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august 2022

hi! had a bit of a hellish vacation trip late july / early this month which. yeah kinda sucked but i did enjoy many parts of it (got to visit plenty of museums).

thesis progress: i really hate working with 3d software (especially with my tiny laptop screen). really shot myself on the foot here. but i've made my mind to just allow myself to suck? like in the same way i've decided to allow myself to apply to jobs i'm dubiously qualified for, i'm making things easy for myself. i have a hard time working with 3d shapes so i'm using sprites instead; i'm not sure how lighting affects sprites on a 3d environment, so i decided not to worry about it if my finla lighting ends up rather flat. stuff like that you know? i'm far from being a perfectionist, i love the kinda ugly aesthetic of early graphics so hey! why not go ahead and make something amateurish anyway?

and here's a slice of what i want to work towards painting: tableaus of frolicking surrealist trans people. just. had a flash of it while in a museum. just idk bosch trans joy or something. um. word of warning there's non sexual nudity btw. no hard feelings if you'd prefer to skip the genitals.

hell yeah really needed to paint something like this. had a ton of fun with the workflow itself too. i couldn't for the life of me get it to compress nicely, i was just not satisfied with the indexing (not a ton of compression and didn't even look particularly good imo). so i did commit anathema and 90% quality jpeg'd it. they love my lossy swag. do take a look at the original though

media

movies and series

• bram stoker's dracula (1992): watching a vampire movie from the 90s feels soo uncanny that's too fucking modern lmao. it should 100% have been made in the 70s. tragically orientalist in the first 40-ish minutes which is A Lot (inherited from the book of course), but otherwise it is a pretty damn good movie
• et mourir de plaisir (1960): in name only -ish adaptation of carmilla, it's pretty nice for what it is. wikipedia calls it erotic horror which it most definitely is not, the same way carmilla is not as homoerotic as people'd make you think it is. and honestly, nothing wrong with a little artsy subtle vampire french film
• the sandman (2022): i found it kinda underwhelming, particularly when it comes to aesthetics. i'd say it's good enough; it made me a lil more interested in the comics (they already sounded appealing i just never got around to them), and i'll go ahead and watch season 2. not something i'd recommend unprompted but 's alright
• nope (2022): finally came out in brazil and oh my god!!!!!!! it's so fucking good!!!!!! can't stop thinking about jean jacket's design. it's just. so fucking good, the way it moves, everything!!!!
• spiral (2021): yeah i've been meaning to watch it since it came out but... it doesn't hit the same as other saw movies. zeke's an annoying protag, and the focus is shifted more towards investigation than fun traps. i mean, cop shit has always been in the movies but this is basically pure cop shit with maybe ten minutes of traps total, it's very very boring. much like the killer is a weird copycat, the movie feels like a weird fake saw, except the defining trait of the series is the fucked up situations, so like... what even is this honestly. there are bad movies that are fun — in fact all movies except (being very generous) the first are terrible and fun. this one's terrible and dull. honestly man saw is a comedy. slapstick even

books (52/50 🥳) and manga

• queen of the damned (anne rice): complicated mixed feelings about this book. bit of a mixed bag. i think i took too long to read it (due to the trip) so that might have affected how i felt about its pacing. there's a chapter early on that's just a toxic homoerotic masterpiece (daniel's first chapter, in case you read it). sadly the book does take the rather racist bits of the vampire lestat and... makes them the main plot. i don't mean to #cancel anne rice or whatever lmao it's just kinda disappointing. not only because of the racism but also... ok so iwtv's / louis' whole deal is that he goes looking for meaning in his vampirism and finds none; he goes to europe to look for an older vampire that might explain it all to him, but armand doesn't know anything and claudia ends up killed. and then comes the vampire lestat and we get a way older vampire and also a somewhat convincing story of how vampires came to be, as well as what's very likely to be thee very first vampires ever. and then we get to queen of the damned and we get confirmation that that story was mostly correct and also the Actual Real True story from the mouth of one of the ancient vampires and that's the main plot. and... idk i vaguely know there was Stuff going on rice's life that relates to the tone of the books and shit and which is why tvl is a bit of a soft reboot in some ways but doesn't it feel rather dissonant? plus i think anne rice is at her best when she's writing fucked up interpersonal drama. also i find women with red hair and green eyes and powers the most obnoxious characters in the entire world probably, they're just too lame who give a shit
• #drcl midnight children (sinichi sakamoto): well, only like 20 chapters out rn but i just have to share it. it's based on bram stoker's dracula and honestly just everything i want from vampire fiction
• hellsing (kouta hirano): ehhh. it's just rather juvenile and monotone, but then at times there are some really incredible panels and pages and chapters? it could have been really fucking good if only it was better, but as it stands it's both boring and rushed. he's a better character designer than a writer
• innocent and innocent rouge (sinichi sakamoto): saurrrrr good holy shit i love sakamoto's art so much..... great characters and story as well!
• flowers for the sea (zin e. rocklyn): hm. it's alright. pretty sure there'll be some sort of sequel or follow-up or whatever
• viscera (gabriel squailia): wish i could have liked it more, but it's kinda lame. good body horror potential but just doesn't really come through
• american hippo (sarah gailey): yeah yeah we all heard of it, this book's been in my to-read list for ages and it's a shame i didn't read it before, i really liked it!
• cycle of the werewolf (stephen king): more a short story really, but it's pretty good
• the faggots and their friends between revolutions (larry mitchell): it's beautiful. really wish i had a physical copy
• carrie (stephen king): ok so when i watched the movie i found it fascinating how knowing that shit goes down at prom seemed to make the movie more tense. well turns out that's also more book-accurate, since it intersperses the narrative with quotes from books / etc written after the whole thing, including several mentions of Prom Night. which is really cool! the extra context and characterization is also great, the book is really well written. i fucking love carrie, highly recommend both movie and book

bye bye! :D

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