what you mean there was no different ending for sasusaku? I think naruto was a better pairing for both of them

I just think it was the most logical resolution.

I´m gonna try to explain why I assumed it without getting in the ship/romantic scenes (this blogger made an awesome analysis about the whole sasusaku thig, btw), since I undestand that´s kind of subjective.

At the start of the series we are presented a three-man squad formed by two boys and a girl. It was just obvious that there was going to be some romantic plot around them, specially when their (kind of) love triangle was setted up from the very beggining. Therefore, two of them were gonna end up together. Now, this is an early 2000s japanese manga, so (though it´s a shit) the boyxboy was not an option in my head.

As it was, Sakura was gonna be with either Naruto or Sasuke at the end of the series.

Starting from this premise, the easy thing is to ship the girl with the protagonist, Naruto, but there´s this other character, this other girl, Hinata, who has a big crush on him, even though he is hated by everyone. That crush had to be important for the plot in some way, because, if not, why even bother to put it there? It definetely was not for comedy releave. I mean, just think about the difference between Lee´s crush on Sakura´s beauty and Hinata´s feelings.

Anyway, we go through genin period with, I think we can all agree, more shipping moments between Sakura and Sasuke than between Sakura and Naruto. But, even if we pass throug it, the thing is that at the end of part one, Sakura is love-strucked, Naruto kind of stepping back and no other girl has interacted with Sasuke.

In part two I did thought that the dinamics could change, since Sasuke wasn´t in the picture and Sakura and Naruto did grew closer to one another. Now, the issues with this were that Hinata was still longing for Naruto´s affection and, most importantly, Sakura´s feelings towards his teammates had not changed. To make the narusaku a thing there had to be some click in her mind, but she never gave it a thought. I actually think Sakura loved Naruto more than Sasuke in her teens (that´s a highly personal opinion, of coruse), but she did it in a fraternal way. Well, she claimed she was still in love with Sasuke even when she was on her way to kill him.

As for Sasuke, him ending up alone was not in my bets either. This guy spent his whole freaking life (and the whole show) craving for his family. For him to be alone forever, was far too depressing. Even at his lowest point, I thought he would die (which was also too ilogical to become true) before having that kind of ending. It was just too cruel. However, if you don´t agree, it was also really weird to create this whole Uchiha super ultra hyped awesome power and have the line ended with Sasuke. The sharingan would be extint! Maybe it´s not objective, but, come on, the Uchiha clan had to be perservered.

Sasuke did not have romantic interaction with anyone, of course. And, to be honest, I think some people ship him with Karin because she was the only girl there (that´s really subjective, though, I don´t like Karin at all). He didn´t really make bonds with anyone, and the only time he showed some care for Team Taka was when they reminded him of Team 7. So, even if I overlook my personal likings, he had to be with someone who was close to him in his genin time (for thoose were the only legitimate bonds he had). Naruto was not an option for both homophobic and reproductive reasons, so, only Sakura was left.

So, yeah, that pretty much sums up why I always assumed Sasuke and Sakura would end up toghether! Anyway I get we all have different pov and the fact that I ship the two of them, had obviously helped me to get to this conclussions. Anyway these are 2D drawings, let´s just let people like whatever they want :)

How good they look once they get toghether though...

You know, I really wonder how much Elliot Page’s coming out influenced Gerard to feel more comfortable expressing their gender nonconformity on stage. Not in like a gross “you can catch the queerness just by being around another one” kinda way but in the way that homophobic parents mistake their kids coming out as ‘social contagion’ when in reality their kid’s friend came out and they saw how all the negative repercussions they had built up as being major barriers to their life weren’t reality (anymore at least), and that they didn’t lose everything, so suddenly its just that bit easier to truly express themselves or whatever.

Ya know? Like I wonder how much getting to see, so up close and personal, exactly what happened when Elliot Page came out, and how, yeah there was some backlash and some things aren’t the same, but at the same time, Elliot Page still has a life. Still has a job. News articles about them don’t misgender them (unless it’s one of the terrible ones but that’s just evidence for which to avoid in the future). The Umbrella Academy still took the top of the Netflix charts for over a week straight in season 3 and got renewed for a 4th and final season (which is a pretty standard run length for a well running Netflix show. They’ve so far only had a total of 19 shows get a season 4 (not counting shows that have been renewed for a season 4 but haven’t released season 4 yet because Netflix has in the past changed its mind on show renewals), 8 of which were docuseries, reality tv, or a late night talk show style interview series all of which cost significantly less to produce).

So, I just wonder if getting to see that. Getting to see how, yes expressing yourself fully in regards to gender can still be a risk even in 20 fucking 22, overall, the fall out of doing so isn’t like it was in the 80’s, the 90’s or even the early to mid 2000’s when mcr got started and got called slurs for wearing makeup or masc-aligned-but-theatrical outfits. I wonder if seeing that kinda, nudged them towards the realization that we wouldn’t suddenly hate the entire band just because they wore a dress on stage. Or whatever else they probably thought (and probably would have earlier in their life) would happen.

8, 33, 47, and 50 for the get to know you asks.

Thanks for the ask! I answered 47 and 50 here, but I'll try to give some back up answers this time!

8. where do you wish you could go?

Ohh, if only this list had an end haha. Out west is a big one for me, I've taken two trips to the Bay Area of California and one to the Phoenix area and Grand Canyon of Arizona, but other than that, the farthest west I've been is West Memphis, Arkansas. Or maybe New Orleans. They're about equally west tbh. But I really want to go to Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Wyoming, Nevada, New Mexico, hell. Even Texas. Just so much new and different wildlife.

Also like, abroad too obviously. But I don't really have a hope or prayer of affording that. Oceania would be a dream come true.

33. what’s a cool skill, party trick, or talent you have?

Not that I get to show it off much as parties, but I love rollerskating! I'm not necessarily super impressive, but I can do some basic tricks like Shooting the Duck (no actual ducks involved). Also idk if this counts I guess but I recreationally pipe smoke tobacco on occassion and I can blow smoke rings like some kind of Hobbit lol.

47. what’s your favorite time of day?

I mentioned Dawn and Dusk in my last post but special shout out to evening as well, I love a good night hike out in the woods or a swamp.

50. what’s your favorite book, movie, and tv show?

Book- Again I am like the worst reader ever because I just can't stay focused long enough to finish a book, but aside from Dune and Lost Stars... Well I thought Phasma was pretty good, and Heir to the Empire. I also listened to the audiobook for the first in the new Thrawn trilogy and remember liking it, but sadly, my retention for audiobooks is really low.

Movie- Jurassic Park will always be #1 in my heart, but I really like horror movies too, especially campy 80's/90's horror, and I love vampire movies (except those vampire movies). Like I watched Bram Stoker's Dracula wayyyyy too young and it probably shaped me forever lol. I love Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Scream, Lost Boys, Van Helsing, etc.

TV Shows- Since I really struggled with this the first go round, how about I tell you about a TV Show I have an... interesting relationship with. So one of my best friends is super obsessed with LOST. And because she's really into it, I watched the first 4 seasons in college. But it was a really stressful time, there was a lot going on, and I just... straight up don't remember any of it. So flash forward to now, my husband has never seen LOST, and so she starts a podcast with him as the co-host and they watch the episodes and recap and I edit the podcast for the entire first season and holy shit. I still don't remember a goddamn fucking thing that happens in this show.

I uh, don't really love it. It has good moments, but goddamn the early 2000's were like, hella misogynist and homophobic and such. But at least for our second season we're splitting up editing duties. I didn't mind it, because it made my husband and my friend happy, but wow yeah. Podcast editing takes a lot of time and I am not as into LOST as they are lol.

Xue’s Supernatural Dare: Wendigo (S1 EP2)

Hello, everyone? How did everyone feel about the finale? Yes? Yes? Oh. Oh. Oh my. Oh, dear.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell that half-assed homophobic chicken-shit fuckbucket’s not gonna stop me, since I strapped myself onto this roller coaster already and I promised I’m not getting out until the ride’s over, so here we go, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Also, those who are in this roller coaster with me, ready? Tag list is: @fangirlxwritesx67​ @amazingiam00​ @kalliravenne​ @indecisive20something​ @2musiclover2​ @impossibletosleepthrough @there-must-be-a-lock​ @wingedcatninja​ @arvit​

Oh my gods this recap is so cheesy I actually can make a fondue out of it. 2000s, everybody!

A WHOLE MINUTE AND A HALF FOR THAT FONDUE

FUCKJUMPSCARETITLEFUCKYOU

So we’re starting the episode with the murder scene first, eh? Is that gonna be a trend?

Oh come on, Chads, you’re out in nature and you’re playing video games? Absorb the nature...before it absorbs you!

Waitwait. Holy shit is that...is that Cory Monteith? Oh, bless his soul...

If the wendigo eats his dick as he’s peeing I’m immediately giving Jensen Ackles $100. For no real reason, I just feel like giving him money for already carrying the show on his back.

I can’t tell if it did or not, so I’m not paying yet.

Aw, Sammy...

"I should have told you the truth.” *Vine voice* BUT YOU DIDN’T

FUCKYOUINTHEASSHOhnightmare. Nightmare. So did he visit her at her grave or not? I need answers.

A week? Goddamn. Poor thing. That man-eating tree’s fucking good at his job, man.

“There’s nothing there, it’s just...woods,” Sam, I don’t know if Jess’s death hit you hard or if you got into law school by eating some ancient dick and/or pussy instead of earning that high score fair and square, but the woods “in the middle of nowhere” (your words) are known to be one of the top places full of weird-ass creatures. Even kindergartners know that.

Ehehehehehehehehe he’s so smol next to his lil bro my lil shit

At least you’re coming up with decent covers this time. No Agent Mulder and Scully ruining things for you this time around.

“Bull” oop-

Oh Dean’s a smoooooooooth operator. Good going, buddy.

AND HE GOT A COPY OF THAT DOCUMENT TEAM DEAN TEAM DEAN

Oh that death really got to Sam. I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a trigger-happy psycho. Or eat the man-eating tree and become one himself.

Oh, Haley’s a cutie! Which one’s her brother? Cory? Discount Enrique Iglesias?

Do you have a card for EVERY profession, Dean? And how do I get them too?

That is a very pretty car. I bet they wasted half the budget on that thing.

Okay, sonny boy, little bro, Broseidon, calm down.

Ah, fuck, Haley and Broseidon is gonna go into the woods, that’s more heads to worry about.

How the fuck does Sam find information this fast? I’m impressed, I take five hours to get to one article for my research paper. Or maybe I’m just lazy. So he really earned his law school interview without having to eat dick and pussy, huh.

Every 23 years? What is this, Pennywise? Are we going to see the wendigo do his best Tim Curry do his best scary clown impression? Honk honk?

“Whatever that thing is, it can move.” And the sun rises on the East, Sammy. Why are you so smart and dumb at the same time? Is this his character trait? It might grow on me.

Ahhh, so Sam’s go-to move at interrogation is doing puppy dog eyes and sympathize with the person. He’d make a good lawyer, shame that man-eating tree.

Go Grandpa Exposition, go!

Go Grandpa Exposition, go, give us information and none at all!

OH GEEZ THAT SCAR. PENNYWISE WENDIGO IS VICIOUS.

Skinwalker, Back Dog...Ooh, those all sound cool! I hope we get to see them soon!

‘Corporeal’ doesn’t sound like a real word, but then again, English doesn’t sound like a real language. Sorry. Moving on.

Sam’s gonna eat the wendigo with that attitude, Jesus Christ.

AND HIS BROTHER, AT THIS RATE. If the real villain turns out to be inside Sam all along I’m gonna flip. Is that why women keep dying and burning on ceilings where he sleeps? Is he secretly Lucifer’s spawn or something?

“Oh sweetheart I don’t wear shorts”. They queer-coded him from the start and they tried to make you believe he was straight for fifteen seasons straight? And some people bought that?

Oh, crap, another crappy death treatment for Cory before he got into Glee...No, I wasn’t into Glee, I just watched a few episodes and I might hate Rachel Berry...And Lea Michele...ahem...

Dean is totally flirting with Roy shut upppppppp

OOP AND THERE ROY GOES OH THE SEXUAL TENSION IS HIGH IN THESE WOODS TODAY

“It’s probably the most honest I’ve been with a woman. Ever.” See. Bi. Bi bi bi.

So...why the coordinates, Daddy Negan? Is this a portal to Hell? A place where man-eating trees grow?

*carefully places death flag on Roy*

Ooooh the campsite is very...haunted house-y. You know what I’m saying?

