I Flopped

A tragic state of affairs has arisen. This week I posted a main channel video, a YouTube video deposited neatly onto my primary video-posting location. It's a twenty minute video about the first Bratz movie, from 2004, and it immediately sunk to the eighth or ninth place out of the previous ten videos I've posted. That, unfortunately, is a certified flop.

It has reached seven out of ten now. Bobbing atop the dregs.

This can and must happen - it's the nature of posting. Some flops must occur. And potentially, the flop can help me to understand different elements of flop potential. But this also happened at the same time as another shocking video incident.

I made a video for my second channel this week, too. Usually, I don't post anything to this one, but on a whim, I made and posted a video about French Pokémon names a few days ago. For some reason, this racked up a quick twenty thousand views. That's a normal amount for my main channel, but not for this secondary channel, which usually can expect to see a few hundred views, maybe a thousand.

But here I am, with sweetie-pie commenters piling up in the comment section of this video and a gently climbing view count, while my poor Bratz video languishes. A strange predicament. 

Perhaps I can yet slay...

Would the Teletubbies Accept Me?

Okay, so we all know that the Teletubbies are a tight knit foursome. They don't fight, they just chill on their mounds all day, except for when they want to watch thirty minutes of Antiques Roadshow on one of the group's tummy TVs. But the thing is, I don't think they'd all accept me into the group if I was to visit their beautiful green hills. This is how I think the dynamics would work out if I, a normal adult woman, became involved in the social landscape of the Teletubbies.

Dipsy

Dipsy is a wild card. A real crazy guy. I think he would test my limits with some playful ribbing, which could escalate into a situation approaching tense. But ultimately, we would certainly become firm friends. I know this because Dipsy's hat is so cool, and there's no way someone with a hat that cool would commit to cruelty against me, long-term.

Tinky Winky

I believe Tinky Winky would hit me with his handbag - big time. Not maliciously, really, but just out of a sense of excitement. He wouldn't know what to make of me, so like a dog reacting with unconrollable madness when an unknown person passes through the doorway, Tinky Winky would begin a campaign of gentle violence. But this, of course, would bond us instantly. Especially because he's my favourite one.

Laa-Laa

I think Laa-Laa would struggle with the addition of a gorgeous, carefree woman like myself to the group. In a sense, Laa-Laa is the most feminine and the most unassuming of the Teletubbies. Her thing is just being cute and giggling. But then I'd arrive, letting out all of my big womanly laughs at all the Teletubbian antics, and she'd feel perturbed. She'd try not to show it, but we'd all know.

Po

Po is a sweetie, and wouldn't do anything to me, but she would slightly resent that I would immediately rise above her in the Teletubby hierarchy even though I'm not a Teletubby and am in fact just a normal human woman. She'd just make a few grumpy noises now and then to get it out of her system, and then everything would basically be good. 

Spacechase (1982)

It's another blog post about an Atari 2600 game. I cannot be stopped. You can't catch me and force me not to post about the Atari 2600, so I shall continue. Today's game is Spacechase (1982).

It's a beautiful little alien shooter, where waves of alien ships swoop in and you must GET them. And it works well as a high score seeking arcade game. It has just the right feel to make you want to go another round - the kills feel satisfying, and you quickly feel like you've gotten a knack for the game's movements.

What really struck me, though, were the visuals. There are some pretty sophisticated visual tricks going on. The background is this wonderfully rendered, perpetually moving moon underneath you, and it just looks so good.

I also love the blinking stars in the background, and the graceful way enemies swoop in. These details make the environment feel so immersive, which is not something I'm used to saying about Atari 2600 games.

Spacechase feels quite beautiful, but more importantly, it feels good to chase that high score.

Beat mine if you dare. 

Alien (1982)

In 1982, Atari and 20th Century Fox blessed us with an exciting licensed Alien game. That's right, you can be Ripley. You can feel the terrifying approach of the alien. You can relive the atmosphere of your favourite dazzling and terrifying sci-fi movie. As a Pac-Man clone, of course!

In this game, launched confidently onto the Atari 2600, you are not Pac-Man, but a regular human-shaped person. Your task is to avoid the scary aliens wandering through the gorgeous onscreen maze, and to get these yummy circles. In this game, the circles are alien eggs, and you are mercilessly crushing them - yay!

The controls are perhaps slightly more finicky than in the original Pac-Man - I found myself failing to swerve into the direction I wanted to go a few times, things feel just a touch sticker - but for the most part, this is a servicable, standard Pac-Man situation. An interesting deviation, though, is in its interstitial bonus levels.

This is a sort of Frogger. I wasn't ready for it. Quite frankly it frightened me, the presence of all those aliens. But before I knew it, I was back in the regular level, safe and sound.

It's really the look of this game that I find compelling. I love the sprites, human and alien alike, and the use of a very blue-purple colour palette creates a nice, moody, celestial feel to the whole thing. There is a beauty here in this low-effort licencing. They've taken Pac-Man away, leaving his workplace behind for you to attend to, but they've put a special little atmosphere where he once was. And there's something beautiful about it. 

Don't let the aliens get you. 

