Total run time: 3h14m of movies plus 16 minutes of interstitial High Art (piss break songs), rounded to 2 sig figs = 3h30m

A note: timezones hard, feel free to use https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ or something similar to do timezone conversions to your local time

We will be using Blorptube tonight: https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine. IMPORTANT NOTE: please use a good VPN whenever visiting Blorptube due to how peering works.  You can read more about Peertube and potential security concerns here: https://hexbear.net/post/3471120

There may be 0 deaths in these movies and no gore, but I fear this might be the most disturbing movie night I’ve ever hosted.  “Who are you and what have you done with Cuddlefish?”, you may ask.  Well, I’ve never seen The Wedding Crashers and I met someone who was trying to sell her collection of over 1000 Wedding Crashers DVDs to raise funds for laser, and I take that as a sign that I should.  If not now, when?

Next, we have a Disney movie about a 2D princess going to the terrifying 3D world.  This sounds like it could be an effective cosmic horror about the effects of being forced to live in more dimensions than one’s mind is capable of, à la HP Lovecraft’s fear of non-Euclidean geometry, but instead they make it some ¿sweet? rom-com.  She falls in love with a divorce lawyer and forgets her betrothed because I guess 3D D mogs 2D D (I’m so sorry).  I’ve heard it’s pretty sweet so I’m going to try it out.

I did not plan this, but it turns out divorce is the common thread that justifies why both these movies are being shown together, not pure happenstance (it was pure happenstance).

Wedding Crashers (2005)

Best friends John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey are divorce mediators in Washington, D.C. who, in their spare time, crash weddings under false identities to meet and have sex with women. At the end of a season of successful crashes, Jeremy convinces John to crash the wedding of the eldest daughter of the U.S. Treasury Secretary, William Cleary.  Shenanigans ensue.  This entire movie is probably highly misogynistic

Content Warnings for Wedding Crashers

Violence and gore: barely :(

• minor surface wounds

Sexual violence: Heavy.

• Sexual harassment and assault depicted on screen played off for laughs, multiple attempts
• Stalking

Other:

• Death of a parent
• Character is restrained
• hate speech
• homophobia
• Abused ends up in a relationship with abuser
• ableism

Doesthedogdie: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/12558

UnconsentingMedia: https://www.unconsentingmedia.org/items/884

IMDB Parental Guide: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396269/parentalguide/

TankieTube link to movie: https://tankie.tube/w/aatZYrNTHTncprpSKKmWj6

Interstitial Break Queue: 16m09s planned

Pee Break Songs:

• Time for Piss - Burial Goods: https://youtube.com/watch?v=a1lJ4RxQnhs. (1m40s)
• Retained Surgical Instrument – Piss Chugging Contest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8VucUC0zVU (2m56s)
• Shrigley Piss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHZslWaW848 (0m40s)

Wedding music

Omar Souleyman sings at his own son’s wedding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4R6iFSYDZ0 (6m45s)

In all things there must be a remembrance of…

• Red Sun in the Sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBSUVgU4iNg (1m25s)
• Astrophysics synth wave remix of USSR anthem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf1GIrZWOig (3m08s)

Enchanted (2007)

Echanted is a 2007 American live action/animated musical fantasy comedy film.  It focuses on an archetypal Disney princess-to-be named Giselle, who is exiled from her 2D animated world into the 3D live-action world of the New York metropolitan area, where she promptly forgets her 2D betrothed and falls in love with a 3D divorce lawyer.

The live-action animated film is both a homage to and a self-parody of Disney's animated features, making numerous references to past works through the combination of live-action filmmaking, traditional animation, and computer-generated imagery.  It also marks the return of traditional animation to a Disney feature film after the company's decision to move entirely to computer animation in 2004.

Content Warnings for MOVIE 2

Basically nothing.

