Fornite, GLITCH and the Leeching of Pop Culture

So, GLITCH productions is crossing over with Epic Games by having Pomni and Jax appear in Fortnite. Now, of course there are issues with this, largely Epic Games is a terrible company that is trying to replace a bunch of its human employees with AI slop and apparently fired an employee with Brain Cancer thus stripping away his life insurance, yeah Epic Games is not a good company... name me a company that is, and yeah I am disappointed that GLITCH would choose to work and collab with them, but I'm gonna be honest that's not the biggest source of my disdain with this announcement. Like, yeah they should be more incriminating with who they work with, but to play Devil's Advocate, it's Fortnite. Like, Fortnite is one of the biggest games in the world right now, the fact that GLITCH characters are appearing in Fortnite before anything like Minecraft, some Tetris clone, or even as a deck of cards, like that says something about Fortnite and by extension Epic Games. Yeah, I don't like Epic Games as a company, and frankly I don't care about Fortnite as a game, but I hold no ill-will towards GLITCH for this decision, you can all you want, but money's got to be made somehow, and maybe this is the first step to an actual video game, like a Murder Drones video game would kick ass. No, my disdain for this news comes mostly from the fact that... well, it's Fortnite, and I despise what Fortnite is doing to and with Pop-Culture.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine and it helped me really gather my thoughts on the matter, because the problem was more than just "Popular = Bad", I am a strong proponent that popularity is a good thing overall, like Pokémon has done nothing but benefit by being the most popular video game franchise in the world, and Minecraft ain't slowing down any either, so why does the Fortnite collab irritate me so much? Fortnite's current model seems to be... like the worst, most annoying autistic kid (Self burn, those are rare), like you know that kid who finds a new thing and makes it their entire personality, or if you were like me you probably were that kid, Fortnite kinda comes off like that.

Its business model seems to be less "Hey let's make a great game that everyone will want to play" and more "Let's load our game with licenses and have people come back for a skin-economy." Like I don't agree with what Yahtzee Croshaw said about Mortal Kombat 1, but like that does kind of apply to Fortnite, but Mortal Kombat's case they have characters that make sense for Mortal Kombat, they have violent action characters like Omni-Man, Robocop, Jason Voorhees, they don't have Peter Griffin and Pomni. On top of that Mortal Kombat has actual... y'know, characters, like you can name them and identify them, Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Shao Kahn, Sub-Zero, Kenshi, you know most of these characters if you know anything about Mortal Kombat, Fortnite is not the same. I'm sure they have named original characters, but for the life of me I can't think of any of them, I don't know their names, I've never really seen much art of any of them out in the wild.

Yes, other games do this kind of thing as well, but most of them are not as egregious about it as Fortnite. Super Smash Bros is a game that works because the novelty of having Mario, Link and Pikachu fighting each other is backed by what is ultimately a solid platform-brawler, the kind of which has become so linked to Smash Bros that very few fighting games try the same thing, while Fortnite is just one in a sea of Battle Royale shooter games. Also, Nintendo can get away with it because most of the characters are Nintendo characters. I made this comment years ago about PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, but that game was never going to be as great as Smash Bros solely because Sony does not have that many first-party characters that are as iconic to their brand as their second and third party characters. Nintendo has so many iconic first and second party characters that a fighting game with just them would sell like hotcakes, and like PlayStation All-Stars, Fortnite is struggling in the original character department.

It's an attention grab more than anything else, they're saying "Look, we have The Simpsons, we have Cartoon Network licenses, we have The Amazing Digital Circus" they're doing this because they know it will make people play their game and spend money on cosmetics, it's a cycle; They add some license to their game, streamers play with the license and skins, rinse and repeat. Really the streamers only get the views because "Look at this guy, they're playing Fortnite as Danny Phantom" or "They're playing with the Peter Griffin skin", it's like a gelatinous cube in Dungeons and Dragons, catching I.P.'s and licenses and absorbing them while dissolving them of any actual value. Like there was buzz about ConcernedApe thinking about collabing with Fortnite, and I'm just thinking, "Yeah, Stardew Valley, the game about the connection with nature and community where the community has a strong opinion of players who choose the corporate route. That would be perfect for the license gobbling gelatinous cube."

