#half of the shit is heinous the other half is hilarious

[windrunner]

seeing people “blaming” certain pride flags on gen alpha “tiktok teenagers”on here is hilarious because every time i’ve seen it it’s always been for flags that were made by either millennial or gen z bloggers (gay man flag, pan flag, agender flag, etc.) right on Tumblr

like. girl. you have BEEN at the devil’s sacrament. shut up

( worth noting that i don’t know a single flag in widespread use which was made and published on tt originally, but this site tends to pump them out once every 2-4 years on average)

[lord-radish]

Okay, I'm gonna hit everyone with a hard sell and then I'm gonna bring it back around and come out clean. Basically something happened last night that sounds really fucking bad, but is actually ridiculous once the full story is revealed.

Here's the hard sell:

I got suspended from GameFAQs for defending racism last night.

I legitimately didn't know what to think when I saw this decision come down the line, I didn't know what they could be taking as me defending racism, when suddenly it hit me.

The reason they asserted I was "defending racism". is because.

*clears throat*

The mods on GameFAQs consider "cracker" to be an anti-white slur that approaches the level of other racial slurs.

and in the post that got moderated, I roasted the fact that the official mod stance is that "cracker is a slur against whites".

Now I also made some very incendiary comments about the Catholic Church's storied history of child abuse and cover-ups that go to the highest positions of power in the church, and I took shots against 9/11 as the "hallowed pro-war institution" it's been turned into to justify wanton slaughter and decades of active destabilisation in the region. I went so far as to say if I was one of the three thousand victims of the attacks, I wouldn't want my memory to be evoked in the name of the heinous shit that 9/11 has been.

I got too spicy about it, and that was kind of the point - the topic title was "MrMallard is BANNED!", and it was to basically say that I'm out of fucks to give and one way or another, I'm gonna get taken down.

I'll go down for the Catholic church comments and the 9/11 comments. But basing about half of the decision to suspend me again on the idea that cracker is a slur - with myself finding that notion ridiculous and calling it out, and that assertion being equated to "defending racism" - is fucking stupid.

Historically I haven't hated most of the mods I've spoken to. I can name a handful that I even like. The only reactionary right-wing fuckfaces on the mod team were a Trumper named The Admiral who got banned years ago, and Valjackal who's still a mod. But the stance that "cracker is a slur", to the point of moderating people for supporting bigotry, is such a weak stance - imo, it can and should make GameFAQs look bad.

So basically I got myself into trouble, semi-intentionally. The fact that they went out on a limb to condemn me for "defending racism" because I disagree with their policy of treating "cracker" as a racial slurs is stupid and hilarious though.

[morgana-ren]

God the 😻 🦋 I get when reading what your ocs are into. Love it. Your kinks a line with mine almost perfectly!

Do you have one scenario/fantasy with them that you're into more than the others? Or at the top of your list right now

I'm super fond of all of them, but there are specific things about certain ones that I really love.

There's a modern AU I love because there's something absolutely hilarious about 3 guys who live in ye olde medieval times™ learning the ins and outs of modern technology and severely abusing it. Too many emojis and a tenuous grasp on modern slang. Using the internet to stalk love interests and having way too much fun with their phones-- especially the camera function. Annoying each other with late night texts, abusing the GPS system. Reaver getting involved in crypto and shady business deals and having a self indulgent instagram and a twitter rivalry with fellow real-life evil oligarch Elon Musk. Dodging cops with ease after the slew of murders cause magic and also... they don't technically exist. Astarion going batshit for everyone with vampire kinks and trying to get the hang of sexing. Nighty having to hide his true form because we're just not used to tall purple half-dragon tieflings running around with horns and tails although he cannot be persuaded to stop dressing like a pirate whore unless the circumstances are absolutely dire. All three of them using Pornhub but absolutely refusing to admit it except Reaver who will unabashedly watch at the dinner table with the volume up.

There's one that gives me a heart tickle where Nighty gets his happily ever after and actually has the children he wants so desperately with a wife that loves and adores him (and Astarion loves and adores her but isn't allowed to touch her and just has to pine from the sidelines forever although that rarely stops him from trying.)

There's a particularly mean one where Nighty decides he wants his brother's (a different, actual brother, not mentioned here) girlfriend and taks her for himself himself behind his brother's back but erases her memory so she doesn't remember and can't tattle but ends up slowly actually falling for her and ends up in a real jealousy-fueled pickle.

Nighty joins the PTA and becomes king shit of fuck mountain among all the moms and absolutely despised by the dads. He murders and eats all the abusive parents in his downtime and tries to cover it up (he has a serious soft spot for families and kids so if he catches wind of a parent hurting their child or something else that's sinister, those parents don't last long). Wears leather pants and an unbuttoned shirt constantly to said meetings and never misses one. Is literally in the history books the kids read from as history's biggest pirate villain and does not bother to hide it except from his wives and three adopted daughters who he does not want finding out about some of the stuff he's done (spoiler, they do.) Reaver is the reluctant actual uncle in this one and pretends he hates it but does genuinely love the kids even if he won't admit it but will not go as far as to proclaim to be their father unless something is happening he really doesn't like.

I also love when they pull stunts and blame it on each other. Like one will do something particularly heinous and go out of his way to blame it on one of his brothers ie Nighty shapeshifting to look like Reaver before he does some disgusting, horrible thing or one of them getting the others drunk to get some form of blackmail (happens a lot, they do a lot of horrible shit and do try to conceal it.)

They're absolutely dreadful when they work together but they're arguably so much funnier when they work against each other. Look, they love each other but they're all assholes and have no problem throwing each other under the bus. There is an ongoing joke when one of them fucks up that the other ones proclaim "Ha, you're out!" meaning they are out of the polycule for good. Never seems to stick though.

Anything that takes place on the pirate ships is always so good. Nightmare squawking like a high-strung Mormon pretending he isn't into something that he clearly is. Reaver dragging the others down to his level and trying to shoot anything that inconveniences him, including them. Astarion being forced into being the rational one (which he hates.) Nighty having to be physically stopped from adopting every wayward child he comes across (believe it or not, he's a great dad. Just a horrible love interest but he's pretty good at separating the two). Reaver ending up paying 8000 different child support payments to random families because Nightmare has eaten their horrible parents.

They have literally done every horrible thing under the sun between the three of them.

[supercorpkid]

A weekend without Kara.

Supercorp, Kara Danvers x Daughter!Reader, Lena Luthor x Daughter!Reader.

Word count: 3300.

“AHHH!” You yell standing up in one movement, looking at the portal opening in front of you, right in the middle of your living room. “Holy shit.” You put your hand on your chest and watch the Flash coming out of the portal.

“Oh, hi Superkid!” He smiles at you and you give him a thumbs up, after the first scare. “Is Supergirl home?”

“MOMMA! Uncle Barry is here to drag you to another reality so you two can fight some…” You look at him raising an eyebrow.

“World-consuming alien.” He answers and you agree with your head.

“Some nonsense alien.” You yell again and you hear Kara agreeing from her bedroom, saying she’ll be right down.

“How did you know?” Barry asks, looking at you throwing yourself back on the couch.

“Please. Like you would just show up here to say she looks pretty on her dress or something.” He agrees with his head. You’re right.

“Hey, wanna race while she doesn’t come?” Barry smiles and you stand up again.

“Yeah, I’ve been training a lot. I think I can beat you now.” You walk to the front door and open it.

“One time around the block and here is the finish line?” He asks and you shake your head agreeing. You both get in position for the run. “Ready? Go!” Barry becomes a flash in your eyes, and stops next to you a second later. He looks at you standing by the door, furrowing his brows. “Wait! How are you here already? I’m pretty sure I just broke the sound barrier.”

“Well, I told you I could beat you.” You walk back into the house, and Kara appears all dressed as Supergirl.

“Kid, I’ll be gone for a while. Please text your mom to come stay with you.” Kara asks and you agree with your head, but you don’t move. She points at your phone in your pocket. “Now, come on. I want to see you typing.”

“Fine.” You grab the phone and pretend to send an audio message. “Hey guys, I’ll be alone for the weekend! Party at my house! Bring a beer keg!”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Kara is unamused while Barry laughs extremely loud next to her. She shoots him a disapproving look.

“Sorry. She’s hilarious.” Barry shrugs defensively and you smile.

You: Momma is going to another reality. World-consuming alien. The Flash. Probably another bunch of weird stuff.

Mom: OK! Do you want to meet me at the hotel, or should I go home?

You: Home, please.

Mom: Ok baby, see you there after work.

You show your texts to Kara, who shakes her head agreeing. Then looks at Barry next to her, giving him a nod.

“Ok.” He fumbles with the portal control, almost dropping it, then presses the button to open it. “Good to see you Superkid! Next time don’t let me race alone!” He winks at you and you smile.

“Guess you are smart.” You do finger guns at him and he goes into the portal. Kara walks towards you and kisses your forehead.

“Please, be good. If you need anything at all, call your aunt Alex. Be nice to your mom. If there’s an emergency and you need to save National City, please be careful.” She adds another kiss to your forehead. “I love you, little one.”

“I love you, mommy. Be careful out there.” You smile and she agrees, before walking into the portal and disappearing right after.

You look around the empty house and the clock on the kitchen wall. You’re not throwing a party, obviously, but what’s stopping you from having your girlfriend over? You text her, and it doesn’t take long until she’s at your door.

You have everything prepared when she arrives, and you both settle in the living room to watch a movie. She has her arms wrapped around you the entire time and you feel happy and bubbly about the whole situation.

“Hey.” She whispers on your jaw, and gives you a sweet kiss there. “I don’t want to ruin the moment, but can we talk about what happened today at school?”

You forage your brain trying to remember what happened, but nothing comes. You look at her with furrowed brows to show your confusion.

“What that girl said to you?” Maya adds when she realizes you have no idea what she is talking about. “Babe, you can’t possibly have forgotten about it.” She opens a little more distance between you two, shaking her head in denial. “She told you to kill yourself.”

“Oh! Ah! Yes!” You stand up, a little uncomfortable, collecting the empty popcorn containers, and soda cans. “That’s just, you know-”

“That’s just heinous it’s what that is.” She stands up again. “How can you not have told her to go fuck herself or something?”

“Oh no, babe. That’s not-” You turn your back to her, so she won’t see your face completely red. “Why would I do that? I can’t drop to her level.”

“Oh my God, are you serious?” Maya’s voice comes a little louder. You know she’s not fighting you, and that she’s not upset with you, but with the situation. Your heart still starts pounding in your chest, either way. “She told you that you should die because you have Luthor in your name. How can you put up with that and not say a word?”

She walks towards you, taking everything you’re holding out of your hands and putting in the nearest surface. She cups your face and smiles at you.

“I get that you’re the nicest person in the universe, but I can’t stomach the way they treat you in that school. And I don’t like that you put your head down for them.” She kisses your cheek lightly. “If you’re not going to fight them, I will.”

“I just don’t think it’s worth it. It’s not like they’ll ever stop.” You shrug, looking into her eyes. She sighs. “Besides, I’m used to it.”

“Babe, that’s even more upsetting.” Maya puts her head on your collarbone. “What do your moms say about it?”

“Oh no. No.” You step a little further away from her, shaking your head. “They can’t know about the things they say. It would be very distressing.”

You hear a noise in the kitchen and you don’t even have to use your x-ray vision to know that Lena is home, making noises so you notice her there.

“Lena is here.” You say, and Maya holds your hand, when you two walk to the kitchen. “Hey mom.”

“Oh hey-” Lena raises her head from the grocery bags. “Girls.”

“Hello, Mrs. Luthor.” Maya answers and turns her face to you. “Walk me out?”

“Yeah.” Lena waves a quick goodbye at Maya, and you take her outside, closing the door for a little goodbye kiss without Lena being able to see it. “I’ll see you Monday.”

“Ok. Please, text goodnight.” Maya adds before turning on her heels and leaving your house.

You go back inside, and look at Lena putting the food she bought on the fridge. You help her, without saying a word.

“Please tell me you’re eating healthy.” Lena asks, knowing the answer by the things on the fridge. You shrug.

“Maybe you should come back home and make me.” You open a smile and she chuckles, holding your chin and looking at you lovingly.

“Funny.” Lena kisses your cheek and you hug her, laying your head on her shoulder. She strokes your back gently, and you sigh.

“I miss you here.”

Lena doesn’t answer. You know she misses you too by the way she’s holding you tight, and by the way her heart is beating. You know she’s hurt with Kara, and you wish there was something you could do about it.

“So.” Lena lets go of you, cleans one tear on her face, and looks at the things she didn’t put away. “You start on the salad, and I’ll start on the chicken.”

“Sounds good.” You two fall into a natural and comfortable silence while cooking together. It’s twice as fast without Kara around, but half as fun.

After you two finish cooking, she puts the food on the table, while you finish setting it up.

“You know I don’t have super hearing.” Lena says, while filling her glass with wine. You sit and wait for her to come closer. “But, when I got home, I heard you and Maya talking, and it sounded like you two were fighting.”

“Oh, no, we weren’t.” You deny with your head, and serve yourself. Lena finally comes back with her wine. She sits, crossing her legs, reclining on the chair and looking at you from the other side of the table.

“I know. I’ve heard.” She says and you look up to her, realizing what that means. “Baby-”

“Mom, I got it, ok? You don’t have to worry about it.” You sigh, putting food on your mouth, and giving her a thumbs up, because it’s delicious. “Let’s not ruin this perfect dinner with this conversation.”

“I’m sorry, babygirl. I think we should ruin dinner.” Lena says and you sigh. “What they do to you it’s not right. No one is supposed to hear the things you do, because of your stupid name. God, sometimes I regret giving it to you in the first place.”

“Mom.”

“No, I-I do. I should’ve known better. It’s too big of a burden to carry, and you are the opposite of what this name stands for.” Lena’s eyes are filled with tears and you bite your lip. “I actually thought people would forget about Lex. But he keeps coming back and dragging our names through the mud, all the time.”

You know she’s mad at Lex for mind controlling you still, so you let her vent. She’s been keeping this feeling bottle up for more than a week now, not having Kara to talk about it.

“And you, the sweetest, nicest person on the planet, keep paying for it.” Her tears fall, and your heart squeezes in your chest. You hate seeing her like that. “I wish you had nothing to do with this sick, rotten family.”

“But then I would have nothing to do with you.” You get up from your chair, rounding the table and going to her. “And you are the best thing in my life.” You smile. “And momma, of course.”

“Baby.” She cups your face with one hand, and smiles through the tears. “You are the best thing in my life. I love you so much.”

“Listen. You are right. I shouldn’t have to endure all the hate speeches, and all the teasing, but kids are stupid. I don’t think that half of them actually hate me because of my name, I think they hate me because it’s fun.” Lena raises her eyebrow at that. “It’s fun to laugh at the school genius, at least that’s what I see in every teen movie.”

Lena gives a little laugh and kisses your cheek.

“You’re amazing. Are you sure you’re just sixteen?” She asks and you shrug.

“You tell me.” You round the table again, going to your place. “You’re the one who made me in a lab.”

The dinner goes smoothly after that. The food is incredible and you know it’s only been a little more than a week, but you missed her food anyway. Lena’s presence feels right, like it always did. And you just wish she could stay more than just the weekend.

You two hang out a lot. It feels stupid when you think it hasn’t been that long since she left home, why were you missing her so much? Why were you missing her telling you to clean up your room, and help her with dinner?

After the conversation she overheard between you and Maya, she became Maya’s number one fan. It’s hilarious, and you didn’t see it coming. But every time you say Maya’s name, she just opens the biggest smile and it’s awesome.

You don’t want this weekend to end.

But it’s Sunday night, and your heart feels heavy even though Lena is still right next to you on the couch, talking about some experience that went wrong in the lab, and that one of the interns got so scared he’ll be blamed for it, he almost puked.

“Poor kid.” Lena adds, in the end, and you agree with your head.

“But you forgave him, right?” You ask and she agrees. “Then why can’t you forgive momma?”

“Baby, that’s not-”

“Mom, I don’t know what happened but, well, you once told me that we’re Luthor-Danvers, and that means that we might get upset, but we know how to recognize our mistakes and apologize.” You raise an eyebrow at her.

