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First Year

In my first semester of college, I forbade myself from watching any tv shows, movies or videos for leisure. The reasoning was that TV is social pica and that it would take away from my desire to go out in the world and talk to new friends. The secondary reason was that being able to sit down and watch youtube would make it harder to focus on my school work. I also forbade myself from eating any explicitly sugarry foods.

The thing is, I had actually done both of these before in lower sixth, then eventually went back to eating sugarry things and watching TV concurrently in school, which led to me making so many youtube poops, which I don’t regret honestly, I look back at those fondly.

How did it go? I hyperfixated on Phineas and Ferb so hard and not being able to watch it meant I would just spend hours browsing and updating its fandom wiki. I used winter break to watch primarily new things, so Rick and Morty Season 7, Big Mouth Season 6 or 7 I forget which had just released, and then Monsters at Work and the Star Wars movies, so I didn’t process my Phineas fixation until the following SUMMER. I did talk to a lot of people though. Also the lack of stimulation meant I could take regular NAPS for the first time ever. I also got through tonnes of books, primarily the Ender’s Game series, but also The Stranger by Camus, The Goal by Goldratt, HPMOR, The Martian, Project Hail Mary… damn. Good times.

The final restraint was that I wasn’t allowed to listen to the songs which I had on my songs reflecting the final year of high school playlist, so that I could lock in the assosciation of the songs with high school. THAT was miserable and I will not do that again. But getting to listen to You’re on Fire to make a blog post about it for school was heavenly, and listening to Whole World and You still feels like a treat.

By the second semester, I didn’t let myself listen to any music while doing anything else. I was only allowed to singletask. (It was inspired by my friend Leah). I don’t know if this did more harm or good – I wouldn’t walk around ANYWHERE, or clean my desks for MONTHS just because I never had the stamina to do such boring tasks while doing stuff. It did make sitting down and just closing my eyes and listening to certain songs extremely euphoric. I think this may have been net bad, because now sort of in reparations for this, I ALWAYS let myself listen to stuff or watch stuff to be able to motivate myself to move around, because of the latent memories of how miserable it was. But the thing is walking around bopping to music is so FUN and I know it’s bad that I don’t let myself THINK anymore… but I guess I wasn’t cut out for it.

Second Year

I had a free day on Sundays to watch whatever I wanted. I would basically only use it to finish Game of Thrones at first, because I stupidly had like ten episodes left coming into the semester, so I had to painfully spend months to have enough time to get through all the episodes. I also allowed myself to watch stuff while working out, which helped me process my lingering hyperfixation on Phineas and Ferb from the summer (not aided by knowing a new season was soon to be coming out). Eventually I switched to being obsessed with A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was very helpful as I could read the books Mon-Sat then watch episodes of the show on Sundays.

I bailed on caring about sugar at this time.

It was a lot more bearable having sunday as the respite day, I remember being absolutely transfixed to Glorb videos on Sundays because of how much I like looking at animation.

By the end of the year, my attention span for books had really gone down, shifting from super short ASOUE books, to tonnes of fanfictions, then to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, of which I read every single one in the series. And that was it. Apart from If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, I think the last pre-Party Pooper Dowk book was the last book I read, and that would have been in May.

Third Year

Over summer, I became pescatarian then because I learned I was no longer allergic to beans or soy. (Obviously being vegan is the morally good option, but I never did it because it’s too difficult to get protein with my allergies). Being vegetarian is fine. The euphoria of living according to my morals – especially after years of telling myself that this is HOW I would live if the circumstances were different but never knowing if it was true or if I was lying to myself – makes the inconvenience not even matter. I’m also glad to be like inducted into the group of people who regularly make sacrifices for their morals in a legible way…

I guess that’s everything that’s insufferable about vegetarians. But if I can’t say it here!

I finally stopped with any rules at all for youtube/tv/movies. I can watch them on any day. And I don’t think my socialisation went down in any huge way. I mean I also live in apartment-style housing now and I would go CRAZY if my apartment were just quiet without any nice Community or Home Movies or anything.

One of the things that always worried me about being able to watch stuff to go to sleep was the time wasted in picking out a movie, which would make me stay up way later than I would otherwise. But I found a 19h compilation of this series, Home Movies, which was PERFECT for going to sleep, and for the first two months of the semester it saved my life. Once it finished I found another similar show that’s not quite as good, but has about 30h worth, but now I’m back on Home Movies and the thing is, cartoons are such a deep part of my psychee and I want to create them – and I have been animating it’s not completely just a pipe dream – and actually being able to experience my favourite thing, my favourite type of art, every night, is so so so so good. And makes it a lot easier to go to bed since it’s interesting.

Consequently, my quiet thinking time is about zero. I joked recently that I get all my thinking time done while I’m talking to people, which is why I talk so much. It’s gradually becoming less of a joke.

Meat that you eat isn’t the only thing in that category that I altered my relationship with this semester.

Thing is, they’re both supposed to be permenant changes. The vegetarian one I’m not worried about. The other, more so.

Reflections

I don’t regret not watching stuff, but man was it hard. It’s good to learn from the future, and I may never have clearly designated UNITS of time in a new continent to experiment like this again. I don’t think I intend to though. I love cartoons and music so much… more than thinking, really. So yeah, it’s against my aesthetics, but at least it’s an informed choice. I miss being able to take naps though.

Happy 2025!

This review was written in 2021, midway through my very first read through of my favorite book of all time. I have since reread it three more times and loved it even more every time since.

—

This is a review of chapters 75-89. Mega spoilers ahead.

After a long, peaceful rest from the series, I return and things kick off crazier than ever. To be entirely honest, I found Hermione’s heroine arc exceptionally boring and just wanted to get back to Harry, but I now see it’s purpose in setting up what very well could have been the reason for her Azkaban trial and the resolution of her story arch, once and for all.

To summarise what happens in these 14 chapters, Hermione believes Draco to be plotting against her and humiliates him in one of Quirrel’s battles. Draco, who was making serious progress in his path to redemption and honestly meant no harm for Hermione, must challenge her to a duel. Probably the biggest difference between Methods of Rationality and the main series is the split perspectives. We’ve frequently been granted residence in Draco’s conflicted mind, which makes it all the more spooky when we see neither his or Hermione’s perspectives for a long time after Hermione is convicted of Draco’s attempted murder.

