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piosplayhouse · 1 year

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Horse Isle 3: The Yandere Sim of Horse Games

(or, an extended study in how to hate your own playerbase as much as humanly possible)

(or, or, tldr there's pretty much no updated information on just how ridiculously bad this game is so here's a writeup on how I got banned and all the subsequent information I found during my time playing for documentation's sake)

Part I. The Backstory

My beloved followers will know that a few months ago I began playing Horse Isle 3, a horse-raising MMO surprisingly released in the year of our horse 2019 despite its 1997-era website and Runescape-esque graphics. Some of my play through (mostly just horse pictures) is chronicled in my tag #homophobic scum horse chronicles ¹ if you want to see how drippy my horses were before they killed me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have endless respect for small teams of game devs that manage to create insanely impressive products-- which HI3's elaborate real-genetics breeding system, its main draw, certainly is. Coding is hard, modeling is hard, moderation is hard. Tip a coin to your local small indie teams that work hard to make incredible art.

However, HI3 is far from an admirable success story about a small dev team that triumphed over its obstacles.

The game is known for a variety of things, chief among them being the staff's rampant homophobia (which has earned it the moniker "the homophobic horse game"), hilariously uncharismatic mods (to the point where one of the main moderators, Connie, is mentioned by NAME in the majority of poor reviews of the game), the dev team's unrepentant rejection of criticism, and racism with a side of downplaying war crimes.

(Screenshots taken from Sitejabber, here)

Now, it's marketed as a game for ages 8+, which, as I've briefly talked about before, is unfortunately a rarity in today's hostile internet climate. I grew up on a variety of typical child friendly MMOs like ye olde Pixie Hollow and PetPet Park, and truly lament that so many of these have been shut down over the years. As such, I have no issue with strict rules or word filters in games, with the caveat that they are effective and genuinely intended to keep people safe. Kids are naive, and can and will say things that they shouldn't (I, for example, got kicked from a Minecraft server when I was 8 because I posted in chat that my mom told me sex wasn't a bad word. things happen). Filters are a very appropriate tool to aid manual moderation of chat features, especially in an environment where mistakes will be made.

However, HI3's, as shown below (words that are forbidden from chat are marked in red), are... questionably selective.

(Screenshot taken by Alice Ruppert, from here)

This appears to be attributed to the fact that along with having horrible moderators, HI3 also seems to have a remarkably horrible developer backend, which is a trend that you'll see pop up quite a lot in this post. Taken straight from the horse's (haha) mouth, the lead developer is the only person who seems to be able or willing to add to the filter list, and for whatever reason only wants to block the "most common inappropriate words"- because saying transgender is more of an issue than nazi and gulag I guess.

(Screenshot taken from Top R.'s Sitejabber review, here)

¹ I'm not sure how far this will reach out of my audience, and since people have already assumed weird stuff about me I thought I should probably clarify-- I'm not calling the game "homophobic scum" ghghg, my play through was focused on making horse versions of characters from a novel called "scum villain", so I took the scum and added horse (I actually have another tag for a different horse breeding game called "scum horse chronicles" so I needed to distinguish them easily but am not very good at tagging). That's it.

Part II. The Game

The game itself is, putting it simply, a mess at best and openly hostile towards newcomers at worst. The game's UI is comparable to your average petsite with 20 thousand things to click on but if you tried to navigate that while also watching the Pilgrim's Progress movie by Scott Cawthorn on 90% of your screen. This is a very good overview of what your experience first logging in will be like, with the added caveat that talking in global chat costs in game currency and that the game doesn't tell you this at ALL until you try to type in chat, and that depending when you log on it's entirely possible that you'll spawn into a completely dead town miles away from anyone who can help you, wilderness survivor-style.

To make things more complicated, information about the game is split between the game itself and the laughably horrible website/forums. Spectacularly enough, the forums, which provide vital game information and rule elaborations, cannot be searched in any way (not via Google or any hard-baked search bar) and are regularly purged by admins to erase evidence of scandals and poor moderation complaints.

Now, something you will find to be generally people's biggest issue with HI3 is their strict no "date-speak" rule, which sounds ok on paper but is worded *just* vaguely enough to give the moderators full jurisdiction over whether or not they think you're breaking the rules. Selective moderation is a major theme in the HI3 chronicle, but it is perhaps most documented with regards to this rule, because what the hell does "boyfriend/girlfriend talk" even mean?? Outside of vagueness, this rule has also been scrutinized extensively by others due to the fact that a pair of previous moderators were openly married with the igns "FrogLips" and "MrsFrogLips". I don't personally think this is super condemning, since kids usually address adults by Mr/Ms etc whether or not they know they're in a relationship, but regardless it's clear that the complete lack of elaboration on what this rule means can be easily manipulated to lodge any number of complaints against people.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website rules page, here)

What I will say, however, is that this rule would probably hold more water if the game wasn't literally about breeding horses.

You can pimp out your horses, you can pay others to breed your mares, you can put any number of special (real life currency-bought) amulets on your horses to make them more fertile/have twins/give birth faster. I paid $1000 to castrate Jiang Cheng. The word "stud" (which btw, is another word for a black butch lesbian) is used constantly. Perhaps most shockingly, horse inbreeding is very common and accepted among the community, to the point that it is explicitly mentioned and EXPLAINED in the game guide; the only penalization for it is that your incest product foal will have a lower intelligence stat. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel as though implementing and acknowledging that horses can breed with their own relatives is hmm perhaps more harmful than another player saying the word gay, but what do I know.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website game guide page, here (only accessible with an account))

Well, you might ask, after you breed and sell a horse, is there any way to put a brand on it so you know it's from your ranch? That's where the "prefix" system comes in. Prefixes are bolded titles that appear in front of a horses name in lists and in the overworld, and are described in the official game guide as follows:

(Screenshot from the same Horse Isle website game guide page as linked previously)

I think you can toggle them off if you don't want to see them, though I could be wrong. They're basically just 1-5 letter titles you can put on your own horses (nobody else's, importantly). There's no way to search prefixes, and you won't see them in game unless either a horse with a prefix is listed in auctions or you actually encounter someone in-game and see their horse.

In fact, I would learn later that not even the moderators monitor the prefixes, and apparently have no way to mass-delete them. At all.

(Image taken from an anonymous friend)

Now, it's not unusual that a game as complicated as HI3 would inevitably have a pretty taxing server-side code. Millions of multifaceted assets and features is really nothing to scoff at. However, the notion that your lead developer has to perform a manual search in the game's code to delete the equivalent of a stamp from every instance individually is hilarious. I'm not going to pretend to be a game developer, but there HAS to be a better way of coding a feature that intakes user-generated content that should probably be monitored regularly than that, right? Or, at least, there should be a robust filter system that could prevent any issues from occurring before they would need to be fixed so tediously. You might think.

On December 29th, 2022, I discovered how to register a prefix. It's very common to headcanon the characters I was naming my horses after as transgender, and I thought it would be cute to attach "TRANS" to my horses as a nod to this. However, a filter blocked the word. I was disappointed, but not surprised², and then tried to think of another word that was under 5 letters. To my complete and gay surprise, "GAY" was not filtered out, and henceforth, this worked as my prefix.

As you can see on the popup here, there are scant guidelines for what the requirements for a prefix should be. And, in this moment of apparently utter foolishness, I was under the impression that since "GAY" was NOT filtered out despite there clearly being a filter on this function, it was ok to register. Possibly it's not filtered because it's a synonym for "happy", I thought, which is also cute because I do like when horses are happy. Perhaps the staff had learned from their past criticism and had loosened the restrictions slightly because they felt restructuring was appropriate now that gay marriage is legal in the US, I imagined.

(My original post)³

What I could not imagine, however, was that the only reason the word wasn't filtered out, despite being possibly the most common sexuality-related word, was just because the lead dev couldn't be assed to add it to the filter list. And that apparently I was supposed to know this because it would lead to a permanent ban on my second offense with no warning.

² Hence typing "eat shit lol". Admittedly childish of me, but I didn't put a lot of thought into the post because it was just part of a casual silly live blog I was doing to blow off steam. The "if I get banned" tag surprisingly was not referencing "GAY", as I genuinely thought I was in the clear for that for reasons stated above, but because I tried to register "TRANS" and then posted about it online. You don't have to believe me, but I feel the need to defend myself since some people have wildly extrapolated that my actions were malicious instead of just a split second decision I made because I was bored one morning.

³ Despite the pop-up box saying that prefixes cannot be removed, they actually can at any time, given only that the person that owns the prefix unregisters the horse from it. The unregistering mechanic is for whatever reason not told to the player upon registering the prefix, but is mentioned in the official game guide linked above.

Part III. The Ban, The Report

I will preface this section by saying that I played the game normally. I do like being outrageous sometimes for my followers' entertainment, but I really don't like dragging random people into my antics if they aren't interested. Because of this, I really didn't interact with other players unless we were mutuals on some other platform. I rarely used the chat feature except to participate in server-wide events that required team participation, and I typically just explored on my own for fun. In general I think I was a pretty ok player, objectively, which lines up with my user trust score.

You see, the way moderators of HI3 allegedly keep track of rule breaking is through a "user trust score" with points added if you use features in the game, help people, etc, and points deducted if you violate rules. Anecdotally I've heard that around the -10 total points mark is when moderators put you on a sort of list to be monitored for suspension or punishment, which is pretty reasonable.

By the time I was banned, I had a score of +31. The -10 offset was a part of this debacle. The only thing I had ever done in the game which warranted any kind of violation was, as you will soon see, literally just naming about 30 of my own horses "GAY", a sin egregious enough to apparently offset about 200 hours worth of playtime with no issues.

Because of this, I was a little bit confused on multiple levels. For one, I had never even seen a moderator in game, nor been informed of discipline at any time before. On top of that, their permanent ban notification is extremely strange and vague. The text pop up when you try to log in just reads "Account currently banned -1 minutes ().", which is probably just copied straight from the server-side code for things and just wasn't translated into user-side comprehensibility. You'll also notice there is a "()" section in the notification, which I would assume is where they put the reason for bans, except for the fact that mine was completely blank.

The website which allegedly would hold more info just repeated a near identical code: "BANNED! -1min. Reason:".

