#starhyuck

[redherringtime]

I love the narwhal <3

Aw, bonding over mindless violence. <3  I realize it’s just the lighting but it looks like Marco has heterochromia eyes in this shot and it’s neat.

Ok, I admit, I thought he really was safe kid.  I bought it.  Thanks Disney.  (I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that this is Disney)

....thanks, Disney.

[redherringtime]

Mmm, yes.  There’s that Sailor Moon wand.  Also very Card Captor Sakura.  Someone knows how to get my attention.

She appears to be a princess of some kind of fantasy land.  It may take me a while to get used to the character animation.  Those eyes are kinda creeping me out, to be completely honest.  I’m sure I’ll adjust shortly.  I felt the same way about Steven Universe when I started watching it.  

I like that little creature.  It looks like a cross between an eevee and a mareep.

Unitroll is apparently an example of An Force of Evil.  Queen Mom discourages such Vs behavior.  Past experience with princess media makes me think that Queen Mom wants Star to be more Proper and Refined.  Queen Mom seems to have some marks on her cheeks like Star but it’s hard for me to tell what they are.  Maybe teardrops or diamonds?

Karate school does not seem like the best place to go to learn how to be Proper and Refined so princess media may have failed me up to this point.  I really like her hair.  I am all about characters with ridiculous amounts of hair.

Ok, I think that’s Marcus.  His eyes creep me out slightly less than Star’s.  I wish they had some reflection in them, I’d even go for pie-eyes.  As is, they just look too vacant to me.

Ok, we have a location.  Echo Creek which is, judging from the flag, in California.  I like the glow on that giant bug monster.

This is great.  I like this a lot.

Ok, look, I told you I knew it was coming but what the heck?  (Also I apologize for the awful quality of my screenshots.  The video I’m working off of is not great because I am cheap and refuse to pay for both Netflix and Hulu.)

Ok, seems like travelling through different dimensions will be a regular thing.  What is this reminding me of?  Uh........  Bah, I don’t know.  It’ll come to me eventually.

This intro is very fast-paced for me and it’s hard to stop and comment on all the different characters that we see briefly zipping by, but Three-Eyed Casanova boy seems to have enough emphasis on him that he must be important.  He has an interesting character design but the coloration of his horns make it look like he has little fox tails sticking out of his head.

This cartoon knows what I like.  

Ok.  Important characters.  What stands out?  King Dad has a literal moon scepter.  The troll in the back has librarian glasses and is therefore very smart.  The girl in the orangey red sweater looks super nice and I want to hug her. Actually I’m guessing maybe she and the guy in the yellow shirt are Marcus’s parents?  The little bat-riding dude has a Zirconia rod (more Sailor Moon, sorry) so he’s clearly the minion of the shadowy ultimate Force of Evil.

Ok, I honestly had to go back and watch that again to actually take in the lyrics and everything together rather than focusing on different singular images.  So a couple observations.  1. I did not realize this was Disney.  How did I not know that?  2. Who sings the theme song?  It sounds familiar to me.  3.  Star, in the very brief overview of her that we get from the intro, seems like the ultimate literal manic-pixie dream girl.  I’m hoping that the show will sort of squelch that trope along the way, since it’s very stale.  4.  I am old and this is very fast-paced for me.  Hopefully my decrepit old brain can keep up!

[redherringtime]

Star Vs the Forces of Evil

I guess there’s not much to say here.  I’ve been liveblogging Homestuck for a while and I need an occasional break from it, so I intend to fill that gap with Star in order to (try to) keep more active on the blog.  All posts will be tagged Starhyuck for anyone who wants to avoid it.  Believe it or not, I have no particular attachment to Goofy but we got the ball rolling with Homehyuck so we might as well stick with it.  That’s branding. *thumbs up emoji*

What I know about Star going into it:

- There is a girl named Star with hearts on her cheeks and questionable fashion sense.

- There is a boy named Marcus (I think).

- There is some kinda floating unicorn head????

- Star has a magic wand that looks like Sailor Moon and is pretty much the sole reason I became interested in the show.

- Everyone who likes Steven Universe seems to like Star and I like Steven Universe so away we go!

[redherringtime]

Sigh.  Take Two.  Ok, I caved and signed up for a free trial of Hulu.  Hopefully I can find an alternative before it comes up but in the meantime SUBTITLES <3.

This is more like it.  Give me that classical princess media opening.  And she lives in a land called Moonie?  I mean, *cough* Mewni.  You cannot convince me that there wasn’t a good deal of Sailor Moon influence on this show.

Ok, now that I can actually see what I’m looking at, it’s obvious that Queen Mom has diamonds on her cheeks.  If King Dad has symbols then they’re covered by his very fine facial hair.  Queen Mom also has a little scepter that’s very reminiscent of Sailor Chibi Moon’s Pink Moon Rod.  Now between Sailor Moon and the prevalence of diamond imagery everywhere, I automatically assume this is some sort of matriarchal society and the Queen is the real power, but I may be deluding myself.

