currently

READING: the bewitching; minimizing marriage

PLAYING: radiata stories; sos:awl; tomodachi life

WATCHING: seasonal watches (wha, liar game, go for it nakamura, ynt, akane-banashi)

MANGA (CAUGHT UP): akane-banashi; ichi the witch; kagurabachi; sakamoto days

up next to play: to watch (gen tv): to watch (anime): to watch (movies): to read (manga/graphic novels):

mega list | storygraph | letterboxd

review log


Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair

Finished April 20, 2026

the only good reunion special ever created. actually the platonic ideal of a reunion special and it's hard to find things to say bc it was sooo good..wasn't expecting nonbinary representation or buddhism humor but here we are. hal's ego death actually DID get to me and "i'm an inexhaustible birthday cake" might become an affirmation. more than anything i love that malcolm is still an absolute sociopath but also managed to develop as a character in a way that aligns with where he ended up in the finale,,, like it's already exhausting to watch 18 year old malcolm do some of his bullshit so thank god he got to grow up a Little Bit in adulthood. there's an evil content eating worm in my brain that sees how good this was and wants an actual reboot but ofc that would be a terrible idea! man i might have to do a mitm rewatch now tho
Isekai Office Worker

Finished April 18, 2026

Going to miss this viewing experience... I hope Caz gets whatever that was soon
Cinder House - Freya Marske

Finished April 12, 2026

Picked up on a whim and was primed for disappointment because fairytale retellings are often slogs, especially when Cinderella is involved. Breezed past all expectations!! Love the audacity of every single world-building choice, no one can stop Freya Marske from doing whatever the hell she wants, and the descriptions are soooooo eatable. Weakest parts to me were the romance scenes which honestly,, a big part of that is just because it's so difficult to develop a romance subplot in a novella when there's so much other shit going on, like we do not have time for reasonable relationship progression here. Had issues with the last third, a lot of which I think are reasonable, but also I've just been in a mood lately where every single piece of writing is worthy of being ripped to shreds, so it's probably a little better than I think it is.
Liar Game

Finished April 10, 2026

Quite possibly the worst manga I've ever read, so of course I ate up all 19 volumes in a week. I've seen it compared to Squid Game but I think the best tonal match is Kakegurui. It's objectively worse but if you like made up gambling games with convoluted rules and supergenius main characters explaining their 5d chess moves then this might actually be entertaining to you! With the added bonus that most of its faults are just funny-bad

Things I like: Akiyama Shinichi and his genius boy moments + twinkish outfits (also the fact that his name is Shinichi). Nao is such a cute character and everytime I started to get pissed off at all the bullshit going on I would calm down because she came back on the page. Most of the color spreads are actually gorgeous!! This was serialized from 2005-2015 and has an art style that's very much Of The Time (mostly I think of Death Note, but I think there was a lot of popular stuff with that gothic ish vibe??) and since I've never actually read/watched anything from that niche it felt both nostalgic and fresh for me.

