On a trip out and about, I and my wife bought the board game "The Lost Ruins of Arnak", a jungle adventure themed game where you explore the island of Arnak, research its mysteries, uncover hidden ruins and contend with the mystical guardians that protect them!
It was a pretty fun game. Only played it once so far, but I give it a thumbs up.
...To help get in the mood to play an 'explorer/adventurer in the jungle game', we thought we'd watch that movie with the Rock we'd seen the fairly colourful looking poster for on disney+.
After watching it we were a LITTLE less in the mood for jungle adventures, but fortunately we played Arnak anyway and had a good time in spite of "Disney's Jungle Cruise".

Basing a movie on a ride has NOT worked once, except for the complete anomaly that was Pirates of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, every time hollywood captures lightning in a bottle, they devote the next ten years of their lives to standing at the top of that same hill in droves, holding pickle jars with outstretched hands. Haunted Mansion was shite, Tomorrowland was dull, and Jungle Cruise proposed "What if we deliberately tried to ape on the success and formula of Pirates of the Caribbean, but instead of getting a good director who had to fight to get the movie made with some actors who were at the time not ENTIRELY trending, we just assembled a board-room of corporate suits to fill in the blanks on a mad-libs script, and cast that guy Hollywood DESPERATELY wants to make into a star?"

Jungle Cruise was a pathetically transparent ripoff worthy of Asylum studios. I criticize a lot of movies on here, but believe me, I'm not too good to enjoy something with enough of a cheeseball factor to it. But, in spite of the good will and optimism I went in with, Jungle Cruise was just too shit. It was confusing, meandering, unoriginal, unmemorable, and for god's sake will someone let the Rock grow some hair and wear clothes that fit? I think he could be a pretty fun, talented guy if every movie wasn't just putting a camera to him for the spectacle of watching clothes burst off his swole body.

As usual in my reviews, its full of SPOIILERS.

Here I go, talkin' about something that's been out for a million years now, and I've only just watched it. First, because it seems like a lot of people love this show and I don't want to get your hopes up, I hated it.

But WHY did I hate it? Therein lies the real mystery. Come on gang, let's find some clues and solve it! Because this may be a very difficult case.

On its veneer there are things I ought to like within this show. They give scooby doo a plot stretched out across its two seasons with a lovecraftian leaning to it, the show is atmospherically eerie, and it's done its best to try and be 'serious', and not hokey like previous scooby doo iterations.

But the devil, as always, lies in the details.

The FIRST clue: As the show opens, we have Velma and Shaggy engaged in a secret relationship with one another, wherein Velma is jealous of a dog. Shaggy flat out says at least once that he might not be ready for a relationship, to which Velma responds with mean-spiritedness and bitchery.
No means no, Velma.

Once Velma and Shaggy stop snogging, the show mildly improves. Fred's bizarre fascination with 'traps' ranges between being actually funny to 'Oh god make it stop, the word 'trap' has lost all meaning please make it stop', and provides the SECOND clue. The gang solves a few mind-numbingly dumb mysteries (Guess what, the gator people were the people who ran the creepy gator motel, who'd-a thunk it?), and it even manages to be good sometimes.

Then, like a parasite waking up from its slumber deep within your bowels, the plot rears its ugly head in the form of a disgustingly stupid parrot named Professor Perrrichles (I don't give a shit about the spelling), and here's where things become truly dumb.
A child play-acting with action figures and toys, who has seen a few movies and television shows, may have the general NUANCE for what makes an evil character. They're always GLARING and SMILING evilly, they've got EERIE MUSIC to tell you they're EVIL, and they talk in an EVIL VOICE.
But in the end, it's a fucking parrot with a scarf, a giant head and a dumb toupee, and I just can't get over that. Clue number 3.

Things carry on, yadda yadda yadda, the 'mysteries' the gang starts to unmask get more and more serious. Eventually they change from 'masked mysteries' to straight out super-villains, armed with super-science, explosions, and out-right sorcery. Clue number 4!

