mistressofmuses

My work day on Christmas Eve was just as slow as expected. I finished up with my actual work within about an hour and a half, and then spent the rest of the day just watching through training videos. Those aren't due until the end of next month, but now I've only got one more to do.

After the half day, my mom came to pick me up. We headed back to her house to hang out.

We made some of our family's traditional holiday cookies: molasses cookies and butter cookies.

( Pics of both: )

We did get a bit of a white Christmas - it snowed a fairly good amount on Christmas Eve. Not as badly around us as it did out on the plains to the east, but still enough to stick. Fortunately the roads around us didn't get too bad.

Taylor and I finished up the Final Fantasy XIV raid we'd started last time ("The Binding Coils of Bahamut.") I definitely see what they meant about this being kind of a weird one to have be optional... because it really does feel extremely plot-relevant, despite a sort of "and now we must never speak of this to anyone" conclusion.

Then we watched the last three episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite a typical holiday vibe, but I guess it falls under the "stories of ghosts terrorizing rich people" heading, lol.

Christmas Day was also nice. I was gifted a ton of books (as I'd asked for, haha.) My TBR list is definitely crying, and I have GOT to figure out how to make more time and space for reading. They also got a bunch of books from me. I'm pretty sure that's about 90% of what all our gift-giving is: just... swapping books around, lol.

Alex slept in, but came over to join us around 1:00 or so.


Cy was criminally cozy on my mom's loveseat. (He wrapped himself in the blanket, by nosing under where it was draped over the back of the seat.) The cushion cover is on there solely to protect my mom's furniture from our dogs' stomping on it.


And here's Bella standing on the loveseat. (The books on the table there are all the ones Taylor got, ha.) Ignore Bella's butt glowing in the sun.

We hung around for a couple hours, and then headed home. There Alex and I exchanged our gifts. I got a couple more books, a very large set of lots of colors of gel pen, and like... a thousand cute animal stickers, haha. Also a very cute "fruit bat" squish plush (it's a bat... that looks like an orange. I love it!) Also some candy and very cozy looking socks. I got him model stuff, some brushes for pastelling, a kitchen gadget with some various blades for chopping and slicing, and a new wallet. Also candy and some silly tiny plastic crabs.

After that, he was ambushed by a nap, so we delayed our Christmas movie watching. After he woke up, we made a pizza and then watched Christmas Vacation and our always holiday classic: Christams [sic] Twister.


Amazing as always.

I was dozing off after that one, so we put our other holiday movies on hold. (I'm mildly surprised - Alex doesn't usually want to stretch it into more than one day, ha.)

Today we watched A Christmas Story and Muppet Christmas Carol. Tomorrow will be It's a Wonderful Life. That covers most of our personal holiday classics, ha.

Very glad today was a normal day off for me, but then that I also took tomorrow off. I feel like I *should* have the week between Christmas and New Years off to just do... nothing. Or nothing beyond recovering from a big holiday and doing whatever I want to in order to prep for the new year. But alas, it's hard to take that string of time off from work, since there are a LOT of people who want it off, and a lot that's hard to get coverage for. Oh well - a three and a half day weekend is still nice.

A day that went so *ordinarily* at work that it seemed like there has to be SOME disaster I failed to engage with.

Spending tonight and tomorrow at my mom and Taylor's house.

Tonight we watched Glass Onion (which I really did enjoy), and read a very little bit of A Desolation Called Peace. My mom made lasagna, and it was delicious.

I think the only thing of any consequence that I forgot was my phone charger, minor miracle.

And this is not that early, but just slightly early for me... yet I am absolutely going to bed.

Caught up on my reading list, but I think comments will be waiting until tomorrow.

I hope that everyone had a fantastic Christmas (or Shitscram), if you celebrate it. If not... I hope it was a fantastic Sunday!

My day was a good one - woke up early at my mom's, exchanged stockings and gifts. Got a few books I'd wanted - The World We Make, Thirteen Storeys, and The Luminous Dead - and the movie Nope, which I quite liked. Also a new pair of boots, because my current pair have one sole detaching and a pretty badly torn seam. Taylor and I read for a bit.

Alex came and got me around early afternoon. Cy is, unfortunately, not feeling well, so while he got some toys, all of his treat-type gifts have to wait. Alex and I exchanged gifts, and I think both got each other things we wanted. :) I got him a couple cute plushie things and some model things. He got me some cute plushie things, a couple fancy bath things, and two nice larger-size notebooks. (Which was sweet, because I'd just idly mentioned filling up my habit-tracking one.) Also candy.

