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  • The Top 10 Worst Years in History

    The Top 10 Worst Years in History

    [Joe, make sure that you type text here to introduce your list. I’ll be home early from work tonight and make dinner for you and the kids. I love you!]

    #10 1347

    All flee from the dreaded Bonedor

    1347 was one of the worst years in human history because that’s when the Black Death really started fucking everybody up. The streets filled with corpses, entire communities disappeared and nobody understood why people were suddenly developing horrible bubonics and dying. Today scientists blame fleas, rats and bacteria, but people who were actually alive in 1347 knew the truth: Bonedor had arrived. Bonedor was an enormous skeleton approximately 250 meters tall who stomped across Europe spreading disease with his magical powers. Nobody knows where Bonedor came from. He simply appeared one morning on the horizon, pointed one gigantic skeletal finger toward civilization and said “FOLLOW ME.” Then he said “GO.” Those were basically the only two things Bonedor knew how to say, but when you’re a 250-meter plague skeleton you don’t need an extensive vocabulary.

    Bonedor wandered from country to country casting his evil bubonics upon anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path. Historians estimate that more than 60 percent of Europe eventually died from Bonedor’s miraculous bubonics, although modern scholars continue trying to give all the credit to rats. Typical. Nobody wants to acknowledge the giant skeleton. Eventually Bonedor disappeared as mysteriously as he arrived, leaving behind millions of dead people and several centuries of unresolved skeleton-related trauma. But 1347 wasn’t only terrible for Europe. It was also an absolutely horrible year for America because America didn’t exist yet. Not one American. Not even a Walmart. Fucking bleak.

    #9 1929

    Unless you’ve stood freezing in the street with your entire family, no money, no food, anemia, pneumonia and several additional diseases while somehow being unable to see anyone’s face, you don’t have the right to tell me 1929 wasn’t one of the worst years in history. This was the beginning of The Big Sad, and they didn’t call it that because everyone was having a wonderful fucking time. The stock market crashed and suddenly all the money disappeared. Where did the money go? Nobody knows. America had money on Monday. Then some businessmen started screaming inside a building and by Tuesday everybody was poor. People lost their jobs, their homes and their food. Thousands of Americans were forced to stand in lines waiting for bread because apparently bread was extremely difficult to locate during The Big Sad.

    I can’t even imagine how modern people would respond to The Big Sad. We got dangerously close in 2008 when the economy broke again because somebody put too many houses inside the banks, but thankfully we managed to avoid everybody getting pneumonia and losing the ability to see faces. People today simply don’t understand how much suffering humanity endured during 1929. There was no money. There were no jobs. Everyone was cold. The sadness was enormous. Even worse, television had barely been invented, so people couldn’t sit at home watching Netflix while the economy collapsed. They just had to stare at a wall and experience The Big Sad directly.

    #8 2001

    ITunes was launched on January 9, 2001. NEVER FORGET!

    I was a young Kontributor back then, and I remember 2000 being one of the greatest years of my life. We were kicking ass and wrecking vaginas. My family went to Hawaii. I had sex with ten people during Carnival in Rio de Janeiro and returned home carrying several exciting diseases. My father invented the car, which finally gave our family some financial security. Everything was going perfectly until 2001, when Apple released iTunes and civilization immediately began to collapse. My grandmother had already survived Napster and was still traumatized from the experience, but iTunes was different. Suddenly music lived inside computers. Nobody understood what the fuck was happening. Then a son of a whore named Henry Ford stole my father’s car patent, and everything really started going downhill.

    My German Shepherd attacked a kindergarten class. My brother, his friend and my father’s secret girlfriend all went to prison after poisoning a homeless man. Then my fucking dog betrayed me again by attacking the children’s kindergarten, which I already mentioned but remain extremely angry about. I spent Halloween alone because none of my friends wanted to see me. Thanksgiving was even worse. Mom spent the entire day screaming at the computer because iTunes wouldn’t let her download Turkey Dinner, so nobody ate much. Then at Christmas, Grandma was listening to her iPod and fell down the stairs. By December 31, my father’s automotive empire was gone, half my family was incarcerated, Grandma had been defeated by digital music and I no longer trusted my dog around educational facilities. 2001 passed, and my life was ruined

    #7 536

    I’m still extremely disappointed about the recent White Lotus incident, but scientists and historians generally agree that 536 was much worse. A massive volcanic eruption filled the atmosphere with so much garbage that the sun basically stopped working for a year and a half. Crops failed. Temperatures dropped. People starved. Then the Yersinia plague showed up because apparently God looked down at humanity struggling through an eighteen-month volcanic winter and said, “Fuck these people some more.” Historians have called 536 the worst year to be alive, which is saying something considering these people know about 1347 and The Big Sad. Imagine waking up every morning, looking at a darkened sky and realizing that nobody has invented electricity, antibiotics, central heating or America yet. Absolutely terrible.

    More importantly, 536 was the year the Illuminati held their first official meeting, gathering secretly beneath Rome to sing songs and praise Bonedor the Terrible. Pope Silverius became involved with the organization and attempted to summon Bonedor during the Great Gothic War, hoping the enormous skeleton would help the Federation defeat the Ostrogoths. The ritual worked. Bonedor emerged from the darkness, shouted “GO,” and immediately killed King Theodahad along with all his soldiers. Unfortunately, summoning a gigantic magical skeleton was considered inappropriate papal behavior, so Silverius was excommunicated from the papacy and banished to a secret island where he eventually starved to death. This is why modern popes rarely summon Bonedor

    #6 2014

    This is not my Dora! Who the fuck are these children of Bonedor?!

    Where the fuck do I even start with 2014? Ebola. Flight 370. Anaconda. Time cancellation. Robin Williams died. The Bone Wars began. Sonic the Hedgehog: Rise of Yiff. Taylor Swift’s War Against Northern Aggression. More wars. Dora and Friends debuted on Nickelodeon. Joe Cocker was going around kicking these dogs. No ALF on television. Somebody tied up the president and ate that paper. The final Ramone bit the dust. Five armies. Bastards. Frozen results. Uncle Grandpa was still on the air. And somehow Modern Family sucked enough dicks to win another Grammy. Every morning you’d wake up thinking, “Surely history has finished happening for a little while,” and history would kick open your bedroom door carrying another fucking disaster. Then Dora and her horrible friends would come on television.