So, with nothing else to go off of, I messaged support on the jankiest help center submissions I've ever seen on a website with this:

"Insisting" and "total disregard" are very strong words to use for a situation in which I just typed a word into a textbox because the game let me, I'd think, which is why I tried to reason with her. The prefixes mentioned in my message are well-known amongst the userbase and are much older and wider-spread than mine, so I would think that there would be at least some sort of precedent for this. The "geldings and yearlings" reasoning was mostly a joke, but also intended to express that the nature of an acronym (as the majority of prefixes seemed to be) is that it can be interpreted in many ways. Intent was thrown around a lot when I was discussing the issues of prefixes with other users, and it seemed to have been used to excuse previous behavior in situations where mods liked the users in question better.

I also cannot emphasize enough how much they did not warn me about my prefix being removed. When I logged in and saw my horses' names did not include it, I was suspicious that the moderators removed it just because of the history of their behavior. However, I had no hard evidence because they did not inform me at ALL. Not through in-game mail systems, not through server messages, not through the website. Complete radio silence except for the addition of an unexplained "-10" to my user score. I did complain to some people that I thought it was removed, but a combination of things suggested that it wasn't a huge deal, so I mostly let it lie. For one, I had over 100 hours of playtime and was mildly worried that one of my chat messages had been flagged without my knowledge. For another, my profile text had also mysteriously disappeared, probably because of a glitch, so who knows what could happen in this game. Lastly, I went to the prefix registry again just to check and hilariously enough, they didn't actually block "GAY" from the database. Yeah, they apparently individually deleted it from all of my horses, but couldn't be assed to add such an "inappropriate" word to their filter system.

So I just registered it again and publicly told people that I would do it again if the mods didn't actually tell me to stop. I didn't really care about the prefix because to me, the feature was purely cosmetic. All I wanted was transparency from the staff.

Well, anyway, I assume Connie couldn't think of a comeback, so she just closed my report. I was annoyed because quite literally none of my questions were answered and she didn't even refer to anything in specifics. It would take less than 1 second to type the number of the rule I violated, but I guess that was too much work for her.

I tried to give them as many outs as possible to just apologize about poor communication, but they didn't even take the bare minimum. I would also like to mention that this support ticket process is the ONLY way to directly communicate with any staff. There's no ability to upload files or images on this system, and no email listed that you could contact. So essentially, there's no way to give actual evidence for anything you say even if you want to.

Kat, who is known as the slightly-more-reasonable-but-still-pretty-bad mod then picked up the case. Her response actually provided specific information, which made it leagues above Connie's, but still included some very strange elements for sure.

The notion that this game is intended for a worldwide audience is especially funny to me because you would really think if they cared about other countries they wouldn't violate their own rule one by using a slur for Europe's largest ethnic minority, but ok. It's a weird hill to die on considering how USA-dominated the staff's opinions towards rules are (Connie justifies the usage of a slur for Rromani people based off the opinion of a single roommate she had who reclaimed it, Joe defends a store in-game being called "The Gulag" because Americans don't think gulags are that bad (discussed and cited in the conclusions section)). But then again, picking and choosing what parts of other countries' customs you want to respect is very American, which is why I think they should add an extra star rating for its patrioticness on the website.

As I mentioned before, the prefixes I included in my response are definitely older and more commonly-used than mine, so I'm not sure how they wouldn't have seen them before. This comment also ties back to the suggestion that the moderators have very little control or insight over a distinct feature of their game, which is not a great thing to admit so casually.

Kat has a strange habit of immediately contradicting herself in the same paragraph, as can be seen here. "The glitches never happen and bugs were quickly fixed, but games still have bugs". "People that break the rules usually write in to ask what was wrong, but most people usually never ask". At this point I think we can confidently say that they don't even make an attempt to proofread any of their responses, to be honest.

Her 7th paragraph has one of my favorite lines in this exchange. "If we had to notify players every time we made moderator changes to their account we would spend 24 hours a day" is giving huge Yandere Dev "stop emailing me because I have to spend 24 hours a day reading all my emails instead of coding" energy. You really have to wonder why these people that seem to hate moderating so much are moderators.

You can tell by my response, but I do not like the use of "most" and "usually" in this at all. What's your standard isn't others' standards, and this is a topic which needs to be navigated gently, especially when kids are concerned. I never played the previous Horse Isles. I had no experience with the mod team, or with violations, or with anything because no one bothered to take five seconds to send me a message. No, I did not know that you would permaban me for typing a word that's in one of the most popular traditional Christmas songs in a place were only people who interacted with me would be able to see it. Most games would not do this. To take a lackadaisical approach to your literal job of community management because you want people to moderate themselves is contradictory to your claims of keeping children safe.

I will admit I was being a bit cheeky here as a subtle hint that perhaps they should take feedback, but I also would have taken a genuine response. I try my best to be as polite as possible to tech support staff because not everyone is! But they're people too and a simple thank you is worth a lot in customer service, even virtual. But Kat... you're not really giving me anything to work with here! If anyone reading this has feedback for how I could've rephrased things, feel free to comment them honestly. I actually ran drafts of these messages through a few people before sending them to make sure I was as concise and polite as possible, even if support clearly wasn't interested in reciprocating the effort ("following out rules using the the GAY to begin with"...?).

Part IV. The Backlash

I won't go too into depth in this section because it's more personal than documentarian, so feel free to skip to the next section if you want!

After this, the girlies were not happy with me. The one saving grace of HI3 that I've heard pop up over and over again is that the community is great. And a lot of users are! Don't think I'm disparaging people who play the game because I'm not-- it's a really fun experience with the right people. I was in a Discord server with a lot of people who were extremely helpful and kind.

However, within the community, there's also a pervasive culture of silence. According to Alice Ruppert of The Mane Quest, a lot of people will refuse to go public with their complaints about the staff due to fear of retribution, which I feel is unfortunate but understandable. There's a pressure to shut up and eat your food lest you be seen as someone causing controversy for the sake of it and ruining the sanctity of the game, which is an attitude explicitly encouraged by the staff (discussed more in the next section).

I liveblogged my entire correspondence with the support team to a group of other players for the 2 days I talked to them, and did have a lot of acceptance from people who appreciated someone speaking out. After the 2020 Mane Quest article, public information had sort of just gone dark as the community was pushed further into niche seclusion, despite things not improving at all. However, towards the end of my messaging, a group of people that I had never even spoken to or seen online before accused me of a variety of things ranging from "displaying my sexuality to children" (note: all I ever did was name my horses "GAY". I never once talked about my own sexuality in-game, nor did I say the word in chat ever) to "joining the server to cause drama" to "mocking the lgbt community by throwing around the word gay" (actually I'll attach a picture of this one even though I don't want to put people on blast in this section just because its so funny).

I think most of this can be attributed to the game having gained such a notoriety that longtime players, especially those with strong nostalgic feelings, have become completely desensitized to it. And this compounds with the fact that the game is so niche it doesn't yet have a good alternative to turn to to create a toxic cocktail where people tell themselves that they have to be loyal to the staff to play this one of a kind game-- and that anyone who doesn't follow them just doesn't understand. It's really sad, honestly.

Part V. Conclusions

I don't necessarily think the devs of HI3 are legitimately consciously homophobic-- unfortunately LGBT rights are still controversial amongst the largely southern and rural population of horse enthusiasts, and I could understand if they felt it necessary to skim the line towards conservatism to maintain a userbase. It's cowardly and dumb but it's not a sin to do what you have to do to survive in a capitalistic hellscape as cutthroat as the game industry.

However, what I do think the devs are is power-hungry and hypocritical. They have failed at every turn at community management because they're unwilling to admit they make mistakes, instead choosing to issue non-apologies like "[we] regret you guys got so upset and did not realize neither our true intentions nor motivations nor the whole situation [that we said it's ok that a player has a shop called The Gulag because it's 'not direct or violent']". To respond this way to a userbase filled allegedly with young children as a fully grown adult with a wife and kids is laughably out of touch. 'Sorry your fee-fees were hurt by our adult moderator responding to a serious complaint about inappropriate user-generated content with "lol", but actually you just misunderstood us and we're going to ban anyone who brings this up again' is the sort of response you'd see from the teenage mod team of an Undertale amino, not the supposedly responsible head dev of a 'rare oasis of kid friendly content'.

Telling an audience of impressionable kids that the fact that their feelings are hurt is their fault for not intuiting the intentions of 40+ year old adults is unbelievably toxic, and it's no wonder why people are so nostalgia-bound to feverishly shut down criticism about the games. They've been guilt-tripped into believing the mod team can do no wrong and any controversy, even if valid, that springs up is just extrapolated by people that haven't been laboriously groomed to know what the mod team wants to hear.

Countless times throughout my time researching and playing the game, the number one advice I've heard has always been "suck up to the mods or they won't do anything for you". It's crystal clear that the moderators care more about the joy they get from having power over some 200 users who will kiss their ass if they say a buzzword more than they care about you, your child, or the game itself.

It's essentially a model scam Kickstarter's wet dream, a game propelled to release and popularity by its singular defining feature and left to fester on the shelf as the only game in its niche market. Because of this, I believe there's truly no better way to describe HI3, with its messy backend, refusal to improve, narcissistic moderators, broken features, poor visuals, and inefficiency than as the Yandere Simulator of horse games.

#img descriptions in alt text!#lmk if there's any way I can make this more accessible! It's my first time writing something this long on tumblr :)#long post #really long posts #long posts #really long post #essay #hi3 #horse isle 3 #horse isle #fandom drama #hobby drama #discourse #homophobic scum horse chronicles

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xxinkyshadowxx · 2 months

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games that i think more people should know about cause they are so good oh my goodness

TW For blood, gore, and disturbing imagery

GOHOME

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM IM GOING TO EAT THE ENTIRE GAME OM NOM NOM NOM NOM I DO NOT HAVE THE WORDS TO DISCRIBE THIS GAME SO THERES IT DISCRIPTION DOWN THERE BUT IM GOING TO EAT IT ALL QUICK READ IT BEFORE I EATED ALL THE DISCRIPTION TOO

"This is a third-person horror game set in a residential area in 2000s Japan. It's the complete version of the free horror game GOHOME, which was released in 2019 and caused a boom. The map has been doubled, and six more ghosts, including hidden characters, have been added to the game. There's no grotesque , so even kids can enjoy it.

You've been separated from your parents and you're going home alone. It's the usual way home, but something's wrong. You're being chased by someone so you run away and go home. It's a sad, scary and mysterious game, but I hope it will be a lovely memory for you."