Amidst the ramping up of the danger level of the bad guys, the plot creeps along. ...And by 'creeps along' I mean sometimes the show cuts to the bad guys meeting around an ominously lit room, and saying "We need to get the macguffins! Soon, the macguffins will be in our hands! Mwa ha ha!" Only for them to not do all that much except the same at the end of the episode. Clue 5.

EVENTUALLY, in its own slogging sort of way, mixed in with monster-of-the-episode type 'mysteries' to solve (Clue 6), the final arc of the show actually rises, and the grand mystery is revealed: That an evil space-monster is trapped under crystal cove, and has been subtly engineering (somehow) the creation of various 'mystery solving gangs' throughout history, each accompanied by an animal companion, so that when they solve the 'mystery' of how to find it, it will have an animal to possess, and free itself.
The gang beats the flying spaghetti monster, and time alters itself as if the monster had never existed, and was never exerting an evil influence on the world: Crystal Cove becomes a bright, gaudy, shiny paradise, as saturated as What's New Scooby Doo. All of this is what I call the final and most important clue, Clue number 7.


SO. Let's examine the clues, and solve this mystery, gang!
The first clue, Velma's unpleasant demeanor, lines up perfectly with the general coldness and mean-spirited nature of the entire town and all its characters. When the background characters aren't forgettable, they're unpleasant to be around.

Clue number two, Fred's trap fascination, indicates that the creators of this show just don't really have a grasp for humor. Every once in a while, perhaps ONCE every four or five episodes it got a good laugh out of me, but otherwise it was groan-inducing. Yet, for all their lack of talent, they never got the hint and instead decided to try HARDER by doubling down on it all.

The third clue, the stupid evil parrot, is the bloody dagger of clues. Whoever made this show has only a child's grasp of story-telling, knowing that things are supposed to happen a certain way, that if you play eerie music and make someone smile evilly they SEEM evil; but they write these things into their show with no actual grasp of WHY these tropes are the way they are. ...and then they apply them to a parrot in a scarf.

The fourth clue is apropos, because by now you ought to be getting sick of me writing 'clue'; as sick as I was of hearing the show say 'mystery' and 'clue' and 'trap'. The bad guys of the show start to become super-villains or genuine paranormal entities, and yet the gang still say 'Let's solve this MYSTERY' or 'Let's get some CLUES'. These are no longer masked guys trying to scare you away from their haunted gold mine- these are cyber-ninja, nazi robot super-soldiers with exploding weapons! It shouldn't MATTER whether or not you pull off their mask; they're still shooting things with exploding missiles from inside their tony-stark super-suits!
And yet, the gang presses on. Everything is a 'mystery' or a 'clue' or a 'trap'. These are the only three things that exist in this world. Mysteries, clues, or traps.

We come to the fifth clue. The villains stand around, say evil shit, and stand around some more. This is really just a revisiting of an earlier clue, in that the show writers don't know how on earth to write a story for real. All they know how to do is check tropes off their list, and their list says "We need that scene where THIS happens, because that makes things seem serious!"

Clue number six PROVES the creators of the show have no idea how to do things. Even as the final arc begins, for some reason they still feel it necessary to insert 'one-off, episodic monsters' to be dealt with (Cow-bee-piranhas? Really?), as if they know nothing but that core ethos, that "Scooby Doo is a show where you solve a mystery every episode).

Then, at last, the final clue, and the most damning one: As Crystal Cove becomes bright and shiny, it reveals that this show has an insatiable need to EXPLAIN everything. Why does Scooby Doo talk? Because aliens visited the world long ago, and their descendants were animals gifted with intelligence and speech! Why do four teenagers hang out with a talking animal to solve mysteries? Because an evil monster made them do it! Why is Crystal Cove so riddled with masked villains? Because the EVIL MONSTER exerted its influence to make everyone act that way! Why are most scooby doo shows to bright and cheerful? Because its a world absent of evil, since the spaghetti monster was removed from it! Yes, we have an explanation for why scooby doo is so hokey!

