Honestly whats even worse on top of leaders barely dying anymore? We don't even get unique sendoffs. Like, think about it: other than Firestar's death, Tigerstar the first's VERY iconic death, and Onestar's deaths, do we even see people really talking or making fanart of them anymore?

I’m biased because I’m one hundred percent a rule of cool > logic person lol but MAAANNN some of the send offs have been so weak. It kinda sucks both Blackstar and Leopardstar get murked offscreen, it would’ve been neat if they died in the great battle or got a more fitting send off than “new leader time”!

I think the most attention other non-leader deaths got was Bristlefrost for obvious reasons and Berrynose, mainly because the wiki described him as “eviscerated”. DOTC (from my memory) got waaayy too cozy with the bloodletting (of mainly its cast of she-cats) so that fell through (also because it refused to let the characters face the consequences of so much death), AVOS had Needletail, Darktail, and Onestar….but also killed long time fan favorite Sandstorm via scratch (VERY disrespectful) and Briarlight with green couch (even MORE disrespectful). They’ve struggled to really balance the cool death ratio to how many shitty calls they’ve made imo

Assorted Shin Kamen Rider Takeshi Hongo thoughts because this was going to be just my thoughts on the movie and it is breaking five paragraphs when just talking about Hongo

Takeshi Hongo is yet another excellent reinterpretation of that classic character. With the biggest change being in the character classic stoic sense of misery being replaced with a much more palpable and open aura of depression.  Takeshi is not as ready to kill as he was in the original, viewing it as a great burden and something he finds horrific.

 He is also significantly more socially awkward and one of the ways his dynamic with Ruriko works is that they incredibly socially awkward traumatized people who are learning to trust each other.

He is a man who is steadfast in his desire to keep his promises, going beyond and above the request of the late Hiroshi Midorikawa to protect Ruriko. With him stating that if he it is to uphold hist duty to Ruriko he can put on the mask and kill to help her. He ends up understands that she is someone who doesn’t trust easily and when he has a plan to help her fight SHOCKER he says that since she doesn’t trust him, he hopes she will trust his plan.

Her response is that She doesn’t trust his plan, she trusts him.

Part of Takeshi’s backstory is also that his dad was a cop who was killed in a hostage negotiation and he has complicated thoughts on it. He both resents and loves his father for the fact that he refused to shoot the hostage taker. That he loves that he was kind enough to only ask if his killer was safe as he died, but left no thought for the family he left behind.

Which serves as a parallel to how he ultimately faces Ichiro/CHA-1, how he ends up giving his life to ensure his killer knows peace.

Part of his dynamic with Ruriko is in regard to her less than ideal family situation. How due to the grief her family felt for her dead mother they were constantly emotionally distant. And these two just find this sense of togetherness in these tragic days and they start coming out of their shells around each other it is just sweet

Another element of the character is that he is “Too kind”

At the end day he is just a college kid who has been forced into this battle with SHOCKER. With one scene having him taking off his mask before he can kill HAA-01 because she was Ruriko’s friend and he doesn’t want to kill her and Ruriko doesn’t want to see him dead.

His social awkwardness also causes issues with Ichimonji, who when he joins Takeshi is mildly annoyed when halfway through getting their asses thoroughly kicked does Takeshi mention that he had a plan which he neglected to share

He’s the type of guy who when he has to destroy his motorcycle Cyclone to defeat the CHA-1 he has to stop and say goodbye first

I've been seeing some enbies and non dysphoric genderfluid afabs calling pre-T transmen "women", they were talking about how they consider them tomboys and "transmasc sisters" and they view transmen who can't go on hrt for whatever reason as "basically just lesbian women" that they're glad haven't been able to transition and hope will never get the opportunity to so they don't destroy their "gorgeous female features and body", I blame this on whoever the first trender was who started this bs

Yikes. And they'll still consider themselves anti-TERF, despite the fact that they're literally demonizing trans men for "corrupting" their "beautiful female bodies."

Unfortunately, this has been an ongoing problem with progressives and the LGBT community for ages. They support trans men up until the point that they actually start to "be" men in their eyes. It has been getting more obvious in the kind of attitude that you described, that's recently been enabled by the progressive idea that all labels are both meaningless and the most important thing about a person.

The most frustrating part of it is that they will claim to wholly support trans men but will insist on only calling us by female terms or refusing to even view us as trans men, and instead as butch women or tomboys regardless of our protests and regardless of how far into transition someone is.

