#Features Reviews

[cnl0400]

The new dating feature... What to expect?

(Apart from disapointment, of course)

Disclaimer: I only bought this because I had a lot of Google Play points, so I could shave a looooooooooot of the total price, but my condolences to anyone who doesn't live in the US because it's a lot more expensive in another regions... Including mine, of course

Disclaimer 2: I'm not telling you what to do with your money, this Is my personal opinion. If you are planning in buying this, do whatever idc, but since a lot of people are having doubts, I felt that I might as well tell everyone what Is this about.

So yeah... Since they announced the new feature, I knew It either would cost real money, It just sounded too good to be true, but I didn't expect to cost $29.99? Almost $37 in my country currency, a total scam, really.

But to be fair to them, this Is a bundle that comes with 300 DP, and considering the price of 280 DP, it's almost like you get the ticket for "free", right?? At least that's how Solmare probably thought It would look like, but the reality Is that the common player will see this bundle and just think that this ticket cost 30 fucking dollars (just look at the comments of Twitter and the tag Right now). In my opinion, just separate the DP and the ticket, and have the bundle as an special offert If you want. Remember that selling stuff Is also about framing... Most players that were planning on buying this might not be planning on buying the DP (like myself, I don't buy DP unless it's on special offerts) so the only thing people like that will think Is that "why this ticket costs that much?"

But what you get in the actual event, you might ask? The trailer was vague as hell in my opinion, and that's an instant red flag in my radar, especially for that spicy art that came with it

For a ticket date you get:

A 1min call

A 10min storyline (not fully voiced, apart from certain lines in the las part of the storyline)

A Majolish background with the date art

The event starts with you calling you boy of preference (in this case, I choose Mammon) to invite him to a date, the call ends and you get a 10min storyline. The premise of the Mammon's date Is that MC has won tickets to Phantom Park, and then Mammon & MC get involved to a game of tag to win a price. Then couple shennigans happen, blah blah blah.

The Story Is... Not bad? I found It rather cute actually, it's romantic and at least they make It explicit that Mammon & MC aré actually dating, but again, this could very well have been in a Devilgram, it's not worth the 30 dollars Solmare expects you to pay tbh. Just tip your favorite fanfic author and call It a day

The last segment Is the one they show in the tráiler, with Mammon getting out of the shower

In this scene, some lines are voiced, and tbh, If the actual story was like this, It almost miiiight be worth It (not the full price, but at least something). But as now? Save your money people, I wouldn't really recommend It.

The only way I would recommend buying It it's If you're already planning on buying the 280 DP offert, or you have a lot of coupons/GPP so you don't pay full price lol, but If you like Lucifer (or Asmo) just do yourself a favor and buy the ASMR. At least, that's what I think

[thechaoticreader]

Horror books that genuinely scared me (from a lifelong horror reader that’s so so rare):

1) The Outsider by Stephen King - made me paranoid as fuck at night, had to hide the dust jacket

2) Straight by @drchucktingle - I had fucked up nightmares about this book, I couldn’t look my cis straight roommates in the eyes for days

3) Everything the Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca - I’m a queer with religious trauma, I had a full existential crisis after reading this

Did these books affect me psychologically? Yeah probably. Are they also in my top fav of all time? Yup😊. Would I recommend them to everyone? Fuck yeah I would! Go read these and prove love is real (that is a threat💕)!

[wip]

Will you be doing our Year in review 2024 this year? Or have you stopped it completely because you didn’t do it last year?

Answer: Hi, @captainstrawberrywings!

Thanks for getting in touch here, and we hope you've been enjoying Year in Review 2024!

Unfortunately, while we had a really fun time building Your Year in Review in 2022, it's true that it was a fair amount of work, and we struggled to make it a feature we could repeat again. It didn’t make the cut of projects to work on in 2023, sadly, and it didn’t make the cut to work on this year either, as you may have seen by now. As things stand, it’s not on our roadmap to do again.

That said, there is a lot of love for this feature on staff, too, and we would love to make it happen—so never say never!

