#i've been over 2000 following for a couple years now

[meanscarletdeceiver]

Culling the insanely long list of blogs I'm following until my dash is predominantly train stuff. I look forward to actually seeing y'all's posts again soon <3

[luthsthings]

Sims 4 x 10 Years!

Ten years ago today, I booked the day off on my work schedule and played a lot of Sims 4.

I'd been a Simmer since 2000, after one of my kids asked for the game because they'd seen it at a friend's house. I played The Sims, and then Sims 2, and then Sims 3. Sims 3 and my computer didn't get on too well, and I fought it a lot, wanting to play rotationally as a micromanager! When the Sims 4 trailers started coming out, I felt like they'd finally made a version of the game that was really for me, as a micromanaging rotational player who doesn't want to restart for new packs and new worlds, and who likes some quirk and exaggeration.  

So on September 2, 2014, I installed Sims 4. (I'd preordered, of course!) I downloaded trailer Sims from the Gallery (I still have a soft spot for Amber -- in one of my saves, back around 2015, she married Elvis Presley). I giggled at Sims sticking their fingers in their ear while they cooked. I got annoyed by the push-ups. I completely failed at making a roof. A Sim read a book while on the toilet and I was delighted. I took my Willow Creek Sim to visit the bar in Oasis Springs and enjoyed the view there (I like the dinos).

I made a self-Sim and spent lots of time tweaking her face till my husband came into the room, glanced at my monitor, and said, "Hey, that's actually you!" She's still my self-Sim (over on my avatar there). I just update her look now and then as I update my own.

I had a lot of fun, and I found myself using Sims as a new creative outlet in ways I hadn't so much before. I felt creative.

Eventually I confessed to my daughter that I'd actually played with my self-Sim. Here she is as a scientist back in 2015. Once upon a time, in an earlier version of the game, we -- me and my kids -- were playing with "us" in game and I died in a model rocket accident. This was traumatic and I was not supposed to play with "us" anymore. This time I did not die.

And here I am still playing! (But my hair went white.) I've had three-day saves and seven-year saves (RIP that save!). I've played every pack, but there are still base game things I haven't done! Sometimes I get really caught up in too much micromanaging with the game (townies really do often need fixing), then a new pack comes out and I try new things and it's a lot of fun again. It makes me laugh.

I've also made new friends in Sims communities and helped lots of Simmers keep playing the game. I started doing that back in 2014. A lot of the Sims community back then was focusing on what was bad about Sims 4. I was having fun with it, though, and enjoyed helping other people on the Forums who just wanted to do that.

That just kind of... morphed. It turned into some Forums posts gathering scattered info about upcoming packs from the various places SimGurus were saying things (I stopped doing those a couple of years ago -- there are websites gathering that info now, and a lot less places it turns up too). It turned into threads gathering info about mods that got broken in big game patches... and that was way back in 2015! I'm delighted that it turned into a whole thing in the community, with different places providing the info different ways. Getting to know the modding community after starting that has been a lot of fun. I even brushed off my old programming knowledge from high school and took over some mods from a modder I'd gotten to know well. I do like the lack of punch cards in modern programming!

I'm also super thankful to EA and Maxis for inviting me some years ago to be a Game Changer (the program that morphed into the EA Creator Network). I love the connections I have with other creators and storytellers and support people in the EACN, even if I feel really tiny next to the big names with their thousands and thousands of followers (but a quick thank you to my little group of Patrons! I appreciate you a ton!). I am also very appreciative of the gifted packs from EA that I receive as part of the EACN. They've helped make it a little bit easier to volunteer my time to supporting other Simmers, even if I do now have to put disclaimers on gameplay content I post, which sometimes feels a bit silly.

tldr: Happy 10th Birthday, Sims 4! I hope it's a fabulous one.

And now I'm going to grab some lunch, do some chores, then dive back into my current save. Cassandra has two love interests to consider, and that jewel is charging up. Plus she really needs a cat. And some actual income. And some improvements in her spellcasting (my previous save's Cassandra was a Mermaid). And that's not to start on Alexander building some skills before he heads off to uni for Robotics...

Psst... 

Don't forget to mark on your calendar the next anniversary. The Sims franchise will be 25 on February 4, 2025! 

[genericpuff]

no but listen, rachel has truly embodied herself as persephone because she's constantly trying to "distance herself" from her past as a medical fetish artist but then keeps the name that's affiliated with her medical fetish art-

Like, I can't believe I never noticed it before tbh, but that was the thought that hit me while I was explaining to someone on reddit what the name "used bandaid" meant and why it was weird that Rachel is STILL using it on her print cover books, even now when she just recently set up a new Facebook account with her REAL NAME and not the used_bandaid penname (I feel like this is an attempt to "legitimize" herself in the industry but idk).

But that leads me into talking about how she keeps lying about LO being her first webcomic project and that really pisses me off. And yes, this is related to the used_bandaid thing, just bear with me here.

A lot of my contempt for this is for reasons that go beyond her, I just hate the notion that people should succeed on their "first try" and that's an idea that's often sold by people like Rachel who spin these grandiose stories of how they were just "trying it out" and suddenly wham! Fame and fortune! You can achieve all this and more if you just xyz!

Literally, in every interview I've found over the past couple years, she always heavily implies that LO was her "first attempt", that she had never used Webtoons prior to LO, and that she was just "dipping her toes" into the medium. None of this is true, she's literally been drawing webcomics since the early 2000's (possibly earlier but the earliest documentation we can find is of The Doctor Pepper Show), LO wasn't even her first webcomic on the Webtoons platform (that goes to The Doctor Foxglove Show which she ended up dumping a chapter in to work on LO almost immediately after starting it on Tumblr) and as much as she'll claim she "couldn't pay anyone to look at her work", she had landed a number of gigs that got her work out there, had been printed in anthology collections, and IIRC she had even won some small local NZ awards for her comics prior to LO. Shit, there was a local beer brand that had her art on its labelling.

But it really feels like she's trying her damn hardest to hide all that, never mentioning or implying that she did anything prior to LO, that she was just a "struggling graphic artist working in retail" until LO happened.

So why keep the penname that's directly affiliated with that past identity ??

It boggles my mind, honestly, especially considering she had gone by MULTIPLE usernames back then, some of which were actually pretty sane that she could have used instead (such as Rach Alex, which she uses in her FB groups, and Rachel Royale).

I wouldn't blame her if she was trying to hide her old medical fetish stuff, whether she didn't want it affiliated with her new LO branding or if she's just embarrassed by it, I can totally empathize with that because god knows I wouldn't be all that proud to show off the cringy shit I got up to during my early days on the Internet. But if she IS embarrassed by it, you'd think the last thing she'd want to keep is the name that's directly affiliated with the thing she's embarrassed by. Almost like a certain pink protagonist who goes by the name she earned after doing the thing she doesn't want to talk about.

But if she ISN'T embarrassed by it, then why lie?

Why paint this picture that LO was a one hit wonder, that she lived on "struggle street" until she found fame and fortune on Webtoons?

Oh right. Because it's a better story.

Because it's way more romantic to be some struggling indie darling who "came from nothing" and achieved fame through one big idea. Because it looks good for the platform who's trying to attract people to their app and website on the promise that you, too, can be a success story simply because you followed the exact same perceived steps that you saw another person follow and advertise.

If you can't tell from my tone, I really fucking hate this kind of disingenuous wish fulfillment advertising. It's manipulative, it's cruel, and it sets people up with expectations far beyond their scope of reaching, both due to the luck and "being in the right place at the right time" involved at best (which is a HUGE factor in stories like these that people never talk about), or through joy-killing comparison at worst when you don't achieve worldwide fame on your first try and wonder why everyone else did (spoiler: they didn't, they just want you to think that because it makes for better headlines and it gets you using whatever product they're affiliated with.)

If Rachel doesn't want to be tied down to her past, that's fine. But it's incredibly irresponsible and flat out cruel to lie about that past existing at all because it sets a horrible precedent to those who look up to her and want what she has.

And I say all that because I've seen what happens to the people starting out who admire these creators who painted the picture that they were just successful right off the bat. It's not a fun headspace to be in, it's robbed many creators like myself and others of their joy in creating, and it's really all just a ploy to get you to spend time and money and energy on a stupid corporate phone app that profits off your emotional investment and labor. Don't fall for it. Pretending like the Act of Wrath didn't happen doesn't remove it from history.

Anyways, I was gonna leave it at that, but then I ended up doing another rabbithole deep dive through her Wayback Machine and found album art she had illustrated for NZ band PorcelainToy. Enjoy this piece of her "dark era" art that still exists without needing to use the Wayback Machine.

[des2dream]

Ranking MLP Generations!💗🦄🌈

For over 40 years, we have been exposed to colorful horses. Colorful horses who can talk....and sing....and dance....and fire mega rainbow lasers at their enemies! Colorful horses who also made their way into our collections. My Little Pony was introduced in 1982 following after the original My Pretty Pony toy that dropped in 1981 which was meant to sell toys for the young female demographic.

The rest became history! MLP grew to become a popular toy during the 80s which spawned a movie in 1986 and a TV show that came out three months later. As the years went by, MLP went through multiple changes gaining new fans for new generations. I've decided to go over each generation and rank them based on my opinions, thoughts, and overall feelings of satisfaction I have toward them. I don't necessarily hate any of the generations that will be placed lower on this list, I just don't feel as attached to them nor do I feel like having an interest in them. I also won't discuss much of the toys, but I will discuss heavily on the TV shows based on them since I've seen more of the shows than I collected the toys. We'll start with the worst, then save the best for last. Let's go, everypony!

8. My Little Pony Generation 2

The fact that I didn't even know this existed until years later doesn't help its case. The toy sales were so low that there wasn't even a cartoon to go with it. Only a video game. This generation released in 1997 before it ceased distribution in 1999 due to lackluster sales. However, it did find some success in Europe. I don't have much to say about this since I hadn't known about it. I originally thought My Little Pony Tales was Generation 2! One positive I can give is that I love the designs as they give off slightly more realistic horse-like features and it's a cool look. I didn't have any toys nor saw anything on TV with there being no series. I'm sorry, G2! Unfortunately, you hit the bottom of the barrel.

7. My Little Pony Generation 3.5

Now, this spot is interesting! The third generation of MLP dominated the 2000s with newer colorful ponies like Pinkie Pie and Minty. On top of that, multiple specials began selling in DVDs that also aired on TV. By late 2009, Hasbro decided to revamp the series twice (sort of). They gathered a group of ponies who were well known in G3 (Pinkie Pie, Starsong, Rainbow Dash, Cheerilee, Toola Roola, Sweetie Belle, & Scootaloo) and gave them a redesign as well as likely aging them down for younger audiences. There was a 45-minute holiday special titled, Twinkle Wish Adventure as well as a couple mini episodes and new toys that spawned from this revamp.

