january

February 01, 2025

Things I enjoyed in the month of January:

Ilona Andrews', Sanctuary:

"I'm sorry," Finn said.
"For what?"
"For coming here. You got hurt because of me."
Roman shrugged. "All part of the job. I have to say, that's the first time someone asked me for sanctuary, but turns out, I'm rather good at providing it. Catholics, eat your heart out."
"You joke a lot,' Finn said.
"I do. Helps with the darkness."


Roman Semionovich, the Black Volhv blorbo of my heart.
Madwoman in the attic

And a whole novella devoted to his lawful evil, cinnamon roll, adopt-any-stray-that-moves, goth babygirl self?
black and white blair waldorf gif | WiffleGif

This might be the part I love most about being a predominantly SFF/Romance reader: that there will be some random character the fandom/author(s) falls in love with and they'll deviate from the main story simply to write their's.
Be they a hapless side-y, a chewable one-time villain, or the random miaow miaow in the corner who possesses very little actual loveable qualities but somehow, for some reason, instantly become a blorbo for the ages and feral love is bestowed upon them.

It's a truth fandomly acknowledged, that a horde of fans in possession of stanning capabilities, must be in love with a blorbo.
S'just facts.
And the SFF/Romance genre sees us, it hears us, and it gives us the bonus stories we respectfully scream our lungs out for.
Thus, Sanctuary, the first in The Roman Chronicles was born; a Christmas story for the Slavic-ly inclined that melds marital disputes with evergreen solutions, a boy and his puppy in need of a little seasonal assistance, mercenaries caught in a "bone"-chilling conundrum, an adopted menagerie of mischievous critters with resemblances to nightmare-fuel Furbies, a hell hath no fury like a gods-touched woman scorned as the love interest/my new obsession, and of course, Roman himself, my precious blorbo baby who I'd run over main characters to get to.
(Not actually true; House Andrews have this bewildering ability to write full casts of beyond loveable characters. It's creepy and wonderful)
Shelby Scott on LinkedIn: #171r3

And it's THE BEST.
I know I'm blinded by devotee-like love for HA, what with them being my all-time favourite Urban Fantasy authors (read Kate Daniels you fools, it's fucking amazing!), but genuinely, they cannot put a foot wrong, and Sanctuary proves it.
We don't need this novella, we don't need Roman's story.
We want it, we practically begged for it, and because HA are benevolent authorial overlords who love him as much as we do, they pulled a cracker of a spinoff out of their spectacular asses and went, "here, this is for you, it's snowy and funny and magical and you'll have an awesome time."
...
AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO DO IT.
THEY COULD'VE STORED ROMAN'S STORY AWAY IN THEIR MAGICAL BRAIN VAULTS AS A "SOMEDAY BUT PROBABLY NEVER" STORY AND GONE ON WITH THEIR LIVES.
BUT INSTEAD THEY GAVE IT TO US.
BECAUSE THEY LOVE US.
AND WE LOVE THEM.
AND ENDLESS SPINOFFS ARE FICTION READERS' LIFEBLOOD.
...
I'll stop shouting now, but only to repeat myself:

SFF and Romance are the most generous genres of fiction, long may they continue to place blorbo stories atop our heads like the most snuggleable of flower crowns.
(I would like to take note of autocorrect changing "snuggleable" to "snrggableable" ... because that made up nonsense word makes way more sense that my made up nonsense word. ... AI, y'kill me. Ps. go fuck yourself ☺️)

Now I simply have to continue mastering my chill until either the next Wilmington novella comes out (I think about Kate and Curran on a daily basis, it's kind of worrying), Hugh and Elara's delayed sophomore story appears (it's been seven years and I'm haemorrhaging. First chapter snippets on HA's blog (1, 2, 3), though, and it already slaps), or the sequel to Blood Heir magically drops in my lap in the next couple of months like I haven't been fucked up since Derek told Julie off for being a big faker, and that it's dinnertime, game fucking on (been holding onto this ship since Magic Burns - platonically at first, obvs - and I need my goddamn reward cookie).
Oh, and maybe a prequel spinoff for Bran and the Morrígan?
Or was it just me who imprinted aggressively on his himbo champion-ness and misses him with the power of a thousand dying suns?
#Vikings from Vikings

Nah, can't just be me, he's perfect.

