#call it nitpicky but this shit has personally affected me and I have seen the shit idiot brain fungus it gives people

[problemnyatic]

This is your regular reminder not to conflate top/bottom with dom/sub because the queer community does not need another goddamn gender binary, especially not from inside the fucking house

maybe reskinning cishetero gender roles with a coat of rainbow paint is not actually a good thing and inhereting the exact same stereotypes is bad and you shouldn't do it even as a joke! thanks

#problemnyatic discourse #problemnyatic rants #problemnyatic thoughts #call it nitpicky but this shit has personally affected me and I have seen the shit idiot brain fungus it gives people #bottoms are all useless incapable pillow princesses who cant do anything lol!!! theyre just good for sex and whining #And tops make all the decision and also money and have all the life skills and are always arousing to the silly feminine bottoms #wow this is just ancient fucking man and woman sexism but you made it gay! die.

[eldritchamy]

I watched “Happiest Season” and no it fucking wasn’t.

Here’s a review so you don’t have to suffer like I did: if I wasn’t watching it as the host of a movie night, I would not have made it past 20-30 minutes in.

It was very uncomfortable to watch.  I feel like I just spent two hours on a plane with a crying baby.  Except the baby was a homophobic rich white Republican that I was forced to campaign for.  All of the people I watched it with, including myself, found it stressful, anxiety inducing, and deeply unpleasant.  The first thing I did when it was over was warn my best friend not to watch it.

90% of the movie is rich white straight people drama forcing lesbians into the closet.  It’s not fun.  It’s not happy.  It wasn’t enjoyable.  At all.  Watching this was an uncompromisingly depressing and miserable experience.

It was marketed as a romantic comedy and it was neither of those things.   I feel repressed for having seen it.  

Every relationship in this movie is toxic and hard to watch, with the sole exception of two other characters who aren’t part of the family both having much better chemistry with Kristen Stewart’s character than her girlfriend.

Aubrey Plaza playing Gay Aubrey Plaza one of two redeeming things in the movie and she’s in it for about ten minutes, and even one of her scenes was hard for me to sit through (the awkward and dubiously written drag bar scene)  The other 90 minutes are agonizingly drawn out and unbearable.

If you are determined to support this movie because god knows we need more (and MUCH better) representation and we live in a hellscape where money is the only way to ask for such things, press play on it and then take out your headphones and go read a book instead until it’s over.

For your own sake please do not watch this.  

I genuinely can’t tell who it’s even FOR.  If anything about this movie resonates with you, I am SORRY to hear that, because you are probably the lesbian daughter of a very rich white man running for office as a Republican, and watching any of the rich housewife reality shows probably gives you PTSD because those are the kind of people you grew up with.  

And even IF that is the case, spare yourself the trauma of watching your own life and watch something else instead.  This movie will only hurt you.

Nothing about the experience of seeing this was worth it.

Plot spoilers ahead.

The plot is as follows:

Abby (Kristen Stewart) loves her girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis).  But she does not love Christmas.  After a night out together, Harper asks her to join her when she visits her family for the holidays.  Abby says yes, and gets her gay male friend John (that guy from Schitt’s Creek) to cover pet sitting for her. While running a few errands with him, she goes to pick up an engagement ring which looks completely unattainable for a woman who makes a living as a pet sitter.

When they are almost to Harper’s family’s home, she awkwardly brings up that she lied about coming out to them earlier in the year.  They still don’t know she’s gay and they have to make sure the family is perfect and scandal free because her dad is running for mayor or something and one of his donors? campaign manager? is going to be there.  So they have to pretend Abby is her straight roommmate.  They fight about it before Abby very reluctantly agrees.  This is a pattern that repeats until Abby can’t take any more.

The family is like upper-class-Republican terrible.  They are AWFUL people.  The parents treat their children like trophies in a display case, and the children all feel forced into brutal competition with each other to see who the parents will actually be proud of.  One of Harper’s sisters (Jane) is actually an okay person who does nothing wrong, but she’s an aspiring writer who has spent 10 years not finishing her book and she’s played like she belongs in a different movie, and it feels like she’s meant to be seen as the useless layabout sibling, in a cruelly funny way.  

The other sister is a nightmare of a woman (Sloane? I think?) played by a completely unrecognizable Allison Brie.  She’s a lawful evil cutthroat monster who is straight up VICIOUS to the other two, and is especially terrible to Harper, because neither of them even see Jane as competition.  Her own family is the thing she uses to try to be worthy of her parents’ pride and affection.  

The dad is focused entirely on his campaign and is more or less indifferent to all of them unless they aren’t “presentable” and “scandal free” enough to keep his potential donor/campaign manager satisfied, in which case he “expects better of them” until they behave.  The children are like 30.  

The mom is maybe the worst of all of them.  She’s invasive, ignorant in that forceful way where she doesn’t give a shit about anything except her own bubble of reality that she thinks she’s living in and blows past any contradiction to it like it’s not even there, nitpicky about what everyone’s doing, is willfully out of touch with everything she’s told (Abby’s parents died when she was 19, and she spends the movie acting like she thinks Abby grew up in an orphanage made of dirt and never had a Christmas before).  And she will not leave the two of them alone.  She insists it’s ridiculous for two grown women to share a bedroom and gives Abby a room without a lock in a basement that’s bigger than my whole house, while Harper’s room is upstairs.  Everyone is constantly barging into Abby’s room with less than two seconds of notice, which leads to the kind of tension and awkwardness you’d expect.  The first morning, Abby wakes up to Sloane’s children staring at her.

Abby is clearly MISERABLE.  And so are you, because you’re watching this movie.  Abby and Harper are constantly pushed apart by the family, and Harper pushes Abby away while pretending to be perfect and straight for her family.

Her family invited Harper’s ex boyfriend, who thinks they should rekindle things.  Super fun thing that I always love to see in my lesbian media.

While out at dinner, Abby and Harper have another mini fight in the bathroom.  Harper promises she had no idea Connor(?) was going to be there and that there won’t be any more surprises.  They walk out of the bathroom, right into Harper’s OTHER ex, her first girlfriend Riley (Aubrey Plaza, who literally just plays herself and is the only good thing about the movie).

This is the first 20 minutes.

There’s a party that leaves Abby feeling isolated and pushed away.  She goes outside to make a phone call.  She makes regular texts and phone calls to John for support and advice throughout the movie.  He’s terrible at taking care of fish, but he’s genuinely a good friend to her and it’s clear he cares about her a lot.  It’s probably unfair not to say his friendship is the second redeeming thing in the movie.  After Abby gets off the phone with him the first time, Riley comes out from around the corner and tries to be nice, saying she could relate to what she’s going through.  Abby kind of closes off from her and she takes the hint without any fuss and leaves her alone.

The movie slogs on with compounding stress and anxiety and a moment when Abby is LITERALLY forced to hide in a closet and pretend she was sleepwalking on her way to Harper’s bedroom at night.  It MIGHT have been an attempt at a joke?  I’m genuinely not sure because I did not come close to laughing once in the entire 100 minutes of this nightmare.  Harper instead sneaks into Abby’s room while she’s awkwardly trying to get away from Harper’s mom.  That’s where the gifs of the sneak-snuggle from behind the door come from.  Enjoy the gifs because everything that wasn’t giffed is not worth seeing.  Harper spends the night there.

Bright and early, Harper’s mom comes knocking on the door, trying to open it and barge in again but Abby blocked the door with something heavy claiming it was to “keep her from sleepwalking again” (her excuse for being in the closet) while Harper frantically gets almost-dressed and hides behind the door as BOTH parents come to bother them, and the evil sister’s children see her partially dressed through the crack in the door.

Later that day Abby has to go shopping for a present for the “White Elephant” Harper didn’t warn her about.  She bumps into Sloane at the mall, who dumps her kids off on her before quickly leaving.  The kids very intentionally frame Abby for shoplifting by putting a necklace in her bag, and there’s a really awkward and uncomfortable scene with her being interrogated by overly forceful mall cops who are yelling at her.  When she finally gets back to the house, Harper’s entire family now thinks she’s a criminal.

Abby spends the night alone during another (campaign?) party that Harper told her she’d probably be happier getting left out of, and she bumps into Riley on the street and gets to talking with her, still more frustrated by Harper and her family.  She says she needs some alcohol, Riley takes her to a drag bar which gave me really bad vibes and bonds with her there, telling her a bit about her relationship with Harper.  They dated secretly (obviously) in their first year of high school (which implies she knew she was gay before she dated Connor, and used him as a cover).  They would sneak each other romantic notes.  When someone found one in Harper’s locker, she threw Riley under the bus completely, outed her, and said she was obsessed with her so she could go on pretending to be straight.  They bond a bit and seem like they could be friends, at a minimum.  They have a few more scenes together over the next hour (yeah there’s still that much movie left, and if you’re wondering how it could be that bad, you’re welcome for the warning, because I was wondering that too) and they have better chemistry than Abby and Harper by miles.

Eventually Abby becomes so miserable she checks the movie-specific version of Uber to try to go home by herself, but it’s running at holiday rates so it would cost over $1000 for her to leave.  She’s still tempted to do it, and calls John again for advice and says she feels awful, completely alone, and with no way out of this horrible situation.  He gives her some more friendly support.

Abby still needs a White Elephant gift, but has no way to go by herself because Harper drove them there.  So she calls Riley to go with her.  They spend a day hanging out together while Harper is doing some other thing with her dad’s campaign, and Abby makes text excuses to Harper, who then immediately sees Riley and Abby walking by on the street together.  Before she gets a chance to run out and say something, she gets interrupted by something I thankfully don’t remember (I long for the moment this is true of the rest of it).

Riley and Abby bond some more but nothing romantic happens.  The plot only wants them to be good friends, even though their chemistry is really good.

At the end of the day Abby comes in and Harper immediately almost starts a fight with her but they get interrupted again somehow.

I have willed most of the next 20 minutes out of my mind, apparently.

There’s yet another party at this gigantic house because I hate the rich, Abby and Riley talk more.  This is the one with the really gay outfit.  Abby admits to Riley that she was planning on proposing to Harper, but at this point it’s like she’s a completely different person and she can’t tell who the real Harper is.  Riley says it’s probably both of them.

SURPRISE JOHN IS HERE.  He comes in the front door and calls for Abby.  After Abby’s last phone call he arranged for his therapist to do the pet sitting and he drove all the way here just so he could take her home.  Seriously, John has incredible Good Friend Energy.  Yet more awkwardness ensues, while John mixes some awkward flirting with Connor into his poor attempt to come off as straight.  Abby then walks right up to Harper, says “we’re done” and goes to grab some things to leave.  Harper follows her into the room and tries to get her to stay, Abby says she can’t take the hiding and the general misery, the whole experience has been terrible and she’s not sure if Harper is the person she thought she was.  Harper argues for her to stay and says she’s caught between being afraid of losing her family if she comes out and knowing she’ll lose Abby if she doesn’t.  She promises to come out to them as soon as the holidays are over because Abby is more important to her.  They kiss briefly and realize Sloane is in the doorway.

Sloane tries to run to tell the rest of the family because burning Harper’s reputation forever means she’ll be the one their parents love most.  They fight in the many hallways of this stupidly enormous rich people house (this is when “Stay out of it, Sappho” happens) and on the way to ruin her sister’s life Sloane finds her husband making out with another ....campaign person? in the pantry and or closet which is big enough to fit two people inside.   Now Harper has something to use against Sloane.  This family is fucking horrible.  Sloane gets to where everyone else is first, and outs Harper.