I am absolutely hooked with this story. I really don’t know where it’s going! I really don’t know if I side with the idea that Hermione is completely innocent, and I would love to just blame Quirrell and be done with it, but there are so many other leads! The predicament Yudkowsky finds himself when trying to invent suspicion for these characters is that we all know Quirrell is hiding something because of the main series, so he fixes that marvelously by plotting clue after clue and random-but-important scene after scary and intense scene, and it just puts everything out of wack. Though I couldn’t entirely follow, Quirrell’s alternate identity plotline is really intriguing. What really distorts my thinking is Hermione’s angel. The one that she meets in our penultimate residence in her mind. What is she? Could it be Snape? I know it’s involved in everything, but how!?

The events leading up to Hermione’s death were fascinating. I had feared we’d no longer get her POV, so that scene in the library was a jolly surprise. She’s so fragile, and it makes my heart ache. It hurts how she gets all flustered with Harry for spending time with someone else, and then the realisation dawns on both of them at the same time that Hermione really does love Harry. I mean, how can she not? For reasons that are still far from me Harry will go to Hell and back for this girl. It’s only when he really rejects her with the puberty line (I keep forgetting he’s only eleven — heck it feels weird even to type) that I realise — Harry never feared about being in love with Hermione. That was entirely Hermione’s POV. And yet he did silly, adorable things like give her heart-shaped chocolates and gave up his fortune for her to not be tortured for ten years.

The Troll

I wasn’t scared of the troll. I was spoiled about Hermione’s death long ago,  and after surviving Azkaban, I couldn’t have imagined that Hermione would be killed by something the main-series-trio handled so easily. And Yudkowsky must have known this, so he buffs up that troll to a crazy extent. I mean, Hermione just lying in a puddle of her own there with half her legs chomped off — that’s a chilling image. I stopped reading right after the reveal, and my mind has had the night to ruminate endlessly over the circumstances of her death, and what could happen next.

I hate all the seven years! I’ve heard of the distributed responsibility phenomenon where no one does anything, but it killed Hermione! Harry was late to her rescue by seconds, and there were just so. Many. Delays. It’s infuriating in retrospect. I hope all those seven-years who didn’t step up to the challenge, even poor Hagrid to some extent, grieve endlessly for Hermione. A girl DIED because they valued not being expelled over saving a life. Their cowardice is disgusting. Apart from Fred and George. As usual, they are absolutely brilliant. Did Dumbledore obliviate their ownership of the Marauder’s map? And did George just draw the sword of Gryffindor and slice it into Troll flesh like the coolest person in the world?

I want to point out how it hurts that Harry has ruined his iconic illusion of his all powerful click, though it passed by quickly it did sting.

Miss Morgan’s face twisted. “You—you’re the Boy-Who-Lived! Just go off by yourself and snap your fingers, if you want to help her!”
Tick.
Harry was hardly even aware of what he was saying. “That’s just cleverness and bluffing, I don’t have any power like that in real life, a young girl needs your help now are you a Gryffindor or not?”

What I can’t help wondering is whether Hermione ran to the troll in hopes of defeating it due to her heroine-related self-image related issues, or if she was simply caught unaware like in the main series.

What happens next?

After one recommendation of this series, I was met with the fear that because Harry is too intelligent, all the problems will be too easy to solve.

Boy were they wrong.

Whatever will Harry do about the hundreds of thousands of Galleons he just sacrificed to save Hermione’s life? How will Draco react? Just picture the effect this is bound to have on Harry! In the moments where Hermione was in juvie, I realised just how friendless Harry really is without her. Being without his one friend will seriously mess him up.

I don’t think Harry is going to succeed on his goal on reviving Hermione. I have this terrible feeling that the true message of this series, or at least the one that Harry must learn, is that he really can’t control everything, and just has to cope with Hermione being dead. I don’t understand how that aligns with the author’s utter adoration of science and all things being possible through it. Will Harry still be able to cast his epic Patronus, now that death is looming over him? I seriously cannot see how this series will end.

I can’t see why rewinding to a point where Hermione was alive to warn her about the troll won’t work, but I guess I’ll have to keep reading to find out why.

(Update from the future: in the end I kept reading and found out why.)

Rating –

Things I was happy to see once again:

• Allen the Alien and his backstory
• Viltrimites (I prefer that spelling over the one with the u) beating the unrelenting crap out of everybody they come across
• The Mauler twins, but they were only in the first episode! They have to come back in Season 3 they’re some of my favourite characters (this show also has to come back for season 3).
• Them taking the crap out of shitty animation
• People dying permanently, like Dupli-Kate
• Atom Eve still being super down to earth and reasonable even though she’s not part of the Guardians
• People who shouldn’t fight each other (like Allen and the Immortal) realising that they shouldn’t, and then stopping
• Being proven wrong when my first instinct was “Mark should leave Omni-Man’s second son there and just leave the planet, he has no obligation to him” to shedding tears when Oliver’s head so much as bumps against the floor, and being ready to give my life to him
• An absolutely crazy opening where Mark is evil
• Being played like a fool in said opening when a portal opens up and eats the guy and then totally forgetting about it for the next eight episodes just because Omni-Man commands me to “not worry about it”
• An epic montage of all the most badass moments across season 1 and 2 including Omni-Man’s amazing speech
• Them referencing in great detail how Omni-Man called Debby a pet and that fact not being forgotten as an insigificant detail
• Spider-Man!!! That’s not something I was expecting to be thrilled about! And it was a really good portrayal of Spider-Man too!!
• I loved the sub-plot with Celia’s side-kick being a revived clone but it does beg the question why they don’t do that for every non-super who’s killed, entirely eliminating the risk of their lives themselves when they go onto the field. Eg. surely they could put Invincible’s backup into a robot body even if it didn’t give him his powers, meaning each time all he’s risking is having super powers, not death, which seems acceptable.
• Amber describing the loser-y-ness low stakes ness of college (I’m in college and really really like it but when you are talking about it you do sometimes realise how low the stakes of your life are and how seriously you’re taking them) was very relatable.

Things I didn’t like:

• The whole multiverse stuff seems super tacked on and totally entirely irrelevant to the whole rest of the plot of the season. It didn’t have anything to do with Viltrimites or Nolan or Allen or anything and I’m really annoyed that we ended on that beat with this random guy who hates Invincible as opposed to anything more central to the actual show.
• I got very sick of Amber early on. When I read my review of Season 1 on this blog I was surprised to see that I actually liked Amber and her scenes a lot, and this is something that I got mind-wiped with the internet on. But I found her cringe here, just constantly kind of wise-cracking. I did appreciate it whenever she was forced by circumstance to be a sincere person. I’m glad that she’s broken up with Mark.
• No William discussion at the end!
• I forgot all about William’s boyfriend rick from season 1 but his little plot was okay, it’s nice to see how caring William can be.
• Future Guardians is stupid. Stupid stupid deus ex machina, “We have five working time machines”. I was really really wondering how Mark was gonna get out of there.
• Future Eve telling Mark that she loved him all along is stupid as a way to kickstart that, I wish they’d just let it happen normally and naturally. I’m glad Mark didn’t say “future you told me you love me” like it seemed like he was gonna say, and instead just put his hand on hers and took is slow.
• I am a tiny bit fatigued of Mark having trauma from his life. Obviously the second he stops feeling bad about what’s going on the show’s over, otherwise it’s boring just watching him happily be a super hero, I think, but still, there were so many scenes of people asking Mark “how are you?” and him dodging it or saying “not fine”, whereas last season as far as I recall (or really, just the only one I recall) was the one they had at the table at the end.

