456. TMTF’s Top Ten Dragons

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Adam Stück

A while back, TMTF ran a top ten list of hot guys in fiction—guys who are literally hot, I mean. As I made the list, I was strongly tempted to fill it with fire-breathing dragons. I eventually wrote about other fiery characters, saving the dragons for a future top ten list.

That time has come. Today is a day of dragons.

Well, I won’t let this introduction dragon—sorry; drag on—any longer. There’s no claws, um, cause for further delays. These dragons hail from tails, I mean, tales of all kinds, old and new. (Heck, am I ever ember-rassed—embarrassed, I mean—by these dragon puns. I thought they were clever, but the scales have fallen from my eyes… so to speak.)

Feel the heat, ladies and gentlemen, as TMTF presents…

The TMTF List of Top Ten Dragons!

Be ye warned: Here there be dragons, and also spoilers.

Before we begin, a quick note: I considered including Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock on this list, but it’s clearly not a dragon. It’s a Jabberwock. There’s a difference… I think.

10. Elliott (Pete’s Dragon)

In this classic Disney film, Elliott is the dim-witted but well-meaning protector of Pete, an orphaned boy. Elliott communicates in good-natured grumbles, mumbles, and clicks. He can also turn invisible, which allows him to hide from grownups (and made less work for the film’s animators). Nearly everyone assumes Pete’s dragon is an imaginary friend, but that doesn’t stop him from being a faithful one. A remake of Pete’s Dragon will soon be released, but its oddly furry Elliott won’t replace the lovably derpy original.

9. Trogdor the Burninator (Homestar Runner)

Have you ever wanted to draw a dragon? It’s easy! Just follow Strong Bad’s simple, step-by-step instructions—and witness the creation of a beloved Internet icon. Trogdor the Burninator began on a sheet of notebook paper as the letter S, followed by teeth, “spinities,” angry eyebrows, and a beefy arm “for good measure.” This silly sketch quickly spawned a cheesy death metal song and a couple of browser games, and went on to become one of the Internet’s most enduring memes. Strong Bad puts it well: “When the land is in ruin … only one guy will remain. My money’s on Trogdor.”

8. Ran and Shaw (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

There are basically two types of dragons. The Western dragon, rooted in European folklore, is a fierce beast. The Eastern dragon, born of Asian mythologies, is nobler and wiser. These dragons are that second type. Ran and Shaw are godlike creatures who guard the secrets of firebending, an ancient martial art. They are silent and mysterious, helping only those who prove themselves worthy, and adding to the fascinating lore of my all-time favorite show.

7. Mushu (Disney’s Mulan)

I just declared Eastern dragons wise and noble, but Mushu is an exception to the rule. This tiny dragon is sent to aid the heroine of Disney’s Mulan by the spirits of her ancestors. (They meant to send a bigger dragon, but Mushu went instead.) This irreverent spitfire is full of bad ideas, but his heart is in the right place. Forget Malificent. In this story of war and loss, Mushu makes us laugh, and earns his place as Disney’s best dragon.

6. Spike (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic)

This young dragon is a dude in a world of candy-colored ponies, and he knows it. He survives as any self-respecting male does when surrounded by emotional females: he makes sarcastic remarks. Behind the snark is a kid who is in turn earnest, selfish, thoughtful, and insecure. In a couple of unexpectedly deep episodes, Spike comes to terms with his identity: neither a pony nor a typical dragon, belonging to neither group, yet finding acceptance in both. And did I mention his deadpan snark? Spike may not be the most consistent character ever written, but I like him.

5. Eustace Clarence Scrubb (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)

By the time the Dawn Treader, a ship battered by wind and waves, reaches the safety of a deserted island, Eustace Clarence Scrubb is sick of everything. This ill-tempered brat abandons his fellow passengers and goes for a long walk, which ends with a nap on a dragon’s abandoned treasure. He awakes, in the fine tradition of Gregor Samsa, transformed into a monstrous vermin—a dragon, actually. This outward change is horrifying, but prompts a positive inward transformation. As a dragon, Eustace finds his humanity, and eventually regains his human form in a scene that echoes the redemptive grace of Jesus Christ. Eustace may be only a temporary dragon, but he’s quite a good one.