Harper tries to swear she’s not gay, and sees Abby watching her.  She silently turns and walks out the door with John.  Harper then grabs a giant painting that Jane spent 100 hours on for the white elephant and smashes it over Sloane’s head and yells at her before falling apart.

Abby and John have another heartfelt conversation where John asks how she came out to her parents, and she said they loved and supported her.  Then he said his dad kicked him out on the street and didn’t talk to him for thirteen years.  He says everyone’s story is different, and Harper was still going through hers, and it was a hard one.  I THINK he acknowledges that if Abby doesn’t feel like she belongs in that story, she shouldn’t force herself to?  But that might have been wishful hindsight.  Abby comes back into the house to grab her things and leave, Harper comes out to her family right in front of her, Abby says it was too late and leaves anyway.  Harper is crushed and the rest of the family starts to see how fucked up they all are.

And then in the span of 7 fucking minutes the parents realize they were shitty to Sloane and Harper and the only reason Jane turned out okay is because they gave up on her, they give a minimal apology to their children, who also realize they were shitty to each other, and then it’s the next day and Abby is there with them, Harper has the ring on her finger, and everyone is magically happy now because the dad turned down his campaign advisor who said she could still work with him if he kept Harper’s “problem” a secret.

Jane’s book becomes a best seller and she’s friends with John now, because he was the only person who seemed genuinely interested in her passion.  He sits next to her at her book signing.  The end.

No, I’m not kidding.

As soon as it was over, I thought, wow that felt like a rushed happy ending that got slapped onto the end with nothing building up to or deserving it.

After further consideration, that gives it too much credit.

Because honestly? after the first hour and thirty five minutes of this hell, Abby and Harper being together at the end is not even something I would consider a happy ending.  I wasn’t satisfied at all.  It DEFINITELY felt like Abby ending up with Riley would have been a better movie.

If I had been told beforehand that a lesbian romcom starring Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis, and featuring Aubrey Plaza as Gay Aubrey Plaza would have been an absolutely miserable experience that was hard to sit through and nothing but unpleasant to watch, I would probably have been shocked and disappointed.  

But at least I would have not seen this movie.  That is my gift to you.  Please do NOT watch this.

It was marketed as a romantic comedy and it lived up to neither of those claims.  Absolutely terrible movie.  The happiest season of all is one where you don’t watch this stressful, uncomfortable disaster.

#eldritchreviews

[ds-sparrow-manufacturing-co]

A Rebuttal

Ok so I really did not want to make this post. I would’ve loved to have left this whole thing behind because I’m aware I made some mistakes and would like to atone for them, but it seems I’m going to have to go over this one more time. For anyone seeing this post who somehow doesn’t know, I said some regrettable things about Aidan Gallagher here. I later made another post here summarising the entire situation that resulted, so I would suggest you read that first. 

I’m still getting people telling me what I said was fucked up, which is entirely justified. However, I have just now realised that the person who took it upon themselves to ‘correct’ me about my opinions of Aidan Gallagher (something that has not changed, I still strongly dislike him) later made several derogatory posts about me. I was not aware of this because after the first rude post they made about me, I blocked them to save myself the additional stress. 

I have done my best to deal with this whole thing as calmly and politely as possible. When this person was downright evil towards me, I didn’t bother to argue with them, I just made an admittedly-snarky post with a screenshot of what they said, and then blocked them because I had no desire to begin an argument. When I realised that what I had said about Aidan Gallagher had been fucked up, I apologised, accepted my mistake and did what I could to fix it. But I am out of patience. I don’t take kindly to being treated the way this person has treated me, I don’t think anyone does. So here I am, about to break down everything they said about me bit by bit to show you how much of a lying scumbag they have been towards me (as well as possibly others).

warning: this post is incredibly long

tw: su*c*de mentions

My first interaction with this person was when i got an anon ask who wanted to know what Aidan Gallagher had done to make me dislike him. I responded with a brief list, excluding most of my evidence because it was late at night and I didn’t have the energy to go down the rabbit hole of all this. The following day, the blog this post is about reblogged my post, attempting to disprove everything I said. I will not include screenshots here, because it was a long post, you can find it in my archive if you so wish. I read what they said, took everything into account, and responded with my proof for things I hadn’t previously included the proof for, as well as explanations for why certain things he’s said annoyed/upset me. I expected a polite response, as we had both been courteous so far. 

Instead,  I received the following:

Now, lets break down some of what they said.

‘stop saying things you can’t prove, because it’s fake’ - I provided my proof. I am not trying to lie to anyone, or perpetuate rumours. All I aimed to do was explain my point of view and why I personally dislike him.

‘some of your screenshots are fake’ - That’s just blatantly untrue, especially as they have at other points said things along the lines of ‘well yes but he apologised/he didn’t mean it like that’ for everything I have provided screenshots for. Make up your mind.

‘you’re so gullible’ - For... having an opinion? That I researched before forming? And which is based on something other than my blind faith in a 17 year old? Right.

This was when I blocked them.

I thought that was going to be the end of the situation. Then, I got some asks.

I saw this and, being a minor, was a little creeped out. I had assumed this person was a teenage fangirl because that’s who the majority of Aidan Gallgher’s fans are so this information was surprising.

This one scared me. I did what the anon suggested, created a backup (i won’t tag it here because I get the feeling some of the aforementioned ‘army’ are going to see this) and reported the other blog. Once again, I thought it was over.

It was at this point that people started telling me how fucked up what I said in my original post was, and I realised they were right. As mentioned at the start of this post, I apologised, and did everything I could to fix it. End of, right?

Until today, where I started thinking about what the above anons had said and decided to fact check, mainly out of curiosity. I unblocked the blog, only to discover they had made 3 posts about me that I hadn’t seen.

This was the first one, as you can see they began it with a screenshot of my original post. Let’s talk about this.

“but you wishing him dead is ok?” - I never wished him dead, to start with. Stabbing does not automatically equal death, but I know that’s nitpicky of me. I also did not wish he was stabbed. I said in that exact tag that I didn’t, because of TUA. However, I know that this ‘joke’ was really shitty of me, and I have already apologised multiple times.

“what kind of a low life do you have to be to have nothing better to do, but talk shit about a kid?” - Why don’t you tell me? As I’ve said multiple times, I am a minor. That doesn’t excuse what I said, but that does make it incredibly hypocritical of them to say that given everything.

This was the second post they made about me, beginning with the same screenshot as in the first post.

“they’re spreading false rumors” - I’ve already covered this one.

“they want a reason to be mean, even if it isn’t true” - I would never be mean to someone if they hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I’m a strong believer in the moral philosophy of respecting everyone until they give you a reason not to. Aidan Gallagher has given me more than enough reasons to lose respect for him. And, honestly? I still respect him as an actor, even if only that.

“you can’t say you’re a decent human being and wish someone dead. you can’t say you’re anti-bullying and want to prevent suicide and then bully someone” - That is some big talk from someone who claimed they were ok with what Aidan Gallagher said about mental health because they’ve had their own experiences with suicide, before immediately telling me to rot and burn in hell for disagreeing with them. And, wait a second, wasn’t Aidan Gallagher the one supporting women’s rights and feminism who then turned around and made gross comments towards a bunch of girls? Hmm. Also, wishing someone dead is too wide of a blanket statement to actually measure whether someone is a decent human being with. 

“i tried to be nice” - I didn’t know telling someone to rot in hell, calling them a stupid hoe, was being nice. I didn’t know lying, and telling people to report someone because they disagreed with you was being nice (notice how they never said anything about my stabbing comment until I disagreed with them.) I guess we have very different definitions of nice.

“if they really cared, they would kindly ask a fan if the rumors were true” - And that, ladies gentleman and variations thereupon, is a brilliant example of how not to perform unbiased research! I based my opinion on actual evidence, and neutral articles as well as arguments from both sides. Not on one fan who’s likely to deny everything.

“they said it themselves, they have no proof” - That is so incredibly cherrypicked. What I actually said was “supposedly used the f-slur although i can’t find proof“, one of the many points on my list of reasons I dislike Aidan Gallagher. You know why I said that? Because I found a screenshot of him supposedly having called someone that slur via Instagram but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided it was probably edited. I included the point on my list in the hopes of people doing their own research. And I certainly did not say I had no proof for anything, as you would know if you saw my original response to this blog, where I provided proof.

“threatening him and bullying him is wrong” - I am fully admitting of the fact my stabbing comment was in poor taste but it was very clearly not a threat and not even close to being bullying. Furthermore, I would say making four posts harassing and telling others to harass someone because they disagree with you is a lot closer to being bullying than anything I did was.

“defamation is a crime” - I live in the UK, so let’s use those defamation laws. A statement is not defamation unless it ‘ has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.’ Less than a hundred people are even aware my blog exists. Nowhere near enough people have seen anything I’ve said to count as defamatory. Not to mention that a statement is not defamatory if it is a statement of opinion.

“you’ll get karma for lying and playing the victim” -  Ohhh the irony. I have not lied once. I have provided all the necessary proof for everything and I have owned up to my mistakes. And yet, they, who have repeatedly lied about me, twisted my words and oddly enough, avoided including proof outside that one screenshot of my original post, are the one accusing me of playing the victim. Classy.

“hi to your little follower that you cry to” - This one’s just hilarious to me. I’m happy to have people on here who will let me know when people are, you know, harassing and bullying me. And, what the hell do they mean by ‘cry to’? Do they mean ‘mentioned that this situation was stressful once’? Wow.

“I promise you misery for the rest of your sad little life” - Honestly just re-read the other screenshots after seeing they said this. Jesus Christ. And, as someone who already struggles with depression and other mental health issues I’m interested to know what they’re intending to do that’s gonna be any worse.

“you’ll pay! that’s not a threat it’s a promise” - Are they planning on tracking me down? Or are they just going to keep sitting on their throne of yes men and echo chambers acting as if they’re actually affecting me? 

I would say this is the last post I plan to make about this situation but I’ve said that over and over again throughout the last 12 days and it’s never the last post. This whole situation has honestly been very emotionally taxing, and combined with some real life things, it’s been a bad week or so. Hopefully this post is enough to end this whole thing. 