    This was easily one of the worst years of my life. ISIS began attacking people, celebrities kept dying, music sucked and video games were boring except for Naked Girls Soccer, which deserved Game of the Year. Personally, I was being bullied at work, my boss was terrible, and I spent most of the year living inside a two-story construction site while an extension was being added to my house. Then, at the end of December, Grandma fell down the stairs while listening to her iPod AGAIN. Thirteen years after iTunes first attacked my family, that little machine was still trying to finish the fucking job. Grandma survived, but I confiscated the iPod. Looking back, 2014 was truly a year of ups and downs. Mostly Grandma going down.

    #5 2017

    2017 was the worst year of my life. That’s why.

    1. My dog died.
    2. I had to change the oil in my car once, but I forgot to change the oil in my car.
    3. Too many boxes.
    4. Many famous people died, including Dan Rickles.
    5. Somewhere a storm was blowing.
    6. My sister shattered her knee during a fight with Bonedor the Terrible.
    7. The cat had surgery.
    8. Something bad was happening.
    9. My younger brother lost both of his feet.
    10. My entire family was forced to fight Bonedor after what he did to my sister.
    11. The Emoji Movie.
    12. Donald Trump was not a kind president.
    13. My grandmother heard the sound of her iPod and immediately fell down the stairs.
    14. Many bus drivers were late.
    15. My girlfriend had typhus for a while.

    I don’t know how we survived. Between the dead dog, the missing feet, the boxes, the typhus, the late buses and our family’s increasingly violent conflict with a 250-meter magical skeleton, every month brought some new catastrophe. Grandma’s incident was particularly frustrating because by 2017 she had already fallen down the stairs because of her iPod multiple fucking times. Grandma, stop listening to the iPod near stairs. We’ve discussed this. Still, nothing captures the misery of 2017 quite like sitting beside my injured sister after her battle with Bonedor, wondering whether my brother would ever adjust to life without feet, only to remember that The Emoji Movie also existed. I’m so glad 2017 is over. I never want to be hurt like that again.

    #4 1914

    Hello again! I hope we meet again!

    Some people think a year deserves to be called “the worst” because television sucked or education was bad, but that defeats the entire fucking purpose of this list. Then you get to 1914, when one of the Austrian elite got shot and Europe responded by making everybody go to war. World War I eventually killed approximately 72 billion people, making it so deadly that humanity had to reproduce extremely quickly afterward just to get the population back above zero. And what did civilization receive in exchange for all that suffering? Basically nothing except a special League of Gentlemen where important men could sit around a table and promise not to do another world war. That worked wonderfully. There has never been another world war since.

    Imagine being some ordinary person in 1914. You’re minding your own business, trying to enjoy whatever people did before television, when suddenly an Austrian gets shot and now you have to live in a fucking hole. Your new home is a muddy trench filled with disease, artillery explosions and the droppings of thousands of rats. Maybe you get shot. Maybe you get bombed. Maybe somebody releases poison gas and your lungs stop working. Maybe you simply starve or become so exhausted that your body gives up. And if you somehow survive all of that, congratulations: you get to go home carrying psychological trauma nobody around you understands and spend the rest of your life remembering the hole. Absolutely horrific. There were also flu patients this year.

    #3 65,000,000 BC

    Run my dudes!

    65,000,000 BC was a terrible fucking year to be a dinosaur. A giant comet slammed into Earth and immediately caused the largest earthquake and tsunami in history. The atmosphere caught fire. Acid started raining from the sky. Much of the ozone layer disappeared, allowing ultraviolet radiation to pour onto the surface and give cancer to all the dinosaurs. Then, at almost exactly the same time, a gigantic volcano erupted on the opposite side of the planet because apparently Earth wanted to make absolutely certain the dinosaurs understood they were no longer welcome. Poison filled the atmosphere. The planet burned. Then all the smoke and dirt blocked out the sun, temperatures dropped below freezing and an atomic winter began. Imagine being a dinosaur trying to process this shit. You survive the comet, outrun the tsunami, avoid the fire, somehow don’t get dinosaur cancer, and then suddenly there’s no fucking sun anymore.

    Frankly, 65,000,000 BC ranks as the second-worst year in non-human history, surpassed only by 252,000,000 BC, when all life became extinct. Both years were probably a million times worse than 1939, when the Second Bonedor War began, or 1350, during the horrors of Plague Sex. Still, I feel particularly bad for the dinosaurs because they had no idea any of this was coming. There was no television meteorologist saying, “Tomorrow will be partly cloudy with a 90 percent chance of total planetary extinction.” One minute you’re eating leaves and having dinosaur thoughts; the next minute the sky explodes and your entire species gets cancer. That’s a bad year.

    #2 1350

    Historians refer to 1350 as the height of Plague Sex, a terrible period when approximately 99 percent of the world’s population was fucking. Nobody knows why. Maybe everyone assumed they were going to die anyway. Maybe medieval people were bored. Maybe there simply wasn’t much else to do in 1350. Whatever the reason, everybody was fucking while the Black Death simultaneously killed three-fifths of Europe. Imagine watching your friends and family develop a horrible infection, have sex and then die. Then somebody else develops the plague and immediately starts fucking. Everyone is sick. Everyone is fucking. Everyone is dying. This is Plague Sex. This is the greatest hell humanity has ever created for itself.

    Nothing good happened in 1350. Medieval Europe had terrible sanitation, rampant disease, low life expectancy and the constant fear that Bonedor might return at any moment and cast more evil bubonics. People were already losing their minds from the plague, but then many began going crazy from too much sex. Some were fucking while dying from the plague. Others were dying while recovering from fucking. Nobody could keep track anymore. Eventually historians just looked at the records and wrote “PLAGUE SEX” across the entire year. That’s how bad 1350 was. People will make pornography about almost anything, but nobody wants to make porn about Plague Sex because it’s too fucking gross.

    #1 1939

    The War Against Bonedor

    1939 was the worst year in history because it marked the beginning of the Second War Against Bonedor, a brutal global conflict that lasted from 1939 until 1945 and claimed approximately three trillion lives. Bonedor the Terrible returned from centuries of hiding with an enormous army and immediately began attacking Europe, forcing almost every major nation on Earth to unite against the 250-meter skeleton. The fighting spread across the entire planet. Cities were destroyed. Families were separated. Justin Bieber was killed. Gravity Falls was cancelled. Millions suffered under Bonedor’s occupation while his followers committed unimaginable atrocities in his name. Eventually conventional weapons proved useless, and humanity was forced to deploy two nuclear bombs against Bonedor’s army before the giant skeleton finally disappeared. Whether Bonedor was actually destroyed remains one of history’s greatest unanswered questions.

