LEAVE JOJO SIWA ALONE

For REAL guys. She’s a child star struggling with fame and money and power and all that classic shit in her adulthood.

I would have thought we would have learned from the Free Britney movement, Jeanette McCurdy’s book, Quiet on Set, Lindsey Lohan–like there are so many conversations happening right now about child exploitation and how young adults (especially young women) who survive it are treated by the media, but we’re witnessing a victim of it now struggling with direction as an adult and we are treating her with the SAME EXACT LEVEL of ire and nitpicking as the tabloids back in the day, just under the guise of “wanting accountability”.

She’s essentially still a child and hasn’t had the chance to learn a lot of real life shit yet. If you don’t like what she’s doing just stop paying attention to her. Don’t bully her about it!! OH MY GOD i’m so fucking tired of this shit. Mark my words, in 20 years people are going to look back and be horrified by how she was treated. While people abuse some other young public figure for making normal bad life decisions, probably.

I have a conspiracy theory against spotify

It’s about their shitty playlists, and not wanting us to make our own.

THE THEORY:
I believe spotify doesn’t want its users to make their own playlists, and instead wants them to use the ones spotify pre-makes. I’m almost positive they sell slots on their pre-made playlists, that’s not the conspiracy–I think they’re actively changing their user interface to make it more difficult for people to curate their own listening experience on spotify, instead pushing them towards the pre-made playlists. more listeners means they can sell those spots for more money. CHA-CHING!

Data point 1: the like button being removed.

I know they say, “ohhh the new add to playlist is more intuitive!” but it doesn’t help if you’re someone like me who rarely listens to Spotify’s curated playlist. My listening pattern is curating new stuff from artists I follow or want to check out in a “check out X month” list–which I KNOW is not a unique habit. It renders the “add to playlist button” completely useless because everything I’m listening to is already on at least one.

like… no shit!

This like button being removed absolutely makes it more difficult to navigate spotify as someone who listens pretty much exclusively to playlists I’ve created.

Data point 2: their algorithm masquerading as customized.

They’re always pushing this, “Custom made for you playlist!” I’ve never really paid much attention to them but recently they tried out a “daylist” feature, which were playlists based on your listening habits throughout the week. “Cool, that’s interesting!” I thought!

checked today’s daylist out of curiosity–did not disappoint LOL

NOPE! no matter the subgenre listed as the inspiration for the playlist it was always the exact same 3 artists, same like 15 songs with no diversity.

Part of this is also because spotify has divided their library into so many subgenres that it’s just gotten repetitive and unhelpful. Which, is another great way to try and get people to listen to a pre-made playlist. “What is Glunklecore? I guess I’ll give it a click.”

You can argue that the point of this playlist isn’t to introduce me to new music, it’s to compile stuff i already like. but… i ALREADY HAVE MY OWN PLAYLISTS FOR THAT! I don’t need a new one with the same old same old i already listen to!

Data point 3: they said something about me making a lot of playlists in my spotify wrapped.

Like ok yeah maybe I’m a bit of a fiend and made like 10 playlists in june but THATS MY BUSINESS! I thought it was odd that they are tracking how many users make playlists vs just listen to radio features.

TL;DR

I am not an academic but this is the feeling i’ve been getting from the service in the past few months. i honestly was never big on streaming until my housemates and I all went in on splitting a premium membership. I enjoyed being able to easily check out new artists, but that’s becoming harder and harder; it’s so much easier to keep up with my favs on youtube. i buy all the music i like as mp3s anyway, maybe i’ll delete my account and rebuild my beloved playlists in windows media player.

sexism and the never ending war on “low effort content”

if you’ve been online at all for the past few months you’ve probably heard of the youtuber showdown between Jacksfilms vs. SSSniperwolf. SSSniperwolf has been a notorious “react” creator for years. There have been multiple campaigns against her (and reaction creators in general), as a lot of people feel she is just stealing content instead of creating her own. Jacksfilms is a gen1 youtuber, having been on the platform for over a decade, and started off with a bang with loads of sketch comedy vids that went viral back in the 2000’s and 2010’s (you may recognize him from his snuggie parody). Jacksfilms has been making videos on SSSniperwolf for over a year now, calling out her behavior.

