[Spoilers, spoilers everywhere, and not a drop of shame]
I am a daughter of Lethe, and the wolf is at the door.
I don't know how to behave after reading this.
It's as if I've been slapped awake; the boundary between the dreaming world and the waking world irrevocably blurred, and Leigh Bardugo's spirited me somewhere dark and familiar.
A place I unquestionably know, but inexplicably cannot.
Half awake, half asleep, wholly overwhelmed.
Ninth House set my brain alight and I don't know what to do with myself.
Do I talk about it? Do I write this review? Or do I hold onto the way it made me feel and cradle those feelings inside, sheltered and untainted?
I review, it's what I do, what I enjoy (most of the time), but sometimes a story, a story like Ninth House, robs me of my vocabulary.
As I read its words, it devours mine.
Voracious and unstoppable.
I feel that way now: wordless, impotent, a desperate, clawing thing reaching for the surface to draw any kind of breath.
Inelegant, inarticulate, it doesn't matter, just... anything.
But I can't get there, and every single time I try, I can feel myself being pushed further down, further away from a resolution, from an answer.
This feeling of muffled containment is in many ways extremely apt, because it's a state of being Galaxy "Alex" Stern, the protagonist of Ninth House, finds herself in near constantly.
Galaxy Stern (no high school diploma, no GED, no achievements to speak of other than surviving her own misery) [...] She looked malnourished, her clavicles sharp as exclamation points beneath the fabric of her shirt. She was too sleek, almost damp, less Undine rising from the waters than a dagger-toothed rusalka.
[...]
Darlington looked at her. Undine with her slick black hair, the center part like a naked spine, her devouring eyes. [....] The dark sheen of her eyes seemed to harden. Hadn't he wanted magic, a doorway to another world, a fairy girl? But faeries were never kind.
Born a medium of sorts, with the ability to not only see ghosts - Grays - but communicate with them, be violently hurt by them, she's been in a state of terror since infancy, and the hounded, edgy, biting existence she's had to adorn like armour has been her only defence against a power she neither understands nor knows how to control.
From the off, you're plunged headfirst into Alex's world, inside her head, and you follow alongside her, just as the Grays do: dogged and hungry, waiting for a taste of the Galaxy behind the girl.
She's not varsity, she's not Ivy League, she's a known imposter simply waiting for the inevitable catch in the second chance she's been given to fasten around her neck.
Alex's been expecting shackles her entire life, just not in a place as renowned as Yale university.
And the anxious anticipation of her undoing is an almost palpable thing within the story; it lives, it breathes, it sucks at the joint of any exposed weakness as she guides us through every moment with as much bravado as she can, with the only weaponry she possesses: her scattergun determination.
I let you die. To save myself, I let you die.
That is the danger in keeping company with survivors.
Has there ever been a protagonist more resolutely out of place as Galaxy Stern?
In perpetual free-fall down the rabbit hole, clinging to the hope that somewhere on the way down a hand will reach out and slow her?
Perhaps, but I can't think of one, or, at least, one that's had this affect on me, that I've mourned for whilst they still live.
It's a strange experience to walk alongside a character that's truly unknowable, who you may never be granted access to the true depths of, who's fractured themselves into shades of then, now, and underneath.
I still don't know and I spent just under five hundred pages with her.
I know I like her, that I care what happens to her, that I'm rooting for her. I know she's a pillar of resilience, smarter than she's given credit for, and so fucking damaged by life that all I want to do, all I want anyone to do, is keep her safe and allow her to dig her way through the ten tonne pile of crap she's been suffocating under her whole life with a modicum of protection.
She's owed that much.
Everyone's owed that much.
Take me back. Make me into someone who has never been done harm. Go as far as you can. Make me brand new. No bruises. No scars.
[...]
I want to live to grow old, [...] I want to sit on my porch and drink foul-smelling tea and yell at passersby. I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.
But do I know her?
Mmmmnope.
Even with chapters dedicated to her history, enlightening us to the before Alex, the Galaxy she's tried so hard to leave behind (you can tear non-linear narratives from my cold, dead paws. I love them, I love them so fucking much)which give context to the Yale-suit she wears now and why it's so damn ill-fitting, the depths of Galaxy Stern are far from plundered.
But that might just be my favourite part of Leigh Bardugo's first foray into the deliciously grimy apartments of dark, adult Fantasy: the narrative may be a murderous, occult mystery only Alex can solve, but what Bardugo's really offering us is a chance to wander the tenebrous labyrinth of Alex herself.