4. Hungarian Horntail (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

In the Harry Potter series, the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry is notable partly for training witches and wizards, but mostly for child endangerment. (A troll and a three-headed dog in the first book alone? Really?!) By the fourth book, Hogwarts has made child endangerment into a formal competition with the Tri-Wizard Tournament, in which teenagers face giant freakin’ dragons. (No wonder Harry Potter is controversial.) The spiked Hungarian Horntail is the deadliest of these, giving Trogdor some serious competition in the “spinities” department. I love how the various species of dragons in the Harry Potter books seem so believable, with different breeds having different countries of origin; the Hungarian Horntail is the coolest by far.

3. The Dragon (Beowulf)

Art by Andreas Mayer.

We’re dipping into the classics here with the unnamed dragon from Beowulf, the Old English epic. (I recommend the poem; it’s fairly short, and modern-language translations are surprisingly readable.) After conquering a couple of frightful monsters, Beowulf finally meets his match in this dragon, and dies shortly after killing it. This beast made literary history. According to Wikipedia, it’s an early archetype of the Western dragon, establishing classic traits such as hoarding treasure and breathing fire. John Gardner’s novel Grendel adds its own interpretation of the Beowulf dragon, depicting it as a nihilistic philosopher. Huh.

2. Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon)

Toothless is basically my cat, but even more adorable. He can also fly and shoot concentrated blasts of explosive energy, which I’m pretty sure my cat can’t do. In the film How to Train Your Dragon, the Viking lad Hiccup defies his culture by refusing to kill this injured dragon. The dragon, which Hiccup names Toothless, rewards his compassion with fierce loyalty and adorable affection. In the original book, Toothless is actually kind of a jerk; this is a rare case in which the movie is way better than the book. Toothless is cuter than your average dragon, which makes him pretty much perfect.

1. Smaug (The Hobbit)

Yes, Smaug is number one on this list. Of course he is. Inspired by the Beowulf dragon, Smaug is the ultimate example of his kind: cruel, vindictive, petty, vicious, powerful, and scary as all heck. After destroying an entire kingdom, he haunts the land for many long years. The entire story of The Hobbit builds up to Smaug, and it doesn’t end with him: Smaug’s death ignites a battle between three armies, which is interrupted by legions of goblins eager to claim the dragon’s hoard. Even in death, Smaug causes all kinds of horror, and I consider him the greatest dragon ever imagined.

Who is your favorite dragon? Fire away in the comments!

430. Revelation Is a Weird, Weird Book

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Adam Stück

Donald Trump is all over the news these days. He reminds me of the book of Revelation, and of the end of the world.

Nah, I’m just kidding. When the author of Revelation described trumps resounding, I doubt he had this particular Trump in mind. Then again, maybe he did. It is a weird book.

Brace yourself. Things are about to get weird.

A high school teacher of mine once declared, “I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, but Revelation almost makes me wonder if John was tripping on something when he wrote it,” or words to that effect.

Revelation is a bizarre book, full of visions that seem more like hallucinations. A closer look reveals something even stranger. Revelation is a bit like Frankenstein’s monster: a book stitched together from bits of other books. It combines concepts and images from Old Testament prophets like Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah with New Testament events such as the life of Christ and the spread of the Christian Church.

Revelation is weird, man.

The book is a bizarro mixture of warnings, prophecies, and visions, practically all of which are incredibly vague, and some of which are just weird. There are plagues, earthquakes, beasts, angels, demons, and locusts with human faces and scorpion stings. (I’m not making up that last one, I swear.)

This statue from my hometown of Quito represents a vision in Revelation.

