The majority of the conflict in home renovation shows comes from the homeowners balancing their wants, their budget, and practicality. When it comes to specials where the home-building or home-renovating celebrity is building or renovating of their own place, however, there’s no longer any mention of budget. Wants are only occasionally balanced with practicality.
Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House is no exception wherein Chip and Joanna Gaines buy and renovate a house in the Colorado mountains to be closer to skiing in the winter with their five kids. The retreat features three buildings to renovate: the main house and two guest suites. The main obstacle I recall involved Chip and Joanna’s desire for a massive, two-story, wood-burning fireplace, a want that would typically be completely unattainable on an average budget. The catch? On the ground floor, the best spot for the fireplace was to the right of the best spot on the second floor. In the end, they still built the massive, two-story fireplace. They just also built another massive, one-story fireplace next to it and nixed a French door.
Another interesting choice they made was to convert a large walk-in closet to a bunkbed room for 3-4 of their kids rather than designating separate spaces for them. It was a neat room despite it defying the common homeowner desire to give each kid their own space, but I suppose this is more of a vacation home than a permanent residence.
It looks like a cool place overall… but let’s never speak of how much any of this costs.
I remember thinking when I watched Season 4 of Stranger Things in 2022, “Oof. They should have stopped there.” If they had increased the pace a little and been more definitive with the ending, they could have done it, and it would have felt complete. Instead, an interdimensional rift split open Hawkins to create a cliff hanger to a final season that somehow the creators were going to fill with stuff, despite the series feeling like it should have ended.
When Season 5 finally came out, I started by rewatching all previous seasons, as I did whenever a new season was released. I started late though and then ended up spoiling myself by watching a couple of my go-to commentators complain about how bad Season 5, and one episode in particular, was before I had even started watching the season. Still, when Red Letter Media and Sydney Watson had the same reaction for the exact opposite reasons (RLM leaned toward the season being pointless, action-packed nonsense while Sydney Watson leaned toward the season being pointless, mundane nonsense), there was still some hope to form my own opinion.
The first episode is a bizarre mix of 80s nostalgia and stopping Vecna. Despite the rift splitting Hawkins and its military occupation, the characters pretend to have a normal year in high school. Somehow, I made a connection to the final Harry Potter book. Unlike episode one of Stranger Things 5, which attempts to be another year in high school in the 80s and also defeating Vecna, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn’t about another magical year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and also defeating Voldemort. Too much had changed by the end of the previous book. Too much has also changed by the end of Stranger Things 4. Stranger Things 5 does quickly abandon the pretense of normalcy, but that means it also abandons what made the show charming: 80s nostalgia combined with a science fiction, fantasy adventure. Season 5 can’t have such charm because the right-side up is so devoid of 80s normalcy. Nobody is nostalgic about military occupation or making plans to infiltrate the upside down in a bunker. In contrast, Harry Potter never loses its charm despite the drastic change of pace in the final book because its charm is magic in general, not tied so strictly to Hogwarts.
Will’s sudden super power to defeat Vecna kind of works and kind of doesn’t. Unlike One, El, or any of the children raised in isolation in Hawkins Lab, Will didn’t have to do anything to attain or unlock his powers. He didn’t even have to come out as gay. So, his abilities appear to manifest from nowhere and also belittle El’s experiences. It also kind of works. Vecna made his first official appearance in Season 4, and Will was nowhere near Vecna or his minions for the entire season. His abilities could have always been dormant, and Will has had a fair amount of suffering. For how much Will suffers from his experiences in the upside down in the first two seasons in particular, he never has a moment of power over the monsters that tormented him. From this perspective, it feels fitting for him to develop super powers. This could have been done more cleverly though rather than simply turning him into a second El or One. For example, he could have been given a second opportunity to spy on Vecna or the Mindflayer except this time, he’s the one in control and feeding crucial information to El and the others.
All I can think when I see El in that wetsuit with the triangle cut out of the neck is, “What a stupid costume.”
Nancy has killed monsters before, but she’s also perfectly fine with killing people? When did this happen?