The only problem being, this fractured, tri-layered version of her is constantly overlapping on itself, phasing in and out of who she is, was, could be.
One minute she's disappearing into the background, desperately trying to fit in, the next she's a blaze of untested power, a beacon for everything with an appetite.
...Queen Mab. Night ebbed and flowed around her in a cape of glittering stars; above the oil-black sheaf of her hair, a constellation glowed―a wheel, a crown. Her eyes were black, her mouth the dark red of overripe cherries. He could feel power churning around her, through her.
"What are you?" [Darlington] whispered. But he didn't care. He went to his knees. This was what he'd been waiting for.
But always that terrified little girl who was assaulted by an entity that shouldn't have had the ability, that never had the right.
Alex Stern is the definition of an enigma wrapped in a conundrum, tied with a puzzling bow.
And the one person who had even a sliver of a chance of understanding her is lost to us from the very beginning.
Daniel Tabor Arlington V.
Darlington.
Even his fucking name evokes a sense of this is the guy, this is the one you can't stop watching, that you shouldn't stop watching.
Alex would have liked to be immune to it―the pretty face, his lean frame, the easy way he occupied space as if he owned it. He had a way of distractedly brushing the brown hair back from his forehead that made you want to do it for him. But Darlington's lure was offset by the healthy fear he instilled in her. At the end of the day, he was a rich boy in a nice coat who could capsize her without even meaning to.
The embodiment of refinement, the Gentleman of Lethe House, the keeper of the keys, the missing shepherd.
His presence is so huge within the story, so delightfully inescapable, it's shocking to come to the end and accept he's been absent the entire time.
Darlington was on the other side of something terrible, waiting for rescue. Sandow had stolen the golden boy of Lethe from this world, and someone had to steal him back.
This book, is what is widely known as: a giant tease.
No, worse than that, it's a giant, unapologetictease.
Ninth House was released at the latter part of 2019, and I established my cyber home inside the literary boroughs of the internet a long, long time ago, meaning I'd heard whispered talesof the golden boy of Yale well before I picked up his narrative abode and discovered for myself why exactly everyone lost their collective minds over an occult Ivy-Leaguer.
And I can unequivocally say the loss of sanity was wholly justified.
She knew how he would affect her readers, the story, Alex; she knew we'd fall all over ourselves for him.
Because Daniel Arlington is all charm, intelligence, and effortless refinement.
He's the stalwart port to Alex's chaos, with the easy allure of old school Hollywood in a privileged package.
He's the long-awaited hand that tethers her, that reaches out as she falls, and falls, and falls, that makes sure she's not alone even if he has to descend with her.
If Alex could have told Darlington anything, it would have been, Come back. She would have said it in English and Spanish. She would have used the imperative.
He's the only person I believe with every bone and sinew in my body wouldn't hurt her, who would go out of his way to protect her.
[Darlington] might not believe she belonged in Lethe, but she knew he believed she was worthy of Lethe's protection. He had promised to place himself between her―between all of them―and the terrible dark. That meant something.
Romantic? Unconfirmed (but I ship it; don't hurt me, Bardugo)
Essential? Most certainly.
Which makes the bite of him oscillating throughout the story as prologue and probable epilogue all the more heartbreaking, exacerbating, thrilling.
There's an expectation that at some point he will appear, throw open the doors of Lethe House with a stern pronouncement of Daddy's home, and all will be as it was.
We're even given a date, a time, a place.
It's established.
It's fact.
It doesn't fucking happen.
"He's gone," [Dawes] said. "He's really gone."
[...]
Until this moment, until this night, anything had been possible and Alex had really believed that somehow, inevitably, maybe not on this new moon but on the next, Darlington would return. Now the spell of hope was broken and no amount of magic could make it whole.
The golden boy of Lethe was gone.
Of course it doesn't happen.
Because at the heart of this story, it's not truly about solving the mystery of a girl's death - even though the solution is vital to the plot, it's not even about the loss of Darlington himself - as fascinating as his absence may be, but about Alex, of course it's about Alex.
Darlington is literally the Virgil to her Dante, her tour guide through theurgic academia, her knowledge keeper, and without him she's ambling blind through a Divine Comedy of her own unwelcome choosing.
Ninth Houseis a Canto in itself, the first chapter of three which Alex must journey through to reach the next; saturated with monsters, both human and otherworldly, perils beyond comprehension, and paths unsafe to venture down.
Unguided, afraid, clinging to the hope of embracing her Dante at the enjambment.
And what a path to follow, what a world to slip between the cracks of.
