Category: NERDING DAY
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Nerding Day: Rebel Moon
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Nerding Day: Doom Endgameš
In 1993, I was a casual video game player just like any child of divorce with almost no memory of his parents before age 6, which makes sense because thereās no way I could have known them when they were that young. But DOOM made me realize video games didnāt HAVE to be the esoteric shit diaries of a madman, like Blaster Master or that cursed Ninja Turtles game. They could also be the RAD shit diaries of madmen, and DOOM nestled snugly into that space in my brain alongside Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II. The problem with shit diaries is that theyāre very difficult to read after the first hour or so. But more importantly, they attract flies. And sometimes those flies are horny science fiction authors. When will I release this metaphor? Never. Weāll die in each otherās arms.
If you recall, DOOM is a game about the Tasmanian Devil tearing a hole through space to punish the forces of hell for stealing the second half of his name. Heās only technically a āspace marineā because he wears boots and doesnāt use his teeth until he runs out of bullets. So, you can imagine my surprise when I sat down to read four entire DOOM novels worth of his adventures only to be greeted by a Call of Duty FAQ written by the youth minister with the most dangerous POG collection. The demons arenāt even demons – theyāre aliens PRETENDING to be demons. The authors felt DOOM would be way cooler if it were a story about aliens who attacked earth because theyāre scared of how much we believe in heaven.
Three people other than me have highlighted this passage! Probably not for comedy articles! The series was written by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Lineweaver, two maniacs who refuse to stop pissing on your doorbell until theyāve shared their love of Jesus with you, but itās a trick. Theyāre not going to stop. The books were published in the mid-nineties and are still available to read and purchase, although I encourage you to never do those things. Iāve already done both for you ā twice, in the case of the first three books. See, Iād read Knee-Deep in the Dead, Hell on Earth, and Infernal Sky back in the ’90s, but 13-year-old Tom gave up the ghost after that, because the ghost was alarmingly horny and wouldnāt shut up about the goddamn bible. So, in writing this article, I read DOOM: Endgame for the first time, and Iām glad it happened this way, because it is the most despicable book I have ever read. It might be the worst book ever written. If Iād read it as a teenager, I would have given up language. I might have given up sight itself. I genuinely believe reading it aloud will summon a dark spirit into your home to steal all of your panties. All of them. More than one school shooter has been buried with a copy. The Necronomicon wears DOOM: Endgameās hand-me-downs, is what Iām saying. To read it is to unleash The Horny Dead. And NOBODY wants to see that movie.
Iāve already written about the first three installments, so if youāre jumping in here, thatās weird. Youāre doing it wrong. But to recap, the books follow Flynn āFlyā Taggart, a strong, tough, and cool space marine who is so fucking square you could balance a glass on him. It would be a glass of apple juice, because he is so fucking square. He saw a bikini lady on television once and told his mom to ground him. He all but covers his mouth when he says a bad word. We get a glimpse of his terrifying origin in a flashback, during which a young Fly spies on a drive-in porno and fractures his boner so hard it gives him nightmares for 26 years:
He’s the galaxyās biggest badass, which is made evident by how often he screams, throws up, and is afraid:
But Flyās primary characteristic is his self-loathing lust for his best buddy Arlene:
They hug each other to sleep, but have no sex. So, Fly fucks the ground instead, while staring up Arleneās asshole like a periscope:
Fly isnāt afraid to grab that ass when he has to, because as his buddy, Arlene is basically his property:
A weaker person might subject Arlene to constant sexual harassment. Luckily, Flyās faith is too strong for such temptations:
Youāre right, guys. Doomguy IS way cooler if heās a puritanical sex creep trying to convince us he friend-zoned himself. Letās continue!
Va-va-voom! I donāt know who Midge Garradon is, but if sheās anything like Jayne Mansfield, she was in a shitty movie that gave the authors 14 sexual awakenings. Anyway, hereās Fly pretending he doesnāt get a crippling zipper-pinch every time he sniffs Arleneās boobs:
Now, some of you are probably wondering how many times Fly has watched Arlene piss. Well, the answer is PLENTY. But donāt worry! It frightens and confuses him every time:
Fly could totally fuck Arlene if he WANTED to! Heās just too much of a GENTLEMEN. Instead, they sleep innocently next to each other while Fly burns a psychic hole through his cock:
Dude, sheād probably give it to me, itās FINE.