“I wish it was that simple.” Lena sighs, and you hug her.

“It could, if you two just stopped overcomplicating stuff and just talked.” Lena doesn’t answer. She kisses your forehead, and falls silent for the rest of the night, looking too lost in her thoughts.

When Kara comes back from another reality is really late at night. You and Lena are comfortable on the couch watching a cooking show, when the portal opens again in the middle of the living room.

“Lena!” Kara looks so surprised as if she didn’t make you text your mom in front of her to make sure Lena would come to keep you company.

“Oh, hi.” Lena stands up, fidgeting her fingers, nervously. You roll your eyes thinking this is very pathetic. Just make-up already! “Well, great! You’re home. I suppose other realities are saved?” Kara shakes her head, agreeing. Eyes looking at Lena’s hands, then focusing back at her eyes. “Then I should get going.”

“NO!” Kara says a little louder than she planned to, reaching out to Lena, but not really touching her arm. Damn, it was so close. “It’s late.” She guesses by looking at the sky. “You should stay. It’s-It’s your house.”

Lena raises an eyebrow, and they stare at each other for a few seconds. Do they even know you’re there or have them forgotten completely about your existence?

“You take the bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch.” Kara points at it, and sees you sitting there. “Or with the kid.” Oh, so they know you’re there.

“I don’t know…” Lena bites her lips, and you open your eyes at Kara, encouraging her.

“Please. It makes no sense for you to leave. It’s late, and even if it wasn’t-just-yeah-please.” Kara is always so articulate. But still, somehow, that makes Lena agree with her head and she decides to stay. You smile to yourself, and whisper a ‘thank you’ when she sits back on the couch, and Kara goes to take a shower.

When you hear that Kara has finished getting ready, you go to your room, so you can leave them alone to see if they finally talk. They don’t. Seriously, what are you going to do about this?

“Hey.” Kara knocks on your door then puts her head inside. “Will you absolutely hate it if I sleep here tonight?”

“C’mere.” You open your arms, and Kara smiles, walking into your arms, and laying in bed with you. “How were things in the other dimension?”

“Hard. Maybe I’m getting too old for this.” Kara says making you laugh in response, and soon she adds. “Don’t you dare saying I’m 70.”

“But you are.” You say and she sticks her tongue out at you, and flop back on her belly next to you.

“How were things here?”

“Great. It’s really good having mom home.” You watch her expression when you say that. She hums in agreement, but doesn’t say anything. “So, are you going to apologize or what?”

“Why do you assume it was my fault?” Kara furrows her brows, and you ease her crinkle with your thumb.

“I don’t. I have no idea whose fault it is. Or even if it’s a matter of culpability, at all. All I know is that, it doesn’t matter.” You stroke her back gently. “You love her, she loves you. You guys have been through so much, and you have never ever given up on her.”

“I’m not giving up now, either.”

“Well, then do something about it.” You say and Kara breathes deep. You raise your eyebrow at her. “Now! Do something now!”

“Ok, yeah.” She stands up and goes to the door. Before she leaves, she comes back and kisses your forehead. “You’re the best kid in the entire universe. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. Now, go.”

It would be a lot easier if your power had just gotten out of control again, and you could blame your eavesdropping on this, but that's not the case. What is happening is that your heart is so heavy on your chest. You know they keep saying it was not your fault, but if this is true why is your guilt practically consuming you? So, you need to know.

“Hey.” You hear a knock on the door, and Kara’s voice right after.

“Oh, Kara. Do you need to grab something?” Lena’s voice comes a little surprised.

“No, I-Lena, I’m really sorry.” Kara breathes out, like she was holding the apology for days, which is probably true. “Of course, I believe you, and I don’t think there’s a world you would ever hurt her, but I got really scared. I saw the look on her face, and she kept calling me mommy, and I caved.”

So, it was your fault! Holy shit you knew it! Lena’s voice comes an entire minute later, which almost makes you faint in anticipation. Come on Lena, come on. You can do it.

“I’m sorry too.” OH, THANK RAO. “You were right, there were other ways, and she was in pain. But don’t think for a second I wasn’t scared too.”

“I know. I know you were. I know you ARE.” Kara says, and you lower your glasses to see if they’re hugging, and they’re still not. Goddammit Kara, do something! “It doesn’t matter how many times the world gets in danger and our existence is threatened. Every time she is the one in danger, I-It’s-”

“Yeah.” Lena’s face drops and you watch Kara coming closer. Reaching out with one hand. Fingers ghosting over Lena’s arm. Your heart is stuck on your throat the entire time, and it feels like it’s going to explode in anticipation. Go, momma, please.

But Kara doesn’t go to Lena.

It’s Lena who goes to her.

Lena hugs Kara’s waist tight and sobs on her t-shirt. You hear Kara’s heart skipping a beat, and a breath of relief leaving her mouth.

“We’re ok.” Kara kisses the top of Lena’s head, wrapping her arms around her head, pressing her further into her chest. “She’s ok. We-We’ll figure this out, love.”

Lena’s heart beats a lot faster and she looks up, gazing into Kara’s eyes. They don’t have to say the words, so you know what they’re thinking. But they do it anyway.

“I love you, Lena.” Kara smiles, kissing Lena’s head again, and it’s time for Lena’s heart to skip a beat. “Always have, always will. In a hundred lifetimes, in any alternative reality, in every world. I love you.”

“I love you, honey.”

You stop listening, because now it’s way too private and it seems like things are better. And since Kara doesn’t come back to your bedroom, you’re right to assume things are better than they were before. But your heart only truly eases, when Monday comes and Lena comes back home after work. That’s when you can finally breathe.

Notes:

@itzyourgirlnat prompted a week without Kara and I LOVED IT!

Also Kara and Lena are back together, so the angst is over, ooof! What a long ride!

[charliejrogers]

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

In 2006, Borat was one of those great cultural touchstones that transcended the big screen. There was no aspect of pop culture after its release that wasn’t in some way affected. It perfectly coincided with the rising popularity of YouTube, such that those who hadn’t seen it (or couldn’t because they were too young to get into the rated R movie) could at least see many of its famous clips.  Everyone knew Borat in 2006. Everyone. You couldn’t go two fucking steps without someone going “very nice!” or “my wife!” It was such a wonderfully smart movie. It combined the best aspects of a Jackass movie, i.e. the trolling of innocent and unsuspecting bystanders, with a noble cause, to expose to the world the ignorant side of America. It was a novel and insightful look at our country.

In 2020… there is no insight in telling us that much of the country is ignorant of the truth, racist, or sexist. As Borat himself points out in this film, in the years between when he filmed the first movie (2005) and the new movie 2019-2020, America has become transfixed by their new “magical abacuses”, i.e. cellphones. Phones, the internet, social media, all of them expose us everyday to how the other half lives in their little social bubbles. We don’t have to wonder “do people really think this?” Just type whatever terrible or stupid theory you can think of into Google, and you’re guaranteed to find at least one person who endorses whatever heinous thing you just wrote. Again, this is portrayed within the film when Borat, confronted by the fact that maybe some of his core beliefs are lies, finds websites that say that (much to his anti-Semitic disappointment) the Holocaust was not real. So, one is left wondering… what can Borat bring to the table in 2020 that is fresh?

Unfortunately, the answer is… not a whole lot. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm feels mostly like a retread of 2006 with the only additions aiming more for “shock factor” than real comedy aimed to grab headlines (which it succeeded in doing). This is not to say this is not a funny movie. It is. The film’s opening where Borat describes the typical (fictionalized) Kazakh’s view of American politics is hysterical. In sum, America went to shit with the election of Obama, paving the way for other Africans to take power of the West (cue the photo of Justin Trudeau in Black face). Now with Trump in power, Borat is sent on a mission to curry Trump’s favor so that Kazakhstan and its leader will be viewed with the same favor that Trump has bestowed upon other “tough guys and tough guy countries” like Russia/Putin, the Philippines/Duerte, North Korea/Kim Jong Un, Brazil/Bolsonaro, etc. The gift is supposed to be an overly sexually aggressive chimp for Vice Pussy Hound (i.e. Vice President) Pence. However, Borat’s daughter Tutar sneaks into the crate with the chimp, and after a chain of events Borat has no choice but to gift his daughter over to Pence, and eventually Rudy Giuliani, instead.

It’s a simple enough plot but I think the movie gets a little too caught up in it. No one is asking for a plot line for this movie. If this were just a string of sketches with a vague whiff of a plot to transition between the sketches no one would fault it. In fact, that sounds like the first Borat. We are just here for the sketches. Yet the movie is looking to do a little bit more than the first movie. It’s not content to just say, “Hey, look at yourself, America! You’re fucked up! Let’s all laugh at you.” This movie has specific targets that dominate its focus: Trump and Trumpland.

This is, I think, an unfortunate choice not because I don’t approve of bashing Trump and Trumpland, but because whereas the first movie felt like comedy was king with the sociopolitical insights as a dominant undercurrent, here the story and the humiliation of Trump and his base is the end goal. This still makes for funny scenes, but when I think back to the first Borat (and as I re-watched clips of the first movie after finishing this movie), some of the greatest parts of Borat had nothing to do with politics or sensitive subjects. Much of the humor was just based around the ballsiness of Sacha Baron Cohen. This is a guy who when invited into a person’s home for dinner makes openly sexually complimentary remarks about two of the female guests, but explicitly states that the host’s wife is ugly. Never mind the fact that at that same dinner party, Borat hand-delivers his shit in a bag to a guest, claiming to not know how Western toilets work. It’s hilarious, it’s daring, and has nothing to do with politics.

In essence, the first Borat was such a success because Cohen played the character with such a believable naivete and loose grasp of English idioms, that he was a factory of malapropisms, a genius of comedic-timing, and a troll that could annoy the ever-living daylights out of anyone. There are as many scenes of him trolling nice, innocent people (like the driving instructor, the man who teaches him jokes, the group of feminists, or really any time he goes on the news) as there are scenes of him trolling people so that Cohen can make a political point or social observation (like the singing the wrong national anthem at the rodeo or his innate criticism of a Pentecostal Chruch’s weirdness). And in the end, the “point” of that plot at least had nothing to do with politics. You can watch this movie, get your laughs, remark at America’s racism, and still get your laughs.

Here, there really isn’t any scene I can think of that wasn’t done to make some sort of observation or political point. The closest I can think of are the bits towards the beginning before the plot kicks into high gear. There’s a recurring bit I love of him communication with the Premier of Kazakhstan via fax machine at a local UPS Store. The genius isn’t contained in the sentence I just wrote, but that he requires the aging worker of the UPS Store to hand-write all of his faxes for him and read any and all replies. Similarly, there’s a quick bit of genius at the beginning where Borat goes to a cellphone store and cannot understand FaceTime at all. He assumes the person on the phone must be the brother of the phone store worker he sees in front of him; they cannot be the same. Similarly he somehow enlists the help of a delivery person to re-seal the crate in which his daughter came to America in.

But otherwise, the jokes are there either to say, “Woah! Aren’t these Americans terrible?!” (whether he’s talking about QAnon’s theorists, anti-abortionists, or anti-maskers). Or there’s gross out humor, mostly about vaginas and periods, (or moon blood, as Borat calls it). As I said, these aren’t all unfunny. Probably my favorite sequence in the film sees Borat and his daughter at a pregnancy crisis center because Tutar has accidentally swallowed a little baby doll that was on top of a cupcake her father had “given” to her as a “treat” that was just supposed to be “their little secret” because women in Kazakhstan aren’t supposed to have sweets. So she ate the cupcake behind a dumpster. I’ll let you guess what happens when you enter a Christian pregnancy crisis center asking for them to take out the dumpster baby your Dad wasn’t supposed to be giving you… but it’s hilarious to see the worker sorta squirm his away around addressing the reality of incest.

But mostly, I felt kinda fatigued knowing that Cohen and co. were mostly trying to show me the “underside” of QAnon and anti-maskers… but as I said, in 2020, I am unfortunately well aware of both these groups, their psychologies, and their world. So merely highlighting that these ideas exist and that the people who endorse these ideas don’t really have a lot of great ideas otherwise, isn’t that novel as it might have been back in 2006.

Probably the more “interesting” side of the film is it’s focus on feminism. The film uses Tutar (played perfectly by previously unknown Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova and deserves all the praise she gets) to really expose how America, despite being a “feminist” nation, still shares many aspects with the fictionalized version of Kazakhastan where women are considered equivalent to livestock. The movie hopes to shed light on the far reaching effects of the patriarchy. The movie ends at the top of the pyramid with politicians who feel like it is their right to use their power to sleep with whomever they want (Trump’s obviously the true target of this criticism and I will say, the final Giuliani scene feels a little bit like entrapment… that said, I think it’s fair to say not every man would be so willing to fall into that trap). But leading up to that we see aspects of America designed to fit perfectly with the patriarchy’s demands. We hear from a shallow, vapid Instagram influencer that to get by women need to be docile and pretty, and we see a frankly horrifying discussion from a plastic surgeon talking about all the things wrong with Tutar that he would fix with surgery so that men would want her… despite the fact that she’s a beautiful woman and has nothing wrong with her! We live in a society that recognizes the horror of a patriarchical society, but still so clearly buys into it.

But in the end… you’re not watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm to get an education on feminism and the problems with the patriarchy. That should be the extra cherry on top of a main course of hearty laughter. In focuses on the politics, Cohen and co. find plenty of laughs and memorable moments, but fail (perhaps inevitably) to recreate the signature naivete and bumbling oafishness of his titular interviewer, in the process losing some of the film’s humor and paradoxically its ability to leave a lasting message.

**/ (Two and a half stars out of four)

[metalchick19-blog]

The Bowers Gang: Ship #2 - Patrick Hockstetter

Request: Hi. ~ ( Sorry for my bad english, I'm Italian. ) First of all I wanted to say I love your headcanon on the Bowers Gang and your writing. This is my ship request. 💙✨I'd like to be shipped with Patrick. ( My physical description )My hair is bright red ( dyed ) and half shaved. I usually wear blue contact lenses and make-up ( eyeliner and pink/red eyeshadow ); I also wear glasses. I am tall 5'6''. ( Personality ) I am an extrovert girl and very talkative, I often annoy my friends talking about the movies I have seen and the books I read ( My favourite films are A Clockwork Orange, Benny's Video, Crash, Good Fellas, Nosfretatu, Videodrome; my favourite books are Catch-22 and Naked Lunch. ) My friends usually describe me as arrogant and very impulsive; also someone told me that I look like a cupcake filled with poison 'cause I have a pretty face but I am very sarcastic and I'm used to threat anyone who says to me something I think it's offensive ( I am very prickly. ) Also I am very anxious and nervous about lots of things like keep my grades up and always look pretty, similar to a Barbie or Jessica Rabbit ( so I wear make-up everyday, wear clothes like crop-top and shorts and keep my weight down. ) I am the kind of person that tries to always win because don't know how to handle a defeat. I suffer from OCD so I have lots of irrational fears ( example: if I don't repeat a phrase an even number of times I'll be hit by a car and die ). I also have compulsion like repeat every action two/four times ( never three or five ) and I eat different foods ( as chips and meat ) in different plates because I'm scared to be poisoned if they touch. Me and my cousin's boyfriend usually do things like burn little insects or trap them in something ( like a glass full of water ) and put them in the fridge to freeze them. I also smoke a lot ( cigarettes, I don't like weed so much ) and really like to drink, even if I rarely get drunk. Sometimes I get involved in fights, always out of school, and I became pretty violent; I am not so strong but I have always a little knife with me or a chain, worn as a necklace. I only sleep few hours at night because I usually spend time drawing ( I draw only naked people and without the head ) or reading / watching something. I am not a jealous girl, I always leave a lot of freedom to my partners. I don't believe in moral laws applicable to anyone, I think that there isn't something always wrong or always right and for me the end justifies the means. I did my best, I hope I went deep enough. 