Side note: Her name is Star Butterfly so if we don’t see her go through a metamorphosis into something much grander than what she is currently, I will be surprised and disappointed.

Oh my.  Scorpion man may wish to consider some support garments.  

That is one grumpy looking unicorn but look, at least it has a body.  I really like the backgrounds.  They aren’t ‘take my breath away’ pretty like Steven Universe ones, but they’re very pleasing to look at.

Hey, guess who got her Sailor Moon powers when she was fourteen?  If you didn’t guess Sailor Moon then I have concerns for you.

I love the cartoon ‘fantasy’ thing of just mashing together two normal animals and calling it something new.  I tried to guess what this might be called but all I could come up with was Pigeer or Dig and those are both lame.

Look, he’s even got her pink diamond (requisite Steven Universe moment.... ok, we’re done) on his crown.  And she’s got the magic wand.  She’s clearly the one in charge here.  I like how animated Star’s voice actress is.

I am already finding myself being won over by the character animation.  It’s just so over-the-top expressive.  That didn’t take as long as I anticipated.  (Could still use eye reflections, though)

Our first magical metamorphosis and she’s even got a star and a butterfly on her wand.  Please tell me that Queen Mom is named Fleur Heart.  

[redherringtime]

Listen, she lit a rainbow on fire.  That takes talent.  

Ompa Loompa Loopidy Doo, I’ve got another riddle for you

What do you do when your kid is too wired? Wreaking havoc and lighting rainbows on fire?

Should have taught her manners when she was only two.  Now what’s a king and queen. To. Do?

~Send her to karate school~

Oh yeah, dragions.  Very nice mush up.  The carriage is also very cute.  It looks like a teapot.

These expressions are so fun. I love a cartoon that is willing to make their female characters look goofy.

The costume design is great.  I love the matching colors and the bold shapes.  I really like Star’s vest and Queen Mom’s wingaling shoulders.  I like how the shape of King Dad’s beard is reflected in the bottom of the pale part of Queen Mom’s dress and in Star’s bangs.  I really freaking want that moon scepter.

1. What makes it safer?  Less ambient magic?  2. They’re sending someone to train her, right?  It’s not just like ‘go practice over there, you’re their problem now’ 3. I really need more backstory about Mewni.

[redherringtime]

Huh, expected us to start in Fantasy Land.  Oh well.

I dig the background art.  Very nice.  I dig the variety of body shapes though I am momentarily concerned by the fact that this only seems to show large boys and the girls are all toothpicks.  It’s only one scene so I’ll hold out hope.  I love the goofy opossum.  

(Side note, I was once nearly run over by a boat at a place called Echo Lake.  I was not on the water.)

Um, wait, hang on.  We may very well be starting off running and I’m fine with that, but I want to make 100% sure that I didn’t actually get the wrong episode.

...

...

...

CRAP.

HANG ON.

[redherringtime]

A Little Change

Hey

Hi

It’s me

Niki

I know I haven’t been posting much.  I’ve been going through a lot of mental stuff lately and it’s made doing anything hard but also I think I hit a bit of a wall with Homestuck.  From what y’all have told me in the discord this is generally the place where such a thing happens.  I’m gonna work my way through it eventually, but I need time and a little distance, I think.

In the meantime, I really miss liveblogging and it occurred to me that one of the biggest challenges for me in liveblogging Homestuck is that there are no starting and stopping points. It just keeps going (and going, and going, and going) and it makes it hard for me to feel like I’ve made any actual progress, you know?  

So I’ve decided that I’d like to do something that comes in more bite-size chunks.  Specifically, I’ve been wanting to watch Star Vs. The Forces of Evil for a long time now but kept putting it off and this seems like just the sort of distraction that may help me.  Homestuck will still be the primary focus of this blog, I don’t really plan to review Star deeply or regularly, it will be more casual and really as a break to help me stay active when Homestuck is too much for me.  

If you’re following just for the Homestuck content and don’t want to be bothered with the other stuff, I understand.  I’ll be tagging it starhyuck so you can just block that.  Otherwise, thank you all for indulging me.  I plan to at least start on an episode tonight, since I’m big into some insomnia.

[redherringtime]

He’s got a wingaling eyeball on his chest just like the minion of the Ultimate Force of Evil had on his staff. 

I wonder what the motivation of the ‘bad guys’ is here. One of the things I liked about Steven Universe was that none of the ‘villains’ were evil for the sake of being evil.  They had very complex motivations and even if they were wrong they were all behaving as they thought was best.  When an evil frog pops into a dark castle surrounded by skulls it doesn’t generally indicate that much complexity of motivation, but then maybe I’m just ragging on somebody for their goth aesthetic and what kind of thoughtless jerk am I?

Wow, just throing that Nazi-esque salute out there right away, are we?

‘Bad guy is tiny’ is so overdone now that it doesn’t even warrant comment (and yet) but I gotta say that when I learned his name was Buff Frog I was immediately sent hurtling into my childhood watching He-Man with characters like Snout Spout and Snake Face.  This whole villain setup definitely has a Skeletor vibe that I can appreciate.

Is Evil Master Ludo a budgie?