It eventually led to the second revamp titled, Newborn Cuties where the characters aged down to babies....you had to see it to believe it. I actually owned a G3.5 Pinkie Pie, a Newborn Cuties Pinkie, and a baby singing Starsong back in the day. These redesigns couldn't do it for me after being mesmerized by G3. I remember being upset that even Ponyville got a resign and it looked so bland compared to how the town looked early on. Newborn Cuties also looks extremely off with their pony heads and baby bodies. This generation is mostly hated by the fandom and I can see why. At least, it had more to offer than Generation 2. It was a nice distraction for young girls. It's now best to be left alone by an older me. If any of you like seeing fillies and baby ponies, this is the generation for you.

6. My Little Pony Generation 1.5/ My Little Pony Tales

Let's go back to the year, 1992! You're sitting in your room and you're watching, Disney Channel. You're watching your favorite shows like, Goof Troop, The Little Mermaid, or Raw Toonage and you come across this colorful horse show. After Generation 1's series came to a close in 1987, we are now hit with a new series for pony fans in the 90s. This is the generation I previously thought was Generation 2. That is in fact not the case! We follow a group of pony friends as they spend their days in Ponyland going to school, hanging out for milkshakes, having sleepovers, and feuding with the resident boys. Our main ponies are Starlight, Sweetheart, Melody, Bright Eyes, Patch, Clover, and Bon Bon whom we follow in their daily lives. I find this show to be.....innocent, but weird (and not in a good way). It's passable for a Saturday morning cartoon and it does have funny moments, but something was off.

Generation 1 left quite the impression on young audiences during the 80s. Ponies that not only sung and danced, but ponies that went through continuous magical adventures involving dragons, princesses, witches, evil kings, and all sorts of mythical creatures. My Little Pony Tales has talking and singing ponies, but there was an odd lack of magic with the show emphasizing more on Slice-of-Life. Not that I have any issues with that genre! It just feels odd seeing these magical horses not doing any magic and living in a modernized world. The characters also have annoying moments which is likely because the writers wanted to portray preteen behavior (since the ponies are preteens in this show), but it also falls into some cheesy 90s writing. Like I said, it is passable so I believe there's an audience for this one. It can make nice riffing material too!

5. My Little Pony Generation 4.5/ Pony Life

Here are the table scraps of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic....except, these table scraps were pretty okay. This show came onto streaming services and YouTube from November 7, 2020 until May 22, 2021. This was supposed to be a successor, spin-off, and reboot to FIM. The previous show had already ended, so I was chill with seeing the characters again in a different style. This generation was.....bonkers, to say the least! It was already kind of a struggle seeing fans adjust to the new chibi art style, but it was also a struggle keeping up with the show's new format. Pony Life was incredibly energetic as each episode was around 5 minutes (10 since they're in two-parts). There was also some crazy new quirks to the cast with Applejack breaking The Fourth Wall, Fluttershy shrinking and massively growing at will, and everyone casually drinking potions left and right. For me, it was hard to keep up with the fast pace of the show. However, I did appreciate the cast of The Mane Six reprising their roles for this show.

Season 2 introduced viewers to Lightning Flash Chill (the tiger), Sugar Snap (the peacock), and Echo (the bat). Meet The Wild Siders! They're unicorn-hybrid creatures who work at a healthy food restaurant called, Salad Bowl Junction in their home realm. I honestly enjoyed them! They give off similar vibes to The Care Bear Cousins which is fascinating because the 80s actually did a spin-off toyline with a similar premise by having other pretty animals. There have also been episodes where characters from the previous series make an appearance such as Spike, Trixie Lulamoon, and Discord. I enjoyed this more than My Little Pony Tales and the characters are still likable, but it still has issues. I'm still put off by the constant energy in almost every minute. I don't feel attached to this show, but I do see myself watching it once in a while because the episodes aren't that long and I've grown used to the art style by now with how cute everyone looks. Also, it's nice seeing The Mane Six again!

4. My Little Pony Generation 5

The year is 2021, it has been a couple years since Generation 4 ended, and this had some major horseshoes to fill! September 22 of that year presented us with a debut film on Netflix titled, A New Generation featuring stars like Vanessa Hudgens and Sofia Carson. It was actually pretty good! I instantly loved the characters, the animation, the story, and all the songs! It was a great introduction to G5. Personally, I enjoyed it much better than the early concept which was going be having The Mane Six meet each other all over again in a new Equestria. Twilight would've been an Earth Pony, Pinkie would've been a Pegasus, Fluttershy would've been a Unicorn, and Applejack was on the verge of likely getting replaced with a new character. Instead, Generation 5 is supposed to take place DECADES after the events of G4 with ponies and other creatures becoming separated from fear and prejudice. While it was shocking since G4 ended with bringing creatures together, it does make sense for history to repeat itself. The Mane Six have now become what you call, "An Old Pony's Tale" and The Magic of Friendship has been abandoned....until one pony stood up. A pony named, Sunny Starscout!

We follow her along with her friends Izzy Moonbow, Princess Zipp Storm, Princess Pipp Petals, and Sheriff Hitch Trailblazer on their mission to restore magic in Equestria and bring everyone together. After the film, we got a series on Netflix titled, Make Your Mark as well as a series of shorts on YouTube named, Tell Your Tale (I wish it was actually Tail) that took place after the events of the movie. I have mixed feelings on both series. On one hand, I enjoy the art styles, I love the songs still, and I like the characters that were introduced like Misty Brightdawn and Sparky the Dragon. On the other hand, the episodes can be messy. We get pieces of information on how magic faded from Equestria, but it still doesn't feel like we're getting the whole picture. The IDW Comics have been giving a little more than the series. I also have many questions on G5's villain, Opaline who is an ALICORN! How did she become an alicorn or was she born one?! G5 wants to be its own thing, but it also clashes with trying to be a sequel to G4. It's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess! I do want to see more.

3. My Little Pony Generation 1

Welcome to the generation that started it all! Say "thank you" to this generation for being the franchise's starting point please! Also, let's give a BIG "thank you" to My Pretty Pony for making this all possible! Before we got a full series, we got two TV specials titled, Rescue at Midnight Castle then Escape from Catrina in 1984 until we got a full-length film in 1986 many know as, My Little Pony: The Movie featuring the voices of recognizable names like Danny DeVito and Madeline Kahn. I've always found this generation to be fun to watch while having some 80's cheesy moments. There was a mixture of magic, action, adventure, and pure pony fluff that kept me sitting through multiple episodes. G1 had messy dialogue, some messy hand-drawn animation, and sometimes messy plot, but it was always charming and to the point. There were times where the pacing was very fast, but not as energetically exhausting as G4.5. This show brought a lot to the table with mystical adventures and characters. This generation gave us unicorns, pegasi, twinkle-eyed ponies, sea ponies, Spike the Dragon, witches, and dear sweet Megan Williams.

After Generation 1, there was no longer a use for any human characters in MLP (unless if we count G4's Equestria Girls) and while it is a little sad, it does make G1 a little more unique. While Megan is the bearer of The Rainbow of Light, she's always there for her pony friends whenever they're in trouble and will always be down to have fun in Ponyland. She even includes her younger siblings, Danny and Molly into the mix. Aside from having human characters, there's also a fair share of creatures like dragons, penguins, and giant crabs. We also have other familiar names in this generation like Applejack and Twilight. This show even introduced memorable villains like Tirac, The Smooze, and Grogar. I feel like we owe a lot to this generation even if it's not everyone's favorite. I wouldn't be making this list if not for this show leaving such a a huge impact and leading into future generations to come. If you're feeling nostalgic, I think you'll have a good time checking this out.

2. My Little Pony Generation 3

I know some of you are shocked....trust me, I know! Let me explain!....I can't help but love G3! I grew up with G3! I enjoyed it so much when I was little and I can't help but still like it today! Is it perfect? No! Is it messy? Yes! Did I have fun? Very much, thank you! In the year of 2003, we were presented with a lineup of new and improved MLP toys different from the previous gens and a Direct-to-Video special titled, A Charming Birthday which introduces our new ponies. As each year passed by, we got new specials and new ponies like Star Catcher, Princess Rarity of Unicornia, Wysteria, and so much more! This generation also includes Spike from G1! One thing I loved about G3 was watching all the specials and movies that came out. I'd always watch A Very Minty Christmas every time December rolled around! I thought Sky Wishes and Star Catcher's friendship was so cute to watch during Dancing In The Clouds and I absolutely adore Star Catcher's design. When Spike was reintroduced debuting in The Princess Promenade, I thought it was interesting that he was more knowledgeable and cultured rather than the sweet and innocent personality he had in G1. We were also introduced to fairy-like ponies called, Breezies. While G3 had little to no antagonists, less magical creatures than G1, and a slice-of-life feel like G1.5, there was still plenty of magical adventures to be had.

I absolutely loved the aesthetic G3 was giving to its audience at the time as I couldn't get enough of the color scheme! I've never seen so many shades pink, purple, blue, and even hints of light green since watching Barbie movies! Their hometown, Ponyville looked so beautiful with the purple/pink castle standing front and center. Even other places like Unicornia, Butterfly Island, Breezie Blossom, and Rainbow Wishes Amusement Park are fun to look at. I didn't find the characters annoying and I loved watching their adventures while learning lessons. However, this generation was given a handful of hate like G3.5 mainly because pony fans though it "doesn't reach the same standards as G4" and it made me a little sad. G3 wasn't meant to be groundbreaking or anything. It was just meant to sell toys while using movies and specials to showcase the ponies making new friends, solving problems, and having fun. The same thing can be said about all the generations, really. I get why people don't enjoy it, but I don't think it's warranted of all the hate that it gets. The stories can be too simple and the executions might not be the best, but they're charming. Okay, everypony! We're reaching the end here! Let's see what my favorite generation of My Little Pony is!

1. My Little Pony Generation 4/ Friendship Is Magic

There was no competition. There was no doubt. If anyone asked me what my favorite generation is, I would say G4 in an instant. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic really changed the game for the franchise as a whole! Lauren Faust (animator, writer, director, producer, creator of DC Superhero Girls, and married to Craig McCracken) got this show going in 2010 and it was a MASSIVE success! Toy sales were through the roof, comics were made, music albums were made, merchandise was highly recommended, and the show practically dominated the whole decade as it lasted for nine (technically ten) seasons from 2010 til 2019. Everyone fell in love with Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy. We just call them, The Mane Six! This was actually a technical reboot to G3 with such familiar names in this gen. There's also familiar names from G1 that are present like Twilight, Applejack, Spike, Grogar, and Tirac (except he's renamed Tirek). I couldn't get enough of this show! I remember watching the first episode when it aired for the two-part series premier instantly wanting more when the first episode ended with, "To Be Continued...." and I was hooked! Each season gave us memorable characters, fantastic locations, exciting lore, amazing songs, and everyone's character growth throughout the series. This generation sparked a fun spinoff called, Equestria Girls where Twilight travels into a different universe where everyone is a human and Megan Williams from G1 even makes a cameo. There was even a full-length movie in 2017 featuring stars like Emily Blunt, Zoe Saldana, Sia, and Taye Diggs. This series also led the way for Pony Life to be made into G4.5 and Generation 5 as its sequel series.

