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A Mostly Complete Diary Of All The Media I Consume That I Bother To Write Down And Then Also Post On The Internet 🍽️😋

Legion (2017) #

— Season 1

Why not a new super hero show?

This is Legion, the son of Charles Xavier who has dissociative identity disorder, and every personality has a different super power. Which means that this kid is Crazy Jane from Doom Patrol!

Kind of an interesting trope really. We don’t really see too many other mental disorders glamorized to the point of creating super heroes. There’s nobody on TV so autistic that they become a superhero. There’s nobody with so much anxiety that they solve crimes. Actually I guess there are some high anxiety ASD detectives. Like Monk (never watched) and Morgan from High Potential (just watched Season 1)

But off the top of my head, with DID there’s Crazy Jane, Moon Knight, and now here’s Legion.

Whoo hoo mental illness!

UPDATE:

Just finished this season.

So they changed David’s character to have paranoid schizophrenia instead of dissociate identity disorder. Which is okay I guess. They still stay close to the original characterization by giving him a headmate. So it’s not like he’s the only personality in his head after all.

Sidebar: closer to having DID is Loudermilk. Two people sharing one body. They made a point of identifying Kerri as native, which makes me wonder whether they were trying to evoke any kind of two-spirit association since the two of them are different gendered. I don’t know enough about that tradition to make a guess though.

Anyway, it really does feel like a season of Doom Patrol with all of the trippy reality warping and memories-within-memories and astral selves and stuff. But a much more serious Doom Patrol with much less haha.

I like the story and the effects.

David’s tantrums and his overpowered glower were unpleasant to watch. Jermain’s Oliver is a wacky stuck-in-time Austin Powers-esque sort of deus-ex-machina thingie but still very fun to watch.

All in all I like it a quite a bit. There are only two more seasons and then it got canceled. So I think I’ll finish it! 5/5 stars!

Wands of the Whippoorwill Wood #

Fantastic layout and art. Very beautiful to look at, a pleasure to read. Extremely thorough and complete for 19 pages of spreads.

The players find themselves embroiled in a struggle between the advancing human civilization and the retreating fairies. Whoever first finds the two magical fae wands will secure victory for their side.

Submitted originally for the “A Town, A Forest, a Dungeon” game jam, it delivers on the theme and more.

The Whipporwhill Wood is an 18 point diamond-shaped triangular-grid map evocative of a hex-flower with its wrap around mechanics, and chance of getting lost (though, using a simple d4, it lacks the hex-flower’s biased 2d6 movement). The triangular grid map is a rarity in this hobby of hex maps. I think it is very neat! Diagetically, this is explained not just as a dense and confusing forest, but as a magical effect that protects its fairy inhabitants through warping shifting forest paths.

The Bailiwick of Swallowtail is not simply a town but a tight-knit colony of miniature fairy villages.

There are two dungeons to explore.

And There is a detailed faction game (everybody wants those wands!) complete with wants, needs, and a full table of attitudes each faction/npc has for each other.

There are also encounter tables a bestiary, magic items, starting hooks and objectives. Just a really complete adventure.

5/5 stars!

https://palleonpress.itch.io/wands-of-the-whippoorwill-wood

https://itch.io/jam/a-town-a-forest-a-dungeon

Hope Floats (1998) #

It’s Sandra Bullock being all southern, and Mae Whitman being a little baby.

I was very disappointed to learn that Sandra Bullock’s character is named Birdee and not Hope. But I guess you can’t call it Birdee Floats. Although they do. Haven’t you ever seen a duck?

At home we had a pet skunk. Mama used to call it Justin Matisse. Do you think that’s just a coincidence? All day long she would to scream, “You stink Justin Matisse!” Then one day she just picked up a club and killed it.

Mae Whitman’s Bernice was kind of the star of this show I think

Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts the most. Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up.

You have to wrap the movie with this quote in order for it to make sense or to be tolerable, really. Because it’s all middle. It ends right at a new beginning for Birdee and you don’t get to see what happens.

It was pretty good. Good soundtrack. 5/5 stars!

American Horror Story #

— Murder House (Season 1)

This is a very scary show!

It is just chock full of ghosts!

I got to around episode 6 and thought to myself, this must be about finished. But no! Six more episodes to go! How much more can this family take?

The answer is: not much. The house broke them. But then they kind of had a weird, twisted happy ending anyway?

Violet’s reveal threw me. Did not see that coming!

Can’t tell if I’m supposed to feel sympathy for Tate. Dude is truly a monster I think. A sad, lonely monster. But a monster nonetheless.

I’d watch another season! 5/5 stars!

Triangle Agency (Haunted Table Games) #

Paranormal Investigation and Corporate Horror

Calling it: Game of the Year right here. I get super excited any time I find a game that supports gonzo, surreal, or dada paranormal investigation. Basically I just want to play Doom Patrol.

Found out about this on the Tabletop Book Club Podcast.

this is a fucking delight to read! absolutely beautiful layout! lots of charts and infographics. super corporate. very funny.

there is a great conceit where the rulebook is a manual for field agents, and “a roleplaying game” is some kind of psychological stress relief technique for agents. this allows the manual to refer to the in-game events as “reality” and the game itself as … not. i think you have to read it to get it. but it’s great.

the tone is highly comedic and surreal: the first example mission is an anomaly that came into existence because of a sandwich maker’s desire to keep all the ingredients inside the sandwich, and has started turning people inside out. brilliant! what kind of weird, gonzo, doom patrol bullshit is this? i love it.

agents are Resonants: anomalies that have grafted onto humans and are stabilized by the triangle agency.

uses a unique d4 dice pool mechanic where you roll 6d4 and count 3s as hits. (because triangle.) non-3s add to a Chaos Pool that can be used to fuel anomalous effects. and you can spend QA points to turn a not-3 into a 3. but if you run out of QA, you get burnout in that attribute, and must convert one 3 into a not-3, creating more Chaos. rolling exactly three 3s is a critical “Tricendence” success and you get an additional bonus. Achieving three 3s through burnout or QA is not Tricendence, but is Stability: you get no bonus, but contribute zero Chaos.

Rolls are made not to accomplish things directly—you are not superpowered, nor even especially capable—but to Alter Reality by establishing Causal Chains and applying one of your Qualities. This is a great way to avoid short circuiting to meta-gaming. e.g. “I roll for perception, what do I see?” That kind of meta-gaming doesn’t exist here. You can’t just “roll perception” as a player; you must state an intended effect, narrate a mundane and external chain of events that could have caused the stated effect, and then roll a Quality to see if it happened. This keeps you in the game, and also involves the players in setting the scene and narrating details. Brilliant!

Harm and death are handled by a clever little “Life Insurance Policy” provided by the agency.

Character creation allows just enough customization to be interesting, and uses the character ARC framework: Anomaly + Reality + Compentency

  • Anomaly: the egregoric archetype that has attached itself to your agent. Allows you a couple of ways to reliably alter reality

  • Reality: your background. something that anchors you to reality. defines your relationships, which have mechanical properties. and most interesting, each Reality has a small clock that when filled, means you must abandon this Reality for another.

  • Compentency: the role you play in the workplace. Provides QA and a starting requisition (special item).

There is a sort of metacurrency of Commendations and Demerits that you can collect for behaving various ways and that you can cash in for various effects.

There’s a whole work/life balance minigame where you spend Time on your career or on your relationships, gaining advantages for each at the cost of missing out on advances in the other track. Filling up your tracks can lead to promotions and other Playwalled content like uncovering the Truth about the agency.

Then the GM section! In a spectacular move, an anomaly breaks through and takes over the task of explaining anomalies and the game to you, and stuff gets very meta. Brilliant. And then in the sections behind the Playwall, Reality appears to complete the trifecta of Anomaly, Reality, Competency. This is just so well crafted.

https://hauntedtable.itch.io/triangle-agency

https://podcastaddict.com/tabletop-book-club/episode/191340275

Lancer (Massif Press) #

some townies wanted to play some Lancer. I had the full rulebook in my library so I read it and offered to run it!

It seems like a fork of an earlier version of D&D that inverts the minigame dichotomy: whereas D&D is a combat wargame with narrative roleplay tacked on, lancer appears to be a narrative roleplaying playing game with a mech combat minigame tacked on. Either way, it suffers from “Two Games Smooshed Together” disease, in which when the minigame is triggered you have to stop what you’re doing and set up a battlemap so you can do some grid-based turn-based tactical combat wargaming. In giant battle mechs!

The rulebook is pretty. The layout is great. It is written and illustrated by the guy who did Kill 6 Billion Demons. The lore is deep, and pleasantly self contradictory: Union is a utopian post-scarcity government … with strong colonialist expansionist tendencies. And also the megacorporations hold nearly as much influence and dominance as the government does. And there sure is a lot of violence necessary to spread and enforce Union’s utopian ideals.

There is a neat lovecraftian, higher dimensional entity or entities colloquially known as Non Human Persons (NHP) which have to be “shackled” and forced into a more or less human point of view before they are capable of obedience and human logic. At which point they are AI with personhood. The language around this all is violent. They are “shackled” into “coffins.” The metaphor of chattel slavery is obvious but unexplored in the text.

There are factions of mech manufacturers:

  • General Massive Systems is generic and only exists to give you your starter mech. They have one frame and it is the Everest.

  • Harrison Armory: Anthrochauvinist war criminals who make the best war machines. All their frames are named after conquers and generals.

  • IPS-Northstar: The result of a merger of two interstellar freight and transportation companies, they make mechs designed to protect transport and fight piracy. All of their mechs are named after pirates.

  • Smith-Shimano: Lean, lithe, anime inspired frames. All named after moths / butterflies.

  • Horus: a mysterious decentralized hackers collective whose mechs defy categorization, manufacturing classifications, and sometimes physics. All named after monsters from D&D / mythology. (These names are assigned by Union; nobody knows what Horus calls their own “pattern groups”)

You gain access to new frames and upgrades by unlocking licenses (instead of “leveling up”): it is DRM: The Game!

All the of the mechs can loosely be mapped onto classic D&D roles: you got your strikers, your healers, your tanks, your wizards, your controllers, etc.

Completeness: The GM tools give you tables for generating planets and missions; and “sitreps,” or the format and success conditions of the mech battle: is this an escort or an extraction, or a capture-the-flag kind of situation?

Sci-fi shit: Interstellar travel is possible by connecting to Blinkspace via Blink Gates. The omninet is the Super Internet. There are comp/con (companion/concierge) units that are analogous to advanced forms of today’s AI assistants. (This where the official lancer companion app gets its name! https://compcon.app/) There is a human diaspora that left Cradle (Earth) long before its collapse, dark age, rebirth, and return to modern technology; consequently there are isolated human settlements in space that long predate Union’s spacefaring abilities by thousands and thousands of years. One time Union’s secret martian supercomputer, Five Voices, accidentally created a way for the first NHP superconsciousness, MONIST-1 aka Ra, to cross over into realspace; Ra then stole Deimos, Mars’s moon, and everybody living on it (this is how we found out about Blinkspace) and disappeared with it for a couple years and then came back briefly and forced the government through the Machine Uprising to promise to never try to find Ra’s physical corporeal form and to never research post-human or post-mortality development; with these agreements written into law Ra and the moon disappeared again: whaaaaaat?

Mechanics: the narrative game employs a very simple d20 + stats vs 10 roll.

The combat game uses tons of complex rules, not just for combat but also for mech overclocking, overheating, and exploding. Lancers survive most mech explosions, and mechs can be re-printed and re-assembled cheaply and quickly. Except in the rare cases where there is a core breach and the mech explodes and melts in a ball of fire and its pilot is instantly vaporized. The mech has an interesting property where it can be brought down to, and bounce back from, 0 hp multiple times. (With consequences.) I think this is meant to simulate anime battles where the protagonist and/or antagonist becomes stronger in some ways only after suffering setback and injury. Catastrophic failure for a mech that has a NHP attached can also result in “cascade” which means the NHP starts to come un-shackled and can take over the mech, become unresponsive, and start to behave in unpredictable ways.

It’s wild!

https://dozensanddragons.neocities.org/66

https://massif-press.itch.io/corebook-pdf-free

Goosebumps: The Vanishing #

— Season 2

David Schwimmer!

Little tendrils growing out of Planthony’s arm is nightmare fuel. In fact I cannot tell you how many times I had dreamed about exactly that.

https://tilde.team/~dozens/dreams/15.html

Surprisingly more scary than I thought it would be. Thought it would be a little more campy and a little more juvenile.

Did a real tour of the classics. I feel like I kind of sort of recognized several different classic stories from the story.

Love how it started off with a small, local mystery and quickly escalated during the last 2 episodes to fighting aliens and saving the planet. In fact, that’s actually how I think the perfect ttrpg / D&D campaign should go: try to solve the mystery of the missing kids / the weird plant, encounter a swamp thing and a ghost car along the way, and then ultimately save the world from being destroyed by an external threat. Call it a day.

Hellhole (1985) #

Cruising movies on archive.org

This is an exploitation B Film. A variety of the Women In Prison subgenre, except all the women are in a mental asylum.

This is mostly nudity and strangulation and knife fights.

Here are a couple of the random plot elements that don’t really go anywhere:

  • MacGuffin: There’s some doctor who has some incriminating “papers.” The heroine and her mom have these papers I guess? They could put the doctor away, which brings us to…

  • The Killer: Shows up and kills the mom. Then poses as an orderly at the asylum to keep tabs on heroine and finish the job

  • Amnesia: After witnessing her mother’s murder the heroine loses all her memories

  • Hideous Medical Experiments: a doctor experiments on the patients trying to perfect a chemical lobotomy. It leaves most of the women crazy, or dead. Which brings us to…

  • Necrophilia: Mentioned a couple times but mostly glossed over. But the doctor gets really turned on when the patients die.

It was not really worth the time I guess. Not that great. 5/5 stars!

https://archive.org/details/hellhole.-1985.1080p.-blu-ray.-h-264.-aac-rarbg

Dr Strange (1978) #

Learned of this movie from mastodon:

https://polymaths.social/@solusspider/statuses/01JKH9QKD8K5RJKZ37TDH59AFT

The special effects for magic include: zooming in on somebody’s eyes while a high pitched buzz plays; and some glowy hands / eyes. And Strange’s trip to the astral plane was super trippy and kind of like the Dr Who title sequence? Morgan Le Fey and Wong have a force lightning battle; that was pretty cool.

This was definitely a made-for-TV movie meant to be the pilot for a TV series. Which means that there’s no real resolution.

Le Fey passes up several opportunities to take out Strange because she has a gentlemanly lady boner for him. And Strange manages to accidentally defeat her by accepting his place under Lindmer which shoots him back through time I think? Le Fey is defeated but immediately comes back and is established as the antagonist for the show. And Strange is like, aw shucks I know magic tee hee.

It’s corny and it doesn’t deliver on its promise, and it’s a shame the TV show was never picked up because it could have been real good. 5/5 stars!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077469/

https://archive.org/details/doctor-strange-1978

High Potential (2024) #

— Season 1

This is basically Castle meets Psyche: a tagalong consultant with super Noticing powers baffles career detectives with her unorthodox but highly effective work.

I think the hook is supposed to be that Morgan is a single mother with three kids who is looking for her lost lover, the father of her first child. This is the overarching plot that ties the episodes together. Otherwise it’s a Mystery Of The Week kind of format.

The episode where the terrorists take over the police station is a radical break from the otherwise lighthearted tone. It was scary!

In general there are sometimes some holes in the writing, or they try to gloss over or refuse to elaborate on something obvious, and that’s annoying. But yeah it’s fun! 5/5 stars!

Babes (2024) #

This is a movie with Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau about pregnancy and having babies

it is pretty funny!

we watched it because Library Bingo had a square for streaming a movie on Kanopy, so that’s what we did

i recommend it if you want a story about two ladies being best friends and trying to define what family is and what motherhood is. it is very much Ilana Glazer humor so if you liked Broad City then give this a go and you will like it! 5/5 stars

Terratopia: March of The Demon King #

It’s kind of like a roguelike choose-your-own-adventure story because it’s very narrative and very lethal. Every time you die, you have to start over. But there’s a friendly narrator who helps you keep track of everything you learn each playthrough. You eventually learn enough to know which paths are deadends and which ones are promising.

