Category Archives: Other Media

My Thoughts on Regular Show, Season by Season (Part 4 of 4)

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

This is it, guys. The final installment of my ultra-ambitious and long-winded project analyzing Regular Show. With a whopping four blog posts written over the course of nearly two months, covering about a quarter of the show’s 200-odd episodes and nearly forgetting the movie, this is a project that I’ll look back on for years and say, “wow, this was pretty modest compared to my MLP episode reviews”. Speaking of that project, my next MLP post will probably come out a week from now; I skipped out on it this week in favor of finishing my Regular Show review.

I scrambled to write this entire post in the last three days of September 2022 because I wanted to stick to my promise, and I hope it was worth it! Now let’s begin with the movie.

The Movie: I Almost Didn’t Cover This One

This is for you, commenter on my last Regular Show post.

Regular Show: The Movie isn’t on Hulu as of this writing like the rest of the show, so instead of digging up legal ways to watch it, I settled upon one of those janky episode mirror websites with weird domain names, which is my reluctant fallback for watching episodes of TV shows. Taking place between seasons 6 and 7, the movie’s plot revolves around time travel and Mordecai and Rigby’s difficult friendship. It shows us an alternate future where they are no longer friends and expands on their past by showing us their high school lives. The villain throughout the movie is their science teacher Mr. Ross, who in typical Regular Show fashion wants vengeance for something extremely petty: Rigby ruining his volleyball match. Also in Regular Show fashion, Ross’s desire for vengeance burns so fiercely that he does something surreal, which is building a time machine so he can change the past and destroy the universe with a time-nado—one that was wrongly presumed to be his troublemaking students’ fault.

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My Thoughts on Regular Show, Season by Season (Part 3 of 4)

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Sorry this post took so long! I wrote it at a leisurely pace and intermittently worked on MLP episode reviews too, plus real life stuff. The good thing is that my next Regular Show blog post will be my last one, whenever that comes out. It may take a little while though!

Season 6: Mordecai’s Love Life Falls Apart

It’s always thrown me off that Mordecai’s mother has the exact same voice as Leela from Futurama.

Due to CJ’s presence, Maxin’ and Relaxin’ (6.01) may seem like yet another season premiere focused on Mordecai’s love life, but I view it more as a classic tale of learning to respect your mildly embarrassing but deeply loving parents. I really like that the show takes some time to expand on both Mordecai and Rigby’s relationships with their parents and give depth to their childhoods. Their childhoods are explored further in the movie, which I originally wasn’t going to cover but then decided to review in the next post. Mordecai’s mother seems like an archetypical embarrassing mother, but this whole time CJ finds her perfectly cool and nice, reminding us there’s more to her than just that. Towards the end, the ghosts of Mordecai’s awkward childhood memories remind him of all the nice things his mother did for him after each memory, which leads him to shed his characteristic Mordecai awkwardness and apologize. Rigby’s relationship with his parents is much more difficult, as we’ll see in season 7.

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My Thoughts on Regular Show, Season by Season (Part 2 of 4)

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Remember when I said I would make three blog posts reviewing Regular Show? Yeah, so… that number kind of just bumped up to four. The reason why is because I was slower with writing this post than expected and didn’t want to drag ass for too long. This post goes over seasons 4-5, part 3 will go over seasons 6-7, and part 4 will go over season 8.

To be fair, seasons 1 and 2 combined are the same length as most other seasons: 40 ten-minute episodes. So this post covers about the same amount of content as part 1, just with more text.

Season 4: Introducing Thomas

I’ll never forget how incredibly hyped I was when watching this episode’s premiere.

The first two-part episode of the show other than Terror Tales of the Park, Exit 9B (4.01-02) is one hell of a strong start for season 4. It features all the park members besides Mordecai and Rigby having their jobs switched and memories erased, and a huge showdown of the park crew against every single villain we’ve seen in the first three seasons, all led by the vengeful son of the guy whose high score Mordecai and Rigby had beaten. The episode is full of hype all the way through and raises the bar for how dramatic this show is willing to get. In the end, the day is saved by a new addition to the cast: the park’s intern named Thomas. When a show adds a new character to its main cast, the character will usually be divisive, and Thomas is no exception.

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My Thoughts on Regular Show, Season by Season (Part 1 of 4)

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

For those who don’t know, Regular Show is an eight-season Cartoon Network show directed by J.G. Quintel that ran from 2010 to 2017. In short, it’s about a bunch of guys who work at a park and get into mishaps that lead to surreal adventures. But there’s much more to Regular Show than that, and in this three-part blog post series, I want to review this show and give it the justice it deserves. This post goes over seasons 1-3; the next two will go through seasons 4-6 and 7-8 respectively.