Of course, I can't keep going on about Generation 4 without mentioning The Brony Fandom! With Friendship Is Magic being such a successful show, it didn't only reach younger audiences. It also reached adults too....mainly targeted towards men hence where the term, bronies came from. For a whole decade this fandom has made so many fantastic projects inspired by the series. Music videos, fan songs, remixes, audio dramas, fanart, fanfics, animations, OCs, AUs, and so much more! You had to see it to believe it! I know just as many Brony songs as I do official G4 songs! This generation and its fandom changed my life! I don't know which season is my favorite because there's so many good episodes. Not every episode is perfect and maybe there are some who are put-off by the art style, but it's a really good time. Who would have thought that a show about magical animated ponies would make THAT much of an impact?! I highly recommend that you give G4 a watch if you're interested because you'll definitely have something to write home about.

Conclusion

Welp, that's my list! Thank you for sitting down and reading my thoughts. My Little Pony has been a successful franchise for up to 40 years (and still continuing)! I'll always love these colorful ponies no matter how messy each generation can be. MLP played a big part in my childhood so it was nice to look back on every generation as an adult. I'm looking forward to see what the future holds for newer generations and I hope any of you pony fans have a generation that holds a special place in your heart.🐎❤🦄💕

Images (in terms of artwork) by: KacperKrysiak, Lea Dabssi, Justasuta, Tony Fleecs, ASKometa

[garrettwrites]

Warning: discussions of homophobia; extremely negative rant over a popular lgbt book.

Post context: I waited a decade to read a certain retelling book that focuses on the development of an lgbt couple, one which has been discussed over the centuries. I'm doing my best to censor its title and characters, so this post doesn't show up in the tags for people who genuinely love this story. The title, one I now view as overrated, is something along the lines of a song about a certain popular greek hero with long blond hair and a particularly fragile heel. I wanted to read the original, the Iliad, first. I was so excited... and finally, I read the Iliad and other classical texts, I studied ancient history, and I was finally in the mood to start, paired with good knowledge of the characters that would feature in it AND the historical context... Only to find out I shouldn't have waited. 14/15 year old me would have loved this. Current me cannot. I find most reviewers must have either been high while reading, or have taken this book as teenagers, because there is no way an adult over the age of 25 with some degree of reading experience would have not seen the glaring problems with this book.

Disclaimer, if you care - I have no problem with story alterations. I can be critical of them, sure. But even that won't stop me from enjoying something. I think Percy Jackson should have followed a more greek setup, and I don't particularly fancy some of the worldbuilding choices, but those books were and still are among my favourite fantasy stories. Even though they're for children. Even though I've read Tolkien. I'm no elitist, nor do I believe shit can't be changed to make a compelling story. What I do have a problem with is how you present information, and how you distort it.

For instance, if you wanted to write a story about Ariadne and her godly husband set in the year of 1850 for some reason, and make opium play a role? I think that's a fucking weird setting. But it could work, if you stuck true to what characterises them, their relationship, and had a story with a beggining middle and end that tries to show something.

Going back to the retelling that inspired this "rant review". I'll let others more qualified than me to talk about the sexism. What shocked me here was the gay lovestory that reads so homophobic in how cliché it is that it hurts.

This story reads as "when you're so progressive you gotta turn a gay couple made up of two masculine, warrior like, war drowned men into "the hot warrior and his healer who hates fighting" so it fits into (the already sexist/misogynistic) heterosexual couple role".

Because god forbid you have a gay couple where you actually need to deconstruct masculinity without villainizing it. God forbid you actually need to write men into a gay story. God forbid these men are not good, and you need to get into their complexity. God forbid the pov character, who is written as a love struck maiden, has a life outside his strong warrior that helps contextualise his love for him.

Listen. Feminine men are amazing. Gay feminine men are too. I have plenty of original characters that fit within these labels. What I do not do is turn two ancient greek warriors into an early 2000s seme uke yaoi dynamic where one of them is a fragile maiden war tent housewife and the other a very hot but detached strong soldier god man. This is not the story to do that. And even if you play with gender roles and have a man take a more "womanly" role, it's not enough to just genderswap - a character is still badly written regardless of wether they're male or female.

If the housewife character here was a woman, I guarantee everyone who praises this book would be losing their marbles. A woman with no personality outside her lover? Afraid of fighting, of standing up, of speaking up, and this never changes? Who becomes a healer not because she studies it, but because her fragile soul has no other option? Who is passive as all hell in the story until the author remembers she has to die in an impactful manner to trigger her male love interest? That is two dimensional and no way to write a girl, and it's not suddenly okay just because this girl has a dick and is a him.

Yet cause it's gay it's okay to write such an insipid character. Praised even. Which is made even worse, because the original version was a man who yes - indeed - was kind to others yet an absolute beast on the battlefield. Who had opinions and gave counsel. This is not even an original character - I wouldn't criticise an original character as harshly, but this author changed a fighter with incredible skill, who killed a son of a god and was a hero in his own right, into this. A character who yes, was kind and beloved. But touched by war regardless. A character who was loved by those around him, but in this book is ridiculed by these very same people.

Why do you think that is.

And no, trying to make the story more anti war is not an answer. The Iliad is anti war. The Iliad literally comments on how war corrupts what it touches, how it fucked up the lives of everyone involved. This is not a modern take on an old story, because the old story in question already talks about it.

But what can I expect, here. I could call this a work that doesn't know how to write gay men without adhering to (already dated even for straight people) gender roles... but truth is? Author doesn't know how to write women either. The moment you unironically think Helen of Troy is just a vain little hot chick you should not be allowed to write an Iliad retelling, me thinks.

Oh, and let's not get into the fact both main characters are meant to be gay. They're not bisexual. Yet this book - a GAY ROMANCE - is not shy about shoving straight sex scenes onto you. Sex scenes with really no purpose, for they're never brought up again later, and have no story impact.

I am not kidding. Character A gets D pregnant, Character P barely reacts to it, and when D gets upset at P for whatever reason THE TWO OF THEM HAVE SEX TOO. NOTHING AS GAY AS FUCKING THE WOMAN IMPREGNATED BY YOUR BOYFRIEND, UH?! And it's never brought up again! Nobody forces Character P into this yet he willingly goes? Excuse me, if you wanted these characters to have sex with women so casually, why not just make them bisexual and open to banging outside their relationship?

It reads as so disgusting, to have an author clearly lean into a soulmate trope, then just pull some of the most uncomfortable to read sex scenes ever outside that soulmate couple (I love purple prose. Purple prose is probably the only reason I didn't hate this book - the writing was beautiful. But the way the sex with Character D goes... good lord it's written in such a puke inducing way). I'm not against poly in books, what I am against is leaning into monogamous tropes for a gay couple, where you write neither of them as bisexual (which, btw, bi-erasure of the original characters) but then have them bang outside their relationship EVEN when nobody is forcing them to. Never have I read a gay book where straight sex is pushed forward so much. And it's not just even weird for the gay couple, it's also written in a really odd way for the women involved.

"Oh you just don't get the theme! It was out of pity! It was-" turn this into a straight romance and tell me, with a straight face, that this story is well written. Bad character development, bad usage of tropes, terrible pacing, and the use of sex outside the main romance purely for reader self insertion (for it contributes with nothing but shoddy erotica, in a book supposedly about AxP) should not be excused just because a book is gay.

Honestly. "Let people enjoy things" well I propose let me be a hater. I went above and beyond to block the book and character names, let's hope it's enough. But I'm against not criticising things just because they're diverse. It's 2024. There's plenty of authors writing good stories with marginalised people.

And let's talk about LGBT+ worldbuilding, shall we? In the beggining of this book - set in Ancient Greece by the way - it's stated men could take male lovers on the side. Then it's not brought up again, until later a woman tells P many married men take lovers on the side. This girl was originally a sex slave by the way, and here she gets Stockholm Syndrome and falls for P. But then another character tells P he's too old to be into men? So, which is it? It's not even a thing about ancient greek men having that thing where it was accepted for an older man to be sexually involved with a young boy, because here the problem brought up is P being too old, not his lover being too old too.

Oh, and the love interest's (A's) mother. She hates their relationship. We are told she hates their relationship because P is mortal and she doesn't want a mortal to be with her son. Yet later on she arranges a marriage between her son and a MORTAL woman. So is the problem really mortality, or homosexuality?

Why is there modern day homophobia in a story that many praise for historical accuracy?

I honestly hate how people care about representation at the cost of quality. It is mind boggling to me that a woman in this century wrote a book more homophobic and misogynistic than greeks almost 3 thousand years ago did.

[stardestroyer81]

🥪 Introducing... Door2Door! 🥪

Door2Door stars twenty year old possum Gigi Dempster, who lives in a rather ramshackle, podunk town in Vermont called Bendersville. After sending numerous job applications all over town with no word back, she finally lands herself a delivery driver position at an unassuming locally-owned sandwich restaurant named Dine 'n Dash. With no prior experience in the art of crafting a mighty fine sandwich or running a delivery route, Gigi is strapped in to experience the whirlwind of a first time food service job firsthand, and in an unpredictable town like Bendersville, quite literally anything can happen.

(For more information on what Door2Door is— as well as a handful of progress images— please consider checking underneath the cut!)

At last, witness unveiling of my latest project I've spent the last month conceptualizing, Door2Door! What once came about as a silly idea of basing a project after an inner-city delivery driver inspired after a certain gameplay section in Spongebob Squarepants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman, it has since blossomed into one of my dearest passion projects yet!

Though, before I get into any further detail behind Door2Door and its creation, I must stress— none of the above five images hail from a lost late nineties/early 2000s Cartoon Network show, and if by chance any of them were enough to fool you into thinking they were, then that just means I achieved what I set out for! 💙✨

Now, about a month ago, I'd been watching a retrospective on the critically un-acclaimed Spongebob Squarepants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman, a game I had growing up. It's important for me to mention that I had seen and personally played the aforementioned gameplay section before, though for some reason seeing it again struck me with a brilliant project idea.

Anyone who's been following me for at least a year knows that I've designed a cavalcade of candied characters for my own arcade game concept, Rascal, and initially my idea for Door2Door— which I also called Project JJ (In reference to the sandwich chain Jimmy John's)— was to give it a plot simple enough to translate into an arcade game.

The idea was that you played as a plucky delivery driver who rides through the streets of a seedy city to deliver a food order to the... er, order-ee. But your progress would be impeded by a fiendish gang of mobster alley cats who are after your sandwiches, so there would have definitely been a large cartoony element to the gameplay loop.

I drew concept art for Door2Door's protagonist, then known as Marcy, though I really wasn't vibing with either drawing. For one, making the protagonist a cat seemed a bit overdone, and I already have a cat character who's name rhymes with Marcy, so that had to go. More so, I also couldn't settle on a good spriting style, which prompted me to rethink the whole project.

Well, there is a general aura of cartooniness to Door2Door, I thought, why not just embrace that vibe whole-heartedly and reshape the project into a long-lost late nineties cartoon?

I did like the idea of having an excuse to drawing more animation cels, though if I was going to make Door2Door into something resembling a cel-animated cartoon, I was prepared to go the full distance in nailing that aesthetic, in the form of how characters are designed and the way I go about drawing each screenshot.