It is very difficult. And very fun!

These are the same folks who made Reflections: Nightingale. Which is another of my favorite playdate games.

https://kodiakgamesatx.itch.io/terratopiamotdk

The Fosters (2013) #

— Season 1

Started watching this because we just finished Good Trouble. It’s okay! Pretty cute, pretty sappy. Can’t really make myself believe that Callie is supposed to be this real delinquent. She looks young. Marianna looks exactly the same. The moms are fun to watch.

Watched the first couple episodes last night. Callie, Marianna, and the moms are little baby people!

Waiting for it to hook me. It’s not very interesting yet. Just a very 00s/10s teen high school drama.

Update: stopped watching. It’s a little too Teen Drama, and the writing is sparse, full of holes. Pass!

Good Trouble (2024) #

— Season 5.5

Davia is still kind of annoying, and so is Dennis.

Gael is still trying to figure his shit out.

Luca is still a wee little baby.

I still love Mariana and Evan.

Okay so I’m pleased with the resolution of the current story lines.

But I HATED the expository dinner scene where everybody just goes around the table and tells us how their story ends. Except for Kelly. She doesn’t get an ending, because she never got her own story line to start with. But yeah, what an insult of a wrap. I don’t know what else the writers should do when they suddenly find out the show is being canceled. I almost wonder whether it would feel better to just end on a dang cliffhanger. But I doubt that would feel super good either. Maybe better than this weaksauce ending though.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993) #

It was okay!

It seemed like this is supposed to document the transition from the 80s to the 90s or something. It came out in ‘93. They make a big deal about him being out of the dating scene for what, nine? ten years? Things are different now!

The most remarkable thing is that Annie (Meg Ryan) is such a creep! Total stalker.

More remarkable than that though is the fact that for the entire movie, the romantic leads never share a scene opposite each other until the final moments of the movie. And then it ends. Right at the beginning of their relationship. Neat writing, that.

Recurring references to An Affair To Remember makes me want to see that.

Having now seen both classic Hanks/Ryan 90s romcoms, I gotta say that they’re both a little disquieting. This one because Annie’s a stalker, and You’ve Got Mail because Hanks’s character is a gaslighting tool.

Killing Eve #

— Seasons 3 - 4

Okay here we go.

The first two seasons of Killing Eve are some of the best television out there. You should absolutely watch them.

The show starts to lose its way in Season 3, and Season 4 is an absolute travesty.

Season 3 is nice enough. You can take it or leave it.

But seriously don’t even watch Season 4.

Eve is practically relegated to a secondary character as the focus shifts to Carolyn and Konstantin. And the finale, Villanelle’s fate, is an absolute slap in the face, and one of the most egregious instances of the Bury Your Gays trope that I’ve ever seen.

When I learned after the fact that there is meant to be a Carolyn spin-off series, Season 4 made more sense to me: it was just a long ass pilot episode, and a disservice to a show that soared so high at its beginning.

The Morning Show (2019) #

— Season 1

This is weird. It’s as though Apple wanted to create a flagship show for Apple TV and threw as much money as it could at this. It’s kind of distracting how many people are in this. It feels like they wanted to write a Sorkin-esque behind-the-scenes show about the morning news, but didn’t do it as good. I’m sure it gets better. We’ll see.

Update: Didn’t care to finish it before canceling my Apple TV subscription, so I guess we’ll never know!

Bad Sisters (2022) #

— Season 1

This was so good!

It took at least an episode for it to expose itself for what it really is: a nearly slapstick funny (very) dark comedy about a series of failed attempts to murder a man whose sadism and cruelty start out a 10 at the beginning of the show and only take off from there.

It is so very Irish. I don’t think I would have caught all the dialog without captions.

The ending was great! No reason for a season 2 as far as I’m concerned. Any subsequent episodes are non-canon.

Severance (2022) #

— Season 1

weird, sparse, creepy, roomy, expansive

only got 2 episodes in before canceling Apple TV, so didn’t get very far into it. I liked it though. It was captivating and arresting.

maybe i’ll come back to it one day.

Shrinking (2024) #

— Season 2

This show seems to just keep getting better and better.

Segel is still a joy. Ford seems to be loosening up and getting more comfortable in his role. Williams still makes Gabby feel like the breakout character in this show.

Surprise cameo by Colby Smothers was a delight!

This season revolves around Alice seeking out a relationship with the guy who killed her mom, and then absolutely insisting that Jimmy have a relationship with him as well. Which is entirely unreasonable! I didn’t like this thread.

5/5 stars!

Best Christmas Ever (2023) #

Final entry in this year’s Crappy Holiday Movie series.

This is the one with Heather Graham and Brandy. It was pretty good!

The funniest part of the whole movie is how the husband’s big, dark secret is that he has been secretly sending out tacky christmas letters every year, even though Heather Graham hates those things. Hilarious!

They tried to write the children as funny, precocious, and cute. But they were just really annoying.

You can watch this and have a good time. 5/5 stars!

Wicked (2024) #

Out of this world.

For some reason I was skeptical of Ariana’s Glinda going into it, but she absolutely killed it. Her scooting around on her back during Popular absolutely floored me for some reason.

I had no prior familiarity with Cynthia and was super happy with her performance.

Visually stunning. They didn’t have to include all the little details and embellishments, but they certainly did.

“One Short Day” was so over the top surreal and psychedelic I honestly wondered whether I had taken a gummy and had forgotten about it.

Looking forward to part 2!

Hot Frosty (2024) #

Second entry in this years Crappy Holiday Movie marathon.

A surprise hit! This movie succeeds where others fail because it goes really hard where others don’t: it is so stupid, but also fully embraces the fact.

Here’s the premise: a lonely, small town shop owner puts a magic scarf on a ridiculously hot snowman, and it comes to life. That’s it! Hijinks ensue. It is, as I said, so stupid. And totally cute! It absolutely works!

The sheriff and deputy were comic relief in a movie that doesn’t really need any comic relief. But again, it works somehow.

The only really negative thing I’ll say is that Hot Frosty has the outlook and reasoning of a small child. And the romantic lead for some reason is really into that. And I’m sitting here like, please do not bang the magical come-to-life snowman who has the mind of a child. That seems really inappropriate.

Anyway, this is fun. You should watch it. 5/5 stars!

Our Little Secret (2024) #

First entry in this year’s Crappy Holiday Movie series!

Lindsay Lohan and Kristin Chenoweth are an instant yes. Too bad they cannot transcend the genre: it is still so bad!

There’s really nothing memorable or redeeming here. Total snoozefest. Which is too bad.

I’d skip it if I were you. 5/5 stars!

The Dark Tower (2017) #

This is going to sound silly, but I didn’t really realize until recently that TV shows are meant to be merely an approximation of real life. They’re not meant to be like the real thing. That’s why a character can walk into a bar and say, “Gimme a beer” and the bartender will act like that’s not a ridiculous thing to say. And that’s why nobody says goodbye when they hang up the phone. It’s really obvious, but it never really clicked for me until I heard somebody say it that succinctly.

Anyway, I just watched The Dark Tower (2017) and as a huge fan of the books I have to say: it was alright! By no means is it any kind of acceptable adaptation of the seven (eight?) novels. It is an approximation: it contains elements of the Dark Tower. And for that it was enjoyable. But it certainly wasn’t the real thing.

Furthermore I can’t imagine trying to watch this without knowing about the series. It hardly stands on its own as a film. There are a couple of amazing moments: Roland shooting a taheen without looking from 100 yards away? Awesome. Roland’s final shootout at the Dixie Pig? Amazing. That’s kind of all we get though.

Anyway, it was pretty bad and I liked it!

Quest Friends #

— First Arc

Okay so I bought the itch.io TTRPGs for Accessible Gaming Charity Bundle because I think that Accessible Gaming is awesome, and one of the highlights on the bundle was this cute little game called Under The Neighborhood. Turns out these are the rules custom made for the Quest Freinds podcast! So I decided to give the podcast a listen. And it has been really fun!

I think Kyle’s Under The Neighborhood ruleset is spot on great. Dead simple, but also plenty of room for customization for the players. It’s 85% pbta and 15% cypher system, which makes sense because I think I remember hearing one of their first games together was Numenera. And you can see it in the phrasing of playbooks and modifiers: I am an “x” who “y"s.

And I like how modular they play it. All of the necromon rules are adapted from and layered on from Animon Story. Kyle makes heavy use of the “Paint the scene” mechanic from Brindlewood Bay. All of the courtroom mechanics are lifted straight from the Ace Attorney games. It’s a great example of how you don’t need to invent everything yourself. Beg, borrow, and steal from other games!

https://questfriendspodcast.com/hereafter

https://itch.io/b/2623/ttrpgs-for-accessible-gaming-charity-bundle

https://questfriends.itch.io/neighborhood

Shrinking (2023) #

— Season 1

Why is this so good!

Jason Segal is good when he’s big and sad and goofy.

I haven’t really enjoyed any latter day Harrison Ford. He only has one expression (stoney), one tone of voice (growl), and one attitude (grouchy/exasperated). And that is true here. But I can also tell that they’re working really hard on getting him to break out of that on this show.

Jessica Williams’s Gaby is the breakout role in this show. She’s so good.

Ted Lasso (2020) #

— Seasons 1 - 3

How stinking adorable is this?

All I want in life now is for Coach Lasso to show up and and give me pep talks every now and then.

Can’t believe Nate’s heel turn! What a tool.

5/5 stars!

Nobody Wants This (2024) #

— season 1

This season was pretty good. Adam Brody was great. Kristen Bell was okay. I can’t tell whether she was flat or her character was flat. At first I thought the “loser siblings” getting together was pretty cliche. But then I liked it.

Yellowjackets (2021) #

— Season 1

Just started watching. Always wanted to see this. Sounds like modern day Lord of the Flies?

Everytime the creepy vocalization happens, it sounds to me just like the opening of Mount Wittenberg Orca by Dirty Projectors and Bjork.

Oh noooo why did I start this not knowing that season 2 isn’t streaming anywhere yet???

I cannot believe how much happened in the last 10 minutes of the last episode.

Welp I will anxiously be waiting to find out what happens next.

5/5 stars!

Perfect Couple (2024) #

This show was medium good. It probably should have been an hour and a half movie instead of a 6 hour miniseries. I know that in the book, nobody outright kills Merrit, but everybody plays a hand in her accidental death. This is much better than what happens in the show. There’s a little too much of Amelia just staring off into space. And a little too much is supposed of her relationship with Shooter: it is portrayed as a thing that never really happened, but also as a deep connection. The funniest and weirdest scene is when Greer (Kidman) starts awkwardly and desperately dancing along to Never Gonna Give You Up when Tag is ruining her book release because she is otherwise powerless to do anything about his going off the rails. It was a little hard at times to keep track of what was a flashback and what wasn’t.

Killing Eve #

— Season 2

I didn’t realize it until this episode, but I’m really rooting for Eve to snap. Kind of like rooting for Joe in You. Oh snap, Eve stabs Villanelle at the end of Season 1 so V shoots E at the end of Season 2? Damn. Also V crossing the line with Gemma and Niko. Also E going Jack Nicholson on Danny. V vs Peel felt like a weird fugue. Big ole season!

Killing Eve #

— Season 1

This is really funny. Some of the best television I’ve seen. Sandra Oh is really good. And Jodie Comer? I can see why she got an Emmy for this. Mercurial. Equally hilarious and terrifying in equal measures. Can’t look away from her. They’re walking a fine line with Fiona’s Carolyn character: her alienlike aloofness borders on the terribly absurd. The intimacy and the violence of the season finale was perfect.

Umbrella Academy #

— Season 4

let’s goooo

Notes by episode

  1. Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman as Drs. Jean and Gene. What a treat! Already over Luther’s slapstick. They done Klaus dirty. What are they doing to my beloved Umbrella Academy?

  2. Christmas Village of DEATH and DOOM. As far as dysfunctional families of super heroes go, I think I still like the Doom Patrol the best, but these guys are a close number two.

  3. Finally get to see Mrs. Hargreaves. And looks like Klaus is back. Ben takes out the entire Thibodeau compound and shows us why his codename is The Horror.

  4. Jesus how many of his children has Reginald NOT murdered. Viktor’s screaming monologue is a tad much. Durang Marigold reveal.

  5. I know that Five is actually like almost seventy years old, but this Lila and Five sequence is weirding me the heck out. I should listen to more Tagically Hip. Holy shit Sy Grossman was Mrs. Hargreaves this whole time? She’s trying to bring about the cleanse? This episode felt very unfocused. Klaus and Alison feel like a tangent. Same with Diego and Luther. Five and Lilra was a little bit interesting I guess. Stripper jokes got legs.

  6. Finale! Bennifer are pretty messed up aren’t they. Feels like a bit of a let down of a season, and of a series finale. The family spent most of the time splintered off away from each other and bickering with each other. Weird time to introduce a new love triangle just in time for the show to end.

Supa Cell #

— Season 1

I ended up really liking this. I love the six episode structure: one episode for each of the 5 characters, plus one finale where they all finally come together and team up. Super (supa) cell is an evolution of sickle cell that give black people super powers. This is kind of like Misfits but if it happened to people with real lives and real problems. Struggling with family and obligations and work and money. Revealing Krazy as a traitor at the end was really cool, and I was surprised they (allegedly) killed him off; he could have been a great Season 2 villain. And then also with introducing “the boss” at the end. Before we even got to see the director be a proper villain either. I assume they know what they’re doing, but getting rid of both of the main bad guys at the end of the season before we even really got to see them do their thing seems a little rushed to me. Ultimately, a really good “regular folks get super powers” show a la Misfits and Heroes. But again, more serious and dramatic.

Suits (2011) #

— Seasons 1 - 4

I stopped watching Greys Anatomy and started watching Suits because I don’t have the appetite for a medical drama when my life is suddenly a medical drama. This show is deeply unserious. I don’t actually really like it that much; I basically jeer all the characters all the time. Except Lous Litt. All he wants is a friend, but he’s so unlikable and everybody just shits on him all the time. He’s the only character on the show who is ruled by his emotions. Except maybe for Rachel Zane. The premise of the show is a joke: Mike Ross could do almost anything with his brain powers. Or, maybe the whole point of season 4 (Investment Banker Mike) was to show that having a super brain doesn’t mean you can’t fail. Harvey and Donna’s relationship is very Sorkinesque a la Joshua and (his) Donna. I basically don’t pay attention to the arc plot at all because I can’t keep up with the nuance of the legalese and the double crossing and backstabbing. And the great part is, as long as you can keep up with the “Uh oh, Louis did something stupid and now Harvey’s pissed” bits, then the bigger plot elements don’t matter. It’s all about how the characters react and relate to each other. The particulars of the legal proceedings behind those actions and relationships is less important. I’m going to have Bingo squares made for this show: “You think I can’t x?” “You think I don’t know how to y?” “Don’t my name me.” “Why the hell not?” “I’m gonna goddamn x.” Donna reads somebody. Rachel is annoying.

Doom Patrol #

— Season 4

Wow, I didn’t realize I never watched the final season of Doom Patrol! Let’s go.

I could never really get into Cyborg in this series. But he really shines this season. Big welcome back to Danny, Dorothy, Maura Lee Corrupt, and Candlemaker. Welcome to Casey Brinks. They are really rushing Jane + Casey as we get close to the end. Bored with the musical episode, but good to see Brendan actually make another appearance. And Larry’s actor can really sing! And I did crack up when they started onomatopoeia acapella singing the title song. Okay fine, the musical episode was good lol.

At first I thought this season was pretty formulaic: a minor crisis of their own making is escalated to earth-ending proportions due to their own faults, flaws, and ineptitude; but then they get their shit together act like a family and solve the crisis kind of on purpose kind of on accident. But weaved throughout the tapestry of this tried and true formula is a thread of vulnerability, finality and mortality, and healing and acceptance. The ending does feel rushed, but it’s not weak: the last fifteen minutes are a sort of epitaph for each character, and Cliff’s ending definitely brought a tear to my eyes.

Series review: four seasons of spectacularly fun, top-notch, irreverent and exciting, emotional superhero drama. 5/5 stars, do recommend. It’s tempting to say that peaks in Season 1 with Alan Tudyk’s Mr. Nobody. But in actuality, the first season merely sets the stage for the surreal and absurd antics of the following seasons.