onto the problems
  • i really do think most of the chapter art is gorgeous, but the actual manga looks really really bad--it improves as it goes on but WOOF the early chapters are rough . i don't just mean ugly or offputting visuals, i mean like on a fundamental level?? i don't even know Art but the perspective is NONSENSE and locations and actions are consistently confusing because they change from panel to panel and ohhh my god the proportions.. these people's arms go down to their calves..... it actually gets a little scary!! there are a billion examples but i'm including the first one that gave me a giggle fit because it really feels like he just gave up on making it look like they're in the environment at All
  • this is like a compliment sandwich, except it goes from funny flaw to Actually Bad to funny flaw: we unfortunately do have to talk about fukunaga. one of the main characters in this series is a trans woman, which goes about as badly as you expect in the beginning--very ace ventura. it did still make me laugh my ass off because the big "i've been a man the whole time!" reveal is just fukunaga pulling her wig off, except all it does is make her look more like bait for every lesbian i know
    like that's actually the funniest manga panel i've ever seen. I'VE BEEN BUTCH ALL ALONG!
    this whole reveal and the language she uses actually makes it really confusing at first whether fukunaga is supposed to be a crossdresser or nonbinary/genderfluid in some way, but it's later explicitly confirmed that she's a binary trans woman who has medically transitioned, and from that point on it gets Weird, because she's actually like, treated with dignity? everything about her first appearance left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but once she becomes a regular cast member it's actually a surprisingly good portrayal for the time period. fukunaga is never depicted as creeping on anyone or using her gender as a weapon after the first match, there are almost no jokes made at her identity's expense, and she actually ends up getting the Most development/depth/page time of any character outside the main duo. Apparently the artist had another manga series before this one with a female lead who looks IDENTICAL to fukunaga, so it's also like, Proven that he draws her the same way he would draw any woman. I still don't think her portrayal is GOOD, but when you take the whole thing into account it might be some of the best we've gotten in animanga of the time? Makes me wonder if Fukunaga was someone's introduction to transness as a concept. it's almost worse that it isn't uncomplicatedly bad because this means i have spent WAY more time thinking about liar game deeply than it deserves.
  • the ending is so laughably bad that it sort of made me wistful, because i wished i wasn't experiencing it alone. if the entire liar game anime was out and we had somehow organized a watch of it in call i can just imagine how we would be howling at the barrage of completely nonsensical and contextless plot twists because the artist clearly just did not know what the fuck he was doing. it's so bad that i kind of don't want to spoil it in case any of you ever DO read/watch this because i really think getting through all the 200 chapters that precede that bullshit only to have it end the way it does is like, an almost religious experience, and i don't want to ruin that for anyone
  • i have discovered as i write this that there's A SEQUEL SERIES AND IT STARTED THIS YEAR. WHO WANTS THIS???? WHO ASKED FOR THIS????? WHY WON'T THEY LET LIAR GAME DIE
Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer

Finished March 27, 2026

When I read this book for the first time I auditioned it for my favorite book ever, and after my second read I think it might have the part?? (At least until my next Spinning Silver reread!) Whenever I read the "when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you" line I think, That's How This Book Makes Me Feel!!! Beauty In Desolation!!!!!!!!!!!!! Incredible. I'm TERRIFIED to read the sequels because all my instincts say they'll ruin it, but the ratings are about the same across the series, so I'm going to trek on anyway...
Letters to a Young Writer - Colum McCann

Finished March 14, 2026

I remember liking this a lot when I read it in high school. It feels a little cloying to come back to, but honestly what else did I expect? Everyone has days where they need to read the most excessively sentimental and inspiring essay on writing ever written to get themselves to work
The Doctor - Robert Icke

Finished March 14, 2026

Talking about plays after reading them always feels a little strange because I know I'm not interfacing with the work as intended--everything I say here can only apply to the on-paper experience. I can imagine a production of this being awful or one of the best things I've ever seen because so much of it depends on elements outside of the lines themselves. I do really like the way this one was written--it has some pretty interesting methods of direction which I've never seen in a written play before, and it takes a while to get into, but once you do it reads as easy as poetry. A little too much "makes you think" stuff going on, but generally really interesting and I would absolutely go to a production to see how they pull it off. Exactly one (1) line that burrowed into my head for the rest of time and that's all I need from any play ever. Apparently this is "very freely adapted" from Professor Bernhardi, so I'd really like to go back and read that and see how it factors into my opinion here.
Scribble Scribble: Notes on the Media - Nora Ephron

Finished March 13, 2026

Such an incredible secondhand bookstore find! Ages ago I saw Daniel Radcliffe say in an interview that he'll only buy a book if he thinks he'll never find it again, and I'm so glad I went with his advice here. This is a little collection of essays written by a journalist about (as the title implies) the media at the time--mostly focusing on the journalism landscape and print periodicals, but occasionally touching on TV and advertisement, etc. Since this contains essays published between 1975-1977 you can imagine that a lot of it is incredibly dated. Each essay is unflinchingly specific in its subject, focusing on something like the downfall of a specific food columnist's reputation or a pair of reporters who continue to cover conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy Assassination or how invested she and her friends are in the soap opera Upstairs, Downstairs and its cast drama, so it's really the most mid-late 70s that a book could possibly get. Anyone reading this, like, five years after it came out would have probably called it "of its time." (My favorite super specific bit is the essay on Theodore H. White, where Ephron imitates his writing style throughout the entire piece. It's such a great showing of her skill and personal style, because even as someone who had only read the preceding 40-ish pages of her work I could tell something was off from the first line--and it only took until the end of the second paragraph to realize she was doing a dig at him, even though I have never read a single word of this guy's work ever. One of the coolest magic tricks I've seen a writer pull off in a bit!)

