Author Archives: Franklin Cota

There Has Always Been a Sexy Fox Character

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Throughout the ages there have always been sexy fox characters. The first in my memory is Robin Hood from Disney’s Robin Hood. If Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships, this anthropomorphic fox launched a thousand fursuits.

I’m not a furry, but I get it

From there, there has always been a sexy fox character just hanging around. I get why it’s foxes. I mean, one of our synonyms for sexy is foxy. I just don’t fully understand it because this isn’t my thing. Now we’ve kept it going throughout this time. Next one that I can think of is Renamon.

The amount of thirsty fanart for this digimon is through the goddamn roof. I’m trying to think of why this one hit so hard when there are so many other super thirsty designs that you don’t even need to try to make creepy through fanart.

Look at this thirst trap

An honorable mention of course is Lola Bunny from the original Space Jam. This rabbit version of Natalie Dormer came out of nowhere and probably introduced a whole new generation to the world of furries.

Wait a minute… bunny and fox. Oh my God, Disney knows what they were doing.

Could that have been a variable in the creation of this movie? Is it all coincidence? Who could say. But this more mature male fox character does lead me to one of the points of creating this post. The new Star Fox designs. Now, there have been a number of designs for Star Fox from the polygonal in Star Fox 64 to the fresh young man in Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Look at this fresh young man whose ready to hit the clubs. He looks like he drives a Ferrari but it’s not because he’s having a midlife crisis. Just that he’s living life on the edge. Over the weekend, they announced the remake for the Switch 2 and showed the new designs. And the reaction has been mixed.

Okay, I don’t hate it. But a lot of people do and I think I can understand the reason why. Go back to that last picture and look at it. Young looking and fancy free. Ready to do battle in the Smash Bros tournament or whatever the hell they’re doing. This one, seems to be more mature, older. In a word, a daddy. And I think that’s why people don’t like it. As with all things we idolize the young while we disdain the old. I’d give this new Fox a mortgage. I’d demand a co-signer for young Fox’s mortgage application.

The thing is about this Fox McCloud is that he’s a daddy. And as gaming has matured with its audience so has its characters. We’ve gotten so many games about sad dads. It’s time for a sad fox dad.

Where Am I?

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I embarrassed myself a few years ago. I said to one of my lady friends who has a beautiful wife that I had just heard of this person named Chappell Roan and her wonderful music. I asked her if she had heard it and she replied “Yes, I’m married to a woman.”. It was a good burn. But it does highlight something that I never thought would happen, I am so out of the loop when it comes to music.

I thought from her sound that Chappell Roan was a cool indie artist. I didn’t realize that she was a huge pop star that everyone knew about. I was trying to come up with songs for a rock playlist and couldn’t really come up with that many. I did the whole listening to a hundred albums thing last year but I don’t remember that many songs from it. When I listen to Spotify, I keep going back to old favorites instead of finding new things.

Maybe I’m not that bad off. But the fact of the matter is that new music doesn’t excite me the way that old music did. I think a big part of it is that that music hit me at exactly that moment when I needed it. I fell in love with it. I walked with it. I took it places with me. We had a relationship. Everything since then has been a one night stand. We did our business and we both moved on.

I don’t want it to be that way but I think I can change it by listening to more music. Maybe check out some articles on Spin or Rolling Stone about up and coming bands. It could just be that I have no connection to any of these bands. When Bright Eyes was putting out the bulk of his music, I read articles about him and I was like “Oh, he’s sad just like me!”

Now that I’m on the subject of music magazines, I want to talk about Blender. Sure it had the stink of its parent company, Maxim on it, but it was a good rag nonetheless. I had a subscription but then Blender got closed down and they finished my subscription with Maxim. This was infuriating for two reasons, one its porn lite that is just like “Oh you’re not brave enough to buy Playboy.” Secondly, Maxim is/was a terrible magazine. Just the worst misogyny. It was like I ordered sushi and the chef came out and hit me with a dead fish and poured soy sauce on my head. It’s the same sentiment but completely different delivery.

