#sorry this is ranty i just started thinking about things and got mad

[pansydivided]

always makes me so upset that the concern about treating PCOS is always centered around how it makes people look less masculine, as if thats the main problem with PCOS. ive talked to trans men with PCOS (or suspect they have it) who are like "i don't need to treat it because it just gives me extra testosterone! i like looking manly" and its always so concerning because PCOS does have actual physical health concerns! even if you don't want to take estrogen as a treatment you still need to be seeing a gynecologist regularly, getting tested for insulin resistance (very very common with PCOS and can lead to diabetes if untreated) and making sure you're aware of your cancer risks and getting checked regularly (yes you will need to get a pap smear probably im sorry its better then cancer 😔 they're changing the recommendation from 21 to 25 so i can avoid it a little longer haha). not ovulating naturally (without birth control i mean) is considered a risk factor for uterine cancer, i know having a period sucks but you need to be doing it safely, if your body stops having periods without medication its not safe. its so infuriating that people's biggest concern about PCOS always seems to be "fat and hairy" and not heart disease risk, diabetes risk, insulin resistance, cancer risk and even just having cysts in your ovaries that can cause health issues if they get too big.

[evolutionsvoid]

I think a thing that needs to be said about ecosystems is that no matter how pretty they are, they are still the wilds. I know this sounds painfully obvious, but I feel like it is something that is still widely ignored. When it comes to dark jungles or eerie bogs, sure, people worry about dangerous monsters and hidden perils. But if it were some picturesque mesa or lush meadow, where the scenery is absolutely captivating, I feel people kind of get lost in the majesty of it all. They think themselves in some magical land, or a painting come to life! They cease to be aware of the fact that they are still in the wilds, and that the same rules apply. People will stand there dumbfounded, or blindly walk across dangerous terrain, or just ignore the fact that wild animals are afoot. Why do I bring this up? Because some of you people are way too casual about coastal areas! Particularly the places one would call "beaches!" You see a sunny sandy beach next to a gentle ocean and just throw all cares away! Start acting like you're on a resort, where there are fancy drinks and hunky lifeguards a plenty! Riptide? What's that? Say, what are these colorful birds with the weird club arms? How pretty! It never ceases to baffle me how quickly one's guard drops the second they see a nice stretch of beach far from civilization. Just rip off all your clothes and throw yourself into the waters without a second thought! One good thought to have would be "hey, does anything live there?!" That might be good to figure out before you dive headfirst into the water, or throw a towel down onto the sand, or just start grabbing random shells with your bare hands are you serious!? Sorry if I am getting a little ranty here, but oh how it drives me mad! Not only are you spoiling a good spot to do some wildlife watching, but you are also throwing yourself blindly into danger!

I bring this all up because it was meant to be a short little lead in to the species I wanted to talk about, but look where that got us. What I was meaning to do was say that I have seen this behavior all over the world, the sheer stupidity that befalls people when they see a sunny beach. And while in most cases things end up being just fine, there are a few times where fools wind up getting bitten. Literally. In one region, there is a telltale sign of when someone succumbs to this spell. When they come stumbling back into town with a nasty bloody bite on an arm or leg, you know full well someone tried to have a beach day on Nure-onna territory.

The Nure-onna are a species of reptile that is found out on the coast in subtropical regions. I know sharp eyed readers may note my vague description of calling it "a reptile." Why do I say that? Shouldn't I just say it is a snake? I mean, just look at it! Well, the reason why I chose "reptile" is because we aren't fully sure yet what the Nure-onna is, be it snake or lizard. Yes, it has a long serpentine body that it slithers with, but there are species of legless lizards out there. Sure, it has very small forearms, which would rule out snakes, but does it really? And then some people cite the prominent fangs as a snake feature, while others point out the strong muscly jaws as something more lizard-like. I find it hard to say, because I get swayed back and forth whenever people start piling on arguments, but currently I feel the Nure-onna is some kind of primitive snake. Perhaps a relic of when ancient snakes started losing their limbs, but the Nure-onna hung onto theirs.

Regardless if it be a legless lizard or a faintly legged snake, the Nure-onna is a reptilian creature with a greatly elongated body, bright splotchy patterns and a pretty distinct look. Their serpentine bodies have bright red patches of color over top white scales, making them pretty eye-catching! They possess tiny, nearly atrophied forearms, which still have claws, but they do very little. At times, they can help give traction over smooth stone, and some say that males use them during mating to better grip the females. Going to the head is where things get more interesting, as they possess very strong, brutish jaws, and a surprising shock of hair! In truth, this black mane of "hair" is actually made up of long, thin scales, which cascade off the body and bunch up together to create this illusion. Some folk compare them to very crude feathers, as if the Nure-onna tried to make feathers but gave up nearly instantly into the process. So what is the reason for having this odd collection of scales? Well, it appears that it helps them soak up the heat of the sun more, on days where simple basking isn't enough. They can be seen curled up beneath this mane during colder days, helping trap in what little heat they have, while also using the black scales to better absorb sunlight. Some also think this curling up helps disguise them from prey and predators, hiding in the shadow of rocks with this tactic. It should be pointed out that this hair is also useful for creating the illusion that makes them so infamous. Because Nure-onna have a particular shape to their heads, and curious markings too! Add in this hair, and their threatening pose of holding their upper bodies high, and the snake (or lizard) suddenly becomes a human woman!

Okay, well, not entirely a human woman, but you can see where the mistake can be made at a glance. Scary stories like to say that this is meant to lure in human prey, or disarm them with their seductive feminine appearance, but in truth, it seems more like a coincidence. People seeing similarities in certain patterns. One of the reasons I say this is because these facial markings vary slightly between individuals, and greatly between regional species. Some have patterns that are strikingly human, while others look like they were trying to apply makeup during an earthquake. So this variation suggests that this is not a particularly important appearance that they must uphold exactly. Nature doesn't seem to think it is worth anything, but that doesn't mean there wasn't some kind of selection to be had here! Some theories claim that locals long ago selectively bred certain populations to get that distinct face look to their patterns. Certain nobles and warlords liked having these human mimicking serpents around, and kept them as pets. To be clear, there was no domestication to be had here, more so having a serpent that looks like it has a face but also one that is down for taking a chunk out of intruders and people you don't like.

With a toothy maw like that, the Nure-onna is obviously a predator. They scour the beaches for prey, hunting the sands, shallows and rocky areas. They use their long bodies to slip into tight spaces and burrows, while also using quick bursts of speed to chase down prey. Their strong jaws are good for grabbing on and never letting go. They are also pretty decent at cracking open shells of crabs and other coastal invertebrates, and if their teeth don't do the trick, bashing them against rocks also helps. Nure-onna use the tactic of "bite down hard and don't let go til it stops moving." They coil around prey and chomp down, waiting to the fight drains out of their meal. If prey is larger or more feisty, they may twist and thrash their bodies around while latched on to do some real damage and maybe tear off a chunk of meat. If they can't down their food, at least they get a free mouthful!

While their typical menu is usually crustaceans, fish, small reptiles and the occasional washed up carcass, Nure-onna are known for attacking larger things. More so, they are known for being very aggressive and territorial. They are an ill-tempered lot, always perceiving others around them as potential threats or competition. While other critters may flee at the sight of a human, the Nure-onna would stand its ground til they got too close, and then the fight is on. Their way of dealing with predators is to essentially be so aggressive and bitey that they give up and find something that doesn't fight so much. Due to this nature of theirs, Nure-onna territory is marked and avoided, as people trespassing on a day the Nure-onna are out and about results in getting chased down and bitten. Obviously, not everyone listens to these warnings. They will see an isolated beach with no one else around and think they found paradise, only to find serpents pouring from the rocks and racing across the sand with teeth bared. This aggression results in the Nure-onna being labeled a "maneater," with the belief that they happily hunt and consume humans. But it actually is more that they chomp onto oblivious tourists and then consume the corpse if they succumb to the squeezing and biting. They don't specifically target people, but they won't say no to a human carcass after they have bitten their throat out.

Though Nure-onna are feared and avoided due to their strong bite and anger issues, people do hunt them from time to time. Typically, if someone wants to settle upon a coastal stretch of land, the Nure-onna are going to have to go, as you can't make a beach town with these things around. And even for villages that are already established, lone Nure-onna may travel here and try to setup shop, which thus leads to culling. Their meat is said to be quite good (though very bony) and their hides and hairs enjoyed in fashion and ceremonial garb. As mentioned before, some folk a long time ago tried keeping Nure-onna as pets, or more so punishment for others. They weren't exactly lap dogs, more so creatures that knew who fed them and who didn't have food. You would keep them in pools or moats, and let them chew on intruders who tried to sneak in. Thus, this is why it is believed these face patterns appeared, as owners selectively bred them before the trend was given up on and they were released into the wilds. In stories, people like to play up the feminine appearance of Nure-onna, pretending that they can perfectly mimic woman. They also like to use this species as minions for evil-doers and sorcerers, who unleash these faced serpents upon foes. One story claims a sorcerer used some Nure-onna to kill and rob people who walked the beach. He would cast a curse on a pretty looking stone and then leave it in the sand, so someone would see it and pick it up. Once touched, the cursed rock would bind them to the spot, weighing down on them as if it was a boulder. The serpents would emerge from their hiding place and devour the poor soul, and the evil fellow would gather what coin and jewels were left on the shredded carcass. Neat tactic, though a bit convoluted for simple banditry. I guess points for creativity?

Though the attempts at keeping Nure-onna as pets has fallen away for humans, I will say another species has formed a bond with these savage serpents, seeing that they indeed make good guards! But that is a story for another entry!

Chlora Myron

Dryad Natural Historian

--------------------------

"Nure-onna"

May of went too face-like for this thing, but ah well.

[volfoss]

how about ranking bucciarati's team?

regret to inform you that ur gonna get a very long answer bc i have passionate feelings about them all! also trish is in this bc she is part of the team and no one will tell me otherwise and will also include some rambling bc it is me and i have so many feelings towards these characters and none of them r cohesive

under the cut just in case (post writing yes it was long)

Giorno Giovanna:

way way more complex than ppl normally give him credit for (i will not go into feelings on how a majority of the fandom treats him unless ppl want me to then i will in fact make a very long ranty post and will not be stopped)

mildly op (esp at the beginning with how hes kind of able to just use his stand really well w no problems altho i think thats true of most of the jojos that we have seen animated?)

i am emotionally attached to him and want to give him a big hug

hes just a kinda goofy kid and is maybe a bit not good with figuring out hey this is a semi dangerous situation maybe i shouldnt be taunting him (leaky eye luca for example)

has the actual best theme

i love how he works off the rest of the team so well (even w members who do not like him)

is in my top 3 jojos i love this kid sm i would adopt him if he was real

7/10

Bruno Bucciarati:

the fucking way his character develops from licky man to best dad material is my favorite thing

his outfit is so so so good i would die to wear it

in general this man is one of my fave jojos characters and i get a lot of comfort from him

hes just really neat and has a good taste in music

he did his fucking best and i will always love him for that

imo the way that his death was drawn out was genuinely one of the most heartbreaking deaths in the entire series and fucks me up each time i think of it

i feel like he really is the one to hold the team together in a way that everyone feels cared for and saved

def has a savior complex tho for sure

dilf but im ace

also manga superiority bc he either makes the stupidest faces or looks very nice (anime has a lot of weird animation in regards to his face) and also because its lingerie there instead of a tattoo that changes thickness and placement every second