Opinions on Revelation are extremely divided. Some interpret these visions and prophecies as literally as possible, which is the basis for the Left Behind books. (They’re pretty terrible.) Others believe the visions are somehow symbolic of world events. A few lunatics believe the mystical “secrets” of Revelation can be somehow “unlocked,” which is rubbish.

I have no idea how to interpret Revelation, but the most sensible theory I’ve read is that its visions and prophecies applied not to events in our own future, but to events that occurred nearly two millennia ago. According to this view, Revelation prophesied imminent events such as the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. This theory isn’t perfect, but it seems more rational than most of the ideas floating around these days.

Of course, there’s more to Revelation than its unanswered questions. Certain elements of Revelation have captured imaginations everywhere and left a huge cultural impact.

Consider the number 666. “This calls for wisdom,” wrote the author of Revelation. “If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.” Many have tried to solve this riddle, but none have figured it out.

The best theory I’ve heard, based on established traditions of biblical numerical symbolism, is that it represents someone who challenges the sovereignty of God. The number three represents God, who is three Persons, and the number seven symbolizes perfection. The number 666 (three sixes) represents an imperfect trinity that falls short of perfect divinity.

Nowadays, the number 666 is used mostly in horror movies and stuff. Superstitions surround the number to a point at which some people are a little scared of it. This fear is called hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. (Seriously, I’m not making this up.)

Another popular image from Revelation is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These bringers of divine judgment ride differently-colored horses and are widely believed to represent cataclysmic events. The riders of the white, red, black, and pale horses are thought to symbolize conquest (or possibly plague), war, famine, and death, respectively.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, more or less.

The Four Horsemen have been embraced by pop culture, even becoming characters in superhero comics. (Heck, the trailers for the next X-Men movie suggest the Horsemen will make an appearance.) There are even unofficial My Little Pony versions of the Horsemen, because this is the Internet.

Revelation is full of weird images and intriguing concepts, but the note on which it ends is a hopeful one. The final chapters of Revelation paint a picture of a world no longer broken, but restored and renewed. God wipes away the pain, the injustice, the suffering. He makes things right.

The older I get, the more I see the brokenness of the world. In my twenty-something years, I’ve glimpsed the sickening realities of poverty, abuse, depression, mental illness, and addiction—and God only knows what horrors I haven’t seen. It makes me long for everything to be fixed.

This brings me to a song. It is, honestly, the most beautiful song I know. No song in the universe stirs my soul quite so deeply as Michael Card’s “New Jerusalem.” It makes me long for a time when there will be no more hunger, no more child soldiers, no more senseless massacres, and no more pain.

That is the great message of Revelation, which not even its weirdest visions can eclipse: God will someday set things straight.

Collectible Card Games

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Adam Stück

A few days ago, as I chatted with a dear friend from Ecuador, our conversation turned to his brave but ill-fated attempts to teach me to play a collectible card game. Years ago in Quito, my friend and I sat down with colorful packs of Magic: The Gathering cards. He wanted to teach me to play; I wanted to learn to play. It seemed simple enough.

However, there were two things neither of us considered. That first is that I am easily distracted. The second is that I have a deplorable memory: especially in the case of rules and systems. As my friend, whom I’ll call Socrates, explained the rules of the game, I flipped through his cards, looking at the pretty pictures and reading incomprehensible bits and pieces of game instructions.

The rules for most collectible card games are only slightly less comprehensible than Finnegans Wake. (I’m sorry; I can’t help making lit jokes occasionally.) The pictures are nice, though!

When Socrates and I tried playing a round of Magic: The Gathering, I asked him an average of thirty-seven questions per turn. We gave up in the end, opting for Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. or some other game that wasn’t so far beyond my feeble intellect.

