#because I hit it in this post

[boo-cool-robot]

Everything I Watched This Year

I have watched the most movies this year of my life, which is still so few that I can fit them all into one tumblr post, so here they are in approximately chronological order (along with TV shows). I almost exclusively watch visual media with other people, and they're often the ones picking. Favorites get an asterisk (*), and this does not include rewatches.

*Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-Wai): Five loosely connected lonely people chase imagined versions of each other around the Hong Kong nightscape. I didn't go into a plotless arthouse film expecting it to be extremely funny, but it is. He Zhiwu (my new tumblr icon!) deserves to be up there among the deranged autistic blorbos of all time.

What We Do in the Shadows (Showrun by Paul Simms and Stefani Robinson) [First half of S4]: If you're on tumblr you probably know the premise already. I was disappointed that after S3, which felt like a build to huge shifts in the characters and status quo, S4 felt like a walkback. Don't remember much else about it other than crying laughing at the sequence where they try to get baby Colin Robinson into private school.

Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee): Everyone knows what this movie is already. It's well-made and solid, but it wasn't anything that exciting for me. I expected it to be more striking. Love the 70s home production design in that one scene though, and that kiss truly is good.

*Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes): A reporter tracks down the truth of a rock star gay affair that sparked his own queer coming of age. Dreamy, gorgeous, and I could not describe the plot scene to scene if you paid me. Just a really lovely film to experience for me, someone who had latent and unnamed transgay feelings as a teenager about the concept of "emo boys kissing."

Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma): Phantom of the Opera-inspired drama about a songwriter getting revenge on the predatory producer that ruined his life. Total delight of a campy melodrama.

Kamikaze Girls (Tetsuya Nakashima): A delinquent and fashion-obsessed scam artist strike up a lesbian-tinged unlikely friendship. This movie is bananas. Way more stylistically experimental than I'd expected--there's a sequence of the protagonist's birth, people just float offscreen sometimes, the townspeople constantly turn to the camera and advertise for the megamart they buy all their clothes from, etc. A really really surprisingly fun watch.

*Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Hiroshi Kobayashi and Ryō Andō) [First 6 episodes only]: Optimistic young pilot of a war machine that she may have an illegal psionic connection with goes to space high school and is promptly drawn into political plotting via accidentally getting gay engaged to a corporate heiress. Highly enjoyed the parts of it I saw - great action sequences, fun character drama, and just enough political substance. Not as weird as Utena, which it's inspired by, but can be brutal where necessary. I should watch more!

*In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai): Two Shanghainese emigrants in Hong Kong discover their spouses are cheating and embark on a tragic affair of their own. God, this movie deserves every bit of praise it gets. I gasped out loud multiple times at the gorgeousness of shot compositions. Top notch acting, gorgeous colors. This tends to be a movie pitched as being about a repressed love affair, but it's also a movie about the positionality about being middle class colonial subjects and the relationships they have with the world. This gave me so much to chew on after I watched it.

Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai): Two Hong Kong expats living in Argentina have a toxic gay relationship trapped in a tiny apartment. This one felt very opaque to me, and it is allegedly an allegory for Hong Kong being returned to Chinese rule after British colonialism, which I absolutely do not have enough background to really get. Wong is a great director though, and I constantly think about the sequence of the main character seeing the abusive ex walk into the club, beat while he finishes his drink, and then he breaks his bottle off and goes in to screams.

Bound (The Wachowskis): A lesbian handyman falls for a woman married to an abusive mobster that they plot to rob. The first 45 minutes were very enjoyable as a lesbian heist film. Unfortunately, once the gunshots started the torture scenes became so stressful for me to watch that I sweated through my shirt. (I also had Covid).

