I Identify as a Flying Attack Unicorn

Continuing the meme series, for National Unicorn Day:

While my feelings about my sons’ developing gender politics are ambivalent, (“Mom, is the wage gap a REAL thing?”) I do understand that they are growing up in an entirely different landscape than the one I experienced long ago when I was a young cishet person.

If you are asking yourself if the previous sentence has a typo in it, then you might be late to the gender nomenclature party. My son has high school friends who use “they” or “hir” as their pronoun. The school addresses teacher reports in the 2nd person (“You wrote a good essay”) to avoid inadvertently using an inappropriate pronoun.

We’ve come a long way on the topic of gender and self determination...Well, not universally of course... But the conversation is certainly out there for everyone to see and participate in, complain about, or make fun of through memes. 

One such gender-discomfort meme is  “I Identify as an Attack Helicopter.”  According to knowyourmeme.com, this one parodies “absurd gender and sexual identification posts often found on forums and blogging sites, most notably Tumblr.”

While I have some serious misgivings about the appeal of backlash memes, (particularly to my sons)....it is a confusing time for many, and we do have stuff to process....Humor could help...maybe.

At any rate, while I can’t really support the Attack Helicopter Meme, I find the spin-off than my son favored: “I identify as a flying attack unicorn” to be more charming. 

Because. Unicorns. Why not?

In this drawing, unfortunately, I did not do said unicorn justice. I was thinking that maybe it should be helicopter/robot-like, but, giving my poor skill at rendering mechanical objects, this was not a wise choice

Unicorn, Raptor, Wade, Rocket and Groot

Much anticipated spring movie characters with weird, awkwardly drawn, pink furry unicorn:

Yes of course we saw the Avengers Infinity War. 

And we will not miss Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, no matter how ridiculous the premise necessary to allow dinosaurs the opportunity to eat humans again.

Deadpool 2 presents another challenge. 

We were able to all watch the first Deadpool movie courtesy of some fancy editing by mom on the iPad. While our eleven year old son has definitely viewed more material inappropriate for his age than I care to admit here... I will probably have to put the popcorn bucket over his head if we see the movie in a theater.

Laughing Unicorns from Gravity Falls and Star vs the Forces of Evil

Celestabellebethabelle and Pony Head share a laugh at how seriously uncool those non unicorn persons are.

“Star vs the Forces of Evil” has filled some of the “Gravity Falls” shaped hole in our younger son’s tv viewing heart.  

Both shows have a large and inventive cast of non human creatures (the Bearicorn and the Multi-Bear, to name only two examples)

And Unicorns.

Unicorns that might be described as the cool alpha girls of their respective environments.

When I was a preteen, (and definitely not an alpha girl) I loved drawing unicorns and rainbows, using every marker in the box. Now an aging crone, I just want an opportunity to draw startling yet anatomically correct horse teeth. 

Catastrophon with Space Unicorn

These two seemed to go together well...horns, big eyes, excessive cuteness...

Of course the Catastrophon is the ultimate destructive evil (ok, one of several ultimate destructive evils) in Skottie Young's "I Hate Fairyland" volume 2, and the Space Unicorn is the insipid, rainbow spreading, happy deliverer of mail from Parry Gripp's ear worm song and video.... 

But otherwise, they have a lot in common.

Mr. Toots from "Red Faction" vs. Happy from "I Hate Fairyland"

Rainbow Battle:

The kids have always been enamored of Mr Toots, who is apparently one of the acquirable weapons in the "Red Faction: Armageddon" game. One holds the unicorn like a gun, and when he is somehow triggered, he farts a deadly rainbow blast.  (They have never played this game- this information came from YouTube of course.)

And of course they loved Skottie Young's first volume of "I Hate Fairyland" a gleefully profane child-inappropriate spin on what happens when a young girl named Gertrude is sent on a quest in a magical kingdom....and then what happens when she is still stuck there two decades later.

Gertrude's competition in the graphic novel is Happy, a girl who initially has much better luck on the fairytale quest....and who can shoot deadly rainbows.

