Haha, right?

For sure! Kick ass score! Trying to show me up, eh? :P

Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t know they were. I’m excited ;D

Yeah, I dabbled a bit with the full game since I own it through itch.io. But never played past the third stage. I’m no stranger towards brutal platformers though, so maybe that gave me a little bit of a boost. I can hold my own with fairly difficult games and have even tried my hand at some Mario Kaizo hacks. That said, I still felt like I was doing a lot worse than I was apparently. It’s also been quite some time since I really took on a challenge of this difficulty, as I have been mostly been playing cozy stuff like TOEM and GNOG lately. I’m really enjoying the change of pace though, it feels good to beat a good challenge like this again. I’m playing through Celeste Classic 2 now, and I’ll be playing the full Celeste soon as well.

Haha, and here I was thinking that I did horribly. I saw someone on a random reddit thread say they did it in 400 and something.

As I was typing this out I rechecked the thread and they we’re playing the full PC version with assist mode on. Apparently the PC version has the original playable within the game at some point. A quick Google search put the average at 1000-1200 or more deaths for the Pico-8 version.

So, damn. That makes me feel pretty awesome lol. Thanks for the kind words, you made my day!

Right on, that’s good on them. I was honestly disappointed to learn that they were deniers years ago, which definitely effected my ability to watch the show afterwards. I’ll have to check out the episode when I can.

Oh, I didn’t realize they’d revisited the gag. Thanks for the head’s up.

Kudos. That got an unexpected, but much needed, hearty chuckle out of me :D

That episode is commonly misunderstood. I too had always thought they were lampooning climate change deniers, but Matt and Trey were actually poking fun of Al Gore and An Inconvient Truth as alarmist. They’ve since apologized for the episode, but it’s wild that it’s so often confused for satirizing the very thing it was mocking. For me I just assumed that Matt and Trey wouldn’t be deniers so it never occured to me until I found out their true intention and now it’s pretty cringy to watch that episode since it’s a lot more obvious. Here’s an article about it:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a25127458/south-park-climate-change-manbearpig-apology-season-22-episode-7/

Excellent! I noticed that there seems to be a lot of UK stuff that is explicitly working-class versus American. Interesting to say the least. It seems like, for whatever reason, it’s a little bit more prevalent in the UK. Maybe it’s just the responses I’ve gotten so far, but I have noticed there seem to be a disproportionate amount.

Parenti, in Blackshirt in Reds, covers this topic excellently. He does not gloss over the flaws and corruptions in the USSR, but he is realistic in giving a fair assessment of their successes in the midst of their failures. A big point being what you mentioned above: the USSR had to continue focusing production towards just being on even footing with the US in terms of defense, to protect against the very real threat of the US overthrowing the government as they were doing in so many other communist countries. At no time during the USSR’s existence were they ever not under attack by some outside force or another (the NAZIs, CIA, multi-national capitalist interests etc). Here’s a good quote talking about the Stalin era and progressive policies during that time:

During the years of Stalin’s reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women’s rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that “socialism didn’t work” is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.

Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti

That’s…gross. But entirely unsurprising. I never knew that there was a neutered version in the US. I actually had to look it up. Wow. Go us. This country really just continues to depress me day after day.

Ken Loach

Thanks! I’ll look into him.

Right on. The small snippet I read was intriguing. I look forward to it.

Ooo, sweet. I enjoyed The Plague. I’ll take a look. Thanks ;)

Haha, thanks. I’m surprised there’s someone out there that isn’t even familiar with Rent in passing. My ex was a theater major and she looooved Rent, but even I had heard of it before that. I’m not sure I could survive watching the movie again. I think seeing a stage production of Rent would have been awesome though, especially if I knew someone in the play. I DO dig the overall perspective of it, from what I do remember of watching it years ago.

Will do, thanks for the reply!

Billy Elliot is one of those films I’d always meant to watch but never seem to finish when I start. I’ll have to seek it out again sometime soon.

It’s been awhile since I watched Firefly, so I can’t recall the show’s perspective on class, if any. I haven’t seen it in years, so maybe I’ll rewatch it. Although, I liked the show, I didn’t feel as strongly about it’s quality as others commonly do. I wonder if it’s worth a watch for me because of that.

Comic recommends are always welcome, I’ll take a look at Our Members.

Thanks for the suggestions ;)

Huh, I hadn’t picked up on that when I watched it. I’ve been meaning to rewatch it when I get the chance. I’ll be sure to keep an eyes out.

Thanks! Those all look pretty interesting. I’ll probably watch Vast of Night over the weekend.