D Tier Sexting, White Woman’s Instagram

They’re pretty simple joke songs. WWI has an extraordinary amount of effort put into its filming though. I think it might have the most amount of cuts in it next to Content, which makes them both very good songs to put at the start of the special.

C Tier

Shit, All Time Low

Both pretty standard songs about him feeling bad without much nuance. Which is totally fine and they’re fun to listen to, especially Shit, but if I had to pick a a least favourite aspect I had about Inside, I think it would be the occasional unapologeticalness in the self-wallow. Which I know is the entire point, but is the reason I could take it or leave it for some songs like these.

Facetime with my mom

> Say to hi to dad! He says “How you’re doing bud” I say “I’m not so bad”, and that’s the deepest talk we’ve ever had.

This one however is very, very funny. I love the dad line and I also love how the whole point of it is that he’s wasting his time talking to his mum and he says that over and over. He says it so much that either his relationship with his parents is fully dead, or its really close such that they can fully poke fun like that, and that’s sweet.

B Tier

Bezos II

Spotify isn’t working right now so I can’t actually this to this one to remember what I liked about it.

That Funny Feeling

Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ!

I would say this is the single most unique song in the whole thing. Totally absent of synthy piano, just a relatively quirky pure guitar song. I think after listening to Mykonos by Fleet Foxes (Or I guess also Panic by The Smiths) I became vulnerable to songs which repeat the same lyric for an inordinate amount of time before closing. Bo can handle a guitar.

Goodbye

This is mostly this high for its sampling of previous songs. The fact that it ended with my favourite song, Look Who’s Inside Again, made me realise that it wasn’t just a coincidence that that was my favourite song from the special, but one that Bo valued as highly as I did, which was really reaffirming.

I didn’t realise that the fact that Bo in this special has spit out about 13 random songs, some of which I’d guess are definitely less loved than others (though I guess that could very much be me projecting), I didn’t realise that knowing that Bo also really respected and loved the song that goes by so quickly which is also my favourite, would mean so much to me.

Daddy’s favourite is your favourite — open wide!

A Tier

30

I’m! Turning! 30!

This song was really sad. It sounds like a big Disney ballad the way he’s screaming it. Also, it’s definately one of my favourites choreography-wise.

Obviously making music must be an impossibly difficult and extravagant task, and choreographing an hour and a half of exciting visuals to go along with that with super minimalist tech is one of the most impressive feats of the whole film.

The use of his phone and keys on the ground to change the lighting in super cool ways (I especially love the little flicks of the impossibly bright phone screen — how does he make that effect on his phone??? no phone is that bright — which result in flashes in time with the drums) and also it’s all in one take. I imagine the audio must be ADRd but it’s just so good.

Comedy

A Jew walks into a bar and I saved him a seat! That’s healing the world with comedy?

This might be one of my favourites just purely rhythmically speaking alongside Don’t Wanna Know. It’s so upbeat and fun, and the lyrics are funny.

I enjoyed watching the reddit debate over whether this was purely a surface level joke about instead of it being a punchline about jews just saving one a seat, or it being a deep cut to a unique Jewish tradition where they always save a seat for this one prophet I’ve forgotten.

Also, pure filmography wise, so many of the angles in this song are absolutely gorgeous, and there’s so many cuts like a more general kind of skit. I wonder if he was doing most of the songs chronologically — I would like to imagine that he recorded the plot relevant songs in mostly chronological order, like he did Content around the beginning, and All Eyes on Me towards the end of the process.

Bezos I

Come on Jeffrey you can do it!

This has similar synthy beginnings to Content.

Super funny. What could I say that CJ the X hasn’t already?

Unpaid Intern

I used to put up with too much aggravation – but take a look at me now I’ve got a new vocation.

Just very funny and a good, short, jazzy time.

How the World Works

The global network of capital essentially functions to separate the worker from the means of production!

I feel like I’ve written about this song before…

It’s a joy. It’s one of the songs which feels like it’s from a different world than the others, and doesn’t blend into any of the others at all.

I guess it’s something to do with the fact that it’s the most overtly different from Bo’s real life character than any of the others, I’d say. The lighting and framing are also totally different (I love the opening zoom as Bo sings).

The lighting is so bright and vibrant and makes it feel like it takes place in an entirely different room.

But I guess the biggest thing that makes How the World Works is that it’s the only one which features Bo talking to a totally different entity. In my most recent Inside rewatch, I was impressed at how easy it was for my companions to recognise the similarity in their voices (since Socko and Bo are both… Bo) but at least for me it was one of the main things which called into doubt that Inside could have been exclusively made by Bo since his vocal range is just so far from it (but this is something that becomes more obvious with the background singers in Any Day Now (which are Bo) which sound a lot more like Socko because of the pitch up.)

The story is obviously great, very Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared reminiscent, just very good stuff which could easily feel like it’s from a different special but plays super well with the themes of balancing the awfulness of the world with looking at it through

The myopic lense of your own self-actualisation! This isn’t about you! So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way!

It was also definately my favourite immediately apon finishing the special, I rewatched it the most and showed it to my friends.

S Tier

Any Day Now

(Imagine it’s after Content on the tier list image)

It’ll stop any day now! Any day now!

It’ll stop any day now…

It’s so sad…

Reverbed and slowed?

Don’t wanna say too much about it, it speaks for itself.

I didn’t remmeber thing song at all, it’s basically new to me, and the only one I’ve added to my playlist from this listen through.

Content

Daddy made you your favourite open wide!

This one is such a bop. It’s the one which feels most like a classic, proper opener to a real movie. The layers and everything are just so fun, and attatching a flashlight to your head and shining it on a disco ball to light up the whole room? So much fun.

Comedy is the Disney Princess’s mission song, and this is the opening number.

