B!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111oneone111!!!eleven
1. COMMENT WITH A MYSTERIOUS COMMENT OF YOUR CHOICE.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the names of five fictional characters and your thoughts on each.
Versipellis shot me with the BB Gun. (Hurr, see what I did there?)
1// Beat, the leader of the GGs in Jet Grind Radio and, um, a dude from Jet Set Radio Future. I'm gonna address both characters at once here, because I feel like it.
JGR!Beat wasn't given much in the way of a concrete personality, but there was enough for the gamer to glean some details. He was a rookie skater with an affinity for leadership and a strong sense of compassion for self-expression. What draws me to him is the fact that he's an all-around good guy, and is willing to help people who have fallen on hard times (Combo and Cube) without taking advantage of them. Granted, Combo and Cube had to prove they had what it took to roll with the GGs, but once they did, they got the GGs' full support.
JSRF!Beat...isn't so endearing. Really, he's kind of a butthole. Granted, he's given a more concrete personality than in JGR, and I like that SmileBit went further than they had in the first game, but it was a sharp diversion from the character I'd become accustomed to. (Then again, half of the characters in the game act like buttholes...) In JSRF, he's not the leader of the gang, and is in fact not even a founding member; he joins as the fifth member of the gang following Yoyo's initiation. (Yeah, I count Roboy as a proper member of the gang despite not being able to play as him until after you've cleared the game's storyline.) I mean, I like JSRF, it's not a bad game, but the upbeat atmosphere and the bright colors felt dulled, Beat's new personality reflecting as such.
Overall, while Beat's not my favorite GG, I still love the hell out of him, and it's great seeing him representing the Jet Set Radio series in Sega's crossover sports titles.
2// Billy Cranston, AKA the first blue Power Ranger. When I was a tyke, Billy was my favorite Ranger because I had a soft spot for all things geeky. Billy was "go-to guy, the man with the plan"...and then when Zeo Rangers hit and Billy retired from active Ranger duty, he became the Tin Dog of the group. >_> Still, I really loved him even when he Tin Dogged it, because he would try to outsmart his enemies rather than fight them head-on. It was great when there were Billy-centric episodes, since most of the time it revolved around the other Rangers becoming incapacitated and Billy having to fight a monster solo in order to save his friends. Hell, in one episode, Billy had to face and take down one of Lord Zedd's monsters by himself after it had grown huge; unable to form the Megazord without the other Rangers, Billy dove in with his own Zord and took the monster out by himself. (Whether that means Billy is awesome or that monster was just a pussy, I don't know, but I'll err on the side of the former ^^)
In the past few years, Adam has replaced Billy as my favorite Ranger, as Johnny Yong Bosch is both awesome and has done voice work for pretty much everything. Hell, it was Adam that returned in the episode of Operation Overdrive celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the Power Rangers series, his veteran status making him the leader of the Retro Rangers. It was pretty sweet.
Still, Billy will always have a special place in my heart.
3// Bulk, also from Power Rangers. Yes, this feels sort of like cheating, but I'm having trouble thinking of "B" characters without cutting off part of the names. Bulk (whose full name is Farcas Bulkmeier - yes, I'd go by the nickname "Bulk" too if that was my real name) started out as a typical - almost stereotypical - bully, antagonizing the Rangers with his friend and fellow bully, Skull. While largely ineffective and serving comedy relief, Bulk (and Skull) could save dull episodes by being hilarious and awesome. Hell, Bulk had the longest tenure of any character in Power Rangers, staying on the show for seven years (Skull's actor, Jason Narvy, had chosen to return to college after his sixth season).
Because the two of them were on the show for so long, they got the most character development of any character in any series to follow; although starting out as bullies who wanted to learn karate so they could beat people up and cowards who ran away at the first sign of Rita Repulsa's monsters, they really began to shine as their schtick changed from season to season. In the second season, although still bullies, the two became determined to find out the identities of the Power Rangers, and even figured it out once; unfortunately, in the process of saving the Rangers by standing up to one of Lord Zedd's monsters, Bulk and Skull's memories became scrambled and the Rangers' identities were wiped from their minds. In the third season, they became junior police officers (despite initially doing it to pick up girls), and then they became detectives the following season, progressively becoming more and more heroic while still serving as comic relief.