Doesthedogdie: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/14609

UnconsentingMedia: https://www.unconsentingmedia.org/items/12404

IMDB Parental Guide: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461770/parentalguide/

TankieTube link to movie: https://tankie.tube/w/fwFS3iBmSGq2Sm8Gm2VPJP

Apparently his channel was demonetized a couple years ago for releasing a eurobeat remix because catchy music is terrorism, more details here https://docs.google.com/document/d/17tAUpwztZKXzfZYSpe-38OqWaiVMCgvwUHzI4BeFIqM

I love the original song and am interested in hearing his remix of it. If anyone's got it, please mirror or dm me

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/glompsalot.bsky.social/post/3mvajn3lsik2o

(I know Hochul's never been in the vicinity of the Left but Mamdani is allegedly DSA-tier)

Alternate headline: Muslim mayor of NYC begs Trump for counterterrorism funds because of 9/11, inveighs against defunding the police

Counterterrorism funds were not famously used to brutalize Muslim NYC-ers

Weaponizing the smears against us for wanting to abolish the US police, which got watered down into wanting to defund them. This is the same tier of political literacy as calling Trump gay for Putler or Hegseth woke and trans-affirming for wanting to give aspiring war criminals testosterone shots

I will never live down the period where I thought Mamdani could be better. God. Fuck. I thought the person on hexbear who told me last year that fake socialists winning elections would be a disaster for the left was an ultra; turns out 'twas I who was wrong.

Someone ripped the front cover off so idk what the title is. It's going straight into a recycling bin, the paper deserves better. And of course the "romance" is between a minor and a legal adult.

Total run time: 3h15m of movies plus 15 minutes of interstitial High Art (piss break songs) = 3h30m

A note: timezones hard, feel free to use https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ or something similar to do timezone conversions to your local time

We will be using Blorptube tonight: https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine. IMPORTANT NOTE: please use a good VPN whenever visiting Blorptube due to how peering works.  You can read more about Peertube and potential security concerns here: https://hexbear.net/post/3471120

Two movies featuring James Woods being James Woods.  We learn about his tragic backstory of heavy violence.  These movies come with a lot of content warnings, so be prepared.

Vampire$ (1998)

An adaptation of the piece of shit book Vampire$ by John Steakley.  A team of vampire hunters backed by the Vatican hunt vampires in New Mexico.  There’s blood!  There’s violence!  There’s weirdness!  Men deal with their feelings in very unhealthy ways!  Some cowboyesque gunslinger dude has revolvers that shoot silver bullets!  This movie is a rare case where the movies adaptation is far better than the book, but this is still the weakest JC movie I’ve seen.

Content Warnings for Vampire$ (1998) (1h48m)

Violence and gore: SEVERE

• It is very bloody.  Stabbings, people ripped in half with their internal organs showing, beheadings, corpse burning, head on spike, disemboweling,

Sexual violence: High (not much depicted, enough shown / hinted at that it would be very triggering to some)

• A woman is shown stumbling along with two men, bleeding from between her thighs. She’s then stripped naked and tied to a bed.  Later she is beaten ¿but it’s “ok” because she’s turning into a vampire?
• Questionable depictions of sex workers

Other:

• vomiting
• f slur
• suicide attempt

Doesthedogdie: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/44513

UnconsentingMedia: https://www.unconsentingmedia.org/items/9500

IMDB Parental Guide: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120877/parentalguide/

TankieTube link to movie: https://tankie.tube/w/hwwPAovwMeQ2wayWkrydVZ

Videodrome (1983) (1h27m)

Content Warnings for Videodrome (1983) (1h27m)

A guy who bootlegs underground broadcasts of a snuff show gets more and more obsessed with the scenes he’s seeing.  The boundaries between real life and the screen blur.  Much body horror and “creative sex” ensues.  

Violence and gore: SEVERE

• Body horror, transformations, goop and gore
• shooting, killing, GOOP AND GORE
• suicide on screen
• The main theme of the movie is about a guy who seeks out ever-worsening sexual snuff films so it gets fairly intense.

