#sort of. not much of a review

[dragon-of-the-night]

You may remember this post I made at the beginning of the year, about “The Man Who Laughs” being public domain. Well, I looked after my boss’ kids a couple of nights ago, and once I finally convinced them to go to bed, I started to watching it for the first time on their large movie projector! [mild spoilers ahead].

Unfortunately I only managed to watch half an hour of it, because the parents came home (and asked what I’d been watching 😳 Had to explain my weirdness).

I finished it the next day on my own (considerably smaller) TV.

(The format didn’t work too well on my television, some of the picture was missing on both sides, annoyingly).

It was so good! It put me through a lot of stress, because while I’d read that Gwynplaine had a happy ending, I was still so worried something bad would happen to him, Dea, Urus or Homo.

It felt similar to “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “The Phantom of the Opera”, but also very different at the same time. Gwynplaine is the only Universal “monster” character to have been a leading man, and to have not been killed off at the end.

Look at them 😭

I couldn’t help but laugh every time this guy showed up. Look at his goofy face 🤣

It was nice not to feel emotionally destroyed after a tragic movie for once (well, I was a little bit scarred - Gwynplaine had so much inner pain 😖)

[realreadysetrose]

In super exciting news, I’m going to be competing with Lil Hal in the Awesomecon Cosplay Competition!

In even BETTER news, that means I get to make a whole BOOK about how I made his cosplay.

I’ve already got my build book cover ready to go

[sanguine-fangs]

Yeah, sure, sex is great and all, but have y'all ever tried being lounged on by a guard dog who's stronger and meaner than you? Serving as a weighted blanket, casually pinning you down beneath them under the guise of cuddling whilst watching a show/video. Their hands roam wherever they please, just softly exploring your skin with their fingertips and nothing more. Their lips are even more explorative whenever they're not pressed firmly against your own: panting hot breaths into the crook of your neck, leaving bite marks and hickeys all over your throat and shoulders. They growl each time you shift, any attempt to move making them more handsy out of spite. Any whining only makes them chuckle at your helplessness and bite/claw at you harder. You're stuck there, helpless to move, and so deeply content to be dumb and teased and frot against another, bigger dog who loves to watch you squirm beneath them.

[ineffably-smote]

Macbeth, David Tennant - A very subjective, spoiler and emotion filled review

Just walking out of seing Macbeth at the Donmar and I have Feelings. Unsurprisingly, I primarily went to see it because David Tennant was in it. I love the play, big fan of Shakespeare but the trip to London was most certainly motivated by a very specific actor. Hence the highly subjective review. Fortunately, I also happen to quite like Macbeth. We studied it at school, and it holds a special place in my heart (back then, Hamlet was my favourite Shakespeare play but honestly, after tonight, I’m not so sure anymore. Anyway, I digress). It was my first time actually seeing an actor I’m a fan of in real life, so obviously the entire time my brain was just going oh my god that’s David Tennant oh my god that’s David Tennant like I actually could not comprehend it. The man I’ve spent hours staring at on a little screen is suddenly real, and right there. So yeah, that took me a hot second.

(Excuse the piss poor image quality, I took this with shaky hands without looking or bothering to focus the cam)

The Staging

Still starstruck and a bit dazed, one thing really really stood out to me: the staging. It was so, so good. I knew it was going to be minimal from the pictures I had seen, and it was, but it was also so insanely real. There were barely any decorations, and half the cast and the musicians were hidden behind a glass screen doing background noises and gestures. From where I was sitting I could not see them much, but could definitely hear them which added to the overall atmosphere. The stage was also really tiny, and the play benefitted incredibly from it. All the action was happening in one tight space that had been put to use incredibly well, particularly the banquet scene but I’ll come back to that because it deserves its own paragraph.

The way they chose to do the soliloquies was so fitting - all the actors start to move in slow motion - everyone else slowing down and just the characters speaking moving was so good, it made sense.

The Headphones

I’m a bit mixed about the headphones. They were amazing for the vibes, we could hear whispers and they really heightened some of the emotional speeches in the play - because when someone is struggling with guilt and trauma it makes sense for them to be mumbling rather than yelling. So that was really great. However, especially in the scenes where the actors where yelling/ loud I preferred to take them off a bit cause it felt more real that way. I’m so used to hearing actors voice on recordings, it does hit different when you can hear them for real. But, as I said, personal preference and that’s what’s nice, you can take them on and off as much as you want.

