This was an exceptionally grumpy month for my brain, my anxiety was hovering around stratospheric, the depression was pinning me to the earth's core, and that delightful combo meant I couldn't enjoy anything, apart from little bursts of sporadic joy, mostly in the form of goblin creatures.
Before I can stop him, Jamie jumps into the driver's seat. He turns the keys in the ignition and for a moment it cranks and I think it's not going to turn over. Then the car roars to life – well, as much as Honda Civic can roar – and Jamie gives me a wide, childlike grin that makes my stomach flip.
"Get in," he says.
I roll my eyes. "I'm going to set you up here and I need you to get this right." I move around to the passenger seat and hop in. I stare at him as seriously as I can while looking at his goofy grin. "You have to back up. I don't think you have enough road to get to eighty-eight."
For just a second he looks concerned, and I'm so ready to punch him. Then his smirk returns. He shifts to drive and says, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."
"YES!" I shout and roll the window down. "America! He knows Back to the Future!"
[...]
Wake up, smile: the apocalypse has provided a cute boy to nurse us back to health.
So, here's the thing:
This was adorable, extremely cute, I had a perfectly nice time, but it didn't stir anything else inside me other than a temperate smile.
Not unhappy, but not exactly overcome with the feels, which kind of sucks because I'd been keeping Erik J. Brown's YA, post-pandemic, meet-cute road trip as a special treat for when I was feeling like shit, which I was for most of November (see: above blog PSA).
And what do we do with our brains when we feel like fossilised excrement? We feed it endorphins in the form of the arts.
Or, at least, that's what I do, and sometimes, sometimes it just falls a little short of dopamine expectations, like it did here.
But, in lieu of dwelling on my feeling of contented underwhelm, I'm going to do a little fan-casting instead, because I would unequivocally watch the tv/movie adaptation of this book.
One hundred percent.
These boys are adorable and it'd be refreshing to watch a post-apocalypse without the supernatural but distant enough from reality to not set off the big "C" PTSD shudders.
(All you weirdos who watched Contagion in the last few years? What the actual fuck?)
...
Also, I just really love fan-casting, and will take any excuse to do it, so... here we go!
But a little plot before we cast.
In short:
A viral plague has swept through the world and only the minimal immune have survived.
Pan in on Andrew, hobbling along with a bear trap injury, stumbling across a cabin in the woods.
Cut to Jamison, the inhabitant of said cabin, pointing a shotgun at the Andrew-shaped intruder.
Cue adorable bi-awakening, flirty behaviour in the midst of surviving the varying shades of fuckery humanity devolves into when the laws of society are eradicated, and the slowest of burns.
Also cult references aplenty.
It's all very charming as you can imagine, and the Americana setting brings a welcome burst of sunny warmth that would be entirely absent if this had been set in the UK, or some other freezing, distant land.
Truly, if I'm gonna kick it through an apocalypse, I want to be warm, with nary a frost-bitten toe in sight.
My lizard blood was not made for a frozen dystopia.
I can hear the screaming from here, you can't cast him in everything bi just because he is and you love his stupid puppy face!
Uh, yes, I most certainly can, especially when he's exactly who I imagined as soon as Jamie appeared.
Jamison is a walking human Labrador with a massive heart, who can't murder Bambi's mum even when the world's ended and a bitch's gotta eat, but will burn the world down for the boy he loves but hasn't figure out he loves yet.
Andrew was less clear in my mind - but no less enjoyed, mostly because I just couldn't think of a current actor who would fit the role, and that's generally how I visualise characters - hence the ceaseless fan-casting.
And the closest I could get to his jokester, absolute nightmare, ball of energy with a bleeding heart who'd cross the ravaged world to get to his cinnamon roll boyfriend "vibe", was this absolute puppy:
He's the black cat to Jamison's Golden Retriever.
And if there's anyone who can keep you upbeat whilst running from homophobic, post-apocalyptic white supremacists, it's this guy:
Like Jamison, casting Cara was an immediate visual of Tanya Reynolds.
If you've seen her in Sex Education, there's a fair chance you'll agree with my casting choice, because her portrayal of Lily in the show is outlandish, vulnerable, cuttingly honest and abrupt, somewhat selfish - though, no more so than you're average human, but kind when she knows those around her need her to be.