It also has a super ominous ending with It’s a beautiful day to stay inside! which is wonderful, eerie “wordplay” in a sense, and also just one of the very sparing very amazing uses of the actual word “inside” during this special, which we’ll come to more later…

All Eyes on Me

Are you feeling nervous? Are you having fun? It’s almost over.. it’s just begun.

This was also probably one of my favourites immediately after watching it. It’s so incredibly atmospheric and it’s more proper finaley-y to me inside of my head than Goodbye is (such that up until now, the names for the two songs have often been interchangeable in my head even though I never think about Goodbye).

Everything he does to make it so intensely commanding at atmospheric totally works.

I love how he uses the deep voice filter to show that this too is another character that he’s playing, this more serious, scary, I’m talking to you get the FUCK UP! version of Bo is a slightly different protagonist to one that we’ve had and lets us near the end of the special with a Rooster-call level jump in tone.

Both the with audio and song only versions of this song are great.

I also made a meme version of this song which has slightly mentally poluted it for me but just ignore that.

Also, taking the projector and projecting the live footage of yourself over yourself? So so cool.

Don’t Wanna Know

I thought it’d be over by now! But I got a while to go!

Having an intermission and therefore creating two discs with a separation between them is so much fun (I unfortunately used the bathroom right before the intermission because I forgot that there was one).

If there’s any way to refer to a song as perfectly being the song which you come back to after an intermission it’s this. It’s like a depressed version of Content (the opener) which I wonder how on purpose it must have been or not.

Yeah I just relistened to both and it’s not obvious but there’s something about their instrumentation and rhythm that makes them feel so much like mirrors of eachother in some beautiful, slowed and reverbed kind of way.

I feel like Don’t Wanna Know should trigger my “Bo being kind of whiny -> offputting” thing which is the reason why a couple of the really low ranked places have their place, but each of the setups for why he “doesn’t wanna know something” are so funny in turn.

Maybe it’s less that it feels like a remix or callback to Content and more that it’s unabashadely using the classic Bo instruments, letting it be proudly part of the same family that gets to include this, content, any day now, and my all time favourite.

Look Who’s Inside Again

Well, well! Look who’s inside again. Went out to look for a reason to hide again.

This song is so peaceful which makes it so melanchony. It’s a sad, purely sad, so incredibly sad ballad with very little before it.

It’s sad without being achingly self aware. It has no jokes.

It has nothing about politics, nothing about feeling guilty about either not caring about politics or not caring about it enough.

It’s the heads face of the Inside coin it’s in purest, least self-referrential or jokey form and its tragic because of that.

It emulates a sick, twisted, mocking lullaby.

It somehow captures the feeling of wallow so well that I fell in love with it while travelling. I don’t even know in what sense I was feeling “stuck” but even just in the sense of continually, over and over coming back to the same thing, and just barely being self-aware enough to have stuff like “look” who’s inside again, being just far enough in the first person to be that level of self aware without being achingly or jokingly so, without ruining the full streaming blood of tragic sincerity for a second.

I think, because I didn’t fall in love with this song first, I assumed that it was a small little scarce-loved song which was mostly loved just by me, but I think that was relatively high delusion on my part — it’s the third highest song on the album. Which despite my small amounts of angst over that, is fundamentally reaffirming.

Look Who’s Inside Again has made me well up multiple times and I love it for that. It brings warmth to my heart the idea that Bo loves it to and named the whole special after it.

At the end of high school, I created a playlist of nostalgic songs which I couldn’t listen to (indefinitely…, but later changed until just until Christmas) because each was tied to a specific event which I wanted to have the song as a trigger for the memory.

Look Who’s Inside Again was tied to the memory of a school trip I went on, where we happened to stay in some of the fanciest, nicest places I’ve been in.

Listening to it again after Christmas day was amazing, and I’m enthused and in love with the idea of getting to listen to it every day for the rest of my life, if I do so please.

I’m from the UK, and last august I started college in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. They say Atlanta doesn’t really count as the south.

Before starting here I’d been to the US thrice before. Once to berkeley for two weeks two years ago, the second time also in Berkeley for a month and a half two years ago, then for a week touring unis on the east coast one year ago.

But, somehow, only this time have I ever felt so othered for being from the UK.

I don’t know how to put it in a way that doesn’t sound whiny but I am whiny. It’s annoying!

And it’s even more annoying because it’s not Americans that are the problem, or being in America. Because I didn’t even go home over the winter break. I went to California, and I spent the first half with American friends of mine in San Fransisco and the second half with American friends of mine in Berkeley, and not once was I ever made to feel like I was a strange anomaly for being from the UK.

I hate it.

Things people do:

• Make jokes about British food being gross (Okay? Haha? I’ve literally never thought about this ever before people telling me here that that’s the case. I’ve never eaten beans on toast, the rest of it is just food?)
• Translate things for me in a super condescending way like they really find it very funny (football/soccer, etc)
• Straight up mimic my accent. All the time. ALL the time. This is the worst one and happens the most.

And you just can’t have a conversation with these people. And why would you try? There’s just a 1 in 5 chance that something you say will either be funnily British to them that they won’t be able to resist halting the conversation to comment on it (which is annoying, because I don’t care), or they’ll just copy the way you said it.

AGHHHHHHh!

And I tell these people. I tell them, as seriously as I possibly can, “I find it really annoying when people do British accents, please don’t do it” and so many people still fucking do and I can’t stand it. THAT’S when it becomes bad.

It’s completely okay if people have to get it out of their system because they’re interacting with somebody from a wildly different background than them. To break the ice or whatever and acknowledge that “ah yes, we are from different places” and then move on!

That’s okay. I found other notes in the trash just like it. Poor weirdo. I pity them. Wish they could let go and move on.

“Sounds healthy!”

Sure would be!

But when you explicitly, explicitly request of them to please stop this fucking joke, and they still do it, that’s when I have no patience for them. That’s when seeing them makes me annoyed. That’s when them knowing friends of mine so having an excuse to come and be around me enfuriates me. For them to come near the timer to begin ticking down until they point out something funny about britishness and boom suddenly they’ve opened the floodgates, and other NORMAL, REGULAR people who have a very CORRECT voice in their head that was telling them up until now that it’s probably not polite and probably very annoying to point out tonnes of stuff about britain and his funny voice and whatever to the british kid, once you have ONE person who does it, who mimics the accent, whatever, then everyone thinks it’s okay, and everyone starts doing it.

It spreads, like a disgusting, annoying virus.

And these people don’t get bored of it. They’re happy to say funny things about your voice or about the UK or the fact that you’re from there, or “teehee omg I didn’t even notice when I said that word it slipped out in a british accent it just happens when I talk to people I slip into their accent did you know that blah blah asldkjalsdkjf;askdfj”

They’re happy to say that every time they see you.