For those unfamiliar with cel animation, essentially it can be described as a traditional form of animation and involves objects— usually characters— being hand-inked and painted on clear celluloid sheets and placed over painted backgrounds.

Above, I've provided a visual for what a standalone 'cel' from Door2Door would look like, coupled with a hand-painted background. When overlaid on top of one another...

... you would get this! This is exactly how cartoons were animated up until the era of digital inking and coloring... but that begs the question. How am I achieving a hand-drawn and painted aesthetic if everything I've shown so far has been drawn digitally?

I have my ways! It involves a lot of studying how individual cels of animation look, and taking note of recurring hallmarks; grainy textures, paint blemishes, drop shadows, etc. Above, I've assembled a small gif of my process in composing a screenshot for Door2Door, from lineart to final product!

So, that all should loosely explain it; Door2Door is what would happen if I were in charge of a late nineties Cartoon Network show, and what you've seen here is merely the beginning. Going forward, I will be posting art of Door2Door's main cast with some additional character information and concept art for each one, though for the time being, enjoy all five art pieces I've supplied for this post— they are perhaps the biggest works of mine yet this year! 💙🏳️‍⚧️���

[themakeupbrush]

I've been following your blog for a while now and I enjoy the content. I'm curious about a couple of things. I find that I can tell when something is older, say 90's or 2000's and thus can sort of see trends historically. What I want to know is if you, as a person who follows fashion more closely can tell designers from a picture or see trends from different designers over several seasons.

Yeah, if you show me a picture I can almost always tell what designer it is, and usually tell you when it was.

Some are distinct enough that I can tell you exactly what year and season it was (though if I'm being honest, I really just don't have a great memory, especially for dates)

Others the trends are distinct enough that I could narrow it down pretty closely, between the clothing, models, and even runway design. For some it's pretty easy, like the galliano era of dior was very different than the current MGC era, so if you've followed the brand you clearly know what time frame you're working with.

But if you've ever heard the cerulean blue monologue from devil wears prada, yes it is possible to recall what designers did each season and what trends that influenced if you follow fashion long enough (though to my knowledge, none of the designers used cerulean in 2002)

[gryhmz]

The Coffin of Elfen and Leyley: Incest and Questionable Consent in 2000s Media.

WARNING: This blog post mentions numerous sensitive subjects such as incest, questionable consent, murder, cannibalism, sexually explicit material, and real-life criminal cases. If any of the following is bothersome, I would highly suggest scrolling past this post. Thank you.

ANOTHER WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Elfen Lied and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. If you wish to avoid spoilers, I would highly suggest clicking off this post and come back once you have finished both. Thank you.

Hello (again), it's grim.

I wanted to discuss an interesting phenomenon that I've taken note of over the past couple of years that seems to always cause internet controversy: The rise of taboo subjects found in modern media.

Now, I want to clarify that I hold very libertarian beliefs when it comes to media. If you can think it, it can be written, regardless of how inappropriate the content is. However, I also believe that there should be consequences to such writings depending on the substance.

The two topics I'll be talking about today are The Coffin of Andy and Leyley and Elfen Lied. These are both pieces of media that I have consumed in the past 2 years, and have noticed a trend between taboo subjects and how their respective authors and/or fanbases have used their taboo nature to repurpose characters and relationships for inappropriate media.

While I believe these pieces of media can be criticized in any manner due to their taboo nature, I would argue in defense of their conception since there is no exact promotion of the taboo nature represented throughout the mentioned medias. I believe this is important to state, for I solely disagree with the creation of media that promotes a taboo and/or illegal act rather than just the representation of such acts.

Images of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley (left) and Elfen Lied (right)

To make this analysis and opinionated piece easier to read, I will be going through my opinions and personal experiences with both of these medias separately. To do this, I will be separating taboo into two subsections:

Illegal Taboo

Questionable Taboo

While I would argue that there is probably some grey area between the two of these, I am simply dividing the taboos into two separate categories because my stance on illegal and questionable taboo slightly changes. Furthermore, the taboos in TCOAAL and Elfen Lied are very different. I believe it would be unfair to compare incest and questionable consent content. Both are taboo, both have been countlessly debated for and against, but incest has stable, concrete laws set against it (at least in the United States) while the other doesn't.

Let's get into the analysis.

Illegal Taboo (The Coffin of Andy and Leyley)

Screenshot from the love/incest route of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

Oh boy, where do I start. I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting myself into when I first stumbled upon this game. I saw the art style of the game in a YouTube video where the uploader had referred to the siblings as "lovers," which gave me the impression that the main characters of the game were not blood relatives. By the time I had seen the controversy plastered all over Twitter and Reddit about the TCOAAL's "questionable" content, I had already bought the game, which put me in a tough dilemma: Do I immediately refund the game or do I give it a chance?

I bet you can guess which one I picked.

Me being the curious individual that I am, I decided to keep the game. I had a million thoughts rush through my mind about the decision I had just made. What if the game actually has illegal content? People must be exaggerating the situation. I'm sure that the incest claims are probably just false. If it does have a plot that revolves around such content, maybe its just a small tidbit of the game. No biggie. These thoughts did not stop, and I wasn't sure what to do next.

One of the only screenshots from Episode 2 of TCOAAL that isn't horrendous

For a month or so, I avoided the game like the plague. I held off on installing it, I avoided it on Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram as best as I could (for both spoilers and online biases), and I refused to talk about the game with anyone that I knew. I planned to play the game, but I wanted all the controversy to die off first so I could play it without too much backlash. Unfortunately in this world, outrage has become the people's first emotion to anything, so even if your reasoning for such an action is rational and fair, you might still be attacked for simply touching new media without an initial bias.

When I finally got around to playing the game, I was genuinely pleased. Episode 1 has nothing over-the-top, and the incest that people were talking about was yet to be seen. So I didn't think anything of it. I scrolled through my social media and just continued assuming that people were hating on TCOAAL simply for being a new trend.

Then Episode 2 came around.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet: There is incestuous acts and behaviors littered throughout the game, and people online were certainly right.

Below, I have a handful of screenshots that I took showcasing the romantic and sexual tension and acts between the two siblings. There's a bit of it.

(I'm not kidding, all of these are in the game)

Now, I will give TCOAAL fans this, the vast majority (9 of the 10 images) of the incestuous content above is NOT easy to come across. There are very specific routes that you must past through in Episode 2 to come across these screenshots. So it's not as "obvious" as people online made it out to be. In fact, it took me roughly 3 hours of additional gameplay to reach all the different endings for Episode 2, so it certainly is time consuming.

For the sake of time and my sanity, I will NOT be showing how to reach these scenarios. I will only say that you will know if you stumble across the lover/incest route because the NARRATOR THEMSELF warns you NOT to continue down the route.

While I don't think that the incestuous undertones of the story should be the entire definition of the series, I can understand why people dislike it. What is so genius about giving Leyley a romantic and sexual interest in Andrew is that it does one simple thing that the creator wanted to hit home: It makes people uncomfortable. It simply does what every other piece of horror/thriller media tries to do, and it does it well. I don't see it as any more or less uncomfortable as the barbwire scene from Saw I, and the fact that the creator could pull that off just by making Leyley an incestuous, manipulative creep is stunning.

Furthermore, TCOAAL acts as an interesting question for psychology: Does social deprivation, abandonment, isolation, hopelessness, and manipulation play a role in one's moral compass? We see that Andrew's behavior towards Leyley dramatically changes throughout Episode 2 depending on whether you choose to trust and sympathize with Leyley. In addition to a change in behavior, we also see that (most notably the incest route) Andrew accepts his nickname "Andy" again, which he hates due to its connection with a murder that he committed with his sister in Episode 1 (not going into too much detail). It is also noted that Andrew's ex-girlfriend Julia had trouble with Leyley's dominating presence in Andrew's life, which would lead her to stop communicating with him. His degree of whether he cares or not changes based on his sympathy towards Leyley, highlighting how relationships in Andrew's life highly changes based on how much he lets Leyley abuse his existence.

Backstory that showcases Andrew's love interest that abandons him in Episode 1

In short, TCOAAL has many more layers than the internet made it out to be, but the incestuous routes and behaviors between Andrew and Leyley can be seen as concerning. I'll come back to this shortly.

Questionable Taboo (Elfen Lied)

Famous cover art for Elfen Lied showcasing Lucy in the nude.

Now, I watched Elfen Lied in 2022, so I'm just putting it out here that it has been a while since I have watched the anime. Furthermore, I have not read the manga, so my observations are SOLELY off the anime adaptation of Elfen Lied.

Just like TCOAAL, I do NOT think that the story of Elfen Lied is overly terrible. While I do think that TCOAAL has a more sound story line, I do think that Elfen Lied did an okay job at showcasing the selfishness and cruelty of humanity. However, there has always been a part of the show that doesn't sit right with me and many other viewers, and that is Kouta's (the main male protagonist) relationships with Yuka and Lucy.

Throughout the entirety of the show, Kouta partakes in relationships that are considered extremely taboo, especially in the western world. For one, he marries and supposedly procreates with his cousin Yuka at the end of the anime and manga, which is gross and highly disturbing to me, and I am certainly not the only one who feels that way. Almost any search through r/elfenlied would show the outrage and confusion that many people hold towards such a decision. Below are just a couple of what can be found about Kouta and Yuka's relationship (which is also ironically incestuous):

However, one thing that I do not see talked about a ton is Kouta's HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE relationship with Lucy. While Lucy is not human and is considered to be a Diclonius (some sort of humanoid), some of the scenes and plot points feel as if the author wanted to bank off of questionable consent. Many scenes throughout the anime highlight that Lucy is "sexually curious," which makes perfect sense in theory, but is implemented horribly into the anime. Scenes like Kouta observing Lucy's private parts and random butt shots of Lucy just make the entire show uncomfortable, and I would even argue it normalizes taking advantage of the mentally immature for sexual purposes, which could be considered sexual abuse and/or rape (especially since Elfen Lied is a fan service ecchi).

I understand that mangakas and Japanese culture call for the normalization of nudity, but Elfen Lied fails horribly at making a good case. Elfen Lied could have looked over to other medias such as Ghost in the Shell and Imouto Sae Ireba Ii do a much better job at implementing casual and artistic nudity in their shows while still offering tidbits of fan service to the horny. But, I digress.

Nudity is showcased in both Imouto Sae Ireba Ii and Ghost in the Shell and don't face the same criticism as Elfen Lied

Regardless of how I feel about the previously mentioned, I will give the mangaka of Elfen Lied this: They did a great job making the viewers uncomfortable. I would even argue that Lynn Okamoto did a better job making me feel so unbelievably uncomfortable compared to The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, and it's been two years since I last saw Elfen Lied, so props to Okamoto!

My Personal Take on Taboos in Media

(Now that I scroll through images of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley and Elfen Lied, there really are a ton of similarities...)