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Francisco Fonseca:

This must be the third or fourth time I've posted Fonseca's work, but I just can't seem to get enough of his softly lit, impossibly proportioned, intricately illustrated urban snapshots.
There's something "other" about them but instead of being unnerving, they're endlessly welcoming.
I would live in one of these houses, and fill it with books and critters and lackadaisical whimsy.
pushing daisies books gif | WiffleGif

...
And all my weird lights, of course.
Tater, taking pride of place:

Had my eye on his oversized plush big bro for a while now:

And this big boy's a need, not a want:

Smoko! Supply to more stores in the UK! I need this giant beet in my life!
And speaking of veggies:
Johanna Forster aka. johanna_and_the_grunlings

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The Portable Door:

Apparently I've read the book.
And rated it four stars.
Went so far as to label it as a favourite.
...
Call me Gandalf because this wizard bitch has no memory of this place.
(Does anyone else do this? Read and love things but remember nothing?)
However!
A routine episode of literary amnesia doesn't stop me from knowing exactly the vibe the adaptation needed in order to qualify as certified Tom Holt-ish.
The necessaries are as follows:

🚪 Quietly, quaintly, absurdly British - middle-class, not posh gits
✨ Humour without the hyperbole - you should be sniggering, not guffawing
🚪 Urban Fantasy-lite - there's a mystery but it's delightfully ridiculous
✨ A hapless hero of reluctant chosen one origins - basically they've gotta be useless but precious with it
🚪 Supernatural critters spilling out of every crack of the landscape - but usually only the chosen one(s) can see
✨ A very capable take-no-shit woman who Hapless falls for - sounds clichéd but Holt writes kick ass women (see: Flosshilde) so it's understandable why the mmc would get his knickers in a twist over her.
🚪 A bombastic dénouement - well, as bombastic as the British can be.

These are the requirements, no wiggle room, and Jeffrey Walker's adaptation friggin' nailed it.
I don't know if it's because he's Australian (watched The Artful Dodger? He's responsible, gods love him) and shares a sense of humour with the Brits, or that he's clearly a huge Tom Holt fan - the movie is basically a love letter, or he managed to bandy together the ideal cast, or that he simply understood the assignment and respected the hell out of the source material - with some help from Henson, which always leads to most excellent story potatoes.

I don't know, but it's great either way, better than great, fan-fucking-tastic.
My family and I chose to watch this on New Year's Day, after the mayhem of being socially functioning people (so drained, so drained!), with mid-movie slices of buttered toast (sourdough, fyi, and it was the best slice of toast I'd had in days. I'm pretty sure I uttered the words "Fuck. Yeah." after the first bite) and cups of tea, and it was one hundred percent the exact right medicine for our tired brains and bones.
Visually, verbally, vibely; it hit every damn spot.
And I don't believe I've ever seen Sam Neill have so much fun in an acting role before, not even Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Dennis Tanner is a role for the squirmy ages, after all.
Iykyk.
And if you don't, sort that out.
And then read Expecting Someone Taller because it's one of my favourite books, his best book imo, and I need more people in my corner so it gets adapted.
Come on universe, do me a goddamn solid, I need more c*nty Rhinemaidens in my life.
the little mermaid mermaid gif | WiffleGif

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Darya Kawa Mirza's moon photography:

Yes, I'm following a whole insta account dedicated to the moon because this is what happens when I try to take a photo of this overgrown shiny penny in the goddamn sky:

She's cute and all, but...
a man in a suit says should have left it to the professionals netflix

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Rewatching the brats:
Interview with the Vampire