10/10

Leone Abbacchio:

guilty pleasure liking man

i am obsessed with his vibes and wish to become him

i cannot physically express just how much i love him but hes one of my faves of all time (not obvious by my theme at all wdym)

i miss his manga palette but also the colored manga isnt my beloved but also black lipstick abba

hot take maybe but anime abba looks better than manga minus the lipstick debacle

hes so so tall and i will steal his height in a nice way

his past man his past it fucks me up

his death fucks me up normally but when i was rewatching recently, i saw he gave this tiny lil smile after helping the kids get their ball and i could not take it anymore

him and brunos relationship (canonically and out of canon too) is one of my favorites in the series

also fandom hot take as i guess i am doing those for everyone- but ppl either have him as cosntantly trying to murder giorno or being like good son and v out of character, and it is really weird? not sayign that ill do better when i write them but also like im convinced some ppl havent seen the show or smth

i will steal both him and bruno and marry them both <3

this man is beloved i love him to death

10/10

Pannacotta Fugo:

i cannot spell his first name to save my life

also fandom take- ppl make him constantly only angry boy all the time and it really irks me. ik araki did not give him 2 much to work w in terms of canon personality but its frustrating

the light novel purple haze feedback is so so so good and adds sm to his character and i really like it for that!

fugo is one of those that imo deserves a lot and didnt get that

genuinely the vibes between how he treats narancia is v interesting to me, like its clear he cares about nara but nara not doing great w math really frustrates him

i love their interactions and how he is genuinely a kind person at times

the manga colors r superior here, my strawberry boy <3

i just really love and appreciate him a lot and wish that ppl gave him more love

i keep getting assigned him on kin quizzes

very smart good boy

ALSO ok fugo did not do any wrong by leaving

unsure if thats a hot take but i genuinely dont blame the character one bit for leaving and again purple haze feedback really delves into that and why he did it

if ur a fugo fan go read it

his past is really upsetting esp in the anime i will cry over it

his stand is adorable and i wanna hug it

his vibes r fun and i wanna gift him strawberry dangly earrings

8/10

Narancia Ghirga:

this boy i am also adopting (i am adopting most of them sorry)

i really hate how ppl act as if hes stupid bc bad math skills do not equal stupid like did ppl not see the fight w formaggio??

the way he just fucking dove into the water after the boat and how brunos face went all soft and happy it will never not make me cry

he is constnatnly making me wanna cry if i think too much about him for 2 seconds i love him sm

how can anyone not adore him when he set an entire street on fire yk

hes just happy despite his past and it makes me sad i love nara sm

torture dance is one of my favorite memes from the show

ALSO ok the way he died so suddenly absolutely broke me bc the remaining team members r really just seeing everyone die in front of them so quickly

his goofy and laid back moments r my fave

i love just how loyal and caring he is to his friends

his stand is really cool and again the fight w formaggio was so fun to watch

8/10

Guido Mista:

probably my least favorite member of the team for a semi good reason:

the jokes towards trish are really really uncomfy and how fugo doesnt wanna be involved but he is pushing him to do something that makes him uncomfortable did not make me like him a lot

hes goofy but not goofy enough for me to be ok with the repeated jokes about that esp in the body swap episode (ik it was supposed to be funny but it just felt off)

his vibes r good but i wish we got to see his hair

the fandom interpretation is normally pretty good of him overall?

despite not loving him a lot, i really enjoying writing for him (one day might open up headcanon requests or smth but unsure)

hes someone id wanna watch movies w but his taste in movies and mine r very different

love how he and his stand get along

honestly has very very good comedic potential

i really like how he and giorno interact as the series goes on (in a platonic way i need to clarify that i love their friendship)

again him in purple haze feedback was really interesting

probably a 5/10?

Trish Una:

beloved and deserved better

her first outfit in the manga > outfit in the anime

actually in general i believe in manga trish superiority like her hair in the manga looks so cool

her stand her stand her stand i love sm

if u dont include trish in the group i am murdering u <3

HER CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!!! IS SO GOOD!!!!!!

fandom gripe is how people either pretend she does not exist or has the trish first introduction thing where shes using her defense mechanisms and acting a bit spoiled

OK but her in purple haze feedback!!! mild spoilers but how bruno was taking care of her post the ending of vento aureo makes me so happy each time i think of it

very mad that she canonically didnt really get an ending and yet again PHF my beloved actually gave her that

how spice girl starts out as a stand thats helping her thru a very stressful situation is so cool and i love it

DAD BRUNO DAD BRUNO DAD BRUNO *frothes at the mouth*

but more seriously how she leans on bruno and begins 2 trust him and nearly point blank is referring to him as a father figure always fucks me up

esp because of the resulting fight afterwards

and the very ending of the arc that ends w bruno being like bye gonna go in the clouds and look ethereal now, oh man it makes me so sad

bc giorno is the only one that knew what happened and people that were closer to bruno due to knowing him longer didnt

i wanna see how trish coped w that personally

despite being introduced not at the beginning i think her arc and character in general were as well paced as it could be!

9/10

finally done! sorry that took so long but oh man i have so many feelings towards these guys its not even funny

[saturnaftertaste]

I would love to hear your thoughts on YJS3

sure! fair warning, though, I'm a ranty person by nature so this might end up being a bit long. sorry in advance ♡

anyway! things I liked:

the humor: s3 was pretty funny lmao, theres that whole collection of outta pocket scenes from throughout the season that I find hilarious each time + the humor was a little more dirty which is nice bc the audience has also grown up from the kids they might've been when they watched it on CN

dickbabs!: I'm not a huge fan of dickbabs, I prefer dickkory (no hate to dickbabs stans btw I just vibe more with dickkory) but this dynamic between the two of them was so sweet and well-balanced I couldnt help but squeal everytime they were on-screen

Clark and Conner getting along: them calling each other brothers was so CUTE I canttt

FORAGER: an absolute legend 10/10 freaking love him

That Episode With The Hallucination: mmmmmmm I miss wally. SO MUCH. and the og 6 I was Super Mad about the first timeskip so it was nice to see them all together again🥰

yeah that's about it for things I liked lmao. now time for the Much Longer list of Things I Hated:

HALO: young justice the bar was so fucking low how are you still successfully doing the limbo what the fuck. you take a muslim immigrant in what is VERY CLEARLY a hijab and 1. infantilize her to an exceptionally uncomfortable degree (I KNOW SHE WAS THE MOTHERBOX, I DONT CARE) to the point where she resembles a five-year-old with every sentence she speaks or action she takes 2. you made a visibly muslim girl claim that she's actually no longer muslim, she's just wearing the hijab as some kind of security blanket???? I'm sorry??? what the fuck were you aiming for here exactly 3. why did you have to name her violet harper. what. 4. really?? the immediate romance with brion? What the shit was up with that...you make her Muslim in some aspects like victor not seeing her hair when she brushes it but her LITERALLY making out with brion like I'm sorry what the fuck are you doing??? you had one muslim character and you fucked up so bad holy shit...like...it could've been simple as hell, man, but no...Big Yikes.

M'gann: I've said this before but I really feel like once they introduced artemis m'gann immediately became a side character whose only job is to be villainised again and again even though it doesn't really vibe with her character. Secret teams?? Lying to Conner??? This isn't s3 but that whole thing with their breakup in s2...what the shit are they doing to M'gann, man. I loved her so much in s1, she's literally trying her best after having gone through so much and it's never fully explored...like we get half explanations every season but we're never shown half the shit that we were given for artemis. And by making her the Uncool Girlfriend at points it just looks like they're trying make her easy to hate like what the fuck. no. stop it

The Plot: too overcomplicated, too many characters. It's only season three, why are you introducing Apokolips already. Why are there so many characters?? what's with all the subplots yall were switching location cards every five minutes. And it's so convoluted...like...what was going on with Beast Boy and the monkey-god-doom-patrol-exposition stuff? I can't even remember if there were two granny goodnesses or just the one. All of those meta kids left over from the last season are a cute cast but like...I was so bored??? we know you can do well-written self-contained storylines a la s1, so hop to it, yeah?

THE ANIMATION: ok ok ok so. season 1 and two (one especially) had a very distinct feeling to them and that feeling was very late-2000s Cartoon Network Action Show - the base model for the males and females is the same (like Ben 10 Alien Force) the colors were not dynamic (stayed the same no matter the lighting, lots of cel shading, and generally were realistically colored in the sense that suspension of disbelief was not entirely necessary) CHEEKBONES, gritty textures and purple skies (Batman the Brave and the Bold). overall theres a certain Tone to the earlier seasons that spoke a lot to the animation capabilities of the studios at the time, as well as the general feel of the show. however, season three was a MAJOR downgrade in terms of animation. they made it both simpler and more complicated - they started using their DCAMU animation style which while it does give muscles to the women, adds too many unneeded shadows and a strange stiffness and dullness to every character. There are now extra lines and uncessesary shadows on the face of every character, and their eyes and facial features are almost identical. There's also less highlights, and the hairstyles are way too overcomplicated now to be appealing (see mgann and dick) - the hair is unspeakably dull and and the skin tones and hair colors are painful on the eyes. This isn't even taking into account the shitty backgrounds they've started using (AHEM AHEM ARTEMIS'S KITCHEN) because while the earlier seasons may have had unappealing, mostly empty settings, the characters still fit in to the scene, unlike now.

the lack of sisterhood????: apparently, only artemis goes to see zatanna for her Dr. Fate appointments. Apparently, M'gann barely talks to Artemis after the very tragic apparent death of Wally. the two of them, dare I say even the THREE of them, should be close as hell considering they spent their early years super-heroing together on a team full of boys. M'gann LITERALLY called Artemis her sister in the SAME EPISODE she was introduced, and neither of them had any real girlfriends other than each other at this point. M'gann who fell apart so hard Artemis died in her head that she almost killed them all in her grief. Like. You're telling me, you're SHOWING me that these two aren't each other's support system? Where is the sisterhood, bitch????

Lastly: the costume design. I understand that they're constrained by the need to make it simple enough to animate, but COME ON. if you're going to borrow Diana's DCAMU/JL: War costume, at least keep the metal silver. What the fuck is that green-gold. And Tigress? god DAMN that mask is ugly. Cassie looks like she robbed a goddamn supermarket discount clothing aisle for her outfit. Why is bart's outfit Like That it's so ugly it makes me want to cry. @ young justice costume designers Please Rethink Your Decisions

that's about all I can think of right now. it got REALLY negative whoops, but theres just so much I didn't like about this season :/ hopefully the next one will better ;-;

[fuck-customers]

hohohoho backer crarrel: thanksgiving week edition has been a wild ride

mega long ranty semi-coherent post so sorry abt that

ever since i had to cover for my covid-having shift lead, my manager's been scheduling me more closing shifts. not so much a "fuck managers" part but it's incredibly irritating since every time it's been me an the newest part of our team. so not only do i have to learn the closing ropes all on my own, i also have to borderline train a new person since she doesn't! do! anything!! unless you tell her to. she's super quiet and introverted, which i get! bc everyone has to start somewhere! but i'm not even 100% sure why she was hired bc we have to be outgoing and peppy and proactive. doesn't exactly line up with making the closer do all of your work on top of all her own stuff. 

i had to work thanksgiving night. that night, we had over 30 names on the restaurant's wait list at multiple points bc people still don't understand the concept of a pandemic. our to-go wall was also completely full on top of all the thanksgiving family meals we were sending out. so instead of just coping with the wait that they signed up for when they ordered food or put their name on the wait (where they tell you how long your wait will be!!) they complain to me!! just bc i wear an apron!!

that same night, there was a woman picking up her food. she was very upset bc she had to wait 😲 for her food 😲😲 while i was pulling up her order. grumbling, "this is the worst restaurant experience i've ever had," the whole nine yards. then complained she didn't get enough turkey gravy. i told her i could have someone bring her some (bc the to-go people are supposed to do that, retail's typically not supposed to leave the retail part) so she'd have to wait a few seconds. so she called a manager, who offered her a pie. she asked if we had any other pies bc the FIRST ONE SHE SAW was broken (it wasn't, i looked after she left) to which i told her she'd have to wait a few mins for another one to be brought up from the kitchen. otherwise she was free to pick any!!!! other!!!!!! pie!!!!!!!! on the pie stand. got a million times more huffy and just decided to get one off of the stand. 

there was another guy that same night who also had a to go order. i told him to get in line bc i wasn't about to stop in the middle of one transaction to get this guy's order pulled up. i get done with that transaction but some other guy with ornaments comes and sets his stuff down on the counter before i can wave the guy with a to go order over. instead of getting mad at the guy with the ornaments, the guy gets mad at me for not prioritizing him. starts yelling at me, pointing figures, again! the whole nine yards! luckily my manager was at the other end of the cash stand and made attempts to calm him down with stuff like "i can help you down here," "i'll take care of her [me]." he didn't mention anything about any sort of discipline, so i think i'm good? first though, he had begged him to stop yelling at me but the guy didn't enjoy being told to "please stop," bc he told my manager to talk to him like a man. i mean, my manager's a little effeminate, but if you perceive "please stop" from him to be less than a man, that's not our issue. thank you for yelling at a 17-year-old retail worker on thanksgiving night though! i hope that made you feel manly :)))

black friday rolls around and since we're surrounded by tourist attractions, hotels, and a mall, we ofc got a lot of traffic again. there was a couple who were complaining that another chain breakfast spot wouldn't let them in bc they weren't wearing masks. the guy said that he was so mad that he had to pull off to the side of the road bc he was so pressed over the fact that he had to wear a mask. as someone whose family member DIED OF CORONAVIRUS, i didn't take too kindly to their """oppression""" and did my little squinty smiley eyes so i looked somewhat polite. as the crarrel's resident brown queer girl, i sure WISH that was the level of oppression i faced. 

one good thing: my manager (the one who got between me and the arguing customer) offered me and the other cashier iced lattes :))) it was sugary and the coffee was burnt but tbh it was exactly what i needed and the gesture was incredibly kind :')))))) 

[heraldofzaun]

//Still lurking.