In short, I do not think that these taboos make The Coffin of Andy and Leyley and Elfen Lied "bad." Distasteful? Sure. Gross? Most definitely. But, my concern for these medias stems from the fact that modern media has failed to hit home the ideas that these might be inappropriate taboos to normalize in modern internet culture. Simply going through tags such as "gravecest" and "coffincest" on Tumblr showcases the questionably deranged behaviors hardcore TCOAAL fans have towards the story's incest plot.

I was fairly surprised to find out the Elfen Lied has not been overly sexualized over the years. While I am thankful for that, I do believe that Okamoto was wrong for writing up a manga and anime that focused on a humanoid character solely for the purpose of being sexually taken advantage of. She could've done a much better job at handling the fan service without making Elfen Lied look like a promotion for sexual and mental abuse.

I believe all that really matters and what can be taken away from this analysis is that taboo subjects can be used in media as long as the intent and the targeted audience work together. For instance, I believe that The Coffin of Andy and Leyley's questionable use of incest as a story principle is okay since the author does not call for the promotion of incest in the story nor does the entire story revolve around the incestuous behaviors of the two main characters. BUT, rule 34 content of the game that showcases such explicit, incestuous acts between the siblings should be criticized since R34 content is solely made for pornographic purposes with no substance to the story's canon. I am also okay with Okamoto's usage of incest and questionable consent in Elfen Lied since it plays into the storyline and theme of the anime, but the fan service showcased in the show should be criticized since it was easily used as a lazy way to throw borderline pornography into the anime, therefore ruining the point of "artistic" and "normalized" nudity.

In short: I don't think using taboos in media should be illegal unless the media in question is a direct reflection of a real-life scenario (like the 2019 Shadman incident), but public criticism is certainly understandable on a case-by-case basis.

Thanks for reading, I am extremely tired.

grim.

[saintsenara]

Madam. Hi. I'm back.

I am so so curious to know your thoughts on the casting of the 'Marauders'-era characters in the films.

This thought process was triggered by your previous answer to an ask where you said you were not a fan of Alan Rickman as Snape. I personally think it would have impacted the storytelling quite profoundly if they had cast Harry's parents, and their friends, age-accurately.

A few reasons come to mind for me.

Re Lily and James. Not that the Potters' death wouldn't always have been tragic, but seeing 22-year-olds get killed would have definitely hit differently. And in Deathly Hallows p2, when the resurrection stone brings them back, they would have looked very close in age to Harry himself, and that would have hurt real bad to see, really putting things in perspective for the viewer. Basically I'm a slut for pain and I want tragedy and heartache and messy tears.

Re the teachers. This also applies to Remus, specifically, whom I afford a special place in all this. I know the teachers are supposed to be Adults in the eyes of children [the target audience for the first two-ish films], and characters like Lockhart, [who is btw canonically FOUR YEARS younger than James and Lily??] are supposed to serve that (very British) storytelling purpose of the Silly Adult, and later Evil Adult. Snape is also an Evil Adult, Mathilda-style, so I GET that children need to see them as Old People. BUT, children view anyone over the age of 20 as adults??? So like, 30-ish year old teachers look very mature to them and can serve this purpose just fine imho. Anyways, I digress. The reason I would want them to be younger, as they should have been according to the text, simply has to do with the audience relating to them. These are just different stories when these people are in their 20s and 30s when Harry is a kid. Also, the first generation of HP fans would now be their age, opening up a whole new avenue of feelings when watching the films. Watching the films as a kid and identifying with the children vs. watching it as in your 20s and 30s and identifying with Harry's dead parents, Snape, Lupin, etc., would be such a wonderful thing to feel!!!

Re. Sirius. The above points mentioned all obviously also apply to Sirius, but I still think he warrants a special mention. Being 33 and having spent the past 12 years in Azkaban and DYING aged 35??? It's just a different story than a middle-aged man imho. I hope I don't sound terribly ageist, because of course dying at 45 is premature, but it's still different, yknow?

A final, petty note. The chronology of it makes no sense. When we meet him, Gary Oldman's Sirius is not a boy who was sent to prison aged 21, where he has been for the past 12 years. There's a good 10 years missing there by the looks of him, so what's up? Same with Lily and James, it just cracks me up that these people look middle-aged. What do you mean they look middle-aged, they've done nothing but graduate from school and DIE????

These are my countless cents on the matter, and I am very curious to know your thoughts if you would be so kind as to share.

i don't love a couple of the performances [not just alan rickman's, but gary oldman's], but i've been forced into neutrality on the actual casting ever since the films came out by the twist of fate that one of my best friends has never read the books.

[and - in a sign of just how culturally dominant harry potter was in the 2000s - is the only person my age i've ever met who hasn't.]

and seeing her try to understand the films was a trip...

i think those of us who started with the books - or read the books quite soon after seeing the films - don't realise quite how hard the films are to follow if you have no understanding of the basic outline of the story. which is to say, i agree that something is lost in not casting the marauders generation age-accurately - the great tragedy of the priori incantatem or resurrection stone scenes in the book versions of goblet of fire and deathly hallows, for example, is that harry and james are basically indistinguishable because james died when he was only a few years older than harry - but, since the films needed to be accessible not only to people who'd never read the books, but to people who'd never seen another film in the series, the very obvious visual distinction between the two generations makes it easier to understand who's who. if - in the philosopher's stone film - harry had looked into the mirror of erised and seen an age-accurate james, many viewers would - i think - have assumed he was looking at his future self, meaning either that the running time would need to be increased so that it could be explained that he wasn't, or the audience would have to be left not understanding the emotional heft of what they'd just seen.

a longer-form adaptation - if they ever make the tv show, not that i'll watch it if they do - will have the space to do the casting age-accurately [and will also, i imagine, feel less beholden to shoehorning in as many british establishment luvvies as possible]. but the films get a pass on this one, i fear.

[winderlylandchime]

If you had to sum up QAF in a single paragraph for someone who has been interested in the show, but still hasn't taken the plunge, how would you do it?

I've followed you for months for unrelated reasons, but I'd lie if I said I wasn't curious by seeing so many GIFs of it, and seeing that one anon's brother react to it last year.

Hello dear sweet anon! Wow. I’m so glad my other anon and her brother has piqued your curiosity. And of course @sophsun1 incredible gifs with her wonderful insights.

QAF in one paragraph. This is a challenge.

QAF US 2000 centers on Brian Kinney and his group of friends - gay men (and one lesbian couple) in their late 20s/early 30s. Brian has this godlike persona and is the most desirable gay man in all of Pittsburgh. The show begins on the night that Brian meets Justin - a 17 year old kid who comes to the gay neighborhood in Pittsburgh to explore. That same night, Brian’s son is born (see aforementioned lesbian couple). The show follows the development of Brian and Justin’s relationship as well as their character development through 5 years. The characters are all very human which means you both have affection for them and hate them at different points and sometimes at the same time.

“It’s the greatest love story ever but also most of the characters suck” @kiranerysed

Warnings: the show is very much set in the early 2000s when it aired. The racism, misogyny, bi-erasure, and transphobia is incredibly shocking and would not air today. The binary understanding of gender norms and top/bottom sexual positions is certainly telling of the show’s creators’ beliefs.

Do not watch it streaming on showtime. The show aired well before streaming was a thing and therefore the rights to the music were not secured in perpetuity, or whatever they do now. So the original soundtrack is replaced in some parts. It is a crime. Find it illegally or borrow DVDs or send me a DM.

“Prepare to have Britin (Brian + Justin) take over your goddamn life but also hate half the show’s creative decisions” @kiranerysed

If you do watch it, please feel free to return with your reactions! I love that new folks are still discovering the wonder (and horror) that is QAF. (Honestly if it was perfect would we be so obsessed? No. There would be nothing to talk about!)

[lestappenforever]

I saw someone (perhaps even you) saying the other day how the culture of the grid has changed over the last decade or two, and how drivers actually seem to be friends now outside of just racing. I've only really paid any attention to f1 since covid, and even then only half-heatedly until a couple of months ago, so I don't know enough to know if that's true or not. I did watch a tiny bit of f1 in the early 2000s as a kid and I don't remember there being any sign of drivers being friends, but I really couldn't say for sure.

So, as someone who's being actively following f1 for years now, has there been an actuarial shift in the grid culture, or does it just sort of seem that way because of the marketing stuff drivers are doing more of now? And if there has been change, any ideas why?

Hi anon!

I think @valyrfia and/or @tsarinablogs have talked about the shift in the grid culture; I don't recall ever really talking about it myself. (And girls, please correct me if my memory is absolutely wrong on this so I can ammend this.) But, there is no doubt that there has been a shift in the grid culture over the years.

Now, it is worth mentioning that when I started watching F1 in the early 2000's, social media was not what it is today. So you didn't really get any sort of insight into the lives of F1 drivers outside of race weekends, and the coverage of their lives in the general media was pretty non-existent unless somebody was involved in some sort of scandal. So this is a factor worth keeping in mind, as whether the shift we have seen in the grid culture is as actual as it appears, or if it's mostly due to how different social media was back then and how you really didn't get an insight into the drivers' lives outside of F1.

But, the entire vibe between the drivers was different back then, and based on what you did get to see before and after races, in press conferences, interviews, etc., you definitely didn't get the same vibe that you'll get now, with many of the drivers actively name-dropping each other and clearly indicating that they share genuine friendships outside of F1 where they'll spend quite a bit of time together outside of F1 weekends. There were of course exceptions, as there is with everything, where some of the drivers clearly were close friends outside of work (Rosberg/Hamilton before that whole friendship went to shit, Button/Coulthard, Webber/Alonso, Schumacher/Alesi, Räikkönen/Vettel, to name a few). But on a general basis, the vibe was quite different because there seemed to be a much clearer line between work and private life that wasn’t crossed all that often.

I personally think the main cause behind the shift, regardless of how much of it is actual and not just related to how we didn't really have a way to follow the drivers' lives outside of race weekends in the 2000's, is a generational thing.

The grid started becoming increasingly younger in the 2010's, with a lot of the current drivers having known each other for years prior to meeting again in F1, and the lines between work and private life are far more blurred with this younger generation of drivers. They're part of the generation that get married and have kids at far higher ages than the generation before them — if at all — and that of course plays a huge role. Only three drivers on the current grid have kids (Kevin, Nico, Checo), and they're all part of the older generation. When you don't have kids, you have more freedom outside of race weekends, which I definitely think plays a part in drivers spending time together outside of race weekends more often now than what was commom 15-20 years ago.

But yeah, like I said, it's impossible to know just how much of this shift is actual, and how much is just due to how we couldn't really follow the lives of the drivers outside of race weekends before the age of social media. However, there is no denying there has been some sort of shift there, which I think is mostly caused by the generational changes within F1 over the past 10 years or so.

[maddie-grove]

The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2023

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949): I thought somebody would make me read this book in school, but no one ever did. Now that I've read it, let me just say...mark me down as horny and scared! No, I will not explain what I mean by that.

Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser (2017): In this examination of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and work, Fraser skillfully weaves a portrait of two complicated women (Wilder and her daughter/editor Rose Wilder Lane) with an overview of large swathes of American history. The examination of how Wilder and Lane adapted Wilder's life experiences into autobiographical fiction and why they made those choices is particularly interesting.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022): This is a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, transplanted to Appalachia in the 1990s-2000s. Kingsolver retains the warmth and the pathos of the original, and the narrative voice is great.