When at last the blood tide reached the end of the parchment, the Aurelians each lowered their sleeves, letting them brush the soaked paper. Zeb's blood seemed to climb up the fabric as the sound of the chanting rose―not a single language now but all languages, words drawn from the books surrounding them, above them, tucked away in climate-controlled vaults beneath them. Thousands upon thousands of volumes. Memoirs and children's stories, postcards and menus, poetry and travelogues, soft, rounded Italian speared by the spiky sounds of English, the chugging of German, whispery threads of Cantonese.
As one, the Aurelians slammed their hands down on the blood-soaked parchment. The sound ruptured the air like thunder and black spread from their palms, a new tide as blood became ink and flowed back up the table, coursing along the paper to where Zeb's hands rested. He screamed when the ink entered him, zig-zagging up his arms in a scrawl, line upon line, word upon word, a palimpsest that blackened his skin, slowly crawling in looping cursive up to his elbows. He wept and shuddered and wailed his anguish―but kept his hands flat to the paper.
Ink climbed higher, to his bent shoulders, up his neck, over his chest, and in the same instant entered his head and his heart.
I think we've established I have more than lukewarm feelings for the characters in this book, but there's something that exceeds even my adoration for Alex and Darlington: the world they exist in.
Dark Academia isn't a new idea, the genre was established very early by the likes of Shelley with Frankenstein, Wilde with The Picture of Dorian Gray, and subsequently given new life in the early 90s by Donna Tartt's magnificent piece of academic bacchanalia, The Secret History, and then again by M.L. Rio with If We Were Villains- which I urge you to read, it's outstanding.
(And filmically, Flatliners, which is, in my opinion, the definition of DA in film)
Three out of four of my favourite works of literature.
This is a genre I both love and admire with unchecked greediness, so to see it being prolifically embraced now, and by authors I either know or are excited to be introduced to, is so damn thrilling.
I'm bubbling over with the possibilities of what's to come, what Stygian, scholarly depths I'll be consumed into next.
I love, love, love this world.
There's alway been a measure of the cabal in old universities, churches of intellect and creativity, with secret societies and traditions that border on the ritualistic.
"Mors irrumat omnia," Alex whispered. Death fucks us all.
It's an easy jump from the mundane to the supernatural within the halls of these hallowed halls, and from the way Leigh Bardugo's written it, you can tell that she both attended Yale and has spent years spinning her magical system into place.
Quite probably while she was there, being a member of a secret society, witnessing whatever happens behind those shuttered doors.
It's elemental, fundamental, believably uncanny, and downright frightening, but the truly fearful thing isn't the magic itself, it's the people using it.
The one thing that will always be true is you can't give power to the privileged and expect them not to abuse it, to not use hieromancy to cheat the stock market:
Lacerate their own flesh as an offering of blood in exchange for creativity:
Utilise therianthropy just because they can:
Cross the divide between worlds to break bread with the Grim Reaper:
Deal magical roofies to abet the abuse of women:
It's an unavoidable fact, and Bardugo's Yale is no exception, in fact, it's a hothouse of bad behaviour.
Unchecked, devoured at leisure, and only available to the elite who taint it with their entitlement.
"All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down."
But like most things, most powerful, beautiful things, when trusted to someone worthy, someone who needs it not for pleasure but for survival...
"Where were you?" [Alex] demanded. "All you wisemen of Lethe with your spells and your chalk and your books? Where were you when the dead were following me home? When they were barging into my classrooms? My bedroom? My damn bathtub? Sandow said you had been tracking me for years, since I was a kid. One of you couldn't have told me how to get rid of them? That all it would take was a few magic words to send them away? [...] Why didn't you help me?" said Alex, her voice nearly a growl.
"I did. You were about to be buried under a sea of Grays, if you recall."
"Not you." Alex waved her arm, indicating the house. "Sandow. Lethe. Someone." She covered her face with her hands. "Take courage. No one is immortal. Do you know what it would have meant to me to know those words when I was a kid? It would have taken so little to change everything. But no one bothered. Not until I could be useful to you."
Someone like Alex or Darlington, that same magic takes on a very different power.
One by one, [Darlington] took out the moths and laid them gently on her skin. One at her right wrist, her right forearm, the crook of her elbow, her slender biceps, the knob of her shoulder. He repeated the process with her left arm, then placed two moths at the points of her collarbones where the heads of two black snakes curled, their tongues nearly meeting at the hollow of her throat.
"Chabash," he murmured. The moths beat their wings in unison. "Uverat." They flapped their wings again and began to turn gray. "Memash."