Some thoughts below the cut. A little melancholic. A little ranty. Many thoughts on how Viktor is perceived by the fandom at large. It got away from me.

I think I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I have followers here and this is also a Viktor blog... I think it would be nice if people stopped making fun of Viktor’s accent - I saw T/BSkyen’s (I think that keeps me out of the tag) shorts video on Viktor, and it was disheartening that he chose to make fun of Viktor’s accent several times throughout a one-minute video. No other character with a hammy, over-the-top accent, as far I know, receives this treatment. No one makes fun of Caitlyn’s British accent in character analyses of her. No one makes fun of Fiora’s French accent in character analyses of her. (I just checked his videos on them, actually, and guess what - no mocking their accents by doing them! Although Fiora’s accent does get mentioned, at the least.)

Just... stop doing it? We know the accent is cartoonishly bad and not accurate to actual Russian accents at all. But why, specifically, are people - T/BSkyen, in this instance - compelled to make fun of Viktor by putting on an accent and saying “Get reed of all emotions“ and “GLORIOUS EVOLUTION” and “BEEP BOOP ROBOT BRAIN”? (The misspelling in the first is not mine. It is in the actual subtitles for the video.)

I mean, we all know that the answer is the fact that American (and other countries, but we can focus on America for now) media spent the Cold War convincing Americans that Russians and Eastern Europeans were mindless followers of ideology and/or Crazy Insane Scientists, instead of like... people with diverse thoughts and feelings who may or may not agree with their government, but like... I have to ask the rhetorical questions here because no one else is going to apparently. Anyways it’s 2021 stop conflating people and the governments they live under, I guess.

Anyways, also very disheartening that I just checked the pinned comment on that video and he is now saying that Viktor’s endpoint is the Battlecast universe, which is not a canon fact even in current lore. It’s an assumption. I can’t even say that Full Machine Viktor is Viktor’s endpoint, because that was retconned into being a janitor skin that randomly breaks into Spanish in the skin bio for a... “joke”? (Because that’s a cool thing to do. I’d ask how that got past anyone, but that’s a pointless question.) But Battlecast is not stated anywhere to be the end result of canonical Viktor, as far as I know. I suppose it’s not stated to not be the result, but... Like, what other character gets an AU skinline that people then say has to be their canonical endgoal when it is not said to be their canonical endgoal by any official source?

Quothe the loremaster... “The endpoint of Viktor's quest is the Battlecast universe. In case y'all forgot. Read between the lines of his stories even a little bit before stanning him, I'm begging you.”

The entirety of the pinned comment is frustrating. It is frustrating not only because it clashes entirely with the funny comical tone of the minute-long short, which also decides to yet again conflate transhumanism with being trans (we have heard my thoughts on this before. Please stop doing this), but because it is unfortunately true in aspects about current Viktor. He is really not a good man, even though you may be able to argue that Riot’s biased narrator choices mean that a canonical version of the Viktor-Jayce fight does not exist. (Because both lores tell their sides of the story. Biasedly.) But as the story stands, his character getting filled out didn’t make him more morally ambiguous than his original counterpart. The ambiguity that existed originally was due to us not knowing a lot about him and thus being able to interpret things the way we wished. (I’m sure that there is still room for interpretation in the new lore, but it seems lesser to me. Also, his color story is framed atrociously. It’s going for warm and fuzzy when the content of it is giving a kid drugs but this is a long enough post already...)

Riot does not know what to do with Viktor. They’re content to portray him as a Russian mad scientist and buffoon in LoR and in some other media, because... [gestures at the struck-out paragraph above]. But then they have his lore which... could be interesting, maybe, if it weren’t convinced that the way to tell a morally grey story is to have narrators more unreliable than a pull-start lawn mower. Like, they just don’t know what to do with him.

Any analysis of him needs to come with that caveat, not someone deciding that the best way to spent a minute of analysis is to make multiple jokes about Viktor’s accent being stereotypical via... feeding into it being stereotypical... and saying that transhumanism is related to trans rights in any inherent way.

Also, T/BSkyen says that Viktor only has an augmented hand and the third arm, which conveniently ignores the fact that Prototype is probably supposed to be taken as semi-canonical considering its name and the fact it was made when backstory-related skins were a more common thing. (And also because it hasn’t been retconned into being a janitor.) It also conveniently ignores the fact that Viktor’s lower legs clearly don’t look like armor on his model, but this is a side tangent that doesn’t really matter, so...

Whatever, right? I’ve clearly put more thought into this than League’s local loremaster put into that video and subsequent “no guys he really is a baddie stop stanning him and grow critical thinking skills” comment. Sorry if I sound jaded here or am taking this far too seriously or whatever, it’s just... man, it’s a lot. It makes trying to do my take in any public capacity feel kind of like shit, because it’s clear that the general perception of Viktor is currently 1) Haha Funny Accent Man, 2) Trans Rights!1!, and/or 3) He’s Evil :(, and it sucks. I already am writing for a niche audience who will accept a Viktor who never went to Piltover and who exists in old Zaun. I know that that’s niche. I’m okay with it being niche, I think.

But it sucks to build up all this character and do all this writing and try to... I don’t know, present a nuanced view of someone, and then just get another fucking joke about his accent or his design tropes or about what transhumanism is. Especially when those jokes are what people remember, right?

Sorry. This got whiny. But I think it explains why I’ve lost so much steam on writing our favorite Machine Herald, because stuff like this just keeps kind of... happening.

Thank you to the folks that send in anons about my analyses or who like my posts about my artistic endeavors or just... well, interact in general. It does mean a lot to me that you guys are invested enough to hang around and read 2k words of me doing the Pepe Silvia scene from Always Sunny as I connect dots that might not have been meant to be connected. It’s just hard to keep doing it, sometimes, and I guess this is one of those moments.

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 4 - Meng Yao has a crush & Foxglove likes to babble

Hello everybody, welcome to episode 4. I slept like a baby last night, but I have a migraine so I may sound a bit incoherent. (Post episode Foxglove here, I’m not incoherent in this, I’m just ranty)

Poor WWX. Funny story, during my first? Second? Year of Med School I fell aspleep on my biophysics notes during exam period, woke up at 9pm when my alarm for my meds started ringing, realised what I’d done and called my mum (who was on a 24h shift at the hospital) crying. In hindsight is hilarious because I had something like two weeks until the exam so I lost no more than a few hours but oh well.

Full disclosure here: I don’t like the Lan sect, LXC, LWJ and the Ducklings excluded I think they’re a bunch of hypocrites. You can’t call yourself righteous and boast about your almost 4000 rules and then shrug when people decide to commit genocide.

Also, 4000-ish rules? Fuck that noise, there’s a post floating around here where some amazing soul translated what they could see of the Wall of Rules and yeah, some of them are in the “don’t be an asshole, don’t hurt yourself or others” vein which, absolutely fair. But things like “dress properly” who are you to tell me what and how I cover my body with? “Don’t be promiscuous” wow thanks for the slut shaming my dudes. “Don’t smile foolishly/don’t smile too much”, “sit properly”, “don’t be too sad”, “don’t be too happy”. You’re telling me these are rules, not guidelines, not common sense stuff. RULES. You’re telling me people get punished for grinning or crying. Fuck off mate.

And we can’t forget the golden example of hypocrisy “Don’t talk to Wei Wuxian” so much for “don’t speak ill of others”.

Is my Western Girl showing? I’m sorry, I’m from Spain and I was raised by the guidelines “don’t be an asshole, don’t hurt yourself or others, don’t take anyone’s bullshit, live and let live, have courage and be kind, we will always love and support you” so some stuff in here is very very grating. I don’t have enough knowledge about the culture to discern if it is because of my modern sensibilities or because my culture is so different.

Oooooohhh I don’t like birds. I mean, I love crows, ravens and birds of prey to an unhealthy degree, but they keep their distance. The other day a pigeon flew into my building and decided that my (very dark) doorstep was the place to have a rest. I screamed like a banshee.

Hey, those two assholes at the back, get the fuck out of here.

LXC protective mode activated.

You will never convince me Meng Yao did not develop a monster crush right then and there.

Oh no. It’s this asshole.

Oh WangJi about to cut a bitch.

Drag him WWX.

MY’s protective mode activated.

And LXC is too done with this shit. Yep, NHS also thinks MY got a massive crush.

WQ aka Qishan Wen’s only braincell.

It’s the One Braincell Trio!

Notice me sempai! Omg JC’s faces.

This is where I dump all my canon-divergence AUs:

Meng Yao stays in Cloud Recesses. He and LXC keep gazing longingly into each other’s eyes.

NHS introduces him to the other two from the One Braincell Trio. WWX takes one look at him and goes “yep, you’re my friend now, I’m kneecapping anybody who fucks with you.” Because there’s no way he wouldn’t be sympathetic to MY after his own childhood (omg, both of them drunk, making terrible gallows’ humour jokes about living poor and mostly homeless while JC and NHS just listen horrified). JC goes into overprotective bro mode with MY. I mean, he still can’t emote for shit but he’s made very very sure that he will cut a bitch for MY and at least he knows MY has a brain, not like someone else he knows.

Shijie makes friends with MY because Shijie is a goddess and MY is so confused because how the hell does someone so kind exist? And she wants to be friends? And she doesn’t care at all about his past? What? MY.exe has stopped working.

Maybe JZX gets his head out of his ass and goes to talk to MY and warn him about what an asshole JGS is, because I refuse to think JZX doesn’t know it. Maybe MY hears him disparaging Shijie and decides that nope, the Jins can fuck right off every single one of them is a rude idiot; it’s ok with him because of his parentage (it’s not ok) but no one touches Shijie. The Yunmeng sibs is where it is at.

And that’s when he unleashes his full Slytherin powers on behalf of his new family. Because he does indeed have a fully functioning brain and shit is going to get really ugly really fast for all the people he loves if he doesn’t try and mitigate the damage somehow.

(A lot of mutual XiYao pinning is going on in the background because I live for the angst ok. LWJ fully approves of him as a brother-in-law tho)

A lot of terrible shit still happens because this is my AU and I want pain, but not only does JGS not have MY’s enormous brain on his side when he tries to seize power, he’s actively working against him (you can’t tell me MY wouldn’t get the kick of his life publicly bringing down and exposing his terrible father).