Song of the Magdalene by Donna Jo Napoli (1996): Miriam, a Jewish girl in first-century Magdala, finds her life altered by unexplained seizures, which she must keep secret, and a first love that ends in tragedy. Napoli often brings it when it comes to thoughtful portrayals of disability and unexpectedly weird sensuality, and this novel is one of her best.

My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews (1982): Audrina Adare, a young girl with severe memory problems, lives in an isolated Virginia mansion with her domineering father and various deranged female relatives...and it gets worse. This is V.C. Andrews at her most deliciously perverse and lurid, and I was definitely rooting for Audrina to close the portal.

I Never Asked You to Understand Me by Barthe DeClements (1986): Faced with her mother's terminal cancer diagnosis and the unhelpfulness of most adults in her life, fifteen-year-old Didi ends up at an alternative school for truancy and finds a friend in Stacy, a would-be runaway whose home life is even more dire. This 1980s YA problem novel always gets me, thanks to the author's gentle, empathetic treatment of her messy teenage characters.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (2006): Jasons, a thirteen-year-old boy in early-1980s Worchestershire, copes with brutal grade-school politics, a tense home life, various small losses of innocence, and the odd supernatural event over the span of a year. My favorite stretch of the novel was where half a dozen scary/weird/sexually confusing things happen in the course of Jason taking one meandering walk through the countryside.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (1963): I'd been intending to read a Kurt Vonnegut novel since he died in 2007, so don't say I never follow through on anything. This book is extraordinarily fun and absurd, which just enhances the horror of the eventual climax.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905): Cash-strapped socialite Lily Bart struggles in turn-of-the-century New York society, mainly because she can neither fully commit to gold-digging nor figure out a viable alternative. Her crumbling state, both social and psychological, is horrifying yet fascinating to witness.

The Fell by Sarah Moss (2021): In November 2020, English waitress and single mother Kate breaks quarantine to take a walk through the countryside, with disastrous results. This short novel is lyrical, compassionate, and impressively stressful.

Old Babes in the Woods by Margaret Atwood (2023): This short story collection is split between vignettes featuring elderly couple Nell and Tig, and several standalones that vary wildly in tone and form. All are well-written, but I generally enjoyed the standalones best, especially the poignant "My Evil Mother," the chilling "Freeforall," and the thought-provoking "Metempsychosis."

Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott (2023): Pregnant Jacy goes with her new husband to visit his widowed father in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but a pleasant vacation soon turns into a paranoid nightmare. Abbott's lush descriptions--kind of sexy and kind of gross, as always--enhance a truly disturbing thriller.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925): This is another book I assumed someone would make me read in school, but I think all my teachers and professors were like "yeah, yeah, The Great Gatsby, we all know what that is." What you don't get from the Baz Luhrmann movie and pop-cultural osmosis, though, is the exquisite secondhand embarrassment of watching Gatsby pursue a married woman who is actually more into her husband, or just how fucking bizarre that husband is.

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (2023): Single mother Louise is pulled from San Francisco to her hometown of Charleston by the sudden death of her parents and has to coordinate funeral arrangements with her ne'er-do-well brother Mark...and it gets worse. This isn't the best or the scariest Grady Hendrix novel, but the sibling relationship is compelling and it features the incomparable Pupkin. I love that fucked-up lil hand-puppet.

Seventeen and In-Between by Barthe Declements (1984): High-school senior Elsie Edwards is beautiful, brilliant, and talented, but she's still plagued by the lingering trauma of childhood bullying, her terrible parents, and her complicated feelings for her long-term boyfriend (slightly older and jonesing to Go All the Way) and her male best friend (also trying to figure things out, albeit through working in the lumber industry in Forks, Washington). The Elsie Edwards trilogy is great overall, and Elsie's struggle to figure out how to move beyond her unhappy past is especially moving.

Don't Look and It Won't Hurt by Richard Peck (1972): Carol, the sixteen-year-old middle daughter of a poor divorced waitress, gets a front seat to her older sister's disastrous relationship with a scumbag, experiences her own first romance, and sorts through her feelings about her strained family and stultifying small prairie town. This is a sweet, understated early YA novel that offers a look into the last few years before Roe v. Wade.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (2022): In this memoir, McCurdy recounts her relationship with her controlling, abusive late mother and her dispiriting time as a child star on Nickelodeon. I really enjoyed her writing style--clear, conversational, and bracingly pissed off--and she offers some good insight into the acting industry.

Just Like You by Nick Hornby (2020): Joseph, a twentysomething black working-class Londoner balancing his musical aspirations with babysitting gigs and a job at a butcher's shop, stars a romance with Lucy, a fortysomething upper-middle-class white single mom and schoolteacher. This is a pleasant, easygoing love story with some insightful commentary on how ordinary people form political opinions.

The Fourth Grade Wizards by Barthe DeClements (1988): Fourth grader Marianne is distracted in class and adrift at home after her mother's sudden death, but she has a good friend in Jack, who struggles in class because he's hyperactive. You might ask why this list is so dominated by one 1980s middle-grade/YA author, and the answer is that I love her. Also, I did not read all that many new-to-me books last year.

How Do You Lose Those Ninth Grade Blues? by Barthe DeClements (1983): Elsie Edwards, no longer the emotionally battered class pariah she was in Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade but not yet the maturing young woman she'll become in Seventeen and In-Between, starts high school with everything going for her...except her horribly low self-esteem and her still-terrible home life. This is definitely the slightest installment of the trilogy, but it still makes an impact.

[emotionalcadaver]

Hello 🌻

hope you are having fun during your holiday :)

So... I noticed in your bio you describe yourself as a film snob, and I was curious if you could put together a list of films you believe everyone should watch. It doesn't matter whether they're niche films or d'essai or blockbuster, I used to adore going to cine-forums and watch every kind of genre, they always leave you something to bring home

Thank you! <3

(Sorry for the ramble, but I'm stuck in bed for the next couple of weeks with way too much free time, and I figured I might as well put it to good use! xD )

Ohhh my god, Ari, you have no idea just how badly I wanna hug you right now. Films and filmmaking are one of my special interests and I could literally talk your ear off about the industry!

Please keep in mind that these are just my personal picks/opinions, and I am almost certainly forgetting a few because I'm doing this off of memory. I'm also not including any films that I haven't seen yet (there are a few classics that I embarrassingly just somehow never got around to seeing that are currently in my watchlist) so if you notice any strange omissions that's why. Please keep in mind that I tend to prefer dark, pessimistic films, so this list is going to reflect that.

If you'd like specific recommendations, wish for me elaborate anymore on any of these films, or want a part 2 to this, please let me know!

Also, I recently got a Letterboxd account back in December, so if you want to see what I've been watching recently, give me a follow over there!

Under a read more because this got LONG.

Alien (1979, Dir. Ridley Scott)

Aliens (1986, Dir. James Cameron)

Anthropoid (2016, Dir. Sean Ellis)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022, Dir. Martin McDonagh)

Batman Begins (2005, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Black Swan (2010, Dir. Darren Aronofsky)

Children of Men (2006, Dir. Alfonso Cuaron)

A Clockwork Orange (1971, Dir. Stanley Kubrick)

Clue (1985, Dir. Jonathan Lynn)

The Dark Knight (2008, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Dune Part I (2021, Dir. Denis Villeneuve)

Dunkirk (2017, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Get Out (2017, Dir. Jordan Peele)

The Godfather (1972, Dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

The Godfather Part II (1974, Dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

Inception (2010, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Interstellar (2014, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001, Dir. Peter Jackson)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, Dir. Peter Jackson)

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002, Dir. Peter Jackson)

Memento (2000, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Molly's Game (2017, Dir. Aaron Sorkin)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, Dir. Henry Selick)

No Country for Old Men (2007, Dir. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen)

Oppenheimer (2023, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Platoon (1986, Dir. Oliver Stone)

The Prestige (2006, Dir. Christopher Nolan)

Psycho (1960, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Pulp Fiction (1994, Dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Rear Window (1954, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

The Shining (1980, Dir. Stanley Kubrick)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991, Dir. Jonathan Demme)

Spotlight (2015, Dir. Tom McCarthy)

Titanic (1997, Dir. James Cameron)

12 Years a Slave (2013, Dir. Steve McQueen)

28 Days Later (2002, Dir. Danny Boyle)

Zero Dark Thirty (2012, Dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

[thestupidhelmet]

Hey there! First of all - I can't begin to say how amazing your work on here is. Your metas, fanfic, comics - as a relatively new 70s fan, it's been so great to peruse. I started watching the show in the autumn last year, and grew up in the 2000s so it still feels nostalgic to me.

It might be a bit of a weird question, but basically I've really been interested in researching the original screenplays, especially the 'scrapped' s7 ending (Aka the original finale) before it was renewed for season 8. I've had no luck so far, and I was wondering if you have had any experience looking for these before? If you have, would it be possible to ask for any pointers on where to start on my journey?

Thanks so much for everything you do, honestly it's amazing to read!!

Thank you for the kind words! I'm happy you're enjoying my T7S works. 😊♥️

Unfortunately, unless you got a hold of the T7S writers' own copies of their original drafts (if they -- or the producers -- still have them), they don't exist online anywhere.

The information I have about them is from the That '70s Show message board at Fan Forum. It was active from the time the earliest seasons first aired until my co-mod and I shut it down this year. The archives are still available to read at Fan Forum.

Before I was part of the board, it was a known quantity to people at That '70s Show. For instance, Wilmer Valderrama posted there a few times.

People who ran T7S fansites (which were a thing before social media sites like Facebook and Tumblr existed) often had connections to the show, and they shared insider info with people on the board, including about the S7 rewrites once S8 was greenlit. One specific example is that Jackie and Hyde were not supposed to reconcile until after Jackie's job offer in Chicago / ultimatum -- in other words, the series finale.

Because the series finale turned into a season finale, Jackie and Hyde's happy endgame was scrapped to give a ready-made story-arc to S8. That also led the showrunners to reconcile J/H temporary to give them a little more time together as a couple, allowing for the cliffhanger of the now-season finale.

J/H's reconciliation episode in S7 is badly written. Probably quickly written, and it shows. It contains no depth, no acknowledgement of their two-and-half years of show time as a couple. It defaults to their status in "Going to California" (5x01) and misinterprets and retcons it to boot.

(Reminds me of how T7S writer and T9S showrunner Gregg Mettler admitted he used Wikipedia to remind himself of the T7S characters' basic characterization and storylines instead of actually watching the show again for the most accuracy.)

When I became co-mod of the T7S board, I read through over fifteen years of posts (did my due diligence so I could be as knowledgeable as possible about T7S, behind-the-scenes info, and the fandom. The number of posts I read is staggering (we're talking close to 100,000), not just from my board but every T7S-related boarding on Fan Forum.