I think the big problem I have with this is, and this is shockingly an actual problem, Fortnite is not ignorable. Like Marvel Rivals, that game came out, it's pretty popular, people still play it, it gave us the popular iteration of Squirrel Girl that... look I like fine but I want the dork that juggled Kraven with one hand that I fell in love with as a teenager. Still it's a Marvel Hero Shooter, I don't have to play it, I don't have to pay attention to it. Like, the only thing I know of Marvel Rivals beyond the game is that one of the voice actors was somewhat involved in a controversy involving his daughter that later expanded to involve BlackGyrph0n, Saberspark and a bunch of other crazy people. That's it, I can't even name all the voice actors in that game, I love it. I don't have to know anything about Marvel Rivals. The same cannot be said for Fortnite, I see ads for it everywhere, they had some kind of Halo collab and got Rooster Teeth to do something, they had YouTube ads for their Simpsons thing, the news that The Amazing Digital Circus was coming was shared by Toonhive, I cannot ignore Fortnite.

Fortnite constantly shoves itself in people's faces with these licenses, it's not even creating its own pop culture at this point, it's leeching off of the success and popularity of other properties, like Smash Bros is has still given us original memes, locations, stories, characters. The Master Hand, Final Destination, Subspace Emissary, Fox Only No Items, Smash Bros isn't just leeching off of pop-culture, one can argue that has created its own parts of Pop-Culture. Fortnite is reminding me a lot of Garry's Mod, where half of the fun of the game is just the flagrant usage of characters they didn't create, but like... Garry's Mod is a joke, it's a sandbox game where you can make Gordon Freeman and and Sonic ride a Minecraft Boat over a river in a Spyro world. Fortnite is Battle Royale Garry's Mod without the joke. It does not create Pop Culture, and it barely qualifies as celebrating it. Again, what are the names of the original characters? What is the name of the original location? Unless you are an avid player you probably don't know, nobody is making videos about how Fortnite Island is an underrated location like Nintendo's Wuhu Island. Fortnite really is on the same level as Garry's Mod in the Pop-Culture pantheon, except Gmod was partly used for things like SMG4 so even Gmod can arguably claim to have created its own piece of pop-culture.

Look, I don't care is GLITCH wants to collab with Fortnite, again that money's gotta me made somehow, it's the same reason I have no ill-will towards the actors in the new Harry Potter series, like yeah they probably should have reconsidered, but then again it's one the most popular franchises in modern history so those actors, especially those child actors, are basically set for life. GLITCH can collab with Fortnite, they can collab with Konami for all I care, but let's be real the collab can only happen because Fortnite is a license leech, and it only looked at The Amazing Digital Circus because it is so freaking popular that it licked it's gluttonous lips and salivated at the idea. If the Circus was so popular, we wouldn't be talking about this and instead be talking about Fortnite collabing with Bear in the Big Blue House, that would actually be funny.

So... What's been going on?

It's... been a while hasn't it? Let's cut to the chase, what is going on and what will be happening going forward?

Straight up, what is going on is a combination of things, mostly a form of burn-out. The thing is, for most of this year I decided to slow down movie reviews and focus on editorials, for three reasons; Firstly I have not really had the space to watch a movie consistently, so a weekly or bi-weekly schedule just seemed less possible. It also didn't help that this year started off with a 1-2-3 punch of getting sick, getting back problems and getting sick again, that was how my first quarter went, so that was fun, and also a reason I couldn't go to the theatre. Second, Editorials were just more enjoyable to write, I have a bit of a formula for reviewing movies and it got a bit dull to write after a while, plus there are only so many ways you can say "this is funny", "this is beautiful" or "this is good". Finally, movie reviews just weren't getting the views, granted I have a very small reader-base, but editorials have usually gotten more views than movie reviews have so it made more sense to focus on those.