This show is bullshit. It's INSIDIOUSLY bullshit. At a glance, perhaps on paper or in premise it seems fun, and maybe I just came into it too late as a bitter, jaded adult, and don't have some kind of childhood nostalgia for it. But to me its problems are multitude, and all boil down to this: The writers, for all their ambition, just didn't know the very basics of how to tell stories. My dislike for this show is a dislike for all of its squandered potential; a scooby doo show where they solve a grander mystery in a spooky, atmospheric world with lovecraftian influences sounds great to me. But they squandered all of its potential, and we may now never get to see a show like that.

...Oh wait. Gravity Falls did ALL of that, but pulled it off flawlessly on all accounts. Cool.

So, my fellow investigators and cultists out there know about 'The King in Yellow', and lost Carcosa of course. You know, the play that has a banal and boring first act that you're not sure what all the hype is about, but then you watch the SECOND act and things get a whole lot more... ...'crazy'? It gets in your HEAD, infects you with madness, and brings ruin and devastation wherever it goes?

Well guess what. H----r the unspeakable, the tattered king of madness, is modernizing! It still wants to bring about the downfall of mortal civilization, but a single play? That's old school.
...But what about a crazy idea? An insane CONSPIRAY THEORY? Something that creeps into people's minds and changes them, makes them act like insane, violent psychopaths, ready to kill and die for their madness?
What if a certain conspiracy progenitor that begins with a 'Q' was created by the elder god of madness to destroy us all? And then what if someone made a musical concept album about it?

I dunno, maybe I'm a crazy person for getting hung up on this kinda thing so intensely, but to me music can make a huge difference in a movie, and I'm not just talking about "ooh it was a good theme" or whatever.
I mean when you can feel the music trying to claw its way into your skull, so it can sit at the wheels of your brain and punch all the buttons, like "FEEL SAD NOW" or "OPTIMISTIC NOW" and so on.

Alex Hirsch (creator of gravity falls) was merely a CONSULTING writer on Mitchells v Machines apparently, yet, whilst watching it, I could feel his fingerprints in there (almost to the degree that this felt entirely like an unused gravity falls episode script). Thus why I feel fair in comparing Gravity Falls to Mitchells.

Let us compare the two moments when they introduce the characters:


here we have the introduction of the Mitchells, at the beginning of the movie. The score is a bit of music I like to refer to as "FEEL UPLIFTED AND SENTIMENTAL NOW"

vs:


Which is scored by a bit of music that sets a tone that I think is kind of 'neutral and snarky', allowing you to be introduced to these characters through their quirky flaws, which you laugh at/with. (Only watch the first half- second half of the video is from end of gravity falls, which, if you don't want it spoiled, then don't)

ONE of these two gives you time to grow to love the group of characters, laughing at the surface level weirdness, but eventually becoming attached to them as you spend time with them, and realizing "hey, I really like this bunch of folks." the OTHER one demands that you love them right away, as if someone is shouting at you "DON'T YOU LOVE THIS QUIRKY BUNCH OF PEOPLE? AREN'T THEY RELATABLE TO YOU? WOULDN'T YOU JUST LOVE TO HANG OUT WITH THEM? HUH, HUH?? By the end of this movie, you're gonna feel so sentimentally attached to them, boy howdy are you!"
Take a wild guess which one is which.

I dunno. The Mitchells Vs the Machines wasn't even really that bad. I even kinda liked it. I just thought it was a good movie buried beneath the overbearing efforts of some netflix executive who was too eager to please, who wanted to seize control of the project in order to make it 'the best, most trendiest thing on netflix of the day', but did so without actually having any original film-making talent of their own, so they just filled time by rolling sentimental family montages, editing not nearly as much out as they should have, and scoring it with free music they found off of youtube.

