"I'm needed elsewhere, but I'll find you, Kitt. When this is over, I'll find you, all right?"
"Don't leave," he whispered, and his hand flailed, reaching for her. "You and I . . . we need to stay together. We're better this way."
[...]
She laced their fingers together, holding him steady, [...] She smiled, but her eyes were burning. [...] "I'll find you," she whispered and kissed his knuckles. He tasted like salt and blood.
I fear this is going to be a review in contradictions.
Divine Rivalsis, at its core, a magical love story set in alt-Blitz Era Britain with Hades and Persephone-esque gods fuelling the war, and ultimately the narrative. The book starts by introducing us to Iris and Roman, two rival reporters working at the Oath Gazette (London Gazette, if we're being comparative) who spend their time vying for the best articles whilst the war rages on beyond the city, and generally hissing and clawing at each other at any available opportunity. Their relationship is antagonistic, often cuttingly playful, and routinely pleasingly petty - Iris pathologically moving the precisely placed items on Roman's desk to watch him twitch is a thing of spiteful beauty - but dare I say they're written a tad... surface level?
Incomplete?
It's not hard to like these two characters: Iris, your classic YA heroine with enough bite and moxie to set her somewhat apart from the snowflake women of the genre (I hate the term "snowflake" when applied to neurodivergence but in the case of character types, it's a nail/head situation), and Roman, the curmudgeonly simp, who you know was bending the knee at her feet in his mind the moment they met, even as he purposely vexed her. Classic, see? So, while they aren't new character types, I did enjoy spending time with them, especially together (which isn't a hell of a lot, tbh), but I don't think Rebecca Ross quite fleshed them out well enough. A pleasant character is just that: easy to read, to be with, to expect very little from, which is unfortunately how I felt about these two for most of the book, and is fast becoming a common complaint I'm garnering whenever I dip into the YA genre. Perhaps this is a "me" thing, or maybe my crone status is barring entry to anyone without peak level of personality, but for me to truly invest in characters, they have to possess qualities I want to sink my teeth into. Be it their rage, their unwavering optimism, their humour, their spite, I want to feel as though I won't survive without devouring it one savouring bite at time. I have to crave it, and much to my chagrin, I just didn't with Iris and Roman. They felt pleasant enough to be with, and I rooted for them the whole way through (supinely from the depths of my pit, aka. Bedfordshire), but I wasn't clambering to turn the next page or finding excuses to escape reality to return to them. Each day I would sit outside (highly recommend outside reading) and read fifty pages, or thereabouts, and be entirely content. And that might be the high score, triple point word of my experience: content. I was content to be inside the story. I was content to watch Iris and Roman fall in love. I was content to turn the last page.
And that's simply not enough for me.
(There are exceptions, but they're rare and immaculately done)
I'm in no way saying I want or even need to be adrenalised by every story I read, I'm not sure I could even cope with that level of intensity, but there does need to be some level of urgency, a lizard brain desire to not drift away from the page and stroke my cat's off limits ears instead (he's a mean, mean furry man). If I'm choosing guaranteed blood loss and potentially fatal hand injuries in lieu of following the story, there's something vital missing; evidenced harshly by the fact that I flagged only five places in the entire book, a sight rarely seen in my library.
But is that the full story? Is that the sum of my enjoyment?
Not even slightly, because there are moments of pure joy to be experienced within the pages of this story, moments I do feel the need to return to for a second glance, most of which occurred within Iris and Roman's magically delivered letters to each other.
It's no secret that I loveepistolary fiction, and specifically epistolary romance. If you even hint at the possibility of two or more characters corresponding through letters/telegrams/txts/emails, I morph into one of the seagulls from Finding Nemo until those worded crumbs are slip-sliding their way down my frantic gullet. There's something inherently personal about this form of communication, a secret story playing out between two people that no one else is privy to. Unless, that is, you're a reader, who can take a seat in the rafters and openly snoop over the shoulder of the secret-sharers in question to peruse at leisure. It's a seat of privilege and immense power, and one I'll park my butt in any time it's offered, just as I did with Divine Rivals. It's where I watched Iris and Roman fall in love, from my lofty perch, safe from the action but fully invested in its trajectory. It's where I felt their connection the most acutely, more so than their begrudging interactions face to face, before and after their inevitable coupling. It's one of the reasons I kept coming back day after day for those fifty pages, to learn something new that they wouldn't/couldn't say out loud; but I'm wondering now if that's a problem. While I love a connection formed through correspondence, it can't be the only place that attachment lives; it'll die there, away from the light with no sun to nourish it, to help it thrive. At some point it has to move beyond the page, and while it did for these two, while they did bridge the gap between page and person, I can't help but feel I loved them best in their words, rather than in their actions.
Which begs the question: Is this why I couldn't fully connect? Is this why Iris and Roman's love story felt swift and begging for depth? Maybe so, but it also might've been the stage the story was set upon.