Patrick first started creeping on you entirely because of your physical appearance 

Kind of struck him as the type of person who likes to act crazy, rather than someone who actually is crazy, but likes that better than actual crazy because it gives him the opportunity to test the fuck out of your limits

Legitimately experienced euphoria-level joy when he saw red hair, blue eyes, crazy eye-shadow, and shaved-headedness all on one person, and decided he needed to “get a taste” of you as soon as possible

... Which eventually led to you guys actually getting together, because ya’ll are two fucked up peas in a pod

Patrick traded you one of his old lighters (but not the sacred Zippo lighter) for your chain necklace when you guys first got together

Half because he wanted people to know that you were his, half because he wanted to choke you with the chain during sex from day one

He becomes the permanent light for your chain-smoking habit (lights every cigarette you ever smoke, hands-down)

Friggin’ loves that you’re not clingy

Will sometimes tell you about other people he wants to fuck, so you can rate them together

The judgement is real, though - you’re both basically Simon Cowell when it comes to sizing other people up, and just end up roasting most of them into oblivion 

It’s a bonding activity though, so yay (?)

Also insanely turned on by the pictures you draw, and sometimes asks you to draw specific people from school so he can use their decapitated naked bodies as jerk-off fuel

Also likes that he can mess around with other people without having to sneak around... 

... but would literally kill you if you did the same

Seriously - you can give Patrick all the freedom you want, but you don’t have any freedom whatsoever where he’s concerned. You’re his girl.

If you test this limit, there will be serious consequences. 

You guys kill insects together all the time and he loves it oh my gosh

He’s never had the opportunity to kill with someone who actually enjoys it before, and he’s on the darkest version of cloud 9 you’ve ever seen 

Legitimately starts to take a big chunk out of the time he spends with the guys, because he’d rather be in the woods fucking up Jiminy Cricket with you 

Always leads to insane, animal sex in which you just get fucked right out in the open (sometimes pounded against a tree, other times held down on the ground - orgasms galore either way)

Gets more violent with you than any other partner though, because you get his killing instinct hot and bothered 

You get burned, scalded, cut, stabbed, choked, slapped, bitten, scratched, and drowned all within the first 3 months (and we all know homeboy is just getting started)

Eventually starts trying to goad you into killing bigger animals with him (”Come on, princess - you’re tellin’ me you’ve never wanted to move on to bigger and better things before?” *Gets all up in your personal space, grazing your lips with his* “That doesn’t sound like the heinous bitch I know...” *Peer-pressure filled Hockstetter grin*)

... But will settle for the insects if that’s really all he can get 

Still surprises you with a cat or a rabbit once in a while though, and expects you to watch him kill it even if you won’t participate

Doesn’t give a fuck about your OCD issues 

Actively tries to trigger you by mixing your food around on your plate when you eat near him, and by messing up your counts when you try to repeat things a certain number of times

Sometimes even tries to inspire new irrational fears by telling you you’ll probably die if you don’t count this, repeat that, etc.

Both because he finds it hilarious, and because he thinks your temper is sexy af

High-key rubs himself through his pants every time he sees you break out into a fight with someone

Screams anything he possibly can to rile you up more, so you’ll mess the other person up even worse than you originally planned to

Will 100% use your concerns about always looking your best against you when he gets angry though (”Dressing like a whore won’t help you, sweetie - you’re still the ugliest thing I’ve ever fucked.”)

For the most part though, gets a big kick out of his relationship with you

Moves on when you reach your batshit crazy limit for the time-being...

... but starts hanging around you again at random points throughout your life 

Because of your unique traits (i.e. because you killed with him, and because you generally don’t give a shit) you’re a “toy” he’ll never get fully bored of

Expect a random Hockstetter visit at least once every 4 months, even after you guys split up

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Seven (30.43% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Significantly flawed, and well-known in fandom for it. Unpopular opinion? I still think it’s better than the first Avengers film.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha and Laura pass in a single-line trade. It’s sooo close to not counting.

Female characters:

Natasha Romanoff.

Wanda Maximoff.

Maria Hill.

Helen Cho.

Peggy Carter.

Laura Barton.

FRIDAY.

Male characters:

Tony Stark.

Steve Rogers.

JARVIS.

Thor.

Clint Barton.

Strucker.

Pietro Maximoff.

Bruce Banner.

Ultron.

Sam Wilson.

James Rhodes.

Ulysses Klaue.

Heimdall.

Nick Fury.

Erik Selvig.

Vision.

OTHER NOTES:

Everyone talking about Strucker like we already know who he is...

The “Shit!”/”Language!” gag was funnier before they hung a lantern on it. Not least because it takes almost a full minute before Tony harks back to it (fifty seconds, actually. I checked). If you’re gonna make a Thing out of it, you gotta follow up immediately, not after fifty seconds of cutting around to different character intros and action shots and a whole lot of other dialogue. 

Urrgghh, ok, I’m going to break my standing rule about not discussing source material, because we gotta acknowledge the colossal wrongness of re-writing the Maximoff twins - canonically Jewish Romani - as willing volunteers in a Nazi science experiment. It gets worse the more you think about it. There are a few things about this movie which generated significant negative outcry, and this incredibly offensive decision is one of them.

Tony and Thor fighting over who has a better girlfriend does have a certain charm to it. If you’re gonna have a testosterone-off, it might as well be about how great your partner is.

I got a zero out of ten on this out-of-nowhere forced romance crap with Natasha and Bruce. We’ll come back to this later.

“I will be reinstituting Prima Nocta,” Tony declares, as he prepares to lift Thor’s hammer and thereby theoretically take charge of the Nine Realms. Primae noctis (believed to in fact be a myth) refers to a supposed Dark-Ages law that granted lords the ‘right’ to take the virginity of any newlywed peasant woman who lived on their land. So, this is a wonderful little rape joke from Tony (or, y’know, not so little, since primae noctis in reality would make Tony a serial rapist). Ha ha ha ha. Hilarious. Good one.

I’m really mad about the parts here that are total garbage, because mostly, the revels sequence has a nice low-key quality to it, good solid team dynamics. 

I can’t fucking believe that they played the ‘and then Bruce falls with his face in Natasha’s cleavage!’ gag. I cannot believe it. Is this a disgusting frat-boy comedy from the nineties?

Honestly, Tony, just shut up and admit that you KNEW from the get-go that it was wrong to try and make Ultron happen (that is why you kept it secret from everyone else to begin with); don’t try to defend the decision now that you’ve got a ‘murderbot’ on your hands. Take responsibility for a bad choice instead of talking shit about how you had to and everyone else is just too short-sighted, damn it! 

Andy Serkis is delightful.

The Iron Man/Hulk fight absolutely KILLS the momentum of this film. It goes for way the fuck too long (eight minutes) and has no narrative significance at all. Pro tip for action scenes: they should always be driving the story somewhere. You can pull off eighty minutes of action so long as your plot is advancing alongside/within it.

Also, Iron Man causes a huge amount of additional damage during this fight, in the service of the aforementioned pointless action. His efforts to minimise Hulk’s effects are extremely poor, and calling in his relief organisation to clean up after the fact does not negate that. 

Gotta love that throwing a wife and kids at Hawkeye at the same time as we suddenly start pushing this Natasha/Bruce thing. That’s not transparent at all. I also understand this to be a major deviation from Clint’s identity in the comics, and very unpopular with fans for that reason, but regardless; reinventing him as a family man to reset the romantic blather after baiting fans with the possibility of Clint/Natasha in the first Avengers movie is such a shitty move. I was not invested in the ship myself and would have loved to have them reinforce the just-friends relationship between Hawkeye and Black Widow, because there are not enough platonic friendships between compatible men and women in fiction, but 'they’re not interested in each other because they’re busy with someone else!’ is a weak reinforcement indeed. Less forced romances, and definitely less token wifey who exists for no other Goddamn reason at all. This comes out of nowhere, and not in a clever-surprise kind of way.

“You still think you’re the only monster on the team?” Natasha says, after telling Bruce about her sterilisation. This earned a HUGE backlash, and for good reason - despite all arguments about how what Natasha meant was that her being raised to be an assassin makes her a monster, the direct implication of her words as they are phrased and as the discussion is structured is that her inability to have children makes her monstrous, and that’s deeply offensive. It’s also completely in keeping with a narrative which is often played out against women, in which their value as people is attributed directly to their ability to produce offspring, so it’s not even like this outrageous implication of monstrosity - the corruption of what it means to be female! - is that unusual. It’s awful, but not unusual. Add on the fact that 1) Natasha’s nightmare-flashes specifically foregrounded her sterilisation over all other details of her training, supporting the idea that she believes that it’s what makes her irredeemable (instead of, y’know, all the murdering and stuff), and 2) this is Joss Whedon’s work and he is OBSESSED with highlighting the womanhood of his female characters and treating it like their defining trait while also variously punishing them for it, and you’ve got every reason to interpret this terrible fucking line as exactly the heinous thing it (presumably, unwittingly) seems to be. 

Steve ripping a log in half with his bare hands is the funniest thing in this whole movie.

Thor’s brief side-adventure with Erik Selvig is pretty out-of-place. He just...goes for a swim in a convenient magic pond that Selvig chances to know about. Seems normal.

Ultron is full of such boring, empty rhetoric. Reminds me of Loki in The Avengers, with all that sound-and-fury. 

I love Paul Bettany.

Man, they sure do find Natasha instantly. It’s almost like making a damsel-in-distress of her who needs to be rescued by the team was completely meaningless...

Breaking my no-BTS rule (since I already have done for this movie at this point) because it’s well-known how Joss Whedon ordered Elizabeth Olsen not to show exertion or ‘ugly emotion’ on her face in this film, because God forbid she compromise her attractiveness by being human. Joss Whedon is not human; he’s fucking trash. 

The final fight sure does just, y’know, get to a point where it ends. They really did not ratchet up the tension over the course of the Sokovia conflict, it just goes along until it stops (also, they say Sokovia is a country, but then they never call the city anything else, it’s just Sokovia. Is the city conveniently named after the country (very confusing), or is it a city-country, like The Vatican? I kinda assume it’s option three, which is that no one bothered to care because it’s just some fake European placeholder anyway and we’re not supposed to notice such a dumb oversight).

“I was born yesterday.” This is the best quip in this whole thinks-it-is-way-wittier-than-it-is movie.

Helen Cho deserved better than to be a prop rapidly dismissed and then just trotted past at the end for an ‘oh, she survived, btw’. 

Back when I reviewed the first Avengers movie, I said that I considered that film to be heavily overrated, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that I actually like this one better. The two primary problems I had with that first film were the overly simplistic plot, and the fact that most of the characters were OOC compared to previous films, and this movie does do better on both scores, so I feel more engaged by it, and less annoyed. That said...this movie has still got a lot of problems, and those include iffy characterisation and a plot with various holes, nonsensical complications, and conveniently ignored or smoothed-down dynamics. When I say I like this movie better than the first one, I mean just that: I like this better. That does not mean I am here to sing its praises. 

The tacked-on romance is part of the problem - for Clint as well as Natasha (but especially for Natasha). After Hawkeye was so heavily under-used in the first film (and his slightly-ambiguous relationship with Black Widow was the only human element that made him a character instead of a prop), Age of Ultron attempts to compensate by giving Clint a personal life, in the form of a magically-appearing heavily-pregnant wife and a pair of nameless children. The function of this family appears to be 1) to give Clint a reason to not be interested in Natasha, and 2) to ‘humanise’ him by giving him something to fight for and get home to, because we all know nothing legitimises a character quite like some otherwise-irrelevant dependents. Want a man to seem lovable and important? Give him a pregnant wife. That’s what women are for, anyway, right? To enhance a man’s story? In this case, to provide a man whose purpose in the story has been contested with insta-personality, because ‘he’s secretly a family man, ooh, twist!’ is way better than having to spend time on giving him something to do in the plot that is actually meaningful in some way. Great logic. Makes Hawkeye super dynamic, right? 

Natasha, unsurprisingly, is hit much, much harder. As the only female avenger and one of only two prominent female characters in a cast which has seven-to-nine male characters of equal or greater importance/screen time (YMMV on whether or not you think Fury and Vision count for that list), the pressure is already on for Natasha to be served up a quality narrative, because if she doesn’t get one, well...she doesn’t have six-to-eight alternative characters to pull the weight for her gender. The best solve for this problem would be to avoid the ‘Token Woman’ cliche in the first place, but since we missed that boat...not having the personal story of your only primary female character revolve completely around her womanhood and her catering to heteronormative expectations of a love interest would have been a good choice. This weird, forced, chemistry-free thing with Bruce Banner? Was the worst thing they could have used to define Natasha’s presence in the film. It sticks out like a sore thumb every time they have an awkward interaction, and it leads in to that atrocious ‘monstrous infertility’ element (though that particular egregious mistake could have been included with or without a romantic blunder, it...probably wouldn’t be, and we’d all be the better off). Even the Hulk-whisperer part of the relationship - while not awful on its own with all the unnecessary romance and Unresolved Sexual Not-Tension removed - serves to highlight Natasha’s female-ness by making her the soft maternal figure for the team, because God forbid one of the other male members of the team be asked to ASMR-speak to the Hulk while delicately caressing his hand. If Natasha’s presence in the first Avengers film leaned too heavily on her gender identity as a defining trait (and it did), this movie doesn’t fix that problem at all: it doubles down on it. 

The good news for most of the excess of male characters is, they by-and-large don’t feel as OOC as they did in the first film. The boorish romantic entanglement aside, Bruce Banner is still a naturalistic character highlight (all credit to Mark Ruffalo, who probably doesn’t know how to turn in a bad performance in the first place), and Thor’s dialogue is way less ridiculous this time ‘round, so he lands a lot closer to his personality from previous films simply by virtue of sounding like the same guy (unfortunately, the plot does not have the faintest idea what it wants to do with him as a character). Steve Rogers is still being written as if being Captain America is his character, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of his identity, albeit one which conveniently allows him to behave in a stereotypical self-righteously bland manner, thus avoiding the need for any nuance in his perspective or actions. This borderline fanfic-flamer ‘Captain America is my least favourite character so I’m going to write him as a boring stick-in-the-mud and then hopefully no one else will like him either!’ approach doesn’t grate quite as badly as it did in the first Avengers, and it can’t cancel out the innate level-headed charm of Chris Evans, so as disappointing as the bias is, it’s still a better balance here than it was last time. The one character who is not so flatteringly handled, however? Also happens to be the one who was arguably handled best last time, and unfortunately, he’s the one who is essentially treated as the ‘lead’. 

The big problem for Tony Stark is that this movie is not interested in digging in to the pathos of any character, it’s all-flash-no-substance on that front, and Tony really, really needed a less heavy-handed slathering of ‘afraid of what might come (feat. messiah complex)’ to motivate his actions and reactions in this film, because without any exploration he’s basically just a billionaire kid playing with matches. If this were an Iron Man film (either the first or third one, anyway), we’d get into some tasty deconstruction of Tony’s mental state and confront his hubris, etc, and - crucially, most crucial of all, it’s a mainstay of all his past stories in the MCU - Tony would own up to his mistakes, listen to the advice of those around him, and take contrite steps toward fixing the problem not just in the direct sense of ‘beating the bad guy’, but also in the personal and emotional sense of working on his own flaws and making amends with the people he hurt along the way. This movie offers none of that. To begin with, Tony’s ‘I know best and I will not be taking any questions’ approach to creating Ultron feels like a significant step backwards in his character development so far (Iron Man 3 was specifically about addressing his PTSD and associated tumultuous emotions surrounding the fear of imminent alien invasion, so his reactionary and secretive behaviour in this film feels particularly out-of-touch with a mental reality Tony has been explicitly working on for the past couple of years); Tony is actively aware that it’s a bad call and thus hides it from the other Avengers until it’s too late, and then he’s bizarrely unrepentant about his mistake. Worst of all, he actually attempts to repeat that mistake, only worse, late in the film (the fact that his idiotic ‘mad scientist’ pep talk actually convinces Bruce to help him again is the weakest character moment for Bruce outside of the aforementioned romance crap). The plot rewards Tony’s second, far worse mistake, in the creation of Vision, who turns out to be ‘worthy of wielding Thor’s Hammer’ and whatnot and conveniently provides every necessary skill to defeat Ultron in a deus ex machina so overt you could use it as a textbook example, so even though Tony had absolutely no way of knowing that he’d get a good result this time and almost every reason to believe he’d just compound the existing problem, his reckless disregard for the literal safety of the planet is treated like a good thing because it happens to work out this time, and they just kinda sweep under the rug the fact that Tony is playing God (and being uncharacteristically stupid and selfish about it - in other films, Tony is normally only reckless with his own safety, and it’s when his actions spill out into unintended consequences for others that he realises the error of his ways and cues up a positive learning curve; it’s what makes him palatable). At the end of the film, once Ultron is gone and Tony has thrown some dispassionate wads of cash into ‘relief efforts’, he strolls and quips and eventually drives off into the sunset in his expensive car, with nary a mention of, I dunno, maybe a little guilty conscience? Maybe a hint of having learned a valuable lesson? The closest he gets is just suggesting that it might be time he retires from Avenging, but neither he nor anyone else lets on that there’s a need for serious self-reflection. The Tony Stark in this movie is the nightmarish male-fantasy version of the character, the playboy with the cool tech and no limits who does whatever he wants and then...literally rides off into the sunset in the end, no muss, no fuss. He’s kinda like a complete reversion to his original self, pre-Iron Man, frittering money around and designing weapons of mass destruction while convincing himself he’s bringing peace to the world one explosion at a time, but that Tony has no business here, seven years of character development down the track.