There are two types of people who say the same thing every time they see you. Dumb people who’s brains can’t think of anything else to talk about, or people who don’t care that they’re winding you up.

Because, guess what? I also don’t care about hearing about people’s habits of slipping into accents after I tell them that I don’t want to hear their shitey british accent and that I hate it I hate it I hate it. I definitely don’t want to hear about oh you went to an international school where there were tonnes of british kids and people made fun of your accent? Then you should fucking know better then!

But if these things were just small, one-line anecdotes to complement an apology, then why would I care? How would I care? It’s that it goes on, and on, and on that’s the problem.

And why are these people like this?

I think it’s something to do with being so, so confident in the type of person you are, and being a majority (as in, the opposite of a racial/ethnic/nationality-y minority). I think it’s something to do with that, that cover, that lets you see something unusual and have your brain come up with no other reaction than “hahaha that weird person! So funny omg! Do you ever have beans on toast! Do you take the chube to school each day! Do you pronounce it ‘Youtube’ or ‘You-chube’! blah blah blah blah blah”

I don’t believe these people when they tell me stories of them also being minorities in some way. Because how could you ever have been? “Us weirdos have to stick together”, right? So how could you have been in a place where you were different from everyone and not picked up anything that taught you that when that’s the case for someone else, they don’t want to be the “token x”, and to IGNORE THEM, IGNORE them when they tell you that they don’t find it funny and please fucking stop.

This isn’t one person, this isn’t two people. This is so many people. This happens all the time.

And going to California makes me sad because nobody there is like that. There are about five people from the bay area at my school and none of them have ever been deeply annoying in this way. Is that because they’re a minority, and bay area californians have a “california fry” and do actually sound a bit different than the other general conglomerate of americans and so they know what it’s like? Or is California just one of the most tolerant places in america, where people of other races do actually live together in peace and harmony, and have more interesting things to do than point out how funny other people’s accents are all the time?

Going to california makes me sad because I like America but I don’t like this and being in California reminded me that I could be in America without experiencing this. And I can instead just be someone who’s “not from the bay” in a general, safe sense (Immigrant, Lite). I like my college and I enjoy being here, but this is such a big part of it, and it makes me start to daydream and fantasise and wonder – what would it have been like had I gone to college in California? Would I have gotten the great fun and joy of going to college in the US without having to flinch when the professor’s powerpoint goes to something that looks vaguely like a train because I’m worried he’s going to make a joke about the tube? Or if something approaching the concept of a “telephone” box remotely comes close to coming up? Or Europe, at all? Or colonialism?

I’ll tell it to you now. I don’t know anything about telephone boxes or trainlines or europe or colonialism or anything. And I’m black anyway. Both my parents are immigrants from Africa and both their countries were British Colonies!

And so in thinking about this, in hating this entire concept, and dreading coming back to it, and being back here, I thought, I need a word. I need something to describe these people so confident in themselves they feel no fear or shyness in so frequently pointing out something else as “other”.

And, of course, so many of my best friends, both in college and before joining, are American, and I love them dearly.

But the word I’m going to use is “Supermericans”. And if you are one, I will scheme to prevent you getting into my classes, I will leave group conversations when you join them, and I will avoid you as hard as I can, until my world is one which you’re not a part of.

(I am taking alternate name suggests though. I need a pejorative way to refer to these people as a group. Please let me know if you have any suggestions).

It’s not only in Twilight; the myth of how to kill a vampire is to decapitate it, burn it, or stab a wooden stake through its heart.

Random Person on Quora

Sticky friends are those who emit a powerful field of “please don’t leave me on my own, every second I’m on my own is a great pain”.

Sticky friends are those who, if you run across them while hanging out with non sticky friends, they will follow you around for the rest of the day.

Sticky friends do not pick up on hints. Only the most extreme measures are able to successfully shake off sticky friends. Hence, “sticky”.

Interlude: A Sticky Encounter

(I’ll give the play by play of what happened that made me cement this sticky friends concept so that the rest of the post makes sense.)

Background context:

Background 1) I have two regular very close friends, Tiggy and Leviticus, and one sticky friend, Cunningham. On a previous occasion, they asked me what I thought about Cunningham, and I said I loved her but that I didn’t feel relaxed in her presence. She is intense to be around. I love her, but her presence at some class of social events will reliably ruin them for me.

Background 2) Cunningham has high functioning autism. The relevance of that fact during the following story is at your discretion, and will become more relevant at the end of this post.

Background 3) It has previously been the case that we have run into sticky friend in the early afternoon and still been in her presence in the late evening, despite regular hints hinting otherwise.

What happened:

1. Tiggy, Leviticus and I had been studying in a building off-campus, and had gone on-campus to get lunch.
2. Leviticus was planning on doing a small errand elsewhere on campus and we were going to go with her to do it, before going back off-campus to continue studying.
3. STICKY FRIEND Cunningham ARRIVES
4. I panic.

Interinterlude: Why I panicked

a) There is no way to be “honest” to Cunningham by letting her explicitly know the study plan exists but using social hints that she is not invited. Cunningham is autistic. She would not pick any up.

b) The most normal way to shake her off would be for us all to split up and reconvene, but if I say “I’m tired and will go to my room”, I have no guarantee that Tiggy or Leviticus would not say “what about our study plan after this”, and blow the whole thing to Cunningham.

1. (Imagine this list continues from 5.) I leave to get a glass of water, and make notes on my phone on how I could shake off Cunningham.
2. I return and Cunningham is talking to Leviticus and Tiggy.
3. I subtly wink at each of Leviticus and Tiggy as Cunningham looks elsewhere.
4. I tell them that I am tired and going to pop to my room.
5. Leviticus and Tiggy both pick up the hint (I am very likely giving them too little credit and they would have figured out the plan without the wink).
6. I leave, they each split up with Cunningham, and we reconvene sans-Cunningham afterwards. (I did indeed pop into my room between this.)

Back out of Interlude

Sticky friends earn the title of “sticky” because regular social hints cannot cleave them off you.

My understanding of the purpose of social hints is that by using them to shake people off rather than telling people explicitly “I like you but I don’t want to be around you right now, nor the next time we study, nor the next time after that, but I do enjoy getting dinner with you occasionally and catching up”.

I guess that’s what it is. It’s wanting to be someone’s friend and a slightly lower level of amicability than they want to be yours.

And that’s the important part. The part that earns them the second half of the title, sticky friends. I do love Cunningham. I do want to see her. I am happy when I come back from school holidays and see her. But she cannot be someone I hang out with all the time.

