resemble them. 

The hand-thing presumes muppets work like toons from Roger Rabbit or toys from Toy Story, where they’re made by people an incarnated. I propose they are like Pokemon, a separate, parallel classification of life that exists alongside what we would call natural life. As with Pokemon, these lifeforms are not the result of a parallel evolution. Rather, their various kinds were created by some manner of God. We know these exist in the Muppet canon, as Big Bird argued the Egyptian Pantheon into letting a child ghost into the afterlife that one time. 

Personally, as the essence of being a muppet is your greatest motivation being your greatest weakness, I blame the demiurge. 

But you can blame Gonzo’s people or the aholes that are made of a Skexis and a Mystic, but not the Goblin King (he is a rogue memetic construct, what some might wrongly label a ‘tulpa’).  It’s also possible they crossed over from the Gorg world. (but that does not preclude them from also being the creations of the demiurge)

This is not to say that muppets are inherently magic, any more than say, a hobbit or a goblin is “magic” in Lord of the Rings. They are simply created beings that thereafter reproduce after their own kind. Emmit Otter and his Ma, the fact that “Monster” and “grouch” are explicitly races in Sesame Street, etc. 

Now, I hear you saying, “but [email protected], you handsome madman, we just pointed out that Fozzie and Kermit have a green half-bear/half-frog father!”

Yes. In a movie.

Because the Muppets are actors. 

Muppets (the order of life) and the Muppets (the comedy/acting troupe), are different things. The former contains the latter but the latter does not contain all of the former. In essence, Kermit named his endeavor “The People’s Theater”. 

Breaks down like this: You have our, real world universe. Within that is nested a universe that is much like ours, except it is sillier, and Muppets are creatures and not special effects. Within that are nested the fictional worlds of all the various muppet productions. 

For further proof, I present these bloopers from Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas:

It is uncertain how much of the Muppet ouvre is canonical ‘behind the scenes’ and how much is constructed entertainment provided by the Muppet organization, because of one deep wrinkle we haven’t touched on…

Kayfabe.

Kermit is hard-core about Kayfabe. He comes from a Vaudeville theater background, the 4th wall does not exist in his performance ethos, the show must go on, and the rubes getting a peek behind the curtain doesn’t get you off that hook.

All your Muppet-troupe core performers stick close to this ethos, ensuring you can never be quite certain on what level of reality the scene you’re being presented with is intended to be.Any specific example that conflicts with the others cannot be shown not to just be another straight-faced performance. 

It’s not an unreliable narrator, everyone is unreliable, from the producer on down to the go-fer.

Don’t blame me, blame the Demiurge.

I’m not talking simple, one-level Wrasslin’ type kayfabe. Shamus can’t be used as evidence, because we don’t know how the levels of Kayfabe align. This is also true of arguments that Walter is Jason Segal’s cousin outside the film-verse. 

Breaks down like this:

Shamus is a character within the Wrassleverse. In this universe, he has been presented as Beaker’s cousin. In the next level of reality up, Shamus is a professional wrestler playing a role wherein Beaker is his cousin.

But we don’t know if that universe is the one where the Muppets are sapient creatures who are actors, or if it is the reality where they are puppets performed by actors. Remember Emmit Otter and his ma. 

Are we seeing one man perform kayfabe, or are we seeing two?

The answer cannot be locked down, because the essence of Muppet is the futile struggle of Sisyphus by way of Willy Loman, with a chaser of “No Exit.” Never succeeding, never failing enough to invalidate the effort. This is why I blame the demiurge.

We all have our burgers boulders to heft.

Inconclusive.

There are Muppet “humans” in the same sense that there are muppet dogs (both sapient and otherwise). Dave the human is no more an issue than the Swedish Chef or Statler and Waldorf. (If the Animal Show can be considered a part of this)

The Muppets, with Walter, is just like all the other muppet movies, the conceit is that these are productions starring muppets (the creatures) put on by the Muppets (the acting troupe/production company). As stated above, in-our-universe promotionals present Segal and Walter as cousins, as opposed to brothers in the film. However, that’s still got Kermit’s hand on it, so we don’t now if that can be taken at face value.

And lets diagram out the Shamus problem. We’ve got the following possibilities, and no way of telling them apart, except for the last one, which is out of bounds for the nature of the exercise:

Wrasslin and Muppets are both real. - Beaker and Shamus are cousins, whether by blood or marriage unknown, though blood is implied.

Muppets are fake in a world where Wrasslin’ is real. - Shamus is the character, but Beaker’s still being worked as a puppet as part of a cross-promotion tie-in.