As someone who was pursuing journalism for a few years I find the whole idea of being a journalist in the 70s almost unbearably romantic, and I get the same feeling from reading this and imagining myself in Ephron's position that I imagine romcoms and isekai shows inspire in their target audiences. Sighing longingly and imagining being a writer in New York before print was strangled to death is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. But this makes all the sentiments about media that remain timeless even more interesting! Ephron makes it clear that she's aware she stands in the middle of a turning point in media as TV takes over print, so it's a bit like reading one of those thrillers that starts with a snippet of the big final scene--we as the audience know with hindsight exactly what our narrator is piecing together as things unfold.

I don't really know much about Nora Ephron, but anyone who's familiar with her film work would probably find this an even cooler find, because it comes out before she ever got involved in any of the still iconic movies she wrote/directed/helmed, like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. Maybe I need to go back and watch all her romcoms? Is this my 80s-90s romcom era?

Ephron is just a really fucking funny writer, and I laughed out loud at some point during almost every single essay. This may be going on the special favorites shelf. Really sad that my copy didn't have the adorable jacket art intact!
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

Finished March 12, 2026

NASTY! after reading so many hacky thrillers this was pretty incredible--you can really get away with all the same annoying tricks and absurd plot beats if you're actually a good writer. the plot twist at the end is obviously bad from like, a sociological perspective, but the only bit i actually disliked was the very handholdy explanation that made up the last three pages--boooo let me do a little work
Aiura

Finished March 8, 2026

one of these days i'll read the actual aiura comics instead of rewatching this eighty billion times. i wish i wasn't 90% sure that this is made by a bad person
Tears of the Kingdom

Finished March 6, 2026

I knowww everyone has been eagerly awaiting my thoughts on this game from 2023. For the first time ever with a mainline Zelda game, I have reaaaallyyy mixed feelings. So! Rambing below the cut!