The Stuff (1985) #

This movie is about how America is addicted to consumerism. It’s not that great. But it’s pretty okay. The best part is maybe how Abe Vigoda and the Where’s the beef? lady make a cameo together in a tv commercial for The Stuff.

Bird Box (2018) #

This is a movie where Sandra Bullock blindfolds 2 five year olds and yells at them for two hours telling them they’re going to die. Malkovich was fun to watch but when is he not. The ending was kind of convenient, but didn’t detract from anything. I enjoyed it quite a bit! 5/5 stars!

The Flash (2022) #

This movie is one part very silly and one part very cool because we get to see Michael Keaton reprise his role as Batman. And we get to see a bunch of cgi supermans: George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, Adam West, even Nicholas Cage who didn’t even get to be Superman because Tim Burton’s Superman was never made. (Which is actually a very clever way to demonstrate the whole “all possible worlds” thing.) Without all those cameos I don’t think this would have been much of a movie. The Flashpoint Paradox arguably did this story better. It was especially distracting watching Ezra Miller knowing what we know now.

I really am not that into “superhero” as a movie genre. But I’ve always had a soft spot for the Flash because I used to watch the 1990 television series when it was on. So I’ll probably always watch any Flash series or movie that comes out. This one was enjoyable because of references and nostalgia. It is the Ready Player One of its genre.

Vixen! (1968) #

WARNING: this film is 1960s sexploitation / softcore pornography.

There’s nothing in the world Vixen likes more than fucking. And there’s nothing in the world she hate more than black people. That’s pretty much it! That’s the whole movie. She has sex with her husband, her husband’s client, the client’s wife, and her little brother. All for no real apparent reason but for fun, power, and to fuck with and or manipulate people. Also she’s suuuuper racist. It’s really uncomfortable. This was allegedly the first film to receive an X rating. So it has that going for it.

https://archive.org/details/vixen-1968

Russian Doll (2019) #

— season 1

I thought Natasha Lyonne was doing a bit when she played Nichols on Orange Is The New Black, but apparently that’s just who she is. And it’s kind of a lot! But this show was good. Like Groundhog Day but a lot darker. The premise started out kind of dark, then got funny, then got really dark by the end. The ending was particularly satisfying. 5/5 stars!

Reflections: Nightingale (playdate) #

Just finished playing this through for the second time. One of the best games on the platform. It’s a little disorienting at first until the disparate vignettes start to fall into place like puzzle pieces, creating a larger picture of pain and trauma, and how one deals with and escapes from it. The theme of inevitable and advancing destruction are subtly woven throughout. And the author took care to weave names and locations throughout the episodes so that the player is never quite sure who or what originated from where. Even the very name of the protagonist, elly, is uncertain. Sometimes it is short for Elhaym, sometimes Eleanor.

It is a profoundly lonely experience. elly seems to have a single friend, Cassie, who is available sometimes for texting. But Cassie is busy working and ultimately elly is left with her pain, her fear, and her haunting visions and dreams.

In the end, the creeping horror suddenly manifests, and the simple matter of abandoning the by then familiar dialog system in favor of the on screen floating text makes it feel like choices are no longer up to the player, but that the game is now on a runaway course of its own choosing, right up until the final choice that brings a sudden and abrupt end to the game, leaving the player to ponder elly’s fate and reflect on acceptance, pain, and destruction.

https://kodiakgamesatx.itch.io/nightingale

Spellcorked (Playdate) #

— Season 1

I don’t know the name of the genre where you get orders and have to fulfill them, but this game is that genre. You play Lune, a fledgling witch who just graduated witch school and just opened up Spellcorked! their very own potion shop! And apparently you’re the first witch to leverage modern technology by using your CubeOS crystal “ball” to take orders via emeow and get reviews via Welp. So there’s a daily cycle. Each day you get a few orders, and then you brew, bottle, and ship the potions, and then you go to bed! Throughout the game, you unlock new ingredients. And a large part of the gameplay is figuring out / discovering what effects the items have. I found this part fun!

The creators made a decision not to have ingredients be consumable. Thusly, because you can’t use them up, there has to be some kind of risk somewhere in order for potion making to be fun. The risk is that once you start making the potion, you cannot stop or start over. Consequently, there were times when I accidentally grabbed the wrong ingredient and immediately realized I was making the wrong thing. But I had to continue making the wrong potion, and then bottle it, and ship the wrong potion to the customer. Which felt really bad to me! But I get why the creators made this choice. And it made me feel very extra cautious when getting ready to brew.

The alembic alchemical still took me a very long time to figure out, and to be able to use confidently. It is a whole little mini-game in and of itself, and each of the six alchemical ingredients—and their animations—are so compelling and evocative and unique and magical. I eventually would play the animations on “fast mode” but never once wished that I could skip the animations even though it takes up a lot of time even on fast mode. It’s one of the best parts of the game.

For a Season 1 game, Spellcorked feels half finished: quips and jokes from Beau and Manny, Lune’s familiars, stop about halfway through the game, and the two of them just become background scenery. Correspondence from Faer, Lune’s significant other, stop disappointingly early in the game. Lune themself kind of fade into the background as the game as continues on in silence. Eventually, for lack of anything else to engage with (other than just brewing potions for its own sake) the player might end up deciding to ship potions until you get enough positive reviews to reach Tier 5 on Welp. After which you get a meta email from the Spellcorked developers congratulating you on finishing the game by winning the respect of your former professor. This was a surprise to me because the professor—although they do send Lune a skeptical emeow now and then—never seemed like anybody I should focus on, or whose approval I need.

I think there’s a memory leak in the game somewhere. Twice I noticed the game grind to a very slow crawl. Once, it crashed. And the second time, I proactively restarted the game, after which it worked fine again.

But anyway, this game is awesome and I love it! I find it peculiarly compelling. Many times I told myself I would put the game down after fulfilling these next three orders, only to take a peek at the next day’s orders and decide to just fill them real quick. I will definitely reach for it again in the future when I want to do some cute witchy potion brewing. 5/5 stars!

Maniac (2018) #

I started this show as something to watch in the background while working on something else. But then I had to stop doing that because the show was so good and so compelling that it demanded my full attention. It’s about family and relationships, and how hard it is to really connect with somebody. And how precious it is once you finally do. Emma Stone is of course insanely watchable in everything she does. What i did not expect is that Jonah Hill is insanely watchable in this as well. Surreal and ridiculous. There’s no telling what time this is supposed to be set in. There are anachronisms all over the place. Funny nod to Quantum Leap when they’re at the taxidermy shop trying to save Wendy. It must have been so fun for Stone and Hill to get to play so many different roles. 5/5 stars!

Edit: Here’s the thing. Maniac’s low-key, background, 1970s retro-futurism is uncommented on and unexplained, but it’s actually what makes the whole thing work. Consider the Ad Buddy. Consider the Proxy Friend. These are the artifacts that make this show work. People are so desperate for a genuine connection but relationships are so superficial they’re literally commoditized. And it’s normal. It’s unremarkable. I think the rest of the retro tech in the show—campy, delightful, and glorious as it is—is just a happy accident that we get because the story required normalized and widespread, over-the-top, crushing loneliness, without it seeming too alarming or out of place. And so the creators were like, “Let’s just distract the viewer with a bunch of weird stuff and pretend it’s normal. So that when the truly sad and awful bit comes along, we can just portray it as part of the background weirdness they’ve already accepted.”

The Irregulars (2021) #

— Season 1

It’s pretty okay! A band of misfit kids solve supernatural mysteries for Dr. John Watson. Good spooks. The first half is a good monster of the week kind of show. The second half is kind of weird family mystery. The weak point was the irregulars themselves. The two sisters are the main ones. Leo makes sense as romantic interest. But Billy and Spike a lot of the time were just kind of, there. They were all good archetypes. There was the leader (Bea), the weird (Jessie), the muscle (Billy), the outsider / brains (Leo), and the face (Spike). Some of the twists are predictable, some aren’t. Anyway it was pretty okay, I enjoyed it. 5/5 stars!

In The Shadow Of The Moon (2019) #

Really neat movie about a Bad Guy who is traveling backwards through time killing people (with some kind of gruesome brain melting injection) and the cop who keeps encountering her every ten years or so. Very mysterious, good action, good drama watching the cop slowly descend into obsession and madness in his single minded pursuit over the decades. Very interesting, very entertaining. 5/5 stars!

Split (2016) #

The second installment in the Unbreakable, Split, Glass trilogy. The first “stealth” sequel I’ve ever seen, where you don’t know until the last 60 seconds of the movie that it is actually a sequel to a previous movie. Tremendous acting props to McAvoy who not only had to play half a dozen or more different roles as Kevin, but also at one point had to play one personality playing a different personality. Lots of tension, plenty creepy. A lot left unresolved. I preferred his portrayal in Glass where the question of whether the Beast is really super powered or just a deranged man is definitively answered. Major points off for spectacularizing and villainizing dissociative identity disorder. 5/5 stars!

Glass (2019) #

  1. Night Shyamalan presents … Glass! The final installment of the … I don’t know what it’s called, the superhero trilogy? Pretty good build up with Dunn / Unbreakable and the Hoard focused on each other while Mr. Glass masterminds the whole thing. It’s Shyamalan so you know there’s going to be a twist, but I think he did a good job at having three twists, one for each character: the reveal of the ancient secret society of superhuman hunters, the fact that Glass was (predictably, but not expectedly) playing at a whole nuther level, and finally the death of all the main characters. Bold, that. This works 90% as a standalone movie, but works better if you’ve seen the previous films. Having not seen the 2nd film at this point, I was left wondering about some of Crumb’s personalities and their relationships with ATJ’s character. 5/5 stars!

Madame Web (2024) #

meandering. web’s precognition was pretty fun to see play out, but after the second or third time you really lose all investment in anything that happens and instead expect the cosmic rewind button to kick in and save the day. it was especially poorly executed in the final, climactic scene in the abandoned warehouse where nothing really happened. this was definitely poised as an origin story for a series of movies that we are certainly never going to see. But hey it had sydney sweeney in it? 5/5 stars!

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) #

Best movie I’ve seen in recent memory. Absurd, surreal. All about the relationship between a mother and a daughter, and how love is the only thing matters. If I hadn’t already known Jamie Lee Curtis was in this movie I would never in a million years known that was her. 5/5 stars!

Godzilla Minus One (2023) #

My first godzilla movie! Deeply symbolic and metaphorical. All about trauma and how to survive and overcome it, and chosing to live. Very bleak, very sad. 5/5 stars!

Aldous Harding - Designer #

derkirche posted the video for The Barrel the other day, and I found it absolutely mesmerizing. Had never heard of Aldous Harding before.

https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=QyZeJr5ppm8

Then I watched her performance / interview on KEXP, and decided that Aldous must be some kind of alien from outer space. In the best possible way.

https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=O-_yCMPNNEo

Last week I was traveling for work and listened to Designer nonstop.

https://open.spotify.com/album/39CMyhmaEk6JMlqYUXQNOI

It’s so good. The Barrel and Designer are both stand out tracks. But each track is amazing.

Dead Boy Detectives (2024) #

— Season 1

What good fun! I really liked it. I enjoyed the Dead Boys' first appearance on Doom Patrol. And this was a great world for them to “live” in and inhabit. Great secondary and tertiary characters. Can’t wait to see what becomes of them all.

Inventing Anna (2022) #

Uncomfortably good. Infinitely quotable. Could easily have ended after episode six or seven. I liked it a lot. An incredibly Shondaland cast of actors, which made it feel comfy and familiar. 5/5 stars!

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) #

This was roughly half as good as Amazing Spider-Man 1. They just tried to cram too much in. There’s no excuse for having the Crocodile AND the Green Goblin be the main villain AND ALSO managing to slip in the guy from Sideways as the Rhino???? Too much man, way too much. The death of Gwen Stacy was too sad. 5/5 stars!

Lyrical Ludology, Logan Timmins #

— Episidoes 1 - 4 w. Jay Dragon

Started listening to this after discovering Logan’s autobiographical tabletop game, “Logan.” Very short (~10 minute) episodes exploring the nature of Lyric Games. Logan is adorable, and the conversation is great. Do recommend. https://redcircle.com/shows/lyrical-ludology

Solaris: A New Dawn, Roberto Bisceglie #

I overlooked this game in my library when I was looking for solarpunk games. Its subtitle is “Solarpunk Adventures in the Future”. It is … kind of solarpunk? It is little more than a reskinning of the Push SRD by Cezar Capacle. Which is a really good system! The core mechanic is the “push”: roll 1d6. 1 - 4 = weak hit; 5 - 6 = strong hit; 7+ = miss; you can reroll and add your result as much as you want. Characters are made by rolling for gift, upbringing, experience, mark, charm, and bond. There are tables for creating missions, challenges, moments, etc. And that’s pretty much all there is here! No setting, no real guidance on building community and harmony in the face of conflict and scarce resources. Which is to say, there’s not much here that feels like solarpunk. Cute game though! 5/5 stars! https://zeruhur.itch.io/solaris-a-new-dawn https://capacle.itch.io/push

DIE A HUNDRED TIMES, Alexandre Kobayashi #

The ultimate distillation of d100 games in the BRP / Chaosium / CoC tradition. Found this via Sean F. Smith, who chose it as the ruleset for a play-by-post game of Dark Conspiracy that we’re playing. Incidentally, I’m also starting a short campaign of Delta Green, and the character creation process was okay, but still way complicated. I would far prefer to have just done Die 100 Times. Very flexible, short and sweet, hackable. Love the integrated combat roll. Would 100% run/play a game with this! 5/5 stars! https://alexandre-kobayashi.itch.io/die-a-hundred-times

Little Dung Guy, Sleepy Badger Games #

Look at this cute little guy! “A sisyphean dung beetle solo RPG.” You play a little dung guy trying to roll a ball up the hill. And it frequently rolls back down the hill, and that is frustrating! And that’s the whole game. A strong undercurrent of capitalism vs organized labor. Love it! 5/5 stars! https://sleepy-badger-games.itch.io/little-dung-guy

Logan: An Autobiographical Tabletop Game #

Disquietingly beautiful game. Logan shares very intimate key moments of his life, and allows the reader to determine their outcome through the roll of the dice. You are encouraged to consider your own life’s significant moments and how different outcomes might change your life, and who you are. I love the “methods of play” section. Method #1 says explicitly that reading and thinking about the game is playing the game, which is something I believe to be true about games. You play by completing the playbook, which guides you through experiencing moments, narrative milestones, and self-care breaks. The layout is fantastic. Can’t believe how good this is. 5/5 stars! https://breathingstories.itch.io/logan

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) #

I’ve never seen the Andrew Garfield spiderman movies. Only ever watched the Tobey Maguire ones. Delighted to get Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Martin Sheen is so great. He didn’t get to deliver the iconic Uncle Ben line. But instead said something like, “If you have the ability to help somebody, you do it. Responsibility!” Emma Stone was pretty good as Gwen Stacey. Couldn’t stand watching Dennis damn Leary as the police chief. I wish there was a little more to bridge the characters of Peter Parker and Spider-Man: Spidey was so confident and wise-cracking and kind of egotistical, and Peter was such a mumbling, unconfident kind of character. The villain (The Lizard) was pretty good. Sympathetic to a degree. It was good! I’d watch the sequel.

