index
october 2023
hello my ghastly ghouls and happy halloween, hope you watch a lesbian vampire movie and think of me. i reached 25 reviews this month and am rather proud of that.
also! finished the the nonexistent knight yuri analysis! i'd like to revisit it to make it more in depth, but i'm pleased with what i currently have.
also some site changes on my end, i finally stopped being lazy and downloaded my website and set things up to update with git / the neocities cli. this makes absolutely no difference to you as a reader but is a bit more convenient to me, and let me reorganize the structure a bit (which is a pain on the web interface without drag-and-drop) (if i didn't catch a link when moving files and directories around and stuff has broken i'm sorry please contact me so i can fix it). i'm not even using github, which is neat (the backup would be nice but that's more moving parts that i don't wanna deal with rn). if you're interested on setting that up for yourself, this is how. it's pretty easy if you're at least a bit familiar with the command line. which you should be, so consider this a way of learning a thing or two if you aren't yet.
further notes on this method though: 1) change the git hook to neocities push --prune . so that files you delete locally also get deleted irl, lest your website becomes a Mess. 2) don't forget to create a .gitignore file containing the .git directory and itself (i also made and ignored a wip folder). nothing bad will happen if you don't, but the neocities cli will nag you about it.
media
games
- pokémon black 2 (2012): a quick (well... 12h) solo run with porygon. surprisingly i found it easier than my absol run in soul silver, with a lot less moveset rotating and battle item use. in part because porygon levels up faster than absol (i was a solid ten levels ahead at the final team plasma bits, and finished at level 74), but the gyms are pretty undercooked. and i suppose it helps that normal type only has one weakness and STAB return is a beast, especially with a silk scarf. i think i could have gone for challenge mode. eh. for my next solo i'll probably go with umbreon, maybe on moon. i hesitate to wipe my save over there because i completed the pokedex, but i can back it up so it should be ok. i don't wanna play it right now anyway
- sender (2023): i had an eye on this once since launch but i was afraid of the driving simulator gameplay lmao. but it really wasn't too hard! the game is very good, i love a horror game that has me saying "um. what the fuck is that ♡", i love looking at a lofi Thing and really wanting to get close and see all the details while also really not wanting to do that on account of The Harm. the pace set by the controls is slow and meticulous just how i like it. if you'd like a hint for the end, i'm pretty sure you have to follow the arrows "backwards" so you reach the source, but i think i just stumbled upon the correct area lol
- cursorblade (demo) (2023): i downloaded it a while back. it's more vampire survivors than bullet hell, i didn't like it much. don't enjoy this kind of gameplay tbh
movies and series
- adventure time: fionna and cake (2023): watched the last two eps. it's cute! perhaps even sappy. i liked it, though i wasn't expecting it to be this short. anyway. i love scarab one of the most characters of all time for real.
- our flag means death (2022-): season 2. see, the thing about not being subscribed to any streaming services is that, while you do become ten times sexier, i never know when anything is coming out ever so i always get jumpscared by tumblr gifsets or stremio plopping some eps on my lap. regardless, yeah man it's ofmd. jim and archie had me foaming at the mouth and barking in undignified ways but then the series just flopped. i have to say it. this season is lame. over in a blink — i don't think a season of tv should last a single month — but maybe that was for the better. given it was mid as hell.
- saw ii (2005): my friend's officially a sawhead now. we're gonna watch em all and i'll wait, pure and untouched, so we can watch saw x together. this one's ok. not my fav but amanda's there and the twist is fun :)
- riverdale (2017-2023): finished the first season! um. yeah that's tv babey. s2 has very few seeders and a little too much teen relationship drama so it's been slow going but insane how the stakes have risen and how little that matters. like how did we go from one (1) murder mystery to a serial killer lmao
- the last voyage of the demeter (2023): this feels sooo 2010s mid budget mainstream dark fantasy. it's lame, and two hours is too long for a lame movie to be watchable. at this point i'm in too deep into questionable vampire movies to care about staying true to the book, specially when it's essentially the intermission, but it doesn't even bring anything particularly interesting to the table (the gore is pretty nice though). i particularly dislike the presence of a lore-versed character; i think a big appeal of the demeter setting is that it's a locked room where people are being picked off one by one, and they cannot know why. i'd particularly like to see the tension slowly building up throughout the days. also she is just too "ooo strong female character" in the least interesting way possible. i'm a mina lover (← bilingual lesbian pun), her nemesis relationship with dracula is much cooler. well, just read the route of ice and salt instead for a better and homoerotic take on this often neglected section of an exhaustively adapted source.
- saw iii (2006): yipee! this one's fun, my fav is there, and tobin bell always slays. i also like this twist and it's pretty well constructed if overall a bit stupid, but the ending is a drag. it goes on and on and on and what even for. anyway it's interesting on a rewatch because you can see some elements that become foreshadowing later ^_^
- bit (2019): lukewarm movie with a mediocre script, its only claim to any relevancy being some limp nods to "social issues". full review.
