synopsis:
An isolated island community experiences miraculous events - and frightening omens - after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest.

thoughts:
i cannot believe it took me so long to watch this show... wow. it had everything i love: horror, terrifying religious fervor, and vampires. It was SOOOOO good and i was riveted the whole time...

synopsis:
A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

thoughts:
i loved this movie... unsurprising... its a beautiful psychosexual horror and those are my favorite! i really like all of robert eggers films and i think this is my favorite.

synopsis:
A woman returns to her Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her for her attraction to a female childhood friend. Once back, their passions reignite as they explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.

thoughts:
i enjoyed this movie. i liked the commentary about the freedom of being able to choose what we want in life and how so much gets in the way of that, especially ourselves. the lesbian sex scene was very Male Gazey and it was just obviously directed by a dude that wanted to see rachel weisz and rachel mcadams in a lesbian scene lol

synopsis:
Sinister characters converge around a young man devoted to protecting those he loves in a postwar backwoods town teeming with corruption and brutality

thoughts:
pacing and arrangement of this movie vs the book was not something i enjoyed and i don't really like that they didn't make sandy as fucked up as she was in the book but. their whole plot didn't feel as prominent as they were in the book, like they just kinda showed up every now and then imo. robert pattison's character was just as repulsive as he was in the book which was awful to watch on screen

synopsis:
Chris Redfield enlists the help of Leon S. Kennedy and Rebecca Chambers to stop a death merchant from spreading a deadly virus in New York.

thoughts:
we're watching all of the worst resident evil movies with a friend of ours and this was the first on the chopping block. IT'S SO FUCKING BAD. between making Chris a bit of an idiot when it comes to combat, giving rebecca a whole forced marriage subplot while also making her the team "mom" that knocks leon's and chris's heads together. it's just. bad. i like some aspects of it, like leon's jadedness, him struggling with what his job makes him do but then they have him blowing up civilians on the highway to kill TWO DOGS. but no wait, you have to read this movie's novelization to discover that it was arias's men on the highway??? because the movie gives you literally no indication otherwise. so fucking awful LOL.

synopsis:
Set in 1998, this origin story explores the secrets of the mysterious Spencer Mansion and the ill-fated Raccoon City.

thoughts:
utter dogshit. the director/writer hated leon so much they made him some bumbling moron, which was a shame because i really liked his actor. this movie was so close to being the return to basics that the movies needed but then they totally destroyed the characterization of every single character in the series LOL. lily gao is the exception, proving once again, she is the one and only ada wong.

synopsis:
Special Agent Leon S.Kennedy goes against his superior's orders and works to destroy a series of biological weapons being used in a war zone in Europe.

thoughts:
the animation for this is bad, they all look slighty off enough to bother me. that being said, this is one of the better re movies. really like leon in this, even though matt mercer makes it hard. i HATE matt mercer. he's not voice acting he's just. not good. stop giving him work. i hated ada in this movie but only because they made her caucasian for some fucking reason. caucada wong jump scare. also, this was during capcom's 'i hate women' period so a lot of panty shots and showing off how flexible ada is for no reason other than she exists. oh and misogynist leon makes a return. because, heh. women.

synopsis:
In 1950s Mexico City, an American immigrant in his late forties leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival of a young student stirs the man into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

thoughts:
a beautiful film and the yage scene was really emotionally gut-wrenching.

synopsis:
When Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with leading one of the world's most secretive and ancient events, selecting a new Pope, he finds himself at the center of a web of conspiracies and intrigue that could shake the very foundation of the Catholic Church.

thoughts:
holy shit this movie was SO good. the intrigue, the drama, the ending.... incredible. i loved cardinal lawrence's struggles with faith despite his station... ugh. i really need to read the book.

synopsis:
Follows ghosts who want to become the spookiest of urban legends and most successful and famous stars in the underworld through their scare tactics and performances amongst the living.

thoughts:
my friend came over and we watched this together! it is such a cute and funny movie and i actually found myself tearing up a lot LOL. really great film that i can't rec enough!