I’m sorry, back to the commentary.

This two idiots omg.

It’s WQ! Drag him WQ (gently)

I’m going to channel my ballet teacher here for a second: put your hair up! (You bunch of spider crabs, as she would call us)

I mean, JC’s hair is clearly in his face when he’s doing drills and, while the visual of all that dark hair whipping in the wind with the robes (another beef I have, they look like they’d catch on everything) is very dramatic I can assure you it’s fucking annoying. Plus it limits your visual field a lot. Again, I know jack about the culture and people can fly on swords here so why am I complaining about hair but let me live.

I used to have that much hair (then I got a pixie, now I’m growing it back out) and smacking yourself on the face with your own braid hurts.

Shijie knows what’s up with Jiang “I can only show anger” Cheng.

My one track mind when I saw the fish: Anisakis!

I think I would absolutely become a vegetarian if I got dropped in the past tbh. Not only is there no quality control of animal products (hello Trichinella), there’s also no way to do a proper cold storage (hello Salmonella). I’ve read and seen to many horror stories due to contaminated animal byproducts and, while vegetables pose their own risk (hello E. Coli) usually you only have to be thorough at washing and peeling to not have trouble.

5am wake up call without coffee. Fuck that noise.

Wei “I’m a petty gremlin” Wuxian.

I once called WWX a “mad scientist with ADHD” on an AO3 comment and I stand by that assessment.

Ok, but why the turtle caricature? It’s because turtles are “old and wise” like LQR? Is that the joke? Or are they laughing at WWX’s balls?

AW NO PAPERMAN.

“Tell me, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood? // Where, would you look if I asked you to get me a bezoar? // And what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?” It’s pretty much the same energy. LQR is Ancient magic China’s version is Severus Snape down to the pettiness. He tries to catch WWX in a mistake, and when he can’t he dismisses his knowledge (look at Shijie’s face when he says WWX should not be proud to know what he does). He keeps pushing until WWX’s runs into a wall, then uses LWJ to “show him how it’s done” I mean, look how smug he looks and how uncomfortable everyone else is.

“Pity... clearly, fame isn't everything.”

(No, I don’t like LQR and I don’t like Severus Snape either; tragic past and sacrifices do not give you a pass to abuse children don’t @ me, I’m not interested in changing my mind)

And here is where all my “mad scientist with ADHD” hc stem from.

“No screaming in Cloud Recesses.” Screams LQR (yes, I’m 100% that bitch)

WEN NING IS HERE HI WN YOURE SO PRECIOUS.

But intercepting an arrow mid flight is some Geralt of Rivia Witcher bullshit right there.

Detective Wei strikes again.

The scenery is gorgeous my god.

Can we talk again about how this 16-year-old boy reacted to someone sneaking up on him by drawing his sword and attacking? That’s not fucking normal, that’s a common reflex in soldiers or people with PTSD.

(The Netflix translation has him calling LWJ “WangJi” and I die)

Thanks for reading!

[spicy-ryls]

Ranty TROS stuff below. I wrote this on and off days so it might sound disconnected but yeah. Sorry it’s kinda long and my spelling and grammar might not be the best but I just wanted to let my feelings out.

I’m still trying to accept this movie. I watched it on the night of 19 December, the premier date for Malaysia, and I still remember my visceral feeling towards this movie. I remember feeling so empty, baffled, sad and shocked, almost like I just lost a relative or one of my cats, and I’ve experienced that multiple times in my life and it sucks.

Sometimes I think, how could I be so attached to this trilogy? I’ve literally spent so much energy defending TLJ and the ST from the backlash in the local fandom to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore and I removed myself from the local fanbase as much as I could. But I’ve never felt so betrayed and almost embarassed that I was so invested into it.

I never grew up with Star Wars. Instead, I started watching TFA while I was in that age period between 19-20. I was a little shit and I was still adjsuting to adulthood, so it pretty much was almost like in the process of being born again as an adult. At the time I was making a series of webcomics under the title ‘Gods Among Men’ and I was pretty much drawing almost exclusively Hades/Persephone stuff and I was drawing Hades as this typical tall, dark & handsome guy. At some point, my friends and I just joked at how much I loved that trope that’s it’s like my type in fictional guys, and yes I still love it.

So my friends just said to me “hey, watch the new Star Wars, you’ll love it!”

And I was HOOKED.

I got so into it. I watched all of the other movies, even the Christmas Special. And I loved the character of Kylo Ren so much. Initially I wasn’t instantly into Reylo. But after some fanart or fanfic or two I fell down the rabbit hole of this ship that I loved so much and the two characters of Rey and Kylo/Ben whom I had such a strong connection to.

Q4 of 2017 was the best year for me as a fan of this franchise. I was so excited for TLJ. I was super involved in a lot of local Star Wars related stuff and at that point people just knew me as “That Rey (cosplayer) who liked Reylo and Kylo Ren a lot”. I had made many friends and acquaintances over the year. And then TLJ came.

And the community was divided.

A lot of male fans I knew were so enraged by the movie. “TLJ ruined my childhood!!” they shouted on their facebook wall. “RJ and KK ruined Star Wars” they yelled. It just cemented the Star Wars Fanboy trope so badly that it was laughable that grown men 3 times my age with family AND KIDS were yelling about it for TWO WHOLE YEARS and because I was the one publicly championing the ST, all they talked about to me was about how much they hated it, and it’s still brought on in passing conversation to this day. I hated having to meet these people at events because my encounters are always unpleasant.

Time passed. The Reylo community was prosperous and it really was a golden age of content. We were excited to see how the ending of a saga was going to be, with a definitive Ben Solo redemption and Reylo being canon. And then came the announcement of JJ returning to direct Episode IX. I instantly had a gut feeling that it was not gonna be good, but I will hold my trust to him since he directed TFA. BOY I WAS WRONG.

The TROS panel at SWCC ended in a somewhat hopeful note. Later in the year, interviews were being published, and in the beginning it was all fine and dandy. I can’t remember when the news of reshoots started popping out, but even then I gave them the benefit of the doubt that because this movie was going to tie in all of the other 8 movies and surely they had to do something right about it. Then came in a lot of red flags in merchandising, marketing, cast interviews, etc. Daisy’s and John’s infamous interview felt so OOC for me that I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And at this point, my hopes were very low. I felt something was very off in everything and I was almost inactive of soc med or any TROS news because I wanted to watch the movie with no outside influences. I didn’t even read any leaks and only heard about it in passing.

Then came the week of the premier. I was putting my expectations super low. I just thought of all the bad things that could happen like Rey Palpatine or Kylo/Ben dying and I went into it with that thought. Before the movie, I had to sort of minggle with the crowd of a private screening event as Rey. But I just had so much anxiety before I could even get in costume to the point where I did cry. And it didn’t help that some of the other cosplayers and minders had already seen the movie the previous day and were having borderline spoilery conversations, which did upset me further. Eventually I calmed down enough, but I was still feeling a little down. It sort of helped that the attendees who are usually normal people are usually the kind to take pictures with the more masked or sith-looking guys or my friend who was masked Kylo so I could usually be left alone.

And finally, it was time to watch the movie and I can still remember how dumb I was for thinking this movie was going to be smart. There was just too much going on and I was so in shock of how poorly written, edited and directed it was. There was hardly any cheer or gasps in my cinema throughout the whole thing, although there were one or two who tried to whoop at the Lucasfilm logo but they kept quiet for the rest of it too. It was such a different experience from the one I had of my first TLJ screening. 80% of the time I just had a blank expression on my face and the only time I sort of got excited for were the Rey and Kylo/Ben scenes, except that ending. I really did not like this movie. I did not feel hopeful at all and the ending the just felt so off. I was relieved to see that I was not the only one who thought of it that way.

This movie effected me so much that I had trouble sleeping, loss of apetite, loss of focus and random bouts of crying in my car for how hollow I felt for about a week+. There was a huge convention on the same weekend and everyone who knew me pretty much came up to me and ask how I was and what I thought about the movie, and a simple glance and head shake was enough to convey how much I felt, and I just did not want to talk about it on a busy con day. But after a busy con weekend, I went in full force on venting it out on Twitter and finding myself in discord support groups and I’m glad I was not alone.

Now it’s been 11 days since I’ve watched TROS and I’ve sort of clamed down from being mad about it. But I don’t think I could accept an ending to a saga for how botched it was which stemmed from fan pandering and corporate greed. But I have never been so proud to be in the Reylo community, who are tirelessly finding concrete evidence on how badly edited it was and just how messy things were behind the scenes. I’m glad to have met all of you and even befriend some thanks to this ship and our love for Rey and Ben Solo and every character in the saga. I am very saddened at how badly treated every character was from Rey to Leia and everyone in between, but it’s not going to stop us from creating good fan content and what we’ve had so far is incredible.

Stay strong and save what we love. ❤

[overthinkingkdrama]

Jona’s 5 Worst Dramas of 2019

A couple words about this list. I’m making this for fun. If a drama you love ended up on this list, it doesn’t mean that I hate you or I think you’re stupid or have terrible taste. But these are dramas that inspired strong negative reactions in me for one reason or another, whether that be disappointment, rage or disgust.

I’ve only included dramas that finished airing in 2019 in my selection process. If you have some dramas that hated, feel free to share them in the replies or send me an ask. It’s fun to complain about things for some reason.

Also, I have included major SPOILERS in a couple of these. So read at your own peril.

Dishonorable Mention: Melting Me Softly

I sincerely tried to limit myself to only dramas that I--for whatever misguided reasons--finished in their entirety for this list. Mainly because I don’t think it’s fair to brand something as the “worst” of anything without actually giving the thing a fair shake. That’s the only reason Melting Me Softly isn’t higher on this list. But I felt that it wasn’t right to leave it off entirely, if for no other reason then out of respect for the fallen Ji Chang Wook stans out there who lost their lives trying to make it through this trash fire. Somebody needs to stand up for those brave soldiers, out their gifing trash dramas while people like me are safe and sound on our couches, watching the tag like it’s a train wreck.

I made it through only two episodes of this drama, and despite my goodwill toward the majority of the cast, they were two of the most bafflingly bad hours of television that I forced myself to sit through this year. From what I could tell while side-eyeing the drama on tumblr and twitter it didn’t improve much over the course of the run. There were a couple steamy kisses that I enjoyed in clip form, but I don’t think it would have been worth the brain cells lost to sit through any more than that.

Bottom Line: Painfully unfunny, overwhelmingly expositional with no character development, confusing pacing and sloppy editing. Two episodes was two too many.

5. When the Devil Calls Your Name

It pains me to put this on the list because it was just last year that a Jung Kyung Ho, Park Sung Woong collaboration (Life on Mars) ended up in my top 5. And giving credit where it’s due, the two male leads seem to have a great deal of fun working together and I believe that all the actors gave this drama everything they could and sincerely tried to make it work. That’s one of the things I like about Jung Kyung Ho, he picks unique, risky projects that either pay off in a big way or fall flat on their faces (like the amateurishly written and edited Missing 9) Unfortunately, this script just too messy and too bizarre to work. Ha Rip as has a deeply frustrating character arc. He’s such a self-centered jerk for the vast majority of the drama, which is fine for a Faust type story if it’s written with conviction, but every time you think he’s started to turn a corner or grown as a person he reverts back to his old ways. The writing and tone are whiplash inducing. Plus the vague “soul mates” relationship between Ha Rip and Kim Yi Kyung seemed to want to have it both ways, flipping between implied romantic potential and a father/daughter dynamic, which made me quite uncomfortable.

Bottom Line: This drama’s bizarre mythology and world building barely makes any sense at all, but at least they’re easier to follow than the character development. Attempted something unique, but couldn’t pull it off. The OST is super dope though.