While reading the book, our older son proclaimed, "Happy is my new spirit animal!"

But could she beat Mr. Toots in a fair fight?
Or in an unfair one?

Pink Fluffy Penguins Dancing on Rainbow Ice

A poorly drawn variation on the "Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows" theme. 

Which, apparently never grows old. 

My younger son, the originator of the fluffy penguin variant idea told me that, first, the Penguins were not fluffy enough to qualify, and second, I should be sure to state that the ice is like a flavored ice or sherbet and that explains the odd presence of the spoon.

We've had some other pink fluffy napkins here and here that attempt to explain the phenomenon.

Nightmare Foxy from FNAF 4 Rides a Pink Fluffy Unicorn

The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse?

(Yes, this combination was a specific request from my somewhat perverse older child.)

Apparently there is another iteration of the horror video game "Five Nights at Freddy's" (fnaf to the initiated) in the offing. And perhaps the murderous animatronic animals in the game have decomposed further. There is a picture of Foxy, one of these characters, circulating on the web,  which displays mostly glowing eyes and scary teeth.

The unicorn hails from "Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows."

If you have any interest in this song, you can read what little I discovered about it in a post from 2013 about a previous misguided pink fluffy unicorn napkin.

It might be best to stay away from the actual song, depending on your tolerance for slightly ironic insipidity.

Below is the "My Little Pony" version of the unicorn and the Foxy picture:

Alien, Raptor and Unicorn do the Michigan Rag

Hello my baby.

I'm going to be drawing two napkins a night next week when the kids start summer camp. I am not sure how this is going to go, as I'm way out of practice with that sort of volume.

Since my sons are in the same program and will be eating lunch together, I suggested that perhaps there would be one napkin a day, alternating between the two of them. Their response could be described as a bit agitated. The older one argued that it wouldn't be fair because he hadn't been getting any napkin drawings during school and really had to have them for camp. The younger one argued that he was used to getting them in school and couldn't possibly go without them for camp.

Ok. Well, I guess they must still appreciate the napkins a little.

I thought I would try and make a few before camp begins.  However, such advance planning rarely works out well for me.  Asking what they want ahead of time just means the kids' requests get much complicated. For instance: "I want the Alien, a Velociraptor and a Unicorn dancing like the "Hello My Baby" frog with top hats and canes."

The kids have been singing this "Hello My Baby" song frequently when they want to pull out all the stops and be extra annoying. But somehow I had not made the connection between this grating behavior and the classic Warner Bros cartoon featuring Michigan J Frog.

Perhaps the singing frog cartoon is not fresh in your mind either... particularly if you are not the mother of small boys prone to loudly performing the song while jumping on their bed clad only in underpants more than an hour after they should have been asleep.

You can see the cartoon "One Froggy Evening" and read copious (and fairly interesting) commentary at this link

The Unicorn Takes on "Zilla"

Kaiju Killer:

(But only the less popular Kaiju)

Our older son can provide chapter and verse about the differences and relative merits of the various iterations of Godzilla. Unsurprisingly, his information and opinions come mostly second hand. He hasn't actually watched all those obscure-to-western-viewers 1960's Toho monster movies. I suggested to him that he probably wouldn't have the patience to sit through, say, "Mothra vs. Godzilla" from 1964, or even the 1992 version, "Godzilla vs Mothra." He replied, "Oh God, mom, of course not! That's what Youtube is for!"

Through watching YouTube, he managed to pick up the near universal fanboy condemnation of the 1998 American Godzilla movie. (the one with Matthew Broderick) That monster is known among the kaiju cognoscenti as "Zilla" because "they took the God out of Godzilla." If you want to know more about what that sentence means, I recommend the Wikipedia entry...or spending an ungodly amount of time watching YouTube commentary.

When my son asked me to draw him riding a Unicorn "Kaiju Killer" like the one pictured in 101 Ways to Use a Unicorn by Robb Perlman and Dave Urban, I knew it had to be "Zilla."

Useful Unicorn

Our younger son recently rediscovered the book "101 Ways to Use a Unicorn" by Robb Pearlman and Dave Urban.