However, that's really the surface answer, because I made a decision that ultimately burnt-me out. See in November of 2024, I did a blog about animated movies that were banned in different countries, and I had a lot of fun doing it, in May of 2025 I sort-of spiritually followed it up with a blog about seven myths around animation. These kind of editorials that required more research were tougher to write than others, where I just write down my thoughts on a certain topic, but were also more fun because it allowed me to look into subjects I normally wouldn't have thought about, like the Road Runner rules or why Shrek 2 got a ban in Israel. So, I tried to do something ambitious, I wanted to do a similar style blog, but with a topic I was more familiar with; I wanted to talk about the cartoon reviewing community that the different controversies it got into.

This was a mistake, because... first of all really all it was gonna be was a condensed recap of certain events, and second, as it turned out, two of these stories were still ongoing, sort of. I talked about the Great Brony Purge, the period of time where many prominent and even lesser known members of the brony community were ousted for being predators, and immediately after that the Saberspark controversy happens, where Saberspark gets accused of sexual assault. Really it began with BlackGryph0n but the way the whole situation ended, really it's about ILoveKimPossibleALot and EmuEmi. The second story that ended up carrying on was the Stargiant Productions controversy, because guess who resurfaced? And with the most... stupid stuff I've ever heard anyone say or write, if you can stomach seven and a half hours of literal delusional nonsense check out Lazy Bedhead's stream where she and the Enter Team read and react to a document that Stargiant wrote. Keep in mind, the second stupidest thing I heard from that document was literally "The law is if they are free, they are innocent."

The blog I was writing was not good, and would need a serious rewrite if I wanted to post it, the key word there being "if", because I'll be honest it does come off as a little... ambulance chaser-y, like those channels who talk about controversies and dramas only because it gets them views and attention, I won't deny on some level I did want that, but I also wanted to just tell these stories because... some of them are just insane, like the Stargiant story involves N3k0pan, Lio Convoy, Mr Enter, HopelessPeaches, Misanthropony, Rei Rants, PhantomStrider, and almost involved Just A Robot apparently. Like this whole story needs to be studied, in university classes or something, it's that insane. Still, not a great blog, and I'm going to withhold it indefinitely.

So what's going to happen for the future? Well... I think it goes without saying but I'm stepping away from this blog for a good while. I began this blog because I wanted to explore the vast world of animated features and I have not been doing that as of late. Also, I've been working on a few comic projects, most notably I have been submitting cartoons to the underground magazine Absolute Underground, so I think I'm going to focus more on comics for the time being. Will I come back to this blog? Sure, I don't believe this is goodbye forever because I still love animation, I still love movies and I still love writing, but right now I need to really focus my time and energy on to one or two things, and given the state of the world, and some personal issues I can't and won't divulge publicly, keeping myself sane is one of those two things.

 Well... this was a long letter, I'll see you around.

Good or bad, Fixed is important.

Okay, this is going to be a short summary of my thoughts on a certain topic. Recently the Genndy Tartakovsky adult animated feature film "Fixed" was released and prior to that it had a large group of detractors. People were calling this movie "Sick", comparing Genndy to John K, and all around making a lot of claims about this movie and how depraved and degenerate this movie was.

Full disclosure I have not seen Fixed as of yet, I have been really slacking in my job this year, but regardless, this is not a post about the quality of the movie, rather about how I think a movie like this is important. What is the one thing I always say about animation in stories like this, "There is a stigma towards animation", I say that because animation is constantly being pigeon-holed as "Children's entertainment", and this doesn't just mean viewers dismiss it as "Low art", it also means that companies disregard it because "It's just for kids, nobody cares". If AMC treated Breaking Bad as badly as Nickelodeon treated... literally any of their cartoons, but for example sake let's say Legend of Korra, chances are they would not have gotten away with it.