Famous Speeches

There were three speeches I was quite interested to see how they were going to be adapted - scorpions and dagger for Macbeth, and out damned spot for Lady Macbeth. These are classic, everyone knows the words, the plot but they managed to make it feel real in a new and touching way. I think here the headphones were quite helpful because they allowed the actors to actually whisper parts of those lines. They were so subtle, so embedded in the text they felt so natural which imbued them with all their power. I saw in a review Cush Jumbo’s out damned spot speech be described as “haunting”, and I wholeheartedly agree.

The Macbeths

I didn’t like Macbeth, the character, very much when I first learnt about him. His actions didn’t make sense to me, I couldn’t quite comprehend in my 21st century little brain how he went from I’m super loyal to the King to I will freely murder children for shits and giggles. But now, now I understand. It makes sense, it’s believable. And that’s a mix of the acting choices and teh overall setting. Like the opening scene, instead of presenting Macbeth as a glorious hero, he is presented to us as a traumatised hero. He spends the first few minutes washing the blood of his clothes, haunted by noises from the battlefield. And that sets the themes quite nicely, not ambition, as Tennant specified in an interview, but guilt and trauma. There are so many ways to interpret Shakespeare, that’s the beauty of it, and I think this version of Macbeth just resonated more with me (maybe because ambition I don’t quite understand but guilt I am intimately familiar with? Or maybe because it was David Tennant? I don’t know, probably a bit of both). Tennant delivers a convincing Macbeth. Yes, you can see his ambitions play out, but also his fears, his guilt, and that makes him into a complex three dimensional character that you want to understand.

And I absolutely loved this version of Lady Macbeth. Not just a powerful woman who bullies her husband into become an evil murderer (because again, here we can see traces of that in Macbeth from the start), but an ambition woman in love, with her husband, with power, and not quite healed from the trauma of loosing her child. Again another review said she is more of an enabler than a manipulator and I quite liked that description.

My Favourite Scenes

God the banquet scene. The one with the ghost of Banquo. An absolute masterpiece. I did not expect that scene to hit that hard. It was raw, it was powerful and even if Tennant was facing away from where I was sitting, even without seeing his face I could feel the emotion, the whole audience could. In a video essay on Tennant, @davidtennantgenderenvy highlighted how in almost every role he played, there is it is the classic Tennant breakdown moment, and breakdown moment it was. Not with tears, not as expressive as he sometime is but just enough for a King trying to hold it together but fear and guilt breaking through. I was absolutely overwhelmed and it was beautiful. The set up for the scene was amazing too - there were ceilidh, celebrations, I adored the contrast between these fast pasted scenes and guilt ridden whispers of the couple. And the way everyone sat down around the stage and suddenly it looked like a banquet table ? Just perfect.

Another really cool moment, less on the emotional side but more on the visuals was when Macbeth goes to get the second prophecy from the witches. Almost the whole cast is there, running around, moving, almost dancing and it gives the whole thing a mystical atmosphere. There’s smoke, Macbeth falls, is carried up high Jesus style, cowers, rises, it’s so busy and insane all the while there are whispers and whispers in the headphones - it manages perfectly to feel like a mystical moment.

Descent Into Madness & other cool things

For Macbeth, having the kid running around scene after scene, haunting him, and then scene where he kills him - GOD it’s powerful. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness was so well characterised, I also loved the glass on the background that locked away some of the cast. Just wild. The actor that played Malcom actor was also really cool, and Macduff and Ross, big fan of all of them.

Overall I am overwhelmed with emotions. Tennant is truly one of my favourite actors - from Good Omens to Staged, Jessica Jones, even Harry Potter but also Mad to be Normal, Nativty, There She Goes, Around the World in 80 days, Doctor Who (god I’ve started a list, never start lists cause you’ll forget people) and so, so many more, I was truly beside myself with excitement and expectations for tonight. And it did not disappoint. I do not want to leave the theatre and I pray they release a recording of this because I want it imprinted on my soul.

