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The Most Whitewashed Character Ever
- Once again, mocking Gerard Butler's singing in the 2004 film adaptation."Darkness deep as... HELLLLLLLLLL!" [the word scrolls by in screen-filling Comic Sans font]
- And for the stinger!
"This is the point of no reTUUUuurRrhghgGHhhnnnnnnn!" [yes, also in screen-filling Comic Sans font] - Once again there's a recap of the story (Phantom of the Opera in this case) to get people not familiar with the work up to speed, but this time it uses the creative medium of MS paint!
- Summing Raoul up as a "victim-blaming fuckboy" (spelled "fuccboi" in the subtitles) who constantly grumbles to himself about Christine being a slut for no reason.
- Erik is the "skull-faced incel who lives in the basement".
- The Persian and Erik's relationship is described as them basically being college room-mates who did each other a solid once.
- The Shah's thoughts on the Phantom almost certainly sums up the fandom's feelings on the Phantom.Shah: We stan a spooky murderboy.
- Also the Phantom's extortion letter to the managers:Dear Mr. Managers,
You suck, this opera house sucks, Charlotta sucks, everything sucks, besides Christine Daaé and the first three seasons of Frasier. Give me your money.
— O.G- And indeed, when we later see the Phantom's lair, there is a Frasier poster decorating the wall.
- Lindsay bluntly admits that this video was partially motivated by some two-decades' old grudges against Phantom and takes time to air out her petty irritation at the Phantom of the Opera fandom circa 2001 for defending it so much.Lindsay: [excitedly] And there was a time when the Phantom fandom had no goddamn sense of humor and you were not allowed to criticize this book! But it's 2020, Phantom shitposting is finally a thing and I am the god!
- The Hilarious Outtakes at the end, with Kaveh Taverian and Abigail Thorn hamming up their performances as The Persian and The Phantom. After slurring her way through one take, Abby punctuates The Phantom's tirade with "I'm fed up with this world!".
Why is Cats?
- Lindsay managed to rope several YouTubers into doing cameos by reading out the various soundbites of horrified reviewers reacting to Cats, up to and including Kurzgesagt.
- Lindsay's editor & co-writer, Angelina Meehan, has a brief but glorious reading of Elaine Stritch's reaction to the musical, primarily the "crabby old crone" voice she puts on for it.
- The list of characters from Cats according to Lindsay: Munkustrap, The Rum Tum Tugger, Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, Jennyanydots the Gumbie Cat, Asparagusus the Theatre Cat, Thataintitchief the Canceled Cat, Nala the #Girlboss Cat, and Fieri the Flavortown Cat.
- While describing Andrew Lloyd Webber's priority for the original musical as wanting "a bunch of people in lycra singing about being cats", she plays a clip that contains the awkward "heathen Chinese" line and silently responds with a grimacing emoji.
- While we're on the topic, the Running Gags for this video include "Hal, it's about cats", and several "meows" from the likes of theater Rum Tum Tugger, Ian McKellen and Idris Elba, not to mention the latter's "Macavityyy!"
- Even in a video about Cats, she still manages to find time to throw potshots at the 2004 film version of Phantom of the Opera.
- Lindsay believes the only real good to come from Tom Hooper's previous Les Misérables adaptation is all of the Javert memes. Cue clip of 24601 Releases a Sammich on Parole.
- A special shout-out should be given to Lindsay remixing Javert falling into the fountain to the Thomas & Friends theme.
- "Fig. 2: Etienne the town lech is harangued for being too horny on main."
- Lindsay surmises that Taylor Swift only got involved with the film because she wanted to win an Oscar like how Lady Gaga did with A Star Is Born (2018). The problem is that she and Andrew Lloyd Webber were fussing with the song right up until the day of shooting, and since Tom Hooper insisted on catching audio live on the set rather than recording later in a studio, they didn't have time to re-record it. Lindsay points how how uncertain Francisca Hayward's singing sounds because she had just learned the song that morning, and how annoyed she seemed with Taylor during the promotional tour. And in the end, Taylor Swift did get an award nomination...for a Golden Globe.
- She presents Taylor with a crooked gold star that reads, "your did it."
- The Freeze-Frame Bonus of mock reactions from the attendees of the Oscars 2020 to James Corden and Rebel Wilson blaming the VFX crew for how the movie turned out."this somehow reminds me of the movie Parasite"
"thank god i turned this movie down"
"this bodes ill for Cats 2"
"i still haven't forgiven VFX artists for The Scorpion King"
"i'm drunk lol"
"ironic clapping from Todd Phillips"
"so that's what James Corden looks like from this angle"
"shit my oboe reed snapped"
"if the VFX peasants don't want to be mocked, why don't they simply work harder" - While addressing Tom Hooper's inconsistency with Breaking the Fourth Wall, Lindsay draws attention to the ending where Judi Dench sings to the audience for five minutes straight. To highlight the overall awkwardness and unbearably long duration of the scene, a series of images are shown alongside the clip as it drags on including wilting flowers, a rotting corpse, and several nuclear explosions.
