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An addendum to reddit, ofc. View my iceberg chart on where and how I find movies like Watership Down or Animal Farm on the 'upsetting'-ometer.

For now though, these are my objective picks for decent media that's also absolutely horrific.

Plague Dogs. Don't watch this with you dog. Your dog will hate you because you'll just keep hugging them and dogs don't like hugs. To me this movie is so much better at Isle of Dogs in illuminating the importance and struggles of dogs as a species. Part of what hurts so much about this story isn't just human's preexisting protection of dogs, it's how it accurately shows how quick mistreat/dispose of them as monsters for being the carnivores that they are or having trauma indicative of any animal -dogs don't exist for our pleasure. The fact that the book isn't nearly so grim and how this movie's existence makes that ending feel somehow 'fake' or insincere also doesn't help. Infinitely better and more intimate, sad and better told than Watership Down.

It's Such a Beautiful Day. Don Hertzfelt has that affect with his movies where they illicit such strong emotions out of you despite the characters being stick figures. It really is a very sad story and situation. I cried my ass off at this.

When the Wind Blows. It's everything everyone's already told you. Despite it being a fictional story and nowhere near as horrific as the real stories of survivors, it's just not fun watching two old people who sound/act somewhat like your own parents or grandparents die slowly.

Padak. God this fish movie slaps so hard. It's so genuinely good and shows you how much you can make a person care for animals even by just picturing what it'd be like in that situation where you're surrounded by reminders that you're going to die horrifically...which is saying something considering it was meant to be an allegorical film about human emotions and not even an animal-rights flick. PeTA, eat your sexist-racist hearts out you could never make something like this.

Grave of the Fireflies. As other anime-viewers have pointed out, what makes this movie more than just a super sad story is how and why it happened at all. How it's a plea for 1980s era kids to see what their parents had to go through while also a plea to those same parents to remind them that their own Greatest Generation is the same as their kids- impulsive, set on thinking they're right like Seita is. To me it never comes off as accusatory . It's about how, with or without war, childhood is a dangerous time of life and one not everyone's can or SHOULD be in control of everything just because they're an older sibling or they have 'responsibilities' now.

Barefoot Gen. Hardly need to divulge much without just trauma-dumping on you. Trauma-wise the moment that sticks with me is never the bombing-scene despite that being the part everyone knows. It's the immediate and lingering aftermath of the bomb and Gen's family dying. The part where Gen holds his baby sister and then calls out to his father, brother and sister that they need to be seeing her and not dead brings waterworks every time. Also the accurate details of the rotting or dying corpses are as horrific as they ought to be. I swear if you only watch the bomb scene you don't have any idea about how truly grim and tragic this film actually is.

The Wolf House. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone who has acute sensory problems or schizophrenia. While I love it and it's sound design it's also that aspect of the film that's what's so intense. From the moment it starts to it's final image you know you're watching something from a deeply darked, cursed place yet the images brought forth feel like the imaginings of the victim and not the perpetrator telling the story. It's like, as if, Humbert Humbert was narrating the story of Lolita while we personally see what's in Dolores' mind- yet ALL without ever showing you any actual onscreen ab*se. Wonderful, disturbing work.

Waltz with Bashir. The ending scene. That bit. You're seeing real footage of death (of children). People who say it's somehow hypocritical of me to list this movie when I'm pretty sure Ari Foleman is not anti-Israel, but to me this is exactly the kind of dialogue needed to start this talk. Much of Waltz with Bashir feels like a jumpy but mostly basic war drama where Ari and the soldiors are just told to go places and not think of their safety. It's purposeful dissonance. And then, in the end you get the massacre scene. It shows you the reason for this dissonance. It shows you what it is this 'war' is really for and what exactly everyone has been doing. If anything's sus about this film it's frankly how no one talks about that moment.

Mad God. Gross. I love it.

Kill it and Leave this Town. Mad God and this movie both feel like nightmares that last too long and which you feel at the moment you're having them that you can never escape. Mad God feels like the kind of nightmare where you know and can follow what is happening loosely and keep following it despite knowing it's not going to get any better. Kill it and Leave this Town feels like a lucid horrific dream where every awful image and memory you've ever had comes up to haunt you and you can't help but wallow.