spoilers/thoughts
  • So much of this game is spent trying to make you think about other 3D Zelda titles (obviously OoT is everywhere as always, but everything with the sages + the wind temple is very reminiscent of Windwaker, the Gerudo section reallyyy makes you want to think about Twilight Princess, and the WHOLE sky island stuff and most of the zonai tech/design were basically just ripped from Skyward Sword). What this game DOESN'T evoke, beyond the opening hour-ish, is the tone or "vibe" or whatever of the game it's a direct sequel to. Like, all the same people and locations and music is there, but the understated melancholia of BotW is gone, and it just feels really weird and hollow without it
  • The problem with harkening back to older games so much is that I spent a lot of time thinking "god I wish I were just playing Twilight Princess instead." Like,, the split second when I thought we were going to get a puppet Zelda fight??? Beautiful. I would've killed for that. And instead of something like that or even something like the end of Windwaker or at least SOME kind of beast Ganon, we just get to fight Ganondorf seven times in a row, and then get what basically amounts to a cutscene fighting dragon Ganon. Yayyyy.
  • I say that like I didn't love the dragon Ganon section--I absolutely adored it, and the finale of this game was really well executed tonally in a way that made up for most of my issues--but there's no way that counts as a phase of the boss fight to most people
  • Really surprised that Purah doesn't become the sage of spirit. There are enough design similarities and general parallels that I thought they were going to at least hint at it in the post-credit sequence or something, but they just never do! Really feels like something the devs were originally planning and just didn't have the resources for or something? I don't have any problems with Mineru's presence in the game, it's just another Thing That Is Weird
  • A lot of my issues with the combat should be taken with a bucket of salt because I am just genuinely bad at video games BUT there are definitely some real problems. Mainly with the sages! GOD they should've been button-mapped somehow! Having a combat ability tied to interacting physically with a character who is constantly running around the screen and overlapping with other characters makes for some unbelievably frustrating moments good god!!!
  • I originally thought everything with the constructs and zonai tech was poorly implemented, but I did come around to its presence with the Mineru section. Getting to pilot a mech in a Zelda game is pretty outstanding I will tell you that
  • Okay, this is a general critique that extends to BotW, but JESUS the presence of the Gerudo in this game is baffling. It's pretty obvious why they haven't come back since OoT, right? Because their whole existence is almost laughably racist? The thing is, I think it would've been possible to bring them back in BotW in a respectful way with some revisions. If they didn't look like that and dress like that and sound like that (crazy how the one race in the game that doesn't speak hylian isn't the rock people or fish people or bird people, but the town of dark-skinned women!) (also, crazy that the town of dark-skinned women is treated like a separate race on par with the fucking ROCK PEOPLE AND FISH PEOPLE in the first place) or act like that (the two gerudo social roles are MAN-HATING WARRIOR and WOMAN OBSESSED WITH FINDING A HUSBAND) or do the things they do, then things would be fine! I really shouldn't be so surprised by the pervasiveness of orientalism in media, especially from Japan, but while playing the game I started to feel kind of crazy that I haven't actually seen anyone talk about how awful their depiction is. Am I taking crazy pills? Is this not as bad as I think it is? Gonna go ahead and say it is actually Quite Bad
  • The wind temple was SO good and really got me excited about the format of this game--it felt like there was just more of that Original Zelda Spirit than BotW had! Every single subsequent temple was a disappointment!! Most of them were just boring and a little taxing--both the Gerudo and the Goron just felt kinda rushed. I didn't care about the dungeons much in BotW anyway, the focus just isn't on them as much, but getting my hopes up only to squash them was just kinda Woof.
  • The post-credits scene wanted to be the final scene of Twilight Princess sooo baddd oh my god. The reason I cry at the end of that game every single time is because you spend the ENTIRE GAME with Midna and you love her by the end, right! The same reason people get emotional about Navi flying away or Fi getting sealed! And then this game tries to pull that same shit with Mineru who is truly on screen for maybe 25 minutes? Okaayyy????
  • Feels counterintuitive to say this, but the story of this game is really limited by being open-world, and it would've hit a lot harder if it were strictly linear. This has been said to death by video game writers already, but, yk, sometimes gamers are wrong about what they want from video games. More endings = more hollow endings because a story can only end so many ways and still be satisfying. Non-linear storytelling = less impactful storytelling because timing and the withholding of information is a really important part of a compelling story. It takes SO much work for a dev team to make a story still feel impactful with that level of player freedom, and they missed the mark this time in a way they didn't in BotW, which makes it feel almost lazy in comparison. I think this game was sort of a death knell for the open world Moment we had going for a while there, or at least I hope so, because GOD I miss linear storytelling
  • Was left with the feeling that this game could've been so much better if it were its own thing instead of being shackled to the characters and plot of the first game. I feel like there's a reason why we haven't gotten this sort of sequel to any 3d Zelda game before (Majora's Mask is not the same thing at All with it being so much shorter and with entirely new characters and setting and stakes, even if the same assets are used). TotK is held back from being what it wants to be by the logistics of the BotW setting, and BotW feels cheapened by the information we get in TotK, and everyone loses as a result
  • Everything I've listed as a problem above actually isn't that much of a problem at All, and as a game on its own, TotK is great. Zelda games just have a REALLY high standard to live up to! (Except for the racism stuff that just sucks why did they do that. What could possibly have compelled them to do that seriously)
Books Bought With Tax Money #1

Finished March 5, 2026

Really cute manga! The whole delinquent working at a library thing makes it feel like Sakamoto Days without the assassins. Will probably wait for the anime instead of reading the rest of the manga tho
Your Letter

Finished March 4, 2026

Cute n short little webcomic!! Let's all write more letters!!!! Thinking about watching the movie adaptation,,
How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

Finished March 02, 2026

"All stories are ghost stories."