synopsis:
Natsuo Kirino's novel tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her deadbeat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.
thoughts:
i HATED the ending of this book!!! the tension and suspense was built up so good throughout it and then the ending just sucked literally everything out of it. a shame because despite how ""dark"" this book got, i was still hooked with Masako's story and how it would unfold. I hated that it ended the way it did and it took away from Masako's character, imo.

synopsis:
Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

thoughts:
i am usually not a huge sci-fi person but a friend recc'd this to me and i'm really glad i decided to read it because omg... it was soo good. i really love the way peter watts writes humans and how they interact with one another. lots of really intense dread that outshone most of the horror books i've read.

synopsis:
A haunting novel about a black woman who returns to her hometown for a plantation wedding and the horror that ensues as she reconnects with the blood-soaked history of the land and the best friends she left behind.

thoughts:
i really enjoyed this book, especially the glimpses into the main characters past but the pacing of this was.... odd. i felt like we ran through the climax at breakneck speed and then it just. Ended. still, a good read that i was invested enough in that i finished it in a single night

synopsis:
Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s.

thoughts:
this book was crazy ngl. an appalachian gothic always intrigues me as i am from the area so i like seeing Snippets of the familiar, which this book delivered in spades and often in a way that i both liked and disliked. a lot of the writing for the women was the same but i couldn't tell if it was the author's personal bias showing or if he was really good at capturing the small-minded categories people from small towns seem to sort women into: madonna or whore.

synopsis:
While vacationing in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, a middle-aged woman awakens one morning to find herself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall. With a cat, a dog, and a cow as her sole companions, she learns how to survive and cope with her loneliness.

thoughts:
i really loved this book and the way the relationship between the narrator and her animals is written. the descriptions of just how empty her world was often left me feeling the same unease and overwhelming dread the narrator was describing. the part where the narrator is ill and having a fever dream actually scared the hell out of me and i have no idea if it was actually that scary or that the fact it was 1 am and pouring rain and just added to the oppresive atmosphere. i did not like how abrubt and sudden plot point happened(literally the last five pages) but otherwise an interesting and unsettling read.

synopsis:
The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd - spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist - accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something ancient and beastly - which she calls the grey dog - is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her.

thoughts:
i liked this more than i thought i would! idk why its so hard for me to find a book i love 100% of the way through theres always something that happens that throws me off and eventually pisses me off the more that i think about it LOL. there was a "twist", idk if i should even call it that bc i have no idea if it was meant to be one, but it pissed me off so bad i almost put the book down and never picked it up again. like surprise the woman you thought i slept with? it was actually her husband. like don't. piss me the hell off!!! the whole "i let him have me because i couldn't have her" line just. ruined so much for me LOL. i did enjoy the slow(very slow, which i also loved) descent into ada's madness. some of the writing toward the end became rehashed "we are the daughters of witches you couldn't burn!!" and it made me cringe while reading it but. still. better than i expected but not as a good as i had hoped.

synopsis:
A Certain Hunger tells the story of Dorothy Daniels, a food writer and convicted serial killer, who narrates her crimes from prison, interweaving her life behind bars with the events leading to her imprisonment, particularly her obsession with food and eating men

thoughts:
jesus fucking christ this book was bad. like, the worst book i've ever read bad. the main character is so fucking boring it's not even funny. like i thought patrick bateman was boring but this bitch takes the cake. not only is the main character bad, so is the writing. rambling, meandering word salad slop trying to pass itself off as something better. and holy fucking shit does this book love an aside. it will ramble for days. maybe that's supposed to be part of the satire this book is claiming to have but. it was just bad. like fucking awful. i wish i had followed my gut instinct and shevled it after the literal second page. but it was like watching a train wreck. i want to unread this book. and also gut everyone on good reads rating it five stars because they "support women's wrongs". like grow a spine. admit this book is dogshit. also delete your account.

synopsis:
a gothic fantasy about one of dracula's first victims, Lucy Westenra. She escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love.

