Updates, Birthday Retrospectives, and Existential Crises
How’s it going, beautiful watchers?
I think you guys are overdue for an update on my future plans for the blog. I should start by saying that all the goals I set in my previous update post are still on the table. However, there are currently more immediate goals that I’d like to accomplish first. I have a new idea for a “P.J.’s Ultimate Playlist” entry on an 80s country music hit from an artist who died far too young, and I’m currently working on the next entry in “Cryptids of North America,” focusing on Rhode Island. I’m also still hard at work on Part 1 of the “best animated series of 2023” list. I started watching the last of my April candidates yesterday evening (Oshi no Ko, to be specific), and I have only two entries each for May and June, two of which I’ve already seen. If everything goes according to plan, I should be finished around the beginning of May.
This is fortunate because my birthday is next month, and that’s when I plan to start a new retrospective on a franchise that has been highly nostalgic to me. Last year, I looked back on the novel Watership Down and its various adaptations. This year, however, I plan to look back on a much bigger franchise… one that is 65 million years in the making. My dear watchers, welcome…to the Preston Posits Jurassic Park retrospective!
I recall the time they found those fossilized mosquitoes, and before long, they were cloning DNA. Now I’m being chased by some irate Velociraptors, and believe me, this has been one lousy day!- “Weird Al” Yankovic
I know it’s not unusual for young children to have a “dinosaur phase,” but that phase tends to hit harder than usual when you’re a kid like me who happens to lie on the autism spectrum. The original film ranks alongside Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings as one of my favorites of all time, so I feel it is the perfect franchise to cover for a new retrospective.
Here’s the list of franchise entries I will be covering over the next month and change:
-The original novels by Michael Crichton (I plan to cover both novels in a single article.)
-The original film trilogy (One article for each film)
-The Jurassic World sequel trilogy (Ditto)
-The animated Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous series, as well as its sequel Chaos Theory when it comes out on May 24 (One article for each series)
So, yeah. With nine articles planned for this retrospective, I definitely have my work cut out for me. If I keep to my usual weekly upload schedule, it will likely not be finished until July. It might be longer, though, as my sister is getting married this June, and there’s no telling how that might affect my schedule. Still, I think I have enough passion to see it through.
Circling back to the animated series list, though, something about it has been eating at me for a while now. And to talk about why, I unfortunately have to give my two cents on the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the Israeli “Defence” Force.
I know some may object to my usage of the term “genocide,” who will say that the blockade, bombing, and ground invasion of the strip since the Hamas-led attack on October 7th is entirely justified for an incident that was the deadliest for Jewish people since the Holocaust. Yes, the deaths of 1,143 Israeli citizens, including 36 children, are a tragedy. But you know what’s an even bigger tragedy? The 33,797+ Palestinians who have died in Gaza in the six months since! And before you try to lecture me on sympathizing with “Hamas terrorists,” that death toll includes over 9,000 women and over 14,000 children! What the FUCK is wrong with you people!?
Sorry for losing my cool here (not really), but it’s hard to keep calm when so many people, including the fucking President of the United States, seem content just to let bygones be bygones. And don’t accuse me of being an antisemite. There are plenty of Jewish people, both within Israel and without, who don’t support what the Netanyahu regime is doing to the Palestinian people.
“Okay, Preston, I get it,” you may be asking, “but what does this all have to do with your best animated series list?” Quite a lot, unfortunately, because as recent martyr Aaron Bushnell said before his self-immolation, “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” Sadly, said ruling class includes several places where I’ve been watching the shows that make up the best-of list, including Disney+ and Amazon Prime.
As displayed here in this recent chart from the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement
Of course, the streaming services aren’t the only ones I have a stake in here. I also have an account on DeviantArt, which, in addition to being hosted on the Israeli-owned Wix, is also undergoing a process that I can only describe as “AI gentrification,” with AI artists being embraced with open arms by the site admins, much to the anger and disappointment of longtime users.
But even beyond the issue of potentially profiting off a genocide, many streaming services have also proved in recent years that they cannot be trusted to safeguard our favorite shows and movies. Whether it’s Netflix splitting single 20-episode seasons in two to avoid paying union fees and then canceling the shows anyway, or Disney+ removing movies that have only been on the site for seven weeks while thrusting endless Star Wars series that no one cares about on us, or practically everything that has happened to HBO Max since David Zaslav took over (the Coyote vs. Acme scandal only being the most recent and egregious example), it is abundantly clear that the people running these services are only in it for the money, no matter how many artists and creators they need screw over to get it.
I guess what I’m asking is…is it, maybe, time for me to start watching my favorite shows via…*cough*…alternate means?
Come raise the flag of the fallen! We reign the storm and the seas, and live our lives on the brink of death. WE’RE PIRATES!!! And we are free- Orden Ogan
While the idea of online piracy does appeal to my inner anarchist (full disclosure: I did a bit of high-seas sailing during my teenage years until my younger brother finally convinced our parents to sign up for Netflix), there are a few problems that are holding me back from fully going into “har-har-fiddle-e-dee” mode. For one thing, my brother and his girlfriend are also using the Disney+ account I’m currently paying for, and I don’t know how they’d react if I suddenly canceled it due to my guilty conscience. As I’ve mentioned before, my family is conservative and thus unlikely to be very sympathetic to my pro-Palestinian position. I’ve also heard that pirate sites are unusually susceptible to viruses and malware, which I’m very paranoid about.
Finally, there’s that slight worry about the creators of my favorite shows not getting proper compensation for their work, even though I realize that’s somewhat irrational given how I just went over the various ways that the CEOs running these services are going out of their way to screw creators and animators out of a paycheck. Indeed, some creators, like Infinity Train creator Owen Dennis, have even given fans their blessing to pirate their shows once the big streamers have decided they had no use for them.
I guess the only thing left to do is to turn the question over to you, beautiful watchers. Am I being too paranoid about pirate sites? Are streamers like Disney+, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max just a giant waste of money? And to those in my audience who are seasoned sailors, are the benefits of piracy outweighed by the risks? Leave a comment and let me know! And remember to hold on to your butts because next month, we’re off to Jurassic Park!
I’m afraid those things will harm me ‘cause they sure don’t act like Barney, and they think that I’m their dinner, not their friend. Oh noooooooooooooooo!-Weird Al again
