A note from the archivist: In 2014, I read an interview with joshi wrestler Act Yasukawa, and it was one of the most moving wrestling interviews I had read at the time. Learning of Act’s struggles with Grave’s Disease – a disorder I also had – inspired me to take the plunge and enter pro wrestling myself the next year. When I introduced a close friend to pro wrestling, I used this article to explain why it was so special to me.

In 2015, Act Yasukawa retired from the ring after then-World of STARDOM Champion Yoshiko shot on her, beating her bloody in a despicable act of cowardice. She has, thankfully, returned to the ring since, initially as a manager and now as a full-time independent wrestler. Unfortunately, Yoshiko also still wrestles.

On November 10th, 2025, it was reported that wrestling social media personality Leslie Lee III had passed away. My opinion on Leslie Lee III was not a positive one, but his death was discussed in my circles, and mourned, and that’s when I realized that I had known him long before – as “Dirty Dirty Sheets”, the one who wrote the Act Yasukawa article that I had read and reread many times.

I do not know what will happen to Leslie Lee III’s old website – once Dirty Dirty Sheets, currently (as of 2026) Pro Wrestling Is Art. I just wanted to make sure that this article was saved. It’s still a wonderful piece of writing, and I hope by archiving the text and images, it can mean something to someone else, just as it meant something to me.

-Erin

Originally hosted on Pro Wrestling Is Art – Originally published March 13th, 2014

The Act Yasukawa Story

Written by Leslie Lee III

Conducted by Sonny Gutierrez and Leslie Lee III

Translation by Yoshiko Naoe, Pumi Boonyatud, and Melchor Hernandez Jr.

Additional Photography courtesy Resuner (3), Kenji Nuruki (5, 6), Pumi Boonyatud (2,7,8)

‘There was a lonely girl whose dreams were impossible. She was sick. She was bullied. She was lonely. She had no one to talk to about her problems. No one who would listen. No one who would help. She took a bottle of toxic cleaner and drank it, hoping to end her life…’

This was the story Sonny scribbled on a notepad for me to read prior to meeting up with Act Yasukawa. He and Yoshiko gleaned it from an article about Act’s life in Weekly Pro Wrestling magazine. I was floored; although I was already a fan of Yasukawa’s as a character and wrestler, I had little idea about how gripping her personal story was. I wanted to find out how that sad, troubled girl became the brash, cocky Stardom Joshi pro wrestler.

Act told us the whole story over dinner at her favorite restaurant, an Italian eatery in Tokyo called  NICE. This was DDS’ most in depth interview. We hope you find Act’s story as engrossing was we did.

Act I

We walked past Act on our way to the restaurant without noticing. Aside from the cherry red streaks in her hair, Act looked like a typical young Tokyo woman on the way home from work or to the bar. “My image in the ring is very cool and masculine and I have many female fans, but they’re surprised when they see me outside the ring as I’m very feminine.” She apologized for dressing so casually, and informed us, “Now, you are just talking to Yuka Yasukawa,” That’s the name Act goes by outside of wrestling or Act’s twin older sister, depending on your level of imagination. She had come to the interview straight from a hard day training with Stardom, “I got slammed a lot.”

Act ordered a glass of white wine, though she said she was taking it easy on drinking since she had a title defense coming up. After a kanpai, we started her story from the beginning:

Act was born in Aomori Prefecture on the northern tip of Japan’s main island. Her relationship to Aomori is “complicated,” as her family moved around for her father’s work in the Self Defense Force.

As a child, Act was a “tomboy” with a vivid imagination. “When I was growing up I watched a lot of samurai movies and action movies.” Abarenbo Shogun was her favorite series. “I used to play with a walkie-talkie and I could hear transmissions from a US military base. I’d go to a storage shed and pretend to be an action hero!”

Act’s dream was to become a samurai, something she genuinely believed was possible. Her parents played along with the fantasy and directed her passion towards Kendo. “When I was in first grade, my parents got me to take kendo lessons by telling me it was how I could become a samurai. I practiced kendo from 1^st grade through 6^th grade.”

However, when Act reached middle school her friends broke the news to her that samurai was no longer an actual profession in Japan. “It was like being told that Santa Claus does not exist! I believed from the bottom of my heart that samurai were real. I was so upset, I quit kendo.”

Middle school was also when Act would face her greatest difficulties. She was bullied for being “different” and having a disability: near blindness in her right eye. She suffered from attention deficit disorder and mental illness. Act spent most of her time in isolation, even at home. Her father was away and her mother was busy taking care of her own ailing parents. Act sought help but instead of finding a trained and supportive counselor, she was referred to a surgeon that diagnosed her as, “a bad, lazy kid who pretends to be sick to get out of going to school.” Thinking she had nowhere to turn for help, Act attempted suicide.

After her suicide attempt Act finally began to receive counseling and started the path to recovery. She also found a new passion, “In Junior High and then High School I spent a lot of time in the nurse’s office because I was still afraid to go to my classroom. One day after school when most students left, I walked into class and a script happened to catch my attention. Someone saw me, and she asked if I wanted to try acting. I followed her to drama club and she asked me to read a part since someone was absent. It was a part of a rich girl and I still remember the line. I really got into it. The drama club said I was so good and asked me the play the part!“ Act saw acting as a way to live her dream of being a Samurai, “I am a loner, but with acting, I could be anything that I wanted to be. I could be the action hero that I dreamed of. I couldn’t be a samurai in real life, but I could be one in film.”

Act II

The chef asked us if there was anything that we couldn’t eat, instead of what we wanted to order. Act let us know that NICE was offering us a special menu. “For celebrities?” I asked. She just laughed.

As Act’s love for acting grew her mental health improved. Act followed this love of drama throughout high school. She attended the Japan School for the Moving Image and appeared in several stage productions and films, including the live action version of Death Note.

However, Act began to suffer from an illness that threatened her career, “I rapidly lost weight, felt shaky, and I couldn’t stand for long periods of time.” Act was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease, a thyroid disorder. “Due to my illness, I was not getting the roles that I wanted. I was very thin and weak, so I received roles as weak girls, not action heroes. There was a huge gap between what I wanted and what I got.”

Act did find herself a strong role though, one that would give her a pivotal opportunity. In 2011 Act was cast in the stage production Wrestler Girls, alongside model-turned-wrestler Yuzuki Aikawa: “Aikawa was practicing for her wrestling debut at the time, and would often miss practice. Aikawa is quite a loner, so I was very intrigued by her. She joked with me that she didn’t like reading the script, and didn’t like acting! She was a lone wolf.”

After meeting Aikawa, the general manager of Stardom Fuka invited Act to audition to become a wrestler. In spite of her illness, Act did not hesitate: “I felt like this was probably my last chance to become a fighter in real life, so I took it. I felt like it was destiny, my chance to fulfill my dream.”

Early training was difficult for the then frail actress, “When I started, I could not even do one push-up!” Did you ever consider quitting? Act smiled, “No. Never! Before I started I knew I was weak and inferior, I knew training would be hard, so I was determined to not give up.”

After 3 months of training, Act fell seriously ill again,“My doctor told me to not wrestle, not even to do anything too active, but I refused. I couldn’t live with giving up. He then gave me the option of taking a medicine that would strengthen my body, but told me the drug’s side effects could prevent me from ever having children.”

The doctor asked Act to take two weeks off and seriously consider her next step, but Act never wavered, “After two weeks I came back to training and saw everyone practicing  the dropkick. I was so upset that I was behind.” Beaming with pride she said, “I was so angry, I practiced the dropkick so much that now my dropkick is higher than anyone else.”

She took the medication and it allowed her to recover and pass her audition with Stardom: “My weakness gives me strength. If I was healthy and everything was alright, I wouldn’t have tried so hard; I would have given up.”

Act III

One of the questions I had planned to ask Act was if she had thought about stopping wrestling last year when she had what was reported as a very serious neck injury. That question seemed silly now. Act did point out that it was that injury that introduced her to the restaurant. “While I was injured I saw a doctor and his office is nearby. He always came to NICE after work, and he invited me to come as well. The food was good so I’ve been coming ever since,” she said, gnashing into our massive appetizer plate of Italian meats.

We did ask how Act’s now total blindness in her right eye, due to Graves’ disease, affects her wrestling. Act said, “I cannot easily judge distance. In this respect, Kendo still helps me even today as we had to learn how to properly gauge the position of my opponent. I’ve also been training grappling. Once I get my hands on someone, I don’t need to judge distance. I always try to find a way to do something when it’s difficult. I always think, ‘Okay, I have to try harder. I can’t give up now.’”

Act incorporated her impairment into her character. She wears an eye patch to the ring and designed her gear with one pants leg to reflect the asymmetry. “People think that I’m inspired by pirates because I wear an eye patch and drink rum. There’s a samurai named Date Masamune who was also from northern Japan. He had an eye patch. I’m not a pirate!“

“As for the rum, it’s just because I like alcohol! I chose rum specifically because it has color and a smell, so fans know that when I walk to the ring, I’m drinking the real thing. If you’re at Shin-Kiba on the south side, you can smell the rum and you know that’s Act’s area. I’m marking my territory.”

Pirate or not, Act’s character immediately caught on with fans when she debuted. She remains one of Stardom’s most popular characters, “Even though I’m a heel, I’ve never been booed. Once, in Korakuen Hall, I had a fan screaming my name, and I spit the alcohol onto him. Now, fans are always screaming, ‘Act! Act!,’ wanting me to spit on them too, but I can’t hit everyone!”

Reflecting that popularity, Act is the current Wonder of Stardom champion. “I feel that the holder of Wonder of Stardom Championship is responsible for energizing the crowd. While the red belt [World of Stardom title] represents strength, the white belt represents spirit and energy.”

The concepts of the “red” and “white” belt are ones Stardom borrowed from AJW, Zenjo as it’s known in Japan. “Stardom has inherited the soul of Zenjo, but gives it a modern twist. My trainers have taught me about Zenjo history, and I like to watch matches of the trainers and legends I meet. It’s rude not to.”

Besides a sense of history, Act’s trainers have also instilled in her a sense of pride, “Being in Stardom means being a pro wrestler that people can be proud of. We are different from other groups. We aren’t just sexy or cute, we are part of a great tradition. You have that strength and authenticity. Stardom has real puroresu spirit.”

Of course, “sexy or cute” are things Act has been. She’s even dabbled in modeling. On the potential discord between that and her turn as a serious pro wrestler, “I haven’t been modeling lately but if somebody is offering to photograph me, sure why not? My arms are buff and I don’t have a girly figure anymore, but my mindset is: If that is what you want to see from me, sure go ahead.”

Act IV

Our main course arrived: hamburger steaks smeared with cheese and tomato sauce. We played word association between bites.

On Kairi Hojo: My peer, my classmate and a great rival.

On Natsuki Taiyo: A master and senpai of my aspiration.