[artist-issues]

Sounds like Moana 2 felt like the rushed tv movie it was supposed to be.

THIS IS THE MOANA 2 CRITIQUE POST

I'm tired of excusing things with the word "rushed." If you have less time to produce, you should simplify what you're trying to say. That way, all your small amount of time can be spent on carefully building the best way to say it. Moana 2 felt very unfocused. It felt like it was trying to say:

"You Can’t Survive in Isolation" (but like why not? why do they need their neighboring islands? Don’t make up a reason—tell me the reason the movie showed you.)

"There's Always Another Way” (what? As opposed to what? One way? What One Way was Moana demonstrably sticking to before the not-really-villainess sang her song? Wasn’t finding that One Way ((“learning where to go by remembering who you are/where you’ve been”)) the whole point of the first movie? Now we’re throwing that out the window?)

"Together But a Little Different" ("Different" as in 'In-New-Circumstances' not "Different" as in 'We’re-Different-So-It’s-Hard-to-Relate-to-One-Another,’ which would've been the better, more cohesive sense of ‘Different’.)

“Something-Something Stories Are Important” (literally they just substitute the phrase “we’ll die” with “our story will end.” No mention of why that’s bad, or what makes a story a story, no reason why stories are important, or what for, just throwing the word “story” around vaguely.)

And none of those "themes" I listed just now had a lot of work put into them. That’s it, in a nutshell. But I can flesh-out my argument for those, and present what I think they could’ve easily done differently, if they’d just picked one and worked hard to make it simply good. SPOILERS BELOW.

“You Can’t Survive in Isolation”

We're told in a quick vision that Moana's people will die if they stay in isolation—but there's no showing us that.

In fact, what we've been shown is that they're thriving, they're fine by themselves. They were in the first movie. They are at the beginning of the second.

So we're not convinced that they need what the whole adventure is supposedly about. Compare that to the first movie! Totally doesn't measure up to the storytelling quality!

In the first movie, the whole first act sets up the idea of darkness reaching through the ocean from Tefiti's missing heart, killing everything. That’s especially bad for Moana’s people. We know that because we’re shown how Moana's people are so deeply connected to the ecosystem of their island, and how every part of it is needed for their way of life to continue—then were also shown that Moana has a deep, personal longing to leave the island. There’s a real connection to home and an urgent need to leave it, and that creates really good emotional tension.

So by the time we're shown (not told in one scene, or through snatches of overdone dialogue, but shown) how the darkness will destroy everything if she doesn't go, we really believe it. We have lots of reasons to empathize with and believe in Moana’s reason for going on this mission. We also feel for her having to make the big decision; we’ve been shown that she’s trying to live up to her responsibilities, and leaving the island would seem like a dismissal of those responsibilities, but we can also see how doing nothing and staying actually would be a dismissal. We feel that tension because they showed us several believable reasons to feel it.

But when Moana is singing “Beyond,” which is supposedly about her conflicting feelings about leaving, and the need to go? I’m just bored. Not emotionally invested. I just saw her going back-and-forth, leaving and coming back, leaving and coming back, one song ago, in “We’re Back.” And everything was fine during that song. Leaving-And-Coming-Back is the dream she’s been living as a voyager. So why is she suddenly convinced it’s a hard decision to…leave-and-plan-to-come-back?

“Because the last voyager died doing this mission she’s about to go on! She might die too!” Okay but all you did was tell me that. You didn’t show me Moana nearly-dying (like she did the first time she tried to cross the reef, or the first time she tried to tackle Te Ka on her own) and then realizing, “gee, oh no, I could die this time,” and then having to make a renewed decision to go anyway. You didn’t put work in, so I don’t believe it.

But the emotion Moana is feeling about leaving is also undercut, like I said, because there doesn’t seem to be a need for her to leave. All they did was tell me that Motunui is in trouble if it stays isolated. But no proof. They were fine isolated from other islands in Moana 1. They have been fine up until now in Moana 2. One random vision of an empty pavilion for three seconds isn’t going to make me forget that and believe that continued isolation will do anything negative to them.