While we’re talking iffy characterisation, we should also segue into plot, and that’s something we can do easily enough by looking at our villain, Ultron. Calling Ultron an actual character feels...ambitious. He’s a CGI robot full of empty rhetoric and, you guessed it, more of those quips that this movie has in place of any meaningful dialogue. I’d call him self-fellating, but he ain’t got nothing to fellate, so instead he just blathers a lot in a manner that sounds vaguely poetically intelligent but is, upon a moment’s consideration, just vapid nonsense (much like Loki in the first Avengers, as noted above, but at least Loki had the benefit of a flesh-and-blood actor delivering his lines with conviction; James Spader does solid work as the voice of Ultron, but trying to make a CGI robot who spouts a school-kid’s attempt at edgy philosophy sound like a genuine menace is an uphill battle). Speaking of genuine menace, I assume the reason the film is called Age of Ultron is because A Couple of Days of Ultron Causing Disturbances in a Handful of Specific Locations was too much. For all the big talk (and there is..so much), Ultron doesn’t get up to all that much trouble, most notably in the sense that he apparently has his code all over the internet and yet he doesn’t bother stirring up a single ounce of chaos with that ungodly power. Why bother including this as an element of the character if it achieves zero story? Is it purely to make Ultron seem ~unstoppable~ because he keeps downloading into new robots? Because it didn’t really land, y’all. They try to play it like a big victory for the good guys when Vision burns Ultron out of the ‘net, but in context it’s meaningless because he didn’t do anything while he was there. Pretty much everything about Ultron was all talk, little to no action - even a whole bunch of the trouble he did cause happened off-screen, with Maria Hill just popping in to let us know that ‘there are reports of metal men stealing shit’. Cheers, cool. And you know, Ultron makes a song and dance about how he’s going to save the world by ‘ending the Avengers’, but then he...does not pursue that at all. He tries to make himself a pretty body, the Avengers thwart him, and then he enacts a doomsday machine to destroy all life on Earth. Like every other aspect of the character, the whole ‘end the Avengers’ schtick is just white noise, there’s no meaning in it. Ultron is just a same-old-same ‘What if Artificial Intelligence wants to WIPE US OUT?!’ cliche, and maybe that’s what he was in the comics too, I don’t know, but it’s the job of the film to tell that story in a dynamic way, and they had two and a half hours to do it. And yet.

There should be more to this than a nondescript placeholder villain concept and a series of action set pieces that just kinda happen until they stop. At least the first Avengers had some variety in each of its action sequences, using the location and the different skills and weapons of its antagonists, whereas this one is just ‘there are robots and the good guys punched and shot them until they were all broken, the end’. Even making the city fly in the end doesn’t actually make it interesting, not least because the characters spend most of their time running around the (weirdly, perfectly stable) streets not having to deal with any consequences of being up in the air anyway, and the doomsday device is too nebulous to ratchet up any real tension about figuring out how to deal with it. The conflicts with the Maximoff twins have at least some spark of life in them, but the characters themselves are treated to an over-simplified and very contrived narrative arc that uses what they do and what they know more as plot devices than as details of actual people’s lives, leading to a cheap death for Pietro so that Wanda will be distracted enough to abandon the big ol’ doomsday button, and it’s just all so convenient. There’s no heart in any of it, and it makes the moments that try to have heart all the more embarrassing and out-of-place (don’t even get me started on what a prescribed attempt at tugging the heart-strings it is to have Hawkeye name his magnificently well-timed newborn after Pietro, because DAMN). When I said I liked this movie better than the first Avengers, I meant just that: I like this better. That’s not to suggest that it is significantly better in any sense, because it isn’t, and I can’t even argue that this one has a better story, because honestly, it doesn’t. The first film made more sense, it was just less interesting to watch, and the things about it that were contrived were contrived in different ways. The first film was weaker and more irritating on character, and character is always the most important part of a story for me, so as annoyed as I am by the major character blunders in Age of Ultron, I’m still not as annoyed as I was after The Avengers. That is damning with the faintest of praise; this is just not a particularly good movie, it makes a poor use of its cast at the best of times, delivers a sub-par action extravaganza, and the script is not half as witty as it gleefully convinces itself that it is. It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that I am very glad a certain writer/director departed the franchise after disappointing everyone with this outing. I say I like this better than the first Avengers, but gee, it’s a close call.

[davidmann95]

Another day, another SDCC news roundup/response since that’s made up the bulk of my asks.

* Not official Comic Con news, but obviously the development of the day: James Gunn has been fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 due to Michael Cernovich digging up rape and pedophilia jokes he had made on Twitter in 2008 and 2009 and marshaling a major backlash against him. I don’t think I’m in a place to make a call as to whether Gunn deserves it - dude absolutely had a reputation as a gross edgelord once upon a time, he seems to have cleared up his act and it was a different time in terms of what kind of shit was considered permissible to joke about, but it really was some heinous shit and there aren’t people I trust who know him claiming he’s changed since then - but the alt-right getting this kind of victory in leveraging their weight against companies, and setting this sort of precedent for the power of their voices in the process, is frightening as hell. Because make no mistake, it isn’t because Disney is appalled - they got Johnny Depp on the payroll - but because enough people made a stink, and now the worst people in the world know that’s something in their pocket that can work on a scale like this.

* Marvel Knights is returning as a line under Donny Cates’ supervision, kicking off with a 20 year anniversary oneshot by him and Mike Deodato apparently starring Daredevil, Punisher, Black Panther, and Blade. The contents of the line spinning out of it are unknown, but we know Cates will be involved along with Tini Howard, Matthew Rosenberg, and Vita Ayala. It’s an interesting prospect and I’m down for Cates, so I’m sure I’ll check out at least some of what spins out of this.

* With some unspecified legals hurdles cleared Miracleman is coming back once and for all in 2019, starting with reprinting those first two issues of The Silver Age and then finally going into Gaiman and Buckingham’s new issues wrapping up Silver Age and concluding the epic with The Dark Age. Not much to say, this is just really good news. Hopefully we get Apocrypha as well.

* Of all the rumors out in the ether, the oddest and most boring of the bunch has come true: Peter Tomasi is taking over Detective Comics with #994 in the runup to #1000 next year, with Doug Mahnke in tow. I guess we at least know James Tynion IV must have left of his own volition rather than being sidelined for a major new thing, because Tomasi ain’t that. This whole thing is just a big question mark, because...just, why? But at least it’ll look good.

* Heroes In Crisis is going to have Mitch Gerads handle a couple issues - while Clay Mann’s going to continue to do the big story, Gerads will do material focusing on individual heroes and more of the day-to-day stuff of Sanctuary as a facility. Obviously there’s only so much space for him to work with in a 7-issue mini, so very curious how much of the book will be his and how his segments will be their own thing while remaining a critical part of the whole.

* Scott Snyder talked more about Justice League, confirming what we all knew in that it’ll lead to an event comic in 2019, and revealing that Francis Manapul will be drawing the next Aquaman/Wonder Woman-centric arc (presumably Jorge Jimenez is coming back for the Superman-centric story after that, since Snyder’s already talked about his involvement in it on Twitter); he also mentioned the other Justice League-mirror Dark Knights will be returning. Perhaps most interesting though was this anecdote, picked up by Newsarama:  “Snyder said Grant Morrison told him he should have Superman fly the entire multiverse to another location, 'and the best thing would be waiting there.' Snyder asked what was there, and Morrison said 'Marvel!' Morrison (perhaps jokingly?) pitched that Snyder should have Superman fly DC to the Marvel Universe.” Obviously the latter half is a goof, but sans context and being able to actually hear Snyder’s voice it’s hard to tell if this is just a hilarious story of Morrison tossing around great weird ideas, or if this is actually a legit tease for an amazing Superman moment down the line given the multiverse is at stake with the long-term plot of the book.

* Speaking of which, forgot to mention in my initial reaction to The Green Lantern yesterday - it’s also weird that Morrison’s doing something non-apocalyptic with Hal, because the IMMEDIATE assumption when Justice League #1 revealed that he had learned about the multiverse dying offscreen was that that was something Morrison was going to be dealing with in tandem with Justice League. You’d think that’d be Hal’s top priority in his own book at the moment, and given Morrison and Snyder are pretty tight at the moment, I have to imagine that’s something Morrison will acknowledge one way or another.

* Snyder will also be doing a 6-issue Batman Who Laughs miniseries with Jock spinning out of Justice League, where he goes about some mission with another Dark Multiverse Batman, one who grabbed Joe Chill’s gun in the alley and shot him, going on to basically be Bat-Punisher. If this were by anyone but Snyder it would be a hard pass with how much I hated the Batman Who Laughs oneshot, but I’m curious to see him do this bizarro take on his favorite comics mythology and maybe flesh out the concept into something as interesting as its potential. Hopefully he’ll get to show some of the interesting Dark Knights ideas he discussed having considered for Metal in interviews, such as a Batman made up of the iconography of all his villains, or a Bruce Wayne raised in Arkham Asylum when he cracked after his parents’ deaths who somehow mystically merged with it.

* Finally, we got the first trailer for Glass. I loved Unbreakable, never saw and never intend to see Split, and Shyamalan’s reputation precedes him (I’ve only seen the one film in his oevure, and while Split picked up solid reviews, that was apparently written around the same time as Unbreakable, whereas I believe this is all modern), so not sure whether I’ll be checking it out. Well, I mean, I will, but I don’t know if that’ll be opening weekend or in five years on Netflix.

[jmsa1287]

'American Vandal' Kills the Joke in its Second Season

Hi I wrote about the second season of “American Vandal” which is a disappointment, considering how delightful and brilliant Season 1 is.

It's nearly impossible to recapture lightning in a bottle.

The investigative podcast "Serial" became a phenomenon when it debuted in late 2014. Exploring the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, the "This American Life" spinoff got so big, it gave a boom to the podcast industry as well as sparking a true crime wave on TV. Shortly after, two true crime series - HBO's "The Jinx" and Netflix's "Making a Murderer" - became huge cultural lightning rods and over the last few years, we've been hit with a deluge of true crime series on the small screen. It's no surprise that we eventually got the true crime parody series "American Vandal" last year.

"American Vandal" has more in common with "Serial" than the "true crime" genre. Almost a year after its first season, "Serial" returned with a highly anticipated follow up. This time, host and producer Sarah Koenig focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held captive for five years by the Taliban and later charged with desertion. Though it was a story that made national headlines - unlike the small murder case that Season 1 centered on - the enthusiasm around the podcast's second effort was definitely muted, proving Season 1 was a once-in-a-lifetime sensation.

Blending lowbrow humor with the sophistication of this new wave of true crime, the first season of "American Vandal" was a surprise hit for Netflix and went on to win a Peabody Award. The premise is simple: Two high students - Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck) - investigate a costly prank where someone spray-painted 27 penises on the faculty's cars. The mockumentary centered on the alleged culprit, burnout senior "class clown" Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro in a breakout role).

With just eight, half-hour length episodes, "American Vandal" Season 1 was a delight. It brilliantly spoofed new true crime shows with overdramatic drone shots, complicated timeline breakdowns, and in-depth analysis on the way people draw penises. The comedy perfectly walked the tightrope between ridiculousness and mystery. Unfortunately, "American Vandal" Season 2, which hits Netflix on Friday, pales in comparison in almost every way to its first installment. The show follows the same format - nearly to a tee - and nearly kills the joke that made Season 1 a success.

"American Vandal" - the show within the show that Peter and Sam created and released online - became so popular, the duo are hit with thousands of emails from students around the country, begging them to help catch those behind pranks plaguing their school. The teens finally answer a message by a student from St. Bernardine, a ritzy private Catholic high school in Bellevue, Washington and travel there to crack the case and film it as part of their senior project.

They learn about a recent incident that occurred at the school called "The Brown Out." The heinous act was carried out by an anonymous culprit who bills himself as "The Turd Burglar." The Turd Burglar, ostensibly a student at the school, is said to have spiked the school's popular lemonade dispenser during lunchtime with an uber-strong laxative, sparking a large number of students at the school to suddenly and literally shit their pants. With bathrooms quickly being occupied, several students were forced to relieve themselves anywhere they can, completely humiliating them. The moment, recorded by cellphone-carrying students, is nauseating, stressful and hilarious. And it turns out it's not The Turd Burglar's only prank. With only an Instagram account, the crappy criminal pulls off a few other poop related pranks all while taunting the school and a handful of select students via social media.

Like in Season 1, "American Vandal" has another possibly falsely accused suspect at the center of Season 2: Much of Peter and Sam's sleuthing is focused on whether or not Kevin McClain (Travis Tope), a very specific type of high school weirdo (think a theater geek crossed with a 4Chan basement nerd), is The Turd Burglar. Kevin confessed to pulling off The Brown Out but things quickly get complicated. Much of Season 2 hinges on Kevin but Tope is no Tatro. The absence of Tatro's Dylan is a huge hole in the season and, despite starting off solidly, "American Vandal" struggles to find its footing and never captures the same kind of Season 1 magic. That's not to say Tope is bad here - he's a committed young actor, completely embodying Kevin and his tea-huffing freakishness. Season 2 falters mostly because it feels like a lesser carbon copy of Season 1.

The show also does not flesh out the characters around Kevin, making Season 2 feel like a one-dimensional world - the complete opposite of the fully realized Season 1. Besides Kevin, the only other character "American Vandal" successfully creates is DeMarcus Tillman (Melvin Gregg), St. Bernardine's top basketball player and an all-around popular guy. Like Dylan and Kevin, DeMarcus is a hilarious archetype that gets skewered and Gregg's great performance only enhances bringing DeMarcus to life. Kevin and DeMarcus are fun characters but it's not enough and it's hard to latch onto any of the characters in Season 2, including Peter and Sam who have very little development this time around. (Those who watched Season 1 will remember the surprising rift between the friends.) With flat characters, it's hard to care about the (overly complicated and twisty) pranks at play.

Like Season 1, "American Vandal" Season 2 also has just eight, half-hour episodes, all of which were made available for review. It's a digestible format and a near-perfect time length - you never have to worry that the comedy will outstay its welcome. Even so, Season 2 is a disappointing return, lacking the compelling tone that made Season 1 a fantastic watch. "American Vandal" Season 2 proves you can't trade dicks for poop; there's an art behind even the dumbest jokes.

[raximoweek]

An insight into Cristina’s life by C. Bonadincel

You wake up to 45 text messages from your son Máximo waiting to be answered on your phone.  Check your facebook/twitter/Instagram and you have 450 likes on the selfie you took of yourself with a caption making fun of our current President.  You want more attention though, so you take a shower, put on a shirt that whoops! accidentally lets the side of your bra show, put on 4 whole pencil’s worth of eyeliner to go from a 9.5/10 to a 10/10, and snap a quick selfie of yourself that you quickly upload to your social media accounts with some sarcastic emojis.  Maybe this one will get you 4500 likes.

