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The Independent Variable

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Meryl Streep Calls Out “Marvel-ization” of Movies: “It’s So Boring”

She argued that the genre has “Marvel-ized” storytelling, flattening characters into predictable heroes and villains, whereas real life — and more interesting cinema — involves morally complex, “messier” people with mixed traits.

She's absolutely right, but we have ourselves to blame. We all flocked to every Marvel movie during the first 2-3 waves, or whatever they call them. So the capitalistic overlords of Hollywood decided that's where they wanted to put their money. The stars in Hollywood realized they could grab a huge bag from these places, and we continued to go. Now we—and the actors, producers, writers, etc. who care about the art form and not just the check—have to deal with that outcome.

In some ways it feels like the death of an art form. In other ways, there are still places like Neon and, to a lesser extent at this point, A24, trying to do things differently and put out original, exciting films with a point of view that don't regurgitate the same thing over and over. But it's going to be on us as the so-called "consumers" to actually go to the theaters for those movies so they continue to get made. No matter what you say, movies are an art created by humans for humans to go and feel things. It's not just supposed to be a bunch of computer generated song and beautiful people fighting each other.

AT Kyrios /// a curious, slightly psychedelic blackletter font family

Kyrios is a curious, slightly psychedelic blackletter family. Though it may seem like a modern idea, it is an interpretation of lettering from a grave monument carved in the late 1800s, located in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY.

I want to give a big shout out to Stephen over at ArrowType for officially launching Kyrios 1.0 and graduating from Future Fonts on this one. We've been using Kyrios here at TIV for almost 2 years now, and it's hard to imagine any other font replacing it at this point. We've had a ton of really cool blackletter fonts, including Casserole from OH No and Albertus Nova, but none of them can hold a candle to Kyrios.

A Great Big Fuss (2025)

The first anthology from Foofaraw Press has arrived.

A little bit of self-promo here, but over on the litmag I run, we released our first full length anthology. It's a book of 30 stories that were submitted to us based on the theme of "foofaraw: a great deal of fuss or attention given to a minor matter." You can pick it up directly from us as a limited edition hardcover, paperback or epub/pdf, or find it anywhere books are sold online. It was a huge labor of love and we are already prepping the next one to come out this fall.

GameStop Wants To Buy, Uh, eBay? [Update]

If you’re wondering why GameStop would bother, you might find the answer in the fact that CEO Ryan Cohen, who publicly claims he currently receives no compensation for his role, will be paid $35 billion if he can get the company’s value to $100 billion, a moonshot that a deal like this seems specifically tailored towards.

I can’t tell if this guy is that dumb, on something, or hiding something. Also, how does a moron like this end up being the CEO of a publicly traded company???

Jeffrey Epstein’s Possible Suicide Note Hidden From Public View

An inmate said he discovered the note after Mr. Epstein was found injured in his jail cell, weeks before his death. It’s now locked in a courthouse.

I’m just waiting for Dr. Oz to come out as the DoJ’s handwriting expert to say “this letter that says ‘I, Jeffrey Epstein, was the sole trafficker of children and only trafficked them to myself. The wholly honest and trustworthy Donald Trump and our billionaire friends had nothing to do with the child sex trafficking ring and he should be fully exonerated from any wrongdoing.,’ is unequivocally authentic.”