And another thing, what does “uniting with other islands” even mean?” Why would it be such a good thing?

Nobody mentions trade. Nobody mentions learning from one another, or demonstrates learning from one another. Honestly, having Kele teach Moana or Moni or the Kakamora, an actual other-islander, about farming would’ve been a great demonstration of “why we need to meet new people and get out more.”

Having Kele LEARN TO SWIM would have been a SLOW ONE DOWN THE MIDDLE.

But nooo. They just half-bake suggest the idea that the old man doesn’t like leaving his comfort zone, but then never let one of the others have a real conversation with him about why he needs to learn new things from new people. NEVER. It’s just “bouncy vague song, almost-jump-in-the-water-under-coercion BUT NEVER ACTUALLY DO IT, banter and one liners” for the rest of the movie! (And don’t tell me Kele “learning to speak Kakamora” was an example of him “getting out of his comfort zone.” No. Kele never demonstrated a lack of desire to meet and learn new things from strangers. He demonstrated a hatred of fun and the ocean. All the others could also understand the Kakamora literally whenever they needed to, so that wasn’t a special-character-arc for Kele.)

Even though, my point is, they could’ve easily had a character arc for Kele. And that would’ve had something to do with “learn new things from new people, or die stagnant and stuck in your ways,” look, see, a mini-object-lesson in one character’s journey about the theme of the movie. But noooo

They could’ve done the same type of “learn-something-new-or-die” with Moni. Have him be convinced that doing things the “traditional Motunui Wayfinding Way” on this, his first adventure, is the ONLY way to do things. But he’s not good at it, no matter how much head-knowledge he has. And then the Kakamora (or literally any non-Motunui-character) could’ve shown him a newly-developed style for him to learn and grow.

They could’ve done the same type of “learn-something-new-or-die” with Loto. But nope. She just has a really poorly-done, poorly-written, poorly-performed snippet of a song where she mentions how… “perfection is a myth, the journey is just failing, learning, then death, no destination, ever.” But that ridiculous, absolutely absurd worldview is not portrayed as something she’s wrong about or needs to grow out of. It’s portrayed as a good, quirky, revolutionary thing.

But that’s not the same thing as portraying the value I’m describing. Loto just sings about it and invents-and-reinvents canoes. She does not learn how to make canoes from outsiders. She doesn’t learn anything from anybody. She is portrayed as a solitary genius with her own ideas who’s never once shown to be wrong about anything in the whole movie, and everything she tries works. She never messes up or makes a mistake, for all her singing about it. So she never actually “falls on her face, then gets up and learns.” Even though learning from others would be the literal only way for her character to portray the idea of this vague theme they throw out there, “You Can’t Survive in Isolation.”

The point is: there is no reason, in-movie, SHOWN, for the audience to believe that Moana should “re-unite the islands.” There’s no believable demonstration of why that would be a good thing, and no believable demonstration of why not doing it would be a bad thing.

So then why do we care if she risks her life and Maui’s life to re-unite the islands? For a bunch of nameless nobody background characters to show up for a five-second afterparty on Motunui at the end? Ridiculous.

Moving on.

“There’s Always Another Way”

So BUMP ALL THAT, I GUESS.

Matangi, everybody’s Cherished Hope for a New Villain, sings a song and it’s about “get lost, there is no one way, there’s always a different way.”

Fine. Cool. Whatever. The whole point of the first movie was that there’s this symbolic, ancient, WAY of sailing and living your life bravely. And Moana doesn’t know what that One WAY is because her tribe had forgotten it, so she has to learn it. It’s cool, because you navigate by looking at where you’ve been, to see where you’re going. It’s the whole “remember who you are in order to face life’s challenges, not hide from them.” That’s “the Way.” But whatever. Dump that down the toilet, new movie. You know why? Because everybody’s obsessed with “There’s No One Truth,” and “There Is No Right and Wrong,” and “Let’s Experience Things Just to Experience Them, the Journey is the Destination Because We’re not Going Anywhere!” Blah blah blah ridiculous inane sewage slop.