The final episode reminded me of Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, the final book in the four-part Inheritance series. I know this show is supposed to invoke 80s nostalgia, but for some reason, my thoughts kept going to books that I read in the mid-2000s. Anyway, Inheritance had something like 120 pages of pure epilogue. In a similar vein, almost half of the two-hour finale of Stranger Things is epilogue. After Vecna and the Mindflayer appeared defeated, I was shocked that there was still an hour of the episode remaining. I remained shocked when El said goodbye to Mike and disappeared, and there was still 50 minutes left.
While getting to those last fifty minutes was as full of filler as I feared it would be four years ago, however, it felt fitting for all the characters and brought back the 80s charm that made the series great. I’ve never seen the end of Game of Thrones, but I doubt this was comparable or worse, especially (tying this back to books) when the book series Game of Thrones is based on will never have an ending at all.
I’ve been watching competitive eating on YouTube since early 2024. I was in the midst of a keto diet phase (it was a mistake; I don’t recommend it), and I think the YouTube algorithm sensed I was hungry. Initially, I was disgusted by watching Erik the Electric eat meals featured on My 600-Pound Life x2 four times in a day but continued watching his videos anyway. These days I mostly just think it’s impressive. I don’t watch all the competitive eaters, I may not even watch the best ones, but below is my ranked list of eaters that I watch regularly or have otherwise made an impression.
1. Erik the Electric
The YouTuber who introduced me to competitive eating has to go at the top of the list for multiple reasons. Erik’s videos are unique among all competitive eaters that I watch. Unlike other eaters listed here, Erik rarely does restaurant challenges. Instead, he sets challenges for himself. For the past three years, he’s based these challenges around a theme or a story. In his most recent video as of this writing, for example, he trained an AI, presumably on his previous challenges, to create a 14-day-long challenge for him to follow to prove he was still the “World’s Hungriest Man” as his tagline proclaims. His previous format, which he used when he posted challenges weekly, usually included eating a ridiculous amount of calories while showcasing new foods, entire menus, and seasonal specials at fast food restaurants and grocery stores.
Currently, Erik posts videos at a much slower cadence than other competitive eaters. It’s not out of the ordinary for months to pass between videos, but they’re always worth the wait for Erik’s humor, storytelling, and unique video editing style. Erik has a way of making food look delicious or at least making the challenge of eating a large quantity of it exciting (because, really, eating a 1-pound gummy bear in one sitting is disgusting no matter how you frame it). Where other competitive eaters merely tell the viewer how tasty their 10,000 calorie burger is week after week, Erik emphasizes his enthusiastic “Mmm!”s with fist pounds, camera shakes, video and audio effects, and animated fireballs. His challenges and loose storylines have plot twists, obstacles, and rising and falling action, and his onscreen calorie counters, timers, and progress graphics further emphasize the difficulty of his challenges and keep you wondering if he’s finally given himself too great of a challenge.
Erik’s backstory also distinguishes him other eaters. Like most eaters, Erik is an exercise enthusiast, his particular interests being in power lifting, bike riding, and most recently triathlons. He found these passions and competitive eating, however, after years of struggling with anorexia. It was his discovery that he could eat massive quantities of food and still maintain a healthy weight that ultimately gave him a better relationship with food.
I also have to put Erik at the top for the effect he’s had on me, and not only by introducing me to competitive eating. Don’t worry. He hasn’t inspired me to want to eat a sickening amount of food. He did, however, inspire me to try all the food. When I went to restaurants, I used to ask myself, “What’s the ‘safest’ thing on the menu, or what have I tried that I know is ‘safe’?” I often ordered the same foods over and over again. Now when I go to restaurants, I ask myself, “What haven’t I tried before that I’d like to try?” I keep a list of restaurants and menus from around Missoula with notes about what I liked, what I didn’t like, and what I thought about what I’ve tried. I’ve ordered from fast food places and restaurants that I’ve never tried before. I’ve ordered tasty food and desserts that I’d never considered. The inspiration came from simply watching Erik try all manner of tasty-looking foods. I wanted to try them, too. If he could eat a disgusting amount of food and be perfectly fine, why couldn’t I be fine giving a reasonable portion a try? Obviously, I’m not on the keto diet anymore, and I partly thank Erik for that as well.