Which is entirely the way Cara behaves; she sees a way out of her unwalled prison in the boys, so both helps and manipulates them to escape, and ultimately finds a new family with them along the way.
That's Lily! Through and through. A outlier who finds her people and her confidence.
Yet again, I had problems visualising Henri; in the book she's described as the could-be sister to Bea Arthur, with an abrasive yet motherly and comforting air to her.
Like... don't fuck with her, and most certainly don't refuse a snack and a cuddle.
Hell will rain down in only the way a matriarch with a shotgun and the will to live can.
And it was actually Sally Field who came to mind first, entirely because of Steel Magnolias, a movie I genuinely can't watch without breaking the fuck down. It's just tears and gross sobbing for days.
The part that gets me the most, though? Field's breakdown at the funeral.
It's pretty over the top but you can just tell she'd raze the earth to the ground for her kids, be it in the smallest of ways (angry letters to school, verbally bitchslapping bullies, etc.), to the grandest (Faustian deals and whatnot).
She has that presence in spades, I'd be genuinely scared to cross on-screen Field.
However, ultimately it was Frances McDormand who blazed the brightest in my imagining of the role of Henri.
The emotional range on this woman, truly an actress for the ages, and if I think of the way she was in Almost Famous and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the quintessential, yet offbeat, somewhat darkly humoured matriarch, I can see her so clearly as Henri.
Andrew and Jamison would unequivocally traverse America for her, no doubt about it.
Ladies and gentlepeople... her.
And so we come to the end of the fan-cast.
Not a villain in sight, entirely because the way Erik J. Brown wrote them, they could be any generic actor; pick a white guy with a decent sneer and you're done (Boyd Holbrook is coming to mind).
But that's okay, I'd be happy to leave that decision up to the casting directors because I'm honestly quite fixated on the idea of ATLitW being adapted, now.
They could get a combo team of The Last Of Us and Daybreakcrew to do it, sans the comic book aesthetic.
It'd be pretty and intense.
Yeah. I want that. Make it so universe!
...
Or, I'll just, y'know, read the sequel and make do with my lack of post-apocalyptic visuals.
With every season I don't expect my feral vampire family to up their game so exponentially when it comes to shocking the shit out of me, but true to form, my jaw was on the fucking floor.
Three words for you:
Body
Swap
Foursome
...
I can't unseen it!
And it got even more fucked up from there.
I love these undead goblins so very much, and I fully believe they'll assault my eyes, if not equally, then with more gusto in the next season.
Long may this vampiric household reign!
I think they outdid themselves with the arterial spray for their fifth go around, the special effects department must've had a blast achieving the perfect fountain.
I can be forgiven for initally thinking these were digital. Look at them.
And what with the deluge of AI (fuck that shit and anyone who uses it), it took me a minute, and a second more to actually read the description, to realise they were sculpted out of wheat and eucalyptus, not pixels.
Truly, wow.
There's a genus of goblin in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series that's coverered entirely in thorns, they're called Rose Goblins(Toby's adopted gob is named Spike, of course) and behave like cats.
In my head they look like a cross between a Thorny Devil and your classic Tabby.
My girl Harrow, my bone-maiden, my crepuscular queen; I think she'd greatly respect me using her to bitchslap an intruder Jason Bourne style (in my head, at least).
And I do have those delicate wrists... aka. weak as fuck.
Jar lids are the enemy, crow pose is a c*nt, and infinite scroll has forever changed my bone structure.
And the meaner she is, the more I love her, and she's mean as shit in Catastrophe, like next level, make you cry in the bathroom, hide in the cereal aisle when you see her in the supermarket mean.
...
It's hot as fuck and I don't know why!
Also, this show refuses to stop being a fucking brilliant, goblin-fuelled comfort watch for me.
Straight up refuses.
You should watch it, if you're into foul-mouthed dickhead women from Ireland.
I wanted to see if it held together as a whole and the final season wasn't the wonky cousin clinging to the family's trouser legs screaming I'm the banana police, surrender your toasters! that I saw it to be.
...
It wasn't, I was wrong, I don't know why my brain rejected it so fiercely, but I still hold firm that it was bloody miserable for a show that previously thrived on levity.
Perhaps because there'd been such a big gap between the previous season and the finale (at least, it felt big), a weird disconnect formed between what'd come before and where the show ended up. We're not even at Moordale anymore, instead a New Age hippie commune masquerading as a college inhabited by eco warrior babies.