I am being dramatic when I say I could talk about AMC's Interview with the Vampire all day, every month, for years, until hopefully Lestat de Lioncourt pops up dramatically out of the aether and offers me the immortal gift (he wouldn't, my goblin ways are far beneath His Imperial Brattiness).
But it doesn't make it any less true.
My sisters, who like the show but don't love it with the feral intensity I do, can attest to my inability to shut the fuck up about it and its two insufferable idiots with fangs falling in tortuous and tortuous love.
It's taken over my brain.
Like the zombie-ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis, my mind merely a host for Rolin Jones' hungry, flavourful, deeply emotional take on Anne Rice's beloved, purple prose, vampiric soap opera.
If my mind wanders - an often occurrence - it's to New Orleans and 1132 Rue Royale; to 1920's decor and twin coffins lain side by side, one grand, the other unassuming, both steeped in living contempt. The air humming with a collision of Jelly Roll Morton's hiccuping ragtime and the resonant demand of Donizetti's Don Pasquale, both scored nuzzlingly alongside Daniel Hart's sympathetic yet impelling score, which coats the narrative tongue of every scene.
Do I hear the beckoning, beseeching, berserking tone of Lestat whilst my mind visits the famous liquored streets of The Big Easy?
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Only as an echo to its call for Louis' Creole patois, both loving and antagonising in its response.
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Does a rush of Claudia, both iterations, come clawing at me sideways, full of rage and underestimated power as she shoves her way between the "stormy love" of the men who "made" her? Oh, just whenever I fucking breathe.
r/InterviewVampire - I’m team Lestat, team Louis, team Claudia, team Armand(I think you get the idea)
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And Daniel? Somehow the bitchiest queen of the piece? Yeah, he's the provocative voice behind every probing question that plays on a loop inside my head about this unreliably narrated piece of tv genius.

...
Hyper-fixation feels too diminutive a word for how this show of disliked origins (I fucking abhor the book; get over it, you brats) has taken my brain hostage, how I could watch it endlessly on a loop and never tire to find something new to say, feel, obsess over.
Even talking about it turns me into a flowery-worded chump with golden hair flips, intense stares, plot twists, deceitful raconteurs, and devastating lines like "did you hurt yourself?" on the brain.
And it might be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Nah, scratch that, it's definitely the best thing that's ever happened to me, and if season three sucks? Lestat's season? Well. Prepare for the apocalypse, bitches, because this fangirl's gonna go nuclear.


Fanart:
Roz aka. rozenkranz_does_things

Noah aka. noahdea.art


Trixie Mattel & Katya Like to Watch: Interview with the Vampire

Necessary.
And way less filthy than I thought it would be.
But that's what happens when you get OG Interview stans in the room with an adaptation; out goes the smut, in comes the comparative analysis!
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Kaos

Is there still smoke coming from my every orifice - okay, maybe not every orifice - over the cancellation of this show?
Fuck yes.
It was so good and funny and stylistically nomable.

And with only one flaw.
A pretty huge one, in fairness, one I find hard to excuse.
Orpheus? The greatest musician to ever live? Serenading the gods and mortals alike with... Bastille?
...
a man wearing a grey shirt and a necklace smiles

Sorry, but that's unforgivable!
But not so much that Netflix should've bloody well cancelled it!
Why don't they want us to have nice things? Why? Is this punishment? Have we not suffered enough?!
What ritual sacrifice do I have to perform in order to get a good series to last more than a season?
Tell me, I'll do it!
a group of cartoon characters are holding hands in a circle with a pentagram in the center


What If

If you've seen Kill Your Darlings, then you know Daniel Radcliffe can act his arse off. He and Dane DeHaan pretty much wrecked me in that movie and it pops into my head from time to time solely to make my brain howl.
But did you ever think he'd make a good romantic lead, let alone a great one?
I didn't (sorry, Dan; love all the fuck you's you're delivering Joanne's way, great work) but damn, he's so lovely in this updated take on When Harry Met Sally (probably not purposeful but my sister and I agree it's totally riffing on it), with the awkward charm us Brits are known for and seems to be catnip for the Yanks, which totally suits the tone of the movie because "awkward" is kind of the theme soup of the day.
But not in the horrific cringe way that seems to get people off but makes me want to crawl inside my body until I invert myself and resemble something from a Cronenberg movie.
Not that.
Never that.
Cute awkward.
With stuttered eye contact and actual chemistry.
Also, with one of my favourite performances from Adam Driver before he decided to become an actor.
Sex Nachos live in infamy:
This may contain: two men in a kitchen one is eating pizza and the other is talking to each other


Ps. This is part of the Zoe Kazan 2012-2013 movie triumvirate:
 
1. Ruby Sparks
2. The Pretty One
3. What If

Watch 'em all, they're pretty fucking great.


Class of '07

They said season two was gonna happen.
They definitely said it.
But is there any evidence of this absolutely necessary thing occurring?
The network says:
a group of women are giving the middle finger and one of them is saying get fucked

I hate it here.

