I have about 10 freesia corms that are about 2+ years old that just hung out in the garage with my extra plant pots and what nots. The 5 or so I planted in a pot never grew. I generally have a green thumb, so I'm not sure if they are duds. Are these too old to even try again? I've got seed heating mats and mini indoor greenhouses with full spectrum lights, too, so that may help? Or should I not bother?
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Happy first Friday of June, my friends! :) And welcome back to this weekly mobile gaming recommendation thread based on some of the most interesting games I played and that were covered on MiniReview this week. I hope you'll enjoy the read.
Support these posts (and YouTube content + development of MiniReview) on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NimbleThor <3
This episode includes an amazing adventure flying game, a cute polished puzzle game, and old school action arcade game, a fun Brotato alternative, and an indie tower defense real-time strategy game.
New to these posts? Check out the first one from 178 weeks ago here.

Let's get to the games:

Laya's Horizon [Game Size: 546 MB] (Netflix-only)

Genre: Adventure / Casual / Flying - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by NimbleThor:
Laya’s Horizon is a fantastic 3D adventure flying game where we explore a large island, participate in mini-games, and complete quests – all by gliding from mountaintops using the cape on our back.
Starting at the top of a mountain, we tap to launch ourselves into a glide across a completely open game world. Scattered across the island are NPCs with quests or mini-games, airstreams that provide an uplift so we can glide further, and lots of hidden secrets.
The mini-games range from flying under bridges or close to threes without hitting any obstacles, to racing against NPC gliders. Bust most importantly, gliding around the island just feels amazing – especially when going fast. Although the core gameplay is different, it has a bit of that same feel as flying in “Sky: Children of the Light”.
Despite the many challenging quests, however, the gameplay feels more like a relaxing free-roam experience than something you’re meant to complete as fast as possible.
A few hours into the game, we also discover new mountain tops to launch from, and better capes with different advantages, which allows us to reach new areas of the map.
Laya’s Horizon is made by the developers of Alto’s Adventure, which shows in the game’s atmospheric art style and overall feel. Combined with the music, it creates a highly immersive experience.
The controls may seem daunting at first, but I quickly got the hang of them, and after an hour or two, they start to feel natural.
The biggest downside is that the game requires a beefy phone to run properly. Hopefully, it also expands with more islands down the road.
Laya’s Horizon is a premium game that can only be played with a Netflix subscription. If you already have Netflix, it’s a must-try for anyone fond of casual adventure games.
NOTE: if you don't have Netflix, it's not worth buying the subscription if you only plan on playing Laya’s Horizon.
App Store: Here

Where's Samantha? [Total Game Size: 310 MB] (Free)

Genre: Platform / Puzzle - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Some
tl;dr review by AlexSem:
Where's Samantha? is a beautiful and clever physics-based puzzle platformer that tells a romantic story of two living pieces of fabric who brave increasingly dangerous challenges in order to eventually reunite.
The game takes place in a surreal and colorful textile world full of gaps, springs, levers, buttons, gates, moving platforms, and other interactive objects. There are also plenty of dangerous traps that we need to overcome, including spike pits, rotating saw blades, shooting cannons, and even laser turrets.
Starting as an easy "walk in the park", the game gradually turns into a deadly obstacle course that requires some serious platforming skills to survive.
Throughout our journey, we can make use of an unusual gameplay mechanic that allows our character to split into two, or even three separate pieces of fabric that we can then operate independently. This enables us to solve complex puzzles that involve interacting with multiple remote objects simultaneously.
What’s more, our weight and physics change when splitting up, which means we can apply a large force to doors and platforms when playing as a single character, or split up so we can jump higher to get over obstacles.
What I like the most about the game is its amazing visual style, where every item we see and interact with is hand-drawn to resemble a real-world physical object. Add to this the game’s atmospheric music, crisp sound effects, responsive controls, fluid animations, and an absolutely amazing voice-over narration by an award-winning actor – and you have yourself one of the most aesthetically pleasing experiences you can hope for from a mobile game.
Where's Samantha? shows occasional ads, with a $0.99 to disable them and a $3.99 iAP to unlock the full game.
It's rare to find such a high-quality game on mobile, so if you enjoy puzzles and platformers, I can easily recommend checking it out.
App Store: Here

Retro City Rampage DX [Game Size: 29 MB] ($4.99)

Genre: Action / Arcade - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by AlexSem:
Retro City Rampage DX is an old-school racing and shooting arcade game that draws heavy inspiration from the famous Grand Theft Auto series. It features lots of pixelated violence, energetic 8-bit soundtracks, hectic action, and tons of references to movies and video games of the past.
Playing as a henchman for a powerful crime lord who is robbing yet another bank, we quickly find ourselves dragged into a dangerous cascade of events that only get weirder when time-traveling and other ridiculous sci-fi elements get introduced.
I personally stopped paying attention to the story after a while, as it mostly served as a background for all the crazy events taking place, and as an excuse to reference endless iconic characters from popular franchises.
Just like in GTA, there’s a lot happening very quickly - shooting, racing, fighting, stealing vehicles, robbing banks, chasing the police, participating in minigames, and much much more. The game doesn’t restrict itself to a specific genre, instead just mashing together various elements from all the retro hits of the past. And it somehow actually works.
If we get bored by the fast-paced story mode, we can freely roam the city to do whatever we want, or hone our skills in various arcade challenges.
Unfortunately, this mobile port of the game isn’t perfect. Everything looks too tiny on small screens, and the touch controls aren’t comfortable when we need to react ultra-quickly. So it’s highly recommended to use a Bluetooth controller.
Retro City Rampage DX is a premium game that costs $4.99 on iOS. It’s a great tribute to the classic games of the past, and it succeeds at inducing a deep level of nostalgia while providing the exact type of highly entertaining gameplay experience seasoned gamers grew up with.
App Store: Here

Pickle Pete: Survivor [Game Size: 248 MB] (Free)

Genre: Arcade / Bullet-Hell - Offline
Orientation: Portrait + some Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by NimbleThor:
Pickle Pete is a reverse bullet-hell roguelike that combines the over-the-top chaotic gameplay of Brotato with the permanent character progression of Archero for a surprisingly fun gameplay experience.
The objective is to survive 10 time-limited waves of enemy attacks, return home, and then continue to the next chapter. During each wave, we control our pickle character with a large joystick while it auto-shoots at any enemies in range.
After every wave, we get to first pick one of three random stat-boosts if we leveled up during the wave, and then spend the pickles we’ve collected on buying weapons and items. Just like in Brotato, we can equip six weapons at a time, which quickly makes the gameplay chaotically fun.
If we get two of the same item, we can even merge them to increase the rarity, which makes it a lot stronger. I found the weapons to be decently diverse, and it’s entertaining to experiment with everything from snipers to magic wands, anvils, turrets, and drones.
After defeating the boss in wave 10, we receive gold and permanent items. In-between runs, we equip and upgrade these items to grow stronger, and buy stat boosts. All this permanent progression makes the game feel slightly more rewarding than Brotato.
Playing normal runs requires energy that we eventually run out of. Thankfully, the game also features a daily mission game mode, a competitive endless mode, and several challenge modes that are almost entire games on their own. Most of these don’t require any energy.
The art and animations are silly but neat, and I found it particularly nice that we can see where an enemy is about to spawn.
Pickle Pete monetizes via incentivized ads to revive, receive extra gold, or refresh the shop. There are also iAPs for items and a paid battle pass, but none of this is needed to progress at a decent pace.
App Store: Here

Nanuleu (Game Size: 59 MB] ($2.99)