For years, I could hardly sit down at a table without having to brush away collectible cards. My friends in middle and high school collected cards from all kinds of games: Magic: The Gathering, which featured fantasy elements in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons; Pokémon, starring Nintendo’s cutesy Pocket Monsters; World of Warcraft, which had leaped from computers to tabletops; and Yu-Gi-Oh!, which featured the most egregious anime hair I have ever seen.

Yu-Gi-Oh my gosh that hair is horrible.

I never got into collectible card games, except for a brief fascination with Pokémon cards as a kid. I went through what I can only call a Pokémon phase in fifth grade, in which I collected dozens and dozens of cards. I never learned the rules of the game, but that didn’t stop me from playing it with friends. Fortunately, my friends were as clueless as I, and our card games turned into anarchic free-for-alls with rules made up as we needed them. (It was sort of like Calvinball.)

I’m not sure what happened to all of my Pokémon cards. They probably slipped away to whatever inscrutable corner of the world swallowed up Amelia Earhart.

To this day, I have not forgotten the value of a holographic Charizard.

Since I finished high school, collectible cards seem to have vanished from my life, though news occasionally reaches me. I hear there’s a new My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic collectible card game making the rounds, and Magic: The Gathering seems to be doing well. World of Warcraft cards have been replaced by an online card game. The anime hair in Yu-Gi-Oh! is probably just as bad as it was eight years ago, but I’m too disinterested to find out.

I enjoy looking at them, but I don’t plan to buy collectible cards any time soon. My money must go to necessities like rent, gas, coffee, and food. Besides, my life is complicated enough without the unintelligible rules and instructions for card games! If I tried to learn all the rules to a new game, I would probably lose whatever sanity I have left, and end up eating grass like old Nebuchadnezzar. No card is worth that!

Well… a Charizard might be; I suppose it depends on whether it’s holographic.

This post was originally published on June 8, 2015. TMTF shall return with new content on February 22, 2016!

Days Gone By

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Adam Stück

This song comes from a girly cartoon about rainbow ponies, and it may be the loveliest I’ve heard all year.

This beautiful arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne” has new lyrics and a deft fusion of two styles. The Irish flute and tin whistle give the song a Celtic feel, while the banjo and southern-accented singers add an acoustic country flavor. Celtic and country music come from separate continents, yet have much in common as styles of folk music. (I wish someone would mix Celtic or country with traditional Andean music… I think Irish flutes or banjos could blend well with pan flutes and charangos.)

I generally frown upon rewriting old songs, but this one’s new lyrics are pretty good. Its message—thinking of family who can’t be here and smiling at good memories of days gone by—strikes a chord with me. Many of my loved ones are scattered across the world, and my quiet Indiana life seems far from my adventures growing up. This song is a celebration of good things past, and it hits me right in the feels.

Happy New Year, guys.

The Ability to Pull Stuff from Nowhere

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Adam Stück

Art by iangoudelock on deviantART.

I’m sure you’ve seen it. As you watch a movie or play a video game, a character pulls out something from nowhere. Bugs Bunny and Wakko Warner reach behind their backs and bring out anvils or sledgehammers. Solid Snake and Link produce an endless assortment of gear and weapons from thin air. As Link demonstrates in the clever picture above, actually carrying around all that stuff is a physical impossibility.

The ability to pull stuff from nowhere is sometimes called the back pocket, a wry suggestion that the things characters pull from behind their backs were in their pants pockets the whole time. (This concept is particularly amusing in the case of characters that don’t wear pants.) In anime, the concept is called hammerspace. A comedic trope in Japanese animation is for characters to express anger by hitting something (or someone) with a large hammer produced from nowhere, making hammerspace the hypothetical place where all those hammers are kept.

The back pocket concept is usually played for comic effect in animation. Pinkie Pie, an exuberant character from a surprisingly awesome show about ponies, produces a wide assortment of items (including freaking cannons) from nowhere. Other characters know better than to question Pinkie’s defiance of physics.

In fact, when back pockets are used in any show or film, no one ever seems surprised.