As I mentioned above, Divine Rivals is set in an alternative Britain during WWII with a little gods-spice sprinkled in, and the Britishness is inarguably apparent from the first page. Oath, the city we begin in, Roman and Iris' home and workplace, is very clearly London in the nineteen forties during the Blitz. From the clothes people are wearing, the architecture, the "keep calm and carry on" attitude, and most importantly the endless cups of tea, there's no question that Rebecca Ross took her influence from good old Blighty (I'm pretty sure there's even a place called Albion within the story, but I can't be one hundred percent sure... and also can't be arsed to look), and honestly, it's an incredibly attractive bit of world-building. I'm not usually very drawn to stories set within the war - too bleak, too close to home, but the appeal of Britain in the forties can't be denied: the clothes, the hair, the music, etc. It's a veritable feast of aesthetics, and when melded with fantasy the appeal only grows. The vision of flying, dragon-like creatures in place of B-29s sweeping across the skyline, dropping bombs on jumpsuit-clothed soldiers and civilians is equal parts enthralling and terrifying, and written with such tactile clarity.
I'm no author, so I can't testify to the "how" of creating worlds with words and making them seem inescapably real, but there's no argument that Ross' alt-Britain does exactly that. I can picture Oath in great clarity, it's almost tactile in its delivery, sensory to the point that I can hear the stern clacking of typewriter keys in the smoke-fogged bullpen of the Oath Gazette; breathe in the wind-delivered scent of the wild, open meadows of Avalon Bluff; and feel the caress of steam curling around ink stained fingers from a freshly brewed cup of English tea. There's honest to the gods magic in this style of writing and the immersive experience it provides a reader, but I am wondering if these things are so innately known to me because I am British (Scottish, specifically), born and raised, it's my homeland, my stomping ground, my soil.
I know exactly the way the birds sound in every season, I can taste in the air the exact moment Autumn is coming, I know - without being told - that the teabag goes in first, then water, then you brutalise the bag until the water turns pleasingly sinister, discard the leafy cadaver, and add milk. And never, and I mean never, microwave it - you get thrown out of the country for such blasphemy.
These things are more than facts, they're womb-learned truths, and I feel a little as though Rebecca Ross cashed in on those tenets of my culture but couldn't leave herself behind enough to fully embrace them.
It's not lost on me that the world of Divine Rivals is inspired by Britain, not a carbon copy with fantasy laid over it, but it is distinctly Britain set, and I couldn't help but be endlessly bothered by the numerous Americanisms sprinkled throughout the story (pickles atop sandwiches is not a thing we traditionally do) and an overriding tone of the States creeping in at the edges of every scene. This might not be a "thing" for everybody, but almost exclusively, I can tell whether a book written about Britain (even alt-Britain) is written by someone who isn't native. Call it instinct, call it being a pernickety brat, it doesn't matter because I always know, and it always bothers me. If you're going to write about someone else's culture, then you should really fully immerse yourself in it, because if I can tell? If I can sniff out the otherness? You haven't successfully built your tribute to my country and my brattish nature will make note of it.
However!
This is where it gets tricky: did Rebecca Ross do this on purpose to set her "Britain" apart? Are these rogue Americanisms supposed to blend the two cultures together to birth a new one?
If so? Sorry, it didn't work.
When the scales are tipped so exclusively towards the smaller of the two islands, throwing in cultural misplacements only shines a high beam on the ocean between them, and the result is a legion of Brits twitching every time something feels just a little bit off.
Did this ruin my experience, though? No, it didn't, but I wish the distraction hadn't been there at all because then maybe I could've spent more time connecting with the story instead of rewriting its anachronisms with the pedantic rage pen that lives in my head - blood red ink, of course. A pen I unfortunately also aimed towards the pacing of the story, which was abrasive in its impermanence and failed to provide the story the depth I was so desperately searching for. The first few chapters of the story we scuttle from Iris' flat to the newsroom, barely able to catch our breaths to take in enough of Oath's surroundings to fully embrace the city, when all of a sudden we're in the verdancy of England's Albion Bluff's countryside and cross crawling through the muddy trenches of Enva's army. It's a shock to the system and doesn't provide the story the stability it gravely needs to firm its footing in the reader's mind. Which sounds contradictory after waxing lyrical over Ross' ability to stir the senses of the reader with her world building, but I did say this review would be one of contradictions. And here's another one: there is a place where the story does feel entirely at home, and that's within the walls of Marisol's B&B (I refuse to write B and B, it made me ragey every time I had to read it in the story) in the village of Albion Bluff.
If you asked me to tell you the colour of the wallpaper, or the shape of the kettle, or the creak of the stairs, I truly feel as if I could, even without those details necessarily being present in the book because this temporary home for our lead characters is somehow a living thing in my mind. Maybe because I've been inside such places, or perhaps because Ross has that magical ability to dress a scene, either way, the time we spent with Iris, Roman, Attie (love Attie, more Attie, please), and Marisol within the welcoming walls of the B&B was, I felt, the most realised period in the story. Days and days of working in the garden, typing articles at the research-covered kitchen table, eating dinner together by candlelight every night after tending to wounded soldiers in the infirmary - it's almost halcyon, dreamy.