Even the aliens want Arlene and Fly to fuck, but he can take that ass or leave it, because the authors think a platonic friendship means you have a pet woman:
See? Sheās already had sex in front of him and an entire group of her friends and coworkers! Like platonic friends do! Thatās not TOTALLY INSANE, nothing more to see there! He CERTAINLY hasnāt recreated that event at home with his G.I. Joes!
Fly is so off-the-rails horny that he canāt risk any DUDES getting in the way, because the collateral damage would make him GAY. And heās definitely NOT GAY:
After spending three books bragging about how he and Arlene can constantly rub up naked against each other like greased-up hogs and its totally FINE they donāt even THINK about fuckinā, Fly would rather die than touch another human man for any reason lest they accidentally collapse into gay sex before either of them has a chance to react. The authors overcorrect so hard in their homophobia that Fly has less self-control around naked dudes than he does his hot titty pet. Speaking of Arlene! When he isnāt recklessly whipping mind boners around like Professor X with his dick stuck in a vacuum cleaner, Fly is FURIOUS with Arlene, mostly for being a woman within his field of vision:
The authors genuinely think they are the first human beings to wonder what women do when there arenāt any hygiene products available. Check-MATE, broads! Also, this doesnāt affect the plot in any way and never comes up again. They just wanted to remind you what a stinkinā CHICK Arlene is. Now I know what youāre thinking ā thereās no way this square-ass Doomguy fucks. Heās NEVER fucked. Heās never even SEEN a naked woman before, outside of his captive FriendPet. But thatās where youāre wrong. He TOTALLY had a girlfriend back in high school, but she got an ABORTION because WOMEN BE SHOPPING:
We can tell this relationship was particularly traumatic for him, because he waited until the fourth book to mention it. Talk about an Endgame! Also, this is the second abortion in the series, which, again, is supposed to be about DOOM. But as much as the authors CLEARLY hate women, Fly would never DREAM of killing one, so DONāT WORRY, itās totally not an issue AT ALL:
Occasionally Fly fights monsters, and every so often, one of those monsters is a creature from the computer game DOOM. But most of the time, heās quizzing the reader on Mormonism and fringe right-wing propaganda like he’s driving us to hockey practice because Dad drank too much on his day off. At the end of the last book, the aliens had mostly been defeated on Earth, so Fly and Arlene decide to take the fight to the alien home world to smash them once and for all. Tragically, the length of their trip means they would never see their friends again. But mostly it means that Fly will never again see Jill, a fourteen-year-old computer hacker whomst he REALLY wanted to fuck. Donāt worry! Heāll get his wish!
Speaking of objectification! When Arleneās not being ogled, sheās serving as the authorsā Weird Science computer genie, regurgitating every one of their interests and opinions and confirming everything they believe about women, which is really only two things ā āWomen are stupid. Why wonāt they sex me?ā They pair her up with Albert, a bone-chilling weirdo who shows up in the second book to neg Arlene with Mormon scripture until she finally agrees to marry him. I wish any part of that sentence was a joke, but I also wish the DOOM novels had been written by guys who didnāt masturbate in view of so many pictures of Jesus. Hereās Arlene reminiscing about all the starlit evenings she spent debating her bro:
Donāt you DARE tell Albert itās called āfaithā specifically because it canāt be empirically proven! Not unless youāve got the evidence to back it up, pal! You can tell their love is real, because itās the fourth emotion Arlene feels for Albert, two spots below exasperation. This is the first thing the authors have told me about her that I believe.
When Fly and Arlene reach the alien home world, they find out itās already been destroyed ā¦ by Earthlings! Dirty socialist Earthlings, who turned the planet into a utopia free of wealth and labor in their absence. This is a Planet of the Apes ending, as far as Fly is concerned.
Whatās worse, the dirty socialists disgracefully intermarried until nothing of the white race remained. No, Iām serious. The book makes a point of emphasising that none of the socialists are white, and theyāre all impossibly stupid.
āBut from when?! If heās from the far future, that means Iām not racist, itās just science fiction! Those are the rules!ā Later, Fly thinks a Black man with straight blonde hair is the most absurd thing in the world, and the authors expect us to laugh too, because they assume we hate race-mixing as much as they do:
The shipās captain, Tokughavita, knows karate because he is part Japanese. But itās not a racial stereotype, because Fly respects it:
In America, ādinkā most commonly means ādual-income, no kids,ā basically a term for wealthy rubes, or couples with disposable cash. For example, you can hear some of the locals talking about the āsummer dinksā in Jaws. However, it is EXTREMELY RACIST in other parts of the world, specifically when used to refer to southeast Asian people, which is exactly how the authors of DOOM: Endgame chose to use it:
The authors spiral further into racism until Fly is calling Tokughavita āTofuā and has befriended a straight-up minstrel pilot named Blinky:
All that ājolly good!ā stuff is just āthank you, come againā for British racists!