Thought I was getting an aged up action-comedy version of Derry Girls with an emphasis on the comedy, got a thoughtful exploration of what happens to a person when they try to run from the things that happened to them or treat life like it's a work of fiction. It's always a little nerve-wracking going into another work by someone whose debut you really respect--are they going to be able to pull it off again without just retreading old ground? SO glad to say this one does not disappoint. Not perfect but it lives up to itself!!

spoilers/rambling
  • truly feel like the whole reason they got erin's actress back was to keep anyone from speculating about on set drama in derry girls, since a major plot point in this show is the tv writer main character being annoyed to hell by the main actress of her tv series
  • that said i am OBSESSED with her presence in the show. her character is like,,, kind of way too much but it circles around to be incredible almost immediately. one of my favorite scenes in the entire series might be her repeating that story she overheard about her grandfather buying her ice cream. like??? the way she feels compelled to steal joyful life experiences from the world she observes and "mimic" this innocent childhood she never got, yk??? insane to me. and i love it even more because they truly didn't need to add any meat to the bones of this side character who could've just existed as Wacky Insane Woman With Great Outfits. but you really can't help but fall in love with her when they add details like that!
  • the WHOLE final flashback season in the cabin was incredible but there are two things i especially love: first when the two girls switch to speaking irish,, it's SUCH an incredible way to show them taking control of the situation back from this english guy right?? the way he immediately gets so agitated by them talking to each other because even that small act of communication without him being able to understand diminshes his power over them. GAAH it's so good
  • second favorite part from that scene is when the audio switches to being all staticky the moment they discover the tape recorder DUDEE i got chills
  • sorry but you can never tear me away from a story where some kind of writer or artist gets punished narratively for treating their own life like a project of theirs instead of Life where things have Consequences on the lives of their loved ones, it makes me feel like a wee child being warned by the legend of krampus like i actually do need that cautionary tale often
  • didn't really know what the show was doing at first with the bits where the main characters would be looking at their high school actress selves--and actually, i was surprised at first that they didn't just use the same actresses, because derry girls makes it really clear that this show runner didn't care all that much about making them look authentically like teenagers, right? erin is the oldest looking 16 year old i have seen in any show ever it's a little ridiculous. BUT the final scene with greta holding hands with both her younger actresses was so... i get it now gif ..... you carry your old selves with you forever you can't be rid of them. gaaahh
  • liam and saoirse fucking in the end of episode seven was so funny oh my god. once again my least favorite part of a tv show is the shoehorned romance subplot because literally HOW are you two in the mood after everything that just happened. do we not have bigger fish to fry/?? and do not get me started on the whole cheating thing i genuinely just can't think about it that hard. like--i actually do enjoy the fact that the three main characters demonstrate that they CANNOT have positive healthy relationships because they're so fundamentally incapable of showing their true selves to their partners after what they did together, right? they're all living in this facade and their completely hollow romantic relationships are a reflection of that. but it's still pretty rough to watch when it doesn't get even remotely resolved at the end of the series.. if they ever get a season 2 i really hope robyn left her husband because watching her be the worst wife of all time ever was just rough. (saoirse's cheating on her fiance arc was just as bad but he also gives the vibe that he would literally thumbs up react if she told him she was breaking things off. no lights on in that house)
  • that said the shoehorned romance subplot that i DID like ? the lesbian one. probably mostly because that was a relationship where dara's girlfriend DID see how hollow their relationship was going to be and break things off in the flashbacks so i didn't have to deal with watching them hate each other in modern day. but i would rlly love to see dara developed more if there's a second series because i think she has the Most room for forward growth just in yk. learning that she doesn't have to punish herself for existing. give her a girlfriend she's earned it
  • that said this show doesn't need a second series like, at all, and i'm so glad for that, because i might've exploded if it ended on an actual cliffhanger--the whole "what's in the bag?" thing at the end is soooo 2010s prestige tv in a way i can live with never seeing resolved it kinda made me giggle
Patlabor: The Movie

Finished February 21, 2026

"Business or pleasure?"

"Combat."

