gdp's Comments

http://markspoils.blogspot.com/ : The Black Market

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 18:45:34 +0000

Gargoyles 1x06, 1x07, 1x08, 1x10! http://markdoesstuff.fetchapp.com/get/710ef261

http://markspoils.blogspot.com/ : The Black Market

Sat, 11 Mar 2017 21:43:18 +0000

Gargoyles 1x02 - 1x05! http://markdoesstuff.fetchapp.com/get/6e484eeb

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Steven Universe': S01E18 - Beach Party

Thu, 3 Nov 2016 18:42:53 +0000

AHAHAHAHHAHA WELCOME

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Steven Universe': S01E16 - Steven the Sword Fighter

Tue, 1 Nov 2016 18:18:26 +0000

Oh wow! I had no idea a revival was happening... guess I have some reading to do! I remember watching the forum drama from a distance... I never got involved in the RPGW forums. Other webcomic forums, LiveJournal webcomics drama, sure! But somehow I didn't get dragged into those.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Steven Universe': S01E16 - Steven the Sword Fighter

Tue, 1 Nov 2016 15:30:58 +0000

SO this is one of my favorite episodes, and includes some adorable references. As posted above, lots of Utena references, but also some slightly more personal ones! Steven's action figures--some of which are more recognizable than others. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/9TER5YH.jpg"> The first is an adorable cross between Pikachu and a Moogle, the second is Gitaroo Man, and the third is the one, the only, the legendary Sanic the Hegehog. <img src="http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/506/223/2ab.gif"> (I like to believe that in the world of SU, this is the actual canonical design in the video games.) The last figure is the most important (to me personally) and often mis-labeled! <img src="http://66.media.tumblr.com/59dd16d4c91d76913ae3409b4677de59/tumblr_inline_n3t065fTBB1qe81k1.png"> This is not, in fact, Cloud Strife, though it sure looks like him! No, this is Hero, the main character of Ian JQ's old webcomic, RPG World. RPG World was a loving parody of JRPGs, and Hero was definitely modeled on Cloud, so the mistake is quite understandable. <img src="http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/272-1_3244.jpg"> Ian JQ wrote and drew RPG World for many years, and it was one of my favorite webcomics throughout middle school and early high school. I even ran a tabletop roleplay based on it! Sadly he abandoned the comic just before the grand finale (on a hell of a cliffhanger, too) but the archive is still online. You can read it here! Ian, of course, went on to become one of the directors of SU and partner of Rebecca Sugar, so an RPG World reference isn't a huge surprise--just really cute.

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Steven Universe': S01E16 - Steven the Sword Fighter

Tue, 1 Nov 2016 15:15:39 +0000

Came here to post this same series of gifs, thank you for beating me to it! I was about halfway through my Utena watch when I saw this episode of SU, and completely lost my shit at the swordfight. I couldn't stop cackling with glee. I would say this is the moment that I knew the show had hooked me and there was no turning back.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'Deep Wizardry': Chapter 10

Wed, 1 Jun 2016 04:18:58 +0000

Ah! Ah. Ah! Goodness. GOODNESS. I am overwhelmed all over again. I read this for the first time when I was about eight, and it just... it was perhaps the single image from the entire series that stuck with me the most: Nita and Kit taking her parents to the Moon. I grew up with a love of astronomy, courtesy of my father. His whole life, he dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but circumstances (and poor eyesight) never let that happen. So in this chapter, Nita gets to live out one of my most intense desires in all the world: taking a parent to the Moon. For her, it's her mother. For me, it'd be my father. I might not have wizardry, but I'm still not giving up on that dream. I'll get him there, someday, somehow.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'So You Want to Be a Wizard': Chapter 8

Fri, 29 Apr 2016 15:15:36 +0000

Nothing like crying about wizards to wake me up first thing in the morning. What a wonderful book. What a wonderful everything. I read this for the first time when I was probably seven or eight, and I've honestly never been the same. I'm so glad you're enjoying it so much, Mark.

Mark Watches : Confirmed Shows for the Future

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 19:24:13 +0000

Tsuritama! A wonderful sweet anime about teenage boys and fishing and feelings. Twelve episodes, perfectly paced, with gorgeous animation and legitimate character development. I've watched it a half dozen times and introduced it to many many friends. Might be a nice change of pace to do something upbeat and delightful!

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'Supernatural': S09E05 - Dog Dean Afternoon

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 23:02:47 +0000

MAN OR CAT? MAN OR CAT? OR DOG? OR SNAKE???

Mark Reads : Mark Finishes 'Circle of Magic': Wrap-Up / Q&A

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 15:20:17 +0000

I don't have a question, I'm just terribly excited for The Circle Opens, because it's largely uncharted territory for me! Circle of Magic was my favorite series when I was a wee thing, but I started the first Circle Opens book when it came out, and bounced off it because I was a pretentious eleven-year-old snob and didn't like one of the conceits of it. So I never read the rest, or the subsequent ones! But now a decade and a half later I get to read them at last, and read them along with you, Mark. I can't wait.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'Pyramids': Part 10

Sat, 14 Feb 2015 14:38:48 +0000

Mark has in fact already watched them with friends, and loved them dearly and screamed a lot!

