‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’: seemingly through an effort to add more shade to the cardboard caricature of the Na’vi, they instead somehow managed to make it so much more racist “They’re not all noble tree-huggers, some of them are bloodthirsty savages who enjoy scalping” is not the flex you think it is

When I first read ‘Bleak House’ at uni, I HATED Skimpole and his whole “I’m but a child, I can’t have any responsibilities” shtick. But now I honestly think he might be an early millennial icon?

For a show that spans years in a single AMV, Heated Rivalry occasionally just throwing up a “TWO WEEKS LATER” title is genuinely disorientating. Two weeks later from what?!! What do you mean???

Ban this thicc Sylph!

One of my big bugbears -- the way Spotify playlists have, in just a handful of years, replaced British Xmas music (leery boozed-up Brummies with ridiculous facial hair) with American Xmas music (cardigans and expensive dentistry).

I’ve seen ppl online who want to educate people about how racist/right-wing Japan is and abt JPN imperialism (often through a pop cultural lens) – which is good/worthwhile But so much of their stuff is presented as a gotcha Like, “Ramen is *actually* Chinese” And like yes. Obviously. Not a secret

In am effort to appeal to the kids, Square Enix will release a game called ‘Final Fantasy 6-7’, which contains both FFVI and FFVII – it will accidentally be the best game ever released

Wild that ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’ seems to be an under-appreciated casualty of Covid. Episodes every year from 2007, then the final ep was broadcast on 16 March 2020 – the same day the UK was advised to avoid non-essential contact – and it just never came back.

Big fan of Iceland Marie Kondo-ing their Eurovision participation into the bin

Was on the phone to family in Japan earlier and mentioned that I needed to book train tickets to for Christmas travel soon before they got expensive. They were confused, becuase (apparently) train prices in Japan are basically fixed and don't get drastically more expensive closer to the date 😭😭😭

Well… the EBU have gone about this vote in the worst possible way. Looks like the participation vote was contingent on the new rules being rejected at vote, which they weren’t. So now the Netherlands is out, and there’s a vibe that participation was agreed by vote, when that didn’t actually happen

I’m sorry, but this is just one of the mugs they had lying around in a cupboard at the Pantone office, which they’ve slapped a logo on. Not fooling me.

People making ‘Best of Year’ lists or rankings do not respect the month of December, and I, for one, am fed up with it.

I gave up on Stranger Things after the first season (though, for some reason, I have also seen the stage play), so I think I’m the person most qualified to make the following judgment: They should’ve jettisoned the 80s setting and D&D stuff after S1.

RE 'The War Between the Land and the Sea': I find the reaction I'm seeing to it online really weird, given that a lot of what people are (seemingly) getting mad about is just applying to the Sea Devils the same treatment the Silurians got when they were reintroduced to Doctor Who.

I'm sorry, how big are your carrots? Well, 250g, but still... Unreasonable.

When I was 7, we had to programme the sequence of a some traffic lights in ICT class I did it super fast and was excited to show the teacher. 🟢 >🟡> 🔴> 🟡> 🟢 "That's not right," said the teacher. "It's 🟢 >🟡> 🔴>🔴 + 🟡> 🟢." I remember thinking, I'm 7??? I can't drive??? And I still can't, so I win.

Is it not slightly odd that Girls Aloud don’t come up in the BBC’s ‘Girlbands Forever’ doc?

For once, I’ve got a Halloween costume. Like all the best costumes, it requires an explanation and for me to show you a picture on my phone. It’s a life-size recreation of this tiny painted vampire that’s in my flat.

I was pretty gutted that we weren’t getting a third Ncuti series of Who, but, TBH, probably a worthy trade for dodging the bullet of whatever RTD had planned with Susan.

Between ‘Avatar’ and ‘Bayonetta’, 2009 was a landmark year for controlling dragons with hair

I’ve been watching Apple TV’s ‘Drops of God’, which is very funny because it’s straining to adapt a manga into prestige-y TV. It‘s good though! Good enough that it almost convinced me that *I* could get really into wine. Anyway, I drank about two sips and have decided that it’s (still) not for me

If anyone's interested in going to the 'immersive audio experience' in a bunch of shipping containters in the Olympic Park, know that I came off my bike because I ran into its power cable cover and properly scraped up my knee – so it's tasted blood and is probably hungry for more.

Remains immensely frustrating that many people have decided that social media/the internet is a grave threat for the youth, but are seemingly unable to recognise that older people’s minds are getting absolutely fried by it! UK politics is basically all quote tweets, but it’s a young people problem

The idea of a Nana x Vivian Westwood collab edition of the manga feels sorta redundant because isn’t that just Nana?!? It’s already full of Westwood!