Fair play, those eco warrior babies have more chance of saving the planet than anyone born before the 2000s, but FUCK they're annoying.
And during my initial watch I found these characters sovery annoying, so very smug, so very basic.
I haven't done exactly a one eighty on those feelings, but they grew on me, ever so slightly, eventually, but they remain interlopers on a group of characters I love dearly.
Who spent the entire last series miserable.
Unjustly so.
But I'm not as mad about it anymore because as a whole, it does indeed hold together.
I try not to have parasocial relationships with celebrities.
Not actors, not authors, not musicians, not artists, etc.
I like their work, appreciate and respect the effort, remain entertained by the personas they put out into the world, but you will not find me screaming or crying if I ever enter their physical orbit.
They're people, not gods, and as much as I may like them, I don't know them.
I will be sad if someone whose work I enjoy dies. I will be disappointed if they do something unethical. I will rejoice (reasonably) in their successes.
But that's it.
...
BUT THEN THERE'S THESE TWO FUCKERS BEING ADORABLE AND GRUMPY AND FLIRTY AND RUINING MY FUCKING CHILL.
Zoë Kravitz is the perfect Rob; acerbic, sullen, effortlessly cool, a complete disaster narcissist with flawless taste in music, and it's going to pain me forever that this got cancelled.
I enjoyed the book, eternally love the movie, and never expected the show to measure up. But it does. It so does. And they took it away from us!
There's a special seat in hell reserved for tv executives.
Ps. It's still blowing mind how beautiful this is, and how spectacular and unfettered Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell are in it - their chemistry is palpable.
There are many ways to tell a love story, but sometimes the rawest form can be the most relatable, the most tangible.
I contemplated putting something else, maybe Titus Groan or Cloudstreet, The Magic Toyshop or Expecting Someone Taller, but ultimately, my brain is the happiest when it's stomping its way through the magic-eaten, post-apocalyptic streets of Atlanta with Kate, slapping down evil with her quick-wit and pointy sword.
Watching Carla Gugino methodically and bloodily dismantle/butcher a family of privileged nepo-babies was a thing of beauty.
To be fair, though, watching Carla Gugino do mostly anything is a thing of beauty, but hand her a script from Mike Flanagan, the current king of psychological horror?
For those who think graphic novels are just cute stories and pretty pictures, I direct you to In Real Life, a tale of the power of an avatar and the confidence it can bring, how economic and political circumstances are more than something you read online, how everyone's life is hued differently and we should never assume, and how the power of a single voice can spark change.
All exceptionally good stuff delivered in illustrative form.
...
And this important message would've lived up to its intentions if it wasn't being delivered by (and centred around) an American white girl to a Chinese boy of lesser privilege.
I love Jen Wang(The Prince and the Dressmakeris one of the sweetest, gentlest stories about representation I've ever read), I genuinely do, her illustrative style is the stuff of comic book dreams, but not even that can override how needlessly tone deaf this is.
Something I didn't even realise until after I'd finished - that's my privilege showing.
And I know there'll be those out there who'll say: but it's fiction! Well, yes, but like Ray Bradbury said:
The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe into one garment for us.
Stories can change a mindset with a single sentence, that's the power they hold, even in the silliest of narratives you can find a life-altering message, which is why authors have to choose wisely when deciding who's perspective they're imparting this knowledge from.
They have to, otherwise we end up with the right message being sent from entirely the wrong place, and unfortunately, that's the case with In Real Life.
Which is entirely a shame because if you can ignore the wrong choice of voice - you shouldn't but for the sake argument, the story as it stands is sweet, relatable, features a plus size heroine who's also a gamer (thank you, more, again!), is triumphant over life's hardships, and does send a clear message of friendship, kindness, vulnerability, and courage.
Which is everything I could possibly want from a graphic novel that's feeding me my socio-political vegetables by hiding them in a dreamy, soft-hued sauce.
Truly, I couldn't ask for more and Jen Wang's style is the perfect delivery system.
I only wish it'd come from the right narrative sauce.
...
Sigh.
I am not doing well with my book choices this month, which means it's probably time to trundle back to some old faithfuls and finish the year off with a satisfying crunch.
But you can bet your ass that whatever Jen Wang brings out next, I'll be all over it.
