coldangel
DOOP Secretary
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Originally posted by Archonix: on the other hand if she was taking her clothes off all the time I'm sure quite a few female viewers would not be watching You can bet your shiny red bicycle they would be quickly replaced by certain other female viewers. Originally posted by Xanfor:Leela topless! You sick fuck Originally posted by Bend_her:[Quagmire]All right![/Quagmire] You sick fuck Well anyway, I have the impression now that the movie sucks, so I shant buy it.
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coldangel
DOOP Secretary
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If I wanted challenges, I'd have joined NASA when they begged me and begged me to lend my skills to the space program.
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Xanfor
DOOP Secretary
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Originally posted by bend_her:
For what? That Leela will only go out with Fry if he completely reinvents himself? No. Bear in mind that this was the first truly shippy episode. There were bound to be some setbacks. During the course of this episode, we found out that Leela would find it quite capable to love a more mature Fry. Fry realized, during this episode, how much he really cared for her: "Only recently ... I've been able to articulate my thoughts", etc. He begins to win her over. The holophoner becomes a symbol of their relationship. At it's best, the music was phenomenal, at it's worst, Leela dumped him. At the end of this episode, Fry plays the holophoner again. This time, he's slightly better. Given the symbolism, this is obviously a foreshadowing of his (subconscious, at least) quest to manually mature himself. A goal he appears to be achieving towards the end of season four... It was metafictional hope, to be sure, but hope nonetheless. In addition, it was the first of the episodes in which Fry actually tells Leela 'I Love You'. You will note that he will only say this later two more times. One of those times, Leela will marry him (TKoS's only redeeming point, perhaps), and the other time, she will come out of a two-week coma. Originally posted by Archonix:
I'm an old romantic at heart, not a shipper, so I can live with them never actually getting together as long as Fry is always able to pursue her and Leela's always open to the possibility of being pursued. I'm a cynical romantic, and I can live with them so long as they make up their minds to be either friends or lovers or enemies or what-have-yous. Just stop with the fruitless pursuits already! Or at least sometime. Preferably toward the end. Originally posted by coldangel_1: If I wanted challenges, I'd have joined NASA when they begged me and begged me to lend my skills to the space program. Cute. Wait, ain't this a new page?
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Archonix
Space Pope
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I'm a cynical romantic, and I can live with them so long as they make up their minds to be either friends or lovers or enemies or what-have-yous. Just stop with the fruitless pursuits already! Or at least sometime. Preferably toward the end.
As a romantic I would prefer to see them get together, but as a realist I know at that point the show would be over. A large part of what makes it interesting is the very pursuit that so many people find frustrating. Take that away and suddenly there's no more reason to watch, or at least one reason less. Take it away and we're faced with seeing two people who are in a permanent relationship and who will, eventually, realise things about each other that they can no longer ignore. Of course part of the challenge of that would be learning to live with them... Damn, I just blew my argument apart. I still think that the journey - with Leela edging ever closer to accepting Fry, and Fry edging ever closer to the ideal that Leela seeks without losing his own appeal - is preferable to the final destination in this case. Sucha journey is not necessarily fruitless. In each case they learn something. Leela has learned that Fry with a little more maturity might be someone she's willing to spend her life with (maybe). Fry learned the same thing. Fry also learned that Leela is susceptible to grand romantic gestures - she is an old romantic. And Leela has learned that Fry is willing to do anything for her without question. Without wanting to sound like a saturday afternoon special, I think it's fair to say that life is all about these learning experiences. Though at some point they would have to get together or it's just not right. Just... it would have to be the last episode. Ever. That's at least one reason why I don't want to see it happen. If I wanted challenges, I'd have joined NASA when they begged me and begged me to lend my skills to the space program. Ahh, but if they were begging you to join then it's likely your skills would be so hugely grand that anything they set you to work on would be no challenge at all!
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Xanfor
DOOP Secretary
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« Reply #405 on: 11-18-2007 09:57 »
« Last Edit on: 11-18-2007 09:57 »
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Originally posted by Archonix: Though at some point they would have to get together or it's just not right. Just... it would have to be the last episode. Ever. That's at least one reason why I don't want to see it happen. Originally posted by Shiny:
I, too, see the comedy and drama as separate. Having Leela and Fry get together will not wreck the comedy; but it might impact the drama, because it will destroy a certain part of the tension.