Mark Watches : Mark Watches 'In The Flesh': Series One, Episode One

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 16:32:19 +0000

Once again, Mark brings us to a series that is not a zombie story, but rather a human story that has zombies in it, and NONE OF US ARE PREPARED. Dear lord are we unprepared. I've never been a big zombie fan, but this spring I read Newsflesh because of Mark and fell madly in love, and now it's happening again. Because holy sweet mother of mercy, In the Flesh. I don't even know that I have anything to say about the first episode beyond the fact that it's brilliant. The only other first episode I know of that's as intense and gripping and complicated as this is Orphan Black. Both leave me with a million questions, absolute faith that the show will answer them, and a burning desire to keep watching. I love the depiction of the Walker family so much. It would have been such an easy creative choice to just have Kieren be a war orphan, or old enough to have his own place, but instead the writers put him back with his parents, who are trying so hard and messing up so badly. The dinner scene is just brutal on every level, but so hauntingly familiar. His parents aren't bad people. They're not villains. The show refuses to take the easy way out. Instead it confronts us with the banality of bigotry--people who just want to pretend the problem doesn't exist, and go on with their lives.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'Sandry's Book': Chapter 5

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 15:18:36 +0000

Man, rereading this chapter was SO DELIGHTFUL, fourteen years and a mountain of skills later. When I first read this, I honestly was only interested in the magic side of things. Oh, okay, cool, there's mages! Tell me about these sweet elemental powers! YEAH! That was my interest. Briar always captured my imagination most, because my mother is a gardener. I grew up in gardens, and I've seen firsthand the power of a green thumb. So all his scenes about plants made perfect sense to me. The others, though? That was alien to me. But oh man, blacksmithing sounded SO COOL. And the images of Frostpine at his forge stuck with me. So as a freshman in high school, I took an intro to blacksmithing class at The Crucible in Oakland. It was WONDERFUL, and since then I've had a few more opportunities to practice blacksmithing. I've also learned to spin wool, in exactly the way Sandry learns, with a drop spindle. I've made my own yarn, and knit with it. In another path of my life, I learned meditation, as part of my Aikido practice, learning to control my breathing and work with it and through it. Piece by piece, I've learned the skills these four characters learn here, and coming back and rereading this, my perspective has been so changed. Now I see the beauty not just in their magic, but in these skills, the craftsmanship and the joy they derive from this work. I am so, so, so glad for the opportunities I've had to learn, and I'm so thrilled to see Tamora Pierce highlighting this work as not just beautiful but worthy of appreciation and care.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads 'Sandry's Book': Chapter 5

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 15:11:02 +0000

Whoo! Bostonians! I'm a Californian, but have transplanted to Cambridge for grad school.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads \'Sandry\'s Book\': Chapter 1

Thu, 9 Oct 2014 16:29:22 +0000

I WAS A VERY CONFUSED THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD AT THE TIME

Mark Reads : Mark Reads \'Sandry\'s Book\': Chapter 1

Thu, 9 Oct 2014 14:47:17 +0000

Yup! That was the idea. As you go into the venue, if you're under 21 they mark your hands with sharpie X's. You can still go up to the bar and get water (because oh lord, dehydration's a killer at punk shows), but if you ask for anything more than that they'll see your hands and not give it to you. Which if I recall correctly was a system that actually came from a straight-edge band not getting let into a venue they were playing at, because they were all under 21? So they got the X's on their hands to denote that, and then it spread to other venues as a way to let under-21s into concerts, and in parallel became one of the emblems of the straight-edge movement. Which is pretty cool! There were definitely occasional issues of resentment when I was in high school, though--I knew people who didn't care about drinking at concerts, but didn't like the feeling of being branded as younger and somehow lesser just because they were under 21. It was a feeling I understood, but given that the alternative was not getting to go to the show at all (and there were still plenty of 21+ only venues taunting us), I was generally glad to have the option. I was busy being grumpy about the shows I DIDN'T get to go to, which usually had my favorite bands playing. Hmph.

Mark Reads : Mark Reads \'Sandry\'s Book\': Chapter 1

Thu, 9 Oct 2014 12:57:26 +0000

Oh goodness gracious I'm so excited. These were my first Tamora Pierce books, way back when I was ten, and they're still my favorites. I'm rereading them along with you Mark, and it's such a wonderful journey. Though I'll admit I couldn't stop myself zipping through Sandry's Book--only to find that all the scenes I remembered were... from this book? And suddenly I'm realizing that I remember snippets of the latter three books, but have huge gaps! Which is very exciting. I'm also laughing uproariously about your reaction to Briar's tattoos, because... well, this was where I first encountered that image. And then in high school I started going to punk shows, and saw straight-edge people with the X-tattoos. And had them drawn in sharpie on the back of my hand at venues with bars. And my immediate reaction was "are we convicts?? what is happening here??" My friends had to explain the meaning to me, because the only one I knew was from this book. And ever after that, I always took a little bit of pride in the sharpie'd marks on the backs of my hands--not out of any sense of being straight-edge, but just because they made me a little more like Briar.