That’s not Discount Enrique Iglesias, but Pennywise wendigo, yes? Those things can mimic human voices, right?

*Google searches*...There are so many versions of this tale I can’t even confirm or deny it. Dammit.

Maybe Pennywise wendigo just wants some snacks and a nice phone and GPS? Maybe he misses his family in uh, Canada or something?

Daddy Negan’s journal is  a e s t h e t i q u e .

I’m so sorry, but the way Sammy smirks as he speaks with those dark, dark voids for eyes? My boy’s a demon. He’s a demon, I’m telling you.

At least Haley has some sense to her. *puts another death flag on Roy*

*PUTS YET ANOTHER DEATH FLAG ON ROY*

True, that. What the heck is Daddy Negan up to with all of this?

“Saving people, hunting things, the family business!” Okay, the way Dean said it gave me chills.

I can actually empathize with Sam here...As whiny and bitchy as he is, he has his reasons to be this way. I guess if I were in his shoes, I’d be less of a Dean and more of a Sam, too. We deal with our losses quite similarly.

Ah, the brotherly bonding moments like these little talks make the show worth it. It’s so heartwarming.

Pennywise wendigo! I didn’t miss you, why’re you here to burst my happy bubble?

I’m starting to see a slight parallel between Haley and Broseidon and Dean and Sammy. Hmm.

Nice meeting you, Roy. Zoop you go.

Haley and Broseidon are taking this rather well, I’m glad they do.

Okay, actual exposition time, thank you.

Whoa, Broseidon speaks! Donner Party! Please don’t remind me of that! Those poor people!

Hibernation and food storage. Delightful, just delightful.

TORCHING? *CALLS RAMMSTEIN*

Somehow, not being able to see the wendigo is scarier to me than what I will probably see itself. Limited budget horror can actually work well.

Oh, dear, Roy literally did a death drop. Badum tissssssssss.

FUCK IT TOOK DEAN THE ONLY CHARACTER I CARE ABOUImean I love you too, Sam! Come on, let’s find him before it’s too late!

A trail of M&Ms! Yes, Broseidon! And Hansel and Gretel refercalled it. Sammy, you and I share the same wavelength?

SHITSHITTHEYTRIPPEDANDFELLINTHEFUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Thank the gods the Pennywise wendigo kept them right there. Chances.

DISCOUNT ENRIQUE IGLESIAS IS STILL ALIVE GEEZ BUT ALSO PHEW

Ah, Dean Winchester, I love you so much that I can’t even begin to describe it.

Also how convenient that the flare guns are there. Deus ex machina!

Haley would bode well as a hunter, look at her courage, her will. There are more hunters around than Daddy Negan and the brothers, right?

Yeah, seeing the actual wendigo makes me less scared of it now. It’s unnerving, but still.

TEAM DEAN YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAW

Graphics are...alright, but it’s the thought that counts!

Running with the grizzly bear story. Smart Broseidon. Ben. Sorry, you deserve to be called by your real name. I think with practice they could become good hunters, along with their Discount Enrique Iglesias brother! Is there a fanfiction for that? Can I write it now?

...

I AM WILLING TO DIE TO PROTECT DEAN WINCHESTER I

Haley’s a lesbian, that’s why she kissed him on the cheek only. Headcanoned. Also I have a crush on her, she’s really pretty? Like? Heart eyes???

Ah, the siblings parallels again. Let’s hope neither of the two brothers end up in the bed like that.

“Man, I hate camping.” Really. Really really. Really.

“I’m driving”

...

SAM WINCHESTER I’M SORRY I EVER SPOKE ILL OF YOU I WILL PROTECT YOU WITH MY LIFE TOO I PROMISE YOU I WILL

It’s just a sassy bisexual brother and his little snide bisexual brother on the road to kill evil creatures and find their father and I love this show? Help? Help???

I really, really see the charm of Supernatural now! I’m fully invested in both brothers and their story, and I’m cheering them both on! Let’s get Daddy Negan back and get rid of that man-eating tree once and for all!

Six stars out of five!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This dare is introducing me to a whole new world, and I really, really am glad I took that jump a few days ago, man!

Thank you everyone for reading my ramblings, and I’ll see you in the day after with the next review! Thank you for sticking with me! Buh-bye!

- Xue

SGA/SSA aren’t LGBT+ terms you should be using

In fact, they’re not even really terms from our community at all.

In this post I’m going to be talking about two terms sometimes used by some people in our community: SSA (same sex attracted) and SGA (same gender attracted). Note, however, that this post is NOT about SGL (same gender loving) which is a completely unrelated, lovely term created for and by black LGBT+ people. To clear things up, the SGA term is not based on the SGL term; SGA was already an entirely separate term based in violent homophobia, which I’ll speak on below.

So, what’s wrong with SGA and SSA, and why do I have the right to speak about it?

I was born and raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a church that until recently also went by the nickname “Mormons.” (Yeah, I know it’s a mouthful. Don’t worry, I’ll be using LDS, Mormon, or The Church for the rest of this post.)

This church has a very long, horrible history of homophobia and transphobia which continues to this day, and they’re known for using the SGA/SSA terms to describe LGB+ people, to the extent that the SSA and SGA terms are considered fairly taboo in the queerstake community (queerstake  being what much of lds LGBT+ call ourselves). I grew up hearing the SSA/SGA terms with lot of negative connotation, and to put it shortly, the church has for a long time “encouraged” lds LGBT+ people to call themselves “same sex/gender attracted” instead of LGBT+.

This statement, by the church leader Dallin H. Oaks (more on him here in a post by a gay mormon) is a pretty good example of the kind of rhetoric they use to encourage this: “We should note that the words homosexual, lesbian, and gay are adjectives to describe particular thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. We should refrain from using these words as nouns to identify particular conditions or specific persons.” (x)

This kind of rhetoric is repeated so often in the church that “same sex/gender attracted” is the way a majority of cis straight lds people refer to LGBT+ people aside from negatively using the word “gay” or “homosexual.”  They often use it talking about how we “suffer” from SSA/SGA, are “afflicted” with SSA/SGA, “struggle” with SSA/SGA. Instead of being gay, we “have” SSA/SGA.

It’s used as a way to essentially brainwash LGBT+ lds people into distancing ourselves from the LGBT+ community and further envelop ourselves in the church’s “you should repent from your homosexual behavior” mentality. The two terms are used fairly interchangeably; I’d argue SSA is used more often, but SGA is starting to get used more as well. In any case, it contributed to my younger self’s phase of “I won’t label my orientation” because I’d been trained to think that if I didn’t label it and I kept doing what the church said, my attraction to girls would either go away or I could just ignore it. Which, uh, didn’t really work, seeing as I’m extremely queer now.

A church university called BYU has, in particular, been homophobic to an extreme, actively participating in anti-LGBT+ efforts. In fact, they’ve been ranked one of the least LGBT friendly universities in the entire US! What an incredible achievement! You can read the history of their homophobia (and some transphobia) in this article (including a fairly extensive timeline from the 1950s up to the end of 2018). To sum up some of the really bad parts, though (the sources are in the link):

They repeatedly banned LGBT+ people from their university entirely, then banned students from being openly LGBT+, and are suspected of firing several staff members for being gay, as well as for suspending and expelling students for dating or kissing people of the same gender

In the 60s through 70s, they began administering “electric aversion therapy” in order to “cure” LGB+ students (this “therapy” involved showing gay people nude pictures of the same gender and giving them electroshocks in order to make them associate those feelings negatively). This method was ineffective at making the LGB+ people straight (obviously), but the people who underwent it reported extreme decrease in mental health and increased suicidal thoughts. At one point this therapy was required for anyone suspected of being gay. The therapy ended in 1983, but only because of the overwhelming reports that it wasn’t working.

In 1965 there were 5 reported suicides of gay Mormons at the university in a single year, and the LGBT+ Mormon suicidality in Utah has continued to be high. 

In the 70s, when Dallin H. Oaks was president of the school, he created a surveillance system to “catch” LGB+ people, including literally spying on gay bars and implementing recording devices to watch for any suspected LGB+ students, as well as posting fake gay advertisements to “ensnare” them.

Dallin Oaks also helped create the Institute for Studies in Values and Human Behavior, which was dedicated to proving that being gay was a choice, in order to re-affirm the church’s stance on homosexuality at the time. The freaking director of the institution, Allen Bergin, once said that homosexuality was “caused by some combination of biology and environment.” (thankfully, the church no longer believes being gay is a choice, though they talk about how “SSA/SGA behavior” is a choice as often as they can.)

I suggest y’all also read the Payne Papers (aka Prologue), which was written by two gay BYU students in 1977 in response to a homophobic professor at the university.

In 1997 there was a poll where 80% of students said they wouldn’t live with a roommate attracted to people of the same gender.

“In 2000 a reported 13 students were suspended from the University when caught watching the TV series Queer As Folk. The next year two gay students (Matthew Grierson and Ricky Escoto) were expelled under accusations deemed ‘more probable than not’ of hand-holding or kissing.”

In 2005, The Foundation for Attraction Research (FAR) was founded, run by mostly BYU professors. In 2009 the organization published Understanding Same-Sex Attraction which advocated therapy to change sexual attraction (evidently they didn’t learn their lesson lol).

In 2014, a BYU survey to students only gave the option of “heterosexual but struggles with same-sex attraction" or "heterosexual and does not struggle with same-sex attraction” for people’s sexual orientation. Y’all, this was only a year before same-gender marriage was legalized in the US. That’s just bad.

LGBT+ students are currently still facing risk of expulsion from the school if they hug, kiss, or date someone of their same gender. Celibacy is mandatory.

All LGBT+ groups are currently banned from meeting on campus, so there’s only a single LGBT+ group for the school that meets at a library in the city.

And of course, this is only what happened at a single Mormon university. You’d be surprised how much power the LDS church has, especially in Utah. Ya know Dallin H. Oaks, the homophobe? Yeah, last October he gave a homophobic and transphobic talk in front of over 4 million church members from all over the world.

During the course of all that homophobia at BYU, “same sex attraction” and “same gender attraction” were both terms used regularly in this therapy and in the church, alongside “homosexual.” And as I said earlier, they still use these terms today! In fact, if you wanna see them in action, you can just visit this page on their official website, which has “same sex attraction” right there in the title. The entire website continues to follow the implied idea of “we’ll tolerate you saying you’re gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but we’d prefer if you’d just say you’re same sex/gender attracted, because being gay/bi/lesbian is a lifestyle, and we don’t support it” and the whole website is basically “it’s okay to be attracted to the same gender, but it’s a sin to ever do or think anything gay!”

You can also just search the internet for “same sex attraction” or “same gender attraction” and a bunch of christian articles will pop up with rampant internalized homophobia among LGBT+ church members, and a bunch of homophobia from the church itself. It’s possible this SSA/SGA rhetoric isn’t specific to my church, as I haven’t researched other church’s histories as thoroughly, but the church absolutely contributed to anti-LGBT+ efforts throughout history, using “SGA” and “SSA” the entire time. This isn’t even a thing of the past, LGBT+ Mormons are still freaking here going through all this--conversion therapy is still not banned in Utah.

So, TL;DR: the “same sex/gender attraction” phrase was used in LGB+ conversion therapy, and is still used to perpetuate homophobic rhetoric in the church today. Because of that, a lot of my fellow LGBT+ Mormons are uncomfortable with the terms being used as umbrella descriptors for our orientations. So when someone tells you “SSA/SGA was used in Mormon conversion therapy, please don’t use it,” take them seriously. Yes, I understand that they’re sometimes helpful terms when talking about LGB+ identities, and I’m (sometimes) more okay with the usage of the terms than others, but in general, if you’re not a person affected directly by the church’s usage of these terms (read: an active LGBT+ Mormon or ex-Mormon), please don’t use them liberally, and don’t use them to freaking discourse about who does or doesn’t belong in the community. “SSA/SGA and trans” is not how you should be defining our community, I don’t care whether you’re an exclusionist or an inclusionist, just don’t. And you should never. freaking. use them. to refer to any LGBT+ Mormon who asks you not to.

And, last of all, as a bi person, y’all should not be implying that attraction to the same gender is the only thing about our orientation that makes us LGBT+. I’m not just LGBT+ because I’m attracted to the same gender, I’m LGBT+ because I’m attracted to multiple genders. My attraction to multiple genders makes me inherently Not Straight. Biphobia and monosexism is an issue that greatly affects mspec people, and it’s time monosexual LGBT+ people recognize that homophobia is not the only type of oppression we face. Not even to mention how SGA and SSA terms are exclusive of nonbinary orientations, which don’t always involve even having a same gender to be attracted to.

