Hi! I built this mono red goblins deck as my first ever commander that's not a precon, I played the deck already with mixed results, and I was hoping if you could help me tune it a bit, and some suggestions on what cards to add, and wich to remove.
My table is casual for the most part, althought a Dihada legendary creatures deck always gives us trouble with lifelink and indestructible.
Here is my deck list, I mostly added the recomended goblins in the CEDH page for Kreko who is my commander,
1x Abrade
1x Arcane Signet
1x Brash Taunter
1x Burn at the Stake
1x Castle Embereth
1x Caterwauling Boggart
1x City on Fire
1x Defense Grid
1x Diamond Pick-Axe
1x Dragon Fodder
1x Exuberant Fuseling
1x Faithless Looting
1x Fire Diamond
1x Frenzied Goblin
1x Gempalm Incinerator
1x Glittering Stockpile
1x Glorious End
1x Goblin
1x Goblin Assault Team
1x Goblin Bombardment
1x Goblin Caves
1x Goblin Charbelcher
1x Goblin Chieftain
1x Goblin Chirurgeon
1x Goblin Grenade
1x Goblin Instigator
1x Goblin Matron
1x Goblin Rabblemaster
1x Goblin Rally
1x Goblin Warchief
1x Gut, True Soul Zealot
1x Hazoret's Monument
1x Hidden Volcano
1x Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician
1x Impact Tremors
1x Koth, Fire of Resistance
1x Krenko's Command
1x Krenko, Baron of Tin Street
1x Krenko, Mob Boss
1x Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin
1x Legion Warboss
1x Mana Geyser
1x Mind Stone
1x Mines of Moria
1x Mizzium Mortars
1x Mogg War Marshal
1x Molten Influence
1x Moria Marauder
27x Mountain
1x Myriad Landscape
1x Outnumber
1x Outpost Siege
1x Pashalik Mons
1x Puppet Strings
1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
1x Pyre of Heroes
1x Raid Bombardment
1x Reckless One
1x Repeated Reverberation
1x Return the Favor
1x Rising of the Day
1x Rummaging Goblin
1x Rundvelt Hordemaster
1x Shared Animosity
1x Siege-Gang Commander
1x Skirk Prospector
1x Sol Ring
1x Squee, Dubious Monarch
1x Squee, the Immortal
1x Thrill of Possibility
1x Treasure
1x Volcanic Geyser
1x Volley Veteran
1x Voracious Dragon
1x Wild Ricochet
1x Zada, Hedron Grinder
Than you very much!

Vecna: Eve of Ruin has a solid premise (a grand tour across the planes to save the multiverse) and a dissatisfying execution. Beyond a few gripes about specific chapters, the most common complaints seem to be about the sidelining of Mordenkainen, the plot twist with Kas, and the total absence of the legendary artifacts that have been associated with Vecna since the earliest days of D&D.
The good news is, all of these problems can be fixed without completely rewriting the adventure. Here are my thoughts about how to restore these important pieces of D&D lore to Vecna: Eve of Ruin.
The third wizard
Mordenkainen is a great character with a rich history, and it's a shame that the big plot twist writes him out of the story entirely. (It also insults the intelligence to suggest that Tasha and Alustriel Silverhand fail to notice that their archmage ally can't cast spells.)
This campaign is much stronger if the real Mordenkainen is actually part of it. He should be working with Tasha and Alustriel Silverhand to stop Vecna's plan, freeing up Kas to operate as a rival quester with his own agenda.
However, if you want to preserve the betrayal plot twist (and the secrets that are attached to it), perhaps Mordenkainen secretly aids Kas, arranging to free him from his imprisonment in the dread domain of Tovag and reunite him with his sword. He could even help Kas steal the completed Rod of Seven Parts from the party in the misguided belief that Kas is best positioned to stop Vecna.
I would argue that this is actually in character for Mordenkainen, whose True Neutral dogmatism inclines him towards balancing rival factions in opposition rather than throwing in his lot with one side; he might genuinely believe that setting Kas against Vecna is the safest path. Of course, Kas intends to betray his erstwhile ally by taking Vecna's place and finishing the ritual himself. Mordenkainen fully expects this, and is cultivating the player characters as his contingency plan. In any case, the archmage should come across as an amoral manipulator, not just a mask for Kas.
The Rod of Seven Parts
As written, Kas's plan is a little underdeveloped. He wants the rod so he can free Miska the Wolf-Spider so Miska will help him fight against Vecna. It's not especially clear why he specifically needs Miska as opposed to any other ally. Surely there are other factions who would be easier to bring into play.
It seems much more likely that Vecna needs Miska, as an ally who is dedicated to overthrowing the natural order of things or even as a potential component of the Ritual of Remaking. Perhaps Vecna plans to sacrifice the demon lord, unleashing powerful primordial forces that will unmake Pandemonium and all of creation. That means Vecna should be actively trying to acquire the Rod of Seven Parts for himself, sending his servants to the different locations where the parts are found and creating new complications for those chapters.
I wouldn't have the Vecna cultists show up in every location, because that would get old fast. Once the party acquires the first part of the rod, they should get a head start on locating the other parts. But if the cultists show up a few times over the course of the campaign it gives Vecna more of a presence and establishes the urgency of completing the quest.
All collection quests have a built-in failure point, or in this case, seven failure points: what happens if the players fail to grab a part of the rod, or if Vecna's cultists get it first? Collection quests work better when the characters don't need to grab all of the items, but this campaign's structure forces the players to retrieve them all so they can proceed to the next chapter.
But Vecna might be counting on that! If the party assembles the rod for him, that's almost as good as assembling it himself. Either they will bring it to Pandemonium or Kas will, and his plans can proceed.
As for his cultists, they have been searching for the rod for years if not generations and they are not privy to all of Vecna's plans. They could be cargo cults executing instructions given to their ancestors. They could also be searching for other precious artifacts, giving Vecna a chance to earn a couple of wins without derailing the party's progress.
War in Pandemonium
Since Vecna and Miska are allies in this redesign--at least until the moment of Miska's sacrifice, anyway--the party will be on Vecna's turf, rather than Kas's, from the moment they arrive in Pandemonium. That seems preferable to me, as it means that Vecna controls more than a single cave and his presence will be felt continuously in the final chapters.
It could also mean that all the demonic forces in the region serve Miska, not Lolth. Given how easily the characters can avoid Lolth's forces if they want to, I'm not certain they are needed in this chapter. However, if you want to preserve the battlefield aspect of chapter 10, perhaps Lolth's forces are there to stop the Ritual of Remaking. She stands to lose just as much as any other power if Vecna succeeds; it's hard to imagine Vecna offering anybody a place by his side in the new multiverse, and it's hard to imagine Lolth being gullible enough to believe him.
If you really want to raise the stakes, perhaps the attacking army is made up of followers of all the demon lords, or even a never-before, never-again alliance of demons, devils, and celestials, all fighting to preserve the current multiversal order. But these unlikely allies will not coordinate effectively (the demons will not coordinate at all), and the Wolf-Spider's legions are both disciplined and boundless. Only the adventurers can break into the Ruinous Citadel and stop the ritual.
The problem is, if they stop it in the citadel, the last chapter becomes an anticlimax. Sure, at that point the party will probably want to hunt Vecna down anyway, but the tension will be a lot higher if Vecna still has a chance of destroying the multiverse. There are a few ways you can manage this:

• Too late. When the party reaches the prison-hall, Kas has already freed and slain Miska, releasing his primordial energies for the ritual. This is guaranteed to continue the adventure but it brings its own kind of anticlimax.
• Double-cross. Just as the party reaches the prison-hall, Kas frees Miska. Thinking Kas is an ally of Vecna (he's missed a lot), Miska fights the party and is shocked when Kas turns on him, slaying him and releasing his energies. This is certainly true to form for Kas the Betrayer.
• Vecna intervenes. Same as the double-cross, but right when the battle is at its most chaotic, Vecna appears and absconds with the Wolf-Spider. He takes Miska back to his lair, where he murders and sacrifices the weakened demon lord and the Ritual of Remaking begins in earnest. This works especially well if Vecna has retrieved the Hand of Vecna, giving him a couple of free castings of teleport.

The last option might be the best one if you want to increase the party's interactions with Vecna. It can serve as a preliminary bout to foreshadow his power, and the party is unlikely to slay him with so many other dangerous foes about.
Kas is happy to allow Vecna to begin the ritual. However, if the party is on the verge of slaying or banishing Kas, he will propose they pool their resources to defeat Vecna. Whether the characters trust him or not is up to them.
Kas's revenge
Kas wants to see the Rod of Seven Parts assembled, but not for the same reasons the Wizards Three and the party do. The wizards want to protect the rod so Vecna can't free Miska (or at least two of them do) and use its powerful law magic to disrupt his ritual.
Kas wants the rod assembled so he can free Miska and complete the ritual in Vecna's place. He is happy to draft along behind the party while they are searching for the pieces, letting them do all the hard work for him. He could show up during the rod quest as a dangerous ally, clashing with the servants of Vecna or even helping the party retrieve a piece of the rod if they are stuck. He will offer to ally with them, but while he won't reveal his actual plans for the rod, it should be clear from the start that any alliance will carry a terrible cost.
The treacherous vampire also wants to find the Sword of Kas so he can slay Vecna. He is much more open about this goal and will present the sword as the best means of stopping his ancient foe. This belief is sincere, but it also makes a good alibi and red herring for his involvement in the campaign, distracting from his interest in the rod. Kas will gladly accept the party's help in retrieving the sword but he will not willingly allow anyone else to claim it.
Eye, hand, sword
The absence of the Eye of Vecna, the Hand of Vecna, and the Sword of Kas from this campaign is one of its biggest disappointments. I can sort of understand why they're missing: the campaign is built around reassembling the Rod of Seven Parts, and the designers probably felt they didn't have the space to add three more artifact hunts. But these artifacts are part of Vecna's history, and adding them will make the campaign feel more like a story about Vecna as opposed to a linear fetch quest with Vecna at its end.
If you want to extend the campaign, then adding new locations for the artifacts isn't a problem. If you're looking to add the artifacts without prolonging the campaign, you could exchange them for some of the rod quests. Perhaps the servants of Vecna have already claimed one or more pieces of the rod, allowing you to skip any chapters you don't want to run or place the artifacts in those locations instead. However, this means the rod won't be fully reassembled until Kas brings the party's pieces to Pandesmos. It's probably more fun for players if they assemble the rod themselves.
Alternatively, perhaps Vecna's artifacts have been gradually drawn to the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts like iron filings to a magnet. You wouldn't have to add any more locations, and the artifacts could serve as secondary goals or impossible choices while the characters are on their quest. Vecna's servants might grab his hand or eye while the party takes a piece of the rod, and Kas will certainly prioritize retrieving his sword since he's counting on the party to rebuild the rod for him.
If you go this route, there are several locations in the campaign that might house one or more of the artifacts.

• Hand of Vecna. This is the easy one. Canonically, it's in the possession of Arkhan the Cruel, a champion of Tiamat who resides in Avernus, and the party will be going to an infernal casino that's connected to Tiamat's lair. Arkhan can easily be encountered in Dragon's Pride.
• Eye of Vecna. Vecna is a native of Oerth, and Acererak might have placed the eye in the Tomb of Wayward Souls as a lure to draw adventurers to their doom. The Amber Temple in the Domains of Dread was once a temple to Vecna (represented as the god of secrets) and might hold his relics; the party could go there after the Death House or in place of it.
• Sword of Kas. The sword's appetite for blood means it is drawn to battlegrounds. It might show up in the wastelands of Eberron or the war-torn lands of Krynn. This could also be a lure in the Tomb of Wayward Souls if the eye is found elsewhere. It's probably better if Kas gets the sword later, giving him more chances to pretend to ally with the party.

Finally, the artifacts could come to the party rather than the other way around. Any or all of them could already have owners who move from world to world in parallel with the characters. The Eye and Hand of Vecna offer some especially interesting possibilities in this regard. The hand can compel its host to commit evil acts and the eye can turn its host into a puppet controlled by Vecna. A hollowed-out servant who wields the Eye of Vecna could be a great way for Vecna to interact with the player characters without putting himself at risk.
Adding the artifacts allows for a more dynamic campaign that responds to the characters' successes and failures. Vecna might be searching for his hand and eye (with the hand proving particularly useful if he has to sacrifice Miska) while Kas tries to retrieve his sword, but the characters should have opportunities to claim some of these artifacts for themselves. Doing so will expose them to their corrupting magic, opening up new storytelling possibilities.
One artifact too many?
Vecna also has a history with the Book of Vile Darkness, serving as its first author. Personally, I wouldn't bother with the book; it isn't that interesting mechanically, and one of the few interactions it does have (the book disappears if its wielder willingly performs a good act) is so incompatible with the campaign's goals of thwarting Vecna that most parties wouldn't be able to hold onto it.
I suppose it might work if Vecna has the book and is using it to conduct the Ritual of Remaking, in which case it serves as an omen of doom and nothing more. This is more of an Easter egg than a Maguffin, and honestly, that's okay. The plot feels kind of overstuffed with Maguffins as it is, and the campaign needs to do more with what it already has.
Many other changes have been recommended for this campaign: expanding or swapping out the quest locations (seriously, what is up with Krynn?), reworking the secrets mechanism, and more. With the exception of a few of the better locations in the quest chapters, just about every part of the campaign has been marked for renovation by somebody.
My own personal preference is to make the minimal changes necessary to run the adventure you want to run. It's easier to remove or rearrange individual elements than it is to rewrite the whole adventure from the ground up. I've kept these revisions as close to the campaign book as possible to make it easier for other DMs to personalize them by adding their own changes. My hope is that these modifications will allow DMs to restore some important pieces of D&D lore and rework the campaign to deliver what it promises. Let me know what you think!