- She also addresses the same lack of commitment within Les Misérables (2012), adding in additional Caption Humor by subtitling and simplifying the film-exclusive lyrics of "Look Down", complete with bouncing Javert.There was a time we killed the King (Hey dumb dumbs, this is a different revolution)
We tried to change the world too fast (This ain't the one where we chopped off heads)
- She also addresses the same lack of commitment within Les Misérables (2012), adding in additional Caption Humor by subtitling and simplifying the film-exclusive lyrics of "Look Down", complete with bouncing Javert.
Protest Music of the Bush Era
- Stealing her intro verbatim from Todd in the Shadows' "Trainwreckords" video on American Life (and her firing back that he stole the format of that video's intro from her "Rent" video).
- Todd Nathanson actually filming a rare cameo appearance for his former colleague!Lindsay: We just [stopped collaborating] because you never know who's going to have a Twitter meltdown and you don't want to be doing, like, apologies by proxy.Todd: Oh yeah, yeah, that is why we stopped. And for no other reason.Lindsay: No other reason... [shifts eyes]
- Todd Nathanson actually filming a rare cameo appearance for his former colleague!
- Her "modern translation" of "Yankee Doodle"Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on his cuck house
Dressed up like he's read "The Game"
And thought he looked like he was having a normal one
Yankee Doodle bring the lulz
Yankee Doodle dipshit
You have no rhythm
And you have no game - Subtitling 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up?" and Pearl Jam's "Bush Leaguer" with "Unintelligible GenX Caterwauling". And later subtitling Nellie McKay 's "Get Away From Me" with "Incomprehensible Millennial Rage", shortly before her Suddenly Shouting "DIE MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
- Laughingly summing up the Top-40 music of the era as "big, dumb and loud," spliced in-between clips of "Just Lose It", "In Da Club", "Sk8ter Boi" and "Milkshake" note .
- Summing up Jewel's "America" justly:Jewel:We / Are living in America / We're giving in America / We're tripping in America
Lindsay: Literally, "We live in a society."
- Summing up Jewel's "America" justly:
- Lindsay loving the cover art to Rock Against Bush (which she used for part of the video's thumbnail)Lindsay: That cover art is fantastic. It's like (mimics covering her ears like the cover's George Bush, while blasting guitar riffs) "Oh no! Not the rock and roll!"
Is Titanic Good, Actually?
- Once again bringing up The Phantom of the Opera and pleading with the on-screen cursor not to click away.
- Flicking out a giant paper fan saying "ICONIC" and muttering to herself "This requires skill..."
- And then, when discussing the lead actors:
- Lindsay then uses his performances in The Man in the Iron Mask & Romeo + Juliet to show how not to get a good performance from DiCaprio.
- The blink-and-you'll-miss-it addition of a wee-bit of text to the scene in The Abyss where Dr. Brigman interacts with the water tentacle.
- "MY TRASH"
- Speaking of trash, the pile of cans & bottles strewn around her desk, later declaring "This is where we live now."
- "You dropped this, king." (holds out a toy crown)[Beat]
Lindsay: This is from my Masterpiece Starscream, it's the only crown I have-(starts laughing) - When William Randolph Hearst comes up, the "Oh Christ, It's This Asshole Again"
reaction image appears onscreen. Though to be fair, William Randolph Hearst was, indeed, quite the asshole. - When talking about cycles of nostalgia, she points out that it's about time for it to recur for the 2000s...which Lindsay, author of a novel set in the early 2000s, intends to shamelessly capitalize on. The screen fills up with advertising for Axiom's End, and she can't quite finish "Link in the description" before she cracks.
- At the end of the video, her call to action is replaced with pictures of puppies skateboarding over cheerful music.
- Accentuating Jack's attempt to climb onto the door with a slide-whistle sound effect.
- Lindsay takes a moment to call out everyone who complained about this scene in her Twitter mentions, and cracks up again when inviting people to leave algorithm-boosting comments that she will definitely read.
- One segment is just an extended discussion of how badly Pearl Harbor fails at serving as a follow-up to Titanic.
- Lindsay's snarky comment that someone replacing her dead lover with his best friend would make some "great Real Housewives drama".
- "Previously, on Cucked by Josh Hartnett..."