House

yeah it's less of a witchtrip(do not pay attention to how i use this word the way i use it makes sense and you know it does) than GOHOME is but oh my god the music the gameplay the plot i just this game would blow up a microwave and come out scratchless

A review: "a carpet killed me👍"

Literally any arcadekitten game

my personal favs are Cemetery mary and sweet no death but i swear all of their games are bangers)

game so good i stole a character's name that should say enough

A sweet no death review: "this was such a cool mix between cute and horror- loved it ! the game was pretty fun too, lambchop was so entertaining, and the music and visuals, so pleasing. "

A cemetery mary review: "Bro, I made an account just to say how much I enjoyed this game. This game was truly a pleasant experience and I genuinely think this is one of the best indie games i've played IMO."

Blackout hospital desc: "Blackout Hospital is a game where you play as Vasilis, a nonbinary janitor at Altobuck Hospital. When the power goes out while working the night shift, the emergency lights come on and bask the halls in an eerie, ghostly glow. Bizarre happenings start to occur at the hospital, and Vasilis wants no part in it as they try to look for a way out! Along the way they will fight off mysterious enemies, meet strange characters, and make a few allies--but will any of it mean anything if they can never return home?"

It's not me it's my basement desc: "Mom and Dad are away. But you're old enough to take care of yourself now, aren't you? You'll be fine, there's no need to worry. You're more than capable of keeping everything under control...right?"

It's Not Me, It's My Basement is a short horror game following a nonbinary child and their daily life. It takes about 30 minutes-1 hour to complete. There is only one ending."

Crowscare desc: "Crowscare is a short horror game, RPG game, and a love letter to the autumn season.

The game follows a young boy named Ryo, excited for the upcoming Harvest Festival in his hometown. Wouldn't you know? This is going to be his first one! He was never able to go to one before, as it always started past his curfew...but soon he'll see why he was never allowed out at night.

The game takes about 1-1 ½ hours to complete. There are two bad endings, and one good/true ending. "

World's end club:

AEWRT%UYTYRERSFXFGTY *EATS IT ALL IN ONE BITE* If you like danganronpa then you're gonna like this game as it's made by the same people this is just danganronpa but like more interactive and pg13 and im going to eat ALL of it the designs *eats the designs* oh and im not sure how true this is but i heard that one of the designers who worked on this made Top champion geeta's design soooooo

"Brought to you by Zero Escape series creator Kotaro Uchikoshi, and Kazutaka Kodaka, mastermind behind the Danganronpa games. With twists and turns aplenty, this mysterious, captivating tale of friendship and adversity will have you hooked from the get go.

Dive into this easy to pick up fusion of puzzle platforming and choice-driven story adventure, and surround yourself with a cast of charming, quirky characters as you set off on an unforgettable trip!

In an elementary school in Tokyo, a group of oddball kids from across the country have banded together as the "Go-Getters Club." Reycho and the rest of the Go-Getters are, to say the least, a little different to the rest of their classmates.

One summer's day the group is riding the bus on a school trip when disaster strikes. They wake up to find themselves trapped in a rusted, long-abandoned underwater theme park. As they struggle to get their bearings, a sinister clown appears out of the blue and informs the Go-Getters that they'll be playing a "Game of Fate"—pitting their lives against one another in a desperate struggle for survival!

Bewildered and confused, prospects look bleak for Reycho and the gang, but when all hope seems lost, out of nowhere, strange powers start to awaken in the daring Go-Getters.

What in the world could happen next!?"

Motherhood

i just i i just i AIUYTEWGEHYUDZIOR*(E&FUDTYGHJUIDS

A review: "Really good game with nice and disturbing aesthetics. The story was quite cryptic, but you get most of it by the secret ending.

It was a nice experience, I want to play the rest from Enigma Studio if the other games are as cool as this one!"

Bad end theater

i want to dissect this game like its a damn frog and then i want to go OM NOM NOM NOM NOM

Review: "PLEASE LET ME GIVE YOU MORE MONEY OH MY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GOD, ALSO LIKE ADD AN ART BOOK I NEED ACCESS TO ALL OF THIS ART AT ANY GIVEN TIME EVER"

Review: "While I cannot spoil why, this is possibly one of the sweetest, most thought out and unique short games I played in years.

Go in blind, you will find everything more meaningful that way!"

Loomian legacy

*Dj Khaled voice* Life is roblox

Formerly Pokemon brick bronze so i feel life that should be enough info for those who know of it

Emily wants to play

I I HYYDUIEUUI THIS SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF LITTLE ME I LOVE THIS GAME

Desc "It’s 11pm, and you are at the last house on your route. The lights are on, and the front door is opened. But, the windows are all boarded up and the grass is overgrown. It seems like a strange place to deliver a pizza, but at least, it looks like someone is home.

You run to the front door since it’s storming pretty bad.

“Hello!? Your pizza's here!" You announce. No one answers. There's an eerie silence.

You are getting soaked from the rain, so you hesitantly step inside the door and look around. The front door suddenly closes behind you.

You just wanted to finish this last delivery and head home for the night. Now you must figure out how to get out of this stupid creepy house.

Freely roam the house and try to figure out what is going on. Three dolls and a strange girl named Emily will also start roaming the house as the hours toll by. Stay away from them, but if you do end up in a room with one, figure out how to stay alive.

This may be your last pizza delivery."

I need to stop eating all these games im going to get a stomachache not from eating them but from the joy and whimsy i feel when these games are even real

#Leech's suggestions #Motherhood Enigma studio #blackout hospital #arcadekitten #cemetery mary #game suggestions #crowscare #its not me its my basement #go home game #worlds end club #house bark bark games #sweet no death #suggestion

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hopeymchope · 2 months

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"Rascal Does Not Dream" Double Feature review-ish thoughts

I attended the North American "Rascal Does Not Dream" double feature (subtitled edition) yesterday on March 24th. This was one of those Fathom Event things, and it served as the official North American premiere for both Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing Out and Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid. At 73 minutes apiece, they're pretty damn short for movies... but I've seen even shorter in the anime world, weirdly enough. These would be the second and third movies after the "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai" 12-episode series and its first movie sequel, 2019's Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl.

If you're completely unaware of this series, I implore you to ignore its admittedly awful titling convention. This is all based on a set of Japanese novels revolving around teenage (ofc) protagonists Sakuta Azusagawa and Mai Sakurajima as they contend with the bizare phenomenon that's come to be called "Puberty Syndrome" (sometimes called "Adolescence Syndrome"), in which the emotions of teenagers/pre-teens/young adults are able to somehow affect reality via quirks of theoretical quantum physics. So in this world, if someone wishes they could redo a bad experience? They might start looping said experience ala Groundhog Day. If someone feels two sides of their personality are diametrically opposed? They could literally split into two separate versions of themselves. Only somehow resolving the underlying issue can fix these bizarre sci-fi events.

The first four arcs of the TV series could be described as "A boy is made to understand and empathize with how hard it is to grow up female." After that, starting with the final arc of the TV series and up through these movies, you could describe the story as "A boy is made to understand and empathize with people who struggle with disabilities." I have tons of respect for how the series is basically all about trying to provide deeper understanding/sympathy for everyone around us.

I'm an anime-only plebe who hasn't read the books these are based on or the manga adaption, so that obviously will affect my view of the story. With that said...

Sister Venturing Out is basically the emotional sequel to the TV series' final arc, the "Sister Home Alone" story. That one contains an emotional sequence that has made me cry on MULTIPLE viewings, which I consider to be some of the highest possible praise. I have to say that Sister Venturing Out has a similarly devastating scene that flips the script on what was so painful in "Sister Home Alone" and effectively shows the pain of the OPPOSITE side of the relationship. So: major props. It's a slow-build sort of tale without the tension inherent to some of the franchise's arcs — the central gimmick of "Puberty Syndrome" barely plays a role here — but it works well at delivering on emotional payoffs and character moments. I previously felt that "Sister Home Alone" was the most emotionally intense story in the series, but Sister Venturing Out is an easy rival to it.

Knapsack Kid, on the other hand, is all about Puberty Syndrome business and the suspense of how to resolve it. Unfortunately, I don't think it works nearly as well as Sister Venturing Out because it's so clearly in need of a longer runtime to flesh out its ideas. As the story stands here, the existence of the titular "Knapsack Kid" is never even remotely explained! Series fans know that we usually expect Rio Futaba to provide some kind of quantum theory that suits the weirdness occuring, but Rio only shows up long enough to vaguely hand-wave the reality-warping shenanigans at play. Nobody ever provides any justification for why Sakuta is being guided by an all-knowing childhood version of his girlfriend. How does she know so much about what's happening? How can she jump between... realities or timelines or whatever she's doing? Why her, and more importantly, why her as a child? Shouldn’t the CHILD version of Mai know LESS about this stuff? Normally, the series would have fun explaining this; here, they want us to stop thinking and just feel it. And admittedly, the emotional moments are still pretty strong. I just think I would've felt them harder if I understood more about how and why this was all happening.

Although the series has always had its emotional moments in each story arc, the fact that these two stories have so little room to breathe means we lose out on a lot of the humor and witty dialogue that the TV series managed. There's still some of it in here; it's just not as common because we don't really have much time to spare onn comedy.

We do, however, seem to have time to spare on setting up future stories! Two plot threads are set up that do not pay off in these films but instead are events for the upcoming "University Arc." A little tease at the end of the second movie (after the post-credits scene; don't miss out on that) says that "Animation Production is Confirmed" for the University Arc — whatever the hell that means. A new TV season? There are four books so far in the "University Arc," so that seems possible. A bunch more movies? It definitely implies something longer than just one additional film. Whatever this turns out to be, I look forward to it.

#anime reviews #reviews #rascal does not dream #rascal does not dream of a sister venturing out #rascal does not dream of bunny girl senpai #rascal does not dream of a knapsack kid #university arc

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morbidology · 1 year

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Gabriel Cruz, an eight-year-old boy, lived in a small village near Níjar in Almería, Spain. One afternoon on February 27, 2018, Gabriel was playing with friends near his grandmother's house. Around 3:30 PM, he left to walk to his cousin's house, which was about 100 meters away. He was supposed to cross the main road after walking through an unpaved road, but he never arrived at his destination.

When Gabriel did not return to his grandmother's house a couple of hours later, she reported him missing. A massive search operation for the boy was launched immediately, involving hundreds of volunteers, police officers, and emergency personnel. This search was reported to be one of the largest in Spanish history.