No, really, the authors are definitely aware of it!
Also, the future socialists may all be mongrel dummies, but the Asian lady is still good at math:
At one point, Fly proudly compares humanityās resistance to the einsatzgruppen, which is an obscure name for the triggermen of the SS, meaning the Nazis who carried out all the murders:
The Nazis have now been mentioned in all four DOOM books! They appear more in this series than the BFG-9000! Thatās weird! Iām sure it doesnāt mean anything! Anyway, those socialist dummies canāt even get uniforms right, because theyāre not caucasian enough:
Theyāre also just SO GAY, you guys:
But despite whiteness being eradicated, everyone speaks Western English:
The Dirty Socialists become terror-stricken at the slightest noise, because two centuries of Woke has made them panicky, knee-knocking idiots:
For some reason, Fly insists this extreme fear of death is the result of socialismās foul corruption:
Necrophobia is NOT the irrational fear of dying at any moment!
On several occasions, Fly tries to convince us that the socialists canāt understand the concept of being an individual person, but are also so individualistic they canāt conceive of doing anything without direct personal gain. In other words, the authors meant to dump on socialism and all its evils, but accidentally spend the entire book raging against libertarianism, because they are not curious men:
At one point Fly comes dangerously close to realizing that a world free of wealth and labor might actually be a good thing, if only it werenāt inherently evil for some contradictory set of reasons he struggles to articulate.
Youāre right, Fly! It doesnāt wash! He also has a weird grievance with the socialistsā command hierarchy, because how can you know FREEDOM unless you have a clearly defined caste of subordinates?
But at the end of the day, is a united socialist Earth even worth saving?
Thankfully, Fly and the socialists can find common ground, on Arleneās tits.
But plot twist! It turns out that socialism turned Earth into such a bunch of godless heathens that it was conquered by a microscopic race of different aliens, who have been piloting the socialists like Venom symbiotes ever since.
Hereās Fly executing a dirty socialist alien before it can poison Arleneās ears with its silver tongue:
The symbiotes copy Fly and Arleneās immortal souls into a computer simulation that is very obviously just the DOOM computer game, but Fly is able to break free by converting all the socialists to Mormonism.
Boy, that Fly sure is the Bomb! May he kill us all with a pure heart, in Doomguyās name we pray.
Meanwhile, Flyās digital soul is trapped in a computer game like Matthew McConaughy in Serenity. But Digital Fly fights his way free of the simulation by ā you guessed it! ā converting the demons to Mormonism.
Even the demons are horny! And honestly, good for them.
Digital Fly and his Bible Camp recruits meet up with Digital Arlene. The two of them conquer the simulation – which, again, is just the computer game DOOM – convert the rest of the demons, and rebuild the simulation world in their own image. In Doomguyās name we pray.
That last line is an obtuse reference to Brave New World, by way of Shakespeareās The Tempest. The very excellent movie Demolition Man is based on it, sort of. But the problem with a lot of dystopian satire, Demolition Man and Brave New World included, is that it ends up equating socialism with an attempt to legislate morality rather than addressing genuine issues with socialism in practice. And Demolition Man comes to the same conclusion as these DOOM books ā a socialist utopia would be bad, actually, because itād be all weak and stuff. Too many pussies. Not enough Stallones. And Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Lineweaver are laboring under the delusion that they are Stallones. You can almost see the steam coming out of their ears as they try to reconcile Mormon Cobra into existence. MOBRA. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the supple flesh-and-bone Fly and Arlene return to Earth to vaccinate the planet against socialism with their faith. They cruise into Salt Lake City and nearly collide with the Mormon Tabernacle, which is basically their Camelot, only now itās over a mile tall and topped with a giant fist. The Mormon church has somehow not only survived but triumphed, despite the authors repeatedly telling us that Socialist Earthās utter lack of faith led to it being conquered by alien symbiotes. Fly calls it a Tower of Babel like thatās a good thing, because the authors are fucking stupid:
Thereās an entire city inside the Tabernacle encrusted in every jewel and diamond imaginable, but wealth has been eliminated so itās NOT A BIG DEAL, it isnāt weird or gross AT ALL. Socialism doomed us to this glittering palace of literal diamonds! Curse you, socialism!