Lowtech Radio Gazette #

— Back for 2024

will’s back for 2024! first post since the birth of his daughter. his droid is still broken, sad. this is a fun, conversational episode recorded in the car about wanting to be more offline first, about the distractability of our always-online life and smart devices. he uses a palm tungsten pda to try to combat this but still misses his droid. https://lambdacreate.com/podcast/ltrg/5

Playdate Podcast #

— Mars After Midnight

Lucas Pope releases Mars After Midnight for the Playdate. Very interesting interview about his development process and how all these different disparate pieces fit together: designing procedurally generated martian faces, designing a squiggly font, creating speech synthesis, learning a music tracker to make the music, learning lua to supplement his C programming, learning the hardware and the simulator and how the buttons and the crank work (and don’t work) together, specific techniques for 1-bit art on the sharp display (although he already has 1-bit art experience from making Obra Dinn). Interesting to hear about one can pursue so many different interests and learning opportunities in the course of making a game! https://podcast.play.date/episodes/s01e29/

Lost Universe #

NASA released an adventure! missed opportunity to call it HUBBLE TROUBLE. the plot is: a dragon steals the hubble telescope. adventure design is by Christina Mitchell with graphic design by Michelle Belleville. so, nice to see some women driving the project. they go out of their way to not say “D&D” probably because legal and licensing reasons, but this is a D&D adventure “designed for a party of 4-7 level 7-10 characters … for your preferred tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) system.” i’m a little disappointed that they decided to go with straight D&D fantasy instead of a more sci-fi or even science fantasy game, but I understand the marketing reasons for doing so. the adventure is pretty okay! player characters wake up on a mysterious planet with no memory of how they got there, and start to slowly reveal and unravel the mystery. there are locations (and a map!) and npcs and guides for roleplaying them. there’s a fair bit of “background science.” there’s exploration, combat, puzzles, and social encounters.. it is a varietally correct if not particularly inspiring dungeons & dragons experience with space telescopes. 5/5 stars! https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/multimedia/online-activities/the-lost-universe/

After The Mind The World Again, Aster Fialla #

super neat mystery game inspired by Disco Elysium. this game borrows heavily from Everyone Is John in that different aspects (Intellect, Psyche, Fysique, Motorics) compete for control of the detective, and also play NPCs and locations under their domain. while the objective of the game is ostensibly to solve the murder, a significant portion of the game is occupied by the minigame of the aspects competing for control and dominance, forming alliances against the dominant aspect, tampering with each others evidence, etc. other mechanics are from pbta: playbooks full of detective moves and aspect moves, and 10+ strong hit / 7 - 9 weak hit / 6- miss 2d6+aspect rolls. evocative of Brindlewood Bay in that the mystery is generative: the mystery itself—and the solution to it—don’t exist until you start playing, and are resolved via mechanics. not logic or deduction or anything premeditated. of course, this doesn’t prevent you from using logic and deduction to drive the mechanics. it’s just that the solution doesn’t already exist anywhere ahead of time. the mystery resolution mechanic involves a tree called the DEDUCTION PYRAMID. you begin by collecting eight pieces of evidence. these can be combined to create 4 minor deductions, connections that don’t directly identify a suspect or method of death, but that suggest plots like alibis, alliances, etc etc. these can be combined into 2 major deductions which do relate directly to the murder and or suspect. e.g. murder weapon, motive, time of death, etc. finally, the fourth tier combines all the evidence and deductions into the final solution. this game seems super clever and super fun, and i would love to play it! 5/5 stars! https://pieartsy.itch.io/after-the-mind

FIST #

— Ultra Edition

i was turned off by this game for a while because of the tactical mercenary / assault weapons packaging. but upon actually reading it, it is actually pretty great! So don’t judge a book by its cover. Its vibe is The A Team meets Doom Patrol: you are a rogue team of strangely powered mercenaries investigating weird stuff. There’s even an evil / rival agency a la COBRA called CYCLOPS. Character creation: choose one of d66 ROLES and two of d666 TRAITS. Complete with a Mission Generator to create missions, objectives, and complications for you. A rare “War Dice” meta-currency allows you to add an extra d6 to your roles for when you really wanna succeed. (I like it when there’s a way for you to bargain with the game and bend the rules a little bit when you really wanna roll good.) It has PBTA dice resolution: miss, weak hit, strong hit on 6-, 7-9, 10+ after rolling 2d6+skill. Double Skills are Force, Tactics, Creative, and Reflexes. Lots and lots of GM advice supplement the relatively light core rules. I like this quote: “FIST is camp and pop-cultural pastiche. We’re being grim, gritty, and serious as a joke—but the joke we’re telling is dead serious.” 5/5 stars! https://claymorerpgs.itch.io/fist

Delta Green #

my beekey blinders group is thinking of running this game. it is directly descended from Call of Cthulhu and retains nearly all of its character creation rules and dice mechanics. In fact, it’s just CoC with with an X-Files / Government Agents kind of vibe to it. There are some additional rules around relationships, which slowly deteriorate as you spend more time investigating and succumbing to The Strangeness. Seems fun. I’d play it.

Royal Pains #

— Season 1

this is a fun and silly show! total fluffy, guilty pleasure. big old nothing burger. lovely sets and outfits. here’s the royal pains drinking game: 1) somebody passes out, 2) “CFO of Hankmed”, 3) Divya says something sassy or withering, 4) “Kuester von Jurgens-Ratenicz”, 5) awkward Dieter, 6) Jill’s bad/awkward acting

Wanderhome, Jay Dragon #

Wanderhome! Picked this up because of Last Tea Shop and Fox Curio’s Floating Bookshop. A very beautiful book full of gorgeous art work and very lovely writing. It’s a No Dice No Masters / Belonging Outside Belonging game which means it has Playbooks for characters and a token based metacurrency based on playing to your strengths and vulnerabilities. It’s a cute-as-a-button animal-folk game about wandering and traveling. That’s pretty much the whole game! It’s full of traits and natures so that players can also play NPCs and Locations. It doesn’t provide you with any kind of plot or storyline. You open each session arriving somewhere and prepping some locations and npcs to interact with. It has a full list of seasons, months, and seasonal holidays complete with rare seasonal specials. Wanderhome’s influence on Floating Bookshop is so strong that Bookshop is essentially Wanderhome on a river with a “selling and trading books” aspect to focus the game and provide Wanderhome’s missing storyline. This book is gorgeous, friendly, and dreamy. 5/5 stars! https://possumcreekgames.itch.io/wanderhome

Resident Alien #

— Season 1

This show is really silly and fun. I started watching it because Alan Tudyk. And I think because I read somewhere that the alien alphabet used in the captions is a tranliteration of poorly spelled Esperanto, written backwards. This season is cute. I chuckled. It started to drag in the middle a little bit, but then it picked up again for the season finale. Tropey, but entertaining.

Last Tea Shop, Spring Villager #

This is a short 16 page pdf. A solo journaling game (with alternate rules for 2 players) about operating a quiet tea shop between the lands of the living and the dead. You receive guests on their way to the land of the dead, and serve them tea and ask them questions. My grandfather died this morning. It got me emotional thinking about getting to ask him the questions I never asked. And thinking about somebody offering him tea and comfort on his journey. He would prefer coffee though. He liked to talk about how ‘toffee’ was one of his first words, and how he’s been drinking coffee since he was a little kid. Anyway, this is a very cute game and I really like the feel of it. I picked it up because I had just read Fox Curio’s Floating Bookshop, and it listed this game as an inspiration. Floating Bookshop is clearly a descendant of Last Tea Shop. Incidentally, this game cites The Lighthouse At The Edge Of The Universe by lostwaysclub as an influence. Lostwaysclub is who wrote Floating Bookshop, which cites Last Tea Shop as an influence! Mutual respect! They should be friends. https://springvillager.itch.io/last-tea-shop-complete

Fox Curio's Floating Bookshop, ella lim #

this book is fucking delightful. super cute, super cozy. it’s a solo journaling rpg in which you float up and down the river in your floating bookshop and sell books to animal folk a la redwall, etc. it’s a fully realized setting with seasons and weather and seasonal holidays and river towns with features and characters, and stuff happens that you have to address, and you can make friendships and go fishing and cook meals for your new friends and i just love it. there’s even a part where you can photocopy or tear out a page and then cut out a bunch of furniture and then arrange it in your bookshop however you want. i can’t stand how cute this is, and i can’t wait to play it. it says it is inspired by the last tea shop and wanderhome, and i think i have both of those, so i’m going to read them next. because if they’re like this, then i will love them. 5/5 stars! https://lostwaysclub.itch.io/floating-bookshop

Ragnarok #

— Season 3

spoilers Okay I cannot BELIEVE they ended this series with “it was a figment of the main character’s imagination.” There’s just no way that anybody could have thought that would be acceptable. It’s hard to come up with an alternative interpretation though with the way they kept reminding us that Magne was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and that he retreated into the comfort of his Thor comic books as a child. On the other hand though, Isolde definitely died. And Magne definitely had a bunch of interactions with the Jutuls that cannot be explained away. I think what happened is that Magne rewrote Ragnarok by getting everybody to lay down their weapons and avoid the war. But the gods still had to die some how, for some reason. They cannot be allowed to continue to live in our modern world. So Magne changed the story and spared the gods. But then the story changed reality to make it so that the gods are effectively dead anyway by virtue of having never existed. Or rather, having only existed in Magne’s mind. So Ragnarok, or fate, or The Story, was going to wipe the gods and giants out one way or the other. Either by war and mutual destruction, or via a very tropey “it was all a dream.” Either way, still a terribly disappointing ending to a show that honestly should have been canceled after one season if this is the wrap up we’re going to be given.

Fivewild, and Hey Check Out This Cool Thing I Found In The Gullet #

Richard Kelly aka SprintingOwl aka kumada1 is my favorite game designer. He churns out an improbable number of games. Some of them are memes, some are jokes, some are hauntingly beautiful, none of them are just straightforward boring games, and nearly all of them show very careful and deliberate thought and design.

Fivewild is a shockingly complete old school clone, and “… In The Gullet” is an adventure scenario for it. I say shockingly complete because it starts out with such a tone that the reader is convinced that this will be just another jokey memey product. But no. It is 150 pages of very funny dungeon fantasy adventure that you can tell came from a very fun home campaign. It has details that otherwise wouldn’t be in a mere joke system. Details like fall damage and suffocation damage. Rules for multiclassing. An equipment list and a bestiary.

Language takes a new front and center role in the game. Including introducing what is possibly the doom of all mind kind: crabs, and their dangerous, magical language “That’s carcinization, baby!” Totally custom races, each with its own language. Kelly attempts to address the “Human Problem” with the “Ladies” race: all humans, male and female, are “Ladies.” All custom classes, some familiar some exotic and some, you can tell, custom made as a joke for a player who had one very specific, odd itch that needed scratching.

I can’t say enough good things about this! I would run it / play it in a heartbeat. 5/5 stars!

https://kumada1.itch.io/fivewild

Wizard Trash Goblin Treasure, David Lombardo #

A short madcap adventure made for, and by the author of, Brighter Worlds. A wizard has been portaling modern tech into their fantasy world, and throwing it away down the trash chute. Only to find out that the resident goblin population has found and been using the tech. So the wizard summoned a bunch of autonomous quad-copter drones to stop the goblins. And hilarity ensues! I would run this in a heartbeat. I love the artwork and the layout too. That progressive roll d6 on a ten item table on the inside cover? Chef’s kiss. 5/5 stars! https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/wizard-trash-goblin-treasure

Cyclic Dungeon Generator, Sersa Victory #

This short essay describes a method for creating procedurally generated dungeons that have a cohesive feeling of intentionality and human design. It defines twelve different “cycles,” all of which have a starting point, a goal, and some insertion points. Cycles can be nested within cycles to create complex dungeons. Examples of cycles include “lock and key” and “hidden shortcut.” It finishes with an example of the creation process, in which we follow a hypothetical dungeon designer as she creates a dungeon from scratch. The dungeon map and key are included at the end. Can’t wait to try this! 5/5 stars! https://sersavictory.itch.io/cyclic-dungeon-generation

Wormskin #1 by Norman and Gorgonmilk #

Wormskin is a series of short zines that establish and develop the setting of Dolmenwood, a dark fairy tale forest. Now that the Dolmenwood player guide, campaign book, and monster book are nearing completion, these zines are no longer available.

This zine provides a beautiful hex map of the forest complete with settlements, rivers and roads, and magical leylines.

It primarily showcases two playable races: the Moss Dwarf (a druidic forest gnome / classic dwarf / swampthing kind of creature) and the Grimalkin (a catperson capable of some innate magic, and that constantly evolves back and forth between mundane cat, cat person, and a fey trickster). Both races are dripping with flavor and I would love to play either of them.

The zine also has a lengthy guide buying and selling mushrooms, and about 30 different mushrooms + effects for Moss Dwarfs and other characters to experiment with.

The tone is very whimsical and fairy tale-y. If this is what Dolmenwood is going to be like, I will purchase it in a heartbeat when it’s available.

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/the-end-of-wormskin

https://necroticgnome.com/pages/about-dolmenwood

Grandmothership, Armanda Haller #

A very cute little book. Excellent layout and art. It has a two stat Honey Heist mechanic: move points from Grandmother and Mothership when attempting tasks. The classes and loadout and setting all adhere to the “Grandmas in Space” theme. And the point of the game is to gather clues and put them together as in Brindlewood Bay. All in all, a fantastic package! 5/5 stars! https://armandah.itch.io/grandmothership

Named and Sky Pirates of Jotnaar, Wightbred #

Named is a framework / toolkit for playing high-trust, rulings-over-rules games in the Free Kriegspiel tradition. And Sky Pirates of Jotnaar is a setting guide for Named.

Sky Pirates is great. The setting takes place on a gas giant planet that is covered deadly mists. A few mountaintops protrude from the mists like islands. But most of the action takes place on hot air balloons equipped with lightning coils, batteries, furnaces, and swivel-guns.

Named is mostly advice on playing and cooperating. The chore mechanic is the “Name” which can be any character descriptor in the tradition of Risus cliches, only with no dice value attached to them. You just start with 3 - 4 Names.

In a sticky situation, you can avoid rolling by accepting a Devil’s Bargain, or revealing a Dark Secret, which is kind of the same thing as a Devil’s Bargain. It is something undesirable that happens in exchange for you succeeding at the task.

If you do decide to roll, Named provides the One Dice Engine (ODE) resolution system:

  1. Roll a six sided die. If it’s a 1, 2, or 3, that is 1, 2, or 3 “Swords” or successes. If it is a 4, that’s a “Devil’s Bargain. Essentially a success at cost. If you roll a 5 or 6, that is one or two "Skulls” or failures.

  2. If you don’t like your roll, you can choose to re-roll by invoking a name that you haven’t used recently. If the new roll is a sword, that’s a success. Add any swords from from your first roll. If the new roll is a skull, that’s a failure. Add any skulls from your first roll.

  3. If you don’t like your re-roll, you can choose to roll a third and final time if you agree to feel a Strong Emotion. This has consequences on future actions. Re-roll, adding any previous skulls or swords, plus one for your strong emotion.

That’s basically it. A great system because it can resolve conflict quickly with a single role. Or it can draw out the conflict with multiple rolls and escalating stakes.

All in all, a great little framework, and a great guidebook for playing in the FKR style. 5/5 stars! https://wightbred.itch.io/named-toolkit https://wightbred.itch.io/skypirates-of-jotnaar

Record Shop, Craig Maloney #

A very cute little solo journaling game about finding a record shop and having experiences with your discoveries. Does a pretty good job of creating that magic feeling of rifling through a bin of strange and wonderful records, and then choosing something to take with you and be a part of your life forever or for a short time. One thing that has stuck with me about solo journaling games after talking to Paul Czege about his “The Ink That Bleeds” is that there’s really no reason not to play a bunch of solo journaling games all at once and all at the same time. And this game seems like a 100% perfect candidate to slip into some other game (or games) in which you’re playing an approximate version of yourself. Be it about relationships or adventure or whatever. That version of yourself can certainly take a moment to duck into a mysterious record shop or a yard sale and have a personal experience with some music. 5/5 gold records! https://craigmaloney.itch.io/record-shop

The Vow (2012) #

Put this on for a Valentines Day watch. It was not really what I expected. I found it hard to believe parts of it. Like when Paige initially believed there was no evidence of her and Leo being in love, when there was in fact an entire house full of their life together, including a video of their wedding. I was pretty sure about halfway through that Paige had left her previous life to find out who she is on hew own, and that she would do the same to Leo. But what brought her back to him was that he gave her space to find out who she is on her own. It was cute, and sad. Not a straightforward, stereotypical, formulaic romance. 5/5 stars! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606389/

The World After, David Blandy #

This is the second title, and the last one, in the series of two “solarpunk” games that I downloaded and read after thinking about and looking for solarpunk games. (The first was Arcology World.) You can blame tomasino’s solarpunk prompts podcast for my current interest in the topic: https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts

The World After is starkly different from Arcology World. It is primarily a game of violence and combat, whereas Arcology explicitly has no rules for combat or violence. In fact, there are almost no aspects of solarpunk in this game at all, aside from it being set in a now thriving post apocalypse after the world was destroyed by climate crisis. I wish I could remember who told me this was a solarpunk game so that I could tell them, no. It is not. There are none of the elements of hope, cooperation, and co-existing with nature intrinsic to Arcology and to the solarpunk genre. Nature instead is something to be harnessed and controlled and channeled through the magical Essence.