Almost a week after Gabriel disappeared, a t-shirt was discovered approximately 1 km away from where he was last seen playing. Forensic examination revealed that the t-shirt contained Gabriel's DNA, but it was dry, despite recent rainfall.

On March 11, 2018, Gabriel's body was discovered in the trunk of a car owned by Ana Julia Quezada, who was the girlfriend of Gabriel's father. Quezada was a Dominican national who had been living in Spain for many years. Shockingly, she had been involved in the search for Gabriel and had even participated in the family's public appeals for help.

After the discovery of Gabriel's body, Quezada was arrested and charged with his murder. Although she initially denied any involvement, she eventually confessed to suffocating Gabriel following an argument at their rural home in Rodalquilar, which was under renovation.

Investigators, however, had a different theory. They believed that Quezada had killed Gabriel out of jealousy. They also determined that the t-shirt was planted by Quezada in an attempt to suggest that Gabriel was abducted by a child predator.

The trial of Ana Julia Quezada began in September 2019, during which the prosecution presented a wealth of evidence, including DNA evidence and video footage of Quezada carrying Gabriel's body in a suitcase. The prosecutor argued that "she killed him in cold blood."

Quezada was convicted of Gabriel's murder and was sentenced to permanent reviewable prison, which is the Spanish equivalent of a life sentence.

#gabriel cruz #true crime #spain

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frosty-the-killer-doll · 10 days

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Top 5 favorite horror movies and why? (I’m not that well verse in horror genre so this is as close to a horror ask I can get rn but I’m curious)

HOORAY OKAY i can't order my babies in terms of favorite-est so this is in no particular order

child's play 2, obviously; it's the best movie in the chucky franchise, it's got that comedic charm but still drives the horror home. it's kyle's introduction, so we get to see a sibling dynamic develop in real time between her and andy. plus the kills are just very interesting. how's it hanging, phil? is iconic.

escape room (2019); i rewatch this one an unhealthy amount, it's ingrained into my psyche. it has mostly shit reviews but it's five fucking stars for people with taste! ZOEY DAVIS defeats the forces of EVIL with FACTS and LOGIC! like zoey says, the game is designed so they always win, and she is consistently the only one that decides to play by her own rules, which is what earns her her life in both movies! i just love its outro, too-

pet (2016); i'm obsessed with its weirdo philosophy on love. with quotes like all the girls in the world and you get a hard-on for me? and you think that's what, a coincidence? you and me, we were born to do this, holly affirms seth as, essentially, her soulmate. but holly's love language is sacrifice- that is the only way she'll believe seth truly loves her. it isn't until he cuts off his finger and kills a man to keep holly encaged that holly accepts his love for her. because as much as he likes to pretend it wasn't so, the only way sociopathic holly can love is through acts of sacrifice. seth is supposed to be the one breaking holly down- holly's a girl he's keeping in a cage, after all- but holly is smarter than him, she's not alone, and she's far more ruthless. they're in love, your honor. here's a webweave and a playlist about it<3

gerald's game (2017); this one takes my breath away. people say it tampers off at the end there, but they don't fucking get it! the moonlight man being real is just another trauma that jessie told herself wasn't reality; accepting his existence and confronting him, realizing that he's just small and not even worth her time? it shows how far she's come in grasping the full reality of her father's abuse, that it was abuse at all, that it changed her entire life. i could go on and on about color in this film, but it would just turn into a repeat of my letterboxd review.

freaky (2020); it's so fun, i used to rewatch it constantly, i <3 men possessing women, millie is a fucking piece, this comedy horror just hits the spot. the deaths are so good and so are all the homages to classic horror movies. i literally have your touch makes this pussy drier than sandpaper you fucking monkey, i can't wait to kill you hung up on my wall and that is not a joke.

honorable mentions; morgan (2016), final destination 2-3, seed/bride of chucky, hard candy, the descent, hush, riley (short film starting bex taylor-klaus), the cabin in the woods, killer klowns from outer space, girls against boys, jeepers creepers, m3gan, candyman, fear pharm, the dark, urban legend, magic.

maybe i'm the one with bad taste...? no no no, that's crazy talk, these movies are amazing and everyone needs to bask in their glory.

#frosty answers #horror asks #pet 2016 #escape room 2019 #freaky 2020 #child's play 2 #gerald's game 2017

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conradscrime · 6 months

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What Happened to Novelist Barbara Newhall Follett?

November 6, 2023

Barbara Newhall Follet was born in New Hampshire on March 4, 1914 to literary editor, Wilson Follett and children's writer, Helen Thomas Follett. Barbara had one older sister from her father's first marriage, Grace, and a younger sister Sabra, who later became the first woman to become a graduate student at Princeton University in 1961.

Barbara was homeschooled by her mother and at a young age began her love for reading and writing. At age 4, Barbara was writing her own poems, and by age 7 she was writing about a world she created called Farksolia and writing about it's language, called Farksoo.

In 1923, as a birthday present for her mom, Barbara began to write a story called The House Without Windows with a typewriter she had been given. Later on, the manuscript actually burned in a house fire, but Barbara completely rewrote it and her father published it in 1927 as he was an editor for Knopf publishing house.

Due to the success of the book, which was about a young girl who ran away from home and lived in nature with her animal friends, some considered Barbara a child genius. Barbara began to review other children's books and her book was critically acclaimed by the New York Times.

Barbara's next book was called The Voyage of the Norman D, based on her experience travelling on a coastal schooner in Nova Scotia, Canada. This was published in 1928.

Though another success, 1928 would not be a good year for Barbara. Her father left her mother for another woman, and this was incredibly devastating to Barbara who was very close with her father.

Her family was then struggling and the Great Depression of the 1930's only made it worse. At the age of 16, Barbara took up a job as a secretary in New York City, writing several manuscripts.

Barbara met a man named Nickerson Rogers in 1931, and together, the two of them travelled to many different places in the world including the Appalachian Trail and also Spain. The couple settled in Brookline, Massachusetts where they married in July 1934.

Barbara was still writing, however she was not having much success with publishers. By 1937, her marriage wasn't so happy anymore either, she began writing to her friends about being dissatisfied with married life.

Her marriage began to crumble further, as Barbara had suspicions that Nickerson was being unfaithful, causing her to fall into a depression.

Barbara's husband stated that on December 7, 1939, Barbara had lelft their apartment after they had gotten into an argument. Nickerson said that Barbara had $30 in her pocket and she was never seen again.

Initially, Nickerson had not reported his wife as a missing person until two weeks later, telling police he was waiting for her to come home. Four months after Barbara's disappearance, Nickerson requested a missing persons bulletin be issued.

The bulletin had actually used Barbara's married name of Rogers, so the public had actually not recognized or known about her disappearance until 1966.

Thirteen years after Barbara disappeared, in 1952 her mother wanted the authorities to look more into it, believing that Nickerson had something to do it due to him putting in very little effort to find his wife.

Barbara's body was never found, and there was no evidence authorities could find suggesting or excluding foul play.

In 2019, a theory that Barbara's body was found but incorrectly identified was brought forth by a writer named Daniel Mills. Mills supposedly found evidence that Barbara's body was found in 1948, but identified as another missing woman named Elsie Whittemore.

The body was found on Pulsifer Hill, half a mile from where Barbara and Nickerson had a rental agreement. The possessions found with the body were consistent with Barbara's belongings, but local police were unaware of her disappearance. The cause of death was determined to be suicide, a bottle of barbiturate residue was found at the scene, which Barbara had been known to take.

#true crime #crime #unsolved mysteries #unsolved #murder #homicide #unsolved murder #unsolved case #mystery

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redgoldsparks · 1 year

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March Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Four of the books I read this month were for the Trans Right Readathon, which I participated in from Mar 20-27 and donated money to the Transgender Law Center. Reviews below the cut:

The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln (Dutton Books for Young Readers) A whimsical, witty debut middle grade murder mystery full of word play and puns. The Swifts are an ancient English family with many quirky rituals- one of them is the tradition of naming every new child by opening the dictionary and pointing out a word thought to determine their character; another is the massive family reunion they host every ten years when Swifts from around the world gather at the family manor, a decaying three story mansion, to try and find a massive treasure hoard hidden by an ancestor. Shenanigan Swift, youngest of three sisters who still actively live in the house, is determined that during this upcoming reunion she will be the one to find the treasure once and for all. But almost immediately, fights behind to erupt between the contentious Swifts, and a scream in the hallway leads to the discovery of a body at the bottom of the stairs, and then a deadly Scrabble duel, and then a bloody accident in the library... before she knows it, Shenanigan is searching not for a treasure hoard but for a murderer. This book includes nonbinary, trans, and queer characters and an overall message of being true to one's self despite societal and familiar pressures and expectations. An excellent read for anyone who enjoys a good all-ages tale.

Queen of the Tiles by Hannah Alkaf read by Catherine Ho (Salaam books/Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers) Najwa's world centered around her charismatic, beautiful, popular best friend Trina and their shared passion for competitive Scrabble. Then Trina collapsed and died during a tournament, and Najwa was thrown into the confusion of depression and grief. Finally, a year later, Najwa feels able to return to her first Scrabble tournament since the death of her friend. She wants to win in Trina's memory and earn her old title, Queen of the Tiles. But then someone starts posting on the dead girl's instagram account, taunting messages that hint that the death was a murder, and that the players might even now be in danger. Najwa does her best to unravel the events of a year before, navigating gaps in her own memory, and a tangle of the envy, hatred, admiration and love the Scrabble community had for Trina. This is an engaging, diverse, complex mystery that kept me guessing until the very end. Full of wordplay and etymology trivia.

The Anthropocene Reviewed written and read by John Green (Dutton) I started listening to the podcast of The Anthropocene Reviewed years ago- maybe late 2019 or early 2020? For me these essays are colored with the bittersweet poignancy of the early covid period, and indeed the book references covid, collective health, and vaccines regularly in essays on small pox and more. I had planned to re-listen to the whole book, but I ended up missing the lovely sound editing of the podcast version so I only ended up listening to the last 25% to hear all of the essays which were exclusive to the book ("Winter Mix" to the end). This book is my favorite of John Green's work to date, and I'd recommend it even if you've bounced off his novels.

