i have been assaulted by the romantasy genre over the last couple years. back when i used tiktok, it was everywhere and part of every booktok girls book stack. when i go into any book store, there is a dedicated section to romantasy, and every time i read the blurbs, i am intensely turned off. it's not just the romance - which i don't mind - it's the high fantasy of it all, too. i'm very much not a fantasy girl. i can do sci-fi alright, as long as it's not super high concept. but, something about fantasy just does not resonate with me. anyway, i had a friend recommened Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, a book i had heard the title of many times in the aforementioned tiktoks. i knew very little about it, i think i had the vague idea that it was about dragons, but my friend swore that i'd like it. my sister also happened to have read it and enjoyed it so i had a copy already at home. i started reading it on friday, finished monday, and gave it a whopping one star rating on goodreads.

i'm not great at talking about why i don't like books, mostly because i don't really have much experience with reading bad books. i can usually find something i enjoyed about the writing or plot, but this time i couldn't help but lead with hate. if you are someone who doesn't mind incredibley trope-y works, then you will probably think this is pretty good. but i can't stand it. the main character (and every other character, to be fair) is so flat and uninteresting. she is the ultimate generic girlboss who can do anything because she is the most special person to ever live. did she earn that specialness? do we see her work to earn the title of "strongest rider in the kingdom"? not really. she's just kind of born that way. with her magic silver hair and hunky edgy boyfriend (who she is coincidentally tied to for life) she can do anything and never makes a mistake. the closest she comes to doing something with serious ramifications - killing someone - is completely swept under the rug and not acknowledged for more than a few lines. that's because the guy she kills is just evil. no depth, no development as to why he might be this way. just ontologically evil and deserves to be killed. that is the most boring way to deal with the topic of massive amounts of power that she struggles to control. it would have been much more interesting to have her kill, or even just injure, one of her friends. but that would mar her reputation of being perfect, so it's a no-go.

speaking of her friends, every one of them, besides the lead and her love interest, are the most generic side characters ever. the two types of side characters are 1) nice, loyal, quippy friend and 2) completely evil, irredemable bad guy who wants to kill the lead. there's no nuance in any of the writing, no sense of depth behind the characters and why they do anything that they do. they just serve as fodder to be killed in epic fight sequences so the main character can feel sad and become more powerful. between the horrific, marvel level dialogue, there is paragraphs and paragraphs of the most hamfisted lore you've ever seen. what a coincidence that the main character loves to recite pages of world history to calm herself down! how wonderful that in the middle of what should be a tense scene, we get to read about every type of dragon and where exactly every country is located! surely there was no better place to put any of this information. a problem i have with a lot of fantasy is that you can tell the author is so proud of their original lore that they just have to put it all in. there's no room for mystery, or letting the reader figure out that there's a bigger world outside of the characters through context. so now i know all the lore about this world and for what? it didn't enhance my reading experience, it just slowed any scene to a screeching halt so a character can monologue for a while.

the romance was fine, i suppose. the sex scenes were pretty generic, but tame compared to what i've heard about other romantasy books. it's a pretty typical enemies-to-lovers situation, with the added "drama" of them being bonded by their dragons (i'm not even gonna explain) and so if one dies, the other basically dies too. i know this because it is said about 100 times in every interaction they have. the guy is just another tall, dark (but still white), and handsome boy who is the most tortured person alive but also the best at sex. much like the lead, there is very little depth to him besides a sad backstory. there's a whole thing where the lead is like "sigh.. he doesn't let me in, let me really know him" and then he tells her basically nothing and it never gets brought up again? he tells her to just trust him over and over again and she just does because she has no brain when she's around him apparently. they also make a point of pointing out how small she is and how tall he is and how he can just toss her around or whatever. there was one line i actually kind of liked, when it switches to his perspective towards the end. he says something along the lines of "she never looked fragile to me", which is nice in the context of her having a chronic illness basically, and everyone else telling her she's gonna get hurt. but, unfortunately, they never really go into this too much. and this could have given her a much more interesting mindset but it just results in her being stubborn and doing things out of spite, with no real inner world.

the only other thing i liked was another side character who spends a lot of time with the lead, as a bodyguard (again, i won't explain) and lowkey, i thought he was a more interesting character than the love interest. fuck it, make them fall in love! idc about the dragons or whatever, just let this diva have a nice guy who didn't try to kill her multiple times before they fell in love. but then he dies, because of course, there must be angst. so, yeah, this book is bad and i can't recommend it in good faith. it was 500 pages of slop that i truly wasted my time on. at least now when i read a good book, it will feel even better.