Genre: Tower Defense / Strategy / Indie - Offline
Orientation: Portrait
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by AlexSem:
Nanuleu is an area control real-time strategy game where we expand our territory, accumulate resources, and place defenses to repel the enemy onslaught until we can launch an effective counterattack.
We play on a randomly generated square grid where certain tiles contain valuable resource deposits such as minerals and water. Starting at the center, we spend resources to build various nodes adjacent to the tiles we already occupy.
Cheap root nodes serve as roads that expand our network, while more expensive extractors can only be placed on deposit tiles to increase resource production. Our objective is to reach several distant tiles on the map and build special nodes there.
As time goes by, enemy camps start to appear in the corners of the map. These spawn troops that attack our nodes, and to oppose them, we must place defense towers that fire projectiles. Once we occupy all the special tiles, we get access to our own troop factories so we can produce units that destroy the enemy spawns. Getting rid of all the enemies is the ultimate goal of the game.
The strategy revolves around carefully balancing our expansion and resource production while racing against the ever-growing enemy forces. If we fail to occupy the deposits, we may not be able to produce enough towers in time, but a larger territory is also harder to control and requires more resources for towers. I found this balancing to be quite challenging and unforgiving, which highly contrasts the game's seemingly casual art style.
Nanuleu is a $2.99 premium game without ads or iAPs. Despite being rather simple and repetitive, it still provides an entertaining and unique experience for fans of real-time strategy and tower defense games.
App Store: Here
Special thanks to the Patreon Producers "marquisdan", "Lost Vault", "Farm RPG", and "Mohaimen" who help make these posts possible through their Patreon support <3
Google Sheet of all games I've played so far (searchable and filter-able): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bf0OxtVxrboZqyEh01AxJYUUqHm8tEfh-Lx-SugcrzY/edit?usp=sharing
TL;DR Video Summary (with gameplay) of last week's games: https://youtu.be/ED1TnAyhKko
Episode 161 Episode 162 Episode 163 Episode 164 Episode 165 Episode 166 Episode 167 Episode 168 Episode 169 Episode 170 Episode 171 Episode 172 Episode 173 Episode 174 Episode 175 Episode 176 Episode 177

Happy first Friday of June, my friends! :) And welcome back to this weekly mobile gaming recommendation thread based on some of the most interesting games I played and that were covered on MiniReview this week. I hope you'll enjoy the read.
Support these posts (and YouTube content + development of MiniReview) on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NimbleThor <3
This episode includes an amazing adventure flying game, a cute polished puzzle game, and old school action arcade game, a fun Brotato alternative, and an indie tower defense real-time strategy game.
New to these posts? Check out the first one from 265 weeks ago here.

Let's get to the games:

Laya's Horizon [Game Size: 546 MB] (Netflix-only)

Genre: Adventure / Casual / Flying - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by NimbleThor:
Laya’s Horizon is a fantastic 3D adventure flying game where we explore a large island, participate in mini-games, and complete quests – all by gliding from mountaintops using the cape on our back.
Starting at the top of a mountain, we tap to launch ourselves into a glide across a completely open game world. Scattered across the island are NPCs with quests or mini-games, airstreams that provide an uplift so we can glide further, and lots of hidden secrets.
The mini-games range from flying under bridges or close to threes without hitting any obstacles, to racing against NPC gliders. Bust most importantly, gliding around the island just feels amazing – especially when going fast. Although the core gameplay is different, it has a bit of that same feel as flying in “Sky: Children of the Light”.
Despite the many challenging quests, however, the gameplay feels more like a relaxing free-roam experience than something you’re meant to complete as fast as possible.
A few hours into the game, we also discover new mountain tops to launch from, and better capes with different advantages, which allows us to reach new areas of the map.
Laya’s Horizon is made by the developers of Alto’s Adventure, which shows in the game’s atmospheric art style and overall feel. Combined with the music, it creates a highly immersive experience.
The controls may seem daunting at first, but I quickly got the hang of them, and after an hour or two, they start to feel natural.
The biggest downside is that the game requires a beefy phone to run properly. Hopefully, it also expands with more islands down the road.
Laya’s Horizon is a premium game that can only be played with a Netflix subscription. If you already have Netflix, it’s a must-try for anyone fond of casual adventure games.
NOTE: if you don't have Netflix, it's not worth buying the subscription if you only plan on playing Laya’s Horizon.
Check it out on Google Play: Here
Check it out on MiniReview:: Here

Where's Samantha? [Total Game Size: 310 MB] (Free)

Genre: Platform / Puzzle - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Some
tl;dr review by AlexSem:
Where's Samantha? is a beautiful and clever physics-based puzzle platformer that tells a romantic story of two living pieces of fabric who brave increasingly dangerous challenges in order to eventually reunite.
The game takes place in a surreal and colorful textile world full of gaps, springs, levers, buttons, gates, moving platforms, and other interactive objects. There are also plenty of dangerous traps that we need to overcome, including spike pits, rotating saw blades, shooting cannons, and even laser turrets.
Starting as an easy "walk in the park", the game gradually turns into a deadly obstacle course that requires some serious platforming skills to survive.
Throughout our journey, we can make use of an unusual gameplay mechanic that allows our character to split into two, or even three separate pieces of fabric that we can then operate independently. This enables us to solve complex puzzles that involve interacting with multiple remote objects simultaneously.
What’s more, our weight and physics change when splitting up, which means we can apply a large force to doors and platforms when playing as a single character, or split up so we can jump higher to get over obstacles.
What I like the most about the game is its amazing visual style, where every item we see and interact with is hand-drawn to resemble a real-world physical object. Add to this the game’s atmospheric music, crisp sound effects, responsive controls, fluid animations, and an absolutely amazing voice-over narration by an award-winning actor – and you have yourself one of the most aesthetically pleasing experiences you can hope for from a mobile game.
Where's Samantha? claims to show occasional ads, with a $0.99 to disable them and a $3.99 iAP to unlock the full game, but after finishing all 48 levels, I haven't encountered a single ad nor been asked to pay.
It's rare to find such a high-quality game on mobile, so if you enjoy puzzles and platformers, I can easily recommend checking it out.
Check it out on Google Play: Here
Check it out on MiniReview:: Here

Retro City Rampage DX [Game Size: 29 MB] ($2.99)

Genre: Action / Arcade - Offline
Orientation: Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by AlexSem:
Retro City Rampage DX is an old-school racing and shooting arcade game that draws heavy inspiration from the famous Grand Theft Auto series. It features lots of pixelated violence, energetic 8-bit soundtracks, hectic action, and tons of references to movies and video games of the past.
Playing as a henchman for a powerful crime lord who is robbing yet another bank, we quickly find ourselves dragged into a dangerous cascade of events that only get weirder when time-traveling and other ridiculous sci-fi elements get introduced.
I personally stopped paying attention to the story after a while, as it mostly served as a background for all the crazy events taking place, and as an excuse to reference endless iconic characters from popular franchises.
Just like in GTA, there’s a lot happening very quickly - shooting, racing, fighting, stealing vehicles, robbing banks, chasing the police, participating in minigames, and much much more. The game doesn’t restrict itself to a specific genre, instead just mashing together various elements from all the retro hits of the past. And it somehow actually works.
If we get bored by the fast-paced story mode, we can freely roam the city to do whatever we want, or hone our skills in various arcade challenges.
Unfortunately, this mobile port of the game isn’t perfect. Everything looks too tiny on small screens, and the touch controls aren’t comfortable when we need to react ultra-quickly. So it’s highly recommended to use a Bluetooth controller.
Retro City Rampage DX is a premium game that costs $2.99 on Android. It’s a great tribute to the classic games of the past, and it succeeds at inducing a deep level of nostalgia while providing the exact type of highly entertaining gameplay experience seasoned gamers grew up with.
Check it out on Google Play: Here
Check it out on MiniReview:: Here

Pickle Pete: Survivor [Game Size: 248 MB] (Free)