Pretty straightforward, right? Youtube old guard defending the platform from turning into a cesspool of low effort sludge?

NOPE. Because Jacksfilms’ flagship series for the past decade or so have been YAIY (Yesterday, I Asked You) and YGS (Your grammar sucks) Where he mines his OWN AUDIENCE for content. Much like the react channels he claims to hate, he just reads and reacts to audience comments. Obviously some videos require some photoshop & editing but calling yourself a comedy youtuber and reacting to your OWN AUDIENCE’S jokes reads “hack” even more than only posting crowdwork clips from your stand up set.

There’s obviously a lot more to the situation. SSSniperwolf ended up threatening Jacksfilms, but Jacksfilms also whined like a little baby about it after having harrassed her for over a year. I’m not on either side here, I think they’re both cringe and should be embarrassed. But there are 2 things here i want to talk about:

First, the “low effort content” debate

This is something i see a LOT in art actually! Especially in younger/aspiring artists. Young mid-level artists dogpiling 15 year olds for… learning to draw via tracing. For being a little spammy in discord art channels. For using other artists’ styles as reference while they refine their own.

The idea of something being “low effort” is inherently flawed, because how much something is worth or how good something is is not directly proportional to the amount of time you put in. Sometimes work DOES take a long time! but other times, the most brilliant sketches, shows, and films are the product of a split-second decision or silly idea someone got on the fly. And especially in animation, where your work is part of a much larger pipeline shortcuts are GOOD! it’s super common to trace CG assets and sets while working on boards, because the environment is more accurate that way but also!! SOMETIMES YOU JUST DONT HAVE TIME TO DRAW A BUS FROM SCRATCH!!

Calling something “low effort” is just a veiled attempt at gatekeeping, and usually comes from the most insecure members of a community. Which is why i think Jacksfilms got so caught up in this fight! He has been producing “low effort” content FOREVER. WHICH HE IS ENTITLED TO DO!! He is allowed to ride out a popular series with his fanbase. I genuinely enjoyed YAIY and YGS back in the day. He has been on youtube forever and deserves to take a break from constantly working on high-budget and -concept short films.

But just as Jacksfilms is allowed to make his more relaxed content, so is SSSniperwolf. Her videos have millions of views each, that’s not an accident. People ARE finding value in it, but Jacksfilms has decided that it’s not worthy of our respect. But sure, you read, laugh, and roast your audience’s comments, that seems like it’s totally in its own league. I can’t help but feel that this extended beef is a result of Jacksfilms needing to feel better about his own standing in the creatorsphere.

Second, the sexism.

I’ll make this quick because you’ve almost definitely heard most of this before. There are absolutely female presenting streamers who lean into their looks to get money, i’m not denying that, but men have an advantage that’s just as powerful and is very rarely ever talked about:

People take men *seriously*. People don’t question if they’re only popular because they’re pretty (even tho the majority of male content creators ARE conventionally attractive), they don’t question the legitimacy of their opinions, they don’t question them BEING there.

Take moist critikal, for example, one of the most boring men alive. His voice could put me to sleep after drinking 3 cans of monster. His takes are the most lukewarm, unnecessary shit i’ve ever heard and all he does is sit on stream all day and react to stuff his followers send him. And people fucking LOVE him!! And other than legitimately problematic takes he’s had he hasn’t caught a feather of the hate that SSSniperwolf has.

And yes, other male creators were criticized in the latest anti-react movement–but there was like a week of discussion around xqc and then the discourse on him faded away. the man straight up reacted to war crimes and the most he got was chewed out on twitter. softcore porn shouldn’t be accessible to kids on twitch but neither should the male-dominated gambling streams–something hasn’t gotten NEARLY as much attention as any phenomenon where a few bad-actor female streamers discover a loophole in TOS that allows them to graphically thirstbait their audience.