Terry Pratchet: A Life in Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday) I've read 30+ of Terry Pratchett's 50+ books, but I didn't know very much about his life before reading this biography. I never had the pleasure of hearing him speak at a convention, or of seeing him at a signing, despite the extensive amount of touring he did from the mid-90s to the 2010s. This extensive biography was written by his long time assistant, friend, and collaborator Rob Wilkins, a huge Pratchett fan who went from working on organizing the UK Discworld conventions to working for Pratchett's agent to working for the author himself. It's funny and conversational, full of footnotes and silly asides, not unlike a Pratchett book in that regard. It takes nearly 90 pages to get through Pratchett's high school years; though to be fair, Pratchett published his first two short stories, bought his first typewriter, and attended his first few sci-fi conventions before he was out of high school. He was a tremendously dedicated worker, often writing two or more books a year once he quit his journalism and PR jobs to begin writing full time. This book is primarily about his creative work and extensive hobbies (gardening, beekeeping, raising goats and ducks, astronomy, silver-casting, brewing mead, building home electronics, playing computer games, forging his own sword) but skates lightly over his interpersonal relationships outside of professional collaborations. I did not leave it with a good sense of how his only daughter might have felt about having such a workaholic as a father, but I did leave it with a better sense of what fed and nourished his astonishing imagination, and the successes and stumbling blocks he met along the way.

Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki (Drawn and Quarterly) Zoe and Dani, high school best friends now in their first year of college at two distant and different schools, reunite for a spring break in New York City in 2009. They have five days to cram in as much sight seeing and bonding as they can. But Dani brought one of her classmates, Fiona, and this third person injects an intense new energy into the dynamic. Dani wants to visit all of the biggest tourist attractions. Zoe wants to have some adult experiences she's never had before. And Fiona? Initially she wanted to ditch the other two, but then she decides Zoe is more interesting that the people she was going to meet up with, especially after Fiona manages to buy some weed from the desk manager at their hostel and Zoe turns out to have a fake ID. This is a smart, beautifully drawn story about the painful period between being a teen and becoming an adult, the growing pains of an old friendship, the addictive pull of a new crush, the struggle to figure out who you are and want to be against the backdrop of a foreign city. Fans of previous Tamaki collaborations will love this one as well. I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advanced reader copy; preorder it now or look for it in stores in September 2023.

Team Trash: A Time Traveler’s Guide to Sustainability by Kate Wheeler and Trent Huntington (Holiday House) A short, easy to read book on historical sustainability and recycling efforts for young readers. Two kids, Charlie and Oliver, are paired together for a science project and end up accidentally taking a time-traveling car made out of trash back in time to Pompeii, ancient Japan, early America, and more, to learn how people in different eras have handled their garbage. A fun, informative introduction to the topic for kids which includes with an example of how to contact legislators. Forthcoming in June 2023!

Babel: An Arcane History by RF Kuang (HarperCollins) I read this for my book club, and we won't be holding our discussion of it until late April, so I might come back after that with more thoughts. For now, I'll say there were aspects of this book which I really enjoyed (the focus on the damage caused by colonization, the diverse cast, the unique magic system, the Oxford setting) but also multiple ways it felt bogged down by it's own length and some of the plot decisions. I'm normally a huge fan of a quirky or educational footnote (see: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) but in the second half I felt like the footnotes were bleeding the tension out of the action and really taking away from my reading enjoyment. I wanted more from several of the lead characters emotional arcs. I wanted the plot turns of the second half to come sooner. I wanted some of the multiple main character deaths to be given a bit more space to breath. Still, I'm glad I read this and I think it's a very thought provoking book, maybe more so because it's so far from perfect.

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders, read by Hynden Walch (Tor Teen) Tina has known since she was a kid that her destiny lies beyond Earth. From the outside, she looks like a regular high schooler, someone who loves her friends, has a passionate sense of right and wrong, and never passes by an opportunity to stand up to a bully or a corrupt local business owner. But in her chest is a star beacon which will someday activate and call an alien spaceship to pick her up and return the memories of her previous life. Tina is the clone of a famous and beloved space general from the Royal Fleet and she can't WAIT to get to the business of saving people for real. But when Tina's ship and future come for her, she learns that battles are messy and fighting comes with causalities. This is the first book of a trilogy, which asks the questions: what are acceptable losses when fighting for a greater good? How far will you go to save your friends? How about a girl you just met, but are already half in love with? This series is fairly light in the realism and sci-fi world building departments, and cares about its characters maybe more than its plot, but its delightfully queer, trans, and full of heart.

Come Tumbling Down written and read by Seanan McGuire (Tor dot com) The stories that center on Jack, Jill, and the Moors continue to be some of the strongest installments in this series. In this one, Jack reappears at the school for Wayward Children- in her twin sister's body. She needs help, and she needs it fast, and despite the sign outside the school which reads "No Quests", a group of Eleanor West's students once again step through a magical door to save a world not their own.

Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore It's been a while since I read a novel all in one day! I picked this up for the Trans Rights Readathon (running on all bookish social media near you from March 20-27 2023) and I absolutely loved it. The two main characters, Bastian and Lore, are both nonbinary, both Mexican-American, and both neurodivergent. Bastian lives by the shore of a lake, the source of many myths, but only Bastian seems to be able to access the liminal, magical space beneath its surface. Until they meet Lore, who can also see the way the waves lift off the shore to become a path. But Bastian and Lore both end up pouring things into the lake they're unwilling to face- bad memories, traumas, and the hateful whispers of cruel classmates. The lake can only hold so much, and soon these painful things start flooding the shores, into the streets and homes of the teens. The only way to quiet the waters is to face what they've tried to drown. This a fast, engaging read and one of the best books about living with ADHD and dyslexia I've ever encountered. It makes me want to seek out more stories with this kind of representation, and this kind of emotional, visual language!

Self Made Boys by Anna-Marie McLemore Another book I finished all in one day for the Trans Right Readathon (March 20-27 2023!) This Gatsy retelling casts Nick Carraway as Nicolás Caraveo, a 17-year-old trans boy from Wisconsin. He wants to move to New York not for the glamour but because he has a head for numbers and wants to make money working on Walls Street to support his parents and establish himself as a man. His cousin Daisy finds him a cottage in West Egg, but when he reunions with Daisy he's shocked to realize she's passing as white and lying about her past to her sort-of fiancé, Tom, a man who pretends at tolerance while exhibiting casual racism. Then Nick meets his other neighbor, the infamous Jay Gatsby, who throws outrageous and extravagant parties but is more similar to Nick than most people can see. This retelling adds an insurance investigation about a missing $350,000 pearl necklace; a visit to an underground gay club; and cast full of queer characters, all trying to make some kind of safety or place for themselves in the world. I'd love to see this version added to school reading lists along side the original!

Prophet by Sin Blance and Helen Macdonald (Grove Press) At the start of this military thriller, set in 2010, a sergeant dies in a mysterious fire on a US base in the UK. Around the base, dozens of objects appear ranging from familiar, nostalgic childhood toys, to a full American style diner in the middle of an empty field. A pair of unique agents are called in to investigate these circumstances: reserved, rule following Colonel Adam Rubenstein, and chaotic Sunil Rao, unranked, pulled from rehab after an overdose attempt. Rao as the ability to spot fakes and forgeries at a glance, and also to tell when anyone is lying. Except Adam. Adam is the only person who confounds Rao's power, and the only one who can manage his unpredictable moods and whims. This unlikely team chase the threads of the mystery back to Colorado, into an experimental government lab, where they find a bizarre substance effecting people's psyches to produce physical objects linked to memory. Everyone seems to react to it in the same way... except Rao and Adam. The book is a little over long, but full of witty dialogue, very original, and the plot intrigue is underpinned by the emotional tension between the two leads, who are pulled together by curiosity, attraction, and increasingly, by real feelings. There were a few missed opportunities that I think could have ramped up the romantic stakes even farther, but still, I loved that a cautious queer romance formed the emotional core of the story.

Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me written and read by Janet Mock This candid, conversational memoir is read by the author in the audiobook and I really loved hearing it literally in her voice. Mock begins the book writing of being a freshman in college in her native Hawaii, of working briefly in a strip club as a dancer, of meeting the man who she would marry and live with on and off through her twenties, of following her academic ambition and writing skills to Rhode Island and then New York City, of friendships, boyfriends, heart breaks and career breaks. Mock pursued the goal of becoming a culture magazine editor with remarkable clear-eyed practicality and worked her way into higher and higher positions even as a recent grad. Along the way she gained confidence in herself, her place in the world, and her unique voice as a trans woman of color. She went from living stealth to deciding she wanted to share her story calmly and compassionately with the world.

#books #reading #book reviews #comic book reviews #transrightsreadathon

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thefilmsnob · 9 months

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Barbie: **** out of 5

As I was leaving a screening of Barbie amidst a sea of elated fans, I overheard someone saying, “That was so much better than I thought it would be.” Honestly, I didn’t share the sentiment. That’s because I was certain it would be great the second that I learned it was Greta Gerwig’s next project. A wonderful actor and writer, Gerwig eventually directed her first film Lady Bird in 2017 followed by Little Women in 2019, both extraordinary works and two of the best reviewed movies of the last decade. I wasn’t excited for Barbie; I was excited for Gerwig’s third feature.

That feature is half of the ‘Barbenheimer’ cultural phenomenon. Never in a million years would I have pictured Gerwig, the de facto Queen of Indie Films, at the center of two blockbusters vying for box office dominance…in the same week! What’s more, her film is actually winning the financial battle against Oppenheimer, the second film in that portmanteau whose director, Christopher Nolan, churns out blockbusters like Mattel churns out plastic dolls.

One such doll, Barbie, is the star of this film and an American institution launched in 1959 whose instantly recognizable brand floods the hallways of countless stores. Some might view the film as cynical commercialism—this two-hour showcase definitely won’t hurt sales—but, that opinion is reductive. The opening scene alone defies expectations and reminds us of the exceptional talent behind the camera, including co-writer Noah Baumbach, who’s even more ‘indie’ than Gerwig, and both her creative and romantic partner.

You may not know the people behind the camera, but you do know the star in front of it. Possessing otherworldly beauty (narrator Helen Mirren has a killer line about this) and exceptional acting skills, Margot Robbie’s casting is a no-brainer, which is ironic considering how inclusive the cast is; dozens of Barbies inhabit Barbieland, composed of various races, body types and gender identities. That goes for the Kens as well. But, Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie, a crucial aspect of the story that the film makers stress often, mainly to highlight a standard that impressionable, vulnerable young people experience so often.