I'd been planning on shifting to a smaller dot-grid journal for next year, but largely because that's what I had available. Now I could stick with my current style layout, which is also appealing.

After our gift exchange, we watched The Muppet Christmas Carol. Alex took a nap, and then we watched A Christmas Story, and ate pizza (because we're very done with serious baking/cooking for a while) and now It's a Wonderful Life is playing in the background. After that, our traditional watch of Christams Twister (sic), and I fully expect to fall asleep.

ETA:
CHRISTAMS TWISTER!

I'm way to old to be excited about Christmas morning, but much like the night before a vacation or the like, I never sleep well on Christmas Eve, so I am very tired!

A bit of a miscellaneous one, rather than for a set time period or anything, since I do these... sporadically, at best. Just kind of a vague sense of Some Stuff I've Experienced Lately.

Things I've played lately:

Nier: Replicant
Not a lot to say that I didn't already talk about before. I'm still curious about what way we get to have an impact on the ending, or if it will be much of one. Going through with new knowledge (though admittedly, not all of that knowledge is something the protagonist is privy to) very much makes me wish that I could alter the story - have the protag make different choices, choose not to fight certain enemies, prevent NPC deaths that I know are coming...
But at the same time, it is effective tragedy to know that you're doing something terrible, yet be unable to stop or alter it.

Things I've read lately:

Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire
Summary: Alice Price-Healy has spent decades searching for her husband, after he was taken away by the Crossroads as payment for a deal he made saving her life. Finally, she receives a clue to where he may have been hidden... though she still has little idea how to rescue him.

I enjoyed it! I do, however, think it very much needed the buildup of the rest of the Incryptid series behind it to grant it the necessary weight. That is generally what the author has said: the entirety of the series was built just so that people would care about these characters and their story - as a standalone, without the way in which these characters have hovered in the distant background of the rest of the series, I don't know that there's enough connection to them to really feel invested in their story. (Mainly to say: I think she had the right idea by saving this story for the 11th entry into the series.)
There's also a LOT that references the short stories about the characters. Those short stories have been released via Patreon. Taylor and I read them all (all the ones written so far, anyway), and did so specifically to be "ready" for this book, and I'm glad we did. But I'm not completely sure how the book would come off without that context? I think there's certainly enough for it to be understandable, but I think the mentions of those events and characters felt a lot richer for having read the stories, rather than having them just be disconnected references.

Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire
Summary: October is forced to fight against one of her oldest friends, as one of the long-lost Queens of Faerie is found... no matter how much destruction her return leads to.

I got to have the Real Fandom Feel with this one, because Taylor and I have our pet theory that we went into the book with, so we've been flailing at each other over it.
( Cut for very minor spoilers: )

Things I've watched lately:

Don't Worry Darling
Summary: Alice lives a completely idyllic 50s life with her loving husband, Jack. While the work he does is mysterious, it provides a completely perfect, comfortable suburban life for the two of them, much like all the rest of the members of the community. Strange things begin happening around Alice, causing her to question whether everything is possibly as perfect as it seems to be.

Alex and I went to see this one on Tuesday. I've mostly ignored the ~drama~ that's been alleged about the whole thing, and don't really care about that. The movie itself seems to be kind of love it or hate it - I've seen a couple people saying it was literally one of the worst movies they've ever watched, and that I really don't get.
I wouldn't say it's my new favorite or anything, but I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was well-acted, the costume design was great, and I thought it captured a sort of fridge-horror aspect that I really liked.
( Cut for spoilers: )

Diabolique
Summary: The wife and the mistress of an abusive man team up to murder him. After his body disappears, the two of them seem to be stalked by someone who knows what they've done.

A movie from the 90s, remaking a French film from the 50s. I hadn't seen it before.
One of my first thoughts was "ah, I see where The One Lifetime Movie I Genuinely Enjoyed got much of its plot from."
I liked the cast: Sharon Stone was very hot in the 90s, and Isabelle Adjani does "fragile waif" extremely well. Also Kathy Bates is in it, and she's pretty much always delightful to watch.
And "Wife and mistress team up to murder abusive husband/lover" really is an A+ plot (even if there is more to it.)
Apparently this was ROUNDLY hated when it came out, and to be fair I haven't seen the movie it's remaking, so maybe that one is miles better. I don't know, I thought it was fine? It wasn't SUPER suspenseful, but I was entertained, and ultimately enjoyed the ending.