Your driver takes you to the Senate in a car that cost 365,283 whole Argentinian pesos.  Before you get out you make a quick video complaining about all the injustices done to you by Federal Justice Claudio Bonadio : (  Got to keep the public talking about you! you laugh to yourself.  As you walk into the Congress building, you pass several Federal Justices on the street. They all stare at you as you pass. Most of them are actually concerned with bringing justice to the nation of Argentina and punishing its most heinous white-collar criminals.  Gross! You ignore them.  These losers spend their whole adult life jerking off to persecuting their political opponents, and they still only earn one million pesos per year—legally.

You stop to get your usual morning diet fruit salad on the way.  Have to maintain all 140 pounds of you!  The good-looking boy serves you and tries chatting you up again, but he’s too good looking, nothing like your crude, hulking son Máximo or the rotting corpse of your dead husband who it’s time to get over.  You know he’s going to ask you out one day, but you’ll end up rejecting him because you only fuck people with the last name of Kirchner.  You don’t mind the attention though.

Several men stare at your cleavage and the bruises on your leg that conveniently show through your tights as you resume your walk.  It’s so hard to be such a radiant goddess.  You enter your 106,000 pesos per year Senate job which you had to get by manipulating the voters due to being a mentally ill degenerate with no competence or leadership skills who’s thirsty for power.  You notice many of your male political opponents are there. The Senate is sexist.  Typical.  You greet all of your coworkers: Máximo’s handsome young friend from La Cámpora, Axel Kicillof your young, brilliant Chad former minister of economy, Máximo’s other handsome young friend from La Cámpora, Hot Blonde Female Senator who you’re probably fucking, and nemesis from the opposing party Vice President Gabriela Michetti (in a wheelchair, so she can’t even sit on the special throne!)  Of course the “less corrupt” political party is currently in office.  They get all the good jobs now!  But that would change.  We’re fighting to get me—I mean, us--back into power! You remember how Kim Il-Sung of North Korea is still considered the leader of the nation even after his death. Good on him, you think to yourself.

You ask the Vice President to shut up and let you speak and she immediately does so.  You cut a grape from your fruit salad in half because grapes have such a high caloric content and demand that a bottle of low-sodium mineral water be brought to your desk.  Máximo’s young Chad friends have to come over to flirt with you, so you make the entire Senate wait for you to begin your egocentric ramblings.  Then you take the floor and talk for 45 minutes about how you’re being persecuted for your beliefs and then answer another 45 texts from Máximo.  Then leader of the majority Miguel Pichetto asks to speak.  He can be so conceited sometimes thinking anyone cares what he has to say! But at least this gives you time to go to the bathroom.  You stand up and make sure to announce how unfair it is that the bathroom is so far away while you pretend to be leaving the room quietly and respectfully.  Before you know it, it’s lunchtime and you hide in your office and stuff your face with your favorite fried pig intestines so no one sees you eating anything other than fruit salad and grilled chicken.

Around 2pm another senator from your party comes and jokingly asks if you’re doing any work.  You laugh and tell him you don’t need to work to make money and smile sexily at him (because you’re talking about all your laundered money).  You spend the rest of your time in the Senate ranting on Facebook about how Federal Justice Claudio Bonadio has accused you of colluding with Iran.  What an ugly, fat son of a bitch he is!  Your post from this morning now has 450,000 likes.  You have several text messages from Máximo letting you know he wants to get dinner tonight.  So far, he’s asked for dinner 3 times and for pre-dinner drinks 4 times. You check Página|12, the one news site in the country that understands how oppressed you and other Kirchnerite policians are (but especially you).  You see an article about how Federal Justice Claudio Bonadio should be removed from the Iran case because he holds a grudge against you and is very corrupt besides. You share the article and say how hard it is for you that this competent, experienced judge is persecuting you and your family.  You get 45 likes and 45 comments agreeing with you and saying that this innocent and ruggedly handsome enforcer of the law of the land should go to hell.

After work you head back to your apartment and do 30 minutes of running on the treadmill with smoke pouring out of your ears while watching the news anchors on TV talk about your criminal behavior.  You notice your personal trainer Luciana staring at you from the weights section. She’s pretty hot, but topping you is a privilege that she has to repeatedly earn, so you put your headphones in to listen to the Gladiator soundtrack.  You wouldn’t dare take a selfie when you’re done with the treadmill, because you don’t want the public seeing what you look like with most of your eye makeup sweated off. You head off to the water cooler to drink another glass of low-sodium mineral water.  Luciana tries to make conversation with you.  She’s hot and attractively younger than you, but her last name isn’t Kirchner, so you politely make it clear that you’re not interested (today).

You already have several more likes on your reposted article about angel of justice Bonadio and more comments about how heartless he is to persecute the best president the country has ever had.  Máximo has now asked you to go out for dinner with him 6 times.  You text him 4 times and organize the night and make sure to use lots of heart emojis.  You get home and say hi to your poodle Lolita and ignore your daughter Florencia.  She’s 27 and still a vegan.  She’s always cared about the environment, stood up for the rights of dairy cows and shit like that.  Now her baby daddy dumped her because of how obsessed with soy milk and social justice she is.  Maybe if she showed some ambition like you did.  You got into politics relatively early on because the electorate noticed how charming, sexy, and honest you are.  She was always Dad’s favorite though, and never appreciated you enough before he died.  She could be such a selfish bitch sometimes.

You call your 89 year-old mom and tell her that you want to buy a new Birkin bag but don’t want to use any of the funds you’ve thoughtfully embezzled from public works projects.  She gives you 6,088,350 pesos that she earned from scamming the Post Office.  You say thank you, even though you know you don’t really need it because you recently had a net worth of 80 million USD.  You deserve it for simply being Cristina Kirchner.

You decide it’s time to meet up with Máximo.  You need protection out on the street though in case the people who have seen through your grating charisma and realize what a sexy piece of shit you really are decide to throw eggs at you again.  You text some of Máximo’s buff, Chad friends from La Cámpora to come walk with you. You take fifty selfies and a dozen videos for your YouTube channel while you’re walking down the street.  Some men who also happen to work as federal judges and prosecutors call out to you about how immoral you are, and you and your Chad posse laugh hilariously.  All these guys aren’t getting laid, right?  Like, why do they even bother?

As soon as you get to the restaurant Máximo comes to greet you and plies you with expensive wine.  You don’t really plan on staying though because you want to have a private night with your good for nothing Chad son who’s never had a job interview in his life.  You make sure to keep his handsome male friends from La Cámpora there so they can protect Máximo’s blubbery body and lack of a law degree too.

After 4 men come to talk to you and tell you they definitely don’t believe that you allegedly ordered the murder of a prosecutor who was about to accuse you of collusion with Iran, which gets them kisses on the cheek from you, you abandon the restaurant and head off down the street with Máximo.  People greet him with respect even though he has no degrees from institutions of higher learning and owns 45 SUVs purchased with stolen money.  Your Chad bodyguards get in between you and Máximo and the innocent Argentinian citizens who you proclaim to love so much who are demanding you answer for your disgraceful crimes and complete lack of disrespect for our justice system, especially learnèd and powerful Federal Justice Claudio Bonadio. Máximo takes a video of you two walking down the street while ignoring the demands of your countrymen.  You can’t stop laughing at how empowered it makes you feel to ignore this persecution.  This is great!

At home you and Máximo sit close together on your expensive imported couch and talk because literally no one matters to you other than the degenerates in your family.  Máximo tells you how he’s broken up with his latest girlfriend, just another one in a series of girls who look like a broke-ass version of you.  You tell him how you approve of this because she was a distraction—Kirchners need to stick together.  That’s why you refuse to testify in your court appearance and won’t meet Federal Justice Claudio Bonadio’s eyes when he greets you.  Some guys can be so pathetic.  Your lawyer Gregorio is texting you.  He is a pretty hot Chad and you’ve considered ****ing him to see if that will get you free legal representation and perhaps inspire him to bribe the jury (with his own money, not yours).  Your degenerate son Máximo gets jealous so you stop replying.  The only thing you love more than defrauding and deceiving an entire country while dressing like an oversexed mom is your son who always seems to get girlfriends even though he has accomplished nothing in life (certainly nothing like going to law school and becoming a Federal Justice, anyway).  You make plans to have Máximo spend the night. You ask him which of your apartment’s 5 bedrooms he’d like to sleep in and he says he wants to sleep in yours. Gregorio is still texting you but you have long since stopped replying.  Even your Chad lawyer is kind of acting like a loser right now.  You tell Máximo that of course he can sleep in your bed with you because he’s such a big strong boy who spends Mommy’s laundered money so well. He is a literally perfect Kirchner. You remember Florencia telling you that it’s weird that Máximo still likes to sleep in your bed at age 40, yet she’s the one sleeping alone tonight.  You laugh to yourself. She must be doing something wrong.  She’s obviously not worthy of the kind of love you and Máximo share.

After a night as deviant as you are, you wake up to Luciana asking if you’ll have hot girl-on-girl sex with her today, your mom sending you her fraudulent money for your new Birkin bag, and 450 comments on a leaked photo someone took of you on the treadmill saying you look good even with your 45 pounds of mascara smeared all over your face.  It’s only 9am.  Máximo brings you cake in bed and you post another article trashing the blameless silver fox Federal Justice Claudio Bonadio on all your social media profiles.  Today is going to be a good day!

[genericdubstep]

hey do you haven any links for the videos where they say this stuff? I like RLM but I don't want to watch them anymore if they're really that bad, I always got a bad vibe from Rich Evans but idk

They’ve used “retard” as an insult many times since the beginning. Just off the top of my head I remember it in the Star Wars episode 3 Plinkett video, the Amazing Spider-Man Half in the Bag episode, and if you want an especially heinous example, they made an animated Gummi Bears parody at some point where the “Retard Bear” eats the villain. They deleted all their animation videos though but not because they were offensive, just because the animation was ass.

Mike uses “tranny” as an insult in the Force Awakens Plinkett video. This is the same video where he claims that Star Wars doesn’t need black characters because it’s “above race”. Meanwhile he shows a video of a black kid playing with an Obi-Wan figure, so I guess black kids doesn’t need black role models because they like Obi-Wan.

Rich uses autism as an insult around the 31:30 mark in Best Of The Worst episode 37. After calling someone autistic, Mike says “you’ve done that before and everyone freaked out”, so this wasn’t the first time. Rich responds to this with “I don’t give a shit, he’s autistic”. Then he goes on to rant about political correctness. “If you can’t handle a word you don’t like, grow a fucking spine. Go get laid you virgins”. While Rich is ranting, Mike jokes about “#autism-shaming”, so he clearly doesn’t think ableism is a problem in the slightest. This gross video now has over a million views.

In the same video they have a running gag where Rich yells out “AIDS!” because they think it would be hilarious if the wheel landed on an educational video about AIDS. Cuz you know, a disease that kills 7,000 gay men in the US every year is absolutely hilarious, right? Great allies.

In the same video AGAIN, they make fun of a guy that died and says “thank god he’s dead” just because they disliked his harmless mushroom movie.

They claim that the Ghostbusters reboot sexism backlash is a hoax by Sony to start drama in the “Scientist Man Analyses Ghostbusters (2017)” video. This video is a follow-up to the “Rich Reacts to Ghostbusters (2017)” where Rich basically calls the movie shit based on nothing but the idea of a female Ghostbusters movie.

In the Half in the Bag Captain America: Civil War episode, they keep referring to Falcon, War Machine and Black Panther as “the black ones”. They refer to everyone else by name, but when they refer to these characters they just call them “the black young one, the black old one and the black one with an accent”. The joke is that all black people are the same.

The “#autism-shaming” thing is actually a running gag where they complain about “PC” terms. They’ve also laughed at “#fat-shaming” and “#midget-shaming” (yes, that’s what they called it) just to name a few. This is just a different version of the “#triggered” joke that all other edgelords makes.

They’ve made rape jokes since the beginning. The Plinkett videos has many gags where the entire joke is that he kidnaps, rapes and murders women. There was also a gag where Plinkett jerked off to kids. And later in (i believe) Half in the Bag, they made a character called “Rape-bot 5,000″ or some shit.

They’ll often insult movies about minorities without even watching them. They attacked The Danish Girl (a movie about a transgender person) and The Fault In Our Stars (a movie about a disabled person) and called them “pretentious oscar-bait” before even watching them, based on nothing but the premise.

I haven’t provided links because their videos makes me uncomfortable (i only looked up the timestamp for the autism rant because it’s a great example of how shitty they are) but you can easily look up any of these videos except the Gummi Bears one. RedLetterMedia has never tried to hide that they’re shitty, ableist, transphobic edgelords and any of their hardcore fans are well aware of this.

And these are just the videos that I happen to have watched or heard other people complain about. There are literally hundreds of Best of the Worst and Half in the Bag episodes I haven’t watched where they probably say horrible shit too.

So yeah, RedLetterMedia are fucking garbage and you can consider this a callout.

[bakechochin]

The Book Ramblings of May

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

[apologies for the delay with this one: I was binging Good Omens and contemplating spending 200 quid on a pair of shades to match Crowley’s sweet pair]

Falstaff - Robert Nye I’ll admit that I was ready to embrace this book as fucking great right from the word go, because it seemed so up my alley; Falstaff is a titan of the carnivalesque and one of my very favourite Shakespeare characters, and so from the very premise I figured that there was very little that could go wrong. The book takes the form of the memoirs of Sir John Falstolf (no, I don’t know about the ever-changing name spelling nonsense) told over the course of a hundred days, and becomes a journey through history told from the perspective of the fat drunk knight and interjected with lengthy insults to his cook or scribes and even lengthier songs of praise for his own cock or his innumerable sexual exploits. Everything about this is fucking great. In the course of the book you’re given incredibly evocative descriptions of carnivals or tavern debauchery, followed by hilarious anecdotes on fantastically crude subjects, and holding it all together is a narrative voice that can effectively handle both the grandiose reminiscing and the tales of shagging and farting. I also want to praise this book’s fantastic blending of the characters of Shakespeare and other popular fictions of the time with the characteristic Falstaff flare, including one fucking genius link between the character of Bardolph and the stories of the pig-faced woman Tannakin Skinker. Shakespeare’s characters probably are not that difficult to adapt, or at least not inasmuch as adapting the character traits that I perceive as responsible for making Shakespeare’s characters great - you’ll inevitably get some people arguing that Falstaff is Shakespeare’s greatest character because of his complexity, but for me the fact that he is a corpulent tanked-up knight bloated at the seams with sack and fabricated tales of grandeur is enough to make him a quality guy. The archetype is captured splendidly by Nye, but the book doesn’t half remind us of how fucking amazing Shakespearean dialogue is by comparison to Nye’s attempts at Falstaffian humour, and thereby highlights the difference between Shakespeare’s Falstaff and the basic character shape. The book delves into numerous specific events of I Henry IV (and a couple from 2 Henry IV), often quoting lines from Shakespeare’s play verbatim, much to the deficit of the rest of the text that has to string it all together with writing that obviously is not up to snuff with Shakespeare’s amazing writing. The dedication to the plays from which Falstaff was spawned seems at times odd, when a good few chapters are dedicated to extrapolating on one minor event in Part 1, which, to my understanding, was but one of the jests that Hal pulled on Falstaff, and but one of the instances that he was called out for his obvious bullshitting. If Falstaff was repeatedly made a fool of by Hal, he wouldn’t have directly addressed only one of said instances as if it was a big deal, but of course, it was a scene in the play and so it had to be adapted in this book. Whether this was down to Nye not having faith in his own ability to make up more pranks that Hal pulled on Falstaff, or simply because he knew that he had to write in this sequence because he needed a direct link to the play, is a question that I can’t really answer. But let’s talk about Falstaff’s bullshitting, and the complexities that arise from it. Falstaff’s whole shtick is that he is a mighty bullshitter, spinning yarns of heroic exploits and trying to talk his way out of trouble, and thus it stands to reason that his memoirs would reflect this, right? As I first went into the book, I was fully taken in by what I was reading, for although it was dumb, the story was centralised within a world of farce and Rabelaisian carnival, a world in which French armies can be defeated by drunken Englishmen brandishing hogsheads for weapons, men can eat enough food for seven men and still demand dessert, Irishmen will stab you up the arse from below while you sit on the bog, and every woman is inexplicably attracted to a fat drunken knight. It also mythologised Falstaff’s character, that he was conceived atop the knob of the Cerne Abbas giant and that his father died from laughing at nothing in particular. Is this not enough to make the story worthwhile? Would second-guessing Falstaff’s words at every turn, cross-referencing them with what we know of the truth from the Shakespeare plays, not only render the reading experience a pointless trudge, but demystify this world of carnivalesque absurdity? Falstaff’s overblown postulating on whether or not he is lying, or indeed his reasons for lying, are enough to satisfy me without contemplating the book from a meta perspective. There is also the character Scrope, who acts as one of Falstaff’s scribes and uses his position to call out Falstaff’s fabrications for us in a dramatic way, but a) there are discrepancies in his so-called truths and b) he’s a colossal dickhead, so regardless of Scrope’s presence in the story, we’re given the option to still side entirely with Falstaff and his comical version of reality. This is my perspective, but it is worth considering that I am a vacuous fool incapable of complex thought, so adopt my opinions with caution. I do, perhaps, have a few criticisms about Falstaff’s gratuitous descriptions of sexual escapades, not because I’m a prude who can’t stand the mention of the secrets of our own sinful bodies, nor even because it is unjustified in the narrative (because of course Falstaff is going to brag and give too much detail, if not for the sake of posterity than to make his servant scribes uneasy), but because I don’t feel that it fits the comedic tone of the text. Shagging is a staple of fabliaux and folksongs, but the comedy comes from who’s doing the shagging, or where they’re doing the shagging, or the extraneous circumstances surrounding the shagging. This book just describes shagging, which is funny when considering, as mentioned above, the fact that Falstaff within the story is including such titillating or sensational tidbits to vex his scribes (a strand which reaches its high point when Falstaff makes his amanuensis transcribe his words WHILE he is in the act of shagging), but taken as it is, it doesn’t seem in line with the rest of the book and its comedy. When this story has to plod on without its Falstaff-centric source material (or indeed, even from 2 Henry IV, in which Falstaff doesn’t really do a whole lot), it can get rather tedious as it becomes a mere listing of historical events and Falstaff’s minor parts in them, but at that point the book is rather winding down anyway, so perhaps I can’t complain too much. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YEAH, IF YOU’RE INTO SHAKESPEARE

