Posting screencaps from the animated series "Storm Hawks." Currently, screens are queued to be posted once or twice per day, until the blogstress runs out, which will probably take a good long while!
Hey, everybody out there! Just wanted to let you know—you’re all awesome! Hope you’re having a good day, or if you’re not, that things pick up for you soon. Just remember, the sky is never the limit, for Storm Hawks or rad people like you!
Gosh Stork if you’re not enjoying this maybe you shouldn’t have eaten the god damn crystal.
It just isn’t Storm Hawks unless Stork is making a sarcastic face while Junko looks weird in the background.
I think it’s pretty obvious that I enjoy Storm Hawks’ treatment of female characters. Here’s an example: In this episode, Piper gets annoyed when her male squadmates get taken off to do cool practice riding on their motorcycles by the male members of the Absolute Zeroes, and she gets left behind with “them girls.” Then, Piper is happy to learn that Suzy Lu, a woman, is actually the leader of the squad, and she and the other girls are the bosses over the boys and sent them on a silly training excursion while they do the work of building a town. Suzy Lu impresses Piper with her apparent organization and handling of a powerful crystal. Then, however, Piper becomes rightfully distressed again when she learns that Suzy Lu actually didn’t think things through when re-terraforming the terra they’re on with ice, because a) she didn’t think of the creatures that already lived there, and b) there’s an active volcano sitting right there. Piper and Suzy Lu then have to get everybody out of the vicinity together.
This episode is a great depiction of female characters, because both Piper and Suzy Lu are shown to have strengths and weaknesses. Having a girl in charge of a squad could’ve just been shown as being all ‘YEAAAAH GRRL POWEEEEEERRRR!’ with a lady being perfect and buttkicking and smarter than all the boys and—yeah. But IMO that’s honestly not that much better than when cartoons always put a male in charge of everything, because it turns the lady in question into a Sueish, flat stereotype. Here, Suzy Lu made mistakes as leader, and Piper helped her out. But Suzy Lu’s flaws and mistakes don’t lead to her being ‘taken down a peg’ or to anyone suggesting she shouldn’t be in charge anymore, either. Everybody just basically accepted that hey, mistakes were made, and a different solution was needed.
In conclusion, Storm Hawks is a good show.
This is probably a silly thing to like about a show but I actually like how in Storm Hawks the characters’ models don’t just get flipped when they turn from one side to the other. The two sides are different and are shown accordingly. A counterexample would be that if Stork here was drawn in the style of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, his side-bangs would always be on the side away from the viewer, no matter which way he’s facing.
My pet theory on why Piper got so sick from performing the Binding is that unlike other crystal uses, which only entail the drawing forth of the crystal’s own inherent power, the Binding requires acting on, and altering, another living being’s makeup/power/(soul?). And perhaps that in itself requires an equal and opposite weakening or corruption of the user’s soul. So, even though she was doing it for a good reason, to assist Aerrow in powering up to help their friends and cause, Piper was essentially doing something ‘against nature’ to Aerrow and draining herself as a result. Meanwhile Cyclonis, who was arguably already pretty corrupted and twisted, doesn’t have the same (or possibly as great of?) effects on her.
But I don’t know. It’s not really…clearly explained, beyond it being stated that the Binding is sorta ‘forbidden’ and bad for you. What do you guys think?