Of course the question is, "How do we destigmatize animation?" and the answer to that is really simple, but also really complicated. For the most part, animation fans are doing alright, supporting "K-Pop Demon Hunters" and "The Day The Earth Blew Up" is absolutely how we should do it. However, let's not (For want of a better word) kid ourselves, these are movies meant for kids, maybe older kids, maybe young teens, but still meant for younger audiences. Animation is never going to leave the stigma behind if the only things coming out in animation are predominately meant for kids and young teens. We need more adult animation, and I mean beyond X Rated pornography, and South Park and Family Guy clones, or even online content. We need proper mainstream adult animated properties, especially feature films.

This is not to say that adult animated features are exceedingly rare in this modern day, we see things like "Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie" or "Anomolisa", but are those "Mainstream" or are they more of a "If you know your stuff" kind of movies? Genndy Tartakovsky is a mainstream name in animation, even if you don't know the name, you know Samurai Jack, you know his work on Dexter's Lab, you know Hotel Transylvania, he's not a name like Richard Williams or Rob Renzetti, he is probably up there with Walt Disney and Stephen Hillenburg. Him making an adult animated feature, one that reportedly is not tame at all, is actually very good to help destigmatize animation. Even if the movie isn't good (Though I've heard good things about it), it does say to other animators that they don't have to be stuck in these holes they are put it, they can experiment, leave their comfort zone, and get notoriety for it.

I actually think it's kind of refreshing to see Genndy Tartakovsky go in this direction, and I do think that "Fixed" is a good thing on the art side of animation. Of course, on the business side, "Fixed" is probably going to be a nightmare, with studios green lighting more animated features that have adult content, but miss the point of what made them liked in the first place. We can, and should, celebrate the artistic achievement while dreading and criticizing the corporate directions that will come of things.

Anyway, those were my thoughts on the matter, again, whether the movie is good or not, and again I've heard good things, I do think that "Fixed" is important to animation as a whole, and also trailers suck, but that's a topic for another time. 

Movie Review: The Pebble and the Penguin (1995): There's a really good movie in here

Well... hiatus was fun, but I want to get back to what this blog was meant to be about, exploring the vast world of animation, experiencing the weird, wonderful and creative works that such a wonderful medium can bring us. When it comes to wonderful, there are very few names to make that word synonymous with animation as Don Bluth, a former Disney animator striking off on his own in the 80s, he made movies that not only rivalled Disney, but in many cases usurped Disney's throne. The Secret of NIMH and The Land Before Time are fantastic movies that define the medium and show that not all amazing animation has to come from Disney. So what happened in the 90s? In my review of Rock-A-Doodle, I posited the idea that the movies that Don Bluth wanted to make became more passe in the Disney Renaissance and someone pushed him to adapt to the changing landscape of the 90s, and what followed was some of his... more odd film making attempts. Case in point, The Pebble and the Penguin. Why does that line sound so familiar?

The Pebble and the Penguin follows Hubie, an Adélie Penguin who falls in love with a girl named Marina, and wishes to propose to her with a pebble, however he gets tossed aside by another penguin who has eyes for Marina, a big, hulking obviously designed to be the villain penguin named Drake. Hubie must travel across miles of ocean with a new friend, a Rockhopper Penguin named Rocko, to return to the island before Drake can marry Marina, or she gets banished by law. Overall, I'd say the story is... halfway solid. There is an idea here, and it does almost work. What is the biggest flaw? I guess it would be that it's a bit too formulaic, but it's not too bad in that regard. Obvious tropes like the "friends squabbling only to make up later" and the "Fake Out Death" are here, but for a kids movie, the plot isn't all that bad. I guess it could have probably benefited from fleshing out a few things, like for the most part we completely forget about Marina and Drake save for little snippets before the climax.