On Yoshiko: Someone that I have to overcome some day. Will you overcome her? Yes.

On Kyoko Kimura: A free spirit.

On Miho Wakizawa: Comedienne. She is always doing funny things, but she spit water on me during a match and it was like torture! It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me in the ring. I won, but it was traumatic. It made me feel a little bad about spitting out alcohol towards people. I almost wanted to stop doing it. Laughs.

Momoe Nakanishi: A person that Natsuki admires.

On Hiroyo Matsumoto: Good at getting along with people. Party person!

Io Shirai: I’m very amazed by how agile she is! Great lucha style. At first I thought she was older than me, and I found out that she’s much younger.

Mio Shirai: She works for many companies.

Tsukasa Fujimoto: Like a ninja!

Hikaru Shida: A wrestler with an unyielding spirit.

Tomoka Nakagawa: Very calm, but a heavy drinker.

Yuzuki Aikawa: Full of pride.

Akira Hokuto: Legendary.

Bull Nakano: Legendary and kind-hearted.

Kellie Skater: Cheerful and outgoing! Always partying. How about you? I always join if there’s drinking. I don’t do tea parties. Wherever there’s alcohol, I’ll be there.

Dark Angel: Beautiful.

Alpha Female: Huge!

Hailey Hatred: Where did she go? What happened to her? She disappeared.

Fuka: Very charismatic in how she deals with the fans. Strives for perfection in engaging with them.

Rossy Ogawa: Loves money! Uncle Scrooge.

Nanae Takahashi: She is Joshi Puroresu.

Yuka Yasukawa (Act’s outside-the-ring name and personality, whom she refers to as her older sister): Zasso damashi. It means, “Like a weed that doesn’t die, even if it is stepped on, or crushed, it keeps on living.”

Favorite venue: For our home base, I enjoy Shin-Kiba 1st Ring, but I love Korakuen Hall. It is a sacred place for puroresu.

Favorite match: I love singles matches! My first singles victory versus Yuzuki Aikawa in the 2012 5 Star Gran Prix is my favorite match. I remember the crowd cheering me on, they gave me the strength to win.

Favorite movie: The Last Samurai starring Tom Cruise. I watch this movie all the time! Ken Watanabe or Tom Cruise? I love everyone in the film, but Ken Watanabe.

Favorite Anime: Since I did work as a voice actress, I always watch the first couple of episodes of any anime to get past the boring part. I know how anime can get good after that point, so I give them all a chance and know a lot about many different shows. So I don’t have one favorite, I just know a little about each. I do like Studio Ghibli, especially Porco Rosso!

Three secrets: First, I like gardening. I like to grow cucumbers. I like to grow veggies and eat them. Second, I like cooking. I like to cook hirabayashi daikon, even though it’s the sort of thing your grandmother would cook for you. Third, I am too scared to watch horror films! Fans think that I am cool and strong, but they might be surprised. In real life I am pretty girly.

Act V

Speaking of Kellie Skater, Act and I received concurrent texts remarking that at that moment Skater was in Roppongi, Tokyo’s infamous party district. “Kellie Skater is my English teacher. I wasn’t confident in speaking English, but I like talking to Kellie so much that I now enjoy learning English.” Sonny and I informed her that Kellie, being Australian, does not actually speak English and that Act should not begin calling everyone “mate.”

Act was days away from a defense of the Wonder of Stardom Title, but does she have her eyes on the World of Stardom title? “Some day I think that I will achieve it, but I am not ready yet. I’m still not confident enough yet. I get nervous before matches, but that fear is the source of my strength and it’s why I continue going on. Once I am stronger, I will challenge for it, for sure. I am determined to have the belt around my waist. I know someday I will be ready and it will be my turn. “

It seems likely. While Stardom has developed many home-grown talents, she, along with Kairi Hojo, is one that can exclusively be seen in Stardom and nowhere else, at least in Japan. “As for wrestling overseas, yes I would love to if I’m invited. Kellie is often telling me that she is hanging out with her SHIMMER friends in Tokyo.”

When asked where she would like to be in five years, Act has a clear goal in mind: “When people hear of Joshi Puroresu, I want them to think of Act Yasukawa. Five years may be too soon, but that’s my hope. I’ve been a baby face and a heel, but when I’m a heel I’m never booed. In five years I want to be neither; I just want to be Act Yasukawa. My path is known as Act Road. My style is different from other Joshi. I was the first to bring sake to the ring. I am one of a kind.”

Before becoming synonymous with Joshi Puroresu, Act hopes the sport itself continues its recent growth. “Joshi needs more media exposure. More people need to see it, not only wrestling fans, but other people as well. That’s what Stardom tries to do. Recently there was a poll of wrestling fans on what TV programming they want to see, Stardom was one of the highest ranked.”

But Act doesn’t want notoriety for its own sake. Act’s story of dealing with suicide and mental illness is far too common among Japanese youth, and she wants to use her success as a platform to help. “Because of the trials in my own life and when I attempted suicide, I want to be influential and give hope to young people. When I was younger, like them I was bullied and unhappy. I survived and now I feel really alive, and I’m living my dream. That’s the feeling she wants to give to the audience and the younger generation. I want to give them hope.”

Sonny asked Act if there was anything upcoming that she wanted to plug, but she preferred to just give fans this message: “Live while you’re alive. Don’t have a dead life. You can be alive, but be dead inside like I used to be. I didn’t have emotions or feelings. I want all fans to live life to the fullest!”

With that we asked Act to pose for some pictures. The gracious woman we’d chatted with disappeared and was replaced by the rum swigging samurai. Perhaps we spent the entire time talking to Yuka and Act just comes in when the cameras are rolling. Act or Yuka, we were touched by her story and her willingness to share so much of herself with us.

All four of us walked to the train station together. Act was carrying several bags with her, more than she brought since Sonny gave her a bottle of Okinawan Sake. Someone asked if she’d have trouble dealing with the burden of getting them all home. She said, “No, it’s Okay. I’m strong. I’m a Joshi pro wrestler.”

By: Erin

Posted: July 11th, 2026

Hey! You! You want an EMN Update? I’ll give you one! But first, let me drop something I’m super excited about!

Mandy has started writing articles she’s dropping on the website! It’s been a long time coming and I’m so happy she’s begun doing it! Mandy’s Movie Musings is now live, and she has started with a doozy – a really cool article looking at the recent trend of “Ruined Childhood” horror, and what lead to the “Poohniverse”.

Check it out! Check it out right now!!

In other news…

Well, there isn’t much! Whoops! I’m working on a new article breaking down our trip to Seattle, where I took an old Sony digital camera on a Twin Peaks Tour and got some pretty great shots, along with some wonderful bonuses. Seattle was awesome, and I can’t wait to share it with you. Here’s a taste!

Somewhere oh-so-familiar…

Other than that, it’s GDQ season so EMN DIY is tuned to the GDQ Twitch channel, and I’ve found a new way to manually generate EMN playlists using Microsoft Excel that works better than all the fancy automated methods I’ve been using. I really should work on a tutorial for that method soon. Apart from that, I have some pretty exciting guest appearances on podcasts cooking up, and a whole ton of photos I want to one day pick through and toss up here some time. I should also grab more Great Movies essays and put them up as well. Eventually, I’ll make a section talking about the music I’ve made. But today, check out Mandy’s Movie Musings! Go go go!!

For now – ciao!

By: Mandy

Posted: July 11th, 2026

Click the thumbnails in this article to view them at full size!

In high school, I became close friends with a horror movie enthusiast. We would spend our lunch breaks deconstructing every Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street movie, and thanks to those conversations – as well as I-Mockery’s regular horror movie articles and James Rolfe’s yearly Monster Madness reviews – I was inspired to watch as many horror movies as possible. For what many would consider a low-brow genre, it tickled my mind in ways other movies didn’t. Filmmakers and screenwriters used the genre to put a face on their anxieties and trauma, and as someone with severe anxiety I found catharsis in seeing how they reckoned with them – or didn’t.

The first college class I fell in love with was a film studies class. It taught me what it meant to be media literate and it introduced me to some of my favorite movies of all time. At that moment, I knew I would never shut up about movies – whether that meant exploring the feelings movies give me, analyzing the subtext behind the movies I love, or learning about the history and behind-the-scenes stories behind them. I love it all. So, if you’re wondering why my film and biography podcast I do with my wife and my Letterboxd account where I review a minimum of two movies a week just isn’t enough, I have to shrug and say “that’s hyper-fixations for you!”

Hello, my name is Mandy. I’m the middle initial in EMN, and my goal is to make this a regular film column, sometimes about recommendations, but mostly to talk about trends and things that inspire me. Until the day Letterboxd allows me to post full essays, welcome to a vacation home for my thoughts. So, without further ado…

Four years ago, the DiscussingFilm Twitter account revealed screenshots for a then-unreleased horror movie called Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. The movie appeared seemingly out of thin air mere months after the willy-nilly-silly old bear entered the public domain. As of 2026, the tweet has nearly 9,000 quote retweets and at least 1,500 comments, nearly all of them sharing identical sentiments of disgust and confusion. Even I responded back then with a confused GIF, saying that I didn’t think it would be good, but I would love to be wrong. After that, I didn’t think twice of it until its release half a year later. The slasher take on A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (differentiated from the Disney character with the book-accurate hyphens to keep the House of Mouse’s lawyers at bay) sees a college-aged Christopher Robin haunted by a grotesque Pooh and Piglet, who look like people in costumes, but really are a bear and a pig. The story goes that after regularly coming to feed and take care of the Hundred Acre Wood, Robin eventually grew out of it, and as such the creatures of the Hundred Acre Wood became starved and cold, souring themselves on humanity, the predators of the group reverting back to their animal instincts. It’s dedicated to interpreting everything that happened in the Hundred Acre Woods as a literal group of talking animals rather than Christopher Robin’s active imagination, with Christopher Robin as a modern British man as opposed to a representative of A. A. Milne’s son.

It really didn’t feel real.

Many made the decision to seek out the movie out of morbid curiosity, but the movie received almost universally terrible reviews – even from hardcore fans of horror movies. Still, even bad word-of-mouth wasn’t enough to stop it from being a huge success on streaming services. One only needs to look at how heavily Peacock marketed Blood and Honey II to see how much of a hit the initial premise was with audiences, and given the film was made for a meager $50,000, it wound up making back fifteen times its budget, giving director Rhys Frake-Waterfield more than enough money to justify a sequel. On a personal note, I’ve heard way more water cooler talk, Discord chats, and family dinner discussions on the killer Pooh bear than even movies like Barbarian and the X trilogy, which says so much about how the initial shock value of seeing a murderous childhood icon ‘worked’. One could call Frake-Waterfield an innovator, but like how John Carpenter didn’t technically make the slasher genre with Halloween, his contribution was more about knowing what to apply the idea to. If there was a starting point to pop culture’s obsession, it most likely begins with another killer bear.