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Alexandra Bishop's little Audrey II's:

Other than these being a feat of sculpting wonder, y'know what makes them absolute perfection?
The drool.
Baby Audrey II's totally a salivator.
📽️ — Little Shop of Horrors, 1986

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Poeticals:
Robert Hayden
Those Winter Sundays


Emma Trelles
Brujitas


Molly Peacock
Widow in Kitchen with Yellow Apple


Kay Ryan
Surfaces


Poetry analysis gives me the serious ick.
For me, poetry is very much something that should be read (or be read by the select few humans capable of reading it (see: Ben Whishaw, Annabel Lee - I'm not even a Poe fan, and my gods) without using "the voice". You know the one. The "poetry voice" *shudder*) and allowed to wash over you; and if a flicker or a blaze of feeling occurs then that's enough.
Its dissection feels reductive somehow.
Some things are meant to be solely felt, not picked apart for scraps of possible meaning.
I'll say one thing, though: 

If it wasn't cultural appropriation, I would absolutely want to be known as "brujita".
But, alas, my pale, Celtic ass will just have to make do with the Scottish equivalent:

Bana-bhuidseach
(banna-vootsch-och)

...
Dammit, it's just not as satisfying.
a girl with red eyes is wearing a purple jacket and tie

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ELK and one very angry unicorn:

It's a unicorn, so, of course I'm obsessed with it.
(I was the kid with unicorn figurines and who asked their mum to paint their bedroom walls with fairy tale scenes featuring the horned ones - which kicked ass by the way)
₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ : mater-suspiria: The Last Unicorn (1982) | Dir....

But it's the background and the colour and the fucking rage of it all that's really giving me the feels.
unicorn gifs Page 37 | WiffleGif

Reminds me a little of this badass:

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January Jukebox:

Okay, January.
Show off, much?

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Luz Tapia back in classic movie action:

I live for this shit.
8 fashion lessons we learned from Clueless

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Sophomore series sacrificing the funnies for the feels:
Shrinking season two

Bad Sisters season two

Well, this was disappointing.
Did I overhype because I was so looking forward to them? I mean, maybe? Or were they just equal parts lacklustre and overwrought, going hard for the darker stuff whilst leaving the humour behind in the wind, thus rendering them a real downer suck-fest?
Hmm, survey says that one, that's the culprit, they're the one who ruined everything with their feelings.
I'm not against emotional angst, not in the slightest (gotta be worth it, though, don't make me suffer for shits and giggles, I want my Kinder Surprise at the end), but if you are a) a comedy drama, and b) a black comedy, don't shirk on the comedy element. If I wanted to watch a drama, I'd watch a drama. If I wanted to watch a murder mystery, I'd go Scandi because y'know, they do it the best. Don't tell me I'm having hot chocolate and hand me a glass of warm milk. Nobody wants that shit. Bring on the genre flavour and mix it thoroughly.
Not cool, not cool at all.
The true villain of the piece, though?
Brett Goldstein's fuzz-free face.
If you shaved my cat, I'm pretty sure it would stir the same feelings in me.
a black and white photo of a fluffy white cat with a caption that says " the dread monster "
a woman is sitting at a desk with two laptops and the words put your pants back on and get a job

And he agrees.

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Groundhog Hill:

This is the definition of a book nerd being tickled.

We want food.

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Tori Bovalino's, My Throat an Open Grave:

In Winston we're taught to go to church every Sunday, to pray for our own souls, to do what is right and good and holy. And in Winston, we know that if we do not obey, there are worse things than death: The Lord of the Wood will catch us if we stray. His shadow is there in the spaces between the trees; his terrible amber eyes watch us all from just across the river, waiting for us to slip. It's the threat hanging over all of us. He likes girls from our village, likes the ones who are wicked. Likes to lure them in by taking kids, stealing away the ones we can't live without. Perhaps, I usually think, when I talk of this with Jess . . . perhaps I should be more afraid.