thoughts:
god help me i cannot pick out a book. where do i start. it's published dracula fanfiction, which would be fine because most vampire novels are carmilla/dracula fanfiction, at the end of the day. but it's BAD published fanfiction. the author claims to love dracula and honest to god, i don't think she does. she hates the book. she hates it so much she spells lord godalming's name wrong for the ENTIREEEEE book. it's spelled goldalming. and no, it's not meant to be a twist on godalming it was literally meant to be godalming but she hates dracula so fucking much she couldn't even be bothered to fact-check her spelling. Like are you fucking kidding me?

ironically, i thought the chapters from dracula's pov were some of the best written. and those still weren't great but because the chapters from lucy and iris's pov are so badly written it tricks you into thinking its good. some of iris's dialogue feels very millennial girl boss/sad girl quote pinterest board to me LOL? some of lucy's did too but iris was the WORST. dykwim? like... just bad. also she could NOT stop quoting emily dickinson. it was almost like she was trying to write like someone else but she doesn't have the range so everything just felt like regurgitated Crap.

also how the fuck is this a novel of female empowerment when you make one of dracula's other victims(she isn't in this book but in dracula she WAS so my point still stands) the surprise twist villain. LIKE? all this to tear down another woman so you can self-ship(iris feels very selfinserty to me lol) with lucy westenra. literally going as far as to claim SHE was the real dracula or at the very least as bad as him. calling her his mirror and shit. which ig is fair because for some odd fucking reason you did make her as evil as dracula???

idgi. i also hate the use of modern language and terms i'm ngl. even though a good chunk of this book takes place in 2024/2025 it still just felt. forced. like reading the line "lucy was confirmed sapphic" (nearly verbatim line btw) just turns me off and makes me roll my eyes so far back in my own head i wanted to die. like it never feels... genuine, dykwim? like it always feels like LOOK WE KNOW THE LINGO... WE'RE SO INCLUSIVE! like it just feels forced and i hate saying that as a lesbian but it just feels cheap and like. plastic. idk.

the plot was bad, at one point lucy literally participates in WWI and WWII and it's as bad as it sounds. She ends WWI by forcing the humans deciding that to sign the peace treaty and calling them "fucking monsters" it's just bad. the ending was so drawn out and took forever to finally wrap the fuck up that i was literally glazing over through completely irrelevant plot points that were added to increase word count. overall, it read like a YA novel meant for more mature audiences because the author wanted to throw in some barely there lesbian sex that was less than a page and just vague alluding to. I want raw uncut lesbian vampire sex. otherwise fuck off. once again fell for a pretty cover on a terrible book and you'd think i'd learned my lesson by now. this was not a sweeping and seductive gothic fantasy. it was SHIT!

STOP PUBLISHING BAD FANFICTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

synopsis:
To the dirt poor town of Enigma, Georgia, a local farm boy returns as a prosperous faith healer. Though the townsfolk give way to a mindless idolization, the Gospel Singer is tormented by the extent of his deception and is forced to admit his corrupt activities.

thoughts:
a gritty southern gothic with a horrible cast of characters. the introduction in this book promised gender and race would be defied and i don't think that really happens. if it did, 30+ uses of the n word in the first chapter and then throughout completely diminished it. not to mention the insane amount of times women were called whores. i know this is a gothic but... c'mon man. The gospel singer himself is about the worst type of man to exist but is seen as some Holy Healing Prophet so much it makes him uncomfortable and no matter how much he insists he hasn't healed, saved, or blessed anyone, no one will believe him because of how awe-inspiring his voice is. i did enjoy how the gospel singer grappled with what has voice has both blessed and cursed him with and the "i will do anything to get out of this backwater town" mindset that so many characters in this book have.

synopsis:
From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find - discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe - cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

thoughts:
I really enjoyed this book, it was a short read but i didn't end it feeling unsatisfied. there are some things i wish the author had gone into more detail about but i also think it might have taken away from the narrator's POV. we didn't know because she didn't know and i really liked that! the ending was sad but given the tone of this book, i had a feeling it was coming. i'm tempted to pick up the author's other book, tender is the flesh after reading this one!