The Hike - Drew Magary I picked this book up because I’d heard it compared to The Third Policeman in terms of it being a journey narrative, and I had a hankering for a book in which the story is not driven by the actions of the character, but rather the situation that they were thrown into, mainly because I’m interested in seeing how different authors go about doing this and not making the resulting narrative crap. Immediately upon going into this book, the acerbic narrative voice reminded me of John Dies at the End, and as the book continued and began to unveil other similarities, most egregiously the technique of using the bizarre weird reality-warping and monster-centric nonsense as a means of juxtaposing or disguising the book’s true content, that of the heinous DMC (that is, the deep meaningful conversation), I thought that I was in trouble. The reason why this is a book ramble, and not just a flat-out review, is that at this point I feel like I’m just rambling about the broad genre of contemporary American horror-centric weird fiction, and so to go through the book point-by-point may be a tad redundant when we already know exactly what to expect from the genre; a review would in all probability just devolve into quibbling about minor semantics. The story follows a man who, getting lost on a hike, stumbles into a world of nightmares and oddities, half of which were presumably inspired by the author’s obscure fears and the rest being absurd non-sequiturs to amp up the kookiness. It is nothing if not memorable, with its foul-mouthed crabs and murderous men wearing the faces of Rottweilers and whatnot. The book eventually develops to be smarter and more twisty-turny than such a randomly-selected clusterfuck of ideas might suggest, but these moments become transitory stops scattered amidst the rambling improvisational D&D campaign that is the main narrative. The story does have a habit of periodically bringing us to a formative experience in our protagonist’s life in the form of dream visions, with some interesting blurring between reality and fiction that doesn’t detract from the sheer fucking ludicrousness of the amount of shit that our protagonist has gone through, or at least the sensational self-reflective tone of these events’ retellings. This put me in mind of John Dies at the End, as did an ineffable sense of self-importance that the protagonist of this book seems to impart. I can’t properly word it, but there’s something to our protagonist’s narration, in that we see the world through his eyes but the retelling seems embellished somewhat to make him seem better off, and the fact that I noticed this at all speaks to me of shoddy characterisation. That’s not to say that the character is an unflappable badass the whole way through the story; it just seems like the character beats are cookie-cutter and that his moments of weakness or breakdown only occur because they have to, in order to make us feel sympathy for him. Both this book and John Dies at the End utilise new nomenclature on the fly for the horrors they find, but in all cases it just seems so pre-meditated, and the insistence on using these terms makes it seem like we ought to be on board with them as well, regardless of how stupid they are. Some of these terms are also tinged with an element of our narrator’s feelings of repulsion or standoffishness, in a manner similar to a downtrodden kid trying to stand up to a bully by referring to him with an insulting nickname. It’s all just rather tonally dissonant, the fact that we have to align with and appreciate our protagonist juxtaposed with the reality of our protagonist not really being that likeable. John Dies at the End (or at least its sequel) attempts to obfuscate the angst of its protagonist by admitting at the end to having a retrospective ghost writer, attributing the changes to the story and relatively inconsistent character fuckery to an unreliable narrator and details being altered in post, but this book lacks this safety net. What this book does have at the end is a bit of life-affirming reality-changing nonsense, and more importantly a fucking sweet twist at the end which, whilst not having much to do with the rest of the story (being dependent on memories and characters who didn’t have much to do with the overall narrative), leaves the story on a bittersweet note. In all my time spent reading classic literature, I’ve really missed experiencing twists that a) I didn’t already know about or wouldn’t have predicted, and b) actually have some fucking oomph. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: PROBABLY

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - Mark Twain The question of authorial intent loomed over me as I begun reading this book. The introduction places the story firmly within the framework of Twain’s own righteous vengeance at the age he lived in, whereas I was under the impression that the book was naught but a dumb burlesque of middle English romances with some fun anachronisms thrown in for comedic effect. I thought that Twain’s ‘dream of being a knight errant in armour’ was funny as shit, but according to this introduction writer geezer Justin Kaplan (who apparently knows a better way of enjoying the book than myself), Twain’s dream ought to be interpreted as ‘a nightmare of being swaddled in iron, confined and helpless, just as Mark Twain was often to feel confined and helpless in his way of life’. As such, I sought advice from my friend, who told me to just go in with my unsophisticated cap on and I’ll be fine, and also took solace in Twain’s squib 1601, his exercise emulating my main man Rabelais in which famous Elizabethans hit the shit about shit and shagging, to adopt the mentality that Twain is just fucking about and that I don’t need to think too much about what I’m reading. Now I’ve sat through enough seminars of medieval literature to have heard every imaginable inane comment from every single vacuous shitwit grabbing at the lowest hanging fruit possible when it comes to pointing out the silliness of Arthurian romances; I’m a dab fucking hand, albeit unwillingly, at recognising all of this shit, and at suppressing my groans when slack-jawed fuckheads go over the same empty points about how middle English romances are ever so daft. “I mean, what’s up with all these knights running around attacking each other for no reason?!? That doesn’t make much sense!!” they all opine to each other, confident that they’re bringing something original and nuanced to the conversation, to jolly plaudits and insufferable guffaws. (No I’m not bitter about this, I have no idea what you’re talking about). Twain of course touches on all the usual points that you’d expect in a romance parody, but I needn’t have braced myself for an onslaught of unoriginality, as he does so with fantastic wit and evokes an actual comedic image rather than just commenting on the world’s lack of logic. He paints a delightful picture of naive and foolish knights howling with laughter at slapstick and ooo-ing and ah-ing at one another’s exaggerated tales, which is not only a great representation of Arthurian knights to explain their questionable behaviours, but justifies how they are so easily swayed and led by our protagonist Hank Morgan, the eponymous Yankee. I’m also a great fan as to how far they take the delusions of the Arthurian chaps to, believing with complete conviction that a swine pen is an ogre’s castle and that the pigs within are kidnapped noblewomen; there’s a lot of fun to be had with this, and as absurd as it seems, I’m glad that the explanation isn’t any more complex than it just being a result of everyone’s unyielding belief in everything. Our protagonist sets out to whip this century into something resembling nineteenth-century society, and putting aside the suspension of disbelief we must have in Hank’s apparent knowledge of every-fucking-thing imaginable required to accomplish this transformation (from building phone lines and electric fences to a ludicrously precise knowledge of the timing of eclipses), the story is a great romp of technology trumping magic and the grim realities of an unfair world, with some fantastic memorable scenes here and there. The plot somewhat meanders, the stories of Arthurian legend being rather directionless beyond the overarching call for adventure, and so we get a bit of that and we get a bit of blending in with peasant life, but overall the book is made up of a series of encounters and problems to overcome, which is fine to read for the most part (for some adventures are more fun than others). Though I want to pooh-pooh the idea that the story is a castigation or attack on the political structures and struggles of the time, and indeed can continue to pooh-pooh it so long as such content is if not subliminal than overshadowed by the story’s fun content, this unfortunately bubbles to the surface in an overt form when the book draws to a close, with a swift arrival of reality and sudden need for a bloody war. The mask of fun burlesque is stripped away to give us a galling look at a stubborn England, the denizens of which would rather die than change their faulty unfair ways. It’s not enough to tarnish the rest of the book, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth, not because it’s an objectively bad thing but because scathing attacks of that calibre and of that level of overtness seemed to come rather out of left field. The transformation of the book from one thing to the next is dependent on a swift plot progression that occurs in a short period of time and is conveyed by a massive exposition dump which rushes through the last chapter of the Morte D’Arthur and plunges us into a fight between the Church and our protagonist, a fight that the story, apparently now being a treatise on the inability for people to change and our helplessness in altering the state of things, must regrettably end with our hero losing. But now I’m prattling on about an approach to the text that I was adamant I was not going to take. Don’t let it tarnish the rest of the book; that’s all still good shit. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YEAH PROBABLY

Tales of the German Imagination (trans. by Peter Wortsman): - ‘The Singing Bone’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and ‘The Children of Hameln’ (the Brothers Grimm) - I struggle to place the Grimms fairy tales in terms of an analytical approach, and so it’ll suffice to say that these stories are exactly what you’d expect from the Grimms, in that they’re short and dark and make for easy reading - ‘Rune Mountain’ (Ludwig Tieck) - a proper romanticism story with a fantastic dream-like storytelling tone and incredibly evocative imagery throughout - ’St Cecelia or the Power of Music’ (Heinrich von Kleist) - a well-written actualisation of a cool suspenseful horror story concept with a few nice spooky bits, albeit with a rather slow middle and generally anticlimactic end - ‘Peter Schlemiel’ (Adelbert von Chamisso) - an amazing idea for a story that, while bogged down with unexplained magical objects straight out of Hoffmann’s fairy tales popping up every now and then to take the story in weird directions, and based on a social ostracisation that really does not seem like as big a deal as the story makes it out to be, is still very enjoyable - ’The Marble Statue’ (Josef von Eichendorff) - another story that brings to mind Hoffmann’s fairy tales (which I should perhaps instead just consider the archetype for German romanticism?), this time in terms of its romantic setting and soppy protagonist, and indeed its dumb allegorical dream-quest nonsense ending - ‘My Gmunden’ (Peter Altenberg) - so short that I didn’t really know what I was meant to be laughing at - ‘The Magic Egg’ and ‘A New Kind of Plaything’ (Mynona) - absolutely amazing little snippets of madness and laughter at oddity, the first story being an absurdist exercise in stupidity with a cast-aside veneer of meaning to the story, and the second being a jolly examination of a ludicrous idea - ’The Seamstress’ (Rainer Maria Rilke) - a compelling and vaguely unsettling story with fantastic character descriptions of the titular seamstress and an ending that casts our narrator adrift - ‘The Island of Eternal Life’ (Georg Kaiser) - a short and enjoyable story of rapid cartoon-like escalation, albeit with an ending more befitting a cynical satire on humanity - ‘In the Penal Colony’ (Franz Kafka) - a story I’ve read before and my favourite of Kafka’s writings; it’s dark and compelling (if a bit long-winded at point when describing the intricacies of the machine), and has a fantastic culmination (specifically the fate of the Officer) with elements of regret and serious fucking brutality - ‘The Blackbird’ (Robert Musil) - possesses a narrative voice that, while philosophical and high-minded, was not enough to embellish the story’s rather boring content (or at least seemed a tad misused when utilised to describe warfare) - ‘The Lunatic’ (Georg Heym) - over-the-top and gruesome and overall fucking hilarious; godspeed to ridiculously hyperbolic depictions of madmen in literature - ‘A Conversation Concerning Legs’ (Alfred Lichtenstein) - a conversation on one absurd subject, with dialogue that possesses all the necessary elements to make the humour work; it’s matter-of-fact and occasionally stupidly verbose to juxtapose the oddity of the subject matter, there’s rapid escalation from one train of thought to the next, and the conversation ends as abruptly and pointlessly as it had begun - ‘The Onion’ (Kurt Schwitters) - one of the first surrealist stories that I’ve read that has properly made me consider the ineffable and indescribable genius of the minds that concocted it, as well as having a pretty fucking sweet premise even before the text starts getting properly surreal and fragmented - ‘A Raw Recruit’ (Klabund) - a very funny story with a satirical premise I’m well used to - ‘The Time Saver’ (Ignaz Wrobel) - a story with an interesting abstract premise that is continuously built on in a manner that put me in mind of Krzhizhanovsky, but with an ending that didn’t seem very connected to the plot that preceded it (though perhaps that was somewhat the point) - ‘The Tattooed Portrait’ (Egon Erwin Kisch) - perhaps the funniest story in the collection, possessing the satire of people in power and absurd turns of fate to knock esteemed people down a peg as to be found in Gogol or my favourite Leskov short stories - ‘The Experiment or the Victory of the Children’ (Unica Zurn) - a story that takes the same general steps as Mynona’s ‘A New Kind of Plaything’, but seems less tongue-in-cheek and satirical and more like it’s trying to make some sort of grand statement - ’The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran’ (Ingeborg Bachmann) - purportedly a modern day fairy tale (albeit set in a mythologised past full of names for places and people I’m unfamiliar with), with the influence of modernism presumably being evident by the nonsense anticlimactic ending WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YEAH

[oovitus]

'Watching Your Toddler Drink Bathwater From a Hotel Tub', and other sordid tales of OCD exposure therapy

