La Ron S. Readus

Why Annette is Black (Castlevania: Nocturne) | READUS 101

The release of Castlevania Nocturne, Netflix’s sequel series to Castlevania, revealed that the character Annette was race-swapped to be a runaway slave and given a new backstory as a monster hunter. And as you can imagine, sexist and racist trolls began to reveal themselves, challenging the decision along with dark-skinned characters in the anime in general. So allow me to explain both why An...

Barbarian Explained Detroit's White Flight POORLY (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, I’ll be 100% honest with you. I had NO idea what I was getting myself into when I decided to watch Barbarian for the first time.

/I was one of those individuals whose first opinion about the movie was that it was gonna be about a woman who needed to safeguard herself because she was in a situation involving a man she doesn’t know that seemed INCREDIBLY sketchy, and it didn’...

Barbarian Explained Detroit's White Flight POORLY! | READUS 101

The 2022 horror movie Barbarian takes place in a blighted neighborhood in modern day Detroit that -- according to how Barbarian explained it -- was heavily affected by American migration centered around racism called White Flight. But instead of giving a Barbarian movie review, I instead give a Barbarian analysis and focus on how Detroit's actual White Flight Detroit impacted the actual neighbo...

The Little Mermaid is ALMOST Significant! (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, I wanna start this by saying I don’t think the 2023 live-action remake of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” was terrible

Am I upset that they got rid of the lyrics to the Vanessa reprise of Poor Unfortunate Souls? Yes. I’m actually REALLY upset about that!

Listen, sometimes you’re just in the mood to hear Halle Bailey sing “Soon I’ll have that Little Mermaid and...

The Little Mermaid is ALMOST Significant! (The Little Mermaid 2023) | READUS 101

Disney’s 2023 live-action remake of The Little Mermaid -- despite personal gripes -- impressed me with the direction they decided to take Halle Bailey’s Ariel. So much that it felt like they realized the change gave them the perfect opportunity to do a better job addressing racism, race relations, bigotry and intolerance than their 1995 insulting retelling of the life of Pocahontas without ...

How Redlining Created the 'Hood (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, have you ever watched a movie that took a subject that you became extremely passionate about thanks to your neurodivergent ability of hyperfixation, and saw that it succeeded in highlighting the aspects that needed to be addressed about it thanks to the fictional twist the movie gave it?

Well you...would NOT be surprised to hear that that’s EXACTLY how I felt when I watched The...

How Redlining Made the 'Hood (They Cloned Tyrone) | READUS 101

Netflix’s “They Cloned Tyrone” introduced a lot of people to The Glen -- one of many impoverished black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia. And for a lot of African Americans that live in neighborhoods like The Glen -- aka the hood and ghettos -- They Cloned Tyrone has elements in its sci-fi blaxploitation that paint a great picture of its history with redlining and segregation, and even h...

Is Loki the Main Character of the Multiverse Saga? (VIDEO SCRIPT)

(sits on couch) Okay. Loki is the main character of the Multiverse Saga. (pauses) Where’s everyone going?

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With the October 2023 release of Loki season 2, Phase 5 of the MCU will be releasing its second narrative in The Multiverse Saga following Ant-Man and the Wasp Quanumania.

And because Phase 4 put it in motion with Loki Season 1, What If Season 1, Spider-Man...

Is LOKI The Main Character of THE MULTIVERSE SAGA? | READUS 201

If the MCU’s Multiverse Saga has a main character in its narrative, then it’s Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Thanks to Loki Season 1 and the direction of the other installments in The Multiverse Saga, Loki seems to be the one main character among Doctor Strange and Ant-Man who is the main protagonist leading into Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret War. In this video, I explain how he is ...

Are You Black Enough for The Blackening? (VIDEO SCRIPT)

This video is sponsored by BetterHelp.com

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Depending on the type of person you are, this little bit of trivia may or may not surprise you.

Some of y’all will probably go “Really? I know you were excited about it, but damn!” While others might go “...No, yeah; that hella tracks, actually.”

The trivia in question? The first movie I saw in theaters in ...

Are You Black Enough for The Blackening? | READUS 101

With the release of the horror-comedy film The Blackening, African Americans now have another satire that successfully highlights the dangers of alienation within our own community in the form of judging other black folk’s own personal blackness. So much that I wish that there was a version of The Blackening that worked the concept of being not black enough as a thriller that took itself more...

Are You Black Enough for The Blackening?

(WARNING: Contains spoilers for both "The Blackening" and "Undercover Brother")

(This will be fleshed out and reformatted into a video for "Readus 101" relatively soon, so I'm presenting the editorial exclusively for Patreon as it was originally intended)

There was no doubt...

The Black Reclamation of the Body Snatchers (VIDEO SCRIPT)

I wanna talk about Get Out

/Get Out is a 2017 horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. It tells the story of Chris Washington, a black photographer from Brooklyn played by Daniel Kaluuya, who’s taking a weekend trip upstate to meet the parents of his white girlfriend Rose Armitage played by Allison Williams. However, after experiencing things that are off with both Rose’s fam...

The Black Reclamation of the Body Snatchers | READUS 101

Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a great addition to the horror genre surrounding body snatchers, because it highlights body snatchers' roots to whiteness instead of the anti-communist propaganda that the 1956 film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” tried to say it originally stood for. So I explain how body snatcher horror better reflects the evolution of whiteness to Americanization, how it uses...

Coming Out the Spider-Verse

(WARNING: Contains spoilers for "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse")

(This may be fleshed out further and become the topic for a future video once the movie is released digitally)

If you’ve been following my work since at least June of 2022, then you probably already kn...