Faz, not Mono.

Twelve years ago, the indie game Five Night’s At Freddy’s, made almost entirely by developer Scott Cawthon, released, and it became an immediate media juggernaut. The game sees you stuck at a desk needing to keep yourself safe from four animatronics looking to come through the doors and kill you. You have cameras you can check at any time to see if any of the animatronics have moved from their normal area, and you can shut the two doors with an automatic lock if you think they’ll be near, but you only have a limited amount of power per night. Every time you check the cameras or keep a door locked, it drains your battery, and you won’t want to be left alone with the animatronics when the lights are out. On top of a simple gameplay loop that builds up tension, there is dedicated lore and a story based in childhood nostalgia, ingredients that really helped this succeed. In the same way Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey took cues from the original Pooh books and their Disney adaptations, Freddy’s Pizzeria is reminiscent of restaurants common in the eighties and nineties with animatronic bands, most notably Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza. YouTubers and streamers helped to make it a success by playing through it and recording their reactions, with some digging deeper into the breadcrumbs of lore to see if they could uncover more than what was beneath the surface.

To call Five Nights At Freddy’s a success is putting it mildly. As it stands there are eleven games in the series, eight spin-offs, and countless other games very obviously inspired by the franchise’s success, such as Bendy and the Ink Machine or Poppy’s Playhouse. If you enter your local mall or superstore chain, you are almost guaranteed to find a kiosk or a store selling shirts, dolls, or figures of these franchises, all of them skewed at a younger demographic than other horror properties. Indeed, the idea of a modern horror franchise being this marketable is something uniquely modern. Horror has mostly been aimed at a teen demographic, with certain franchises such as Goosebumps popular with preteens, but the streaming community (and their predecessors, the YouTube ‘Let’s Play’ community) managed to introduce fans not even in the double digit age bracket to horror. So, naturally where there was money to be made, Hollywood wanted in on the action.

Only one year after FNaF dropped, Warner Bros. purchased the rights to adapt the film to screen, with Freddy’s creator Scott Cawthon acting as producer and writer on the script. The development was heavily delayed, with multiple rewrites, as well as different directors and studios jumping around the project, but eventually the final film arrived in time for Halloween 2023. On a budget of 20 million dollars, the Freddy’s movie made over 297 million at the box office, immediately being a huge financial success for both Blumhouse Studios and Universal. A sequel was immediately greenlit and released two years later.

Of course, the eight years of development is a long time, and with copyright laws allowing for mockbuster companies like The Asylum to pump out legally distinct movies with titles like Snakes on a Train, Atlantic Rim and Top Gunner: Danger Zone right before their more popular Hollywood counterparts were set to come out on video, there was room for copycats of Five Night’s at Freddy’s to give their takes on the idea. The most notable copycat – one arguably better than the actual Freddy’s movie – was 2021’s Willy’s Wonderland, a movie featuring Nic Cage as a nameless, ass-kicking janitor who protects a group of teens set to be sacrificed to killer animatronics at a haunted entertainment venue & pizzeria.

“It’s better! Much better!”

Some others were a little more unique with their approach, however, which is how we got 2019’s The Banana Splits Movie.

If you grew up in the sixties, or if you were a kid who woke up early in the nineties and the early aughts just in time to catch it on Cartoon Network, The Banana Splits was a comedy variety program featuring a band of anthropomorphic animals, played by humans in suits, getting up to mischief. The creators of The Banana Splits Movie were quick to say that it was inspired by films like Child’s Play instead, but it’s hard to deny the similarities to Freddy’s. They were already animals who played in a band, but the movie made a deliberate choice to say that the Splits were specifically animatronic robots, instead of actors in suits. Combine this with how out of character this was for the IP, and how strange it was they bought the rights to an abandoned 60’s kid show that vaguely resembled the Freddy’s cast, and you can understand my skepticism. As a promotional tactic however, it succeeded at turning heads and making for water cooler talk.

Good movie or not, the concept was outlandish enough to be an interesting gimmick, like a mystery box that someone promises you contains something too ridiculous to be true. It made sense at a time, too, that the circles on the internet that were talking about secret Pokémon you could unlock as a kid, and who were posting and reposting fake ghost stories about a lost, depressing episode of SpongeBob about Squidward’s death, would spread a movie like this to their friends, with the set up of “you won’t believe what they actually made”. It was a new gimmick to play around with, but not one Hollywood knew immediately how to follow up. A much less successful attempt at this ‘loose horror reinterpretation’ of an IP came one year later, when Blumhouse Studios released 2020’s Fantasy Island, based on the 70’s TV Show of the same name.

You probably forgot about this one.

Which leads us back to that Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey announcement only two years later. The rights to the character finally entered the public domain, and the internet took note of this well in advance. Not only was a beloved character now free to use in other stories, Pooh is a beloved character with popularity spread at least in part due to the efforts of the Walt Disney Company. The last major extensions to copyright laws in the US were thanks in part to Disney and their heavy lobbying to extend copyright terms for twenty years across the board, with their successful campaign effectively making a twenty year period where nothing would enter the public domain.

Their reason?

This guy!

When they started lobbying, Steamboat Willy was set to enter public domain in 2003, and they feared losing full ownership over the mouse who built the company. Hence, the act is derogatorily referred to as ‘The Mickey Mouse Act’. On top of the irony of the Walt Disney corporation regularly pumping out films based on stories that were only adaptable because they entered the public domain, people were rightfully mad, as things like film could rot and become unusable before ever getting a chance to enter the public domain, effectively creating lost media and sending characters or movies to the grave before getting the chance to be shared and spread.

So, whether people were trying to be counterculture as a “fuck you” to Disney, or just trying to make themselves laugh, Disney and their IPs became the punching bag of the internet. All of these things coagulated and combined, and that is how we got Blood & Honey. It’s a fun idea in the moment, but the joke got old fast for those watching it, and it’s more than likely this fad won’t last long. Following in Blood & Honey’s footsteps have been a string of imitators for other beloved characters, including The Grinch (The Mean One), Mickey Mouse (Screamboat), and Popeye (Popeye the Slayer Man). All of them have been much less successful, and that’s because the original Blood & Honey benefited from shock value that becomes less potent every time one of these are released. Drawing creepy eyes and blood on the mouth of a Simpsons character might shock you when you’re ten, but if you look at the same picture every day, it’s certainly going to feel passé at twenty.

Boo!

Even the creator of Blood & Honey isn’t free from poisoning his own well. Rhys has been regularly producing and directing several other movies based on Disney properties, all under the label of the “Twisted Childhood Universe”, also known by the much funnier nickname of the “Poohniverse”. As it stands, they’ve released two Winnie the Pooh movies, as well as ones based on Bambi, Peter Pan, with a Pinocchio movie on the way. The ultimate end goal is an Avengers parody titled Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble. It’s a funny idea, and despite terrible critical reception, he managed to carve out a small group of fans, but the Avengers parody feels like the ultimate endpoint for this joke. Ideally from there, Frake-Waterfield will take whatever money he gets from it to make other dream projects, but allegedly he’s gone on record to suggest, free of sarcasm, that he plans to make horror versions of Teletubbies, The Powerpuff Girls, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, the idea of him pursuing other projects seems unlikely.

All the stars are here!

That said, there’s no real reason to fret what this subgenre’s failure or success means for the horror space. You’ll mostly find these movies mostly buried on free streaming services like Tubi, and they are far from permeating horror, which has seen a boom period over the last decade. It’s simply an ultimately inoffensive trend in a genre that has seen no shortage of originality in its releases across the last decade. Every film service is a potential platform these days, and so we’ve gotten a lot of gambits ranging from shock hits released on streaming to big budget success stories in theaters. Horror has historically been one of the cheaper genres to produce films for, and with film budgets inflating every year, it’s been one of the most trustworthy genres for theaters since the eighties.

The streamer Markiplier, one of the names who helped bring Five Nights at Freddy’s to the mainstream, recently released an adaptation of an indie horror game called Iron Lung to critical and financial success. The Terrifier franchise by Damien Leone has grossed over one hundred million dollars collectively, with the most expensive film in the series being made on a 3 million dollar budget. The video streaming service Shudder has distributed multiple hits on streaming, including Late Night with the Devil, Tigers Are Not Afraid, and One Cut of the Dead. Arguably most impressive of all, horror has finally started being recognized by the Academy Awards after years of feeling like a critical taboo, with last year’s big box office hits Sinners and Weapons both walking away with awards. Sinners was even nominated for more awards than any other movie that Oscars season. While some would say Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, and The Shape of Water aren’t “true” horror movies, which is a sentiment which I would strongly disagree with, the first genre for Sinners is unquestionably horror. Arguably, no genre has thrived more once the thrill of the superhero movies started to wane.

As for the Poohniverse and the other nostalgic corruptions, we’ll see if the last stop really is Monsters Assemble, or if there’s enough money to justify pumping them out Dick Tracy and Conan movies in the upcoming years. A medium only continues to thrive with innovation, however, and much like how moviegoers couldn’t stand another killer in a camp after Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, once these childhood corruptions have successfully numbed audiences, it seems all too clear where this genre is going.

I can only hope the ambitious filmmakers use this as a jumping off point, and not get stuck in Poohgatory.

If you enjoyed this, click here for more of Mandy’s Movie Musings!

By: Erin

Posted: March 8th, 2026

Twin Peaks Day has come and gone, which means so has EMN’s sixth anniversary! Six years! Unbelievable. I always wanted to believe that we’d stick with our little TV channel, but you never know what the future holds. It turns out that the future holds website updates, articles, and a whopping seven channels with multiple programming lineups running in our home. Who knew?

I really wanted to get some cool things done for the six year anniversary. There have been multiple articles I’ve been working on, including one I started over a year ago, and I’ve been trying to figure out what a proverbial “next step” for EMN could look like. As it stands, our main units either use PseudoTV or pure marathon-style code depending on the unit, and I’m happy with those, but I’m always looking at what else is out there. It’s pretty funny, because in the time since Mandy and I got EMN1 up-and-running using Probnot’s simple video script method, tons of people have made their own ways of running TV boxes to simulate having a channel to turn on. The people crave the old days of analogue television and are sick of picking what to watch! And, obviously, people, I’m on your side.

I could use this post to wax philosophical about EMN’s ethos, about Tunarr and ErsatzTV and NostalgiaTV and FieldStation 42 and all these other projects out there, but I won’t. Those projects have their audience, and I absolutely love that this little niche desire of mine and Mandy’s has since become a community of people giving those who are a little more sane than us and don’t want to be beholden to ancient tech a way to experience the joys of their own custom TV channel. Instead, let’s look at what we have done for EMN’s anniversary this year.

