NERD ZONE

October 30, 2024 - CHROMAKOPIA

HOLY SHIT THIS ALBUM IS SO GOOD. It came out on Monday and I've already listened to it like 10 times. The sheer gender of this album is just PEAK.
CHROMAKOPIA is about embracing and living as your true self, and it's also a VERY woman-powered album, which lends itself to a genderqueer reading that I don't think I've seen many people discussing. For one, there's a LOT of women featuring in this album! Glorilla, Sexxy Red, and Doechii (my fave ever) absolutely ate up their verses. In "Hey Jane", "Judge Judy", and "Take Your Mask Off", Tyler even speaks from (or close to) the perspective of various women. In "Hey Jane" specifically, he does this to intentionally center the female experience instead of his own emotions, which is brought up again in "Take Your Mask Off". Iconically, in "Sticky" (and another song that I couldn't quite find) he says "give a fuck 'bout pronouns I'm that nigga and I'm that bitch". In addition to being very vulnerable, this album truly is unapologetically queer.
Go stream CHROMOKOPIA right now it's so good I promise.

musi

September 15, 2024 - First read of Twillight!

Many have heard of the infamy of Stephanie Meyer's Twillight Saga, but after many years of hearing opinions and rumors (and watching the first movie with my family) I finally decided to read it for myself. DISCLAIMER I am not finished reading it yet!
The first section of the book was actually super fun for me. Bella is everyone s favorite sarcastic YA protaganist and she's actually really funny. She's basically just stuck in the town that she despises for the forseeable future, and there's no sun, and there's no good books in the bookstore, and she's being maybe bullied by some guy in her biology class (spoiler: it's Edward). Unlike in the movie, the book actually spends a lot of time with Bella and her friends and her life outside of Edward. Edward, who is a TOTAL WEIRDO. He's also very funny. I keep flip flopping between being entertained by his antics and wishing Bella would stay awayyyy from this freak. After he gets over himself during Bella's first week, he decides to instate himself as Bella's brand new Straight Best Friend without consulting her, which I found hysterical. I honestly really wish the whole book kept the same tone as the beginning, since romances bore me and Arizona Girl Bella Swan and her token Quirky straight vampire friend would have been so entertaining. Unfortunately after Bella learns he's a vampire she gets a crush on him and also loses her mind, and then the rest of the book is a romance novel. Hot take but I actually think their relationship is actually pretty tolerable. They definitely act like 17 year olds in a relationship, but they have some actually cute moments (until Edward ruins it by being a freak and Bella proceeds to have no survival instinct or common sense).
Canon Bella is straight, but in the Alternate Universe Twillight in my head where everything is like the beginning of the book, she's 1 million percent a lesbian. I just think gay girl Bella Swan would be a lot of fun in the Forks setting, can you blame me?

twil

July 25, 2024 - Opinions on every animated Spider-Man show, by date!

Okay so I actually wrote this a few days ago but shhhhh. Without further ado:

Spider-Man 1967-1981 - the originals...I didn't actually watch any of these I apologize
Spider-Man 1994 - I only watched a little bit of this but it's got a really classic late 80s/early 90s art style and Peter looks so Un-Peterlike it's hilarious. He looks like his name should be Andrew or smth
Spider-Man Unlimited - I really really like the art, and I appreciate how they let Peter go to space! He barely ever gets to go to space! New York will be fine I'm pretty sure
Spider-Man: the New Animated Series - Spiderman 2003 you will always be famous. This show is peak. The janky animation, the inexplicable sound effects, the sheer DRAMA AND CAMP. This show is perfect.
The Spectacular Spider-Man - By far my favorite canon* Peter Parker iteration ever to exist. The art style is so so cute and more importantly this IS Peter Parker. He's broke as dirt. He's the flakiest mf to ever live. The slightest breeze makes him consider quitting Spider-Man and ending it all. And he doesn't let any of this stop him from being an arrogant asshole down to his core. He's literally perfect
Ultimate Spider-Man - Okay I only watched like part of the first episode bc the vocal performance really wasn't meshing with me, but I think the 4th wall breaks and internal monologue scenes are a really cute idea, especially for a high school Peter
Spider-Man 2017 - The most convincing evidence that Peter Parker was bullied. After he mentioned the scientific method for the fourth time, I was tempted to shove him in a locker. Could not get past the first couple episodes, apologies to my nerdy nerdy boy
Spidey and his Amazing Friends - this is a show for babies. I was not strong enough to get past the first 5 minutes of the first episode.

*My favorite overall Peter Parker iteration is from a 2019 fanfiction on ao3, and my favorite Spider-Man overall is, of course, Miles Morales from the Spider-verse movies

This User is Normal about Spiderman in classic colors

spdr, from discord

July 24, 2024 - Worldbuilding of Adventure Time

So obviously I love a good character-driven narrative. I think that having well-developed and fleshed out characters can anchor your audience into the story better than just about anything else, and can deliver the themes and messages of your story really effectively. It's also really satisfying when the arcs of characters tie directly into and are reflected by the conflicts and setting of the narrative, and Adventure Time takes this to its logical extreme like no other show I've seen.
The world of Adventure Time is extraordinarily developed, with history spanning hundreds of thousands of years, and mythology that expands into space, but they never once face the exposition dumping problem that so many fantasy plots with similar worlds encounter, and this is because it almost exclusively shows us history through the eyes of its characters. An excellent example of this is Marceline, who is one of the most beloved characters in the entire show (which says a lot because all the characters are fantastic), and whose backstory is the source of the majority of our information on the period between the Mushroom Wars and the present day of the show's main plot. By tethering the past, present, and future of the world to its characters, it also tethers its audience to that history through the characters we've grown to love, as well as better connecting its themes of change and cycles by directly showing us the witnesses and casualties of these patterns (both on a large, historical scale, and within a mortal lifetime).
Overall I just think the show's worldbuilding is really really cool, and the way they do it ends up coloring every point in time with the memory of these characters that we know and love which is so well done and so in service of the show's messages and so wonderful

advt, from discord