With each beat of their wings, the moths grew darker and the tattoos started to fade.
Alex's chest rose and fell in jagged, rapid bursts. Her eyes were wide with fear, but as the moths darkened and the ink vanished from her skin, her expression changed, opened. Her lips parted.
She's seen the dead, he thought. She's witnessed horrors. But she's never seen magic.
This was why he had done it, not because of guilt or pride but because this was the moment he'd been waiting for: the chance to show someone else wonder, to watch them realize that they had not been lied to, that the world they'd been promised as children was not something that had to be abandoned, that there really was something lurking in the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery.
The moths beat their wings again, again, until they were black, then blacker. One by one they tipped from her arms and dropped to the floor in a faint patter. Alex's arms were bare, stripped of all sign of the tattoos, though in places where the needle had gone deep, he could still discern faint ridges. Alex held her arms out, breath coming in gasps.
Darlington gathered the moths' fragile bodies, placing them gently in the box.
"Are they dead?" she whispered.
"Ink drunk." He shut the lid and placed the box back in the cupboard. This time the lock's click seemed more resigned. He and the house were going to have a discussion. "Address moths were originally used for transporting classified material. Once they drank a document, they could be sent anywhere in a coat pocket or a box of antiques. Then they'd be placed on a fresh sheet of paper and would recreate the document to the word. As long as the recipient knew the right incantation."
"So we could put my tattoos on you?"
"They might not fit quite right, but we could. Just be careful . . ." He waved a hand. "In the throes. Human saliva reverses the magic."
"Only human?"
"Yes. Feel free to let a dog lick your elbows."
Then she turned her gaze on him. In the shadows of the room, her eyes looked black, wild. "Is there more?"
He didn't have to ask what she meant. Would the world keep unraveling? Keep spilling its secrets?
"Yes. There's plenty more."
She hesitated. "Will you show me?"
"If you let me."
Alex smiled then, a small thing, a glimpse of the girl lurking inside her, a happy, less haunted girl. That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you'd been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for. That was what Lethe had done for him. Maybe it could do that for Alex, as well.
This is the kind of magic that sets someone free, that releases them from the cruel realities of their life and makes the impossible, fact instead of fiction.
This is the kind of magic I yearn to be real, for that sliver of hope I've sealed up inside myself, that I've carried since adolescence, to shatter reason and logic and land softly on my shoulder, absorb into my skin, and never leave.
And I guess, in a way, that impossible landing defied itself through the existence of Leigh Bardugo and her imaginings, her starless words that stopped me in my tracks at times (...lost in books he consumed like a flame eating air, trying to stay alight.), the macabre magic she summons within the Gothic Revival architecture of Yale University, and the gloomy, cicatriced characterisation of both Alex Stern and Daniel Tabor Arlington V.
The question is, what comes next?
How do I unfocus these few, vital words?:
Alex slept in Darlington's bed and dreamed that he was curled behind her on the narrow mattress.
He pulled her close, his fingers digging into her abdomen, and she could feel claws at their tips. He whispered in her ear, "I will serve you 'til the end of days."
"And love me," she said with a laugh, bold in the dream, unafraid.
But all he said was, "It is not the same."
Will the mystery of Darlington ever be solved?
I suppose there's only one way to find out.
In the intrepid words of Galaxy Stern:
"Who's ready to go to hell?"
Who, indeed.
Ps. My book stamp fits the aesthetic perfectly:
Pps. I haven't spoken about Pamela Dawes, but I would like you to know that I am very much in love with Pamela Dawes:
(This is why you take a support buddy to changing rooms so you don't fall prey to death by neckline. Ps. This is the same animator who created Uterus Unleashed. A queen.)
Forgive me Brian K. Vaughn, but all of your creations deserves a bit better than this.
Cool premise, though.
.............................................
I would like to submit this as evidence that my cat can be sweet, that he doesn't despise me all the time, and there's a high chance he thinks he's a duck:
This season on my favourite emo-brooding, sociopathic serial killer show, Joe finds himself embroiled in an unending episode of Made in Chelsea by way of Clue.
Colonel Inheritance Baby in the drawing room with a broken champagne flute, indeed.
...
I fucking love this stupid show.
I love rooting for this deranged brat.
I love his shocked face every time he kills someone, as if he hasn't done it a hundred times before.
Poor little Joe Goldberg, the killer-stalker with a heart?
Bring on part two, let's see how many entitled brats he can send to the morgue "by accident".