For now, however, a little commotion for her art in this narratively questionable but unarguably gorgeous graphic novel:
I love the way she draws faces, it's not even funny; snubby little noses and gorgeously big eyes.
(If you haven't watched Dark, remedy that immediately. Not only is Hofmann fantastic in it - along with the rest of the cast - but the visuals are insane and the plot is bonkers in the best way. One of my favourite series in years, the minute it comes out on dvd, I'm putting my time travel-loving paws all over it)
This was deeply disappointing.
All style, no substance, and what the fuck accent was Ruffalo attempting?
You're a seasoned actor, man, what the thespian were you doing?!
Hofmann was genuinely the only actor with any measure of grace in a sea of purple prose and highly saturated visuals.
The only one.
So, instead of wasting your time on this, go watch him in Dark.
It's three seasons of mind-bending, emotional, time-travelling fuckery that hits all the pleasure points:
🕰️ Visually bleak and deliciously crunchable
🕰️ Full of suspense and narrative labyrinths
🕰️ And the acting's *chef's kiss*
And if you're not big on subtitles, don't fret, the dialogue is short, agonisingly riddlesome, and compelling.
You'll breeze through it.
...
Or if you can handle dubbing, turn that on.
(I can't, it makes me cringe so much and hyperfocus on the actor's mouths not matching up to the dialogue and not suiting their faces. Anyone else have that problem?)
Either way, get it seen, it's fucking outstanding.
Normally, when you're served a lukewarm but enjoyable first season, you don't expect the second course to come out piping hot and delicious.
(I write reviews when I'm hungry it would seem, hence the perpetual food analogies)
But here I am, having gulped down eight episodes of genuinely fucking fantastic book-to-screen fantasy and truly shocked as to how that happened.
To be fair, though, I haven't read the books, instead choosing to annoy my mum - who has read the entire fourteen book series, holy shit, that's a lot of fantasy - with quick-fire questions about Robert Jordan's epic tome, which I'm sure she loves (hi, mum! I'm sorry!), so I can't say how well the show creators are actually doing.
And I'm fairly certain it's because the main cast were separated for most of the story; something I normally find incredibly tedious.
I don't know about anyone else, but while I can respect why the MCs are split up in order to come back together eventually (character growth, multi-stranded plotting, and whatnot), personally, I'd rather they just stick together so I can enjoy their general existence in one place.
It's all well and good fighting to make it back to each other and picking up some interesting strays along the way, but what about family bonding, huh?
What about roasting fantastical, marshmallow creatures over campfires while divulging your greatest sins under the serious moonlight?
But for some reason, with Rand and his cohorts, it felt right to ship them off to different corners of the continent, to break them apart and let those strings of fate connecting them tug homewards.
I don't know why, can't explain it, but it worked perfectly and genuinely provided the wiggle room each character needed to evolve.
Especially Egwene.
Oh, holy shit biscuits, I am in love with her.
Egwene didn't impress me all that much in the first season, she felt a little too much like Rand's "girl" and not much else, but ohhhhhh boy was I wrong.
She's a badass, a certified powerhouse, and the evolution of her character from Nynaeve's powerful "lesser" to someone who fought their way out of enslavement and went up against a Forsaken in the space of weeks (I assume it was weeks? Mum?) was nothing short of hypnotising.
She's not meek, she's not lesser, she's a furious, unstoppable force and I adore her, Madeleine Madden absolutely crushed it.
I can't even fathom what comes next in her story, but I imagine it's going to hurt, and kick some serious magical ass.
*is here for it*
And that's just Egwene.
Morraine was an über bitch all season, which I loved - Rosamund Pike, a queen.
Rand remains unfortunately annoying but picked up a dark friend who I very much enjoyed - Lanfear, please hold me, I need an evil cuddle.
Perrin sees wolf souls now? - still not a fave, but I do love a bit of therianthropy.
Nynaeve, as cutting as ever, but I get it, untapped power takes it out of a girl - could she hurry up, though? Just a little?
Mat's, uh, horny? - that all felt very Dead Men of Dunharrow, but with heroes instead of traitors. ... I'm into it.
And of course, my beloved Lan Mandragoran:
Babygirl was a puppy for eight episodes, a lost, little sweater boy who I couldn't love more, even when, maybe especially when, he's pouting in the corner.
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