Friends and communities.

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/13/vacation-mode-on/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56049

Hey, you know what happens next week? Krissy and I celebrate 30 years of being married. She and I are taking a little vacation to enjoy it together. You may not see me for, uhhhhhhh, a while. If I do show up, it will be pretty brief. Don’t worry, Athena will be around for you, and we have a lot of Big Ideas for you next week too. It’ll be fun. Just mostly without me.

Bye!

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/13/vacation-mode-on/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56049

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/12/why-licensed-music-works-so-well-in-megamind/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56041

If you know me, you know one thing I complain about a lot (and probably more than any sane person should) is the use of licensed music in animated movies. I especially hate the use of licensed music in Illumination studio movies. Though, I can recognize that I am biased because I hate Illumination as a whole and dislike 93.3% of their movies (I did the math).

There is one movie, though, in which I find the licensed music to not only be tolerable, but enjoyable. Megamind is the only movie where licensed music is absolutely essential throughout the film, and integral to the very character of Megamind himself.

Megamind is a flashy, theatrical villain who is in it for the love of the game. He lives for the showmanship and flamboyant performances that are the fights between him and Metro Man. As he says in the final fight of the movie, the difference between a villain and a supervillain is presentation. And you can see this ideal of his throughout the film.

In the first interaction with Roxanne Ritchi, where she has been kidnapped and is in Megamind’s evil lair, he unveils all these supervillain-esque devices to her in hopes to come across as a threatening villain. There’s alligators, spikes, a disc blade sort of thing, a mini gun, even a flamethrower. She is impressed by none of it, of course, and his confidence deflates as she mocks him. She also asks where they get all their blinky dials and Tesla coils, to which Minion responds that they come from an outlet store in Romania.

As we can see from this exchange, Megamind goes out of his way to aesthetically meet the requirements of being a villain. So much so that he even buys fake equipment from overseas to look professional. Essentially, he has props. Because he’s a theater kid!

Megamind is obsessed with the pageantry of heroes and villains. We can see this in the exchanges he has with Metro Man and their “witty” banter about microwave warranties. He loves it so much that when he is training Hal to be a superhero, he specifically tries to teach him how to have that same back-and-forth like Metro Man did with him. Even during their first fight, Megamind says “Now it’s time for some witty back-and-forth banter!”

Right before this fight, Megamind accuses Hal of being “unprofessional” and that Metro Man would’ve never kept him waiting, because he was a pro. Hal isn’t “professional” enough for Megamind, and when Hal catches him after their fight and says he’s going to kill him, Megamind says “that isn’t how you play the game.” Proof that Megamind sees this all as a big stage play. It’s a game to him, and one he loves and takes great care in making sure all of the details and specifics are just right and fit his ideal narrative perfectly.

In this same vein, Megamind is obsessed with perfecting his outfit, the Black Mamba, for his first fight with Hal. He wants his costume to look good for his big battle. For what is a good show without the costuming department? In the beginning of the movie, he intentionally points out that he’s wearing custom baby seal leather boots just to prove to everyone he is the bad guy. Look how evil he is, see how dastardly Megamind is. He’s obsessed with painting this picture of himself that presents himself as heinous and diabolical.

Which is exactly why all of the licensed music in this movie fits Megamind perfectly. More often than not, he is the one actually playing the music out loud. When he takes over Metro City, he tells Minion to “hit it” and plays “Highway to Hell” on a big boom box that Minion carries around. He proceeds to dance to it, and makes his smoke show entrance to city hall while it plays. For his final fight with Hal, he plays “Welcome to the Jungle” out loud and creates a huge smoke and light show with his Brain Bots. This is the part where he proclaims “presentation!” is the key to super villain. At the end of the movie, he plays “Bad” on an even bigger boom box and him and Roxanne dance to it.

The point here is that his music choices are intentional. The songs are tools that serve his purpose of painting himself as an iconic, nefarious villain. The licensed music isn’t just thrown in, it’s part of the world and a part of Megamind himself. It is intentional. And it works.

God, I love Megamind.

Do you like Megamind? Do you hate licensed music as much as I do, or am I just obsessed with something niche? Should I talk about why Despicable Me is the only good Illumination movie? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/12/why-licensed-music-works-so-well-in-megamind/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56041

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/10/reigniting-my-love-for-phase-one-of-marvel/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56011

In recent years, I, like many others, have pretty much completely fallen off the Marvel bandwagon and stopped watching all the Disney+ shows, the spin-offs, even most of the theatrical releases like Madame Web and Brave New World. Whatever your reasoning is, whether it’s because there’s simply too much stuff to get through, because the original gang we all loved is long gone, or you’re just burnt out on superheroes, tons of other people are in the same boat as you.