That's me on the left, nodding my Russell-head, and everyone else on the right who've never seen Cameron Crowe's magnum opus and have no idea that Daisy Jones & the Six is a markedly good mimicry of it.
A mimicry I at first felt, not nothing, but not exactly very much about.
Throughout the story, which is told through transcripts of an interview with the band - DJ&tSis essentially a rockumentary in print, I kept expecting to feel more, to feel invested in the characters and the hell they put each other through, but there was a resounding feeling of malaise that followed me through the whole thing.
Pettiness, ego, talent, friendship, love, hatred, chaos, these are all things you would expect from a band climbing the charts, on their way to becoming the next big thing.
Especially in a band with controversy surrounding it.
BILLY: You can't write songs with somebody, write songs about somebody, know that some of the songs you're singing are ones they wrote about you . . . and not feel something . . . not be drawn to them.
It's a great fucking story, timeless, even.
I remember watching a documentary about the band almost a decade ago called The Fleetwood Mac Story, and I was pinned to the screen watching it, listening to the members of the band talk about each other individually, what they went through, how they made the music, what touring and falling apart simultaneously was like: full of love but despising the sight of one another, and how each person's experience is recalled with notable differences.
DAISY: That's how it was back then. I was just supposed to be the inspiration for some man's great idea.
Well, fuck that.
[...]
I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story.
It was riveting, the ultimate rubberneck.
Because who doesn't want to peep behind the illusive curtain of rock and roll?
Even if you don't like the band, there's a still an inherent human urge to be in the know.
As a species we actively seek out stories, and what's more gratifying than a story that's been kept under lock and key?
Nothing.
Nothing is more gratifying that being told a secret you've longed to know.
And Daisy Jones is all about secrets and finally setting them free.
But it didn't set me on fire the way watching that documentary did.
It didn't upend my emotions and send them running in opposing directions.
After I'd read the last page and closed the book, I didn't continue to hold it like I would a story that'd deeply affected me; whether it be joy, anger, satisfaction, catharcism, I will never put a book down until I've absorbed as much as I can from it.
That wasn't the case with DJ. I put it down immediately and started reading my other book (I read three at a time - morning read; usually trash, main read; DJ in this case, and then something from a different genre to balance my mood ... my brain needs entertained at all times) and didn't think about it again until the morning when I woke with a feeling of inexplicable, sluggish melancholy.
To be fair, I was sleep deprived and I'd been listening to Lizzy McAlpine's Ceilings(šµ and it feels like the end of a movie I've seen before)on repeat for the past twenty four hours, my emotional judgement was not to be trusted.
But the feeling lingered as the days went on, like discovering a wound; it stings and it burns, and it itches as it heals but you have no context for the pain you're feeling.
And it doesn't feel warranted or fair to be suffering, to be softly scarred by something you didn't feel deeply at the time of its origin.
Because it wasn't a book I felt much for, it wasn't a story that blew me away, it isn't something I'll read again in a hurry, but there's a big, pleading heart at the centre of it, a richness I almost missed, that I don't think I would've noticed if I hadn't watched the trailer and clips for the show.
You need the sepia-hued landscape of the 70s to really bring this story to life, you need the grit and joy and grime of rock music, you need to see Daisy and Billy's faces to understand just how beautiful and toxic the making of music, of falling in love, of making a goddamn mess together can be.
BILLY: You have lines you won't cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rules and the world won't instantly come to an end.
You've taken a big, black, bold line and you've made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.
GRAHAM: You know how sometimes you can tell that something is off with somebody? But you can't put your finger on it? And you ask what's wrong and they seem to have no idea what you're talking about? You feel crazy. You feel like you're going crazy. This feeling in your gut that the person you love isn't okay. But they look okay. They look okay.
BILLY: Everything that made Daisy burn, made me burn. Everything I loved about the world, Daisy loved about the world. Everything I struggled with, Daisy struggled with. We were two halves. We were the same. In that way that you're only the same with a few other people. In that way that you don't even feel like you have to say your own thoughts because you know the other person is already thinking them. How could I be around Daisy Jones and not be mesmerized by her? Not fall in love with her?
I couldn't.
I just couldn't.
And I can't fucking wait to see it take its full effect in the show.
Some books aren't necessarily written for tv, but some simply belong there.
I think Daisy Jonesis going to be one of those stories.
And I think, no, Iknow, it's going to break my heart.
And I might just love it.
BILLY: [It's] what we all want from art, isn't it? When someone pins down something that feels like it lives inside us? Takes a piece of your heart and shows it to you? It's like they are introducing you to a part of yourself.