2. Max vs. Food
I only found Max vs. Food a few months ago through collaborations with Katina Eats Kilos and Randy Santel, but he’s quickly risen to the second spot in my tier list. Max posts bi-weekly videos, featuring mostly restaurant speed and/or capacity challenges and some food-eating competitions and at-home challenges. Max is impressive for both his speed and his capacity. I rarely see him fail a challenge due to running out of time or feeling too sick to continue, and I’ve never seen him eat to the point of getting sick. He almost always breaks previous time records and out-eats the eaters he collaborates with. Alongside his bi-weekly, self-edited videos, he also works a fulltime job and runs several hours a day.
Max is enthusiastic and entertaining. His video format follows Katina Eats Kilos’ style where video of him eating is lightly edited, sped up, and overlayed with music and Max narrating his thoughts throughout the challenge. While videos in this style also include live audio of the eater interacting with the staff and audience, I find the additional narration makes it more interesting by adding observations and doubts that the eater might not admit aloud. Max makes food look good and rarely shows misery during a challenge, even when he says he’s struggling. While some eaters strategize how they approach a challenge, such as eating all the meat first, Max often has more fun with his food, attempting to eat giant burgers whole, making sandwiches from piles of meat and bread, and saving his favorites for last. His significant other Laura often assists, coaches, and supports him from behind the camera, which keeps me rooting for him when times are dire as well.
Being based in the UK, he also eats a lot of tasty-looking English breakfasts.
3. Katina Eats Kilos
Katina found competitive eating through the world of bikini competitions. In these competitions, natural competitors (i.e. non-steroid users) such a Katina ride a fine line between building muscle and remaining lean. After a competition, Katina decided to try competitive eating as a method of building muscle or bulking. She has since become a professional eater, although she maintains a strict regimen of weightlifting and bike riding. Katina isn’t a speed eater, but what interested me in her was her impressive capacity for being my size.
Katina also streams World of Warcraft regularly on Twitch. She brings her well-practiced narration to her weekly (recently turned bimonthly) videos to keep them engaging with her inner thoughts.
4. Randy Santel
Randy isn’t particularly impressive for his speed or unmaintained physique. Even his capacity is questionable at the frequency with which he struggles through or fails challenges. This may be, however, because he frequently eats one or two challenges a day for weeks at a time while on tour to accumulate videos to post over a much longer timeline while he’s not on tour. He has also beaten over a thousand restaurant challenges across the United States and around the world and owns foodchallenges.com, which maintains a global list of food challenges and tips for how to eat big and maintain physique. I don’t know for sure, but I would guess he’s one of the original professional eaters on YouTube and has inspired many of those that exist today.
Unlike other competitive eaters here, Randy doesn’t edit his own videos, and it shows. His videos are very formulaic, and since he has the beginning and end of the videos to share most of his thoughts, the introductions and closings can be drawn out. Randy is enthusiastic and infinitely supportive, but he usually comes across as showy and obnoxious rather than charming.
I discovered Randy through his fiancé Katina Eats Kilos. When I hear the two of them supporting each other off camera, I suppose I have to support both, although I find Katina more entertaining and impressive. Randy has recently decreased his schedule from bi-weekly to weekly videos in preparation for his marriage to Katina. He plans to retire as a professional eater when his new YouTube channel–featuring his knowledge as a dietician–grows to a sustainable size.
He also managed to find a challenge in Missoula:
5. Matt Stonie
Matt Stonie reminds me of Ryan Higa except instead of making short films with his Asian friends, his Asian friends film him cooking and eating disgusting food. Matt specializes in speed eating but has an impressive capacity as well. I don’t watch many of his videos, but most that I’ve seen feature home challenges he creates for himself, mostly focusing on challenging textures, uniformity, and flavors. As mentioned, Matt’s editing and video style reminds me a lot of Ryan Higa short films and also Erik the Electric videos. He doesn’t, however, make food look good and frequently fails his own challenges.
6. Molly Schuyler
As one of the top professional eaters in the world, Molly Schuyler doesn’t chew. She just swallows.
That said, I don’t go out of my way to watch her videos. Despite her ability to eat a two-foot long cheesesteak and an entire tray of cheese fries in less than three minutes, she’s not very entertaining. Of the few videos I’ve seen, there is somewhat uninformative and meandering introductions, bad audio, and zero narration during the challenges. Unlike most of the eaters I’ve listed here, she’s also not a “clean eater,” frequently turning her food to mush before stuffing it in her mouth.