And so, the perfect Barbie played by the perfect actor lives a perfect life in a hot pink utopian society where the Barbies hold all positions of power while the Kens, including Beach Ken (a priceless Ryan Gosling), chill at the beach and try, unsuccessfully, to woo the ladies. The nonchalance of Barbie’s rebuff of Ken speaks volumes about this social hierarchy. Robbie’s Barbie has a daily routine, executed as if a child were controlling her, rituals that include sipping from an empty cup and floating from bedroom to driveway because what child would walk her doll down every stair?

This occurs on a meticulously constructed set, realized by designers Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer. Built on a solid foundation of whimsy and charm, this community—whose geographic and temporal relationship with the ‘real world’ wisely is left ambiguous—is the product of stunning practical effects in place of tempting CGI. Like in recent films, interestingly, such as Beau is Afraid and Asteroid City, the set resembles a colourful diorama, at once fantastical and tactile. It’s a world of make-believe you can otherwise almost reach out and touch, just like the toys that inspired it.

But toys don’t have sudden preoccupations with mortality like Barbie does during a dance number, handled with perfect comedic timing by Robbie. She’s also horrified by newly flat feet and patches of cellulite. It’s around this point when the story shows it has more on its mind than just brand promotion. That trend continues as Barbie consults Weird Barbie (the delightfully weird Kate McKinnon) who’s an outcast yet the wisest of them all. Lurching about, contorting herself and giving those big-eyed, alien-like looks that McKinnon has mastered, she tells Barbie to find the girl who’s controlling her in the real world.

With Ken stowing away in Barbie’s convertible, the two arrive in Los Angeles’s Venice Beach, enveloped in neon spandex. There’re some standard fish-out-of-water moments played for laughs, sure, but Gerwig and Baumbach also use this framework to explore a myriad of social issues with the same amount of fervor used to entertain. After being ogled relentlessly at the beach, Barbie is cat-called by some construction workers, but that cliché is subverted as Barbie simply and unexpectedly explains that she lacks genitalia. It’s brilliant.

As with Gerwig’s previous films, it’s difficult to pin down a specific message; she explores numerous issues and isn’t one to tie things up in a neat little package. The stories have feminist underpinnings, but they’re never reduced to simple dichotomies like ‘women are good/men are evil’. Yes, men are portrayed as misogynists occasionally or embody corporate greed in the case of the idiotic Mattel executives led by a pompous Will Ferrell as the CEO. We also see the dangers of an impressionable air head like Ken learning of the patriarchy and introducing its flaws to Barbieland, hopefully bringing attention to how insufferable bro culture can be. Yet, Gerwig’s brand of feminism is sympathetic to male struggles too, especially toward the end, even if much of their behaviour is rightly judged.

Mattel isn’t even immune from judgment; the writers get away with a surprising amount aimed at the company, specifically regarding their toys’ negative influence on body image and self- esteem. For a film maker to resist the pressures of both studio executives and the heads of the represented brand, especially with the huge stakes of a blockbuster production, is truly remarkable and a testament to the audacity of Gerwig who’s unwilling to sacrifice her artistic integrity. Mattel also deserves some credit for acknowledging their shortcomings and vowing to do better. Everyone wins here.

That includes the audience, most importantly. Not only are we treated to hilarious, candy-coloured entertainment, but we’re given a smart film for adults that kids will also enjoy and whose insight will benefit both. It challenges corporate power, the patriarchy, beauty standards and stereotypes while promoting inclusion, autonomy and self-confidence, mostly in creative and entertaining ways though, occasionally, unlike Gerwig’s previous films, a bit too overtly if not altogether preachy. America Ferrera, with a soulful and honest performance as the Mattel employee Gloria, gives a tirade about society’s ridiculous expectations of women; it’s hard to refute her argument, but the delivery feels too familiar in this otherwise unique experience.

It’s an experience that relies heavily on its two leads, both marvellous. Gosling eschews his usual dead-eyed intensity for a relaxed turn as a lovable nitwit and does so effortlessly (no offence). It’s Robbie’s (Barbie) world, however, and we’re all just accessories. The roll is deceptively complex, requiring an actor with more than just beauty to be at once effervescent and existentially preoccupied. Both her performance and the story are capped off with one final word that recalls a line (also the final one) by Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut, appropriate considering Barbie begins with an explicit reference to another Stanley Kubrick masterpiece. It’s a word that Robbie announces with aplomb when it would otherwise be whispered with embarrassment; a word she wields like a weapon, charging forward into a new life in the name of unapologetic femininity.

#movie review #barbie #the barbie movie #barbenheimer #margot robbie #greta gerwig

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my-autism-adhd-blog · 1 year

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hi! um. i have a kinda awkward question

so my friends are always making this joke about me being neurodivergent but i'm starting to wonder if i might actually have it? um. rephrase.

so i stim a lot and have some trouble sleeping if i'm not exhausted. and i always thought it was recent and bc of depression but

i've always walked on tiptoe for as long as i can remember and i remember as a kid my grandma would get annoyed at me for: perching on my chair instead of sitting normally / and wringing my hands as a nervous habit (she told me i looked like an old maid, repeatedly) / and being so restless that when we sat down to eat the table would vibrate / when we sat down on bleachers to watch my cousins play sports the bleachers would vibrate.

but i don't think i have adhd, 'cause i do well academically and love reading books, and i don't think i have autism, because i have no sensory issues or communication troubles. maybe i'm just making something out of nothing? sorry, i'd just like your two cents, thank you!

Hi there,

I toe walk while stimming (usually on my tiptoes and spinning counterclockwise). And tie walking does have a relationship with autism. According to the Autism Research Institute:

Idiopathic toe walking (toe walking that persists without a diagnosed neuro-motor or physical dysfunction) is most frequent in children with neuropsychiatric and communication and learning conditions (Sala et al., 1999; Engström and Tedroff, 2018). Studies on the prevalence of idiopathic toe walking did not differentiate between ASD and other neuropsychiatric conditions until recently. However, in 2019 a large-scale review of trends and treatment patterns found that 9% of children with ASD are diagnosed with persistent/idiopathic toe walking compared to less than 0.5% of children without an autism diagnosis (Leyden et al., 2019).

Causes for this increased prevalence of toe walking in individuals on the spectrum are varied and unclear. In some cases, it results from tight heel cords that restrict the range of movement in the ankle (Barrow et al., 2011). Toe walking can also be caused by a dysregulated vestibular or sensory system involving touch, proprioception, and vision. More research is needed to fully understand which tactile/sensory processing differences may cause idiopathic toe walking in children with ASD.

The full article will be linked below if you’d like to read it.

I found something else from the Autism Research Institute:

A dysfunctional vestibular system, a common problem in autism, may be responsible for toe walking. The vestibular system provides the brain with feedback regarding body motion and position. It may be possible to reduce or eliminate toe walking by providing the person with therapeutic vestibular stimulation (e.g., being swung on a glider swing).

Toe walking may be directly or indirectly related to a visual-vestibular problem. I have conducted several research studies with Melvin Kaplan, O.D. at the Center for Visual Management in Tarrytown, New York. While performing these studies, I observed four individuals who were toe walkers. In each case, their toe walking was eliminated within seconds after the child began wearing prism lenses.

The article goes over prism lenses in more detail. I’ll also link to below so you can read it.

I hope these sources help. Thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ❤️

#inbox #inbox reply #inbox is open

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medea10 · 7 months

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My Review of My Happy Marriage

How did I get into this anime? So, I noticed this anime’s promotional poster and wondered to myself if this was going to be like Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale. That is the weirdest reason for watching an anime I’ve ever given and I sometimes pick animes just because of who sings the opening theme. Actually, I wasn’t that far off with my idiotic question.

Miyo Saimori is someone who was brought up under some unfortunate circumstances. Miyo’s mother died when she was really young. Her father ends up remarrying another woman and having another child with that woman soon after. Miyo was kinda shoved into the background and become subservient to the family as she was seen as useless. Apparently, everyone in the family has supernatural abilities except for Miyo. That’s why they see her as someone with no merit and useless. Her step-mother and half-sister are cruel to her. Her father says nothing. All Miyo does is lower her head and obey them.

Oh my God, what kind of Cinderella, Princess Sara, Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale shit did I pick up here? This first episode is just cruel. Treating Miyo like a slave is one thing, but erasing every happy thing from her life including what her dead mother left her is just sick.

There is one person who has been kind to Miyo for all of these years and that’s a family friend, Kouji. He’s the only one to ever make her smile. Unfortunately, things change and not for the better. Miyo’s father announced that Kouji was to be betrothed to Miyo’s half-sister Kaya. This of course broke Miyo’s heart despite her expecting something like this was going to happen. Now, there was more to the announcement. Miyo was also to be married off. They’re sending her away to be married to the lord of the Kudou clan. And just to be bigger dicks than you would imagine, they’re sending Miyo to be married off to someone who has a reputation for being a jerk.

If this story takes place around the same time as Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale, could the story do us a big favor and just have this whole family die in the Great Kanto Earthquake? I know it’s a terrible thing to wish upon anyone, let alone a fictional family. I was just really annoyed by everyone in Miyo’s family that it made me say what I just said.

Despite the rumors about this young lord and all of the marriage proposals that have lapsed due to his attitude. This man, Kiyoka Kudou is actually kind-hearted. And Miyo just deserves the best. She deserves a nice life!

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: Welcome to a very new experience here. As you all know, this is a Netflix exclusive anime. But unlike many animes they’ve licensed in the past, this one was put out on the same day as released in Japan with an English dub. That is almost unheard of on Netflix. Recently, Netflix has been releasing anime alongside the Japanese schedule like when Blue Period came out. Some had a small, couple-week delay like Komi-san. Others are released all at once like Aggretsuko and The Way of the Househusband. And then there are those animes that people wait an eternity to see, but Netflix finds a way to delay it by weeks or even months.

The U.S. waited 11 months for that Steven Stone vs. Ash Ketchum match. That’s a disgustingly long wait, Netflix. Not even 4Kids was that cruel! THIS DOES NOT HELP WITH PIRACY YOU PEOPLE KEEP SCREAMING ABOUT! I will never be over that one.