I also followed links to the fansites, using the Internet Wayback Machine when necessary. Found interviews with cast members and producers (transcribed, early podcasts, and filmed). Read through the Live Journal fandom and any other T7S message boards I found. I was beyond thorough. I treated my new post like getting a PhD in T7S.

Talk about hyperfixation (but I had my reasons 😅). My memory for this kind of info is scary. I might not remember how the contents of my dresser drawer have been arranged for over a decade, but I'm the person who naturally memorized her most interesting college classes and could recite their entirety to people (who were interested) for years after I graduated.

So it was with the T7S info I learned. Spoilers from taping reports with alternate takes and scenes ultimately cut from the aired episodes. The words I read while in a grocery store checkout line of the S8 showrunners from a TV Guide (I believe) interview and how unhappy I was upon learning they hated J/H's relationship and were reverting it back to their season-1 dynamic (as they [mis]understood it).

By repeating all this info for a decade to people who asked, it remained with me. I shared some of my findings on this blog with links. But to get the full picture, one would have to read all the posts and fansites, etc., which is a ridiculous task. So I do my best to provide what what specifics I can.

When I was a co-mod of the T7S board, we still had people visit who interacted with T7S creators. One person, for instance, had interviewed Mark Brazill (the man who came up with the major concepts of T7S) for his own site and posted the transcript for us.

I'm sorry that I can't help you find the actual original scripts (I'd love to read them myself), but if one watches T7S's latter half, original parts are still evident -- as are where stories were spliced and rewritten.

[sirensorisons]

i can't believe it's finally happening.

in early 2012, i picked the hunger games up off the shelf at my school library on a whim. my eldest sister hates reading, but i remembered that this was one of the few books she'd actually enjoyed, so i figured it couldn't be bad. not long after i finished reading, i learned that it would be adapted for the big screen.

on a school trip in april, me and so many of my classmates were caught up in hunger games mania. we tried our hand at being katniss with archery and pretended to be tributes in the woods. i wrote a couple chapters of some horrible self-insert fanfiction that's been lost to time, where my oc was bffs with some of my favorite characters: annie cresta and finnick odair.

throughout middle and high school, i made note of the release dates for every hunger games film, and i went to see catching fire and mockingjay part 1 in theaters. i revisited the series with a keener eye when i was a little older, and i began to understand the true literary genius of it.

for my last high school english assignment in 2018, we were allowed to do anything we wanted. earlier that year, our teacher had said something disparaging about the literary merit of the trilogy, so i decided made a short video about the series, fan films, and 1984.

on june 17, 2019, i learned for the first time that suzanne collins was working on a prequel, set to release on may 19, 2020. i learned at the same time that a movie adaptation was already in the works. i was skeptical when i heard it would be about president snow, but this series had captured my heart seven years prior, so there was no way i was passing this up. i preordered the book as soon as i could.

when it came in the mail on my twentieth birthday, i read the ballad of songbirds and snakes in that single day, for twelve hours straight. when i finally put it down, i'd managed to give myself a nasty eyestrain headache, but i was so, so happy.

i followed the production of the film with interest, as closely as i could with information made publicly available by actors, producers, and fans. i was always excited to share what i'd learned with my parents, and eventually, we were calling it my movie.

last year, in the last few days of august, i embarked on a mission to write a canon-compliant fanfiction about another one of my favorite characters, johanna mason. i posted the first chapter of "as long as i'm burning" in september, and i would write nearly 150k words between then and this past march.

although the fic has been on hiatus since then due to my copious mental issues, alaib and the canon series have been at the forefront of my mind all year. i started to regularly edit the hunger games wiki in may, and i've made over 2000 edits since then. last month, i even made my own private wiki for alaib on miraheze.

i cannot express how much this series means to me. the book release for tbosas genuinely kept me alive in some of my darkest days, and the movie is keeping me going every day even now. i love the world, its characters, and its commentary on our world. i love its message of hope and recovery in such cruel, dire circumstances. i love its love for kindness, freedom, and justice.

and i love that i get to share it with all of you. because even though i had nothing to do with its creation, tbosas feels so deeply personal to me. in my heart it's my movie, and i can't wait for everyone to be able to see it.

i've queued this over a week in advance because i don't expect to be nearly so coherent the day of. at time of posting, i should be heading into the theater, and the hunger games: the ballad of songbirds and snakes will be beginning any minute now.

this has been such an incredible journey. i'll see you in a few hours.

[popculturebuffet]

Junteenth Special: The Blackening (Patreon Review for WeirdKev27)

Happy Juneteenth all you happy people! It's once again time to celebrate black liberation with me, a man so white I blend into most doorways and friends episodes.

While the irony of that isn't lost on me, I do this because it's an important holiday that really always should've been something white dumbasses like me at least knew about. You'd think Missouri Schools would teach "This is the day we finally treated black people like people and not property".. but then again this is the kind of state where their once again attempting to pass a bill that bans "critical race theory" despite heavy opposition telling them "Stop this nonsense", so I really SHOUDLN'T be that surprised. It also taught Missouri keeping slavery as "a part of our past we're mildly ashamed of" and not "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. SERIOUSLY WHY WERE WE SO FUCKED UP. MY GOD CHILDREN. Now it's time for lunch everyone get into the cafeteria for some horrifying rice abomination with your meal. "

Still we celebrate and while Kev backed this year's review and had the idea to do one, I suggested this one as it's a film i'd been meaning to get to and owned, and one that perfectly fit: The Blackening. The Blackening is a 2023 horror film that most places mark as 2022 because it aired at a festival before delays. I go with the wide release in it's native country because that's when most people could see it, when it's marketed and when most people could consider it came out.

Pedantic nonsense aside, the Blackening is a horror comedy from Tim Story, who you may remember from such films as The 2000's Fantastic Four Films, Barbershop, the recent Candy Cane Lane and Ride Along. I wouldn't from the last one because I already spent one insufferable trip in a car with Ice Cube, i'm not doing it again. Are We There Yet? Scarred me for life... great work in Mutant Mayhem though just stay away from cars Ice Cube. And Kevin Hart.

The Film was based on a short by Dewayne Perkins, which I watched and was hilarious and the core of it was kept: conversational jokes about black culture and horror cliches, with the core of the sketch itself (Voting on one of them to die so the rest can live), being a key scene in the final flim and the joke of someone wretching as they try to say something stupid makes it into the film.

The result is a clever film about blackness, how people change over time, and horror tropes. While satrizing horror tropes isn't new, Scream 6 came out the same year, the way Blackening does it is clever, not overdoing it but having it be just present enough. And look i'm a sucker for meta meditations on horror: I love the Scream franchise and The film The Final Girl, so this film already had me but it also has likeable characters, a ton of great jokes, and a clever villian, while having some genuinely creepy stuff. While this leans more into the comedy than the horrror, the horror's still present and masterfully done. Check this film out if you can and if i've sold you enough. If you still want to go ahead with the rest of the review feel free but be warned full spoilers under the cut.

Cabin in the Woods Woooooo-oooo

The Blackening follows 7 close friends who went to college together reuniting for a cabin in the woods. And like many a thing, they lampshade how sketchy going to a cabin in the woods feels and with this, the mutilator, cabin in the woods and the evil dead franchise they absolutely have a point. And that's not even a fraction of the films with this sort of premise.

The group was invited by their old friends and married couple Morgan and Jay. Morgan is played by Yvonne Orj of Insecure (A series I haven't seen but want to watch) and Jay Pharaoh, who I have seen (for lack of a better term) in invincible as bullet proof and The Venture Bros: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart as Nuno Blood. Unfortunately for these two their the scream style opening kill, finding a racist as hell board game with a racist caracture in the middle and while having the sane reaction of "taking a picture of it".. are still stupid enough to play it and soon get taken out, Jay with an arrow to the neck and morgan ambigiously kidnapped. It creates a nice sense of tension. We know one friend is dead, one might be, and their walking straight into a trap.

We soon meet the group and since the Blackening has a LARGE cast and most of them live to see the credits, let's break them down.

Lisa (Antoinette Robinson from Dear White People): The calm rational one of the group. She's mostly defined by her relationships in the film, with said relationships being one of the films only arcs for the characters involved. This isn't a terrible thing as our friend group still feels real enough we don't need a tidy character arc for everyone. Still Lisa feels like she got the shortest end of the stick out of the cast and is mostly bouyed by Robinson being a great actress and having a great role in the climax. Lisa is best friends with...

Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins himself): Dewayne is a delight, an openly gay man (something that only comes up part way and casually at that but it's nice it's just in there), and Lisa's best friend. The two have a somewhat co dependant relationship with Dewawyne feeling he needs to protect her. He's also objectively hilaroius when he's not involved in sniping at someone we'll get to next. My faviorite gag with him is him getting introspective and weird on shrooms.. only for Shanika to point out he's always like this and hard cut to him dancing to 777 by Silk Sonic. Dewayne can be annoying though as he spends most of the film pissy at Lisa over

Nnamndi (Sinqua Wells, Teen Wolf, American Soul, Power): Lisa's boyfriend who she just got back together with after a rocky as hell relationship in college where he cheated on her constantly. He's genuinely trying to change but most of the group are worried it won't stick. Dewayne, having been the one there every time he did that shit, is especially a fucked up little whiny bitch about it. He has a valid point to be worried and to be upset Lisa didn't tell him.. but at the same time I can kinda get why she held off not telling him given he procedes to mope around the cabin and brings it up even when their being threatned by a killer. It's thankfully not to the point it gets anyone killed or gets super tiresome but i'ts just.. hard to care. The film tries to use this as it's core.. but it's far more intresting when the freinds are just riffing on one another than with this friend vs lover argument. It only dosen't bring down the film because Lisa eventually calls their asses out pointing out to Nnamindi that Dewayne absolutely has a reason to be upset.. but that this also isn't Dewayne's buisness, she didn't ask him for his help, and that she can take care of herself: College was a long ass time ago, she knows what she's risking with this and the three reconcile.

King (Melvin Gregg, American Vandal, Snowfall): My faviorite of the group mostly for his horrible "king's kool aid": which is Kool Aid with an assload of sugar and vodka mixed in. I love how proud he is, how he tries to hype it up.. and how he still does even after the Conesus is it tastes like ass. He also has a quick wit. He also somehow survives a full on arrow to the chest holy shit. He's also implied to be a former Gangster, but has moved on from that.. though he still brought a gun. But I like how they have one without it breaking the plot: it makes sense someone might have one for protection, especially in increasingly racially fraught times where stupid white people are especially agressive and obnoxious, but he has to use it to shoot the door off, thus leaving it out of play long before the killers meet them face to face. And yes I said killers, plural. The film may be it's own thing.. but it does feel very scream in places and I support that. He also has a white wife. That is used primarily for jokes which only works because the group in general razzes each other a lot. Not something i'm super comfortable with a lot but I do have friends like that who will take the piss out of each other, so I get it.

Allison (Grace Beyers, The Gifted): Speaking of taking a piss

Allison is for the first 2/3 mostly the "one they mock for being biracial" and the peacekeepr of the group, trying to help manuver the whole Nmandi Dewayne thing, though she's also aware Kim is lying through her teeth about them being just friends. To the film's credit though they give her more to do in the last part: she accidently gets high on adderal, so not only does Beyers get a lot of great material for Stoned allison, she also gets to punch one of the killers to death with arrowheads tucked between her fingers, think...