EDIT: Change of plans, this is now going to be a four-part blog post series. The next three posts will go over seasons 4-5, 6-7, and 8 respectively.

Regular Show is a show that I have a long history with. I remember the day I first watched it in I want to say January 2011, on the old tiny TV in my parents’ bedroom when I was home alone, and it didn’t take me long to get hooked and follow almost every episode live from season 2 through 5, then inconsistently in season 6. As much as I enjoyed the show, I eventually stopped following it for a good while as my parents got rid of our cable TV in favor of streaming services. That didn’t stop me from watching episodes on unofficial mirrors online, which I did several times from 2016 to 2019, but I never quite finished the show. Eventually, over the course of the past month, I binged the entire show on TV with my family Hulu subscription until I watched the final episode on August 10, 2022.

Given that it took me over a decade between first watching and finishing Regular Show, and that it had a fair amount of influence on my life—my main Internet username before my current one was WikiRigbyDude—I think it’s only right to talk about this show on my blog. But don’t worry, I won’t make a lengthy ambitious post series analyzing every episode. Instead, I’ll talk about the show season by season in three blog posts, and discuss various episodes along the way that I think are highlights. Unlike a certain show involving horses, most Regular Show episodes are only ten minutes each, meaning there’s usually not that much to say about each one.

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The Obligatory Psycholonials Review Post

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The title screen of Psycholonials, put for the sake of having at least one image in this post.

If you don’t know what Psycholonials is, it’s a visual novel released sequentially in February through April 2021 by Andrew Hussie, the creator of the legendary webcomic Problem Sleuth.

… what, are you telling me that there’s another webcomic Hussie wrote after Problem Sleuth that’s much more famous? OK, fine, I’ll drop the act. I’ve accepted long ago that I can never escape Homestuck and that it’ll always be with me, as the visual novel reminds readers near the start. This review will contain spoilers for Psycholonials, so read at your own risk!

Comparison to Homestuck

Where do I begin with Psycholonials? It’s the first work of fiction written entirely by Andrew Hussie since Homestuck ended in 2016, and it’s far shorter than Homestuck, which I find relieving. Not because I didn’t enjoy Psycholonials—quite the opposite! It’s more that Hussie intended for Homestuck to run for only a year at first, and it spiraled WAY out of control as he expanded Homestuck and started various side projects related to it, making the comic instead run for seven years. Hussie had long promised Homestuck to be merely a precursor to later works to come, and with Psycholonials, he’s fulfilling that promise at long last.

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How K-ON! Personally Connected to Me (and is also the absolute best thing to ever exist)

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Best girl, I love her so much.

The time has finally come for me to write a full-out blog post about what is arguably the best work of media I have ever consumed: a glorious anime called K-ON! I absolutely love literally everything about that show—the music, the nostalgic atmosphere, the sense of humor, the EXTREMELY PRECIOUS AND CUTE girls, but most of all, the connections and nostalgia it gave me for middle school and early high school.

People aggressively recommended K-ON! to me after I watched Love Live! School idol project due to extreme summer boredom, claiming it to be—and I may be paraphrasing here—”love live but actually good”. When I finally watched the first episode of K-ON! on my 20th birthday (which also by EXTREME luck was the 10th anniversary of the show’s premiere, like holy shit how can I be so lucky), I immediately saw what they meant. The season 1 OP blew me away when I first heard it and made me know I was in for a wild ride. A wild ride of humor, endearing girls, and being far more enjoyable than that other anime which I won’t talk much about from here on out, because while I’d be glad to do a full comparison between those two shows, I’d like this post to be just about K-ON! by itself. I’ll just say Nico Yazawa is kind of an amazing character and leave it at that.

Season 1 (13 episodes) was pretty fun, but the show started to go way above and beyond for me in season 2 (26 episodes) as I took more time to think about its implications and realized that watching K-ON! is a lot like re-experiencing middle school, a time I am extremely nostalgic for. Middle school was three years for me, the last of which felt the longest by far; season 2 of K-ON! is similarly two thirds of the show and takes place entirely during the girls’ third year, with a lengthy and extremely emotional lead-up to the graduation. I also started to heavily identify with the lead girl, an impossibly adorable dorky bundle of joy named Yui Hirasawa, and some other characters started to sort of remind me of specific friends from middle school which is pretty crazy.

