Tag: Fancy Nancy
#memes
#memes
#memes
Dammit, Disney
‘Fancy Nancy,’ Episode 1: A Discussion
I’m not sure what kind of review this is going to be because I haven’t decided yet what I think of this show. I hated it at first, and then it grew on me.
Under discussion here is Fancy Nancy, a show on Disney Junior. I need to give a little background in case you’re wondering why I’m talking about a CGI Disney Junior show on a blog largely dedicated to magical girls and other weebery.
To put this in terms that my fellow weeaboos can appreciate, it goes like this: Have you read Yotsuba&!? And did you like it? Well, there are a whole bunch of books just like it in the kid lit section at your public library.
In fact, I would recommend that serious anime fans explore some of the chapter books and junior novels at the library, mostly just to find out what they’re missing. American writers of children’s literature give the impression of being people who’ve actually observed children closely before attempting to impersonate them on paper, whereas Japanese creators of manga and anime give the impression of being people who’ve heard rumors of children but have never actually seen any. The next time somebody asks me to justify why I think Cardcaptor Sakura or Lyrical Nanoha is poorly written, I think I’ll just wave a Judy Moody under his nose and say, “Here! Read this! Then you’ll understand!”
The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 8
Chapter 8: Ivy and Bean
Although Nancy now wore her full magical girl outfit, the other girls had nothing but their housecoats. That apparently didn’t bother Junie B., who was too tough to need shoes and too young to understand modesty, but Judy and Amelia clutched the coats about themselves as the rain quickly saturated the terrycloth.
“Time to find out of this works,” said Cam. She raised a hand into the air, much as Nancy had earlier done—but she didn’t give any miniature speech in French. Instead, to Nancy’s shock, she threw off her housecoat, and a suit of metal, like closefitting armor, unfolded across her wiry body. It looked like glossy black plate trimmed with shiny chrome at its edges, and in the joints were what looked like thick blue fabric. Above her temples appeared little boxes that blinked with LED lights. The outfit wasn’t the kind of thing Nancy especially liked, but she had to admit it was pretty in its own way, and Cam somehow looked noble in it, though it might look silly on someone else.
Cam glanced down at herself and flexed her hands in her shiny black gauntlets. “Looks like the nanoprobes finished building my exoskeleton,” she said. “That’s a relief.”
With that, she raised her right hand and pointed it at the robot. A long tube unfolded from the vambrace on her forearm and flashed rhythmically, making the staccato thud thud thud of an automatic gun. A small opening appeared in her wrist and ejected spent shell casings.
Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 8”
The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 7
Chapter 7: Ill-Met by Moonlight
Now began another hard march through the forest in pouring rain. After the kids struggled back into their wet clothes, they trudged, often through ankle-deep mud, into the inky darkness. Rain poured in miniature waterfalls down the broad leaves of the forest’s understory. Men marched with them, men on every side in saturated green fatigues, each with an AK-47 in his arms, each snarling in French too quickly for Nancy to follow. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder roared like the end of the world. Now and then, one of the girls stumbled, and then she got a cold gun barrel against her back—or else a buttstock made a sharp, wet thwack as it stung her shoulders. Twice, Junie B. flexed her raw, burned hands and looked ready to start something. Both times, Cam calmly laid a hand on her arm.
Judy cradled Mouse and tried in vain to shelter the cat from the rain. Droplets hung off the ends of Mouse’s whiskers. The cat’s fur was matted, and her eyes were half-lidded with misery. Finally, too big to carry, padded alongside Amelia, who had to pull the dog out whenever she unwittingly plunged into one of the deep pools that marked the dark, uneven ground.
The thunder made Nancy jump. Whenever she did so, she compulsively clutched Judy’s sleeve, which only made her more irritated and embarrassed. And she wasn’t the only one in an ugly temper: she could see that Judy’s ring was pitch black, darker even than the night that surrounded them.
It was obvious that she, Judy Moody, was in a mood. Not a good mood. A bad mood. A mad-face mood. A forced-to-march-through-the-jungle-at-gunpoint-in-a-thunderstorm mood. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 7”
The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 6
Chapter 6: Into the Fire
Because of the security system, the teleporter couldn’t carry Ivy and Bean all the way to Pink’s base in the space elevator’s counterweight. Instead, it deposited them in her secondary headquarters at geostationary orbit. There, in the midst of the central control room, with the Earth filling the vast window before them, they floated, weightless. The elevator’s black nanocarbon ribbon stretched away to the globe and disappeared into the swirling white foam of the thunderstorm raging below. Occasionally, flashes of lightning were visible in the clouds.
Bean held Ivy in her arms while Ivy sobbed.
They were both soaked from the rain. Water danced around them in the air, round and clear like marbles. Bean always thought weightless liquids looked like Jell-O.
Nestled against Bean’s chest, Ivy’s frizzy red hair bounced and waved, occasionally casting off more of the round globs of water. In one hand, Ivy clutched half of the ruined leather case of her grimoire. Its rescued parchment pages, most of them smeared and unreadable, swirled around in the air, blown hither and thither by the stations’ ventilation system.
“I’ll never be a real witch now,” Ivy cried. Tears poured from her eyes and floated away. “That Fancy Nancy is awful!” Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 6”
The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 5
Chapter 5: Light out of Darkness
High above the Earth, Pink Vicious sat upon her great pink throne. Over her head was a huge skylight above which the planet, enormous and perfectly still, hung perpetually as it shifted through its daily phases of light and shadow. A black strip glossy with sunlight, like an enormous ribbon, stretched up toward the Earth and disappeared in the distance.
Pink Vicious did indeed have a space station situated at geostationary orbit, but that was not where she kept her headquarters: her headquarters were at the space elevator’s far end, in the counterweight, where the g-force was the same as on the surface of the Earth. It gave her a small thrill to know that nothing anchored her except that thin expanse of ribbon, and that if it ever broke, she would go hurtling into the outer darkness.
She had a full day ahead of her. The first order of business was to torture a prisoner. After that came snack time. Then nap time. Then time to develop her plans for world conquest. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 5”
The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 4
Chapter 4: Fire in the Hole
Soon, they were all seated around the table, all except Cam, who once again sat apart from the others at a computer bank. She no longer needed an awkward headset: now she talked to the computer simply by using her mind.
“How are you doing, Cam?” Mouse asked as she lapped her tea.
“Good,” Cam said as she sat with her eyes closed and her fingers to her temples. “I’ve memorized about a gigabyte from your database.”
“Stop there for today,” said Finally as she scratched herself. “If you take too much at once, you can damage your brain. You need to sleep a good eight hours before you do that again.”
Cam nodded once and joined the others at the table, dropping heavily into a chair. She snatched up a large stack of Mouse’s toast and heaped butter onto the first slice. “I am starving.”
Finally nodded and smiled. “Your brain is going to consume a lot of calories now. All of you will require a lot of calories. So eat up.” She inclined her head toward the computers. “Speaking of which, the matter transmutation system has a large recipe database, so order anything you like.”
Judy Moody lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Anything? Then I want a bowl of Mood Flakes.” Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 4”