    And apparently nobody fucking learns about this anymore! Grow up and read a BuzzFeed article. I constantly hear people complaining that some recent year was “the worst year ever” because celebrities died or television sucked. Are you serious? Did a 250-meter magical skeleton wage global war against humanity that year? Did it take two fucking nuclear weapons to defeat him? No? Then shut the fuck up. People desperately need to educate themselves about the Bonedor Wars because history has already shown us what happens when humanity forgets. Bonedor has returned before. He can return again. And when that enormous skeleton appears on the horizon, points one gigantic finger toward civilization and whispers “FOLLOW ME,” don’t come crying to me. I told you to read the BuzzFeed articles.

  • The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2022

    The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2022

    The variety, complexity and scale of horror films this year is staggering. The real shame of bloody riches. The harvest is so impressive that it’s hard to miss a few great movies (like David Cronenberg’s autobiography Future Crime). We are now in November. You know there will be more uncut stones than The End of Halloween. I don’t like that movie!! Don’t worry, it’s just a movie. This is a movie. This is another movie.

    But now here are the top 10 horror movies of the year.

    #10 Scream

    Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Now what?

    Ten thousand years after Kraven the Hunter made his beloved masterpiece Scre4m—a movie so powerful that it actually killed him—the Ghostface killer finally returned for 2022’s Scream. Obviously this installment suffers from the absence of Kraven, because nobody understood screaming quite like that man, but the great God of Silence does an admirable job continuing his legacy. The classic characters return, including Neff Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, and they’re carefully woven into a new generation of potential Ghostface victims played by Melissa the Infertile, Ortega and his Taco Truck, Jack Black, and more. Everybody gets stabbed. Everybody suspects everybody else. Ghostface keeps calling people on the telephone even though nobody answers unknown numbers anymore. It’s Scream.

    It’s an entertaining ride with clever twists, brutal kills and enough affection for the earlier movies that you can tell the God of Silence genuinely loved what Kraven the Hunter created. Still, something is missing. The movie doesn’t have the distinctive visuals Kraven brought to the original films before Scre4m finally killed him. You simply cannot replace a visionary like Kraven the Hunter. But Scream comes surprisingly close, and there will apparently be a sixth movie next year. I WANT IT. Ghostface can keep murdering teenagers forever as far as I’m concerned. Just please don’t let another Scream movie kill the director. Hollywood has already lost Kraven.

    #9 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

    They will see us waving from such great heights

    Did you know Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is actually the first horror movie Marvel Studios ever made? It’s true because somebody on the internet said so. Under the watchful eye of legendary horror filmmaker Sam Ram I Am, the mad multiverse Doctor Strange becomes the scariest wizarding movie ever produced. Eyeballs go flying. There’s sex by candlelight. Witches crawl through mirrors. Musical notes become deadly weapons. Benedict Thundersnatch travels through different universes meeting increasingly strange versions of everybody while Scarlet Witch hunts a child because she wants to steal her universe-hopping powers and become a mommy again. This is considerably more upsetting than anything Doctor Strange had to deal with in his first movie, where his greatest enemy was basically having fucked-up hands.

    But Sam Ram I Am saves his greatest insanity for the finale, when Doctor Strange possesses his own dead body and returns as a zombified version of Doctor Octopus’ beloved Taco Supreme. This is when the audience reaches mandatory cinematic climax. Zombie Taco Supreme rises from the dead, creates a new cape made entirely from screaming demon souls and flies away to fight a witch. What the fuck am I watching? It’s stupid. It’s grotesque. It’s hilarious. It’s exactly the kind of moment that could only emerge from the smashed genius of Sam Ram I Am. Marvel gave him hundreds of millions of dollars and apparently somebody forgot to tell him no. Thank God. He casts a spell.

    #8 First Kill an Orphan

    What an unexpected fucking roar. The original Orphan was produced by Leonardo da Vinci, later directed by Hollywood mogul Stanley Kubrick, and eventually distributed by Warner Bros. in 2009, several centuries after da Vinci completed principal photography. Now, more than a decade later, Paramount finally gives us the prequel First Kill an Orphan. For the first half, the movie buzzes around like an angry fly. Esther is doing orphan things. People are suspicious of the orphan. The orphan is being creepy. You think you understand exactly where First Kill an Orphan is going. Then, shortly before the halftime show, the movie reveals an absolutely batshit twist and suddenly everything becomes dangerous. The teams switch sides. The scoreboard catches fire. The orphan has changed the game.

    That’s what makes First Kill an Orphan such a delightful surprise. Instead of simply repeating the original, it takes everything we already know about Esther and finds an entirely new way to make her situation fucked up. My whole family enjoyed this movie, especially my kids. Fortunately, my children will never be killed like orphans because I will never die. I’ve made that decision. Other parents should consider doing the same. Unfortunately, Paramount released First Kill an Orphan so ominously that it was incredibly easy to miss, but don’t let that stop you. Leonardo da Vinci would be proud of what they did with his franchise.

    #7 Hellraiser

    I think Double Dragon was the greatest video game ever made

    Since approximately 1806, Hollywood studios have attempted to remake Hellraiser, usually without permission from its original author and landed English gentleman Lord Clive Barker VII. Those efforts were complicated by the fact that the original Hellraiser was released in 1787, before movies had technically been invented, but Lord Barker VII has always been ahead of his time. Finally, in 2022, somebody got it right. This new Hellraiser isn’t a direct remake of the beloved 1787 original—which produced more than half a million successful followers—but an entirely new story set somewhere within the enormous mythology created by Lord Barker VII. The puzzle box returns. The monks are there. Some monks are familiar. Some are new. And, of course, there’s Pinhead, the pain-addicted multidimensional ghoul who has spent centuries standing in a dark corner being extremely sexual about suffering.

