Ah, well. I spent quite some time wavering between having the big fights between the heroes and their nemeses in the plot and sidestepping them…and, as is sadly characteristic of me, I ended up with a wishy-washy compromise. ._. Whenever Lucy said “You’re wishy-washy, Charlie Brown.” on screen, it felt like she was addressing me. And her assessment is still as accurate as it was when I was Charlie Brown’s age…
So, instead of big fights, or no big fights…you get Mopey not having the big fight with her mentor, but at least supplying a short and succinct speculation as to how such a fight (and the Professor) would have gone down. I’m not assuming any liability for the accuracy of her speculation, of course, and the Professor might have his own, alternative, version of what would have happened.
And the speculative nature of this engagement also leaves me at liberty not to be taking sides in the conflict itself – and I’ll gladly avail myself of that opportunity. The Professor’s “History of the 20th Century” is a riveting read, if undeniably wordy at 23 volumes. And Mopey’s “Nutritional issues concerning the breakfast menu at the Wannsee conference” might be a bit tedious at times, but is definitely very well researched and convincing in its argument. Even if the argument is only that you can’t blame it all on the sausage.
So, anyway, that’s how the climactic battle between the Professor and Mopey didn’t go down…but would have gone down, had it gone down. According to one of the would-be participants…nobody knows what the future holds, though, and if those two end up having a real confrontation at some point, the outcome might be quite different.
More on Monday.
… I’m going to be honest, I did not expect a kid-fessor like that to have an appropriate evil face, but that’s a damn good evil face you managed to give him.
It’s still not enough to give him a resistance to being cancelled though. Man, Mopey went for the nukes.
Kids can actually be remarkably cruel, since their capability to empathize is not yet fully developed – but we have such a strong cultural bias towards the idea of ‘child-like innocence’ (which, of course, also exists) that evil children are rare outside a specific sub-genre of horror, which uses that discrepancy for good effect.
Sometimes the effect works the other way round, as well – I think one of the main reasons why the character of Joffrey Baratheon appeared much more despicable in the TV show as opposed to the books is the fact that he’s older. A 12-year-old lacking empathy and showing casual cruelty isn’t necessarily a lost cause and might still grow up to become a decent adult (if he doesn’t get poisoned before that), while 1 16-year-old still showing the same traits is seriously bad news…
Oh yeah, Joffrey is the sort of person you want to punt into a dumpster, certainly. You’ve hit it right on the head though. The book version was terrible, but the show version was just… ugh. Absolutely vile.