The final few chapters of the book are, arguably, the ones filled with the most action and story progression, chapters I found myself turning the pages more swiftly for, willing my eyes not to stray ahead, not to spoil any potential surprises. Those final, desperate moments were riveting, but in a way that also managed to remain quite measured and, even, placid; Divine Rivals is quite a temperate book. And while it may jump too swiftly for my liking from place to place, and doesn't delve deep enough into its characters and the development of the romance between Iris and Roman, it is consistent in its steady rhythm, something I found deeply welcoming. There is something to be said for the cosy fantasies of the literary world; some will write them off as too gentle, not challenging enough, but in actuality they are an unassuming gift within the Fantasy genre, a sojourn for the weary reader who's traversed the harsher lands and are in desperate need of some R&R to rest their battle hewn bones.
That's what this story is to me, despite all my quibbles and desire for it to be just a little bit more, I'm not sure I would change it all that much if it meant losing the full, gracious breaths it let me take as I ambled happily behind Roman and Iris as their story unfurled, one letter at a time.
He is mine, she thought, the words a pleasant shock to her soul. I am his.
[...]
I am his. [...] And he is mine.
Just one thing, however:
WHERE THE FUCK IS LILAC?
I SWEAR TO THE GODS, IF THAT KITTEN IS NOT SAFE IN ATTIE'S ARMS I'M GONNA START BREAKING THINGS!
IMPORTANT THINGS.
BOOK THINGS.
...
I would never, but gah! Why must authors torture me with the animals. Why?!
I wanted only one thing from the You finale, one measly thing, and that was for it to make me laugh.
...
Swearwolves, I laughed my ass off.
I think I say this with every season I review, but You is one of those shows that took me completely by surprise. I’d, of course, seen it on Netflix when it first dropped, and wasn’t exactly deaf to the rising clamour of Joe devotees making themselves known in their derangement, but it still wasn’t exactly peaking my interest.
I watched it on a whim, to be honest, a last ditch effort to find something to occupy my brain after exhausting my ephemeral TBW list. It was supposed to be filler, McDonald’s for the brain, not something I’d become completely smitten with. Which, to be fair, didn’t happen until season two.
If I was going to say anything to a new watcher, it would be to get through the show’s freshman debut - which is good but not entirely mired in Joe’s unhinged archness quite yet - so they can reach the good stuff. The really fucked up stuff. To the very heart of Joe “throws up when he murders people” Goldberg.
Season two’s when things really start to get wild, and the descent into madness in the subsequent seasons is kind of bewildering to watch in an epically funny, kicking my heels, kind of way.
Let’s just say we’ve seen some things, we’ve been through some stuff with the show’s protagonist poster child for misogyny masquerading as feminism, and it’s been a hell of a ride. But I kind of expected the last season to bomb a bit; not a total crash out but there was no way it could live up to previous seasons (three and four are my personal faves), no way they could possibly end it without flubbing it. Which is both true and untrue of what happened. I went into this final season with no preconceived idea of what I actually wanted to occur. I was undecided if I wanted Joe to get away with his crimes (because come on, the villain winning is rarely done and it’d be a nice change of pace), or to go out in a blaze of glory, or for all the women he left behind to converge on him like a Final Girl free for all at the chauvinist buffet. Honestly, all of those options had their appeal, I would’ve been happy with any of them concluding Joe’s story.
What I wasn’t expecting was for the finale to begin with Joe doing his normal shtick: see women, get obsessed, stalk and manipulate, murder a few loved ones, gaslight woman into loving him, reveal true nature, woman gets the ick, Joe does some more gaslighting to convince woman his urges are for her own benefit, puts her in the cage, moves onto the next woman and murders former flame in the name new love.
It’s the basic plot of every season, and I was hoping we wouldn’t go there this time, that maybe the writers would change it up for Joe’s final hurrah and they’d instead delve deep into his psycophathy, to not hold him accountable, necessarily, but let us see with clarity how monstrous he is and always was. But, alas, they stuck to murder boyfriend’s usual routine and it was… fine. A little rote. Irksome. But watching Joe do his stuff is never boring, I’ll give the showrunners that, and it did become apparent in the end why they chose to do it this way, how it was driving the story to its conclusion and in a satisfying twist, putting in back in the rightful voice of the story, of women.
I did enjoy the fuck out of that, even with how messy and somewhat lacklustre a journey it was to get there. Joe’s story should always have been taken from him and flipped to the voices of the women he abused, that's a no-brainer that many shows choose to ignore, so major props for actually going there and it not feeling like a pandering pat on the head.