In video games, back pockets are utilitarian rather than comedic in nature. The fact of the matter is that Link from the Legend of Zelda games needs his gear—all of it. Limiting his inventory would be a hindrance to the player, who would have to backtrack every time she needed something Link didn’t happen to be carrying at the moment. Constantly retrieving items, or plodding slowly under their weight, would be horribly annoying.

Thus Link carts around enormous shields and heavy explosives and iron-shod boots without any trouble. (Humorously enough, the iron boots only weigh down Link when he’s actually wearing them.) Solid Snake somehow sneaks through enemy territory burdened with cardboard boxes, sensor equipment and an entire arsenal of weapons (including massive rocket launchers). Every Final Fantasy character carries up to ninety-nine of every kind of weapon, armor and potion.

Where is all that stuff kept? Where does it come from?

Some questions, dear reader, are simply beyond answering.

This post was originally published on April 2, 2014. TMTF shall return with new content on November 30, 2015!

Peppocalypse Now

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Adam Stück

The photo above transforms Peppa Pig, the cutesy star of a British preschool cartoon, into a harbinger of destruction, death, and everlasting gloom. Behold Peppa embrace the coming darkness with open arms and a soulless smile. Listen, and you may just hear Peppa whisper: “My motto: apocalypse now.”

The apocalypse—nay, the Peppocalypse—has come. Heaven help us all.

This haunting photo was snapped by M.A. Larson, an author and screenwriter notorious for carrying a sharpie marker and signing anything that holds still long enough. He has joined Katie Cook (comics writer) and Alex Hirsch (creator of Gravity Falls) on my list of Most Entertaining People to Follow on Twitter. Besides writing some stellar episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Mr. Larson snapped the photo above at a theme park somewhere, unleashing the Peppocalypse upon the world.

I don’t know much about the Peppa Pig cartoon, except that it’s a well-received preschool series, and also twee as all heck. Whether it stars a harbinger of doom, as M.A. Larson’s photo suggests, is a question best left unanswered.

384. Spiders Are Noble and Misunderstood

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Adam Stück

Nearly everyone I know has an irrational fear of spiders. In fact, most of my friends and relatives react to spiders by terminating them with extreme prejudice. This is a shame. Spiders are noble, innocent, misunderstood creatures. I’m fond of the little guys, and I think they deserve better than to be slaughtered without pity or remorse.

I grew up in Ecuador: a tiny country with a bewildering variety of birds, animals, insects, and other creatures, including several species of spiders. At one point in Quito, my family and I had tarantulas burrowing in our back garden. No spider ever did me harm. Other bugs attacked me, such as mosquitoes; still more tried unsuccessfully to hurt me, such as scorpions and a Giant Mutant Killer Jungle Ant, but spiders were contented to mind their own business and leave me alone.

Most people refuse to return that favor. A friend of mine, whom I’ll call Socrates, once tried incinerating a spider with a flamethrower cobbled together from a lighter and a can of cooking spray. Other friends—less creative than Socrates, but just as violent—have wielded books and shoes in their bloodthirsty crusade against spiders.

Heck, even J.R.R. Tolkien, a man of enormous creative genius and one of my heroes, hated spiders. A childhood encounter with a tarantula traumatized him for life. His arachnophobia surfaced in his stories; his most famous books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, both feature wicked giant spiders.

As much as I admire Tolkien, I think E.B. White was closer to the truth when he wrote Charlotte’s Web, a children’s book about a sweet, noble friend who happens to be a spider.

Everyone thinks spiders are awful, but look at that goose! That bird is clearly evil, and probably possessed by many devils.

Charlotte is basically any and every spider: hardworking and considerate, spinning beautiful webs to rid the world of pests like flies and mosquitoes. E.B. White understood, guys.

Flipping heck, even cartoons for young children get it.