Genre: Arcade / Bullet-Hell - Offline
Orientation: Portrait + some Landscape
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by NimbleThor:
Pickle Pete is a reverse bullet-hell roguelike that combines the over-the-top chaotic gameplay of Brotato with the permanent character progression of Archero for a surprisingly fun gameplay experience.
The objective is to survive 10 time-limited waves of enemy attacks, return home, and then continue to the next chapter. During each wave, we control our pickle character with a large joystick while it auto-shoots at any enemies in range.
After every wave, we get to first pick one of three random stat-boosts if we leveled up during the wave, and then spend the pickles we’ve collected on buying weapons and items. Just like in Brotato, we can equip six weapons at a time, which quickly makes the gameplay chaotically fun.
If we get two of the same item, we can even merge them to increase the rarity, which makes it a lot stronger. I found the weapons to be decently diverse, and it’s entertaining to experiment with everything from snipers to magic wands, anvils, turrets, and drones.
After defeating the boss in wave 10, we receive gold and permanent items. In-between runs, we equip and upgrade these items to grow stronger, and buy stat boosts. All this permanent progression makes the game feel slightly more rewarding than Brotato.
Playing normal runs requires energy that we eventually run out of. Thankfully, the game also features a daily mission game mode, a competitive endless mode, and several challenge modes that are almost entire games on their own. Most of these don’t require any energy.
The art and animations are silly but neat, and I found it particularly nice that we can see where an enemy is about to spawn.
Pickle Pete monetizes via incentivized ads to revive, receive extra gold, or refresh the shop. There are also iAPs for items and a paid battle pass, but none of this is needed to progress at a decent pace.
Check it out on Google Play: Here
Check it out on MiniReview:: Here

Nanuleu (Game Size: 59 MB] ($2.99)

Genre: Tower Defense / Strategy / Indie - Offline
Orientation: Portrait
Required Attention: Full
tl;dr review by AlexSem:
Nanuleu is an area control real-time strategy game where we expand our territory, accumulate resources, and place defenses to repel the enemy onslaught until we can launch an effective counterattack.
We play on a randomly generated square grid where certain tiles contain valuable resource deposits such as minerals and water. Starting at the center, we spend resources to build various nodes adjacent to the tiles we already occupy.
Cheap root nodes serve as roads that expand our network, while more expensive extractors can only be placed on deposit tiles to increase resource production. Our objective is to reach several distant tiles on the map and build special nodes there.
As time goes by, enemy camps start to appear in the corners of the map. These spawn troops that attack our nodes, and to oppose them, we must place defense towers that fire projectiles. Once we occupy all the special tiles, we get access to our own troop factories so we can produce units that destroy the enemy spawns. Getting rid of all the enemies is the ultimate goal of the game.
The strategy revolves around carefully balancing our expansion and resource production while racing against the ever-growing enemy forces. If we fail to occupy the deposits, we may not be able to produce enough towers in time, but a larger territory is also harder to control and requires more resources for towers. I found this balancing to be quite challenging and unforgiving, which highly contrasts the game's seemingly casual art style.
Nanuleu is a $2.99 premium game without ads or iAPs. Despite being rather simple and repetitive, it still provides an entertaining and unique experience for fans of real-time strategy and tower defense games.
Check it out on Google Play: Here
Check it out on MiniReview:: Here
NEW: Sort + filter reviews and games I've played (and more) in my app MiniReview: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=minireview.best.android.games.reviews
Special thanks to the Patreon Producers "marquisdan", "Lost Vault", "Farm RPG", and "Mohaimen" who help make these posts possible through their Patreon support <3
Episode 248 Episode 249 Episode 251 Episode 252 Episode 253 Episode 254 Episode 255 Episode 256 Episode 257 Episode 258 Episode 259 Episode 260 Episode 261 Episode 262 Episode 263 Episode 264