I just wish they’d done this storyline with Kate, the woman he married, instead of bringing in the new, shiny ingénue for him to play with. Watching him go toe to toe with Kate, a real opponent who knew his darkness intimately would’ve been pretty spectacular to watch; having to learn yet another woman, and experience her struggle was on the side of narratively insulting.
But.
And this is a big but.
Those last two episodes?
Incredible. Ridiculous. So much fucking fun.
A masterful way to end the show.
I’m fairly certain I didn’t breathe for the entirety of those two episodes, and I watched them back to back. ... I'm lucky I'm not comatose, but the lung paralysis was totally worth it because the double feature dénouement of season really saved the show for me. More than saved it, the finale(s) were You at its finest and then some; watching Joe’s world fall entirely apart and finally seeing him at his most explicitly predatory was nothing short of riveting, electrifying and goddamn, Penn Badgley absolutely crushed it.
This man... I've always liked him, he and Leighton Meester were the best things in GG, and though the only thing I've watched of his since his stint as Dan Humphrey is Easy A (Woodchuck Todd is peak movie boyfriend representation), I've always meant to watch more (Greetings from Tim Buckley, specifically), because he's damn appealing. He's got that thing. That boy next door thing. That non-threatening, book boyfriend thing. Which is what makes him so perfect for Joe, how he can have the audience rooting for him even as murders yet another woman. He's the nice guy Patrick Bateman. He's Holden Caulfield if he wasn't such a fucking twat. He's the dream guy who says all the right things, does all the right things, and makes your life better with him in it.
He's the perfect lure, so perfect that even he believes his own bullshit, and as he imprisons you in his glass case of multiple misogyny murder, you'll almost be thanking him.
...
It's insane, and Badgley's so good at it.
I'm gonna miss this freak, he's brought me so much amoral joy.
This isn't going to be the month of me saying intelligible things when it comes to the things I like. It's just not that month. I don't have the brain function.
So, I'm just going to oooh and aaaah over the mastery of light and texture in Amita Sevellaraja's work.
There’s camp and then there’s Interview with the Vampirewhen it comes to histrionics in the bloodsucking genre.
I hadn’t seen Interview since I was a teenager, and it made a fairly bad impression on me then, not helped by reading its original source a decade of so after, which is purple prose at its most grandiloquent - I am quite violet-shaded myself.
It’s an overwrought but inarguably gorgeous production that doesn’t explore Louis and Lestat’s inherent queerness or trauma of dying young and staying pretty, and instead flounces and flails in some sort of manic waltz between two men (and actors - Pitt and Cruise apparently could stand each other) who clearly wish the other to die a swift, flame-licked death but ultimately can’t live without each other. All whilst emotionally traumatising their adopted, short stack vamp child who outshines them in every fucking scene.
Genuinely, Pitt and Cruise should be embarrassed with the way preteen Kirsten Dunst acts like a fucking thespian in every scene, saving the entire movie from their theatre school melodrama.
How she didn’t get an Oscar for this, I have no idea; she’s fucking magnificent. But even her tiny tot abilities doesn’t counteract this shitshow if a movie. Not even Christian Slater’s slutty little outfit couldn’t do that.
And you accuse me of being too harsh, because while the Pitt mostly pouts and sadboi’s his way through the movie (he’s such a bad Louis, it’s cringeworthy), Cruise at least tries to embody Lestat’s clear psychosis and flare for the dramatic. He really does put his full ass into it, and that final scene is pretty spectacular, it still falls short of the book, and now, the tv show.
Now, that is how you tell Loustat’s story: with depth, by exploring the culture and racial/queer climate of the twentieth century, with the full spectrum of emotion and by casting actors who just embody these characters, the way Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, and the rest of the cast do.
That’s how you get someone who actively hated a story to devote their entire personality to it.
Like me.
I am such a simp for Rolin's production, give me season three or give me death.
*tries to calculate how long it'll be before I get to watch these depraved cinnamon rolls once again*
...
.............................................
Plant swing:
By some stroke of the divine (Persephone? That you?), after absolutely massacring my Pink Princess Philodendron last year (a birthday gift from the siblings), I’ve managed to not only keep this Philodendron Brasil (a second attempt b-day gift from the sibs) alive, but the pretty little bitch is thriving.
Look at those tendrils!
I don’t know what she’s reaching for, but P the Second was in desperate need of a perch to trail from, and this hanging shelf from CaisleyCo fit the bill perfectly.
...
The time is fast approaching, however, for the longest tendril to get the snip for propagation, and I am afeard.
Ps. My favourite aspect of the Brasil other than it being pretty? It purges itself of unneeded water.
It's called guttation; so, if I accidentally overwater it (highly likely, I either ignore or drench), this smart, variegated cookie will be like, "Hey human, don't sweat it, I've got this."
...
This is the dream for plant owners who have no fucking clue what they're doing.