For me, I’ve been wondering so much lately what it is for me. Why don’t I like Marvel anymore? When Marvel hit it big and came out with The Avengers in 2012, I was 13, and boy howdy did Marvel take over my teens. I was pretty damn obsessed. I had Tumblr posts and fan art saved on my iPhone 5, would talk about all the movies and superheroes with my friends, see every movie on opening day like my life depended on it, all that typically teen fan type stuff.

So what happened? Is it that I’m getting older, or did Marvel content just genuinely get worse and worse as the years went on? Is it some of column A and some of column B?

It was just about right after having seen Thunderbolts that I was really thinking about this question a lot, when a video came up in my recommended section on YouTube.

The video was called “The Lost Art of Marvel’s Phase One,” and was part of a series called Detail Diatribe from Overly Sarcastic Productions. If you’re on the internet and also a nerd, you probably already know who Overly Sarcastic Productions is. While I had heard of them plenty and even seen a mythology video from them once or twice, I never really got into them.

But how could I resist a two-hour video essay over Phase One of Marvel, the phase that pretty much changed not just my life but society as a whole? So I took a chance on it, and immediately loved it. So much so that I started watching OSP’s other superhero videos, and now I’m here to recommend them to you.

They put out “The Lost Art of Marvel’s Phase One” about three weeks ago, and I would recommend starting with this one, like I did. In it, they talk about what made everyone fall in love with Marvel in the first place. Are we all just wearing rose colored glasses and remember them being better than they were? Especially for people like me who were younger when they came out, is our nostalgia blinding us into unearned fondness of these movies?

While it is almost two hours long, I genuinely don’t feel like any part of this video essay drags or is boring, as they talk about so many different things and keep their points moving along consistently. They go over the characters specifically of course, like Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, even Hulk, but they also go over how well the creators did at weaving together the overarching narrative that comes together in The Avengers.

This video made me realize, you know what, fuck yeah I liked Marvel. Shit was good. Like genuinely good! There’s so much to love about Phase One, and so much to love about our original group of super pals! I’m not ashamed that I liked, and am still fond of, Phase One. I hope this video inspires some of that in you, too.

After loving this video so much, I of course had to watch another one of their Detail Diatribe videos called “Captain America The Winter Soldier is the Best MCU Movie” which came out only two weeks ago. Why? Because I have been saying that exact thing for years. But, they can explain it better than I can, so you should listen to their video over it:

This one is also two hours long, but when you’ve been saying FOR YEARS that The Winter Soldier is the best Marvel movie, those two hours really fly by. This one is such an important analysis of not just Captain America as a character, but also Black Widow, and the relationship between these two throughout the film. It also talks about the importance of Hydra and how this movie is a damn good political thriller/espionage movie that I feel like we did not know Marvel was capable of at the time!

Moving away from Marvel, I just listened to their Detail Diatribe over Superman a couple days ago, and since Superman is my favorite superhero, I want to share it with y’all!

Superman is my favorite and I’m sick and tired of people saying he’s boring! He’s not boring! Y’all don’t understand the art, and most importantly, heart, of Superman, and hopefully this video will make you see how awesome he is. And you guessed it, it’s almost two hours.

I have absolutely been loving these videos (and a couple others, such as their Doctor Strange one) and I hope you do, too.

My parents were being killjoys by saying that they didn’t understand why I’d spend two hours watching something like this, and that you can just say “The Winter Soldier is the best MCU movie” without needing to talk about it for two hours, but I wholeheartedly disagree! So I’ll keep watching my two-hour videos and keep recommending them to you. You’re welcome.

On a real note, though, if the idea of sitting there and watching a two-hour video is daunting or seems like too much, I’ll go ahead and tell you I didn’t actually watch a single second of any of these videos. I only listened to them. I listened to them in the shower, on my drive to the store, while I was folding clothes, etc.

You don’t have to sit perfectly still and have your eyes glued to the screen the entire time to watch these videos, y’know? You can still enjoy the points they’re making and think about the ideas they bring up without feeling like it’s a chore to sit there and watch two hours of PowerPoint slides.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy what OSP has to say about these characters and movies we’ve all loved at some point in our lives. I know I did!

Do you have a favorite superhero? Which Marvel movie is your favorite? What do you think of all the shows they’ve come out with? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/10/reigniting-my-love-for-phase-one-of-marvel/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56011

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/10/and-now-a-moment-of-flowers/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56005

Because they’re pretty, and the US is a mess in ways that will take a lot to essay, and I just got back from travel and apparently caught a bit of con crud in Phoenix and so am kind of low energy at the moment. So: Look! Flowers! I figure the rest of the Internet will catch you up on the rest of it. Here, have a bit of pretty.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/10/and-now-a-moment-of-flowers/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56005