I kind of get dazzly whenever I think about this absolutely wonderful anime and I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job putting all my thoughts into words. Maybe I’ll be able to write out these thoughts better if I go on a character-by-character basis. I’ll start with the five band members ranked from favorite to least favorite, then do the other major characters. Do note that I love every character in the show, just that there’s some that did something special for me more than others. To add some visual spice, my sections on each character will be accompanied by my own personal Artist’s Interpretation of them.

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Why SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS is a fantastic video (Followup Post)

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Why is “Star Light Zone” all green and gray? The answer isn’t quite what you think.

This post is a followup to a blog post I made from last year, reviewing hbomberguy’s video “SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS“.

Last night, I was in bed thinking about another Sonic related video that’s more grounded in reality and how it ties in to hbomb’s overanalysis of Sonic the Hedgehog (the first game). That video is “Square Trees?!” – A Critique of Sonic Art Styles Throughout the Series” by Triple-Q; I had seen it before watching SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS.

The section of Square Trees that relates to SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS is that on Sonic 1, starting from this timestamp. At that point, Q discusses how every zone after Green Hill looks kind of boring and monochrome. When I first saw that video, the point in that section that struck me the most was the description of Star Light Zone (shown above), whose name would suggest something awesome and spacey but is instead murky green and gray.

The most logical thing to deduce from this simplistic zone design is that the developers didn’t put too much thought into designing the levels. This is especially clear when you compare it to the next few classic Sonic games. Sonic 2, CD, and 3&K all have delightful level design; Sonic 2’s Chemical Plant Zone is one of the best designed levels in any video game I have ever played, if not the best. Many zones in the next few share similar elements to Sonic 1’s but look a lot more lively and colorful, or just have much more of their own personalities. CD’s Tidal Tempest is a version of Labyrinth that doesn’t look like ass, while 3&K’s Lava Reef is a gorgeous spin on the lava theme set by 1’s Marble. Also on the topic of CD, Stardust Speedway is what Star Light was probably always meant to be: jumpy design, iconic music, and a way cooler sounding name. Sonic 1’s bland zones are best seen as predecessors to similar but more lively zones, am I right?


That idea is cool and all and makes sense, but doesn’t stop hbomb from analyzing the game how he wants; reading too much into it, if you will.

Before we go on, I’ll note the following. As I said in my prior post about SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS, hbomberguy and Patricia Taxxon both taught me that there is nothing wrong with reading too much into things. It can lead to mind-blowing analysis if done right. It’s just that if done poorly, reading too much into things will make you look like a doofus. In my most recent Homestuck posts I can proudly say there’s a few points where I read “too much” into things. And a few points where I read just the “right amount” into things, so that I could decipher Hussie’s mind and predict his book commentary almost verbatim.

OK, back to where I was.

As the game progresses, Sonic 1’s art styles evolve from vibrant nature all the way to robotic dystopia. If you compare each of the zones, the general trend is that they become more robotic looking as you go through the game. I established prior that aside from the ending zones, the robotic appearance is probably just a result of overly simple design. But hbomb takes full advantage of the monochromatic appearance of the game’s zones and draws a conclusion that I already discussed in my prior post about his video.

Perhaps hbomb’s dystopian Sonic 1 analysis was inspired by Sonic CD’s bad future zones? Or perhaps it wasn’t. Either way, the cool thing is that he never talks about other Sonic games in this video (aside from a few offhand jokes) and nor does he need to. He masterfully interpreted Sonic 1 as a standalone game, without saying “oh it’s the first game, the next few do it better” or “Sonic has had a rocky history ever since its transition to 3D” or such clichés.

Man writing about Sonic is pretty fun. Maybe I should do it more often; I’ve been thinking of writing about Sonic CD, the weirdest of the classic games. In a parallel universe, I’m probably working on blog posts about Sonic every day and maybe on occasion some weird webcomic called Homestuck. My next post about the weird webcomic called Homestuck probably won’t take that long to make, which is why I don’t feel guilty about making a blog post on something unrelated. See my schedule for more information.

Why Scary Maze Is a Work of Art (Early Halloween special I guess)

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You remember this thing, right? I hope you do, or at least I hope you weren’t like me and played this game completely unaware of what you were in for.

The reason why, of course, is because this game is aggravatingly hard!!! I can’t beat it no matter how much I try. I just want to make it to the fourth and final level, but the road to the end is way too thin and the controls are already so shaky. I’m surprised I haven’t destroyed my computer after all this frustration!

… Just kidding, I’m gonna be Mr. No Fun and ruin the surprise for those that haven’t played it (which I doubt is many). The game is just a mean prank. You play level 3, get to the narrow part, and then suddenly a zombie face appears accompanied by two extremely loud screams in short succession. There is no level 4.