Sure, we all joke about "Unresolved Sexual Tension," or UST, but tension is a real part of drama. Other TV shows have found that interest drops after its UST is resolved. ( "Moonlighting," for instance, was a show entirely built on UST. ) As the Wikipedia stub on it says, UST is "a common mechanism in fiction, which enables the relationship between characters to build up a powerful erotic charge without actually becoming sexual....When the sexual tension [is] resolved, the tension that made the relationship interesting to the audience disappear(s)."
That said, I think that Futurama has much more going for it than UST. For one thing, Fry and Leela have much more of an "unresoved ROMANTIC tension" between them, rather than just a sexual one. For another, Successful romances can be as funny as unsuccessful ones if enough other tensions exist around it (re, Dharma and Greg). Thirdly, there will always be the tension between Fry the lackadaisical slacker and Leela the practical captain (add in Bender's hyperkinetic petty crime tendencies and the brew becomes more interesting).
Fourthly, Fry and Leela's relationship is important, but not the actual focus of the show. The focus is comedy based on subverting, inverting, and/or otherwise playing surreal pinball with common “tropes” (literally meaning “a play on words,” figuratively meaning "devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations" (TV Tropes Wiki Home Page); usually science fiction, animation and action adventure tropes, but random tropes can be found in varying amounts. Mix in a few handfuls of science, a quarter cup of drama, a healthy dollop of heart, and then add robots - viola! Futurama!
In my humble opinion, Futurama’s drama could survive Fry & Leela getting together as long as some other long-term tensions remained (like the Nibblonian prophecy stuff); and also as long as Fry and Leela still conflict normally over other issues, Bender remains an anti-social petty criminal with a soft spot for his crewmates, the Professor remains a senile, amoral crackpot, Zoidberg remains a poor, hungry, lonely, pathetic bizarre lobster thing, etc. etc.; and lastly, as long as other books, movies, and TV shows remain to have fun poked at them by a team of brilliant, clever, and geeky writers.
Now, if only the show's creators would just agree with ME....
~~~~~~
(And now, being inspired but having no scanner, I will present the following cartoon strip in narrative form: )
----------- Panel 1: a dark Planet Express building. The Professor stands in the center of the conference area.
Prof (horrified): “Great Balls of Plasma, we’re completely powerless! The unthinkable must have happened!” ----------- Panel 2:He rushes into the lounge, to see Fry and Leela on the sofa. Leela lays across Fry’s chest, hair unbound; beneath a small coverlet, they are clearly naked. Both wear sappy, sweet smiles.
Prof (sadly, hand clapped to forehead): “I knew it.” ----------- Panel 3-4: Professor walking downstairs to the basement with dejected look. ----------- Panel 5: The Professor pulls a giant electrical plug out of an equally giant socket which is attached to a flat surface, like a wall.
Prof: “Four years of free power, gone! What a tragedy!” ----------- Panel 6: PULLBACK to reveal that the giant socket is actually attached to the flat side of a large machine, of the “big box of unexplainable dials” variety. In one dial window we see a small picture of Fry, in another we see one of Leela. Both dials are sunk to the “0" level on the left, and in between them a vertical readout containing a column of measures also reads "0".
The name of the device is emblazoned along the bottom: “The Unresolved Sexual Tension Power Converter - The Ultimate in Electroerotic Energy Storage.”
Prof (walking away; *sighs*): “Now I’ll have to go back to burning rhesus monkeys....”
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gaschief
Professor
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Originally posted by km73: It seems like he tells her a lot more times, due to the aforementioned endless pursuit. I think JustNibblin's spoilers hint at the possible cessation of that pursuit. Actually I think it was suggested a few pages back that the cessation of the chase on fry's part might ultimately lead to a better outcome in shippy terms. Perhaps it's not going to happen in this movie, but potentially is setting the scene for a change in dynamic, wherein Leela mourns the loss of fry's pursuit and realises she misses having him around and emotionally interested. I guess some of you were hoping this would happen in Benders big score, personally I never really expected it, though i am of the school of thought that whilst I like the idea of Fry and leela getting together I suspect it is better left just over the horizon, like as asypmtotic curve ever closer to the axis but never quite getting there. On the other hand I would rather see Fry and Leela getting together, than them loosing interest altogether even though like Archonix i think if they do get together before the end of Futurama then subsequent episodes / movies may loose dramatic impact.