4. Love in Sadness

When I watched the first teasers I got the distinct impression that this wasn’t going to be a good drama, or at best it was going to be a guilty pleasure, but at the time when I started it I was hungry for a melo and there wasn’t much airing to hold my attention so I started it on impulse. I think in this case I got what I deserved for continuing to watch something I didn’t think was very good.

The first few episodes were actually pretty gripping and intriguingly dark, but that petered of quickly and the drama became and infuriating wheel spinning exercise with barely any perceptible plot development from episode to episode. The protagonists in this are all so stupid that in the final few episodes the female lead gets kidnapped not once, but multiple times because she keeps meeting her unstable husband alone. Plus nobody in this drama seems to know how to call the police when a madman is waving around a gun. It probably wouldn’t have made me so very mad except that in the last few episodes the writer became unaccountably preoccupied with how sad the psychotic, wife-beating husband’s family life was and how lonely and pathetic his life was when he wasn’t allowed to stalk, assault, and psychologically terrorize his wife. Seriously, in the last leg of the drama the villain is the only character who gets any character development at all. The drama pulls out all the stops to try to make use feel sorry for him. It’s disgusting.

Bottom Line: When a drama about a woman trying to escape domestic violence becomes completely preoccupied with painting the abuser as tragically misunderstood, you’ve got some serious problems.

3. The Lies Within

If it wasn't for the last two episodes this drama would not be on this list, but that isn't because it was in any way an exceptional drama, or that it otherwise would have ended up on my best list. Without the last two episodes The Lies Within is a merely adequate thriller, somewhat heightened by the brutal nature of the premise. I picked this show up largely to fill the void that was left by WATCHER and it was more or less successful, plus it helped that I liked the cast. However even at the beginning this drama I felt like it had some pretty glaring tone problems. There were parts of the drama that were standard OCN dark and gritty thriller, and there were other parts that felt like a campy police sitcom. The humor, when it does crop up in this drama always feels super out of place. But then that last big twist happened and man...I can't remember the last time a drama made me that angry or cratered quite so hard with a twist.

[And this is where I spoil the HELL out of this drama...]

Before this drama decided to go all M. Night Shyamalan in it’s last two episodes, there seemed to be at least one, if not two really reasonable candidates for the kidnapper. Actually all the ground work they’d done up to that point would seem to have pointed to Young Min and if he had turned out to be the perpetrator, I would have completely bought it. Instead they decided to blow everyone’s mind by making the kidnapped husband complicit in his own kidnapping and dismemberment. Which might seem like a shocking twist until you think about it for even half a second.

What it winds up doing on a narrative level it makes everything the characters have done to investigate this series of crimes up to this point feel pointless, resulting in a huge anticlimax. It makes the ambiguous figure of Seo Hui’s husband not only hopelessly stupid, but also cruel and unsympathetic. Because he thought somehow simply sharing the information with her would put her in more danger than threatening and psychologically terrorizing her into investigating the very people he was theoretically trying to protect her from. The explanation that he was already terminally ill doesn’t to anything to mitigate the stupidity of his plan for me. Seriously, you couldn’t think of any solution aside from cutting bits off yourself and sending them to your wife in the mail? I could rant about this ending at length, but I’m going to try to stop here.

Bottom Line: As far as I’m concerned, if you choose to sacrifice the emotional and narrative coherence of your story for a cheap and dirty twist to surprise the audience, you deserve every ranty review you get.

2. Love Affairs in the Afternoon

I’m really not sure what possessed me to watch this drama to begin with. That I continued to watch it is on me. The fact that I watched it despite hating the shallow characters, the thin story and the abortive message at the core of the drama is simply a lapse of judgement for which I shouldn’t be forgiven. Why did I do it despite not having a single nice thing to say about this show? Well, there are two reasons. I was curious to see if they would do anything compelling with one or two of the characters, (specifically the serial adulteress housewife an the broody artist) and I was surreptitiously watching this drama at work and it was really easy to follow the plot while only actually keeping my eyes on the screen about half the time. I watched the last episode before the subs were available and had no trouble understanding what was going. Which could be a sign that my Korean is improving, but is more likely a sign that the writing was so predictable and simplistic that you could follow it if you didn’t speak the language at all.

[Spoilers beyond this point.]

It’s my understanding that in the Jdrama that this is based on all of the characters basically wreck their lives and end up miserable, pointing toward the emptiness of the lives of these people who try to find fulfillment through extra-marital affairs. If that’s how this drama had ended, I still wouldn’t have enjoyed the execution but I could have respected the intent. But in this watered down Kdrama-fied version all the couples’ issues are resolved in the whitewash of a last episode time skip that makes the suffering and bullshit that led up to it feel completely pointless.

Bottom Line: Maybe this level of trashy, uninspired tripe would be somewhat justified if the chemistry between the leads had been better, but somehow they even managed to screw that up. The leads are just bad, vacuous people, a fact which is rendered all the more unforgivable by them being utterly bland. Everybody needed to divorce, nobody deserved to end up happy. Please be wiser than me and avoid this one.

1. Memories of the Alhambra

Initially, I was on the fence about even producing a “Worst List” this year, because in the past few years I’ve tried to be better about dropping dramas the moment they start to disappoint me, rather than hanging on to them and winding up burning myself out. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough material to write this list, or at least not enough material to make it worth reading. Then I remembered that Memories of the Alhambra finished airing in January of this year (2019 was impossibly long, wasn’t it?) and I thought, “Aha, I can make this work.” I knew at once this drama was going to be the shitty tinfoil star atop my Christmas tree of suck.

I’ve already written a full review of this drama, where I got about as mean as I felt I could reasonably be. You can go read that if you like, I’m not going to retread all my many complaints here. What I will say is that Memories of the Alhambra took my mixed-to-favorable opinion of the writer, Song Jae Jung, and turned it to a negative one. She’s someone who clearly has a lot of interesting high concept ideas, but the execution is just not there. You can hook an audience with a concept, but you have to keep them with craft and structure. 

Maybe the industry can be blamed for that. Maybe she just has a hard time ending her stories, or maybe writing on a deadline doesn’t agree with her. Whatever the reason, I can no longer trust her to deliver a satisfying story. And that’s deeply saddening to me, because Queen In Hyun’s Man is in my top 10 favorite dramas.

To be front-to-back terrible is one thing. The joke’s at least half on me for bothering. But to have potential, to have an interesting hook, a budget, a cast, but then to be either unwilling or unable to live up to that potential feels like a con. That’s how I felt about his drama, like I had been willfully deceived by special effects and flashy editing, all orchestrated to disguise a narratively bankrupt, unsatisfying drama.

Bottom Line:  Is Memories of the Alhambra objectively the worst drama on this list? No, it’s not. Is it the most disappointing? Absolutely, it is. And that’s the more heinous crime, in my opinion.  And that’s why it’s my worst drama of 2019.

[kae-karo]

I was skimming the demon doc and having a grand ol' time until I saw the 'dan started wearing an earring in the "gay ear" ' thing. I know it's not that big a deal but am I overreacting for being a bit irritated by it? I never understood it and it seems so juvenile and middle school to me to be like "oooo you wear jewelry on a particular side of your body? GAY". Granted there are younguns in the phandom so whoever made it could be really young. Sorry if this comes off as ranty lol 1/2

2/2 That’s not my intention at all. I think I just have bad feelings with that whole deal after being that young and seeing boys get legitimately mad at their friends for getting the “gay side” of their nose pierced. And also being a closeted person wondering if people are gonna judge me when I got my nose pierced myself. I said this wasn’t supposed to be a rant and yet I’m ranting lol sorry >.

hi dear! for context, the demon doc (x) credit to @philsroots 

first and foremost, let me just remind everyone it is a demon doc, it’s not meant to be taken at face value.

second of all, it’s important to clarify that the ‘right-side earring is gay’ thing isn’t a childish insult spawned from insecure kids making fun of others (although i know it did evolve into that by most of our generation), it’s rooted in homosexual culture as one of many different historical ways to subtly signal a person was mlm (x) i’d actually suggest the opposite here, that those who aren’t aware of the culture are most likely the younger members of the phandom, unless they’ve gone about educating themselves on lgbtq+ history and culture.

i definitely understand where you’re coming from and why this might’ve upset you with only the context of bullies from school, and i’m not saying that i believe dan made a decision to put his earring in his right ear because it has a special significance with regards to his sexuality, but it’s important to understand the context of both the demon doc itself and the historical context before getting annoyed at the author

(also how could i not credit the lovely @legdabs for finding that article bad friend detected)

[wickedhawtwexler]

sorry i keep bitching on this website my life is lowkey a disaster at the moment but it's fine we're fine everything is f i n e <3

so my labmate and i met almost a month ago to talk about our manuscript. we each gave ourselves a to-do list. i have ONE task i am still working on. he has done NOTHING. but HE keeps texting ME asking when ***I*** am going to be done??? UMMMM WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO BE DONE!!!!! last week he went into our lab meeting and was like "oh i'm just waiting for morgan to be done" WHY ARE YOU WAITING FOR ME YOU HAVE 3/3 THINGS (that YOU ASSIGNED YOURSELF TO DO i didn't FORCE THIS on you YOU LITERALLY SAID YOU WANTED TO DO THEM!!!!!!) LEFT TO DO AND ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THEM REQUIRE MY INPUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

i ignored him and kept working on my shit because whatever asshole, i'm going to finish my things and then our advisor can look at our document and see YOUR list of undone shit and see that ***I*** have not been the problem.

and again, as of this afternoon i have ONE (1) task left and it's almost done and i was feeling pretty good about it. buuuut then i joined our lab zoom meeting, saw that he had texted me again (late yesterday, i had my phone on do not disturb so i just saw it) blaming ME for this manuscript not being done saying that our advisor was upset and i just fucking snapped y'all. my soul just left my fucking body because i am so FED UP!!! QUIT BLAMING ME!!!! I will admit I'm working slowly but YOU ARE NOT WORKING ON THIS AT ALL!!!! I know you haven't even LOOKED at the manuscript since our meeting last month because you would SEE how much I have done and you would know that YOU STILL HAVE SHIT TO DO!!!!!

y'all i have not had a panic attack since literally like june or july (shoutout to therapy and adderall <3) but i could feel one starting because this is literally just so frustrating!!! like i am the only one putting in effort and i'm still getting all the blame and i just can't fucking win and i feel absolutely helpless. and all the family drama going on in my life already has me on edge. so i closed out of the stupid lab meeting bc i am NOT going to have a panic attack over this nonsense lmao

and like. y'all know i love my advisor but i know he isn't going to do anything about this lmao. last time labmate and i were having issues... he definitely didn't say anything in our lab meetings to labmate, and if he handled it privately it didn't work because labmate STILL did not do ANYTHING to help for weeks (then decided to do everything on christmas, then texted & emailed me a bunch and got annoyed when i didn't reply, like ummmm it's winter break, if you have no life that's fine but i'm not dealing with this).

sooooo i am fucking done and i don't care what happens. i don't care if my advisor is mad at me, i don't care if this stupid paper ever gets finished, i literally just don't care!!!! i was already planning on dropping out. literally none of this matters.

anyway i'm very angry but also weirdly happy because this is just very validating of my choice to drop out. and i'm proud of my choice to drop out tbh, like i think it's really hard to accept that the things you used to dream of aren't actually good for you anymore, and i'm proud of myself for acknowledging that and for actually making a lot of progress in preparing to leave (i have a whole flowchart of things i need to complete and i'm making regular, sustained progress on checking things off the flowchart....... again shoutout to therapy and adderall <3)

SOOOOO yeah. i am pissed and i am ignoring all communications from people in my real life atm but it's gonna be ok. i just have to survive this without screaming at anybody (hence the SECOND ranty text post in as many days, i need to unleash my wrath on the internet)

[ishikawayukis]

you really don't have to reply to this because I dont want you to get worked up over the dumbest fucking people ever on this planet, but like you're so right for that rant

my dad who had to start fending for himself when he was just 16 literally tried to argue with me about why teachers and doctors deserve to get paid a living wage, because according to him they should just get better jobs

like we get it You out of like maybe 100 have it good, please for the love of an actual god shut the fuck up no one cares about your opinion, especially when it's so shitty

I'm sorry I got a little ranty too, Tumblr is my newspaper and it can't be helped at this point lol, but just like... There's dumb people out there, but at least change happened, and I'm hoping it's gonna keep happening, it's Really time for better things to come, and to all these people who only think of and for themselves... Life always finds a way :) sometimes you just gotta ignore all the dumb people and try and keep in mind that they're mad because something good happened and it's their problem honestly!