Exclusionists and inclusionists alike please reblog. Y’all need to listen up. Queer Mormons aren’t here to play.

ask meme - things my friends said ! ( volume three )

from July 2019 - September 2019 warnings: language, ns/fw themes, alcohol mentions, drug mentions change pronouns as needed! under the cut for your dashboard convenience

“Put that on reddit and I’ll grind you like cheese.” “THIS ISN’T THE M25.” “Safety first? Can’t relate.” “I am a mer-BITCH.” “Wonderful, my drunk ramblings are being used for education again. Where's my wallet?" “PUT THE HUNDREDTH PRESIDENT ON THE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL, ASSHOLE!” “Instead of carrying mase, I just carry a hairbrush.” “We're just really high on blanket smell.” “Only crackheads can hear normal voices.” “I WALKED INTO BOTH OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.” “LOOK AT US. PLEASE, LOOK AT US. WE'RE YOUR PACK MULES.” “If you have a neck, you’re a hellspawn.” “I should probably do the dishes before my mother astral projects back home to yell me into the dirt.” “This is not HENTAI, I am NOT attracted to a snake.” “Don't mind me, I'm just having a gay stroke.” “I WILL NEVER STOP SAYING BITCH, FUCK YOU.” “Limes taste like an old, stale skittle.” “WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? THE GOLDEN CORRAL OF BITCHES?” “I DON'T CARE. I DON'T ASK PEOPLE FOR NUDES.” “WE CAN RE-EDUCATE THE CHILDREN.” “God, I can already feel myself drifting off. How does a horizontal position change the game so much?” “We HYDRATE in this bitch.” “I'm a drunk man with a phone.” “I'm your man for getting into small holes.” “Tony Hawk is just THAT powerful.” “I wanna be the fastest boy in the village.” “Well, I thought, if I think faster, I’ll go faster.” “Imagine nutting, and suddenly you’re a flame thrower.” “I feel like a Vienna sausage.” “I diagnose myself with bitch.” “God damn, I miss being twelve and not depressed.” “I don’t need drinks to be drunk.” “I fully gave birth out there.” “As long as I’m not detrimental to anyone, I WILL be an inconvenience.” “Hey guys, I’m back. And I’m ready to BITCH.” “I love being a weak bitch!” “Sorry, my brain is on fucking cucaracha.” “Fapping is just sex in single player mode.” “Is it possible to un-dab?” “Google how many nipples snakes have.” “Snakes don’t have nipples.” “Lil Punk is my new rap name.” “It’s legal for babies to pout.” “We’re the--” *gasp* “WE’RE THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE.” “I don’t wanna live in a world where a beat-up station wagon is an ‘epic’ moment.” “I am a shredded potato in this current moment.” “I might have a death wish but I would do literally anything else before I let some little bitch parasite threaten my life.” “Who hasn’t gotten a little tongue with their dog?” “LET’S CURBSTOMP THE GOVERNMENT!” “The smell of Axe body spray triggers my fight or flight response.” “Are you telling me I DON’T have a disease called homosexuality?” “My consciousness is but a parasite.” “It’s an egg that puts the fear of God in me, I’ll tell ya what.” “It’s a parking garage for prisoners!” “You don’t need contacts to see their boobs!” “Niccolo Machiavelli looks like a little bastard.” “Yeah, he seems like the kind of person to be like, ‘I’ll live another ten years,’ and then he didn’t.” “Nothing new happened, but the anxiety metaphorically bodyslammed me into a folding table.” “I’ve yelled at you way too many times for you to cry about it.” “Can you imagine two e-girls fighting?” “Hecko, I am a loser-o.” “I feel like Vincent van Gogh. I’ll be unappreciated until my death, and only then will I be loved and adored by millions.” “The good Lord has smote me with that sweet, sweet anxiety.” “You look like a fucking limo driver.” “Did you know I kin the lesbian pride flag?” “I’m gonna commit stage four cancer treatment.” “I didn’t know early 2000′s Alan Cumming was making a comeback.” “Swear, I’ll clap your asscheeks.” “I might be able to serve you in a rap battle, but I don’t know how to serve a table.” “My entire lower half is weeping.” “I guess when you turn 16 you gain a neck.” “Oh, you want a bigger dick? Have fun NEVER USING IT, EVER.” “You wouldn’t go out adventuring if you were a shithead.” “Be prepared to be spooked and clench your asshole.” “My mouth is good for French.” “I don’t even have a brain cell today.” “I’m gonna give you five seconds to say something else.” “I have had one ugly moment and I’m still in it.” “This rhombus has jaundice. The jaundice rhombus.” “There’s two places pineapple doesn’t belong! One: on a pizza! Two: in my ass!” “Yup, I’m a god amongst men.” “I’m a fucking shit.” “You want me to pour an egg straight into your mouth, you kinky fuck?” “How long ago was 2003?” “Being gay and homophobic is pretty woke.” “He doesn’t deserve cheesecake. I deserve the cheesecake.” “The pencils smell like pencils.” “I loosen the pants. Is that a charisma check or a strength check?” “Who is this Hawaiian mother fucker?” “Walking is hard.” “We at an anime convention, Jesus can’t help you!” “And you’re a sparky sparky boom boom boy, you deal with that.” “His butt would his the foot rest.” “I CAN’T BE AWAY FROM YOU CRACKHEADS FOR FIVE MINUTES.” “I forget you have family.” “It’s the brain cell of the week.” “Men must have created speed bumps.” “Ew, ew, my clothing.” “Oh, I’m already getting a game over? That’s fucking hot.” “At this point it’s not even about straying further from God.” “How am I supposed to go to a job interview after this? All I can think about is sexy Colonel Sanders.” “That’s some long meat.” “Zeus was horny on main.” “Don’t be horny on main. Be horny on sideblog. Have you SEEN Hades elsewhere? MY GOD.” “There’s men with computers in their heads and we don’t know if they’re going to try and steal our condensed milk.” “If you’re gonna be a slut, you should at least be proud of it.” “I will dress nice for you, but I will NOT cosplay in a cheesecake factory.” “When your child overthrows you, they take the skeleton with them.” “HE’S A FUCKING CHICKEN WIZARD. DILF CHICKEN WIZARD.” “What would I know? I’m not a capitalist.” “I MIGHT KEYSMASH A WHOLE LOT, BUT I CAN DRIVE, WHICH MEANS I’M NOT A BOTTOM.” “We salted our cardboard pizza slices like cavemen.”

Medea Rambles - Vic Mignogna

Fuck.

I know I’m going to regret writing this and WILL end up with backlash no matter what side I choose in the matter. So this post is the equivalency of shooting myself in the foot. No matter.

I just feel like saying something. Free speech and all that mess.

If you’re unaware of who this man is with the funny sounding last name, this man is named Vic Mignogna. For years he’s been well-known in the anime community as a very prominent voice actor. Many fans (myself included) was introduced to him when watching the English dub to Full Metal Alchemist where he plays pint-sized alchemist Edward Elric. And from then on, fell in love with his voice.

Well, I mean he was okay. Vic wasn’t really my favorite voice actor, but he was still very good. I always loved his voice in Full Metal Alchemist, Soul Eater, and Ouran High School Host Club. But others are absolute, can’t breathe without him, ride-or-die fans of Vic Mignogna and his work in anime, video games, and the Star Trek videos he does with his buddy Todd Haberkorn. In years past, he would always be seen as one of the best English voice actors of all time.

In the past ten years, I’ve seen Vic get some pretty harsh criticism from all across the board. First of all, he was seen as a homophobic. Then there were those who were SICK of hearing his voice everywhere in the anime world. Then they started attacking his Christianity. And other things like he’s mean to people around him, he’s an arrogant so-and-so, he won’t sign this thing I gave him so he’s a buttbag for life, he’s an Anti-Semite, he’s the devil, and so on and so forth. I truly felt sorry for him in some aspects. While I disagree with much of his stances on certain subjects and the homophobia thing was kind of a big driving point for me to dislike him, I wasn’t going to boycott animes that have his voice in it and call him Fuckface McFuck. But despite all that, his loyal fans would stand by his side.

But I think people started to warm up a little to him again a few years back when he attended an anime convention as a guest and got into a shouting match with some random bible-thumper. No matter what anime convention you go to, 9 times out of 10 there will always be some FuckCock holding a bible telling all of us we are going to Hell. And Vic stood up and said that is bullshit. Yeah, that was one moment where I was happy with Vic and proud that someone was ballsy enough to shutdown random Joe Jesus Jr. on the street.

I really wish I could have had the chance to meet him at a con. There was so much for him to sign for me. But alas, he never did make it to the Bay Area (excluding Sacramento, I refuse to travel all the way up there). Because after this next part, I don’t think we’ll ever be hearing from Vic again.

In January 2019, the anime community learned of several sexual harassment and assault charges filed against Vic Mignogna. Many of these claims go back to 2008 (maybe further).  More here. Yeah, the #MeToo movement has nailed a lot of sexual offenders. From Hollywood elites like Harvey Weinstein, to political figures like *too many to fucking count*, to people in the sports world like Larry Nassar. In the wake of this movement, many victims felt it was time to step out of the darkness and tell the world their story.

First of all, everyone is different. Not everyone who’s been assaulted is going to go straight to the police. Some hide this shame for years, decades, so on. When someone is sexually assaulted, a lot of things go through their minds. And the biggest thing is FEAR. Fear of what the assaulter will do if you speak up. Fear of the consequences of speaking out. Fear of what the assaulter will do next. Fear of someone else falling victim to the assaulter. Fear of losing your career. And so on. Many of us choose to stay quiet for fear of no one believing us. Many of us choose to stay quiet for fear of being labeled as a slut or being in the wrong and that we should know better.

But I feel like the wake of the #MeToo movement has encouraged victims to come forward. Especially if their assaulter is someone in a position of power and want to make sure that no one else suffers the way they did. And I’m sure Vic Mignogna’s victims felt the same way. Even though he’s a voice actor and goes to conventions. However with his popularity, it can be VERY intimidating coming out with anything of the sort.

From the looks of many of these accounts, they definitely feel ewwie due to the fact that many of them were underage. And from what I’ve seen so far is about the same level as what Al Franken did. Could there be other victims? Possibly. Could there be worse stories out there that go beyond the too-close-for-comfort kiss/hug? Possibly. And we probably will never know.

Many of Vic’s colleagues have had mixed feelings. Some have come to the defense of Vic and some have taken the side of the victims. And one even came out with her own experience with Vic. More here. As for the fans.

IT. IS. FUCKING. HELL.

I’ve seen it all in the last three weeks all over the internet. And quite frankly, it’s starting to remind me of the stupid crap that happened when R. Kelly was in trouble in the early 2000s (before what we know now). It’s either #KickVic or #IStandWithVic. If you stand with Vic, people see you as a rapist-enabling cunt and if you hate Vic, you’re seen as a lib-tard, SJW, crybaby, snowflake. I’m quite sick of seeing this getting to the magnitude it’s getting to.

The actions of Vic, again, to me they don’t seem that big. However, I’m looking at it through someone who is in her early 30′s. If I was a teenager meeting him for the first time and having him give me unwanted and unprovoked hugs and kisses, I might feel something different. Especially since this is a complete stranger. The story that was shared by Jamie Marchi however makes me think that, yeah Vic did some shady shit. But that’s just what I think.

But the fans are getting out of hand. Voice actors are being harassed for even talking about this. Victims are getting death threats. And that’s another thing I would like to go off on! Why would you do that to someone who’s clearly been through a lot? Why would you send someone who came out after years of suppressing an ugly moment in their lives a fucking death threat? What did they ever do to you personally? NOTHING. They just exposed someone who isn’t even related to you and have no connection to at all after something that felt uncomfortable to them. People like you are the reason Dr. Ford STILL TO THIS DAY can’t even go back home. So knock it off!

When other voice actors in the anime community wound up in extreme trouble, fans were not shy about dumping them like rotten potatoes. The names Scott Freeman and Illich Guardiola come to mind. Then again, both of these guys did stuff far worse than Vic, so I’ll leave it at that.

As of today (February 11th, 2019), FUNimation released a statement via Twitter stating that they have no plans to use Vic in future productions. Yeah, I’m sad on one fact. I’m sad that if any of the shows he was very prominent in, he won’t be there. Which makes me wonder what’s going to happen when Free! returns in 2020. I don’t know, maybe they can get Bryce Papenbrook to play Rin. But I digress. This was a man with a lot of talent and revered as one of the greatest voice actors of all time.