Did  lillyvaine take some cute and sexy photos for moomoomarch? Yes she did! Why not find 'em here?
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/41154706/

Anyone use this? I'm always intrigued to mess around with sites that make marvelous claims like "Create family trees, organize your world notes, upload interactive maps!" and stuff like that- but more often than not I've found, even if you unlock the subscription options by paying for them, I tend to find that ACTUALLY using sites like that in any effective way seems to require the skills from you that you'd need to format/create your own website anyway, so it's like "what the fuck am I paying you for".
I dunno, I made a free account, and it feels less intuitive than some have claimed it to be. Is it really just a wiki, I gotta code every inch of it myself, or does it just hold onto all the good features behind a paywall?

Plus I swear, every video they link me like "here's a helpful tutorial!" must be for an older version of the site, 'cause it keeps pointing to menu options or buttons that just ain't there.

Deviantart fixed the really major gripe I had about it's last update - infinite scrolling. Now you can set it back to pages again if you desire! (Apparently). So, I'm gonna start uploading some of my stuff there again as well! I ain't jumpin' ship on FA or nothin', I love this site, but- just reminding everybody that I do have a second gallery on the web, in case anything ever happens to FA and you still have a yen to find some Fenris49 art.

https://www.deviantart.com/fenris49

Netflix's "The Babysitter" is a movie about a kid who has what SEEMS to be the perfect babysitter. She's acts all cool, quotes geeky stuff, and she looks hot too. But then the young boy discovers that its all a LIE, and something sinister is secretly going on!
...It is therefore a truly ironic coincidence that the MOVIE "The Babysitter" SEEMS to be a cool, geeky good looking movie, yet somehow it FEELS like a lie.

Now, I wasn't present for the making of it, so I don't KNOW. But if I were to hazard a guess, here's what I think went down, roughly, in the writing room when team netflix got together to make this movie:
"So, what's cool with the kids these days?"
"The 80's."
"Are you sure? You don't think we've milked that completely?"
"Nah nah, the 80's is still cool. So, we'll put in lots of colours that remind people of 3D glasses, we'll have kids on bikes, treehouses, all that kinda stuff."
"What else should we have?"
"Hmmm. Well, putting impromptu popular music in movies is still going pretty strong. That one clip with out-of-nowhere music from 'It Chapter 1' is the most upvoted scene on youtube!"
"Great! We'll put in lots of that then. What else?"
"Well... I was watching some Tarantino the other day. How about we have a gang of bad guys who are, like- all weird and quirky and treat killing people like its casual, like, they're more concerned about irrelevant shit instead of human life?"
"Fab! What else?"
"How about lots of geek references? You know, the obvious shit that everyone knows now, like Star Trek, but people THINK is obscure?"
"I'm loving it. Got any more scraps of cool shit hanging around?"
"Maybe a little Scott Pilgrim, this sponsorship from apple computers, and a few very confused, out of place jokes. Kids like random humor."
"Let's get to filming!"

So, like a frankenstein's bride made out of all your favorite girls chopped up and put together, you THINK it's a good idea. ...But then you just start feeling nostalgic for the people who contributed their bits to the creature, and think to yourself "Man, I'd really rather be hanging out with THEM than here with this thing."
I ain't saying it was completely unsalvageable and without redeeming elements or anything- just that the thumb-print of focus-testing and market research smudged the film far more heavily than any desire to create something original and truly clever.

Boy, that CG from the 1990's sure isn't as good as I remembered it was. It looks kinda dreadful.
...oh wait a minute... that was the trailer for the NEW adaptation I just watched? That was CG made THIS year?
Oh.
Ohhhhh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

BOY HOWDY, these california fires, am I right? You JUST start unpacking your evac bag thinkin' "I think the sitch looks preeeetty well in hand" when ANOTHER fire suddenly poofs up next door, like "Yo, I hear there's still some shit here ain't been set on fire yet".
Ain't we just so blessed to live in such interesting times ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaa marty get in the time machine, we're goin' back to get Al Gore elected.

