Linkara's views on Comic Book Death are as so: It should not be done at the top of a hat. Every character has limitless potential in the hands of a good writer, and it's pointless to kill a character only to resurrect them when someone else realizes that potential.
The angriest that I've ever seen him was when Cry For Justice killed off a little girl, the daughter of Arsenal (formerly Speedy, Green Arrow's plucky sidekick), as she, a civilian, was unlikely to be resurrected by Comic Book Magicks, and her death was simply a bit of extra salt in the wound, to give the destruction of a city meaning. Arguably, that's the worst kind of comic book death; that's what gets women stuffed in refrigerators.
I have no great love for what Linkara has become, largely because he's become more vitriolic as time goes by, and I doubt that he's particularly skilled in his field (I believe his importance is due mostly to the dearth of others in his genre), but I agree on him on that point.
I do, too, actually. I don't like killing off characters in my longer work for precisely that reason.
I actually really liked Linkara at one point (a lot of my posts on TVT c. 2010-2011 referenced him), but I eventually did get sick of him, mainly because it seemed like he was more and more out of his element as time went on. That and if you want to make a Doctor Who/Power Rangers crossover show, make another series for it...don't shoehorn your fanfiction into the reviews! (Okay, so the Mechakara arc wasn't so bad, but it got way too self-indulgent later on, and this is amongst a group of performers where hammy self-indulgence is part of the charm...)
And yeah, Todd did seem awfully bitter this time around, especially considering most of the songs he disliked weren't really all that horrible except maybe that Lil' Wayne song. Lame and uninspired, sure, but not horrible.
Pure, spleen-venting anger is something most of the shows on TGWTG don't jive well with, or at least it seems that way to me because most of them are supposed to be goofy comedies. The kind of bemused, jaded annoyance Todd usually does works well, and even the NC's Daffy Duck moments usually do well in context. But someone actually being pissed about something seems more like it should be in the OOC video blogs or What the Fuck is Wrong With You?
^^ Again, when you review or discuss something, your thoughts on the subject are supposed to be the important part, not the accoutrements.
In fairness, boredom is a more frustrating emotion than offence much of the time. That song was legitimately offensive, and no doubt should have ranked higher for that, but as a reviewer, that at least gives you something to talk about.
Then again, I think that most of the anger comes from his being someone that actually likes pop music and enjoys reviewing it. Having little good to say about something that you generally appreciate or at least can talk about in detail must be extremely annoying, if not outright upsetting.
But then again, this year in music in general was pretty good. Just not really for pop.
That's... definitely not the case. If anything he strikes me as a so-called "poptimist" that happens to like rock music and dislike the whole post-Guetta pop-EDM thing, the latter of which he admits is coloured by overexposure to bad happy hardcore in the late '90s.
yeezus was a good fun time. hasn't gotten more than a few spins tho
also i never did see My Name Is My Name at target
that disappointed me
also that's like only 4 albums, just sayin
yeah but that's just ones I thought of immediately, and I deliberately didn't include a couple I didn't like (like RAM and Nothing Was The Same) because I'm just kind of sick of thinking about them.
You know, it's weird: The 20/20 Experience feels like a 2012 album to me. I had to look it up to confirm in my mind that it came out in March rather than December. It seems so long ago.
I will confess that I don't have my ear to the ground in the way that some people here do, though. I just hear things passively. The thing is that little I heard passively made me go, "Huh, I actually like this a lot!"
Including Soulja on "We Made It" turned out to be one of the savviest tricks Drake has ever pulled. The song is a testament to overcoming and unabashedly flaunting your success much to the chagrin of nonbelievers. Rub that shit in the naysayers faces like apricot scrub—it's good for them. Soulja Boy is the main reason this song is so delightful. The chorus and beat are anthemic, sure, but, the highlight is Soulja interrupting Drake's verse to inform us, "Damn, Soulja Boy stunt on them haters."
He sounds taken aback by his own actions, as if he can't believe the ferocity and malice with which is he able to stunt on them h8rz. But, much like Whitney Houston, Soulja Boy simply doesn't know his own strength, for he has stunted on them h8rz for so long that at this point it basically happens subconsciously. Stunting pulses through Soulja's body—it lives deep within his sinew.
We aren't here to argue Soulja's talent (limitless and diverse) or his place in the current landscape of rap (he is a legend). We're not saying Soulja Boy is a better rapper than Pimp C because he has crashed two Bentleys, while Pimp C has only crashed one, however compelling that evidence may be. We are here to document DeAndre Way's steadfast commitment to stunting on them h8rz through his actions and laboriously put together outfits. Perhaps, we could all learn a thing or two from the master.
yeezus was a good fun time. hasn't gotten more than a few spins tho
also i never did see My Name Is My Name at target
that disappointed me
also that's like only 4 albums, just sayin
yeah but that's just ones I thought of immediately, and I deliberately didn't include a couple I didn't like (like RAM and Nothing Was The Same) because I'm just kind of sick of thinking about them.
i'd say that kind of undermines your point, although i didn't think either of those were bad
i'd even go so far as to say RAM was pretty good, although i understand if people were disappointed by it
You know, it's weird: The 20/20 Experience feels like a 2012 album to me. I had to look it up to confirm in my mind that it came out in March rather than December. It seems so long ago.
I will confess that I don't have my ear to the ground in the way that some people here do, though. I just hear things passively. The thing is that little I heard passively made me go, "Huh, I actually like this a lot!"
i'm the same, honestly
but i didn't notice any particular decline in music quality last year
yeezus was a good fun time. hasn't gotten more than a few spins tho
also i never did see My Name Is My Name at target
that disappointed me
also that's like only 4 albums, just sayin
yeah but that's just ones I thought of immediately, and I deliberately didn't include a couple I didn't like (like RAM and Nothing Was The Same) because I'm just kind of sick of thinking about them.