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Frida Waterfall
Professor
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« Reply #411 on: 11-18-2007 15:23 »
« Last Edit on: 11-18-2007 15:23 »
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Originally posted by Xanfor: Wait, ain't this a new page?
I owe you. Anyways, I'd hate to backtrack us, but may I please converse more on the words "I love you"? I've taken some notes earlier last month about a "theory" I have. These words "I Love You" have such a strong impact to their relationship. As Xanfor pointed out, when somebody told Leela that, it got to her deeply. In "Parasites Lost", she got prepared to have sexual intercourse. In "Time Keeps on Slipping", she got married. And even in her dreams in "The Sting", she came out of a coma. Never underestimate the power of those words. So, I ponder at what would happen if Leela declared those three powerful words. Never once has she say those words to Zapp, Alcazar, Adelai, Chaz, William Shatner, or any of the other losers she has dated. I'd probably have to incorporate Fry into that list, too, because closet thing she said to those three words was "I love what you've become". Still, when she used those three words with other words to make the same sense, it had a lot of meaning to it. Therefore, I believe that she saves the words "I love you" when she is truly loves somebody and would consider them a candidate for marriage. She didn't say the three special words to Alcazar even though she was going to spend the rest of her life with him, because she knew that it wasn't true love. And when she said "I love you" to Fry's changes in "Parasites Lost" she really meant that she wanted her life to be based around that. So, here's my "theory" (I guess you could call it that). When Leela admits to Fry that she loves him, then he could propose there and then and she would gladly accept. However, Leela will need some time to reach that point where she has convinced herself and is willing to tell the public that she loves Fry. I apologize if this didn't make much sense. I'm too apprehensive about "Bender's Big Score" at the moment to think deeply and the Fry/Leela ship. P.S.: Want a topless Leela? Here's a topless Leela for you!
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Frida Waterfall
Professor
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Originally posted by Bendersfan1221: That made much more sense than anything I could type Frida. It makes sense to me and I agree. Thanks. I needed more confidence in my writing. And now, the most anti-shippy screenshot from "Bender's Big Score".
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SonicPanther
Professor
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Image exclusivly by dvdactive Tha'ts so sad! Anybody want to post a working one?
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SonicPanther
Professor
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I know! I can't see them either! Can somebody upload one to Imageshack?
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SonicPanther
Professor
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o___o
Did you hear a shattering sound? That was my heart breaking.
That picture brings tears to my eyes.
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Ralph Snart
Agent Provocateur
Near Death Star Inhabitant
DOOP Secretary
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Ah, but that's the hook for the next DVD. Fry somehow gains mysterious new powers - will he use them to bring Leela closer to him?
It would seem that the hook has been set for future sales. Remember that the writers already had this arc planned prior to the series cancellation.
Now my gripe: FOX has done Jack-Shit about advertising this DVD. They don't even have an official Futurama website. I guess taht they're planning on the already existing fanbase to sell these DVD's and when the series goes to CC on primetime, hoping that CC will advertise and promote the series in hopes of bringing in new fans.
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coldangel
DOOP Secretary
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The execs might have taken the in-movie jibes against them personally.
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SonicPanther
Professor
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I should'nt have asked for that picture. Now i'm depressed and worried.
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bend_her
Professor
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I somehow don't see that screengrab from the movie in such a negative light. First, it seems like it's a dream sequence of some sort. Second, even if it's not, like Ralph said, it's probably a lead-in for the next movie. Gotta keep the fans on their toes, eh? As for all the complaints about the series losing dramatic impact once Fry and Leela get together, how many episodes in seasons 1-4 revolve around their relationship? I'd agree with Shiny and say that the writers have other ways to make the series just as dramatic without Fry desperately chasing after Leela. Originally posted by Archonix: They let ... core demographic ... expounded ... demographic appeal ... zero-sum game Do you have pointy hair?
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coldangel
DOOP Secretary
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Was that the mountain-climbing analogy?
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Frisco17
DOOP Secretary
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[Professor] "I'm sad now." [/Professor]
I knew they were going to screw with us as long as they could. All this stuff realy destroys the point of "Devil's Hands." At least they said the F/L story arc would be resolved at the end of the last movie and they aren't evil enough to have is resolve badly. So thats a glimmer of hope I guess.
Is it just me or does that other guy in the bubble look like the professor?
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