Shanika (X Mayo, American Auto): The most outspoken of the group and the only one to drive down alone, stopping a convience store to get glared at by a threatening white man, with one eye who naturally turns out to be one of the killers. I also applaud her for grabbing rap chips and generally being a lot of fun in her reactions to the shit going down. She tends to stir it up a little, but is ultimately kind and when the chips are down incredibly badass, taking one of the killer's crossbows and using it for herself towards the end. She runs into the final member of our party

Clifton (Jermaine Fowler, Coming 2 America, Superior Donuts, Murder at the Edge of the World): Clifton is the odd man out in the group. He's , to put it blunty, a fully grown Urkel

Jermain Fowler is hamming it up as he's awkard, nerdy, won't shut up about his android phone charger (which having had android I CAN relate to but my god man), and no one is sure why the fuck he's here as no one was expecting him. He WAS a friend of the group.. but it's clear they never really kept touch. He's honestly annoying, but is kept to the back a bit till the big "Whose the blackest scene". There's more to him as you can probably guess by the mountain of red flags.. but we'll circle back to that.

So we have our magnificent seven, who have a good time: they play some spades, a card game I hadn't heard of till watching L'Ron Readus' video on the movie (Which I highly recommend) but comes up a decent amount and is a favorite of the group.

Naturally the group start to get suspcious their friends are missing and eventually find the game. The film really uses the horrifyingly racist caracture well as it's the killers logo for when they pop on the tv and the voice they use for it is really hushed and creepy, using a very real very horrifying symbol of racial sterotyping to good effect. The masked killer(s) also use it, with black hoods, ala Black Christmas, but with white chalk drawn across the mouth because of course there that level of mother fucker.

So their told Morgan will die unless they play the game right and we get a great sequence of them trying to figure out how long second aunt viv was around. The answer of course is three seasons but it's fun to see them use things like nicky. It's also fun when asked something about NAZ's blunts, we see Nnmandi do the math on screen.

Eventually though the Killer, being a dick throws them a trick question: Name 5 black people from friends. I love the slow revelation that ALL of them clearly watch friends despite trying to watch it. White as hell the show may be it's reach is long. Though living single is the better show, let's be real, it's just not shown nearly as much as it should be, though I do see it has at least daily reruns on one channel and is on hulu. It' sa trick answer as the correct answer is "I don't watch it".. which is really just the killer fucking with them. As we find out later Morgan was already dead.

With Morgan dead the Killer decides to get vicious and forces them to pick "the blackest one of them", an expanded version of the scene from the sketch that can be hilarious but is also nicely cutting in places, as Allison calls them all out for trying to pick her when their constantly questoning her blackness due to being biracial, something that bothers her way mroe than she lets on and makes those jabs worK: she brushes them off.. but they clearly DO hurt and everyone noticably stops after this.

Naturally.. everyone picks Clifton: he was there supsciously as they quicly point out, isn't likeable and his attempts at proving how not black he is.. lead to him saying he voted for trump... TWICE. Yeah unsuprisingly they all vote him out. He quickly dies and even with the Trump thing, they do feel bad a person "died".

The doors are opened after Nnmandi destroys the game board, with everyone agreeing fuck this shit.. and the masked killers responding with "Alrighty then murder time". They didn't say that and what they were probably thinking is so vile and racist it makes me upset.

The group argue about what to do next; Stay and fight or go for help. Allison has the unevible task of suggesting the obvious but stupid option: Let's split up gang. I love how she gags saying it, how she knows it's the LAST thing to do in a horror film.. but both ideas make sense. It's also nice in it's execution in that for once it's NOT the stupidest idea in the world: most time people split up in a horror movie it's one at a time MAYBE groups of two if your lucky, which when your being stalked by one person, is dumb. Here the group simply splits in half to take two entirely logical courses of action: Go for help and take out the killer on their own turf while they have time to prepare. As far as they know and the film's implied there's only one killer, so it sends him after only one party, and if it's the rescue one they at least have a chance to loose him in th ewoods, and if it's the one at home, it's three on one.

So they split into two teams: Allison, King and Shanika go for help, Lisa, Nnamandi and Dewayne stay behind to prepare.. and thankfully work out their shit.

Team Allison ends up running into one of the killers and we get a pretty fun fight scene as Shanika beats the shit out of him, king at least stabs him once before that and allison wolverines him as mentioned before. It's a fun fight scene and a nice way to turn the tables: normally a killer in horror would've killed all three of them, maybe ONE of them surviving for a possible sequel. With the Blackening, the characters not only get to live but strike back. It isn't the only horror film to do this, but it's a refreshing subversion: our characters go thorugh a lot of shit but no one really had to die and they still lost two friends, with their deaths proving the killers are dead serious.

Meanwhile the other team runs into Ranger White, who looks suspcious as fuck but is as guilty as red herring. Ranger White showed up earlier to hassle king and be a white dumbass, and is our obvious red herring for the evening. And our only white guy. And Deidrich Bader who does a great job, playing the role entirely stone faced and being both a convincing asshole at the start, but his turn to being helpful if stupid here works. Sadly being mildly offputting, obestructive and finding the killers mask in the woods means he gets locked out of his own car and stabbed with an arrow. I REALLY love the killers use of arrows, a way to give them a ranged weapon that's still horrifying, see Shawn's horrible death in the opening, but has a chance of survival and makes perfect sense once we find out who the killers are, as well as making sense for our red herring: While the ranger HAS a gun, that could be traced a lot easier than a case of arrow through the neck. Not saying you can't trace an arrow through the neck, but you don't leave finger prints on an arrow. Probably. And you do if you don't use gloves.

Thankfully the rest of the party come in and Shaniqua gives Killer #2 a taste of his own arrow through the neck. They find out the two guys are the ones who rented the cabin and one of them is naturally the creepy guy from the gas station and I like how despite not meeting the killers that much before.. this reveal works. We never knew WHO rented the house to Morgan, and it was clear they were sketchy, and Ranger White mentions they usually only rent to families.. with our heroes outright saying the quiet part he's trying not to loud by adding "white" to the word. IT also explains the weapons: their hunters and their motivations are pretty simple: their racist assholes and being payed to kill black people was an easy pitch. As our heroes find out... someone HIRED them, meaning whoever was actually behind this is out there..and return to find Clifton's dead body.. and him pulling a billy loomis and waking up. Clifton was behind it all

Yeah I did get spoiled on this as I wasn't sure I was going to ever watch the film, so I watched L'Ron Readus' video on it and highly recommend it. You can find it here. It's what convinced me to buy the film and the reason this review is here, so I couldn't help but give a shout out. He's a great youtuber and has great mini essays on black and queer themes in media.

Even without it.. the twist is pretty obvious: no one really seems to LIKE Clifton and some of them struggle to remember him, he shows up abrubtly with a weak excuse his car broke down, and it feels VERY weird Morgan didn't tell anyone he'd be coming or would suprise them with this. Nnmandi being hidden made sense: Dewayne is a raging dick about it and might not have come. But no one was going to say no because Clifton was coming they'd probably just be dispaointed it'd feel a bit weird having someone they haven't spoken too since college there. It helps he feels the least.. real. Not because he's a nerd, that's entirely normal and King himself is a bit of a dork and even Dewayne sings the O'Reily autoparts theme at one point. Said gag is one of my faviorites as when trying to figure out WHOSE after them, she mentions an online argument where a guy got mad at her for saying the O'Reily autoparts jingle was more ubiquiotus than the natnional anthem. Which... I agree with Dewayne she has a point and I love everyone singing along to the "auto parts" part perfectly. Clifton really couldn't be more obvious if he were wearing a sign saying "I didn't murder anyone today promise".

It works mostly because while there are obvious clues he shoudln't be here, he could've just crashed and as far as we know the killer is a white man way too burly to be him. The film sets him up as a red herring.. then reveals him as the mastermind.

His reason for it is also brilliant, and is why the scream comparisons: like many a ghostface, his reasons are somewhat sympathetic.. but still so out of touch with what actually happened and who was actually responsible in the situation that you still want to see him die. He explains he had a drunk driving acccident... and is clearly pissed he has to lead them to the why: They were playing Spades, and he was bad in it since no one in his state really plays spades and rather than teach him, in his eyes the others were teasing him, with Lisa jokingly "revoking his black card". For them it was just the kind of ribbing you do during spades and they do in general, but Clifton took it personally, got extra drunk due to the pain.. and accidently hit a woman with a his car, getting four years in prison.

The thing is Clifton is to a degree sympathetic: it's hard to fit in and likely harder when your seen as "too white" just for being yourself. That you don't fit in and no one's really trying to help you. I've been there with the latter. Sometimes fitting in with a crowd is hard and it can be easy to take an insult way too personally: i have extra trouble with that. It's easy to see why what was just a joke hit him hard. When you have a deep well of self loathing and a bad need to be accepted , being seemingly rejected and constantly mocked can take a toll. I learned over time some assholes just aren't worth it while for others teasing is just how they react and they can dail it back. The group likely woudl've mocked him a little.. but don't seem so dickisht hey wouldn't of apologzied had he called them on it. And if he didn't then sometimes the hard truth is it's better to be alone than be freinds with someone who dosen't respect you. This group dosen't seem the type, but we see them as adults, not young adults, so it's hard to say.

What isn't.. is that Clifton took the wrong message. Instead of those.. the message was "They ruined my life, I wasn't black enough, they rejected me, they were the assholes" which again they kinda were, but it wasn't intentional. He took a sarcastic statment as gospel and proof that he needed revenge. He wasted the rest of his life trying to get back at people who didn't evne remember they hurt them instead of moving on: I've had my share of assholes in my life... and i've left them behind. They were far worse than the group here, but you move on. The gang did fuck up, I belelive that, but they all fucked up in other ways.. and as we've seen grew: Nnamandi was a serial cheater who constnatly said he'd change but didn't.. but is now really changed. Lisa is willing to give him another shot but is mature enough to know he's on thin ice. Even within the film Dewayne realizes he's been too overprotective of lisa and should trust her judgement. The group all cahnged and evolved.. while Clifton remaind the same angry kid he was blaming the world for something that ultimately was his fault. He drank a lot, someone died, and he drove into them.

Thankfully for them Clifton was dumb enough to lock two of them out, and while Lisa and co stall, their able to eventually disarm the asshole and kill him. OUr story ends with our heroes triumphant.. if not calling the cops because HAHAHAHAHAHA NO .. JUST.. NO. and calling the fire department because "they don't shoot people"... with bullets maybe not. With a hose.. yes. A goofy gag to end a great film.

The Blackening.. is excellent. It's funny, has some genuine scares, and nicely subverts a lot of horror tropes while talking about them cleverly. It's hard to be meta in horror as Scream has done a LOT of it and lead to a lot more films doing the same, bu tthe Blackening pulls it off with flying colors and is well worth checking out. Happy junteenth and thanks for reading.