I hope you have a much better rest of your day <3

don't worry about getting ranty i actually love having conversations like this! a

and also not to insult your dad but people like that often complain about how ignorant people are, how education is shit and how bad health care is, and my dude how do you expect any of it to be good if you're telling those people to just "get better jobs". make it make sense, teachers literally should be the best paid job because they're literally educating the new generation i truly don't get how people see education as this thing that can be sweped aside. and at least doctor here get paid well but maybe too well in some places (most people from the higher class are doctors or lawyers or any of the sort because they can make fucking money and do not care lmao)

and yes it is time for better things to come! i do think that this new generation maybe will be able to stop this alt right wave that is happening right now worldwide because things are getting scary.

and thank you! i hope you do as well dear <3

[foxy--stoat]

sorry if this doesn’t make sense

so i’ve been thinking a lot (wow, what a surprise) and idk I feel like i’m not really dealing with things? and I can’t really tell anyone, so what better to do than to tell the entire world completely anonymously, I guess...? I’m really confused. about everything. but here’s my rant (it’s either going to be 10 pages long or 5 sentences, it can go either way)

I feel like I live in the world of my podcasts and books and tv shows because a world where the mayor uses they/them pronouns, and queerness is a given, or a world where hooded figures won’t let you in the dog park and the city council is a large blob of limbs, or where small silver worms can eat your flesh or where people’s boyfriends are empaths or when giant bats live underground, or when every problem can be solved in a 40 minute episode is so much more exciting than my reality! my life is so predictable, just get up, go be in zoom meetings all day, take a walk, practice cello, exercise, and go to bed again. Nothing happens. but in my tv shows, the words “from beneath you it devours” will pop up again and again and every time I’ll get shivers down my spine because I dont’ know what it means and I do and I know that everything will be ok in less than 10 episodes and if I get sad I can push through the pain push hard through the pain till it breaks, but in real life, the monotony of my life, when I push though the pain and fear and doubt and struggle it just slingshots me back a million miles. and I know, that’s just real life. but when you’re a little kid, you read of all these worlds that you can retreat into, so much excitement and wonder, like narnia, or harry potter, or even the underland! but then you realize that it was all in some stranger’s imagination and it will never be real. so you live your life, and every day is a drop of water on a stone, making a difference, but it won’t show until you’re long dead. and maybe one day it will stop. and it will never show. and all you’ll have to show for your infinitely small life is a falling apart family, a sad group of friends who will later turn you into a cautionary tale for their kids about wearing your seatbelt, or looking both ways before you cross the street, and a stack of books. maybe one day they’ll find your tumblr account and if you were still alive they would have scolded you. “clara!” they would say, voice shaking and mind racing as to what could have made their perfectly goody-two-shoes daughter break such obvious rules “why would you do this? you know that you could be catfished or hunted down!” and what they wouldn’t add is “we thought you were better than this. we thought we could count on you but all you did is let us down and now you can’t have friends or your podcasts or your books or tv or your room and all you can do is sit and stare at the wall and agonize over if Buffy ever defeats the first, or what Rita’s last name is, or what Rose’s story is. they’ll not let you hang out with Jane and Liam, even though you haven’t talked to them for ages, because they’re “bad influences” even though all they did was dye their hair and use the occasional curse word and go on twitter.” when I was in third grade, they were glad I made friends with them. that was when liam was still mila. I only had 2 friends, one of which I hated. (she and I were the perfect example of frenemies, but we’ve grown apart now). but now when I want to hang out, maybe go on a masked walk or facetime, my mom is like “why don’t you hang out with vivian instead? or julianne? or literally anyone else besides your stupid idiotic ‘bad influencing’ elementary school friends, despite the fact that you’ve known them since you were 7.” when I talked to the doctor, she asked me if I did drugs or knew anybody who did. I said no, obviously. (I really don’t). then my mom had the audacity to pull me aside for a moment and say “what about jane and mila? (this was before he was liam)” and I got so mad for a moment, because shaving your head and hanging out with people you hadn’t known since kindergarden is apparently evil and if they rub off on me I’ll be a little devil child. ok, this has turned into a rant about something else. I do this a lot. all of my notebooks are full of me starting to write a short story about something and always, without fail, end up being something awful and ranty. if I ever actually finish anything, I’ll share it on here, but I doubt I will. 

so anyway, I feel like every episode of every podcast or tv show or every chapter of every book is like another brick on the wall separating me from my life, and though it feels like it’s keeping me safe, it’s really separating me from what I need - food, water, sunlight (metaphorically. I do eat and drink and sleep and go outside, mostly). Or like I’m digging a hole, and with every shovel of dirt the mound becomes more prone to falling and burying me alive. but I can’t stop, because maybe if I dig deep enough I’ll find something worthwhile, something to keep my trying. something that will stop me from just giving up on life. 

ok. whew. that was a lot. I’ve been holding that in for a while and I don’t care if you read it or not, it’s just comforting to know that somebody, somewhere, maybe agrees and can sympathize. maybe they even read this and feel somewhat better knowing that I feel the same way? doubtful, but I’ll keep thinking it. I need the hope. 

apologies that this was so long, and apologies in advance for the millions more of these that will inevitably come, probably all very repetitive and nonsensical, but also very therapeudic for me. and I don’t care if this didn’t make any sense because it does to me and ugh not another rant

also sorry for any spelling/grammatical mistakes usually I’m a very grammatical person (at least when I’m talking out loud, idk about when I’m typing) so plz don’t hate me for that

[everymovie2020]

Into the Storm (2014)

Date watched:  24 February 2018

Hold onto your butts, it’s about to get ranty up in this bitch!

This is the best bad movie of all time, and I say that with love.  Because I’m gonna rant about it, and I’m going to complain, but I want you to understand that this movie makes me laugh SO MUCH and therefore I LOVE IT.

They’ve taken certain things from Twister - the tornado outbreak, the storm chasers - and things from the Discovery Channel TV show Storm Chasers - the armored car - and mishmashed them together in a hodgepodge of bullshittery so beautiful that I want everyone to appreciate it.

Because it’s the worst, but it’s also the best, and I. AM. LIVING.

First of all, this is the armored car “Titus” from the film Into the Storm:

And this is the TIV, the real life armored vehicle designed to intercept tornadoes:

Are we seeing any distinct similarities here?

Oh, how about the fact that Matt Walsh plays a filmmaker trying to intercept a tornado:

Which is exactly what Imax filmmaker and real-life badass Sean Casey does with his TIV?

I MEAN.

Guys, it’s lazy to watch the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers and steal a bunch of ideas from it, okay?

Like the radar truck, for example.  That’s something you’ve blatantly stolen from Storm Chasers.

And I don’t really know how the real life storm chasers feel, because I cannot find any opinion about this movie on the internet anywhere at all - so maybe Sean Casey okayed it, I DON’T KNOW.  All I’m saying is that it’s FISHY.

God, I don’t even know where to start, it’s all so bad. So I’m just going to list it:

So tornado season starts in late March and goes through to the end of May/early June - it’s June 16th, and they haven’t seen a tornado in that whole time?  Guys, what are you doing wrong?

Lori from the Walking Dead is the meteorologist - is she bad at it because she’s - GASP - a WOMAN?

Or maybe they’re all just bad at storm chasing?  Who can say?

There are a few plot lines in this movie - the first is Matt Walsh in his TIV - I’m sorry, TITUS - the second is the vice principal of the school and his two sons and the third is the two crazy rednecks who follow them around trying to get killed.

And Matt Walsh’s whole deal (I’m just going to call him Matt Walsh because it’s the famous Matt Walsh from Veep and other such comedy shows) is that he wants to drive his TIV - I’m sorry, I did it again! - TITUS into a tornado to capture footage inside the funnel, which is literally the premise of at least four seasons of Storm Chasers.

And the vice principal and his two sons have the usual father-sons issue, because he’s an uptight asshole, his wife died, blah blah blah - honestly this whole plotline is not interesting but also central to the story, but I’m just going to omit it because it’s the worst, most boring part of this movie.

Anyway, there’s this massive unprecedented storm system bearing down on the tiny little Oklahoman (I think?) hamlet of Silverton, a predominantly white town with pretty houses and trees and such, that’s about to be THROWN INTO THE BOWELS OF HELL BY MANY, MANY TORNADOES

And surprise surprise, Lori and Matt Walsh are the only storm chasers there!  They finally got a forecast correct!  Way to go team!

They also have three other members of their team - unknown white cameraman no. 1 who has no lines and survives, black cameraman who has lines but inexplicably disappears halfway through the film (we’ll get to that), and Jacob.  Oh, Jacob, you poor dead bastard.  We’re going to run down the list of bad choices that led you to getting sucked up into a fire tornado one by one.  Jacob just wanted to go on spring break, guys, but he was talked into making money storm chasing (hahaha making money storm chasing?  That’s a good one) by his friend, black cameraman, who talks him into staying even though Matt Walsh is so mean to him.  Oh, poor dead Jacob, you unlucky bastard.

So there’s a massive storm warning and they decide to hold the graduation ceremony outside?  These people live in Oklahoma, are they insane?

Or maybe because they live in Oklahoma they’re flippant about storm safety

And like the whole town is there?  But the school is a storm shelter so they all survive the first tornado that hits.

The special effects are pretty good but they still don’t get the look of the tornadoes right.  There are millions of tornado videos on YouTube, it really shouldn’t be that hard to make them look real.

The two redneck assholes hellbent on killing themselves decide to follow the Storm Chasers, and they call themselves the “TWISTA HUNTERZ” which is brilliant

All the characters converge in the lovely (soon to be destroyed) downtown centre of Silverton, because the vice principal is trying to locate his other son who got trapped in an industrial park that collapsed - don’t ask, it’s boring, he’s trapped, who cares.

And then all of a sudden - despite the BLUE SKIES - BAM TORNADO ATTACK

And this tornado is so strong that all it has to do is appear from the sky and briefly touch this huge cement building to make it crumble

Fun fact about tornadoes, they gain strength the longer they’re on land, not when they suddenly appear from the sky

But whatever what do I know I’ve only watched FIVE SEASONS OF STORM CHASERS WHICH THIS MOVIE RIPPED OFF

Anyway then there’s like a bunch of tornadoes all touching down in this one area of the town (it’s funny how the tornadoes go wherever our protagonists are, that would certainly make storm chasing a hell of a lot easier in real life if the tornadoes had a personal vendetta against the storm chasers and actively hunted them down - oh my fucking GOD DID I JUST COME UP WITH A MOVIE IDEA?  Coming to theatres soon!)... what was I even talking about before I came up with the world’s best movie idea... I’m thinking of optioning it to Pixar?

Oh right, the tornadoes are touching down, they’re all hiding in this bank except for Lori from the Walking Dead and the Vice Principal (probably just going to call him the VP from here on out because he’s so bland that I literally do not remember his character’s name or really what he looks like), and then Lori and the VP get like... lifted off the ground and are floating there as the tornado tries to pull them in, because apparently these storms are so strong that gravity no longer exists?

Oh man there’s so much more to complain about, strap in

They survive that and head off in search of the trapped son, and for some reason it’s going to take them like 40 minutes to get to him even though they live in this small town?  Small town with a huge airport though, we’ll get to that, we’ll get to it

I’M JUST SAYING THE LAYOUT OF THIS TOWN MAKES NO SENSE.

