Horror is similar to comedy where it’s not meant to be literal, but allegorical. The two genres have a lot of overlap, often two sides of the same coin. Thus, world building isn’t the point of horror, the same way talking animals getting into whacky adventures in comedy isn’t meant to explore the implications of animals who can communicate verbally with humans and vandalize everything.

Foundational to the genre is the unknown, where a wish-granting-magic stick shouldn’t be a thing that exists. Yet here it is, causing all kinds of suffering and chaos. Just like you shouldn’t be able to make a person out of corpses, yet here a creature with its own thoughts and hopes and dreams was created by Frankenstein. When you start getting too far into the world building and trying to make sense of everything, you are no longer in the horror genre. You’ve created a sci-fi or fantasy film with a central conflict.

Think about a sci-fi or fantasy film and do the reverse: leave things unexplained and unknown. What happens? You get a horror film. Using LotR as an example, imagine if Gandalf doesn’t find out what the ring is or he doesn’t exist. Some weirdo Hobbit has the power to dissappear but not before Ringwraiths show up, kill everyone in Bag End, and take the ring. Why this happens is never explained. It seems this cursed ring attracts evil spirits who kill the wearer for abusing its power to turn invisible.

So yeah. The point of comedy is to tell a joke to make people laugh. The point of horror is to explore our fears to make people recoil. Diving too far into explaining everything is like explaining why the joke is funny, making it not funny.

The .world thread has an Adolf Hitler user and another with lots of upvotes using the R-slur. Who knew anti-communists would turn out to be racist and ableist?

Fascism was so effective it took Germany from being one of the most powerful countries in the world to the 5th. most powerful country in Berlin.

Goddamn Jaime Peck must be furious Sam Seder replaced Michael Brooks and her with this fucking social fascist suckdem. I have no idea what she’s up to, but I hope she is able to protect herself from these Rosa killers.

If I remember right, there’s even another Jew who tells Timon to change his ways because it’s not compatible with their religion.

And I think Lenin himself would argue he was only successful because of stuff tried by Marx and Engles first. Marx, especially, with his experiences at the Paris Commune and then trying to organize back in Germany.

We don’t have that letter in English (as in, we can’t pronounce it), so jinn and djinn are both acceptable because they’re rough approximations. It’s true of a few of our letters in other languages.

I tried watching it for the first time as an adult and turned it off partway through the first episode. It was just ridiculous with its dialog. I thought the live-action Japanese film was okay, though.

Of all the things to criticize about Rome, it’s the…minor plot line of like a single episode featuring Jews living in Rome?

• Akira is a must-watch for any cinephile, period. A lot of CGI techniques were invented during this film’s production, causing it to go wildly overbudget. No Akira means no Jurassic Park or Toy Story.

• Anything by Satoshi Kon. People have already mentioned a some of his works in this thread, like Perfect Blue.

• Anything Studio Ghibli (also mentioned ITT).

Please note I’m heavily biased towards horror and watch a lot of it. So, the horror recommendations:

• Another (2012): A new student encounters a mysterious girl in his class who no one else will acknowledge exists.

• When They Cry (2006): A small country town is plagued by a horrible curse. Warning: extreme violence against children. On the third or fourth episode (I forget which), something very weird is going to happen and you’ll be wondering if there was a mistake. Keep watching, it will make sense.

• School Live! (2015): A group of girls starts the Life Club at their school. Except something isn’t right.

• Flowers of Evil (2019): One day middle school student Saeki impulsively steals his crush’s gym uniform. But before he can correct his mistake and return it, he’s blackmailed by his classmate, Nakamura. Nakamura is an absolute sociopath and she will traumatize anything and anyone around her. She will continue to escalate Saeki’s situation more and more until his life spirals out of control. At what point, however, do you stop being a victim and start becoming an accomplice? Serious SA warning as this series is heavily themed around consent or the lack thereof. It also didn’t get a second season to finish adapting the manga, where things continue to get worse before having its amazing ending.

• The Promised Neverland (2019): An orphanage isn’t what it seems. Season 1 is one of the best animes of all time. Do not watch season 2. Season 1’s ending is perfect.

• From a New World (2012): Students at a magical school discover a terrible secret hidden from the rest of their post-apocalyptic society.

• Shigurui Death Frenzy (2007): Two samurai, one blind and one missing an arm, confront each other in a duel to the death at a tournament hosted by a daimyō gone mad. The series focuses on how their rivalry started and how they got their physical injuries. It’s an unapologetic look at the samurai and the caste system of Japan. Pretty much all of the warnings, however. It gets pretty graphic.

• Erased (2016): Satoru travels back in time to when he was 10 years old to solve the disappearance of his classmate and his mother’s murder.

All of the content warnings for Berserk, though. I’ve seen the movie adaptations and read the entire manga. It’s an amazing story, but one focused on trauma.

Motherfucker they still haven’t identified all the bodies of children killed by members of the SS under Pinochet.

That and Judge Dredd. Event Horizon takes place a while later, after Terra is rebuilt from the nuclear apocalypse but before humanity leaves the Sol system. A lot of horror movies, such as Hellraiser, take place on Terra long before humanity colonizes the stars. Raised by Wolves and The Matrix take place sometime during the Age of Strife.

Yup. I was just pointing out how there were no doubts in 2004 the Iraq War was illegal. Platner joined up after then-secretary Powell confessed the whole thing was a sham. It’s not like he joined up on September 12th. 2001, naively believing the US was a force for good. He joined when everyone knew what was being done to the Middle East was a crime.

China was just celebrating the US with some fireworks in the part of the ocean called the South China Sea. Australia is mad they dried up too much of the Outback and can’t have fireworks because they don’t have a sea of their own.

Iraq. The entirety of Iraq was a war crime. Collin Powell even came out and said there were never weapons of mass destruction and they lied to the UN. He gave that interview with the Guardian early in 2004. Fallujah was in November later that year.

The US lied about WMDs and illegally invaded a country that had neither attacked them or an ally, nor was it at war with any other country. That’s a war crime and why Germany had the Treaty of Versailles placed on it for invading neutral Belgium.

Really activates the almonds how none of this stuff was a deal breaker. Even if he does replace Collins, I still doubt he’d actually do what he says and he’ll just be another John Fetterman/AOCIA.

Oh look everyone, the American nazbols have arrived.

“Mom can I have a Reze body pillow?”

“We have Reze at home.”

The Reze at home: