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This week we're watching "Ebony Wood", "The Pioneers", "Simon Bolivar", "The Gold Rush", "The End of the Indian People", and finally the series finale "Towards the 20th Century". The runtimes range from 24~30 minutes, so we're probably looking at roughly 3 hours of scheduled content.
Plot summary: There's not really much to say about the premise of Once Upon a Time... The Americas since it's just, y'know, the history of the continent of Abya Yala told through vignettes with the recurring cast of characters we all know and love from the previous three OUAT shows (Man, Space, and Life).
Content warnings and accessibility
Audio description: Not available.
Sign language: Not available.
Language of audio: English (5 episodes) Spanish (1 episode).
Captions: There are English hardsubs on the Spanish-language episode; the other episodes have no subtitles. Let's thank Redcuban1959 again for xyr work in creating these subtitles for us.
Content warnings:
These are content warnings for Albert Barillé's Once Upon a Time... in general:
- Death incl. murder
- Sexual assault
- Nudity
- Animal gore
- Disease
- Racist caricatures
- Religion presented as fact
- Eurocentrism
- Children getting serious diseases
- Vanishing Indian myth
- Problematic depictions of cops, slavery, and settler-colonialism
- Problematic depictions of race and class issues in general
So although Once Upon a Time... The Americas is a kids' show, you should still expect it to get pretty damn yeesh, just like its predecessors. Two weeks ago someone actually had to leave early because their "blood boiled" from the show's coverage of Columbus et al.
Plans for the Wednesday 11 PM CET slot going forward
The watch parties for Barillé cartoons are growing more and more couchy, and I'm honestly losing interest in it, too, so I'm thinking of taking an extended break from Once Upon a Time... after we finish The Americas. We'll probably come back to OUAT eventually, just after a break significantly longer than the last one we took.
I have a pretty big backlog of things I want to blorp, but for the time being I've got about 13 weeks of break material more or less at the ready. So these are the programming blocks for the next 13 weeks, not necessarily in order:
Deaf Culture Night 1
- Salt & Pepper (2024), the first ever feature film in Norwegian Sign Language, with my own subtitles. A group of Deaf friends get together for a dinner party for the first time after lockdown (COVID liberalism alert) when things start to fall apart.
- This is Norwegian Sign Language (2023), a documentary miniseries about Norwegian Sign Language, also with my own subtitles.
Deaf Culture Night 2
- Deafula (1975), the first ever feature film in American Sign Language. It has English-language spoken interpretation but I'm transcribing subtitles as well. A horror film about a man with an unquenchable thirst for blood, in a world where all people are Deaf.
- Tegnsatt episode 1 (1989), a Norwegian Sign Language "magazine for the Deaf", so it's basically like a glimpse into the Deaf community of Norway in the late 1980s.
Deaf Culture Night 3 Through Deaf Eyes (2007), a PBS documentary about American Sign Language and Deaf history.
Caucasian Animation Night
- The Magic Reedpipe (1998), a North Ossetian-Belarusian stop motion film based on Ossetian mythology.
- Abraskil's Adventures (2020), a 3D CGI short film based on Abkhazian mythology.
Esperanta Nokto 1: Via Nomo, Esperaĵo's 2023 fandub of Makoto Shinkai's famously gender-y body swap movie Your Name. (2016)
Esperanta Nokto 2~6: Skubi-Du! Kompanio Mistero, Esperaĵo's 2024- fandub of the first 20 episodes of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010-2013). This fandub is notable for using retrieval-based voice conversion (RVC), so most of the voices are actually done by the same person.
Fanime Fun Time
- Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls (2010-2012), probably the most (in)famous fanime show out there. It's a parody show.
- Tokyo Crystal Mew (2006?-2010?), believed to be the first ever fanime series, although the original uploads have been taken down. It's a fan-made sequel to Tokyo Mew Mew, which arguably makes it a bad idea to watch this one if we haven't seen the thing it's based on yet.
Whatever-The-Hell Wednesday 1: Tinpis Run (1991), a road trip comedy from Papua New Guinea, in Tok Pisin.
Whatever-The-Hell Wednesday 2: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004), a British miniseries parodying old, low-budget horror anthologies.