Anyway, on the way to get the son they pass by this car lot right next to a church - because after I’ve been for a good pray, I like to stop by the used car lot to pick up my next vehicle - and BAM TORNADO ATTACK!

These tornadoes are MAD and they are coming for these guys (seriously I’m going to write a script, I think it should have a heartwarming ending where they decide to be friends, it’s Pixar after all)

And then the radar truck gets flipped over, so they have to abandon ship, but there’s tornadoes EVERYWHERE and then OH NO!  A fuel leak!  BAM!  FIRE TORNADO, THE WORST KIND OF TORNADO!

Now we get to the saga of poor dead Jacob.  You see, poor dead Jacob wanted to quit, but black cameraman told him to suck it up, and that he would be on spring break the next week, and he would get to see that lovely girlfriend of his.  What black cameraman didn’t realise is that he sealed Jacob’s fate - we knew at that point that Jacob was a goner.

And indeed he was, when he decided to film a close up of the fire tornado - seriously, I know Twister makes it look like you can just stroll up to a tornado and it will be fine, the winds are contained, but there is NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL HE WOULD’VE BEEN ABLE TO GET THAT CLOSE

And also I’m not sure that the fire tornado could have happened the way it did - I feel like the winds would extinguish the flames?  But I am not a scientist

And neither is poor dead Jacob, because the tornado is whirling away, and suddenly it sucks the camera out of his hands, and they’re screaming JACOB NO but he has TO GET THE CAMERA OR MATT WALSH WILL YELL AT HIM and then gravity, once again, is turned off and he is SUCKED INTO THE FIRE TORNADO AND RIGHT UP THE FUNNEL TO HIS DOOM

Again, I’m not a scientist, but I do feel as though that probably wouldn’t happen exactly the same way IRL, but this is an unprecedented tornado outbreak and who is to say that they’re going to behave in a normal way?

Poor black cameraman is SHOOK now, and they’re in the church, and Jacob is DEAD, and he decides to leave?  I missed that part but he’s not in the rest of the movie

So they save the son - seriously don’t care - and then it turns out that ANOTHER TORNADO IS HEADED RIGHT FOR THE SCHOOL

But gasp, that’s where the whole town is!

What will our heroes do?  I’ll tell you what they do - they strap into the TIV - I’m sorry, TITUS - and head on over to the school.  The earlier tornado thankfully didn’t hit the huge amount of cars and school buses parked outside - what a considerate tornado - so they herd everyone into them and set out to flee from the world’s biggest tornado that is DESTROYING EVERYTHING IN ITS PATH

And it’s a monster. It makes the one at the end of Twister looks like a wee lil baby

Because they were like, “you know what we’re going to do?  We’re going to take the tornado from the end of Twister and turn it all the way up to 11 MOTHERFUCKERS”

This thing is so big it creates its own gravity

This thing is so big that when it crosses over the enormous international airport in the middle of nowhere but in the vicinity of this small town named Silverton - seriously what the fuck are they doing with an airport that big? - it sucks the planes up into its vortex where they fly around

Actually this reminds me of a cool tornado video; I’m going to try to find it and post it at the end, stay tuned

Anyway all of the buses except the one with our heroes and the TIV - I’m sorry, TITUS - manage to escape, but they get trapped because of fallen power-lines and such.  So they decide to ride it out in a storm drain.

Let me tell you something.  A storm drain would be the exact WORST PLACE EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD TO RIDE OUT THIS TORNADO

Because you know what a storm drain is, in addition to being a DRAIN THAT WATER COMES OUT OF?  IT’S A FUCKING WIND TUNNEL

I MEAN I CAN’T EVEN WITH THIS IDEA TO HIDE IN A FUCKING STORM DRAIN IT IS THE WORST IDEA EVER

AND ONE END OF IT IS A FUCKING STEEL GRATE SO LIKE, IT’S THE WORST PLACE EVER

And then they get down there and Matt Walsh says to Lori, “Take care of this camera footage for me,” (or something like that) and she’s like “NO MATT NO” but he heads up to shelter in his TIV TITUS, and you think it’s because he wants to film the tornado - which he totally does - but it’s also to SAVE THEM and to wedge the TIV TITUS up against the steel grid of the storm drain so they won’t all get sucked out to their horrible deaths.

So they anchor it using the steel cable from the winch at the front of the car, and it’s like, now you’re in a storm drain, there’s a steel grate at one end and a fucking steel cable running through and you’re all holding onto it? You’re literally ALL GOING TO BE RIPPED APART

It’s like that scene at the start of Ghost Ship where the cable snaps and cuts all the passengers in half - the only scene I remember from that movie tbh - only in a storm drain

Anyway the tornado hits and Matt Walsh is in the car and it’s trying to fly but it’s held in place by the cable, and then suddenly things go calm - what can this be?  Has the tornado lifted?  Has it dissipated?  No... it’s the EYE

THE TORNADO IS SO BIG IT HAS AN EYE

LIKE IT’S A FUCKING HURRICANE OR SOMETHING

I MEAN FIRST OF ALL NO.

And second of all NO!  NO!  THAT’S NOT HOW THEY WORK!

But it gets even more PREPOSTEROUS - I know, at this point you’re thinking how could it possibly get more preposterous, but it does - because the winds hit again, the manhole cover flies off and VP is almost sucked out - IRL he would’ve been snapped in half and sucked right out of that motherfucker, you best believe it

And then the cable snaps and off floats the TIV - TITUS - because once again, to nobody’s surprise, they turned off the MOTHERFUCKING GRAVITY AGAIN

And Matt Walsh rides the tornado right to the top - yes, that’s right - where he sees the fucking SUN BECAUSE HE’S ON TOP OF THE CLOUDS

I MEAN IN WHAT UNIVERSE

IN WHAT WORLD COULD THIS POSSIBLY HAPPEN

HE IS AN ARMORED TANK WEIGHING LITERALLY TONS

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE

And of course he then plummets to his death but STILL

And they all survive because of course they do.

OH MY GOD ACTUALLY I FORGOT ONE OF THE BEST PARTS - The Twista Hunterz get sucked up into a tornado but in the end they survive!  And they all lived happily ever after

And what did we learn from this?

DON’T STAND NEAR FIRE TORNADOES YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOT

ahahaahahahaahahahahaaha

Seriously the best worst movie ever and I highly recommend it if you want to die laughing like I did

Also can Sean Casey sue over this?  I think he should.

For some reason it won’t let me embed it, but this is the link to the cool tornado video mentioned above (see about 2 minutes in for truck flipping):

https://youtu.be/WABqwKjQM_c

[lexidanger]

My TLJ (way longer than expected) analysis/rant/review

DISCLAIMER: I work for Hasbro but knew NOTHING behind the scenes for this movie like I did for TFA, so I didn’t have any outside influence...also

SPOILERS GALORE, IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS MOVIE I SUGGEST SEEING IT FIRST ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE A SW FAN

I honestly have a lot of mixed feelings about this movie, because while there were things I absolutely adored in it, but there were also choices made that I really still can’t wrap my head around and ultimately have left me pretty disappointed, I’m not going to go over every little thing but if you have a question about how I felt about a certain character/scene etc just shoot me an ask and i’ll rant at you there. Anyways I’m gonna start with the good shit since I might get a tad ranty with the bad

THE GOOD

The opening sequence- The opening scenes were phenomenal imo, that was absolutely the way to start off the movie, It honestly held a lot of that SW nostalgia and felt really great action/tone wise, it pulled you in like a good hook should.

Leia- So i’m legit a huge emotional baby when it comes to stuff I love, I was already crying as soon as the opening crawl hit, but it wasn’t until they showed Leia the first time that both me and the girl next to me started sobbing (she turned to me and offered some tissues saying she made sure to bring a bunch so it was nice to have some emotional solidarity) But anyways Leia was great and i’m beyond happy with how they handled her which leads me to my next point…

LEIA USING THE FORCE- Everyone in the theater was crushed when she was thrown out into space, and as soon as the shot closed in on her body and she began to use the Force to bring herself back, you could hear the sigh of relief and amazement come from the crowd (as well as the sniffles because everyone was crying at this point) and it was such a magical moment to see her finally use the Force in a tangible way and shut up the fanboys who thought she wasn’t Force Sensitive. And speaking of one half of the twins...

Luke- As always Mark is an absolute delight and gift to this role, and it was so nice to see him back on screen again. A lot of people are crying out about how this movie “””””ruined him”””” by showing his more grey morality (THAT HES ALWAYS HAD B T W) but even as a dark sider I’ve always adored Luke and his views and he made me super proud in this movie. I’m honestly not ready for people to start demonizing him for "almost killing their precious Ben bby uwu” because again that was a moment with a lot of complexity on both sides that I think could bring up a lot of great conversations about Luke’s trauma in the war and wanting to prevent the loss of billions of lives.

Also as a side note I just want to say how heartwarming it was to see Luke reunited with R2, the moment he recognizes him the bitter old facade melts away and we see that sweet excited boy from Tatooine when he gets to talk to his best friend again after so long.

I’m so so sad to see him go, but honestly I couldn’t think of a better way for him to go out, I’m glad it was done in such a peaceful way (except maybe him actually going to Crait and pulling an Obi proper but thats a whole other issue)

Snoke- I adored Snoke, plain and simple. The few scenes he was in he commanded attention and I was honestly captivated by Serkis’ skills as a character actor once again. The CG work done on him was remarkable, his personality was actually very enjoyable and I really wish we got to see more of his Force mastery, it’s so rare we get to see it controlled on that grand of a scale and so effortlessly too (For those of you who read Darth Plagueis you know the difficulty that comes with using the Force on someone over hologram/long distance, so it was definitely a treat to see that). The potential of this character is remarkable and if anyone involved with SW media is smart they will tap into it and release more content with him ASAP

Rey’s Parentage- As someone who was an avid Rey Palpatine theory supporter, I just want to say how glad I am that Rey’s parentage proved to be of no significance, because in a way it still holds kind of what I wanted to see from her being related to Palpatine. I wanted them to show that really in the end, your bloodline doesn’t make you who you are, you decide who you want to be, not your past, and in a way they did that. They showed that someone from humble beginnings, like Rey and even Finn, can rise up to do amazing things, you don’t have to be part of a dynasty like the Skywalkers to be great.

Imagery/Portrayal of the Force- If theres one thing I can really commend this movie for, it’s the visuals. From the color contrasts of Crait to the trippy Force shenanigans everything was visually stunning. Leia using the Force to glide through the void of space to safety was such a magical moment I will never forget (and anyone calling it Mary Poppins or Superman flying is honestly just afraid to have whimsical moments in their SW and therefore a coward) the blend of CG and puppets was super great and using a puppet for Yoda’s return was such a great callback to the original trilogy. After watching so many Transformers movies its nice to watch an action flick that doesn’t rely on shaky cam to sell the intensity of a scene, but instead uses the art direction and imagery as it should.

Also as far as the Force goes, i’ve been so happy that we’re moving away from the two extremes. The Dark Side in not completely evil and the Light Side is not completely good, i’m just glad we’re finally showing that in the movies, and if it makes people mad then good, the truth hurts but they need to understand not everything is black and white.

Humor- Some might argue that a lot of the humor was oriented more towards the younger audience, but tbh most of the bits really hit with me (probably because I am a child) and provided some nice warm moments in what might be considered a tense and dark movie. We’ve been debating for years now how Luke’s first interaction with Rey would go, what would he say to her? What would he do? and it’s my belief that they could not have gone with a more appropriate choice than for him to toss the saber over his shoulder as he did (Luke’s “reach out” moment with her was also so nice and I’m 1000% convinced it was improv by Mark) The bits with the guardians of the island were great, the porgs were surprisingly enjoyable (if not still a bit bizarre) and my favorite running joke of all, turning Hux into what i’ve always seen him as, a huge joke, a slapstick prop to be tossed around and ridiculed, it was quite satisfying.