Part 2
​
Recently, I have been hit by a writing bug for a story I’m working on, where the entire thing will be a combination of Warehouse 13 and Kingdom Hearts. I want the story to be a critique of both how postmodernism functions and how it destroys contemporary culture by trying to subvert that which works and that which people enjoy. In order for me to write this story, I am required to study both postmodernism and satire of postmodernism, which has strangely led me to a little cartoon from the middle of the 2000s known as Drawn Together.
It ran for 3 seasons, had a direct-to-DVD movie, and vanished from the face of the Earth after that. Nobody dares to mention it and yet there are tons of youtube clips of it that are filled with praise in the comments. People love the show, yet nobody can mention its name without social backlash from the woke left. Why is that? Well, let’s get into what the show even is to begin with.
Like every chick who dresses as Harley Quinn for Halloween, it has some severe issues that are treated as normal.
Postmodernism was already popular by the time we hit the 2000s, and by this time we have had postmodernist media for about 40 years. An entire generation worth of rejecting modernism. With this, we gained a lot of different media styles and new genres. The internet was growing into something capable of creating flash cartoons, movies like Fredy Got Fingered popularized shock comedy and neo dada, we started to have shock jocks take over the airwaves with uncensored satellite radio, and soap operas for the ladies were being replaced with reality TV.
Postmodernism allows for a blending of media and real life to create a hyper reality where we can’t see where media begins and reality ends. Media is part of our lives, all day every day, in this highly connected and social media focused postmodernist era. Even now, we wake up to our pop music alarm clock that holds notifications to our social media and the only way to escape media is to leave society and never read anything. That’s impossible for most of us, so we’re stuck in this hyper reality where we’re always watching others and we ourselves are always being watched. We’re at a point in history where people can become popular by just filming themselves making a goofy sound, vomiting, or taking off their clothes.
Usually it’s all three.
This should concern everyone, yet we tend to embrace the absurd reality that is postmodernism and reality tv. Despite common belief, reality TV began with Candid Camera, a show from 1948 where people would be filmed while being at the butt end of a prank. This kind of filming was a look into how real people provide real reactions to things when they aren’t expecting certain situations, which is actually in relation to the neorealism film movement that was inspired by the poetic realism french film movement. We enjoy seeing pranks being done because we get to see a real person provide real emotion and it’s no different than seeing a fight break out in real life, or seeing a car crash. It’s that train wreck mentality that keeps us glued to the scene as shit gets real.
Or was it the shit that glues us to the train as our real mentality gets wrecked?
It’s the same reason we love to see game shows and court shows and Jerry Springer. Add in some sexual exploitation like busty Ukranians and you have Naked Funny, which is a show people search for without caring about any words being said, since it’s a show with zero dialogue but plenty of mouth watering mammaries. Have the exploitation be where people are horrifically injured or do something sensational, and you have Jackass. Have a bunch of people pretend to be outraged and engage in scripted events while living in a single house, and you have The Real World.
That’s right: it’s a show with fake situations and it’s called The Real World.
This type of “reality” TV caused a massive issue in media because it allowed incredibly fake situations to pass as real, and there was no way to counter it because people were convinced it’s real. Just like professional wrestling, just like any show featuring a magician and a paid audience, just like any porno, there is a mix of real things and fake things that create this ambiguous state of hyper reality. Yes, a person can actually be hit by a chair or a sledgehammer, but there’s no way someone is going to be trying to win a match by holding their hand over the head of the sledgehammer and lightly tapping the other guy with it. Obviously, they don’t want to hit their co-worker, unless they’re in a porn shoot with a white woman. That’s when it’s fair game.
Postmodernism is a term that postmodernists try to avoid defining, because of the main doctrine of postmodernism: there is no such thing as a truth that can be verified by human experience. This means that anything being stated must be an opinion and thus everything being stated is completely disconnected from one another. A postmodernist is unable to make a clear and definitive statement that is true, because it goes against their doctrine. Everything must be vague and open-ended. Everyone has an equally valid interpretation. With that kind of mentality, art can be anything we want to call art. Rules are there to be broken, especially if they are rules of a broadcasting network. The R rating, the X rating, the unrated, these are products of postmodernism, due to the intention to break rules.
Subjectivity, blurring of genres, juxtaposition, playfulness, skepticism of a grand narrative, intertextuality, irony, pastiche, appropriation; all of these things are what makes postmodernism appealing to the masses. There is no desire to make something good, so the goal is to do something else, like be blindly entertaining or blindly propagandist. There is so much art before postmodernism and so much established through modernism, like science, that the goal of the postmodernist is to deconstruct all of that and make it feel like none of it matters.
Despite all of the deconstructionism and subversion that comes with postmodernism, media still has to appeal to an audience, and an audience reacts well to archetypes. We don’t know who to cheer for if we don’t know who is the heel and who is the good guy. There can’t be drama if there isn’t some red haired succubus or pampered shrew to throw a wrench in the circle of hotties. And at the same time, we can’t have all of them being that type of person, or else there’s nobody to root for. In the most ironic way possible, postmodernism is required to appeal to archetypes even more than modernism, due to the demand for audience retention and interaction.
Every reality show had to have at least one of every archetype, but remember: it’s totally real, everyone. It just so happened that there’s only one sneaky bitch and there’s only one cool guy and there’s only one innocent girl and there’s only one slacker. It was by random, totally not on purpose, and you’re crazy if you think producers are controlling the environment of these shows in any way. Same goes for dating shows like Next. It’s obvious that these people with their one liners and bad acting are being honest with all of us.
If you didn’t get it by now: I’m being sarcastic, these shows are faker than lady boy tits and the apologies from Bud Light for advertising with such fake tits. And yet, people can’t stop watching these pointless shows. Even I enjoy it, because of how dumb it is. A big part of my life after school was relaxing late at night with MTV and watching stupid reality tv shows. Even respectable ones like Cops were dumb because the entire show was about police officers finding people breaking the law. The entertainment comes from people ruining their day or their entire life with one dumb act after another.
You’re probably wondering: What does any of this have to do with Drawn Together?
Well, imagine all of these reality shows mixed into a cartoon and then each cartoon archetype is from a different type of cartoon. That’s Drawn Together, and the show gets more insane from that point on. The eras of cartoons are represented by the cast members who are to live in one house, as a satire of things like The Real World and as parody of cartoon archetypes. You have Princess Clara(a parody of the Disney Princess), Foxxy(a parody of 70s mystery solving cartoons like Scooby-doo), Xandir(a parody of 80s Nintendo and action cartoons), Wooldoor(a parody of 90s style Nickelodeon shows like Spongebob), Ling-Ling (a parody of anime like Pokemon), Spanky(a parody of internet cartoons from the early 2000s), Toot(a parody of 1930s black and white cartoons like Betty Boop and Popeye), and Captain Hero (a parody of 90s superhero cartoons like Batman Animated Series and Animated Superman).
These character types are all based on their known stereotypes when it comes to appearance, with their appearances never really mixing since these are all different types of cartoons from different styles. You never see a Pikachu with a Batman, or a human unmasker talk to a video game character, or a human princess from a fairy tale talk to a farting pig from the internet. These things never happen in their environment because these things don’t mix. Then the show puts all of these unrelatable characters into a single house to provide random challenges in the same way reality tv does in order to juxtapose the genres.
The art styles also are juxtaposed. Captain hero is drawn with a square jaw, while Toot is drawn incredibly circular and with a giant head. Woldor has giant white eyes while Foxxy only has pupils. Xandir and Claira are drawn rather similar, but even they have their differences with colors and the thickness of the outline. To the untrained eye, these are easy to miss, but to the artist, these are great homages to the very style something is drawn in. An important part to note is that these are all based on other things and are meant to represent them as symbols. There’s no reason for any of this, yet the show does it anyway.
This is what postmodernism is all about: doing things for the sake of doing it. Juxtaposition is a big part of postmodernism. Blending genres and mixing them around is a big part of postmodernism. Subverting tropes to claim originality is a big part of postmodernism. Non-sequitur is a big part of postmodernism. This entire show is one of the most postmodernist things you can find out there and I love everything about it.
You might be thinking “Is Erwin sick? He talks day and night about how postmodernism sucks and then says he loves Drawn Together. Is this an imposter?!”No, it’s me. I’m simply able to understand the purpose of the show, and I love the meta attempt in all of it: the show is a postmodernist attack on… postmodernism. Everything in the show is designed to be a massive middle finger to how postmodernism functions, by being the dysfunctional postmodernist mess it is. From how meaningless the challenges are, to how characters can never die all the way, to how 4th wall jokes stop the show, to how there is a mundane message tacked on at the very end. Everything in this show is a jab at postmodernism, but at the cost of the show’s own integrity.
In the story I’m working on, I would be required to present postmodernism in it so that I can critique it. But, if my entire story revolves around only that, then I would be presenting postmodernism the entire time, which means I can’t separate the thing that I’m attacking from my work, just how a story about the evils of racism would have to feature a racist. Postmodernists attacking postmodernists is the same as a racist saying “racism is fine, but only in the way I do it.”
But is all postmodernism really the same? The show is hated now, after all, right?
Yes, it’s hated now, because it(ironically) went against the grand narrative that postmodernists currently hold, but it was part of the narrative that was held during the early 2000s. Barely 20 years ago, less than half of a generation, millennials were being raised by exploitation. I know that the postmodernists hate it when I use this word to describe nearly all of postmodernism, but by definition, it’s exploitation. You can blame the 80s for this, because once home media became popular, we had movies that went straight to VHS and then later DVDs that were able to push the envelope.
That’s what postmodernism started as: a way to push the envelope.
South Park and Simpsons didn’t do things that were part of the status quo. They went against it to then become the status quo right after. In fact, there’s an amazing joke from the show Bevis and Butthead(another example of postmodernism) that captures this phenomena perfectly, where the two go to a radio show because they were the only caller, and then they influence the radio show by saying stuff sucks and stuff is stupid.
Their own stupidity and negativity was seen as a sort of punk culture by the viewers and so they demanded the radio host, who was angry at them, to do the same. And so, the next day, the radio host does exactly what he threw Bevis and Butthead out for doing. This complete hypocrisy that somehow there are rules, but they can be broken if the money is there, is something Drawn Together also tackled.
The entire first season was all about having pointless challenges with a character called Jew Producer, who was a parody of both Richie Rich and Donald Trump. How did they connect these 3? Easy: Donald Trump had a show called The Apprentice, Richie Rich was a cartoon, and a Jewish producer is a Hollywood cliche that's entirely true. A lot of Jewish people produce Hollywood stuff and TV shows. I don’t know why this is a controversial statement or why the left always gets insulted by that fact, but they constantly freak out the second someone mentions that someone like Harvey Winstein exists.
While I’m talking about controversies, Adam Carolla, the voice of Spanky, was blacklisted by Hollywood because he decided to do the cardinal sin of… demanding free speech in a country with free speech as a constitutional right. I know, how dare he! It shouldn’t surprise us that the former hippies who ran Hollywood on the backbone of free speech and demanded freedom of expression are now against… freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Meanwhile, Tara Strong, a proud jewish woman, voices a character like Princess Clara, with Princess Clara being a racist, homophobic, anti-semite who is also in a sexual relationship with her father.
So, let’s recap: a jewish woman is able to do the voice for such a terrible thing, yet an Italian male comedian is not able to ask for the acceptance to joke about such topics.
Why is this even a thing?Well, at first it really puzzled me, but like when we saw the left defending drag queen acts in front of children, it finally clicked. The problem in Hollywood isn’t that something terrible is said or written or put in a show. A white princess saying terrible things is normal to them, because that’s how they view white people. Their fear is that something might make a non-white person look bad. Something might make the LGBT look bad. There might be an “uncomfortable truth” revealed in a chain of unregulated jokes.
One of the most profitable postmodernist comedians around, Dave Chappelle, was canceled over making trans jokes, despite being a good friend of a trans person who killed themselves after… trans advocates hated the trans person due to being friends with Dave Chappelle. The woke are disgusting people, to put it bluntly. Zero people were harmed by Dave’s comedy, yet the woke harassing people has a death toll that’d make Pol Pot take notes on their efficiency.
So the difference between Tara and Adam is that Adam wants to make jokes about anything, while Tara is just doing her job and reading the script. The free thinker is the threat, while the obedient follower is not. That’s why Tara still gets jobs and Adam is off doing a podcast and somehow still making millions. I’m sure he’s wiping his tears with gold bullion over the thought of no longer being able to do voices for farting animated pigs.
But what exactly makes Drawn Together hated?
To be honest, I didn’t even know someone could hate the show until I was around 20 or so. Some online people I chatted with told me how offended they were by the show and I never understood what offended even meant until that era. I watched the show throughout my teen years without a care in the world. To me, it was another adult animated show that tried to do anything offensive and it was funny all around. Some of the subject matter, contains but is not limited to:

