Month: November 2022

hey you’re like. really passionate about small dogs so. why are Chihuahuas always so angry??? it’s just confusing. why are they so mad?

why-animals-do-the-thing:

shrimpsisbugs:

i fucking love chihuahuas, man. i think there are a few factors involved, but i think the problem first and foremost is how chihuahuas are treated by humans.

chihuahuas are rarely allowed to be real dogs. they are treated like decorations and accessories and stuffed animals and cute little novelties

so not only are they rarely trained or thoughtfully socialized and taught to be comfortable with different things, but their autonomy and sense of personal safety is very often disregarded or intentionally threatened by the people around them

people pick them up with little consideration for the dog’s feelings, manhandle them at will and physically force them to comply with human desires. sometimes people intentionally antagonize them because they think it’s funny – for a while there was a very popular Tik Tok by some twenty-somethings dedicated to harassing and frightening an elderly, disabled chihuahua because he made funny noises when he was upset and uncomfortable.

it only stopped because the dog died.

the people responsible claimed to “love” the dog.

chihuahuas’ attempts to communicate discomfort are almost always ignored. dogs usually start out with relatively subtle body language that most people don’t ever learn to read. they might have the whites of their eyes showing, or yawn and lick their lips, or look away, or pin their ears down, or get tense. and when chihuahuas do this, it is almost always disregarded.

so they learn that polite and subtle communication of their discomfort gets ignored, and they start to escalate in an effort to be understood. they might start to growl or snap or bite. they might learn that the best defense is a good offense, that people who approach them are rude and frightening and the only way to get them to back off is to try and be intimidating.

and a lot of the time even that doesn’t work. because hey, look, the chihuahua is growling. isn’t that funny and cute and nonthreatening

there’s more involved but fundamentally at the end of the day, the issue is that chihuahuas are often profoundly mistreated for their entire little lives, psychologically and physically, with no way to communicate or be understood or have their boundaries and needs respected.

and as much as people have made ~aggressive chihuahuas~ into a funney meme, i think that’s fucking tragic.

i’d want to bite people too.

This is spot on. If you learn that the only way you’re going to get any bodily autonomy is to use your teeth, you’re going to be very willing to bite. If you’re never listened to when you say “no” to something without growling and snapping, that’s going to be your go-to.

Because little dogs can’t do the same level of physical harm as bigger dogs, people tend to laugh off their very genuine distress and anger. It’s absolutely not okay, and it’s way too popular on social media.

My rule of thumb is always that if you wouldn’t do something with a 75lb dog, you shouldn’t do it with a 5lb one. And it’s never too late to start! Even littles that you’ve had forever can benefit from being allowed more voluntary engagement in their world, more choices to consent to things, and more freedom to say no.

2percentsugar:

2percentsugar:

i wish all affluent people who are in college and make nonstop jokes about being poor a very understand that poverty is not a temporary condition

if you are poor for four years and know the exact date at which it will end, you have not experienced poverty.

this is the same reason that “politicians should have to live a month on minimum wage to see what it’s like” doesn’t work. poverty is a lack of resources beyond monetary ones. it’s not having family members you can borrow money from. it’s not having a place to stay if you were outdoors for a bit. it’s not having the nice kitchen equipement with which you could make food more cheaply. it’s having to buy cheaper things which will break sooner because you can’t afford the better ones.

the bit about knowing the end date is not a semantic point to make me feel better. if you know you’ll be out of this soon, it enables you to make choices you otherwise couldn’t. you can splurge on pizza delivery or spend half your paycheck on good shoes because it isn’t real. if a crisis comes, the irreality of this situation allows you to deal with it. you can ask your parents for money, you can stay with someone for a while. impoverished people can’t.

i think a lot of times otherwise progressive people come out of college more classist because they think they know what it’s like to be poor now, and they made the right choices, so why doesn’t everyone else? you weren’t, and you didn’t. poverty is more than that.

New Fiction 2022 – October

Short Stories & Chapters

Comic Shorts & Single Issues

Video & Electronic Games

Movies

TV Episodes

TV Series

New Horror 2022 – Day 31

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“A Good Student” by Nuzo Onoh (2014)
“Bit by slow bit, his body started to disintegrate like fluffy flakes of white cotton.”