yes, i am aware that there are much more important things happening than celebrating rich people taking part in rich people things. unfortunate for everyone around me, i've heard every version of "erm... awards literally don't mean anything..." and it's still never turned me off from following awards season. there are absolutely abhorrent parts of hollywood that should be called out, but also the celebration of arts is very important to me and goddamn it, i just love the movies. specifically this year, there have been some incredible movies released and while my watchlist is absolutely clogged with the international films that have been making waves, i have seen many of the other nominees and i'll talk about some of my predictions for the winners (shout out to fellow gold derby users).

my big 4 movies for the year were Sinners, Hamnet, Marty Supreme and One Battle After Another. i kind of expect these to sweep most of the awards, and i think those odds are pretty high. i think OBAA has it in the bag for best picture/best director, which i honestly can't be mad at. i only watched it last week (a little late, i know) and was pleasantly surprised at how much i did enjoy it. i in no way would consider myself a contrarion, but when a movie is as hyped up as this one it's hard to not be a little disappointed when it can't reach impossible expectations. while i don't think it's the best movie of the year, it's a strong contender and i wouldn't argue with anyone who thinks it is. the cinematography, the music and (most of) the acting were phenomenal and i was so entranced. Teyana Taylor specifically blew me away and i was so diappointed when i realised how short her screentime is. she is my pick for supporting actress. as i understand, Sentimental Value is another big hitter in terms of acting performances, but like i said, i haven't seen it and can't comment. for the other acting categories, and to move on from OBAA, i'll give my one negative critique of the movie. i didn't think Leonardo di Caprio gave that impressive of a performance, especially when compared to all the others in such an impressive ensemble. Timothee Chalamet, however, gave an all-timer performance in Marty Supreme. if any other actor had that level of performance, you would say it's career defining, the best they'll ever do, but every time i have said that about Timothee Chalamet, he comes back with something even stronger. his campaigning for the role and dedication to being the best is pretty admirable and i would really love to see him win. in my opinion, he should have won years ago for Call Me By Your Name, but we won't get into that. speaking of all-timer performances from actors i've been a fan of for a while, JESSIE BUCKLEY. that's all. she is such a powerhouse performer in everything i've seen her in and i am so happy to see a fellow irish diva on top!! Hamnet really moved me; in fact i'm still thinking about it now. you can't take your eyes off of her, she is just an insanely talented actor and from the buzz that's been going around, i think it's fair to say she has the award in the bag already.

for best supporting actor, i am torn, but i took a swing with a movie i haven't seen and said Stellan Skarsgard will win. while Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro are great, there always need to be one career oscar and it seems possible they'll do it with Stellan. i hope that doesn't come off as saying he doesn't deserve it, i think he is an incredible actor and would be happy to see him and his clan of giant acting sons get that recognition. once we get away from acting awards, i get a little less confident with my predictions, but i think Sinners will do well in the production side of things. it has maybe one of my favourite film scores ever so i would be ecstatic to see it get an award, as well for the casting with that incredible ensemble. the record-breaking movie being horror, a crazy black-led horror that is a criticism of capitalism and white supremacy, has me grinning from ear to ear. any horror fan knows that it is typically snubbed in major awards, but between this and The Substance last year, it seems that tide is changing. Amy Madigan being nominated for Weapons had me jumping out of my seat - i love seeing an incredible performance get its dues. The Ugly Stepsister being in the category was make-up and hair was a massive shock to me, though i had heard a little buzz around it. a lot of people seem to have not seen it, which is a shame, it's a really fun but nasty body horror flick; very similar to that of The Substance. after all that, i do think Sinners will win that make-up award, along with production design, and sound. there were some great performances in there too, so it would be nice to see it get an award for casting too, as i think it's out of luck with the main acting awards.

i don't think anyone will argue with the assertion that KPop Demon Hunters is an easy win for best animated film. i think, historically, this award normally goes to the most popular film and KPDH definitely is the most popular one. however, it's also just a good movie! i didn't resonate with it the way some people did, but it's still a fun time with catchy songs and great animation. in terms of songs, i'm torn between Golden and I Lied to You winning the award. While I Lied to You is incredible and the scene it plays during is one of the greatest of all time, Golden is catchy and was impossible to escape this year. i would personally prefer I Lied to You, i wouldn't be mad if it fell the other way. i'm just happy that Ariana Grande song from Wicked didn't get nominated, phew.

there were a few snubs i was upset by. Jesse Plemons was incredible in Bugonia and should have gotten a nod. Sally Hawkins in Bring Her Back was great too, one of the best horror performances since Toni Colette, and they unfortunately end up in the same catergory of snubbed horror performances. i was suprised by Marty Supreme getting no score nomination, but the competition was tough this year. while i didn't like Wicked, i thought it was a big enough success to get it a nomination for make-up or maybe costume design. but, i was pleasantly surprised. not to sound to cunty about my dislike of it lol.

i'll be following the awards closely and might give an update afterwards to see how close i was with all my predictions!