Not that I was ever the most outgoing person in the world or anything, but when it became clear way back in march that 2020 was gonna be the year of 'staying home and not having people over', I began to think about things to do.
I tried all kinds of crazy schemes. I watched shows, I printed out 'play n print' games, I bought actual solo games, I worked on drawing.
Then I came up with another crazy plan. What if- and just hear me out - I read some BOOKS?

"Kings of the Wyld" by Nicholas Eames
The tale of an old and tired adventuring party years after their glory days and years after they've all split up, it's time to get the band back together and pull off another quest! Eminently readable, I was able to pick it up and put it down at will, with short little bite-sized chapters that each had a little somethin' going on. It read a bit like a first novel (Which, it turns out, it was!), but a first novel from a promising author who has since gone on to write even more!

"The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" by Terry Pratchett
Explaining anything about Terry Pratchett feels like explaining who mozart is. Even if you don't KNOW, you know.
One of his shorter books, this one's a little twist on not only the story of the pied piper, but the idea of smart little woodland animals being smart and having human intellect in general, and all that entails- disturbing and adorable.
Like cluing you in to who Pratchett is, I feel it's somewhat redundant to say 'of course it was good'. It's a pratchett. Of course it's worth reading.

"Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman
I read it long ago, but now having seen the (relatively) recent show, it was definitely worthwhile to read it again.
The story of 'the end of days' at the hands of the antichrist, for every joke I caught, I couldn't help feeling like there were several more slipping under my radar, that a more worldly (or at least religiously educated) person might catch. It's a delight full of clever quips and lines, and once you read it you'll find yourself thinking and talking like a smart-aleck demon or angel for a while afterward.

"Invaders from the Dark" by Greye La Spina
An unusual book that I found sitting on my shelf, and that within its forward makes the claim of having been thrown out the window at the author from a woman who died immediately afterwards in an explosion. It tells a Dracula-esque tale of a sinister individual with supernatural influence coming to a posh, old-timey upper-class neighborhood- except instead of a dracula, it's a werewolf woman! And instead of a team of gentlemen of good class, the evil is opposed by a woman apprenticed in sorcery, and her aunt, who work together (in the sort of dry, shocked way that old timey people did anything back in those days) to save a guy from being seduced by the werewolf woman. It was a strange read, and I'm glad I read it.

So.
Ben Ten.
You know the one. A show about a kid who receives a little trinket that gives him super powers, aliens, and wizards, secret government organizations and epic battles for the fate of everything against all kinds of strange villains.
After you got done watching "Teen Titans", you'd probably watch an episode of Ben Ten.
Or, you know, if you knew kids of a certain age, they probably were watching it. Or had trading cards for it. Or something.
The point is, in my humble observations, Ben Ten was pretty big.
I caught episodes here and there on television, but at some point years later I said to myself "Hey, I got internet. If I'm really curious how things turned out, I could probably find the episodes online!"
And you know what, maybe I just wasn't that nostalgic for it, but watching it as an adult I got real bored real fast.
But doesn't that say something, that my mind wasn't sparked by it? That I wasn't thinking to myself "Yeah, gonna draw my OWN OC in the Ben Ten universe, wooh!" It just wasn't quite enough to GRAB me.
But, you know, I guess it kept kids rooted to the tv for a while.

SO.
"Tales of Arcadia".
...Repsectively, "Troll Hunters" "3Below" and "Wizards".
DO you know the one? It's a series of netflix shows about kids who receive little trinkets that give them super powers, aliens and wizards, secret government organizations and epic battles for the fate of everything against all kinds of strange villains.
It's made by Guillermo Del Toro?

