The Crooked Wasteland

Making art is like making a child: You give life to it, but once it is made it is no longer your life to dictate. So make sure it supports itself. ***PSA: No one pays me for my posts, time or insight. I do this as a passionate hobby. This space is MY space.***

[crooked-wasteland]

Notable Posts

How I Grade Media

Goat 2026 is What We Need Right Now

How Themes Write Your Story For You: TADC

TADC Essay: Punishment vs Consequence

This is Why Gooseworx is an Amazing Writer

The Odyssey (2026): The End of The Age of Men

"Un-writing" and How The Circus Ruined Helluva Boss

Stolitz was the Best Part of Helluva Boss

How TADC Poses an Existentialist Critique of Christianity

Hazbin Hotel Rewrite

Hazbin Hotel Liveblogs: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (S2) 1 2 (Discontinued)

Zooble and How TADC Teaches to Grow Beyond Existential Egoism

Beastars Netflix Review: A Spectacular Disaster

My Existential Rejection of Steven Spielberg: Disclosure Day

Abuse in Hazbin Hotel: Moral Theatre and Bankrupt Empathy

Media Literacy 911: TADC

The Existential Threat of Generative AI

America in 2026 and How 60 Years of Art Warned Us

Lilo and Stitch: How Themes Hold a Story Together

Helluva Boss Essay: An SA Survivor's Reading of Stolitz

Helluva Boss Essay: The Anti-Bojack

Existential Authenticity in The Amazing Digital Circus

Why K-Pop Demon Hunters WORKS

Helluva Boss Essay: The Paradox of Good Damage

How the Hellaverse Doesn't "Get" Musicals

Hellaverse Musicals and Diegesis

My Stupid Defense of White Scars in Helluva Boss

Silent Hill Symbolism: Mannequins

Helluva Boss Essay: Oops - Rushing to Catharsis and Dodging Accountability

Sinners (2025): A Preliminary Critical Race Reading

Abuse and Vivienne Medrano

Spare a Penny, Miss Medrano?

Vivziepop and Bojack Horseman: Learning the Wrong Lessons

Helluva Boss Essay: Skipping to the "Good Stuff"

Helluva Boss Essay: Stolitz - Retconned and Ruined

Helluva Boss Essay: The Toxic Romance of Fizz/Ozzie

TADC Critics and How Media Illiteracy Makes People Worse

Sir Pentious: A Case Study of a World View

Helluva Boss Essay: The Spectacle of Mediocrity

Women in Helluva Boss: A Feminist Essay

No, Mission Zero Did Not Fix Stolitz

Long Story Short: Better than Bojack?

[crooked-wasteland]

I’m so sorry for your loss. Always remember you give them the best 13 years of their life as they did for you ❤️

I just can't believe it. The entire last 13 years feel like they are suddenly gone with her.

Thank you for reaching out. I'm just .... Cleaning and waiting for my wife to come home from work. She looks like she's sleeping. Going in and out of hysterics lol.

I loved this cat. I loved her so much my mother used to threaten to kill her or "let her loose" when she was mad at me. I don't even miss her yet. I'm just ... Grief.

[crooked-wasteland]

My cat of 13 years died today from cardiac arrest. I probably won't be around for a while

[crooked-wasteland]

Sam Haft was a music and sound director who couldn't even mix the music in Season 1 competently. Every duet sounded like it was mixed with a pencil sharpener. Vaggie's voice was drowned out and not even complimentary to the music. The lyrics are utter narrative nonsense and don't even rhyme half the time. In Whatever it Takes, he blasted 1.6 dB by pushing the music and both singers to MAX because he wanted it to sound BOMBASTIC instead of fucking directing the singers and writing music that actually FELT BOMBASTIC. This mf is a music director, got the note to make the music swell here, and thought that meant cramming everything in all at once and with absolutely no understanding of leitmotifs, harmonic movement, layering, or arrangement construction.

Which, by the way, is actually how fucking sound-based weapons work. I cannot even listen to the song at the duet portions because it makes me physically nauseous because it is such a fucking trainwreck of throwing everything at the wall and oh no it stuck.

The PROFESSIONAL Broadway Singers were half a count behind the music so he didn't even time the voices and the music together properly ON A COMPUTER. he actors repeatedly complain about recording songs due to the fact that the songs were not written with any consideration for human talent or ability.

If you like garbage, like garbage, stop acting like it needs to be good because you like it. You obviously also enjoy eating the cat shit out of the sandbox. I think that's disgusting, but you do you. No one is saying stop eating the cat shit. I'm saying don't eat cat shit and then act like the victim when I'm disgusted and don't want to talk to you.