Over my shoulder (that's where my bookshelf is).
I am taking a break from my predictions to visit the earlier books in the series.
Fair warning, I read this book in like 3-4 days and that might have affected my initial experience with the book somewhat.
Each book I review will start at a neutral 0 and I will be rewarding points and removing points as we extol its virtues and sins.

• It never feels like Erikson is developing the world as he is writing it. Malazan feels lived in and well-trodden.
  • This feels nice. +1
• This world feels lived in and well-trodden and Erikson makes zero effort at easing you into it. It's confusing, the time-scale is fucking wonky, souls are being swapped and split and pushed about.
  • This might sound like a negative, but according to a bit of brief introspection reveals that I, apparently, like being confused and/or gaslit. That's on me I guess. +1
• A teen sees boobs for the first time and immediately falls in love.
  • Lore accurate teenage experience. +1
• Dragons
  • +1
• Kallor is in this book.
  • -1
• This books is 23,3 cm tall, 15,5 cm wide, and 3,3 cm thick.
  • Bigger book, better story. +1
• I hate reading Kruppe. Every time he speaks shit becomes ten times more complicated, yet the density is not a match for his loquacious nature.
  • He's fine in small doses, but I remember stumbling at his sections multiple times. -1
• Anomander Rake is tailor-made to be edgy and cool.
  • The precision with which is character was created has only been topped by Gojo Satoru of JJK. +1
• Ganoes Paran
  • Always a +1.

Overall this book earns a score of 5, out of... 0, I guess.
This book is fucking hard to read. He'll throw half a dozen names at you, three new terms, and seventeen strange apostrophes, immediately kill half the people before putting the rest into puppets and start yammering about gods. And then he'll move somewhere new and do it again. It's testing your ability to ignore the fantasy nonsense and pull out the relevant information without allowing yourself to get bogged down in minutia.
I suspect this book holds up much better on a reread than it does on first perusal, much like Eye of the World. Steven's prose feels dense and layered, too much so for my autistic ass, but it rarely (Kruppe) gets in the way of my enjoyment of the series. It does feel like he's being purposefully obtuse regarding magic at time.
I like this book for the fantastical elements. The magic and world felt grand in a way I hadn't experienced since Stormlight or WoT, even if each of these do so in their own unique way. I also like Paran and Crokus, the rest of the characters they are certainly there.

My wife Serenity passed away on May 18th from Cardiac arrest. She's played dozens of characters and ran several campaigns or her own. Her last character was her Pathfinder 1e Oracle of Time Astrid. An 11 year old Oracle, member of a cult to the gods of secrets, forbidden knowledge and the forgotten. She also had the leadership feat and had a small army of cohorts and followers. She played all of them and these follower often ended up being more her real characters since they were adults.
Astrid was evil and servered her dark gods loyaly, but her father another PC was trying to steer her back onto the path of righteousness and towards the light.
She sacrificed her eyes to her God as recompense for the mistakes of her followers during an adventure. She made deals with the royal advisor who ran the cities underworld, keeping all the thieves, assassins, and other criminal syndicates in check and serving his Interests.
She talked a purple dragon into letter her pet him in exchange for the advisors secrets.
She was excited and ambitious, hoping to prove herself and wanted to be taken seriously like an adult but was very much a kid.
Her followers had two that mattered. A kitsune that fed on chaos and was trying to guide Astrid further down the path of the puppet master and to push things towards further war and chaos. While Rae wanted to guide her down a path of a responsible secret power, leaving hints and information in just the right places to guide and mold society to be more enlightened and peaceful.
The day she passed we were talking about what she wanted to happen next session. She wanted Rae to have some time alone with Astrids Father Reiner so they could talk. She wanted Rae to become a more trusted and trustworthy member of the party.
Astrid had also lost her memories as part of a test from her gods and we were discussing her getting her memories back since the test was over.
I never got to reveal that the test wasn't done, and she hasn't passed, I didn't get to reveal her characters secret lineage from an isle of isolationist mystic theurges. I didn't get to suggest to her the truth about the lich phylactery they were hunting or the true identity of what monster the vizier actually is.
We had so much we were supposed to do. She was more passionate about our games than any of us. She always acted as her character. Never metagamed, knew the rules better than I did, and could minmax and munchkin with the best when we played that kind of game
She'd been an excellent DM and told stories of upstart gods, rogue angels, and untrustworthy fae. She told stories about super powered cults worshipping the end of the world, and she loved to tell the stories of young girls broken or abandoned by society, finding their strength and defining themselves.
She loved fae and sirens and vampires. More than anything she was smart, witty, and the best person I'll ever know.
Farewell Aurelia, Bryghitta, Delilah, Glitch, Astrid.
Goodbye Serenity.

My HAVES:
- MISC.
Black Nintendo 3DS XL (Older Model) with Box, AR cards and Manual but no Charger
Junkrat, Mei, and Hanzo Nendoroids with all Parts and Boxes
Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of Wisps Collector's Edition Box, Stained Glass, Pin. Art Booklets and Postcards (Games Not Included)
Black Nintendo Switch Pro Controller (No Cables)
Brain Age (DS/CiB)
Legend of Zelda: Game and Watch (Sealed)
Blue Inkling Boy Amiibo (loose)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3/CiB)
-Switch
Ring Fit Adventure with Ring (Switch/CiB)
Splatoon 2 (Switch/CiB)
Dragon Marked for Death (Switch/CiB)
Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch/CiB)
Puyo Puyo Tetris (Switch/CiB)
Starlink Battle for Atlas: Arwing Bundle (Switch/CiB)
Sakuna of Rice and Ruins (Switch/CiB)
Rival of Aether (LRG/Switch/CiB)
Octopath Traveler (Switch/CiB)
A Hat in Time (Switch/CiB)
Spyro: Reignited Trilogy (Switch/CiB)
Crash N’Sane Trilogy (Switch/CiB)
Pokken Tournament DX (Switch/CiB)
- Playstation 4:
Borderlands: Hansome Jack Collection (PS4/CiB)
Granblue Fantasy VS. (PS4/CiB)
Control (PS4/CiB)
Death Stranding with steel book (PS4/CiB)
Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev 2
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid Super Edition (PS4/CiB)
Batman: Enemy Within (PS4/CiB)
Crystar (PS4/CiB)
​
LOOKING FOR:
Puppeteer (PS3/CiB)
Bayonetta 3 (Switch/CiB)
No More Heroes 3 (Switch/CiB)
Omori (Switch/CiB)
Spyro: Reignited Trilogy (PS4/Reprint/CiB)
Crash: N’Sane Trilogy (PS4/CiB)
Stella Glow (3DS/CiB)

Hey - this is the 3rd try to find info about this over a couple years. It's been over a year since I tried here previously so time to repost.
As a kid for our library unit we were shown a movie with a narrative and everything where the main characters were all hands (similar to oobie) but looked like different animals. I recall this was probably in 2004 but to be safe I will say it also could have been maybe 2006 or 2007 at the absolute latest. The main character was a dragon (also just someones hands) who guided you around this world of puppet-hands. (New to reddit, not sure how to add an image just yet, but if you google image "how to fold your hands into a dragon" the very first image pops up IS the main character. It's not a still from the tape or anything, but that's identical to what he was.)
As for the title, I want to say he said it was "the land of Puz" or "the land of Paz" or something sounding like that. That also might have been the name of the dragon main character.
As it went on, he would encounter new animals (just someones hands) and they would talk, then it would cut to step by step how to fold your hands into the animal shapes. Some I remember were the dragon, the dog, giraffe, spider, horse, and snake. There were certainly more, but I don't want to misremember and throw us off the information we DO have. All the steps were very whimsical, I remember the specific phrasing of "spread your hands from side to side let your fourth fingers cross and the rest spread wide". All of them kind of rhyming like that.
I can't say if i remember this being distinctively low budget or not. Nothing I recall suggests this was a local production or something the librarian just whipped together, because there were musical numbers for sure. The only one I remember was with a bee or firefly character where the lyrics were just the characters saying "buzz, buzz, buzz, zzzzzz". Not very helpful, I know, and those are the only words to it I can remember.
I have tried so far searching different VHS directories, puppet web pages, and reached out to my old elementary school librarian too. She said it was part of a program that came from "out of state" but couldn't really provide me with much other information and I didn't want to press her.

Kickstarter & Gamefound Campaigns Launching this Week by ShelfClutter!
Support My Work by Watching This Week's Episode
or consider a One-Time Donation or Joining Our Community🙂️🙏
I do all this for fun and do not get any payment or games from publishers.
Related Videos..

📺Launching this Week

⏲️Launching this Week in 60 seconds

📺️ See what's expected for the Month with BoardGameCo
🪖Check out Upcoming Wargames from ZillaBlitz
Want coverage for your game?? Submit Your Game Here

Expected	Name	Publisher	Video Summary	Campaign Page
May 28	#bg 25th Century Games 2024 Big Sur Grand Central Skyport Sand Art Wine Cellar	25th Century Games	Wine Cellar Sand Art Grand Central Station Big Sur	KS PAGE
May 28	#bg Tales of Realms and Ruins	Fantazem Games Ltd	Preview	GF PAGE
May 28	#bg AVghost	Juegorama	Preview	GF PAGE
May 28	#cg Galactic Shogun	Self-Published	Preview	KS PAGE
May 28	#cg Shrinkopolis	Most Points Win (my publishing company)	Preview	GF PAGE
May 28	#bg Puppets in High Places	Subsurface Games	Preview	KS PAGE
May 28	#cg Mysticana: A Foundation Deck	Button Shy Games	Preview	KS PAGE
May 28	#e Agemonia New Heroes	Lautapelit.fi	Preview	KS PAGE
May 28	#bg 18 Hex Games Collection VOL.2	LittleHouse BoardGames	Preview	KS PAGE
May 28	#cg Neverrift TCG	Gate to the Games GmbH	Preview	KS PAGE
May 28	#bg Terraria: The Board Game	Paper Fort Games	Preview	KS PAGE
May 28	#cg All Time Wrestling: Abu Dhabi Rumble	Cation Arts	Preview	KS PAGE
May 29	#bg Dystopian Knights	House of Madness Games		KS PAGE
May 29	#bg Dungeon Pen	Yeast Games		KS PAGE
May 29	#bg Cysmic	Star Reach Games (Self-published)		GF PAGE
May 30	#e Warline: Dragons War	El Jay Play	Preview	GF PAGE
May 31	#bg Prison: Can you escape?	IOCUS Games		GF PAGE

View Further Ahead on Discord

You can opt into Notifications of these posts on discord as well (look under the #roles channel)

Tags:

• * - Added Late
• #bg - Board Game
• #cg - Card Game
• #e - Expansion
• #wg - War Game (or similar)
• #rpg - RPG
• #rw - Roll & Write (or similar)
• #pg - Party Game
• #dg - Dexterity Game
• #d - Dice
• #c - Component
• #o - Other

What is this?

• A curated shortlist of Campaigns launching in the next 7 days.
• Dates are provided to the best of my knowledge. They change aggressively! 😅
• Out of respect to the players, I will only mention games that appear to be properly playtested, and in general, have some effort put into their presentation and community presence.
• Missing games are normally not intentionally left off the list. It is very difficult to keep track of all upcoming games as information is scattered and release dates are often changing. Feel free to mention them in the comments 🙂
• I also provide a weekly video version of this post covering all the games in more detail + weekly pledge give-aways for viewers 💁‍♂️ Definitely check it out!
• If you are a publisher with an upcoming game, feel free to Submit Your Game Here

What you can do here?

1. Enjoy the info! Feel free to check out any that interest you!
2. Let us know which you are excited for!
3. Let me know if I am missing anything!
4. Feedback welcome

🔹️Last Week's Post🔹️ 🔹️Submit Your Game🔹️

I went to the renaissance faire last week and this guy had a small dragon on his shoulder and he looked like he had finger gloves attached to strings that connected to the puppet and made the dragon move manually rather than electronically. Is there somewhere I can find this or a tutorial on how to make this? Most of the searches were either electronic or showed me hand puppets.

I brought so many silver, gold and rainbows but all I got was Charlotte’s hood, vestments and Judgements over and over. I finished the main game, got all the way to witchy rift and finally tried my luck. I got it!
Why the hell does it look like dog hand puppets? Angela’s dragon wand is badass, Charlotte’s Judgement is… ok. Why does Kevin look like he’s about to pretend to be Karl while talking to himself in a funny voice? Worse skin in the game hands down (no pun intended). Also bummed there are zero new spells in Class 4.
Whatever, I got a witch to kill folks!