I wanted to love this but I can't in good faith tell you I entirely did.
This is my second venture into the writings of Tori Bovalino, my first with Not Good For Maidens, her updated take on the sisterly devotion and allure of the illicit that is The Goblin Market. Both, I'm coming to realise, are ultimately missing something in their makeup that, given their source material, should be there. In abundance.
With NGFM, it was the indulgence of the ethereal grotesque I was seeking and found sorely lacking; I wanted a tale of one sister seeking another in the sparkling, sickly rotten sweet underbelly of the barbarous fae's bazaar and found myself less mired in the overwhelm of the debauched than sweetly spun in riotous circles by not so nightmarish nixies. There's no fault to be had with Bovalino's writing, which is adept in drawing you in. Nor her grasp of atmosphere, which leaves a boozy, fetid aftertaste stuck unmoving to the lining of your throat. But when the fae are involved, I want to feel tainted somehow, to feel their gristle-tipped fingers run obscenely down my cheek and flinch away, but then lean with feline intent into the caress. A feeling noticeably absent during my time spent within the Goblin Market.
So, with my next foray into Bovalino's works, a take on Maurice Sendak's tale, Outside Over There, the inspiration for Jim Henson's Labyrinth, both of which take their lead from Goethe's, Der Erlkönig (The Erl-King/The Elf-King), I was in desperate need of this verboten feeling being answered and fulfilled.
It wasn't a want, so much as a necessity, and it seemed overtly possible given the influence.
Set in small town Appalachia, an area rich in Native American folklore, it's no stretch to believe that in the arboreal depths of Pennsylvania there could lie, just across a stretch of river, secreted in the depths of the forest, an eldritch ruler of Fae descent making deals with the desperate and offering impossible challenge in exchange.

In fact, within Cherokee history there are tales of the Yunwi Tsundsi, The Fair Folk (Aos Sí), a clan subset of which are known to steal children. If I could believe in one sibling's plight to retrieve the other from a wicked fairy king taking place anywhere, it's in the occult depths of the Appalachian territory. And from the first chapter of My Throat an Open Grave, I was hustled with intent into its forested depths where a game of manipulative backwoods religion, misogyny, and true, elemental magic was taking place. The introduction visceral and suffocating and moreish, from the first worded bite I was starving for more, and so I followed the wooded path into the next chapter and that promised barbarity became a less sure thing, swallowed in the soft haze of a pretty picture in place of the grime and murk of the uncanny.
The problem, you see, is this is a romantic love story, and it's not I wanted, not even a little bit - and that's coming from someone who devours romance on a daily basis.
Of course, that's simplifying the story which actually deals with incredibly important, prevalent themes such as religious control and trauma; bodily autonomy; misogyny and the patriarchy; purity culture and its oppressive, controlling nature; sex and consent; adoption and postpartum depression; suicidal ideation; parental neglect and abuse; choice.
And these are just the things that come to mind.
My Throat an Open Grave isn't a kind story, it doesn't pull its punches when it comes to making its point.


In the fairy-tales, the princes come to save the good girls, the pure girls. I spent most of my [spoiler] cataloguing them, searching for some sign of salvation: the princess who is so pure she feels a pea under a stack of mattresses; puritanical Cinderella and her goodness, her desire to be nothing but a perfect, helpful girl; Snow White and her unflinching good character, even when she lives with men, even when she's in the perfect environment for ruination. I'm Red Riding Hood, lost to temptation, screaming forever in the belly of the wolf. The princes don't come for the ruined, the unchaste, the soiled girls—they only care for the princesses. They don't come for girls like me.
I'm so, so tired of fighting to be seen as anything other than I am.


But it did read as though it was hiding those points ever so slightly behind an incredibly sweet love story, cushioning their impact which felt detrimental to them in the end. Where there's soft glances and unending kindness from an unexpected overlord and his community, there should've been something more visceral dogging the steps of the heroine, something that truly brought the horror to a horrific story every person capable of giving birth knows all too well. Yes, there are grotesque moments with a suffocating air surrounding them that felt tactile and breathless, and the revelation of the true monster of the piece was, if a tad predictable, satisfyingly done with a most pleasing "execution". But I wasn't necessarily horrified.
Tori Bovalino's novels almost exclusively promote themselves as horror, but I've yet to see much evidence of it, to find myself so profoundly grossed out and terrified that I've had to put the book in the freezer, which is kind of the benchmark for the genre hitting the creeper mark. Instead, I've been lured into two worlds of profound, eldritch beauty and led completely astray.
But I can't say I'm altogether mad about it.
I am, predominantly, a Fantasy reader, it's my happy place, so to read two impeccably sumptuous retellings of Fae deviltry isn't exactly a hardship, in fact, it's a welcome respite from reality and I highly recommend you do the same. I love the Fae, in all their iterations, but especially when they are portrayed as their candid, malefic selves; the more fucked up and tricksy the better, I say. And this is genuinely quiet hard to find in current Fantasy, what with the genre being dominated with Romantasy - a sub-genre I love - there seems to be very little room for the Fae of old, where crunching baby bones are the meal of the day and drugging mortals into dancing 'til they die is eventide entertainment. I long for this kind of debauchery, I'd give my left canine (big deal, the pointy ones are the best) for a fairy revel or a bacchanal that ends with lacerated limbs on the floor and louche fairy lords and ladies paddling their toes in the bloodied floor.