This is NOT a defense of any TOS abuse on twitch, or SSSniperwolf. It is, however, a call to action: if you consume streamers or react content, please don’t write off any women or female presenting streamers as just “successful because they look nice”. If you enjoy thought-provoking and intellectual content, but find yourself quickly writing off femme streamers because you think they’re just a pretty face, take the time to fight that assumption! There are plenty of quality female streamers with varying degrees of success: one of mine is Boze vs the World! Actually listen to what they’re saying, and THEN make your decision. And make sure you look at male streamers with the same critical eye.

intrusive thoughts

they’re so funny to me these days. i’m just so aware that i’m in control of my own actions now that i’m older, they don’t even bum me out like they used to. It’s just like having an edgy 11 year old who lives in your head saying random fucked up stuff and going, “isn’t that messed up??? wouldn’t that be so awful and sad?? welcome to my dark mind“.

“Ok, thanks for sharing with the class, Edgy Katie, now sit back down.”

knit, shit, or die

cla-click. the gun cocked.

“what’s it gonna be, katie?” the masked intruder asked. “pick one. knit, shit, or die.”

“ohhhhh my bad,” i said, “i thought you were telling me to knit shit or die.”

“LOL COMMAS ARE IMPORTANT” said the ghost of 2009 comedy.

my grandma died last summer, she’s always been a huge inspiration to me and a major supporter of my passions. she taught me to sew and made that first rapunzel dress with me!!! if i was working on a story she would get me books for research. She was the best.

i inherited all her knitting gear because no one else in the family is really into crafts and for the first 3 months after i felt like i’d been possessed. i couldn’t stop knitting. it was a genuine addiction. it was ruining my life, staying up till 5 am on work nights because i couldn’t put it down. literally felt like i needed to knit shit or die.

i’ve found a way to temper my passion since then but im still having lots of fun! it makes me feel a lot more connected to her, and ive really been enjoying working my way up the skill levels of the patterns she had saved. i’ve mostly been following patterns so far, but have experimented with making my own, and this month i’m tackling my first big project without a pattern. fingers crossed it’s not a total disaster!! LOL only time will tell…

here’s some of the stuff i have done so far!

these were one of my first projects! i used this pattern!

hat and gloves set! hat pattern is here, gloves were from scratch using the same stitch as the hat.

hat and scarf set! pattern for scarf here, hat from scratch using the same stitch.

another hat and scarf set! same dealio, hat pattern here, scarf just uses that stitch!

sweater for my bf from this pattern!

i have also been playing around with my embroidery machine and found a free pattern software i love! so ive been making patches!!

also made some puppets and merch for my friend’s comedy show!… hiding below the cut though because its NSFW XD ( show is about him talking to his dick, i made the faux weewee. or should i say….

what the fuck — why the fuck — is Bones

If you grew up loose on the 2010’s internet, like I did, you might remember Hulu sometimes put shows up to watch for free. We didn’t have cable, so I devoured this content religiously. Bones, Castle, Rizolli and Isles–I had no benchmark for quality, just an unquenchable desire to finally be a part of pop culture as a whole. After years of only catching snippets of Spongebob at the dentist or doctor, I could finally relate to my peers. Maybe? Kind of?

OK, so maybe none of my friends were watching Bones. But I LOVED it. Especially as a young horror fan, the gross, gruesome aspect captivated me particularly. I loved the creative problem solving by the crew to unravel details from corpses so mangled they were unrecognizable as human.

I’ve had a lot of unexpected down time thanks to the WGA/SAG strike (TAG STANDS IN SOLIDARITY!!! get those rights so we can reference your contracts later!!) and was like, what the hell, why not revisit a childhood classic.

It’s… it’s garbage. It’s flaming hot garbage. The character writing is nonexistant, the plots are threadbare at best, and mysteries are often not even fully resolved in favor of ending the episode on a cute character moment. The show wants for there to be chemistry between the two leads SO BAD that they’re forcing it down your throat every episode by talking about how perfect they are together but they’re barely even characters. Characters’ attitudes and beliefs change based on what’s convenient for the episode, or funny for a joke. There’s absolutely 0 consistency.