So, I’m watching the dub. I gotta give praise to the cast here. This is my first time hearing either Miranda Parkin or Damien Haas. I am impressed by their performance and wish them nothing but the best in the future. It wasn’t all newbies in the cast. I saw a few memorable names like Lizzie Freeman, Mela Lee, and even a few Pokemon voice actors like Erica Schroeder and Mike Pollock. This kind of stuff makes me giddy. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

JAPANESE CAST: *Miyo is played by Reina Ueda (known for Mallow on Pokemon SM, Kisa on Fruits Basket 2019, Kanao on Demon Slayer, Gray on Lord El-Melloi, Jiro on Tokyo Ghoul, and Elianna on Bibliophile Princess)

*Kiyoka is played by Kaito Ishikawa (known for Kiawe on Pokemon SM, Naofumi on Shield Hero, Genos on One Punch Man, Iida on My Hero Academia, Kageyama on Haikyuu, Sakuta on Bunny Girl Senpai, and Urie on Tokyo Ghoul :re)

ENGLISH CAST: *Miyo is played by Miranda Parkin

*Kiyoka is played by Damien Haas

DISLIKED CHARACTERS: I think you know what I’m about to do here.

Miyo’s entire family (minus birth mother) are horrible people. And if this series is set during the Great Kanto Earthquake, I hope they all die. I know I said that before and it’s a horrible thing to say, but I’m at that point where I’m saying ‘fuck it’. The step-mother and half-sister are that usual kind of awful that one would expect in a Cinderella type of story like this. But Miyo’s father, her actual biological, blood father had the audacity to say in the third episode that he doesn’t care about his own kid and whether she’s still alive or not after sending her to the Kudou home. Just because she can’t see spiritual beings like the rest of the family?! I think I hate you the most.

This hatred was just the beginning.

Give Taishou Maiden Fairy Tale some credit as I didn’t have to see Tamahiko’s rotten family in every episode. The first six episodes were full of horrible scenes featuring Miyo’s father, step-mother and step-sister being horrible creatures. Whether through nightmares Miyo continues to have or them plotting and scheming, they continue to exist. The pinnacle of their disgusting behavior came when Kaya got jealous of her sister being happy for once in her life. So, Kaya and her step-mother had Miyo kidnapped off the street, tied her up in a shed, and beat her until Miyo caves into their selfish demands.

By this point, I’m thinking if this is just overkill in the evil department. Like, if you two are looking for the worst characters in anime for the year of 2023, you’d win that category. Even the guy that stabbed Ai Hoshino is in no competition compared to these bitches. But I feel like their evility was much too much.

Thankfully, after episode 7 we don’t see much of these wretched people. Kiyoka torched everything in his way and pretty much destroyed Miyo’s father, step-mother, and sister Kaya’s livelihood. I even think Kaya’s engagement to Kouji was broken off as she’s sent away to fuck if I know. I’ll take any kind of karma that can be bestowed upon these cum-buckets.

SHIPPING: Arranged marriages. Perfect matches or doomed from the start? Let’s see how this works out.

In the first episode, I was worried that this poor girl is going to continue getting abused. By the second episode, I twinged with this after watching Kiyoka put up the defiance just eating the food Miyo made. But that soon disapated with some optimism when Kiyoka took Miyo out on the town and gave her a present that could be mistaken for a marriage proposal. And by the end of episode 4, I was cheering for this. Especially when Kiyoka went to Miyo’s parents and demanded them to apologize to Miyo.

Unfortunately, other forces are working for selfish reasons. Apparently, Miyo’s father had originally promised Miyo to another family. Despite not having any spiritual powers, she still carries her mother’s blood and she could potentially pass on something to her children in the future. And this other family is Kouji’s family. Kouji is of course still on Miyo’s side and was pissed that his father did nothing to aid in Miyo’s torment. Just for good measure, let’s add Miyo’s cunt sister Kaya to this mix. She’s willing to throw away her fiancé Kouji and steal Kiyoka just because she can’t stand her sister being happy.

As I mentioned before, we don’t see much of Kaya and the rest of the family after episode 7. Same goes for Kouji. You would think that’d be the end of the interruptions and this ship can set sail. You know as well as I do that isn’t in the cards. We’ve got Miyo’s meddling cousin Atara to deal with.

ENDING: Everybody wants Miyo! It’s clear that Kiyoka loves Miyo and just wants her to be happy. But then you’ve got these interlopers who want Miyo only because she has an almost extinct bloodline (Usuba) running through her veins. Pretty much the same reason Koji’s father wanted Miyo. Two of those people are Miyo’s grandfather and this guy named Arata that happens to be her blood cousin.

That’s nice. Where the fuck were these two bros when Miyo was getting abused by the Saimori family? Follow up question! Where the fuck were these two bros when Miyo was getting the Kunta Kente treatment just a couple of episodes prior?!

For people so worried about the fate of the Usuba bloodline, you didn’t seem too concerned about Miyo until this very moment when she might have a slim chance of having some special power. As it turns out, Miyo just might. The following problems to this are; it’s ravaging her in her sleep, and her full power might have been sealed off by Miyo’s deceased mother. For this very reason, these two family members insist Miyo stay at their premises. Kiyoka was not going to give up his fiancé to these people whom he still has severe distrust over and ends up in a duel with this Arata dude. This was essentially, bringing a sword to a gunfight. Unless your name is Himura Kenshin, you are probably not going to win in a gunfight with a sword. I know Kiyoka is pretty tough, but…no. Knife to gun fight!

There’s a lot on Kiyoka’s plate at the moment. There have been going-ons with a supernatural called “the grotesques” and one wrong move could result in many lives lost. But this whole thing with his fiancé is something that has him worried all over the place. I guess Kiyoka’s demeanor changed quite a bit since we first saw him in his debut. During the big battle against the grotesques, he wound up seriously injured.

Meanwhile, Miyo learned from her grandfather about the Usuba family and her mother Sumi. Turns out that when Sumi was younger, she decided to help the dwindling Usuba family with their family troubles by marrying one of the families willing to give financial support. That just happened to be the Saimori family. The father was not happy by that decision and it unfortunately caused a rift between the two. Soon after marriage, Sumi gave birth to Miyo and realized her potential already. Sumi (who already had a weak constitution to begin with) managed to seal Miyo’s supernatural powers to prevent her father and the other Saimoris to abuse it. And then she died! Okay, I’m easing up on hating on the grandfather. Miyo’s cousin is still on the sus-watch as he continuously kept Miyo away from Kiyoka. Even when Kiyoka is injured, Atara tried to keep them apart. Thankfully, Grandpa realized that if he did this, he would lose Miyo the same way he lost Sumi. Miyo was able to be by her beloved’s side.

Kiyoka was in a deep coma due to a horrific injury. After a few weeks with the Usuba family, Miyo was able to regain what was sealed away from her after so long. Miyo has a special ability to go into dreams. She went inside Kiyoka’s dreams. After battling around with her inner insecurities, she managed to protect her fiancé and he was able to recover. This power was also able to vanquish the grotesques that invaded too. No one can tear apart these two. Not the Saimoris. Not the evil governor that wanted all the power for himself. Not Atara. No one! And we end with a happy ending where Miyo goes to a fancy party and puts her new education from her sister-in-law to good use.

Yes, love me some happy endings. Miyo deserves it! And best of all, we’re getting a season two to this. Guys, end it here. I know I can’t resist seeing what happens next. But after everything Miyo has been through, I can’t stand the fact that more tragedy could befall her. I also don’t want to see the Saimori’s again. I don’t care if karma came in like a firestorm to these people, I never want to see them again.

I’ll be honest, I was unaware about this story being about people who have supernatural abilities until episode 1 or 2. When I learned that, I thought that was just sloppily tacked on. That was until all this grotesquery nonsense and Kiyoka’s work came into play. I dropped my thoughts on the matter then. Despite every horrible thing happening to Miyo is playing right on my screen, I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if this girl ever gets her “happy marriage” like what it says in the title. And at least if there’s a season two, we might see the actual wedding. I mean, they aren’t married yet.

But aside from that, if you want to watch a supernatural/romance anime, you might want to consider watching this anime. Just be warned that the first half of the anime could aggravate you with how they treat one of the characters.

Every episode is streaming on Netflix.

#anime review #my happy marriage #miyo saimori #kaya saimori #kiyoka kudou #watashi no shiawase na kekkon #shinichi saimori #kanoko saimori #arata usuba #yumi usuba #kouji tatsuishi

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scotianostra · 1 year

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Happy Birthday Scottish actress Rose Leslie, born on February 9th 1987 in Aberdeen.

Leslie was born Rose Eleanor Arbuthnot-Leslie in Aberdeen, near Lickleyhead Castle, where her family has lived for more than 500 years. Leslie’s father is the Aberdeenshire Chieftain of Clan Leslie. She went to the local primary school in Rayne, before going to Millfield, a co-ed public school in England. It was at Millfield that Rose really cultivated her love for acting, as the school had an excellent drama department.

After five years at Millfield, Rose went on to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) to earn a bachelor’s degree with honours in 2008.Rose’s first acting job was in a television documentary series, called Banged Up Abroad in 2007, she then appeared in the BBC film, New Town, in which she received a Scottish BAFTA Award for Best Acting Performance - New Talent Award. In 2010. Downton Abbey fans might remember Rose in the TV Series, as Gwen Dawson, for 7 episodes. Later that year, she appeared in the play, Bedlam, at the Globe Theatre in London. In 2011. She was back in Edinburgh in Edinburgh the same year in the fab BBC series, Case Histories , as Laura Wyre for 2 episodes. In 2012, Rose played Lena Holgate in the episode, Vera: The Ghost Position, in the detective television series, Vera

In 2012 Rose would make her iconic appearance in the 2nd season of the HBO epic fantasy series, Game of Thrones, opposite Kit Harington as the wildling Ygritte in 17 episodes. 2015 saw Rose featured in two episodes of the excellent Luther, with Idris Elba. Miss Leslie also starred in American legal and political drama The Good Fight, which finished it’s run in 2019.

2021 saw Rose in the BBC drama Vigil, she then took the lead role in TV series The Time Travellers Wife , an adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel,unfortunately it received negative reviews and wasn't renewed for a second series, she also appeared in the latest remake of Death on the Nile.

Rose can trace her heritage back to King Charles II, another notable bloodline takes her back to Frasers of Lovatt.

Rose married her GOT co-star Kit Harington at Kirkton of Rayne church in Aberdeenshire in June 2018, her hubby also has the same royal lineage going back to Charles II, not surprising given the Stuart line’s propensity in spreading their seed!