If you are in any way depressed, suffering from SAD, anxiety-ridden, over-stimulated, simply in need of endorphins, I beseech you to follow Tweedy & Fluff, they're the sweetest scraps of fabric in the known universe.
The Fisher brothers never gave Belly a wall, did they?
They never took her on a romantic boating adventure.
They never named their restaurant after her family's fatally burned down one after being broken up for over a decade.
THESE LITTLE SHITS NEVER TOLD DAWSON LEERY TO GO FUCK HIMSELF BECAUSE YOU CAN’T CALL DIBS ON GIRLS HUMANS, YOU REPUGNANT JELLY MOULD OF A "MAN"!
...
That last one might be the most important one of all, to be honest.
Pacey Witter is the book boyfriend standard, he's the Lloyd Dobler of the 90s, he'll never go out of style, and future generations should be made aware of this.
Look at this guy, he's perfect:
I did realise a few things with this rewatch, though, things I probably should’ve known before:
🛶 Joey’s awful unless she's with Pacey, why did I ever like this Dawson apologist?
I wonder what it’s like to have written/drawn a manga so perfect that the animators adapting it didn’t change a thing.
Not a panel, not a facial expression, not a single hangry outburst of Laios’ when he encounters yet another monster from his Things I Want To Eat Before the Dungeon Finishes Me Off bucket list.
That’s gotta feel pretty epic, right? Like finding the Red Dragon, killing it, and having your “I hope it tastes like steak” dreams come true.
To be fair, I can do that last one, it's just that I'm at the age where my bones are crunchy (happens way sooner than you think; jfc!) and everything hurts, so that position might actually break my neck.
I’m not a True Crime person, people are scary enough without me knowing the intricacies of their depravity, so it’s a hard pass from me. But if I am going to watch the scum of the earth, I prefer to do it in docudrama form so there’s a degree of bombastic unreality to it. I need that level of separation to save me from absolutely losing my mind and going outside even less (vitamin D’s vital and I live in Scotland, you do the maths). So, when this popped up on Netflix…
...
I gave up writing this halfway through, not because it isn’t a good show but because I really don’t have much to say other than I love Kaitlyn Dever and she was so unbelievably fantastic at being a hateful monsters in this, it should’ve been four episodes instead of eight, wellness culture is really fucking dangerous - listen to your doctors.
That’s it, that’s all I’ve got.
I might rewatch it at some point, see if it improves with a second viewing.
Or just watch Booksmart for the hundredth time instead?
Yeah, I like that option better.
Kismet fact: This showed up on tv a few days after me writing this, so I have, in fact, followed through on injecting this feral movie into my brainpan, once again.
I haven't actually seen Magnolia, which both outrages people for some reason and confuses them because I've watched basically every other Tom Cruise movie (not because I like him, or he's a great actor or anything, the weirdo just makes great movies due to an obvious pact with some lower level demon because there's no other explanation for this block of janky wood's success), and to have missed Magnolia is apparently sacrilegious.
It can't be that good, surely?
Anyway, SO, I don't know what the frog rain means exactly - really intrigued, though... but I love it. I want it. I need it on my wall.
It’s what every “whacky” family based rom com wants to be but simply cannot because they don’t have Cher being a curly haired goddess and also they’re not funny, not like this, not with Nic Cage’s weird timing and acting tics and Cher telling him to “Snap out of it!” after he tells her he loves her.
It’s iconic, it’s rom com gold, it’s a line I might have to now use against people when they’re being complete dum dums.
Thanks, Cher, now I can hero worship you in two movies.
…
If you don’t know the second, then go educate your brain by watching Mermaids.
Rachel Flax could ruin my life any time she wanted.
1. Is it collectively accepted in horror movies that no one has seen a classic summoning movie? Is this simply a sub-genre that doesn't exist in horror movies themselves? Because come on, it's survival 101: don't touch the ouija board, unless you want to die a horrible, bloody death.
2. Paging, Father Andrew Kiernan, there's a possession in the room AND YOU'RE DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT IT.
(If you get this deep cut reference, you have my utmost respect)
3. I'm getting Rosemary's Baby vibes, and I don't dislike it.
4. Did the whole cast get awards for this? Because holy shit, Toni Collette was acting her ass off. ... Or, head.
5. I think I might be broken because this didn't scare me at all. Not even a tiny bit. Not even when the nudists showed up.
At first I thought this was too quiet a movie for the subject matter, but in hindsight it’s actually the perfect tempo to portray the quiet slog of two investigative reporters searching for justice for the women Weinstein assaulted.
It’s not verbose, bombastic, or salacious, instead taking its time to set a pace that felt highly driven forward but not barrelling towards a conclusion. It’s precise and methodical, involving and inexplicably watchable, but perhaps fell short in delving into the sexual corruption of the film industry and the devastating effects it has longterm on women's welfare.