i'm sure you've all been inundated with posts about 2016, filters and insane make-up and all. they are usually posted with a level of self-cringing along the lines of "i thought i ate" or "why was i like this?" i've been thinking about why 2016 has been getting this level of retrospect. in fact, at the time, i distinctly remember people talking about how awful 2016 was at the time (though people have said this about every year ever, i'm pretty sure) but now, people view it as a sweeter, more innocent time with the hindsight we have now. obviously, the answer to all this would be that it's been a decade since 2016 and its a milestone, but i do not remember 2015 getting this level of nostalgia posting last year. the posts i've seen rarely reference any particular subculture or trend that defined the era, other than some of the make-up choices. it's more about the general feeling that the time evoked and, of course, seeing how much people have changed in 10 years. i have some thoughts on why this year in particular is making such a splash online.

i say online, because that's what this is all about. the subtext to people's posting is about the posting itself. they are usually referencing their online behaviour at the time, the kind of things that got tweeted or posted to the instagram grid. people who are in my generation, in their early to mid 20s, have a goldmine of cringe as they were teenagers, or pre-teens, trying desperately to mimic what they had seen posted before them. in fact, let's discuss what i was doing in 2016.

i was 14 for the majority of 2016, and deep in my fandom era. my favourite band was twenty one pilots, and i religiously watched markiplier. i did a lot of digital art, which i recently uncovered on my old tumblr (which will stay hidden) it was wedged in between posts making calls to action about the american election (i am not american) and posts about internet figures who have since been outed as sex pests (yikes!) the quality of my art was... not great. but i was 14! it didn't need to be. though, i was convinced i could make a living off of it if i just opened commissions, but that is a post for another day. what i noted from this online behaviour was, like i said earlier, a mimic of older, established proto-influencers and niche internet micro-celebrities in fandoms. i copied the quirky language - everyone was a "smol bean" or a "gremlin". i posted apologies about "taking a hiatus" and not making new art for my 200 followers who probably didn't care if i lived or died. the thing about this era was that the age of the influencer was beginning. obviously before this, internet celebrities existed, but our modern understanding of the influencer started in 2016. ads on instagram posts and youtube videos became more common, there were more people than ever getting popular and making money from just tweeting. or even better, just reposting other people's tweets - the first content farms. because of all this, combined with being young and naive, the thought of becoming famous through the internet was so appealing and it seemed so easy.

of course we know now that this is not the case. though people who definitely do not deserve their positions have become wildly rich and successful through internet attention, the average person will not get this sort of attention. unless you are entirely dedicated to posting on every social media and becoming famous, you just won't get it. but in 2016, no one knew better. so we had 16 year olds doing a rainbow cut crease before school and posting tutorials on snapchat. people were posting aesthetic indie sleeze photos to tumblr, hoping to be the next IT girl alongside cara delevingne and acacia brinley. the fanfiction of it all! honestly writing fanfic may have been the way forward with how many of them have been adapted into regular novels, and then adapted into movies. those divas knew something we didn't.

so our understanding of 2016 is not the political, cultural shifts of the time, but the shift on the internet. the beginning of the end, you could say. the tipping point as everyone began to get online, and the internet stopped being a place. it became everything everywhere (all at once) online posting and memes all the way back then basically directly led to the current political climate of the world, and that's too big of a thread for me to follow, but i can say 4-chan and the alt-right and you'll understand where it all began. i havent even begun to comprehend the memes from this era and i don't think i'm ready to.

i do miss dat boi though. is he still coming

so i suppose this will be the first piece of writing that goes on this website. i'm still updating the design here, though i am quite happy with how it's looking so far. my only other experience with html and css was between old tumblr and a myspace clone from 2021. those were mostly just css though, as the sites obviously had existing html that just needed to be edited. so the last couple of days have been a learning experience, and could i say that i have actually learned how to make a website? not really. its been a lot of brute forcing and copying and pasting but i swear eventually this will be a much smoother experience in future. i dont have many things i want to add anyway, i would prefer to keep it pretty lowtech. maybe an art gallery page in future. but i should learn to walk before i run. i'll continue posting updates about the website and its upgrades over time. maybe i should seperate updates into their own box away from the blogs? we'll see.