The Last Man Standing in the Battle of 100 Men Vs 1 Gorilla

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He didn’t know why he agreed to this. Some kind of bravado in the moment, maybe he thought it was a joke. But then he had been picked up along with five other men. They had been driven to a warehouse. There were several dozen more men there. Not one hundred. Not yet. They were still being collected. There were cameras along the walls and ceiling. It was well lit. There were no weapons around. They would be fighting hand to fist.

He looked up and got an exact number on how many of them there were. It was a large digital counter. On one side, it said 76, the other it said 0. Eight more men were brought in and the number jumped to 84. After about an hour of waiting another 16 came in and the number was now 100.

The men were standing around, talking strategy. Psyching themselves up. They were getting ready. Some of them were stretching. A voice came over a loudspeaker.

“Attention, we have collected the 100 men. It is now time to introduce the gorilla.”

There were a pair of double doors and they swung open. The gorilla came running into the room. Loping on his enormous fists. He had seen pictures of gorillas but he had never known had big one could be. Its muscles moved under its skin and hair.

Many of the men no longer seemed confident in their abilities anymore. They moved around and shifted amongst themselves. One of them was shouting for them to rush the gorilla. That they could overwhelm him.

About twenty of them, not including the one that called for them to do so, charged. The gorilla beat his chest and roared. The first one got to the gorilla and he had his neck broken by the gorilla’s enormous fist. He fell to the ground, stricken and dead.

The rest of them didn’t make much difference. The gorilla fought them with fist, hand and fang. Soon there was so much blood that it came to his shoes. Shouts of triumph soon faded to screams of terror.

At one point, the gorilla was swinging one of the men into the others. He never tired. He never slowed. When they ran, he chased them. He looked up at the digital counter and watched as it went down to 20, then 15 and finally 1. He stood in the middle of the warehouse alone. The gorilla was punching a corpse in the corner.

When he was done, he walked towards him. The last man standing. The gorilla came with the speed of inevitability. There was no running from him. There was no fighting. They were fools to think that they could contain this force of nature. When the gorilla got to him, it clasped his head in its mighty paw.

“I’m sorry, I was a fool,” he said through his tears.

*squish*

The Saturday Night Live Midnight Matinee Crew Has Been Killing It

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I’ve always been a big fan of SNL, my housemates and I used to sit down and watch it almost every week. It’s sometimes hit or miss but there’s one skit that’s always on point. That’s the midnight matinee section, where it’s a little more high budget but never enough that it looks too good. As a fan of MST3K’s we’re barely above a public access show aesthetic, I’m a huge fan of this. I’m going to talk about a few of my favorite ones here today:

My Best Friend’s House- This one is wonderfully twisted and sold by the talent of Ariana Grande’s excellent comedy chops and vocal range. A young woman recalls the smells of her best friend’s house only to find out that the dad is a serial killer and it was all a coverup.

In a similar vein is the My Room sketch featuring Olivia Rodrigo. She sings about how great her room is only to find out that she’s in a zoo on a bug planet.

Probably my favorite one, is the Beppo sketch where John Mulaney is desperately trying to save a horrible monkey puppet named Beppo that’s in space.

I want to bring attention to these wonderful sketches even if I have to spoil them a little bit. Check them out and have a good laugh.

Batgirl: Transcending Bad Beginnings

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Once a upon a time in the world of comics, a man named Fredric Wertham wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent where he made accusations that the relationship between Robin and Batman was too gay. Mostly because the children that he spoke with that identified, though giving that it’s 50s science I’m going to take that with a grain of salt, as homosexual wanted to live like the two of them. Fellas, is it gay to want to live in extravagant wealth without financial worry? Also that they constantly saved one another, which I guess only women need to get saved. Fellas, is it gay to want to get saved?