Does it perhaps make me uncomfortable that said industry that hid Weinstein’s crimes and paid vulnerable women to keep quiet about them is the same industry making money from their story by filming this movie? Yes.
And as far as I can tell used none of its profits to donate to any #MeToo charities, which is fucking abominable, to be frank.
Annnnd I just found out this was made by Brad Pitt's production company, a man who's been accused of multiple assault allegations by his family. ... Accused isn't guilty, but urgh, that doesn't sit right, not at all.
Overall, I'm glad this movie got made, and that it is a movie because the reach of the film industry is so vast, and people are much more likely to watch this story than read it, and it's a story that needs to be told in detail. But it definitely should've been funded by someone else, and definitely should've used its success to provide financial aid to women still being subjected to this kind of debased torment.
Straight off, my knowledge of what happened to Amy Winehouse, aside from what little I paid attention to in the media when I wasn't simply listening to her fucking incredible vocals, is minuscule. I know she was special, damaged, a vulnerable person who wasn't shown enough care. A once in a lifetime talent who died tragically, but as far as the details? Consider me a blank page. So, going into this biopic, I had no preconceived idea of how it should play out other than her swift rise to fame and her too soon disappearance from both the music scene and the planet, but even without that knowledge, there was something really soulless about this depiction of her life.
Sam Taylor-Johnson is without question, a beautiful director. I love Nowhere Boy, faults and all (it did take a fair few liberties with Lennon's life and her relationship with Aaron Taylor-Johnson was completely fucked up, a total abuse of power), but there's no denying that it's gorgeous and everyone in it is spectacular, but the difference in emotional richness between Nowhere Boy and Back to Black is stark, to say the least. The casting is... okay. Marisa Abela does her best but she feels like a prettied up version of Amy's struggles; Jack O'Connell... well, I don't really remember Blake Fielder-Civil, other than seeing him and Amy together in the paparazzi, so I don't know whether O'Connell did a good job or not, but it felt sort of hackneyed, a caricature, and from what I can tell, a kinder version of his character. And as for the rest of the cast: Eddie Marsan's always a powerhouse, Lesley Manville, as well, but their roles in the movie were almost cursory, with the plot very heavily focused on the romance between Amy and Blake, instead. Which felt diminishing - even if it did bore her most iconic album, the eponymous Back to Black - to boil her down to a begging puppy, instead of highlighting her immense talent.
Amy Winehouse was an unforgettable part of musical history, iconic and irreplaceable, and this felt like the manic pixie dream girl version of her time on earth. Which, in my opinion, is unforgivable.
You don't have laud her, you don't have to erase her mistakes, but for the love of good filmmaking, tell the fucking story, don't sugarcoat it.
Ps. If you want something that's actually honouring her legacy, look no further than the Amy Winehouse Foundation.
I picked this book up on the fourth of April, proceeded to read a total of fifty pages over three days in thirty minute bursts (I'm a pretty fast reader, so you can tell this was killing me), and then finally had to DNF before I collapsed from the fatal reader syndrome known as The Ughness.
...
Fast forward to the thirteenth of April and one Urban Fantasy, one YA Fantasy, one Cosy Fantasy short, one Manga, and nine Romances later, I had the self-flagellating thought of "Fuck it, why don't I give A Deadly Education another shot? Let's see if I can disintegrate a few more essential neurones from sheer, unadulterated rage because who doesn't love a little bit of mid-month hate-reading to turn the soothed beast into a savage as fuck one?"
Apparently not me because down I went, angrily stomping my way back into the literary bowels of word-heavy, dialogue-barren hell. Kicking skulls and spitting curses as I went "merrily" along to the tune of Hell by The Tiger Lillies, fully expecting to rage quit again after ten pages - minimum.
And here's the thing, though: I still fucking hated it.
But I kept reading.
And reading.
And then I was reading.
Actively making sure I could plop myself down outside in the sunshine and the warm (we're having summer in May in Scotland, so June through August is totally going to suck; it's tradition) to get those fifty pages in. And not so I could prove I could finish it, or scratch that itch in my brain that can't let things go (DNF is a dirty word in my finicky vocab), but because somehow, through some inexplicable force of unholy, authorial evil that Naomi Novik apparently has unlimited access to, I swiftly started to enjoy myself. I began to crave the endless pages of info dump, stream of consciousness, diary entry, shaggy dog storytelling that with every word felt as though my eyes were going to drip like ichor out of my head.
Reading A Deadly Education is like being neurodivergent and having to socialise while you have a migraine: if you just keep your head really still, and kinda sink your eyes to half-mast so the evil light can't quite penetrate the hotbox of searing agony your skull has become, you can survive the interaction without begging the next person to disturb the air around you to clean your clock.
In other words, it's fucking abysmal.
And I loved every hateful second - we don't talk about the first fifty pages. We just don't.