Maybe it would have been nice to spend more time with the characters, because they have some charm to them. Hubie is a shy but good-hearted guy, and it might just be that I am soft for this kind of character, but I can't hate him, plus he kicks a leopard seal in the face, that's pretty awesome. Marina is kind of bland, but to be fair, they do give a little moment to explain why she likes Hubie, I love it when the unrequited crush is not actually completely unrequited, and it's clear from the get-go that Marina does actually like Hubie. Really, the worst character in the movie is sadly the villain, Drake, who is just a bland and boring entitled jerk, like come on, I don't need uncomfortably buff Penguin version of Gaston. Sadly, it does not help that he is voiced by Tim Curry, and as much as I love Tim Curry, something about this performance didn't quite work, Tim Curry works as the slimy and sinister evil, not really the pompous and arrogant evil. He is more Maleficent brand evil and less Cruella brand.

This is not to say that the voice acting is subpar, for the most part there are some good talents here. Shani Wallis is the narrator and she does have that voice for it, Jim Belushi as Rocko is pretty good casting, and Annie Golden as Marina was actually really good. Plus, there are cameo appearances by names like Will Ryan, B. J. Ward, Pat Musick, Maggie Roswell, and Scott Bullock who is known for his role as Hades in Kid Icarus: Uprising. Really, it is just Martin Short and Tim Curry who I don't fully gel with, Martin Short as Hubie does feel like good casting, he does have a voice that fits the kind of pathetic but lovable character Hubie is, I guess I just can't separate him from B.E.N. from Treasure Planet, which would come out about seven years later.

Then we have the songs, and the songs are absolutely, complete, one-hundred and ten percent okay. They're fine. I'm probably not going to be humming them, except for the Good Ship Misery song, and Tim Curry's villain song is sadly one of the less good songs in the movie, though least good might go to Martin Short and Jim Belushi's duet. I might flip flop on which one is the worst. Really, the biggest problem is just that the songs are just kind of... there. They fill their purpose and do nothing beyond that. I could imagine a soundtrack by Alan Menkin or Elton John, but instead we got Barry Mannilow. Well, I can think of worse people to get for the music of this movie.

Then we have the animation, and if you want a drinking game that will leave you with a hangover that makes you wish alcohol was banned, take a shot every time you notice an animation error in this movie. I've caught a few, characters in the background being frozen, which also happens during song sequences where they should be singing along in, in some cases you might find unfinished animation, I even think Hubie's hat was coloured incorrectly once. That being said, when the animation is actually animated it is pretty good. Don Bluth is a fantastic animator, and while I don't think this is as good as his early stuff, honestly there are times I think it gets close, like within earshot of something like Secret of NIMH. Really, I get the feeling this movie was rushed for a deadline, and if it had more time to get ironed out, this could have been Don Bluth's best movie since the 1980s instead of his least bad movie of his flop era.

Really that is the biggest problem with The Pebble and the Penguin, instead of being his best movie in a while, it's his least bad movie of a bunch, and that is a darn shame. The movie just needed some more time to iron out the wrinkles, mostly in the script and animation. I get why people can be nostalgic about this movie, I see it, I see a really good movie in here, it's just a shame we didn't get that. I'd actually really like to see an early draft script for this movie because I really do wonder what this movie could have been. Imagine a remake with rewritten songs and more time to flesh out the characters but with the same, or similar traditional animation. Still, I should focus on what we have instead of what could have been, and what we have is alright, like I wouldn't mind showing this to kids, I know the endorsement of "There are worse movies" is not a very... high endorsement, but still, I can't see this movie causing any harm.

The Amazing Digital Cricus Episode 5 Left me Thinking, this isn't Pomni's Story at all, is it?

So, as a lot of readers may be aware, I am a big fan of the GLITCH Productions series, The Amazing Digital Circus. The aesthetic of the animation and artstyle mixed with the charming and lovable characters really won me over immediately from the pilot, and I, as many others were, was hooked on where the story would go from there. It went places, needless to say, and the latest episode, Episode 5: Untitled, is so far the most... "Places" the show has gone so far.

Episode 5 is where things get really... for want of a better word, real. The show has been real before, but this is where we really get to piece things together. Episode 5 is an episode that will leave you confused about how to feel, but also certain as Hell about what to feel. This is one of those episodes, and I think it largely changes the direction of where the show is going, or our perception of where the show is going.