(One particular instance comes to mind when Bulk and Skull fight off a bunch of Cogs - the foot soldiers of the Machine Empire in the Zeo Ranger series - successfully keeping them at bay with a Three Stooges-like fighting style. They once again came through for the Rangers, saving them, and indeed Earth itself, from the Machine Empire's latest, most dastardly plan.)
Although things got a little mixed up for them in Power Rangers Turbo, the characters finally bloomed at the end of Power Rangers in Space. The Earth, having been conquered by Astronema, was in a bad state; Angel Grove in particular had been trashed up pretty good, the entire city left in shambles and its people forced to live on the streets under Astronema's rule. Things came to a head when Astronema came down to Angel Grove, demanding the Power Rangers come forward, or else she would destroy what was left of the city, killing the citizens. While the real Rangers hesitate, Farcas Bulkmeier and Eugene Skullovitch come forward, claiming that they were the Power Rangers, with the explicit purpose of saving the city. This inspires the Rangers to reveal their identities to Astronema by morphing in public; when it becomes clear that the Rangers are outnumbered and could be overwhelmed, it's Bulk who leads the citizens of Angel Grove in a charge against Astronema's forces.
Fffffffffuck I'm tearing up just thinking about how awesome he and Skull are. Dead serious here.
After that...eh, I'm not even bothering talking about Bulk in the Lost Galaxy series, since Skull wasn't there to compliment him and he was only in like seven episodes of the entire series.
4// Bill Overbeck, from Left 4 Dead. Oh man, just...super-sadface. I loved every member of the L4D1 cast, and Bill is no exception. Being a grizzled war veteran, Bill made an exemplary unofficial leader; furthermore, he, Zoey, Louis and Francis were practically a family, Bill serving as a gruff, but caring father figure to the entire group. In particular, when he and Francis start to bicker, it's the most hilarious thing in the world.
Bill is the most practical-minded of the group; when it becomes clear that the Survivors are on their own since the military and CEDA are only looking out for themselves, he's the one that decides it's best to retreat to an island in the Florida Keys, where the Infected would be unable to reach them since they can't swim (yet). He's also the only one with the foresight to steal a sailboat, as stealing a motorboat would necessitate the Survivors constantly returning to the mainland to get gas, quickly becoming a commodity thanks to most of the continental US becoming infected. And while this practicality has a negative impact with the other Survivors, Zoey in particular frustrated at Bill's insistence that they start looking out for their own, it is ultimately what saves the group.
After finding the perfect boat - loaded up with a ton of supplies and everything! - they run into a problem. The boat is locked inland, blocked by a raising bridge that has been lowered. Bill and the other Survivors manage to start some generators and raise the bridge, but they come under attack by an unusually large number of Tanks and other infected; when the bridge shorts out due to one of the generators stopping, Bill drops down onto the road and runs to restart it. It's unfortunately a one-way trip...unable to climb back up to the bridge, Bill gets incapacitated and killed by three Tanks.
:(
Thanks to Bill's sacrifice, Zoey, Francis and Louis are able to maneuver the sailboat towards the seaward side of the bridge, and successfully depart from the mainland, heading towards their island.
This is just - I can't really describe the feeling. I loved Bill, and the fact that he died canonically for the sake of his family...just, damn.
5// Bart Allen, also known as Impulse. A brief history of the character:
Born and raised about a century/a thousand years into the future (I can't remember which), Bart is the nephew of Wally West, the Flash of the eighties, nineties and early 2000s. He had been raised in a simulator, his aging process altered by the machine, causing his body to grow faster than his mind; as such, his body was that of a teenager, but his mind was that of a kid. As such, his behavior was very childlike, prone to making rash decisions and not understanding long-term implications of his actions, granting him an adorable naivete. Despite this, Bart was still a hero, and he had a heart of gold because he knew he had to do the right thing and was more or less impervious to corruption. His mentor, Max Mercury, and his teammates on Young Justice found him frustrating to work with, but he was still like a surrogate son/friend respectively.