Thereās Arlene DEDUCING THE OBVIOUS again, like some kind WRETCHED WOMAN. Fly descends into the belly of the Tabernacle to claim his ultimate reward for saving the earth and completing his missionary service ā a sex doll clone of Jill, which has been kept on ice for him for 200 years in a Sleeping Beauty coffin.
Donāt worry – a hologram version of Jill tells Fly the clone is a present! He clearly also wants to fuck the hologram! This is an OFFICIAL DOOM NOVEL!
They REALLY try to scoot past the statutory poem inscribed on Jillās tomb with some nonsense about Arlene reuniting with Albertās mind, but we wonāt let them. We wonāt let them. Jill dedicated her life to creating a waifu clone of herself for Fly and left it behind in a glass case while his boner festered for centuries. Thatās how horny the authors are for this teenage girl. DOOM: Endgame is like the last Sunday school lesson you get before the teacher sends a text from your phone to create an alibi.
God, I hate this book.
Tom Reimann is the co-founder of Gamefully Unemployed, where he has been waiting 200 years for his cyberdemons to smooch. Check out their new show BADICAL, if youāre rad enough.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: TatersTales, who is furiously working on an audiobook adaptation of this series as we speak.
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Nerding Day: Teen Witch
I read The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film. The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film is an insult to films and books and emojis and the idea that we owe each other anything as human beings ā¦ with one exception.
My dearest Hotdogger: I have a promise. I promise my exploration of this book reveals a hero. There is one (1) hero. However, we have villains and scavengers and one (1) madman to sift through first. I did not expect that much material and depth to come out of reading The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film. I never expected to go up my own asshole with big questions about the value of art, and the way culture reflects our social contract, and I could keep blathering but Iām telling myself to tighten up. Keep it on the rails Alex. Hi, Iām Alex. It turns out The Emoji Movieās main character is named āAlexā.
We have several layers of crappification to explore. Starting on the surface, Iāve never seen The Emoji Movie. I never will. This book is my new additional reason for shunning the film. The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film reads like someone putting The Emoji Movie on their second-best laptop screen, typing a description of what happens without pausing or caring, and then e-mailing that along with an invoice. The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film is bare descriptions of the events in the movie. The movie is apparently mostly lazy sight gags. For example, the characters escape a situation by hiding behind trees. Because this is The Emoji Movie, the trees are the emojis for trees. Thatās the entire gag. The book is those sorts of non-gags, rendered in plain text as bare facts.
This single pointless gag style repeats throughout the book. Two emoji kiss, therefore they sprout heart eyes. An emoji receives a judicial sentence, therefore the sentence comes from a gavel emoji. One character says their mood is dour, therefore the Flamenco Dancer emoji appears out of nowhere to do flamenco. The logic of this joke is that Flamenco is the opposite of dour, and one emoji is a lady dancing in a red dress. What Iām writing out, right here, is exactly as lively as this book. Itās also a book starring an emoji who is the emoji for āmeh.ā The book is somehow more meh than its protagomeh.
Weāve reached a fork in the road. You may wonder whether the book is bad because of the movieās script, or the authorās choices. You may answer this question by watching The Emoji Movie in its entirety. I chose another path. I decided to not care. I refused to watch the movie even though in this situation itās arguably my job. The makers of The Emoji Movie should be crushed to learn Alex Schmidt wonāt stream their film, for pay. The Emoji Movie should be geared toward me. Iām a curious person. I love animated movies. And Iām so interested in emoji, I proposed the creation of the bison emoji that is now on your device keyboard. I am the reason I can type a bison in this line of text right here: š¦¬. And then another bison: š¦¬. And another bison: š¦¬. āLet there be bison!ā is my fingertipsā godlike cry: š¦¬š¦¬š¦¬š¦¬š¦¬. Also, should I have punctuated any of those bison emoji with a period? Or should I let the bison stand tall as the end of each sentence? I donāt know. Weāre all making up emoji culture as we go. That freshness is yet another reason The Emoji Movie did not have to suck. It couldāve approached the level of The LEGO Movie. It did not, for many reasons. One reason is The Emoji Movieās total disinterest in emoji, texting, or reality. Itās like they unfroze a guy from the 1980s to script this. He lacks any concept of which emoji people use. For example, his main character is an emoji that does not exist:
It gets worse. They pair āMehā with a best friend named Hi-5. Hi-5 is a high five emoji, apparently, even though high fives are a muddled concept in the actual emoji keyboard. Hi-5 is also alienating, because this movie makes it a hand with a face in the middle of the palm. Then they add a distracting bandage on one finger. But the big problem is the palm-face. Zero emoji are a hand with an internal palm-face. If that existed, no one would use it, except for weirdos, which is everyone, so now Iām thinking that needs to be an emoji. Anyway as of the Emoji Movie era it didnāt exist in life or in anyoneās mind. Beyond Meh and Hi-5, our remaining main character is a girlfriend slash quest prize for Meh. She is a Princess emoji, disguised as a brown-skinned skater/hacker. Her name is Jailbreak. She lives in a phone app named Piracy. This makes her something no one could ever type, inside an app no oneās ever created. Also in the world of this book/movie/blur, the Princess emoji is a supreme ideal that other emoji respect to the point of worship. The various Princess emoji are some kind of deified pharaonic god-queens, within Textopolis. Stop me if any word I just typed reflects emoji in reality. Thanks for not stopping me.
Here is the plot of the stenographerās summary of The Emoji Movie: Alex is a teenage boy who likes a girl named Addie. Alex is too bashful to share his feelings for Addie. Luckily, Addie initiates a text conversation with Alex while he sits around. Addie leads with a text message of a lone smile emoji. Thatās her entire text. One smile emoji, out of the blue. Horrifying. This girl has the emoji habits of a stalker/murderer. She texts like sheās masturbating [negative connotation] behind your hydrangeas.
When Alex replies to just-a-Smile with the question āHey, going to Spring Fling?ā, Addie replies āYou?ā, because thatās barely cogent. It either implies she is going or not going, which is super clearā¦ā¦ā¦ [Activating Wayneās World Impression] … not. Then Alexās friend Travis intervenes. Travis claims emojis can only achieve one vibe, because thatās what Unfrozen Boomer Screenwriter presumes about the world.
Alex follows this advice, and tries to type a single pointless āMehā emoji. No audience would ever care about this or understand it because, again, the āMehā emoji does not exist. That means the storytellers need the audience to Mandela Effect themselves into this scenario being realistic. The storytellers also count on this to pay off oceans of previous setup. For entire book chapters before this, weāre led through the whole deal of our protagemoji. His name is āGeneā. Gene is the son of a male Meh named Mel and a female Meh named Mary. This is the first of three instances where the canon of this book spells out emoji sexual reproduction. The other examples are more carnal. Later on, this book describes a sight gag where emoji flee through a private room inside Alexās cell phone, and disturb a āCouple In Loveā emoji who were about to smash.
Then at the end of the story, Hi-5 gets handed a Wacky Girlfriend For Best Friend Character out of nowhere. That plot device is regular rom-com stuff. In the hands of Richard Curtis or Nora Ephron, it works fine. In the hands of The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film, itās an anatomical boondoggle. Hi-5ās instant mating opportunity is a female (?) Peace Sign emoji. Peace Sign implies she wants all five of them Hi-5 fingies up in her gaps. She also almost rules out fisting.
Gene is the son of two Mehs. According to what I can only describe as Eu-moji-genics, Gene must match his parentsā exact āMehā output whenever he is texted by Alexās phone. Turns out this emoji world is a police state with a planned economy and a caste system. Mehs must Meh. If Gene fails, a domineering emoji named Smiler will delete him. Also Smiler self-describes as the first emoji ever created. However, she is a yellow smile emoji with lots of lipstick and a giant blonde coif. The movie claims a blonde bombshell galās face is the first emoji ever generated. Get the hell out of here with that random canon. If we all lived in an alternate universe with an oppressive Stepford matriarchy, its typical emoji would still be a plain round smiley face. Also probably white. Totaling up these failures, I award this book one bonus point for making the blonde woman emoji Nazi-coded, and zero regular points for everything else.