IDK Something something horseshoe theory.

i feel like spec ops the line is so often like reduced to being just about "look at how bad of a person you are for playing this game" like just looking at the period of time the game was released in, it is to me incredibly clear that the game is about how military shooters glorify war and soldier. the famous white phosphorus scene is something you have to do, and let's be real no one who wasn't already aware of what the game was going for tried to do anything but continue playing the game as intended, because in any other war shooter like cod you would do that completely thoughtlessly. this is not a condemnation of players because this is what the game expects you to do, but rather the shock of realizing what you have done is imo very good at making you think about how other war shooters demand similar things from you all the time while rewarding you for it

The longer I've been in this depressed state, the more spirituality has become a comfortable thought. Not in a theistict sense. The notion of god(s), beings, or whatever personifications you want to put int the world....it's not for me. There are enough personifications going on in my brain already, I don't need to deal with that even more.

No, what I keep coming back to are...rituals...places...I guess meditation in a sense (tough I don't have the brain for that. At least not as things are right now)...either way, taking time to have a stable point.

I think it's part of coming to terms that all these...things...the depression, anxiety, splitting, fear...it is permanent. I'll get better at managing it, but they are all part of me and I'll have to somehow find a way to deal with that. To live with that.

Trying to visualize the symptoms of syndromes as....energies to be worked with instead of...trying to put them into boxes with set to dos

Taking care of a horde of little energy beasts that are part of the world instead of clinically obsessing about what I do wrong 24/7

Knives Out Thoughts (With expected spoilers)

Lol I just wanted to admit that I prefer the first one better but in real neurotic fashion my brain wanted to justify that until settling on to that it's just a personal bias and its not a flaw or at least intended design.

I think I liked the first one better because it was contained in a way I like better. Contradictions like, a funny Clue mansion that visually felt so contained in its own absurdity. Like its big. Fits like 3 generations. Has an entire center area with a big fucking knife throne. But the sets make it look like these guys were suffocating, perhaps under how much they depended on Harlan that they put up with the kooky mansion. So its psychological and physical. And its fun.

The Glass Onion V2 is like, wealth too egregious to really put up with compared to this. The Clue mansion was still a display of wealth within that really compressed environment and I guess I at least prefer spatial modesty. And here's where I say that yeah that shit is on purpose. It's shameless on purpose because that Elon Musk rip off is just supposed to be that way. It's just that it released at a time where everyone is so done with his shit where they either laugh and do nothing or feel no catharsis at all.

So anyways personal preference aside I'm gonna elaborate that train of thought with justifying why I like the other better. But except I use it to point out that it's fine that it's different but mostly the same formula. Knives Out is a murder mystery story about this Southern guy who keeps being mysteriously dragged to solve high profile murders with multiple layers of deceit alongside unfortunate normal ladies who get dragged along with this mess... which usually ends up with rich bozos getting the rug pulled under them. Both stories involve dependence towards a rich dude. Both co-leads tend to be ladies who arent ultra-rich... and they took liberties with it. Such as Elon Musk wanting to victimize himself instead of actually being murdered. Or the self referential bit being that it was a murder mystery party (I know I would suck at those). Or the framework of the mystery, where first one was about filling the gap that solves everything. But the second one is that the nothingness shows itself in plain sight. The lack of a mystery as the transparent screen you look through to see pretentious puzzles waiting to be solved. And its like, that's where theyre different. I like the two movies in their own different ways that theyve set themselves in. The first one is the fun traditional murder in a house that's a homage to traditional murder mysteries, then the second one is just really really funny to me as The Witness guy. I have to view them so differently but that's just how theyre made. And its fine.

Is glass onion predictable? No, because the way the story was laid out is obscuring the larger story on purpose because its honing in to the layers than the transparent bulletproof casing that protects it from being torn the fuck apart because the mystery is garbage By Design. The first one also fucks over rich people, but it's an individual win. Glass onion is like, switched around. Some of the leads are actively worse than others, or even better people, but they get an overall win, kind of. I think it's just a flaw in the framing because you get that cathartic bit of taking the big bad down by collective action but who's to say his wacko lobbyist friends are going to stick to the script. Just reversed the scale, which is simple but enough to switch it up.

One thing I really couldnt personally stand and its uh. The set. its just too big for me. Feels nauseous. I know its on purpose like I said initially to showcase the scale of how big of a prick these guys were but it was just, tying in with more technological buzzwords definitely did not help. Like, I watch knives out to avoid that bs, but its okay I guess. I liked seeing startup bitches burn. Fun.

The bit with mona lisa we caught on way too immediately but I think, with how much they built up to it, it paid off very well. Didnt matter if we picked it up quickly even before the final catalyst because it was very fun to both metaphorically and literally break glass.