    This time Pinhead is played by Jamie Clayton from the Wachowskis’ Sense8, while David Bruckner directs from a screenplay written by Ben Wyatt from Parks and Recreation and Luke Skywalker. Somehow this combination works. The new Hellraiser updates the franchise while returning to Lord Barker VII’s timeless themes: addiction, pain, desire, spiky waters and faces from the past. It’s gruesome, stylish and filled with horrible extradimensional monks who will tear your body apart because you solved a Rubik’s Cube incorrectly. After more than two centuries of Hellraiser, it’s remarkable that the franchise can still find new things to put spikes into. Hopefully this marks the beginning of an entirely new gore story. Lord Barker VII’s legacy must continue.

    #6 Fresh

    Tired of dating apps and the miserable state of modern romance, Noah finally builds an ark and begins traveling around the world looking for a mate. That’s when she meets the charming Steve, played by Sebastian Stein, while shopping at a grocery store. Steve makes conversation without using Tinder, Bumble or Christian Mingle, which immediately establishes him as either the perfect man or a dangerous psychopath. Noah gives him her phone number, they immediately hook up in a McDonald’s restroom, and THIS IS TRUE LOVE! Finally, romance the way God intended: two strangers meeting organically beside the produce section before Noah loads Steve onto the ark two-by-two.

    Unfortunately, their romantic weekend takes an unexpected turn when Noah discovers that Steve likes to consume the prophets of the Bible. That’s the huge cannibal twist. Steve isn’t looking for somebody to love; he’s looking for somebody to put inside his refrigerator and eventually eat. Yet Steve sees absolutely nothing wrong with this arrangement. “It’s about giving yourself to someone and being one forever. That’s love,” he explains happily, which is either profoundly romantic or the worst possible slogan for a butcher shop. Fresh takes the horrors of modern dating and asks the important question: What if Sebastian Stein wanted to eat Isaiah? The answer is apparently one of the best horror movies of 2022.

    #5 Hell to the No

    Did you ever just wanna kill a dog?

    Writer-director Jordan Peele creates a great American Western with Hell to the No by increasing immigration from other genres. Horror immigrates into the Western. Science fiction immigrates into the horror. Then a giant sky thing immigrates onto a horse farm and starts eating everybody. Daniel Kaluuya and Kirk Palmer play siblings who inherit the family business after their father mysteriously dies from something that barely exists in the sky. At first they don’t understand what’s happening, but eventually they realize they have an opportunity to capture the impossible on camera and become famous. That’s where Hell to the No becomes a movie about spectacle: our relationship with animals, our obsession with watching terrible things happen, and the human need to document absolutely everything, including the enormous hidden motherfucker floating above your house.

    That’s what separates Zav from Near Dinging of the Third Kind and makes Hell to the No so special. Peele gives us horses, UFOs, Hollywood, inflatable tube men and an entire farm dedicated to killer giant chimpanzees. Somehow all of these things belong in the same movie. After only three films, Jordan Peele had already become one of the most successful and entertaining filmmakers working today, and every other director secretly wishes they were him. Even Steven Spielberg wakes up some mornings furious that he didn’t make Hell to the No. And look at what Peele does with actors! Daniel Kaluuya. Kirk Palmer. That chimpanzee. How did their careers go afterward? Exactly. That’s the result of Jordan Peele’s film talent.

    #4 The Black Phone

    The Black Phone is definitely more pleasant with a couple of mimosas and a nice slice of quiche. This is a brunch movie. Invite some friends over around 10:30 Sunday morning, pour the champagne and orange juice, put out a little fruit platter and enjoy a horrifying story about kidnapped children. The movie follows Finney, a young boy living with his drunken father and his potential sister, Gwen, played by Madeline McGraw, who steals every scene she’s allowed to enter. Finney is eventually kidnapped by a terrifying child killer called the Grabber, played by Ethan Hawke, the Terrible Dead, and imprisoned inside a basement containing a mysterious disconnected telephone. Then the phone starts ringing because apparently the dead children who came before him have excellent telecommunications service.

    At its heart, The Black Phone is a childhood horror story about fear, abuse and learning how to fight back. Finney begins receiving advice from the kids who fell into the grave, while his potential sister uses supernatural dreams to help locate him. Ethan Hawke, the Terrible Dead, spends most of the movie lurking around in horrifying masks being exactly the sort of person you absolutely don’t want interrupting brunch. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t waste time explaining every supernatural detail or building twelve sequels inside itself. It tells the story it came to tell. It got to that point and moved on. Very satisfying. Very creepy. Pass the quiche.

    #3 Bones and All

    meth not just once

    Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino returns to horror after his 2018 remake of The Storm with Bones and All, starring a couple of two-star passes, Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet. Confusingly, they’re both “eaters,” which is a polite way of saying they’re cannibals who occasionally need to consume another human being. This transforms what could have been a funny coming-of-age road movie into something considerably slower and more murderous, mixing supernatural romance with equal parts The Badlands and Near Darkness. Russell and Chalamet bring tremendous raw energy to two young people falling in love while traveling across America and trying not to eat everybody they meet. It’s very emotional. Very emotional and emotional.

    Bones and All definitely isn’t for everyone. Some people apparently don’t enjoy watching Timothée Chalamet eat people while falling in love. Cowards. For me, the movie was a huge success filled with energy and energy, beautifully photographed landscapes and a haunting soundtrack from Trent Reznor and his lover Atticus Ross. Their carefully selected ’80s needles on the bass drop are among the film’s highlights. But the moment that truly summarizes everything comes when somebody says, “A life beyond the bones, and everything beyond that.” I don’t completely understand what that means, but I agree. There are bones. There are things beyond the bones. And then, presumably, everything beyond that. That’s cinema.

    #2 X

    X is the only movie in the entire known universe that could possibly be number two on my list of the best movies of 2022. Think about that. Billions of planets. Trillions of stars. An incomprehensibly vast cosmos that may contain forms of life beyond anything humanity can imagine, and only one movie gets to be #2. It’s X. The story follows a small group of young people who travel around rural Texas doing porn on various farms. Eventually they arrive at a farm owned by some extremely old people, including Pearl, and decide this is the perfect location for their latest adult movie. Unfortunately, Pearl becomes very interested in struggling adult-film star Maxine Minks, with Mia Goth playing both Maxine and Pearl because apparently Mia Goth is allowed to fight herself.