#WOW this post got long #the aidan gallagher debacle #long post

[seafleece]

what’s odd to me about critical role rn is that the cast is actually gunning for beau and yasha after it being a sort of running joke for a while, and the exact same thing is happening with jester and fjord, but the much more tangible chemistry that’s been built between beau and jester has gone completely under the radar (as far as i know) because they have been talking about beauyasha and fjorester so much

i honestly am plenty happy with both beauyasha and fjorester, and it always feels nitpicky to say this about a show that’s earnestly seeking out representation and has for years, but i think the fact that beau and jester have this really great chemistry and relationship that’s not seen as romantically viable is kind of a testament to how one-track shows can be with their queer characters. on the surface yasha‘s presented as the only viable interest for beau becaause they’re both canonically gay, and believe me i love yasha, but the relationship she has with beau absolutely pales in comparison to the one beau has with jester. and in terms of story, that makes total sense. the same goes for the relationship between jester and fjord, and even for the relationship between jester and yasha.

the discussion continuing to center around fjord/jester and beau/yasha has made it so those seem like the only options, even though both fjord and yasha have been wildly distant physically and/or emotionally for huge swathes of the campaign and in all that time jester and beau have been saving each others’ asses and staying roommates even when they don’t have to and getting in bar fights together. jester’s crush on fjord absolutely comes across as the crush jester thinks she’s supposed to have on the first nice, pretty boy she meets, but when he actually kisses her/when she gets to see his actual personality, she realizes she might not actually understand what liking someone feels like. beau’s so present and there for her through all of that that they have multiple interactions with the exact vibe of jester actually realizing she loves beau and expressing it, or jester asking beau for romantic advice and getting embarrased because she’s supposed to know everything but doesn’t actually feel the way she’s supposed to about fjord. beau’s the first person she tells her mom about, she absolutely latches onto her like a remora from session zero, she calls beau pretty all the time, asks if beau’s in love with her, says she looks good in a harness, they actually say i love you to one another (which, aside from bg molly and yasha is the first and only time that’s happened this campaign). they have the most solid relationship of any two of the nein at this point (even, especially with caleb early in the most recent ep, beating out nott and caleb) and they get along so well they can literally beat the shit out of each other for fun without it ruining their moods at all

and honestly, fjord returning jester’s affection only once the nein start to find out things he doesn’t want them to know truly seems like an attempt to keep his new, charismatic persona in place. yasha and beau are definitely different, and yasha actually starting to like beau without noticing and feeling really guilty and shoving it down fits really well, but in the same way she’s learning that jester cares about her and recent episodes have really shown that they care about each other.

jester has had more genuinely loving interactions with every other character than she has with fjord, even cad, and her rping has had me 99% convinced laura’s got a lowkey compulsory heterosexuality facet to jester’s character. again i really do have a soft spot for fjorester and beauyasha both, but if we’re going on how things have progressed within the story itself and not with the meta discussions about fjorester and beauyasha and the overarching forces behind them, as far as i’m concerned beaujester is infinitely more viable, powerful, and just all-around lovely.

#fleece.txt #cr meta #critical role #beauregard lionett #jester lavorre #beaujester #beaujester is literally so good from a narrative standpoint

[imadeletingmysocials]

My Final Say On The Final Fantasy 7 Compilation:

DILLY DALLY SHILLY SHALLY!

Now let me say something: I don’t fully hate the remake, my feelings are at best mixed towards it, because of course it plays on my heart strings at moments, I grew up with Final Fantasy 7, I recognize and fall for the fanservicey recreations of PS1 moments, I just hate it’s tone and different atmosphere because I recognize this is obviously fanservicey everywhere you go and rarely comes as close to the original feel, more on that later of course, here’s what’s core: Final Fantasy 7 Remake at best feels like a compromise between the new and the old fans, with some old fans not really feeling 100% about it from what I gathered around many people I know. Everything I hear is “The gameplay is fun and engaging! but some shit is definitely silly and could have been cut” stuff like: the amount of filler, characters that honestly don’t add that much to the world building, and the saturday morning cartoon prolongation of certain moments which were straight to the point in the original, this is a remake where you get to see fast-paced deep cut moments turned into a slow agonizing over-redundant slow insertion of a knife, it’s like using a butter knife to cut a well done stake.

Again, a compromise with the fandom, THAT fandom, the fandom that scared everyone into playing Final Fantasy 7 which was at best a REALLY Good regular JRPG, and it really was like this weirld proto-cringe culture built around a cult, Final Fantasy 7 was this grimdark game about ecology, direct action, the over reach of corporate control on resources, spirituality and all that, and it was ALL REDUCED TO YAOI SHIPPING, I will never forgive you guys for reducing Final Fantasy 7 to that shit and it is one of the main reasons why the Compilation became this anime shit, I’m not even someone who unironically says “this is too anime” but that’s my attitude with a lot of the compilation, there is stuff in this compilation series that makes it all feel like a fucking parody of Dragon Ball Z when outside of that, the original was pretty grounded.

The original was so grounded that it’s still debated if Final Fantasy 7 is cyberpunk AT ALL if not dieselpunk, with the compilation and remake adding more cyberpunk and high-sci-fi aspects like China-like social credit, or VR, and they’re all ham-fistedly added additions to the series, it’s just them running with the idea of “I guess we’re considered cyberpunk now, better play the part and add these cliche tropes”, Final Fantasy 7′s world clearly has a class division when it comes to who has technology and who doesn’t, some technology in the FF7 world is old and some is new, but in the original it’s really just a select places that hold power towards technology: Like the facilities of Midgar or the Golden Saucer.

Adding a lot of these sci-fi aspects and prolonging on the midgar section of course adds plot holes: In the original, the Midgar section flies so fast it’s just one event after the other WHICH IS GOOD, not letting air to breathe in your structure keeps the plot tight, keeps the momentum and pacing good, allowing that air to breathe too much results in what I like to call: Nomura’s Awkward Silence. You’ve probably seen it in Kingdom Hearts quite a lot but Nomura is a shitty director who manages to make scenes so badly and prolonged that by the end any logical person would go: “...But? Wouldn’t that not work?”.

FF7′s Midgar was fast-paced cuz this is a group of eco-terrorists which are on a constant verge of being caught so they’re constantly on the move, plot hole nitpicky shit starts to happen when you don’t have a fast-pacing to keep most hooked and here are examples which aren’t helped with the new plot device additions:

Why doesn’t Tifa confront Cloud’s past since they now have a lot of time to catch up

Why would a terrorist group just... Hire someone and let them stay in a normal ass 

Why is Avalanche just chilling around the sectors when they all live in a mass surveillance state, no really adding that mass surveillance plot device really makes everything fall apart, in the original SHINRA just IMMEDIATELY after the first bombing bombs sector 7 with absolutely no-restraint, them seeing AVALANCHE bomb one of their reactors makes them go: “Oh we can kill them all in one swell swoop and put the blame on them no problem we just giving them a false means of comfort” and the new bombing of Sector 7 REALLY does showcase my annoyance with all of the minor changes that were fine and better in the original: This is also best exemplified by how reno in the original just presses the button and is done with it but the remake prolongs this scene so much, that RENO has to fight you first??? Even if he is literally facing the fucking button??? cuz ANIME FIGHT! and then they make RUDE press the button when before they developed him as “somewhat nice guy” which only clashes even worse with the fact that he was the one who presses a button to SUPPOSEDLY kill an entire sector, well I say supposedly cuz now, there is no weight in that, Barrett doesn’t shoot the fallen sector’s walls in anger and (that’s what motivates him to go to Shinra once and for all) because actual stakes? what are that? No, everyone evacuated this time and the new NPCs are all fine :)

Throughout the whole game, they play up characters who are minor in the original but are FULL BIG FUCKIN IDOLS in the remake now, and as a result, the “bad guys who become good guys as the game on” HAVE TO HAVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IMMEDIATELY. Fuck pacing! We need to show that the HEROES HAVE A CONSCIOUSNESS NOW! and STILL MAKE THEM DO EVIL THINGS. Like what is the point in developing your villains and showing they have a conciseness if they are still going to do bad things? In FF7 the only start developing a consciousness AFTER the bad things, like ff7 remake makes Dude somewhat decent and showcases Reeves as a nice person but they still did evil things regardless so it’s uselesss. Now I won’t say FF7 doesn’t do this and shows Reeves has his gripes but it doesn’t go

Again, BARRET HAS A FUCKING GUN FOR AN ARM, HE SHOULDN’T BE OUT IN THE PUBLIC... AT ALL, HE SIGNED HIS DEATH WARRANT WHEN HE GAVE HIMSELF THAT ARM AND DEDICATED HIMSELF TO THE CAUSE, THIS IS WHY HE ALWAYS LIVES ON THE MOVE AND ALWAYS HIDING. 

Again, why did they introduce the idea of everything being a mass surveillance state if Cloud, Tifa and Barret can literally storm Shinra’s headquarters and Shinra workers are just... chilling in the lobby, it’s all empty, but in the original you had a somewhat sense of danger and the only way to progress was through going through specific corridors in a certain order or tricking Shinra workers.

Every single time the dementors appear.

Examples of the anime-transformation of the remake and making everything a lot harder to not take seriously are: 

Scarlet being a comical dominatrix who like a cartoon character smacks the character when in the original she was truly like a serious fucking villain.

Aeris (or Aerith, not sure anymore) pretty much becoming a Disney Princess

Every single villain going to saturday morning cartoon levels of overreduncancy. 

And of course I hate this shit, I have a connection with the original you know, if it wasn’t called a remake or if it didn’t touch the original maybe I wouldn’t have thought otherwise but because of the fact that it goes out to make these ridiculous changes feels like some sort of insult in a way. Minor inconveniences start to become major inconveniences and Final Fantasy 7′s remake is CHOCK FULL of it. 

It’s the weirdest comparison I know, but the one I feel still works is: You know how Disney movies would a TV adaption? Like how Disney’s Hercules had a Hercules TV show and it went on to develop background characters you barely knew, while basically overly expanding on that interlude of the movie? Well that’s what Final Fantasy VII remake feels like, some even said that this remake feels like as if they made a MCU movie series based on the original, honestly I don’t know which one is worse, sounds pretty bad which ever way you put it.

A controversial opinion but one that never the less is true is that: Midgar was not supposed to be ANYTHING BUT A SET UP, it was just there for the sake of world building, now I guess it’s just me and a couple of friends but we aren’t part of the gang of “I didn’t play Final Fantasy 7 pass Midgar” which apparently is a thing, it goes as far as cultural video game stereotype, I’m one of the few people who played passed Midgar, and i’m one of the few people who prefer the game past that section as everything when the world begins to open starts to build on that set up Midgar introduced, like Midgar isn’t everything FF7 has to offer, it’s just the setup, Midgar is the BIG BAD, but you need to recgonize how Midgar is pretty much a plot device at best and what is more important is the villages of the planet and how each are affected by Midgar’s reach and corruption, like Red Canyon, small villages with rocket projects or Wutai (which the Compilation LOVES to set up as the other super-power against Midgar, rather than letting Midgar be the only superpower like in the original I guess).

Midgar is structured like this fast-paced action film, beat by beat, in fact following the same structural high points of an action movie. Midgar was always designed to be a 2 hour experience, like a fun roller coaster ride or romp, it wasn’t meant to be the WHOLE GAME or that prolonged. 

And a lot of those things will be gone and sacrificed in the remake: For example, you cannot recreate well-placed shots and angles in the remake cuz it doesn’t have pre-background sets like the original. In doing so, you sacrifice shit and make choices LIKE THIS: 

Rather than the slow-panning of the shot that results in this iconic scene:

I want to be clear here: I do not hate Final Fantasy 7 remake for it’s lack of subtlety, whenever Final Fantasy 7′s remake has the chance to be political and preachy about it, that is actually where it expands VERY well on the original (unlike the whole fucking Compilation shit or the annoying quirky NPCs they introduce which honestly don’t add much and kinda remove and detach from what’s kinda important at the matter, again the pacing fucking sucks), the original works as it is with short burst of dialog without dwelling on actual political theory (It can get annoying of course for example: Barrett in the remake every 10 seconds talks about how he wants to save the planet, while Barrett in the original doesn’t need to be that repetitive, in fact I think you can count every time in the remake he says “SAVE THE PLANET”  almost as much “DARKNESS” is said in Kingdom hearts... NOMURA!!!), you know keeping it simple for all of the teenagers playing it in final fantasy 7, vague enough to be accessible.

I could go on about all of those weird changes in the remake which could have been left as it is, like almost every single side-mission, I don’t know of a single side-mission in FF7 I left thinking “Wow that was really worthwhile, thought provoking and added quite a lot to the world building!” cuz guess what, it didn’t. The children don’t add much like we get it children are not immune to SOLDIER propaganda (Cloud is literally the personification of this did we really need this), the angel of the slums shows stealing from the rich is good (like the entire game is about killing corporate people and despite Barrett feeling a lil bit remorse in his methods he never feels remorse in killing anyone related to SHINRA), like oh thanks for showcasing to me that thieves can be good people like the child I am. These are all engineered to make people who didn’t get the point in ff7, messages which feel are for children, which I guess a lot of gamers are, the dumbification of video games as a whole angers me but that’s a completely different subject, you ever notice how characters in the past didn’t talk about every single action they should be performing but every game after 2010 has to be annoying about that?