I want mayhem. I want horror. And I want it so profoundly beautiful there's no option but to stare intently into it and watch it slumberously blink back.
And I was so hoping it would be this book, just as I did with Not Good For Maidens, it had all the potential to be that grisly tale of the perniciousness I craved, but, alas, no matter its horrific subject matter, it truly is a very sweet story of forgiving yourself and making your own choices.
Particularly when it comes to a beautiful, gold-limned boy in the heart of the forest where memories have actual roots and moss-covered pianos sit somnolently in hidden glades waiting to be played. But unfortunately, that isn't the choice I would've made given the option. The choice I was calling out to be offered was one of an entirely different hue; slick and scintillant black, verged with the allure of despicable choices, and a shade dismayingly absent within Bovalino's tale.
#* from pretty woman (1990)

So, no, I wouldn't recommend this book to those, like me, who are deeply beset with the Fae and all their mischievousness. I wouldn't even recommend it to devotees of Labyrinth, who love it to their core and basically built their entire personality around it (hi, I know every line, by heart, I'd never forget Sarah's last line. NEVER. I'd also never use it because bitch, I'm gonna run that kingdom).
This book isn't for us, it isn't even for those of us who revel in the sadistic sublime, and it definitely isn't for those who cared very little for the slight romance in the original tale - yes, I know, Bowie was a sexual awakening for many a human, but I was more interested in which goblin was in charge of delivering the milk and where exactly the milk was coming from...
But it is for those of us who've watched Henson's classic on repeat for the duration of our lives and always dreamed of staying in the Goblin Kingdom, making a home in the glitter and the grime with the goblins as our pillow-mates or to reign alongside Jareth, because who needs the reality of life when there's a Goblin King's wardrobe to raid? - No one, that's who.
But more than anything, this story is for the horrified, the terrified, and the incandescent with rage over the liberties being taken with our bodily autonomy and the weaponising of religion to do so, whether you believe or not. It's for every person told to "be good", "stay chaste", "sex is bad and you will be punished"; lies as old as time. It's for every person with the ability to give birth that doesn't feel the desire to do it, a connection to it, or an attachment to any child that occurs and are punished for that. 
My Throat an Open Grave is a book about choice and fighting off your oppressors, about found family, and shucking off the person you're "supposed" to be and choosing yourself, ugliness and all.
And I wished I'd loved it more, I truly do.

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Puuung 퍼엉:

The old school, Mr Benn-esque animation style is sending me into a nostalgic blackout, one I'm very happy to be thrown into.
So warm, so cute, and the sound effects are sensorily delicious.
Image tagged with himouto umaru chan, my two-faced little sister, anime food – @itadakimasu-letmeeat on Tumblr

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Comfort watch YouTube interviewers:
Dish

I did not see this one coming.
But when the snippets YouTube keeps incessantly hurling at you make you laugh and hungry, and feel really fucking present and calm - painfully rare occurence, you watch the damn thing.
So I did.
(Whilst getting my sister hooked, as well)
And now Grimmie and Angela Hartnett having dinner and a blether with a variety of celebrities is now my new favourite comfort watch.
I would recommend cushioning your viewing time with some form of food in your hand, though, because fucking hell, I'd let Angela Hartnett feed my any time, any place, at my last meal, please.