A Deadly Educationis my real life enemies-to-lovers. It's the literary form of "do I hate them or are they just so hot I feel an intense desire to kick them into the sun?" It's my Roman Empire, it's the book I'll still be thinking about when I'm a fully licensed crone, ancient and withered, no closer to understanding what the hell I just read, or how I go about exactly recreating it.
I hate this book.
I hate it.
And I love it so fucking much.
And I don't know why! I don't know how I got here, I don't know which prince of hell wormed its way into my brain and called "Bingo!" on my turn for a literary spanking. I can't explain it. But it's real, it's happened, I'm living it, and I'm equal parts furious, bewildered, unhinged, and bloody delighted about it.
I. Love. This. Book so much I’m unwell with it.
I love its world building, which is, in a word, extravagant.
I know there's a whole cult of HP apologists who think the TERF of Castle Black Mould invented the magic school trope but Princess Putrescence did, in fact, not. It existed hundreds of years before - think Mediaeval and you're hitting origination, when oral folklore was today's Kindle app; at least until its bound and printed progeny became the norm for human consumption. I could list a whole bunch of them for you. In fact, I will:
Go fetch, make merry, you'll have a grand old wizarding time, I promise.
But make sure to add A Deadly Education to the top of your magic schools tour, because it's insanely detail-orientated in its architecture and genuinely bonkers in its interior. Let me sum it up for you:
The Scholomance is a cog-turned, ferris wheel, cylinder of a school suspended in a monster-infested void with all the regular amenities (dorms, cafeteria, library, classrooms, etc.) but with a side order of student-hungry critters (known as maleficaria; mals for short) dropping from the ceiling or trying to chomp your hands off when you reach for a most likely poisoned bowl of Rice Pudding at any given meal time. There are no teachers but strict rules if you want to survive; the students are murderous and power hungry; alliances are encouraged but with elitism running rampant, if you're not already powerful, you're gonna get got; mana (magic) comes at a cost (pushups and crocheting?), malia (dark magic) comes from energy sucking your fellow sorcerers and will inevitably kill you, and if you run out of either you're truly fucked. And if you survive all that, you're treated to a final exam of being dumped into the Graduation Hall where a swarm of slavering monsters - who've been waiting since last year's graduate party - lie in wait to gobble you up like the succulent little teenage feast on legs you are.
Only a select number survive the hungry hippo horde and return home, usually those rich in mana or malia, but let's just say, the graduating classes of the Scholomance err on the side of... diminution.
...
Sorry, just panting like a fucking lunatic over how goddamn mouth-watering that world-building is (I haven't been this excited over fictitious architecture since Gideon the Ninth). Like, is Novik kidding? Did she magically tap into every arcane academic desire I've ever had and plop it down on the page just because she could? How is this even possible?
And was it just me or did it feel like she was taking the piss out of HP the entire time? As if she was whisper-yelling to Joanne, "Look! Look what I did! And I did it without being a festering wound on the earth's crust, geysering an endless spew of vitriolic nonsense! See! It can be done, you malignant wet rot of a human!" Did anyone else get that? Because I was friggin' delighted the entire time by it, happy dancing and "fuck yeah"ing with every pointed slight, and in my opinion, improvement on the whole magic school trope.
It's so bloody satisfying to finally read an occult institution that is both fascinating in its magic system...
Words can't describe how much I hate crochet. I'd gladly do a thousand push-ups over a single line. I forced myself to learn because it's a classic mana-building option for school: all you need to bring is one tiny lightweight hook. The standard-issue blankets are made of wool that you can unpick and put back together, no other materials required. But I'm horrible at it. I forget where I am in the pattern, how many stitches I've done, which kind of stitch I'm on, what I'm trying to make, why I haven't stabbed out my own eyes with a hook yet. It's brilliant for building a truly frothing head of rage after I've undone the last hundred stitches for the ninth time. But as a result, I do get a decent bit of mana out of it.
It took me almost an hour of mana spilling out of the crystal before it grudgingly started to store again. My teeth were already clenched with fury by then, with a new addition of lurking anxiety: was I starting to turn evil? Yes, now I was worrying I'd be turned to the dark side by too much crochet. That would be so stupid it seemed almost likely.
...and well thought out in its architecture, but also takes no prisoners when it comes to the peril of the student body. Literally. The extent to which this book lives up to the "Deadly" in its title is... it's beyond. That's the only way I can think to put it. It did the thing, the writing on the tin was entirely accurate. This is a magic school that will kill the fuck out of you and then walk over your desiccating corpse to make it to class on time, perhaps pausing briefly to fleece your remains for whatever can be traded to other students. It's kill or be killed in the Scholomance, and no one knows that better than the protagonist, Galadriel "El" Higgins - isn't her name just perfect?