Spiders quietly eliminate true pests. Have you ever tried sleeping with a cloud of mosquitoes buzzing around your ears? I have. It sucks. Have you ever been annoyed by flies, stung by bees, or menaced by cockroaches? I have. It sucks. (Cockroaches, my archenemies, are the worst creatures on God’s green earth.) Spiders prevent the proliferation of these wretched beasties. If spiders did not exist, the world would be overrun by filthy pests. Spiders are God’s guardian angels.

Spiders aren’t so bad, really.

Look, I get it. Spiders look scary. They have a lot of legs and too many eyes, and the way they move is a little creepy. Spiders are odd-looking. However, if it were okay to kill things just because they looked odd, Pete Docter would have been murdered ages ago, and Pixar’s Inside Out (which Docter directed and co-wrote) would never have been made. So there.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for Mr. Docter, but he sure is a goofy-looking guy. He has roughly 70% more forehead than most people.

If we killed everything that looked weird or made us uncomfortable, I probably wouldn’t have made it to my teens.

There’s a reasonable explanation for this. Probably.

Yes, some spiders are venomous. Some can kill you. Do you know what else can kill you? Donkeys. (They have a vicious kick.) Human beings also kill each other occasionally, but I like to think most of us aren’t so bad—and neither are most spiders.

So the next time you want to slaughter a spider out of fear or disgust, consider showing some mercy and putting it outside instead!

365. Collectible Card Games

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Adam Stück

The rules for most collectible card games are only slightly less comprehensible than Finnegans Wake. (I’m sorry; I can’t help making lit jokes occasionally.) The pictures are nice, though!

Yu-Gi-Oh my gosh that hair is horrible.

I’m not sure what happened to all of my Pokémon cards. They probably slipped away to whatever inscrutable corner of the world swallowed up Amelia Earhart.

To this day, I have not forgotten the value of a holographic Charizard.

Well… a Charizard might be; I suppose it depends on whether it’s holographic.

348. About Storytelling: Getting Drunk on Milk

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Adam Stück

In fiction, as in real life, bad things happen. When tragedy strikes, fictional characters sometimes try to drown their grief in alcohol.

We’ve all seen this in the movies. In one scene, a man loses his job or girlfriend; in the next, we find him drinking or drunk. It’s an age-old trope of storytelling. Heck, even I’ve used it. Lance Eliot, the protagonist in my novel, is quite a drinker.

What about stories for children? Here we have a problem. A story may need its characters to drink away their sorrows, but that sure ain’t appropriate for the kiddos! Storytellers, crafty creatures that they are, have discovered a family-friendly alternative to getting drunk on alcohol: getting drunk on nonalcoholic things, of course!

(In writing this blog post, I discovered this trope actually has a name: drunk on milk. Thanks, TV Tropes.)

Here are some examples of characters in family-friendly media drowning their sorrows in things that aren’t alcohol.

Tea (Toy Story)

I’ve drunk Darjeeling tea before, and let me tell you: the stuff Buzz Lightyear drinks (or pretends to drink) in Toy Story is like no Darjeeling I’ve ever tasted. Whatever is in those teacups, Buzz gets buzzed. (Pun intended. I’m so, so sorry. By the way, in case one bad pun isn’t enough for you, “Buzz” is pronounced “booze” in a Hispanic accent.) Buzz’s, um, tea is strong enough that he doesn’t seem to mind being called “Mrs. Nesbitt,” which must be humiliating for an intergalactic hero. Darned Darjeeling!

Doughnuts (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic)

A happy cartoon about magical rainbow ponies can’t show its characters consuming alcohol, despite the fact that one of its protagonists is apparently named after a hard liquor. The alternative? Doughnuts. When Spike the dragon is left behind by his pony pals, he hits the local doughnut shop—the name of which, I can only presume, is Drunk ’n’ Donuts. (Pun intended, but I’m not sorry for this one!) Spike may not get a hangover from his excesses, but I don’t envy him the inevitable sugar crash.

