So One Of My Tweets Kinda Blew Up. :v

You hate that your favorite bands are exercising their free speech.

show, don't tell:

anticipation - bouncing legs - darting eyes - breathing deeply - useless / mindless tasks - eyes on the clock - checking and re-checking

frustration - grumbling - heavy footsteps - hot flush - narrowed eyes - pointing fingers - pacing / stomping

sadness - eyes filling up with tears - blinking quickly - hiccuped breaths - face turned away - red / burning cheeks - short sentences with gulps

happiness - smiling / cheeks hurting - animated - chest hurts from laughing - rapid movements - eye contact - quick speaking

boredom - complaining - sighing - grumbling - pacing - leg bouncing - picking at nails

fear - quick heartbeat - shaking / clammy hands - pinching self - tuck away - closing eyes - clenched hands

disappointment - no eye contact - hard swallow - clenched hands - tears, occasionally - mhm-hmm

tiredness - spacing out - eyes closing - nodding head absently - long sighs - no eye contact - grim smile

confidence - prolonged eye contact - appreciates instead of apologizing - active listening - shoulders back - micro reactions

Tintype of what appears to be a light-hearted spot of stabbing between friends, circa 1880

Dracula is NOT sexy. Quincey is sexy. DNI if you think that book dracula is hotter than the gentlemanly cowboy.

Nope

“Nope” wants to have a message that’s present in every character, but also doesn’t want it to be overtly explicit, causing the themes to get lost within characters motivated by outside influence.

OJ Haywood has just gruesomely lost his father in what authorities claim was debris from a plane in the sky. He has also lost a job opportunity for one of his horses to star in a commercial after the film crew irresponsibly fails to respect its boundaries. Now, OJ must sell his horses to a nearby amusement park owner named Ricky “Jupe” Park, who was also a child actor back in the day. While contemplating with his sister about selling the whole ranch to Jupe, OJ notices that one of their horses is acting weird. When he goes to investigate, he sees what looks to be a UFO.

I know that the opening statement for this review looks like a bunch of word vomit, but trust me, it makes sense. Jordan Peele is a director whom I respect immensely. I’ve mentioned that I used to watch “Mad TV” on YouTube with my brother back when I was in elementary school and watched “Key & Peele” in middle school. Seeing Peele’s transition from comedy to horror was amazing because he just does both so well. “Get Out” and “Us” were great movies first and great message movies second. “Nope” feels like it’s trying to be a message movie, but fails to try and make the movie great. When themes like racial microaggressions and social mobility are exhausted in his other works, he’s left with passively scary themes such as desensitization to spectacle. All the characters in “Nope” operate under this theme, but it’s hard to pick up on because the theme itself is so vague. This leads to characters feeling unrealistic because their choices are dictated by this adherence to the theme rather than logic. OJ and Emerald learn about the existence of a UFO and their initial reaction is to catch it on film to become rich. OJ knows good and well that this UFO violently murdered his father right in front of him. I don’t think he’d be too eager to profit off of this UFO. If anything, he’d probably want to report this to the authorities out of anger. In fact, he’s not even angry at this UFO because the character is so muted. Steven Yeun’s character also adheres to this theme in a weird way. He went through a traumatic incident in his childhood, and that’s putting it mildly. Instead of being scarred by it and needing therapy for the rest of his life, he idolizes and monetizes his tragedy. I know some people will try to justify these characters’ actions and tell me that’s exactly what Jordan Peele is trying to point out. The truly scary part is that there are people like this out there. The problem is, that’s a gross oversimplification of what’s really going on, which in turn leads to my dissatisfaction of how the characters were portrayed. This is mostly apparent with the TMZ reporter. The dude gets seriously injured and all  he cares about is getting it on video. Same with Antlers Hoist with suddenly wanting the perfect shot. Putting the theme aside, I think there were elements that made the movie itself decent. I thought borrowing elements from “Jaws”, but putting it into the sky was a lot of fun. The sky is everywhere so you can’t escape the monster’s grasp. However, on the flipside to that, the sky is more open than the ocean, so you don’t get the fear of the obscured monster as much. I mean, the movie does it with clouds, but the sky can also be crystal clear. The twist with the UFO didn’t really work for me. Part of the fun of alien invasion movies is finding out about the motivations of the aliens. Finding out that the UFO is the monster boils the motivation down to “it’s hungry”. It sucks too since I thought the scene with the kids dressed as aliens was the best scene in the whole movie. Before it’s revealed that it was just a prank, it was a genuine “Oh shit” moment that had me even saying “nope” repeatedly. Also, I know Jordan Peele didn’t have anything to do with the trailers for this movie, but they were misleading at best and downright insensitive at worst. There’s a shot of a weird looking man walking towards something the crowd is running away from. That shot is not in the movie at all. Then, you have the disfigured lady from the trailer. The trailer leads you to believe that she’s part of the horror of this movie, but it turns out she’s a sweet lady who was horribly maimed. It’s a little insensitive to weaponize that imagery to sell a horror movie, but that’s just what I think. All in all, I think this was a step down from what we’re normally used to from Jordan Peele, but still admirable for being something new. Ultimately, that’s what I want from directors and that’s why I respect Jordan Peele so much.

★★★

Watched on July 23rd, 2022

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you got more than 999 boops, the counter would simply say “WOW”. this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

Mexico Weekly Ledger, Missouri, November 20, 1879

ALT

― Ovid, Metamorphoses