Muppets are real in a world where Wrasslin’ is fake. - Both Shamus and Beaker are Actors.

Both Muppets and Wrasslin’ are Fake - Presumed state of our universe.

Ghost Pokemon - Halloween 2023

I'm doing some tinkering on Fauxstalgia stuff, and since I believe in sharing resources, here's an RGB PNG version of the official DC pantone guide, with the swatches re-sampled from current pantone standards. This set is from 1982, but should be generally believable for most stuff post-WWII.

The versions floating around online (two of which are under the fold) are scans of prints and are not accurate for color-picking.

Now, these colors would also be altered by the printing process, but for clean, pre-print versions, here's some authenticity.

Affirmation for writers, please!!

and every time i bring up my cherished dream of Moose Football, someone says, ‘wait, like the coliseum? why wouldn’t you use lions?’

and i have to explain that lions wouldn’t fight anyone if you dumped them on a football field. one male lion versus two teams of beefy human men? it would be animal abuse, the lion would be stressed to death after like one game. lions are either cooperative or ambush hunters. you could not keep a lion healthy if you were regularly exposing it to football players. tigers are even worse, they won’t attack anything from the front, drawing eyeballs on a cow’s butt is enough to get them to back off. big cats have to fight something to death for every meal for their whole adult lives and their life ends once they start losing those fights. so they pick their battles really carefully.

a moose, though. a bull moose is not exactly full of bloodlust, but he’s big and he’s confident and he could tear through a football team without breaking a sweat, and he knows it. football moose could be a thing, easy.

the other thing is that i think sports teams should all have their own moose and it comes with them when they do away games. like, wherever the game is being played, the visiting team brings the moose. i think that would probably make it interesting, strategically, for people who care about that kind of thing. it would be in a team’s best interest to bring along the biggest, meanest, healthiest motherfucker they can possibly manage. if the moose likes them, great! if the moose doesn’t like anyone, that’s also fine, at least they know this moose’s particular moves. i know teams trade players around a lot, so that could also be something for people who like football to talk about boringly at work when i’m trying to eat lunch. who’s the new guy on that team? is he any good? and how’s he doing with the moose?

I couldn’t resist this. The idea of space sirens and starmaids just make me want to grab pen and paper instantly. So, this is how I enjoyed my free Sunday. <3 My thanks for @quietpinetrees for the wonderful inspiration.

You are not writing a movie (ignore this if you are). The reader doesn't need to know every word the characters say for the duration of the story. Less is more.

Dialogue can happen within the prose. "And they awkwardky discussed the weather for five minutes" is way better than actually writing five pages of dialogue about the weather.

Balance your dialogues. Surprise yourself with a monosyllabic answe to a dialogue that's ten sentences long. Don't be afraid of letting your character use half a page for a reply or nothing at all!

Don't write accents phonetically, use slang and colloquialisms if needed.

Comma before "said" and no caps after "!?" unless it's an action tag. Study dialogue punctuation.

Learn the difference between action tags and dialogue tags. Then, use them interchangeably (or none at all).

Don't be afraid to use said. Use said if characters are just saying things, use another word if not. Simple. There's no need to use fancy synonyms unless absolutely necessary.

Not everyone talks the same way so it makes sense for your characters to use certain words more often than others. Think of someone who says "like" to start every sentence or someone who talks really slow. Be creative.

Use prose to slow down the pace during a conversation.

Right now it's a victim of DNS (Domain Name Service) spoofing. This means that a malicious party is trying to steal traffic from FFn by purchasing a very similar domain.

Correction:

The new "fake" site that people are seeing still belongs to FanFiction.net—they just misconfigured their servers and are not redirecting traffic from the bare fanfiction.net to the main site at www.fanfiction.net. There is likely no malicious agent. Didn't mean to scare anyone! Just wanted to let people know the site wasn't deleted!

So if you want to read fanfiction and not see leaves, you have have to type out "www.fanfiction.net".

Friends -- this is what fanfiction.net's front page looks like right now.

@beautifulfic advises (and I can confirm, I just checked it) that the mobile version of the site, m.fanfiction.net, appears still to be up. STRONGLY suggest that if you have material there that's not preserved elsewhere, you go in via the mobile gateway and archive it NOW.

Please reblog so others can take action.

ETA: @mylittleredgirl advises that if you attach “www.” to the front of the URL, the site displays correctly. But this is still concerning, and suggests somebody’s either monkeying around with their .htaccess file—a fairly important piece of under-the-hood "equipment" for a website—or has possibly misconfigured the site in some other way.