• Incest
• Self harm
• Suicide
• Homoerotic behavior
• Satanic rituals
• Genocide
• Mass murder
• Mass shootings
• Fat jokes
• Donkey shows
• Cannibalism
• Necrophilia
• Pedophila
• Mexican babies getting pregnant
• Asians and their inability to drive
• Black fathers leaving their kids
• Lewd conduct
• Shitting on a pizza
• A live action squirrel with big balls
• An old man with dirty balls
• And let’s not forget the idea that Clara’s vagina is a giant hentai tentacle monster

All of these things are put in the show to offend us, because the show intends on making people go “ew”. If the constant vomit, blood, shit, piss, burps, farts, cum, sweat, and queefs aren’t a dead give away of them trying to gross the audience out, I don’t know what is. The point of the show is to do exactly what the 90s and early 2000s is all about: doing stuff that is gross so you laugh at how gross it is. Nickelodeon was notorious for this intention of grossing people out, to the point where they would throw green slime around just for fun. As fun as it looks to be drenched in green slime like a Leprechaun bukkake, the goal is to make the audience say “ew… cool!” because that is a male oriented reaction.
And this is where we find the split in postmodernism. When postmodernism began as a means of subverting modernism and regulations, it quickly became a cesspool of creative INABILITY thanks to the woke taking over. We went from freedom of expression to being required to advocate, which is a detriment to comedy. Recently, we had a controversy over a show called Big Mouth, which was hated by the right for being considered pedophilic and indoctrination, because the characters were teenagers dealing with puberty monsters and were depicted as being sexualized.
This is one of the many areas the right is losing the battle on, because so many of them are trying to be Platoist or Mohism, meaning they want some kind of hyper utilitarian and aesthetic free environment due to a hatred of art. Plato believed that art was an “imitation”, that it was a “copy of a copy of a form”. It was a corruption and perversion of reality, thus he saw art as evil. Mo-Zi, a Chinese philosopher who shared a lot of his views, also saw art as a pointless distraction because it’s not the responsibility of the government. These kinds of “right wingers” are accidentally falling for philosophies that pave the way for socialism, so it’s hard to take their positions on art seriously when they can’t see how brainwashed their approach is.
I’m going to go with the Jews on this one and say that art is very important, and so is freedom to make art.
Big mouth is not a show that I will say is one of my favorites, but it’s nothing as how the right wanted to depict it as. Obviously these are just people who wanted the next Cuties outrage and they had a swing n’ a miss. The left, on the other hand, is able to say something like Drawn Together is offensive to them and so it must be canceled. And lo, we have the tumblr people unable to reblog about it, we have reddit radio silent about it, we have twitter people afraid to meme with it, but then it’s still prospering in places like youtube.
People want to watch it, but nobody is brave enough to talk about it in fear of being canceled.
The show is a Martyr in two ways:

1. It is a postmodernist work attacking postmodernism
2. It is a dead form of comedy due to both the left and the right trying to cancel things like it

I already went over the second point by talking about Big Mouth, but I will quickly reiterate: the right and the left want to cancel things that are offensive, but for different reasons. Something like Drawn Together would be hated by something like Daily Wire, and yet I am a conservative who loves the show. I understand that the show is making fun of stuff, I understand it’s gross out humor and pointless nonsense. I love that it’s aware of what it is, to the point where they had an episode where Spanky goes to see their #1 critic and it’s a Jewish, conservative, pro-life, born-again, overweight, Asian, homophobic, lesbian broad who cuts herself.
He then straight up tells her that she’s not their audience, so her opinion doesn’t matter on whether or not the show is good. And he’s right, if you aren’t the audience for something, why should anyone listen to your opinion on the thing you instantly don’t like? It’s like if I had an opinion about which sports team is better. I am 100% uninformed about anything sports related, and the only sport I ever willingly watched was professional wrestling. That’s a sport, right?
Either way, the show is aware that it’s offensive. It’s proud to be offensive. Each character has their own way of offending, both when it comes to a group and when it comes to art itself. This is when postmodernism kicks in and subversion is used to create a surreal environment suited for satire and parody.
As a quick reminder: Satire is when a subject is critiqued and parody is when a subject is used for a joke. An example of this would be where satire is when Scream uses movie tropes to figure out a murder and parody is when the alien from Signs pees with his finger in Scary Movie.
Princess Clara is the Disney princess. Usually a Disney princess seeks a prince to live happily ever after, and she is pure of heart. They subvert this by attaching a bit of reality to the word “princess” and have her in a sexual relationship with her father because princesses would sometimes do that to keep royalty in the family. She’s also a racist and Christian, because royalty in Europe was Christian and it’s “old fashion” for a rich white girl to be racist. Although they keep her desire to sing, the lyrics are still going to hold her views about people, so the humor comes in how she delivers terrible things with a cheery tone. Her character is meant to make fun of traditionalist people, all while using the Disney princess as a face.
With the way wokeness is going, I don’t see a difference between Clara and the current Disney princess now.
Foxxy Love is the Hanna-Barbera style mystery character who is meant to solve crimes, most likely inspired by Valerie Brown from Josie and the Pussycats. She suberts the role by causing crimes and being a degenerate all over. She is a slut, she acts ghetto, she constantly has abortions, you know the deal. This juxtaposition comes from the fact that Valerie is meant to be a hippie musician, and black women on reality TV are depicted as ghetto thanks to shows like Flavor of Love. And for those who don’t know, hippie musicians are usually promiscuous and incredibly loose, with zero regard for decency or sticking to one sex partner because they are all about second wave feminism.
Again, ironically the woke have caused this subversion to be their intentional norm for a lot of black female characters, only they see it as virtuous instead of comical.
Wooldoor Sockbat is the Nickelodeon style hyperactive loony toon who is meant to be both stupid and gullible. There’s not much subversion here with personality, but it’s all with how far he’s willing to go with his zany humor, such as randomly threatening to suck someone’s dick and having giant tits out of nowhere, which he will then squish into the camera while crying. He’s meant to be loud and random, just like Spongebob or Stimpy. However, with the way Spongebob has become after their first movie, the only thing separating Wooldoor from something like Spongebob is direct word usage.
Plus, Ren and Stimpy had their adult party cartoon reboot made by the creator, so doing something gay and entirely disturbing is nothing new for that kind of character. I still can’t believe that it came out in 2003. In fact, I can’t believe Ren and Stimpy was on Nickelodeon with the stuff they put in there. But, that’s the appeal of Wooldoor, because he does the stuff people have been doing with characters like him for years. I would even say he’s not much of a satire since he’s so close to the content he’s meant to make fun of.
Xandir Wifflebottom is the 80s action cartoon parody, as well as early video game cartoons. During the 80s and 90s, we had a lot of Nintendo shows like Legend of Zelda, which took after plot scripts like Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man, and other product placement shows during that time. Only a few episodes of Drawn Together make fun of these simple action plots, but this connection between the merchandise advertising shows and video game cartoons is important, since they are the same thing, and it’s a product of postmodernism. Shows during the 80s and 90s that were simply there to sell something with the show, whether it was a game or a toy, were part of this media and real life blur. His gayness comes from how people viewed both He-Man and Link, since Link was a feminine looking elf and He-Man was a muscular dude who didn’t wear a shirt when he’s fighting.
This one is kind of interesting since it touches on the subject of queer coding. The left is so desperate to feel like the LGBT is represented, they will declare something is gay because it “feels gay”. This feeling is based on whoever is attracted to a fictional character, so if gay men are attracted to He-Man, or if they like his outfit, then that means he’s totally gay. Link is a character who has sadly been considered a “gay icon” by websites like Polygon, all because the designers made him rather gender neutral in later games in order for him to appeal to a female fanbase that was growing. And when they say gender neutral, they mean “he’s not muscular and he has a pretty face”, similar to practically any 00s alt rock band memeber.
Apparently, having that and then having gay people make gay fanfics about the character instantly means the character is gay. The show made fun of this queer coding nonsense by making Xandir a raging homosexual that is constantly killed like a Mortal Kombat character.
Captain Hero, my favorite character, is the comic book show hero that we all know and love. He’s meant to save the day from evil villains, but they subvert his role by having him be entirely useless and usually the cause of mass destruction. He has superpowers, but he’s so stupid and useless that he doesn’t use them most of the time, like when he is immune to bullets but he still grabs a random woman to use her as a “hero shield” when getting shot at. His character makes fun of how postmodernist super heroes try to depict the classic hero as a terrible monster or some kind of morally warped anti-hero. This is due to how Batman went from whacky detective to psychotic nut job during the transition from the 60s to the 80s, thanks to influences like Alan Moore’s Watchman and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. His character is more like a Superman, which the Bizzaro Superman comics have covered that kind of thing to make way for a super powered idiot who has sex with corpses.
Why does he have sex with dead bodies? Well, because he’s “alien” to us, the point of the joke is that he’s so super powered that he can do whatever he wants, and uses his powers to have sex with something that can’t fight back. Kind of a “he can have any woman he wants, but he would rather have sex with a rotten corpse” kind of thing. Or maybe it’s making fun of how Superman cares about Lois Lane even though she might as well be a rotten corpse to him, because she’s a human and he’s an alien. Either way, it covers a big problem we started to get in the 90s where superheroes were quickly becoming hyper violent assholes who do anything disgusting for the sake of shock value.
Ling-Ling is basically a Pikachu, but here he will battle with anything and cause gory deaths upon his opponent. The joke is that kid shows featuring these little monsters, like Pokemon and Digimon, will have zero blood, and yet the attacks they do are strong enough to cause giant explosions. Thankfully, these go past the typical Dorkly joke and Ling-Ling will also have jokes centered around being Asian and have a made up language that sounds Japanese because he says “kitowa” a lot.
Just like Xandir, Ling-Ling is treated like a punching bag by the others in nearly every episode, and I think it has to do with the video game relation, since Pokemon began as a video game and the show was there as a way of advertising the product. Plus, during the 00s, there was little respect for something like anime, no matter how much someone knew about the golden age of 80s anime.
Spanky Ham is something I’m not really sure what influenced him, but it’s said it might be an early flash cartoon called Evil Piggies. However, there is a flash cartoon from 1997 made by John K, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, called The Goddamn George Liquor Program, that seems more in line with Spanky’s scat fetish. Early internet cartoons usually had people’s faces done in a South Park style, where the mouth moved by cutting the bottom half off and moving that up and down. When I went on Newgrounds during that time, all I would see were stick figures, parodies of existing cartoons, and something like Ctrl+Alt+Del where the characters were drawn as humans in that typical web comic style. He might have also been inspired by Happy Tree Friends, which first came out in 1999, so the idea of cute animals dying randomly, and the crude humor of The Goddamn George Liquor Program might have caused a farting pig to come into fruition.
The joke is that he’s a pig who likes to drink and have sex, as well as be disgusting, but then somehow he’s also like Ren where he has schemes to make money. I forget if there is a word for this kind of character, but he’s the Squidward type who always gets harmed by his own greed. There is also a lot of Fritz the Cat in his character, which was an animated movie based on an underground comic about a cat who would go on sexual escapades. This “cartoon animal doing adult stuff” has been a joke since the 60s, and even Howard the Duck had issues with what Nostalgia Critic calls “duck boobies”. Speaking of adult ducks, there is even a show called Duckman that was made by the same company that made Rugrats.
People treat Bojak Horseman as this hip new thing when it’s simply part of a long line of animated foul mouth farm animals wearing suits.
Finally, Toot Braunstein is the representative of silent cartoons. Betty Boop was seen as sexy for being curvy, and the joke is that Toot is just plain fat and old, with her body hair and repulsiveness, as well as her tits always sagging to her cankles. She is always harming herself because of a self-esteem issue, caused by her weight and age, which is joined by an alcoholic problem due to her being from the roaring 20s. The joke is that she’s that girl in every reality TV show that is completely disgusting to look at, but she’ll see herself as a hot chick despite hitting the wall so hard that illegals can pour through the cracks. Plus, people believe Betty Boop was based on Clara Bow, who was a flapper “it girl” who suffered from hard drug use, schizophrenia, and was constantly rejected for being too fat.
Toot is the only one in the list who’s not directly a product of postmodernism, but there was a particular charm to rubber hose animation(gained its name for how limbs acted like rubber hoses) that continued onward to create things like Ren and Stimpy, Loony Toons, Tom and Jerry, and even some movies that tried to revive properties of the 30s. The Popeye movie is a great example as to how studios in the postmodernist era tried to desperately mix live action with cartoons, and same goes with Who Framed Roger Rabbit with how it was a movie that mixed live action with rubber hose animation.
Part 2