First! Obviously, it was time for our annual main EMN channel update. We’ve added some great shows, movies, and more, and all of it is marked on the main Programming Guide page. No fancy video this year, but what I did do was upload all of our imaging and bumpers to my YouTube channel. I really love this one in particular:

Second: you know it, you love hearing that it’s incomplete, it’s The Physical Media Article! Guess what? The Quest To Own Our Favorite Movies is text-complete!!! Yes, I need to take actual photos of all our movies and upload them, but whatever! It’s text-complete! The researcher I wrote it for loved it! No one can touch me! Who knows what may come of this article? If you want to read about me slowly going crazy over movies like Tekken: Blood Vengeance or the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you’re in the right place.

Not only that, I also got another article done I’ve been chipping away at, mostly because I wanted to make a fancy video to go along with it. In 2024, Mandy and I went to Portland and absolutely loved it, and I’ve uploaded all of our photos from that trip. We’re actually going back to the PNW this year, specifically to take a little tour of some famous places in the Seattle area… I hope we find somewhere to get some damn fine coffee.

I also slammed down an extra Blather article, just posting some funny photos taken last time we were in Oshkosh. Have you ever wanted to know what the world-famous Backrooms look like now? Here’s your chance.

Of course, there’s always more on my plate when it comes to things I want to write. Currently in the pipeline: me uploading my thousands of photos I took while working pro wrestling social media, another Travelogue of our trip to Tennessee, archiving of one of my favorite wrestling articles written by someone who unfortunately passed away recently, and going through all the non-Main EMN channel programming guides and file lists with a fine-tooth comb to get all of those up-to-date.

On top of all that, I’ve become a DJ! Well, to be clearer, for Christmas my lovely friend Silas got me the amazing solo RPG VOID 1680 AM, a playlist-building game where the author encourages you to record your DJ drops and send them in, because he then assembles a radio show that he broadcasts on YouTube. And guess who sent in a radio show based around my and Mandy’s little Beam Saber game we’ve been running?

It’s me!!

There’s one more in the pipeline, and I want to record even more.

Oh, and there is one more thing I’ve been working on regarding EMN. I’ve mentioned it on the ol’ socials but I’m not quite ready to go into detail yet on here. Still, a teaser image wouldn’t hurt…

Who knows what the future holds? Find out tonight at 9/8c!

It’s been a busy time, and there’s a whole lot going on in this world. I’m finding some sanity in my little corner of the internet and in my relationships, and I’ve also been playing Resident Evil Requiem. Great game. I hope you all can find some solace in the little things as well. God knows, we need some solace right now. Stay safe, keep tuning in, and just know that I really do love all the kind comments I receive on my YouTube channel and in the guestbook. Cool things are on the horizon here, and hopefully elsewhere as well.

Ciao for now.

By: Erin

Posted: February 25th, 2026

Click on the thumbnails in this post to view them at full-size!

Happy Day-After-Twin-Peaks-Day! Astute website-readers will also note that means it’s the day after EMN’s sixth anniversary. I’ll be making a big post about that as per usual, but I want to finish another website update before doing that. Rest assured, I’ve been hard at work and actually have things to talk about which you’ve probably already noticed!

Today, I want to discuss something sillier. Last year, I went to Mandy’s hometown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin to visit friends and their family. Not an uncommon experience. But this time, we decided to do something that was uncommon! By now, you’ve probably heard about the famous internet creepypasta “The Backrooms”, a 4chan post accompanied by an image of a sickly yellow under construction area that feels really liminal.

This. It’s this.

Well, it turns out that the original image used for this now-famous post, which is being used as the basis of an upcoming movie, is from a location in Oshkosh! Specifically, it’s for a building that used to house an RC car hobby shop called HobbyTown. Mandy and their family used to go to that place all the time! So, you know, we had to go and see The Real Backrooms…

The thing is, though, that some time between the original photo being taken and when we finally made it there, HobbyTown had switched buildings to one right next to the old one, with the new building being taken over by a thrift shop/kitsch store called Fabulous Finds. So, of course, we went to both. Presenting: the Real Backrooms!

Something really funny is how despite relocating buildings, HobbyTown insisted that they were still the real location of the Backrooms! Don’t get me wrong, they had a cool creepy upstairs area, but you can’t fool me! My partner and their cousins grew up in this place! It’s going to take a lot more than that to trick us into accepting that these are the Real Backrooms!

I haven’t been back to Oshkosh since we visited last July, but it seems like HobbyTown has closed. A shame if so; it was an institution, and they sold a ton of Gundam models. Even the Fake Backrooms couldn’t have saved it. Darn.

By: Erin

Posted: February 13, 2026

Click the thumbnails in this article to view them at full size!

Every year, Mandy and I try to take a trip somewhere we’ve never been. That’s the cool thing about being adults with (a little) money. It started with a trip to Louisville, KY, and just kind of became a tradition after. Look at a map, look at a cool city, figure out what to do there and how to get there.

I don’t remember exactly how Portland became our destination of choice. I know we both wanted to visit the Pacific Northwest, since neither of us had been on the West Coast before, and Mandy and I had been writing stories set in the Portland and Seattle areas, so getting some real world experience in the place we had been writing about was appealing. I think learning about the massive video rental store Movie Madness was the clincher, and it helped that we had friends in the area we were hoping to meet up with.

During the trip, I was taken by the idea of filming a few vignettes here and there with the intention of editing them into a vlog. We drove to the airport listening to one of my favorite albums, Stepdad’s Wildlife Pop, and the spirit of adventure possessed me. As soon as I stepped into the parking lot I shot some film and took some photos, and that persisted throughout the trip. It took me a year to back up all my photos and videos, and I finally got off my rear end and made the planned vlog happen! You can watch all 15 minutes of our hundreds of photos and little videos after the cut.

It’s not much, but it’s cute!

Portland was incredible. It was a beautiful, freeing city absolutely teeming with life. From the moment we arrived at the Hotel DeLuxe to see pride flags flapping in the breeze we knew we were somewhere special.

Our flight from Cincinnati was a rather fun one – I accidentally bought $50 worth of pick-and-mix candy because those Facebook shorts had me craving, I left my headphones at home and bought a new pair from a vending machine that I’m still using to this day, and I broke out my old iPod Touch because I didn’t feel like dealing with Bluetooth connectivity (which spiraled into a whole other thing…). It was great. We landed in Seattle, and then flew to PDX, and arrived late at night. Our trip officially started the next day.

We were very excited to arrive.

We picked the Hotel DeLuxe because it looked like something out of BioShock. The art deco flourishes complete with black-and-white stills from films felt just right for us, and the bar and restaurant was an added bonus, to say nothing of the great downtown location. It was a comfortable hotel, and the aesthetic was very charming. More importantly, the room was quiet, the bed was comfortable, and even if only two or three of the TV channels worked, one of them was History Channel and it played a marathon of some ridiculous show about the history of Little Debbie snack cakes and other uniquely American brands, so we had a great time there.

One thing we love to do on our first day in a new city is to get up early and take a walk. I remember the first thing that struck me was how the street signs and crosswalk lights looked. Very square! We wandered, finding community libraries, a school football field, and a large amount of homeless people.

Yeah, the second thing that struck us about the city was that there were a lot of homeless people and encampments on street corners. It’s a sad situation, one that really laid bare how the country is failing the vulnerable and its own people. It made for a stark contrast between the vibrant city life that popped up as the day went on and the plight of the disenfranchised. A city of contrasts, with gorgeous architecture and centers of culture serving as the backdrop for a population that deserves better care – or any care at all.

On our first day we went to a grocery store down town, picking up staples that we loaded into my Sonic the Hedgehog cooler I had gotten for Christmas the year before. This was going to prove invaluable, because while food was generally affordable, our hotel gave us credit for breakfast but it wasn’t completely free. We also did a lot of walking, so having a readily-available case of water helped a lot as well. The hotel offered bicycle rentals, but we didn’t go for it.

We hadn’t planned on meeting up with our friend Nova so quickly, but she was free and we were free, so we made it happen! We met in front of the famous rental store, Movie Madness, and through that adventure learned how to use the bus system! Public transportation is the coolest thing in the world, and being able to grab a bus wherever we wanted was great. Meeting Nova was an absolute treat, and we got to tell her to watch Baby Assassins and gift her a copy of WarGames, so I would say it was a job well done. We ate at a location close by that had several food trucks, explored the movie store more, saw the famous Fight Club Soap in person and even saw a real statue used in a scene from Citizen Kane! How cool is that?!

Sadly, there was no cane from Citizen Kane.

At some point during the day we got lost in Powell’s Books, a massive book store that author Edgar Cantero has written about in one of my friend Leah’s favorite books, This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us. Apparently he sometimes sneaks signed copies of his books into the store, but no dice this time. I bought a copy nonetheless and should really read it one of these days.

At Everyday Music we found rows and rows of bargain CDs and tons of vinyl I could not afford. I was picking up CDs from Shamen, The World/Inferno Friendship Society, Smash Mouth, and BT from anywhere between 99c and $5. It was amazing! And let me tell you, those albums came in handy when I rebuilt my music library on iTunes. I even found and bought an original Criterion Collection DVD of This Is Spinal Tap, and I now proudly own that along with my original Blockbuster Special Edition DVD and the newest Criterion release. I never wanted to leave.

One place we were told to go was Voodoo Donuts, and it did not disappoint. Walking through the city in the morning and searching for donuts was a lovely experience, and something I fell in love with as we did so was how much graffiti and art there was over all the walls and sidewalks. Murals, patterns, concert posters, and stickers decorated every surface, from bright rainbow walkways, to tributes to those tragically lost to police brutality, to heavily-decorated food trucks and the lurid pink facade of the store we were looking for. Portland is a city of artists of every stripe, and as someone who loves the city life, I could feel the buzz of creativity and passion around me even at 7AM.

We even, completely accidentally, found the famous Keep Portland Weird sign on our way.

It has hard to choose what to get from Voodoo Donuts, but I think I could have done worse than a Cap’n Crunch donut.

One place that we visited and still to this day can’t stop raving about? The Living Room Theater. We bought a whole meal and cocktails at that place, went to a screening of Poor Things (which we loved!), sat in armchairs, and had an absolutely incredible evening. Next time we’re in the city, we’re going back. I don’t care what we watch.

My favorite thing about Portland was how walkable a city it is. This was never more evident than the day we met another friend of ours, Alternis. Alternis was a local who had been in the area longer than Nova, and he suggested we go to the science museum OMSI. As museum lovers, Mandy and I were raring to go, and even though he had a car we decided to walk all the way across a huge bridge and into another section of the city to get there. It was amazing. Not only was the museum a ton of fun, but earlier in the day Mandy and I had went to a thrift store and got some spam musubi and discovered a really cool place that served chicken katsu. The three of us walked, talked, and saw all kinds of dinosaur skulls and cool reptiles and rocks, and then we walked all the way back across the bridge and ate some katsu sandwiches. Alternis, it turned out, was a soda connoisseur, so we stopped by a vintage soda fountain and candy shop as well so he could check out the interesting available flavors.