BUT whatever, fine, IF you mean it in a “There’s Lot’s of Ways to Solve Most Problems, Try Try Again,” sense, that’s okay. That’s true for most problems (not all, but most, certainly there are more than one ways to sail.) Sure. that message, if that’s what they mean, is fine. That’s the sense in which Moana takes it, at least, when she dives down to touch the Core Island and break the curse instead of it rising.

But you know what? Yeah. They don’t flesh it out. They don’t take time to show that that’s what’s happening. Moana doesn’t try to teach her new crew how to sail, and they suck at it, but if she lets them do it their own way or whatever, then they work—and she learns there’s “more than one way.” That doesn’t happen.

The Kakamora that joins their team doesn’t solve all his problems with blow darts, or violence, or whatever—and then Moana, or the kindhearted Moni, or the peaceful Kele, tells him, “no, there’s another way, you don’t always have to do things your violent way.” That doesn’t happen.

Loto has one moment where she applies the way she was already living according-to, from the moment we meet her, not a NEW way, to the canoe so that the gang can out-sail magical waterspouts. And it works for like twenty seconds, is played like a great triumph, before they all get smashed into the ocean anyway.

Kele, again, would’ve been a great example of “learn to do things in a different way, or problem-solve by try-trying again.” Because he’s old and they set him up as hating life for no reason and not wanting to do new things. But they didn’t do anything with him.

And guess what else—at the end—when Moana has her own demigod powers, and her own magical-arm-tattoo ripped off from Tears of the Kingdom—guess what her magic power is?

To stick her oar in the water, and light up one current or “path” for the boat to take to a new destination.

A Path. ONE SINGULAR SOLITARY WAY.

Not “a new way.” Not “all possible ways.” Not “multiple ways.” Not even two ways. One. Even though the big lesson she sacrificed her life for, even though the one and only song Matangi got to sing, was about how “there’s always another way.”

WHILE they’re singing a reprise of, “We Know THE Way.”

It’s like being in a conversation with someone who starts a sentence and then forgets what they were saying halfway through, and winds up saying worse than nothing.

“Together, But a Little Different”

Like I said, if you told me that the Main Point of the movie (not one of many vague ideas, but the Main Point) was “Together, But a Little Different,” I immediately would’ve said:

“Oh, so it’s about having to adjust to long-distance relationships. Maybe even death.” Or, maybe, because I saw the trailers, I’d go, “Oh, so it’s about keeping what makes us unique, but uniting when we need to, in spite of our differences. ‘Together, But a Little Different.’”

No. It’s not about any of that. It’s just a phrase the Grandma’s Ghost says whenever she hugs Moana to remind her that she’s still “with her.” She’s still with her; she just glows and can shapeshift into a manta ray now! That has tons of application for real life. 🙄

It’s supposed to be her words of comfort to pass on to Moana, who can then pass it on to the people in her island, so they know that she won’t “ever really leave them.” But like. Then why should I care that she’s leaving them? Why should that be sad? If there’s no sacrifice in being apart, in leaving for the adventure, then the adventure keeps feeling low-stakes and boring and kind of pointless.

If you tilt your head and squint, it’s also maybe-applying to Moana’s pointless ugly annoying Little Sister character, Simea. Simea is in the movie so that someone can be immature for three seconds about how Moana’s always gone from home. And I do mean exactly three seconds, that’s all the emotional drama we get, and it’s not built up to either. She says, “Never come back? -sniff sniffle- I don’t want you to gooo!” And then runs away and then Moana takes a break from singing the next day to briefly explain to Simea about how she can pass messages through the ocean. Then she’s fine.

But the way this theme is thrown around, you think it would mean, “Moana Has to Go Away Sometimes, But if You Remember Her She Never Leaves You.”

But seriously. Again I say to you, who cares? We know Moana is coming back. We know that. Nobody in the audience seriously believes she’s never coming back when she leaves for this adventure. If we did, maybe we’d care that Simea cares. But we don’t.