[niidsch]

Not seeing many people talk about this on Tumblr, so gonna spread the word myself: Webtoon is going to start using AI for translations and an AI chat bot with comic characters. If you're against this you should delete your account, and if you are publishing on the website, you should consider moving to other alternatives and especially having your own website to host your comic.

Also needless to say that Webtoon can absolutely afford to hire translators, this is just yet another way to not pay the people who are making the company behind Webtoon absurdly rich.

And for the people who might see this as a good decision:

(+ all the environmental damage that AI is causing)

[beriliaa]

[crooked-wasteland]

Bitch, go have your own life lol. You plan on making multiple accounts just to be needy?

[gaydiation-poisoning]

It would kill half the 19-25 year olds online to realize "I can't help it I have trauma" is one of THE quintessential abuser excuses

[gaydiation-poisoning]

Like there is a difference between "My trauma creates impulsive urges and has changed my instinctive reactions to be irrational, I need to relearn shit." vs "I'm traumatized so I Can't Help It and you're not allowed to expect better of me"

[crooked-wasteland]

Wattpad bans smut and now the worst people you know are on my lawn.

[partywithponies]

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

[coolmaycroft]

This is why we need cheesy genres:

We need shallow pulp about adults in an isekai that has cool adventures without deep worldbuilding so adults can use these as steps to a more nunced experience.

We need YA like Artemis Fowl and Percy Jackson that has nuance about elf politics and greek myths so kids can find the nuance they need without reading about sex, violence or marital abuse.

[crooked-wasteland]

Getting an ask that tells me I'm not allowed to have my opinions is wild to me. It's an opinion. You don't have to agree with it, but don't tell me what my opinion should be. I'm not a machine you get to program.

[loredwy]

I cant believe this tweet is how I find out

[would-you-punt-them]

now all the things you guys have told me about american high schools are starting to make sense

[jeaninelatragedia]

holy shit.

[frustratedasatruar]

You're not really supposed to say it this way, because its considered crass, but here in the US children are culturally and legally considered essentially the property of their parents.

Note that its considered more crass to point this out than it is to treat children as property in the first place.

[sophsun1]

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) dir. Peter Jackson

[crooked-wasteland]

Lily orchard has down irreparable damages to people who never watched Steven universe so they just quote her talking points from her video

Honestly. Lily Orchard got famous off making the dumbest arguments against Rebecca Sugar's show that was never about those topics in the first place.

Maybe not the person to base your media literacy on when she both argues that fiction is directly correlated to reality in regards to dark content without ever interrogating context, but also made her own fictional taboos only to have her sister come out and say Lily Orchard molested her.

Because if you're going to morally grandstand, you should source your criticism better, you know? You can't morally grandstand against apples when the argument you are making was coined by an apple.

Even though science has overwhelmingly disproven to connection to violent or taboo media being synonymous with perpetrators. So the argument is not even supported on the basic level. But it makes sense that a predator would assume everyone interested in fictional taboos must be just like themselves instead of capable of separating real desire from fantasy.

Because real predators think fiction must be a form of coping with guilty desire when evidence actually proposes that most people are enjoying fiction without being any sort of perpetrator.

Especially because taboo fantasy also correlates to trauma coping.

[crooked-wasteland]

So, like, as an indigenous queer person who lived through severe child and domestic abuse, when dealing with colonialism or just an abusive family the main way to deal with it is to simply move on, not forgiveness. You just keep being alive. That doesn't mean you don't keep fighting. It means you don't become a perpetual, narcissistic victim.

If you think continuing to live your own life equates forgiveness, you're not living, you're a ghost demanding someone to beg you for forgiveness. They won't. So I guess you're the one who is going to sit and suffer because they aren't suffering. They don't think they did anything wrong.

So how long are you going to wait for a bus that won't ever come?

[crooked-wasteland]

>Rebecca Sugar makes it a point to spare the fascist, genocidal dictator aliens and how they're not actually evil and they suffer zero consequences for their actions other than Steven being kinda disappointed in them

>Deedee becomes a magat and Tom marries a known abuser/pedo

Hmm…

Yeah so one of those is fictional and the diamonds were not at all fascist even a little bit. The diamonds are colonists. Get your virtue signaling right and then ask yourself what colonizing beliefs you still have because, guarantee you, you'll also want to be treated like the Diamonds are, where people allow you to still exist and allow your ignorance to define you more than your malice.

Not only that, but neither of those people are Rebecca Sugar. Weird to be putting responsibility on an unaffiliated person. How do one woman's political beliefs and a man marrying a completely unrelated woman to the project have anything to do with Sugar. Like how fucking much do you hate queer women?

[crooked-wasteland]

My wife: What are the canonical Beer terms?

Me: The deep lore of beer.