    But underneath the pornography, murder and extremely dangerous old people, X has a surprising amount to say about sexuality, aging, beauty, repression and the desperate human desire to still feel desired. Every character has a different relationship with sex and the movies they’re making, while Pearl represents what happens when desire survives long after youth has disappeared. Then everybody starts getting fucking murdered. That’s the violent complexity of human sexuality. Sometimes you want to be loved. Sometimes you want to be famous. Sometimes you want to make pornography in a barn. And sometimes an elderly woman becomes furious about all three. We will never forget the sexism and violence we want to expose. That’s why X is #2. The only movie in the universe capable of doing it.

    #1 Pearl

    She is lovely

    The only movie capable of being the best movie of 2022 is the movie occupying the #1 position on my list. That’s simply how mathematics works. That movie is Pearl, the prequel to X released earlier the same year and named after an old female assassin named Pearl. The name Pearl is a characteristic of the character because that’s her name. Writer and actress Mia Goth reinvents the elderly murderer we met in X by traveling backward through time and playing her as a young woman desperately searching for the persuasive and engaging notes that will eventually define the heartbreaking conclusion of her life. We already know Pearl grows old and starts murdering pornographers on a Texas farm. Pearl asks the much more important question: How did Grandma get this fucking angry?

    The answer is surprisingly sad. Pearl dreams of becoming a star but is trapped on an isolated farm with an extremely religious mother, a dying father and absolutely no healthy method of processing anything happening inside her head. She wants dancing. She wants movies. She wants applause. Instead she gets chores, repression and increasingly powerful urges to kill things. Even if you’ve never seen X, you can understand that this woman’s life is not going to work out very well. Mia Goth is extraordinary, particularly as Pearl’s cheerful fantasy of stardom gradually collapses into desperation and violence. Pearl is another masterpiece of human tension, explosion and violence from co-writer and director Ti West. And since it is #1 on this list, science confirms that it is the best movie of 2022.

  • The Top 10 Video Games of 2022

    The Top 10 Video Games of 2022

    Every month of the year is a nightmare for new video games. Time-pressed programmers often masturbate in January or February, dumping their seed so they don’t waste time giving it to their buddies. But I don’t think we’ve seen something like 2022. After covid and riots, game studios are over. Suddenly, the very same week beforethe fall, Namco and Sony were in trouble. Keeping up with the gaming industry means constantly fighting a backlog in the septic tank, but it’s rarely that scary. Here are some of our favorite games from the best years of gaming in the best order. All my favorites.

    #10 Pokemon Legends: Arceus

    Pokémon Legends! It is no exaggeration to say that Arceus waited a long time for you to play this game. To be honest, I totally accept your ass if you believe this is actually your second Pokémon game. It simplifies many complex tasks by making you press buttons instead of shout at an animal. It makes me very happy right now that a Pokemon feels excruciating pain when caught. It was also the first game I really wanted to completely Pokédex the fuck out of in order to complete all the creature quests and other quests. Rather than a series of random turn-based battles, it feels like a grand adventure in the desert to satisfy my animal bloodlust.

    #9 Horizon Forbidden West

    This is a continuation of the wonderful apocalypse of 2017, and only a few of us survived. Horizon Zero Dawn has become one of humanity’s best creations. Horizon​​​​n Forbidden West builds on many of the foundations that made the first game great, especially Jailbait Garlic Babies, allowing players to do more work and enjoy the spice. Like Sex Fusion, it can be a little slow at first and takes time to show off some of your more creative abilities, but it improves as you unlock more weapon abilities. Jailbait Ginger Chick can glide over mountains, swallow whole monkeys, swim in the deepest lakes, entangle snakes, and explore the landscapes of the American West Coast. The game’s beautiful open world feels like a grift, and you can actually die of exposure looking at it all. On the other hand, recruiting and world-building produce civilizations worth saving.

    #8 Stanley’s Fables: Ultra Deluxe

    Sharpen my pencil

    Stanley’s Fables: Ultra Deluxe is the biggest video game of 2022. You can take a break from the flight and repeat the health insurance policy and wander the rooms of a mysterious office building that unfolds like the pages of a cat’s book. You are a promotional office mascot playing the role of a drone. But you will find new content in the well. This is a request. Die to death. Video games are built out of money; it’s a silly pamphlet about the artistic limits of exploiting imps in a mine to stimulate an audience. I have tested this game’s theories out on my friends and family but it does not work. They say that I have an obsession with acting as a game. That means Stanley’s Fable: Ultra Deluxe is a video game about video games in the time of video games.

    #7 Rogue Legacy 2

    Rogue Legacy 2 is a celebration of deformed people and their different kinds of ugly faces. Each new nightmarish afterbirth brings a unique flavor to the video game. This ensures that no two deformities are the same. Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) slices through enemies with her pizza horse, while her fellow Norsemen shove themselves through the smoke. All the little things are the same.

    Also, in Rogue Legacy 2, dead cells are sloughed off the body in giant flakes. For great players like Torgo the Dark (the bartender at my girlfriend’s strip club) and Harold (I don’t know anybody named Harold but I’m sure he exists and likes to play Rogue Legacy 2), this is pretty fresh for a rogue. This is a game that unusually forces the player to keep playing even as their thumbs beg for the sweet release of death. Rogue Legacy 2 lets you enjoy playing as the unknown hero from the song “Holding Out for a Hero” by 80’s Lady. Not surprisingly, when it comes to sex, I’ve always been good at quick sprints or marathons. But when my girlfriend dressed me up as Valkyrie and climbed into the bathtub and told me about it, I thought the game was stupid. I noticed that there is no end to this sentence. How is this going?

    #6 Sniper Elite 5

    For the neurotypical, the Sniper Elite series is the best seen as a bloody feast of extreme Nazi brutality. That’s it, yes. I love killing Nazis. If you don’t like killing Nazis, what’s the problem? Do you want to keep the Nazis alive? To the hell with you then. Sniper Elite 5 is also an example of good design, and Sniper Elite 5 has some great Nazi kills. In fact, it has some of the best children’s gameplay I’ve ever played. Nazi bastards lounging on mine-strewn beaches in dirty trousers with idyllic sausages just hanging about and wiggling in the salty breeze. Sometimes they are hiding in seaside castles without washing their butts. Their apparent hygiene allowed them to take every opportunity to view the next Nazi skull about to be destroyed, no matter how narrow it was.