After reading the reviews I have come to understand that some of y'all just don't get Patlabor like I do.. I don't want to be mean but the amount of people out here saying they didn't like it because "I was expecting more fighting robots and instead I got something that wanted me to think" is really.... Something

Obviously gorgeous visually and I love the tone and characters and the MUSIC !!! But the thing I keep coming back to with this series is its refusal to hold your hand. Nothing will make you realize how exhausted you are with second screen-ification and hyperstimulation in modern media quite like the pacing and storytelling of a movie from the 80s. Something about it just puts me at ease. The opposite of cocomelon
Patlabor: The Mobile Police (7 episode OVA)

Finished February 19, 2026

"...this isn't some mecha anime whose main character is an autistic kid" now WHY did he say that

IDK if I can explain to you what I find so captivating about this series, but this is the first time in ages that I have sat down by myself and watched an entire anime in a day?? (granted it's just 7 episodes!!) Entire conceit of the series seems to be "what if Gundam was a little boring?" I LOVE LOVE the grounded approach to mecha. As a guy whose brain fully zones out everytime a fight scene lasts too long on screen, this is sort of perfect for me.

some of the many great moments:

  • main mech-related conflict of episode 1 is getting stuck in traffic
  • main mech-related conflict of episode 2 is the mech's inability to get past a bridge
  • it's considered unrealistic in universe for mecha to fly. they're basically just robots with guns
  • the entire squad nearly gets fired and has to go back to training because one of them fired recklessly in a hostage situation

I love love love the female characters in this series! Not that it's perfect, but something about getting a mech anime from 1988 with a female lead?? And I'm obsessed with Kanuka she's so batshit insane. Also, the animation and art is just GORGEOUS... Visually captivating for me the way early Detco is, although Patlabor generally Looks Better in so many ways. I choose to believe one of the side effects of hrt is that I just really love large vehicles/machines now and boy does this show have some beautiful vehicles and machines.

Really looking forward to watching the movies and the anime series!! Also, apparently there's a reboot coming out this year? IDK how this keeps happening to me but I've got a few months to catch up I guess! Some people seem to complain about the lighthearted/slice of life tone in the ova, which to me seems like the wholeee point of the franchise, but I'm sorta worried based on how people talk about it that the series won't carry that groundedness with it and will develop into a much more generic mech anime as things go--fingers crossed this is not the case!!
The Golden Enclaves - Naomi Novik

Finished February 16, 2026

"No one can make you. You have to choose to try."

This after sk8.... I kind of can't handle it

Lost count of the number of times i cried by the end. Not even an emotional book I just have a lot of feelings about Orion Lake. Think I'm gonna have to make a 30 minute homophones video about the trilogy just to get over it all
SK8 The Infinity

Finished February 14, 2026

I will save you my thoughts below the cut

sk8 thoughts
  • i'm so glad we did the dub just so i could finally get "reki, my love.... of skateboarding" but i might need to watch this AGAIN because i missed reki's voice actor sooooo much during the emotional scenes. AND THE WHOLE ALLEYWAY SCENE FEELS DIFFERENT. RAAAAUGHHGHGH
  • everytime i go back to this one i forget how much i hate the last few episodes like oh my god how do you have a story about a guy feeling mediocre at something he's done for so long and then also have that guy doing impossible superhuman feats 20 minutes later.? how does that not undercut Everything??
  • that said i rlly rlly rlly love the road they took with reki ,, that is just not something u ever get from an mc in a sports anime yk. guy who actually Isn't special. guy who cares enough to make up for being Not Special. normal guy hours
  • i feel like there were two warring factions on the staff and one cared soooo much about skateboarding and the other was like "no none of that is cool enough there have to be police and explosions" and it's just .......come on y'all..... we will never get my grounded ass skateboarding anime i guess. but so much love to everyone who actually make the skateboarding look like skateboarding through it all
  • it kills me how much miya just IS rodney mullen. and i love love love the inclusion of his character,, like he to me is one of the things that shows me someone did GET skateboarding because yes ABSOLUTELY the actually competitive skateboarder is a middle schooler and kind of a dork about it. and the inclusion of a freestyle skater at ALL kind of kills because ppl don't really do that shit anymore? they could've just put him on vert and it would've been, like, fine. but YES freestyle is absolutely the BEST thing you could make a character do when their whole thing is social isolation + precision. it's just so ..... arguhghghh... they knew. SOMEONE out there knew
  • i think it'll be so interesting if we ever get a second season of sk8 (which is dubious) just because like,,, since that series has come out i feel like skateboarding has migrated to be associated with japan far more than the US? maybe i'm just saying this because of the olympic results fhksfds but like,, i feel like nyjah huston is the most nameable "modern" skateboarder--i am not including tony hawk in this but second place might be riley hawk purely because his dad is That Guy--but u cannot deny that yuto horigome is out for blood against that guy. just in general skateboarding as a sport has evolved since the show came out since, yk, it IS an olympic sport now. so even though i don't have high hopes i think there are sooooo many interesting things they could do with that cultural shift if they wanted to. which they won't. because they'll be too busy putting adam in stupid outfits
  • honestly reki is so lance mountain too... "I was a real skateboarder, not a gifted skateboarder. I represented that skateboarding is fun to do by being bad at it." (and it's professional skateboarder lance mountain talking like oh i'm sure you're bad at it....) but that attitude.... RAUUGHGHHH!!!! THAT GUY!!
Being John Malkovich