Even when Moana “dies,” and it’s the perfect time to be like, “seeee, what we feeeared has happened, she’s dead, she can never go home to Simea!” THERE IS NO FOLLOW-THROUGH. There’s not even a cut to Simea back on Motonui, feeling through the ocean or the Force or whatever movie mumbo-jumbo that her sister is gone. And there is not even a deadline, in the movie, for Moana to accomplish this mission, so it’s not like she could be running late and we could get some scenes of Moana’s family mourning. Simea having to do something, take some big step, that show’s she’s willing to go on even if she can’t be with Moana anymore because she believed Moana about how she’s always with her—something like that.

My point is, Simea has no real point, so she doesn’t add to this “Together, But Different.” idea at all. And we already know that it doesn’t mean, “overcome our differences” from what I said in the first Theme.

But what they could have done? They COULD have gone whole-hog and MADE MOANA A BELIEVABLE DEMIGOD. Instead of a vague joke about tattoos that leaves the question open-ended, a pointless and theme-breaking display of shiny superpowers, and no other change to the status quo—

—they could’ve shown that there are consequences to that action—maybe she’s a Demigod of Navigation, or something like that, and the condition is, she can sail around connecting islands, but she can never stay on one too long. So she’ll never be able to live with Simea and her parents again on Motunui, but it’s the price she has to pay to connect the islands. Then she’d have to show Simea how they can still be “Together, Just a Little Different.”

Or someone could’ve gotten hurt or disabled, giving off the idea that even though everything is “different,” they can still be “together.”

Maui could’ve died and passed his fishhook powers, AND MINI MAUI, on to Moni or Moana. “Together, but different.”

Nothing, nothing at all like that happens. It’s just a pretty phrase that could’ve meant something, but any meaning it actually has hamstrings the whole emotional weight of the story instead of fueling it.

“Something-Something Stories Are Important”

The thing here is. I already said it. You can’t just say words and expect them to be impactful, in a story. You’re supposed to show what they mean and why they’re true, and THAT’S what creates an impact.

So when you’re talking about “stories” in a story, you definitely should not have nothing to say.

And I can feel it. I’ve seen none of the promotional material, I don’t watch the interviews, I haven’t checked BuzzFeed or ScreenRant or the Disney Youtube page in a while, but I can feel it.

I can feel them trying to say, “Something Something, ‘Storytelling’ is a big part of Pacific Islander Culture!” I can imagine the headlines. “[Actor or Disney Exec Name Here] Invites You to Celebrate Your Story with Pacific Islander Heritage Month!” They’re so into “culture as a marketing tool” these days.

But they say it so lazily. Just repeating the word “story” over and over in the movie doesn’t pay tribute to how important “stories” are to Pacific Islanders. Or to anybody.

You know what makes stories impactful? They point at truth, when the darkness and misunderstandings and evil of the world threaten to distract you or hide the truth. That’s what makes stories impactful. I’m sure Pacific Islanders use stories in that way—to pass on what they believe to be true, in a way that can be retold and remembered.

So MAKE THAT THE THEME OF YOUR MOVIE. Instead of just having Moana replace “Nalo wants to kill us” with “Nalo wants to end our story” for Empty Effect—instead of having Grandma say something about “your e

Okay okay.

Nalo is a silly, lazy villain. He is clearly a Thanos rip-off in design and introduction in a literal post-credits scene, and his most-present form, in the movie, is just a big ocean thunderstorm. But the laziest thing about him is that he’s the Conflict that everyone is trying to rise up and overcome, and the whole reason he sunk the Island was “He gets power from humans being divided.”

That’s never explained. It’s never shown at all why he gets power from the vague “humans are divided” thing. He has no scenes. He has no interactions with other characters (till the end-credits scene.) A range of his power, like “here’s what it looks like when the humans are divided—oh, now here’s how much less-powerful he is when they’re together!” is never shown. So. No consequences if the heroes fail, no change to the status-quo, villain-wise, when they win.

If Nalo wanted to end their stories, though, that would be another thing.