He first came into the modern era in the early 90's DC crossover event, Zero Hour, before being subsequently wiped from existence as his future was eaten by whatever entity was destroying the future. However, when the event ended and time was restored, Impulse likewise made a comeback as a mainstay in the current DC universe.
Yes, he's also technically Kid Flash, but peeling Bart away from the Impulse identity essentially "killed" the character by sucking out all likeability, flaws, and, well, everything that made him what he was. No, the early 2000s brought about the return of the Dark Age in comic books, made popular by the early 90's, and that meant there couldn't be any light-hearted characters ever for all time. Bart, perhaps the most light-hearted of them all, was turned Dark And Serious by taking a gunshot wound to the knee. Now, I won't deny that it was a hard experience for him, since his souped-up metabolic processes would delude anesthetics before they would even take effect, and his super-speed somehow gave him a Wolverine-like healing ability because Geoff Johns is a hack, but Bart has endured worse! Why was that instance the one where he decided to "stop being so impulsive"?
Oh, right. Dark Age, heroing being srs bsnss, et cetera.
God, comic books fucking suck.
In any case, Bart has shown some return to form last I checked. He had died a few years ago, and was recently brought back to life (as is the wont of the comic book), and upon his resurrection, he began acting like, well, Impulse. Sure, he was still wearing that ugly Kid Flash uniform (because DC is currently run by people who want to get assfucked by the Silver Age), but at least he'd re-adopted all of those traits and flaws that made him so endearing. I don't know if he's still Impulsy, since I haven't bothered reading comics following the issues where he came back to life, but I have my fingers crossed.
Also, Bart isn't in the Young Justice cartoon because any writers in the contemporary DC Animated Universe can't get over themselves and think Wally West is the only Kid Flash. (And that Dick Grayson is the only Robin, despite the fact that he hasn't been since the seventies and four people have held the role of Robin since he became Nightwing. Tim Drake was Robin for two decades! What the fuck, DCAU?!) Then again, I'd rather they make Wally Kid Flash if he's going to be a serious hero.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the names of five fictional characters and your thoughts on each.
Versipellis shot me with the BB Gun. (Hurr, see what I did there?)
1// Beat, the leader of the GGs in Jet Grind Radio and, um, a dude from Jet Set Radio Future. I'm gonna address both characters at once here, because I feel like it.
JGR!Beat wasn't given much in the way of a concrete personality, but there was enough for the gamer to glean some details. He was a rookie skater with an affinity for leadership and a strong sense of compassion for self-expression. What draws me to him is the fact that he's an all-around good guy, and is willing to help people who have fallen on hard times (Combo and Cube) without taking advantage of them. Granted, Combo and Cube had to prove they had what it took to roll with the GGs, but once they did, they got the GGs' full support.
JSRF!Beat...isn't so endearing. Really, he's kind of a butthole. Granted, he's given a more concrete personality than in JGR, and I like that SmileBit went further than they had in the first game, but it was a sharp diversion from the character I'd become accustomed to. (Then again, half of the characters in the game act like buttholes...) In JSRF, he's not the leader of the gang, and is in fact not even a founding member; he joins as the fifth member of the gang following Yoyo's initiation. (Yeah, I count Roboy as a proper member of the gang despite not being able to play as him until after you've cleared the game's storyline.) I mean, I like JSRF, it's not a bad game, but the upbeat atmosphere and the bright colors felt dulled, Beat's new personality reflecting as such.
Overall, while Beat's not my favorite GG, I still love the hell out of him, and it's great seeing him representing the Jet Set Radio series in Sega's crossover sports titles.