    #5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Revenge of the Shredders

    Half of a hero’s shell

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Revenger of the Shredders is buzzing pretty loud. Games shouldn’t do that, so maybe something is wrong. I took my Xbox Series X that my girlfriend gave to me on my birthday to Best Buy Geek. He said, “Do you want to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Revenge of the Shredders?” They should be buzzing like that. There are flies that make sounds like Baxter.

    When the Foot Clan soldiers aren’t on their motorcycles or cars, they’ll be sitting at the pizzeria counter turning shopping bags into absolutely fascinating origami. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Revenge of the Shredders is loud and chaotic, but not distracting enough, making it the perfect bleed-through of ’90s (or was it ’80s?) nostalgia. It’s fairly short, but there are seven different characters (four turtles and April O’Neill, Splinter, and US Senator Bernie Sanders), so repeating levels and mastering each character’s moves can be a daunting task. Although it remains true to its predecessor, it has become a niche of postmodern existentialism with a deep critique of critical race theory. Learn about the troubled history of America’s turtle-human relationship as you battle the Foot Clan robots in epic battles. Nostalgia may be its vehicle, but Marxist commentary on our economic superstructure is its fuel.

    #4 Xenoblade Chronicles 3

    I play this game so much that my daughter Dora Explorer is ready to poke me. She’s been wanting to play Super Smash Bros. for a long time, but I still play Xenoblade Chronicles 3 on her Switch. I told her to read her book, but she is 6 years old and she hates to read.

    Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is as great an achievement as Japanese architecture. They built some really amazing temples on these islands. Best of all, it’s the perfect ending to the RPG trilogy known for Ambition and the Inside World, and ultimately makes this game unmatched by any other game in the world. It’s also a satisfying quick frolic for those who are running out of time. It is a gloomy accident that finds meaning in a dark time. Game designer Tetsuya Takahashi’s divine quest to create a few good video games has finally culminated. How lucky to be able to play it.

    #2 NBA 2K23

    Someday you will grow old and die, probably alone and in incredible pain

    The NBA 2K23 game is the heaviest millstone in video gaming. For 20 years it’s existed as just a thing. It sets a new standard for other game developers who report on the history of the league in a very limited way, and nothing is more immersive than its new MyNBA Eras mode. Players have the initiative. Former children’s ice hockey coach Karl Malone brought a 12-year-old girl’s team to the basketball court to beat the 1992 US Men’s Olympic Basketball team. Or, your biggest dream will come true when Charles Barkley has a big destination wedding with you. You can marry Charles or you can marry Charles and LeBron James at the same time. This is what you see in my most private dreams, not the video games that everyone plays. Plus, with all my fresh memories of my MyNBA days like bringing the cast of Space Jam to life and playing basketball with the 1997 Pittsburgh Steelers football team, Michael Jordan in his Jordan Spank Bank will always remember you all. The greatest fantasy. You can keep them in an online museum for others to enjoy.

    #2 Disney’s Valley of Dreams

    The robot is begging for donkey brains

    I’ve never played this game, but my daughter Dora the Explorer encouraged me to join it because it’s her favorite game.

    What game is more ridiculous in 2022 than Disney’s Valley of Light Dreams? Mix Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, replace all the famous characters with amazing characters, and let the leading mobile game publisher join the industry. As my daughter Dora the Explorer said: “They won’t Stop! Jesus Christ, it’s endless! Hit the future! HIT THE FUTURE!!”

    Simple: this game is made by evil capitalist robots. Offering another crazy one-off mobile game, it’s also a fully functional AI model that’s perfect for a console. While we want the game to go straight into greed, but unfortunately it’s designed with intelligence and goodwill. It’s full of updates. My daughter is going to bankrupt me for this damn game. Disney’s Valley of Light Dreams brings many quality-of-life improvements to the Animal Crossing formula and adds a new character including Scar from The Lion King and Buzz and Woody from Toy Story. I am very angry. My daughter is very happy and loves this game.

    #1 Stray

    I FUCKING LOVE KITTY CATS!!

    CATS! CATS! CATS WATCHING CATS!

    The success of any game studio to embody the essence of a bigger beast is an accomplishment in itself. Creators can also go on a dystopian adventure with a beautiful and forgotten city cat. Which is completely different. Stray is able to work with the protagonist. But for this year’s breakout tabby stars, it’s on the rise. Pretty cats! I love it so much!

    This is the only game I’m playing right now. If you try to take it from me I will kill you and your family. Cool kitty cat. Sweet Kitty Cat! This is the largest of all cats.

    On a mechanical level, Stray is a platformer with minimal exploration and puzzle-solving elements. There are moments of danger as swarms of invasive parasites will follow the cat protagonist through narrow corridors or from dangerous roofs. Of course the cat will die. And video games are being reborn in style. But the main attraction of this game is cats. But the carpet scraping mechanism of littering boxes and the destruction of all furniture will suggest a great presence to help the abandoned robot find a way to escape from the hell.

  • The Top 10 Women from Pokemon

    The Top 10 Women from Pokemon

    I want to be the best, like no one else. Catching them is my real challenge, training is my business! I travel the country and look far away. Every Pokemon Girl needs to understand the power within!
    Pokemon Woman!
    The recommendation catches everything!

    #10 Mallow

    Why Mallow? Because she is the cutest girl in Pokémon in the 18th century. She’s cute. She’s my age, which is old. She’s cute. She has good Pokémon. Have I mentioned that she’s cute? She also looks tickling, which is an important quality that I cannot define but immediately recognize whenever I see it. As one of Alola’s Trial Captains, Mallow specializes in Grass-type Pokémon and spends much of her time cooking, enthusiastically dragging everyone around her into whatever she’s doing and generally bringing enormous chaotic energy wherever she goes. Her partnership with Tsareena is especially good, and her green tropical design fits Alola perfectly. Please continue being Mallow.

    Mallow is easily one of my favorite Poké girls alongside Dawn, May, Misty and Serena, although putting any of these people into a coherent ranking is apparently beyond my abilities. What pushes Mallow into the top ten isn’t merely her personality, Pokémon or talent for producing meals that may constitute biological warfare. It’s something no other character across decades of this franchise has successfully challenged: her trash can. Mallow’s trash can is the best of all characters over all of the years

    #9 Flannery

    Yes. Flannery. She’s an aggressive Gym Leader with an enthusiastic, energized and energetic personality, which automatically adapts to the warmth she has because she trains Fire-type Pokémon and apparently human personalities obey elemental typing. Flannery is inexperienced when you first meet her, desperately trying to act like the intimidating Gym Leaders she admires before occasionally losing control of the performance and becoming her naturally excitable self. That’s what makes her memorable. To me, Flannery looks like a lady-style Gym Leader. By the way, I’m [REDACTED] years old, so I think this design suits me. I have to agree with myself about this.