When we get the animated show, and this happens, I'm going to cry even more than I did reading the episode.
And if the cause of my shuffling off this mortal coil is excessive sobbing due to adorable pink and blue cinnamon roll grecian gods getting their shit together, then so be it!
I mean, it's not subtle, but it is damned effective.
I could watch Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes manoeuvre around each other while eating beautiful yet deeply unappetising looking food, endlessly.
Two actors with unnerving energy riffing off each other for two hours straight?
Delicious.
But the movie as a whole did fall a little short for me, and that I put mostly down to me being a devout fan of Hannibal, which The Menu is taking distinct cues from visually and narratively.
It equates to much the same but The Menu doesn't seduce the same way Hannibal does.
It doesn't make you hungry.
It in fact reminded me very much of Midsommar, a movie I abhorred, but respected the inhuman stillness of.
The Menu has much the same tone: a threat in the guise of a welcome, but the follow through lacked the necessary oomph.
I do think I need to watch it again, though, to catch things I missed, to appreciate the structure of it more, and of course for this delightful idiot:
Season three of The Great, please arrive soon, I miss shenanigans.
I know, I'm shocked, too, especially after the dumpster fire trailer they released.
I, like everyone else, looked at the shoddy CGI and judged it harshly.
Or, I initially judged the show, and then judged Disney for not paying enough animators and giving them adequate time to do She-Hulk justice.
Which is, funnily enough, the only thing that bugged me about the show: the CGI, and even that I pretty much forgot about as soon as Tatiana Maslany did her adorable, obscenely attractive thing and made me love not only her as Jen Walters, aka. She-Hulk, but the entirety of the show.
It's funny.
It's cartoony without being embarrassing.
It's got an actual plot.
It doesn't take itself too seriously.
And isn't that why we're all exhausted by Marvel?
That it's written the Verse into a depressing, Ć¼ber serious, un-unravellable narrative rat king?
Where'd the fun go?
Where are the dumb jokes and big explosions not caused by fucking aliens?
I genuinely haven't truly enjoyed anything Marvel-related since Ragnarok, and that was six years ago.
Not until now.
With little Jen "Fuzzball" Walters.
She's tiny, she's smart, she's pugnacious, and she sometimes turns into an oversized green, gummy person (Hulk skin looks like gummies to me *shrug*), and smashes the patriarchy into the pavement, ie. I'm in love with her.
So, this is me putting out a call to arms to watch the show - it's infintely better than it looks - if you have access, and get us a season two.
...
I wanna see her flirt with Daredevil more.
...
Special shoutout to Wongers and Madisynn, the besties I didn't know I needed but totally deserve:
Streaming forth into the night, the darkness fractured into a hundred fluttering bits like windblown scraps of velvet. A hundred smithereens of darkness, they broke apart and re-formed and siphoned themselves into a little typhoon that swept down toward the rooftops of Weep, whirling and wheeling on soft twilight wings.
I think you're maybe the third or fourth person to ever leave a comment on here? I was shocked when I saw an anonymous message. Shocked. So, yeah, hello! Hi! Why did I hate Midsommar so much? Hmm, this could turn into a rant, so I'll keep it simple:
It was so terminably boring and try-hard that I had to actively stop myself from jamming a pencil in my eye to make the torture stop :) ... A little dramatic, perhaps, but ugh, it just felt very empty and weird for weird's sake, and every time Florence Pugh made noises of distress, I had to contemplate the whole pencil thing, again. It was aesthetically pleasing, though? But I'll definitely take The Menu over it, and Hannibal over that. Have you seen Hannibal?
I do love my book stamp. It's ridiculous it has a snake on it, though because I'm deeply afraid of them. But in art? Love 'em, and Leigh Bardugo is feeding that love in spades. Are you a reader?
Hi, again :)
Ps. Are you as in love with Tatiana Maslany as I am? It's a crime she won't get a second season to be Jen!
Oh, wow, this is SUPER embarrassing. Actually it's not that embarrassing. I thought it would use my name if I used my Gmail account but the fat cats at Google are trying to suppress me.
It's dom. Ol' Dom. Dom Dom. Dom.
What did you think of Hereditary? I think I like Ari Aster's depiction of grief. There's something cathartic about it. I don't think he's particularly original but maiming yourself Louise...a step too far. You should reserve that for the real crimes of cinema. Like David O'Russell films.
It IS a crime there isn't going to be more She-Hulk. As much as I like Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke the moon knight series was far worse. Or the Captain America series that was so forgettable it's disappeared from the collective consciousness. It's plain old sexism and I'm not afraid to say it.