The Manhood of Mario (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, I have no problem admitting that I originally wasn’t all that excited for the Super Mario Brothers movie

Not only was I irritated with Universal sidelining Charles Marinet -- the original voice of Mario -- in favor of Chris Pratt

But due to life y’know...life-ing, I had no choice but to wait for it to come out on digital to see it while everyone else had the opportunity...

The Manhood of Mario (The Super Mario Bros. Movie) | READUS 101

Out of the four main men in The Super Mario Bros. Movie -- Mario, Luigi, Bowser and Donkey Kong -- three of them deal with issues that mold their individual masculinity in ways that can grow toxic. And its because of how each man in The Super Mario Bros. Movie translates societal expectations of themselves that we’re able to see how it plays into their overall depictions of manhood and mascul...

How Gay is The Little Mermaid? (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, I, like I’m sure a good amount of you, owe a lot of my childhood upbringing as a millennial born in the late 80’s to the historical era of Disney animation known as the Disney Renaissance. The one that started the revitalization of their animation department as we currently know it being 1989’s The Little Mermaid

/Now for the longest, I was pretty much under the belief that...

How Gay is The Little Mermaid? | READUS 101

The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale about a mermaid princess, is a story about queer yearning that heteronormativity allowed Walt Disney Studios to market it to girls. But with Disney bringing on board Howard Ashman for its music, the audience it formed solidified the queer millennial fanbase that would spawn from the Disney Renaissance. So here’s how the queer yearning...

How King Shark Became A Queer Icon (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, there’s no denying that King Shark is a shark. But now King Shark is also queer

And before all the homophobes and wanna-be comicsgaters come on here to say that the bit I’m referring to in the DC Animated Universe Movie “Justice League Dark: Apokolips War” was just a joke, or that it doesn’t mean anything, or that I’m reading too hard into it...

/Don’t forget ...

How King Shark Became A Queer Icon | READUS 101

In DC's Harley Quinn, King Shark could be seen as queer as early as season 1. Then the DC animated universe movie "Justice League Dark: Apokolips War" came out, and the reveal that King Shark and John Constantine dated in the movie was the talk of the internet, allowing some to look at King Shark with a queer perspective for the first time. So I see if King Shark’s queer icon status is legiti...

The DCEU'S Kryptonian Race Has A Problem (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, I have no problem admitting that I have a soft spot for the first installment of the DCEU, Man of Steel

While it catered to the side of me that always wanted to see Superman actually fight supervillains on film, especially if they’re as strong and as powerful as he is...

/That’s part of the reason why I preferred Superman II over Superman The Movie as a child/

/I ...

The DCEU's Kryptonian Race Has A Problem | READUS 101

Man of Steel, the first film in the DCEU, features a take on Krypton and the Kryptonian race that made me question a few creative decisions regarding Superman’s origins. And after seeing what Man of Steel writer David S. Goyer took from Kryptonians in the comics and how he used it in the first Snyderverse movie, I think I know what it is about how the DCEU’s Kryptonian lore -- and how its c...

ACAB can SAVE The Batman Trilogy (VIDEO SCRIPT)

I wanna talk about The Batman

/The Batman is a 2022 film written and directed by Matt Reeves. Set 2 years into billionaire Bruce Wayne’s crusade against crime as the titular vigilante, he and Gotham Police Lieutenant James Gordon -- the only cop he trusts -- are teaming up to find a killer known as the Riddler, who’s been going after important figures around Gotham and prompting Batma...

ACAB Can SAVE The Batman Trilogy! | READUS 101

Batman has a history of promoting copaganda in comics, movies and television, and Matt Reeves The Batman isn’t exempt from this. But with the origins of police being linked to colonization, oppression, capitalism and white supremacy, there’s a way that The Batman: Part II and The Batman: Part III can use the acronym ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) as part of The Batman trilogy Matt Reeves want...

Sabo Brok's a Victim of Late-Stage Capitalism (VIDEO SCRIPT)

This video is sponsored by SurfShark VPN
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Readers, I want to start this video by stating an absolute fact: My Dad the Bounty Hunter absolutely slaps

Yes, I know that I sorta rhymed there, but give me a break here; I absolutely mean it.

First and foremost, the blackness... WHOO, the blackness.

Just in the first two episodes alone, the blackness of this show i...

Sabo Brok's a Victim of Late-Stage Capitalism! (My Dad the Bounty Hunter) | READUS 101

My Dad the Bounty Hunter, a Netflix Original Series, is a beautiful display of an African American family on an epic space adventure for children. But thanks to the story for My Dad the Bounty Hunter, Sabo Brok’s job as a bounty hunter is being forced to be looked at under the the same lens of late-stage capitalism that affects us in real life thanks to the true villain of the Netflix series ...

The Hit and Miss of Race-Swapped and Original Characters (VIDEO SCRIPT)

This video is sponsored by Babbel. Save 60% on your subscription when you click on the link in the description box below to download the app and sign up.

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I wanna talk about race-swapping in movies and TV shows.

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When it comes to the topic of minority representation on film and television, one of the biggest discussion points regarding it that has...

The Hit and Miss of Race-Swapped and Original Characters | READUS 101

The debate of race swapping popular characters, also known as racebending, and making an original character instead has been a hot debate among fandoms for years and has made it into modern media. However, what seems to be the main problem when it comes to race swapped and original characters is the amount of thought and concern from those who create them for film and television. And those race...

Clerks: A Proper Movie Trilogy (VIDEO SCRIPT)

INTRO

Clerks, Clerks II, and Clerks III.

Not only has the 1994 original been deemed the crown jewel of Kevin Smith’s career and made him such a well-known figure in both pop culture and the independent filmmaking scene, but with the 2022 release of Clerks III -- the third and final installment of the franchise that launched the View Askewniverse -- Kevin Smith now...