- Want and Need in storytelling is explained in detail with reference to Space Jam, of all movies.
- This bit:Rose: When the ship docks, I'm getting off with you.
[cue brief shot of Rose and Jack's sex scene]
Annotation: HELL YES YOU ARE - "The Transitive Property of Haterade"
- The little banner "YouTube: Where Joy Goes to Die".
- "James Cameron got cancelled for quoting his own movie at the Oscars, and Kate Winslet got fat-shamed. Man, fuck The '90s."
- Discussing Avatar and the general lack of long-term impression it made on pop-culture:Lindsay: There are those who are kind of into the worldbuilding elements... I... think... (close-up on Jenny Nicholson fully decked out in Avatar merch from her video on the theme park, and then a screenshot of her Avatar-themed Twitter homepage) I can't tell how ironic this is, and I actually know her...
Into The Omegaverse: How a Fanfic Trope Landed in Federal Court
- Let's start with the intro to the video, which is just Kat Blaque, Angelina, Dan Olson, Harry Brewis, and Todd Nathanson reading pieces of full-on rapey wolf-porn fanfiction.
- And later, Jenny Nicholson's... dramatic reading of Addison Cain's social media posts and emails.
- The reading for Blushing Books Publisher too. Maggie Mae Fish does an excellent job at sounding like a Smug Snake.
- As if to offer Brain Bleach, Lindsay can't even get through her introductory sentence before corpsing.Lindsay: Hey everyone, get set to get we— [breaks down laughing]
- This is quickly followed by Lindsay illustrating the central characteristics of the subgenre, by using a can of silly string (leaving it on her computer monitor for the rest of the video) and continuously using a Sonic balloon as a euphemism for knotting.
- When she sprays it for obvious symbolism, she suddenly looks up and screams "Oh no!" and starts laughing, as you hear the string hit the out-of-camera microphone.
- While listing off the various tropes of Omegaverse and noting how they tie into popular perceptions of wolf anatomy, Lindsay eventually gets to MPreg, "the ability for male characters (usually Omegas) to get pregnant".Lindsay: I don't think real wolves can do that, but it's an important staple of the genre.
- "So I stopped being actively involved in creating and consuming fan works around the time I started making Internet videos back in the 1960s..."
- Lindsay notes that one of the people involved was named Zoey Ellis.Lindsay: No relation...because that's not her real name either.
- Later she says "Zoey Ellis is the nom de plume of...eh?"
- D.J. Stone of LegalEagle fame is called upon to explain DMCA takedowns. Afterwards, he looks at the script and grumbles that Lindsay made him read and talk aloud about wolf porn.
- Another little tidbit, when Devin is finished, one can pretty clearly tell the sentence he says is "I cannot believe I just talked about wolf cock for fucking five minutes," but there is notably three Sound-Effect Bleep noises over the sentence (the two obvious ones, and a third over "minutes,") making him sound even more Sir Swears-a-Lot than he actually was.
- It should be noted when asked if he's heard about the lawsuits, Stone immediately refers to Omegaverse as wolf pornography in spite of claiming to not know anything about it.
- Lindsay's... "choices" of computer wallpaper, from a "CAUTION: sticky surfaces" sign to Knott's Berry Farm to a poorly Photoshopped poster for "Knotting Hill."
- As she discusses Cain's character of Shepherd and his similarities to The Dark Knight Rises Bane, a picture of him keeps creeping into frame during the narration of choice bits that highlight the similarity.
- Lindsay snarks at one point that she's "sure the legality of fanfiction is going to get litigated someday and it's going to SUCK", coupled with a news article with a picture of two crying children fighting and the headline "Reylo Antis take Reylo Shippers to court, all are way too horny". What makes it all the funnier, though, is the text in the article below the fake title:For the first time in her legal career at the Walt Disney corporation, lawyer Helen Sardella is stumped. "I never asked for this."
- After showing all the emails between Addison Caine and her publisher showing that she colluded with them to shut down Zoey Ellis completely as an author out of pettiness, Lindsay caps it off with this:Lindsay: So...this is what the kids call "a bad look".
- Calling back to her favorite Pocahontas Running Gag:Radcliffe!Addison Cain: Think how they'll squirm when they see how I['m]—dismissed with prejudice!
- While discussing genre traditions and Twilight knockoffs, the example she put at the very front is Serra Elinsen's Awoken.
- Lindsay's ultimate summation of how the case ended, contrasting with how Addison Cain thinks it did.Lindsay: They fizzled out and missed a bunch of deadlines and this pissed the judge off and the judge was like "okay screw it you're clearly not taking this seriously" and dismissed the case.