To combat this, they created a Batwoman and Batgirl who were Kathy and Betty Kane respectively. They were to create a kind of Batman family like how Superman had his family of himself, Krypto, Lois Lane and Supergirl. They were unpopular and were dropped after only a few appearances. Batman comics started losing favor continually and then along came Batman ’66. It helped to revive Batman’s popularity but there was a problem in that they were still considered gay. Well, that shouldn’t be a problem? You had Batman flirting with Catwoman all the time. That shouldn’t be an issue! You had a beautiful woman portraying her, the wonderful Eartha Kitt. What could possibly go wrong…

Oh right… she’s a black woman. And if they can’t have gays on the TV in the sixties, you certainly couldn’t have an interracial relationship. What to do? Well, you follow Rule 63 and introduce the female version of a character. Thus, bursting from the twin foreheads of racism and homophobia comes Batgirl portrayed by the beautiful and racially acceptable Yvonne Craig.

Through her, Batgirl rose to heights of popularity where it was rumored she might be getting her own TV show at some point. They did something innovative with the character, which was having her be the daughter of commissioner Gordon. This twist was held over for when she was reintroduced in the comics along with her signature red hair.

Barbara Gordon would maintain the role for a long time until the dark ages of comics got her and she was crippled by the Joker. The years she spent as Oracle were important to the character as well. Since then through multiverse changing shenanigans she has reclaimed the title. Though I did like Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain in the role. Maybe one day I’ll sit down and talk about those two, especially the bullshit around Stephanie Brown’s death.

The thing I want to point out though is that sometimes a great character can come from anything. Including the nonsense that is homophobia and racism. While I might have had a kind of downer take on all of this, I think that it was worth it for Batgirl to be here.

She’s risen above giving Batman and Robin a case of the not gays and became a cornerstone of the franchise. When they made both Batman the animated series and The Batman, they included her as part of the core group. I can’t think of anyone who would not consider her in that role. Maybe I’m hanging out with the right comic book fans or the reality is that that’s where she deserves to be.

Character Profile: William Adama

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The character profile series is going to be me going over characters. The things I like about them, hate about them, find interesting or confusing. To start this series off I’m going to start with one of my favorites, Admiral William “Bill” Adama from Battlestar Galactica.

Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica

There’s always been the conversation of whose your favorite starship captain and it always boils down to two choices: Picard or Kirk. Well, you could be a cool kid and go with the radder third option: Adama.

Adama doesn’t have anything backing him, no Federation, no shields, no backup fleet. It’s just him, his pilots an their Vipers and the Galactica herself. The Galactica being nothing more than an upgraded aircraft carrier. Despite all of this, he’s entrusted with the safety of the remnants of humanity. All 50,000 of them, a number that steadily decreases.

He’s a man of principle and brute stubbornness at times. But he still allows his mind to be changed when he’s presented with new information. He’s also willing to listen to those around him when he takes particular lines of action that might not be the most intelligent.

When the fleet splits over the president wanting to remain at Kobold and search for the tomb of Athena, it takes his communications officer to tell him that he’s making a terrible choice. Hell, he wants to stay and fight the Cylons until Roslin has a sit down with him to tell him that that’ll get everyone killed. They end the conversation, he goes away and has a think then comes back to admit that she was right and he was wrong. It’s after the former that the two of them get on the same page and become an unstoppable tag team.

The man also believes in fairness, justice and the law. He has one of the greatest lines in history about the role of the military: ““There’s a reason we separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”

I’ve seen all kinds of captains of starships. Some of them are happy go lucky, others are reckless and wild. Adama looks like a stick in the mud in comparison. But the sternness in his nature I think is the perfect fit for this show. Those other captains can dance because they have the room to do so. Adama lives on the edge of the knife. If he messes up, that’s the ball game. He could end the entirety of the human race. He’s not the teacher you want every day but when the shit hits the fan, you’re glad he’s running your classroom.

He also passes the Han Solo test. It’s a test that they brought up in the Red Letter Media review of the prequel trilogy. That a good character is one you can describe without bringing up what their job is. Thus, Han Solo is a great character because you don’t need to know he’s a smuggler/pilot to know what kind of person he is, charming, funny, rash, loyal and secretly kind.

Adama is stern, thoughtful, quiet, honorable and stubborn. He makes his presence known without too much effort.