None of which is to say that The World After is a bad game. It emphatically is not. It is a highly polished and very complete game. What sets it apart is its deep lore. Humanity has evolved down five differing paths, resulting in five different human species and societies from which player characters can come. Each is complete with pages of history and culture. The lore and setting are extremely rich and detailed.

The game also has a starting adventure, a bestiary, and advice for starting a campaign.

It has a branching “evolution” system instead of leveling up that grants you different abilities and bonuses. Each branching path (I think there are five) eventually rejoins at the capstone evolution, proving once again that the journey is the thing, not the destination.

It primarily uses a d6 pool mechanic, counting “successes” (4-6) against a difficulty number, with extra degrees of success for exceeding the difficulty.

And then it goes and ruins a perfectly nice d6-only system with an interesting but unnecessary initiative system. You get two of a set of predefined actions per turn. And every combination of two actions is assigned an initiative die ranging in size from d4 to d20. Everybody rolls their different sized dice to establish initiative order. Cute, clever, but also probably the first thing I would throw out from this system because it would require constant look-up, and also throwing it out means a d6 only system.

Its magic system is based on Essence, the magical material the Earth secretes when under extreme duress. Its white blood cells. It provides just enough crunch and math to be engaging. The formula involves whether the spell is innately weak, common, or strong; the difficulty number based on the desired effect; and the amount of essence it will cost the caster. It allows a little bit of nuance and consideration to casting.

The World After is a fantastic vehicle for classic turn-based game of exploration, combat, and adventure. I would definitely play it. 5/5 stars!

https://davidblandy.itch.io/the-world-after

The Imperfects (2022) #

— Season 1

Ten short episodes of varietally correct teen mutant superpower drama. It was super fun and I liked it. Rhys Nicholson as Alex Sarkov was really good for the first half of the season when he wasn’t in the show that much. You get to have a little Sarkov as a treat! But then when he was back as a main character again, he got to be a bit much. But then I adjusted to his over the top presence, and grew to really like him again.

It wallowed quite a bit in the waters of “What makes us monsters, vs. What makes us human?” and “Would you give up your powers to be Normal again, or are we meant to embrace our gifts?” but stopped just short of overdoing it.

Tilda really started to outshine the other two “imperfects” by the end. But maybe that’s appropriate because she was the only one who embraced and really turned toward and tried to explore her abilities. I liked the end where she left the gang to basically go be a solo superhero on her own. The final five minutes of the last episode were obvious Season 2 teasers, but they were so fun and entertaining. I wouldn’t mind a Season 2 to explore these cliffhangers, but I also wouldn’t hate it if it ended here. 5/5 mutated DNA sequences!

Arcology World #

If Apocalypse World and its various and sundry Powered By The Apocalypse progeny have a lasting legacy on games and game design, it will be because of the Playbook, a list of triggers and moves that allow a character and its player to have a profound impact on the story being told and potentially on the world in which that story is being told. The genius of the Playbook is that there is one for each character type (i.e. “class”) and there is also one for the Guide, the non-character player who guides the game. The GM, or DM. There is thus no distinction between a Fighter archetype player gaining a situational advantage based on in-game bravery and strength, as defined in their Playbook; and the Guide creating drama and tension by offering a Tough Choice as defined in their own Playbook.

Gone is the adversarial “DM vs the Players” relationship encouraged and perpetuated by some classic dungeon crawling games. Instead, everybody is just playing their own Playbooks toward the same end: telling an awesome story, creating interesting situations, and seeing what the heroes will do.

In Arcology World, Dyer Rose capitalizes on the defining legacy of Apocalypse World by giving each player not one but two Playbooks, a Method and a Role, each complete with its own special moves, and triggers for collecting XP, and relationships, etc. So you can be an Aggressive Doctor, or a Dramatic Zoologist, or any other combination.

All of the moves and Playbooks are based on the theme of Solarpunk. This is a post-Disaster world of small communities working together to survive in an unpredictable world of heavily mutated flora and fauna. A lot of the general moves shared by all players have to do with calling an assembly and convincing them of a course of action. And a lot of moves have to do with science: analyzing, research, hypothesizing, and synthesizing. It is thematically all about community, resources, problem solving, and working together.

https://basiliskonline.itch.io/arcology-world

Note: This was a bathtub review. I read the book on my iPad, and wrote this text on my Freewrite, all while soaking my aching muscles in a hot tub.

Six Days Asleep #

I picked this up I think because nico mentioned it.

It is a not a game. It is a super short guideline on self-exploration. Super light on details or instructions. Barely a manual at all. Doesn’t even commit to what it’s teaching you: this practice can be considered mindfulness, meditation, magic, or self-hypnosis. Basically you meditate on an Intention (concept/question) every day for six days, and then journal about your experiences.

warning: although there is none in this book, the author writes a lot of hypno-kink. so if you don’t want to see that, don’t click on their itch page.

https://sleepingirl.itch.io/six-days-asleep

The Goblin Pulls Out A Gun #

The Goblin Pulls Out a Gun, by Viditya Voleti

Okay so I identified a gap in logging. And that is indie rpg gamebooks. I log everything I read on goodreads, and everything else here. But these tiny indie itch.io gamebooks aren’t on goodreads. And I read a ton of them. But then I don’t write anything down about them, so then I forget about them. But no more!

So here we go.

Last night I read TGPOAG. I found out about this game on the Party of One podcast. The one featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan, where they play goblins, and they Find Out. It was highly entertaining obviously. But also the game mechanics were really fun, and they were based on this “tech pack.”

It is designed for GMless, high stakes playing, where the player/s roleplay themselves into a sticky situation, and then do one huge roll to resolve everything.

You start with a 1d6 player pool, and a 2d8 challenge pool. Then you add d6 for each advantage, and add 1d8 for each complication or disadvantage, and then you throw them all.

Line up all the d8, and then you assign d6 to each challenge to try to beat it. If the d6 total exceeds the d8 total, that’s a success. If they are equal, that’s a complication. And it the d8 is greater, that’s a failure. So there are multiple potential outcomes, one for each challenge in a scenario. There are also opportunities for Extreme Success (if you beat all d8s with a d6 left over) or a Catastrophe (if there is a d8 left over with no d6 assigned to it).

Listening to Brennan and Stormer play, there was a fair bit of consideration involved in deciding how to stack up your d6, deciding which challenge took priority over the others, and what kinds of collateral and failures are consequently acceptable.

I think this is a very fun system that allows for interesting degrees of success and failure! The book is short, 7 pages long. And the whole system fits on just 2 pages. The rest of it is advice for playing and for incorporating this system into your own original game. So this is definitely a framework to be adopted and hacked. Five out of five stars!

https://vidityavoleti.itch.io/goblin-pulls-out-gun

Happy Valley (2014) #

— Season 1

Started watching this on my local library’s instance of Kanopy after it was recommended at book club. It is super intense, very violent and disturbing. But also very compelling televison. Watching Catherine’s slow burn spiral is captivating. Definitely have to watch with the captions on. Their accents are so thick! Kanopy dropped it before I could finish Season 1, so now I need to rent it I guess if I want to find out what happens.

Hacker Public Radio #

— RPGs and Stuff

Been listening to a lot of back episodes of HPR. Lots of klatu’s old RPG episodes. And a couple of other grab bag episodes. It’s a nice variety of content and hosts.

Indiepocalypse #

— epsisodes 1 and 2

Started listening to Indiepocalypse after duder started shipping thumb drives of the zine/game bundle in cassete tape cases, which i think was really rad. Nathalie Lawhead was in episode 1 which was really cool.

ragnarok #

— Season 3

i can’t believe i haven’t logged Ragnarok seasons 1 and 2! this show is awesome! I’m excited about season 3. there’s only 6 episodes i think? Loki is Really good in this show.

Moonstruck (1987) #

This was an odd little movie! Cher was pretty good in it. Nick Cage was pretty good in it. It was all about people being in love and not in love and crashing into each other and being afraid of death. It was very bizarre and chaotic.

Umbrella Academy #

— Season 3

Okay hella good. This is one of my favorite series. Based on one of my favorite comic books. But I did not remember enough about Season 2 to understand what was going on in the first part of this season with Harlan. And I did not understand the beef between Alison and Viktor. Truly enjoyed how Eliot Page’s character changed genders and everybody was just like, that’s cool. Nice to see Klaus come into his own. I think this is supposed to be the final season which is sad.

Mean Girls (2024) #

Hot damn this was good! Better than the original even!

Mean Girls (2014) #

this was as good today as it was back in the day! so good.

Taylor Swift Eras Tour (2023) #

the taylor swift movie was pretty good! i enjoyed watching it!

Barbie (2023) #

I watched the Barbie movie! It was hella good.

Holiday in the Vineyards (2023) #

This one was hella bad! No chemistry. No tension. Total snoozefest. 0/5 stars!

Rude Tales Of Magic #

— I don't know because they don't number their shows. Up through Murder Of Crows.

super raunchy and dirty but also bust a gut funny. i thought it was just gonna be an immature laugh fest, but there is also some damn decent character development and roleplaying too. this is gonna turn out to be a top tier D&D podcast, I think. not for anybody who wants to hear actual dice rolls: they edit those out. it’s all narrative and story telling.

The Batman (2022) #

Did not finish at ~1:30. Why is this movie three hours long??? I’m super glad that they scaled back the stupid Christian Bale batman voice. Just one small step in a series of decisions that made batman seem more vulnerable and more human: give him a normal voice. Also enjoyed seeing Bruce as kind of traumatized and vulnerable. HATED the character design of the riddler. He was basically an original character the way he was designed and portrayed. Ultimately just didn’t care enough to put in another 1.5 hours.

Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square (2020) #

A Christmas musical! Christine Baranski is the villain who is evicting the whole town right before Christmas, but is there some secret in her heart that she’s guarding? And Dolly Parton is a magical angel. At first I was utterly delighted by this movie. But the pacing is way slow. Too many musical numbers. And also verrry Christian. It was cute though! 3/5 stars!

Christmas Inheritance (2017) #

maybe i was in a Mood while watching this one, but this was the worst of them all so far. most of these so far have been so-bad-it’s-good, or at least fun to watch in some way. this one wasn’t interesting enough to even elicit any negative opinions. just a waste of time. -1/5 stars!

Single All The Way (2021) #

Much more cute and adorable than.. good. There was really no reason for Jennifer Coolidge to be in the movie at all. Except that she directed it. And to get people to watch it. Pete was clueless, Nick was adorable. 3/5 stars!

Love Hard (2021) #

It was kind of cute? They oversold the kiwi joke at the beginning. Jimmy O. Yang was good. The Die Hard + Love Actually mashup at the end was satisfying, but the ending overall fell kind of flat I think. Quirky grandma was obnoxious. 3/5 stars!

A Castle For Christmas (2021) #

On the tin, this looks exciting! Brooke Shields! That guy from The Princess Bride! But it took less than 10 minutes for me to utter the Eight Deadly Words: I Don’t Care What Happens To These People. It just didn’t pick up any drama or intrigue. The main characters had zero chemistry. The plot wasn’t interesting. The ending wasn’t satisfying. -1/5 stars!

Family Switch (2023) #

This one was actually pretty damn cute. It has Jennifer Garner and Ed Helms. It is a self-aware Freaky Friday alike. (They 4th-wall mention Freaky Friday, Big, and 13 Going On 30.) They struggle to fix their family relationships while learning about themselves and each other, bla bla bla. Formulaic. But varietally correct. 3/5 stars!

Four Cousins & a Christmas (2021) #

wow how did this movie even get made in the year 2021. the filmography looks like it was shot on a couple of iphones by some art school students. the music is a bunch of mouth noises that jerk the watcher away from being able to pay attention to the scene. the writing is ridiculous: the entire plot revolves around which song the cousins will sing at their grandmother’s funeral as though you can’t sing both silent night and also amazing grace. also it should have been called 4 cousins and a funeral because it could have happened in the middle of july because the fact that it’s christmas is mentioned maybe 0.5 times and it has no relevance to the movie whatsoever. it’s not a christmas movie, it’s … i don’t know what it is. it’s like if a high school freshman attempted to deconstruct the family comedy drama movie genre and then a million years from now the apes that inherit the earth found that script and tried to reconstruct not just that genre but motion pictures altogether as a medium. all of the things that are supposed to come together to create an enjoyable cinematic experience? each one of them independently fails in its own spectacularly in-your-face way and the result is a disjointed mosaic of discomfort and unease that should never have seen the light of day, but instead is inexplicably a featured hulu holiday movie. 0/5 stars!

The Christmas Calendar (2017) #

this was a weird quasi knock off of you’ve got mail. the big box bakery comes in and tries to put the small shop out of business that the baker just inherited from her grandmother. she was like, Why are you trying to put me out of business?? and then she was like, I hoped it was you!! the funny parts are: 1) the entire town randomly did a bowling tournament together for some reason. like the entire town. and 2) wendy “from the news” showed up and kept introducing herself as Wendy From The News. 2/5 stars!

The Holiday (2006) #

this movie was boring! i feel like cameran diaz and jude law were the main story line, and kate winslet and jack black were just kind of intruding on it. i guess i feel like that because cameran and jude were falling in love since the beginning, and kate and jack didn’t really get together until the very end. not enough time for either storyline to really launch i feel like. i expected more from a major motion picture holiday movie with an all a-list cast. but this was kind of hallmark tier instead.

You've Got Mail (1997) #

this is a movie about a rich white guy who bullies a small business owner out of a job, and then gaslights her into falling in love with her. and dave chapelle was there too. 1/5 stars.

How I Met Your Father #

— rest of season 1 + season 2

this show was deleriously unfunny and boring until the final four episodes, when it suddenly got kind of funny and interesting, and then the series was canceled forever. oh well! victim of the writers strike?

buffy the vampire slayer #

— season 1 episodes 1 - 2

watching buffy! never watched this show thi first time around. i know it’s a whole THING and it starts out really good so i get it. funny seeing sarah michelle geller and allison hannigan, such babies. dialog is kind of heavy handed. trying to be super teenager socal. oh, they just fixed their mouth prosthetics halfway through season 2 so luke can actually talk without lisping now lol

Saturday Edition #

just finished playing this little game for the playdate. it was soo good! a spooky little mystery evocative of old lucasarts / scummvm point-and-click adventures. i was never sure until the end just what exactly was going to happen. five out of five stars. possibly my favorite game for the playdate so far.

The Babadook (2014) #

gay icon and embodiment of mental illness, Mr Babadook, stars in his very own movie, The Babadook! This was a great psychological thriller about how the mom’s grief and depression isolate her and her son and wreak havoc on both of them. The trick to mental illness is to not deny it, and to feed it worms every day. Probably the best horror flick i’ve seen this year

Extended, Your Song Is Good #

still one of my absolute favorite albums. i’m not got going to bother looking, but i bet you a dollar that i’ve already posted it here at least once.

https://ysig.bandcamp.com/album/extended

No One Will Save You (2023) #

Spectacular! The lack of dialogue felt gimmicky only once or twice. The rest of the time, I feel like you barely noticed it was missing. Good action, good scares, good monsters. Good heroine. Excellent ending! 5/5 spooky aliens.

The Friendship Game (2022) #

The premise was interesting and the trailer looked good, but uh oh! all the reviews are really bad. So we’ll see what happens.

… so it never quite, stuck the landing.

it was okay. but i never really understood what the hacker kid had to do with anything..

Gordy and the Monster Moon #

Cute little Pico-8 game game. A bedtime story for a frog about a pumpkin who crash lands on a monster moon and has to hop around unburying a bunch of cryo-pods to terraform the moon. It’s a little zelda-like, or a metroidvania i guess you could say, where you have to get power ups that give you access to other parts of the map. Anyway, cute. fun. short. Seems like a lot packed into it for Pico-8.