There’s nothing on the acting front showing up for Rose, perhaps due to the recent news that she is pregnant with her second child.

#scotland #scottish #Actress #game of thrones #happy birthday

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shadyb00ts · 12 days

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A Long & Brutally Honest Review of The Tortured Poets Department

So, if you follow this account for some reason, you'd know that four years ago, I wrote about how the albums folklore and evermore made me a Swiftie again. Those two albums were a big part of my 2020 and represent the evolution of Taylor Swift that made me care about her work again. Before that point I suppose I had been more of a casual fan of Taylor, and I never really got into Pop Taylor that much save for 1989. But when she released her pandemic duology, it really hooked me, considering she was playing to her greatest strength--storytelling. I kind of consider them her best work by far. Fair warning, I'm going to bring up folklore and evermore a lot in this review, so to simplify, I'm just going to refer to the two projects as folkmore.

2020 was definitely a high point for me in terms of general Swiftie-isms. 2021 also continued that with the re-releases of Fearless and Red, albums I deeply loved as a teenager. And then in 2022, she released Midnights, her first brand new autobiographical pop record since Lover in 2019, and uhh... I never did a full-fledged review of Midnights, but needless to say I didn't like it all that much. I thought it was a downgrade from the masterpieces of the folkmore duo, and only a few songs stood out to me. A lot of the project I thought was bland and generic for Taylor. I didn't really consider myself a Swiftie anymore after the Midnights era.

Well, I didn't think she'd somehow manage to make an album worse than that one, but here we are.

The thing about me is that, ever since folkmore, I always set myself up for disappointment when it comes to Taylor. When she announces a new project, I always hope that she does something that would really surprise me. Something new and unexpected, something that showcases her growth and evolution as an artist. As a pop music enthusiast since I was a child, I've grown used to pop stars reinventing their image, having unique and distinct eras to keep things fresh and keep everyone guessing.

I wish Taylor did this, and I think according to her fans, she does. In my opinion, Taylor likes to put herself in a box, and this album is the perfect encapsulation of that. Like Midnights, this album is a collection of songs that sound like they've already existed for years from her other albums. Barely any of the tracks made me feel anything really, and any one of them could belong in her other pop albums like Reputation and Lover.

As usual, she teamed up with her decade-long sole producer Jack Antonoff, and honestly, Jack Antonoff has made some great things in the past. Take Lorde's Melodrama for example, one of my all time favorite albums. He did some very interesting, out-of-the-ordinary production on that album. He's shown that he's capable of making really great stuff. This time around though, he created some of the most boring, snooze-fest synthpop I've heard in a while, with very little variety between songs.

Now I love synthpop as much as anyone; some of my favorite artists are MUNA, Allie X and Lights. Their brand of synthpop, however, has more of a grandiosity to it, a presence. Taylor herself has also proven that she can do synthpop of that vein, as 1989 had some great examples of it. This time however, she does nothing to elevate these milquetoast beats. A particularly scathing review I saw coined it as "dog water synth". There's so many recycled production elements, melodies and chord progressions. Taylor, not only am I begging you to work with anyone other than Jack Antonoff, I'm also begging you to stop having soooo many songs on your albums in C major. I get it, that's your key of choice and it's been that way since the beginning, but my god. Probably half this album is in C major. Please find another key.

So the production left a lot to be desired, but what about the lyrics? Taylor's strong suit has always been songwriting, right? And this album is supposed to contain self-proclaimed "tortured poetry", so it'll probably be her most beautifully written works yet. Right?

Well... no.

Something I've noticed about Swifties is that the majority of them only care about lyrics. If you pore through their live reactions of this album, the one thing they're listening for is lyrics. They don't particularly place any value in vocals or production, really anything outside of what Taylor wrote. They even make a meme out of pulling out a dictionary anytime Taylor drops a new project, cause Taylor's metaphors and word choices are so complex.

Do you remember that meme of someone talking about the show Rick & Morty? Some fan of that show made this long post about how a person has to have a very high IQ to understand Rick & Morty. The show where the most popular joke is an entire episode where Rick turns into a pickle and shouts "I'm Pickle Rick!!!!" for the entire runtime. Well, that same phenomenon is happening again with Swifties and this album.

I've seen more than a few of her diehard stans claiming that anyone who critiques or dislikes this album just doesn't understand "basic reading comprehension" or the concept of metaphors. That this album is just too smart for their tiny little brains to grasp. Mind you, this is an album with gems such as "You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate / We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep / Like a tattooed golden retriever" and "Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto" and let's not forget her romanticizing the 1830s "but without all the racists".

I resent the notion that this woman is exempt from criticism. Everything she writes is not gold. It boggles my mind that the same person who once wrote things like "Your Midas touch on the Chevy door / November flush and your flannel cure" or "Leaving like a father, running like water" or "I made you my temple, my mural, my sky / Now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life". She's proven time and time again that she's a very capable, very creative songwriter. And honestly, some of that is still present in this album, albeit very few and far between. It's bogged down by the above examples, which I think are some of her worst writing to date. And I thought "Hey kids, spelling is fun!" was bad.

One of the reasons the folkmore albums captivated me was that Taylor really flexed her storytelling muscles and wrote songs from other people's perspectives, even creating fictional characters. The song "this is me trying" from folklore is one of my favorite examples of this, a beautiful song about characters who are struggling with suicidal thoughts and alcoholism. Another standout in terms of writing is "epiphany", where she draws parallels between soldiers dying on beaches in World War II and the modern-day soldiers that were hospital workers during the height of the pandemic.

This was the type of shit that she never wrote about, because up until that point, her work had been 90% diaristic confessions. And yeah, that was the initial appeal with Taylor, that she was a small town girl whose songs felt like diary entries and you could really relate to her feelings. I remember listening to songs like White Horse and You're Not Sorry as a teenager and crying over a cheating ex that I never even had. Taylor was always really good at making music that perfectly sounded like whatever feeling she was trying to convey, and it's what made them so relatable.

Whenever she writes autobiographical songs nowadays, however, as a billionaire superstar writing about very specific scenarios and high profile relationships in her life, I find it hard to relate to anything, really. In this album for example, plenty of the songs are about her summer fling with Matty Healy, someone who I couldn't care less about. I was looking for songs about Joe Alwyn, because it was the longest relationship she had ever been in and he was a huge part of her life. And sure enough, songs like So Long London and loml did make me feel things, because I felt that her heartbreak was genuine over this relationship ending. So Long London is easily the best written song, because it's sincerely coming from a place of pain that many can relate to after a years-long love story ends. That to me encompasses the "tortured poetry" she was talking about more than any of the other songs were able to convey.

But like I said, most of this album is about Matty Healy. I have absolutely no idea what this man did that made her dedicate an entire album to him, a person that really does not matter in the grand scheme of things. He's a gross weirdo, so I mentally checked out during a lot of the songs centered around him, because no Taylor, I can't relate to the feeling of being a pop star that just got out of a seven year relationship and had a brief fling with a nasty lead singer of a band that's no longer relevant. That is a very specific thing that you went through that I have no strong feelings about, nor do I care about that much. I liked The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived though, I guess. I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to it, but it was decent and I liked the outro portion.

Another song I liked at first was Florida, the collaboration with Florence Welch. I think I liked it initially because A) Florence, B) it was finally something that sounded unique and different, and C) Florence's verse has a callback to the song "no body, no crime" from evermore which I thought was cute. But honestly, after a few more listens, the song is... Yeah, it's bad. The chorus is very grating to my ears, and not even Florence could save it. She sounds great of course, because it's her, but the song itself is just not giving what it's supposed to.

And then the other chunk of the album is about her current boyfriend, football player Travis Kelce. Because who couldn't relate to the feeling of being an international pop star dating an NFL football player? It's a very universal experience, like who hasn't, y'know?

Yeah, as you can tell, I didn't care for these songs either. I'm so tired of hearing about that man and their relationship. Everything I've heard about them being together has been completely against my will.

On top of the 16 songs on the standard album, she surprise dropped another one called "The Anthology", and that title piqued my curiosity because an anthology is a collection of different stories, so I thought she was bringing back the folkmore vibes. Turns out it was as if somebody sucked the life out of those two albums. This may sound harsh, but the Anthology portion of this album sounds like if you bought folklore and evermore on clearance. Just like the bulk of the first 16, I felt nothing. Out of 31 songs in total, I only liked 2 or 3.

This may sound a little mean, but I think I've made it pretty clear that I just... don't care about her life anymore. I don't find her experience as a global superstar selling out stadiums and flying around on her private jets to be interesting. It's certainly not relatable in any way, either. The reason I hold the folkmore albums in such high esteem is because yeah, while there are some autobiographical songs in there, the majority of them are fictional works. I've kinda been spoiled by those songs, because now I know what Taylor is capable of. I want her to go back to writing songs from other perspectives and really challenge herself, step out of that mediocre pop box she's put herself in ever since Midnights. I say all this because she's proven she can do it, so she doesn't need to backslide. She doesn't need to downgrade.

The best analogy I can think of is this. If you play Pokemon, then you know that whenever a Pokemon is evolving, you can press the B button to stop it from happening. I think the folkmore albums were her evolution process, and then someone pressed B and put a stop to it, and that's how we got Midnights and now this. Maybe she pressed the button herself, and she just likes to stay in her little comfort zone because she knows that her billions of fans will like whatever she does at this point. That's why I believe Taylor and Jack barely put in any effort with this project, because they don't have to. Swifties will like whatever they put out. They don't have to try new things or challenge themselves. It's an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.

If you're a Swiftie reading this, and you didn't really love this album, I just wanna say that it's okay to critique it. I have plenty of artists that I stan, but I'm not going to love everything they do or whatever they put out. I can be a huge fan of someone and still use my critical thinking skills, still have my own opinions. Don't be passive or follow whatever the popular consensus is.

On the flip side, if you love this album, then please don't try to make it seem like it's this complex poetic masterpiece that only smart people get. Don't act as if Taylor is exempt from criticism, and anyone that dares to critique anything she does is just stupid or "doesn't get it". That's a very reductive and small-minded view of music criticism, and media literacy in general. No artist or their work is above critique. Period.

Anyway, that's pretty much all of my thoughts. Thanks for reading this all the way, and I appreciate you for caring enough about my opinion! And remember Swifties, use critical thinking skills and please don't dox me!

#taylor swift #the tortured poets department #ttpd #album review #ts ttpd #pop music #review #tortured poets department

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