Favourite episodes so far:

Richard E. Grant - feral sniffer

Tom Holland - sweet baby

Judi Love - innuendo bingo

Sandi Toksvig - teach me

Katherine Ryan - backwoods filth

Aisling Bea - potato queen

Saoirse-Monica Jackson - sushi quandary

Siobhán McSweeney - Tucci tired

Claudia Winkleman - starch wife


Brittany Broski's Royal Court

If you want to see celebrities shuck off their performance suits and act like actual human beings, put them in a room with Brittany Broski and her feral goblin vibe will rub off on them the moment they bypass the allergy-afflicted, felted dragon, adorn their regal regalia, and enter her Royal Court.
And it's so beautiful to watch, like Animal Planet but with famous people.
I laugh so much watching this; Brittany's so damn infectiously adorable with her fangirl interview style and mediaeval props.
10/10, highly recommend, if only for her unhinged snickering.

Favourite episodes so far:

Ilona Maher - rugby queen

Cole Sprouse - Kinder Suprise apologist

Daisy Edgar-Jones - silly goose

Saoirse Ronan - Polly Pocket melodrama

Nicholas Hoult - dragon enthusiast

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batsyhead and the relatable Post-it feels:

Choose your Post-it.
I'm definitely "Sensitive idiot" and perturbed tummy ache sufferer.

Ps. These feel very millennial coded.
Also, this:
Julia McIntyre aka. The Bookish Animator

We're a very eepy generation.
a little girl is laying on the floor in a playground with the words status written on the bottom

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Big ol' teases:
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Rachel Smythe's's been dropping character sketches for her new graphic novel (one of two), Eleanor's Deathbed, and I've already entered the realm of soppy motherfucker for Eleanor and her bony beau:

It was the second panel that really sealed the deal.
Stranger in Paradise — female awesome meme: (9/10) antagonists: Agatha...


House Andrews dropped the first chapter snippets of Hugh and Elara's sequel and it's everything.
Snippet 1

Snippet 2

Snippet 3

Seven years.
Seven years of waiting.
And they're finally writing more of my beloved assholes' story.
2025 is probably going to follow in 2024's shit-candle shoes but at least there's this!
Grasping At Straws GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY

Most excellent straws, though.


Ps. Someone filmed me without my knowledge:

Credit to Elizabeth Wheatley for epitomising the BDH (Book Devouring Horde, for the newbs) and understanding the full extent to which the incomprehensible size of Magic Triumphs will forever be a scritch-scratch on our brainpans.
Why, Ace Books, why?
Black Books | GIFGlobe


And a sure thing:

Artful Dodger season two is a gooooooooo!

My gremlin ship lives another day!
Fuck yeah!
GIFs — JACK and BELLE in THE ARTFUL DODGER 1x01

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Just corook breaking my heart in the best of ways:

So fucking joyful, even when it hurts.
This is what the resistance sounds like, and it's so damn pretty.
Tina just don't give a fuck. - GIF - Imgur

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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl:

Stop-motion truly is one of the last vestiges of animation magic.
No shade to cgi, some truly beautiful work's being done out there (see: below), but it's all a little... slick? A little too shiny. Almost too impossible?
Whereas, with stop-motion, it remains a form of animation that feels tactile, like I could reach out and touch it, feel the texture of Wallace's perfectly knitted vest, or gently push my thumb into Gromit's endlessly emotive forehead and leave a lasting thumb print. And that makes them feel so much more alive.
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Like when you physically see a puppeteer's hand up Elmo's butt, and yet... he's Elmo, he's a living, fuzzy thing of scarlet wonder even though you know he's being controlled by a human.
But he's not.
But he is.
But he's not!
It's actual magic, and Aardman, since its beginnings, has been able to instil that same glamour of the impossible into Gromit and his scatterbrained human. And Vengeance Most Fowl was a double shot of the pure, unadulterated animated joy I both expect and admire from them.
It's still not my favourite, that legacy remains stalwartly with The Were-Rabbit, which is actual movie perfection, but this might come a close second. In large part because we're returning to Wallace and Gromit's ultimate nemesis, Feathers McGraw, the most villainous penguin with absolutely zero emotional expression but who can ooze menace like your classic Bond villain. He's one of the all-time greats and to revisit him is to show the greatest the respect, which Vengeance Most Fowl did with abundance.