(Side note: I don’t know how to use tumblr very well, for some reason whenever I try to reply to ppl it posts from my other blog? Anyway @raquel-and-sergio is in fact me)

[mxtwister]

Merline DLC please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please

[dafpork]

the thoughts are returning (making a comic adaptation of the actor au alongside the actual writing)

[transannabeth]

can i say something related to h/p that like. ok i don’t know how to word this exactly but i find it…disheartening. i think. that there are three incredibly popular dra/mione fanfics that are being traditionally published within the year, likely to major success. i’m sure i should have a more complex take on it than that with more nuance but….it feels. bad.

[gingermintpepper]

drop the link on that fic of Zeus being a good dad?

Absolutely my friend!

As you can see, it's called Trials of Fatherhood by the lovely @z-eusie and in-between my agonies and right now, she's actually updated the fic and now the Apollo chapter is live!! Everyone should go read this fic, actually! It's a wonderful little compilation of moments that allow for showing both the ugliness and beauty of the gods when taken from a nuanced, compassionate perspective and it's always been one of my favourites to go back to every now and then just because of how fond I am of it. I'm especially fond of the Athena and Dionysus chapters myself but I hope everyone finds their favourite one. <33

[seaofreverie]

Feeling so thankful for this series of MAD! lyric videos today, because thanks to it I won't have to use the unimaginative names of "wild synth break 1" and "wild synth break 2" when refering to these parts of the song in my album review, but rather their true & official names: [unsettling synthesiser noises] and [heavenly choir + metallic chugging], respectively

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

I am returned! Crazy things happened on hiatus, and here is a play-by-play:

Spent the bulk of September with our dogs at my great-aunt's lake cottage (which is a 15-hr drive from here), due to the abundance of birthdays this month.

Shortly after arriving, I got a cold from my sister, which as per usual, turned into bronchitis, which lasted the entirety of the vacation (I still have the cough).

Around midnight on the eve of our departure, I had a gallbladder attack (first one since early spring).

Except it was way worse. Like, I couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, couldn't even cry.

Called 911, got in the ambulance, and the pain suddenly vanished in the space of a minute.

The wee mountain hospital didn't have imaging equipment beyond a CT scan and the Dr. was like "If the pain is gone, you shouldn't expose yourself to that much radiation" (which I appreciated)

My labs were normal, so we conclude this must've been the passing of the gallstone. Big, if true.

I take hydrocodone and we all go to sleep.

In the morning, my mom and sister pack my stuff for me and my parents and I drive the 15 hours back home so that dad can make it to a job interview the next day.

During the last 45 minutes of the journey, my mom's very very old & frail chihuahua experiences a sharp decline in his already poor constitution.

I'm knocked out on hydrocodone, but my dad is up all night with the dog, and in the morning, he takes him to the vet to be put down.

My mom is devastated, this dog was adopted to be her bedside companion during chemo twelve years ago.

My dad's interview goes well.

I still have bronchitis.

Two days later, my sister (who stayed longer at the lake house to clean up) drives back to her home in Southern GA, but for hurricane Helene reasons, the highway is closed and she gets lost.

She finally makes it home to find her power is out, for hurricane Helene reasons (it's still out)

Three days later (last night), I have another brutally painful attack (clearly I'd NOT passed the stone), so my parents drive me to the ER.

Am able to get an ultrasound there, which confirms I still have either many gallstones or one huge one, but my labs are still normal.

Unfortunately, this makes sense because I underwent some rapid drastic weight loss after my attack in the spring.

ER Dr. thinks my pain is instead being caused by gastritis for genetic reasons (which reminded my mom that as a teenager she passed out at work from gastritis).

He prescribes me a trio of gastritis drugs.

I'll be going to a trusted functional medicine doctor next month because my dad got the job (an amazingly good job, praise God) and we can afford it at last. My hope is that this Dr. can point to causes beyond genetics for the gastritis and also get rid of the stones once and for all, even if that means going on Ursodiol.

My dad's new job requires him to move to the Middle East in three weeks.

Oh, and my personal Instagram account (which was about to become the cornerstone of my small business) was inexplicably terminated during my hiatus and I have no means of getting it back besides writing to the state Attorney General.