Finished Jan 23, 2026

"Don't stand in the way of my actualization as a man!"

Put this on for something to watch while manually formatting several hundred entries in an html list because I assumed it was like, silly absurdist nonsense that I didn't need to pay close attention to. Well! No!

Kind of one of the best movies I've ever seen? Was put off at first by how much the main character is an Unlikeable Movie Guy, but for once this loser is unlikeable on Purpose and not because the director thinks cheating on your wife is cool. Nothing can replicate the feeling of seeing how much the protagonist's wife liked being John Malkovich and thinking "if the writers knew what they were doing this would be a story about being trans" only for the wife to literally come out as trans like ten minutes later
The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie - Freida McFadden

Finished Jan 22, 2026

I have such a strange respect for Freida McFadden despite how bad her books are and this is really why. Girl is a doctor writing a novella where one of the characters is reading her own novel and thinks the twists are poorly executed. Inspired.
Kevin Can F*** Himself

Finished Jan 10, 2026

WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW! i think this show ruined multi-cam sitcoms for me forever! like i will never be able to rewatch an episode of friends or boy meets world or Literally Anything ever again without thinking about how awful it all is without a laugh track. my biggest problem is how much time we spend in the truly unbearable multi-cam scenes with the most hateable man ever written, but holyyy shit this show is still so good and interesting and Needed--really really really frustrating in a good way.

spoilersi actually hated kevin so viscerally that i didn't think it was possible for the show to end in a satisfying way without getting to see allison kill him, but letting her walk away from it all and then having HIM burn his own fucking life down? incredible and everything! getting to see the multicam sets literally burn too .... superb

i spent the entire second season wondering if patti and allison were going to end up together, and it really could've gone either way and ended up well, but i actually think that "let's die alone together" is the best possible note their relationship could've ended on. "story about a bad romantic relationship where the happy ending is ultimately finding a New, Better Relationship" is one of my big media pet peeves, so having their friendship be the centerpiece of the show was so so So Satisfying for Me Specifically. i'm cataloging them as The Blueprint alongside like, sakuko and satoru from koisenu futari... manifesting this energy in my future
The Last Graduate - Naomi Novik

Finished Jan 3, 2026

"...They'd programmed him really thoroughly to spend all his time thinking about hunting. The only other thing I'd ever heard him actually express wanting was me, which I choose to believe meant anyone at all who'd treat him like a person instead of a mal-killing automaton. That was the scale of things for which he could express desire: friendship, love, humanity. But he didn't care where in the cafeteria he sat, he didn't care what shirt he wore, he didn't care what classes he was in or what books he read. He did his work more or less dutifully, was polite, and preferred to avoid hero-worshippers while feeling guilty about it, and if I said, 'Let's go stand on our heads on the cafeteria mezzanine stairs,' he'd probably shrug and say, 'If you want to.'"

orion lake is one of The guys to ever happen to me

A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik

Finished Jan 2, 2026

i finally broke my two year curse of starting the year with a real stinker!! wanted to reread this one on the train since that's where i first started the series, and it's actually even better on the second go. i felt a little blindsighted by the plot twist in book three on my first readthrough, but i actually think this series holds up wayyy better when you read it all sequentially instead of waiting for a release. it's probably pretty obvious that i'm reading a bunch of stuff by her right now based on my typing patterns...