A continuing lesson in their devotional legacy of odes to pulpy film noir b-movies, with the an overload of the usual hilarious puns, and slapstick galore. You truly, without a doubt, cannot beat the Wallace & Gromit movies for style and humour and being so fucking British they garner more love than any royal possibly could - down with the monarchy, burn it to the ground.
And this might just be their most unhinged and beautiful offering yet.

I won't spoil it, but there's a scene with a viaduct that I swear when it appeared I gasped - or croaked, I had acute Laryngitis at the time - like a Victorian lady swooning under her parasol at the sight of a bare ankle. It's that spectacular.
And you should watch it immediately because it'll make your day infinitely better.
As W&G are wont to do.

Also, this:

Nick Park calling AI out as dystopian bullshit with his whole fucking chest by making an entirely handmade movie about it is what we call a goddamn Flex.
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Priya Kakati's cinematic landscapes:

My brain is pretty much mush at this point in writing the Monthlies, so believe me when I tell you that I love these, I just don't have the vocabulary left to express it properly.
Please accept this gif of cuddling capybara's to do the work for me:
10 Adorable Capybara GIFs - Animal Gifs - gifs - funny animals - funny gifs

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Black Doves:

Okay, but why was this so funny?
I wasn't expecting funny.

And why was watching two of the most elegant, bird-boned actors pummel the shit out of, well, everyone, so damn satisfying?
I need to know whoever green-lit this show and cast it, just so I can give deliver my deepest admiration because Black Doves was everything I needed in an espionage mini-series set at Christmas, and I had no idea that was even a thing I coveted.
Like Tinker Tailor but totally whacked, yet soft as the fluff behind a kitten's ear.
...
Friggin' delightful, in other words.
It won't blow your mind with plot, it's pretty straightforward for a spy show, and even I, a known plot twist dunce, wasn't altogether taken aback by the finale's revelations. In fact, I wasn't even very interested, to be honest, but the ride to get there was a total blast, most of which can be attributed to the insanely pleasing chemistry between Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw.

How have they never been in anything together before? Their voices alone should've been enough to get them together before this, surely? But at least it finally happened and we can revel in their aggressively typical sibling/non-sibling antics of bickering and sniping and laughing hysterically all within the span of a minute. As the youngest of three sisters, I can attest to this behaviour being absolutely on point, and if the siblings and I were spies (hahahahaha), we'd totally be squabbling over how best to dispose of a body while still being under fire. No doubt in my mind.
Which is why Knightley and Whishaw's dynamic works so well: because it's a little silly but fierce as fuck.
The show's also insanely pretty, to boot, and the score's got this eerie tinge to it that, I don't know, every time it swelled in the quiet moments I got a little... shivery.
Also whenever Sarah Lancashire appeared on screen in all her malevolent solemnity. My gods, I love that woman. Nothing will ever beat her performance as Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley, she deserved every damn award she got for that show, but casting her as an almost preternatural spymaster?
Masterful.

And we'll being seeing all three of them in season two!

I talk a lot of shit about Netflix, because, y'know, they deserve it, but I'm gonna give them a tiny amount of credit for this one.
I'd give more if they went one further and gave Williams and Eleanor their own spinoff because those two?
Total scene stealers.
I am obsessed.

After two disappointing watches, this was just the right brain medicine.

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Tori of toriloves_heas and a big fuck you to AI book covers:

Love this.
Lovveeeee ittttt.
I would rather authors were mocking up their covers with images from Unsplash (high quality, royalty free photos for zero pennies) and adding fonts on programs like Procreate (£12.99, one of the best creative tools out there, upgrades are free forever, and it's vehemently against AI), than see one more godawful, soulless, piece of soft focus, twelve fingered eyesore AI bullshit on a book I can't now trust hasn't been written using AI.
Because if you're willing to rip off your fellow creatives for a cover, then who says you wrote your book at all?
Bring on the homemade covers, I say, because fuck AI, and fuck everyone who thinks its okay to steal from actual artists.
I hope you perish of eternal thirst from all the water you're using to make your ugly fucking "art".
Pure Hatred GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY

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How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World:

...
Tears Sobbing GIF by Saku Monsters - Find & Share on GIPHY

I'm not emotionally coherent enough to talk about this!
Maybe after a rewatch but not today, Satan, not today!

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Potes aka. stealingpotatoes:

I've had acute Laryngitis for three weeks.

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