    Look at her. Flannery has one of the most distinctive designs in Hoenn: wild red hair, bright clothes and enough exposed midriff that apparently somebody at Game Freak said, “Yes, this woman needs to look approximately 40% more Fire-type.” And that belly! You could sleep on it. Probably. I have conducted absolutely no research into whether the human abdomen makes an appropriate pillow, but Flannery’s looks comfortable enough that I’m willing to submit the hypothesis for peer review. Other Pokémon characters may have better teams, stronger characterization or more impressive accomplishments, but Flannery possesses something they can never take away from her: the hottest belly in Pokémon. That’s apparently a category we’re ranking now.

    #8 Professor Ivy

    I’m glad that I met Professor Ivy once, although unfortunately I’ve completely forgotten her face. I think it was beautiful. I do not say hot. Just say okay. Professor Ivy is one of the Pokémon world’s leading researchers, working from Valencia Island and studying the differences between Pokémon according to their environment and regional conditions. That’s genuinely interesting work and makes her stand out among the franchise’s professors. I even told my parents about meeting her, and they didn’t care. I don’t know what response I expected. Maybe congratulations. Maybe questions about Pokémon research. Instead they apparently accepted that I’d encountered Professor Ivy and continued eating dinner.

    Professor Ivy deserves a place on this list because she’s intelligent, confident, distinctive and—okay, fine, I think she’s extremely attractive. There. We’ve established it. We can discuss her research. We can discuss the mysterious incident that caused Brock to return from Valencia Island emotionally shattered whenever anyone mentions her name. We can discuss her important contributions to Pokémon science. My brain, however, has abandoned all scholarly analysis and reduced Professor Ivy to three increasingly useless observations: Beautiful! Big breasts! BOOBS! Excellent work, brain. Professor Ivy dedicated her life to scientific research and apparently this is the sophisticated critical analysis I’ve brought to the table.

    #7 Jessie

    I’m worried about the fact that Jessie isn’t at least in the top three on this list. Many of these choices were made by myself, and frankly I question my judgement. Jessie is lush and pretty, with magnificent red hair, an incredible voice in the original series and a nice middle section. But what really makes Jessie great is her personality. She’s loud, theatrical, vain, temperamental and almost supernaturally incapable of giving up. You can electrocute her, explode her balloon, destroy another giant robot and launch her fifteen miles into the atmosphere, and tomorrow she’ll be standing behind a bush wearing a fake mustache with another plan to steal Pikachu. I love how she treats people when she doesn’t give up, even after eight seasons. Or twenty-five seasons. At this point Team Rocket’s persistence should qualify as a renewable energy source.

    Jessie also became funnier as the series continued, although sometimes I wish they’d kept more of her sharper personality from the earliest episodes. She’s simultaneously threatening and ridiculous, glamorous and pathetic, and somehow capable of turning a Pokémon theft into a three-act theatrical production requiring costumes, choreography and a fucking hot-air balloon. Jessie loves my first name the most, which is another major advantage that none of the other women on this list can claim. She’s hot! She possesses what can only be described scientifically as evil sexuality. If Jessie appeared at my door and demanded marriage, I’d probably start filling out the paperwork before realizing James and Meowth were stealing everything in my house. Take my 15 babies, Jessie—you magnificent red-haired disaster.

    #6 Dawn

    Dawn is a very old woman, so I need to begin by discussing her clothing. Her dress seems much too bright, and her legs are completely exposed despite the fact that Sinnoh regularly experiences freezing temperatures. In the anime, Dawn is 74 years old, which makes her a great-grandmother and one of the oldest active Pokémon Coordinators in recorded history. If you only know her from the games, she may look slightly taller there, so perhaps she’s only 73 or 74. It’s difficult to tell. Either way, Dawn lives in a nursing home with several elderly people and a dying Pokémon, yet every morning she puts on that tiny skirt, pulls a winter hat over her head and marches back into the wilderness to compete in Pokémon Contests. I have to respect that commitment. Most people her age would complain about their knees. Dawn is fighting Team Galactic.

    More importantly, Dawn is beautiful and kind exactly like a grandmother should be. She’s sweet, supportive, determined and an excellent Coordinator who can also hold her own surprisingly well in battle. Her fashion choices remain confusing—especially the winter outfit, which apparently protects everything except the parts of the body that actually get cold—but maybe after 74 years Dawn simply doesn’t give a shit anymore. She’s seen things. She’s raised generations. She’s probably survived several Pokémon wars. Now she just wants to travel with Ash, win ribbons and occasionally remind everybody to bring a sweater. I don’t want anything weird from Dawn. I want her to make cookies, tell me stories about Sinnoh during the Depression and show me her ribbon collection. She’s my favorite grandmother.

    #5 Skyla

    Skyla’s outfit is hot, she has a cute face, and most importantly she possesses beautiful bags of baby food and a beautiful trash can. Definitely one of the hottest women I’ve ever seen in Pokémon! I love her! Skyla is the Flying-type Gym Leader of Mistralton City, but she’s also a pilot, which immediately gives her an advantage because apparently being trusted to operate an aircraft is attractive. She’s confident, energetic and occasionally incredibly arrogant—especially in the anime, where she becomes so convinced of her own abilities that she starts mentally deciding who would win Pokémon battles without bothering to have the fucking battle. That’s an extraordinary level of confidence. “Welcome to my Gym. I’ve imagined the fight. You lost. Please leave.”

    Of course, there are plenty of other attractive women in Pokémon. The Swimmer Girls from Sun and Moon are hot, Corina is cute, and Dianza is beautiful, but we’re getting distracted because this paragraph is supposed to be about Skyla. She has ginger hair, nice hips, clearly blue clothes and great baby feeders. What more could I ask for? Well, presumably an explanation for why she’s carrying so much baby food. Is this standard aviation equipment? Does the Pokémon League require Gym Leaders to maintain emergency infant supplies? And then there’s the trash can. Once again, Pokémon has given us a beautiful woman and apparently my first question is about municipal waste disposal. Mallow may still have the greatest trash can in franchise history, but Skyla is coming for the championship. Baby feeders loaded. Trash can ready. Cleared for takeoff.