anyway, with site updates out of the way, as the title suggests, i want to take about a bad movie i watched recently. it was not what i would call "traditionally" bad, in fact. upon looking at the reviews on letterboxd (yes, let's all point and laugh) i was pretty surprised by the number of very positive reactions. though i woouldn't consider letterboxd as the most serious movie review site, i still generally trust the userbase when it comes to movie recommendations. so, with the 3.4 out 5 average rating in mind, i rented the movie from letterboxd's new rental service; their "video store" platform. i'm usually hesitant to buy or rent movies digitally when piracy is the other option. but, for once, i thought i would be a good supporter of film and a director i have enjoyed before - we'll come back to that part later. €3.99 for a movie is a pretty good price in my opinion - though for some of the newer movies with limited release, the rental price went up to €14.99, which was a little egregious to me. sure, i'll pay upwards of €30 for tickets and snacks when going to the theatre but honestly, most of that feels like i'm paying for the experience of sitting in those comfy seats and being with a crowd. i love the movies and being in theatres and i feel bad for those who have had mostly negetive experience when watching movies with the public (i could write a whole piece on that on it's own)

so, there i was, cosy in spite of the cold outside - the weather has been particularly bitter here recently - and ready to watch Before We Vanish, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. i knew very little about this film, never having heard of it before seeing it on the storefront. from skimming the review page, i gathered it was a sci-fi. this interested me a lot; i have no particularly strong feelings about sci-fi, but i have seen Cure and Pulse by Kurosawa and i adored both of those. both of those, Pulse specifically, were deeply unnerving and skin-crawlingly creepy. sure, you can call Cure a crime-thriller-drama-blah-blah, but let's be real, it's a horror. so, a director who i have only seen do horror before, doing a sci-fi drama? what the hell, sure.

(some spoilers ahead) the film follows three aliens, inhabiting the bodies of humans (think body-snatchers) as they plan to invade and, presumably, destroy earth. they gain power and knowledge by stealing people's ideas and conceptions of philosophical ideas (e.g family, possession, freedom, work, etc.) a pretty cool concept so far, right? we get to see one alien, inhabiting a man named Shinji, learn about the world and his host's life. he had a wife, whom he was on bad terms with, and now she has to take care of her husband, believing he has some form of amnesia. within the first few scenes, the tonal whiplash is apparent. this isn't an inherent flaw in a movie, many have handled it pretty well - Weapons is a recent example i can think of. but in Before We Vanish, it is just confusing. at first, i assumed it would be a dark comedy. we see in the opening, one of the aliens brutally murders a family and causes a huge road accident while soaked in blood, possessing the body of a young woman. then we see Shinji and his wife, he falls and trips multiple times as he struggles to pilot the body, and his deadpan delivery of complete confusion got a chuckle out of me. but as the film progresses, Kurosawa's horror-style directing, with slow pans and framing of corners and doorways, had me waiting for jumpscares that never happened. i couldn't tell how the film wanted me to feel. was i supposed to be laughing, should i be afraid, should i be THIS horrified at what the aliens are doing? every scene was buttoned by strange, out-of-place music cues that felt like royalty free tracks used as placeholders. a scene where a man is attacked by the girl-alien has this awful music that wouldn't feel out of place in the background of 2016 youtube vlog.

i was disappointed by the lack of colour, and general flat-ness of each shot. flat is also how i would describe the characters. the aliens all act different - Shinji is the deadpan, fish-out-of-water-type; Amano, a teenage boy, is sly, joking, and upfront about being an alien; Akira, the young woman from the opening, basically has no character besides being the most violent of the aliens. Amano is set of finding Akira, but neither of them seem to care about Shinji (though they do go find him towards the end) basically, i'm complaining about the lack of co-ordination in this alien invasion. as i write this, i can feel myself becoming bored and uninterested in talking about the plot and that is exactly the experience i had while watching. and guess what>? i didn't even finish it.

is it disingenuous to review a movie you didn't finish? i don't know. i don't know if the last 30-40 minutes of this movie could have solved my problems with the first act-and-a-half. one of the cardinal sins of film making is making your film boring and that was my biggest problem overall. this film presented me with an intersting concept and didn't deliver at all. i'm struggling to express just why i disliked to movie so much, besides the surface level things like direction, music, and acting. i found myself yawning and looking everywhere but the screen. it was a slow creep of realisation that i wasn't enjoying it. the gradual diminishment of interest as i realised i had been waiting 40 minutes to start enjoying myself. perhaps i had set the bar too high. but, i don't think it's unfair to have high expectations when you've enjoyed the previous work of the director. beyond 'enjoyed', Cure and Pulse are probably two of my favourite movies of all time, both in at least the top 50 i've seen. so, what do you do then? do you continue wasting time with something you feel nothing for? i would make the comparison to a bad date - do you keep hanging around, hoping for a spark, or do you just call it quits and go home before the food even hits the table? - but i have clung onto bad dates way too long, so i probably can't comment (that's a post for another day) it takes a lot for me to not finish a movie, especially a movie i paid for. if the movie was more explicitly terrible, i probably would have stuck around. if it was completely incomprehensible, a low-budget disaster with amatuer actors, i might have liked it more. something like Madame Web, or Imaginary - two terrible, terrible movies - would evoke more emotion out of me, something i could explain to my friends as to why they suck.

but when someone asks how i felt about Before We Vanish, i'll shrug and say "didn't like it" and the converstion will move on and i will never think of it again.