BUT THAT’S STILL NO EXCUSE! People like Vic think they can get away with anything or are invincible because of the status and power they carry. And people like that make me sick. And currently watching that in our political system and real life is just more nauseating. That’s why anime is my one outlet away from shit like this. And then Vic Mignogna reared his head in. While I am skeptical about some of the victim claims, I cannot in good conscience defend Vic.

I’m glad FUNimation isn’t shying away from this and taking the effort to cut ties from Vic. The company does have to consider the safety of the other employees that work there. I will always remember him for roles he’s done in the past (and God help the community if we ever get an Ouran sequel). And that one time fighting that one bible-thumper prick! But that’s it. I can’t support this man’s innocence. Nope. Not gonna happen.

That’s all I feel like saying.

Splash on the Hate-o-rade in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

A Bad Boy’s Love (Chapter 2)

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REQUEST - Plot: JK has twin brother (the sweet & nice guy while JK is the rebel, independent and creative one) Y/N dated his brother but unfortunately the brother passed away. JK grew a hard crush on her and wants her to see him and move on from her past/the late brother.

Word Count - 2281

(Warning - This Chapter contains violence so if your sensitive to the subject then please don’t read. And there is a little Taehyung x Jimin ;) Also sexual themes are implied )

A/N - I know y’all are wondering where the Smut is and all I’m going to say is the next chapter is almost finished and I hope your not faint hearted ;) Also DONT forget that request are open.

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Here’s the other parts :

A Bad Boy’s Love (Prolouge)

A Bad Boy’s Love (Chapter 1 Part 1)

A Bad Boy’s Love (Chapter 1 Part 2)

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“If it’s not because of her ass and it’s not because of her chest then why do you ‘love her’ so much?” Taehyung continued to spin around in Jimin’s desk chair.

Jungkook turned to his friend with a death glare in his eyes. He loved Taehyung and all but now wasn’t the time for jokes.

“The same reason you’re in love with that Jimin guy.” Agitation rolling off his words.

“I don’t love Jimin. We’re just friends with benefits.” He got up out the chair and layed next to Jungkook on the bed.

“You really shouldn’t toy with him Taehyung. He might be what you need.” Jungkook turned to face Taehyung.

“This little talk is supposed to be about your relations not mine.”

“I know that but he’s a caring person also not to mention he’s cute and totally your type. I know you like him so why don’t you just be with him?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that.” Taehyung brought his knees up to his chest. Jungkook looked at his friend. His stare intensified as the silence grew.

“Well talk to me Taehyung.”

“His parents are homophobic.” His voice was low and shaky.

Jungkook pulled his best friend into his chest. He hated that he had to go through this again even though he shouldn’t have to for Gods sake it’s the 2000’s not the 50’s. Taehyung exhaled into Jungkook’s chest. It was hard enough for him to come out to Jungkook in fear that he’d lose the only person that cared for him.

Taehyung’s parents were never really there. His dad was an abusive business man and his mom was often out overseas debuting her cosmetic products. Jungkook rubbed his back and hugged him tighter. He knew how he felt. His parents too obsessed with the finer things in life to attend to their youngest child. Right before Jungkook was about to cry with him the door creaked open.

“Dinner’s ready.” Jimin whispered as he peeked his head through the door.

“We’ll be right there.” Jungkook rocked Taehyung back and forth as if he were a baby.

“Are you ok now.?” Taehyung nodded as he pulled away from Jungkook’s chest. He then got up and dried his eyes.

“I’m fine. Just thanks Kookie. Thanks for being here.” He gave him a hug and they both proceeded to the kitchen.

—————————————

“Are you sure you can’t stay Kookie?” Jimin questioned as he wrapped his arm around Taehyung’s waist.

“I really want to but I have to go make things right. Thanks Jimin dinner was delicious. Who taught you how to cook like that?”

Jimin bounced with delight. “My Jin Hyung taught me everything I know. I’m glad you liked it.” Jungkook chuckled and turned to Taehyung.

“Ok be careful Jungkook.” Taehyung fist bumped Jungkook and shut the door after he stepped out.

——————————————

One knock. Two knocks. Three Knocks. Four. Jungkook was tired of knocking at the god damn door. After about seven more knocks he gave up and sat beside the door. He closed his eyes and began to dose off thinking about all the wrong he’s done over the years. Like that time he got drunk and ran around streaking the neighborhood and you had to come get him from the police station. And that time him and Taehyung decided it would be fun to vandalize an abandoned hospital and you had to be there get away driver.

Something about your loving nature and caring made him someone completely different. He was almost in his tormenting wonderland but was rushed back to reality when the outdoor lights hit his face. He looked up only to find you towering over him.

“Y/N-ah. You’re awake?” Jungkook stood up.

“Of course I am. I’ve been at the hospital since earlier.” You leaned against the door frame.

“Hospital? Why?”

“I thought that would be pretty self explanatory. You sort of broke Junghoon’s nose and fractured his shoulder.” You looked away from Jungkook not wanting to believe that he caused all that damage.

“Look, I’m sorry that I lost my temper ok? I didn’t mean to over react. It’s just that Taehyung is more than a friend to me and I couldn’t stand to hear all those awful things Hoon was saying. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad in any way ” He grabbed our hand and looked at you with sympathy in his eyes. You pulled him inside and shut the door.

“Kookie I was never really mad at you. I mean yes you did go overboard and Hoon was in the wrong but you still shouldn’t take your frustrations out like that. When you get mad don’t go around punching people. Come talk to me.”

“I know and like I said before I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Kookie I’ve already forgiven you.” You giggled and wrapped your hands around him. He smiled and hugged you back.

“But you have to apologize to Hoon first thing in the morning ” You looked up at him.

“Anything you say.” He brushed your hair out of your eyes. You smiled.

“Ok so for now what do you want to do?”

“Movie?” He let go of you and looked at your humongous arrangement of movies and TV collections.

“Ooooo Kookie lets watch this.” You held up a movie you had recently rented from redbox. He grabbed the movie from your hands and began to read the title.

“Fantasy Lover.” He spoke with his eyebrow cocked in surprise.

“Yeah.” You giggled and grabbed his hand. “Come on Kookie you’ll like it I promise.” You put the movie on and set off to the couch and sat next to Kookie.

“Are you cold?” You threw the couch coverlet over him and snuggled up into his side. He let his arm slide down the side of your frame so it could rest on your hip. You pressed play on the movie.

The opening scene showed a woman staring into a mirror lingerie covering her body and a man pressing himself against her. His hand massaging her womanhood and his mouth sipped hickies onto her collar bone. You didn’t really care for the movie having already watched it and finding it entertaining yet a little too much on the sexual side. You fell asleep in the tenderness of Kookie’s side.

While you were snug Kookie was struggling to keep his manhood in control. As the scenes grew hotter and more intense so did his problem. He wiggled slightly in his seat trying his best not to wake you from your snug slumber. The movie also seemed to have an erotic take on his thoughts and having his dream girl laying against him wasn’t helping. Impure thoughts about you and him clouded his mind as his gaze shifted from the TV and onto your sleeping body.

God the things he wanted to do to you. If only you knew how he wished to strip you of your clothes and mark you as his. If only you knew how he wanted to throw you on the bed and show you who you belonged to. If only you knew how he longed for your mouth to engulf him and your wetness immerse him. If only you knew. The boy shook his head at the thoughts. After all you were sleep.

His erection subsided as the movie came to its second scene. Which, showed a woman shooting up from her bed leading Jungkook to believe that all the current events in the movie were just a part of the woman’s provocative dream. Jungkook chuckled and turned off the TV. Thinking about how he could relate to the woman on so many different levels. After, his little comparison he picked you up and carried you to your room. He then went to the guest room where he was free to be left alone with his thoughts and consciousness.

———————————————————

Weeks pasted and You, Jungkook’s, And Hoon’s relationship was better than it had ever been. You managed to get the boys to hang out and come to the understanding that they are brothers and that at the end of the day they only have each other (and you of-course). Jungkook And Hoon went out more than usual. Jungkook didn’t mind though it was nice actually being able to talk with his brother rather than fight and bicker.

Jungkook almost forgot how outgoing a person Hoon actually was. Jungkook even started to stay over later on school nights just to get help from you and Hoon. He used to hate when Hoon was at home with you but now he can’t stop asking where Hoon is. This made you happy but you couldn’t help but feel a little envious.

You were so use to Jungkook looking forward to hanging out with you hearing Hoons name come out of his mouth was almost a surprise in all honesty but that didn’t matter because you had no feelings for Jungkook what so ever. (At least that’s what you thought)

———————————————————

“Y/N-ah. I’m going to get coffee with Hoon do you want anything back?” He yelled as he got ready to leave out the front door.

“No I’m fine Kookie. You be safe and remind Hoon to pay the light bill before we have to walk around with oil lamps and candles.” You giggled.

“Ok Y/N. See you later!” He shut the door after he put another exclamation point on his sentence.

——————————————————

It wasn’t long before he reached the coffee shop. He sat on a bench outside the shop. Not wanting to go in until he made sure Hoon arrived.

Jungkook sat there for about twenty minutes and Hoon still hadn’t arrive. Jungkook didn’t want to disturb Hoon at his place of work but curiosity got the best of him and he set off on his walk to the business building where Hoon worked.

When he finally reached Main Street he noticed that there were police cars and ambulances lined up down the street. There an eighteen wheeler had rammed the front of a car. No matter how close he got the car was wrecked so bad that he couldn’t tell if it was a car or just a pile of mashed up rubble.

He brushed past some of the strangers standing on the side walk to look closer. Finally, when he reached the yellow caution tape his heart sunk into the abyss of his stomach. Blood covered the drivers side of the car and the firefighters struggled to get the driver out of the car.

He let his concern get the best of him and crossed the yellow tape. The shouts of the police officers were tuned out by him. Alas, when he reached the body that layed on the ground he dropped to his knees. His hands trembled and his lips quivered. He let his hands graze over the face of his brother who layed cold on the ground. Blood running down from his forehead, his hands cut, and his mouth full of red.

“H-Hoon?” Jungkook’s voice was soft and fragile. The only thing Hoon could do was cough and give a faint half smile.

“You’re gonna be ok. Alright? We’re gonna take you to the hospital and they’re gonna patch you up. Ok? Ok?” Hoon built all his strength and pulled Jungkook closer. “Please keep yourself safe and out of trouble for me. I love you Kookie and please don’t ever forget that. Tell Y/-.” That’s all he managed to get out before blood filled his lungs.

“Hoon?! Hoon?!” Jungkook looked up to only see people who were merely staring.

“Paramedic! Somebody get the god damn paramedic!” He shouted as tears rolled down his cheeks. “You’re gonna be ok. You’re gonna be ok.” He squeezed Hoons hand as the paramedics loaded him up into the ambulance. Although, that’s what Jungkook hoped that’s not what happened.

——————————————————

It’s 12:45 p.m and Jungkook is just now making it to your home. Hoon was pronounced dead at 1:46 that afternoon and Jungkook has spent his time at the hospital wondering how he would tell you your boyfriend of one and a half years was no longer on this earth. He was still in his blood stained clothes. That being the least of his concerns. I know what you’re asking if that wasn’t his biggest concern then what was? Well his biggest concern at the moment was comforting you.

Making sure you didn’t take anything out on yourself. Five minutes had passed and Jungkook couldn’t bring his self to knock on the door but after summoning the courage and the strength he finally brought his self to do so. “It’s unlocked.” You said as you set down your hot chocolate.

“Y-Y/N.” You turned to look at Jungkook the shakiness in his voice alarming you. And when your eyes met his body you stood up with a quickness.

“J-jungkook. Why? Why are your clothes-.” He gestured for you to sit down. He wrapped his arms around you and pulled you into his chest preparing for your reaction. After, he calmed his self down he took a deep breath.

“J-Junghoon’s dead.” Your whole body went cold and severely numb. You pulled away from Jungkook and looked at him as if he were a psycho.

“Kookie please tell me you’re joking.” You stood up and walked into the middle of the floor. He stood up and walked towards you.

“I wish I was but no. H-he’s gone.” Tears stream down your faces and your knees begin to give out. You’re shaking and Kookie manages to catch you before your body can hit the cement floor.

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Masterlist 😘

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Nach Little Box of Hopes And Fears: Ezreal rework edition.

Let’s open this Pandora box, okay?

So, The Ezreal rework is probably hitting live somewhere at the end of the year after Worlds and the PBE during them, which gives us two months to sit, twiddle our thumbs and think. And Oh Boi! Have I thought! More under the cut because this Got Long.