Sexual violence: SEVERE

• A woman burns her own breast with a cigarette
• Video of women being subjected to various BDSM scenes (whipping, piercing, burning, shocking the genitals).  It’s implied this is not consensual and that they are later murdered.  In fact it is not clear if this is BDSM or just straight up torture. -removed off screen heavily implied

Other:

• Themes of addiction
• hallucinations galore.  It’s hard to follow what’s real and what isn’t.
• orientalism in the porn snuff films

Doesthedogdie: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/17646

UnconsentingMedia: https://www.unconsentingmedia.org/items/3485

IMDB Parental Guide: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/parentalguide/

TankieTube link to movie: https://tankie.tube/w/5vMx1yTQ83xE4XkWNUsokU

Vox is pushing her. They ask several people in south Carolina and only show one cite Palestine against wanting her to run again. One woman says no don't run, she's too smart so people won't like her.

The harshest criticism they give AIT time to is that somewhere around minute 28 a democratic insider says "the campaign needs to be Bye Bye Biden. Like the backstreet boys". But not for any reason other than the biden campaign being unpopular

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux0Y9utkAkw

I asked here about several games’ politics, particularly Esoteric Ebb:  https://hexbear.net/post/8877391.  Based on the answers I picked the game up on sale and played it.

“More lighthearted Disco Elysium written by a SocDem in a DND setting” sounds like it could be fun.  It really sucked me in.  The world was interesting, the mechanics were fun, there were very cute elements, and it overall felt charming and cozy even when it went into heavier territory.  “It was a bit lib, but not too bad”, I was warned.  My tolerance must be lower than other people’s, but I was grossed out by how the narrative handled conflict between communism and fascism, social democracy, genocide and conquest.  Overall I’d say It’s no DE.  It hits neither the lows nor the highs.  I loved some of the cute friends you can make in the game

To be fair: I picked a Red and Green cleric not knowing what those meant politically and not even knowing what a cleric is because I don’t play DND, but just generally appreciating both wisdom and physical strength, and went in blind, didn’t look things up til I was done with the game.  I don’t know if that dramatically changed the messaging I got in the narrative / quest structures.  Halfway through I was thinking I’d love to do a yellow-blue playthrough because it’d be funny to see the game satirize ancap freaks more, but after seeing the end I don’t know if I will return for a 2nd playthrough.  But keep in mind, I said the Azgalist line every time it came up and was leaning very clearly into the character of a disaffected urthguard member with strong Azgalist sympathies.

discussion of what I didn’t like with heavy spoilers

• I was irritated that the very revolutionary seeming dwarves were just socdems and that was not more critically interrogated.  They’re out there claiming to represent dwarf-Marx, but it takes a human girl to present more radicalism.  In neither case are the positions really interrogated, I felt.  

• The division between the fascist youth and the azgalian youth is presented as a boy/girl divide, a lover’s spat (Rollo is hinted as having a crush on Modissa).  Worse, when I tried to give the orange ledger to Modissa, I was forced to give it to Rollo first so he could give it to her.  This turned into essentially a red-brown alliance, and the game was very aware of Strasserism, as Rollo later talks about the in-game equivalent of national socialism (national azgalism.  Nazgalism).  Is this horseshoe theory?

• The game is forgiving to and almost apologetic of the racist nationalists who are not racist, just unemployed and loveless young men upset about economics (and then say racist things).  Should their plight be ignored?  No.  Should it be centered so much?  Also no.