After wearing us all out with an enormous amount of uncanny world-building, The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film pays it all off with one text message. Alex wants to reply affirmatively to Addie, without seeming too excited. So he chooses Meh. The phone summons Gene as that Meh even though Gene is known to be [shudder] āmulti-expressional.ā Therefore, Alexās text reply to Addie is not Meh. Instead, he texts a Gene face that cycles through endless different expressions. The result of this error is a lot of chase-around faff inside of Alexās phone. Gene flees genocidal execution bots. Meanwhile, in the Teen World, none of it matters whatsoever. After about 100 book pages of Tron-moji stuff happening inside of Alexās phone, the story reveals a next exchange between Alex and Addie, initiated by Addie, where she still likes him and everything is fine and sheās the one pushing for a relationship. Despite Alexās faux pas, despite Alex being inert, Addie craves cone.
Alex is at the mall to visit its phone store (thrilling!) to reset his phone. He does this because the phone is being weird, in the sense that a bunch of inside-the-phone events made the phone play a disco song out loud in Alexās science class. Cringe!!!! Also, one of those inside-the-phone set pieces features the statement āHoly deleto!ā Re-reading āHoly deleto!ā interfered with my dreams last night. I bolted upright in a cold sweat, while thinking the phrase āHoly deletoā, because my middle school principal said that to me in my dreams. If you read that phrase one more time you too are doomed to my fate. Youāre also doomed to see the joke written right before āHoly deleto.ā Itās a joke where someone says āNo diceā, and then a Dice emoji bursts in to say āNo me.ā
Finally, Addie hunts down Alex while theyāre both at the same shopping mall, to thank him for sending the same multi-expressional Gene emoji heād sent before. Itās the same text message from before, again. The book explains why this is a powerful expression of Themes Such As Love.
Alex asks out Addie. Gene convinces Jailbreak to not depart for The Cloud after sneaking through The Firewall because if she stays in Textopolis they can make sweet (interracial?) emoji love. Smiler receives no punishments and announces Gene is the worldās first omni-emoji representing all things. Thatās great news. We all want one emoji that means everything in a way that means nothing. That way? Individuality.
Is this book crap because the movie is crap? Yes. Is this book also crap because the author didnāt try? Yes. Most novelizations make at least a little of an effort to flesh out the movie, or at least describe the events of the movie in the way that fits the page. This novelization refuses to novelize anything. It doesnāt even call itself a novelization. It calls itself The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film, in a savage act of exploiting the broad way dictionaries define the word ābookā. This is such a non-book, the publisher doesnāt know how to print the spine. The dominant spine text is āBOOK OF THE FILMā. Who makes that mistake? You might convince a kid to buy a book called āThe Emoji Movie.ā Youāll never convince them to buy a book whose spine looks like a Leonard Maltinās Movie Guide re-titled by Borat.
How did that spine mistake happen? This is not a book from a book publisher who handles words. My new frenemy āRuckus Causerā suggested this book to us on the Discord. Ruckus Causer gets a āfrenā on the front of my classification because they provided more than a basic tip. They revealed that the publisher of The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film is a company specializing in sticker books. Sticker books have value. For example, when I get my future hardcopy of Brockwayās wonderful next book, Iāll have to DIY the promotional tie-in imaginary friend stickers on my own damn Cricut. Dammit! A sticker book would save me that labor. However, sticker books are not what I would call ābooksā. The āstickerā part invalidates the rest. If sticker books are books, clown cars are roomy. Books are made of words. Sticker books are made when a machine shits and collates clip art.
For these reasons, the publisher of The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film shows their ass throughout the product. Thereās a middle section of glossy pages that are definitely single sticker designs sized up like splash panels. Thereās screwy margins on the back cover text. Also the insides of the front cover and back cover feature stolen art. Thereās two whole pages of the on-screen arrows from Dance Dance Revolution. Stunning stuff. Even your most out-of-touch uncle understands āDance Game Robloxlutionā is different from emoji.
Does the book plug in extra character images, to make up for its lack of everything else? Yes it does. They also stuck a little drawing of Gene or Jailbreak on every upper page corner. However, itās the same drawing throughout the entire book. So nothing happens when you flip-book the corners. These damn sticker jockeys have no respect for the legacy of Animorphs.