This is all VERY subjective. Please take it with a grain of sea salt.

Let’s start from the beginning, as all organized matters should: What has Riot been doing with their reworks and Lore updates lately?

In my opinion, is give everyone and everything a place in the world, connecting characters and things that might have not been connected previously and retconning a few things along the way— With various degrees of success. The Darkin in Shurima are probably one of the biggest offenders here. While it gave them a place in Runaterra other than ‘Maybe aliens from another dimension/Old As Hell Demons’, Aatrox’s rework, Varus’s music video and Rhaast’s release never tied their designs or origins to anything Shuriman, from there the whiplash I got at least.

But that’s beside the point I’m trying to make. What’s Ezreal’s current state in the Lore?

Well, Ezreal has always been kind of in a weird spot post-institute, he’s from Piltover but has never had any strong affiliations or associations with the City State other than the place in which he spent his childhood, and now with the Piltover/Zaun and his own lore update, he has little ties in design as well! Back in the day, belts were all the rage in Piltover, now it’s more of an Art Deco thing —which I love— but Mr ‘I could probably go a week eating only the leather in my outfit’s belts and I still wouldn’t go hungry’ doesn’t fit anymore aesthetically. Shurima is still important to his character, since that’s where he got his gauntlet from, but as we can see from Elixir of Uloa, he’s not limited to exploring the desert, and to be honest? he never was.

Talking about design, it’s not that his design is horrendously bad, even if a bit ridiculous for his job (leather is not a breathable fabric), it just grew old. And it could have grown older! But the disparity between League’s current aesthetic/lore direction and Ezreal’s would have grown way too large for a champion so played. That’s why I reason they chose him, and not fiddlesticks or Udyr, for a VU/VO right now.

And here is where the box gets opened: let’s go first through the fears to have hope be sitting nice and pretty still inside at the end, okay?

I think everyone that follows me knows that, while I eat up any and all canon Ezreal content, I really don’t like the most recent approach Riot has had with his art: That Cutesy, Pixie Boy aesthetic that gets in my nerves and is present both in Star Guardian and the most recent World Championship skins. (Not to mention, they have gotten really lazy painting/modeling his face? I’d argue Ace of Spades has a prettier face than SG/SSG). Were his rework to take that direction for the sake of the good old ‘Ez is a girl’ joke, I’m going to be really sad about it. And Mad. Smad.

Not because I have a probelm with Ezreal not being your traditional hypermasculine fantasy male character, I quite enjoy that he isn’t, and if they were to tilt the scales in that direction to overfix the same joke, I’d still feel weird about it.

I think its easy to understand the fear of my favorite character being changed into the joke that has plagued him for years because of the homophobic fanbase that birthed it. My beef of course isn’t with male aligned people who don’t fit into the expectations of the gender, and it’s not my intention to imply that if you like the joke/ship, that you are contributing to your own oppression by reclaiming something they named as shameful— of course not. My beef is with the fact they claimed it shameful and that Riot is Not Woke Enough to pretend like it was their intention all along and they aren’t playing into the vices and prejuices of its fanbase. Let me explain.

Tar/ez or Eztar!c exists only because of the powerduo they used to be all the way back in Season 2, and persisted as an intracommunity joke because people just loved making fun of characters that didn’t quite fit with the usual Male Archetype(tm), Ezreal with his assumed ‘pretty boy’ looks (assumed because tbh no one was pretty back then) and lithe physique, and Taric with his ‘affeminate’ liking of gems. This joke, rooted in homophobia, turned both of their characters into jokes that Riot despite its best efforts because I mostly liked Taric’s rework, shut up, still l can’t completely overcome to this day, when the usage of ‘lol that’s so gay’ is not as negative as the beggining of the decade. It’s not like I think that it’s going to go away, I just fear it’s gonna get worse.

Not to mention! The wildly original, very alive horse that is the ‘Ez is a girl’ joke, comes from people forcing heterosexual roles into same gender relationships which, ew! That and his “Pretty anime boy” archetype, since those are also popular in yao! media (double ew). AND from the misogony that any male aligned person, or in less serious cases like this one, character, that doesn’t fall into line with the expectative of its gender, it’s marked as lesser. You might see this issues and think ‘I barely see that anymore’, which, fair. It has been in decline in the general Internet Population since the second half of the decade, but all of these problems stem from early 2010’s gamer culture so— Yeah. That’s another can of worms I am NOT opening.

TLDR: I feel like the the recent art direction comes from toxic places and I’m fearful Riot is gonna play into that instead of ignoring it.

It may be something else behind those decisions, but this is what my confirmation bias looks like.

Enough of unfounded fears I have now struck into your hearts because if I’m going to hell worrying about this, I’m gonna bring you all with me. Let’s think about hope.

My highest hopes for the update is that Riot plays into Ezreal’s lack of strong links— Not only do I think that it makes sense for a explorer to never truly belong in one place, it’s just easier and doesn’t force anything too alien to his character. I’d really like if they went for a ‘citizen of the world’ kind of deal. Make his design something based on Piltover but obviously worn and foreign, pepper his language with words from Shurima, Freljord, Ionia! Hell, with how big Noxus is, he’d have to learn to speak the language if he wanted to cross through it. I feel like he’s a wonderful opportunity to represent how diverse, yet interconnected Runnaterra is. I also feel like it plays into his fantasy of being a dashing —pun intended—young man who gets in and out of trouble, from adventure to adventure a la Indana Jones.

But going back to Riot’s Lore direction, we still need to tie him with somewhere, or at the very least, something.

Enter the world rune.

‘But Nach’ I hear you wail as I use either 50’s sellsman tactics or early 2000’s fanfic writer interrumptions to catch your attention, ‘World Runes are Ryze’s thing!’

Which, Fair. They are. I’m not saying Ezreal is gonna ‘prove himself to be able to let go of a World Rune’ since that is Ryze’s exclusive thing (even if the thought of that happening and Ez outright rejecting it cos Adventure sounds very appealing to me) I just want him to be tied to the missing World Rune because it makes sense for League’s token explorer to accidentaly stumble into the World Magic Battery.

Also because of the promo, but who knows. Maybe he wasn’t in the Ryze short precisely for that, maybe because since it had been so many years on the making, Ez wasn’t even in the Update Radar then and they just didn’t include him/made reference to him. It doesn’t matter, we don’t know. Time will tell.

Plus, him being tied to the World Rune would make Zoe’s fixation —as creepy as it is— make a bit more sense. If the Aspect Of Change that damned The Darkin is the same one we have today, It’d make her have more secretive, ulterior motives and connect her happy go lucky and childish personality to that mischeveous, manipulative persona we got to see in the Darkin story. If it turns out they are different, it still makes sense with Zoe’s Color story and IG characterization since she can’t seem to get serious about/remember what precisely she was supposed to omen.

TLDR Hopes: Just tie him to the world rune, it’d be cool. Also make him a fucking tutti fruti of cultures.

To tie it all up, I know there’s not much I can do but wait, since I am not active in the forums or the reddit community— but If I could feel in my heart Zoe was gonna have a crush on Ezreal when we got her ig teaser, then I do dare hope.

This is a weird ask. My sis (in her late 30s) is bisexual and so is her husband. They've been married for 13 yrs and are super happy. They are moving back to Chicago and I am so excited for them to come back home and I mentioned that I can finally drag them to Pride next summer (cuz Chicago Pride is AMAZING) and they both balked. They are not active in the lgbtq community at all and it's so frustrating!!! They both have been in same sex relationships. (pt 1)

I was sure I’d have another big sis as intense as my sis was with her gf was all through college. If gay marriage had been legal by the late 90s/early 2000s I wonder if they’d have gotten married. Anyway, my question is, was being lgbtq THAT hard back then? I feel like they’ve both washed their hands of the community and want to live their heteronormative life in peace. Which is totally fine but I want my sis to be a part of what;s impt to me too. Am I being totally selfish? (pt 2)

I should probably add that our parents are pretty cool (and I think they were when she came out when she was 17 yrs old) but my BIL has really homophobic parents, he lived with us one summer after their Senior year of HS (they've known each other forever) cuz of it and I wonder if that has anything to do with it. idk I don't think of the 90s as that homophobic but I have no clue really (pt 3)

A lot of bi people I know have unpleasant experiences with the larger LGBT community. If someone is paired with someone of a societally accepted gender then it’s incredibly easy (and common) for everyone to just assume they are straight, including in the LGBT community. They may have seen times when other couples were forced out depending on the gender of their latest partner or seen enough biphobia to expect that it would happen. I can’t begrudge anyone not wanting to participate in a community that doesn’t make them feel welcome very often. If your brother in law had bad experiences with his parents - that might also impact his willingness to be part of the community. If he still has a relationship with his parents it may be easier/safer to just let them assume he’s straight again rather then fight it at every turn. Or they may have completely different reasons.

As for the 90s - yeah it wasn’t easy being queer then. We didn’t have any kind of institutional support - no GSAs, no queer clubs in school, etc. I can understand someone not wanting to fight anymore.

All of that being said - I get that you were excited to have some queer family members move back close to you. I understand wanting them to be part of the community you’ve found. I’d suggest inviting them with low pressure and if they say no or make excuses just be cool with it and don’t ask them again that year. They may want to join you in the future, and they may not, that’s totally up to them.

Hope this helps some?

Orange Man Bad

Okay. This is gonna be a long one so buckle up.  First and foremost i need to say this in no uncertain terms. I have zero love for the current president. Do i think he’s doing some things right and some wrong? Yeah but that’s how presidents work. You’re not gonna like everything they do. Which leads me in to why i’m even typing this out.

To start out with, I live in the US. Meaning the news many of you hear from our media and yours is likely not fully accurate. So pay attention. 

In the early 2000′s things were slowly but surely getting better. Tech was advancing at a blinding pace, Social Media was just really starting to get it’s feet on the ground, Drama was all over TV and YouTube was still the wild west of the internet. Fast forward to Obama getting elected. The first Black president ever in the US. We were making progress in our own way. But fact is not all was well during this presidency. We will come back to that.

Fast forward to 2014, Hyper-progressivism is taking hold in certain circles and one event would happen that set about a chain reaction that would shake our culture for years to come. That event would be the Zoe Post. The spark that lit the fire that was what came to be known as GamerGate. Now let me inform the masses here for a moment. What you are told to believe, by most of the US and World media, is that GamerGate, was a harassment campaign made to drive women and minorities out of gaming. For those of you that don’t know what this was, this was a scapegoat. A well timed, “look over here, there’s nothing to see over there”.  Now for anyone with a brain stem, willing to look into the events that led up to GamerGate, you’d know a LOT of people did a lot of digging just to be certain of what was going on. And they found out that there was a LOT of shady things going on in games journalism. The Zoe Post was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for gamers and consumers in general to actually get their head in the game and start paying attention to the shady things games journalist had been doing. 

What happened however, was three people took advantage of this to make money. Zoe Quinn, whom had tested out nude modeling and did not feel like continuing, Anita Sarkeesian, an up and coming con artist (See Here), and Brianna Wu an Indie Game maker who saw potential gain for herself and her brand. Now this might seem bias but do your due diligence. Check the sources. Everything pretty much adds up. Now to continue; These three became the modern face of what would later be called 3rd Wave Feminism. Or as most of us know it. Radical Feminism. Reasons being as follows. (Side note: The FBI did a full investigation into threats and other things in regards to GG. What they found was a lot of nothing. Just a bunch of troll account hiding their assholery behind the anonymity of the internet. The entire rest of GG was good people trying to solve a now exposed and exploding problem in games journalism. A problem that was expanded when it was picked up incomplete by mainstream news. Mainstream news that misrepresented the 98% of what was GG. Just gamers that wanted their own journalists to be honest and ethical. That’s literally it. But sure if you don’t believe that, believe the well off journalists that were in front of the bus when this whole incident dropped. Or rather. The boy who cried wolf. Believe the liars if you want but that’s your choice to be or stay ignorant.)

1.It does not seek for equality. It seeks for power over men and other women.Nothing more.

3rd Wave feminism does not care about women around the world. Only empowerment and monetary gain of themselves. 

This version of feminism more or less gave rise to the what later became the Women’s March. The leaders of which, were confirmed antisemitic, Pro-Islamist’s whom were friends with the man who wrote the anti jew handbook, Louis Farrakhan.

Told women that wearing giant stuffed vagina’s are somehow empowering, and bleeding all over yourself is giving your finger to the man.

Also, This version of feminism was not about empowerment of all women. Only certain ones. This can clearly be seen due to the deletion of jobs that certain women wanted to be in but others deemed “not appropriate”.