He was happy to show us around the city he had visited plenty of times growing up, and he took us to some great video game stores, including one that had a vinyl record of Tekken 7 featuring my girl Alisa Bosconovitch (which I didn’t buy) and a bunch of wireless modern N64 controllers (which I did). We ended the day with some ice cream from Salt & Straw, a local place that does unique flavors. I don’t even remember what I ate, but I remember it being delicious.

Jupiter was much smaller in-person.

We met with Nova again on another day to visit Portland’s famous Japanese Garden. It was an absolutely brutal hike up a hill to get there, and the Rose Garden wasn’t in bloom, but the actual Japanese Garden was utterly stunning. We started our day visiting Japanese stores in town, as the city has a large immigrant population, and then we basked among the cherry blossom trees, observed the koi pond, looked at beautiful photography of Japanese locales, admired the view high above the city, and generally had a truly peaceful, truly meditative time.

We then decided to visit TOTL Games, an unassuming little store that somehow had a life-size Naked Snake statue, a Hello Kitty Dreamcast, multiple copies of every Xenosaga game, and a repro cartridge of Streets Of Rage 2 But With Rick From Splatterhouse In It. That was an easy buy. Unfortunately, we got lost trying to figure out the bus system and nearly made Nova late for work, so we had to get a Lyft back to town. It was very funny, but I felt bad. She was cool with it, though.

The most peaceful place on Earth.

One funny thing about Portland is that they love brunch there. They have so many restaurants specially serving brunch. It’s to the point that one of the pieces of graffiti we saw proudly proclaimed “Fuck Brunch, Eat Shit”. On the day we went to the Japanese Garden, we started at Hunnymilk and had a great meal. Maybe it’s bougie, but I understand the hype behind brunch.

Portland’s food truck scene was not to be trifled with. We had gotten a taste earlier during our trip to Movie Madness, but the burrito I got from Tito’s Burritos #2 (in a plaza loaded with food trucks!) was to die for – and good thing, too, as my friend Carl (who had recently relocated from the West Coast) told me he would have been disappointed in his former part of the country if they had let me down. Fun fact, it was around this time that a major news story and scandal involving WWE and Vince McMahon dropped, so Carl and I were moderating a wrestling forum together and putting out fires while I ate a food truck burrito on vacation. Life is strange like that!

There are other places we went as we drifted through town – a pizza place at the bottom of a set of stairs in a building located between two streets, an arcade with a Soulcalibur 2 arcade machine, a memorabilia shop where we picked up a Japanese poster for David Lynch’s Dune, and a fancy restaurant where we had a lovely date-night-style meal – but my primary memories of those last days are ones of joy and freedom, of beautiful Spring nights, of a city steeped in history and queerness and culture, where people walked the streets at night, lined up for clubs, where corner stores with broken air conditioners had huge fans at their doors to keep the temperatures down, where bicycles lined the streets and everything felt just a little liminal. Our last night in Portland lasted a lifetime, and I felt so wonderfully blessed to be sharing it with my favorite person on Earth.

This may be my favorite picture of the trip.

The day we left, we decided to go back to Voodoo Donuts. They really were such good donuts. The sky was grey and the rain was gently coming down. It was nice of the weather to wait until we were about to leave to turn, because it blessed us beforehand. We sat on a wall, eating our donuts, when some kind of street security bot rolled down the road and absolutely terrified me. Mandy teased me about it through a mouthful of donut, but there’s something about automatons that either fill me with warmth or fill me with dread and I can never be sure which it’s going to be.

Our flight got delayed on the way back, and we landed with minutes to spare as we had to make a connection between airports. We did not make the connection, and we found ourselves in a completely empty airport at 11PM, fruitlessly banging on a door and watching our plane back to Cincinnati take off. We managed to get a flight back early in the morning, and so we ended our trip watching Food Network in a hotel on a frozen night and eating midnight Taco Bell.

I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Click here to view the full photo gallery!

By: Erin

Posted: June 2nd, 2025

It is, at least in-name-only, summer in Ohio. It’s June, which means that EMN2’s channel lineup is EMN Flashback. Mandy and I spent a lot of time on our most-recent vacation deciding on a great new list of movies to add to the channel, and I can say that our tweaks have been a major success so far. You may be wondering what those tweaks are! Well, you’ll have to wait a little longer, because…I need to update the Programming Guide pages still. It’s Sisyphean.

That’s not the only big change we’re working on for EMN and our website! Time will tell if any of these things actually get done, but I actually have some articles I want to write! Yes, one of them is the physical media article. Look…it’s a lengthy process, okay? Sheesh.

The big article idea I have in the pipe is a Travelogue for our aforementioned vacation! Yes, Mandy and I went out and did something cool by touching grass. We went to Tennessee for the first time ever, stopping in Nashville, Knoxville, and Pigeon Forge, and we had a lovely – if action-packed – time. I took around 500 photos. We climbed a mountain. It was pretty great.

They aren’t lying – those mountains are Smoky!

So, I need to complete the physical media article, I need to write this travel entry, and I need to update the Channel Lineup pages. I also have yet to unpack, I need to do the dishes, sell some extra things around the house…and instead, what do I do?

Somebody stop me.

If you guessed “use a Chromecast (to be replaced with another Pi) to display a retro weather channel that delivers accurate Ohio weather reports and a little channel guide all over some smooth Japanese jazz fusion“, you’d be right! And you must have cheated.

Still, it brings me great joy. And isn’t that what life is all about?

Well, I’m done for now. Hopefully, the next update will be a productive one. Stay safe out there, and happy Pride Month from EMN. We love you!

By: Erin

Posted: February 23rd, 2025

Five years! Five years of running EMN! There was a time in my life where five years felt like an eternity. Now, it’s still a pretty amazing amount of time to be running a single project, let alone to have expanded it to six channels that I’m always tweaking and updating, but it still feels like it has flown by. Well, that’s what happens when you’re having fun, I suppose.

And yeah, I’ve been having a lot of fun. You may notice that I mentioned six channels up there. That’s right, I’ve added yet another modulator to my collection, and now we have six distinct EMN channels, all with their own purposes! Obviously there’s the main channel, the rotating monthly channel in EMN2, Marathons, EMN Pro, and EMN Vibes, but there’s now EMN DIY! It’s…just a cheap Android box from Wal-Mart running SmartTube and going through a YouTube playlist at random. The benefit of this is that it’s great for longer form programming that wouldn’t fit the television nature of other EMN channels, but it’s also useful to play streams on. We had it running throughout all of Awesome Games Done Quick and it was so cool being able to tune into that marathon at any time just by changing the channel in any room. With this, I really feel like we have everything we could need from EMN – our hyper-personalized channels, something sporty with Pro, music on Vibes, and even “live” and “Slow TV”-style programming. Wonderful!

Tomorrow is Twin Peaks Day. Tomorrow is also the first anniversary of EMN’s test run, where we set up the original Pi, installed Kodi, and experimented with modulation and video. What serendipity! EMN’s anniversary being on the same day our favorite show is celebrated is just so cool. We will of course be updating EMN1’s lineup as we do every year, and I feel really fantastic about our plans for it. I was so excited for the additions (which will be added to the Programming Guide shortly) that I made a brand new bumper using only the 2025 additions!

As always, thank you to everyone who reads this site, who reads me posts on various social media, and who has seen EMN with their own eyes. It’s a project that has kept us sane during dark times, and it looks like it’ll keep doing so. For some personal goals, I want to get my article on physical media completed in the next few months, and I want to update any outdated guide pages. For EMN itself…well, I doubt I’ll happen upon $2000-3000 any time soon, so maybe I can’t buy a professional AV rack and 16-channel modulator, but maybe I can tidy things up in the laundry room just a bit.

Until next year! And hopefully sooner.

By: Erin

Posted: December 26th, 2024

Hello! Little darlings, it’s been a long, cold, lonely year. Well, long, certainly. The other parts came and went. A year of tremendous ups and downs! I always get a little nostalgic and ready to reminisce around the holidays, and as I look at my list of new year’s resolutions I didn’t come close to finishing, I turn my attention elsewhere. Looking back at this website…well, it certainly went through a lot more changes than I remembered!

I started the year by writing one of my favorite articles ever, though admittedly one I still struggle to share. Did Brodie Lee Play Katawa Shoujo?, a question no one else has dared to ask, lead to some fun internet archaeology and philosophical reminiscing on the small ways our lives can change, even in the strangest places. This is the year I got to tell another favorite story about accidentally getting the secret Gay Ending in Tokimeki Memorial Girls’ Side 3, and it was a good year for reposting old things I wrote with the mirroring of my fake Danganronpa 3 press release and my review of The Doom Generation. By the way, I got the Gregg Araki Trilogy box set for Christmas, and I’m so stoked to dive into Totally Fucked Up and Nowhere. You can thank last year’s email to Criterion for that! Totally!

It was a huge year for new projects! I haven’t really posted about it on the site, but I replaced the VCR in the EMN chain with another modulator, meaning right now we have six EMN channels going!! I have to be stopped! That means the main one, EMN2, Marathons, Pro, Vibes, and one we call “EMN DIY” which is just a Chromecast that we use to play various livestreams throughout the house. Right now it’s on an online nature channel, which is cool because you never know when you might see baby cheetahs or a cool monkey. I’m excited to flip it over to AGDQ when the time comes.

One of the biggest new projects Mandy and I launched was Role Credits, our movie podcast. We’re in our third arc already, and are preparing a year-end bonus episode! I’m amazed we got so far with it, and I’m glad to have pushed on through. We’ve had some really fun episodes, with my personal favorites being Batman Forever, Carrie, The Lost Boys, Beverly Hills Ninja, and Christine.

And of course, I should mention one of the biggest changes to the site – WordPress conversion! It was a wild little ride doing something that started as an inkling to make the main Armbar Studios site something people would actually want to click on that then snowballed into learning syntax and extensions to properly make sure all the legacy content on this website displayed correctly, but I’m so proud of how it all turned out. It really is better than ever, and because of it I can write articles and updates as the whim occurs – like I’m doing now!

2024 was a place of personal growth as well. Mandy and I took two of our biggest trips to date: first, a flight to Portland where we explored Movie Madness and the big city and met with our wonderful friend Nova, and then I drove from our Ohio home to Wisconsin to see Mandy’s family and our friends from the area, a trip that really reminded me that road trips kick ass. I really should make a little article and gallery about the Portland trip.

Just a little taste of our adventures on the road!

This is even without mentioning all the movies we watched, games played, skills picked up (like learning to mod iPods), or little projects completed (like porting the EMN tutorials and guides, or finishing my hidden TÁR hate shrine, possibly the best page I’ve ever made)! So, even if I didn’t manage to completely update all the programming guides, or finish a certain very-obviously-under-construction article, or finish archiving the websites I’ve wanted to recode and archive since 2020, it’s still been a wonderful year for EMN and Armbar Studios. Whatever the future may hold, I know we’ll be there to try and make it as fun and as bright as we are able.