I've always been slightly more than casually OCD.  Not the flip-the-light-switch-seven-times-then-tap-dance-thru-three-choruses-of-I-Could've-Danced-All-Night-before-leaving-the-house kind, but more like the picks-stray-hairs-from-my-pillow-before-laying-down-and-always-on-the-lookout-for-dead-bodies kind.  I can't explain away the hair thing, but you try working for the body pickup service contracted to the medical examiner's office of a major metropolitan city for a year and *not* look for corpses on the side of every road and behind every hydrangea.  They're there, people. Now, this has always been sort of quirky and cute to most that know me, and those that may have thought otherwise have largely been kind enough to at least refrain from open mockery.  "Oh, that TheUnluckyPath, she sure is hilarious, over there picking microscopic lint fragments off of her dinosaur print Boden top".  But let me tell you, shit got real when Punky arrived four weeks early.  I had what turned out to be straight up post-partum OCD/anxiety that might blow your mind.  I had no idea that this was even a thing.  You learn some (but not near enough) about post-partum depression in med school.  But I swear I had no idea that you could get heightened OCD associated with the perinatal and/or post-partum period.  It was absolutely heinous.  I've never been so terrified in my whole life.  I spent the first eight weeks of my daughter's life expecting to find her dead, in any and all manner of common and/or obscure/tragic/horrifying/violent ways, every single time I left her for a snooze.  And, presumably because I've seen some serious things in my life, I could picture in excruciating detail every single aspect of the fictional scene.  I became nearly-paralyzed by stairs, where I would clutch her to my body and get an iron-grip on the banister like I was free-climbing Half Dome every time I walked out to the garage (down four steps.....just four).  I would imagine that she, at four weeks old, had somehow freakishly developed musculature, climbed out of her crib, and rolled underneath only to suffocate on a blanket that she had carelessly wrapped herself in.  I visualized her tiny electrocuted body lying next to a wall outlet, no joke.  My heart was repeatedly broken day in, day out, every time that I left her and cautiously returned to see what I would find.  Because, even though she was perfectly fine every time I came back(if not sometimes poopy), I imagined her dead in more ways than anyone could ever believe, and it felt so real to me each and every time.  And a little bit of me mourned her faux death, so many times a day. But that actually wasn't the worst of it.  The worst of it was that, in the majority of instances, when I imagined her death, it was me inflicting it.  It was me hurting her in all of those ways every time.  In the bath tub.  In the kitchen.  In her nursery.  It was so, so shocking and terrifying to have these scenes playing through my fractured, sleep-deprived mind.  The shred of myself that I was still clinging on to still knew that I did not ever want to hurt a single tiny spiky hair on my perfect little peanut's head, but it was so, so hard to reconcile this with the visions that I was constantly having.  I was beyond terrified.  I was so afraid to tell my husband about any of these things, for I didn't know if he would be afraid to leave me alone with her.  A few weeks in to this guilt-and-shame-filled struggle, I remembered an episode of the podcast Invisibilia that I had listened to the year prior.  It was called The Secret History of Thoughts, and it had made quite an impression on me at the time, especially the story about a young, just-married couple.  They had a relatively carefree and easygoing life, until one day out of the blue the guy started having obsessive thoughts of his wife being stabbed to death in their kitchen.  And he was the one doing it.  On one hand, he just *knew* that he had no desire to harm his wife in the least.  But on the other hand he was terrified that he must want to kill her, on some subconscious level, else why would he have such terrible visions? Turns out, he had a specific subtype of OCD called Harm OCD, in which "an individual experiences intrusive, unwanted, or distressing thoughts of causing harm, and this is inconsistent with the individual's values, beliefs and sense of self.  These obsessions typically center around the belief that one must be absolutely certain that they are in control at all times in order to ensure that they are not responsible for a violent or otherwise fatal act." (that's a nice definition provided by the website of the OCD Center of LA) So, I went back and listened to the episode again, and I felt an immediate sense of relief.  I remembered identifying with it to some degree the first time around, and feeling so deeply sorry for the poor bastard experiencing this terrifying thing.......but now I was was reasonably sure that I had become that poor bastard.  However, at least I had some hope that perhaps I could fix this somehow.  So I committed right then and there to myself that I would admit that I was having these thoughts to my lovely, compassionate therapist at my next appointment.  And, I did.  And doing so was the first step in my journey toward recovery from my post-partum Harm OCD.  And now that Punky is 2.5 years old, I'm back to my slightly more than casual OCD, right where I'm comfortable. And that brings me to watching my daughter drink hotel bathwater in a borderline sketchy extended stay motel during our cross-country move a few months ago. Having a toddler is a long-haul treatment course of exposure therapy for OCD, which turns out to be very effective for me in dealing with my issues.  Identify the intrusive thought, analyze it and decide if it's valid and why/why not, then accept it or dismiss it as it's happening.  Gives me the sense of control that I need to feel comfortable and safe.  And then I can go about my quirky day. Watching a toddler eat peanut butter off the floor of an airport.  Standing idly by while my daughter puts her hand in the toilet to retrieve a toy that needed a quick and refreshing swim.  Suppressing a scream as the kid covers the wall in crayon, grinning and singing with unabashed joy.  It's a constant barrage of borderline-horrifying acts of depravity, packaged in an adorable little bundle of cuteness and light.  And on that day a few months back, as I sat back on the yellowed and cracked tiles of that supposedly clean bathroom, I forced myself to let her be a toddler, feeling her way through the world around her and delighting in the new experience.  It was a super gross experience, but she thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.  And the reason that I finally got around to writing this five months after the fact is that it dawned on me a couple of nights ago that I haven't checked my pillow for stray hairs before falling (mostly happy and always exhausted) into bed at night since we moved to this new job and house.  There are tons of other stressors in life, including some new ones about kind of hating this new city, but overall life is pretty damn good.  And the older I get, the better of a handle that I have on my weird brain.  It's actually pretty interesting in here most of the time.........  :0) 'Watching Your Toddler Drink Bathwater From a Hotel Tub', and other sordid tales of OCD exposure therapy published first on

[kitliveblogs]

so this is basically a long-ass rant disguised as a review of Little Mermaid II that I originally posted on a different blog. maybe someday I'll actually get back to that blog, but for right now the theme is broken and I can't read anything on it anymore.

so for now, this will live right here instead c:

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Everyone's already taken their shots at the notoriously bad Disney sequels made in the late 90s and early 2000s. They're basically a walking punch line just by existing. But really, not all of them are completely worthless, and a couple of them are even pretty enjoyable, in a hilarious "I can't believe they actually made this" sort of way.

But I'm here to talk about only the most heinous of cinematic disasters. And let me make one thing perfectly clear: this isn't just Kit being a bitter and cranky old fogy with a chip on her shoulder because the shitty sequel ruined her childhood. I mean, I am bitter and cranky, but The Little Mermaid II couldn't possibly lower my opinion of the original -- there's not really anything lower than rock bottom. (yeah I hate The Little Mermaid fight me)

This movie is just flat out that bad.

word count: 3070

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I'm just gonna get one thing out of the way right now: nothing about this movie frustrates me more than the cast. This cast is made up of particularly well-known voice actors, and it's heartbreaking that they all got wrangled into doing this shit. Jodi Benson (Ariel), Samuel E. Wright (Sebastian), Kenneth Mars (King Triton), and Buddy Hackett (Scuttle) all return to reprise their roles from the first movie, and Pat Carroll who played Ursula is here to play Morgana, the main villain and Ursula's conveniently-never-before-mentioned sister. Yeah. They're doing that. And on top of getting so much of the original cast, they also roped in:

Rob Paulsen (Eric)

Tara Strong (Melody)

Clancy Brown (Undertow)

Cam Clarke (Flounder)

Rene freaking Auberjonois as Chef Louis

and one my favorite VAs Stephen Furst as Dash, one half of the Timon and Pumbaa knock-offs for the film.

When just looking at the cast list pisses me off this much... I don't think this is going to be much fun.

A quick recap for those who have been living under a rock since the late 70s: The Little Mermaid is the story of Ariel, daughter of the ruler of Atlantica, who at the completely world-wise age of 16 decides she's had enough of life under the sea and wants to live with the humans on land. She turns to the sea-witch Ursula for help, and in exchange for her voice is given a pair of legs and a deadline: kiss the man of her dreams within three days or join the shriveled legion of Ursula's previous victims. Naturally the witch doesn't play fair and Ariel fails, and King Triton offers himself in exchange for his daughter, thus sacrificing his washboard abs and obscenely powerful trident to Ursula. One climactic battle later, Ursula's dead, Triton turns Ariel into a human, and she and Prince Eric live happily ever after.

Until the sequel, of course, where Ariel and Eric have a baby girl, Melody, which makes me question the exact biology of this bizarre offspring. I mean just look at this thing:

She was just born but she's got a full head of hair and disturbingly large blue eyes. It's freakish. But anyway, this is where movie number 2 begins.

And we're off to a good start: smacked in the face with a terrible music number. I would say get used to those, but there aren't really enough in the movie to warrant it -- which is pretty bad when you consider this is supposed to be a musical. Also, "listen to Ariel's Melody"? That's... wow. I can't even say that's cute in a sarcastic way that's just terrible.

But oh no! The party is interrupted by Morgana, who is, as Sebastian so eloquently puts it:

Oh good. I can see we'll be dealing with truly ingenious writing here.

So after stealing the baby Melody, ranting and raving about being better than her sister Ursula, and attempting to feed the baby to a shark (all while Ariel, Eric, and Triton stand there doing absolutely nothing), Morgana flees to the arctic. Wait, the arctic? Well, alright, you need to escape pursuit to a barren wasteland, that's fair. I won't linger on this for now, as the geography problems will get a lot worse later.

One of the main MacGuffins of the movie is a gold locket with Melody's name inscribed on it, that projects an image of Atlantica and plays a lullaby when opened. King Triton was giving it to the baby before Morgana came onto the scene, and after failing to find her in a massive search of the sea, Triton drops it in the water and leaves. This strikes me as odd. Wouldn't you want to hang onto it? As a keepsake of your family? Or at the very least dispose of it more properly, just in case Melody might one day, oh I dunno, find it and realize her mother and father had been lying to her her entire life? Nah, I'm sure it'll be fine.

Fast forward 12 years. A giant wall has been built on the shore to keep Melody and the ocean apart, but being a tenacious kid she naturally figured out a way around it. Or rather, under it. Which raises the question: if this child could figure out a way out, why couldn't Morgana figure a way in? It would have been a simple matter to slip under the wall, scale the outside of the tower with her suction cup-riddled tentacles, and kidnap the baby to hold for ransom. Why was it so imperative to wait until Melody found the locket before enacting her plan to steal the trident?

Oh, yeah, that thing I mentioned before about her finding it? Lo and behold, she discovered the damn thing on one of her jaunts to collect seashells (which are comically huge by the way). If only Triton had done literally anything else with it, this whole mess might have been avoided.

But no time to worry about that now; there's a birthday party to attend!

Through a convoluted mess of trying to hide her seashells and pretend she'd been in her room the entire time, Melody accidentally ties Sebastian into the dorky bow on the back of her party dress. I'm sure this will have no consequences down the line at all--

Huh. Didn't see that one coming. This leads to a ridiculous scene of Chef Louis chasing Sebastian around the ballroom like some sort of crazed lunatic. I know this was a thing from the first movie, but this guy is out of his fucking gourd; why do they keep him around? Ultimately, Melody runs off to her room out of embarrassment.

I really don't want to linger on anything for too long since this movie doesn't deserve that much energy, but there's two things about this scene I need to address. One: so basically if Sebastian had just remained calm and waited it out... none of this would have happened? I think the blame for this one falls on him. And two: why the hell are all these other children making fun of Melody? I know she's ~weird~ and all, but she's the freaking princess. Don't you think they'd know better than exclude the princess of the entire kingdom? I would want to stay on her good side is all I'm saying.

Anyway. Melody finally takes a good look at the locket and realizes something's up, confronting her mother about Atlantica. Okay, Ariel, here's your chance. If you just explain the situation, she'll understand and maybe you could even take her to Atlantica under heavy guard or something so she can finally meet her damn grandfather.

Or you could just get mad. Getting mad is good too.

Naturally after that Melody decides to take off, rowing a rather conveniently placed boat out to sea to try and figure it all out for herself. While she meets Undertow and agrees to follow him to Morgana, Sebastian is back at the castle psyching himself up to tell Ariel that Melody ran away.

WAIT. YOU DIDN'T KNOW? IT'S BEEN TWELVE YEARS AND YOU HAD NO IDEA SEBASTIAN WAS KEEPING AN EYE ON MELODY??

So in the end, a) Ariel is the least observant person in the world, b) Sebastian never once told her about Melody's excursions beyond the wall (remember that for later), and c) Triton didn't bother to let Ariel know he'd assigned Sebastian the job, continuing the family cycle of not communicating with each other. In hindsight all this bullshit family drama isn't that surprising.

Back to Melody and Morgana (yes, somehow Undertow and the manta ray minions hauled the boat to the arctic in just a couple of hours), Morgana is doing what she does best: whining about Ursula. Honey, I don't think your mother favored her because she was the oldest; I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that Ursula was actually competent and managed to accomplish her goals. Plus her magic is clearly more powerful than yours, since you have to use one of her potions to turn Melody into a mermaid.

OH MY GOD A SONG. I forgot this movie was supposed to have those. It's an upbeat little tune about learning to swim with her new tail, which quickly evolves into a duet with her mother and finding their "worlds:" Melody finding a place she belongs underwater, and Ariel keeping Melody safe. It's boring, but at least Tara Strong can sing well, and Jodi Benson can still belt it out like she could twenty years ago.

Morgana tells Melody that the spell will only last for two days, and that in order to make it permanent, she'll need the "powerful trident that was stolen from her." I'm sure you're as shocked as I was when it was revealed that she didn't just want a puppy and someone to make her pie. So off Melody goes with naught but determination and a map carved into a block of ice. Wait. That seems... poorly designed.

There aren't even words on it. Now I'm no cartographer, but that seems like a pretty major flaw for a map.

Meanwhile, Ariel has joined the search for Melody as a mermaid again, because apparently, according to Eric, "You should go. You know these waters -- and you know our daughter." Um. I'm not even sure where to begin with that one. Let's just say I agree with half that statement; I'll give you one guess which half.

Back in the arctic-- Stop. Okay look. I liked Timon and Pumbaa well enough. Timon had his moments of obnoxiousness, but Nathan Lane was likable enough to always bring it back, and Pumbaa is still my favorite character from The Lion King. But lemme tell ya, I HATE what Timon and Pumbaa did to Disney for a while. They wanted quirky, amiable sidekicks that would keep the kids entertained and distract from the lion sex happening in the background. I can understand that. But when every kid walked away singing Hakuna Matata and the Disney execs realized what they'd stumbled on, every movie afterward that was bound to fail miserably tried to shoehorn in a pair that would have the same appeal to sell more merch. Timon and Pumbaa themselves wound up with their own movie and a SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON SHOW. YEAH. THAT REALLY HAPPENED.

Why do I bring it up? Do you really have to ask?

Meet Tip and Dash, your knock-offs for the evening.

They are, as they put it, "adventurers slash explorers." That might have actually been a good way of setting them apart from the lackadaisical Timon and Pumbaa -- except that in their very first scene they attempt to save a baby penguin from a shark and completely botch the whole thing by being complete cowards. And then when the penguin family gets upset and berates them for their piss-poor job, the movie has the audacity to frame this like we should feel sorry for them. Movie, I refuse to sympathize with them when all the criticism against them is CORRECT. Also sharks don't live in the arctic. Neither do walruses. Just throwing that out there.

From there they bump into Melody, and she convinces them to take her to Atlantica, since Morgana was an idiot for carving the map into an easily-breakable piece of ice. By the way, for the record, Dash is the only likable character in this entire movie, but even then that's not saying much when you consider I'm biased because of his VA. He's the one that actually agrees to help Melody because she's "a damsel in distress," and doesn't care that she's actually a human-turned-mermaid. Come to think of it, this could have been a really good analogy for trans youth, but that probably would have been way too complicated a subject for a shitty Disney sequel.

Also I was gonna skip this part but it's stuck in my head so I'd like to introduce you to the CATCHIEST AND MOST OBNOXIOUS SONG IN ANY MOVIE EVER. Like damn! That would be an accomplishment if it wasn't so terrible. And I'm not exaggerating; I'm completely immune to It's A Small World, but THIS? This garbage sticks to me like glue. (and if you decided to skip the song you now have It's A Small World in your head so either way you have to SUFFER WITH ME)

Ahem. Moving on.

The Three Stooges here finally make it to Atlantica, just barely missing Ariel, Triton, and Flounder going the other way. Flounder, in the past twelve years, has had about five annoying kids and developed a dad belly. It's not really relevant to anything but it's just hilarious to me that even fish can have dad bellies. But there's only a half hour of this turd left, so let's keep chugging along.

On their way into the palace they bump into a piece of-- what? Fish jailbait? Jail fish bait? Eh, whatever. THEY BUMP INTO THIS KID:

Yes, as a matter of fact it was. Even though Atlantica is clearly in tropical waters. Starfish, sea urchins, and crabs all live in tropical waters, whereas penguins live in colder climates. This geography is seriously messed up. I don't think anyone on the creative team even bothered to so much as glance at a map while making this -- which would also explain the terrible ice map, I suppose.