So color me shocked when the show has FUCKING CRAZY HIGH RATINGS ON IMDB!!!! I know IMDB is kind of a joke but… REALLY!? like we’re talking 7.6/10 for the most annoying 45 minutes of TV you’ve ever seen in your life. And this is in season 9. And people seem to *REALLY* like it. I went to check out the subreddit because I felt like I was going insane and was greeted by posts talking about how much they like the 2 main characters together, how much they liked episodes i had hated, and–most annoyingly–“Has anyone noticed that sometimes the show doesn’t feel like it matters what character says what?” Yes, Brenda, that’s the whole thing. I couldn’t even start to describe to you specific ways the show bastardizes its characters because there ARE NO CHARACTERS TO BEGIN WITH. how can you bastardize something that doesnt exist?

And maybe I’m a little picky about TV. I have very little patience for drama shows in general, but I can still tell the difference between a good show that’s just not for me and a show that sucks butt. I watched other shows like Greys Anatomy growing up, hated the characters, but could appreciate what it was. Even when I watch 9-11 I can appreciate what they’re going for, even though i usually skip over the character moments and just watch the insane setpieces. Bones just has none of that. The dialogue is uninspired and unspecific, the jokes are incredibly dated (and often pretty mean-spirited), and the mysteries are lackluster–serving just as a backdrop for what’s, i think, supposed to be a great character-based dramedy.

It’s just *SO BAD*, and I feel so out of the loop. I’m not confused about what has changed in me that makes me hate it now–I was a tiny baby when i first watched it. It was my first exposure to any kind of procedural crime drama, and i really liked all the cool gore and body horror. I AM confused about how no one else seems to think it sucks. Like. help me. Am i watching a different show? someone please tell me where to find the good Bones because I’m really struggling here.

the house that jack built: an artsy conversation about art

PROCEED WITH HEAVY CAUTION!! this is a review of a SUPER NSFW movie. while i will not be repeating the really brutal parts of the movie in this review, even looking it up could cause some distress so please be careful! i’m not saying this to be an edgelord, it’s a very gory and violent movie so please be kind to your mental health.

ive been on a hair journey

join me on my multi color adventure of finally using bleach

a few things of note

1. i shower daily with hot water. i know thats bad xD im just a greasy gal and im too wimpy for cold water.
2. idk why i felt the need to censor my face since its plastered all over the site already. but i did so thats what you get.
3. for bleach/permanent color i use 30 vol developer.
4. i have relatively thin/fine hair and only left the bleach on for 20 minutes for this level of lift. i did always use foils!
5. i use 0 aftercare products LOL so other than the dye/bleach listed with the photos there have been no othet products.

i wanted to do somethin bright and CRAAAAZY, but am new to bleach so figured an underlayer would be a good place to start. if i fuck it up theres a lot of hair above it!

immediately after:

this is what it looked like 2 months grown out:

after 2 months i decided the yellow didnt show enough so chopped off my upper layer of hair to show it off more, and i also had been kinda patchy w the bleach application so just bleached the whole underlayer again.

w/yellow:

for all of these looks i had a routine of refreshing the yellow every 3 weeks. i used Arctic Fox Cosmic Sunshine for the yellow, Ion Bright White Powder Lightener for the bleach, & Ion Color Brilliance Intense Red for the red

so then i said fuck it bleach is so easy!!! and decided to dye my whole head blue. which, predictably…

left pigment from my previous adventures. LOL! but the blue was dark enough/a contrasting color so it balanced out well imo. i didnt let it process for very long tho (30 min) because i was looking for a specific bright turquoise/cyan color within the next week. i used Arctic Fox Aquamarine for the blue!

immediately after:

after 1 week:

after 2 weeks it had faded significantly so i used Ion Brights Cyan. it was also very patchy tho cuz i was worried about preserving dye for future touch ups over fully coating my hair.

Honestly idk if the yellows and stuff already in my hair made an optical illusion but the cyan felt too blue/not enough green for me. so i stuck with Arctic Fox Aquamarine moving forward.

after 3 weeks:

after 4:

at this point i knew i needed a refresh. but i had a silly little idea… i put my Cosmic Sunshine over my faded Aquamarine to make GREEN!

i let this process for 4 hours this time around.

i didnt do root touch ups this time around b/c they honestly arent long enough yet for me to do em right, i think.

im new to using brights (esp on bleached hair) so im not sure if my first attempt at blue washed out so fast bc i didnt let it deposit a lot at first, or if thats just how this stuff goes. so im sure i will learn a lot more after this round!