2// Billy Cranston, AKA the first blue Power Ranger. When I was a tyke, Billy was my favorite Ranger because I had a soft spot for all things geeky. Billy was "go-to guy, the man with the plan"...and then when Zeo Rangers hit and Billy retired from active Ranger duty, he became the Tin Dog of the group. >_> Still, I really loved him even when he Tin Dogged it, because he would try to outsmart his enemies rather than fight them head-on. It was great when there were Billy-centric episodes, since most of the time it revolved around the other Rangers becoming incapacitated and Billy having to fight a monster solo in order to save his friends. Hell, in one episode, Billy had to face and take down one of Lord Zedd's monsters by himself after it had grown huge; unable to form the Megazord without the other Rangers, Billy dove in with his own Zord and took the monster out by himself. (Whether that means Billy is awesome or that monster was just a pussy, I don't know, but I'll err on the side of the former ^^)
In the past few years, Adam has replaced Billy as my favorite Ranger, as Johnny Yong Bosch is both awesome and has done voice work for pretty much everything. Hell, it was Adam that returned in the episode of Operation Overdrive celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the Power Rangers series, his veteran status making him the leader of the Retro Rangers. It was pretty sweet.
Still, Billy will always have a special place in my heart.
3// Bulk, also from Power Rangers. Yes, this feels sort of like cheating, but I'm having trouble thinking of "B" characters without cutting off part of the names. Bulk (whose full name is Farcas Bulkmeier - yes, I'd go by the nickname "Bulk" too if that was my real name) started out as a typical - almost stereotypical - bully, antagonizing the Rangers with his friend and fellow bully, Skull. While largely ineffective and serving comedy relief, Bulk (and Skull) could save dull episodes by being hilarious and awesome. Hell, Bulk had the longest tenure of any character in Power Rangers, staying on the show for seven years (Skull's actor, Jason Narvy, had chosen to return to college after his sixth season).
Because the two of them were on the show for so long, they got the most character development of any character in any series to follow; although starting out as bullies who wanted to learn karate so they could beat people up and cowards who ran away at the first sign of Rita Repulsa's monsters, they really began to shine as their schtick changed from season to season. In the second season, although still bullies, the two became determined to find out the identities of the Power Rangers, and even figured it out once; unfortunately, in the process of saving the Rangers by standing up to one of Lord Zedd's monsters, Bulk and Skull's memories became scrambled and the Rangers' identities were wiped from their minds. In the third season, they became junior police officers (despite initially doing it to pick up girls), and then they became detectives the following season, progressively becoming more and more heroic while still serving as comic relief.
(One particular instance comes to mind when Bulk and Skull fight off a bunch of Cogs - the foot soldiers of the Machine Empire in the Zeo Ranger series - successfully keeping them at bay with a Three Stooges-like fighting style. They once again came through for the Rangers, saving them, and indeed Earth itself, from the Machine Empire's latest, most dastardly plan.)
Although things got a little mixed up for them in Power Rangers Turbo, the characters finally bloomed at the end of Power Rangers in Space. The Earth, having been conquered by Astronema, was in a bad state; Angel Grove in particular had been trashed up pretty good, the entire city left in shambles and its people forced to live on the streets under Astronema's rule. Things came to a head when Astronema came down to Angel Grove, demanding the Power Rangers come forward, or else she would destroy what was left of the city, killing the citizens. While the real Rangers hesitate, Farcas Bulkmeier and Eugene Skullovitch come forward, claiming that they were the Power Rangers, with the explicit purpose of saving the city. This inspires the Rangers to reveal their identities to Astronema by morphing in public; when it becomes clear that the Rangers are outnumbered and could be overwhelmed, it's Bulk who leads the citizens of Angel Grove in a charge against Astronema's forces.
Fffffffffuck I'm tearing up just thinking about how awesome he and Skull are. Dead serious here.
After that...eh, I'm not even bothering talking about Bulk in the Lost Galaxy series, since Skull wasn't there to compliment him and he was only in like seven episodes of the entire series.
4// Bill Overbeck, from Left 4 Dead. Oh man, just...super-sadface. I loved every member of the L4D1 cast, and Bill is no exception. Being a grizzled war veteran, Bill made an exemplary unofficial leader; furthermore, he, Zoey, Louis and Francis were practically a family, Bill serving as a gruff, but caring father figure to the entire group. In particular, when he and Francis start to bicker, it's the most hilarious thing in the world.
