King Dedede once again the misunderstood hero
(midwest.social)
AstroStelar [he/him]
GamesThere was an episode of the Kirby anime that's a spoof of Harry Potter, complete with a visit by the author "Rowlin". It was part of the trend of praise for it making children like to read.
There is something beautiful about the harry Potter books being so mediocre eveone csn enjoy them then immediately write better fanfic
There was a period where the haters of Harry Potter were all KKKri$$tian freaks who think witchcraft is real and bad
I was spared the HP mind virus by this mind virus
I was a hater as a kid just cause I'd read the first book when I was like 8 or so and thought it kinda sucked. At the time my thoughts were along the lines of 'i already have to go to school every day, why would I read about going to school in my free time?'. Then a couple years later Fellowship of the Ring became a movie and there were lines drawn between LOTR kids and Harry Potter kids in my school for a bit. I was the LOTR kid who immediately got the books from the library after seeing the first movie and struggled through em cause, while I was damn good at reading for my age, Tolkien's archaic word choices were difficult.
My (at the time) favorite cousin was a huge HP nerd when we were young and tried getting me into them. I talked to my mom about getting the books and she gave me LotR and Stephen King's Dark Tower books instead. Later on she gave me Dune because she liked the movie (1984.) I've told her many times how much trouble she saved me by doing that, even though it was kind of accidental.
My cousin who is a year older than me has 3 kids and is a Harry Potter fan, she showed me a tattoo she got expecting me to recognize it one time assuming I was familiar with Harry Potter. Her oldest kid and I have a good rapport, she liked my cool punk style from a young age and now she's 18 and has green hair and is into Italian Disco. I was handing her down books her whole childhood cause I didn't want her Disney adult mom fucking things up.
I didn't want her Disney adult mom
Believe it or not as an adult this same cousin moved to be closer to Orlando, FL. >.>
It would be nice if they moved out of the sticks. But not like that.
See, I was in a similar situation
I was reading actual fantasy novels (oddly enough, I didn't touch LOTR until college) since elementary school and thought Harry Potter was "baby shit"
I was never a big fantasy guy aside from Tolkien and Pratchett. I have made minor contributions to Tolken academia regarding some low hanging fruit that somehow got missed. I got into Pratchett as an adult and am just getting back in now. But i've always been a sci fi dork and was reading star wars novels and Asimov when Harry Potter got big. I had tried a decent amount of fantasy by that time, enough to start to realize it maybe wasn't my favorite type of book and for sure enough to realize how boring and derivative Harry Potter was. There was nothing interesting at all being done with this fantasy. They go to school and the chosen one turns out to be a hero by the end of the year and he's the best at everything all the time.
My English teachers loved me. Im 3rd grade we all had to do a half hour of free form writing every couple of days. Most people did half assed journal entries. I wrote an absolutely bonkers stream of consciousness serial novel over the course of the year! surrounding the adventures of Frank Miser, private eye later turned secret agent. I dont remember much but I know for my Christmas story assignment he was sent to the north pole to bust up an elf strike. My dad was on strike at the time and helped me with terminology and explained a lot of labor issues to me. I did write it myself but he gave it a go over and helped make my second draft more informed. Full writer's room situation. My parents rock. My dad and I can fucking riff. My parents still accidentally call me Louie cause when I was a toddler my dad felt like this walking around, me as a toddler being the short boss gangster:
And misrembered the boss's name mixing it up with a Flintstones episode where there was also a mob boss named 88 Fingers Louie and the nickname Louie just kinda stuck. This kinda stuff in my reallt early childhood has made me a hilarious adult and also really boosted my literacy cause by us making fun of early childhood books together before I could read, I learned to analyze text before I could interpret it.
The first game and the anime are literally the only Kirby related media in which Dedede is a villain. He's an antihero or even a hero in all the rest of the games.
He is a monarchist so it is a little yikes
wields a massive hammer (just needs a sickle to make it complete)
destroys wizardslop
once had an incident where he ate all the food with his comically large spoon
not really from royal blood
King Dedede is /ourguy/.
you missed the most critical one:
is a bird
Also Animorphs also made kids read and clearly was the superior choice for kids of that era
Animorphs
They were all the rage when I was in elementary/middle school, ALL the boys read them and it was a BIG deal when a new one came out.
I remember those books so fondly that I picked up the first one and read it with my step-kid before bed one night.
The writing was, and I cannot emphasize this enough, absolute dogshit. Just AWFUL. I genuinely do not know why they were so popular nor why we loved them so much.
Writing quality was inconsistent due to most of them being ghost written based on outlines from K.A. Applegate. The stories though could be absolutely wild by kid lit standards.
At a time when teachers were desperate to get kids to read literally anything mine were struggling to get me to put animorphs down because I was always trying to sneakily read it in every class instead of paying attention.
I was always trying to sneakily read it in every class instead of paying attention.
Dude we ALL were, myself included. And yeah don't get me wrong I'm glad that it got kids reading that is never a bad thing, I'm just amazed that that was what we were all amped about.
Jokes on you, I like dogshit
And K.A. Applegate loves her trans daughter
People act like the trend was some big conspiracy but the books were putting up impressive numbers that were usually only seen by something like a Stephen King novel release and blowing them away.
Every generation fears the youth becoming illiterate and Harry Potters remarkable sales pushed the idea that it “saved reading”. Typical media sensationalism to sell rags and with a possible nudge from Scholastic to help them sell more books.
JK Rowling was also a very marketable figure as a pretty white woman with a rags to riches story. They wouldn’t have talked about her into celebrity status if she didn’t look like that.
Its popularity was almost certainly manufactured though. Like, Scholastic, a company that mostly makes cheap children's paperback books, just, out of nowhere, decided to make a full-on hardcover mass release from an at-the-time unknown author?
This is a very funny comment if you know anything about Scholastic, book publishing, or the timeline of popularity of Harry Potter
Presumably they saw the first book blowing up in the UK and could guess it would sell well in the US too
All the way back to Kirby's Adventure on the NES
As a wee 'un I was genuinely shocked when Nightmare came out of the Fountain of Dreams
Back when Kirby fighting Eldritch nightmares at the end was a surprise and not routine.
:yea:
Games are still fun tho