My first goal is to finish that aforementioned Physical Media article, though. Gee, who could have foreseen that writing about over 160 items is a daunting and difficult task?!

This will probably be the last news update of the year unless something incredible happens. As such, ciao for now!

By: Erin

Posted: October 28th, 2024

Last Updated: February 7th, 2026

Introduction | 1- 20 | 21 – 40 | 41 – 60 | 61 – 70 | 71 – 90 | 91 – 110 | 111 – 130 | 131 – 150 | 151 – 163 | Extras | Conclusion

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Introduction

In 2023, Mandy and I both made lists of our (at the time) favorite movies of all time. We tried to average around 100 a piece but I went a little overboard. After comparing each list, I put them together and ended up with approximately 163 movies. You can see what my list looks like here and Mandy’s list is here. Our lists have changed around a little bit since we made them, with movies coming and going, but they’re still a great canon of meaningful films for us both.

After making our initial lists, I was struck with a bit of an idea. We had recently preordered Shout Factory’s 4K release of Nightbreed that included the theatrical cut and director’s cut, and Kino Lorber was having a sale on 4K UHD discs. I wanted to surprise Mandy with a present I knew they wouldn’t expect, so I picked up The Night of the Hunter. While I was doing that I needed some more purchases to get free shipping, and while contemplating I came up with the idea of dedicating a shelf in our house to our favorite movies ever. We already had several DVDs and Blu-Rays from our childhood that fit the bill, so I figured I’d throw in some personal favorites and start a new collection.

So, it all started with a UHD of The Night of the Hunter, DVDs of Frank and Super Mario Bros. (1993) (which I actually owned the disc of but not the box from when I got it for Christmas in high school), and a Blu-Ray of American Graffiti. Combined with the movies we already owned and it was a good beginning to making a meaningful physical collection.

Mandy loved the idea, and so we started scavenging thrift stores and our favorite second hand video stores for movies we loved. At first we picked up whatever we could, no matter the format, but as we got deeper in the project we realized how vast the world of physical media really was. You had formats to consider, things like packaging and extras, new releases, alternate cuts, and more. It was a lot more difficult to own some of these movies than you’d expect, and some aren’t available physically in the US at all! Nonetheless, we succeeded – more or less.

Our favorites collection as of 2024 – always under construction, and it’s only gotten bigger since!

Readers of this site know how important archival is to me. Owning the things that bring you joy is an important part of the archival process. I was talking about this project with my friend Sciura who is an archivist by trade, and they encouraged me to write about my experiences and findings. I’ll be going through each of our Favorite Movies that we own, revealing the troubles we went through to get them, the surprises, and what it takes to get your hands on some of these titles in 2024 (And, because of how long this took me, some data from 2025. Whoops.).

Being in the US, my main goal with collecting our favorite movies was to get everything in either Region A/1 and in the best quality possible. I considered things like extras as well, comparing releases, and I tried to get them at decent prices. It started with a mishmash of formats and I’m not stickler for quality – we still have DVDs of certain ones because they’re nostalgic or childhood copies, but if a really cool edition came out I jumped on it. I also had shelf space to consider – DVD boxes are much thicker than Blu-Ray or UHD! If something can’t be played in our off-the-shelf UHD player, or has to be imported, that’s a strike against availability. Believe me, I want a region-free player but it’s not in the budget right now. And foreign films need a release with English subtitles! I love these movies, but I’d like to watch them as they are on the screen, not consulting a Google document like I’m playing Super Danganronpa 2. Also, our list changed slightly in the years following make it, so I’ll be first breaking down the original list, and then I’ll toss on all the extras and a few additional ones I want to highlight at the end.

I’m going to give each movie a rough verdict as to its availability and the average difficulty it takes to get a copy. Let’s say Easy for widely-available discs through major retailers like Amazon or Gruv or a US-based boutique, Medium for those that involve importing a region-free disc from a major retailer outside of the US or have unusual caveats when it comes to owning the highest-quality edition, Hard if you have to go hunting for out-of-print copies through eBay (even if they’re easily available) or there are similar availability issues requiring a thrift store hunt, and Impossible for those with no Region A/1 release at all.

Anyway, with all that in mind, let’s get to breaking down each movie, the difficulty of them to acquire, and the story behind each release.

Click here to start the journey!

By: Erin

Posted: August 5th, 2024

Years ago, Mandy’s mother got us an Oculus Quest 2. It’s a neat little standalone VR headset, the kind of gadget I dreamed about owning since I was a kid riding on those VR arcade games where you fought skeletons while in a minecart. It’s pretty fun for games – Mandy loves the Chronos series, particularly AltDeus: Beyond Chronos, and we’ve both had a lot of fun with I Expect You To Die, and there’s nothing like running around VRChat worlds with my Kaede Akamatsu avatar!

The level of euphoria this gives me is frankly a little embarrassing.

…But for me, the true “killer app” that makes VR worth it is Bigscreen VR.

Bigscreen VR is an app by a small team that one uses to watch things in virtual reality. You load into a theater, or drive-in, or house, and you put things on the TV using the built-in Twitch or YouTube apps, or by your own DLNA server, or by using an app to stream your desktop to others. It’s fun! It was a lifesaver during lockdown, because I was missing movie theaters something fierce, but in general it’s nice to have somewhere I can go when I’m frustrated that truly feels like an escape. When I’m in Bigscreen I’m away from the phone and away from most stimulation outside of the virtual environment and whatever is playing on the screen.

One thing I enjoy doing but don’t often get the opportunity to do is use the app socially. There are always public rooms going, showing movies, people just having fun and messing around, or for some reason having deep religious and philosophical debates. I don’t go to those, or the karaoke, but I respect them enough. No, I prefer showing up to events. Recently, I jumped into a room where people were watching the Olympics and had a great time talking about rugby, which none of us understood, as we cheered for Team USA in the women’s bronze medal game.

One time I hung out with a friend to watch The Game Awards and threw tomatoes at Geoff Keighley whenever he was on screen.

Early on in lockdown I found a room where an older gentleman was streaming disco and funk music videos using the built-in YouTube app. He told me and another user, a military member from the West Coast, about what it was like growing up listening to the Village People, Funkadelic, and Parliament. We danced in a movie theater and then moved to an apartment rooftop at night, and we were joined by others in a virtual block party that lasted until the host’s headset died.

Like I say, I don’t get to do things like that much. I have a Quest 2 and, currently, honking large glasses that make it uncomfortable (though I have some prescription VR lenses in the mail!) and a partner I would rather be spending my time with. What I do get to do is relax and watch my own media, experimenting with the different environments and how they can affect your viewing experience. I’ve really fallen in love with the Sports Bar, using it to watch fighting game VODs and pro wrestling, and with the recent news of David Lynch’s emphysema I experimented watching works by him in various environments, and let me tell you – nothing beats sitting in the woods by a fire as Twin Peaks plays on the screen at night.

It makes me really want to gather up some friends for a first episode watchalong!

It’s hard using just pictures to express how cool this is in-person. There’s a sense of depth and place to it all that videos and screenshots don’t quite capture. That said, I hope that this little gallery of images shows off some of the cool and fun environments and adventures I’ve been having. I even managed to get EMN running in virtual reality at one point using an old Hauppage TV tuner connected to a laptop! Remote Desktop even allowed me to play Umineko extremely jankily! It was nuts!

Who wants to watch Eraserhead in a creepy barn with me?

Anyway, if you end up with a headset, even a Quest 2 like me, I really recommend Bigscreen. And if we’re friends, hit me up! I’d love to hang out in a virtual world together.

Gallery:

By: Erin

Posted: June 17th, 2024

Originally Written: November 28th, 2023

Image courtesy of TheMovieDB

I love furious, disgusting queer art. I can’t get enough of it. Art that lives in hyperreality, art that pretends to be aloof and alien while being the most human work of all, art that loves and hates the time it comes from, inject it into my veins. I knew I was in for a treat when this movie was introduced with the hilarious byline “A Heterosexual Movie By Gregg Araki”. Heterosexual in name alone, heterosexual if only you have never seen the queer underbelly of America that Gregg Araki has, heterosexual if your only signifier of queerness is whether two characters kiss, rather than what it means when they don’t.

To get the obvious comparison out of the way, this felt like the 90s’ take on Multiple Maniacs, a movie so deep in the queer zeitgeist, so utterly irreverent and satirical, so biting and loud in how in both skewers and shoves its deep queer ideals – and the deep fears that we feel – in the audience’s face. It’s an unholy combination of John Waters and Peter Greenaway, scored by Trent Reznor and the sounds of dreams. There’s so much in this movie that lit me on fire, from the phenomenal gory death scenes, the dialogue that sounds like no human being could speak it aloud, the yearning and aching tenderness and sadness in whatever X and Jordan had going on, the beautiful hypnotic music one can drown in and the unbelievable and unreal set design, the Mortal Kombat scene…

The sets are so beautiful and so abstract. They are artificial and filthy, contemporary art, waste repurposed into a doomed-yet-livable world. There are conversations in this movie that make my heart ache with how deeply they touch on existentialism, death, and alienation, and there are conversations that use the words “foodular” and the phrase “smooth move, Ex-Lax”. There’s also so much sex, and so many stupid jokes, and so many dangling threads that don’t get resolved, and vile nihilistic venom dripping from each character’s lips. It is a paradoxical film – at once complex and brilliant, simple and stupid. It juxtaposes beautiful colors and mesmerizing tunes with prepubescent-level puns and teenage-esque lust and grotesque slapstick violence. It exhales and screams, it sneers, and yet it begs for connection as it reaches out and grips the throats of the young queers watching. “You feel it too, right?” it seems to ask. “This world is meaningless and cruel, but I can’t make it through it alone. Don’t make me face it alone.”

I’m fascinated by Amy and her hatred of killing that seems at odds with her brutal, foul mouth. I’m fascinated by Jordan, every glance and word he expresses tinged with deep grief and yearning over his friend he loved, grief he isn’t even conscious that he’s feeling. X, Jordan, Amy. Burnouts, dropouts, freaks. They have each other, for better and for worse.

The final act is harrowing and horrific and yet an unbelievable culmination of all the hilarious hatred being spewed towards propaganda, Conservatism, and America throughout the movie. America to Gregg Araki is depressing, a hyper-capitalist mockery full of gun nuts, disgusting nachos, tinfoil amusements, curtains made of trash, newscasters with ugly ties in front of green screens that do nothing but show gore, and Nazis blasting their “favorite song” – the Star-Spangled Banner.

Why, it’s enough to make one want to kill. Or maybe it’s enough to make one want to die.

Who can say?