Ramen noodles (The Legend of Korra)

Bolin—the young man passed out on the table in the picture above—deals with romantic rejection as heartbroken men do: by heading to the local ramen joint and eating too many bowls of noodles. This early scene from The Legend of Korra makes me chuckle; I’m especially amused by Bolin’s pet ferret lounging in an empty bowl. The Legend of Korra is a good show… I should catch up with it someday.

Milk (The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask)

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is, without question, one of the greatest games I have ever played. It’s also one of the few to feature a milk bar. (Yes, I’ve seen a milk bar in more games than this one!) Open late at night, the milk bar caters exclusively to adults and offers both live entertainment and a variety of dairy drinks. I think the Shakespearean-looking gent in the picture above says it best: “Milk… It’s miiiilk… Can you get tipsy from something like milk?!? Hic!”

Ice cream (VeggieTales)

I’m digging deep into my childhood memories for this one. At one point, Larry the woebegone cucumber responds to bad news by eating too much ice cream at a diner. (VeggieTales is not just a kids’ show, but a Christian kids’ show, so they really had to keep it family-friendly!) In the picture above, Larry recovers with a warming cup of tea. Let’s hope it’s not Darjeeling.

Juice boxes (Jan Animation Studios)

All right, I’m kinda reaching here, but I suppose this short video counts. Bar Buddies, a brief animation from the brony community, has a kid getting wasted on juice boxes. Apple juice, apple cider, applejack—what’s the difference? They’re all made of apples, right? This one makes me laugh because of the disparity between the well-dressed, hard-drinking guy on the left and the silly kid on the right.

What’s drunk-on-milk scenarios did we miss? Let us know in the comments!

300. Creative Counseling with DRWolf

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Adam Stück

In past months, I’ve felt burned out. Writing has been harder. I realized it was time for this blog to get some help, so I met with DRWolf—a creative thinker known for his work in the brony community—to discuss the problem. He was friendly, polite, and helpful. What I didn’t expect was for the good doctor actually to be… you know… a wolf.

I want to thank DRWolf for his time, consideration, and advice. I was sincerely interested in finding some answers, and he gave some really good ones. Keep up the fine work, Doctor. It was an honor to work with you.

I also want to thank Crowne Prince, animator extraordinaire, for the superb video. It’s absolutely fantastic, Ms. Prince. I appreciate your time and expertise!

As usual whenever I stumble over a blogging milestone, I have a few more words to say.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to my parents for their support and encouragement, and especially to my father for his tips and artwork. Without him, TMTF would probably not have lasted long. Thanks, old man. You’re the stoutest of Stout Fellas.

Next, a word to my typewriter monkeys: If you ever do that again, I will donate you to the zoo. I mean it this time.

Speaking of my monkeys, I guess they deserve some credit. Despite their laziness, pyromania, and extensive criminal record, I don’t know how I would keep TMTF up and running without my dirty dozen: Sophia, Socrates, Plato, Hera, Penelope, Aristotle, Apollo, Euripides, Icarus, Athena, Phoebe, and Aquila. Thanks, guys.

(I’m serious about the zoo, though. Behave yourselves for once!)

My readers have been far kinder to this blog than my monkeys ever have. To every person who has supported TMTF by commenting on it, sharing it, liking posts here or on Facebook, writing guest posts, celebrating Be Nice to Someone on the Internet Day, or simply reading the blog occasionally—thank you. Thank you so much. The greatest joy of a writer is to be read, and I appreciate every single one of you.

Finally—insofar as a blog about video games, Doctor Who, and exploding tomatoes can honor anybody—soli Deo gloria. Whatever my struggles, I hope these three words will always be my guiding principle for creativity.

On a less spiritual note… if I had a penny for every post I’ve written for this blog, I’d have enough money to go out and buy a cup of coffee. That’s pretty neat. All in all, thanks to all of you, it seems I haven’t quite run out of reasons to be creative.

I’d better keep writing.

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