A Tale of Numkey
Hi, I'm Numkey a 44/8 Destiny, a Capricorn-Rat with a Lifepath 7, and this is my story...
I came from a workplace where office politics were hardly observed by a normal eye but an open mind, in a city founded on August 26, 1688, by the Earth Dragon. I am an IT (11/2) of that workplace. I decided to step down because of a force that compelled me: my personal year 7 epicycle, which is a time of spiritual awakenings, knowledge gathering, solitude, and inward focus. I didn't know about this knowledge before this story was written.
I was hired on September 27, 2012 (5), to bring change using the Dragon's water to wash away a Snake's den shielded with fire, which was founded on June 8, 1977. I utilized technology to enhance that place, and my salary was raised five times compared to my colleagues who had been there for 15 to 20 years. However, that's because I have a guardian who happens to be a Capricorn-Dragon Master with a Lifepath 6 equipped with a wooden hammer that wields its power and is empowered in a Dragon's territory, even though she was in a Snake's Den covered by a Fire Shield. The fire only adds spirit to its Wooden Hammer, transforming it into a Fire Hammer.
In 2022, Im on my 15th year in IT. In order to climb up another career ladder, I plan to transfer to a new department becoming an IT Auditor (7), setting the date for August 8, 2022. I need one month to transfer my work to my subordinate, who also has a Lifepath 7 and a Loyal Wood Dog.
One day during the transition, [censored story], I experienced extreme body heat, with a radius extending almost 2 meters; even my wife felt it. I was hospitalized on September 1, 2022, and the effects of the Tiger's Well almost killed me; my Fire Tiger aided in reviving me. I initially thought it was COVID, as the symptoms were similar: high fever of 40+ degrees, cough with phlegm, and fatigue. The chest pain felt like it was piercing my heart, vibrating, and making breathing difficult. As the pain persisted, I felt that it was my time to die. I told my wife, "This is my time to go." My wife is a Fire Tiger, the source of my strength; she empowers my wood with fire. She refused to accept that it was my time to go and contacted our neighbors for help in bringing me to the hospital. I underwent a swab test procedure and an x-ray, but all results came back negative for COVID-19. The doctor diagnosed me with osteochondritis, which causes sharp chest pain, especially when moving or breathing. When I partially recovered, I had to go to work to support my family. Despite having a fever at night, I go to work during the day under normal conditions, traveling 25 kilometers from home to work.
For me, this experience forced me to find the true meaning of life. I found it through Numerology and Astrology, which revealed the hidden knowledge behind why it happened to me. All the dates of execution seemed to have a counterpart meaning in numerology and astrology. The day I submitted my department transfer, it seemed like I was executed by its leader, a Leo's fiery Fang (1), and was metaphorically drowned in a Tiger's Well (7), which was where I was headed. Little did I know, I was also heading into a Snake's fire cage, with my new boss being a puppet with a (9) vibration higher than mine (7), and then I lost my identity as an authority. I felt like I was grilled in a cage with fire three times: 1. A Snake's den fire, 2. Leo's fiery Fang, and 3. The Snake's puppet fire cage.
While I left my Loyal Dog, with a Lifepath 7 equipped with a Wood weapon, with its new owner, who is a Rabbit with a Lifepath 1 and also has a Wood weapon, these two make the best team. However, they are enemies of the Dragon Master and bring conflict to a Snake's Den, a fiery place where, if they have a wood weapon equipped, it will become a fire weapon. This makes them the new guardians of the Organization in terms of technology.
On January 18, 2023, a day with a vibrational field of (8) - meaning a strong desire in my favor for whatever I wished to do - I moved my boat ahead without hesitation. No one impeded my decision to resign, and I was flushed away to the ocean. It was the time of the Rabbit with a Lifepath 1 to gain my Throne. He was my counterpart in IT, with the same level as me, who became the IT Head. He's a Lifepath 1, a Leader, while I am a (7), the Thinker, and my Loyal Dog (7) is the doer. It was destined that he would become the leader, especially in his own year.
After I resigned and moved my boat into the ocean, I felt utterly crushed. I was hopeless, having lost everything. But before I resigned, we had moved from a (9) house to a new home (1). It was total chaos; all the members of my family had shifted to a vibrational field where we desired to be the bosses of our own lives. One by one, I lost all my material wealth. We sold everything, piece by piece, in order to survive. It turned out to be the worst year of my life. Back then, I didn't know that the city I was in was founded in the year of the Horse - August 28, 1742, which was my enemy year. There were only two things left with me: my family and my 2018 Model Honda Beat Motorcycle, which is also a Dog, surviving in a Horse city during a Rabbit year. This may be the reason why it was not sold.
After selling everything, we traveled back to a province and municipality where I never thought I would align with: an Earth Rat territory founded on June 10, 1868 (3), which coincidentally aligns with my Soul Number (3). Initially, we lived in a sanctuary, a retreat house (7), but later we transferred and lived in a house (8) for free. I found a job in another municipality, which happened to be founded on June 16, 1800, a Metal Rat Year. This made me feel stronger. My job aligned in a (7) vibration, as I became an IT (11/2) Programmer (7). I discovered that my new job also aligned with my Lifepath (7). Now, I know this must be my destiny: to delve into Numerology and Astrology, to become an AstroNumerologist.
And now, in this Wood Dragon Year 2024, guided by mystical knowledge, Numkey was Born...

Firstly, this game is phenomenal. The amount of effort and love put into it is found in every nook and unexplored cranny. I LOVED those twists, there's so many, I truly didn't think that:

• The dream guardian actually was an alien man (illithid?)
  • Him being actually the guy that founded the city
  • And then he puppeted that woman to control the city while being an alien, and that that's what he wanted to do to me!?
  • That's what actually led me to go and get the orpheus hammer so I could free the prince, but then the Emperor just goes and joins the nether brain. like what?
• The dragon beneath the castle (was it beneath the castle? I don't remember) was already dead!
  • I really thought "haha, yay, I just need to go recruit my allies, get this dragon, and then straight after I get him on my side, I'll go throw fireball and scorching ray at a floating brain. it'll be fine!"
• That the main antagonist was a bloody brain.
  • I kind of love how in the beginning you're given the chance to mutilate a little baby brain though, and then they bookend the game by making you fight a giant brain. Symbolism.
  • And that, apparently, the whole adventure was completely orchestrated so that it could get the stones.

I want to also extend a heartfelt thank you to this community. I think I only asked for help once? but still, many of these posts have been exceptionally helpful, more than youse can know.
It took me some time, but I finally got there, 'in a path that was mine own' as Withers would say. I'm sad I can't see the final cutscene, if there is one, I think there's a bug on Mac (or maybe it isn't Mac specific, I have no idea), he just says "prick up your ears and listen" then the screen goes black for a few moments and we're back in camp but I'm frozen, can't move or interact with anything. I think Withers is actually a god?
https://preview.redd.it/k8eku3gnvj2d1.jpg?width=350&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eadea245a3db378ae30833a84708a349f467be9b
PS: I discovered that I can't multi-class on the lowest difficulty, but I'm excited to do another play through as maybe a sorcerebard? Imagine if there were an option to play the entire game with only dialogue / no combat!
PPS: I'm quite pissed off with Gale. But oh well. He made his choices, even though I convinced him an unfathomable amount of times to not follow in that other guy's folly. 😞 Idiot... RIP.