Domatronnnn! I'm so happy it's you! And I think it's probably my blog that's trying to suppress you with the sheer volume of loose canon HTML I've muddled it with over the years. I want to redo the whole thing but I can't unravel the mess I've made.
Hereditary's on my TBW, but I've yet to get to it. A crime, I know, Toni Collette's a queen and I owe her better allegiance, but... I'm the queen of procrastination, it's a losing battle. But thanks for spoiler that I'm really not mad about. My brain is yet to recover from all the self-mutilation in Antichrist. Lars von Trier makes beautiful movies but holy shit, they're traumatising.
Will I be judged for having a soft spot for Three Kings and Silver Linings Playbook?
I DID enjoy Loki and WandaVision, but watching Daredevil do the walk of shame was *chef's kiss* I hope that even if we don't get another series, which will probably be the case, because yes, sexism is rife in the... everywhere but especially Marvel (look what they did to Captain Marvel; Bree Larson deserves so much better), we'll maybe get a cameo from Jen in the new DD series? Which I'm oddly excited about. After the disaster that was Batfleck, Charlie Cox was a friggin revelation.
i'm here to usurp the throne. i am the bigger procrastinator, although ever since my sister started training to be a teacher she does think i have all the hallmarks of ADHD. i would like to get assessed but the likelihood of getting seen before the dark era ain't great.
let's trade. you swap your movie procrastination with my book procrastination. just a week or two and i promise to give it back. i could manage, like, two books within that fortnight instead of 10 pages.
i've been meaning to watch Silver Linings Playbook for actual yonks. Lars Von Trier might be a bit of a bastard but he makes sublime art, a problematic fav. O'Russell on the other hand has made 2 or 3 good films but none of them are of a high enough quality for me to separate the art from the artist. i'm mixing art and artist and nobody can stop me. don't try to stop me.
I do wonder if the jabs at Marvel in the finale of She-Hulk is one of the reasons it wasn't immediately renewed.
what did you think of R.Patt's Batman and do you happen to have a letterboxd Louise?
I swear to whatever deity's knocking around causing absolute fucking chaos in the multiverse that every time I look up something "weird" that I do, ADHD comes up. Without fail. And being the sensible person I am *laughs into the abyss*, I don't believe Dr. Internet for once second (motherfucker's given me all kinds of afflictions since he/she/it was born), BUT it does kinda make you wonder if maybe some diagnoses from a quack would be helpful. You get tested and tell me if it's any fun. Be my guinea pig, Domatron, I'm afraid of the medical people!
Oh, I must've missed the fall of O'Russell (I'm always on the internet, and yet I know nothing). Who the fuck thinks they can verbally abuse Lily Tomlin and still live? She's an OG 9 to 5er, Dolly Parton's probably on her speed dial ffs! I have to hate him now for eternity. Always mix your art and artists thoroughly, old boy, otherwise you get some really splotchy artwork full of misogyny and tiny dick syndrome. Oh wait, that's the same thing.
In regards to Battinson, the emo-est bat in all of Gotham, I haven't watched it yet but I heard it's pretty lame. I'll probably still dig it though because that grumpy bastard just does something to my serotonin levels. His interviews regarding Twilight bring me much joy. I've really gotta get off my lazy arse and watch The Lighthouse. Have you seen it? More importantly, have you watched the trailer for Wes Anderson's new one? I'm tentatively freaking the fuck out.
Ps. I didn't even know what a letterboxd was! I'll get one and report back. I love lists.
Pps. New Mario movie? I hate Chris Pratt with a passion but... it looks kinda awesome, right?
Louise, I adore your book stamp!
She-Hulk was very unfairly maligned
And I'd love to know why you hated Midsommar
Oh and
Hello!
Hello! :)
I think you're maybe the third or fourth person to ever leave a comment on here? I was shocked when I saw an anonymous message. Shocked.
So, yeah, hello! Hi!
Why did I hate Midsommar so much? Hmm, this could turn into a rant, so I'll keep it simple:
It was so terminably boring and try-hard that I had to actively stop myself from jamming a pencil in my eye to make the torture stop :)
...
A little dramatic, perhaps, but ugh, it just felt very empty and weird for weird's sake, and every time Florence Pugh made noises of distress, I had to contemplate the whole pencil thing, again.
It was aesthetically pleasing, though?
But I'll definitely take The Menu over it, and Hannibal over that. Have you seen Hannibal?
I do love my book stamp. It's ridiculous it has a snake on it, though because I'm deeply afraid of them. But in art? Love 'em, and Leigh Bardugo is feeding that love in spades.