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

This Love

contemporary fiction, set over a decade

a stubborn butch lesbian who breaks a lot of hearts and wants to do something important with her life, and a pan guy who’s moved from New York with his mother to escape his abusive father and a bad relationship with a professor - meet in their final year of university and quickly become close friends

they both dream of settling down and having kids - and decide that if they don’t find partners (or even if they do), they’ll do it together

over the years they navigate their relationships with their parents, new relationships, diverging life paths and media careers, and while their lives don’t go to plan, an unconventional family develops out of their strong friendship

[kyoshialone]

tyyy beloved @ash-and-starlight for the tag here r some books im excited to read next year !!!

tagging (v optionally) @wakingstone @jumping-jackalope @legofbicuriosity @lesbianboyfriend 👉🏻👈🏻👀

[aidenwaites]

Maeve Fly is,,,,, something

[brunetterightsactivist]

looking for fragrances that really smell like sex. not "sexy" and when people call something sexy its always either a violently putridly sweet floral or a smoky leather dive bar smell no i mean like carnal...an erotic aphrodisiac kind of a scent. and god no not something that smells like actual bodily fluids please. idk what i want thats why i'm saying all this

[knife-em0ji]

When The Moon Hatched is an insane book. It is a fae romantasy but this author went whole hog into building a world that works completely unlike our own, and I can tell she is determined to make it consistent and make sense within her own internal set of rules. I really respect her for trying to do something new, even if the prose is the brightest shade of eggplant I've come across in a while. It's not Good -- the weakness of the prose, especially when she tries a "High Fantasy" tone, holy shit, and the stodgy romantasy beats [even with the twist you can see from a mile away] make this a squarely mediocre read -- but she was definitely ambitious and trying something that puts her work apart from the gazillion other fae romances (there's like, no humans at all in this book, which I respect a lot). She definitely has a Vision, and there's nothing I love more than works produced by self made arteurs with only middling technical skill that are obviously passion projects. Yeah, the story itself is mid and the characters pretty stock when you get down to it, but the world is genuinely interesting and probably the least derivative I've read in any contemporary romantasy. You can tell that she probably read things like Discworld and was like, "I want to do this too! I want to create my own unique planet and then set a sexy faerie romance on it and it'll be my magnum opus."

And you know what??? Good for her. I love that. Friggin large popcorn dammit because reading this feels exactly like watching one of those one-off mid-budget fantasy/sci fi movies from the mid 00s - mid 10s that are firmly mediocre, but still live in your psyche forever. This is truly the Mortal Engines or Chronicles of Riddick -- or, actually JUPITER ASCENDING!!!! -- of the faerie romance genre. I'm only about halfway through, but I'm pretty sure at the rate this is going my opinion isnt going to change much.

Also. People complain that there's tons of made up jargon and they need to consistently refer to the glossary, which I personally don't see because to me it's really quite easy to infer what things mean based on context clues ??????? Like the book never goes out of its way to overly explain what anything is since the POV character has lived in this world for her entire life, so it's all just normal to her, and I very much respect that choice not to exposit more than absolutely necessary. Like idk those 70s pulp sci fi books must have really done a number on my pattern recognition and contextual reading skills, because I'm not having any difficulty at all following and inferring the meanings of the jargon. Like. I really need some of these people who complain about fantasy slang and jargon to try picking up A Clockwork Orange one day. That book is nigh impenetrable with made up slang LOL.

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Not people making a whole hashtag(#sick of the smut) against smut on social media and a publisher jumping in on it:

More of people talking about the hashtag:

Video 1

Video 2

And on the smut in YA discourse that’s been talked about along with this hashtag, I’m a fresh 20 years old(birthday was last month) meaning I’ve been(and still am) reading YA for a good portion of my life. Yes, I know YA is for 12-18 year olds. But, 12-18 is a large developmental gap within itself. This shouldn’t really need to be said, but not every book in the YA genre is going to be able to cater to the age range that’s included in the range for reading YA. The singular or few smut chapters in YA that’s everyone’s having discourse about isn’t for 12-14 year old YA readers, no debate about that.

The singular or few smut chapters are for the 16-18 year old readers, because that’s what lines up with the developmental experiences of someone within that age range. Especially the 17-18 year old readers considering they’re either in college or about to be going to college. Sex and dating normally starts to be more relevant or interconnected topics or things people are going through at that point in life. This shouldn’t need to be said(again) but 16-18 year olds(speaking as a former 16-18 year old) aren’t going to really relate to the level of romance that would be appropriate for a 12-14 year old. They’re on different ends of the puberty spectrum and in different environments(mainly 17-18 year olds).

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