Stories are meant to be told. They’re for the benefit of others. So what they should’ve done is made the secret key of Nalo’s power hidden. Unknown. Nobody knows how to beat him. And he’s not sinking some unfindable island in another dimension. He’s just devouring the resources of the weather with his ever-more-powerful storms, (kind of like the darkness leaking through the ocean from the first movie) and nobody can stop him.

But that’s because each island, around Oceania, has clues to how to beat him. Clues in their stories. But they can only sail so far from what they know before his storms kill them. So he’s literally making them weaker by using his power to keep them apart, and making himself stronger by defending his weakness. Now they can’t Wayfind to each other, and learn one another’s cultural advancements or stories or beauties, because Nalo is powerful enough to make storms that rip their boats apart. But if they could learn from one another’s stories about the things their ancestors used against him, they could get rid of him.

That’s what they should’ve done. Shown why Nalo was a threat and how the Main Theme was the key to overcoming that threat.

They did not do that.

They made stories just a hot button word to be thrown around with no impact. In a story.

The point of this post is that Moana 2 had a lot of potentially-good points, and it made none of them, so it was totally unsatisfying. If it had just focused on one, the other little benefits they were trying to fit in could’ve been mentioned more naturally.

The way that Beauty & the Beast is all about ONE theme: “True Love is Self-Sacrificial.” But because of the tools it uses to tell that story—a beast that it would take a lot of self-sacrifice to be stuck with forever—you get little side-themes thrown in, supporting and draping decoratively over the ONE theme: “Beauty is Found Within, So Don’t Be Deceived By Appearances,” etc.

Moana 2 should’ve just picked the Story One, and it could’ve had that theme, and it’s cultural-nod cake, and it’s unifying-effect cake, and EATEN IT TOO.

And we could’ve eaten it. And WE could’ve enjoyed it! But no. Money money money lazy lazy lazy.

[euphreana]

2024, there we go!

I didn't do NEARLY as much comic-ing as I'd hoped this last year, BUT I did learn a whole new art style so that's something! I also completed SAW's yearlong comics program, a major game changer for me, as well as completing my portfolio… although that was entirely digital work, and since I want to move into traditional, I need to make a whole new portfolio now haha.

Goals for next year include:

Finishing the Nimona comics (and having them printed in book form)

Building a new portfolio (which involves creating several standalone comics, including one about goblins I've already started on)

Picking up Tourmaline again (and hopefully finishing it)

Starting an all new comic starring Annual Sledgehammer Lady. (Refuge's been shelved for now.)

2025, here we go!

[marzipanandminutiae]

Reading “A Rather Haunted Life” and so far I have five main thoughts:

1. The author is such a great biographer generally that she really spoils her writing even more by utterly refusing to engage with any aspect of Jackson’s life through a homoerotic lens, than if the rest of the book were mediocre

2. Seriously, she addresses it once and that’s basically to say “yes, she wrote about being accused of lesbianism in college to the point where a male crush lost interest in her because she was so close with her best friend – whatever the actual nature of the relationship might have been, which is uncertain – and yes, she loved The Well of Loneliness, and yes, at least one of her books has seriously sapphic themes (and yes, she got so frightened- not angered, frightened -by having those themes pointed out that she wondered at her own fear, in private correspondence). BUT SHE NEVER SAID “hey I want to fuck women” SO PROBABLY NONE OF THIS MEANS ANYTHING AND SHE WAS 100% HETERO.” I mean. Come on.

3. Yes, Shirley Jackson seems to have experienced attraction to men. I would not say that she was a lesbian by the modern, usually exclusive definition. But like… There’s academic caution about a historical figure who never openly clarified her sexuality, and then there’s naïveté or outright homophobic erasure of queer possibility.

4. Fuck Stanley Hyman; all my homies hate Stanley Hyman

5. I need to read more Shirley Jackson I need to get weirder

[pandorahrts]

attention!!!!

anime / manga / animanga fans who have not yet seen or read World Trigger. WATCH IT. READ IT. IT IS GOOD AND FUN.