PART 1
C tier
These episodes are... fine.
164: Polybius (E150, 2017)
Believe it or not this was the hardest episode for me to rank, and it's because of the plagiarism allegations. I think what sucks the hardest is that it's only the beginning segment of the video that nobody remembers that used someone's research without credit, and keep in mind all the writer wanted was an apology and some credit, and the fact that they completely ignored them put a sour stain on an otherwise solid Halloween episode in my eyes.
I mean yeah the actual meat of the video is still pretty cool to me, but I personally can't watch it without having a bad taste in my mouth because of the above controversy, well I'm sure others can still enjoy it regardless of all that so I can't take that away from you.
163: Dirty Harry (E157, 2018)
To be honest, this episode only escaped D tier because of this line: "because why make the controls easy to use? I mean if you're going to have diarrhea you might as well splatter the toilet seat while you're at it" I have no idea why but I think that line is brilliant in a way, like that's a line I would use on a regular basis if I had the balls to talk about diarrhea in public. I don't remember a single other thing in this episode and you probably don't either.
162: The Simpsons (E30, 2007)
It's not that this episode is bad or anything but I don't know it just doesn't hit as hard as most other classic era episodes. I think what disappointed me was the lack of Simpsons references, James would usually go above and beyond back in the day with referencing the movie or show that the game he's reviewing is based on, fester's quest and star trek are good examples, but here; he says do'h, he eats his shorts at the end... that was kinda neat.
Of course now we know that the lack of references was because James never actually watched the show past the first season which still perplexes me but whatever, the actual reviews are decent at least but I wouldn't call this one of the best.
161: Double Dragon 3 (E11, 2006)
Bimmy. That's it. That's all there is to this one.
160: Planet of the Apes (E146, 2017)
"The nerd says "you take the red pill" in this episode. Other than that it's pretty meh, some alright jokes but most of the review is honestly pretty dull and the ending while I get it's supposed to be a reference to the movie, doesn't make much sense how does the nerd going to a planet and playing a bad game somehow causes the earth to be overrun by shitty games? Why do I even care?"
I think what most people remember from this episode is that the nerd complains about the textures shifting even though a lot of PS1 games do that, I guess that shows how little PS1 James has actually played.
159: Hydlide (E86, 2010)
Since this episode has nothing really to talk about I instead want to go on a little tangent, there's a part where the nerd randomly talks about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and it always stood out to me as weird, then I remembered mike said on stream that he wrote this episode, so I think mike wrote that as a parody of 80-90s drug psas thinking james would get it and follow the reference in the video but instead he just read it blankly like he was just talking about the game.
158: Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu (E9, 2006)
Shit pickle may be iconic but he's kinda annoying, other than that it's a short early season 1 episode with not much to talk about.
157: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (E2, 2004)
A much better pilot than Simon's Quest. But like that one it's hard to actually say much about it, it's just funnier and gets the point across in much less time, though the series still hasn't found it's footing yet in my opinion.
156: Wrestling Games (E149, 2017)
The second screenwave era episode, and an improvement from treasure master but still a little forgettable. The reviews are ok, there are jokes I think, it is certainly an avgn episode I can at least say that.
155: Life of Black Tiger with Gilbert Gottfried (E170, 2019)
More controversial opinions yaaay. This is basically a better version of toxic crusaders, Gilbert is what salvages this episode for me, he makes a pretty unfunny script sound funny by just his voice and it doesn't have the barf in it thank god. The episode is still dragged down though by a poor choice of game and it runs a little too long I think.
154: Dragon's Lair (E37, 2007)
"This episode managed to be the most average episode ever, I have absolutely nothing to say about it. The ending joke was kind of amusing I guess… This episode isn't bad or anything but there's nothing special about it at all."
It was pretty dumb of me to imply that an episode having nothing special in it is a bad thing, there's nothing wrong with a basic episode, and this one is decent, I think by "special" I meant having strong writing/humour like the other episodes of it's era. Alright episode, but not one I'd revisit much.
153: Nintendo World Championships (E104, 2011)
Pat is pretty unlikeable here but I think that was the idea. I for some reason was very positive on this episode the first time but nowadays, despite how unique it is, it's a surprisingly forgettable episode. I really don't have a lot to say about it, it's just kinda there.
152: Fear and Loathing in Vegas Stakes (E190, 2021)
I think this is the most divisive episode of the entire series, people either love it and call it one of the best, or hate it and consider it among the worst, and here I am in the middle. I think the review portions are solid and there is some fun writing especially towards the end when everything goes insane. But yeah there's a lot of flaws, overuse of greenscreen, shots that look like they were ripped straight from the fear and loathing movie (I can't confirm they are though), it's not very funny overall, but it's at least interesting to watch and discuss with is more than I can say for most of these C tier episodes.
151: Freddy and Jason (E199, 2021)
I would've happily put this episode in B tier as the review part is actually solid for screenwave era standards but it's ruined by the skits which to quote past me:
"back in 2006 the original freddy and jason skits in those old episodes were amazing compared to what most people were doing on youtube back then. So the fact that 15 years later and the "grand comeback" of these 2 is just a 1 minute scene where figures of freddy and jason walk towards the nerd into a corner then immediately die by a printer is simply inexcusable, why bother bringing them back if you're just going to half ass it this bad?"
I forgot to mention that thing with the "lawl dowlls" what the hell was that about?
150-149: Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (E145&152, 2017)
Sonic 06 is probably the most overdone thing to review on the internet, everyone back in the 2010s had their rant videos about how it killed the series, how the glitches and the plot were the worst thing ever, but in recent years I've seen more defences for it, I personally think the game is not very good but it's far from being one of the worst of all time like how many reviewers and journalists acted like it was. Now how does the nerd get fresh material out of a game that was done to death even by 2017? he didn't.
The funny thing is that I actually much prefer the second part to the first one even though that was done by screenwave and not James (and possibly mike too). Part 1 is mostly just greenscreen jokes that get old fast but in part 2 he actually reviews the game pretty decently I think. Though still just an average drop in the ocean of sonic 06 videos.
148: Tomb Raider Games (E159, 2018)
"Another ok one. The game reviews are a lot more interesting, the set while filled with green screens is a nice way to tie each review together. The main problem is screenwave's trademark of just not being very funny,"
This was the year where they locked episodes behind Amazon prime for a set amount of time and people were not happy, and now nobody remembers that.
147: Rocky (E16, 2006)
Please do yourself a favor and only watch the original version of this episode, the 2nd version with the shitty midi music makes me want to die, but the ending scene is cool at least, either way it all amounts to an alright early episode.
146: AVGN Games (E115, 2013)
"This episode is half a thanks to the fans for their projects and half an advertisement for avgn adventures. it's ok, it's more of a fan tribute than a review and there's not much funny jokes, the best part is the cameo from Board James. Not bad, but one of the weaker episodes of this season."
The worst thing about this episode is the amount of struggling James and Mike went through capturing footage of pc games, they tried using fraps once, gave up, didn't try any other screen recording programs and instead just pointed the camera to the monitor, they've been making gaming content since 2006 and they couldn't do what everyone else could do for years by 2013, brilliant.
145: Alien 3 (E114, 2013)
The lighting is cool, that's all I have to say.
144: Purr Pals (E203, 2022)
The fact that I enjoy this episode is evidence that I should be banned from having opinions. This is not a good episode, but for some reason I find it funny, I don't know if it's intentional or not but I can't hate this one like others do, might be because I'm a cat person so that cat jokes just resonate with me I don't know, I wouldn't call it a guilty pleasure, I'd call it me being stupid.
143: Paperboy (E140, 2016)
"Meh episode. The window breaking stuff is the only really funny thing in this one but the game just isn't very interesting."
Past me couldn't think of anything to say either. I know a lot of people like this one but it's never really been one of my favourites though the window thing makes it worth it.
142: Lightspan Adventures (E155, 2017)
It's decent, but a really weird choice for the Christmas episode that year, why do educational games when people are usually off school at Christmas? eh doesn't matter. The Santa puppet is amusing at least.
141: The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask (E175, 2019)
I know a lot of people really hate this one, and I can't really add much to the discussion because I never played the game but I do at least like the end of the world setup and the twilight zone parody, the review I find a little boring while others find it frustrating so this episode ends up being a mixed bag in my opinion.
oh just one more thing, why do Majora's Mask fans hate the 3DS version so much? I'm actually curious on that one.
140: The Incredible Crash Dummies (E180, 2020)
It's solid by screenwave era standards, though the discussion about the toys is more entertaining than the game. However you have to sit through kieran's horrible cover of mmm mmm mmm mmm, I found out recently that I'm the only person who actually likes that song so it sucks extra hard for me, and the crash cover at the end, no offense to the singer but it sounds like it's being sung by a 5 year old, fine episode but please don't do song parodies ever again, just don't.
139: Drake of the 99 Dragons (E158, 2018)
Decent modern-ish episode, alright review, alright jokes. I think a lot of people dislike this one but I don't see much wrong with it myself.
138: Mortal Kombat 1 Ports (E177, 2020)
I like the idea of reviewing multiple ports of the same game, but the execution is just... ok. Not much to it other than that "how do these ports stack up" joke which is dumb but kinda endearing.
137: Raid 2020 (E176, 2020)
I still remember how excited I was when the nerd actually lived up to a joke from back in 2008. But when you take that away you're left with an ok episode but it doesn't have much staying power after the joke wears off, the main highlight here is the year based games rant at end.
136: Milon's Secret Castle (E64, 2009)
A passable classic era episode, but not one of the ones I revisit though I know a lot of other people do so good for them.
135: Independence Day (E29, 2007)
Honestly the same applies to this episode but I find this one a little funnier than Milon.
134: Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (E63, 2009)
Same thing as the last yet again, but I think this one is the funniest of the 3. Weird that the old episodes that everyone likes and remembers end up being some of the hardest to talk about. It's not I don't like these 3, they're just weaker in comparison to the other golden age episodes and I don't have much of a desire to revisit them as much.
133: Bible Games 3 (E106, 2011)
The weakest of the bible Games trilogy by far but it's alright as a standalone episode. Just please don't make a bible games 4 for nostalgia purposes, you can tell James was stretching for material here so I'd hate to see them push for another, I think I'm jinxing it now.
B tier
This is where we get to the episodes that I can say I enjoy fully but I wouldn't consider any of these my favourites.There happens to be 12 screenwave episodes in here and the next tier, that may sound like a lot then you remember that there is currently 68 episodes starting with treasure master which means only 17% of their episodes made it into B tier or above, and spoilers none made it to S tier.
132: RoboCop NES Games (E151, 2017)
"So right when screenwave starts getting involved in the show the nerd is killed off and replaced with a robotic copy, hmm. Well anyway this is an alright episode, I'm starting to notice my main problem with these screenwave episodes: they're just not very funny but so far most of them have been watchable at the very least. The nes viser for the robo nerd is easily the coolest thing about this one."
This episode does at least hold up more than I remember, I don't know I just enjoyed it more this time, enough to put it at the bottom of B tier.
131: Amiga CD32 (E162, 2018)
A good enough console review, though far from the strongest, Kang Fu and the paint can are the highlights this time around.
130-128: Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? & The Karate Kid (E6, 4 & 3, 2006)
These are all solid early episodes, but I think they lack substance and could've been a little longer, there's a reason why the nerd would later revisit roger rabbit and back to the future. "I wanna nail roger rabbit to the fucking cross" is classic though.
127: Wally Bear and the No! Gang (E8, 2006)
That hotline scene at the end really makes the episode complete so it's weird to think of a time when that wasn't there, but we do have "press here you dumb fuck" which is great and helps make this one more memorable.
126-125: The Crow: City of Angels & Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (E137-138, 2015)
Both of these are basic holiday specials because James was too busy with other projects, but that's alright because they're both still good, but there's better holiday episodes for sure.
124: Super Pitfall (E76, 2009)
A very standered episode from the golden age, but still a good one. For some reason I was pretty harsh on it originally I must've been having a bad day or something because I don't know why.
123: Spielberg Games (E101, 2011)
I have a weird story about this episode, when I was kid I left one of the season compilations on one night and for some reason I set the video to loop, then I fell asleep and woke up to the jumpscare from the 3DO Jurassic park game. Other than that it's another solid episode with not much to say.
122: Lester the Unlikely (E96, 2010)
Basically just copy-paste what I said about super pitfall. Good episode, don't know why I was harsh on it, shit bag and the cdi flower game are great moments.
121: Video Game Magazines (E166, 2019)
It's alright, it's a good successor to the Nintendo power episode but not as great. Would you be surprised to hear that 5 2019 episodes made it into B and A tier? FIVE OV UM! I remember people hating season 13 and while it has its stinkers that I already talked about, there's a few episodes in here that hold up more than I remember. Probably the best screenwave season but that's really not saying much when I only like half of it.
120: Rambo (E41, 2008)
Just... a good episode, good review, good jokes, the basic formula of avgn in its prime.
119: Seaman (E136, 2015)
Unpopular opinion time, I don't think this is one of the best "modern" (9 years old now lol) episodes. I mean it's good, it has its funny moments but the ending conspiracy is dumb and was already done in Hong Kong 97 2 episodes earlier and the "it says fuuuuuck" thing goes on way too long.
118: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (E35, 2007)
"So I've never seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre so the reference is kinda lost on me but I actually still enjoy that one. The hillbilly character is funny and Mike as the obsessive fan is pretty great too, I didn't even know it was him until I saw the credits. This is how you make a good parody if the episode can stand on its own without having to know the source material."
The hillbilly seller is super underrated, that's all I can add to that.
117: The Last Ninja (E201, 2022)
I once ranked this as my 38th favourite episode, why? I think I said it better in my season 16 review:
"Like the review holds up well as one of the best in recent memory but the ernie bit at the end is just dumb and the episode isn't terribly funny either. I think I praised this one so much at the time becuase season 15 burned me so hard that my expectations were as low as possible but now watching it with the expectation of it being great I don't think it delivers fully. Still a good episode but not as good as I originally said it was."
The saddest thing about this episode is that James fails to make his "lost 2006 episode" convincing for no other reason than his hairline.
116-115: Dracula & Frankenstein (E57-58, 2008)
Solid Halloween episodes, many will point out how impressive the set is in the Frankenstein episode and yeah it is by did you know frankenstein is the name of my cat and not the scientist or the monster?
114: The Making of an Angry Video Game Nerd Episode (E102, 2011)
Really your opinion on this one will depend on how much the idea of it interests you, I find it cool but I imagine some will find it boring.
113: Ghosts n' Goblins (E108, 2012)
Good Halloween episode, I have nothing to say. I've just been procrastinating for 2 hours so I'll speed it up.
112: Sega Activator Interactor Menacer (E143, 2016)
I think this one has been reevaluted in later years, this used to be such a hated episode but I see more people say they like now especially when you remember the episodes that came after. I like the slapstick and Keith has some funny bits ("I'll be right back!") but yeah I wish they actually showed the accessories more instead of just breaking shit.
111: Chex Quest (E171, 2019)
"Weird that a positive review ends up being much better than the other ones this season. I don't have much to talk about for this episode, it's just a nice, chill look at a surprisingly good game. And the brutal chex quest bit at the end was really funny."
I hate when past me has the same opinion as current me, it makes it hard for me to add anything.
110: Hong Kong 97 (E134, 2015)
As a kid this episode made me laugh the hardest of any I think with the whole "fucking ugly reds" thing, nowadays it's still funny but after the shock wears off it doesn't hit as hard compared to an episode like Atari sports that makes me laugh every time.
109: Bevis and Butt-Head (E141, 2016)
Yet another standerd good episode, entertaining review, fun references to the show, some pretty amusing drunk talk. Can you tell I'm running dry of material?
108: Die Hard (E28, 2007)
This episode is right in the middle of the list, yet it's another good one. At least that shows there's more episodes I like than I don't right?
107: Top Gun (E10, 2006)
"ASSSSS" yeah that's the only reason why this is in B tier. Also fuck the higher quality uploads real men watch the 360p original from 2006 with danger zone playing in the background in one part.
106: Star Trek (E49, 2008)
"Is it just me or does this episode feel really short? like it feels like it ends before it really starts. It's still a solid episode with some amusing star trek like wording, a fight against mike as some trek creature. The nerd also for once spares a game he actually doesn't think is that bad instead of the usual ending rant."
I'm only quoting my past self here so I can show you that I called a klingon "some trek creature" even though I never seen star trek I probably should've known what a klingon is, I think I had a lobotomy.
105-104: Metal Gear & Mario Is Missing! (E67&73, 2009)
I don't have much to say about either of these, both are solid season 4 episodes but I don't think they're the absolute best. I do think of "koopas capture king kong" a lot more than I should at least.
103: Darkwing Duck (E135, 2015)
I don't know why I like this episode so much, it's pretty basic all things considered but I think the review and jokes are quite good. It also introduced the shit scale which comes back in the screenwave era, woo.
102: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (E5, 2006)
One of the stronger season 1 episodes, and the one that arguably helped the nerd blow up in popularity. Like many first year episodes it could've been a little longer but it makes up for it with some iconic lines.
101: Home Alone Games with Macaulay Culkin (E164, 2018)
Does this count as a gimmick episode? Maybe, but I don't care I like this one. And yeah it's mainly for the novelty of having Macaulay Culkin there but he has some great lines as well:
"did you ever find anything in the bathtub?" "I found myself there once"
100: Earthbound (E156, 2016)
Time for another round of unpopular opinions!: I think this episode is good but I don't see it as one of the best like many others do.
I should mention that I actually beat earthbound for the first time earlier this year but my change in thoughts on this episode isn't because of differing options on the game, infact I agree with some of the nerds complaints mainly the item management, it's more just outside of a few great moments (particularly the magicant scene) theres not much I find entertaining about the episode as a whole, mainly in the review portion. It's still a good episode but I only go back to it when I'm rewatching the whole series.

1. Winter Games (E84, 2009)

Good and funny Christmas episode. It's also the last episode of the 2000s if that means anything, pointless trivia to fill the blank space where a review should be is my favourite thing.

1. Contra How I Remember It (E202, 2022)

I mean yeah it's kinda sweet and I like the discussion about the game but it's pretty damn long for what it is and the ending is probably a little too sappy for many, but I like it... don't listen to me though my opinions are always wrong.
97-96. Action 52 & Cheetahmen (E90-91, 2010)
Yeah, they're good, funny, something something. In the past I wrote about the Cheetahmen 2 scandal to pad my old review but fuck it I don't want to do padding this time.

1. Sega CD (E25, 2007)

It's a good classic era episode, but maybe it could've been longer, much prefer the 32X follow up.

1. Deadly Towers (E54, 2008)

Despite being written by anonymous internet people from the 2000s this episode is much better written than a lot of the episodes done by hired writers, sad.