Bill is the most practical-minded of the group; when it becomes clear that the Survivors are on their own since the military and CEDA are only looking out for themselves, he's the one that decides it's best to retreat to an island in the Florida Keys, where the Infected would be unable to reach them since they can't swim (yet). He's also the only one with the foresight to steal a sailboat, as stealing a motorboat would necessitate the Survivors constantly returning to the mainland to get gas, quickly becoming a commodity thanks to most of the continental US becoming infected. And while this practicality has a negative impact with the other Survivors, Zoey in particular frustrated at Bill's insistence that they start looking out for their own, it is ultimately what saves the group.
After finding the perfect boat - loaded up with a ton of supplies and everything! - they run into a problem. The boat is locked inland, blocked by a raising bridge that has been lowered. Bill and the other Survivors manage to start some generators and raise the bridge, but they come under attack by an unusually large number of Tanks and other infected; when the bridge shorts out due to one of the generators stopping, Bill drops down onto the road and runs to restart it. It's unfortunately a one-way trip...unable to climb back up to the bridge, Bill gets incapacitated and killed by three Tanks.
:(
Thanks to Bill's sacrifice, Zoey, Francis and Louis are able to maneuver the sailboat towards the seaward side of the bridge, and successfully depart from the mainland, heading towards their island.
This is just - I can't really describe the feeling. I loved Bill, and the fact that he died canonically for the sake of his family...just, damn.
5// Bart Allen, also known as Impulse. A brief history of the character:
Born and raised about a century/a thousand years into the future (I can't remember which), Bart is the nephew of Wally West, the Flash of the eighties, nineties and early 2000s. He had been raised in a simulator, his aging process altered by the machine, causing his body to grow faster than his mind; as such, his body was that of a teenager, but his mind was that of a kid. As such, his behavior was very childlike, prone to making rash decisions and not understanding long-term implications of his actions, granting him an adorable naivete. Despite this, Bart was still a hero, and he had a heart of gold because he knew he had to do the right thing and was more or less impervious to corruption. His mentor, Max Mercury, and his teammates on Young Justice found him frustrating to work with, but he was still like a surrogate son/friend respectively.
He first came into the modern era in the early 90's DC crossover event, Zero Hour, before being subsequently wiped from existence as his future was eaten by whatever entity was destroying the future. However, when the event ended and time was restored, Impulse likewise made a comeback as a mainstay in the current DC universe.
Yes, he's also technically Kid Flash, but peeling Bart away from the Impulse identity essentially "killed" the character by sucking out all likeability, flaws, and, well, everything that made him what he was. No, the early 2000s brought about the return of the Dark Age in comic books, made popular by the early 90's, and that meant there couldn't be any light-hearted characters ever for all time. Bart, perhaps the most light-hearted of them all, was turned Dark And Serious by taking a gunshot wound to the knee. Now, I won't deny that it was a hard experience for him, since his souped-up metabolic processes would delude anesthetics before they would even take effect, and his super-speed somehow gave him a Wolverine-like healing ability because Geoff Johns is a hack, but Bart has endured worse! Why was that instance the one where he decided to "stop being so impulsive"?
Oh, right. Dark Age, heroing being srs bsnss, et cetera.
God, comic books fucking suck.
In any case, Bart has shown some return to form last I checked. He had died a few years ago, and was recently brought back to life (as is the wont of the comic book), and upon his resurrection, he began acting like, well, Impulse. Sure, he was still wearing that ugly Kid Flash uniform (because DC is currently run by people who want to get assfucked by the Silver Age), but at least he'd re-adopted all of those traits and flaws that made him so endearing. I don't know if he's still Impulsy, since I haven't bothered reading comics following the issues where he came back to life, but I have my fingers crossed.
Also, Bart isn't in the Young Justice cartoon because any writers in the contemporary DC Animated Universe can't get over themselves and think Wally West is the only Kid Flash. (And that Dick Grayson is the only Robin, despite the fact that he hasn't been since the seventies and four people have held the role of Robin since he became Nightwing. Tim Drake was Robin for two decades! What the fuck, DCAU?!) Then again, I'd rather they make Wally Kid Flash if he's going to be a serious hero.