Beautiful Aesthetic, Terrible Game

There is a game for the Atari 2600 called 'Bugs'. Released in 1982, it depicts gorgeous, gargantuan, blocky bugs, which crawl rapidly to the top of the screen and kill your ass. Your task is to shoot them before they can do this. But reader, it is hard. Those bugs reach the top of the screen at lightning speed, leaving you very little time to pick them off. 

There is just no balance or finesse to the one single gameplay mechanic: moving your cursor around to shoot those things. The cursor moves in this horrible cumbersome way, often snapping to positions just left or right of the bugs' hitboxes, leading to immediate, unstoppable death.

There is also, if this wasn't bad enough, an orb-shaped thing awaiting you just underneath the enemy bugs. This thing will kill you if you touch it, creating an impasse that stops you from aiming at whichever bug is out of reach when you are on one side of the orb. The result? Near-instant death. So far, so consistent.

While I do like the design of this game - those big, juicy bugs and the flashing screen of pink-green-orange-blue horizon - the game is more or less unplayable crap. 

This is probably just how Ender of Ender's Game felt. Also, one of the bugs is a lizard.

Who is the Sexiest Pokémon?

Many fools have pondered the question, but I am here to finally answer definitively: Who is the sexiest Pokémon?

Now, I know which one comes to mind first. Obviously, it's Rapidash. That's a lithe, strong horse who is literally on fire. And she feels nothing. Very cool. Very alluring to all the fire-lovers in the audience. But ultimately, she's just a wonderful woman who needs to be left alone in her field. She's a single mother and she's not afraid to burn down the whole barn if she doesn't get her salt lick. She's a mysterious figure, yes, but she's honestly too normal, and perhaps parodoxically, too elegant for this title.

A common pick that the clamouring crowd looks to is Electabuzz. While I do understand this - he's stern and a little bit volatile, but also scrappy and hardworking - the truth of the matter is that he is a bit ugly. Like, I'm sorry Electabuzz, but you are not a serious being when it comes down to it. Yes, this guy can kill a child instantly by looking at it, and that appeals to many, but he looks like he's standing in front of the beer fridge in Tesco, indecisive because he's already had a little bit of a friend's joint about fifteen minutes ago.

Some people with eclectic tastes cite Klefki, the haunted key Pokémon, and while sure, haunted keys jangling about do betray a certain unpredictable, spooky delight, quite frankly this Pokémon is far too employed to really climb up the ladder of sexiness. Like, some Pokémon are too unemployed (Electabuzz), but Klefki has the opposite problem. I can't relax around a Klefki, because I know that thing needs to run off and unlock the basement any moment now. It's on call to lock up. And that just makes it hard to relax.

Girafarig is close to the top. Long, elegant, gorgeous neck, and a beautiful dappled pattern adorning its graceful body give it an incredible serenity and unique appeal. And then, oh my God, a weird dark tail with TEETH that BITE. It's scary, and yet you know that Girafarig will treat you well, bring you an excellent wine to taste with its home-cooked, delicately seasoned dinner. Great. But there's one Pokémon that knocks this demonic giraffe off the podium.

Regirock. It's Regirock. The very picture of masculinity. Stoic and hard all over. No-one can reach him. No one dares. This is the sexiest Pokémon, as voted for by one thousand of Northumberland's top midwives (Gornguss et al, 2017).

*** 

Well folks, there you have it. And honestly, looking at this Regirock, I have to say - it's really cute.

I watched Charli XCX's Mockumentary

I was interested in The Moment, Charli XCX's mockumentary about the tail end of the phenomenon that Brat, her lauded 2024 album, became, for several reasons. First, there is something weird about it. Something about this idea that feels perfectly, deliciously weird. This is the sort of thing that could so easily be an embarrassing, lacklustre flop. It sounds like a fun, potentially barbed, canter through the warped microcosm of the music industry she exists in. But it also sounds: stupid.

As the film opens, we're shoved into the great funnel of Charli's promotional life, hapless handler in tow, thrust into the eternal awkwardness of corporate organisational noodling. The record label is bringing in a weird director to make a weird tour film. Neither Charli, nor anyone else, seems to really know what's going on.

And it's messy, this clump of E4 comedy that emerges sheepishly from the screen, wagging its tail limply, knowing its not about to get any headpats. It starts off low, with dialogue a little bit too stilted and awkward, leaning into that The Office style reliance on the natural awkwardness of the moment, and desperately needing just one person who can act.

But luckily, it picks up. Charli is not a great actor, but the more the movie goes on, the more she sells this shellshocked, Fleabag version of herself, at first too cool for the inane squabbles and power-grabs going on around her, later insane and frantically driven to drastic choices by the spectre of celebrity, and later still nicely earnest, doing a lame but still touching monologue about letting Brat die, or actively killing it in a haze of mediocrity.

I find it really interesting that the narrative has her choosing, on purpose, to make cheap hack slop out of her greatest success, wanting to bury it in some ostentatious, awful, utterly corporate way that feels total. This is the great deviation from the real Charli that sits at the heart of the film, and it's kind of great - partly because it's sort of nonsensical, so antithetical to our vision of what Charli XCX is, so obviously a choice she wouldn't make in reality - here she is, an artist freed from the trap of keeping her baby. Authenticity be damned. Jeff Bezos winks and we all laugh.

Plus, the gay people have successfully committed a beautiful financial crime. Something is, in a way, deeply right with this world.

Three Brat cards out of five.

 ★★★☆☆