Dark Skies
No, not the newer, better-known one, and also not the TV series. This was a low-ish budget made-for-TV disaster movie from 2009! (Also apparently known as "Black Rain.")
Summary: A group of three college friends come across a fourth man who has been living as a recluse in the woods. They recognize him as a brilliant scientist who graduated a few years before them. The four wind up trapped in a storm that rains deadly acid - the result of an industrial "accident" caused by unscrupulous business decisions.

We picked it, assuming it would be an extremely formulaic SyFy-style disaster movie... and I won't say it *wasn't* that, but I *was* surprisingly charmed by it, for two main reasons:
- 1: it had a much stronger thesis than most of these movies have. It's typical enough to have an Evil Corporation [represented in this movie by an Evil Businesswoman, played by Leslie Hope as our "kinda slight name recognition" actress for the film], but this movie was a lot more critical of it than I'm used to seeing. Instead of "oh, this one company was bad and led by one bad person", this one actually stated "as long as businesses are motivated solely by profit, they can never be trusted to make good decisions regarding health and safety."
- 2: after the main guy has a random shirtless, bare-ass scene toward the beginning, Alex and I were both waiting for Obvious Pretty Girl!Scientist Love Interest to show up. While one of the other characters is a Pretty Girl!Scientist... she is not the love interest!
The shoehorned-in romantic subplot was between the main guy and one of the other men in the group. #equality #lovewins To be honest, it surprised me that they actually went for it, and I like it. I want to watch bad genre movies with queer characters, and I got to do that!

And another weekly media roundup:

What I've Been Reading:

Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton
( SO CLOSE to done. Feel about the same as last week. )

What I've Been Watching:

There wasn't anything super exciting in theaters this week, so we didn't go see anything. But we did last week and I forgot to include it!
So from last week: X:
This one was... fairly intense, both in terms of blood and violence and sexual content.
( Summary: )
For a slasher it did one thing I really appreciated: it made me care about the group, so I actually DIDN'T want any of them to die, ha. They still do. Let me emphasize, do not truly hope everyone makes it out okay, because this is a slasher and they do die. Also, they aren't all great people all the time, but they're decent characters, and their interactions are mostly pretty fun.
( Further thoughts about it... )

Two deeply mediocre Lifetime thrillers this week:

The Surrogacy Trap
( Summary )
Extremely generic Lifetime thriller fare. Not very good.

The Nightmare Nanny
( Summary )
Also pretty generic and not that great.

Oculus
A favorite! This is a horror movie I genuinely really enjoy and find creepy.
( Summary )
The idea of something that can impact your own perception to the degree the mirror does (making them believe they are outside the house when they are not, attack people because they look like something else, physically harm yourself while thinking you're doing something benign...) is truly creepy. Also, I think mirrors are creepy - blame watching Poltergeist when I was way too young.

What I've Been Playing:

Still nothing. I just still feel like I have no time. :(

What I've Been Listening To:

Still no podcasts. Have been listening to the Transistor and Hades soundtracks while writing.

What I've been reading:

Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton (still, slowly)

( I'm still enjoying the book, though maybe a little less than I was at the start. )

A Cornstalk Fiddle, which is a fic inspired by The Devil Went Down To Georgia. I've seen the story recc'd in a ton of places, and finally got around to giving it a read. Read the first half or so, so far. I'd say it deserves the reccs it's gotten.

(Also a couple other fics, but I'm not sure I want to out my porn-reading habits, lol.)

What I've been playing:

Not a damn thing! Maybe next week I'll have time for something.

What I've watched:

We watched so many bad (and a few good!) movies in the last week... These have all been on in the background while I do other stuff, but I've paid enough attention to them to remember them.

Look Again - ( Summary: )
This was pretty basic Lifetime thriller fare, but always nice to watch Morena Baccarin in pretty clothes. At least it dealt with its multiple twists pretty well, and was competently acted.

Honeymoon - ( Summary: )
Pretty good. Definite body-horror.

Grimm Love (also known as Rohtenburg in German) - ( Summary: )
Pretty damn dark.

Her Name Was Christa - ( Summary: )
The second half has some gross-out type of horror, but there was definitely more time devoted to the relationship before that. Better than I figured it would be based on the start of the movie, but definitely weird.

Fresh - ( Summary: )
More of a dark comedy than a horror, and bits of it were definitely quite funny. Well-acted, glad I finally watched it.