While it is perhaps not quite as sublime as its predecessor, "101 Ways to Kill a Zombie," our sons find this book pretty amusing. It's greatest appeal is of course that it includes some concepts that require adult explanation, like "Greek diner check spindle" or more importantly, "proctological instrument."

I cannot remember what number "Toilet paper roll holder" is in the book, but as it is featured on the cover of the book, it seemed like the obvious choice for a napkin.

I drew a much less utilitarian background and sweetened up the image in an effort to avoid offending the female unicorn enthusiasts in my son's classroom.

I have to admit that I myself was inordinately enthusiastic about unicorns when I was in second grade. Few things pleased me more at the time than using a purple marker to draw horses with wings or a horn. 

When I was my son's age and younger, I intensely coveted the fancy art markers that my parents used to color product design illustrations.   I recently had the idiotic realization that all this marker and napkin stuff is a perfect realization of the drawing fantasies I had when I was a small child. It's pretty pathetic, actually.

And minus the toilet paper, I would have been extremely pleased with this image four decades ago.

Karate Unicorn

The kids were very taken with "101 Ways to Kill a Zombie" by Robb Perlman, with humorous illustrations by Dave Urban. The book features a skewering-by-unicorn-horn right on the cover, in addition to other virtuoso demises by things like "hot dog eating contest," "password reset," or "Axe Body Spray."

Ansel was inspired to describe another character for our still mostly nonexistent family webcomic: The Karate Unicorn.  

While the idea in its pure form was pretty amusing, and I'm sure Dave Urban could have run with it successfully, I had trouble coming up with a good image...well, a good image that could be pulled out of a lunchbox at a 2nd grade Quaker school anyway. 

I asked Ansel, "If a human demonstration of karate involved breaking boards, what does a unicorn break?" He provided the obvious answer: "Zombies." While the idea of a unicorn cleaving a stack of the undead in half was potentially funny, it seemed a bit much for lunch with 7 year olds. A stack of rainbow colored boards, however, was definitely not an inspired solution.

I was also unnecessarily distracted by the issue of anatomically correct horse drawing. Afflicted in my youth by a particularly acute case of preadolescent female equine obsession, I spent many years perfecting my drawing of various horse body parts. I recall making several drawings of unicorns also...and I fear there were more than I can now remember...

At any rate, last night I suddenly felt a bizarre compulsion to try to draw this horselike thing in an accurate and sophisticated way. My subsequent failure at equine draftsman grandstanding certainly did nothing to help the humor of the image. And I added a indeterminate purplish background.  My excuse was that if you google "unicorn," you do see a remarkable amount of purple...skies, mountains, water, haze, etc.

Unfortunately the results here are not particularly ironic or otherwise funny. Instead it looks frighteningly like something I might have drawn while I was a horse obsessed tween.....Sorry Ansel.

(Meanwhile, we are eagerly awaiting the sequel, "101 Ways to Use a Unicorn")

Scary Pink Fluffy Unicorn Dancing on Rainbows

 
A friend introduced my older son to a Youtube video called "Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows."  You can see it here, but don't say that you were not warned...

This tune, and an attendant form of idiocy, became lodged in my children's and my brain.  Apparently we are not alone. There are ten hour versions of the video available online.

I can't really figure out the precise origins of this particular internet meme in the five minutes that I have allotted to write this blog post.  Perhaps this is a good thing.  The song seems to have been composed by a young man named Andrew Huang (over 4 million views on Youtube just for his video of this song) and may or may not have originally had anything to do with "My Little Pony" or "Dan Vs" (Dan is the gun wielding man wearing the "JERK" t-shirt in the video...if you made it that far)

I thought maybe an anti-cute pinkish unicorn rainbow thing would help evict this meme from all of our minds... Well, no, perhaps I didn't really think that was going to work.

I drew this between 1 am and 1:24 am this morning after I had spent several hours filling out mortgage application paperwork, so perhaps I was not truly responsible for my own actions.

Unsurprisingly, when I showed the napkin to him this morning, Ansel's response was a long bug-eyed silence.