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I'm 19M. I've noticed my hair is starting to thin. For a couple years now I can pull it out without much resistance. I have a bald spot that's noticeable on security cameras and such. It's kind of embarrassing but not much I can do.
I chalked this up to genetics originally but I read that apparently undereating can cause hair loss, and I'm not sure which might be causing it.
I only really eat one big meal a day. Besides that I only really have snacks like breads or sweets. Today I had a mini frozen chicken pot pie, corn on the cob, and a few frozen mozarella sticks (a lot of frozen stuff today, not always like that...). I had some chocolate chip muffins I made later (I had about 5 of them- about 2 inches or so wide and tall each.) And that made up most of the calories I had today besides bumming a few chicken nuggets off another family member from lunch. So a lot of my daily calories are probably snacks...
I don't really count the calories on what I eat. I was obese for all of high school and then some, but for some reason I started losing weight in 2021. So I figured whatever I was doing was working. During the school year I'll usually have like a small lunch (just leftovers or something I can grab on campus like a sandwich or something) and a big dinner and snacks (like described above). During the summer I don't even really eat lunch. Maybe like a bagel or something.
So now I'm kind of wondering if perhaps the reason my hair is thinning so much could perhaps be because I'm not getting enough nutrients? I chalked it all up to genetics since my dad is completely bald, but idk I feel like I'm a little young for it to be thinning already this much?

I am looking for suggestions for snacks to share for a group of 50+ people. Normally we default to Timbits or samosas but I want something a bit different; my original plan was to get mini chocolate lamingtons but I am unable to get the order in on time. I will head to Kensington Market to get some stuff from Bunners for the vegan/gluten free crowd but I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks

So, while I'm not a SUPER picky eater per se, I am someone who is picky about the types of food I eat. This Meaning, I am not an adventurous eater, so I don't eat a lot of stuff outside of the basics, but I do eat a variety of foods that the same kinds of ingredients are in. I enjoy simple foods/meals that dont require a lot. I enjoy flavor and variety, but it's unlikely I'll venture out to eat certain kinds of meats and things like that outside of what I'm used to eating. Stuff like that. I'm also particular about texture and texture combination. I also have safe foods, like things I like to keep in the home or have often, and I have my burnout foods. Those are the things I like to eat when I'm low energy and not functioning in the way I usually do, so they're fast and easy more often than not.
With all that said, I am getting frustrated with my partner and how he cooks. Most of the time, he makes great food, but he always (I've been with him for six years) makes the wildest additions to stuff. I spoke to him a few months ago and asked him why he feels like he has to add extra to very simple things that are already good? For example, he likes to add zucchini and squash to the rice he makes, and I've told him repeatedly that the texture of the rice with those veggies specifically makes enjoying the food really hard. He said he likes to try new things. And it's like...ok, but make your veggies on the side so YOU can add whatever YOU want to your food. Don't make a whole pot of food like that. Or when im like, "i really want some BASIC chocolate chip cookies," he adds stuff to it like cinnamon or ceareal pieces. Or if i want a fried egg sandwhich, he toasts my bread or makes my eggs with the yolk still a little runny EVEN THOUGH IVE BEEN EATING AND MAKING FRIED EGG SANDWHICHES THE SAME EXACT WAY MY ENTIRE LIFE. And then today, he made rice and beans and added carrots and BOLOGNA to it????? Why???? I'm getting super annoyed. He's constantly doing this even though he knows I hate it. For one, this is just ridiculous. For two, why not ask me if that's OK knowing how I am about food? For three, he spends all this extra time on food that I don't even like that much when he's done. I don't wanna waste the food, so I eat it, but it's such a chore. I don't get this. Especially since most of his cooking is really good aside from the weirdo shit he does for damn near every meal. If it isn't broke, don't fix it as they say. I hate to sound ungrateful. He's great to me, and I love that he cooks more than I do, but....It's just dumb and I hate it, and he's getting on my nerves.