I still have mixed feelings on FF7R. Little things that are lil fanservice can be nice, but then the final fantasy 7 remake just throws the cake onto the ground as soon as it seems tasty, the best example of this would be the cutscene showing Shinra’s plan in Shinra’s headquarters, it is an EXCELLENT COMPLIMENT to the original, like the original has about the same amazing world building set up of how 2000 years ago FF7′s world was just a regular Final Fantasy world! Final Fantasy 7 is special because of that this particular world building, and compliments to that realism and tone ARE GREAT! Those are moments in which the tone of the game SHINE! It makes you go “Aw that was a nice recreation and it complimented the game fine” but then Sephiroth. You know... That one villain who isn’t supposed to be appearing every single second in the original but since the pacing is dogshit I guess he’s basically become Cloud’s little one winged angel on his shoulder that has to appear IN EVERY cutscene, I really do hate this mother fucker. I hate that Sephiroth bitch, I hate that he became more of an mascot for FF7 to the point it overshadows his role as just a pawn of a more deeper evil (JENOVA) sephiroth was nothing but the representation of soldier exploitation going wrong, and how that symbolically is connected to the end of the world and an evil very alien. Sephiroth was never supposed to be this actual character, in fact he stopped being a character when... you know.

Somehow Palmer can see Sephiroth but that makes 0 sense and is the dumbest fucking addition... Aren’t only people with Mako supposed to see him? And the idea is that Sephiroth can only gain physical form through the bodies of SOLDIERs cuz he’s more of a virus now. But you know... Sephy-kun is a star now! SO HE NEEDS TO SHOW UP EVERY FUCKING SECOND and PRACTICALLY SPOIL THE WHOLE ORIGINAL GAME, what clearer message of “we hope you played the original or else” than all of those forced flashbacks, and how funny that the original demon of FF7remake was straight forward and didn’t include sephiroth flashback but as soon as the game released they put them in! HM, I WONDER. I WONDER. That really does feel like a “haha you actually bought the game! sucker.” 

But by that point I’ve basically become that fan that goes “you should read the book, I don’t like it that in the movie they did all of these little changes”, but truth be told Final Fantasy 7 remake turned me into that kinda person. Again: It doesn’t help that this is literally not a medium conversion, but a full on re-writting from the people who worked, and I don’t care what Nomura considers a “remake”, this makes the original story flow a lot worse.

“You fuckers asked for it! So here it is” says Square Enix when people were angry that FF7 was being re-released over and over again, teased with tech demos since the PS3 era! Truth be told, I was always on the fence for a Final Fantasy 7 remake, I was fine with the original, I cannot speak for everyone else but on my side it was just people going “I REALLY FUCKING HOPE THIS ISN’T COMPILATION BULLSHIT“ AND hahah AHAHAHAH well

Final Fantasy 7 remake’s structure is... AMAZINGLY WELL PUT WHEN YOU START TO SEE THAT THE LONGER IT GOES, THE MORE IT STARTS TO STRAY AWAY FROM GOD’S LIGHT, In fact I think that’s brilliant, it’s like a well made bad prank, you get to see people in real time react to this shit and it’s almost a universal experience so props to the designers for managing to do that, at first it starts building your immunity with like dementors and you’re like “why the fuck did they add this? oh well i guess I’ll just keep going” but then by the end of the game throws shit at the fan and some people are devoted to those changes saying “ah fuck it” or you know: This is dumb. I’d say that 35% of Final Fantasy 7′s remake’s content compliments the original and 65% is modern Square Enix’s shenanigans.  

The rest of this thread is pretty funny also:

This might sound controversial but: When your shit is edited in the editing room, maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason it was edited out. Final Fantasty 7 Remake has this attitude of “WE GOTTA ADD EVERY SINGLE DELETED CONTENT WE COULDN’T HAVE PUT IN THE ORIGINAL, WE HAVE THAT POWER NOW TO GET SILLAY!” which is often the downfall of a lot of video games and their artistic integrity, it’s a constant thing and I’m sure I won’t be visiting it for the last time: video game directors are often these egoistical people who are left like children with this amount of power to just do dumb shit and because video games are an exceptional quirky medium, people just let bad writing and anime shit fly, I mean this is what I have always meant by video games as a medium being like b-movies and kitsch at best, you rarely see this medium be high art.

I think the best example of this is comparing to the movie medium, most importantly: George Lucas, George Lucas was a guy who because of a lot of editors their story became something that even overshadowed themselves, have you seen Star Wars without an editor? It sucks. This showcase should have killed the auteur but in the industry sometimes this is not the case, what results of that is a huge inflation of one’s ego and they start getting more and more power to direct stuff in whatever way they see fit!

The Video game medium has allowed the auteur theory to test it’s limits, I don’t know if it’s fair to blame everything on the black sheep Nomura (I mean Motomu Toriyama is as much to blame here, if not even worse, this is the guy who directed X-2, I’m sure if anything he might have done more harm) it is kinda hard to detach the directors from the product however, especially in this case when a lot of people’s gripes come from unnecessary filler, tone, and terrible pacing. That’s kind of all the directors job you know? 

I detest the idea that a good tone is only set by the standards of western cinema or the soviet montage standards. You can accomplish a good and serious tone by a lot of means, it doesn’t need to be 100% serious, but I don’t want it to become as ridiculous or redundant as a low-budget shonen anime. It doesn’t help FF7 Remake case because it doesn’t go out to compliment FF7 that well. It doesn’t matter what Nomura thinks a “remake’ entitles, because regardless, the changes in this will forever be compared to the original, FF7 remake does not exist in a vacuum, it isn’t a stand-alone original game, it just feels like a weird adaptation that doesn’t fair well to the original plot structure.

Which is where I’ll start to bring this long commentary to a halt! If Nomura himself admits that FF7′s Remake is Final Fantasy VII Compilation Part 5 well all I have to say, and what has and will always be my stance of this so called “compilation” is:

The compilation of final fantasy 7 has always been over redundant filler. It’s all either so bad it’s good or so fanservicey it’s obnoxious. Every single compilation is a mixed bowl of “This is actually cool” and “this is just dumb and unnecessary”. The novels, the side-entries on flip phones, they all feel as if they come from a smug aura of “Clearly you didn’t get the plot from one game alone so we clearly have to expand on it so we can get EXTRA MONEY!”

Oh and the whole one winged angel shit (now a plot device thanks to crisis core) and the NOMURA idea of “you gotta play all of the entries to understand this shit” fucking sucks man! 

Nomura games are so close to being so good, but there’s always that fucking CRINGE that appears, and this kind of shit makes me actually sincerely use the word “cringe”, cloud might as well pull a fucking keyblade in which LIGHTNING from Final Fantasy 13 is there saying how she is THE BEST CHARACTER EVER MADE whatever! Consistency and tone is dead, we get it. 

Every single sequel to Final Fantasy 7 is just cashing in on the fame and it’s unnecessary, you can enjoy FF7 on it’s own. It’s feeling a LOT, A LOT like Disney’s approach to Star Wars, you didn’t have to do all of this for Star War’s simple premise. I feel like that ungrateful child who got a shitty present: You really shouldn’t have.

I mean don't get me wrong, the original has that pre-famous Square Enix comic relief, and the only time you ever got that kind of subtle comic relief again was in Final Fantasy 9, the last call-back to the series being traditional. I think it's impossible to recreate Final Fantasy 7 in the style and tone it was created in 1997, because that WAS LITERALLY before Square Enix became famous and that fame went up to their head.

That's like expecting a “Final Fantasy 6″-type game to not be made by an indie developer or a small dev team today, it's not gonna happen. An AAA developer just does not have the soul to do that today. Many people were like “What if they just did the same thing as the game but with jus priddy graphics” well given the crusty JPEG skyboxes in the remake they couldn’t have even concentrated on that alone it seems, also my answer to that is: of course they’re gonna do that. Square Enix has just enough of an ego to not let shit be simple.

I mean it’s a given right, a lot of people were angry about Chrono Cross because it wasn’t quite Chrono Trigger either (at this point Square Enix was already transitioning into Final Fantasy 8-stuff and going all over the place in terms of quality, with multiple teams developing multiple games, trying to catch the high of Final Fantasy 7, but not really seeing what FF7 did to hook so many people, namely on how FF7 is the most serious and accessible entry in the whole series that isn’t Final Fantasy 6 (although Final Fantasy 6 wasn’t as cinematic which the 90s video games loved the opportunity with the gift OF 3D!).

Also:

Bull fucking shit, I am not convinced you aren’t gonna plaster Sephy-kun flashbacks at every single moment like you have, like if you really were to do a beat per beat Final Fantasy 7 remake after that that’s just so funny. 

"OH WE JUST FUCKING SPOILED THE WHOLE GAME IN THE FIRST ACT"

"BUT THE REST OF IT WILL BE NORMAL'

Like... How? Will you lower the budget for the next parts of the remake. That would legit be kinda funny,  "we just wanted to make midgar really long and weird like that, thats all, the rest will be 100% a remake! The alternative universe ghosts won’t come this time.” I just cannot believe that until I see it.

Uh what should I end this long rant with uhhhh...

#Final Fantasy VII #Final Fantasy #Tetsuya Nomura #Final Fantasy VII Remake #FF7 #Final Fantasy 7 #Motomu Toriyama #long post

[kvltprince]

I was tagged by the lovely @leporidaefluff (Thank you! it was the push i needed to get started on this instead of just going oh~ neat~!)

Rules:

1. Choose an OC.

2. Answer them as that OC.

3. Tag 5 people to do the same. Sorry if anyone has already been tagged, no obligation. @ heathie on whatever acct cos im a dumbass an i miss your bois(you miss em too), @randomwordsandstormydays, @randomfuzzbunny, @jornaquinn @chrysocolladawn ( @somewhere-withoutyou if you would...) and anyone else who would enjoy doing this. (if i get tagged again ill do anther oc. i would tag a few others but i feel weird tagging ppl i dont like ever talk to lol.)

What is your name?

"Lucy Grandchester, yeah that one.” 

How old are you?

“Fourty-five unless you are getting nitpicky about cryostasis. That doesn’t count unless I am joking with a ghoul, honestly.”

What do you look like?

He lets out a small half chuckle, "Oh, we are doing this okay. I’ll bite. Slightly short middle aged punk, long greying curly hair, undercut, with one leg and too many tattoos?”

Where are you from? Where do you live now?

Lucy uncomfortably takes down his hair and redoes his messy bun while sighing and becoming a bit short. “I’m from just the other side of that irradiated water near that gas station south of here. Name kinda gives it away. You have seen it? I honestly am not sure how it’s standing still between the bombs and everything else. It’s looked after now, and is a surprise asset to still have. I lived in Boston for a while after all that, and back in this area once Nuka World was opened, then back in the Boston area, and would you look at that I am back in Nuka World and it is a lot more comfortable now.”

What was your childhood like?

"...Unstable, for everyone. It got a bit better once my parents were dead... are we done with this line of questions? Or am I excusing you?”

What groups are you friendly with? Are you allied with any factions?