I think alot of this kinds from the fantastic actor that is Edward James Olmos. Also known for killing it in Stand and Deliver. I couldn’t possibly imagine anyone else in the role. Thanks to his masterful work, we also got one of the best romances of sci-fi history which I’ll cover in the Laura Roslin profile.

Adama is a great character amongst greats. He embodies everything that makes Battlestar Galactica stand the test of time. You’ll be seeing more of these show as I keep doing this series.

My Ma had a theory and I think it’s true

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I recently had to take my new feral, Rambler, to the vet for giardia. He’ll be fine, I got some meds. The thing is that I’m so used to him hissing at me when I come in, I assume that he wants to throw down. He’s been a feral for five years, so I figured he knew how to defend himself. It was rough getting him in the carrier but I got him to the vet without him making any noise.

When I got there, I told him that they were going to have to sedate him. I assumed he was going to go nuts like his brother, Pierre, who is a sweet little boy, normally. But nope, he hissed twice, didn’t even swipe at the vet and then they were able to work on him.

My mother had brought this up a few days ago that she thinks that cats’ personalities switch when they get to the vet. Her tough guy cat, Killer turned into a big baby and was scared. Boo was a sweet cat but used to fight.

So, my readers if you’ve noticed that your cats’ personalities change when they got to the vet. Leave a comment while I leave you with pictures of my boys.

Rambler
Pierre

I Gave the Deck of Many Things Early… Two Years Later

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I run a DND game with some of the best people that I know. One of the things that I did was give the Deck of Many Things to one my players very early. We’re talking around level 6. She has pulled all but three cards. You would think that that would be a mistake but it has been great so far. At least by my estimates.

I want to tell you how some of the cards has played out and my thoughts on it.

Balance(Your mind suffers a wrenching alteration, causing your alignment to change. Lawful becomes chaotic, good becomes evil, and vice versa. If you are true neutral or unaligned, this card has no effect on you.)– The PC is a dark moody person. This turned them into a happy go lucky and joyful cheerleader type. She used her previously pulled wish card to get rid of this because she hated it so much. This only lasted like two sessions but the player made it really fun.

Skull(You summon an avatar of death-a ghostly humanoid skeleton clad in a tattered black robe and carrying a spectral scythe. It appears in a space of the DM’s choice within 10 feet of you and attacks you, warning all others that you must win the battle alone. The avatar fights until you die or it drops to 0 hit points, whereupon it disappears. If anyone tries to help you, the helper summons its own avatar of death. A creature slain by an avatar of death can’t be restored to life.)- She pulled this card in the middle of a town that they just arrived at. Everyone was horrified but then she one-shotted the devil that appeared. The kind of problem with this card is that the devil that’s summoned isn’t that hard.

Knight(You gain the service of a 4th-level fighter who appears in a space you choose within 30 feet of you. The fighter is of the same race as you and serves you loyally until death, believing the fates have drawn him or her to you. You control this character.)- This spawned a fighter to protect her that she named Bart. I decided that Bart was the same age as her Shadar-Kai character so several hundred years old. He had an existential crisis about being that old physically but not having a childhood. It has led to a lot of fun conversations about personhood and consent. He has also become a character of his own, whom I play. I try to balance him well, you don’t want him to do too much where you’re just playing with yourself but he’s good at making suggestions to keep them on track.

Rogue(A nonplayer character of the DM’s choice becomes hostile toward you. The identity of your new enemy isn’t known until the NPC or someone else reveals it. Nothing less than a wish spell or divine intervention can end the NPC’s hostility toward you.)- The player’s husband plays a circle of wildfire druid who has a little pet squirrel. Guess who turned against the player that pulled this card? I waited for him to cast a spell and had the squirrel attack her instead. Now the squirrel has to roll to resist the want to attack her instead of the target. This has led to so much humor though it’s still kind of new.

All in all, I don’t think that these things or any of the subsequent other pulls have broken the game. I think that it’s okay to give it to them early but you have to check the temperature of the room. I trust the people that I sit at the table with. That they want to have as good a time as I do.