Ever since the pilot, everyone was damn sure that this story largely about Pomni, how she adjusts to the circus, how she relates to the others, and possibly how she abstracts. Yet, Episode 5 seems to shift the narrative. Pomni is still our main character, but this does not seem to be her story, at least not entirely her story. Episode 5 focuses on Pomni's relationship with Jax and Ragatha, and we learn two important things about them.

With Jax, what we learn is implied, but heavily so. When Ragatha tells Pomni that Jax doesn't have friends "Anymore", it becomes clear who Jax is and why is does what he does. At his core, Jax is afraid, he is a scared little bunny, what is he afraid of? Losing the people he cares about. He's pushing people away so when they do abstract, it doesn't hurt so much. "Let them fall face down if they must die, making it easier to say goodbye". We see Jax look at a door with a crossed out face on it during Caine's intermission. Was this one of Jax's friends? It does seem that he is warming up to Pomni, why is that? Well, I have a theory, but before we look at that, let's look at Ragatha.

What we learn about Ragatha is much more stated, though still largely implied. It is implied in the fact that it is not directly stated to the audience. Ragatha did not have a particularly caring mother, and this is probably why she is the way she is. Where Jax is a nuisance because he doesn't want to be hurt, Ragatha is positive to a toxic degree because she also doesn't want to be hurt, she said it herself in Episode four. "I like, hate you, but I don't want you to hate me." In essence, she is trying to be the one that everyone likes, but this ends up pushing everyone away. She will bottle up her feelings in order to protect herself, and it's only hurting her more.

Ragatha is a rag doll, obvious statement, but what does that mean? Dolls and plushies are popular children's toys, because for a lot of children, they were a source of comfort, a friend that wouldn't judge you or tell you to "Grow up". A friend that was always there for you when you needed them. A friend that Ragatha needs. Similarly, Jax is a rabbit. One may see him as the next version of the "Trickster Rabbit" archetype, like I myself have, but now we see something different with him. Jax is scared, he is a small animal made tall, he is putting on a show to deter predators, or in this case, abstraction.

This is in no way absolving Jax of his actions, by the way. Fandom notoriously has an issue with forgiving male characters for their wrong-doings because of one singular thing. How the fandom is treating Jax is reminding me about... a character from the Sad Wizard Lady's books. I mean, the two are absolutely irredeemable people, but they have one mildly tragic part of their backstory and all is forgiven? Just because we now know why he is pushing people away does not change the fact that he is still doing the things he is doing. Just wanted to Snape, I mean snipe that point before it came up.

Pomni is a jester, not a clown, the distinction is important. Jester's were more than just entertainers, they were also trusted messengers, and were allowed to speak freely without punishment in many cases. To put my theory bluntly, this story is not about Pomni, this story is about everyone else. The show begins with Pomni arriving at the circus because she is the catalyst for change. She is the one who is breaking down the barriers between all the characters, and she is doing so by letting them be honest, listening to them, and doing the things she can to help them.

Pomni saw Gangle and offered to take closing duties for her. She was with Kinger and listened as he talked about his wife. She has broken through to Jax, and seems to be making Ragatha confront a part of herself she doesn't like. Pomni is the main character of the show, but this story is not really about her. The Amazing Digital Circus is really all about the other people in the circus, which makes me wonder... how is Pomni going to get through to Caine, can she get through to Caine?

Gooseworx said that the message of The Amazing Digital Circus is that "there is meaning to be found in a stagnant life". All of this makes me wonder, and kind of reminds me of the Gregory Horror Show. I kind of expect this show to end similar to the first season of that show, something expected but haunting. Untitled was a good episode that makes one shift their perspectives on what they thought they knew. We knew this was Pomni's story, but now it seems like it's really about someone else, or something else. One has to wonder if the circus is changing because of Pomni, if she is bridging the gaps between the others and their previous lives.

Also, because I have nowhere else to put this, I absolutely have to make this observation, Jax and Zooble are trying to out each other without outing each other.