She's an absolute nightmare; a grumpy, sullen, bitter, wrathful, petulant, petty, out for herself, complete and utter asshole with no social skills and no desire to learn any, and I completely adore her. If, like myself, you are just so done with reading main characters (specifically in Fantasy and YA/NA) that are beige-r than beige, inherently good but curse and glare a lot, only special because the author tells you they are without backing it up with personality, and every supporting character they sniff at wants to put a ring on it, then El is the curmudgeonly antidote you're looking for. From the very first page she's complaining, telling Orion, the "hero" of the book, to fuck off after he saves her life; sniping and snarling at passersby. She's like a honey badger that's been dropped in a puddle of capybaras - the twain simply doth not mix. And she's not shy about showing her distain; a side character at one point describes being around her akin to that feeling when you know it's going to rain: the sun's gone and those dark, foreboding clouds start crowding in, the pressure drops and a muggy closeness pervades. The joy gets sucked out of the atmosphere.
That's El. She's a joy-sucker.
And she has her reasons, having had a fairly fucked life where everyone hates her on sight and mals trying to kill her since infancy because of her immense power source; she's not exactly lacking in the complaints department. She has every right to be a tad misanthropic, but I think she'd be like this even if she'd lived the Brady Bunch experience. She's my little ray of fuck you-shine, a seething ball of cantankerous spite, and I'm so glad Novik wrote her this way.
And gave her Orion Lake to be the light to her very fucking dark.
"You know, it's almost impressive," [Orion[ said after a moment, sounding less wobbly. "You're nearly dead and you're still the rudest person I've ever met. You're welcome [for saving your life] again, by the way."
"Given that you're at least half responsible for this situation, I refuse to thank you."
How do you explain Orion Lake? In five words: Human. Labrador. Himbo. Freak. Boy.
At first I thought he was a pretty straightforward character type, your classic hero: pure of heart, broad of chest, dumb of heart. He's your resident lifeguard saving students from the jaws of the monster pool, beloved by everyone, destined to save the world! ... All of those things are true. BUT. Ohhhh but, this little freak, this little monster-slaying weirdo is actually just as antisocial as El, more so, even. He's the kid who likes to pull the wings off bugs and smash their fragile little bodies with rocks for fun. He's not insane, he's not dangerous, he just really loves killing monsters. Not for accolades, not because he's strong as hell, and not to get the girl, but because monster killing is fun, fun, fun! He's the antisocial version of Laios from Delicious and Dungeon: a big, unobservant himbo with a knack for maleficaria murder but absolutely no sense whatsoever. His self-preservation levels are nil. This boy's not going to get himself KOed by a monster, he's going to trip down the stairs and break his neck because something squiggly squirmed by.
I started shouting like a madwoman, "Orion, get over here! Orion! Orion Lake, that means you, you tragic blob of unsteamed pudding, we're going. Orion!" and if you think that should've been enough, when he was literally two feet away from me at the time, I agree with you profoundly, except it wasn't. He didn't even have the excuse that he was in the middle of a hard fight, because actually he had just cleared another temporary ring [of monsters] around himself and was just crouched and waiting.
He’s the perfect antithesis to every dreamboat, broods too much, navel gazing, monosyllabic fuckboi the genre’s been subjected to since Heathcliff and Angel Clare entered the chat. He’s the weirdo I’ve been waiting for, and just like El, I fucking love him.
And I don't know what the hell I'm going to do about it, because I finished this book two weeks ago and I'm still thinking about them. About the Scholomance. About what happens next and how much pain it's going to cause me to read (while I simultaneously laugh my stupid ass off because this book is funny), and how I'll love every freaking second of it.
...
This book has made me unstable, and I don't think the quack gives out prescriptions for literary-induced mania. ... They should, though, right? I feel like that might fix me.
…
Anyway... 'Scuse me, got book two to read and a bushel of sanity to find.
And realising the fight scenes are just as good as I thought they were.
I love this movie, very much, the whole trilogy, in fact, and when they first came out and I watched Matt Damon whale on an assassin with a hardback, it seemed like the coolest thing. The best fight scenes I’d ever seen, and that hasn't changed, not even a tiny bit.
And I think that's because of the close range combat style they used (Eskrima; a Filipino martial art), plus how intimately they shot it. There are no aerial shots in TheBournetrilogy, no zooming out, instead you are so close to the action that it one hundred percent feels like Jason Bourne could reach out and punch you in throat.
Now, that, is why these movies hold up after two decades - plus the story, which is the closest America's ever gotten to their own Bond - and why they've influence basically every action movie's fight style since. Just look at the John Wick movies. They're messier, and way less believable (Keanu must be some kind of immortal because nobody survives that level of getting fucked up), but the proximity undoubtedly calls back.
Plus, and I won't be contradicted on this, The Bourne Trilogy has the best car chases ever filmed.
It's the truth.
Real badasses burn rubber in original Mini Coopers.
It's been there since I read the book (which you should do, it's wonderful), grew in intensity when I saw the movie for the first time, and has reached cacophonous levels all these years later with this rewatch.
...
Fucking.
Briony.
This is what cinematic pain looks like, and it hurts so damn good.
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