Not sure if im eating at maintenance or enough to lose weight, im not actively dieting or anything ive just noticed my appetite had been more stable.
I havent written down what ive eaten every single day but here are a few days that I documented, ive been eating more or less like this for a while now:

Day ?:
2 kiwis 2 toast w cream cheese 1 mango popsicle Bowl of pesto pasta 1 medlar fruit Vanilla latte (with sugar n milk) 1 chicken nugget Couple of fries (ca 6)
Day?:
1 cappuccino 2 avocado w salt n pepper 1 stick of celery Mixed grill in a turkish restaurant w some bread and baba ganoush Ayran (yoghurt drink)
Day?:
1 diy mini tiny pizza topped w tomato sauce, cheese and bell pepper 1 mango popsicle 1 slice of bread 2 cocktails 1 hot shot
Day?:
Went for brunch,
2 beef sliders 1 skagenröra toast (ate half, too much mayo) Lots of little pastries for dessert Coffee w milk
Day?:
Sougreen plums 1 apple Couple of radishes 1/2 cucumber 2 hot chocolates Pasta w barilla red pesto
Day?:
Frozen blueberries Some flatbread 2 cornichon pickles 2 magnum ice creams Fresh blueberries Couple of cherries Veggie stew with rice and yoghurt
Day?:
Cherries Watermelon 1/4th of a leftover ice cream bar Veggie stew with rice More watermelon 3 squares dark chocolate Pasta w red pesto Hot chocolate

My DnD group is taking a break as i plot out the latter half of the Campaign, and we’re doing a mini VaesenRPG campaign, to which we invited a new fiend who wanted to dip their toes into TTRPGS.
First session was character creation and a brief combat to get used to the rules, to which he responded positively, then a week later we started the adventure “A Wicked Secret” from the source/adventure book of the same name. We keep a communal Google Drive of resources need for games for a group, full of character sheets, splatbooks, rulebooks, etc.
And the glorious thing is, once he grocked that this was a mystery-based adventure, he said “Hang on, I’ll make a notes file in the drive to keep track of things.” All my players agreed and jumped in to my silent delight.
I now have a document that perfectly logs exactly what parts of the adventures they most enjoyed, what particular details they noticed and how important they think they are, all with commentary and speculation on how they think things may go.
Hell. Yes.

(sorry if the title was word vomit)
SW: 185 CW: 160 GW: 136
28 F , 5 ft 3.75 in
Longest fast: ~72h (gallbladder surgery)
Plateau: 155-160lb for ~9 mo - since Sept 2022? When I reached size medium
Current eating window: ~1pm - 8pm

INTRO

I started IF I think sometime around (I think) August 2021. I started out slow (2-3 weeks per type) with 16:8, then 18:6, and then when comfortable, I moved towards 20:4 sometimes. No breakfast, drink black coffee, try to drink lots of water (I'm bad at it), and window started around 2-3pm and ended around 8pm. I still have dessert, way less than before, but still dessert
After a while, I learned how to listen to my body better about what I want to eat, and how much. Once I got to that point, I started allowing my eating window to be more flexible. Now I try to stop eating at 9 at the latest, occasionally it might go past on the weekend or if we're doing something social. For my first meal (lunch), I try to push it back as far as I can (3pm), but probably averages out to 1pm
EXERCISE: Definitely not helping my case, but very low. We used to play tennis and go to the gym but we come home after work and just don't want to do anything because then the day feels over by the time we get home. During work, every day, I get in a solid 30m walk every day. Also, I unfortunately work at a desk job. Weekends we like to take a walk sometimes

WHAT I'M EATING

Realistically, this isn't helping my case. But, I am eating way better than before
LUNCH: We have a chef at work, so when I eat lunch, I try to aim for (in my mind) "half of a lunch". They have a huge variety and different menu every day, and I usually try to get a variety on a mini plate. Grilled chicken, salad, wraps, soup, turkey meatloaf, pasta, chicken tenders, rice, sausage, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm eating 200 more than I expect. They also have fruit and stuff so I have a banana multiple times a week, and maybe an apple w/ pb+honey for my lunch
I probably have meat and carbs every day, and a healthy amount of broccoli every other day (praise our new air fryer). Salad not that much, but we do LOVE caesar salad (usually from a restaurant, not at home) which I know isn't very healthy
DINNER: At home, neither of us want to spend a long time cooking, like at all. Usually for dinner we'd have leftovers from eating out, or something frozen - frozen breaded fish (like costco's everything breaded cod), costco's seasoned salmon, tyson chicken, pfchangs beef and broccoli, bertolli chicken farfalle, etc. Sides could be broccoli, rice, or apple sauce. Sometimes a glass of skim milk with dinner, but usually water. Sometimes a banana after dinner
DESSERT: I'm a huge chocolate addict. Usually I'll have a handful of hersehey kisses (5-8). Occasionally a small glass of sweet red wine, I also recently re-discovered chocolate covered strawberries so I made my own with very light chocolate drizzle
WEEKENDS: We like to eat 1 main meal on Sat and Sun (~2pm), and it's not skimpy. We like to eat out (pizza, burgers, etc). Also I usually get a latte on the weekend from the local coffee shop with skim & no whip (~300cal?)

STEPS TO GET OVER PLATEAU SAFELY

I looked around other threads, since this is apparently super common. I came to the conclusion that most people got over their plateau by doing a 48 to/or 72 fast
I know that if I'm not losing weight, then that almost always means I'm still eating too much. I already feel like I'm eating 1.5 meals / day with dessert and that feels bad (I'll blame America). Since this plateau has been so long, I'm starting to think that maybe there are other significant factors
I have many questions:

1. Should I go back to 20:4? (4pm - 8pm) or will that not kickstart it?
2. Should I just do 1x 48h fast and that will kick my weight loss in? Or do I need to do longer?
   1. Do I need to work up to it? (like do a 24h?) or get right into it?
   2. How can I safely prep, in detail?
   3. Should I be having tea, in addition to black coffee , water, and water with salt? Anything else? Anything for nutrients besides a vitamin D pill?
   4. After an extended fast to get over the plateau, then what? Should I be slightly stricter than before? (so like 3pm - 8pm)
   5. If I do an extended fast, does it matter what day I exercise (tennis or weights)? i.e. before, after, same day
   6. If I do this, would I only do it once a week? What about the rest - like 19:5?
3. Where can I find a dumbed down explanation of the benefits of 24h fasting, 48, 72, etc?
4. Is my very low exercise that's the #1 issue? i.e. should I start playing tennis every week Tu and Thurs? Obviously I know it'll help, but I'm not sure how much of this is the issue

Specific question about an extended fast:

I understand that anything past 72h requires doctor supervision, but what are the benefits exactly, and what is the reason that fasting for 2-3 days is safe? Maybe if someone has a legitimate source I can refer to (with simple explaining please)
A lot of the time when I mention fasting for a "long time" (anything 24h+), I feel like the immediate reaction from other people is that it seems unsafe. Probably common, and most people aren't educated, but I have never been able to answer actually how it is safe in detail
For example: "not eating for 2-3 days straight with only water is what some hikers do when lost, and then they go to the hospital after being rescued". What is the explanation for this? Probably missing some crucial details?