Including Soulja on "We Made It" turned out to be one of the savviest tricks Drake has ever pulled. The song is a testament to overcoming and unabashedly flaunting your success much to the chagrin of nonbelievers. Rub that shit in the naysayers faces like apricot scrub—it's good for them. Soulja Boy is the main reason this song is so delightful. The chorus and beat are anthemic, sure, but, the highlight is Soulja interrupting Drake's verse to inform us, "Damn, Soulja Boy stunt on them haters."
He sounds taken aback by his own actions, as if he can't believe the ferocity and malice with which is he able to stunt on them h8rz. But, much like Whitney Houston, Soulja Boy simply doesn't know his own strength, for he has stunted on them h8rz for so long that at this point it basically happens subconsciously. Stunting pulses through Soulja's body—it lives deep within his sinew.
We aren't here to argue Soulja's talent (limitless and diverse) or his place in the current landscape of rap (he is a legend). We're not saying Soulja Boy is a better rapper than Pimp C because he has crashed two Bentleys, while Pimp C has only crashed one, however compelling that evidence may be. We are here to document DeAndre Way's steadfast commitment to stunting on them h8rz through his actions and laboriously put together outfits. Perhaps, we could all learn a thing or two from the master.
yeezus was a good fun time. hasn't gotten more than a few spins tho
also i never did see My Name Is My Name at target
that disappointed me
also that's like only 4 albums, just sayin
yeah but that's just ones I thought of immediately, and I deliberately didn't include a couple I didn't like (like RAM and Nothing Was The Same) because I'm just kind of sick of thinking about them.
*gestures frantically and shamelessly towards own post above*
Yeah, sorry about that.
Maybe I'm more willing to say that I found pop music unusually blah last year because I feel like the potential for subversive things to slither into the mainstream that was there to my mind the year before felt curtailed. I mean, consider the fact that Death Grips' third album received something on the order of five million free downloads after they leaked it onto BitTorrent. That album is shockingly abrasive, and yet...
I felt like the mainstream was going to actually start to get odder. But now I feel like things have come to an impasse.
*gestures frantically and shamelessly towards own post above*
Yeah, sorry about that.
Maybe I'm more willing to say that I found pop music unusually blah last year because I feel like the potential for subversive things to slither into the mainstream that was there to my mind the year before felt curtailed. I mean, consider the fact that Death Grips' third album received something on the order of five million free downloads after they leaked it onto BitTorrent. That album is shockingly abrasive, and yet...
I felt like the mainstream was going to actually start to get odder. But now I feel like things have come to an impasse.
^ Yes.
well you probably know by now that I wouldn't find that a good thing anyway, so whatever I suppose.
well you probably know by now that I wouldn't find that a good thing anyway, so whatever I suppose.
I didn't mean uglier; I meant less tame. That can mean more structurally or musically adventurous, more lyrically sophisticated, more sonically diverse, anything. What is the new normal? There has been no shift in paradigm save for the introduction of some faux-earnest folk-pop types, the proliferation of trap-rave inanity, and a slight up-tick in French house and disco references.
Yeah, I was feeling pretty optimistic about the possibility of a Nirvana-esque revolution in pop music a year or so ago too. It's a shame to see that's all slipped away now.
well you probably know by now that I wouldn't find that a good thing anyway, so whatever I suppose.
I didn't mean uglier; I meant less tame. That can mean more structurally or musically adventurous, more lyrically sophisticated, more sonically diverse, anything. What is the new normal? There has been no shift in paradigm save for the introduction of some faux-earnest folk-pop types, the proliferation of trap-rave inanity, and a slight up-tick in French house and disco references.
Yeah, I was feeling pretty optimistic about the possibility of a Nirvana-esque revolution in pop music a year or so ago too. It's a shame to see that's all slipped away now.
I don't think that it necessarily is a lost cause, but this lull is deeply frustrating.
Then again, while Nirvana did flip the proverbial table, what came of that? I mean, it killed the worst excesses of the late '80s, but it also lead to a wave of terrible post-grunge and nu-metal acts.
One was "Smells Like Teenage Spirit" (duh) and the other one was something Kurt Cobain did live with members of some other band called like, The Meat Brothers, I think.
yeah, I knew someone would jump on me for using that term - I should've been clearer, in retrospect.
Assessments of their quality aside (I'm not huge on them myself, although I do like a couple of their songs) it is undeniable that they ushered in an era where weirder stuff had a chance at making the charts, at least for a while.
Comments
i dislike how in TV shows character death generally only happens in season finales; always struck me as a bit trite and predictable
And yeah, Todd did seem awfully bitter this time around, especially considering most of the songs he disliked weren't really all that horrible except maybe that Lil' Wayne song. Lame and uninspired, sure, but not horrible.
*does not watch TitS*
i was just going by what people said the last time he was brought up here; a bunch of people described him as a rockist
Granted the latter two are technically just rap albums that were also pop in the cultural sense, but "pop music" has never not been a nebulous term.
and every other popular music genre except certain rock genres where the fans get snooty about them being called 'pop', e.g. metal
i don't think 2013 was a bad year for pop
i'd even go so far as to say RAM was pretty good, although i understand if people were disappointed by it
but i didn't notice any particular decline in music quality last year
the Youtube ads I get continue to get weirder.
i guess again, i tend to lump more abrasive music under pop so long as it's popular
i don't tend to care what gets into the charts, so much
like, a whole lot
One was "Smells Like Teenage Spirit" (duh) and the other one was something Kurt Cobain did live with members of some other band called like, The Meat Brothers, I think.
All Apologies is good too