The Haunting Of Julia (1977) #

Second Peter Straub flick after Ghost Story. Although this one came first chronologically. It was Straub’s first movie adaptation in fact. Starring Mia Farrow as Julia. She gets haunted!!

spoilers and liveblogging

So in the opening scene her daughter Katie starts choking on a piece of apple. And Henry Heimlich hadn’t invented his maneuver yet in the mid-seventies, so she’s a total goner! To make matters worse, Julia decides to do Katie a tracheotomy herself with a small table knife. That doesn’t go good! So yeah she kind of killed her daughter.

So then she moves out on her own because she’s all traumatized. And she keeps hurting herself and the sight of blood triggers her because it reminds her of all the blood from when she killed her daughter.

The music is all orchestral and i don’t think it’s actually synth, but it kind of sounds like it. must be the strings layered over the piano or something.

Okay so then they decide to have a seance, which is a natural thing to do for somebody still super traumatized by that one time she killed her daughter.

I’ve kind of lost track of the dead kids in this movie. There’s obviously Katie, Julia’s daughter that she killed. And then Olivia the little girl who died in Julia’s new house. And then Brayden, the kid that Olivia and the other kids murdered. And Julia seems to be haunted by … all of them at this point. By their memories at least. The only mystery we haven’t solved yet is what happened to Olivia. I bet her mother killed her when she found out she killed a boy.

Also has nobody realized that Magnus is dead in Julia’s basement yet??

Oh yes, Mrs. Rudge killed Olivia.

Also RIP Mark, died in the bath, poor fella.

For a movie about a haunting, there hasn’t been any ghosts yet. Just a lot of accidents.

Julia laying around tracing patterns on the carpet, humming into her bed sheets, like she’s just killing time, haunting her own space, her own life.

wow spoke too soon, there’s the ghost. and julia just welcomed her with open arms. goodness.

Ghost Story (1981) #

kind of a snoozer this one. neat seeing fred astaire in a modern movie. i can never imagine him outside the 30s/40s. the reveal/ending/climax was very anti-climactic

Barbarian (2022) #

Film number 2 this spookerween. A monster story, a haunted house story. Pretty spooky! Pretty scary! I feel like we’re meant to be sympathetic to the monster, and ultimately by the end I am. But the origin story flashback in the middle, while establishing who the real monster is, seemed mostly to just mess up the pacing. What a very abrupt and final ending!

But wait who was sending the people to the airbnb in the first place?? was it bonnie? was bonnie in on this??

Alien (1979) #

Last year around this time i got covid, and laid in bed for a couple weeks watching scary movies.

This year i will repeat this tradition, minus the covid (I hope!), starting with Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). Which I’ve never seen. And which I will be liveblogging here.

Spoilers abound!

So the opening credits start rolling and it’s funny to me that Tom Skeritt gets top billing over Sigourney Weaver because I don’t even know who Tom Skeritt is, and if anybody knows just one thing about Alien it’s that Sigourney Weaver is in it. And that there is an alien I guess.

There’s a cat! Is there a small kitty cryochamber somewhere?? Did they space-freeze a cat? Just to keep them company in space? Just to be a cute little space kitty?

The facehugger and chestburster scenes happen pretty early on. Poor Kane. John Hurt looks good as a youngster. I don’t think I know him from anything other than Doctor Who, when he was quite old and grizzled.

Ash the Science Officer is highly … illogical. He’s on the side of the alien.

Aw no the cat is back. Its name is Jones!

The Nostromo is massive, but the interior shots are often so tight and cramped. Why is it raining inside the ship??

Ripley gets boss as fuck as soon as Dallas bites it. Good thing we established early on that when Kane and Dallas are gone, she’s in charge. Because now she’s fucking in charge.

Ash actually was in cahoots with the alien! Well, with the company. Was he just trying to smother Ripley with a rolled up magazine? Mirror of how the facehugger impregnated Kane I guess.

Android reveal! He was acting logically all along. He just had a different set of instructions to follow. Inhumanly logical science officer archetype intact.

Who knew Jones the Cat would end up being one of the most important plot-driving characters in the movie.

This movie is worth watching just for all the amazing retro-futurist technology aboard the ship. Truly spectacular. But also at the end of the day it’s really all up to a woman and her flame thrower.

Oh no did Ripley just abandon Jones The Main Character Of The Whole Movie to the alien?? Jones!!

Oh good Jones is okay, whew.

Oh my god be careful Ripley, you cant just fling the cat carrier into the shuttle like that! Be careful with Jonesy!

Whoa Mother wasn’t messing around with that Self Destruct procedure. The Nostromo blew up like a god damn super nova.

Oh okay Jonesy just goes into a regular people sized cryo pod. That answers one of my questions. Let’s not kid ourselves here. Jones is definitely the main character of this movie.

Ripley stripping down to her skivvies to go into the cryo pod is on the one hand a scintillating little bit of cheesecake for the viewers but also on the other hand signifies the upcoming final showdown and its stakes: no ship (exploded), no weapons (discarded), no clothes, no prep. It’s Ripley vs. The Alien, one-on-one. High vulnerability. I don’t really get how or why the thing is just chilling out like, inside the guts of the escape pod though.

Um holy crap Jones has their own book???? Jonesy: Nine Lives on the Nostromo. How can I immediately get my hands on this?? And their own wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_(fictional_cat)

This has been Ridley Scott’s Jones (1979), thank you for watching.

Wilco, Animal Collective #

There’s a new Wilco and a new Animal Collective out! Both are kind of snoozers. Sadface.

And Just Like That #

— S2

This season was maybe overall better that season 1. But the ending was hot hot garbage. FIVE YEARS??? seriously wtf

only murders in the building #

— S3E01-02

i just really love this show. it’s so funny.

casual birder (playdate) #

it’s cute as hell! i love it! I need to go back and find the rest of the birds and finish it

Bachelor in Paradise #

it’s trash and i love it

playdate #

I’ve been playing a whole bunch of playdate games! Casual Birder is the number 1 best season game so far. and the Pick Pack Pup and then Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure. the best 3rd party game is Woods. it’s a really well done and thought out tiny zelda-like. so many little art games and toys too. love it!

doom patrol s3 #

slow burn but what a hoot! everybody DIES and then comes back as ZOMBIES and michelle gomez is amazing in everything i’ve ever seen her in. i feel like we’ve been waiting for like 2.5 seasons for larry to figure his shit out. and giant robot cliff! lol

NOS4A2 #

— the rest of season 1

scissors for the drifter!! kind of over charlie’s constant old guy young guy transformation. i get it, he literally preys on youth. now just keep him zach quinoa aged. EDIT: Wait WHAT, I cannot believe that Scissors For The Drifter was not the season finale, there are three more damn episodes?

sandman #

— 1 - 4

could not be more excited for this. I thought Dream was a little too young and handsome, but he really grew on me. Wowzers the whole scene with Lucifer was magical. John Dee is really growing on me. can’t waeit to see the diner scene.

gossip girl #

started the original series. now i know who penn badgley and blake lively are. surprisingly funny. penn is especially fun to watch.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space #

dnd sesh turned into movie night when chaz unexpectedly dropped out. super entertaining!

doom patrol #

season 1 = good as hell. season 2 = also good! loving this.

working moms #

the final season! ended on a good note i guess.

you, season 4 #

what a trip! first half, was rooting for joe. 2nd half, madness madness!

gossip girl #

finished the series! good run. the ending was dumb

breath of the wild #

just started playing this and it is extremely my jam. an open world sandbox with a light crafting system and an emphesis on exploration? sign me up! the world is very large and scary, and i am very small and weak.

New Years Eve #

an ensemble feel-good holiday movie that i’d rather be poked in the eye than watch. we literally skipped the entire middle 60 minutes.

White Lotus #

total agony. just broken people being broken, hurting themselves and hurting each other. exploiting and being exploited. exploring the violence inherent in imbalances of power. it was beautiful.

last wave - they might be giants #

i cannot stop thinking about this song. entirely on its own, it is one of the trippiest, most surreal, most bleak musical experience you can have. the constantly repeated refrain, “We die alone, we die afraid, we live in terror. We’re naked and alone, and the grave is the lonliest place” over the peppy monotonous beat is a delightfully disonant juxtaposition. BUT THEN come to find out the song was written explicitly to be played to Aerosmith and RUN DMC’s Walk This Way, and it goes to a whole nuther level. https://gamemaking.social/@SpindleyQ/109279993652923258 https://archive.org/details/LastWave_201712

SOPHIE — OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES #

This album is all over the place! I kind of love it. The opening transition of It’s Okay To Cry -> Ponyboy is out of this world. Dissonant noise, beautiful melodies, peaceful ambience.. it’s all over the map. This album title introduced me to the concept of a mondegreen. OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES = I LOVE EVERY PERSON’S INSIDES. The word mondegreen comes from mishearing a line of a poem, “They have slain the Earl o Moray and Lady Mondegreen”. The correct version is and laid him on the green. So it refers to an instance of mishearing a lyric or phrase and changing its meaning. Like Hendrix’s “excuse my while I kiss this guy”, etc. https://invidious.baczek.me/watch?v=AC8h4HnWyys

Alison's Birthday #

Just browsing movies on archive.org, and popped this one on in the background while working on other things. I don’t know if it’s just the part of the collection I’m browsing right now or what, but there seems to be a lot of low budget Australian horror. The opening ouija board / seance scene was good and spooky, but then a whole heck of a lot of nothing happens for the next hour. Not even in a building tension / suspense kind of way. The ending is actually spectacular, but it all comes to a head in the last 15 minutes which, for a 95 minute film, is not really enough pay off. Great first 15 minutes, great last 15 minutes. With an hour of ho-hum in the middle. https://archive.org/details/alisons-birthday-1979

Solarpunk Prompts #

— 1 - 3

tomasino is doing a podcast for nanowrimo! it’s all about solar punk. https://podcast.tomasino.org/@SolarpunkPrompts/episode

Workin Moms #

— season 6

wow this show has really been on for six seasons now? this season is much better than last season. last season was fucking weird. this one has interesting work drama. surprise teenaged children. the angry one’s anger issues. the “other one” has a lot of story line this season. which isn’t interesting. she’s cut off from the other characters so much. like, why do we have her? super sad that kate and anne had a friendship breakup. i expected anne to flip out way more at the crazy lady stalking her daughter. also, did crazy lady murder anne in the last scene????

celebrity memoir book club #

— Matthew Perry has Friends, Lovers, and a Big Terrible Thing

it’s the matthew perry book! i don’t know what kind of weird narcissistic a-hole can say with a straight face “I’ve done 30 years of therapy, there’s nothing else it can teach me” while continuing to have obvious personal issues the size of OUTER SPACE.

Only Murders In The Building #

— Season 2

a whole lot going on this season. I feel like they tried to pack too much in. It was good, but kind of scattered and unfocused. Lots of meta self-references. Funny though! Do recommend!

Over The Garden Wall #

— 1

tried to get phoebe to watch this with me because i remember adoring it the first time i watched. I did not remember how weirdly scary the first episode is though with the woodcutter and the dog with the saucer eyes. they did /not/ like it. The episodes are only 10 minutes long!! gonna finish this one by myself.

Practical Magic #

settled on this trying to find a halloween movie we could both watch together. first part is boring. but it has a baby Mark Feuerstein for like 2 minutes before he gets killed off. and more importanted 1998 Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, and Stockard Channing? What’s not to like!! Later: finished it. It was … not good! But a nice waste of time if you want to eat popcorn and sit on the couch.

Psycho II #

i didn’t know there were a bunch of sequels to the original movie! the aftermathematicians were streaming it this afternoon. Perkins plays a very watchable nervous, fidgetty norman bates. (later..) Okay yeah this is maybe the best horror/suspense movie i’ve ever seen. slow burn. plots within plots. crazy norman is a show stealer. “That’d be a great load off my mind” had me rolling.

halloween edition! #

Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde “I’m gonna have a drink and walk around; I have a lot to think about!” “The moon is full and the stars are bright; The sky is a poisonous garden tonight!” https://open.spotify.com/album/0Qny7PmxUlBMrw4xdeiHaU?si=KMGp4ky4R-quedkteCY2eg

Plastic Fang, John Spencer Blues Explosion “You done your baby wrong and you know you gonna die tonight!” https://open.spotify.com/album/0moGqohhmzHI4yOwqFlZ6j?si=KJhl9CHRRsigFB0lvYuUZg

Floating Coffin, Thee Oh Sees https://open.spotify.com/album/6UpdRU3P0AAMA6MVCzsW3c?si=bB9r8ZchT5GmYP4BNbSNww

Blood Money, Tom Waits “God’s Away On Business!” https://open.spotify.com/album/34jdCKLIC2rmMyACRTKZNG?si=E3XObc2CRdSYK7ddIleZTA

Mary Rose Cook -- 10997 #

mary rose cook is a talented hacker, writer, and coder. And she also just so happens to have a hauntingly beautiful lofi album of confessional songs. https://open.spotify.com/album/2prtOWnF0VMYLjL527tvbC

NOS4AT2 #

— 1 - 5

I didn’t know this was a show! Read the book a long time ago and thought it was weird and fun. There’s 2 seasons on hulu. So let’s check it out! followup: that was cool! i like seeing zach quinto back in a villain role.

Chainsaw Man #

— 1 - 2

delightfuly quirky and violent. can’t stand how out of sync the subs are though

We Need To Do Something #

kind of a closed room horror, where people slowly lose their minds. The opening scene when they all walk into the bathroom like players walking onto a stage was kind of brilliant. In fact, this whole thing could have been a theater production. So very very much happened off camera: the end of the world, the monster whatever it is, the death of the would-be savior, the mom’s infidelity and cheating, the dad’s entire fatherhood apparently. the whole thing was kind of amazing.

Willy's Wonderland #

Okay this movie is basically “Nicholas Cage stars in Five Nights at Freddy’s” and I was really excited about it, but it was in fact the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t even good in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way. Just bad. The only funny part was the janitor walking away from the chameleon fight because it’s his break time. 0 out of 5 stars, do not recommend.

Books of Blood #

the 2022 Spookerween Horror Fest continues with Books of Blood! Books of Blood is the collection of short stories by Clive Barker that Hellraiser comes from. And this movie is an adaptation of sorts about the core framing story, which is a variation on Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. In this case, the one who bears the stories of the dead carved into their skin is the eponymous Book of Blood. I’d say I’m a Clive Barker fan. I read Imajica recently and really liked it. Thief Of Always was a favorite of mine as a kid. So I was stoked to check this one out. It’s one of those stories that is three different interconnected stories, and you get to find out how they’re related as the story goes on. I enjoy this format. Ellie’s garden was uniquely creepy. Simon’s ultimate transformation into the book was satisfying. Probably the most entertaining and engaging horror movie I’ve watched so far this season.

Antlers #

a monster movie staring Keri Russel and some creepy kid about the WENDIGO. very good! interesting watching this one right after Evil Dead, which was all effects and no plot. This one is all plot, with sparce—but excellent—effects. and this was better. It was weird seeing little Felicity pulling the beating heart out of a beast and then murdering a little kid. Whatever actor played her cop brother … I don’t know if he was perfect, or completely miscast. Kind of doofy and ineffectual. Also the abusive father plotline was … important because it gave Keri’s character a motivation and a way to bond with the abused kid. But they explored it and showed us just enough that it was like, either take us there or don’t. Either establish it as background and then build on that, or spend ample time exploring what that was like, but don’t do something weirdly inbetween those. the monster was great. I liked watching the transformation from meth head dad to fucked up dad to wendigo. not positive about the token Wise Native American. felt tropey.