“Well, I started out trying to play nicely vaguely with anyone that didn’t try to shoot me first. That.... hasn’t stayed how it is. At least not fully, though i generally play nice until I am given a reason not to. I am friendly with the Disciples, the Operators, several of the Children of Atom groups that haven't irradiated their sense out of their heads yet, the Railroad.”

Tell me about your best friend.

He finally visibly relaxes the rest of the way after that history business, and takes a drink of a quantum. “Oh only one best friend? Are we in high school again? aw Alright. We have some parallel histories.” He swirls the glowing drink, but doesn't let himself get lost in his head too far. “Great humor, puts up with my shit somehow, doesn't blow my sneaking. Laugh that could take on the world even though they probably wouldn't. No I am not spoiling who I decided on. A man has to have some secrets somewhere and mine are in short supply”

Do you have a family? Tell me about them!

“My son Shaun never ceases to surprise me with what he can come up with, and how well adjusted he is. Codsworth is still helping out with the household, and helping keep Shaun from disassembling live turrets while I am away, though now he is living here at Fizztop with us. Surprisingly it seems to be an alright setup, and Shaun has taught a few people some upgrades in their downtime. There is enough room to keep things comfortable, and I have done some park remodeling since I arrived. My closest companions that don’t hate my choices I have made I consider family, but that has become a smaller circle than before.”

What about a partner or partners?

“Gage of course, he is my husband for whatever it is worth in the wasteland. Otherwise I suppose that depends how you are defining that. I am an affectionate person and some people seem to have rather strict definitions of where the edge of friend and partner should be”

Who are your enemies, and why?

“Several people aren’t speaking to me very well at best after I have settled into the Overboss seat here, on a personal level. The Pack were wiped out. The Brotherhood were wiped out. The Institute were wiped out. The minutemen are pretty pissed understandably. The Gunners still show up in vertibirds sometimes and are still pretty fun target practice. My settlements are generally comfortable, and my outposts mostly only have problems with gunners or trappers. Minor annoyances.”

Have you ever heard of The Brotherhood of Steel? What do you think about them?

“Yeah, of course. I think they got too headstrong for their flightsuits. I mean I understand but you really can’t do that shit and expect no repercussions. It was quite a firework show honestly, I wonder how far away the heat was felt..”

What about The Enclave?

"I don’t know much about them, only one of their ex-soldiers, he didn’t exactly tell me much. Cute, a bit odd. Not sure if it is the radiation that did that or not.”

How do you feel about Super Mutants?

He has a flash of a pensive thought drift across his face “There’s a few that aren’t so bad. Obviously the FEV isn’t mass-curable though, so not exactly much of a choice what to do about them unless you like getting a rocket launcher or a nuke in your face.”

What’s the craziest fight you’ve ever been in?

“Proobably~ around Bunker Hill, It was just, A Lot. That whole time was not just the specific fight. I don’t remember a lot of it, I’m pretty sure Gage half dragged me home after the main running around and meetings after the fight. I don’t think I had a full thought for a while.”

Have you ever fought a Deathclaw?

He thumb points to a sniper rifle leaning against the wall “Yeah, too often, thankfully usually I see them first, and I’ve gotten the sneaking thing down. They make pretty good steaks.”

Do you like fighting?

“Sometimes, honestly. Something tired and overstated about old habits or something boring. Really though, it is exciting and keeps the boredom away. Playfighting and sparring will do, no need to draw blood. I guess. Good to keep knife and sneaking skills sharp however you can.”

What’s your weapon of choice?

“A modded real sharp Throatslicer she called it, I swear Nisha found this thing in the loading dock or something it is the nicest box-cutter I have ever owned. Opens up anything.”

How do you survive? Your wits, your charm, your skills, brute force, some combination? (a.k.a. what’s your S.P.E.C.I.A.L?)

“Outlive everything around me usually by not being seen, notice it first, shoot it faster, stab it more, talk my way out of it, or by luck. I have zero real idea, but I can eat nearly anything and I bet that helps too.”

Have you ever been in a vault? What do you think about them?

"Of course, there are a bunch, and I was ushered into 111 to turn my life upside down. They seem to only be any good for salvage, horror stories, clean water sometimes, and if you are real lucky a trade post and a shave. I have a settlement vault that is doing well that I have taken over and built up, but that is not Vault-Tec related, obviously.”

How do you beat all the radiation around here? Has it affected you?

“I have a few recipes that are good for radiation, though it doesn't affect me very badly overall and I am slow to feel any sickness. I suspect that one day I will turn into a ghoul.” He is rather matter of fact and unbothered by this, and hints that he knows that not getting sick much from radiation means just that.

What’s your favorite wasteland critter?

“Probably the stags and gazelles and other herd animals. They are overall unchanged other than most have two heads now, they are still nice to watch”

What’s your least favorite wasteland critter?

“Honestly? radscorpions? Those fuckers are too quick and you cant shoot them cos they tunnel and they knock you on your ass and poison you and just UGH”

How do you feel about robots?

"Robots are alright if they are not causing trouble. Some of them are nice. Jezebel is not so nice, but she is guarding red rocket and bitching the entire time so shes no longer my problem. The Rust Devil’s robots are a pain in my ass for real.”

How many caps do you have on you right now?

"Plenty.”

Nuka Cola or Sunset Sarsaparilla?

He cocks his head slightly “I havent heard that one in a while. Depends on the flavor of Nuka Cola, I do like Sunset Sarsaparilla though, if you have any.”

Do you do chems?

"Not recreationally anymore. No, not because of him.” He nods toward Gage “It just, gets out of hand”

Do you ever think about the Pre-War world?

"Not as often as you would expect, I mean obviously there is the ‘oh i remember when that wasn't destroyed’ of things, but things are more comfortable than I thought they could be”

What’s your deepest regret? What would you do differently?

His eyes narrow slightly “I don’t really do regret. Things were done the way they were because it was the choice at the time. A choice now for an old situation isn’t helpful to living my current life or my old life. I am not living then, I am living now.” 

What’s your biggest achievement? Or what do you hope to achieve?

“Surviving all of this, and myself. Creating this strange semi-stability in this post apocalyptic place.”

What do you want for the future? For yourself? Your friends? The world?

“Keep me and mine safe, happy as we can be, and I hope that my found-family never fully stops growing. Curious what the future holds for my raiders and friends, there is so much potential, it could be risky but it is there. For once it is a good solid place to be, and it’s mine.” Lucy polishes off his questionable as hell drink with a smile.

#lucy grandchester #oc interview #this is a bit messy but hey thats fine #longpost #wow no wonder it took so long

[home-halone]

I thought I could handle the recordings. I never realized how visceral the reaction I'd get was, just from hearing stories of emotional abuse and manipulation from other victims. I'm in tears for them. I have nothing but empathy and love for these people, and I stand by them but hearing their accounts is just so hard hitting. I'm in tears because I know the exact feeling of being in their shoes. It disgusts me that so many others had experienced this, and that he's neither the first nor the last.

The more I heard about their stories as I clicked to listen to each one, the more I realize how precisely my old situation fits the same pattern. In my case it did not happen on FFXIV and the abuser in question was a completely different person.

I actually used this game to escape my previous MMO.

I don't know if it's appropriate for me to speak up about the abuse I experienced here, or in this situation, if it takes the spotlight away from the here-and-now of it all, but if anything it just reiterates how common it is and how easy it is to miss. So, so easy to miss.

Did you guys know I used to be a healer main? I loved playing support, and I could never bring myself to tank or DPS. I liked helping my friends and working with them.

Did you guys know I used to be wholly content doing casual stuff? I didn't care about endgame, and clearing the latest content. I just wanted to hang out with friends, doing silly things, making a whole army of alts to try new things and classes with. I liked to explore and have fun at whatever pace I wanted and I didn't fucking care if anyone thought it was lame.

But then I met him.

I'd seen Q* around before. He was real life friends with P, someone I played with on occasion, but I had no real interactions with him.

At least not until Q and that friend had a fight, and pretty much left him with nothing. He played the game casually, and ended up borrowing much of P's things. Now that they weren't on speaking terms, he had nothing. I wasn't the richest player or anything, but a friend (who quit playing shortly after) and I offered to give him some in-game money to start off fresh.

Eventually, I saw him around more and more often, and I started to play with him. I invited him to communities I had been a part of, including a very casual weekly group raid group. It was very much less savage and more like extreme primals in terms of difficulty. So it wasn't anything crazy, really.

When we weren't doing that, we were farming and raking in cash for glamour. I thought it was nice because I knew that being P's friend meant he was of a higher skill level than I was. I trusted his opinion and followed his lead basically. Not only that, I really connected with him in a way I hadn't connected with other people. Spending time with him was a lot of fun, and we'd be on Skype for literal hours.

It was the same story. Very charismatic, somewhat flirtatious guy. It was all for fun until he started sounding serious and I found myself very into it even with all the red flags and gut feelings. When I confronted him about the nature of our relationship it moved to us becoming a couple.

But don't tell anyone.

It was a secret.

The same story.

I should've figured it out because a lot of times it felt like he was talking at me instead of to me. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but that's what it was. Consent was a line he would try to push. He would switch from an absolute sweetheart to using disappointment and frustration against me to get what he wanted. He never raised his voice, but he was excellent at making me feel like shit.

If I didn't play well enough. Because "this is so simple". Or if I didn't know where certain items were stored. Even knowing I have problems with my memory. If it turned out he had it the whole time, he’d laugh it off. If it was with me, he’d be so so disappointed and upset and tell me I’m careless.

Q wanted another group to raid with. I get it. He wants to do more, because that's just his skill level. I was in a very casual guild, but they looked up to me as a mother figure, partly because of my age compared to everyone else's, partly because of the character I RPed. I knew I could convince them to play, and it would make him happy.

They were all new, so they weren't like the regular group. But that just made them so malleable for him.

I became stricter and nitpicky towards people who treated me like I was the group mom. I kept the same tone but there was an underlying annoyance. Why couldn't they be as good? Some things are so simple. I started to echo what Q told me. Because if they failed, to Q, I'd failed.

Praises became so hard to come by. Even when I singlehandedly shortlist and fix our raiding roster, when I make literal spreadsheets for schedules and attendance and for the item directory just so I don't forget and I keep things perfect and convenient for him, just so he wouldn't be upset or disappointed. And he would top it off by being sweet and make up for two weeks worth of not spending time with me. He treated me like a retainer. Sometimes worse. I was there to accompany him to dungeons. As far as he was concerned, that was probably all I was good for.

Because when I'd asked to spend time talking, and not playing, I'd just get told that I was suffocating him. Like I was demanding more time, and what we had wasn't enough.

I organized every raid we had, I was raid leader, I called the shots, I pushed a group of casual players into helping me avoid feeling like shit by doing well enough. When it was my fault, I'd be blamed. Even when it wasn't, I'd be blamed. There were times when I had to fill a role we were missing. It couldn't be helped. Not everyone had every class. All Q had to do was show up and do the easiest fucking class. If we'd wipe, he'd ask me why I wasn't on healer. But somehow when I play healer he'd find all the ways to tell me what I was doing wrong. I didn't feel dependable. I always felt like I fell short and I wasn't good enough.

But I had to reassure everyone, I had to remind everyone. Cast this buff when X happens. Use this element for better DPS. I had to keep it all together until he shows up. Even when we'd reached one of the deepest parts of the dungeon we'd never seen before, and I was happy and excited for them, he wasn't. He was just disappointed we didn't clear.

So I became disappointed too.