[kottkrig]

People liking your personal OCs is still such a crazy feeling, I've been doing this for years and ppl asking about them still fills my entire heart with warmth and idk how to handle it

You enjoy this fictional guy I made up for fun?? Whose only content is random artwork or writing made by me and a handful of other artists at most? They have no show/book/game with a large fandom, it's just one person with an art blog?? I love u

[mroddmod]

they are like puppies. 2 me

[ropebunnykant]

the amount of ways we have to qualify the geoncide in gaza in order to get people to care is actually sickening to me. “it’s a feminist issue!” “it’s a disabilities issue!” “it’s an environmental issue!” like i’m sorry but even if this was happening solely to able bodied men and was causing no harm to the environment, it would still be wrong because it’s a genocide and these people are being bombed and killed and starved every fucking day. you shouldn’t need an extra label to give you a reason to care about people that are dying.

[snaxle]

btw if a trans man decides that they want to get pregnant and you're not normal about this and start spewing a bunch of transphobic shit i show up at your house and beat you to death with a baseball bat

[adobe-outdesign]

Neopets discourse is always funny to me because whenever drama starts up 90% of the time it's over something that's just objectively really silly

For example, right now there's neo-billionaires threatening to quit the site over a rare item being released, which wouldn't be funny except the item in question is a tiny pea wearing a Santa hat

[artsymeeshee]

Random idea I got this morning thinking about how small little things (mostly about missing important moments of the past) make the boys emotional and sorrowful.

[aloekat]

his ass is NOT grant o’brien!!!!

[lucabyte]

some thoughts on Claude

alt title: diversity win! this Butch Nun is crafting bombs in an unventilated room in her convent while actively courting Mother Superior! Do Not Give Them Access To Unlimited Power No Matter How Nice They Are

+ bonus

[paintedcrows]

Assorted Gravity Falls doodles!

[bloobydabloob]

I don’t know if this is worth a post on here. We post anyways maybe (?)

[retquits]

there's something about characters who never show any vulnerabilities, any gaps, any weaknesses, any exhaustion, being shown sleeping. there's just SOMETHING about it

[ridibulous]

Hey. Hey. You. Person with breasts who's considering mastectomy and feeling anxious that they'll regret it after. Consider the following:

- No longer having to accomodate your chest when wearing clothes

- Being able to publicly go topless (ex. for swimming)

- Don't have to worry about bras and other supports

- Back pain from a large chest? Who's that?

- Laying on your stomach just got easier

- Less worry about potential breast cancer, especially if you may be at risk (if you are, talk to a doctor about it, prophylactic mastectomy is awesome and reduces the chance of cancer way more than FTM top surgery)

- You could get rid of your nipples, if you wanted

- And you could just get them tattooed on... or have a blank slate for whatever art you wanted instead

- Being able to move around (running, going up/down stairs, etc) without feeling any jiggle

- And if you wanted the appearance of breasts? You can wear fake boobs as long as you want, and be able to take them on & off whenever you want. And they can be any size, too. It's a much safer option, as opposed to binding.

If you really want it, why are you hesitating? Be happier built in your own image, instead of the one other people want to paint on you.

[katsigian]

Why are fandom discord servers some of the most stress inducing places in the world like why is it when you post anything into any chat it feels like either a) you're purposely being ignored or b) you've pissed someone off just by speaking. And it's such a pain in the dick because if you want any sort of help with anything or want to be even a little bit apart of a community you have to be in these servers. While the whole time it feels like that one meme picture of all the girls sneering at the camera because you dared show your face in there

[adobe-outdesign]

So in the Neopets' Battledome there's a challenger called Punchbag Bob who, true to his name, doesn't fight back. However, once in a while he's replaced with Punchbag Sid, who's just Bob with an eyepatch and the ability to deal up to 20K+ damage in a single hit.

Punchbag Sid is important because you get an avatar for fighting him. The problem, however, is that TNT has to manually activate him in order for him to appear, which has not been done since 2014 (aka ten years ago).

and then yesterday they just tossed him in for 20 minutes in the middle of the day without warning. people went fucking insane