Melody swipes the trident and heads back to Morgana's lair. Cloak and Dagger, the two manta ray minions (I know, subtle), follow behind, and Ariel catches sight of them. She and Flounder in turn follow them, discovering the witch's hiding place in the arctic. Personally my first thought was "So, we've looked everywhere actually means except there because it's cold as balls and nobody wanted to?" but Ariel's a bit more focused than I was by this point.

Ariel tries to send Flounder back, to let Triton know where they are, but Flounder, being an idiot, says he won't let her go in there alone. DUDE. GO GET HELP. Who does, in fact, go to get help? Why Scuttle, of course!

And it's all your fault, bro.

Ariel rushes in in the nick of time to stop Melody from handing over the trident, but naturally the two of them get into the argument that puts the final nail in coffin. Melody actually says "You knew how much I loved the sea!" but I'd like to refer you back to the facts. Melody and Ariel never had an honest and open conversation about, well, anything. The closest evidence we have to support this statement is that Melody thought Atlantica was just an old fish tale, which means at some point Ariel told her stories about it and the mermaids. Otherwise there's just genetics: your mother's a mermaid so you must love the sea too. That's an awfully big leap. And there's the fact that Sebastian never told Ariel about Melody's adventures outside the wall. She had zero idea about any of it. So how could she have possibly known how much Melody loved the ocean, outside of sheer guesswork?

Oh, but "you know our daughter." Well if you SAY it it MUST be true!

By the by, Melody's little realization here of "I have made a horrible mistake" when she gives Morgana the trident is just priceless.

De-licious.

Finally we've reached the big battle. Morgana builds herself a big fuck-off tower of ice, and we're ready for action.

Scuttle, in a rare moment of non-stupidity, comes soaring in, tailed by Prince Eric's ship. Before blasting it to pieces Morgana asks, "Come to join the party?" and I have to agree; where the hell have you been for the last 40 minutes, anyway, Eric? ALSO

And I present you the only funny line in the movie:

...If it feels like I'm rushing through this it's only because I am.

After getting the trident, Morgana had sealed Melody and Flounder into an ice cavern. Unfortunately for her, Melody's two days are now up, and she turns back into a human in a chamber full of water. Tip and Dash rush in to save her, and come face-to-face with a full-sized Undertow. Through a not-at-all suspenseful sequence of the shark chasing them around, they manage to trick him into ramming the ice wall trapping Melody and Flounder, and get her back up to the surface. Where she just. wakes up. No coughing water or dizziness or trouble breathing. NOPE. Her eyes open as soon as she hits air and she's good to go.

Disney: showing the lighter side of almost drowning.

As Morgana fulfills her power fantasy of getting everyone to bow down to her and shrieking "WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE NOW, MA" (yeah I'm pretty sure it's still Ursula), Melody scales the ice tower in an attempt to retrieve the trident. If nothing else, this movie shows a very inaccurate portrayal of trying to walk on ice. Unsurprisingly, Melody succeeds and tosses the trident back to Triton, who seals Morgana in a block of ice to rest forever at the bottom of the sea.

So Ursula was literally stabbed through the chest with an entire boat and died but Morgana gets punked out in a block of ice? Weak.

The family reconciles, Melody takes the whole "grandfather" thing a little too well, and the movie ends with them tearing down the wall so the humans and merpeople can interact freely from now on.

I only have two questions before I finally shut up about this stupid stupid movie:

1. So does the whole kingdom just sort of take it in stride that a) merpeople exist and b) the prince married one? 2. How can a movie that's only an hour and ten minutes long sans credits feel SO MUCH LONGER

This whole thing was ridiculous from the jump. Who was demanding a sequel to the Little Mermaid of all freaking things? Who really wanted to see sequels to any of the movies from the Disney Renaissance? And there are quite a few of them. Like I said, some of them can be pretty enjoyable if you like cheesiness. But most of them are just terrible like this one, and if you're wondering whether you'll be seeing more of the Dark Age of Disney, don't worry. Their days will come.

[oovitus]

'Watching Your Toddler Drink Bathwater From a Hotel Tub', and other sordid tales of OCD exposure therapy

I've always been slightly more than casually OCD.  Not the flip-the-light-switch-seven-times-then-tap-dance-thru-three-choruses-of-I-Could've-Danced-All-Night-before-leaving-the-house kind, but more like the picks-stray-hairs-from-my-pillow-before-laying-down-and-always-on-the-lookout-for-dead-bodies kind.  I can't explain away the hair thing, but you try working for the body pickup service contracted to the medical examiner's office of a major metropolitan city for a year and *not* look for corpses on the side of every road and behind every hydrangea.  They're there, people. Now, this has always been sort of quirky and cute to most that know me, and those that may have thought otherwise have largely been kind enough to at least refrain from open mockery.  "Oh, that TheUnluckyPath, she sure is hilarious, over there picking microscopic lint fragments off of her dinosaur print Boden top".  But let me tell you, shit got real when Punky arrived four weeks early.  I had what turned out to be straight up post-partum OCD/anxiety that might blow your mind.  I had no idea that this was even a thing.  You learn some (but not near enough) about post-partum depression in med school.  But I swear I had no idea that you could get heightened OCD associated with the perinatal and/or post-partum period.  It was absolutely heinous.  I've never been so terrified in my whole life.  I spent the first eight weeks of my daughter's life expecting to find her dead, in any and all manner of common and/or obscure/tragic/horrifying/violent ways, every single time I left her for a snooze.  And, presumably because I've seen some serious things in my life, I could picture in excruciating detail every single aspect of the fictional scene.  I became nearly-paralyzed by stairs, where I would clutch her to my body and get an iron-grip on the banister like I was free-climbing Half Dome every time I walked out to the garage (down four steps.....just four).  I would imagine that she, at four weeks old, had somehow freakishly developed musculature, climbed out of her crib, and rolled underneath only to suffocate on a blanket that she had carelessly wrapped herself in.  I visualized her tiny electrocuted body lying next to a wall outlet, no joke.  My heart was repeatedly broken day in, day out, every time that I left her and cautiously returned to see what I would find.  Because, even though she was perfectly fine every time I came back(if not sometimes poopy), I imagined her dead in more ways than anyone could ever believe, and it felt so real to me each and every time.  And a little bit of me mourned her faux death, so many times a day. But that actually wasn't the worst of it.  The worst of it was that, in the majority of instances, when I imagined her death, it was me inflicting it.  It was me hurting her in all of those ways every time.  In the bath tub.  In the kitchen.  In her nursery.  It was so, so shocking and terrifying to have these scenes playing through my fractured, sleep-deprived mind.  The shred of myself that I was still clinging on to still knew that I did not ever want to hurt a single tiny spiky hair on my perfect little peanut's head, but it was so, so hard to reconcile this with the visions that I was constantly having.  I was beyond terrified.  I was so afraid to tell my husband about any of these things, for I didn't know if he would be afraid to leave me alone with her.  A few weeks in to this guilt-and-shame-filled struggle, I remembered an episode of the podcast Invisibilia that I had listened to the year prior.  It was called The Secret History of Thoughts, and it had made quite an impression on me at the time, especially the story about a young, just-married couple.  They had a relatively carefree and easygoing life, until one day out of the blue the guy started having obsessive thoughts of his wife being stabbed to death in their kitchen.  And he was the one doing it.  On one hand, he just *knew* that he had no desire to harm his wife in the least.  But on the other hand he was terrified that he must want to kill her, on some subconscious level, else why would he have such terrible visions? Turns out, he had a specific subtype of OCD called Harm OCD, in which "an individual experiences intrusive, unwanted, or distressing thoughts of causing harm, and this is inconsistent with the individual's values, beliefs and sense of self.  These obsessions typically center around the belief that one must be absolutely certain that they are in control at all times in order to ensure that they are not responsible for a violent or otherwise fatal act." (that's a nice definition provided by the website of the OCD Center of LA) So, I went back and listened to the episode again, and I felt an immediate sense of relief.  I remembered identifying with it to some degree the first time around, and feeling so deeply sorry for the poor bastard experiencing this terrifying thing.......but now I was was reasonably sure that I had become that poor bastard.  However, at least I had some hope that perhaps I could fix this somehow.  So I committed right then and there to myself that I would admit that I was having these thoughts to my lovely, compassionate therapist at my next appointment.  And, I did.  And doing so was the first step in my journey toward recovery from my post-partum Harm OCD.  And now that Punky is 2.5 years old, I'm back to my slightly more than casual OCD, right where I'm comfortable. And that brings me to watching my daughter drink hotel bathwater in a borderline sketchy extended stay motel during our cross-country move a few months ago. Having a toddler is a long-haul treatment course of exposure therapy for OCD, which turns out to be very effective for me in dealing with my issues.  Identify the intrusive thought, analyze it and decide if it's valid and why/why not, then accept it or dismiss it as it's happening.  Gives me the sense of control that I need to feel comfortable and safe.  And then I can go about my quirky day. Watching a toddler eat peanut butter off the floor of an airport.  Standing idly by while my daughter puts her hand in the toilet to retrieve a toy that needed a quick and refreshing swim.  Suppressing a scream as the kid covers the wall in crayon, grinning and singing with unabashed joy.  It's a constant barrage of borderline-horrifying acts of depravity, packaged in an adorable little bundle of cuteness and light.  And on that day a few months back, as I sat back on the yellowed and cracked tiles of that supposedly clean bathroom, I forced myself to let her be a toddler, feeling her way through the world around her and delighting in the new experience.  It was a super gross experience, but she thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.  And the reason that I finally got around to writing this five months after the fact is that it dawned on me a couple of nights ago that I haven't checked my pillow for stray hairs before falling (mostly happy and always exhausted) into bed at night since we moved to this new job and house.  There are tons of other stressors in life, including some new ones about kind of hating this new city, but overall life is pretty damn good.  And the older I get, the better of a handle that I have on my weird brain.  It's actually pretty interesting in here most of the time.........  :0) 'Watching Your Toddler Drink Bathwater From a Hotel Tub', and other sordid tales of OCD exposure therapy published first on http://ift.tt/2iVxKPq

[oovitus]

'Watching Your Toddler Drink Bathwater From a Hotel Tub', and other sordid tales of OCD exposure therapy

I've always been slightly more than casually OCD.  Not the flip-the-light-switch-seven-times-then-tap-dance-thru-three-choruses-of-I-Could've-Danced-All-Night-before-leaving-the-house kind, but more like the picks-stray-hairs-from-my-pillow-before-laying-down-and-always-on-the-lookout-for-dead-bodies kind.  I can't explain away the hair thing, but you try working for the body pickup service contracted to the medical examiner's office of a major metropolitan city for a year and *not* look for corpses on the side of every road and behind every hydrangea.  They're there, people. Now, this has always been sort of quirky and cute to most that know me, and those that may have thought otherwise have largely been kind enough to at least refrain from open mockery.  "Oh, that TheUnluckyPath, she sure is hilarious, over there picking microscopic lint fragments off of her dinosaur print Boden top".  But let me tell you, shit got real when Punky arrived four weeks early.  I had what turned out to be straight up post-partum OCD/anxiety that might blow your mind.  I had no idea that this was even a thing.  You learn some (but not near enough) about post-partum depression in med school.  But I swear I had no idea that you could get heightened OCD associated with the perinatal and/or post-partum period.  It was absolutely heinous.  I've never been so terrified in my whole life.  I spent the first eight weeks of my daughter's life expecting to find her dead, in any and all manner of common and/or obscure/tragic/horrifying/violent ways, every single time I left her for a snooze.  And, presumably because I've seen some serious things in my life, I could picture in excruciating detail every single aspect of the fictional scene.  I became nearly-paralyzed by stairs, where I would clutch her to my body and get an iron-grip on the banister like I was free-climbing Half Dome every time I walked out to the garage (down four steps.....just four).  I would imagine that she, at four weeks old, had somehow freakishly developed musculature, climbed out of her crib, and rolled underneath only to suffocate on a blanket that she had carelessly wrapped herself in.  I visualized her tiny electrocuted body lying next to a wall outlet, no joke.  My heart was repeatedly broken day in, day out, every time that I left her and cautiously returned to see what I would find.  Because, even though she was perfectly fine every time I came back(if not sometimes poopy), I imagined her dead in more ways than anyone could ever believe, and it felt so real to me each and every time.  And a little bit of me mourned her faux death, so many times a day. But that actually wasn't the worst of it.  The worst of it was that, in the majority of instances, when I imagined her death, it was me inflicting it.  It was me hurting her in all of those ways every time.  In the bath tub.  In the kitchen.  In her nursery.  It was so, so shocking and terrifying to have these scenes playing through my fractured, sleep-deprived mind.  The shred of myself that I was still clinging on to still knew that I did not ever want to hurt a single tiny spiky hair on my perfect little peanut's head, but it was so, so hard to reconcile this with the visions that I was constantly having.  I was beyond terrified.  I was so afraid to tell my husband about any of these things, for I didn't know if he would be afraid to leave me alone with her.  A few weeks in to this guilt-and-shame-filled struggle, I remembered an episode of the podcast Invisibilia that I had listened to the year prior.  It was called The Secret History of Thoughts, and it had made quite an impression on me at the time, especially the story about a young, just-married couple.  They had a relatively carefree and easygoing life, until one day out of the blue the guy started having obsessive thoughts of his wife being stabbed to death in their kitchen.  And he was the one doing it.  On one hand, he just *knew* that he had no desire to harm his wife in the least.  But on the other hand he was terrified that he must want to kill her, on some subconscious level, else why would he have such terrible visions? Turns out, he had a specific subtype of OCD called Harm OCD, in which "an individual experiences intrusive, unwanted, or distressing thoughts of causing harm, and this is inconsistent with the individual's values, beliefs and sense of self.  These obsessions typically center around the belief that one must be absolutely certain that they are in control at all times in order to ensure that they are not responsible for a violent or otherwise fatal act." (that's a nice definition provided by the website of the OCD Center of LA) So, I went back and listened to the episode again, and I felt an immediate sense of relief.  I remembered identifying with it to some degree the first time around, and feeling so deeply sorry for the poor bastard experiencing this terrifying thing.......but now I was was reasonably sure that I had become that poor bastard.  However, at least I had some hope that perhaps I could fix this somehow.  So I committed right then and there to myself that I would admit that I was having these thoughts to my lovely, compassionate therapist at my next appointment.  And, I did.  And doing so was the first step in my journey toward recovery from my post-partum Harm OCD.  And now that Punky is 2.5 years old, I'm back to my slightly more than casual OCD, right where I'm comfortable. And that brings me to watching my daughter drink hotel bathwater in a borderline sketchy extended stay motel during our cross-country move a few months ago. Having a toddler is a long-haul treatment course of exposure therapy for OCD, which turns out to be very effective for me in dealing with my issues.  Identify the intrusive thought, analyze it and decide if it's valid and why/why not, then accept it or dismiss it as it's happening.  Gives me the sense of control that I need to feel comfortable and safe.  And then I can go about my quirky day. Watching a toddler eat peanut butter off the floor of an airport.  Standing idly by while my daughter puts her hand in the toilet to retrieve a toy that needed a quick and refreshing swim.  Suppressing a scream as the kid covers the wall in crayon, grinning and singing with unabashed joy.  It's a constant barrage of borderline-horrifying acts of depravity, packaged in an adorable little bundle of cuteness and light.  And on that day a few months back, as I sat back on the yellowed and cracked tiles of that supposedly clean bathroom, I forced myself to let her be a toddler, feeling her way through the world around her and delighting in the new experience.  It was a super gross experience, but she thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.  And the reason that I finally got around to writing this five months after the fact is that it dawned on me a couple of nights ago that I haven't checked my pillow for stray hairs before falling (mostly happy and always exhausted) into bed at night since we moved to this new job and house.  There are tons of other stressors in life, including some new ones about kind of hating this new city, but overall life is pretty damn good.  And the older I get, the better of a handle that I have on my weird brain.  It's actually pretty interesting in here most of the time.........  :0) 'Watching Your Toddler Drink Bathwater From a Hotel Tub', and other sordid tales of OCD exposure therapy published first on