Somehow, I had hoped it was the stress of school and it would pass. And Q will go back the the way he used to be when he and I first met. It was stupid but it was some sort of blind faith I latched onto. That somehow if I'd endured and if I were the bigger person, he would wake the fuck up. Obviously that wasn't true at all.

It got to the point where I really was just his retainer. Hold this. Go here. Go there. Why are you not producing the results I want? Affection was a reward, or something to quell me when I was upset and not a staple expression. I'd drawn a lot for him, but I'd hardly get a response. When I was kidding around and having fun making silly voices, all he said was "What is that voice? I'm just gonna mute you." And actually did. He was very pushy when it came to intimate stuff, asked for pictures and pictures and all that but showed me maybe two shit quality photos of himself and a 5 minute skype video call.

I could fucking solo heal 11 people and he wouldn't be impressed. He would nitpick me and ask why I hadn't used the right buff at the right time. Because healing is so easy. I would spend 4 hours straight doing some super menial stuff that would get an open-world boss into spawning mobs that you could farm. When I tell him I'd finally accomplished it, he'd check hours later when he wakes up to say "it isn't there anymore" and nothing else. I'd have to hold on but once he's salty he can rage quit at any point he wants.

I would be praised by other people, and I'd have fun without anyone pointing out how poorly I do or what I'm missing. The disparity was so evident but I kept lying to myself.

I gifted him an official comic of one of "our" favorite series via mail. He never thanked me. He complained about how inconvenient it was that HE missed the delivery and now HE has to go to the post office to pick it up.

I never got to read it.

After half a year of enduring this, I'd confided what I'd experienced with my guild, it came to light that he had been abusing them too. I'd realized we'd effectively converted my poor, fun-loving casual guild of friends into a farming mill for profit.

We farmed not for fun, but for profit. It was awful. Some of my friends still never want to set foot in that game again. It's been 4 years since then.

That's when I'd worked up the courage to break it off. Not for myself. It was kinda pathetic that what woke me up wasn't the need to fight for myself, but because he had hurt my friends. The ones who trusted me to guide them. People I'd hurt myself, by pushing them beyond what they really wanted via peer pressure.

Even when I broke it off it didn't feel satisfactory. It just felt like he didn't care. He went, "ah yeah, it's difficult." I mean that response makes sense considering at some point he told me I wasn’t his real girlfriend until I had sex with him lol.

And that was it. He gave back my stuff in game but lol wait remember the part where he knew I had memory problems? The fucker stole some gear from me and took advantage of that. Burn in hell, Q.

I lied about the reasons why I no longer wanted a relationship and made it seem simple, and I couldn't call him out. I didn't want to upset him. I was afraid of the dirt he had on me. I was afraid of what he'd say to me. Part of me is still afraid he has some of these things on me, years and years after it had happened. I never told anyone the full story really.

I moved on to FF at this point and it was a fresh start, with another friend inviting me to play. No one to tell me what was wrong.

But it sticks to you. The bullshit people like Q and Oldbear do to get what they want. If I said that I raid ONLY because I find it fun (and I do find it fun), it wouldn't be wholly truthful.

There's a part of me that still hears his sleazy voice telling me I'm not good enough. What I'm doing is easy. Support is easy.

I wanted to stop supporting and do things on my own ability. So I switched to DPS. I kept pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone to shut the voice up. I am good enough, and I can raid. I'm afraid to try new classes because of that fear of failure he'd inflicted on me.

I've never gone to a therapist because of the costs and the general stigma in the country, so I don't know how deep this has settled within me. But it's enough that I carry that elitist voice in the back of my head telling me I have to do more, more, more and that I'm not good enough.

Sometimes I’m in denial it was abuse and I probably just had a bad relationship with poor choices ;;;; Like I said, he never outright yelled at me, and he never swore at me or called me names, so I did not think it was abusive. But he gaslit me and used my emotional attachment as leverage whenever he could, would put me down but get away scot-free for things he’d do.

Anyway tl;dr emotional abuse is fucked up and downright diabolical and disgusting and victims suffer some repercussions long after they've moved on and fixed their lives, and now several of these women have had the chance to speak out and name their abuser we must give them that closure and draw attention to this very real and heartbreakingly commonplace issue.

#very very personal #long post #cw: abuse

[bloggerblagger]

88) Tarantino’s Latest: A dissenting voice. (Quelle surprise.)

A few years ago, I went to see a film called ‘Punch Drunk Love’. It was billed as a comedy. If memory serves me right I didn’t laugh once. But the young couple sitting behind me did. Constantly. And if there is one thing even more annoying than ....(at this point  insert  whatever winds  you up to the point of wanting to commit multiple homicide with a flame thrower ) it is other people - young people in particular - who laugh at things which you find singularly unfunny. You, of course, may be  more tolerant of da yoof (anyone under 5O in my book) than I am - indeed, I would say that is a racing certainty - but I am sure you get the general idea.

Usually - out of fear of being stabbed-  I let such things pass, but on this occasion  I was pissed off enough to risk a lie-down on a mortuary slab, so I turned around and demanded an answer.

“What were you laughing at?”

Actually I can’t remember their answer - just their little millennial snowflake faces crumpling in the face of my interrogation - and anyway  what difference would it have made whatever they had said? No explanation of why something is funny is going to make it any funnier to the person who didn’t find it funny in the first place. 

No, my question was really just a manifestation of my grumpy irritation at having sat through a film which I had only gone to see because someone called Paul Thomas Anderson had directed it and he was supposedly hot shit. (I hadn’t by then seen ‘Magnolia’ or ‘Boogie Nights’, the movies upon which his reputation for hot shitness was largely built . And I haven’t seen them since because I have seen ‘There Will Be Blood’ and ‘The Master’, both of which I thought were overrated and overwrought attempts to do what ‘Citizen Kane’ had done a 100 times better 70 odd years earlier. And I didn’t like ‘Inherent Vice’ much better. 

I was, I will concede, quite impressed with ‘Phantom Thread’, but one out of four is not much of  a strike rate, so PTA’s oeuvre, is, to my mind, a lot less than it is cracked up to be and his name on a film’s credits is an invitation to me to walk on by.

I am admittedly, not one who is wont to swim with the tide of received wisdom on any subject , not least because I am an habitually contrary sod. But still,  I don’t just say Paul Thomas Anderson  is no Frances Ford Coppola for the sake of it. I mean it because I genuinely believe it.

And he is not the only one of the supposed  modern greats who doesn’t do it for me. I loved  ‘Blood Simple’ and ‘Fargo’ but nothing I have seen since by the Coen Brothers -  with the possible exception of ‘True Grit’ - has  done that much of me. I did not like  ‘A Serious Man’ at all, couldn’t see the point of ‘Inside Llewelyn Davis’ and I thought ‘No Country for Old Men’  was a bit of a wrist job. No strike that: a complete wrist job. And yes, I know ‘The Big Lebowski’ is everyone’s favourite film. But, quelle horreur, despite several attempts, I’ve never managed to get all the way through it.

The common objection I have to Anderson and the Coens’ stuff - and to a slightly lesser extent, that of David O. Russell (not to be confused with David J. Russell, the former professional golfer, who became David J. Russell to avoid being confused with plain David Russell, another former professional golfer, no idea what David O’s excuse is) is the way they draw attention so conspicuously to the style of direction and away from the story.

I do not want to know about the film director’s trademark cinematic fireworks anymore than I want to be distracted by a novelist’s glorious prose. What I want is to be so engrossed in the story that I suspend disbelief from first to last and hopefully, at the end, feel rewarded and uplifted and, if I am very lucky, enlightened by the experience. I want a well developed coherent plot with the right ingredients deftly folded into the mixture at the right time, and rounded characters, neither entirely bad  nor utterly flawless, but nuanced as people really are. If I am super lucky, I hope to see some universal truth revealed to me that really makes me think about the way I see the world.

A film that, in recent times, ticked every box, was ‘Manchester By The Sea’, a sublime piece of film-making, deeply affecting and gut wrenchingly poignant. I offer this as exhibit A, m’lud, in support of my case that I am not some old fart whose taste is irrevocably stuck in the past and is thus incapable of seeing anything good in the new, but as someone who refuses to praise the emperor on the fineness of his new clothes just because practically everybody else is determined to claim to love the post modern irony of seeing a king with his dick  out.

And, by the way, my idea of  a good film isn’t just limited to a realistic contemporary drama. It can be historical - the version of ‘Journey’s End’ made a couple of years ago - or comedy, ‘Midnight in Paris’ - something highly stylistic, ‘Laurence Anyways’ - a heist movie, ‘American Animals’ - a musical, (okay the very best of those, ‘Cabaret’, ‘Singing in the Rain’, for instance,  aren’t that recent  but...) Lala Land’ worked for me - even a movie about trolls, ‘Border’ - magical realism. ‘The Shape of Water’ .All of those are  reasonably recent - and this is the vital common denominator - all  worked within their own terms. You are asked to willingly suspend disbelief - the critical first step if one is to engage with any book or film - and however absurd a proposition that may fundamentally be, as in the case of a musical, if it is done well enough you happily go along with it.

Which at last brings me to the original point of this piece, Quentin Tarantino’s latest, ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’, which we are, for some reason, told at the beginning, is his 9th film.

Wow is all I can say. And for all  the wrong reasons. Never mind, PTA, and DOJ and the CB - they all pale into self effacing insignificance compared to this fellow, the unrivalled leader of the  hey-it’s -me-ME!-I did-it pack, who has certainly never done anything on the QT.

Okay, I did like ‘Pulp Fiction’. A lot. It was wild. It was different. It was sassy. It was outrageously, cartoonishly violent. But since then, what have we  had but more of the same? Except that,by definition, all the rest differ in one crucial aspect. They are, paradoxically, NOT different. They are not original. The stories vary but the mode de telling is pretty much identical.

So it is with  ‘Once Upon A Time All The  So Called Professional Film Critics In The World Prostrated Themselves At The Feet of Quentin Tarantino Yet Again’. More of the predictably wacky same. But this time my critique comes with knobs on.

Never mind the bladder bursting excessive length, the unexplained jumping about between different bits of story, the customary unremitting gore, the comedy that isn’t quite comedy (mainly because it’s never quite funny) the drama that’s never quite dramatic because it’s simultaneously being undercut by the comedy that isn’t quite comedy, never mind any of that. I take that as a given in pretty much any Tarantino film. What particularly concerns me about no.9, is why?

Actually there are quite a few whys but let’s start with the big one: why has he taken the still shocking story of the Charles Manson murder of Sharon Tate and then riffed on it so that we are given a totally fictitious alternative version of events? What was the point of that? What was he trying to say? What, in doing this, did he mean to reveal to us, the audience? Surely, anyone would have realised that you can not do something so very odd without such questions being asked? (Unless of course you are an ‘auteur’ who  has managed to create such an unchallenged worldwide  rep for being a genius that no-one dares ask.)

Anyway, I haven’t got a fucking clue. I just didn’t - and don’t - geddit.  And to anyone who says, ‘Who gives a shit about that kind of nitpicky pedantic bollocks if the audience is having fun?’, I say ‘Of course, it fucking matters! Otherwise it’s like a mathematical answer without the workings. There has to be a comprehensible rationale or it’s just bollocks’. (Or is it? a tiny voice in my head insists on saying. What about Chinese medicine? If it works, who cares why it works? But notwithstanding that last bloody irritating intervention, to which I concede I don’t have a completely fireproof answer, I continue to insist that, for me, there must be a reason for any idea to be valid.)