Now explain to me. Where is the female empowerment of taking jobs away from women. Where is the empowerment in telling women what they can and can’t ware. Where is the empowerment in telling women what they HAVE to believe, and do with their lives. You can’t. Because their is no empowerment to anyone other than those whom are setting those standards. That’s NOT feminism. That’s control. 

Event’s that followed led to what is now known as #MeToo. This movement started from a good place. There were women whom were not in a good place at all, and whom were taken advantage of, ignored by police and friends, as well as suffering. The lifespan of this movement however outlived it’s stay as soon as the term “Believe all women” became a thing. The creation of this phrase per lack of a better word was sheer ignorance. Because since 2008 forward, the Mainstream media has reported on over 20 cases of false rape. The biggest of which was Duke La cross, where the girl admitted to lying so the guy she was crushing on would not find out she slept with 2 of the three boys indited in the claim. Now understand. I KNOW, there there are women out there that are not believed. I know there are evil men out there that have gotten away with rape. Here is the issue however with the entire MeToo Movement. Early on, it seek’d to wall men who had been raped out. More over it told men that they could NOT be raped. And it also ignored VERY HEAVILY woman on woman rape. The only care MeToo had for a long time was, “FUCK ALL MEN”. And i can likely still find that sentiment on twitter even now with someone who’s profile proudly waves the MeToo Hashtag. Plenty more than likely. (Side Note: This is not me saying don’t believe women. Not at all. Believe your friends and believe your family. But understand something very clearly. People lie. Anyone and everyone, lies. And the reasons they will do it can be next to anything. What i AM saying is do not crucify people until you know they are guilty. And word of mouth is NOT proof.)

Now lets go back a few years prior to this. Islam and blind acceptance of the religion and culture. Now i’m no xenophobe. Nor am i purely anti Islam. I’m just in support of those within the religion who are trying to mellow it out, and stamp out extremists. Here is the problem. When mass immigration started, there was little vetting. As such, many evil people came over with the good people. And they did it in mass often leaving women and children behind in war zones. And often young men between 14-40 whom only knew their culture. This led to several incidents that hyper progressive Europeans do their best to label, “fake news”. Examples: Link1 Link2 Link3

Now I will be the first to stop you RIGHT THERE, before you utter the phrase, “Not all migrants” or “Not all Muslims”. That’s true. It’s not by any stretch all or even most. But it’s enough that have come from a culture of women being subservient to men, more or less, that have come in with NO want to mesh with the culture. Rather, changed the culture of the land into their own. A culture that prides itself on patriarchy. That really evil thing that modern feminism can’t seem to stop griping about. But it’s largely ignored because, “they don’t know any better”. Ok let’s see you get raped by someone that “does not know any better”. I’m 100% positive you’d very much change your tunes then. And that’s not me wishing it on you. As i’d never wish that on anyone, ever. Fact is however this stuff has happened. And it has happened in bulk. With more than a few arrests being made due to CCTV footage. Though several were ultimately leg go because the government didn’t care to prosecute them. This was the same thing that happened a while back in the UK i believe. A sex trafficking ring that was known about for 41 years, but was left almost completely untouched, because the government thought it would be racist to prosecute them, as it happens many young teens tried to tell the police, only to be treated like prostitutes, and threatened with being locked up or charges filed on them. In what world is this ok? It’s not. But this is what happens when you just turn a blind eye because you want to “own” the other side of the political spectrum. 

Which brings me not to another event in the past, but something i need to say. I don’t care if you are left, right, center, up, down, slanted or otherwise. YOU, need to learn to make up your own mind, and learn how to do your research. Fact is everyone in the media around the world, Australia, Europe, the US and Canada all have a Main Stream Media bias problem. A hyper left progressive bias problem. And do you know why? Because the more angry and divided the people, the more you give into hate, the more you give into hate, the more you listen to them, mindlessly believing every single thing they say. Without question. Like for example, recently there has been a trend of movies doing poorly. Who does MSM blame? “Alt Right Trolls”. Alt Right being a group of radical racists and homophobes, some of whom are literal nazis. But the number of these individuals is small. Less than a percentage of the world populace. Here is the deal though. They make money from you being angry. They make money from US ALL being divided. That’s the thing though. They don’t actually give a damn about being right. They don’t care if they have the facts. They just want your eyes, on their product. And the more you fall into their trap headlines and clipped videos, false framing etc, the more power you actually give them. 

No matter what side you are on, most of us no matter left, right, center, liberal, progressive, conservative, etc, we just want to live our best lives. And trust me i have bones to pick with every side. Why? Because i’m not really on a side. If anything i’m just left of center but i don’t agree with most anyone on anything at this point. Why?

-Liberals are too soft spoken now a days and need to grow a spine, also realize that conservatives are NOT all the same. And neither are all republicans.

Progressives and Hyper progressives are too demanding, childish, irresponsible, hateful and vindictive. They don’t care about collateral damage at all. Nor if anyone gets hurt so long as they can have their way. Not to mention Antifa whom have injured SEVERAL innocent people, AND the fact you’re all actively promoting kids getting danced on by drag queens. Yeah.....you are responsible for that one. A grown man, who dresses like a woman as a career choice, dancing for a young girl. Oh and lest we forget the Drag kid stripping in gay bars for ACTUAL MONEY! IE: You’re fascists.

Conservatives need to stop taking it up the tail pipe and actually put up a fight against the left when they come swinging. Stop playing the “We can’t sink down to their level” game. Because not only are they not playing that game, they are actively participating in corruption and there is little FILED proof because you want to protect your moral high ground. Also also, Rape and Incest are BOTH valid reasons for an abortion. Why? Because the guilt and trauma of either could lead to thoughts of suicide or just as bad death of the baby by the hands of the mother after the birth. So if you are a conservative and believe in having an abortion if the mothers life is at risk? Consider how many rape victims commit suicide. 

Alt Right........Just......go play with alligators. Or Vipers. IE you’re all assholes and no matter your intent your all POS whom are not any better than the hyper progressives. 

Long story short? We stand divided. We stand divided because we let the news control how we see the world. And many of us can’t form opinions for ourselves so we latch on to others. Others that don’t actually care about you. They only care about using your voice as a megaphone to project their own. How does that benefit you? It doesn’t. Stop being so damn divided. Stop judging the other side of the argument before you even hear it purely because you think you already know what it is. OPEN YOUR DAMN EARS. Hate breeds hate. And you can never fight hate with hate because it becomes and endless cycle of only hate. And then it won’t ever stop. Also you need to realize....closing your ears and screaming “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA” does not make you right. It makes you a dick. People are NOT the politicians that “represent them”, just like the Politicians are not the people they aim to supposedly represent. Conservatives are more chill now than they have been in years. But progressives actively chase them out of spaces, and then wonder why they are up in arms. Maybe it’s because you call them all buzzwords that are not true, you protect monsters just to “own the cons” and often turn a blind eye to your own sides wrong doings. (Side Note: An example of this is the huge Ellen controversy when she was seen with G. W. Bush. Everyone said he was a war criminal and should have been put in prison or worse. You know who makes plenty of public appearances and next to no one criticizes? Obama. The man who build your “Concentration camps”, the man who STARTED the parent child separation policy. The man who is responsible for MORE INNOCENT DEATHS in the middle east than most of the previous presidents combined. Do you have any idea how many innocent women and children died in his drone strikes?! If anything Bush was an idiot who was controlled by Chaney. And the VP is also in active control of the Military at any given time. And i hear constantly. “Oh i’m not excusing Obama but we are not talking about him”. Yeah you POS. No one EVER talks about him. No one EVER holds him to the standard they hold Bush to. Do you know why? Because he’s a Democrat. And if people criticized him, they have to admit THEY are the ones that put him in office. They’d have to admit THEIR side is not right. Fuck right off.)

Lets just to Trump as he is the title of this thing. The news will NOT leave him alone. It was Russia for 3.8 years and for the next little bit it’s been Ukraine. And they did the same thing to Tulsi Gabbard when she ran. “Russian Asset”. Sound familiar? Well if it doesn’t it’s the same BS they pull when they say, “This movie did poorly because of alt right white men” It’s the same sentence, different context. It’s an excuse to slap someone down because “Alt right” “white man” “Russia”, and other bullshit are all words and phrases that make people LOSE THEIR SHIT. They don’t even need proof. All they need is one finger to point at the target and blam. All hands on deck to destroy anyone and anything pointed at, no matter who or what it is. None of you actually care about a cause. You care about hurting others. You care about bullying. And before any of you get uppity and go, “well they bully, and they hurt”. When and where did it become ok to become your enemy. And if they really are doing that, do NOT, meet them head on as if doing the same thing as them is somehow ok. Malcom X Justified raping black women as practice for when they’d do it to white women. Are you going to justify rape now? Because if not then sit your ass down and realize who and WHAT you are becoming. That bully you bitch about. That bigot with hurtful opinions? You are becoming them. You are just trying to justify it by saying, “Oh well they deserve it”. So what if they do? When did YOU become judge, jury, and executioner?

And that’s my issue. Trump might be a loud, ignorant, obnoxious, troll. But a lot of the things we’ve been told by the media that he’s done...is blatant shit framing, and flat out lies. Trump is polarizing because no one can actually control him. He can’t keep secrets, and he won’t shut up. Which is still better than Obama AND Bush. Because we hear more or less everything. Or rather, we would if the media would stop talking about fake stories. Why not talk to conservatives about the lack of the wall they wanted. Or how Trump has put crap gun laws in motion. Or maybe, talk about how even though the economy was amazing, pre corona, Trump is still an idiot. You don’t bring anyone to your side by screaming at people. And you certainly don’t do it by berating them. Main stream Media and Social Media have not helped this division and have only made the problem worse. Listen. Love. Learn. You might not like what someone has to say, but let them say it. Listen to people and TRY to understand why they are saying what they say. Even if you don’t learn, and even if you still don’t agree, you will have walked away with a better understanding as to WHY. And the WHY, in everything is what’s most important. The world can’t grow from a what. Nor from a who. Only from a fundamental understanding of WHY. 

Top of the Flops - Cursed (2005)

A brief introduction: I watch a lot of movies, and specifically, I watch a lot of terrible movies. On purpose. Perhaps it was growing up on Adam Sandler movies that did it, but I am naturally drawn to the mistakes of cinema. Making friends that are equally as obsessed with the annals of acrid cinema helped encourage my plight, as did the great podcast, How did this Get Made? I’ve learned to embrace my love of the hot garbage, yet all my terrible film watching tended to just fall into a well deep inside my brain where it’d remain, only to occasionally crawl back out and force me to admit: “Oh shit, I think i’ve seen that”. And so, with this feature, I will attempt to look these movies dead in the eye and say “.....alright then”. These films won’t necessarily be the traditional flop, but they will exist in one of three categories (or hopefully, all three): Financial Flop, Critical Flop, or Flop inside my own Heart. And we start with a movie that swipes at those three categories with a badly animated paw and succeeds at being all of them.

Budget: $38m

Gross: $29.6m

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 16%

When you think about something being cursed, sure, you might think of someone bitten by a Hollywood Werewolf. Or, you might think of a film that is produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the unsurpassed ineffectual tinkerers of Hollywood Movies. Cursed has a lot of curses, but it is hard to find one more damning than that of the Weinstein curse, which put this movie through years of production hell while they desperately attempted to lower the rating and stuff it full of stars so that people would actually go and see it. They failed wildly. Pandering is the bread and butter of Horror Cinema of the mid-2000s (let us not forget that Paris Hilton starred in the House of Wax remake that year) and boy does this film come off as a parent trying to access your love by accessing your CD collection (shit, ‘CD collection’? Sorry, this film has put me into 2005 mode, when I actually owned CDs by some of the bands in this soundtrack).

How pander-ific does it get? The film opens with a Bowling for Soup concert. Y’know, the guys who sang Girl all the Bad Guys Want? Yeah, them. Whether or not they were a voice of a generation, this film skews pretty young, and in case you were worried that they’re just aiming for the kids who ride skateboards, worry no more: the singer Mya is at the concert. Yes, the singer Mya. And the strangest thing is, the singer Mya doesn’t sing at all. Which is what, if anything, she was known for. It is entirely possible she showed up to the production, Wes Craven didn’t recognise her and instead cast her as “girl who flirts and therefore gets violently killed”. And later, the trifecta of “WHY ARE THEY THERE” musicians is complete when Lance Bass has a wordless cameo. Oh Bass, you truly were the Alfred Hitchcock of cameos! (Alfred Hitchcock was also the Alfred Hitchcock of cameos, as well as the Alfred Hitchcock of Alfred Hitchcocks). 