By: Erin

Posted: June 11th, 2024

Originally Written: July 29th, 2013

In 2013, DanganMania was running wild. orenronen’s fan translation of the first game as well as his ongoing translation of the second had lead to an influx of SomethingAwful registrations, and the games were on the cusp of going from unknowns to being fully-localized. Mutual Killing Game Fever was all over Tumblr. I decided to make a satirical press release post about a hypothetical third game, mostly to make some goofy Photoshops and to make myself laugh. Mandy helped with several names and titles, all to service the joke of American Danganronpa. There are a few good jokes here, but one that seems to fly under the radar is that the title is a reference to Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Funnily enough, the idea of a Danganronpa In America would lead to a roleplaying campaign run by Mandy and myself that connected us with some people who would become our friends for life. Even if only like three people ever found this post funny, you can’t say it wasn’t worth it.

Spike Chunsoft announced yesterday a new game in their wildly popular Danganronpa franchise entitled Ultimate Dangan Ronpa 3: New Age of Despair. The Sony Playstation ®Vita-exclusive follows Super High School Level Detective Steve Nakamura as he is invited to attend the American branch of Hope’s Peak Academy, an academy where only the best and the brightest of their fields are allowed to go. They say that whoever attends this school is guaranteed a bright future, but things immediately go wrong for Steve when a strange being called “Monokuma” forces him and fifteen other students to participate in a dangerous and deadly game of despair! Sixteen Hope’s Peak hopefuls are trapped on campus grounds and if they ever want to see the outside world again, they must kill another student…and get away with it! It’s a spooky, strange, edge-of-your-seat thriller sure to please fans of the series. Here are just some of the students you will be spending your time with in UItimate Dangan Ronpa 3:

Super High School Level Missionary Anna Triple

Super High School Level Lawyer David Otunga

Super High School Level Cowboy Mark Sman

Super High School Level American Football Player John Residentevil

Super High School Level Fatty Notorious B.I.G.

Super High School Level Fast Food Worker Yasuhiro Hagakure

Ultimate Dangan Ronpa 3 is scheduled to be released in Fall 2015. Stay tuned for updates!

By: Erin

Posted: June 11th, 2024

Whenever I make a change to this website, plenty more are sure to follow. I guess all I need is a push, even if that push is from myself. I hope you’ve already read my latest Blather Blog entry about my adventures in iPod hacking, but it’s hardly the last thing I’ve added to the website lately!

I finally got off my rear end and ported over the two tutorials on setting up EMN that I’ve written throughout the years! You, too, can Make Your Own Damn Channel! Just about everything needed to create your own EMN setup is there, with the only additional thing I need to add is a link to the extension I used for EMN Vibes to make the video play at 1.5x speed. I have it, I just haven’t uploaded it to my server yet. Maybe by the time you read this I’ll have changed that! Maybe! Or maybe not! I’ll say something when I do.

There’s very little foundational work left for this site after this. It’s amazing – I’ve both done everything I set out to do and allowed myself to go on a journey I never would have expected to go on. There’s a major comedy article I’m working on, and I do want to perform archival work on the websites I’m able to and completely back them up, and I’m planning on going through and figuring out the gaps in the EMN Programming Guide that need filling, but generally speaking all the big things are done. I wonder what’s to come? More writing, I suppose. More archives of old art and silly stories. More musings from Mandy and myself. More, more, more.

Well, that’s all I have for now. See you later, and thanks for stopping by!

By: Erin

Posted: June 10th, 2024

Recently, I bought two iPods. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I used to love my iPods growing up, and how I no longer engage with music as intentionally as I used to. After using my old iPod Touch on a plane ride and thoroughly enjoying myself, I asked around online to see if there were any modern MP3 players worth getting that wouldn’t break the bank, and the overwhelming consensus was that you should just hack an iPod because with an iFixit kit and the right parts it was surprisingly easy to do. The 2nd generation Mini was said to be the cheapest and easiest, and the 5th Generation or 5.5 Classic was the most popular and had the most mods available for it. I had a Mini growing up until it broke and I replaced it with a Nano, but I had never had a Classic. One trip to a pawn shop and eBay later, I owned both!

The 5th Gen was from the pawn shop. I got it discounted because it wouldn’t turn on but it worked fine when I charged it!

One of my favorite things to do when stumbling upon or being gifted old media players is to go scavenging. I got a bunch of Sonata Arctica albums from my brother this way, as well as a few AFI songs I really like! These were no different. Once I had charged them up, I got to scrolling.

iPods are such a specific time capsule for so many people. I know there are people still using them today – like, you know, myself – but most people used them in the early-to-late 00s, maybe early 2010s at most. As such, most music on an iPod consists of certain eras – for example, one of these iPods had Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ by 50 Cent on it, which I gladly copied to my computer. Both iPods had a lot of treasure on them, things like The Beatles’ 1 or Abba’s Gold Collection. The 5th Generation (which was named “GZILLI’S IPOD”) was the most interesting to me, because apart from the collection of 80s and 00s hits, it had some fascinating tracks that really painted a picture of the previous user.

I don’t know who Gzilli was. I will never meet this person. But I do know that whoever they were, they enjoyed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and various musicals, even owning the Original London Cast Recording album for Les Miserables. We both had Hot Fuss by The Killers on our iPods, and The Fame by Lady Gaga. I was amused to find an Enya album, but not the album with her biggest hit, Only Time. There was a Barenaked Ladies album, but it was a live album full of songs I had never heard in my life. This iPod was how I learned that Santigold released her first album under the title “Santogold” before later changing her name. There were multiple Chemical Brothers and Girl Talk albums here. If nothing else, Gzilli and I would have bonded over our music tastes.

There was one moment in all my scrolling that really moved me. When I was looking through the album list, I saw In Ghost Colours. I thought to myself “surely not”, but no, it was in fact independent Australian synthpop band Cut Copy’s debut album – one of my favorite albums ever! It really gave me pause. Somehow, someone presumably in Ohio donated an old iPod to a pawn shop just down the road from me, and that person knew and listened to the same obscure band that I discovered in college and even played on my radio show. Heck, maybe they found the band through my show.

Okay, probably not. No one listened to my radio show. But this person liked Cut Copy so much they even had their second album! That’s so cool.

In the time following my purchase of these iPods I’ve bought a pre-modded model from Elite Obsolete Electronics. I wanted to see what a modded one would feel like in the hand, and it’s an extremely sexy beast.

I love the clear shell – it reminds me of my original Game Boy.

I’ve loaded it with my old iPod’s music, tons of CDs I’ve ripped, and even the Adventure Time episode What Was Missing, something that meant the world to me in college as I watched my iTunes-purchased copy of it. However, I actually don’t use it much anymore! That’s because to experiment with how to do iPod mods myself, I ended up taking apart the Mini and replacing the battery and changing the hard drive to a 128GB MicroSD card.

Surgery.

Maybe it’s because the Mini was my first iPod. Maybe it’s the weight, the aluminum shell, or the simplicity of the monochrome screen. Maybe it’s because it’s just that much more responsive than the 5.5th Gen. Whatever the reason, this iPod Mini is my daily driver. I’ve been having an amazing time using it at work or when working out. It’s loaded with music and a few podcasts, and I’ve been taking time to truly listen and re-listen to whole albums all over again, as well as music I hadn’t listened to in years. It’s nice, and I’m looking forward to bringing it on my next plane trip.

Ah jeez, that’s me.

Anyway, this was a journey that lead me all around the city. To Gzilli and whoever owned this Mini before me, I salute you both. I hope you know that your old iPods are in a loving home. One day I’ll be performing my own case and hard drive mods on Gzilli’s 5th Generation, and I’ll toss some pictures up when I’ve done that, but I’m in no hurry. Right now I’m just enjoying jamming to Cut Copy.

By: Erin

Posted: June 7th, 2024

About a week-and-a-half ago I made a test post on this new version of the website. After making the new Armbar Studios website (Mandy and I’s more “professional” endeavor, if you don’t know) I was bitten by the bug of experimentation and set to work to see if it was plausible to move the EMN programming guide site to this new multisite setup I had going. I figured that if I could, it would be easier to provide brand new updates and tweaks as necessary, keeping the guides updated and blessing the world with more articles than ever.

It turned out that it was not only plausible, but also a great idea! I’ve managed to, sometimes from home and sometimes from work, port every post and page and article over to this new site. Files I’m 50/50 on, but it’s all on my own server so it doesn’t matter that much. The important thing is that I’m going to be able to write so many new pieces and you’re just going to have to deal with that. I’ve already started, kind of! I have a new page full of in-jokes that will be entirely incomprehensible to anyone not already part of the subject of the page. I also moved my post about accidentally getting the secret gay ending in Tokimeki Memorial Girls’ Side 3 (and the associated PSP screenshot gallery) to its own page in Media Talk, and I’m brainstorming more things to share. I have a comedy page I’m having a good time writing for, and maybe I can finally get around to archiving more websites…

The coolest thing to me about this whole site update is how much nicer the RSS feed is. Seriously, go on the main page, copy that link, and put that in a feed reader. I’m even thinking of allowing people to subscribe via email. That’d be pretty neat!

I’m going to just have to swallow my pride here – I fought hard against WordPress for a very long time because last time I used it (about ten years ago?!) I was frustrated at how it was almost solely a blogging style platform and I hated all the themes for it. Turns out a decade of development and my own personal experience figuring out how to make it work for me was all it took to calm the stormy waters of my heart. Admittedly, another thing is that last time I used it it was as slow as hardened molasses and now it loads at a perfectly reasonable clip, but hey, you know how it goes. Anyway, as much as I enjoyed my humble HTML beginnings, learning Javascript and arrays with Zonelets, and static site generation with 11ty, it was time to move on. I hope you join me as we do so, and we can move into the future together.

By: Erin

Posted: May 27th, 2024

Well. This is a day I never thought would come! And, frankly, I’m not sure it will. I’m sitting here on Memorial Day and typing up a news post after converting the EMN website to use WordPress. WordPress! My mortal enemy! I had some poor experiences with it in the past, but after using it for the main EMN website I thought, well, I might as well try if just to sate my own curiosity. I’ve enjoyed using Eleventy as a Static Site Generator very much, but I admit that if I’m able to really nail down WordPress to a degree I’m happy with, the ability for Mandy and I to easily throw an article online without having to faff about with FTP is genuinely quite tempting. We’ll see! Currently, my big struggle is trying to get that top menu to work properly. I think I’m almost there.

Will you see me here in the future? Great question. We just don’t know. Ciao for now, and if I pop up again later, well, there’s your answer!

By: Erin

Posted: February 12, 2024

Every year, Mandy and I load up EMN with new shows and movies. Obviously, we are subject to the space on the drive, and some years we have more to consider than other, but it’s fun to take stock of things we’ve watched recently or to check out shows that have made a splash or we stumble upon accidentally on streaming services, and consider how they may fit the overall vision of EMN. I see EMN as an art project as much as a piece of entertainment, and it’s not enough for a piece of art to just be enjoyable to us. The criteria is loose, but much like horror, we know it when we see it.