So here’s my next why? Why do the ‘critics’ love him so much? My guess is either

a) it is because most of them are twats who have seen a million films but still know fuck all about the subject and just  go in whichever direction the rest of the lemmings are headed,  

or

b) because he stuffs his films - particularly this one - with so many nods and winks tipped to other films and to Hollywood folk lore  that  only a person who had seen a million movies  and immersed themselves in Hollyworld would recognise them and, realising and relishing the fact that  they are part of a tiny select group and flattered that they have been so selected, they choose to believe that a poor film is a good one. (In other words it is my contention that Tarantino aims his films at critics and when was flattery not the best way to get somewhere with anybody?)

Of one thing I am reasonably certain: the audience members who crammed  the cinema to capacity were way too young  (my companion and I were the oldest people there by a couple of aeons) to have spotted more than one or two - if any -  of the film buff references. (Perhaps I am doing them a disservice, but I’d bet a pony to a piece of popcorn that, moreover, nine tenths of them knew almost nothing - if anything at all - about  the Manson murders before the  publicity about this film drew  them into the cinema.)

None of this stopped them laughing uproariously throughout, and annoying the fuck out of me for so doing.  Yep, it was Punch Drunk Love all over again.

Except this time I got the flame thrower out and fried the bastards to death. It was so fucking SATISFYING!

(Actuary, sorry, no I didn’t. But there was a reason for  me to invoke this  image in this context - connected with the film - which you will understand should you have 2hrs 39mins of your precious time on this earth  to waste. And that  makes it different from most of the things that Quentin does which seem to me to have no raison d’etre at all, apart from the fact that he thinks it’s a good idea at the time.

And that’s not good enough for ME!!!!)

[pirirps]

Piri’s Ultimate List Of Horror Recs (2017 Version)

my go-to compilation of ever single horror/horror-related media i’ve ever enjoyed, including slashers, paranormal, thrillers, creature features, and much, much more 🎃

note: this list has trigger warnings but i am operating under the assumption that you are okay with the standard level of explicit sexuality, vulgarity, violence, and gore present in mainstream horror

horror

original nightmare on elm street series, but especially 1, 3, 4, 6, and freddy vs. jason (tw for implied pedophilia and explicit child murder, tw for rape in #6)

friday the 13th (original and remake)

honestly all the friday the 13th sequels are A Treasure but if you want The Core Canon watch 1-3

my bloody valentine (original)

psycho (original) and tbh all its sequels (tw for sort-of-kind-of incest vibes)

psycho ii and psycho iv are my favorites because (1) meg tilly is adorable in psycho ii and (2) psycho iv has a harley quinn/norman bates cameo and nobody can convince me otherwise

child’s play, child’s play 2, bride of chucky, maybe some sequels after that idk i haven’t seen them yet :(

scream franchise

not the mtv scream series

i mean s1 is decent but there are definitely other horror shows that i would recommend more (will show up later in this post)

1-3 are the best, 4 is worth watching if you really like the characters but as a concept the series has p much run its course by then

tw for rape mentions in scream 1 and 3

predator

peeping tom

kenneth branagh’s frankenstein (tw for a graphic depiction of death in childbirth)

james whale’s frankenstein

bride of frankenstein

the phantom of the opera (1925)

the phantom of the opera (1989) (tw for mild body/surgical horror, general grossness; personally speaking, this is one of my all-time favorite phantom adaptations, because 1. robert englund as the phantom hello oh my god, 2. although it’s much more of a slasher movie than a gothic romance, it does an amazing job of portraying the tragedy in erik’s backstory and his attraction to christine, without implying that he is entitled to christine’s affection and that her love will magically fix him, as some phantom adaptations do)

the phantom of the opera (1943)

alien franchise

the wolfman (2010)

darling (tw for rape)

house on haunted hill (original and remake)

final destination franchise

medium raw: night of the wolf (tw for pedophilia and child murder)

the babadook

the final girls [horror comedy]

the shining (tw for implied child abuse)

the cabin in the woods

hellraiser (tw for incest-y vibes for very brief periods of time)

heathers (tw for eating disorders, suicide, everything high school kids are insensitive assholes about)

from dusk til dawn

an american werewolf in london

the guest

it follows (tw for dubious consent)

nightwatch (tw for implied necrophilia/descriptions of necrophilia, self-mutilation)

re-animator (tw for rape, pedophilia mentions)

carrie (original) (tw for child abuse, religious iconography)

the remake had some interesting like... subtext/imagery but other than that it was pretty *wet fart noise*

the awakening

the craft

the blair witch project

honestly i loved the book of shadows: blair witch 2 bc it kind of parallels the crucible but i can admit that objectively it is Terrible

elvira, mistress of the dark [spooky comedy]*

american mary (tw for rape, (consensual surgical) genital mutilation)

fright night (original and remake)

jaws

listen. this is a horror movie. it was a horror book before that. it was specifically written and later adapted for the purpose of scaring and entertaining people. real life is nothing like this. real sharks are nothing like this. there’s nothing wrong with this movie scaring you but there is everything wrong with using this movie as an excuse to advocate for the wholesale slaughter of animals. sharks are quite possibly the most graceful and beautiful creatures on this earth and i will personally fight anyone who says otherwise

halloween franchise

1-5 are the best imo but no matter what skip #3 because it literally has nothing to do with any of the other movies

not the rob zombie remakes, those are awful

let the right one in [swedish (?) film, watch with subtitles]

rosemary’s baby (original)

night of the living dead (original)

28 days later

suspiria

silent hill (tw for child molestation)

crimson peak (tw for incest)

the lost boys

interview with the vampire

the ring

one missed call

the raven (2012)

repo! the genetic opera

teeth (tw for rape, incest, it’s??????? about a girl who literally has razor-sharp teeth in her vagina and it’s a very tongue-in-cheek commentary on religious repression???? so idk like it’s a wild ride and i love it but watch at your own discretion)

american psycho (tw for rape, general misogyny)

sweeney todd

speaking from experience, this is much better live, the movie sucked out all the fun and humor that wasn’t literally written into the lyrics, so i recommend watching the original broadway cast on youtube or something

there’s also a 1936 movie which i haven’t seen so i can’t speak to its quality BUT i would recommend it on the basis of it being made before the musical was created and thus being based more directly on “the string of pearls” novel which is where the sweeney todd urban legend was originally documented

abott and costello meet [insert universal horror monster here] [spooky comedy]

little shop of horrors (original and remake) [spooky comedy]

the last man on earth (1964)

adapted from the same book i am legend (2007) was adapted from but the last man on earth stays much closer to the original book imo

c. h. u. d.

ghostbusters (1984 and 2016 versions)*

ghost ship

sick girl (tw for bugs, pregnancy horror)

misery (tw for torture)

puppet master series (tw for rape, nazism)

the haunting in connecticut

zombieland**

jurassic park series

lizzie borden took an axe

wolf creek (tw for rape)

it (1990, 2017)

i have........ some nitpicky issues about putting it on this list, because neither movie adaptation really did justice to the whole concept of “derry itself is an extension of an eldritch horror and the real scary part of the story isn’t the clown, it’s the horrible violent tragedies that have repeatedly occurred and then been dismissed throughout derry’s history, leaving the entire town in a large-scale sort of cycle of abuse” so ????????????? idk like i truly do recommend reading the book as well as seeing the movies for The Whole It Experience(TM), but i totally get that not everyone is gonna do that

the 1990 version tells more or less the complete story, but because of that it didn’t have time to include a lot of fun details

the 2017 version only tells the childhood portion of the story, which leaves it time to include fun details. i was really hoping to see more of derry’s backstory or more development on mike and stan as members of marginalized groups -> how that influences their life in derry, but we didn’t get much of that? mike’s importance to the losers (researcher, somewhat of a skeptic/hardass at times to keep the others together) was removed, his healthy family dynamic was removed (mike, richie, and possibly stan are the only characters in the book with healthy family dynamics, somewhat underscoring the concept that derry itself is trapped in a cycle of abuse), and derry’s history of racism is never touched on aside from the kids mentioning “the fire at the black spot” a couple times in passing. overall it was a fun movie and you can tell everyone making it had a blast but compared to the book it’s like. mmmmmmmmmmmmm

BASICALLY what i’m saying here is that the book is really deep wrt social issues, and while neither movie really touches on those concepts in-depth, they are still good horror movies on their own and ofc a part of american pop culture

house of wax (1953)

marnie (tw for rape, abuse and coercion in a marriage dynamic, animal/pet death, graphic depictions of psychological abuse, graphic depiction of a violent death involving a child)

cabin fever (tw for sickness horror/body function horror/unsanitary horror, occasional slurs)

mega shark vs. giant octopus

i don’t even have a real reason for listing this i just can’t believe it exists and i want the whole world to know

texas chainsaw massacre (1974), texas chainsaw massacre 2, texas chainsaw 3d

ju-on: the grudge

phantoms

the plot is pretty ehhh imo but the effects are great; rose mcgowan is gorgeous as always, peter o’toole’s character is great, and ben affleck’s character lowkey has some batman circa arkham knight vibes going on. also, liev schrieber becomes a tentacle monster. i couldn’t make this shit up if i tried y’all

vamps*

this movie. this movie

krysten ritter and alicia silverstone are a couple of vampires, sigourney weaver is their hot mess of a vampire mom, dan stevens is krysten ritter’s boyfriend, wallace shawn is van helsing but he’s basically just vizzini: vampire hunter au and it’s GOLD

it’s literally the cutest and funniest vampire media i’ve ever seen in my life as well as one of the most detailed when it comes to vampire lore i cannot recommend it enough

bram stoker’s dracula

death becomes her**

what we do in the shadows**

disturbia

frankenstein (2004 miniseries, more like a 2-part movie than a tv show)

flatliners (1990) (tw for drug use, uncensored depictions of cadaver dissection)

the cabinet of dr. caligari

the limehouse golem (tw for sexual assault and csa)

repulsion (tw for sexual assault)

the trial (1962)

*spooky comedy: a comedy movie with a spooky premise that i am categorizing with horror movies due to the genre overlap, but that lacks the intense violence, gore, etc. of a horror movie

**horror comedy: a spooky comedy that does not lower the level of violence, gore, etc. that is standard in a horror movie

thrillers

stoker (tw for incest, has a scene in which the protag’s mother verbally abuses her)

m [german film, watch with subtitles] (tw for themes of pedophilia/child molestation/child murder, but it’s worth noting that the whole point of the movie is to condemn and demonize pedophilia)

also one of if not the very first detective movies

nightcrawler (tw for rape)

the vvitch/the witch/however the fuck it’s spelled

rear window (1954)

zodiac

hannibal lecter franchise (tw for cannibalism, obviously)-- the silence of the lambs, hannibal, red dragon, manhunter

manhunter is adapted from the same book red dragon is (red dragon) except manhunter was made before anthony hopkins became The Iconic Hannibal Lecter(TM) so it focuses much more on will graham and francis dolarhyde

hannibal rising is worth watching for gaspard ulliel’s performance but the book was much better

the hannibal movie adaptation changed the ending of the hannibal book while still maintaining a really good and really compelling storyline so the book and movie are definitely both highly recommended by me

gone girl

shutter island (tw for asylum horror)

pan’s labyrinth

tiger house

the champagne murders

the plot and pacing are a little ehhh; in my opinion there was too much tension buildup between characters and not enough actual plot development. BUT, anthony perkins is in it so it’s worth watching if you love him like i do

documentaries

cropsey (documentary on child murders)

urban legends (another documentary, by the same people, talks about how real-life crime affects the american psyche and lives on as urban legends/horror tropes)

the poisoner’s handbook

h. h. holmes

nightmares in red, white, and blue

his name was jason

never sleep again: the elm street legacy

american ripper [currently ongoing tv series]

television/youtube

bates motel

ahs s1 (tw for... literally everything)

slasher

similar basic premise as ahs, but imo ahs is v exploitative and builds the plot on violence and vice, whereas slasher builds the violence and vice on the plot

supernatural (LISTEN........ LISTEN....................... conceptually it’s the bees knees okay)

penny dreadful (tw for constant explicit sexuality, religious iconography/sacrilege, asylum horror)

criminal minds

bbc broadchurch

bbc river

bbc sherlock but literally only ep. 3.4 “the abominable bride”

rosemary’s baby (2-part made-for-tv movie)

unedited footage of a bear

marblehornets

true detective

frankenstein (2004 miniseries, more like a 2-part movie than a tv show)

tbs’ search party

podcasts

the black tapes podcast

small town horror

alice isn’t dead

king falls am [spooky comedy, more sci-fi than horror but there is One Episode that positively screams “love letter to 80s horror movies” so i can’t leave it out with good conscience]

limetown

welcome to night vale [spooky comedy]

the dark tome

video games

until dawn

outlast series

five nights at freddy’s

dead by daylight

bioshock

#recs #horror #*mine #masterlist

[knightofbalance-13]

Volume 4 Commentary Counter to Counter

https://rerwby.tumblr.com/post/161522494149/rwby-volume-4-commentary-play-by-play

Yes, like anyone whose opinion matters wants to hear the whiney, egotistical  creator of the third rate, cliché, poorly written version of RWBY bitch about how the people who are actually talented and capable of producing a product that has more to offer than Gen RWBZed.