Aside from Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg leading the cast, (who no teen on earth cared about in 2005), the film’s attempt to celebrit-ise the cast list is, erm...weird? There’s Shannon Elizabeth (who was 5 years past being popular), Joshua Jackson (who was 10 years past being popular) and Scott Baio (who was literally never popular). As Bart once pointed out: “What’s a Chachi?”. And, if it had been released ten years later, the film could’ve had something on their hands with this cameo...

It’s odd that the film should be such a cynical Hollywood cheap-fest because writer Kevin Williamson (scribe of classics like Scream and...not classics like I Know What You Did Last Summer) is quite the meta lover, and is excitedly peppers the script with lots of digs at Hollywood. They’re not good digs: Jesse Eisenberg suggests that as the werewolf is from Hollywood, it might have breast implants, an image that’s so stupid, yet so viscerally disgusting, that I wish Eisenberg had never opened his bastard mouth to say it. Williamson is not much of a satirist outside of Scream, but you get the feeling he thinks he is. “I’m gonna make fun of dumb old Hollywood whilst making a film that is the most clear cut example of dumb old Hollywood. Haha! Take that, me!”.

The film has promise in its names: Wes Craven behind the camera and Rick Baker on makeup, but in reducing the film’s certificate, The Weinstein’s rid the movie of almost any of that great Baker body horror makeup, and any of that Craven intelligence. I can’t blame it all on them: the scariest thing about it is how horrifically directed it is: it looks like a TV Movie, and I genuinely would not surprised if Craven was napping through 80% of filming. And it’s an odd decision to rely so heavily on cheap looking CGI when Baker is around - it’s like they said “Great, we’ve got Rick Baker on board! Now, lets lock him in that cupboard over there for two years”. Because this film literally took over two years to make. A film taking a long time, a film having reshoots, and a film having rewrites, are three signs your film is in trouble. Cursed has all three of those. I mean, did it really sound promising when Men in Black 3′s rewrites were going so badly that they got Will Smith on board to help out? It damn well didn’t, and we ended up with a film with lines like “I will pimp-slap the shiznit out of you”. In 2012. 

You can tell Cursed was filmed over gigantic periods of time, which would explain why nobody in the film appears to give a shit about anything that’s happening. Ricci, Eisenberg and Jackson seem so entirely bored and quite honestly, sleepy, that it’s baffling that Wes didn’t say ‘Hey can we try that once more but this time not shitty?’. Not that he cared too much - how do you direct a film from someone’s else’s script for nearly THREE years and still care? How do you maintain a solid and consistent directing style over three years? The answer is: you don’t. 

I can not blame the bad performances. The script is so dire and laughable that caring about it requires energy which could be better spent on things such as making some lunch or clearing out your junk mail folders. I mean, what could Ricci possibly see in her character Ellie? She’s a talk show producer which never plays into her story, and after she and her brother are attacked by an LA Werewolf, what exciting changes in her occur? What emotional developments does she have to grapple with? Well for a starter, she wears a new shirt to work. It’s the most nondescript shirt imaginable, and yet it causes her co-worker to tell her she looks “Saucy”. Did I mention that this movie has no idea how people talk or act? She does so little else, except sniff the odd bit of blood, and worry that her brooding boyfriend, Joshua Jackson, isn’t happy with her. His story isn’t much better, the crux of his arc in the first half is “He loves to fuck so much, but can he learn to cut back on all the fucking?”. Oh, and he has a club to open, which is a bizarre Madame Tussauds of horror movie mannequins, but also Cher and Xena, and also a house of mirrors, and also a DJ. And Lance Bass attends the opening. It feels like the weirdest and laziest shoehorn of “Hey here’s some horror movie imagery so we can tie our movie to much better horror movies!”, and the twist is so predictable that I wrote in my notes “If Joshua Jackson doesn’t turn out to be a werewolf I will eat my own hands.”. 

         IF ONLY there was some framing to give me a hint! Darn it!

Meanwhile, Jesse Eisenberg plays Jimmy, who knows he is turning into a werewolf because he went on “internet search” and typed in the words “Werewolf L.A”. He doesn’t seem very bothered, though. As soon as they get home from their initial attack (during which Shannon Elizabeth is in a fiery car wreck and then dragged off to her death), he says, with casual indifference “Well. G’night”. After he saw a woman killed. And after they were attacked by a gigantic wolf. Nobody seems to care about anything that is happening, but why should they? Jimmy’s werewolf transformation is only marginally more exciting than Ellie’s, because he gets the Spiderman 3 style hair makeover (although this is spiky rather than floppy) and he can now suplex his bully. 

Ellie’s transformation means she can catch a fly in her bare hand, y’know, just as werewolves are always doing. The film seems to forget that they’re actually supposed to be werewolves because they never actually turn into werewolves, and it never seems to affect their lives too badly. The traditional impetus for werewolves’ story arc is that they want to stop becoming a werewolves because they don’t want to kill people. That isn’t even hinted at with either Ellie or Jimmy - they never even try to kill anyone, they never fully transform, and the most dangerous Ellie gets is when she yells “Don’t start with me!” at a producer who doesn’t want Scott Baio to be bumped for Carrot Top. Seriously. A moment that is supposed to showcase Ellie’s newfound animal fury involves a conversation about Carrot Top and Scott Baio. For most of the film she doesn’t really believe she’s a werewolf, which gives us a contender for worst line of 2005: “Everybody’s cursed. It’s called life”. Her story is thoroughly underwritten, meanwhile you wish Jimmy’s story was not written at all.

Because he’s Jesse Eisenberg, he gets bullied by someone who throws homophobic slurs at him even though, as Jimmy repeatedly reminds us, he’s not gay. Poor straight kid! That must be tough, being straight! Some of these insults include “Your dog is gay too!”, and “You ass wimp wad”. But it’s okay, because it turns out the bully is gay! And not only that, but he turns up on Jimmy’s front porch and tries to kiss him, which leads to another of the worst/best lines of the film: “i’m not gay....i’m a werewolf”. The nonchalant way he just reveals that information is ridiculous, and is another demonstration of the way that nobody seems to care very much about anything in this movie. The film doesn’t seem to care very much about its set pieces either, one of which happens moments after the porch scene. The family dog for no apparent reason is a werewolf now, too! A vague, fuzzily CGI’d ball of brown that throws itself through windows!

                                   “Ahh!! It’s an....onion bhaji?”

Meanwhile, Joshua Jackson’s secret kind of just falls out, as if Kevin Williamson was like “Oh RIGHT, there has to be an antagonist”. Joshua Jackson is a werewolf after all, and this draws the action towards the opening of his club, where Jimmy’s bully joins them for some reason, and proceeds to get knocked out instantly, a state in which he remains for the entire duration of the scene. 

  “My dying wish is that I one day star in a superhero show that is beloved for      one season and then the most hated thing on TV for the second season”

The great TV writer John Swartzwelder was known for using “for some reason” in his scripts, which worked beautifully for a solid, absurd joke. But Cursed is a supposed horror film that takes “for some reason” and bases its entire third act on it. Why are they all here at this club? Why is Judy Greer turning into a werewolf now? And why, by any stretch of the imagination, did the writers think that, after having her looks insulted, it’d be a good idea to have the Greerwolf do this:

Yes, Judy Greer is the last-minute big bad wolf, but to what end? Where was all the build up to that? What is her motivation? And how much longer if there left of this film? She gives an expository dump about how much she hates women and thus wants to eat her, and it carries about as much weight as the fly that Ellie caught earlier (callbacks!). The big fight between Greerwolf and Jimmy & Ellie feels totally unearned, and they don’t even use any of their Werewolf abilities. I mean, sure, it’s a fun sight seeing Jesse Eisenberg charging at Greerwolf with a sword and shouting “yyAAAH YAAAAAAAH”, but the scene ends without Ellie and Jimmy doing anything impressive at all, and instead a bunch of cops just shooting her to death. It’s not very clever or satisfying. At least she got to crack a few lines before her time was up, including “Showtime. Isn’t that what they say?”. Uhh...yeah I guess? Good one? The film cannot seem to make up its mind on what any of the characters think or want, and so Joshua Jackson goes from good, to bad, to good and back to bad again, and not for one second does the disinterest on his face let up.

      “I’m a fuckin wolf and uh, i’m gonna eat you now I guess. Or not. Wes!?”

The final set piece, which limps along after what feels like a 20 minute film (which is actually 100 minutes) occurs after 3 acts which involve zero emotional development, and zero cool werewolf moments. Surely now is the time for our protagonist, Ellie, to have both? Nah! Instead she slowly sort-of turns into a werewolf, by getting lumpy skin and big teeth. She never fully transforms (“It happens slowly at first” says Jackson, meaning “we don’t have the budget for a full transformation”) and doesn’t even get to overpower Joshua Jackson, which would’ve at least given her some agency and closure. That task is left to Jimmy who crawls around on the ceiling for a bit, (another classic werewolf attribute??) before eventually stopping Jackson with a shovel and a....cake serving knife. A cake serving knife that you see a lot of in the film, because apparently cake serving knives are really cool props to have as a sort of Chekhov’s Cake Server?

            “Teenagers LOVE cake servers, right” - Kevin Williamson

Jimmy saves Ellie with the help of the cake server, and once Jackson is down, Ellie at the very least she gets to smash Jackson’s head off, and his body burns. Kitchen RUINED. She doesn’t even seem upset that she’s had to smash her supposed love’s head clean off his body. And mere moments after this, Jimmy’s crush comes to the door having found their were-dog, and conveniently knowing that a) it’s his dog and b) where he lives. They have a kiss and walk off, with his bully in attendance because apparently he doesn’t have a family of his own. They all got over that evening pretty fast. After tearing a werewolf’s head off and having your sister nearly killed, would you not want to hang out for a bit longer? Just have a bit of a night in? Instead, it’s a casual “Well that’s done then, bye!”. And there’s his arc. He’s made a friend, got a girlfriend, and saved his sister. And what was Ellie’s arc? She wears a new shirt, has her life nearly ended several times, has her house ruined, and then, as Jimmy fucks off with his mates, she closes the film with the line “I’m just gonna stay here and clean”. Seriously. That’s her resolution. That’s how she ends the film. Bloodied, miserable, alone, and cleaning up the gore in her kitchen. I can’t wait for Cursed 2 to see if she managed to successfully hoover up all that werewolf fur!! 

It’s a real failure of a film in every regard. It does lean towards trying to be fun rather than trying to be scary, but couldn’t it have tried to be even a bit spooky? Could the jump scares have not been so endless and predictable. I mean, ten points for anyone who can guess where the jump scare is coming from in this scene:

Yes, a cuckoo clock is about as scary as it gets. I could tolerate the lack of care put into the story and the characters if the action and horror were there, but they really aren’t. There is nothing tense, well crafted or smart in the film. It’s baffling to think this is the guy who made Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street, because this doesn’t just feel like it was directed by someone having an off day, it feels like it was directed by someone whose only experience is directing episodes of MTV’s Cribs. It doesn’t attempt to subvert, improve or even just successfully repeat the werewolf formula, instead it just throws random iconography from those movies at you with Dashboard Confessional songs playing loudly enough to distract you from this terrible film with an even more terrible soundtrack. Terrible, and yet I did have fun with it. It actually benefits from being flimsy and light as air, and as dreadful as it gets, I did appreciate it not taking itself too seriously. There are enough unintentionally funny and simply bizarre moments to make it an enjoyable watch, and it’s not the most hatable of films. It could almost have had a charm, if it wasn’t really, really, extremely bad. 

Worth a hate watch?: Yes

Worst/best line: “I’m not gay....i’m a werewolf”

Worst film of 2005?: Son of the Mask, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Doom, XXX 2, The Pacifier and Bewitched all came out in 2005, so no. Cursed might be a bad film from a bad year, but it is not the worst. Rob Schneider knows very well which film is the worst of 2005. 

10 Things From That 70s Show That Haven't Aged Well | ScreenRant

We're all familiar with the sitcom that follows a group of teenagers as they live their lives in the 70s. In That 70s Show, which actually began airing in the late 90s, we meet all sorts of dynamic, wild, and quirky characters as they go through life dealing with relationships, school, and family. However, while this show is still hilarious, not everything from it has aged incredibly well. In case you're wondering, here are 10 things from the series that don't exactly hold up by today's standards.