The Wretched - ( Summary: )
( Pretty good, and definitely better than anticipated. Minor spoiler: )

Saving Zoe - ( Summary: )
Thriller/drama, not horror. Deals with some pretty awful topics that verged a little close to feeling "after school special/very special episode" for me, but really weren't handled too badly.

Goblin - ( Summary: )
This was utterly atrocious in every way. Seems like it was meant to be bad, but the bad acting and deliberate asshole dialogue was a little too over the top. She may be pregnant with a goblin baby at the end? Not sure.

Kept Woman - ( Summary: )
Also a Lifetime thriller, but with a surprisingly interesting setup and plot! It was pretty enjoyable.

What I've been listening to:

Nothing in terms of podcasts. Listening to the Transistor soundtrack while writing.

I keep saying I want to do a sort of media roundup of stuff I've watched/read/played recently, and then I get too tired to do it by the time I'm home. But today I had a very weirdly productive day at work, and was the only one in the center so I got a head start on it.

This got way longer than I thought it would. (If I manage to do this as a regular thing, it probably wouldn't cover two weeks at a time, but that's what this is.)

What I've Been Reading:

- Incryptid short stories by Seanan McGuire: Jonathan Healy and Francis Brown

( List of the stories + my thoughts on them: )

-"The Diary of the Rose" by Ursula K le Guin
( Deservedly well-regarded: )

- Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton
( A bit under halfway through: )

What I've Been Playing:

- Pokemon Sun
( Brief thoughts: )

- Deltarune Chapter 2
( The playthrough Taylor and I just did: )

What I've Been Watching:

- first half of Firefly
( Nostalgia: )

- Last Night in Soho
( Held up on a rewatch: )

- Hideout
( An average-y horror movie: )
If I had a nickel for every horror movie I'd watched recently where someone with ill-intent goes to an isolated house in the country, only to have their murderous plans turned around on them by a deceptively-innocent-seeming local who may actually be an incarnation of the devil himself (and an older human who knows their secret)... I'd have two nickels, but it's weird it's happened twice.
[The other one was A House on the Bayou, which was also pretty averagey, but the kid who played Isaac (the maybe-devil) killed it in the role, imo.]

- The Dropout
( Watched the first three episodes when they dropped. )

- The Batman
( Went to see this one in theaters, earlier than I thought we would. )

Waaaay longer than I meant. If I keep doing this, I have to trim it down, haha.

*from tumblr user grumfield
**except by worst I still also mean best

I realized that I still have a lot of feelings about Jupiter Ascending. This movie is coming up on 7 years old now, so it's not like my thoughts are all that interesting or relevant at this point, but TOO BAD.

I said in my last post that this movie is impossible to describe, and I mean it, but I'm going to try anyway.

Jupiter Ascending...

I feel like it's important to know this movie has a Real Cast. Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne (the year after he won an academy award)...

And it's written and directed by the Wachowski sisters!

It is pure wild wish-fulfillment bonkers nonsense the whole way through, while also being very PRETTY. This movie gets extremely maligned for being very indulgent toward more typically feminine aesthetics and interests, unlike most Space Opera type things, but that's part of what I love.

Here is my semi-chronological recollection of this film. It's got some spoilers, I guess? Please use this as either an advertisement for this film or as a warning to stay away, depending on your taste.

A lot of it reminds me of talking to a kid telling you the Coolest Story Ever, but with a handful of stronger themes mixed in.

- Like, love interest is kind of a GENETICALLY ENGINEERED WEREWOLF, but he also used to have WINGS, but he lost them after getting kicked out of SPACE MILITARY (for killing some rich guy). But he's pretty much terminally sad and pretty. Also wears eyeliner and has space rollerblades. And pointy ears.
- And then there's a bunch of LASER SPACE FIGHTS.

[Doona Bae as a rad blue-haired cyberpunk bounty hunter is EVERYTHING I WANT.]

- And Sean Bean lives in a house full of BEES. And his name is Stinger. He has Complicated History with werewolf boyfriend! And all the bees love the main character! Because they recognize royalty, and she's secretly important space royalty!
- There are a lot of neat alien designs! Some are like classic Roswell-crash grey aliens. Some look like dragons! Some look like deer! Or mice! Or elephants!
- Now there's a lot of SPACE POLITICS. Between functionally immortal SPACE RICH PEOPLE who are also thematically-but-not-literally VAMPIRES. They are all siblings who all try to outdo each other at being THE WORST OF THE WORST.
- They all think main character is the reincarnation of their mother! There's a lot to unpack there! So many space issues!