I’d say the whole volume was a fuck-you shot to the fans but

But you know you’ll get called out on your bullshit seeing as the ratings for Volume 4 are above Volumes 1 and 2 and the only negative things we’v e heard outside of RWDE is a couple of minor issues qand the usuqal “Yang doesn’t get enough screentme.”

And you’re not one to talk: RE:RWBY is just a giant Fuck You shot to the real RWBY and just writing in general.

I’m leaning towards believing this since Salem was one of the first things conceived for the show, so her team would follow. Makes you wonder if Miles was always gonna have his “crazy” Tyrian though or if that came later. I doubt it because I don’t believe Monty would make characters as boring as Hazel and Watts right from the start.

Gee, it’s almost as though those characters have been on screen for a total of five minutes a piece and thus not enough time to be developed and thus you are being a nitpicky douche for making judgements so earlier so you can bitch.

Yeah it’s not breaking news to say that they did the opposite of what would be a good idea. Mentioned in the commentary, but in more detail in the special features, is the fact that CRWBY had a rough start to the volume due to the new production pipeline, which continued for several episodes.

You know, the most common compliant with Oscar was he didn’t get enough screentime to develop his struggle with Ozpin and thus moving him up to Episode 4 is an improvement over the original plan of 7. Of course, it’s not breaking news for RWDE to sabatoge the show just to complain more: That’s like a third of their Modius Operande.

And at least RWBY is original: the one creative license to your name isn’t even an attempt at being original with you badly copying and pasting RWBY onto a screen with what little you do change to make it objectively worse.

Wondering how they would have fit 4 whole monsters in that fight, but I guess that’s why they ended up splitting two bad guys between teams instead.

Oh but Re:RWBY, you just said they don’t do good ideas so that should have happened!

Yeah, see what your bitching does: invalidates what little you have to say nice to show you flip flop like a limp pancake.

Just saying that I believe this. They said that Roman originally played a smaller part in Volume 1? How was this possible? Insert more villains.

And this is worth jackshit...how? is it a crack at the writers? if so, it’s even worse than normal. Is this an observation? Then this belongs under the category of “No shit, Sherlock.”

So Weiss fought a Grimm in her trailer it turns out. Idk how to feel about that. In a way it makes sense because, as we’ve seen with Winter’s summons, the Schnee summons are light versions of Grimm. It makes little sense though when you consider that the Geist inhabits inanimate things and therefore the armor isn’t a natural feature of the Grimm.

Gee, did the fact that she could summon the fucker not tip you off?

And the very commentary points out that the Geists are named after what they inhabit (AKA Petra Geist) so it seems like whatever they inhabit because a Grimm by extension.

Iunno what fatal flaw to focus on here. Is it how this makes it sound like Jaune’s god damn weapon model design was THAT important that Kerry noticed? That it implies melting Pyrrha’s armor down was a last-minute thought? That the plot hole of Pyrrha fucking disintegrating and therefore leaving no armor or cape for Jaune was made entirely because Kerry liked how a shield looked?

Hey RE;RWBY? Know what a storyboard is? Obviously not considering you would know that a storyboard is made RIGHT AFTER they basic writing and thus NOT LAST MINUTE.

So instead of losing it for a reason they just lose it for the sake of it. Cool.

Sort of how Pyrrha can’t understand what jaune was going through in volume 1.

Or how Neptuen and Sun got thrown out of the fight in Voume 2.

Or how no one noticed how old Cinder was in Volume 3.

Or any number of innumerable so-called “plot holes” that shoud have logically booted you out of here a long time ago.

The name kind of gave it away without any other hints

Not really: I never got it. I just thought it was a word for betrayal.

Wow. The people working on this show were seriously so disillusioned that they thought Pyrrha’s relationship with Jaune earned that kind of reaction. Not even gonna mention how the existence of the recording makes no sense, especially since Pyrrha signs off on it. Why would she do that on a generic fighting guide. I can’t believe how attached these people were to the Alpha Hets.

Or, you know.... IT WAS A CHARACTER THEY GOT ATTACHED TO. KIND OF LIKE THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO CRIED WHEN SHE DIED.

And why does their sexuality have anything to do with how their suffering causes pain in people capable of feeling empathy? Are you saying that people should care about people if their heterosexual? Or are you saying that they only cared about Pyrrha because she was heterosexual?

If A then you are a heterophobe and thus any you say about sexuality should be immediately disregarded. if B then that's offensive to at least Lindsay and Arryn who are LGBT and work at RT.

can’t say anything more than what’s been said on this.

Except maybe a list of what they did right and what they did wrong OBJECTIVELY like a REAL critic would do?

She seemed pretty cruel to me lol. They need to have Salem do more before they announce these kinds of intentions, because now they’ve just given us a preconceived notion and they won’t have to write it that way.

Gee, it’s almost as though Salem is the fucking BIG BAD and thus the GREATEST EVIL IN RWBY. And considering she was protecting CInder from her colleagues taunts and was gently pushing Cinder to improve, she has the motherly side as well. She has done enough: You just wanna bitch considering you cannot grasp the concept of a Big Bad.

This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.

Considering this is the author of Re:RWBY and “Alpha Hets”: That’s a lie.

ANd they do this type of thing in anime all the time. It’s even a real life ocurrance so a commonplace and even factually correct is the stupdiest thing you’ve read? Guess you don’t read much then.

Wow! Joel and Burnie, two voice acting veterans who formed RT, are invested in their roles? Don’t get too shocked by actors who actually try, guys!

Well, you heard that right Miles, Kerry, Linsday, Barbara, Arryn and Vic: You all suck and you should all quit your jobs because one person is an ingrateful little shit.

Blah blah magical mystical Asia land

1. So does that mean the entirety of Avatar was “Blah blah magical Asian land”? Good to know Re;RWBY.

2. gee, I wonder who the creator of RWBY was? Oh right, Monty Oum, an Asian of four nationalities. So uh, pretty sure your the racist here.

Can you imagine if we had to see RNJR somehow not notice Qrow like twenty feet away from them? Thank god he sat in that pub across the street.

Ever heard of a cloak or disguise? Also, you’re bitching about them doing something right again.

I mean iunno that scene didn’t scream emotional to me but I also have daddy issues so

Well that explains the misgyony and bias against males. Also: we get it: you have about as much of a soul as Flowey. You don’t need to remind us.

Makes you wonder if by the time of their conception, Faunus were a thing or if Monty was just making up furry OC’s.

And we should give two shits... why?

Jfc guys went kinda overboard there. Didn’t look like 100+ when I watched it.

CRWBY: *Does hard work*

Re:RWBY: *Bitches about hard work not meeting their expectations*

Good to know this is fine: I’ll start publicly launching the reasons why you suck as a writer directly at you form now on.

That’s about what I guessed yep. Now is there a reason for it to be Neptune? To show that Weiss grew past her affection towards him? Or because it was the first person who came to mind? Who knows.

Number 1. Because it shows character development. Oh wait, I’m expecting a RWDE poster to understand good writing.  Sorry, big mistake there.

I remember when capes were in Kingdom Hearts. Then they realized they were too much work so they removed them to avoid continuity errors and such. It was a smart and humble move, because the capes looked cool. I guess Tyrian’s jacket was just really that awesome though.

Any problems with Tyrian’s jacket? No? Then this is a bitch to bitch point.

Just gonna keep reminding us of that huh guys?

And you’re just gonna keep bring it up huh?

well that is a legitimately very interesting fact

And now you provide one...

Best decision they ever made, thank god. I love the idea of Miles being all modest and going “ah yes time to be mature.”

Who wants to bet they’ll ruin this soon?

The RWBY writers struggling with exposition?

There it is: Less that and more making it not sound like exposition.

And it was made known that Miles conceived one of the worst parts of the entire story. And he just copied it from a Grimm Tale.

Not gonna mention how everyone (including YOU) said Miles mad eit up on the spot and got totally contradicted?

And it’s (SHOCK) RWBY takes inspiration from Fairy Tales.

Also: I didn't know Miles wrote in the Maidens.

Isn’t this why you, like, direct your scenes? To avoid miscommunication like that?

Did he say it was bad or just shocked? Oh wait, you won’t tell us because it might contradict your bitching.

Apparently the animation crew’s passion is graphic design.

Aren’t you a fan of Studio Trigger? Wouldn't that be obvious?

Again, directing.

RWBY chibi, Camo Camp, mentoring the new writer for Red Vs Blue.

They had a lot on their plate.

Idk how to feel about this but it is kind of disturbing that Miles would be so quick to make that joke.

Wanna know what’s more disturbing? SHowing zero empathy and an absolute lack of self awareness. Wanna know what that looks like? Look in the mirror.

guessed everyone who knows of overwatch’s existence

No shit Sherlock.

That probably would have made some sense.

And I’m guessing that here they said they didn’t have time and you choose to ignore that for the sake of bitching right?

So Lancaster gets shot down completely, cool. Cool thing of a creator to do. How dare we imply Ruby and Jaune are close after all they’ve been through.

Gee, it’s almost as though a certain part of the fandom will send death threats and verbally abuse and terrorize the crew for heterosexuality.

Yeah I bet Miles loved Tyrian.

And I bet that’s an insult.

Pretty sure Sun’s torso is a tube with the new models.

Yes, that clearly rectangular shape is a cylindrical tube.

God, what is left for Qrow to reveal? We got his weapon’s forms, his Semblance, his transforming thing, what else? Tbh my bet’s on Ozpin’s cane. They planned for him to use the cane but decided against it because of their artifact bullshit.

Salem’s origins, the history of the Headmasters secrets behind Ozpin, bandits, Raven, STRQ.

And said bullshit was planned whereas the Maidens whom you’ve said nothing about wasn’t. Yeah, between your failure at writing, your failure at basic empathy, your failure at self awareness and your failure at basic fact comprehension you just spent all this time making a complete ass of yourself.

#rwde bullshit #re:rwby