That Horrible Pen

  "Cuties poster." Wikipedia ,Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 21 Aug. 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cuties_poster.jpg. Accessed 13 Sept. 2020.   I had originally intended to pair this review with some additional “thoughts,” but the first part alone is already very long. I’ll go ahead and make the thoughts their own post at some point in the future and link them here later. This review assumes you’re at least somewhat familiar with the current discourse surrounding this French-language film, written and directed by Maïmouna Doucouré, which has been embroiled in controversy since its official announcement, in large part due to Netflix’s crappy marketing and original plot synopsis for it. The TLDR Version (For Casual Readers / No Spoilers)             No, it’s not pornography. The camerawork most often treats the girls’ bodies extremely neutrally, and any scene that is shot in a way that might correspond to the...

The following post does not contain spoilers. All of the images in this post are photos taken by me of the Nintendo Power Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles strategy guide and two preview books showing off upcoming Nintendo titles.             Video games were mysterious things for me when I was a kid. For the longest time, the only ones I had access to where PC titles—a mix of children’s adventure games (like Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon ), “edutainment” titles (think the Math Blaster series), and the occasional actual video game ported to the PC ( Sonic 3 & Knuckles , for example). I wasn’t raised steeped in video game culture like a lot of nerds my age, and my first actual console was a long time coming. I often owned strategy guides for games I didn’t actually have any means to play, I assume because they were technically “books” and I was a big reader, though I’m not sure my parents could really tell me now why they l...