1. Odyssey (E68, 2009)

Would've happily put it in A tier if the nerdy turd wasn't so annoying. But hey I like the console review episodes a lot so it's still really enjoyable for me.
PART 3 [to be added]

Prepare for a bit of a rant, apologies in advance. THESE ARE MY HOPES FOR KH4, AS FARFETCHED AND UNREALISTIC AS SOME MAY BE, I LIKE TO DREAM BIG!!! Edited to make it easier to read, Y'all have been telling me to structure my writing better so I have really been trying.
Nomura said in an interview that previously he tried to keep the world's from overlapping thematically, but also that was in the realm of light, I hope for the series moving forward into the lost masters saga they are going to use more realistic worlds, more SciFi worlds, more gothic/dark worlds. more worlds where the cartoony aspects can be toned down and the dark edgy final fantasy style direction the series seems to be going in can thrive.
Atlantis, treasure planet, Star wars, Indy/national treasure, and maybe Wall-E are most suited to this theme. Bugs life, Emporers New Groove, Wreck it Ralph, Moana, Meet the Robinsons, the wizard of Oz, Narnia, and Raya and the Dragon worlds would all be thematically fine, not consistent with my SciFi idea but still they aren't too far fetched and cheery and have an sense of 'epic adventure' which makes them able to be taken seriously... (Make Ralph's world a mini game hub at an arcade in Quadratum and it could be perfect tbh)
My top pick however is to revist wonderland but have it be the distorted Tim Burton version. I REALLY WANT THIS. MOST BADASS WORLD. I would also really like to see Maleficent enter Quadratum and turn into Maleficent-Jolie. (Jolie was my childhood celeb crush aha and Sora would be like WTF you used to be UGLY?!?!)
I am fairly happy to have Marvel worlds but I'd say to make it worth while they will probably have to pick the Avengers and if so, set it during the first film with Loki as the world boss and Secret Superboss Thanos, Superboss Thanos is a sure fire hit. I could imagine the meme value. (Infinity war is too much... It would be hard to pull off in terms of scope.) Guardians of the galaxy would be alright too, if they were to pick a second marvel film. (Fits good into my space/SciFi theme proposal) hell square even has some assets they can revamp and use for both those properties to make it into the game.
I don't want the more cartoony movies like inside out, coco, wish etc. to appear in KH3 unless it's a completely seperate Kairi campaign taking place in the realm of light (which would be awesome) (if so can throw Moana, and Raya and the Dragon world into her world pool...) (maybe a seperate game altogether in the Lost masters ark will be a Kairi game like this, or at least I hope so..) (A Kairi game featuring her and Aqua and Xion as the party would be astonishing... Make her actually important Square shes the princess of radiant garden FFS!)
Donald and Goofy can return to the party, but only close to the end of the game. Make their absence impactful. I want Sora to be forced to mature and grow up, I want him to be stripped of his cheery attitude and spend 90% of KH4 feeling lost and confused, I want this to seem like a completely different ballgame to what he has been playing, and for his loss of Donald, Goofy, Mickey and Kairi to really make him push himself to become independent, mature and reliable.
( TL:DR More real life or SciFi or gothic movies would help that angle out and add a general consistency to Quadratum and the theme of Sora being away from the cheery world he grew up in.)
Side notes: 1. I WANT FINAL FANTASY INCLUSION, SPECIFICALLY 7 AND 13! Cloud and Sephiroth are mainstays that should never have been cut from 3, and Lightning KH version would be so cool!!! Also would be awesome to see Snow Villiers, Hope, Serah and Caius Ballard from 13 in KH style. (NOT FF WORLDS, THAT WOULDNT WORK AND I DOUBT THEY WILL DO IT. BUT THE CHARACTERS HAVE TO BE IN THE DISNEY WORLDS OR QUADRATUM) 2. I WANT LESSER KNOWN SQUARE PROPERTIES TO GET INCLUSION! Specifically characters designed by Nomura tho. Parasite Eve and The Bouncer are my two biggest wishes for KH4, I want Aya to be Quadratums Cop and Sion from The Bouncer to be at a Bar called Fate (bonus if they legitimately name a street Dog Street) 3. IM SO HYPE FOR SORAS APARTMENT! Now I hope they have customisation features and slice of life features added to his daily life like he will prolly get a new phone but how I hope that there is a return of the jobs system from KH2 but with Sora able to flip burgers or work as a lost pet catcher or washing cars ahahah stuff like that really would build his character, (I'd also like animated eating and drinking so you can eat at heaps of resteraunts but that's pushing it...) (Animated Taxi rides you can either skip or just cruise around Quadratum taking in the view?... Prolly pushing it as well) also in the spirit of immersion I hope they make his outfit changeable and have a cool trendy clothing shop with heaps of our there wardrobe choices (DOG STREET jacket for Sora? I'm in. And let's give him more belts and zippers, maybe a spiked choker...) (viable accessory system for stat boosts? Rings and chains and belts visibly show up, jackets shoes etc have stats attached?) Skateboarding coming back? Yes. Sora playing guitabeing a DJ rythm game? Double yes! UFO catchers to get stuffed shadow heartless/moogle/cactuar plushies? ULTIMATE YES!!!! Making a scrapbook with random stickers and photos you take, etc etc Stuff like this! I wanna just immerse myself in this world, Hell I even want random npc side quests to do trivial fetch quests etc.... Final point: there was a leak about 'light online features' Like yeah probably some kind of leaderboard... But I have hope for something like Dark souls where you can see the shadows of all the other players running round Quadratum as like 'ghost soras' he can comment about how weirded out he feels seeing them, call them ECHOES or some shit, very up Nomuras alley, but also given all the slice of life and small stuff I am hoping for, I hope (and predict) a social media service where you can post photos of your customised apartment and your cool new drippy outfits. We need this game to be particularly dark and depressing, but also we need that young adult going out in the city having fun energy. That street punk vibe. That persona 5 vibe mixed with TWEY style and attitude.
Gameplay wise a return to KH2 combat with much more intricate combos, and heaps of challenging fights with high stakes and high intensity. Final Fantasy Summons! Unlock in this order, Ifirit, Shiva Ramuh and Bahamut as the final summon. It would be awesome if Sora at some point unlocks his own keyblade armour and if so I hope it looks like Nomuras play arts batman designs, really techy and sleek, have the armour be part of his transformations, first form he just equips the standard armour with colour changes and small visual changes as you unlock more and utilise each form. Anti/rage form, Dual wield form and Final/ultimate form are definitely needed.
As for party, Sora will have do be solo a fair bit but... Magia and Ageis will be party members sorta early on? They are looking for Yozora but he will probably be like Riku in KH1 and be a mysterious Rival who fights the party thought the game, working for the Master of Masters to the confusion of even his own friends. Strelitzia can eventually join the party as the healer, Riku will eventually join aswell as a DPS tank using new Dark powers that he is confident he can control (but can he????) (Riku also needs a new Keyblade or more likely the ability to transform his into cooler weapons like a buster Sword or dual katanas, and give him one form with Keyblade armor) Young Xehenort might be another option for a party member, that would be cool to fight alongside him and Riku together. Yozora shouldn't join Sora's side yet, keep him as the Rival as long as possible. Kairi should be gone until near the end, where her and other KH originals (as well as D+G and Mickey) will arrive in Quadratum after linking the realms or something...
Kairi should be playable in at least some capacity, if not her own campaign then just at the end when she reaches Quadratum. For like one Boss in Quadratum (Invi, who she unlocks her keyblade armour while fighting against.) and then just be able to switch to her at will to go challenge endgame content, Riku ehhhh only playable if they make him actually cool. (Ideally all 3 destiny trio playable and fleshed out fully if that's not too much to ask) Make the heartless look scary again, make them feel ominous, we need enemies that are uncanny and creepy, Only non emblem variants, purebloods. (Maybe return the mushrooms tho I miss them.. and BULKY VENDOR!) Keep nobodies, add a few new types. Add the robotic/mecha enemies from Verum Rex. No unversed or dream eaters.
Story wise I want there to be a reveal that Quadratum is actually reality and the realm of light and darkness existed inside kingdom hearts the whole time. It was the world born from hearts of children after darkness swallowed the light. The reason Xehenort (and by extension Ansem SoD and Xemnas) wanted to open the door is because they knew that they were stuck inside a giant heart and wanted to reach 'reality'.... Young Xehenort now carries thier legacy, but he is now loyal to Sora and becomes his good friend.
Sora, Riku, Kairi, YX, Yozora will be confirmed to be among the 7 crowns, other members shouldn't be revealed till later entries. The fortellers should get updated outfits that fit the 'dark city' vibes of Quadratum.
Ava will be confirmed to be Kairis grandmother, Possible that Xion is actually the heart of subject X/skuld, which accidentally entered into the puppet in days and nobody figured it out and that her black hair appearance is because ventus (connected to Roxas) saix and axel remember her having black hair. I hope so anyways to give her some relevance again.
I kinda want Roxas and ventus to change their looks very drastically from each other too. That would make their twin thing alot less annoying. Terra and Aqua need a canon confirmed relationship. Sora needs to openly confront his feelings for Kairi and spend time being emo about it like KH2, with Riku telling him that everyone knows he loves her.... this time she's fighting to reach him not being a damsel (A few points for either a Kairi campaign in KH4 or her own spin off game: I kinda hope Ansem the wise is her legit father and can tell her about her backstory as a princess and her grandmother's history as Ava and stuff....Kairi needs to be trained by aqua so she can unlock her potential. she has her own drive forms and shit now, she is fighting Vanitas Who taunts her by looking like Sora, and the usual Disney villains ) and she is the one who works out how to use the lifeboats and leads the rest of the cast into Quadratum near the end of the game it can only be her because of her heart being one of pure light and her connection with Sora granting her the power of waking. Maybe set her up to fight Invi in Quadratum in a lil boss in kh4, but not in a decisive battle just a lil skirmish. Yozora will be manipulated by the master into stopping Sora and company, even attacking his own former friends Magia and Aegis but he is told it's for thier own safety and that he is protecting them. Sora and co will fight him a few times throughout as a benchmarch of Sora's new strength with Yozora just play fighting at first but each fight the intensity escalates, and the last time Yozora uses a brand new keyblade and it ends in a draw.
Before the last boss everyone will have settled into their new life in Quadratum, which is where they live now. There will be a 'calm before the storm' moment where everyone is happy just living life in Quadratum, while Donald Goofy and Mickey prepare to return to the realm of light for now.... The last boss should be Luxu/Braig/Xigbar. Possibly in the form of a boat 😂 Ahahhaha but fr tho he should be in like giant darkness/mech/god form, like kh1 and 2 end bosses but more Cronenbergesque. Riku will use too much dark power during the last boss in order to save everyone and he will get swallowed by darkness.
These are my sincere hopes for KH4 as someone who has dedicated my whole life to the series and obsessed with it to the point of no return. I grew up with this series. I want it to grow with me, I want Sora to finally truly grow. I want the series to be something as spectacular as FF7 Rebirth and then some. I have high hopes.
I'm also basically the posterboy emo kid who never left the 2000s if yous can't tell 😂😂😂