Some highlights:

THE KIDS MAY BE SOLDIERS BUT THEY ARE SAFE. How??? You might ask. Go on and watch it to find out ;)

Wholesome x shonen x found family

MC is not overpowered and have humble beginnings, knows that, and finds a way to work with what he has.

NO BULLIES. The kids/agents here are nice & give constructive criticism rather than be rude to our not-so-physically-powerful MC.

As a seiyuu fan, the abundance of characters = more seiyuu appearances! Guess-the-seiyuu is fun to play!

First bullet point because after watching a ton of shonen with kids in the frontlines, it is refreshing and so so nice to see a story where they can fight AND BE SAFE during battle.

WE NEED THE NEXT ARCS TO BE ANIMATED T^T

[amalgamasreal]

Japanese Endorsement of Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire

The Godzilla Double Feature in 109 Screen X locations in Japan started last night where they were showing Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla X Kong back to back with an intermission, which was a genius move that I need to happen here in the States immediately.

But anyways, the reviews from the Japanese viewers who are seeing GxK for the first time are some of the best I've ever seen (excuse the machine translations):

I don't know about you, but someone telling me "it was a silly movie made by an idiot and it was very good" is a ringing endorsement and would get my butt into a seat faster than anything else. 🤣🤣🤣

[raayllum]

me watching s4's ranking on RT go from 40% to 56% in just one day bc of my review fic-athon exchange

[rickchung]

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant, dir. Ariane Louis-Seize) x VIFF 2023.

This is a surprisingly fresh take on teen vampires in the form of a low-key Quebecois coming-of-age indie comedy about trying to consume human blood and find victims ethically. Sara Montpetit and Félix-Antoine Bénard star as a 68-year-old undead woman in the body of a teenage girl and a depressed high schooler with suicidal tendencies. They form a sweet but strange bond as they try to earnestly help each other achieve their unconventional goals in life. Its exploration of the more mundane but annoying parts of vampiric life makes for an altogether humorous endeavour.

Screened at the 2023 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Altered States series and screening again at the VIFF Centre from Oct. 21–30.

[pirateshelly]

While I very much do think Lestat is an extremely enjoyable/interesting/entertaining character (he's probably my least favorite in the show but that's entirely a me thing and it doesn't mean I dislike him he's just not a particular character type that tends to grab me!) I simply cannot imagine watching all of season 2 (which I personally enjoyed even more than season 1) and being like "this is really suffering from a lack of lestat". It just does not compute. My love for Louis and Claudia and Armand is simply so all encompassing that my brain just short circuits at the idea of watching them on screen and thinking "hmm this is fine I guess but what if lestat was here right now?"

And I am 100% looking forward to season 3 because I still do very much enjoy him as a character, and Louis and Armand and Daniel are still no doubt going to have solid roles even if it's a very Lestat focused season. But the thing that confuses and vexes me is when people (like a LOT of professional reviewers) act like he's THEE main draw and that the others simply aren't enough to hold the show up without him

[hannahwatcheshorror]

TERRIFIER (2016)

This movie blatantly plagiarized Hannibal Lecter and SAW. The damage tracking makes NO sense, someone will get stabbed directly in their brain or shot point blank in the face but is still alive to endure the next few blows. Multiple people come close enough to actually kill the clown but they never do and then he kills them. Not one iota common sense for any character and if I could unwatch this movie I would. Unoriginal and uninspired.

(Trigger Warning Suicide)

⭐

[Originally given 0 stars but changed one star for my tumblr rating system]

Two girls get stalked by a clown, and I will hand it to them, he is good and creepy. They get taken by him and then the dumb blonde gets sawed in half like the the old torture maneuver but he saws through her bones SO easily it’s stupid. Then the brunette has the opportunity to kill him and fucking doesn't. She is beating the hell out of him with a plank of wood screaming, "get up motherfucker!" instead of just fucking beating him to death when bang(!) he pulls out a gun! He shoots her in the leg, then the stomach, she is still crawling away when he shoots her in the fucking cheek which (point blank from a handgun) gives her a little hole and she is STILL breathing… enough time for him to go, reload, come back and shoot her like 12 more times in the face. 