I’ve always been aware of shock content on the Internet. It’s an ages-old trend that has long lost its punch. But Scary Maze somehow flew under my radar for the longest time. Now don’t get me wrong, I had recognized the image shown above for many years. I genuinely had the impression that it was just a REALLY hard game, which doesn’t quite add up in retrospect but that doesn’t mean much. Whenever something doesn’t totally make sense to me, I have a habit of believing it anyway rather than questioning it, even though the truth is usually painfully obvious in retrospect. In this case, I had assumed that since the game was hyped up so much, it probably had really imprecise or rough controls. But on the fateful day of October 11, 2018, I was discussing the game with some people online and decided to play it for myself, only to be greeted with, uh, this. Needless to say, I was completely caught off guard and apparently scared my cat.

Normally the concept of “shock content” is painfully tasteless and boring to me. But the bait-and-switch in Scary Maze is so perfectly executed that I consider it to be a work of art. The game hypes itself up to be a tricky challenge with four levels that requires intense concentration, and already has “scary” in its title. Level 1 is easy, level 2 is a little harder, then level 3 is an “oh shit” moment. It’s much harder than you’d expect from the prior two levels, and makes you really excited for what level 4 will be. The shocking part happens at the time you’d least expect it: early on in the final stretch of super narrow road, when you’re probably already at the edge of your seat, about to beat the second-last level before the ultimate final stage.

I commend whoever made Scary Maze for the choice of where to put the shock content; it’s absolutely brilliant and a prank so well-executed it’s hard to say it’s in bad taste at all. Scary Maze is a perfect example of unconventional art! I hope to make more posts about this kind of art eventually.

Why SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS is a fantastic video

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These wondrous naturally occurring loop-de-loops Sonic runs through mean so much more than the game lets on…

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I don’t really feel like rambling about how inactive this blog has been, I’ll do that at the end of this post.

At work today, for some reason I felt the urge to write a blog post about a video that I really, really love: SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS by hbomberguy. I recommend you watch that video and then continue reading this post.

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"Mulholland Drive" and Puzzle Stories

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I just watched the movie Mulholland Drive for my English class and I have some possibly interesting thoughts on it.

For starters, when I looked up stuff about the movie, it was talked up as “the best movie of the 21st century” in some very recent articles. After seeing it, I can give it credit for one particular thing: it’s the hardest to describe movie I’ve ever seen. Whenever I watch a movie, I read about it on Wikipedia or TV Tropes afterwards; the TV Tropes page on Mulholland Drive has a lot of stuff on it that sounds to me like crackpot theories, like the weird cowboy dude being a reality warper (what the hell?) or everything up to that one lady opening the box being a dream (how and why would that make sense?). Those theories are so bizarre that they make the movie even more confusing, which I am convinced is the point. It purports to be a mystery film of sorts with murder stories, but what’s confusing is, a lot of time is spent on one of the main characters trying her hand at being an actor, which seems to be a pointless interlude to me, but I’m almost definitely missing something. Not to mention that the murder scenes themselves also don’t clearly tie in to whatever semblance of a plot the movie has. Long story short: this is a confusing bizarre movie among confusing bizarre movies.

I believe Mulholland Drive is meant as a story that’s also a puzzle for viewers to decipher on their own. My solution to the puzzle is presently a flat and simple “I don’t fucking know”, which is only compounded by the fact that I’ve never been very good at understanding movies. Maybe that’ll change when I talk about it in class tomorrow? But for now that’s all I can say about this strange movie.

However, I’ll also say this: the “story that is also a puzzle” idea is a common interpretation of what Homestuck is. The present ending of the comic (which I’m not really a fan of) may especially have such a puzzle interpretation, with a lot of cryptic ambiguous events whose true meaning one can only deduce. There’s an “obvious” happy ending interpretation of those events, but that relies largely on a large number of leaps of logic, not to mention disregarding other story points (like the deal with the events of the claymation section); meanwhile, the less obvious interpretations, which I largely buy into, makes more logical sense but also makes the ending even less satisfying.

This may be an alright thing for the comic to do if not for the fact that as confusing as it can get at times, Homestuck still makes a clear effort to be comprehensible to readers most of the time; for instance, many animations or otherwise confusing events are followed by a character recapping what went down. So in this case, the ending as it stands could be thought of as an especially bizarre way to suddenly incorporate the Mulholland Drive puzzle story principle. The weird thing is, not only the events of Homestuck’s current finale themselves have a variety of interpretations, but why it’s the way it is also can be interpreted a number of ways. That’s something I’ll talk about another time but I’ve already discussed this sort of thing throughout my Homestuck posts.