Chapter 1: The Young Puppet Master
The Ning Family council hall—
A Spirit Lamp bathed the chamber in a luminous, radiant glow.
Inside, the Ning Family patriarch, accompanied by the young lord and a cadre of esteemed elders, convened. Several jade slips passed among them, meticulously documenting the proceedings of this year's examination of the major families.
The patriarch gently caressed a jade slip in his grasp, his eyes drifting shut as the scenes recorded upon it unfurled within his sea of consciousness, replaying in a continuous loop.
Harnessing a blend of spiritual sense and mana, the marionettes sprang to life, capable of a variety of movements and actions. However, even the most prominent among the young cultivators found themselves limited to relatively elementary tasks this year: walking, performing aerial acrobatics, and executing rolls.
The overall performance left much to be desired.
The patriarch languidly unfurled his eyes, retracting his spiritual sense from the jade slip, delicately resting it on the desk beside him.
"The Ning family patriarch sighed, 'This year's evaluation disinterred no prospective marionette masters among our younger members.'"
Sensing the mounting tension, the academy elder swiftly interjected, "Patriarch, esteemed elders, our Ning family is renowned for its mastery of talismans. Among the myriad disciplines of cultivation, marionette manipulation is but a minor specialization. Our lineage lacks a robust tradition in this technique, and the academy's instructors for this craft are mediocre at best. How can we aspire to cultivate such talents under these conditions?"
The patriarch of the Ning family reassured, "Please, fear not. I don't hold you at fault. The Marionette Immortal City of Magma Palace was erected by the forebears of the three sects to pacify the eruptions of Fire Persimmon Mountain, ensconced deep within its volcanic heart. To unlock the immortal treasures and the marionettist legacy of Magma Palace, the most effective approach is through the expertise of those adept in marionette manipulation.
"Our Ning dynasty has only recently unearthed the existence of the magma Immortal Palace. The other two major families and the city's lord have long held precedence. They seized the opportunity to covertly nurture the talent nessesary, an opportunity we were denied.
We find ourselves arriving belatedly, with time working against us. Our sole recourse lies in enticing external talent with substantial gains to join us as honored guests, thus granting us a fighting chance to compete."
The patriarch of the Ning family produced a jade slip, stating, "Contained within are records detailing the Fire Persimmon Immortal City and renowned marionette masters in its vicinity. Please peruse it."
After all the elders had examined the contents, the Ning family patriarch declared, "Our task is to establish connections with every marionette masters we can locate and endeavor to gain their allegiance. Of significance importance is particular marionette masters, a skilled practitioner within Fire Persimmon City and our foremost target."
The young lord remarked, "The identity of the Marionette Master remains shrouded in mystery; he has never made a public appearance. Although his puppets sell remarkably well, they are exclusively sold in the black market, held only once a month."
"The black market operations are under the control of Sun Lingtong, an external disciple of the No-Void Sect, rendering direct access to the Marionette Master exceedingly challenging for us."
The Ning family patriarch's expression soured. "Xiaoren, I'm not interested in hearing about problems; I need solutions."
Ning Xiaoren, the young lord, felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he hastily reassured his father, "Yes, father. I've already dispatched agents to establish personal contact with him, and we should see results soon!"
The patriarch stroked his beard. "Good. I'll await the outcome."
After the meeting, Ning Xiaoren wasted no time in summoning his subordinate, Ning Ze.
"Ning Ze, your appointment as procurement manager within the Ning family is owed to my support. I entrusted you with the responsibility of contacting the Marionette Master, yet there has been no progress. What's going on?" The young lord's brow knit with displeasure.
Ning Ze, a middle-aged man whose countenance bore the weight of years of stress, silently wished he could evade the responsibility entirely.
"Young Lord, I am profoundly ashamed for betraying the trust you've vested in me. My incompetence in this matter is unforgivable."
"But engaging with the Marionette Master has proven difficult. Despite my repeated attempts to connect with him at the black market, where I purchased the Up-and-Down Ruyi Ropes and offered continuous advice, he remains unresponsive. He refuses to engage in anything beyond the scope of transactions."
"The Marionette Master's is far to mysterious. I've exhausted every avenue to glean information about him, only to incur the wrath of the black market proprietor, Sun Lingtong. Not only have I lost valuable manpower, but I've also been falsely implicated and forced to pay a hefty sum of spirit stones. Thus far, I've shouldered this financial burden myself..."
“Enough!”
The young lord interjected, his displeasure palpable.
"You've been outmaneuvered, and that's embarrassing in itself. But do you expect the clan to foot the bill for your blunders?"
"This time, our family requires the purchase of 80 Up-and-Down Ruyi Ropes; it's your responsibility to oversee."
Ning Ze was shocked.
“Eighty ropes? That many?!”
The young lord stated firmly, "Use this substantial transaction as a catalyst for your mission. Despite numerous interactions with the Marionette Master, you've failed to progress any discussions regarding collaboration."
"Your lack of results leaves me questioning your competence, Ning Ze."
Sensing the weight of expectation, Ning Ze fervently reassured him of his dedication to the task.
Ning Ze arrived at the southeastern district of Huoshi City, a region infamous for its lawlessness, teeming with its mix of dragons and snakes. It boasted the city's highest rates of theft and the poorest public security, prominently serving as the nexus for the black market.
Approaching one of the entrances to the marketplace, Ning Ze presented a token for inspection.
A sturn-faced cultivator scrutinized Ning Ze with suspicion, meticulously inspecting the token before nonchalantly tossing it back to him.
“Follow me.”
He ushered Ning Ze into a small hut behind him and lifted the floorboards to reveal a hole.
Descending into the concealed passage, they traversed a winding tunnel that eventually emerged into an underground bazaar, evocative of a small marketplace.
Ning Ze surveyed the surroundings and promptly identified his quarry.
"Greetings, Lord Marionette Master," Ning Ze addressed the elderly figure with a genial smile.
The Marionette Master was a seasoned figure, marked by the passage of time and the trials it had wrought upon him. He relied heavily on a cane, his form hunched over like the bow of a lobster.
His countenance bore the marks of time's passage, etched with deep, purple-hued bags beneath his eyes and creases so pronounced they seemed capable of ensnaring insects. His unkempt, black hair cascaded down to his feet like a black cloak.
The Marionette Master loomed near a cart, casting but a fleeting glance in Ning Ze's direction without speaking.
This had always been the Marionette Master's attitude, and although Ning Ze felt powerless, he also harbored growing resentment. As a cultivator of the esteemed Ning family, he expected respect from the Marionette Master, yet none was given.
Despite his frustration, the young lord of the Ning family was determined to win him over. With a forced smile, Ning Ze spoke up, “Lord, this time I present an offer.."
"Eighty Ruyi Ropes in total!”
“Consider the magnitude of this deal; could you perhaps offer a more favorable price?”
"I've been a loyal patron of your establishment for quite some time now, consistently supporting your business. And rest assured, there will be more lucrative deals in the future. But it strikes me as a tad unreasonable that the price remains fixed at 200 spirit stones per Ruyi Rope every time, don't you think?"
The elderly man, his hair dangling, offered a slight nod, his voice weathered with age as he agreed, "You make a valid point."
"In that case, let's agree upon 250 spirit stones each."
Momentarily taken aback, Ning Ze chuckled softly, "Lord Young Puppet Master, but you must be joking, right? That not how you lower the price!"
The Marionette Master Master snorted coldly.
“For every additional word you utter, the price increases by 50 spirit stones.”
Ning Ze’s eyes widened in shock, momentarily paralyzed.
His chest swelled with rising indignation, itching to knock the old man before him to the ground. Yet he managed to quell his fury, muttering, “Fine, we’ll accept your terms.”
“However, my clan desires to incorporate some additional functionalities to better align with our techniques. The specifics of the modifications…”
The Marionette Master sternly interjected.
“No modifications. Take it or leave it. If you’re not interested, leave.”
Ning Ze was nearly speechless with rage.
After taking a deep breath, he finally nodded with a resigned smile, acquiescing to the terms.
The Marionette Master remained motionless, but from the roof of the carriage before him, several marionettes dangled.
These marionettes, animated by threads, each one appeared almost lifelike, emitting eerie giggles.
They tumbled and leaped about, jostling and shoving one another, but eventually, they managed to open the circular hatch within the carriage.
One by one, they descended into the opening beneath the cover, and then, like extracting a series of serpents, they pulled out the Up-and-Down Ruyi ropes.
Each time Ning Ze witnessed this spectacle, he was filled with awe.
The precision of these suspended-thread was honed to such a degree that the doll-like figures seemed almost sentient.
If the young cultivators from the Ning family undertaking the examination possessed even a modicum of this expertise, the command of there puppets would unquestionably be exemplary.
"Marionettist techniques are ranked lowest among the hundred arts of cultivation, encumbered with myriad deficiencies. The most conspicuous flaw lies in the methods of control!"
"Consider these marionettes, for instance; a mere severing of their threads would render them immobile."
After concluding the transaction at the black market, Ning Ze swapped the spirit stones for the Ruyi ropes before making his departure. It was at this moment that a subtle yet unmistakably sinister and enraged expression surfaced on his face.
"Marionette Master! Every time I extend courtesy to you, I genuinely give you face."
"This time, I even hired the Huang Family Three Ghosts for you! I even meticulously prepared this ‘gift’ for you!’
"If you decline to collaborate with me, then you'll undoubtedly suffer."
Ning Ze found himself backed into a corner, compelled to take a dangerous risk.
His strategy was straightforward: enlist the Huang Family Three Ghosts to confront the Marionette Master initially, then swoop in to rescue and thereby gain favor. Should the Marionette Master sustain significant harm, Ning Ze didn't rule out the option of coercing him into submission.
Regardless, his foremost priority remained shattering the deadlock and fulfilling the mission entrusted to him.
As for additional matters, those were worries for the rest of the Ning family members!
Following the conclusion of the black market affair, the Marionette Master, laden with his gains, traversed a shadowy alleyway.
Suddenly.
A Calming Talisman!
An activated talisman immediately sprang into action, encasing the area around him in a binding seal.
The Marionette Master came to an abrupt standstill, rendered immobile by the spell's effects.
“Heeheehee…”
A soft, ethereal laughter resonated through the air as three small ghosts materialized from the vicinity and launched an assault on the Marionette Master.
The Marionette Master remained as motionless as stone until the Ghosts drew near. At that moment, his form trembled, and several marionette birds cascaded out, hurtling forward.
Marionette Technique—Thunder Silent Birds!
Amidst the darkness, a series of lightning bolts streaked through the air, erupting into noiseless bursts of thunder.
In a fraction of a second, the Thunder Silent Birds had dispatched the three small figures.
"How is this possible?"
"We deployed the Calming Talisman; you shouldn't be capable of using your divine sense for marionette manipulation!"
"There's something wrong here. He's evidently employing marionettes, yet I didn't witness him using any controlling threads."
"It's inconsequential. Let's advance as a group!"
The Huang Family Three Ghosts lunged forward in unison, showcasing their individual talents to besiege the Marionette Master with unkempt, flowing hair. Suddenly, over a dozen spectral ghosts materialized, encircling the vicinity from all angles with their eerie and menacing visages, teeth bared and claws poised.
The Marionette Master remained steadfast, akin to an unyielding mountain, as his long, unruly black locks intricately entwined, coalescing into several lengthy whips.
These shadowy whips thrashed about with the ferocity of dragons and serpents, yet not a single gust of wind stirred. In the unsettling silence, a palpable aura of lethal intent permeated the surroundings.
Marionette Technique—Long Hair Death Whip!
The whips exhibited a savage violence, seemingly capable of consuming everything in their path, leaving souls scattered and spirits shattered.
The eyes of the Huang Family Three Ghosts gleamed with fierce determination, bracing for a retaliatory strike.
Within the Marionette Master's mind, a treasure seal materialized, vast as a mountain, embodying both benevolence and malevolence, suddenly radiating an enigmatic brilliance.
Treasure—Buddha Heart Demon Seal!
The three ghosts faltered simultaneously, revealing fatal vulnerabilities. Shocked and desperate, they hastily retreated, but their efforts were futile.
Two piercing screams pierced the air, marking the demise of two of the ghosts.
The eldest, his eyes ablaze with rage and fueled by vengeance, pushed his foundational energies to their zenith, launching a desperate counteroffensive against the Marionette Master.
His cherished dagger, the embodiment of his hopes, streaked through the air like lightning, aiming for the center of the Marionette Master's forehead.
Ting.
A sharp clang reverberated as metal met metal.
The eldest Huang scion stood frozen, disbelief etched on his visage.
Thud, thud, thud.
In an instant, numerous Long Hair Death Whips converged from all directions, impaling him mercilessly.
The eldest ghost's eyes widened as the whips pierced his body, suspending him mid-air. Blood cascaded down like a macabre rain, splattering the surroundings, all obscured by the thick shroud of night.
Hearing the strange commotion, nearby cultivators hastened to the alleyway to investigate.
“What happened here?” one cultivator asked, bewildered.
In the alley, there was neither a sign of a body nor a single drop of blood.
Meanwhile, Ning Ze’s anxiety intensified. “Why is there still no word? It should have succeeded by now.”
“The Marionette Master is at the Foundation Establishment stage, as are the Huang Family Three Ghosts. Even in Huoshi City, where their combat abilities are suppressed, a three-against-one advantage should have guaranteed victory.” He tried to comfort himself.
“I equipped them with the Calming Talisman and the Green Knife Mantis, a spirit pet capable of slicing through even the strongest of threads. With such meticulous preparations, the Marionette Master should have been thoroughly incapacitated!”
“Just wait a little longer.”
But this wait would prove futile.
The Marionette Master marched through the underground tunnels.
Three chain whips snaked behind him, each gripping the corpse of a cultivator. As he advanced, malevolent shadows writhed on the tunnel walls.
Ahead, a crimson radiance emerged, and the air grew oppressively hot.
Rounding a corner, an enormous furnace loomed before the Marionette Master.
He opened the furnace door and, with practiced ease, cast the three bodies inside.
After sealing it shut, he proceeded to an adjacent storage room.
He deposited several kilograms of fire essence, recently procured from the black market, into the storage room. Over the years, the amassed fire essence had formed a small mountain.
“Only ten more kilograms of fire essence to go,” he murmured.
The Marionette Master made his way to the transmission room and activated the teleportation array. In the next moment, he returned to his underground workshop.
The body of the Marionette Master began to transform. The peculiar, floor-length black hair swiftly retracted, and his hunched posture gradually straightened. Beneath the black robe, the old man’s body flickered with light and shadow, revealing his true form—a silver-gray mechanical battle armor.
The surface of the armor glimmered with a faint precious light, adorned with talismans and array patterns. A fresh scar marred the helmet, a testament to the final stand of the eldest of the Huang Family Three Ghosts.
The armor’s breastplate, abdominal plate, and leg plates symmetrically parted to the sides. From within emerged a young man.
The youth possessed a pallid complexion and eyes as clear as crystal, emitting a tranquil and serene aura.
The armor was named: Iron Grey Han Armor.
The youth’s name was: Ning Zhuo.