[Genuinely, I think it's an interesting sort of worldbuilding cultural view of reincarnation. The whole rich-people-space-society is obsessed with genetics, so their idea of reincarnation is the exact same genes showing up in a new person, and then that reincarnation becomes the more direct heir to the previous "incarnation".]

[There's actually a pretty strong theme about exploitation of resources, and how vast quantities of people can be made to suffer (or die!) for the gains of very few, while those who are exploited never reap any of the benefits.
This is strengthened by the fact that main character in her "ordinary life" is an illegal Russian immigrant who cleans houses for a living.]

- There's a space DMV! It sucks! I love satirical over-the-top space bureaucracy!
- My absolute favorite: love interest tries to turn her down, and it's super awkward, and he tells her "I have more in common with a dog than I do with you." Which leads to the ALL TIME BEST LINE/DELIVERY: "...I love dogs."
- So much backstabbing! So much double crossing!
- There are SO MANY amazing costumes! So many fancy dresses, it's ridiculous. (But also A+ to the costume design because they're all really cool and pretty.)
- DRAMATICALLY INTERRUPTED SPACE WEDDING
- I saw someone else say that Eddie Redmayne speaks in 9 pt. or 72 pt. font with no in-between and god is that the truth.
- "I CREATE! LIFE!"

[Holy hell, a movie that keeps at least one chunk of thematic consistency without *directly* pointing it out, and just letting it be clear from the character's choices? FUCKING THANK YOU. It's really just a variation on the trolley problem but hey.]

- SO MANY EXPLOSIONS
- I love these terrible space immortals and their terrible space family and their terrible space drama and backstabbing and murder.
- SPACE WEREWOLF BOYFRIEND GETS HIS WINGS BACK!!

This movie is genuinely a hot mess in a lot of ways, and most people who like it absolutely class it as a guilty pleasure type movie. But the enjoyment, imo, is also very genuine, at least for me. Parts of it are extremely silly, but I appreciate both that it seems to be continually having fun, and is also sincere. It very much does not fall into self-mockery. I hate movies that try to be too cool for sincerity, and just continually try to make sure they're making fun of themselves before you get a chance to. (There's a place for self-awareness, and some movies pull it off. But usually it comes across as self-conscious, and I hate it.)

I think this absolutely needed to be like... three movies in order to actually flesh out all the rapid-fire plot points and scene changes and things, and some of the bonkers nature of it is definitely the fact that it's trying to do too much. But also... idk, if you have a chance to just fling every little scrap of story or scene aesthetic you want into something with a budget behind it... fucking go for it.

I can absolutely see this as the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy that I would have come up with as a middle-schooler, and later been far too self-conscious to admit to. (And later in life, unwilling to be so self-indulgent.) Me-as-main character is secretly important! Angsty, pretty space-werewolf boyfriend who also has wings and a Tragic Past! Wildly complicated bad-guy murder plots! Betrayal! Explosions! Big dramatic space battles! So many fancy dresses and beautiful scenery! I have the power to save the world! Hell, I even love bees, lol.

So seeing that brought to screen, and by a pair of trans women, is a feeling I enjoy. And I hope they enjoyed getting to make this movie as much as it seems like they did, because I sure as hell enjoy watching it. Even when it's silly.

We went and saw Nightmare Alley for cheap movie day. It's been a few weeks since there was anything we wanted to go see.

I enjoyed it! It's a great example of a negative character arc, and a protagonist that you really kind of don't want to see succeed, haha. I enjoyed the casting, and Cate Blanchett is always damn great. There's an element of a long-con to it, which I always love. It's also very pretty; even the grimy gritty parts are beautifully designed and shot.

-

Made a Target run to get the stocking stuffer type things I wanted to get for Alex. (And wound up with one more real gift for him.) I hope he's happy with his haul of stuff. (I do feel a fair amount of pressure on trying to make Christmas good for him - he doesn't have any family left, and Christmas was a complicated and mostly bad thing for him when he was younger, because his mom hated it so much. I know HE doesn't like Christmas much, so I try to do my best to make it good. Usually I think I do okay!)

Just waiting for books for mom/Taylor that are supposed to arrive on Thursday. They were mysteriously delayed in shipping, and there haven't been any updates since Friday, so fingers crossed they still arrive on time. Otherwise they get New Years books.

