Screenshot of Holly Wheeler in stranger things s5. She is a young girl with pale skin and long reddish hair in pigtails. She is wearing a bright yellow, pink, and green sweater and purple patterned overalls. She is warily lying down on a bed with rainbow Brite sheets.

Finally started Stranger Things s5 last night (it’s been a heck of a month, time has been short). And let me just say that I am loving Holly Wheeler’s amazing Xennial representation! I had those exact Rainbow Brite sheets.

Sweater AND soup weather. Seriously the best.

This is going to sound super basic of me but I am so happy it’s sweater weather right now (in California, no less). I adore a crisp day and a cozy sweater so very much.

10/10 concept. Please make this show.

My cats fully endorse this take.

The same people constantly accusing Kamala Harris of “word salad” really voted for this dude.

Cool, maybe we can all figure out which body parts were scanned.

thought they needed to do to survive.

In any case, I would recommend the books Feed, Deadline, and Blackout to anyone who likes a fast paced read full of cool little details (I liked the blood test and hair dye bits, dammit) and can deal if things get super weird In uncomfortable ways. 8/8

The “Newsflesh” version of the world was one in which you had a whole new notion of what was and was not taboo. Just like you had less in the way of mass media, you had fewer shared moral and ethical paradigms. It was all compartmentalized & heavily dependent on what a given group of folks 7/X

that were actually kind of brilliant. She wasn’t writing that relationship as fan service so much as to further emphasize just how much the zombie pandemic and people’s/society’s responses to it (coupled with timelessly unhealthy family dynamics in general) had broken a lot of norms. 6/X

There was one relationship in particular I really, really did not like, even though “technically” it wasn’t as gross as it could have been. And I can see that alone being a reason some people would nope out of the series entirely. But I also think the author was doing some things intentionally 5/X

Another element that I picked up on (which I am realizing tends to be a thread running through this author’s works) was the way horror wasn’t just manifest in the gory reality of zombies, but in how incredibly screwed-up soke of the family/relationship dynamics were. 4/X

The biggest one for me (hopefully not too much of a spoiler, but stop reading now if you’re strict about such things) was the rise to prominence of influencers & independent media over mainstream sources. 3/X

Which I totally understand, given how things have gone during our real world pandemic. It’s also even more fascinating to read a fictional pandemic scenario from over 10 years ago and look at what predictions ended up weirdly accurate. 2/X

Just finished the “Newsflesh” trilogy by Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire’s horror persona). What a wild page-turner of a read. Very cool and unique approach to the zombie concept. I saw an interview where the author said she’d never write such a series post-COVID because it was “too optimistic”. 1/X

I thought this was about Mike Johnson until I saw the picture!

Lately, my favorite coping mechanisms are Stargate, Star Trek (and podcasts about both), and cheese.

Yeah, my partner probably goes 50/50 with avatar gender and has never gotten the vapors over a default character in a game being female?

A small black cat perching on the back of a green chair to lick treat paste from a tube held by her human

Everyone check out how Pearl stands on the back of this chair for treat paste! She is so talented.

Ok so apparently everyone who isn’t running for NY-12 is running for California governor.

also, that em dash is mine from mine own brain. I will never ChatGPT-post.

The people deserve video of his reaction. I bet it’s giving Rumplestiltskin — levitation, red face, smoke shooting out the ears, incoherent babbling about deportation…

The thing you need to remember about Trump is that he likes winners. It’s the inverse of his whole “I like people who don’t get captured” thing.

Plus, he is actually weak against genuine charisma as well as against people who don’t cower before him. Democrats should take several lessons from this.

I realized today that it feels like America is being run by $cientologists. The whole MAGA cult seems to employ the exact same tactics at every level.

A fluffy grey tabby cat relaxing on the back of a couch while being scritched under the chin by her human.

Cora wishes everyone a peaceful Sunday evening and an auspicious Monday, if such a thing is possible.

Disingenuous headline. They’re not “showing” the admin is serious, they’re claiming it with no proof.

Yes! Things are really hard and I know we are all weary and anxious for justice. But defeatism is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s a luxury we cannot afford.

FINALLY!

He says thank you! 😊

This is Brodie, my 16 year old son.