When making new friends, it’s something of a dance, figuring out exactly how important you’re going to be in eachother’s lives. It takes a little effort to go upstream, but then you’re good. But sticky friends are borne from that permanent mismatch in desired hangout frequency.

Either because they’re miscalibrated about your desired friendship level and their software to gauge that from you is so buggy that they will never be able to callibrate, or because for sticky friends, being alone is painful, and they see nothing wrong with that fact emanating from them all the time with everyone they’re around.

My understanding of social hints is that you use them because you don’t wish to receive the punishment of whatever you are thinking. I’m scared of having a complex social situation linger for years in the place I go to school. I don’t want to make enemies and will go to long lengths to keep it that way.

I would much rather Cunningham pick up the hint and try to hang out with us a little less than have her actively never talk to me again, or have things be super awkward if we are hanging out together with mutual friends.

Cunningham is not the only sticky friend of course, nor is she even the only sticky friend I know. Some, I think, simply ignore the hints.

Some ponderings:

• Of course I could be a sticky friend to many people, and I hope I do a good enough job picking up hints of when I’m unwanted.
• Therefore there’s a symmetry: “you get to choose who you hang out with, and people get to choose if they hang out with you”
• So I think that is okay to not want to hang out with specific people.
• I don’t think there is any moral argument that could sway me that it is morally right for me to hang out with her when I don’t want to, not even because she is autistic. This is something the entirety of reddit disagreed with me on. But that would not be a friendship between equals, that’s babysitting, and I don’t want to see her that way, and I don’t want to do that.
• But I could be swayed that because she is autistic, it is morally wrong for me not to be explicit with her, in the aims of preserving an amicable social environment for myself at college.
• What do you think? Please weigh in.

 Fish seller: Hey all, catch it now! Fresh fish! Fresh fish!

You know sometimes I feel like Gingerjumble Writer doesn’t like m—

Cunningham, fading off in the distance as I walk away from the dinner table.

I thought it was going to be a lot worse than it was. It’s stored in my head as “generic white people tv media” and for the first episode it was basically this until the end. I forgot that being part of Apple TV meant it was inherently a streaming show which is like if you take a regular person and make them noncis: it adds spice no matter what.

The spice in this instance being continuity. I love how the first episode started us off with the mystery of what on earth is going on with Ted and his marriage. The first episode was very snappy with giving us only the exposition of the barest we needed to allow it to start telling jokes, but then left the two most curious threads (why would the team hire such an awful coach? and what about Ted’s life that he’s leaving behind?) as the two stingers for the end of the first episode, and it carried these through very well.

Ted

I’m not sure that if I rewatched the very first episode I would consider Ted to be the exact same character. He’s so excessively optimistic and is almost Spongebob levels of cartoony in the first episode that it makes a lot of sense why people find him so annoying (to the extent that it makes me wonder how many of the show’s creators were American vs British and how much of that was just poking fun at American’s from a British perspective).

But I guess I’m happy that we get this sort of bait and switch wrt Ted’s personality. We’re given a red herring with what makes him a good coach (that video of him dancing with his teammates at the beginning) and then are slowly fed the real reasons that make him a good coach. His relentless caring, insanely high emotional intelligence, perseverance and perspective, humility. I don’t say a single one of these adjectives remotely lightly . I would want to watch more Ted Lasso just to have Ted’s personality rub off on me. It would make me a better person and I loved watching him.

But he doesn’t stay onenote like say Steven Universe for a lot of his run. When he first yelled at Jamie about practice my jaw was open the entire time.

Rebecca

This show gives me major “no female writers” vibes. She’s constantly sexualised from the very beginning and making jokes about irrelevant one-time characters being sexist isn’t a non-sexist excuse to sexualise your only two female characters over and over. Even when Keely and Rebecca are given their first opportunity to talk to each other Keely just fauns over Rebecca’s naked body. Her only out-of-the-club arch revolves around her rivalry with her truly cartoonishly evil ex who starts off somewhat realistic but broke my suspension of disbelief with his Disney-villain esque taunts of her in his last few appearances, and I have to consciously think about how this could be a realistic portrayal of a type of relationship I just don’t know about to try and keep myself believing in the world of the universe.

(Put this in contrast to say Ted’s panic attack. Panic attacks aren’t a part of my personal experiences in the universe but it was terrifying and realistic all on its own.)

I don’t love how back and forth she is with her loyalty to Ted but I do like how she is fully honest at the end and I like how Keely is the spur to that.

There’s always this thing with TV shows where their first season gets to in a sense be the most dynamic since you’re allowed to deal with plot threads that have existed for longer than the universe has, but from the second season onward you have to make up stuff to keep stuff going. I wonder how her relationship with Ted and the other characters can still be kept dynamic when she’s not secretly against them.

But to be honest that question even feels a little hollow to me. She was basically on the same side as them the entire time anyway.

Keely

I love Keely. I love how good of a person she is. I think we’re supposed to be tricked into thinking she’s stupid at the beginning but then we’re slowly revealed to the fact that she’s not. She’s super into sex and I appreciate that as she is revealed to be smarter and smarter this fact about her isn’t lost, and it’s nice seeing how being horny can be smoothly integrated into an intelligent woman character as all one thing and not as mutually exclusive traits.

She suffers less from her entire story centering around men thing then Rebecca does but only marginally. She’s also less aggressively sexualised by the show but still very sexualised. I like her job as getting a PR and the reveal that she doesn’t care for football was interesting.

I don’t particularly love her and Roy and I think she can do a lot better. Ted’s too old for her and I think the show as trying to get me to ship them at the beginning and it felt weird. I’d like to see more of her backstory and home life.

Sam and Jamie

The racism angle with Sam is incredibly good. It’s subtle. They don’t spell it out but it’s right there and they show every part of it and it’s really really good, maybe one of the best portrayals of modern subtle racism I’ve seen in TV.

I don’t remember if Jamie apologises to Sam.

I LOVE how the ending of the show gives an incredible entire-season payoff to what Ted has been saying the whole time about losing but it’s still a victory with Jamie winning for ManU but him learning to pass. That’s an insane gut punch. So good.

Others (Coach Beard, Nathan, Roy)

Roy seems a little one note. I’m ready for him to actually lower his guard by now.

Nathan is great and sweet but doesn’t seem like a real person to me. A really person who was actually as shy as he’s portrayed for the first 9 episodes would not be able to give the speech he gave to them rapidly and brutally insulting them in the 10th. It was too cartoony for me to believe. Hope they flesh him out and make him more real.

Coach Beard is hilarious. Holt-esque character done very well.

Overall

Overall, great show and I actually really wanna finish it.