Are you a reader?
Hi, again :)
Ps. Are you as in love with Tatiana Maslany as I am? It's a crime she won't get a second season to be Jen!
Oh, wow, this is SUPER embarrassing. Actually it's not that embarrassing. I thought it would use my name if I used my Gmail account but the fat cats at Google are trying to suppress me.
It's dom. Ol' Dom. Dom Dom. Dom.
What did you think of Hereditary? I think I like Ari Aster's depiction of grief. There's something cathartic about it. I don't think he's particularly original but maiming yourself Louise...a step too far. You should reserve that for the real crimes of cinema. Like David O'Russell films.
It IS a crime there isn't going to be more She-Hulk. As much as I like Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke the moon knight series was far worse. Or the Captain America series that was so forgettable it's disappeared from the collective consciousness. It's plain old sexism and I'm not afraid to say it.
Domatronnnn! I'm so happy it's you!
And I think it's probably my blog that's trying to suppress you with the sheer volume of loose canon HTML I've muddled it with over the years. I want to redo the whole thing but I can't unravel the mess I've made.
Hereditary's on my TBW, but I've yet to get to it. A crime, I know, Toni Collette's a queen and I owe her better allegiance, but... I'm the queen of procrastination, it's a losing battle.
But thanks for spoiler that I'm really not mad about. My brain is yet to recover from all the self-mutilation in Antichrist. Lars von Trier makes beautiful movies but holy shit, they're traumatising.
Will I be judged for having a soft spot for Three Kings and Silver Linings Playbook?
I DID enjoy Loki and WandaVision, but watching Daredevil do the walk of shame was *chef's kiss*
I hope that even if we don't get another series, which will probably be the case, because yes, sexism is rife in the... everywhere but especially Marvel (look what they did to Captain Marvel; Bree Larson deserves so much better), we'll maybe get a cameo from Jen in the new DD series?
Which I'm oddly excited about. After the disaster that was Batfleck, Charlie Cox was a friggin revelation.
i'm here to usurp the throne. i am the bigger procrastinator, although ever since my sister started training to be a teacher she does think i have all the hallmarks of ADHD. i would like to get assessed but the likelihood of getting seen before the dark era ain't great.
let's trade. you swap your movie procrastination with my book procrastination. just a week or two and i promise to give it back. i could manage, like, two books within that fortnight instead of 10 pages.
i've been meaning to watch Silver Linings Playbook for actual yonks. Lars Von Trier might be a bit of a bastard but he makes sublime art, a problematic fav. O'Russell on the other hand has made 2 or 3 good films but none of them are of a high enough quality for me to separate the art from the artist. i'm mixing art and artist and nobody can stop me. don't try to stop me.
I do wonder if the jabs at Marvel in the finale of She-Hulk is one of the reasons it wasn't immediately renewed.
what did you think of R.Patt's Batman and do you happen to have a letterboxd Louise?
I swear to whatever deity's knocking around causing absolute fucking chaos in the multiverse that every time I look up something "weird" that I do, ADHD comes up.
Without fail.
And being the sensible person I am *laughs into the abyss*, I don't believe Dr. Internet for once second (motherfucker's given me all kinds of afflictions since he/she/it was born), BUT it does kinda make you wonder if maybe some diagnoses from a quack would be helpful.
You get tested and tell me if it's any fun. Be my guinea pig, Domatron, I'm afraid of the medical people!
Oh, I must've missed the fall of O'Russell (I'm always on the internet, and yet I know nothing).
Who the fuck thinks they can verbally abuse Lily Tomlin and still live? She's an OG 9 to 5er, Dolly Parton's probably on her speed dial ffs!
I have to hate him now for eternity.
Always mix your art and artists thoroughly, old boy, otherwise you get some really splotchy artwork full of misogyny and tiny dick syndrome. Oh wait, that's the same thing.
In regards to Battinson, the emo-est bat in all of Gotham, I haven't watched it yet but I heard it's pretty lame.
I'll probably still dig it though because that grumpy bastard just does something to my serotonin levels. His interviews regarding Twilight bring me much joy.
I've really gotta get off my lazy arse and watch The Lighthouse. Have you seen it?
More importantly, have you watched the trailer for Wes Anderson's new one? I'm tentatively freaking the fuck out.
Ps. I didn't even know what a letterboxd was! I'll get one and report back. I love lists.
Pps. New Mario movie? I hate Chris Pratt with a passion but... it looks kinda awesome, right?
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