End of a redundant legal doublet / SUN 6-14-26 / Fireball-throwing demons from Doom / Female-friendly fandom event / Asian rice porridge / Tom ___, “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” satirist / Viola score symbol / Fast food chain whose name has two hyphens / Sam who putted croquet style until the U.S.G.A. banned it / 2023 Nobel-winning physicist L’Huillier / What a modest play has in common withe the answer to each italicized clue? / Jam band with a Ben & Jerry’s flavor / Appropriately misspelled genre for Korn and Limp Bizkit

Unalive is a euphemistic way to say “kill” or “die.” […] Use of unalive to mean “kill” or “die” arose on video-focused social media platforms (such as TikTok) by content creators and commenters to avoid having their videos or comments flagged/removed for violent or inappropriate content. […] Unalive is an example of euphemism, the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant. It often used to enable discussion of sensitive or serious topics (such as suicide) on social media without risking content removal or punitive consequences from social media moderators or algorithms. Unalive is used as a verb, with all of the regular tenses and participles: unalived, unaliving, unalives. Unalived is also used as an adjective meaning dead. (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

[4 characters] [l’enfer, c’est ce mot-croisé]

About as unpleasant a Sunday experience as I can ever remember having, and that is, as you probably know, saying something. The theme held absolutely no charm for me. What’s the opposite of “charm?” That’s what it held. If this kind of cutesy is your cup of tea, god bless you, I’m glad you enjoyed this. Someone should. For me, every themer was like pulling teeth, with the result never feeling anywhere remotely near being worth the effort. Was I supposed to laugh (chortle? chuckle?) at “derriere rider” because … it’s a euphemistic way of referring to riding someone’s ass? Mission not accomplished. Why were only four letters used for each themer? More importantly, why wasn’t “four” part of the revealer? They all use just four letters, but the revealer opts for merely SMALL CAST OF CHARACTERS, which not only doesn’t get at the fourness of it all, but also doesn’t ring true as a standalone phrase. “Large cast of characters” outgoogles it about 5 to 1, and even that phrase isn’t exactly snappy (weirdly, “Wide cast of characters” googles best of all). Do the four letters … do anything? Anything besides making nonsense? Do they spell anything? What is the point of making me or anyone endure this baloney hunt? I will never understand the appeal of something like this, especially without some secondary element, some bit of thematic hocus pocus to make the theme seem like it has a point or purpose. I almost think MAMA CASS SCAMS CMAS is a funny phrase. That is the nicest thing I can say about this puzzle. Oh, and I genuinely liked “DEEP BREATHS…,” primarily because it was exactly the advice I needed at the time.

Somehow the fill managed to be nearly as irksome as the theme, but for completely different reasons. The desperation sweat on this one … the “look-at-me” chasing after the “original” or the “new” … it grew wearisome. “HA HA, YEAH” is just a long version of “AH, OK,” i.e. a bunch of words one might say trying to pass itself off as a tight and bright colloquial phrase. MADE A TRY basically describes itself, i.e. the answer MADE A TRY at being interesting and failed. The very idea of a GEEK GIRL CON was off-putting, not because geek girls are off-putting (my own kid is at least adjacent to that category), but because the the very idea that such a thing is necessary is kind of horrible (67D: Female-friendly fandom event). Admittedly, nerd cons and geek cons and fandom-type things in general have never held much appeal for me, but the idea that such events are not “female-friendly” just makes me think of sweaty sexist nerds, and on Sunday, or any day, I’d rather not. NASATV???? MEGAOHM??? Oy. I have “please stop” written in the margins of my grid print-out. And also next to UNALIVED, which I hate more for its clue than anything else (57A: Online euphemism for “killed” used to avoid demonitization). “Demonetization???” That’s such a weird and highly specific thing to say. I think “banned” or “deplatformed” is much more common. “Demonetization” applies only to those actually making money from social media, which as a percentage of users is hardly anyone. I stared at “demonetization” wondering if I was hallucinating. “Does it say ‘demonization?'” Also, what a stupid idea: that using a euphemism is ok but using an ordinary word isn’t. I guess when algorithms rule the world, this is what we get. But srsly, have the algorithms not learned the word “UNALIVED” by now? Ugh now I’m thinking about algorithms, which is, again, not something I want to be doing on a Sunday, or ever. 

TWERE EWER ETRE … there’s an appropriate clusterf*ck! A bunch of ugly terms that only use four letters, all wadded together. I don’t know what it was about the cluing today, but it felt hardish throughout, which would be ok if the results had at any point been rewarding. TRUE FACT is not rewarding (sidenote: why isn’t “redundant” a part of that clue, but it is a part of the DESIST clue!?) (31D: End of a redundant legal doublet) (lol “doublet,” again, please stop, no one calls a ___ & ___ phrase a “doublet”). When’s the last time anyone put a single “tune” in a CD TRAY (92D: It can carry a tune)? The tray carries the CD. The CD carries the tune(s). This is what I mean about the puzzle trying way, way too hard. OK, the puzzle has EATEN AT (oof) me enough, time to wrap things up.