But too many apple products

It was really good! It was all really cohesive and everything was related to Racoon and very focused on him.

It’s the only Guardian’s film I’ve ever seen. The exposition was on point and everything was very clear to understand.

It was really good fantasy and sci-fi, very easy and clear to understand, and they explained where we’d been since before with Gamora and stuff from Endgame.

The characters are really really adorable and friendly and awesome, and I loved the way they played off eachother. Like Starlord’s sister and Future-Dad, they have almost an entire arc? With blue character learning to appreciate Future-Dad, and Mantis being so honest and bold and being able to properly yell at Blue Character for being needlessly mean.

And it was really funny. My favourite joke definately was when they’re all trying desperately to communicate with these alien children, and then Future Dad just effortlessly after pretending to be a monkey (even though they just definately weren’t monkey noises, which was also hillarious), and then just speaks the language and they’re like “why didn’t you say you could speak the language?” and he looks at her with such incredible disgust and is like why didn’t you ask? and boom cut to the next scene.

It was so funny. When they came onto that disgusting planet and he was talking on the wrong channel as well, that was awesome.

It was just really funny overall and the timings were really good, they never overdid it or lingered on a joke past it being funny.

The villain was fantastic. One, he was so interestingly and coolly tied to the present story, since he put that awesome copyright limiter on Rocket, and having to find it to wake up Rocket was an awesome reason to get the gang to have to go there. The only thing I would maybe say is that since Rocket is asleep for so much of the movie, you don’t have much of him doing stuff in the present day. But every little scrap you get out of him is fantastic, whether it’s him as a tiny little baby or him as a cool Racoon killing people at the end.

The deaths of his friends were very sad. I initially thought that bit was in the present because I went to the bathroom just before and didn’t see it had gone into flashback, which made it even sadder to me because there was this weird layer of he had somehow gotten better and woken up and was an adult racoon but they were all still mentally children which was surreal but even without that layer it was still so sad how they all were such good friends and such innocent children and I want to see them again.

I kinda derailed from the High Evoluntionary didn’t I? (In the 6 hours since I started writing this then got distracted.) He was really good, and I loved his world with his weird animals, I don’t really get how having humanoid animals makes a perfect world but I guess that could be part of his delusion. I love the face off joke payoff, and also is Racoon implied to be wiping off his face?

Also there was a part where I cried but I don’t remember which. It may have been the him realising he was a Racoon moment and coming to terms with it.

A very very beautiful good well formed movie and RIP High Evolutionary.

5/7, perfect movie

What? It was so good? It was so good until the ending.

The sixth book in the Shapeshifter series, and the 11th book total, and the final overall, is an interesting ride. It starts by very much rehashing territory we’ve explored before, with Dax being upset because the college is being taken over by dictators who don’t understand the cola project. It basically started in book 1, then took a break with McGonagall as the principal for a while, but now literally all the old teachers are just GONE, and I find it annoying that that’s how the book starts. I wish we got to see where Ms Saterer and Owen and David Chambers and everyone are during the course of the book. I also feel like Caroline Fisher’s role is very much rehashed from Book 3, with being a person who Dax goes to outside the Cola project for help, which isn’t great but it’s certainly interesting, and then after Dax is out she just becomes completely irrelevant. Same with Clive, remember when he was a part of the book?

Man this book really really loses quality in context of the ending. It’s so incredibly rushed and I don’t get what the point or message is. I get that Mia is evil now and oh my god that scene where she was blowing up the boat was incredible, and it’s a cool thing that she gets a Marcy Wu I did it for us moment, but she didn’t actually do anything for “us” here. It was actually just allusions and it’s very clever.

The random government agreement stuff is such a deus ex machina at the end. Terrorists cannot just teleport in and threaten the PM’s daughter and send one signal drone and have that be that. Especially if Dax is not even around, and neither will Mia fully be really, since she would have just gotten murdered at the end by that little drone. Like the Prime Minister should just do a kill all colas scheme immediately, this is not remotely an ending.

The villain for this book is out of nowhere. Like what does he want? Who on earth is he? What does he do at the end of the book?

Also Lisa is kind of annoying in the middle there with worrying about her dad.

Honestly the dealing with the maths of the forcefield and how to escape was a really fun exciting part of the book but feels super pointless in retrospect.

And what, they’re just gonna be outlaws now living in caves forever?

And what on earth was that stuff about Dax’s dad being around at the end? That final huddle where Dax has finally, after the entire book has finally reunited with everyone all these lovely characters and they all just appear out of nowhere and get practically zero lines of description and then he just teleports away is so weird. Especially since his father showing up in the fifth book is such a big deal, and here he doesn’t even get to say anything, he’s just a weird non-verbal animatronic that Dax doesn’t even regard?

It’s just so incredibly confusing. I love Ali Sparkes and her writing and world and characters so very much. But the ending of this so very much feels like the deadline wasn’t just in a week and she was short, but within an hour, and she as quickly as possible wrote an ending.

Also, I can’t fathom that Granite didn’t show up after being left on a cliffhanger in Book 5. I think. I read book five of Unleashed a long time ago and cannot find anything on the internet about how it ends.

It’s a shame, the book was overall written phenomenally and even though Alice and Caroline became very uninteresting after their purpose in the plot was fulfilled, their bits at the beginning were phenomenal. Clive had a wonderful role and it’s tragic that he’s not even so much as mentioned after he helps Dax leave, let alone what happens to him afterward. Olu is a great new character and it’s wacky to think he wasn’t in it before, having a teleporter is so cool. The world really is awesome and the scenes of Mia using her power to heal/blackmail the receptionist into leaking her info was awesome, Dax escaping was awesome, the team blowing up the boat was awesome, Alice tricking the feds and running away was awesome (but so, so unjustified. I don’t want to be snide but it’s an idiot ball — there was no reason Alice should have run away and no reason that a reasonable adult like Caroline would have said yes to the 13-year-old traveling the country on her own. I guess maybe they could have been worried about the government kidnapping her? And I guess they did very much kidnap Dax in the first book?)

Alice has had a major character glow up she’s become really interesting and sweet, but it’s sad she has about 2 lines back and forth with Dax before he just leaves her again.

I also surprisingly enjoyed the level of Dax and Spook’s over the top rivalry but also didn’t miss the peace of when Spook was just gone at the beginning.

I wish there was more Gideon and Lisa, and I want to know more about what that Bunker was like. Also Luke. I like that his muteness hasn’t been completely erased.