Glass Onion is a dream to describe how I feel about the witness and what made it that way. Silicon Valley goons, puzzles on an island, faux resort stuff, layers, puzzles hidden in plain sight stuff, and just... Why I find pretentious stuff compelling is that you see it all in front of you and you play along with cynical delight. Sometimes I'm wrong about the nature of anything that wants to take itself seriously. But sometimes you get shit like that. Is this ironic... I think you'll probably wish it was. It's like obsessive thoughtguy's version of morbid curiosity. I love this bullshit! Rahhhhh!

Also I'm just not a fan of the among us bit. From all the odd marketing for the game this is the line is crossed. Original knives out talks about rejecting a Netflix deal and this one is produced by netflix. Put among us impostor for laughs but come off as the most sinister product placement ever. Focus more on social media + disruption but almost come off as ingenuous coming from the corporation who produced it, but not noticablr enough because hey it's already pretty radical to want the tesla guy dead. Don't look behind the meaningless puzzle of producing content in the streaming age either. People say they didnt promote glass onion enough and wonder why its doing bad and not... realizing its a pattern of behavior. I saw like 3 glass onion billboards, they are not neglecting marketing. They probably spend MORE on marketing than anything else. So like, if you want to look at simple things obscured by some guys wanting it to seem more complicated than it is: poke into that. They'd love that shit. Good night everyone.

If you read all this: wtf?

So I recently restarted my Animal Crossing island, just cause, and with setting up the new one, I was kinda RPing it as a sort of cult leader, for whatever reason 🤷🏻‍♀️

So can I just say, I freaking adore Cult of the Lamb

Just jumped in for my second day playing, and the way I’m immediately going in, very business-like, with my imaginary clipboard

Is everyone fed

Is the place clean

How’s the faith

Well maybe we should sacrifice someone, cause we just had a feast before so and so died

Idk, this is obviously hitting some part of my brain that enjoys checklists very well

On a meta level, what does it mean, if anything, that Dhawan!Master was not really an SS agent, but in was doing SS work so, might as well have been (Insert either Mi6 secret service or nazi there), then at least in the nazi case was definitively unmasked as a ‘spy’, even though he wasn’t actually working for the other side but himself. (With the Mi6 being via a mirror with double/triple? agent Barton)

The Doctor working for The Division for other purposes, but none the less doing The Division’s work, so is there the difference? Ok sure.

Cus it’s the being unmasked as a spy bit, rather than it just being about them working as spies…

Down a psychological meta that’s not being the species you thought. But thinking about the wider subtext story…

I wonder would it be spying on Time Lords? While the Time Lords are definitely a power base, and at least some are aware of Division, Division is clearly a separate multi-species organisation above and beyond Gallifrey. Tecteun does not in fact appear to be Rassilon, on account of having a brain, which lends itself to a…tricky relationship. What if their utility is in being effectively unknowing infiltrators into the higher Time Lord echelons. Cuckoos in the nest. Sleeper agents - potentially so well programmed you never need to ‘wake’ them.

Anyways. God it's so incredibly funny to make Bruce Wayne's entire public persona just be "enormous prick with lots of money", but it does make me deeply suspicious if he still has his playboy thing going

Like. There's nothing wrong with sleeping with a dude just because he's handsome and rich, but BOY do people have a tendency to write those women with a clear and nauseating contempt

One of the things I didn't like about that remake of the "there's only one room" cruise ship storyline where Bruce and Clark first meet is that in it, Lois is incredibly mean to the women who were there with Bruce.

Why?

Well, because they were wearing bikinis! On a cruise ship! And, even worse, they were romantically interested in Bruce Wayne! Shallow bimbos, clearly, so you should make them run away crying by insulting their appearance!

It's just gross.

pro-AI in the sense of "they taught a bread scanning computer to recognize cancer cells" etc etc

against AI in the sense of "we stole artwork from hundreds to thousands of artists, didn't credit them and didn't financially compensate them"

the ability to say "i dont have a tiktok" in social situations makes me feel so powerful. like the general reaction is "shock, confusion, then this weird 'thats probably a good thing' response" its so fun

the idea of public restrooms as "women's spaces" continues to confound me. you know who I hope is in a public bathroom when I go in?? no one. I would prefer no one else be in the bathroom. and if someone else is in the bathroom I am going to ignore them as much as possible. I did not go into the bathroom to connect with other women. I went into the bathroom to piss and/or shit. it's a toilet's space, not a women's space. shut the fuck up and let trans people piss and shit in peace. let's all continue to avoid eye contact with each other and any and all interaction in the toilet's space.

SILENCE

the princess

is :3ing

you will live and you will say the wrong things and make mistakes and people will love you anyways.

one of the most infuriating things about becoming an adult is when you realize that it actually is 10x easier to solve problems by making a phone call vs literally any other communication method

i actually dont give a shit if hamas did everything and worse that israel accuses them of it still doesn't justify killing 30000 random civilians