Alright thank you for bearing through this with me, I know it was a long read and probably too rambly also. I hope that I wrote all the important info, if anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to answer. And of course, I appreciate any tips and answers to my questions!
P.S. Currently reading through this post 6 benefits of prolonged fasting 24-72+ hours

As I grow older, I've changed my diet to contain a little more of healthy stuff. Some daily chicken for protein, snacking on Cucumbers/Tomatoes or a small brick of some 70%+ Dark chocolate when in mood for it.
But I've never dipped my toes into supplements, multi-vitamins or any of the like. The market is saturated with brands with in your face marketing like "HYPERBOOST" or "10X ENERGY".
I've found conflicting opinions on the usefulness of supplements, but I know my diet cannot possibly be covering all needed vitamins or minerals.
So I ask, do you take any supplements? Which ones (type/brand), and how's your experience been.

"Tim McGraw" Hint: blond guitarist with yellow jacket and red shorts on occasions
He said the way my blue eyes shined
How are her eyes? Needing sleep? So worried for her, she needs to eat more warm food. When she went to Vegas she was panhandling with song and she got $21 or so with her mom after throwing trash on the fountain like Detti soaped the fountain with a bar and got quickly bailed, and after the first girl scolded the security guard after the littering event. But what she earned with her mom that night was for 1 buffet that night. Not for breakfast. How is her mom? How is her makeup supply? She smeared her guitar with kohl from her tears?
Put those Georgia stars to shame that night
What do you mean? No more singers or celebs from Georgia could come to Nashville then/anymore? Or they were blinded by the LED light? Or the constellations put on a veil?
I said, "That's a lie"
Do you really have blue eyes? Or sunflowers are coming? You uplifted the homeowners of Georgia/ I heard real estate was quite affordable there. But your penthouse is $15K a month - does that include Lisa's 1800GOTJUNK services?
Just a boy in a Chevy truck
How old? Legal to drive? Tall enough to drive that truck? No limb fractures? Eye health OK? Is he wearing his mascot costume, eg Banana SLUG? Sun Devil? Blue Devil? Cardinal?
That had a tendency of gettin' stuck
How? Elmer's glue? Gorilla glue? Uhu?
On back roads at night
Oh, did you have special car lights on like according to the DMV book? And where did the back roads lead to - the stones?
And I was right there beside him all summer long
Why do you expect me to be with my date 24 hours all summer long? How can one date practice swimming in the pool when I am singing a duet with Alicia Keys or Beyonce on my phone in the gym nearby? How can another date earn money for us by Uber Eats while I'm at the office for Uber? How can a third date play tennis while I bargain with the sports store salesman about getting Penn balls vs Onix balls? How can a fourth date record his song in the studio while I coordinate the concert venue? How can fifth date comfort a downcast kid - not her own - with a Happy Birthday song while the peer circle arrange the audiovisual equipment on stage called Rhino Co.?
And then the time we woke up to find that summer gone
"When September Ends" was a cool song? Are you Sleeping Beauty? Who fought the dragon and the thicket for you? Who woke up the castle crew for you? Did you eat pufish? Who almost found a cliffhanger for you? So... what are you going to do in the Fall (Sem.)?
But when you think Tim McGraw
So you had his EP like Goodbye, Norma Jean single in CD? Cool. On Autoloop? What do you like about his songs?
I hope you think my favorite song
Which one? What do you love about it?
The one we danced to all night long
How many hours of dancing? How many calories burned? Was it like with Ed Sheeran for Perfect? What did you wear? What did he wear? Where did you dance? How many stars were in the sky that night? What styles of dancing did you do? How was "Loki" and "...Wonderland strummer"?
The moon like a spotlight on the lake
Cool poetry. Who do you think is worthy of performing on stage? Of having the spotlight? By the way, which lake were you talking about? Do you want to get an MFA degree and upon the conferral, you can write/perform for Equine Therapy Ranches where kids with sadness may go?
When you think happiness
Do you like Gretchen Rubin's work? Do you like Pharell's song, which is on Wii? What do you think of the emoticon deodorant?
I hope you think that little black dress
Do you know Jomaire Studio's sister in a little black dress and black stilettos for weddings? What do you think about Meghan Markle in a little black dress at a baseball game? I liked the white belt a lot.
Think of my head on your chest
Got the ALS challenge? How long did you have to wait for it? I thank Coleman too for supporting the neighborhood around Galleria, which had a cafe and their version of Sparkletts.
And my old faded blue jeans
Can anyone help her get Wrangler jeans? Or Rock Republic trousers? Or jeggings eg from the pharmacy? Or Old Navy blue denims?
When you think Tim McGraw
How often do you think of his name/face? Why? Do you pray for him?
I hope you think of me
Do you like Phantom of the Opera? What do you think if her dress? What if there was a modern version for Jabbawockeesz?
September saw a month of tears
What kind of tears? Was it because of first day of school again?
And thankin' God that you weren't here
Oh, what were the advantages of him not being "there"?
To see me like that
Were you wearing makeup in September - and what brands if so? Did you lose much weight in the summer(s)?
But in a box beneath my bed
Is it from ULine? Was the bed from Ikea or from Sleep Number?
Is a letter that you never read
I remember I had letters foregarding different people, like one of the top human/child traffickers of China and one on a cover for a football player and some for a farmer and some for a colleague and I regret one which was like under hypnosis (I praised his enumeration of "Crayola") - which I sent to someone whom I wanted to say goodbye and I found him as a storekeeper who shooed me away, as a guy who hung around the doorway of my bedroom at 3 am or so, as a guy wanting to know how to get a Peruvian passport, as a guy who bragged abou eating cat dumpling, maybe trying to gain 9 lives (is that the canned cat food?).
From three summers back
Oh you met him at around university? Thanks for your loyalty.
It's hard not to find it all a little bittersweet
You like Dove dark chocolate like fortune cookies? The Ghirardelli dark cocoa squares? The dark chocolate bars by the checkouts of dollar stores? The dark chocolate at the airports? Do you like black coffee? Like Colombian coffee? Do you like Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You"?
And lookin' back on all of that, it's nice to believe
How often and how long do you go into nostalgia? Did you do Throwback Thursday posts?
When you think Tim McGraw
What do you share about Tim McGraw?
I hope you think my favorite song
What is your favorite song, if it's okay to ask?
The one we danced to all night long
Was it a country song? Fast? Duet? With banjos or fiddles? Any props when you danced?
The moon like a spotlight on the lake
What was the phase of the moon then?
When you think happiness
What three things minimum would you do today to be happy?
I hope you think that little black dress
How is your weight (I am concerned with your photos, and you look like a politician in a Christmas green dress in front of a mic, with empty row before her)? When did you buy that little black dress (the song's topic) for yourself? Waist size? Do you think Lululemon or Walgreens leggings would go well with it, like a ballerina?
Think of my head on your chest
Did you have to sanitize the Coleman? What was in it?
And my old faded blue jeans
What brand? When did you buy it? Was it fashionably torn?
When you think Tim McGraw
Someone said he has an MBA - would you be inspired to get an MBA degree as well?
I hope you think of me
What are your three hopes before the weekend? And when someone remembers you, what are the top three qualities of yours that people can publish/televise/discuss/promote action about you?
And I'm back for the first time since then
Where did you return? How?
I'm standin' on your street
What have you been wearing on that street? How long/what time have you been standing there?
And there's a letter left on your doorstep
Can you summarize the letter in a Tweet? What's the color of the envelope? Does it need the HMat?
And the first thing that you'll read is:
What is the first thing that you think of every morning? And every sunset?
"When you think Tim McGraw I hope you think my favorite song Someday you'll turn your radio on
What is your favorite radio show and your favorite radio channel? Your favorite song on the radio? Who is your favorite DJ? I hope it takes you back to that place"
What place? How does it look like?
When you think happiness I hope you think that little black dress Think of my head on your chest And my old faded blue jeans When you think Tim McGraw I hope you think of me
Oh, think of me Mmmm
He said the way my blue eyes shined Put those Georgia stars to shame that night I said, "That's a lie"
Whom do you accuse to be lying?