Usually psychopathic killers with all the costuming and such have rituals to there kills but this guy who is supposedly already an established killer moves from dissecting to axe murder to medieval torture to guns to blunt force trauma to skinning to suffocation to whipping to cannibalism and finally suicide, I mean it's RANDOM. The clown also sustains a lot of damage over the course of the evening but after a moment of rest he seems no worse for wear. Some bullshit goes down with the wacky homeless lady and the brunette girl's sister but the villain doesn't track for me. He doesn't seem the type to use a fucking gun and his motives are super unclear. Is it important that he scares his victims first? What is it about the killings that gets him off? It all just seems like violence but a gun seems a weird choice for him. Also he has mommy issues? Since fucking WHEN.

[banditblvd]

limnu.com was special I think

[wip]

hiiiii staff, hope you're doing well with the backend migration stuff!

this is kind of a stupid and probably low-priority question, but a few mutuals and i have been wondering: do the stats published on @fandom reflect the trends during one week, or since the last stats roundup on that blog? as in, if for one week they don't get published, do the trends from that week then count towards the next "Week in Review", or just for the "Year in Review" later on?

thank you for the work you do and for keeping tumblr so fun for us <3

Answer: Hey there, @snowiiiiie!

Thanks for the kind words, and this isn’t a stupid question at all!

The data that we use for @fandom’s Fandometrics is seven-day data, as in the previous seven days before the publication of Monday’s lists. It’s not cumulative from the previous roundup—so if we don’t publish one week, the following week won’t have two weeks' worth of data. Unfortunately, the tool we use parses just one week’s worth of data. This is also why, if we skip a week, we don’t do rank changes (whether a tag moved up or down) on the Fandometrics lists.

What is cumulative, though, is Year in Review! Year in Review takes into account an entire year’s worth of data (from late October of the previous year to late October of the current year). So while it’s not January to December, it is a full 365 days worth of trends. We can’t wait to share Year in Review with you and the rest of Tumblr come December—it’s gonna be a good one!

Thanks for the question! Keep 'em coming, folks.

[franki-lew-yo]

-Fantastic Videos about Animation and Animation History-

The Animation that Changed Cinema by Cinema Cartography.

A wonderful intro into the world of Chinese Animated films by Accented Cinema.

Li Speaks breakdown of the Horseland TV show.

Jenny Nicholson's well-deserved take down of The Land Before Time series of films.

Laura Crone's painful look at the original and then all TWELVE of The Swan Princess movies.

Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' crew party with Defunctland.

Phelous' entire playlist on the infamous Dingo Pictures films.

Yesterworld's very insightful history look at The Black Cauldron.

Rankin/Bass history with Quinton Reviews and Worthikids and Nutcracker Fantasy with BenettetheSage.

Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings with Folding Ideas.

Phelous' look at Ralph Bakshi's borrowing between Rocket Robin Hood and Spiderman and also that time Filmation tried to make sequels to Disney films.

Just Lady Emily talking about The Gorillaz history.

BrowsHeldHigh's look at Czech Stopmotion animators Jan Svankmajer with Little Otik and Jiri Trinki with A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Jaccob Geller's heartbreaking deep dive into Don Hertzfeldt's animation (through a single Simpsons gag).

Wonderful introspective videos on Death Note, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Barefoot Gen -cw: violence, child death, crime and sa throughout) with BenettetheSage.

In the aftermath of all....that, I recommend a happier detour into La 'Ron Readus' look at A Goofy Movie.

HBomberGuy's good look back at RWBY and Rooster Teeth.

-cw: discussion of self harm, altrightness, and sa- A sad look into Emily Youcis's infamous 'Alfred Alfer' animations and subsequent fall from grace (into racism).

The Kimba the White Lion vs The Lion King controversy with YourMovieSucks.

CynicalReviews' look at Foodfight, just to prep you for Rotten: Behind the Foodfight by Ok so...