Watched ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’ this evening. I found it pretty boring; I would like 40 sequels please. I actually think all horror films should turn into ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’ (2001) in the final 15 mins.

Doing a deep clean of all the kitchen cupboards in my rented flat because we discovered grubs in some flour, only for my 21yo cousin to message say she’s just bought a cottage. These things aren’t at all connected, but, still, I hate it.

There were probably people whose favourite bit of Resident Evil 7 were when Chris Redfield and Blue Umbrella turned up, and, honestly, that scares me (This post inspired by visiting the Silent Hill subreddit for 20 seconds)

Visited a game shop in Cornwall which appeared to be selling the IKEA aliens for a bit of a markup. Fair enough. The nearest IKEA is like 2 hrs away On further inspection, however, these look like IKEA alien dupes! There’s exposed stitching and the proportions are off! Don’t be fooled, Cornwall!!

On holiday at the minute, and got this notification on my phone that I fully have never seen before… 😬

I was in such a bad mood yesterday that I had to take a 30-minute break during Bake Off because I was infuriated by the challenges

An underdiscussed angle on the Tube stikes is how many people have lived their entire lives underground, since this is apparently their first day on Planet Earth. Welcome to the surface; please don't take a selfie while waiting at a green signal.

Enjoyed the first ep of #KamenRiderZeztz - the dream stuff (which was the least compelling to me in the pre-release summaries), made for some neat filmmaking and character beats.

RE Kamen Rider Zeztz's international release: Struggling to think how anybody will be able to catch the airings every week for 50-ish weeks in a year. I like watching TV at time of broadcast, but that's for at most, what, 12 weeks a go? And if I miss a week, I can catch up! Very odd.

Honestly, I’ve thought ‘Destination X’ has been pretty rubbish. However, ALL will be forgiven if the final destination X is in a TV studio, and the contestants get off the coach to find an applauding audience and their families.

Like, this is not an original point, but it is fucking galling to see the breathless way the far-right ‘asylum hotel protests’ are being covered in the news. And then you see the footage and, like, 200 people are there. A couple weeks back multiple 100,000s marched in London for Palestine.

Was shocked and appalled to learn the stroke order for the same character in Chinese and Kanji scripts can have different stroke orders. Was equally shocked and appalled to realise that in the specific instance I had encountered, I had just been getting the Kanji stroke order wrong all my life.

Don’t get me wrong; I think HK is great and excited to play Silksong in 2-3 years. But going through the whole shebang right at this moment will turn me into the biggest hater, so opting out.

Like, 5 years ago there was a Twitter story/creepypasta(?) about a cancelled Tomb Raider spin-off, which took AGES to get to the punchline “Tombscrolling.” I read all of it, but didn’t know the word “doomscrolling” at the time, so the joke went over my head and I just thought it seemed a bad game.

White boy walks into restaurant and SHOCKS staff by ordering in perfect 1337 5p34k

You can tell Weapons is an American film because quite a lot of it is drinking big drinks while sat in a car.

I will say that Kamen Rider Zeztz has the best opening song in years IMO. (I'm self aware to admit that this might just be that it's a serviceable pop song with a female vocalist)

“Well, there were three of us in this cabbage, so it was a bit crowded.” -Princess Diana, if she were a worm

This is incredible

Watched an ep of 90s/00s CBS show 'Touched By An Angel' today where the angels intervene in the life of a teen whose cousin got them hooked on a violent video game called 'Carjack 2000: Millenium Mayhem'. They were so addicted that they ran over somebody IRL.

I used to love cycling as a kid, but was honestly too scared of cycling on roads in London to pick it back up. Despite Boris Bikes and Lime bikes being ubiquitous round here. However, it’s summer, the weather’s nice, and I bought a helmet, so I’ve been making an effort to cycle to/from the office.

They need to patch in the ability to make Sam take a shower before he goes to sleep in Death Stranding 2. I admire his commitment to being a morning shower person, but he frequently nods off covered in dirt, ghosts and blood. Wash that shit off before going to bed!

Not enough TV detectives want to solve a case a week anymore! Quite enjoyed both ‘The Residence’ and ‘Dept Q’ on Netflix, but 8 and 9 eps respectively for a single case? Too long.

I feel like I’m super out of the loop with Kamen Rider, but, looking at the list of titles, there’s only two or three of the recent series that I’ve skipped entirely. It does just so happen, however, that these are series with loads of Riders, so there’s like 75 suits/names that I don’t recognise.