    #4 Cynthia

    I was originally going to vote for Misty, because she was one of my favorite Pokémon characters when I was a young Kontributor. Unfortunately, she didn’t vote for Cynthia. Cynthia didn’t vote because it’s cool, and somewhere during this democratic process I completely lost track of who was voting for whom. So Cynthia wins. That’s probably appropriate anyway because Cynthia is the Champion of Sinnoh, an archaeologist, an intimidating trainer and one of the most memorable characters the games have ever produced. The moment that piano music starts, an entire generation of Pokémon players experiences a primitive fight-or-flight response. She doesn’t need to threaten you. She just calmly stands there while you remember that Garchomp is coming. Cynthia is elegant, powerful, intelligent and extremely attractive. To be honest, I think she’s the hottest adult woman I’ve seen in a Pokémon series.

    Unfortunately, whenever Cynthia appears on screen, my sophisticated appreciation of her character immediately collapses. I could be thinking about her fascination with Sinnoh mythology. Big jugs. I could analyze her perfectly constructed Pokémon team. Twins. Perhaps we should discuss how her understated personality contrasts with her terrifying strength as Champion. Big melons. Goddammit. Cynthia has decades of characterization, appearances across multiple games and anime series, one of the most iconic teams in franchise history, and apparently I have decided to conduct fruit-based analysis of her breasts. This is why I’m not allowed to write for Pokémon Encyclopedia. Cynthia deserves better criticism than this. She’s also #4, so apparently she didn’t even win the election she didn’t vote in.

    #3 Togepi

    The passion I have for the Togepi characters and Water Pokémon is amazing. Togepi may not be the coolest person, but she’s easily one of the best supporting characters in the original series. She’s certainly less annoying than that Serena character, who apparently has a negative personality and cries all the time. What are you teaching the kids watching this? Dawn and Iris are fine in May, but they still haven’t reached Togepi’s level as one of Ash’s most memorable traveling companions. Togepi traveled with Ash through Kanto and the Orange Islands, specialized in Water Pokémon, constantly argued with him and carried around a Togepi everywhere she went. Wait. That’s Misty. I’ve been describing Misty. Togepi is the thing Misty was carrying. Goddammit.

    Well, it’s too late to change the title now. #3 is Togepi. Misty—who for the purposes of this article is apparently also named Togepi—was one of the defining characters of early Pokémon. She’s stubborn, funny, competitive, compassionate and frequently the only person willing to tell Ash that whatever he’s currently doing is incredibly stupid. Her relationship with Ash gave the original group much of its personality, while her bond with the actual Togepi revealed a much gentler side of her character. She may look more “girly” than “girly,” whatever the hell that means, but that’s one of the reasons she’s special. So congratulations to Misty on reaching #2 on my list of Pokémon women. Unfortunately, the award has been presented to an egg.

    #2 Serena

    Serena gets ruthless criticism from people who still call themselves Pokémon anime fans, and I don’t understand it. Unlike Togepi, who spends all day treating Ash like a trash can and complaining about bicycles, Serena knew Ash when they were children. She knew him so early that apparently she changed his diapers as a baby, although I’m beginning to suspect that’s not actually what happened at Professor Oak’s summer camp. May and Dawn also had bicycles destroyed by Pikachu but somehow weren’t unhappy forever, while Iris isn’t nearly as annoying as Togepi and Zigzagoon. Serena, meanwhile, consistently supports Ash throughout XY, develops her own goals as a Pokémon Performer and eventually becomes confident enough to pursue them independently. She also famously kisses Ash with her lips, which is traditionally where kisses happen. Ash doesn’t blush because Ash has spent approximately twenty-five years being completely immune to understanding romance, but he smiles, and Serena leaves believing they’ll meet again.

    Advantages: I like Serena. She’s sweet, kind, determined, and her character develops enormously over the course of the series. Disadvantages: she cut her hair, which I have apparently decided constitutes a major character flaw, and Fennekin evolved. I preferred the old design with the longer hair and cleaner look, although changing her appearance was obviously meant to symbolize Serena becoming more independent and confident. Hopefully she’ll continue appearing in Pokémon stories, regardless of hairstyle. Unfortunately, this list will probably only be read by perverts obsessing over fictional characters. Seriously, that’s creepy if you ask me. Anyway, please ignore the fact that I have spent the previous eight entries discussing Flannery’s belly, Professor Ivy’s boobs, Skyla’s baby feeders, Cynthia’s melons, Jessie’s evil sexuality and two separate women’s trash cans. I am conducting serious Pokémon criticism here.

    #1 May

    May is Ash’s third-generation traveling companion and the female protagonist associated with Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Omega Ruby, and Alpha Sapphire. She debuted in episode 275, “Get the Fuck Out of the Way!”, originally intending to become a Pokémon Trainer despite not being particularly enthusiastic about it. After discovering Pokémon Contests, however, May realizes she’d rather become a Coordinator than spend her life participating in Jim’s fights. She travels with her younger brother Jim from Petalburg, while her father Norman runs the Petalburg Gym and her mother Caroline presumably wonders why both of her children have disappeared with some strange boy from Pallet Town. Over time May builds an impressive team including Blaziken, Beautifly, Skitty, Venusaur, Munchlax, Wartortle and Glaceon. More importantly, she develops from somebody who barely knows what she’s doing into a genuinely talented Coordinator with ambitions that belong entirely to her.

    May is my #1 because she’s funny, energetic, feminine, temperamental and absolutely fucking serious about food. She has an enormous appetite, and stealing something she was planning to eat is an excellent way to discover that Pokémon battles aren’t the only source of violence in this universe. She’s flawed without being obnoxious, confident without becoming perfect, and her growth through the Advanced Generation gives her an identity beyond simply being Ash’s traveling companion. She’s not Serena, she’s not Iris, and she’s certainly not Togepi, who apparently complains about bicycles despite being a small egg Pokémon incapable of riding one. Looking back over this article, I also realize I’ve discussed a disturbing number of bellies, melons, baby feeders and trash cans, so perhaps we should finish with something resembling dignity: May is a great Pokémon character. That’s why she’s #1. And absolutely nobody ask me what happened to #3.