RELATED: That 70's Show: 10 Storylines That Were Never Resolved

10 The Huge Deal About Homosexuality

This show is definitely not homophobic, and, sure, it takes place in the 70s, but that doesn't mean this show doesn't feed stereotypes. In the first season, Eric starts hanging out with Buddy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). He discovers that Buddy is gay when Buddy tries to kiss him.

This episode perpetuates the idea that gay people are attracted to all men, which is kind of ridiculous. Also, remember when Fez has a weird dream about Kelso, and they're both horrified by the thought of being attracted to each other? Yeah, we, unfortunately, do, too.

9 Frowning Upon Female Empowerment

Donna is a strong woman, and she constantly is getting made fun of for her "non-girly-like" tendencies. This theme shows up most prominently, though, when her mother, Midge, starts taking female empowerment classes in "Stolen Car".

Bob is not pleased about this and has difficulty accepting the fact that Midge should have her own ambitions and strengths. That's pretty misogynistic Bob, and we're not having any of it.

RELATED: That ‘70s Show: 10 Times It Broke Our Hearts

8 Insulting Men's Emotions

Red is pretty old-school, and it goes without saying that he likes his gender stereotypes. Yes, some of the characters do break these, but it doesn't go without being chastised by the other characters.

Red is constantly on Eric for not being manly enough. Another example is in the episode "Grandma's Dead" when Red's brother comes to visit after their mother passes away. Red is embarrassed that his brother is emotional at the funeral. How dare a man cry over his mother's death, right?

7 Contraception

There's a whole lot of talk about sex in this series. Of course, it's the 70s, and what else do young adults talk about? However, one thing that definitely hasn't aged well is the whole deal with contraception.

There are a couple of times where either Donna or Jackie thinks they are pregnant, which is humorous, and, honestly pretty relatable. However, everyone tries to get involved with Donna's means of contraception, and we're not having anyone tell any woman what to do with her body, ever.

RELATED: That ‘70s Show: 10 Most Underrated Supporting Characters

6 Expectations for Sex

Again, sex is a pretty common theme for this group of friends. Sure, kids can be mean and get pretty involved with each other's sex lives, but this show doesn't do anybody any favors when it comes to gender expectations.

For example, when Eric and Donna sleep together but don't have sex, Eric is chastised for not being a 'man'. Similarly, Eric, for who knows what reason, pulls Donna's pants down during a basketball game, revealing her "granny panties." Of course, she's made fun of for this. Today's lesson: have sex when you're ready and wear whatever the hell you want.

5 Everything To Do With Leo

Sure, Leo is the hippie guy that loves photography and smokes a lot of pot and has long hair and is super stupid. Need we really say more about this absolutely atrocious stereotype? Yeah, it's funny, and we all love Tommy Chong. In fact, we're sure this guy has absolutely no grievances with playing this character.

However, we're not exactly sure that this character ages well in terms of inclusivity and stereotypes. Leo is also kind of a bad person who ends up in jail and has tons of money problems. This huge jab at stoners isn't sitting well with us.

RELATED: That '70s Show: 7 Couples That Hurt The Show (And 13 That Saved It)

4 The Shaming of "Big Rhonda"

If you remember at the beginning of the fourth season, the gang is introduced to Big Rhonda. For starters, her name is literally "Big," and, yes, that should be offensive.

What's even worse, though, is that Fez *amazingly* becomes attracted to her after he gets drunk, and it's, like, a huge deal. We don't really have to explain much more about why this isn't aging well. Yes, you should be offended about everything to do with this character. Oh yeah, they also give her a makeover?

3 "Eric's Hot Cousin"

Yes, this is in fact even the name of the episode that you probably remember cringing all the way through. When Eric's cousin comes to visit, the boys realize that she is older, mature, and smoking hot. However, she takes a liking to Eric.

Of course, this is all a ploy by her to get revenge on Eric for some childhood prank he pulled on her. Still, this episode is absolutely appalling to watch, and it's definitely one of Eric's least redeeming moments in the entire series. Can't say incest was ever okay, but it certainly hasn't aged any better.

RELATED: Where Are They Now: That '70s Show

2 "Let's Spend the Night Together"

This is another episode title, and we chose to include the whole thing because there are multiple parts that are definitely not holding up.

For starters, Hyde finally meets his real biological father. He happens to be a black man, which ends up being the source of many jokes and awkwardness. Sure, it's the 70s, and, yes, Hyde is white, but this whole race fiasco shouldn't exactly be surprising. On the other side of the gang, Donna takes Eric to a feminism rally. This whole scene is horribly unrepresentative of feminists—and rather depicts radical ones—and gives a bad name to all women and men in the movement towards equality. This didn't hold up then, and it's definitely only getting worse as time goes on.

1 When Charlie Falls Off the Water Tower

There's a lot of things from this sitcom that should, and do, make you cringe and definitely question how on earth kids are allowed to watch it these days. While we almost included the plethora of strippers, dating older women, and the weird thing that was Donna and Eric's engagement, we settled on this item for the last spot on this list.

Kelso falls off the water tower A LOT, but do you remember when their new friend, Charlie, falls off the tower in the first episode of the 8th season? Do you remember that he dies? This was supposed to be funny, and it's actually just kicked under the rug, like, immediately after. Yeah, we draw the line at young teenagers falling to their violent death.

We still love this hilarious and quirky show, and we know you'll watch it again. However, you might want to just skip these episodes or at the very least, take them with a grain of salt.

NEXT: Early 2000s Sitcoms Which Defined That Era Of TV

source https://screenrant.com/that-seventies-show-hasnt-aged-well/

Notes on “Spider-man: Far From Home” and other Spider-man movies from someone who maybe half-likes the MCU

Hey, who out there is like me -- maybe half-likes the Marvel Cinematic Universe at most? Ie, you go see the movies wth friends as a social event. Maybe you like Thor 1, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, the Spiderman movies. OK this is for you. Come along for the ride.

Alright, so I went to see Spiderman: Far From Home. Yep it’s fun -- I was entertained for 2hrs, it’s fun to see with friends, I kind of forgot everything by the next day, it’s a solid MCU movie, go see it. 

Stuff I liked (mild spoilers ahead)

*Honestly? The scenery is really pretty. That’s not usually the first thing I talk about, but Venice waterways and those European forests and cities with carnivals? Serious eyecandy. I mean if Disney’s gonna throw money at something, I appreciate these beautiful set locations.

*Classmate interactions with Peter Parker. Fav parts of the movie. Cut out 7/8 of the CGI battle scenes and tech stuff; add more classmate stuff instead, thanks.

*Okay but out of the endless CGI stuff, the dream-sequence-ness was pretty cool.

* The bridge scene w/ Peter Parker and MJ. Peter doing an abrupt turnaround decision and blurting out his secret identity. MJ being 67% sure. The quips in the movie are good, as with a lot of the MCU movies. They know how to do funny lines.

* MJ Actually Not Being Here For It At All re: swinging across town with Spidey. I appreciate this because, honestly, who amongst us would have any other reaction than MJ’s.

H/C angles -- Hm, not actually the most interesting part of the movie for me, in this case. Anyway, Spidey/Peter Parker gets physically whalloped a bit, limps around, etc. Also there’s a lot of mourning for Tony Stark which I guess could be emotional hurt/comfort for some audience members. Too bad I’m sick of MCU Tony Stark and I would be okay not seeing his face or character again. So most of the movie was me being like “aaarrgh”... because guess whose face, in fact, kept showing up or being talked about.

Other notes (major spoilers ahead)

Alright, this is where everyone who is maybe only half-interested in the MCU -- because the MCU is mostly about men and mostly white men at that and it’s  these processed corporate stories with like 7/8 more CGI fight scenes thrown in your face than needed and everything is packed into a breakneck pacing and there’s always some Alien Warcraft In Space and every movie is like the same. dang. thing. every time. -- Anyway, this is the space for ya’ll.

Okay, there are times that I did like MCU’s CGI fancy tech stuff -- like Black Panther’s afrofuturism. Very cool. Lots of designs I haven’t seen before. And subversive against a lot of media tropes. Also Thor: Ragnarock with Taika Waititi putting aboriginal flag colors on the ships and other indigenous people references through the movie. Also, in general, I liked those movies ‘cause they were being made with PoC and colonized people viewpoints.

Since I’m on the topic -- the appeal of the first Thor movie is, for me, that it feels like a weird Shakespeare story in Space with Epic Costumes and locations. (The director has indeed made a bunch of Shakespeare movies.) Also the movie has some romance book elements -- the women feel like solid characters and the lead woman demands the male protag to act better and he actually does become a more appealing, good person.

Also, MCU Spiderman. Because I’m here to watch Fun Superhero movies. (Not superhero movies where women get thrown off cliffs repeatedly as plot points. And where a first-year ecology student or a natural resource manager could give like 20 examples of why Populations and Ecology Doesn’t Work Like That and Also That is Some Seriously Racist and Colonizer Views You’re Helping To Spread Through A Mainstream Movie. You know, if the MCU producers or Russo brothers or whoever would have listened for like 2 minutes. Guess which blog writer didn’t think much of Infinity War or Endgame.) ANYWAY, so out of the MCU movies, the Spider-man movies are what I’m more interested in.

Oh, note on Tony Stark. The only MCU Tony Stark I like is in fanfiction. Fanfic people write MCU Tony Stark and write the IronDad SpiderSon thing in a way where I’m like, “Oooh okay I get the appeal now”. Fanfic writers, doing all the good work as usual. Otherwise, eh... I never liked the Tony Stark half-adopting Peter Parker thing. It just felt weird. Towards the end of Spiderman: Far From Home, you see the movie setting up Peter Parker being a mini-Tony-Stark as he messes with CGI holograms and assembles his own suit. And I’m like “Nooooooo, leave Peter Parker alone, don’t turn him into Stark.... And also blaaahhhh more CGI generic holographic tech sequences blaaahhh”.

Also, seriously not cool to all put this responsibility on some little “Haven’t Even Taken all His AP Classes or Started Applying to College” highschool kid. Honestly, earlier in the movie? I was thinking, “Yeah Peter you give those fancy (Likely-Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction) Glasses to there Fishbowl-Head-Man. You deserve better than this mess, MCU Peter Parker. Seriously, the kid probably doesn’t even know how to drive yet.” I was on-board with this plan. But, no, the plot had different ideas. I continue to blame Tony Stark or Fury or just all the adults in this situation honestly.

Also, TBH, as the credits were rolling, what I thought was, “Oh this makes me miss the 2000′s Spiderman 1 and 2 movies.” This shows which movies/versions of Spider-man I imprinted on. 

I did re-watch the 2002 and 2004 Spider-man movies two years ago (after the first MCU Spiderman movie Homecoming came out). The 2000′s movies are still solid movies. A few notes:

Nostalgia Glasses OFF. Wow, Spiderman 1 movie = very White. We are in NYC, right? Why are all the students white? On this point, the MCU Spiderman movies and also the Sony Miles Morales spiderman movie is better and more interesting. (Actually... I’m putting the Miles Morales movie a smidge above MCU spiderman movies, honestly -- the animation is cool, there’s some weird jokes I dig, some really weird macabre jokes I dig, I like the main character a lot, I like that he’s mixed race and we get some references to that, and I like that we get to feel our Feels a little more thanks to more breathing room in the pacing.) 

Also, 2002 spiderman movie, your homophobic joke about Bonesaw was never cool and hasn’t aged well.

What I Still Like: Ya know I just really appreciate some pacing and direction where we get to feel stuff, you know? Also, a standalone story for a movie! We focus on the main protag and a few other people. I like that the main character in this version is moving from senior year of high school to college and young adulthood and a lot of the serious themes about responsibility and stuff are overlapping with this. The way this is done feels more quietly grounded and real.

H/C angles -- Gotta say the whump and emotional hurt/comfort is still really solid in Spider-man 1 + 2. Very earned. Oddly, this time around, what stood out for me was Harry Osborn’s grief at losing his father. Especially that scene where he’s about to kill Spider-man in grief-revenge and he pulls off Spider-man’s mask and it’s his best bud Peter Parker, and Harry’s just whalloped. [Whumpy clip from Spiderman 2 with all that, YouTube]

What I also still like: So I guess the people making Spider-man 1 didn’t have all that much money? There’s a close-up scene where MJ is embracing Spiderman as they swing across the city. I think I read later, the actress playing MJ said the production team had to use a mannequin in that scene, so she had to hug the mannequin and pretend it was Spider-man. I didn’t notice this until I read it. But since then, whenever I see that scene and pay close attention, Spider-man does look a little off and I start laughing.

Also, Willem Dafoe hamming it up. No, really. Hamming. it. up. So good.