The EMN programming guide has been updated with this year’s additions, and thanks to a great suggestion by Mandy you can actually tell what they are thanks to the cute “New” GIF marking each one. EMN only gets better every year, and I hope to keep that up.

I was doing a little research last week, and while we consider February the EMN Anniversary, apparently we didn’t start the channel in its full form until March 2nd, 2020. The timeline goes something like this:

February 13th, 2020: I get the idea to hook up a Roku to the guest TV and start watching YouTube and Toonami Aftermath.

February 16th, 2020: I watch the Cowboy Bebop episode Hard Luck Woman as it airs on Toonami Aftermath, which is the last push needed to start the EMN project.

February 18th, 2020: I get my new VCR and a modulator and start testing things like digital antennas and modulating tapes and DVDs to display on the CRT. We start collecting DVD rips and other files to play on what would become EMN.

February 24th, 2020: I follow the Probnot’s Tech tutorial to create the unit and run our first test run. I then start manually watermarking every main piece of programming using a program designed to do that. It takes around a week.

March 2nd, 2020: On our second break from work we come home to finally launch EMN for the first time. The first video to play is “(NEW WR) American Dad speedrun attempt 19.08 using floor clip glitch news paper skip.mkv”.

February was a huge planning month, but that’s why we consider it the anniversary – it was the birth of it all. Mandy worked so hard with so many of the concepts and lists of initial programming that while I may have handled the technical side of it, they’re the real heart of the project.

So, what does the new year hold? Well, I want to share EMN with more people, for one. I want to continue making bumpers and imaging for the network, and I want to tighten up every channel further. I want to work on more articles for the website, including porting over the tutorial I made for Medium back in 2020 and adding a page full of all the equipment I use to make this station work, and adding extra instructions on how to incorporate bumpers and branding into your own channel. It’s happening soon, really! I promise!

Mandy and I are also working on more “blather” posts and articles as a whole, include some musings and opinion pieces on media controversies and such, so look out for those. More writing! More! More!

Now, speaking of the EMN update, the toughest part was preparing episodes of The Chase for use on the channel. The versions I had all contained several minutes of no-signal screens or timecodes to start, and I wanted them to start when they should. Rather than drag each individual episode into LosslessCut (an otherwise very useful program!) I needed to bulk remove the first two minutes (or in some cases one minute) from a folder of files. To do that, I was able to find some code online that I’m backing up here.

Here is the code which I saved in a file called trim.cmd. Make sure you have FFMpeg installed and put the .cmd file in the folder full of files you want to trim. Change vFileType to the extension of the files you’re cutting, set the TrimOffFront and TrimOffRear values to what you need, and make sure the ffmpegPath value is configured correctly. Then you just run it and voila, a whole folder of trimmed files in just a minute or two. Very useful!

As always, thanks to everyone who checks out the EMN website, and a personal thanks to Mandy who is the light of my life and helps make all this possible. I’m excited for all the creativity the future holds. Until next time!

By: Erin

Posted: February 20, 2024

I hope you read that title in the TikTok TTS voice.

In high school, there was nothing I wanted to do more than hack my PSP. I had a friend with a PSP-1000 and a Pandora battery and he used it to play NES games in the special ed classroom we would hang out in before school – after checking the Brawl Dojo for the day’s updates, of course! The idea of digging into this handheld’s guts and getting it to do all kinds of crazy things was all part of a high I began chasing when I renamed the Recycling Bin icon on an elementary school computer to a PaRappa the Rapper quote. I saved up my money, bought a PSP, and after a sleepless night that ended in me getting grounded for a week, learned that the new slim models did not accept Pandora Batteries and were, at the time, unhackable.

Bummer! All was not lost, because I grew to really love that PSP as I used it to watch ripped DVDs and play Star Ocean 2 while staying in the basement of a family friend during my last accelerated high school year in Italy, but I always wanted to hack the dang thing!

My prayers were answered years later when a softmodding method was discovered that worked on every PSP. From then on, the world was my oyster. ISO files galore! I used it to play Mother 3 on a GBA emulator, Persona 3 Portable, and Mega Man Legends 2 for the third time, among many other games. And one of those games was Tokimeki Memorial Girls Side 3!

My lovely friend Thor, otome game enthusiast and visual novel expert, introduced me to the fan translation of this game shortly after it released after watching me poorly stream the Nintendo DS prequel. Maybe it was the hints she gave me during those streams or maybe it was the game itself, but at some point the gameplay loop of stat-building, clothes-buying, studying, and socializing really clicked. I was having a great time playing as new student Erin Toyota, a name I was using in a lot of games at that time for some unknown reason, but there was one major problem:

I didn’t really like any of the boys that much.

This is an otome game! The understood point of this game was to find a boyfriend before the end of the school year and confess to him under the big tree on a hill and have a wonderful life together! And yet, try as I might, as fun as I was having upping my stats and being the coolest girl in school, I simply did not have time for love. The jock, the childhood friend, the loner, none of them were the one for me.

They simply could not measure up to TMGS2’s Christopher Weatherfield.

I was getting frantic because as far as I could tell, if you didn’t get anyone up high enough by the end of the year, you got a bad ending. I had seen the Tokimeki Memorial episode of GameCenter CX enough times to know that much! And every FAQ I checked online was insistent on how you need to earn stats with the boys in order to succeed. They all seemed to imply that a bad ending was the only thing that would happen if your stats with the boys just weren’t high enough.

Well, guess what? They were wrong! Because when the fateful day came, I did in fact end up hopelessly in love with the one character I had managed to up my relationship stats with over any other, and that person was Ugajin Miyo!

Ugajin Miyo was one of two best friend characters in the game along with your other best friend, Karin, and yes, despite no guide saying it was possible, I managed to raise Miyo’s affections to maximum. She was waiting for me under the tree at the end, and so I was NOT doomed to a life of misery and solitude. According to the epilogue, we spent our lives together, opened up a store selling clothes and jewelry, and presumably had a lovely life together where we talked about the occult. Funnily enough, Karin was more of my speed and my favorite character in the game, but the shock of not getting a bad ending wiped any regret I could have had away. Toyota Erin and Ugajin Miyo are in love and run a successful shop together to this day, dammit!

Nowadays, it’s pretty easy to find evidence that Miyo has an ending in TMGS3, but I swear there was no proof that this could even happen online when I looked back in the day. Truly, love wins.

So, one of the neat things you can do with a hacked PSP is add a little mod that changes the screen brightness button into a screenshot button. I looked and was able to find a neat selection of screenshots I had taken throughout some games I had been playing at the time. These are all from around 2013-2014, and while they’re not all the most interesting pictures, they’re a peek into what I was doing ten years ago.

There’s some historical value, too! You see, some of these screenshots are from the very first fan-translation of the original Danganronpa! It may be crazy to think that once upon a time, the only way to experience any Danganronpa game was to create a SomethingAwful account and follow along with orenronen’s Let’s Play as he posted and live-translated the entire thing, but that was the case. It was a sensation, and it helped make the game blow up to an unbelievable degree. It’s still wild to me to see the entire series freely-available on Steam, because I remember when all we had was the forum thread for the first game, some of an LP thread and a badly-translated Google Doc for the second game, and that’s it. People would cosplay the SomethingAwful paywall! It was great.

I basically forced myself through the fan translation because while it had some fun lines it made the absolutely baffling decision to translate Makoto Naegi’s title as “Super High School Level Luckster”. Super High School Level was fine, but Luckster?! Surely “Good Luck” would have been fine! I believe the official English release went with “Ultimate Lucky Student” – and we could debate the merits of the “Super High School Level” vs. “Ultimate” translation all day, and I have before, but that’s beyond the scope of this post. I wonder if the old translation is floating around somewhere? Anyway, it was a very rough fan translation with some peculiar localization choices, and is overall a really interesting oddity in the history of the Danganronpa series in the west.

There are a few other screenshots from a few other games as well, including from my playthrough of Persona 3 Portable, a game I still love to this day. Interesting, it seems like I chose the female protagonist in that game and named her Erin there as well, and you better believe I romanced Elizabeth. How strange!!

Before you continue, keep in mind that there is at least one spoiler for Danganronpa in these screenshots, and several others for it and Persona 3 Portable that contain late-game information.

Okay, enough dilly-dallying!

Click here to view the PSP Screenshot Gallery!

By: Erin

Posted: February 01, 2024

The other day, Mandy reminded me that I made a gag gift for our friends, something that doesn’t quite fit in the EMN Home Video gallery but should be highlighted nevertheless: Coyote Ugly for the PlayStation 2. Click the thumbnail to see the full image, or click here for the massive PNG version.

…’Nuff said!

I made it in about two hours because dammit, Mandy wanted to make sure they had it for Christmas, and I went way harder on it than I remembered going. Honestly, there’s nothing funnier to me than licensed games that shouldn’t exist. There’s a reason we own a legitimate copy of Beastly for Nintendo Wii.

For context, the whole thing started because of RPG Maker game Division Blade, a video game created by a member of Wrestlezone Forums. It’s a uniquely poorly-made game and I love it to pieces, every single piece of weird dialogue and bad map design. One day I would absolutely love to do a long-form Let’s Play or something with it. I think about it constantly, I love showing it to people, and it’s thanks to this latest stream that this game became a reality.

There’s a portion very early on in the game where the characters visit a movie theater, leading to discussion from both party members and NPCs about it being about “girls in a bar”. It seemed to be a reference, but one that none of us could really place. A lot of the dialogue is like that. Knowing that the creator started this game in high school before finishing it in adulthood and knowing what I did about the creator, we quickly decided from the timeframe that it was Coyote Ugly. I have never confirmed this and I never will.

I can’t remember what I based the box art design and back copy on, if anything, and looking at our conversation that started all of this it seems to be because I was extremely drunk on egg nog while making it. I swear the “‘Nuff Said!” part is directly referencing some bad video game box art but I do not remember what. The screenshots are from Steambot Chronicles, SmackDown vs. RAW! 2006, Final Fantasy X-2, and the PS2 Pimp My Ride game, with the Division Blade Sampler CD graphics based directly on the advertised Final Fantasy VII Sampler CD that was included with Tobal No. 1.

I really should finish Division Blade some day. I’ve streamed it a thousand times and I’ve never made it to the end. Could this be the year?! I kind of hope so. I’m tired of playing that first town over-and-over again. I’m tired of Coyote Ugly.

Funny story – this isn’t even the first time I’ve dedicated absurd effort to a fake game gag. There’s an entire menu option on our RetroPie dedicated to Reading Rainbow For The Game Boy Advance, created after someone we knew tried to pull a fast one by requesting we add it.

The screenshot is from Spy Kids 3, and it boots into That’s So Raven.

The moral of the story: don’t test Mandy and I, because we will pour all of our effort and energy into a cheap gag. Thank you and good night!