- When discussing Caine's complete inability to understand anything legal, she gets to her breaking point when Caine is outraged at the news article about her "not citing sources".Lindsay: My GOD! The article is the citation! This isn't a blog, this isn't a peer-reviewed journal, Addison! (laughs) Newspapers don't have footnotes.
- Similarly, we have Lindsay's reaction to Addison saying that she believes Blushing Books violated their contract with her.
Lindsay: Wha...what do you mean you "believe"? Like...read your freaking contract! - When Lindsay talks about how Addison Caine is right about some things, such as the fact that Zoey Ellis just suddenly abandoning the case and liquidating her entire company is actually rather suspicious in its own right, she shows a Clickhole article "Heartbreaking: Worst Person You Know Actually Makes A Good Point" headline for emphasis.
Addison Cain's lawyer emailed me, and it only got worse from there
- Lindsay calling Addison "Wolfcock Karen".
- A rather choice appearance of "Executive Producer Dick Wolf".
- Blink and you miss it, but Tynia's email has been categorized with a folder label reading 'legal/wolfcock'
- "RETURN THE WITCH!"
- One of the most insane things that happened between the two videos; YouTube informing Lindsay that they got a DMCA takedown notice and deciding that Lindsay's video was indeed fair use. This is accompanied by Big Sean's "I Don't Fuck With You" just to drive the point home.
- The immense amount of utterly unsurprised shock that Cain's actions resulted in more attention and scrutiny drawn to her while holding a picture of Barbra Streisand and wondering if there's a name for this phenomenon.... It could be even considered an effect or something....
- In the dramatic reading of the letter Cain sent YouTube to remove Lindsay's video it gets to a point where Cain claims that Lindsay is a threat to Cain's child. Even though Cain posts pictures of the child regularly, and said child's face was actually blurred out for the video. Cain goes as far as to call Lindsay a menace for referring to the child as "damn baby" as in "she posts baby pics constantly, and WE had to blur a picture of her damn baby bc the baby was on the gofundme". Not only does Lindsay embrace the "Lindsay Ellis is a menace" claim, she's wearing a shirt that reads just that note for about half of the video. But she made a "Lindsay Ellis is a menace" pin to sell. And a few other merch pieces inspired by the ordeal.Lindsay: ...Oh, I am gonna milk the shit outta that.
- The dramatic reading of the letter the Electronic Frontier Foundation received, complete with the Pepe Silvia bit playing in the background, Lindsay cracking open a can to get through it, all the reaction shots, and the annotations:Letter: The Fair Use doctrine is highly subjective-
Annotation: IT'S REALLY NOT- Earlier in the video Lindsay asks her viewers to not be like a fan of hers who tweeted at Addison Cain that they bought her books just to give them one star reviews. When Cain's lawyer brings this guy up during her rant as an example of the abuse Cain received because of Lindsay's video...Lindsay: ...Goddammit, you fucking asshole!
- Earlier in the video Lindsay asks her viewers to not be like a fan of hers who tweeted at Addison Cain that they bought her books just to give them one star reviews. When Cain's lawyer brings this guy up during her rant as an example of the abuse Cain received because of Lindsay's video...
- Once again, Jenny Nicholson and her Oscar-worthy performance as Addison Cain, reading various emails, DMCA letters, and social media posts, portraying Cain as a melodramatic egomaniac with a perpetual victim complex, losing her composure more and more with each reading. Never before has "to whom it may concern" been so hilarious.
- Lindsay expresses empathy for the shit Addison Cain is getting, as a fellow author... but because it's Lindsay, her saying this is preceded by "EXTREME PETTINESS IN 3... 2... 1...", and her saying "New York Times best-selling author" is bass-boosted all to hell.
- Similarly, her saying "Google" when talking about how she was double-checking Cain's absurd claims is also bass-boosted and electronically altered so that it sounds like she's suddenly a priest of the Great Old Ones.
- The fact that she pronounces Tynia Watson's name differently every time it comes up.
- She "calls" Angelina to complain about the time the edit is taking, leading in to a bit about Angelina's "damn baby" (in reference to the above "menace" comment). What really makes the bit is Lindsay holding her phone up to the ear on her wolf ears, rather than her actual ear.
- Lindsay deconstructs the lawyer's allegations about the EFF and OTW working together in a scheme against Addison Cain — even though their previous collaborations were on things completely unrelated to anything to do with Cain — by introducing the concept of a "fanfiction deep state" colluding to destroy Addison Cain. Granted, there's clearly no meat to the lawyer's allegations, but if you really get to thinking about it, there's just something inherently funny about the sheer concept of a "fanfiction deep state."