(Swifties, this is your first and final warning. You will not enjoy reading what I've written. Please remind yourselves that you've had since 2006 to crop-dust all creation with your unchecked Taylor-related dickriding. Meanwhile, it's taken me a year and a half to lose enough of my fucks in the crowd to venture the following opinions. Deal with it, or git)
TL;DR: the Taylor Swift social experiment, like all cults of personality, scares the living shit out of me. Relatability should not be an arbiter of artistic merit; everything can be criticized; no-one should have this much money/ in-your-face ubiquity/ power over the media; she needs to stop trying to be a musical one-stop shop and let other artists breathe.
I’m going to use my opening statement to assure the masses that I mean neither Taylor Swift nor her fandom any harm. I don’t know any of you; I only know the brand and the brand ideals, of which a character named Taylor Swift, represented by a person named Taylor Swift, is the central figure. This is a rant, these are my feelings; I merely ask that you extend me the same grace you would your favourite singer-songwriter. And though I can’t promise that all of my points will be made in good faith, because many of them were prompted by genuine psychological triggers, I will do my best to keep the character and the person separate, along with the platforms and the users within the fandom, even if they are guilty of the same misdeeds. No matter how butthurt and snarky I get while organizing these vagrant thoughts - because this exercise is intended to permanently close down my internal TS thoughtschool - all said and done, I just want everyone to be good people and live good lives.
Cool? Cool.
For the sake of full disclosure: her music is fine. I mean…it’s fine. I’ve yet to hear anything that made me want to manually arrest the earth’s orbit, but that comes down to my own personal taste.
And I’ve been obsessed with music for a good goddamn 43 years; I remember trampolining on the furniture to Queen, Prince, and Blondie when I was barely out of diapers, getting my first period at a New Kids on the Block concert (for real), and clawing the shredded fishnets of every early-90s riot grrrl while my 9th grade social capital continued its neverending nosedive. As someone stuck right slap-ass in the Bible Belt - where my love for the INXS song “Devil Inside” was publicly demonized due to the metaphorical conceit - music is the closest I’ve ever come to religious rapture.
But I just can’t seem to acquire a taste for the holy Taylor Swift host.
Once in a while, drifting through her sea of beige melodies and hand me down instrumentals, she will hork up a half-decent turn of phrase (the bridge of “Marjorie” really is a knockout). But I don’t think her specific command of the English language deserves this level of perpetual global veneration. And even when I’m impressed by the way she clicks words together, I don’t feel moved to take them apart and examine them for hidden depths or synesthetic value. To me, her writing is only marginally better than the Star Wars/ Mortal Kombat/ Jem & the Holograms fanfics I used to write while procrastinating between shifts at Starbucks. (Not me ending a letter to Stormer from Kimber with, “I miss you like January misses Christmas.”) To paraphrase the MechaStreisand episode of South Park: “Ya ain’t Fiona Apple. And if ya ain’t Fiona Apple, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
But it goes beyond me staying stubbornly put as the approximate rest of the world is shaken to the core by her musical LiveJournal. I’m not here to yuck anybody’s yum. If Taylor Swift is to you what Stephen King (an inconsistent but effective storyteller who unknowingly taught me how to express my own macabre thoughts) is to me, that’s fabulous. Everyone deserves to feel that way about something; everyone deserves to experience a piece of art or media that makes them sit more comfortably amongst the serrated edges of the world.
The difference is, when someone tells me that Stephen King sucks all ass, my reaction tends to be, “Fair enough. Let’s talk about the writers you LIKE.” Not, “How absolute DARE?! You must be a Yankees fan if you don’t like Stephen King! I mean, it’s right there in the name! In this thesis I will…”
So let’s break it down, shall we?
*
*
*
*
*
FIG 1. ENSHRINING MEDIOCRITY
Taylor Swift has a way with words. Sometimes. More often than the average American dickhead who gave up on the Cliff’s Notes to Animal Farm. But a good 9 times out of 10, reading her lyrics - especially since Folkmore went to her head - feels less like a peerless, cathartic demonstration of wordplay and more like an Intro to Creative Writing student spraying and praying with one hand on a thesaurus. (“I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian cause I care…” Miss Ma’am. Put the fountain pen on the floor and kick it over to me.)
Sure, everybody loves a good literary reference. “In Liverpool”, where Suzanne Vega alludes to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame while pondering unrequited (and possibly gay) love, is my Roman Empire. But Swift doesn’t explore or utilize literary devices. She drops them, like boldfaced names on TMZ. She feels so Gatsby tonight. Her good-for-nothing boyfriend = Peter Pan. Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who liked to bum around the Lake District, so let’s shoehorn him into “The Lakes” as a ramshackle pun about HER writing prowess (thank fuck she left Beatrix Potter alone). She knows these works exist, but she’s TELLING us she does, rather than SHOWING us.
Her lyricism is inconsistent, her references are anti-dimensional, her instrumentals sound like AI versions of previous artists, her “genre-hops” are formulaic, her singing is meh, and she dances like a preschooler clomping around in mommy’s heels. But at least she plays piano and guitar at a low-intermediate level. This is the only person holding 4 Album of the Year Grammys? Out of every other band and artist living, dead, or undead? Fuck that for a laugh.
(Short break to remind myself that Can’t Slow Down beat Purple Rain, Born in the USA, She’s So Unusual, and Private Dancer in 1985. Same as it ever was, really.)
My intention is not to discredit who she is or “what she’s been through” [dismissive wanking gesture]. I just don’t consider “...you hang from my lips like the gardens of Babylon…” a simile that necessitates a whole-ass branded tunic on Christ the Redeemer. Hell, I wouldn’t even project a salute to the aforementioned Suzanne Vega on a national landmark, and I think her lyricism absolutely BODIES Ms. Swift’s.
To more modern, mainstream effect, there's something so sharp and satisfying about Olivia Rodrigo's music. While not compulsively polysyllabic, her lyrics captivate me with their seething wit and disheveled beauty. Her emotions are dysfunctional without giving you narcissistic whiplash; they create an almost kintsugi effect within the thru-line of the songs, fusing the tragedy, setbacks, and self-deprecation whole with golden veins. I love laughing my ass off to “get him back!’, sprinting through a sunsoaked Appalachian meadow in my head to ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’, and reliving the outset of my romance with my husband to “so American”. Her 90s pop-punk sonic homage is a breath of fresh air, too.
I've yet to hear a Taylor Swift song where she isn't WHINING about something, and I’ve choked down a LOT of her songs just to be informed. Her entire discography reminds me of the final scene from Interview With the Vampire 1994. “Still WHINING, Louis! Have you heard enough? I've had to listen to that for centuries.”
On and on the pity party drones until eventually, no matter how many ornate literary devices she springs on us, Swift outs herself as no deeper than a damp floor. If she learned to economize the bells and whistles and reach beyond her own experience, she might be onto something. There’s a reason Toni Morrison is a legend and VC Andrews is a hack.
This doesn’t mean TS shouldn’t have a successful music career. Or that glitter gel-pen media with a predominantly female audience deserves to be dragged through the cesspool where society once stood. (Ask me how many times I listen to Debbie Gibson’s first two albums inside a calendar year - hint, more than zero.) But I swear to fuck, if I see the word ‘relatable’ used as quality control ONE MORE TIME, I will vomit the entire Nicholas Sparks bibliography. Are we so collectively insecure and empathetically bankrupt nowadays that we can’t engage with an artist unless we want to wear their skin? Does every performer or character need to function as an all-purpose self-insert? Does the winning formula absolutely have to be ‘Literally Me”? This has to be why Black excellence keeps falling by the wayside so the human Barbie doll - complete with interchangeable identities she dons and sheds like fashion plates - can placate her ego with another trophy. Yeah, I’m still sore about SOS and TPAB losing AOTY. (If you don’t recognise those acronyms, ask Google.) The connective tissue between ‘I’d rather have a beer with Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton’ and ‘Taylor Swift is a better mirrorball than Janelle Monae’ is thicker than the volumes of literature TS skimmed while ditching Tom Hiddleston to snoop around Joe Alwyn’s flat.
Don’t get it twisted; I’m all for sisterhood in song, finding parallels of my own experience in a woman’s work. But MUST my inner voice belong to Taylor Swift? Can’t I prefer Tori Amos or TLC or even Olivia Rodrigo? Because I’m not a skinny Aryan poster girl whose rich parents Veruca Salted (the character, not the band) and Tonya Hardinged my way out of every first-world problem and into a stupidly successful career where my only setbacks are breakups and one-sided beefs.
Also, what’s with this theory that lyrics and the ability to write your own are the end-all-be-all of music? Are compositions a joke to you? When you get a moment, listen to my all-time favourite symphony, The Planets by Gustav Holst. Bitchin, huh? Don’t mention it.
Hot take, but as a public figure, Swift has a lot more in common with her archnemesis Kim Kardashian than her idol Lana Del Rey, and I suspect that’s chief among reasons she keeps disturbing the Kimye grave.
(Oh, hey, if you’re that dweeb I’ve seen on YouTube spamming every other comment with your essay on why Taylor Swift is the best singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist due to the units she’s sold and the records she holds…I wish a motherfucker would.)
*
FIG 2. WE DON’T NEED NO GENTRIFIED FEMINISM
Okay. I have a complexion like a fresh stick of chalk, resulting from a family tree full of Scottish libertines and southern Appalachian hill trash. Therefore, I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds of a topic that concerns the experiences of marginalized people. So instead of running my mouth on the meaning of ‘white feminism’ and its insidious cause/ effect process, I’ll urge you to seek out books and essays by more qualified people.
“Hood Feminism” by Mikki Kendall is a great place to start. See also “White Tears/ Brown Scars” by Ruby Hamad, and “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge.
One of the most frustrating things about the inescapable Taylor Swift phenomenon is how her brand and her disciples have perverted feminism. It's now a whitewashed, focus-grouped shadow of itself, used only to shield Swift, and Swift alone, from criticism and her own mediocrity.
Swift really is the perfect symbol of white supremacy, whether or not she wishes to be. Her virtues are blown way out of proportion, and her wrongdoings are swept under the rug with a litany of excuses. Coddled and deified by the same entities that condemn and demonize her Black peers for the same shit. I’m reminded of how, in my home country (USA), a white gunman is a product of a broken home or untreated mental illness, while a Black or brown one represents the corruption of a whole community. Concurrently, when a white woman plays by the patriarchy’s rules and wins, or donates pocket change from her net worth to a few non-partisan causes like staff bonuses or soup kitchens, she’s held up as a paragon of righteousness. But when her stan club harasses one of her presumed nemeses to the brink of a nervous breakdown, or when a concertgoer at one of her Latin American shows dies of dehydration (RIP Ana Clara Benevides), everyone runs to console and absolve HER. It wasn't her fault, she had no power, how could she have known?
“Profoundly unsympathetic underdog”, as I read somewhere, is probably the best way to put it. Has she suffered from the slings and arrows of misogyny? Well, duh. She’s a woman at the top of an industry right slap-ass in the middle of a capitalist hellscape that, to this day, is still dominated by men. Men with a lot more dough and behind-the-scenes influence than she could ever dream of. But she doesn’t want to dismantle the system. She wants to bend it to her will and win it - even if that means cheating. Which is all well and good for her, but at the end of the day, she’s another fuckass oligarch. She’s a dragon in woman form like a reject from Earthsea, gorging on numbers to fill the empty howling void in her soul, tossing crumbs and scraps down to the masses.
She’s not a feminist so much as a Swiftist.
Ironically, Swift’s “feminism” revolves around men, because it’s feminism as interpreted by men. Powerful women using the patriarchy against itself, rather than bulldozing it for the good of humanity.
*
FIG 3. PROFESSIONAL CHARACTER ASSASSIN
Do I consider Taylor Swift an actual Batman villain of a person? Nah. I'm sure she's perfectly nice if you don't look too closely or set off any tripwires. In general, she’s probably not half the psychological sadist her father is or her disciples can be. She's got a long way to go before catching up to the likes of Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, or Andrew Tate. But that's just it - everyone outside the fold recognises the minions of that dark triad as pathetic at best and actively dangerous at worst.
The systemic coddling and infantilization of white women refuses to acknowledge the harm they can cause by gathering a mob with a common assigned enemy. And, having stuffed her cult’s heads full of subliminal tabloid fodder, Taylor has ensured that every time she performs an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers point-and-screech in a rival’s direction, that person’s about to have a bad week. Doesn’t matter if the vitriol is one-sided.
When I consider the full front to back of Taylor’s “lore”, what forms in my mind is the story of a victim, or self-proclaimed victim, who considers a villain arc aspirational. You know, a surly ninth-grader’s idea of justice. Enabled by her fans, who’ve declared Swift’s lyrics gospel, her easter eggs a call to arms against anyone who’s earned so much as a side-eye from her.
And does she call them off? Does she fuck.
Joe Alwyn’s reputation went to hell on an inside track for (checks notes) possibly mismanaging his depression? (Also, everyone involved in the mass unfollowing stunt is tacky and I hate them. That includes you, Ryan Reynolds. You're closer to 50 than 25, with four kids at home, acting like a second string shortstop trying to impress the head cheerleader. Knock it off.)
Katy Perry found herself soaked with pig blood in a public square for either rehiring a couple of dancers after they quit Taylor's tour, or briefly dating John Mayer. Depending on who you ask.
Jake Gyllenhaal was the target of a harassment campaign perpetuated by Swifties, fellow celebrities, and even goddamn CONSUMER BRANDS for, I dunno, acting kinda like a fuckboy eleven years prior? Realizing, perhaps too late, that he and Taylor were incompatible as romantic partners? Either way, I'm more freaked out by the gratuitous shots fired at his sister, girlfriend, godmother, and teenage niece. Let's put a pin in that for now, though.
Antonia Gentry, a biracial actress known for her role in Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia, took a heaping helping of abuse, garnished with a generous dollop of racial slurs. All because Swift got bent out of shape over a throwaway line delivered by Gentry’s character because it painted Swift’s dating habits in a bad light. It must needs be said that Gentry did not write or improvise this line of dialogue, she merely read it. We'll put a pin in that, too.
Scooter Braun can kick rocks in glass socks, but he was right about one thing. Taylor should have faced him down her damn self, instead of siccing her stan club on him…and his family. Put a pin in it.
Kim Kardashian - well, shit. The last thing I ever thought I’d do is defend a Jennerdashian, and my stance on Snakegate has been ESH from jump street. But after all Taylor’s posturing about her nemeses defeating themselves before she can take a swing, she didn’t hesitate to directly name and shame Kim in a recent song. Or use Kim’s daughter as an insult to her lyrical injury. Put a pin in it.
Look, no-one enjoys a failed or toxic relationship. Or waking up with a target on their back. I spent nearly a decade with an authentic psychopath who at one point (I kid you not) accused me of cheating on him WITH A FICTIONAL CHARACTER. So fuck his dreams, but even with the worst of what he did to me in play - and rest assured, it was some Ari Aster shit - I wouldn't want to see him at the bottom of a John Mayer dogpile. Mostly because he has loved ones who shouldn't end up as collateral damage.
Back in 1988, the late Oscar-winning SFX titan Stan Winston (Terminator, Jurassic Park) made his directorial debut with a cult classic supernatural folk-horror called Pumpkinhead. The plot centres around a father named Ed Harley (B-movie legend Lance Henriksen) summoning a demon to avenge his son against a group of “cityfolk”.
Why bring up that old VHS throwback? Well. Revenge films have been a staple since the medium began, but Pumpkinhead is one of the few that shows the dark side of vigilante justice. People love a settled score. But most stories only show the boomerang effect from the offender to the avenger. Pumpkinhead broadens that viewfinder to show the pyrrhic nature of revenge, especially revenge served scalding hot, using familiar genre devices to demonstrate the victim’s torment, the cyclical trap of it all, and - most importantly - the innocent bystanders catching strays. You think you’re wishing on a star, when you’re really wishing on a monkey’s paw.
That’s why I said to put a pin in that list of Taylor’s Undesirables. It’s never just the person who (sometimes debatably) did her dirty. There’s plenty of ‘female rage’ for their associates, too - sometimes with those associates, ex. Antonia Gentry, taking the force of the blow. But unlike poor Ed Harley, Taylor has accumulated too much money and power to face any real consequences.
It’s much easier to contain a narrative in art than it is in real life.
(PS: That sidelong smirk she does gives me the willies. Just me? Possibly. BEC? Totally.)
*
FIG 4. FUNDAMENTALIST SWIFTISM (THIS ONE’S PERSONAL)
I was born in southern Appalachia, in one of North Carolina’s most objectively beautiful cities. Unfortunately, I grew up in a rural, redneck town of just over 1,000, where the locals shared two cinema screens and maybe seven surnames.
And though mine was a mostly secular (Methodist) household full of Jimmy Carter Democrats, I couldn’t go a day without someone on the outside telling me that something I loved was a sin. I was the unwilling congregation for cautionary sermons about everything from Stephen King to Dirty Dancing to a fucking side ponytail in my hair (apparently it evoked Madonna, and that was a Bad Thing). Politically, it was standing water trash. My social studies education consisted mostly of Confederate-apologist kitsch and Red Scare Sovietcore. One of my fifth grade teachers spewed anti-choice rhetoric in class, and two years later, another one literally said, ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’.
For context, like I said: raised by liberals, if not full-tilt leftists. My maternal grandfather was a hometown civil rights activist who ran an integrated workplace and campaigned for JFK. My mother’s friend confided to her (and only her), at the peak of HIV stigma, that her son was dying of AIDS. I remember asking Mom when I was 5 why movies only showed ladies kissing men and not men kissing men or ladies kissing ladies. Her answer: “I don’t know, baby, because it happens all the time in real life.” One of my paternal uncles was a drag performer in his 20s (which would have been between 1966-1976), and once my cycle kicked in, I was lectured THOROUGHLY about birth control and reproductive rights. I was lucky - at home. Outside, it was an ideological wasteland, fire to the left of me, brimstone to the right of me, God, guns, and “guts” waiting to nudge anyone who strayed from the formula back in line. So traumatized for merely wanting to wear fun makeup and clothes, watch A Nightmare on Elm Street, listen to Prince, and walk among neon lights with an urban skyline looming overhead like an enchanted forest, I became rebellious as fuck in my adolescence. I had a witch phase, a zen phase, and a militant agnostic phase. I’d overhear myself saying controversial shit (controversial by local standards) in a neverending campaign to push the born-against as far away from me as possible. Please don’t pray for me, I’d silently plead. Please think I’m a lost cause.
But it’s cool. I moved back to my birthplace in 1999, and clear across the Atlantic in 2016. (Plus the 9 years I spent in New England, but we don’t talk about that.) And I’m seeing a therapist about my psychological dysfunction - PTSD, depression, severe social anxiety, the usual.
Thanks to nearly two decades in this Gilead-coded environment, though, I have a near-phobic aversion to groupthink. I especially despise blind hero worship (due, I suspect, to the evangelical code of honouring God with every choice), and when matters of opinion are presented as fact. It pisses me off when Trumpnecks uproot the goalposts and plant them right in their eye sockets at their messiah's every misstep, and it pissed me off when the BernieBros tried to wreck my shit for backing a different Democrat (no shade to Bernie - he's probably one of the best social navigators America could ask for).
Taylor’s press is sounding less like journalism, even popcorn tabloid “journalism” in inverted commas, and more like nationalist propaganda. She stimulates economies (all sold-out stadium events do)! She’s broken another record (by rigging a broken system)! She eats ranch dressing (bitch, my BFF wrote a SONNET about ranch dressing when we were in junior high - that ain’t special)! She’s single-handedly carrying the music industry on her back (by toying with her fans and weaponizing FOMO)! ALL HAIL! It’s giving Straight Out of North Korea.
But as soon as you dare mention that some of this doesn’t sit right in your soul…chaos. You’re just looking for shit to be mad about because you hate “fun music” and “successful women”. Prison. Solitary confinement. Electric chair.
I have experienced no-shit panic attacks thinking about all the cults of personality that have cropped up over the past decade, okay? Whether Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, or Taylor Swift…they are all symptoms of a terrifying social disorder. Once we were drowning in information while thirsting for knowledge; now combine that with a riptide of tinfoil milliners and hyperpartisan news outlets. Communities have deteriorated, so we create them online using public figures and their open-ended manifestos, our capacity for independent and nuanced thought shriveling into a MAGA-hat shaped echo chamber screaming into a billionaire-branded, corporate-sponsored void.
Is this what Beatlemania was like? I can’t say for sure; I wasn’t there. But much as I appreciate The Beatles (while acknowledging the shady shit still stinking up certain corners of their empire), I can absolutely sympathize with people who maybe didn’t want the music crammed down their throats and the lore shoved up their asses.
“Let people enjoy things.” Let them be skeptical about things, too, and you’ve got a deal.
What frustrates me isn't that I don't like her, or that others do, but that so many of them won't allow anyone to dislike her in peace.
That's how I ended up here, at this desktop, downloading backlogged grievances to a Google.doc file.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.
*
FIG 5. ELEVENTH HOUR TRAILBLAZER (WITH A SIZE 500 CARBON FOOTPRINT)
Let's get serious. Most of our faves are problematic. I love HP Lovecraft's literary universe; he's a racist wad of dick. I love the way Margaret Atwood dissects her characters and serves them up on a silver platter with a parsley garnish; she's a bleach-white feminist and probably a goddamn TERF. I'd probably loathe Frank Zappa if he were alive today, even though I know passages from his autobiography by heart.
You don't have to steamroll your TS merch on Main to accept the fact that as an activist, she has all the conviction of Boy George checking the resale value of a contradiction before the Karma Chameleon gets home.
And that's fine, or it would be, if her aforementioned propaganda team hadn't successfully executed a Jedi mind trick to make the media go, “Taylor Swift - Joan Baez literally wishes.”
Anyone can tweet “Black Lives Matter” a few times, and I'm pretty sure my Boomer mother posted “Why be mad, when you can be GLAAD?” on Facebook circa June 2013. The only appreciable difference between Taylor Swift’s low-effort, low-stakes activism and some rando in Eugene, Oregon tweeting (I refuse to call it X) a picture of their brand new rainbow Stanley cup is the whole world keeps waiting for Tay Tay and her money to talk over the stamping onstage power-walk of her bullshit. And if she's got nothing to say, then by god we'll put the words in her mouth. Because with her unthreatening good looks and Disney princess energy, she makes a perfect false idol for neoliberals and a perfect boogeyman for the unhinged right.
So it goes. Over and over again. Once you win capitalism, you can make people believe whatever you want them to. Championing LGBTQ+ rights in the glossiest, most favourable environment possible makes TS a hero right up there with Captain America, but her manic zigzags across the planet in her private jet(s) are NBD.
Dolly Parton gets away with being politically milquetoast because (I’m inclined to think) she genuinely wants to provide a seat at the table for everyone. Not so the whole world will spend a weekend in Pigeon Forge - though I'm sure that's a strong incentive - but because she was raised with that as a guiding principle. Taylor's only principle seems to be waving her distended bank account under our faces and barking, ‘Fill ‘er up!” Also if you talk shit about her, you're not a girl's girl. Girl's girls push their successors down the stairs while buying and selling the rights to female rage. Because as a wise YouTuber one said, “My problems, my problems, my problems, MY PAIN!”
Sometimes I get the impression that Taylor Swift doesn’t want to BE an activist so much as she wants us to THINK she’s an activist. The public perception of HER matters more than urging that public to help her leave the world a better place than when she found it.
Not everyone is, or wants to be, an activist. Not everyone has that fire in their belly. I can dig it. But activism should not be a cosplay you wear to WokeCon for a single album cycle; it's a bit to which you need to commit.
Especially if you have no problem bringing a ruckus to protect your sanctified public image.
*
FIG 6. SHE DRINKS YOUR MILKSHAKE
“Billboard gamer
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Fu-fu-fu-fuck off, fu-fu-fuck off…”
But for real, some of y'all need to stop approaching music stats like the NBA playoffs. Because I'm telling you straight up and down, if Taylor Swift were on the NY Liberty, she'd be what's known as a ball hog.
“She is the music industry” is not a flex. It's an indictment and manifesto of our own cynical capitalist dystopia. It's the mission statement of an ‘artist’ who can't seem to create without the intent of destruction. It's a slap in the face to musicians who match Swift's work ethic and far exceed her talent, but lack her bloodthirsty cult and cutthroat PR machine. It’s the language of monopoly - doesn’t matter if Swift dominates 90% of the musical market, charts, and records, so long as that wayward 10 is still out there.
Every time Taylor Swift copies another artist’s homework and makes their reality impossible to disentangle from her image, I feel the same sense of weary dread as when Disney buys up another movie studio. Except worse, because a lot of those studios are multinational corporations in their own right, probably direct beneficiaries of Citizens United living off the crops planted by Reaganomics. It’s easy to be facetious and say they had it coming.
But given everything she’s come to symbolize in the public eye, it’s hard to unsee TS as a huge multinational corporation gobbling up rising artists and their chosen niches like a deranged Ms. Pac-Man who keeps doubling back in the maze when she should go forward.
It's almost as if she's trying to create an environment where there's no need to listen to any other artist, because she can do it all. Even be “The Man™”! (Though she mostly targets younger women.) And if you don’t like the current era, where are you going? Pay no attention to that small indie artist - just wait for her to jack their style! Sad Girl Synth/ Witch in the Woodscore/ Bell Jar Chic coming right up!