Additional things- Despite the fact that there wasn’t a saber on saber fight the entire movie, the Snoke’s Praetorian guard fight scene with Rey and Kylo will go down in history as one of the great fight scenes in SW history. Rose was such an amazing addition to the cast and Kelly is so talented, I’m happy she’s a part of the SW family now. And BOY you want to talk about memorable moments, Holdo’s lightspeed crash into Snoke’s Supremecy was absolutely breathtaking. The way it was shot, the sound design, everything was perfect and people are going to be talking about it for a very long time.

THE BAD

Snoke’s Death- The moment Snoke was killed off is the moment I feel like everything shifted in the movie, I was enjoying it quite a bit up until that point, and then as soon as the saber bisected him this huge wave of disappointment and disbelief washed over me, which is why this is probably one of the biggest mis-steps in the movie besides Phasma’s treatment. For years now we’ve been theorizing and trying to piece together who Snoke could possibly be, whether it be the return of an older character or him being his own thing and with every tiny piece of info that came out we were further pulled in to the mysteries that surrounded him. Who is he? What is he? Why does he look that way? How did he come to power? I never expected all of these questions to be answered in TLJ, but a piece of info or two thrown our way to reward our patience and interest in him would have been appreciated.

Instead what we got was nothing and a swift ridiculous death half way through the movie. To say that i’m crestfallen is a bit of an understatement. Those that know me are aware that I’m a huge dark side fan and an even bigger fan of Sheev Palpatine, he’s a compelling character in a lot of the ways Snoke has the potential to be, so to see another great antagonist along the lines of Palpatine just thrown away without any second thought or explanation is an awful thing to see.

And I’m aware that they are probably going to throw his backstory into a book or comic, which part of me is grateful for (especially since James Luceno, author of Darth Plagueis might possibly be writing it right now) but tbh you shouldn’t throw the responsibility of portraying a character off on someone else when you have more than enough time and opportunities to show it in the film. As someone who is heavily invested in the alternative media surrounding SW I still don’t think that you should put your viewers through that, making them ask questions about a character, pay for a ticket to possibly have some of those questions answered and then pull the rug out from under them like “Nope sorry you’ll have to buy the book when it comes out next year” it’s very in-accessible and just downright disrespectful to the writers that set him up for a decent arc.

Plenty of uninteresting things were prioritized over the interesting so don’t tell me they couldn’t have taken 10 minutes out of something inconsequential to slip in some context for this character. It’s such a shame to see an opportunity to flesh out a compelling character passed over for the purpose of subverting everyone’s expectations, cheap and unsatisfying. #AndySerkisDeservedBetter

Phasma- I want to say for the record that I am absolutely outraged, not only did we get even less Phasma than we did in TFA, but they “killed her off” in a way they can either bring her back and do what they said they were going to do after TFA which was give her a decent amount of screen time, or leave her dead. It’s honestly a travesty that they continuously recruit these talented actors to portray these characters and they get shafted as far as content and inclusion goes. I can’t even put my excitement into words when Phasma was first announced, I just wanted female Stormtroopers period but having a woman play a fierce Stormtrooper commander meant everything to me. But alas, just as Snoke it seems these directors can’t seem to find a place to put them amongst the other pointless plots that are stuffed into the film which brings me to…

Canto Bight- A beautiful planet/setting but very unnecessary as a whole. I mean the whole idea of them needing to go to a planet to get a random codebreaker to get on the ship in the first place is absolutely absurd when they’ve had countless ways upon these ships in the past. And the fact that they had to call up Maz so they could poorly stuff her into the movie for 2 minutes as she quickly rattled off their mission in a very Battlefront 2 manner was absolutely ridiculous. The casino itself was neat and I’m glad they touched upon the fact that these people got rich by selling weapons to both sides, but the whole animal chase sequence and everything with DJ felt so out of place and long and distracting from things that would have far better served the characters and plot.

Length- As someone who sat through Age of Extinction after drinking a large soda at the beginning of the film, trust me when I say I know when a movie feels long and this one felt unbearably so. Every time I thought to myself “oh this is it this is going to be the climax and resolution” they would set off on another escape plan. It’s like they came up with 5 different endings and couldn’t decide which one to use so they just kinda tacked them on to the end of each other. After learning that this movie was 3 hours at it’s original cut, I cannot imagine sitting through another hour of squished together side-plots and escape plans, if those cut scenes had more Snoke and Phasma it might’ve been worth it but something tells me it didn’t. We wont know until the bluray with all the deleted scenes comes out next year.

Rey as the future of the Jedi- There was fanboy outcry at the end of TFA saying that Rey was a “”””mary sue””” for being able to defeat someone like Kylo Ren with no lightsaber training/understanding of the Force, but all their arguments are bullshit and there was nothing unbelievable about Rey’s skill with a staff translating to a saber and embracing the Force to gain an edge over Kylo and defeat him.

Now in TLJ Luke’s training of Rey was set up (like many things) to be a main focal point in the story when in reality, it lasts maybe two days and in that time not much training happens at all, in fact Luke tries to show Rey why the Jedi should NOT continue. But in the end it’s very much eluded to that it’s now up to Rey to continue on the Jedi ways and teach a whole new batch of bright eyed young light siders. Rey was skilled enough in TFA to handle herself, but she was still very much a student in need of a teacher herself, something she got only briefly. I honestly have little faith that they can convincingly portray this if they choose to go this route.

Confusing moments with Holdo/Mutiny- I don’t know if was just me but with the movie as a whole being an overwhelming stream of events and developments, the whole Poe mutiny against Holdo was an absolute clusterfuck to me. It was obvious that Holdo was planning something and wouldn’t share it with Poe to the point where it was almost as if she was a traitor/spy and was running everyone into the ground on purpose, and I thought my suspicions were confirmed when she broke back out of custody, but then suddenly Leia shows up and stuns Poe?? Was she a Changeling??? What the fuck was going on??

And then it turns out that she just had a plan to stay with the ship and to get everyone to the Rebel base on the planet below THAT SHE WOULDN’T TELL ANYONE. Like if she would have been a little more up front with this plan I think things would have gone smoother and the whole Poe mutiny thing could have been avoided. It was all very necessary and created conflict and complexity where there didn’t need to be.

Confrontation- While the final confrontation between Kylo and Luke is impactful in it’s end, I think it would have been even more so had it not been needlessly complicated by having him project from Ahch-to. I mean he probably wouldn’t have survived the Walker blasts, but if he could project across the galaxy like that then he could’ve figured something out. When he showed up at the base out of nowhere my suspension of disbelief was already running thin with the loss of Snoke and Phasma, but seeing him look so different from what he looked like minutes ago just ruined the surprise of him not actually being there. I would have liked to see him reunite with Leia in person before becoming one with the Force, and I just think him being there and pulling an Obi Wan by disappearing and leaving the cloak behind just as he did with Vader would have been a nice call back.

Rose/Finn- This moment I did not see coming because tbh, there was no build up to it, and just like the infamous Steve Rogers/Sharon Carter kiss from Civil War, it was awkward and unnecessary and I’m fairly convinced this was added last minute to subvert fans from the whole Stormpilot ship, because you know, how dare us gays want to be included in SW right? Rose is a BRILLIANT character, and even tho Finn suffered the short end of the stick as far as development in this movie went, neither of them needed this rushed moment to make her action or their friendship any more meaningful.

Payoff- Although I was happy with Rey’s parentage I don’t like that it was made to be such an issue that ultimately ended up not being a big deal. Now a lot of this comes from the fact that Rian took it upon himself to “fix” some of JJ’s weaker elements from TFA, but instead of fixing them he eliminated what would have been really nice payoffs for the fans who’ve invested so much time and love into discussing this series. This also goes for Snoke, why create this mystery around this character and have people talking about him if you aren’t going to give them some kind of payoff in the end. That bit of satisfaction that we hoped to get just slipped away and  we’ll have to wait another 2 years to have another chance at it, or maybe not at all and thats incredibly frustrating.

In the end I had fun, but that fun just can’t make me forget about the glaring issues this movie had. And they’re not just issues, they’re needless issues, things that could have been easily avoided or fixed. At this point i’m not even really invested enough in the characters that are left to be excited for the next film.

So yes this film had problems, but is it the worst SW film ever? Is SW really dead? Absolutely not, everyone is being far too dramatic, which honestly isn’t surprising seeing as most of them still pretend the prequels had nothing of value and don’t exist.

It had problems.

Fix them.

Do better next time.

It’s as simple as that and if the filmmakers can’t recognize this film’s shortcoming to avoid making the same mistakes again, then it’s their own fault for the criticism they get. The film isn’t a total loss in the slightest and hopefully some of the deleted content will shed some light on a few things we so very much wanted to see.

[mansikka]

i'm loving ur recent looks!! they're so cute&larme-esque but like.. in an original way? if that makes sense ♡ ! btw i remember u having some links to blog posts etc. about conscious/ecological consumption like especially when it comes to clothes, it'd be lovely if u could share some of those or just share ur opinion about things like that/the clothing industry in general..!

Omg you're always the sweetest thank you so much for the message!! 😭💕 And it makes me so happy you like my coords!!! Lately I've had no idea what my style even is. Most western larme girls seem to get inspired by the magazine in a different way than I do and since I often see everyone doing larme so differently I've started doubting if my style even is very larme. 😅 But I guess it doesn't really matter if my style is 100% larme or not as long as I'm having fun! But the magazine certainly is a big inspiration for me!The last time I talked about this subject on this blog some people got mad and felt like I was blaming them about all the problems so I just want to make it clear that I do not want to blame anyone or make you feel bad, I just want to share information.There are lots of problems in clothing industry and the main problem is fast fashion. I’ve enjoyed watching Justine Leconte’s videos on Youtube recently and in this video she sums up everything pretty well https://youtu.be/0ur13KvWoWE (Sorry for the messy link I’m on mobile) Basically too big amounts of clothes are produced at too high speed. Way too big amounts of clothes go to waste because of this and we currently do not have ways to reuse the materials of unwanted clothing in a larger scale. This is why I believe we should try our best to keep all the produced clothes in use as long as possible, either use them until they're basically unwearable (and even then consider fixing the broken parts if possible) or use the material to make something new. In the current state the industry is right now I believe we should just simply buy less and smarter, choose clothes that are made of good quality materials and mostly buy second hand or from smaller brands that can source their materials. Usually people are adviced to buy more classical cuts instead of trendy ones but larme has made me think about this a lot. I personally believe that if something trendy (for example something like off shoulder tops) suits your style and you know you’ll wear the item for a long time there is no problem. Larme is a trend based style but I personally try to look at the trends in the magazine to maybe find new ways to wear the clothes I already have and maybe find new ways to accessorize them, instead of buying new trendy clothes just because they are trendy. If that makes sense? I believe that buying items more rarely considering your personal style and not only the current trends makes you a smarter consumer. Also, in jfashion scene people often sell their brand clothes second hand which I find great! Overall taking good care of your clothes is an important factor in making the clothes last longer in use and since brand clothes are special for most of us we tend to take even better care of them than ”normal” clothes. It’s geat since then the item can most likely find a new home even if the previous owner switches styles and that way the garment stays in use! Overall I think the best option is to buy mostly second hand clothes if possible, even "normal clothes" and not just jfashion.Justine has some other really good videos up too so I really recommend her channel! Related to this topic she made videos about buying clothes on a budget without buying fast fashion ( https://youtu.be/eRyf3NnGD24 ) and how to recognize signs of bad quality in garments ( https://youtu.be/6a5lHAHf0Zk ) and I hope you’ll find them interesting!I hope this didn't come off as ranty haha! I know we're all in different places in our lives and I'm not blaming you if you can’t afford better quality items or if there are no second hand stores in your area, I just want to share the information. If you can choose a better alternative someday please consider it! And sorry for the rambling! I hope this answered you question cutie and sorry for taking so long with my answer!