-

MY TENTATIVE PLAN FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK (because I get easily overwhelmed, so if I have at least a vague idea of what I need to do, maybe that will help.)

WEDNESDAY:
Go to work. Maybe I'm training someone?
Make Birch Yule Log cookies
(do writing? That would be good)

THURSDAY:
Go to work. Or is this the day I'm training? Both?
Make kolaches
Wrap mom/Taylor's gifts (hopefully they arrive)
(more writing? We can hope)

FRIDAY:
Half day at work
Go to mom/Taylor's house after work
Make butter cookies and molasses cookies, hopefully
Hang out with Taylor

SATURDAY:
Christmas morning/gift exchange at mom's house
Alex comes to pick me up, brings baked goods that he's making (Norwegian butter squares, shortbread cookies, zucchini cake)
Come home, do at-home gift exchange, marathon our Christmas movies (It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story for him, Christmas Vacation and Muppet Christmas Carol for me, and our ever favorite "Christams Twister" because misspelling the title card of your movie is a GREAT SIGN.)

And Sunday back to work.

*Pain in the ass truffles have been demoted/promoted to New Years
*Alex has a ton of stuff he wants to make, and at this point we're just hoping he'll be able to eat some of it.

SO THAT'S THE PLAN. Maybe!

Had breakfast with dad and step-mom, which was nice. I think it's been about... four years? since I saw her.

This was a quick trip for them - just a long weekend. My dad had a day of rehearsal with his friends/band, played a gig on Sunday, and then had a recording session yesterday. Today they were driving back down to AZ, since my step-mom has a new set of classes she starts teaching tomorrow.

-

Spent a good chunk of the day doing like... "restoration" work (in a decidedly non-professional capacity) on some old beat up model horses. A few of my childhood favorites were in rough shape, as I *gasp* played with my collectable models! But a couple of those got nicely cleaned up with some dish soap and some baking soda paste. Not quite "like new", but they don't look like they got beat to hell. Also found someone who may buy some of my old ones that I'm less emotionally attached to, which wouldn't be a bad thing. They've just been in sad, sad storage.

Also found a couple other childhood things in my mom's basement - including my favorite stuffed animal from childhood (Pink Bear. She's a bear. She was pink, though now a bit grey. I was a creative child; I also named my first pet betta Mr. Fish.) She's in rough (dirty) shape, so I spot-cleaned her a bit, and I think I'll try sending her through a gentle wash cycle.

-

The garbage disposal broke. :| Or is jammed, rather. We did what we could to try and flush out whatever's down there, and pulled up any reachable bits, but to no avail. I'm afraid we'll have to call in a maintenance request, which I super don't want to do when they haven't reinspected the apartment.

Even though we've literally never, in the three years we've been here, had to request maintenance for anything.

-

Alex bought some Space Bags, which I genuinely only remember from late-night infomercials. But they definitely condensed our extensive collection of blankets down! More stuff fits up on the overhead closet shelf now, which is nice.

-

We went and saw Candyman (the new one.) I really liked it! I am definitely glad we just watched the original, because there are references to it that I would have missed. While the new film does try to give the basic summary of the key events, I could see some of it being easy to miss or be confused by if you hadn't seen the original, or didn't remember it well.

I've seen that opinions on the movie seem divisive. I'm not completely sure why (though I did see at least a couple dipshitty whinges about it being "too political". Eyeroll.)

Though for me, revenge narratives are among my favorites. Say what you want about that being an unhealthy thing or whatever, (revenge is ~problematic~), but revenge is absolutely my cathartic narrative arc, so maybe it isn't surprising that this is one of the classic slasher-y horror movie villains that appeals to me most.

I felt a bit conflicted about one of the characters. He serves as a provider of exposition, and moving the protagonist along throughout... and then has a character twist that I wasn't sure I was completely sold on. But it didn't bother me enough to detract from my experience.

I thought the ending animation was fantastic.

I loved that several of the original actors got to reprise their roles - most notably Tony Todd, but also Vanessa Williams, and Virginia Madsen in a voice role.

-

I hadn't seen the trailer for Last Night in Soho yet, but I did before Candyman, now I'm hyped to see it. I try not to get hyped about stuff, but... I am.

-

Have to get up extra early to go take care of Raven tomorrow. Alex has a doctor's appointment after he drops me off at work, so he won't be able to swing by to do it after.