I read a story from this book every year, and they are always memorable. Onoh’s stories present such a unique cultural viewpoint that it provides new takes on stories of spirits and ghouls. Another reminder to get my head out of America’s and Western Europe’s ass.

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Dracula Daily – “October” by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)
“The men were scared every time we turned our electric lamp on them, and fell on their knees and prayed.”

I’ve been reading Dracula Daily, well, daily since the beginning, and it ends next month. What a journey. I’d never read it before so I’ve definitely not had the typical reading experience. All the travel stuff this month reminds me most of playing the Fury of Dracula board game, zipping around Europe to hunt down the children of the night. As far as the reading, October was the most suspenseful month thus far as the protagonists chased Dracula out of London and pursued him into the east, then are forced to wait and see where he’ll turn up. I’m not actually sure how this is going to end since the 1992 movie adaptation has been all I knew about Dracula proper for a long time and it turns out is not too faithful to the actual novel written by Bram Stoker. And I suppose neither is this chronological reading, but at least this gets through the original text.

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“The End of All Things” by Natalie Leif & Elaine Well (2014)
“I’ll look at the lines myself.”

I wasn’t quite sure of the message here, and it’s probably a sign of a good story that I found it very compelling but wanted more. The ending evokes a sense of inevitable collapse beneath the weight of the world, that we are all inextricably linked to an entity we cannot escape.

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Darkstalkers 3 (aka Vampire Savior) dev. Capcom (1997)
“Let’s stick together until I’m full, shall we?”

Take Street Fighter and throw in supernatural and sci-fi horror figures, and that’s this game. Each of the 18 characters gets their own little arc and ending through the arcade mode, and while I’m sure most people are more interested in the multiplayer aspect, I always found the single player mode an interesting part of these fighting games. This is another instance in which I realize that while I never considered myself a horror fan when I was younger, I was absolutely in for monsters and the supernatural.

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Amer dir. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani (2009)
"Can’t you see she’s hungry?”

This was a doozy and a strange movie to end the month. Hardly any dialogue and fairly interpretive, it’s also a sharp homage to giallo horror, which I’m not especially versed in. But part of the reason I take on these movie-a-day projects is to check out new works and be challenged, so I’m glad I did. The horror here is in confronting the self, staring inward into the abyss from which there is no escape.

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The Simpsons – "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII” (2022)
“If we want to escape with our delusions of being alive, we have to fight.”

I enjoyed this year’s Treehouse of Horror, even if it was fairly light on comedy. But the comedy in recent years can sometimes be full of some real groaners, so perhaps I just welcome an acceptance by the writers that jokes every other second isn’t their strong suit. The first two segments are straightforward retellings of The Babadook and Death Note (the latter also animated in anime style), but the third segment was especially meta and weird, even as a simple parody of Westworld. That clicked with me because it’s as meta as The Simpsons Game, which I’ve written about before from my perspective of working on the game. That introspective angle also makes it the darkest segment, asking the audience to examine pop culture today and the way we treat the characters in our favorite media.

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Bob’s Burgers – "Apple Gore-chard! (But Not Gory)” (2022)


“Everyone wants a piece of you. Sometimes as a sacrifice to the gods.”

This show’s dedication to producing a Halloween show every year is admirable. The episodes are always great, though in recent years they’ve moved away from Halloween itself as the central theme in favor of other spooky familial shenanigans. Louise’s exploration of the nature of popularity was a poignant thread.

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Castlevania – Seasons 3 & 4 (2020-2021)


“Thank you for my second life. I intend to use it well and make wonderful new dreams of it.“

I’d watched the first two seasons some time ago, and waited until the show was complete to catch the rest. While the arc of the first two seasons that were focused on Dracula felt complete, these latter two seasons were more of an extended epilogue, exploring these characters in the wake of defeating a great foe. As a result, there isn’t the same satisfying arc, just a series of interesting encounters and meditations on forming new lives and relationships. It feels like a short story anthology that follows the novel. Reflecting on it, I’d say it’s just the thing to round out the month, some breathy autumnal monologues punctuated by decadent battle sequences.