The lack of Caroline mentions is I guess approximately acceptable seeing as she’s not in this book and not to spoil her? But it’s really weird. because they annoyingly don’t fully spoil Unleashed, which isn’t even important because Granite doesn’t mention, and why and how could you do that and how could you not bring back Granite…

But they also don’t fully spoil and catch you back up on The Shapeshifter series with Catherine, and that’s not relevant either.

It seems the only bit that’s important is that Mia killed people, but when? And who? Was it at the end of Stirring the Storm?

I wish it would just full spoil the whole series. I thought it was fine enough while I was reading but now that I’ve gotten to the end and I’m confused, and this book did come out eight years after the end of Stirring the Storm and two years after the Burning Beach, the last unleashed book, it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me.

Reading this was still one of the funniest experiences I’ve had in a long while, but it became a really incoherent payoff-less deus-ex-machina filled ending that started skipping important plot beats like me trying to finish my essays in the final two minutes of an exam, which is a shame.

And it’s a shame there’s no more. I really, really like these characters!

Give it a read I think. Obviously don’t read this review first. But yeah. Truly a finale I guess

Rating –

I have no idea how this movie exists.

Chip and Dale is like Disney’s Space Jam, and I was so happy and blown away and in awe all through Space Jam and I barely even knew the Looney Tunes, and I was so happy.

And both are of course descendants of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which I sitll somehow havne’t seen fully, which I basicaly owe my life to. Not really, but I mean if I owe Space Jam 2 and Chip and Dale to the same movie then man I really owe it a lot.

Story

The story is simple, but really well constructed. I have no idea who’s idea at Disney it was to make it a meta movie about chip and dale as actors but it’s so good and so funny.

The actually story though very simple, which is TOTALLY OKAY. They even lampshade it briefly at the begginning, highlighting how Chip and Dale are the classic Ghost and Molly Mcgee / Spongebob and Squidward / Insert an actually more iconic duo like this couple, but cleverly Dale is talking about this in reference to the in universe Chip and Dale show, but because they’re chacters are so similar in and out of universe (I’m assuming), it means ti works without them explicitly saying it.

Clever.

The story at the core of it all is chip and dale realising how much they care about and love eachother, and you can tell where it’s going and you’ve seen this conflict a million times before, but I was super on board with it. I actually like both Chip and Dale (I think I like Chip more, but I did not dislike Dale) and they’re voice actors both gave stellar, like perfect performances as their characters. I fully believed every single line, and you can immediately tell that their characters would not be the same without their actors. Especially chip.

Of course it can be a tad screwy when the same voice actor is in too many notable things, like John Mulaney in Big Mouth, Spider Verse and now this, but he created such a good, likeable character inside of Chip, that I’m 100% for it.

But outside of just liking these characters and appreciating their struggle and conflict, no matter how baseline it is, the world around them is also so very interesting that it without a doubt makes the film super fun to watch for it alone.

In basically every crowd scene you can pay attention to what they’re saying but also focus on all the characters in the background and seeing if you recognise any. And this is a world where the background characters can range from scrooge mcduck to linda flynn fletcher to patrick star to ugly sonic to my little pony.

The villains plot was fascinating. Having Peter Pan as your villain is an extroadinary idea and it works. And having the whole thing be about TV and having bootlegging be the threat works. It just works, and it’s so creative.

I wasn’t expecting anything out of this movie but when watching the disney logo and stuff started happening, it caught my attentnion. And when I went right back for my immdiate rewatch knowing that the disney logo was being hit by the bootleg ray is super clever and fun.

I really like Sweet Peat as a villain.

The Twist

It’s an amazing twist!

I deduced that the girl was the villain pretty quickly after she was like “I can’t name my favourite episode”, and I felt very smug explaining this to my brother, but it was subtle enough that it wasn’t too obvious so I was vaguely tense but mostly excited to see when and how she was going to obey them. I was happy.

Then about 10 seconds later they went a bit harder on her being a twist vilain with the “rescue rangers was never aired in that place where she grew up”, and I rolled my eyes. I suddenly thought “am I watching a baby movie?” then I thought they had to make it sufficiently obvious since it did say 9+ on the cover.

And it got me.

The movie got me.

Thoroughly and completely and totally.

And they fully totally lampshade it being obvious with Putty, but I still love it. JK Simmons gives a stellar, perfect performance as Putty, getting even more perfectly manic as he turns evil. And he becomes legitamately threatening when it’s revealed the extent that he can do with his Putty powers. I feel like the writers were showing restraint with not having him display his powers at all until the fight, and then even when he does display them you’re like “of course, he is putty, this works”.

His fight with Ally was super interesting.

In general, any time this story does stakes it does it really well. Key points include the chase through the convention, Ally fighting Putty, them against Sweet Pete just before the ray explodes…

The movie is super exciting and keeps the pace up.

The bootlegging ray is a genius idea for a movie about cartoons as actors, and it’s super unique, and incredibly authentic to the film and I love it.

Having the production studios secretly be in California the whole time and they don’t realise it till the end is a clever way of allowing them to think Monty died and have him be okay.

It’s just a really well crafted interesting story, against maybe the best setting of any movie.

Humour

It’s not the type of joke that things like this so often do, where I’m like “I can recognise you’re trying to tell a joke, and this is very mildly amusing”, honestly like a lot of the humor in gravity falls and owl house, which rarely makes me proper proper laugh, but the jokes here actually get me cackling and being like “that was a good fucking joke” or “this seems really authentic to the people making this, it seems like this was really funny to the people making it”

One of these things was the CGI surgery stuff, which was super funny.

Oh my god, and the best joke of the whole thing: we raided peppa pig.

Oh wait but actually, another that got me so hard was: “I guess you could say that my character in the show, and my character in real life, are basically excactly the same” and then Chips reaction!!!

And man the making a connection from a bunch of unrelated things gag has been done so many times before but it was so funny here. And like, you can very much tell that the writers just know that they need to get Dale to the place with everyone and they aren’t bothered to have the reveal about Putty twice, oh man.

Oh man, and them laughing at the joke for longer the worse it was, and Chip and Dale in full house. Man this movie got me.

Animation

It’s georgous. Linda Flynn Fletcher looked weird, and I was not happy at first when Dale went into CG because I thought it was going to stay like that for both of them, but when they lampshade it hard because of CGI Surgery which is hillarious, and when I realised it’s a way to make them easier to tell apart (and also that it makes all screengrabs of this film super iconic).

Overall, just a great super entertaining movie. I didn’t expect to love it, and I had no idea it was coming out, and I have no idea why it was made and how on EARTH they got all the rights to all the characters, but it’s like it was a movie made for me, and I will definately, without a doubt, be watching this many, many times.

Thank you for putting this movie into the world.