Now, I'm an adult watching what is very much a kid's show. I mean, I was (mostly) an adult when I was watching things like "The Last Airbender" or "Gravity Falls", and I feel no shame in touting THOSE banners. Avatar and Gravity Falls are just so good I think I'll be watching 'em all the way until the day I die.
"Tales of Arcadia", whichever of the three shows you pick off of Netflix, are not "Avatar" levels of good. They're not the kind of thing I can really say "You need to sit down, Netflix and Chill and watch these right now!"

...But I WOULD, with every ounce of enthusiasm I can muster, recommend that you go show them to your KIDS, because if I was a kid when I first watched 'em, my mind would be BUZZING with all kind of cool stuff. I'd have drawn my own Troll OC, be writing fanfiction about Akiridion culture, or be bugging my parents to let me glue christmas lights to a bracelet so I could be a cool wizard too.

Normally when you recommend something with the caveat of "Only for kids" I think it's being done with the concession of "Well, Angry Birds the Movie might be an offensively mind-melting piece of hot garbage, but... hey, your kids won't know any better." But in this case, I think these "Tales of Arcadia" shows have a PERFECT audience in adolescents. Adults will have seen all these plot beats and emotions hundreds of times before, but to a kid I think these shows would feel epic. They'll have a plethora of neat characters to pick from as their favorite, a world with all kinds of cool systems of magic and technology to fan out over, and lots of neat monsters that would surely inspire one to design their own critters.
It's just really NEAT.

To me, something like Ben Ten feels like a product that was made for children to BE a product that was elevated enough to become a bit of a thing. On the other hand, I think "Tales of Arcadia" is a whole lot of cool ideas that found a place where it could be made, being produced as a 'kid friendly' show on Netflix. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's what all the parents are showing their kids during quarantine, but gosh darn do I just never hear anyone mention it, and that's a damn shame, because I think kids would fuckin' love it.

When it comes to sports movies, there is a... ...mmm, how shall one say... A 'formula' of sorts?

Now, I could go into the nuances of that formula in its entirety, but instead I'd like to focus on one aspect of that formula. Sure, I know you could point out deviations left and right, but BASICALLY, in every sports movie, there are only THREE sports teams.

First, there's our protagonists, the lovable underdogs. They start off at the bottom, they're losers, but they work their way up to become champions.

Then of course there's 'Team Evil'. They're the bad guy team, the ones who are on top, the final champions to beat.

BUT, did you know about a third team that shows up in sports movies every so often? A little team called 'The Jerkass' team?

The jerkass team are the first opponents of the good guys. Their job is to provide the initial obstacle to overcome. They're hardly top tier material, but they're certainly tougher than our good guys. They're rude to the good guys, they sneer at them, they make fun of them, and for the first couple innings they have our good guys beat.
But then, miraculously, something happens (they decide to put in the kid with the rubber arm, they give the dog a chance, the angels show up, etc) and the good guys, against all odds, win! They've found what they need to triumph! Proceed with the 'victory montage', of the good guys beating one team after another as they rise through the ranks.

The Mighty Ducks is an interesting movie in that it made the bold choice NOT to have 'the spunky underdogs' as their protagonist team, but instead focused on "the Jerkass Team" as their main heroes. It has the uniqueness not to have its heroes be likable at all. You might hope "Well, they're a little rough around the edges, but with time their plight wins you over!" BUt instead, rather, you come to dislike them MORE as the movie goes on as they resort to underhanded methods to achieve their goals. You actively begin to root AGAINST them, and wish them nothing but failure for their shitty behavior.

And, most startling of all, if you watched 'The Mighty Ducks' in a 'kids sports movie marathon', you experience the mind-boggling sensation of realizing that, out of everything you watched, "Angels in the Outfield" was actually the one with the most nuance and heart. ...What a fuckin' surprise THAT was.

So, for many of you out there, like me, I'm sure this is month number 'god only knows' of being trapped inside, wondering if the world will still be out there by the time you hear someone besides a fat, orange sack of shit give the okay to start sitting on park benches and visiting buffets again.
...Admittedly I didn't have the most outgoing of lifestyles BEFORE the plague, but, you know. The principle of the thing.