Evil Dead (2013) #

I thought Evil Dead movies were supposed to be kind of funny. This was just gore and blood spatter. The plot was … not really there. Young adults go to a cabin in the woods, release an demon, and get picked off one by one. It was literally all just gore factor. Not that impressed

Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard #

I wonder what the legacy of KG+LW will be. I wonder if they’ll be talked about in the decades to come. I think they’re underappreciated in their own time. I know music people know them and that they have a huge fan base. But if you ask somebody with only an average in popular music, they probably have never heard of them. I can’t believe they continue to churn out 2 - 5 albums every year on top of touring. i literally don’t understand how it’s possible. this is a weird psychadelic soup of elements that is probably my favorite thing of theirs since nonagon infinity, which remains my favorite https://kinggizzard.bandcamp.com/album/ice-death-planets-lungs-mushrooms-and-lava

Viagra Boys #

been jamming out to these boys lately. Sports is probably a career defining song. And the rest of it is so good. Sebastian’s Tom Waits style growling sounds good. Groovy bass lines and noise, and horns. it’s all good

hellraiser (2022) #

spookers! I recognized that Pinhead was Nomi from Sens8 by her voice. that was cool. Not jump scare scary. But lots of gore and body horror that made me kind of squeamish. The story itself was okay. Classic hellraiser stuff. Kind of a buddhist parable isn’t it? Desire and longing leads to suffering.

Bee and Puppycat #

— the rest of season 2

okay as soon as i finished writing the last entry about B&PC (#133) stuff did get a lot more meta arc. AND IT WAS GREAT. i loved getting to see the warlocks. Mouly coming back was really neat. finally getting to see some Space Outlaw (and Violet and … Baby?) was rad. (Cardamon = Baby?) Still don’t know what Bee is. Maybe the ship itself? Like the ship’s AI? and who is her dad?? Cannot WAIT to see more of this weird ass story.

letterkenny #

— 1

a couple of my friends always reference this show. popped it on hulu after Paper Girls ended and I didn’t have anything else i was watching. It is funny! Fast, quick, witty. I shall continue to watch it.

baba is you #

got this in an itch bundle a long time ago. somebody (cymen?) was talking about it on town, so i whipped it out and played the first zone. It is very fun! challenging, innovative puzzle game play. i shall continue to play it.

Felicity #

— the original finale

okay so Felicity got canceled and they rushed the ending like mad. The result was a kind of stupid episode that was really unsatisfying because the friends all break up, Ben suddenly has a baby, they get engaged and then they split up. And then he magically shows up in Palo Alto. There was a lot of satisfying symmetry between the finale and the pilot. But the writing was rubbish. SO NOW WHAT HAPPENS is that the show gets extended for another couple episodes after the finale, and the writers go OH SHIT and try to squeeze a few more drops of content out of an already wrapped up show. I’m told there is time travel involved lol. can’t wait.

Bee and Puppycat #

— Season 1 and half of Season 2

If season 1 of B&PC was a cozy nap, then season 2 is a hectic fever dream. Totally surreal, much more “anime”. Very random. Glad we got to see more of the wizard family. Toast is actually funny this season. Being spoonfed tiny portions of the meta stories, which I am sooo curious about. Can’t wait to see how this ends. I wonder if we’ll get a tight conclusion, or whether it will continue to spin off. The racetrack planet and the vacation coconut planet are two temp jobs that are satisfying at face value, and which are also rich with meaning and nuance. Especially racetrack planet.

Paper Girls #

— Rest of Season 1

Well that ended stupid. I didn’t even know it was the end of the season. No rising action, no tension, no climax, no nothing. If the entire show is about time travel, you can’t have the “cliffhanger” ending for the season be that they time traveled. No duh.

labor day phish at dicks #

wow the enegry of the set 1 opening is amaze. i have got to see these guys live at least once in my life. next year. Labor Day Dicks 2022

Paper Girls #

— 1 - 7

i really enjoyed the book. and the show is also really damn good. I like all the time travel shenanagins

Felicity #

— season 1 - 4

this is a really good show

The Old Man #

— 1 - 2

IS THIS THE BEST TELEVISION EXPERIENCE THERE IS? update (finished): it was okay lol

The Devil Wears Prada #

meh glenn close was fun to watch way early 90s period piece. lots of pre-iphone cellphones (which I love). but also the opening scene had 2 musical montages. just kind of dated romcom adjacent. the boyfriend said it: the real relationship was between andy and miranda. no real romance to be had took her way too long in the ‘search’ phase to get to the ‘find’ phase. ‘return’ and ‘change’ were smooshed together in the final 15 minutes. honestly the whole movie was watching andy adapt to this world that she didn’t want and that didn’t want her. honestly glenn carried the movie. she was fascinating to watch. little nuggets like, “I’ve only ever seen her smile once,” and then her smiling in the final scene. That made the whole movie. and her varied delivery of “That’s all”, from dismissive and condescending to her wrapping up her own fucking marriage.

how i met your mother #

— the rest of it

it was good. after re-watching the alternative ending, i really don’t think they needed to kill the mother probably won’t ever watch this one again, despite how hilarious it is. Too fatphobic, transphobic, misogynist, and all around problematic

moon knight #

— the end

hell yes, good show, would watch again, can’t wait for season 2

moon knight #

— s01e05

caught up! the last two psyche ward episodes were sensational. lots of feels. potential best line of the series: “Did Mark create Steven to protect him? Or did Steven create Mark to punish the world?”

moon knight #

— s01e01

okay that was fucking cool

how i met your mother #

— s07e03

always surprised to see who all is on this show. this time, martin short! okay also with the return of victoria comes the return of ted and victoria’s theme song, spit on a stranger. it’s a beautiful rendition, but that doesn’t change the fast that SOAS is a song about a relationship turning into bitter hatred, and it is super duper distracting for this to be a sweet song about their breaking up because it’s supposed to be a sweet and tender moment of understanding and regret, and here’s this song about growing to hate the person you were with.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power #

— S05E10

countdown to the series finale! feel like we’re rocketing towards it. Wrong Hordak is really stealing the show. Much more interesting than actual Hordak at this point okay listen i’m not “into” anime like that but the episode where mermista and perfuma and scorpia dressed up like dames from the 1930ss and went to a speakeasy was something really special at first i wasn’t sure that spinnerella and netossa should be these super powerful adeversaries, but on the other hand they were the only active members of the princess alliance for a long time, and probably the entirety of their field agents

donkey kong country #

nick and case came over this weekend and we played donkey kong and ate pizza while the girls went shopping because GENDER ROLES. that game seriously has great 2 player support though. it’s funny to go back and look now at what then were the most cutting edge graphics

link to the past #

absolutely stumbled through the ice level in the dark world. luckily the boss was laughably easy. so much more so than Blind in the previous level. in this case, the hard part was just getting through the maze of the dungeon and figuring out how to fall into the boss lair from above. I don’t know why it’s called metroidvania and not metroidvanzelda

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power #

— S05E03

okay i feel like i’ve been kind of binging this lately because i want to see the part where adora and catra get together, and it used to feel like it was going to take a long time to get there, but now it feels like we are rocketing in that direction. now they both have feelings and are doing crying, and catra is like, I’m sorry for everything, waaaah! entrapta getting to go to spaaaaaaace was fun hordak prime has a crazy messiah cult thing going on, but also is the most messed up looking of his ‘perfect clone’ with his random mutated eye holes

zelda and mario and metroid #

loving the crap outta link to the past, best game ever. Got into the dark world and got the first two crystals. playing super mario world with lasso which is super fun because they are super knowledgable about it and it’s super fun for them to be an expert in it metroid was too hard and too scary for me as a little kid but I am finding it super rewarding and fun now. Even so, it’s hard enough that i’ve had to look up walkthrus for it because i couldn’t find my way out of norfair.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power #

— S04E11

hate watch is not remotely the correct word because i love this show, but also a small piece of me is only watching so that i can see adora and catra profess their love for each other, like c'moooon.

legend of zelda - a link to the past #

guess what hosers, dozens got a nintendo switch for their birthday, so you can expect a whole lot more entries in the ‘playing’ category. Link to the Past is soooo good, one of the best games ever made I think. I just started it last night. it’s so familiar, but it’s been so long since i’ve actually played it that it’s also fresh and new: i don’t remember how anything works. well, most anything. broad strokes, i remember. but the finer details are all new again.

Plushgoolash #

Chin25: Soup Tennis, by Plush Goolash. This album is very weird and strange, but also very good. some real standout moments.

Legend of Vox Machina #

— 5-12

Finished it up! Again, I know nothing about Critical Role. I think I listened to 3 or 5 episodes. But I always considered Percy the least interesting character. Well no more! That story was cool as hell! I like it. Makes me want to maybe go listen to the podcast. Hope they make another season.

Legend of Vox Machina #

— S01E03-04

super spooky vampires, percy is spooky. I wonder whether they were unable to make a deal with Wizards because Pike worships the everlight and Scanlan casts Scanlans Hand.

Pushing Daisies #

— all of it

Forgot to mention we did a rewatch of all of Pushing Daisies a little bit ago! Still one of my favorite shows. Very pretty, very fun to watch. Forgot how boobtastic it is at times. Ended way too soon. tragic.

Legend of Vox Machina #

— Season 1 Episodes 1 - 2

Never really got that into Critical Role. This show starts off irreverent and crass to show that it’s not a kid’s animated show, I guess? In the first two episodes they summarily slaughtered an ancient blue dragon, which is a legendary achievement. It’s fun. I’ll keep watching it.

How I Met Your Father #

— Season 1

a new kind of reboot of How I Met Your Mother? It doesn’t really bring the funny.

How I Met Your Mother #

— season 1

started a rewatch of HIMYM. this show starts off so good. It knows exactly what it is, and so many great gags and scenes start right off from the beginning right in season 1. That said, a lot of it does not hold up. Kind of fatphobic, transphobic, misogynist, homophobic. That was 2005 I guess?

Tales of Nowhere S1E89 1:21:36 #

complete: Sat, 16 May 2020 09:42:50 -0600

Dimension 20 Fantasy High S1E1 #

The ending with the school principal / guidance counselor murder suicide WTFFFFF

fantasy high #

plowing through Fantasy High starting episode 6 right now brennan lee mulligan is an absolute force of nature this is maybe Emily’s first time playing D&D? She sounds much less experienced than in NADDPOD Her flipping the car off the road was inSANE

codpast #

  • Dimension 20 Fantasy High
  • Tales of Nowhere
  • NADDPOD: Trinyvale

Tales of Nowhere #

Can’t believe this thing is ending after 3 years

Fantasy High #

on the pen-penultimate episode. The scope and scale of the writing is off the wall. Brennan’s ability to improvise is amazing.

podcast roundup #

Naddpod: Over! ToN: Over! Season 2 of Naddpod started this week. Lapping it up. Season 2 of ToN has been teased. Anxious to hear it. We’ve been promised more in-universe (multiverse?) continuity than we’ve been given with Naddpod. I’m digging Evermourn (Naddpod) though. Murph managed to turn a triumvirate of gods into a fey vs. undead dichotomy that is really interesting so far. Also started listening to Dungeons and Daddies at the insistance of Triple D. It’s awesome and I’m loving it, and I’m loving seeing the effect that his listening to it is having on how much he’s been enjoying our own D&D sessions lately.

Naddpod #

Started up season 2 of Naddpod. It’s pretty good! Don’t really have much time to actually listen to it..

orbbb #

https://orb.farm/

playing #

not video games #

ton of rpgs on discord mostly

listening #

tunes #

in love with all of this #

good stuff #

smog #

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle - https://open.spotify.com/album/2jalkvKIskN3GecqZAuqam?si=z9dqfUbSTDOFpeNU6YDHig

alien sounds from the tropics #

new deerhoof! #

https://deerhoof.bandcamp.com/album/future-teenage-cave-artists

gaga #

azure #

Azure by Vinyl Williams

listen #

chill latin #

La Onda Chill Latin Indie

quiet dreamy #

attack and dethrone god #

Attack and Dethrone God from Attack and Dethrone God by 2DCAT

hibernation and sexopolis #

punisher #

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

man man woman woman #

new Man Man! dream hunting in the valley of the in-between still listening the crap out of fiona apple got on a Tori Amos kick the other night. Fell down a rabbit hole and learned that she has a strong, longstanding friendship with Neil Gaiman, and has mentioned him in a lot of songs. Listened to Silent All These Years, which is a great track, and this one line stood out to me

So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Boy, you best pray that I bleed real soon genius.com asserts that the final line is a threatening sort of way to tell “Boy” that he best pray she get her period soon, which makes complete, total, and utter since, and which is such an obvious interpretation, and one which I never made, being a dude who didn’t grow up around girls. Given the juxtaposition of deep thoughts and being silent, and finding one’s voice, I always thought of bleed in the sense of a pouring out of emotions, a laying bare of one’s most private thoughts. As in, “writing is easy. Just sit at the typewriter and bleed.”

leverage models #

https://leveragemodels.bandcamp.com – somebody on masto said they are trying to be the new talking heads and i am here for that.

lovers party #

https://shop.bornbadrecords.net/track/lovers-party

Sadness: Circle of Veins #

https://open.spotify.com/album/7afsZWJWle3m9drIE0cBWJ?si=QDNm_y6CSpCw-V2db8gSQg

Sparks #

All of the Sparks. I’ve listened to all the albums from 2020 back to the mid 80s. Drip Drip and Hippotamous are amazing. Some of the 90s and 80s stuff is way too 80s. Looking forward to seeing what the 70s are like.

Thee Oh Sees #

Wow why did I sleep on these guys. Floating Coffin might be a new favorite album of all time.

City Sun Eater in the River of Light, by Woods #

is playing in my head nonstop City Sun Eater in the River of Light, by Woods

Twin Peaks #

— S2E1

this is wacky tobacky. what is up with Donna’s bad girl transformation?

Twin Peaks #

— S1E9

cooper said, “as long as you can keep the fear from your mind” at 16:00 which is a brilliant parralel to his character in Dune with the mind killer litany lucy: leo was shot, jauc was strangled, the mill burned, shelly and pete got smoke inhalation, catherine and josie are missing, nadine is in a coma. cooper: how long have I been out?

Twin Peaks #

— S1E8

45 min this was a tough one. lots going on. oh no cooper got shot!

Twin Peaks #

— S1E7

can’t believe Leo shot that bird!

Locke and Key #

— S01E04

They broke down the wall to the old hang out room and there was a huge poster of the cover art of Radiohead’s The Bends What if you took out your fear? What would you do.

Locke and Key #

— S01E05

power corrupts: kinsey being vengeful, kids finding a memory of their dad clubbing somebody. mama starting to notice weird stuff: keyhole scars starting to see the teen drama stuff mentions on tildes. The school bully really kinda came out of nowhere. We haven’t seen her in several episodes, and when we did she seemed like a really minor character, and also like she was not a high school cliche but just a throwaway character.

Twin Peaks #

— S2E2

wonder if Tibbetan Buddhism was just a more alien concept in the 90s. They’re kind of making it a huge part of Cooper’s quirkiness The Meals On Wheels scene was Eraserhead levels of surreal THE OWLS R NOT WHAT THEY SEEM that “just you and I” song was sweet

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #

— P1E1

I never knew that Sabrina the Teenage Witch was part of the Archie and Jug Head universe. I only knew the MJH show on Nick. Fuck I love this intro

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #

— P1E2 - 3

I just love the aesthetics of this show. Adore the intro. Love Michelle Gomez

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #

— P1E4

anti-bullying episode! No Harrowing didn’t know Prudnce is the ~principal’s~ High Priest’s daughter really cool cliffhanger with the sleep demon

The Magicians #

Watched the 1st episode of The Magicians! It rocked. The introduction of the Big Bad was awesome. He reminded me of somebody from American Gods, or the man with the cloak (briefcase?) of flies in Welcome To Nightvale, or I think there was a guy in the Sandman comics whose face was always obscured. Quite liked it altogether. watching S1E2 now. it’s like if Shaggy and Velma have their own spinoff series

Twin Peaks #

kind of rage quit Twin Peaks the other night. Even anger posted on masto. It’s just too much. Too hokey, too campy, too much.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #

This is still a fun silly good little show

Locke & Key #

I think I’m watching the season finale right now. It’s intense!

The Magicians #

This show is fucking dope! I’m on episode 5 or 6.

Magicians #

Still watching magicians. in the middle of s1e10. Still enjoying it a lot, but the novelty has started to wane a little bit.

Rocketman #

Elton John, the movie! Okay so far. Kind of watching it 20 - 40 minutes at a time. Didn’t expect it to be such a musical. It’s kind of like Elton John’s Greatest Hits, with a little bit of biopic movies thrown in. Lots of cheese. When he first named himself and saw a photo of John Lennon, shining, with strings in the background, like he was the damn messiah, I almost threw my laptop.