Letās meet further villains. This is a failed novelization of a failed movie because the idea is a bone-deep cash grab. The Emoji Movie was a hot idea in 2010s Hollyweird. Sony Pictures paid more than a million dollars for this movie pitch, to win a three way bidding war. Perhaps that lavish price would make sense if the emoji concept belonged to anybody. However, emoji do not belong to anybody. A nonprofit called Unicode organizes the emoji keyboard, for free, for everybody. The only element anybody owns is the specific art commissioned by device platforms and tech companies. The art is IP in the same way fonts are IP. But emoji belong to everybody, in the same way letters and numbers and punctuation belong to everybody. So the idea for an Emoji Movie is FREE. Sony did not need to buy the rights. They didnāt get bilked out of the Smiley Face I.P. by a rent-seeking jerk like John Q. Emoji, or Emoji Comics, or the failson inheritor of the artistic estate of Stan Leemoji. Sony simply turned a guy who pitched āan emoji movieā into an overnight literal millionaire. They did that even though āan emoji movieā was all the guy fleshed out. I swear Iām not kidding. The genesis of The Emoji Movie concept was a C-tier animation writer receiving a text message while thinking about how much money Toy Story made.
This is why every emoji in The Emoji Movie is unrecognizable. The studio wanted to merchandise the Emoji Movie characters. But the characters are something they did not own (emoji). They couldnāt turn public emoji into different ownable characters without making them unrecognizable. So they centered the movie around new unique āemojiā, which donāt exist, which ruins the entire ārelatableā hook of an Emoji Movie. Then Sony hurried every step of making the movie, because they worried emoji might flame out as a fad before they finished animating. Extra problem: shortly after the filmās release, it turned out their lead voice actor is a violent sex criminal or a victim of botched brain surgery or both. Oops! That dents the olā DVD sales a bit. It also fits T.J. Millerās decision to do The Emoji Movie in the first place. Miller bolted a stable AND beloved AND easy television acting job so he could voice a character in The Emoji Movie, as if there is not time in his year to do both things. He did that with no further work lined up. He lost his one other job when His Crimes came to light. So, uh, wow! Hard to imagine how T.J. Miller found his voice for this emoji character. How did T.J. Miller find a way to perform the Emoji Movie character of ācanāt stop toggling between all sorts of different emotionsā? Insert grimmest emoji here.
So there you have it: the most commercially driven movie concept of this century, and the bleakest comedian whoās not quite famous, teamed up to make a crap movie. Then a sticker company cranked out its not-a-novelization. Everyone involved is a monster or a glorified photo printer. Yuck. Awful. But wait: Alex (the writer, not the flat CGI homuncu-boy from Emoji Movie) promised you a hero in this story. Alex (the writer, not the hideous work of outsider art satirizing Americaās low standards for its white men) is not a liar. So there must be a hero here. Who could that hero be?
I know what youāre thinking: how could the writer of The Emoji Movie: Book Of The Film be a positive figure? Answer: she did this gig exactly how a moral and ethical person should. Tracey West couldnāt prevent The Emoji Movie from existing. Sheās also the author of more than 200 childrenās books. She professionalized long before a sticker company needed two warm hands to type something. Surely the sticker people pitched Tracey, not the other way around. Therefore she could demand the highest reasonable rate. Sheās a professional. She even snagged a credit of āadapted byā, instead of āwritten byā, because that protects her real books from this paycheck. So Iām a Tracey West supporter. I say all that without knowing Tracey West personally. All I know is her main passion is writing books, containing original stories. Her biggest hit series is books about dragons for young readers. Sheās writing the exact kind of fun books for home reading that paper over the holes in our local education budgets. Tracey also maintains a rigorous multi-state schedule of live bookstore appearances, where grateful children bring her their dragon book fan art. They show Tracey their art. Tracey makes them glad they drew it. Tracey also runs a roving book wagon for her rural Catskills region. Wow! Sheās New York Stateās Dolly Parton? And maybe most honorable of all, her website link to her X dot com account is busted.
Weāre all sinners. I feel Tracey West balances her sins out with these good works. And she did a good work for me without even knowing it. The Emoji Movie sent me into a tailspin of wondering whether the final gasps of American culture will be a bucket oā crabs. I wondered if the last works we fart out will come from vandals and scavengers on the fringes of entertainmentās machines. And as I wobbled on despairās edge, Tracey West steadied me. She reminded me good people exist. She cashed this paycheck, after a maximum of half a day of labor. Then she converted those dollars into the lovelier currencies of āoriginal conceptsā and ātangible joy.ā So thank you, Tracey. Youāve given me the strength to pick myself up, gear myself up, and hunt down the Homunculus CGI Character Alex who may step into our reality out of a technological hell gate. Alternatively, Iāll go have a snack. Either way: š.
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