Tag: fiction

2025, The World Enslaved by Poor Writers

“What Did Corona Do To Jesus?!”

“Nothing!”

Goofy A-HYUCK! | Goofy, Mickey and friends, Pluto the dog

I recently-ish watched 2025, A World Enslaved by A Virus. Christian cinema is generally terrible and this was no exception. However, I love a good wild conspiracy theory movie because the government is generally trash and so am I, so obviously trash movies appeal to me.

That said, these types of fundamentalist persecution movies always overlook blatant, obvious corruption in favor of obscure theories about blood drinking democratic vampires building child-trafficking colonies on Mars which like did every conservative conveniently forget Nathan Larson, a pro-pedophilia, pro-incest, pro-rape, white supremist ran for the Republican party of conservative family values? Roy Moore was a Republican. Trump called his own daughter hot. Matt Gaetz??? Like we really do not need to make up absurd theories to see neither party has the moral high-ground over this issue, nor do they care about the well-being of children.

Anyway, I’m not gonna pretend I watched this entire movie, which honestly negates this review, but I’m trying to get back into blogging 3x a week after taking a Forbidden West induced hiatus and this is all I could think of blogging about on a rainy, Wednesday night.

*Spoilers*

2025 shockingly takes place in the year 2025, which if it had been set in like 2035 maybe I’d buy it, but everyone speaks fluent English? In 3 years? Nah, fam.

The movie begins with Glasses Dude being arrested for vague reasons by cops who cannot shoot a gun. Soon, Glasses Dude reminisces with Cop 1, because the government has banned weddings, concerts, and ice cream. Next, there’s about 20 minutes of them talking poor English in a dark room, which normally I wouldn’t comment on but like the directors are German and chose to make a movie in English. The ban on everything presumably explains why it’s always raining and no one is out on the streets as I assume the government has also banned umbrellas and raincoats, forcing people to stay indoors.

We meet Some Woman and they’re in someone’s house. At this point, I still don’t know anyone’s names, nor their relation to each other, and the movie is so dark I can’t really make out anyone’s faces. However, I do know one of the dudes in this movie was dating his wife when she was under aged, which since this movie is generally about the decay of morality in society, that seems kinda sus. Anyway, they preach again for 20 minutes, then spray paint fishes in the Woods and tunnels. Even now, there are droves of anti-vax Christians roaming around the Woods and tunnels of Germany, so this make tons of sense. Like they already have a rubric for this sort of religious censorship via China, North Korea, and Russia, but I guess writing fanfiction is a lot more interesting than creating anything based on reality?

Some Woman ft. Glasses Dudes 1 & 2

Anyway, while spray painting trees they’re attacked by Cop 2. Some Woman is shot and Glasses Dude abandons her; like homeboy really dipped after all that preaching.

A wild Blond Mask appears. He saves Some Woman and they all run off. Scene change! A random person sits in a green room while electric music plays in the background, reading stuff on Wikipedia. Obviously a hacker despite only being capable of Googling information.

This person turns out to be Holly the Hacker who wants to help. Rather than just say that, we get a 10 minute conversation repeating information we’ve already heard, which is that Holly wishes she could experience things like eating ice cream. I’m confused – it’s been 5 years since 2020. Has Holly never been to a concert or the beach ever in her entire life?

Holly the Hacker can hack all the phones of Christians in Germany, or the world (?), presumably because there’s an online database of (German?) Christians listing their phone numbers publicly for the government (who’s banned Christianity) to peruse. Seriously, why isn’t this database being used to burn Christians at the stake?

Oh by the way there is Curly Blonde in some side plot who is eating muesli and presumably warm milk that was left out overnight.

Anyway, Glasses Dude gives yet another sermon from atop a truck to about 5 people on how sad the world is, ruled by communists and the government, even saying the government decides when “they should die,” and their children are taken from them. Again, this is the same dude who was apparently dating a child at 14 while fully an adult so again… just a bit sus, my brother.

Side note: English is the global language – why does that stop people from speaking German in private with one another?

Anyway, we get a nice sequence of Glasses Dude and Some Other (?) Woman flirtatiously walking around some ruins as various places on the world go red.

Even with the world ending, gotta get laid!

We get another 15 minute conversation/sermon where my ability to suspend my disbelief fizzled because they’re handing each other CDs. Really? Not even USBs?

Anyway, this is where I decided I’d rather die for the 509th time in Sekiro over finishing this movie. I let it play in the background and apparently after the same car chase we saw in the beginning, he’s taken out into the woods and shot at night. I thought Christianity was illegal, so what’s the need for all this secrecy?