Plus, when she’s not coal-mining her peers for ‘aesthetics’ to add to her brand once it’s safe to do so, she’s barging in on their album releases with new variants, surprise releases, ANYTHING to prevent our attention from diverting from her for the length of ten or fifteen songs.
And it’s happened too often and with too much synchronicity to be a coincidence. Restoring her catalog to Spotify on the release date of Katy Perry’s Witness. Dropping new variants of Midnights to block SZA from the top spot. And now trying to open the same expired can of whoopass on Billie Eilish, an artist as renowned by her industry peers as Taylor is by the mouth-breathing masses.
Even her “supportive dancing” at awards shows…it’s cute at first, until you realize it’s blatant camera-pan bait to bring attention back to her.
This is not “good business”. It’s a hostile work environment.
Obviously, high-profile artists siphoning trends from more obscure ones has been how the music industry establishes hierarchy and ratfucks the vanguard for decades. You - rightfully - can’t bring up Elvis Presley nowadays without mentioning Big Mama Thornton (and you owe it to yourself to listen to her original version of “Hound Dog”, because whoa, nelly). But Taylor Swift is hiding her chicanery in plain sight, ripping her peers off and shutting them down brazen as anything, and it’s hard not to wonder how much time will transpire before we can call her on it without being branded heretics.
No-one really talks about it, but IMO, one of her most grimdark acts of sabotage was releasing “Cruel Summer”, a five-year old song that wasn’t even a re-record, on the same day Olivia Rodrigo dropped “Vampire”, the debut single for her sophomore album. “Cruel Summer”, in case you haven’t seen a Taylor Swift evidence board lately, is the reason Olivia is now stuck paying a substantial chunk of “deja vu”’s royalties to TS and her cronies. I’m not saying Taylor’s team chose that song on purpose, to intimidate a (former) fangirl literally 13 years her junior, but I put nothing past no-one.
Success is so much more rewarding when it's not a zero-sum game. Call me a musical Marxist, but I want to celebrate a motley crew of talented artists rising in and out of the top 10 like melodic fireworks, not one grifting normie shithead perched indefinitely at the summit, yanking up Jacob’s ladder rung by rung.
*
FIG 7. IN THIS ECONOMY?
One album, one deluxe edition. That's a god's plenty, especially vis a vis physical media. If you release more than that, you're an asshole, and if you buy more than that, you're a sucker. I will not be taking questions at this time.
No, it isn't just a Taylor Swift problem - far from it. But she is currently the head of a rabid and venomous kaiju run amok across a mortally wounded planet.
And the merch, my esteemed chaotic neutrals, is just too ass to mention.
While we're at it, eat the rich. Most of them. At least leave the bones of billionaires on the lawns of multimillionaires as a warning.
*
*
*
*
*
And where - apart from the hate campaigns - do her hapless paramours fit in all of this? Beats me. The truth is, I don’t give a single solitary fuck about celebrities in the wild, unless they do something incredibly wholesome (Pedro Pascal celebrating his trans sister) or remarkably stupid (Puff Daddy). And despite all the pictures I’ve seen against my will, I wouldn’t recognize Travis Kelce or Matty Healy if they walked right up to me. First of all, I despise the NFL; I’m a baseball/ basketball/ hockey fan. And The 1975’s music, to me, just sounds like yacht rock if the yacht were caked in cocaine and bodily fluids. I know that Matty Healy once mentioned shucking his corn to a certain racist sex-trafficking website. And whether or not he meant it as a joke, it was gross and WoC have every right to have a bone to pick with him - and with Taylor.
For real, though, I look at her body count and all I see is a succession of nondescript white dudes. The only one who stands out to me is Gyllenhaal, and that’s because I’ve been a fan of him and his sister as actors for 20+ years. So her dating history has never been a point of contention or even interest for me.
The long and the short of it is, I'd have no quarrel with Taylor Swift if she were just taking up space as a successful singer-songwriter processing her emotions through her music. We could peacefully co-exist if LITERALLY EVERYBODY were not expected to not only give a fuck about her, but forsake all others unto her and her sanctified narrative. Sorry, my sister in Christ, but I'm an atheist.
And yes, I'd say every syllable of this with my whole chest and my pussy facing the world if Blandie were A MAN. So don't even get on that tip.
Go forth and have the day you deserve, from the depths of my last nerve.