and just as an FYI, started doing my own hair after highschool because i dont like when it looks good xD when i say i want chunky layers i MEAN IT! i like a more diy look and am chill walking around looking like a mess so if you are reading this for advice definitely get a second opinion.

the 2004 stepford wives adaptation is actually good

is it GREAT? no. but oh my god, i am SO RELIEVED it didnt end like the book, and i dont think that ending is necessary for the film’s message to land.

just like with everything, our storytelling needs to evolve with time. a book written in the 1970s can be brilliant satire, and a movie in 2004 can end differently and still get the job done.

the change wasnt just a happy ending–it was important. feminism isnt JUST about women becoming independent and fighting for themselves, its about changing how the whole world approaches gender dynamics. we need to demand equality but also treat others equally. seeing the two main characters’ relationship and love for each other be what cracks the system is SO. IMPORTANT. if we are all to be happy we NEED to recognise and support when men listen to us and change their behavior, and not take that for granted. obviously im not advocating for letting “nice guys” get a pass because they do the bare minimum, i mean REALLY listen, put in the work & educate themselves, and break out of toxic behavioral patterns. that shit is HARD yall. we need to see each other as equals, as partners, as allies–and it goes both ways.

theres still a lot the movie doesnt do so well (the opening with all the extreme reality tv and ending where the husbands are “whipped into shape” probably just fuel fundamentalists’ fears), and i wish we had seen how the kids were changed by their parents’ shitty relationship (maybe have that affect the characters’ decisions to go thru with the process, seeing the example they are setting?) but i think changing the ending was the right move. fucking fight me.

Illumination hates Minions too

So, saw Minions Rise of Gru with my friends last night, and like… I’m not stupid, I knew what I was going into xD This is not gonna be a “let’s just dunk on the bad thing” movie review, because Minions isn’t bad, it’s disappointing. And I honestly think it could have been pretty fucking good if universal had an ounce of faith in their own star property.

The movie opened with some pretty freaking cool action setpieces! There were 2 really epic car chases, a treasure hunting sequence–and everything looked SOOO nice. it’s clear that the artists that worked on this movie are SO. talented!!

Minions honestly work really well when they have human characters to play off of and be the “straight man”. The gags when they were building Gru’s new hideout under his basement were pretty funny, honestly, and i got a lot of solid laughs out of the front half of the movie. But on their own? I was curious! The second act starts with Gru getting kidnapped and i was tentatively excited to see an entire movie of slapstick, ala old silent film comedy.

But as the movie went on, they introduced human character after human character. like OH MY GOD we met SO MANY random one off characters in act 2. The… park ranger dude? Michelle Yeon’s character? All Wild Knuckle’s henchmen that quit? We spend so much time on these guys and they’re inconsequential to the plot. It made the movie feel even more episodic and disjointed than if we had just been drifting from bit to bit. And it made something pretty clear:

Illumination didn’t trust minions to carry the movie.

By the end of the movie, any fun had been sucked from the film. All the bits were SO boring, either super cliché to the point of not being funny any more, or with setups so convoluted it was hard to track what the punchline was. I caught myself multiple times thinking they were going for an anti-bit, where they set something up like “You THINK something’s gonna happen! but it doesn’t!” but really, they just had delayed payoffs that were just confusing and had lost any comedic context. Even the big fight sequence at the end of the movie felt like it was more about selling new toys than reaching a satisfying conclusion. We had some payoffs for minor characters that didn’t make sense in context and honestly slowed down the pace.

know Illumination makes their movies in a super decentralized way (from what i understand they freelance out a lot of the board work, so the story team really doesn’t get to collaborate and build comprehensive runners and arcs that could make the film more satisfying) but this was more than that. Most kid’s media struggles to show its characters even in remote levels of distress or injury because of the total overreach of Standards & Practice. That’s a different thing for a different time, but somehow Minions has found a way around that overreach and they’re choosing to use the super power of being able to show characters getting beaten up to… make a movie about a bunch of human characters we dont know or care about.

I think Minions: rise of gru could have honestly been pretty good, but Illumination didn’t. And that’s why it’s bad.