The movie could’ve possibly been coherent if they’d hired decent actors, hired a decent script writer, utilized far more subtlety, and framed it as an issue of government overreach rather than as Christian fundamentalist persecution fanfiction. It would still be whack but at least plausible because being told to wear masks and get vaccinated are not examples of persecution. No doubt the writers of the Bible, who were sawn in half, stoned, and stabbed to death with swords for preaching the gospel, are surely trying to get God to amend the Bible ASAP to add “cancel culture” and “vaccine/mask mandates” to the list of things early day Christians were martyred over.

Anyway, I’ve had dreams about being a gold fish stuck in the land of World War Z with less plot holes than this.

2025: The World Enslaved By a Virus Rating: 2.2/10

Webtoon Reviews: Lookism Is a Mess

Major Spoilers.

Lookism, by Park Tae-joon, is an ongoing manwha that chronicles the woes of Daniel Park, who’s name is actually Park Hyung-seok but apparently webtoon thinks we can’t read Korean names.

Daniel is fat, “ugly” (he wears glasses), bullied relentlessly by his “peers”, and is low-key a jerk to his mother. He moves schools, moves homes, is still treated badly but bam! He wakes up one day with a second body aka Hot Daniel – taller, muscular, naturally athletic – perfection. When he falls asleep, he wakes up in his fat body (or whichever body isn’t awake).

Lookism | WEBTOON

Lookism began as a really interesting commentary on, well, lookism in Korean society. How people are treated vastly differently solely because of their looks. This is seen clearly in how Hot Daniel rapidly obtains friends, benefits, friends with benefits, expensive clothes, even gets a job as a model solely because of his immense hotness. All things his portlier self struggled to obtain. Not only is he attractive, but his natural, athletic abilities and fighting skills allow him to curb stomp the very bullies who once tormented him.

Author Park Tae-joon does a good job letting Fat Daniel grow as a character too and not just side-lining him. Fat Daniel also levels up; he begins working out, eating well, gets a job, realizes how poorly he treated his mother. Rather than begrudge the fact his more attractive version is treated better by society, he uses his time as Fat Daniel to better himself physically and socially, and consequently gains some of the things he always wanted (admiration of Zoe, his own harem of amigos).

Then, there was the added mystery of why is Daniel waking up in a different body? Where did this body come from? T’was a nice touch of the supernatural in a story that was very much grounded in reality.

However, at some point Lookism went from being a critique of lookism to seemingly a critique of Korean society as a whole to a fight manwha. We get an arc on the perils of social media, an arc on stalkers, an arc on cults, multiple references to bullying and drug usage, a Hostel arc dealing with youth homelessness and human trafficking, yet until Jiho’s arc (which is really a critique of the jail system) the story managed to maintain some semblance of it’s original premise.

When Hot Daniel was put on a boat after Jiho tossed him out a window, Lookism became too overly focused on side characters who should’ve been spin-offs or something (Jiho, Jake, Johan) and descended into something like a typical, fight manwha revolving around gangs, money, and turf wars with Daniel nowhere to be seen. The quality of the story is still high – but the plot is seemingly very far off from it’s original premise and those who were drawn to Lookism because of it’s focus on lookism would probably lose interest.

Anyway, here’s how I’d fix it.

1.) Remove the long arcs featuring other characters

Jiho, Jake, etc. While these arcs were good, they feel like filler episodes in the overarching plot. The two big questions are why is Daniel waking up with another body, and where did that body come from? And while I’m not fully caught up on the story, having stopped about ep. 340, we seem no closer to resolving these issues than when the story first began.

These side characters should’ve been side stories or spin-offs, not part of the main storyline.

2. Have tighter POVs

The story began pretty tightly from Daniel’s point-of-view and mostly stayed that way save for occasionally focusing on Daniel’s friends (like the cult arc, Zoe’s balloons, or Jay and his pups) to focusing on tons of side characters, usually for very lengthy periods of time.

Limiting the POVs in the story to a handful of characters would help the plot seem less messy. Again, it’s not that these characters aren’t interesting, it’s just that Jane Kim isn’t the reason I began reading Lookism.

While overall I’ve enjoy Lookism for what it is (an interesting critique of various facets of Korean society + I honestly like seeing people beat each other up), it’s beginning to read like a fanfiction of itself and I often find myself waiting for the story to progress a bit before picking it up again. Ultimately, it was the original, simpler premise that drew me to the tale of Daniel Park. In the absence of that, it’s become a much more generic story about gangs fighting one another over money, rather than a poignant commentary on lookism.

Lookism Rating: 8.5/10