Anyway, where I HAVE felt hit hard is in my severe addiction to tabletop games. I love 'em, those little (or not so little- I'm lookin' at you Twilight Imperium) funtimes-in-a-box.
Only problem is, they tend to require other people, and ever since 2020 rolled in, god's been watching to make sure all of us make room for not just jesus, but all the rest of the apostles too, which tends to put a crimp on things.

So what's a game-addicted dragon like myself to do? Why, buy some SOLO board games!
I looked high and I looked low, and after some searching, I was led by popular internet opinion to a little somethin' called "The Lord of the Rings Card Game".
And I've been havin' a pretty good time.

Admittedly, I wasn't 100% sold on the concept of 'Living Card Games' back when I was sticking my nose into FFG's "Game of Thrones Card Game". Like, sure, no randomly-assembled booster packs, but what of it? It still involved building up a collection of expensive cards and finding people willing not only to play the game, but to actually become interested long enough to want to build their own decks, and learn HOW to build decks, and all the other competitive details that, after many many long years, made me finally throw the towel in on Magic the Gathering and walk away.

BUT, I discovered something. Where my passion was limp and passionless concerning 'The Game of Thrones Card Game', something about it all works really, really well with a COOPERATIVE game that one can opt to play by themselves, engaging in that timeless FFG conquest of "Player vs Game" that has been a constant in my life ever since the first time I stared in awe at the unboxing of Arkham Horror the Board Game so many years past.
"The Lord of the Rings, the Card Game" was really fun.

WELL, said I to myself - sitting pretty on a fair pile of Lotr TCG cards, including the Mirkwood Cycle, Dwarowdelf Cycle and both Hobbit Saga boxes - if this was a good time, I wonder what their Arkham Horror 'the Card Game' feature is like?
...So I went ahead and got that too. And it's also been fun.

Who else out there plays these? And if you don't, and/or have never heard of 'em before, I guess this is my endorsement to say "Hey, these are a pretty good way to spend time in the house by yourself like a shut-in-weirdo.

...though it still annoys me they have a loose expectation of "Well you don't HAVE to, but we really RECOMMEND that you buy two of the core set..." Don't HAVE to, but "Really, it would behoove you to do so."

WELL, lo and behold, no sooner than have I purchased enough Fantasy Flight card sleeves to sleeve out my recently acquired collection of two thousand or so lord of the rings cards, than I hear it going around on the internet that FFG is discontinuing their production of sleeves.

*insert monty python 'you make me sad'.gif' here*

SO.
...any of y'all got opinions on what a good, alternative go-to for sleeves would be? I like 'em transparent, 'cause with a lot of cards you need to see the flip side of them. The Fantasyflight sleeves had a good feel to them- they weren't TOO slippery or shiny or thick, and they had a nice feel like they weren't crinkling up just from touching them.
I heard Fantasyflight was moving its connection over to gamegenic and that a few people recommended those, BUT:
A: I had a weirdly difficult time finding clear, standard-size sleeves for them? They had lots of coloured, matte-back cards, and lots of choices for variable sizes, but gosh darn, was a little tough just finding a regular standard size.
and B: Their website doesn't actually SELL their sleeves, just advises you what locations in your area you could buy them. ...and need I even say why buying things online is a necessity these days?

BUT IN ANY CASE, for all you gamers out there, what's your recommended brand of sleeves?

I dunno, I'm tired and bored XD
What's your Tracy fantasy? Domme-ing ya, or being used by you? ...or are you like, one of those types that just wants nice good-times, like a weirdo?

Hey, guess who's started releasing pages of her comic 'Pallet Farm' IT'S LILLYMOO  lillyvaine

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/36617526

Y'all know how this kinda thing works ^u^ She's showing the pages for free, but if you support her on patreon, you get to see them earlier, and works in progress and things :D