Runners up now that I've finished seeing all of them:

Unicorn Wars and Birdboy: The Forgotten Children. I can't for the life of me decide which one is "more" messed up; Birdboy is so much more depressing though I think it's also the inferior of the two (still good, just flawed). Unicorn Wars feels more brutal than it does disturbing, think less Come and See and more Apocalypse Now, if you know what I mean.

The Peasants. Honestly REALLY should change the ranking on my iceberg chart and put a stronger warning on it now that I've finished seeing it and made the mistake of not spoiling it for myself. This movie is from the same people who made Loving Vincent and it's about the goings on of a polish peasant woman having an affair with a married farmhand but being married off to his older father. In no short terms, she suffers a LOT in this movie and even though the ending's supposed to signify better things it doesn't feel that way. No VVitch-level retribution here. Prolly not the film to show your girlfriend.

Belladonna of Sadness. Belladonna of Sadness is technically an erotica. So the ab*se that you do see, while meant to be horrific, is also as graphic as the other smex scenes even if the former aren't nearly as drawn out, which is why it goes at the bottom of my iceberg chart. Because of this sheer volume of nope and also it's abstraction in telling it's story it feels more to me like an acid-trip but yeah there it is.

The Breadwinner. I put this one on for a rewatch after having watched Wolfwalkers with my sister in 2020 and I highkey forgot how damn brutal and sad it is. I was bawling my eyes out and said out loud "why did I rewatch this?!" several times. It's good but it hurts. Still one of Cartoon Saloon's best.

Reblog to banish TERFs from your blog.

It actually does make me remember similar segments in shows I watched growing up, like that one program. I don't remember what exactly the segment was about but it followed a young boy, and he briefly mentioned stopping at a friend's house and trying goat milk for the first time.

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

What did it get used for? 👀

It's not done yet, but it's the facing, collar, and cuffs for the patchwork dressing gown I'm working on! It was less than half a metre of silk/rayon velvet that I dyed in college because the sample we did of that colour was so nice I wanted a bigger piece. (It was PRO MX fibre reactive dye in the colour Marine, and I don't have my dye sample book with me right now but I think it was at 4%. It shows up more green on some fibres and more blue on others, but is always gorgeous.)

I had no specific plans for it at the time, but eventually the perfect project came along, and there was just enough!

I've been working on this thing (intermittently, in short busts) for a few years now, and am finally done the patchwork and on to the construction. I've posted occasional updates on @vincentbriggs and will post photos there when I'm done.

I've also been filming the whole process, so I'll have a video about it up on my youtube channel eventually, but that'll be a while after it's finished because I have so so so many clips and it's going to take a horrifyingly large amount of editing.

It's based on this c. 1835 original, which is a good 50-100 years later than what I usually sew, but I like it and I wanted one.

If anyone's wondering how many triangles mine has, it's 6,957.

Since I've got the time consuming part out of the way I'm hoping I can get the construction done before winter officially ends.

Edit: Why does everyone think I had a bad time working on the triangles?? I loved working on them, it was so satisfying to put lots of little bits of colour together. The reason I worked on it intermittently is because I could not put it down once I got working on it, and would work on it all day for several days straight until I was very tired and sore, and then I had to put it away to stop myself, and then I'd forget about it for a few months.

And besides the velvet, it of course used up a lot of other little bits of fabric!

Stripey painted leather gloves.

Velvet mite brooch.

Leaf for head.

Leaf for torso, a leaf sequel, now with added slime mould beading.

Very very long and detailed shirt tutorial, which I also did a written version of. You should make one, it's all rectangles.

and Normal Fabric Waistcoat.

I am very slow at making youtube videos but I post monthly updates on the video stuff I've been working on over on patreon, along with 4 extra dinosaurs a month. (and aaghh I know I've been really really sparse with the dinosaurs here lately, I'm sorry!! It's not intentional, there are just a lot of other things to do and also it's been over 9 years and every year I get a little more tired of drawing dinosaurs!)