- the devil's plaything (1973): this would be a pretty good movie to post stills and gifsets of on tumblr, but nothing else. it's boring. full review.
- house of the dragon (2022): sol stop starting new series before finishing previous ones challenge (impossible). well at least i finished it. what i really wanted was to revisit a song of ice and fire but i really don't wanna watch that series (especially since the last season was... like that), nor reread 4k pages (though it doesn't sound like that much tbh... ← the devil speaking). and hey i heard about rhaenyra's gender and her relationship to alicent. well grrm has ever done anything any justice at all of course (except for his omens i always like his omens), i wish he were a dyke. idk man prestige tv sucks, but it's nice, i like the smaller scope and cast as compared to asoiaf. costumes were kinda hit or miss imo, some of those dresses were giving prom; it's not a historical series, who cares, but it just doesn't look as interesting as it could! also. imagine if this had been written like succession (← has only watched one other hbo series). cousin greg would be so annoying about not having a dragon. untapped potential.
- theresa & allison (2019): a moody indie that i quite liked. no flawless masterpiece but certainly worth watching. full review.
- night fangs (2005): i'm a bit out of adjectives to describe this lame shit tier garbage of a movie. anything too eloquent would make it seem like there was any soul behind it to evoke vitriol. nah it's just trash. full review.
- winnie-the-pooh: blood and honey (2023): if you want to make a pooh slasher flick that's any fun you cannot approach it with detached irony. be fucking earnest with me. we watched this in a fairly big group with mixed inebriation levels and some of my friends said this was the longest 1h24 of their life. i (3-4 beers) thought it was fine but it's sooo monotonous. like you signed up to see pooh killing people and that's pretty much the only thing you get, and they're not particularly fun about it. also this might be a weird take but i think it had too much production value for its own good. the masks look good, the gore looks nice, but it's so bland and generic, possibly because i think they never had to scramble to make do with less budget than ideal. or maybe good filmmaking things have become cheaper nowadays? i heard the sequel will have 5x the budget of this one (100k, so half a million dollars) which is insane to me. what can you possibly do with that. it's bad but uninteresting rather than camp. should have been a creepypasta or a 5-10 minute youtube short film
- thelma (2017): caught this one on mubi by chance, and by god. it's a slow slow burn of a thriller, and it gets so tense i wanted to flay myself alive. it's really good. i will say though. while i appreciate a happy ending, i realize i like the idea of carrie killing her mother and surviving and living a long happy life more than i do the reality of seeing it on screen. like, this isn't a carrie adaptation but it has similar beats and the ending feels somewhat anticlimatic. after winding me up so tight i feel i wanted violent scorched earth catharsis. but that's just me.
books and manga
- double house (nanae haruno): this manga has a really abrupt non-end, it's not really finished. shame too, the characters are really nice, i enjoyed the few chapters we got
- babel: an arcane history (r. f. kuang): i shouldn't have let myself get swayed by the 4.4 star average rating and title referencing the tower of babel. it just ain't good. full review on storygraph.
- the archive undying (emma mieko candon): found out about this book right as babel began to suck and couldn't wait to read it. should i read contemporary mecha after the disaster that was the genesis of misery? well, yeah actually, because i liked this one a lot better. could have used a little bit more description and possibly a tighter structure but i liked it. the pov changes are all very disorienting on purpose and while i don't think i was in the right mindspace to fully grasp everything i found that very interesting. idk about it getting a sequel though, i'm perfectly content with the story as it is. annihilation managed to have good sequels despite not "needing" them but not everyone can pull that off.
- the forbidden body: sex, horror, and the religious imagination (douglas e cowan): omg hiiii! finally got my hands on this bad boy. physical copy so sadly i won't be the one to make this available online, it's still under its bonkers 30 dollar price tag (for an electronic file!). i liked it a lot, it's a nice overview / introduction to the subject. the author clearly loves and respects horror and never dumbs down for the reader, which are two really important things when i'm reading nonfic (i'm often a big pop nonfic hater because so often it feels like the writer doesn't respect me or the subject. this isn't really pop though).
- carmilla (joseph sheridan le fanu ed. carmen maria machado): giving this one a reread through machado's annotated edition, which was reccommended to me a while back. it's lovely as a physical object, with illustrations and the perfect size and weight to hold. machado's very light handed on her notes, and while i suppose it's nice that she lets the book breathe, i am a little house of leaves slut, and i think they feel half-baked. i don't think she does enough analysis or metafictional recontextualization to say her "borgesian imagination unearths for us the possibilities buried in its pages". this is not "something the original text never was". hardly "indispensable if you want a vampire library". print out her introduction (you can read it as the free excerpt for kindle) and tuck it inside a secondhand copy of the original. am i being harsh? i wrote more about the novella here.
cya!
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