• #Most upsetting to me: At the end, Snell gets to confront Urth about the humans genociding his people and doing forced assimilation to the survivors.  Urth’s defense was “Yes it was bad but I had to do it for my people’s survival.  They had no land, were fleeing certain death, and needed somewhere to live, so I took yours”.  Hm.  Doesn’t this sound like one of the foundational myths of a certain fake apartheid state that’s currently committing genocide on live TV?  And we don’t get to condemn it.  He even says that one of the goblin collaborators, Crann, told him that he was making the correct choice because if a single goblin was left alive, they would fight to kill humans forever.  Urth ends up being “merciful” by doing a sort of “gentler” genocide in the vein of what AmeriKKKa did to First Nations: residential schools and brutal forced assimilation.  This is also sugar-coated and a positive spin is put on it, that Snell is something new and different, ignoring that part of his complaint is that he feels like his people barely even get to be goblins anymore.  And we don’t get to condemn this.  Even as the game calls it a genocide, arguments softening horrific genocide are put forth and then not rebutted or interrogated.  Why can my Azgalist cleric with over 20 in wisdom and supposed love for all not tear these arguments apart?  The game calling it genocide but then not letting us condemn it feels like a land acknowledgement from a university.

• We spend an entire game on an election and I don’t even get to know how the election turned out?  Come on!

I’ll end on a positive: shoutout to my dear friend Meek the Mimic.  Love the little guy and wish he would hop out of the game into this realm to be my cloak, so I could always be getting a hug from a friendly little guy.

To get ahead of critiques of my complaints:

• Yes I know having a character say something fucked up is not an endorsement of the fucked up thing.  I’m critiquing the presentation and narrative framing of these things, not the existence of imperfect characters.  

• No, I don’t need all my media to be squeaky clean or ideologically pure.  I enjoy plenty of art from problematic creators.  

• I think handling difficult topics is great!  What I take issue with is taking on the task of handling these delicate topics badly.  Remember, Disco Elysium handled fascism and colonial atrocities much better.

"This is the official community for Brayland Union, a micronation asserting sovereignty over asteroid 468 Lina (also designated 1901 FZ, A915 PA, and A918 EB).

This is a place to discuss Brayland Union, its development, and other micronation news."

Stumbled across this when my app accidentally showed me all instead of local and I got clickbaited into reading the comments on a post titled "AI for President? Here's why, as an AI expert, I think it could happen by 2032"

https://lemmy.today/c/brayland

I'm curious about:

Esoteric Ebb

Fermi Paradox

Tooth and Tail

They all look like games which could be great and could also be ruined by having weak ideas. Disco Elysium spoiled me

Think of swan songs to post for the intermission!

A note: timezones hard, feel free to use https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ or something similar to do timezone conversions to your local time

We will be using Blorptube tonight: https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine. IMPORTANT NOTE: please use a good VPN whenever visiting Blorptube due to how peering works.  You can read more about Peertube and potential security concerns here: https://hexbear.net/post/3471120

We will be watching two movies by Toei Animation.  We’ll start with The Wild Swans (1977), a retelling of a fairy tale wherein a witch turns three boys into swans and sets their sister to an impossible task to break the curse.  I’ve never seen it but it’s been on my to-watch list for a very long time.

Next, the star of the show, is Swan Lake (1981).  It holds a special place of honor next to Scamper the Penguin in the Cuddlefish Canon and I’m delighted to say it holds up in adulthood.   My mom got a VHS of it as a gift for me (along with Scamper!) from a small video rental store that was going out of business when I was in preschool, and it’s been special to me ever since.  Much less bloody than our usual fare, the dismemberment is purely personal and spiritual: the movie is tied to heartbreak for me, as I made the terrible decision to watch it with my ex before they showed their true colors.  It is my hope that by watching it together with friends I can claw it back from being linked in my mind to an abuser, just as we did with Scamper.

CWS: IMDB, UM, and DTDD are useless for these, but my guess for The Wild Swans is that it’s fine.  Abusive stepmother stuff.  Swan Lake has some controlling and abusive father stuff, an old man being very gross and obsessive toward a young woman, and general treachery but nothing really stands out.  It’s cartoonish.  Both are monarchist because they’re fairy tales

TankieTube Links to movies:

The Wild Swans: https://tankie.tube/w/jULFr6SPMvevrzGyZAzwtD

Swan Lake: https://tankie.tube/w/ggDcjvYmmEdnx5D7UwqSoq