I do appreciate seeing her on other eaters’ channels though. As long as someone else is handling the entertaining, video editing, and audio, she is very impressive and worth watching.
Abscission is a book-length story based in The Human Domestication Guide setting. I read this on the recommendation of a friend to see what the interest was because… Well, Abscission is basically a fan-fiction featuring dominate/subordinate and sadistic fetishes.
For someone with no interest in these fetishes, what is the draw? Abscission features a cast of characters with a variety of identities and disabilities. The transgender protagonist Autumn suffers from some sort of schizophrenia, severe anxiety, or paranoid delusions. Her lesbian girlfriend Dawn suffers from neurological disorders that impair her motor functions, memory, and consciousness. Autumn’s would-be murderer turned friend Qiru has autistic symptoms and identifies as a genderless robot rat. These characters have basically been adopted as pets by all-powerful plant aliens called the Affini, who have agreed to love them and take care of all their needs. The Affini have a directive to reduce suffering in the universe, and for humans that have proven to be a threat to themselves or others, adopting them as pets is required. The Affini use a lot of drugs to sooth their pets’ various fears and traumas but also genuinely love them. With their highly advanced technology, the Affini have produced an era of post-scarcity, meaning they and their pets often don’t need to worry about much but spending time with one another.
In other words, Abscission offers an escape for those who suffer from disabilities, mental disorders, or persecution for their identities. It contains a message that the reader doesn’t need to be more than themselves to be loved. The reader doesn’t need to fight through discomfort or disability to impress or prove their worth to anyone. The reader can dream of what it’s like to live in a world of post-scarcity and post-capitalism. Abscission also celebrates drugs not as tools to be used only as needed but as a method to become one’s true self and escape needless or unrealistic worries and despair. And there’s also a lot of dominate/subordinate fetishism for those who are into that sort of thing.
That said, Abscission is also an underdeveloped, minimally edited, and incomplete novel. Abscission is far from the worst such novel that I’ve read. Some manuscripts intended to become legitimate, published novels that I’ve beta read have bored or frustrated me into a rage, but Abscission held my interest by being equal parts entertaining, confusing, disgusting, and boring.
It does suffer from many common problems though. Plot holes are common. For having a directive to reduce suffering, the Affini do a lot of suffering on their own. Autumn’s Affini Solanum claims to have an important job but spends most of the book not doing it, leaving one to wonder who does any of the work around here, what compels them to do it, and how society doesn’t fall apart. Characters are inconsistent. Autumn is afraid of drugs and then wants all the drugs with little transition. Autumn is bored without Solanum to entertain her until she decides she has a history of studying alien languages. There is little conflict or problems for the characters to solve together. Most of the time, Autumn and her fellow pet friends have no life outside their Affini. Most of the book is indulgence in fetishes, drugs, alcohol, and trivial social gatherings. The writer often makes their own fantasies obvious with such nonsense as characters wearing a collar and cuffs by mandate; being casually tied up; experiencing sexual arousal through petting or submission to someone else’s will; or willingly undergoing surgery while awake. On one hand, Abscission tells the reader that they don’t need to be more than who they are to be loved, but on the other hand, it tells the reader to give up and let themselves be defined entirely by their illness, drug use, or niche identity.
Then again, Abscission perhaps couldn’t be the escape that it is if it didn’t contain some of these problems. A book lacking conflict isn’t commonly considered “good fiction.” A world of post-scarcity where everyone is accepted for who they are, problems can be efficiently solved, and people need not worry about who will care for them today or tomorrow, however, is the world that fans of Abscission, and The Human Domestication Guide in general, dream of.
There’s no excuse for the ending though (aside from it being self-indulgent fan fiction). The third to last chapter is mindless torture porn, which, really, the entire 155,000-word book had been building toward. The final two chapters, however, have nothing to do with each other nor anything to do with the rest of the book. In reaction to these final three chapters, I said out loud as I finished reading, “What? That’s insane!” Which might as well have been my reaction to the entire book. XD