The Boys #

Ugh, I said I wasn’t going to watch this show any more after the horrifically horrific first half of the first episode. But logged into prime video and there was the unfinished first episode just a-taunting me. I hear that all the villainous heroes get their comeuppance at some point. Well, I finished episode one finally. Only margainly interested in watching more.

The Midnight Gospel #

3 episodes in. what a weird, delightful little headtrip. The process of converting a podcast into an animated show means that the dialog is upfront and constant, and is the main dish here. And it kind of weaves in and out of actual relevance to what’s physically happening in the show. And bodies and identities and life is so ephemeral and so easy come easy go in the simulation. It’s a trip. Episodes are short at ~20 minutes and highly consumable. 5 stars, would recommend. So delightful. Simultaneously whimsical and also incredible earnest in discussing the nature of life and death and existence.

Good Fight #

Watched all of the new season of The Good Fight. What is memo 618! WTF at Jeffrey Epstein’s penis floating in a jar! what was with that finale!! Apparently there were going to be another 3 episodes but they had to shut down filming because of covid. Shame! I guess I’ll give them a pass

Magicians #

also finished the 1st season of The Magicians. Feeling kinda eh on continuing. Sudden time loops, sudden goddess turned mass murder + rape scene. yikes. and now julia just kidnaps the BBEG and kind of blackmails him into working with her? At Chuck E. Cheese? Weird. What is even going on here with the writers.

Midnight Gospel #

finished The Midnight Gospel. Phenomenal! That last episode with his mom was a real tear jerker.

Magicians #

Kinda sorta lost interest in season 2

Cursed #

Imma watch this because A) Netflix is shoving it down my throat (along with Warrior Nun whatever the shit that is) and B) it’s a dope looking fantasy series with a woman lead. So, in the name of feminism, why not? update: wow they really buried the lead that this is a King Arthur story. I almost quit out of boredom until I heard the words “Uthur Pendragon”

Spiderman #

Big news though: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse! Possibly the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen. Super entertaining, super fun to watch. The color and the animation, and the incorporation of comic book frames. And Jake Johnson really stole the whole show as Fat Old Peter B. Parker. Super great all around.

Rocketman #

Did I tell you I gave up on Rocketman? I gave up on Rocketman. It’s boring as hell. I wanted an Elton John movie. Not a musical of Elton’s Greatest Hits, with little bits of biopic interspersed.

Joker #

well that was certainly quite the descent into madness. left me in a weird mood.

Cursed #

Going back to Cursed now that Umbrella Academy is done. It’s like spooky good fairey tale fantasy.

Magicians #

Kind of have given up on Magicians. Started reading the book. Enjoying it.

Umbrella Academy #

The totality of the second season. It was so friggin good! Diego and Klaus and Alison looking so good with long hair. Vanya grappling with her memories and coming into her own. Cool time travel shenanagins. Expanding of powers: vanya, hello. The season long promise for No. 5 to learn micro scale time jumps. Hated Lila when I met her, but ended up being a delight. Hargreaves. The Swedes. Carmichael. The Handler. Just all so, so good.

Cursed #

Finished Cursed the other night. Outstanding final scene. Coudn’t hate Iris more. The most petulant, punchable face. Started to see some leadership from Arthur the conman. Merlin getting his magic back was as epic as I had hoped it would be. Didn’t really feel Nimway’s corruption that much, but her fall was tragic. Loved the final seen between Gawain and Percivel. Powerful. Five stars.

Stranger Things #

Went back and finished up season three. It was okay. Billy was a great villain. I liked how they sniped El’s powers so she’s not such a deus ex machina all the time. The entire Russian thing was so over the top 1980s red scare that is was kind of farscical and distracting. Weirdly nationalistic. Crazy that Hooper dies at the end. It was pretty good, nothing sensational. I don’t know if I’ll go out of my way to continue watching season 4. Season 1 was a watershed. Season 2 struggled to compete. and Season 3 was just pretty good.

Silicon Valley (Final Season) #

Good season. Kind of a spotlight on Jared, which I like. The final scene (in which Richard loses the thumbdrive) was out of character in how unsatisfying and unresolved it was.

October Faction #

Penultimate episode: we were the real monsters all along! Ultimate episode: the real treasure is the family we choose along the way

The Order #

seasons 1 and 2. binged it. Season 1 was fantastic. Season 2 was also good. very watchable. I like their unique spin on lycanthropy. Kind of sad they dropped the Good Will Hunting kind of vibe of “unexpected boy genius” after the first two episodes. The cliffhanger at the end of season one was amazing. The Season two ending was more divergent, less convergent, but also really good. Really enjoyed watching Vera’s character evolution. Super hate the head of the council. Glad Randall took her out. Super hate Gabrielle Dupris. I think her channeling of Midnight was really dumb. Jack wore Midnight and didn’t get all super crazy. If that’s the direction they wanted to go they should have made the Midnight vs. Silverback fight over Jack feel more personal. Also the show was really funny. Overall 5/5 stars, would recommend.

Hemlock Grove #

The year Netflix won its first primetime Emmy for an original online program, it won three of them: House of Cards, Arrested Development, and Hemlock Grove. Never heard of Hemlock Grove, but it keeps good company! I’ll give it a spin! Episodes 1 and 2: - Visually appealing. Good colors. - Twin Peaks levels of dramatics and overacting over cheesy music. Very much a spiritual successor. - Am I missing somthing or was the jump to “Can I Watch?” out of absolute nowhere? Are we doing chaotic leaps forward? Does the plot advance off screen when the viewer isn’t watching? - Was that the best werewolf transformation of all time? Yes, perhaps it was. Episode 3: - They keep calling this kid hirsuite and he is practically smooth! - the music on this show is really quite something

The Boys #

Ended up finishing Season 2 after all after raging against the misogyny. I ended up kind of liking it after all, which I kind of hate. There’s a not so subtle connection drawn between Homelander’s nationalism and actual, living, breathing Nazis, which I kind of love. Love Howie’s commitment to Billy Joel. The “Girls Get It Done” bit was unfortunately steeped in homophobia (or maybe just blackmail? Which only works because of homophobia) and, again, literal naziism. Only Starlight was left as the normal one, and while she fights against fascism and tyranny in general, there’s no denouncement of the rampant misogyny and no real redemption to be had. The whole thing continues to create a feeling of helplessness and powerlessness and frustration in the face of overwhelming odds. But Queen Maeve taking out Black Noir with an Almond Joy? Slapstick.

Carnival Row #

Visually great. Orlando Bloom! Fanciful. Narnia meets Jack the Ripper. Can’t seem to really get into it :(

The Tick #

Haha. Lol. Lulz. Liked that they gave us 0.5 seconds of SPOOON. Arthur’s character was redone and good. I liked how in the 1st 2(?) episodes we were lead to wonder whether the Tick was real or a hallucination.

Utopia #

Holy shit, timely zeitgeist much? So good. I adore a show that is not afraid to land its punches: killing a main character, torturing and disfiguring another. Rainn Wilson + John Cusak are super watchable. Plus the reveal of Mr. Rabbit’s motives was great because, while I may not agree with the means, I super agree with the end. The tie in of that reveal and his catchphrase, “What have you done to earn your place in this crowded world,” was also super satisfying. My least favorite part was Jessica Hyde herself. She sucked

Lovecraft Country #

Half way through episode 5 of 10. After having played Call of Cthulhu with the gang. I like how it goes back and forth between “The real monsters is racism!” and “The real monsters is MONSTERS!”

Lipstick Jungle #

watching a couple episodes with D as she’s rewatching it. Teddy Altman is good. And, Brooke Shields! I’m curious about the story of how Teddy Altman and husband were having mutual affairs and then the pregnant mistress marched in and demanded compensation. I don’t imagine I'de be a fraction as charitable to her as Teddy Altman ended up being. body: Also Teddy Altman was on Sesame Street??

Lovecraft Country #

Finished this show btw. Amazing middle game with Hippolyta’s adventures in space and time, and Topsy and Bobspy = supremely creepy. The ending is wild, with cutting off magic from all white people, and then Diana’s birthright = Bionic Commando + Lovecraftian beast tamer. wuuuuut This is a show by black people for black people, more unapologetically so than I’ve ever seen. A lot of the comments on reddit were super distateful, crying out about reverse racism and moaning about how every white person had to be evil, while missing the fact that not only is This Is America but this is America in the 20s - 50s where sunset tows and segreation and lynchings were actually real and so by taking part in the system, yes, all white people were somewhere on the spectrum between implicit and actively awful. So in conclusion those commenters can fuck off with their white fragility Anyway, good show. 10/10. Would recommend. Would watch again. Anxious so see a Season 2, but sadly doubt it will happen.

Queens Gambit #

— Episodes 1 - 3

Absolutely stunning. The actress who plays Beth Harmon has the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen. The show is gorgeous. It’s making me feel really romantic about the game, and it makes me want to play more. I can’t believe the kid from Love Actually is some Johnny Depp cowboy chess pirate.

Sherlock #

Watching episode 1. I’ve already watched it once. Still enjoying it nonetheless.

Sens8 #

— Epiode 1

Suuuuper intrigued so far. Didn’t realize this was made by the Wachowskis. Would have started it long ago had I known. Mel played this funny game during the first 30 minutes where she tried to guess the dialog based on the watching the scenes with no sound. She was correct 80% of the time.

Sherlock #

Finished ep1. Great! Half watched Ep2 Meh.

Queens Gambit #

Done. Amazing. I’m pretty sure this is required viewing for all people. Simply gorgeous. “I loved bisexual recovery chess rocky” Interesting shots. So much silence and heavy looks The lady who played Beth Harmon is so wildly expressive and was just perfect for this role My favorite part was how Beth’s mom, right before she died, said something about “I’m fine as long as I’m playing for fun” in regards to her playing piano. This was interesting to me because Beth never played for fun. Until she was able to free herself from having to prove herself by becoming the world champion. Which, you know. Is one way to free yourself from having to prove youself. It was great

Daybreakers #

Literally Feris Bueller’s day off with zombies. Cute show.

Jingle All The Way #

Story time! Once upon a time there was a tumblr blog of pictures of celebrities eating food, and Arnold always looked fuckind stupid/hilarious eating food, and the author of the blog alwas gave him funny captions that usually involved him saying, JINGLE ALL THE WAAAAY as he scarfed down a burger or hot dog. Anyway this movie was crap. Arnold sucked, Sinbad sucked, young Anakin sucked. Phil Hartmon was barely good, and Rita Wilson was the only sans character there. Weird trivia: this was apparently the last movie Phil was in before he was murdered.

Sens8 #

Finished this at some point. It was hella good. It was sexy and beautiful.

Good Trouble #

Okay newer show in my lineup. It’s artsy. Non-linear storylines, creative framing, fake starts, sudden overdubs. It’s all really fancily done. And the story is good too. Intersectional pay gap in the tech industry. Racial justice. Etc.

Good Fight #

Watched the 3rd season after the 2nd ended fucking weird with an extended prolonged penis joke. This one hit really heavy with expendible black lives during covid, and political correctness making it so that jokes are commodities. Dianne’s white guilt is a recurring theme as is the idea of neighborhood courts: where does justice actually come from?

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power #

Definitely loving this show. Its artword is very eastern meets western. It’s a little bit Steven Universe both in style and animation, and in subject, in the sense that I’m looking forward to some LGBTQ+ subject matter come up, and am already enjoying some body positivity via Glimmer.

Walking Dead #

The final season came out just recently. So I’m watching it from the beginning now. On Season 3 now. Zombies are funny because they are such a blank slate of a metaphor. They can stand for literally anything. Collapse of society, disease, fear of the future, fear of being forgotten, loss of control, seeing your loved ones become something else.. I think there was a good Mixed Taste about Slavic Zombies on the subject.

Masters of the Universe #

This show was great. It packed a whollup of nostalgia feels. My favorite part was the big switch-a-roo in which He-Man basically wasn’t in the show at all. It was in fact the Teela show. I was worried that Alicia Silverstone was going to ruin the show because she has a distinctive “Clueless” voice, but she did pretty good after all.

Wheel of Time #

Just watched the first 3 episodes. I love it! The casting is amazing. Nobody has tugged on their braid once. Padan Fain looks like he will be terrifying later. Hate the look of Thom Merrilin. He’s supposed to look more like Mark Twain than like … some sexy country rock star. Visually it’s amazing. Love the trollocs and the magic of the Aes Sedai.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power #

I usually watch an episode or two of She-Ra after Walking Dead as a pallet cleanser. Loving this cute show.

Walking Dead #

Let’s see, they survived the Governor, the cannibals at Terminus, the cop hospital.. Taking the mullet to DC was a weird sidequest. Can’t believe that’s how Beth goes out :(

And Just Like That #

The new Sex and the City where everybody is 50 years old and problematic! Very compelling and kind of a hate-watch. Miranda having an ongoing illicit affair is bonkers nonsense after almost breaking up with Steve for having a one-time fling in the first movie. Also Steve is such a muppet, they really did him dirty. Didn’t know (actress who plays Che and Callie from Grey’s Anatomy) is non-binary IRL.

Wheel of Time #

Finished it. Super great, loved it.

Walking Dead #

— S06E03

The Alexandria story arc is actually pretty great. It’s an effective kind of time travel: what if the Atlanta crew finds survivors who are experiencing the pandemic for the first time? Rick’s descent was hard to watch, but well done. Carol going Stepford Wife mode is creepy. She’s stone cold. This is the person who single handedly liberated the prison from the Governor’s goons. The monk called her out on it too: “Were you a cop? You’re always watching. Ready.” “Tee-hee, I’m just a girl.” That scene was great. Finding the herd at the beginning of this season is good writing. Small to medium groops of zombies aren’t dangerous or interesting any more. Now we need an army. Glen redeeming Nicolas is fun to watch. Edit: fuck I can’t believe I just wrote that and Nicolas literally got redeemed and also got Glen killed anyway 😭😭😭 That was one of the worst, most needless deaths thus far.

And Just Like That #

Just finished it tonight, and I gotta say, it was crap! Miranda is a joke. Steve is a joke. I don’t even want to talk about them. Total bullshit. Charlotte’s storyline finally makes sense at the final moment when she finally “becomes a woman” but–and this is the problem with the writing the whole season long–the writers never at any point bring the story. In retrospect, sure. She has allowed herself to be defined by those around her. Her daughter gets her period and becomes a woman. Her other daughter rejects womanhood and is instead non-binary, but also comes into their own adulthood. So Charlotte’s journey is all about rite of passage and coming into your own. Which she finally does at her own bat mitzah. She also creates some distance between herself and Harry by whooping his ass at tennis and refusing to apologize (a scene which at first I hated) and possibly also, though it wasn’t by her choice, by failing to give him a blowjob in the bathroom. (That episode was weiner-tastic. Two dudes showed peen, and for some gratuitious reason they decided to give Harry a horse cock.) Carrie’s storyline was satisfying. She put Big to rest. She got to reclaim her brand and return to Sex and the City, literally and figuratively. She’s juggling two boyfriends.

The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window #

a disappointing series starring Kristen Bell that was not good. Supposed to be a parody of the “Lonely woman who is a shut-in who thinks she sees a murder but doubts herself and also nobody believes her” trope. But it doesn’t go hard enough. There’s one or Police Academy style gags throughout the series, but again, they don’t go all in. A couple episodes they just don’t bring the funny, and when a parody fails to satirize, it’s just a lame imitation. There are two good parts of the show: the over the top way in which Bell’s character’s daughter died (killed and eaten by a serial killer in the middle of a maximum security prison) and during the finale when the real killer is revealed (the sweet 8 year old girl next door) and the physical struggle that ensued. The finale specifically almost makes it worth it, but not quite.

Walking Dead #

— S06E10

I might be done with this show. I feel like it just jumped the shark with Daryl fucking destroying an entire biker gang in one hit with a bazooka. And with showing Glenn getting ate not once but twice. And Rick and the gang deciding to just go outside and stab the horde to death. Like, what? The death of almost the entire (kid Sam’s) family was heartbreaking and bold. I feel like W’s redemption was half-assed. I just don’t know if I have 4 more seasons of this left in me. It’s getting really repeditive.