synopsis:
The story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man.

thoughts:
this is unironically one of the saddest books i have ever read in my life. i cried like a baby when gregor's family rejected him and made no effort in an attempt to understand him. his sister tries to care for him in the beginning but is frightened of him and her fear of him makes it nearly impossible for her to truly understand him. i think she stops putting effort into her "care" of him once she realizes not only will she never understand him, she just simply doesn't want to. it's so sad and reading the passages about gregor pressing his head to the door and aching to be with his family, feeling guilt about the "burden" he's placing on them, all while listening to his family talk about him is really heartbreaking. its a devastating kind of loneliness to feel and one that i know many, including myself, are familiar with. sad that it took me so long to read this but reading it as 30 year old is something i'm glad for.

synopsis:
Baldur's Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power.

thoughts:
i'm ngl i think this game is incredibly overhyped, lol.

read more

i originally got this game because i'm a sucker for a high fantasy rpg and as an eccentric vampire lover, astarion felt tailor made to lure me to this game. so, i bought it for my birthday last year. and hated it. maybe i'm not cut out for "real" rpgs but this game was such a miserable slog for me that i literally just gave up on it entirely, deleted it from my console, and lamented that i'd essentially flushed 70 dollars down the drain.

this year tho i'm on a mission to beat all my unplayed games and cross platform co-op is coming and my friend wants to play it with me, so i decided to give it another chance. also the mod support on console definitely helped me make up my mind because for such a popular rpg the customization of the character creator fucking sucks and hearing "there's mods!" in response to the lack of body diveristy seriously pisses me off LOL. imo, a lot of the fat characters in this game are meant to come off as disgusting/repulsive or they're all "bad" people. so i played it anyway depsite my hate for it and decided that, yeah. it's not as good as everyone made it out to be.

for as big as the game is, it still felt incredibly empty in certain points. I was getting dialog trees for routes i never took or things i never did. it was annoying at best and frustrating at worst. also. tav, the self-insert player character, feels incredibly empty with the vacant eyed stare and four expressions. it took me out of whatever "immersion" i was meant to be feeling. high stress situations suddenly became a joke when my tav's face looked like an over exaggerated shocked emoji. at the end of my game karlach's ending scene bugged so badly and i'm fairly certain i missed out on quite a bit of dialog in it lol. the fact this game is 60USD(70 if you're on ps5 like me LOL)and they're still adding endings to this game. be serious. all the companion quests are echoes of one another, like what do you mean they're all victims under the whim of some big bad piece of shit and you can either liberate them from that or make them worse LOL. that being said, the charaters are this games strongest asset but i think that is 100% because the voice actors were working like the rent was due. also, it's not so much a game issue as a community issue but what the fuck is up with the characters that get DO get attention. i love astarion but seriously. wyll is right there. karlach is right there. jaheira is right there. shut the hell up about gale!!!!!!!!!!!! also really??? FUCKING GALE? a windbag egotistical dipshit?? fuck him!!!!!

synopsis:
Enter the world of Thedas, a vibrant land of rugged wilderness, treacherous labyrinths, and glittering cities - steeped in conflict and secret magics. Now, a pair of corrupt ancient gods have broken free from centuries of darkness and are hellbent on destroying the world.

thoughts:
this did not feel like a game that took 10 years to make. it did not feel like a dragon age game at all. which is a huge let down as i loved inquisition so much. the dialog is empty, and rings hollow. everyone is my friend and no matter what i say or do they still just end up liking me anyway, even if i go directly against their apparent unshakable beliefs. it felt like none of my choices were my own, all dialog options more or less played out the same. calling this game a rpg seems like a joke as it felt like my character spoke for me more often than i made choices. i didn't feel connected or immersed in my character as there were so many "hey remember that time we did all that stuff we're not gonna bother to show us doing but hey trust me, it happened and now we're the best of friends?" moments it actually drove me crazy. i dont know if rpgs are getting worse or i'm just disenchanted with them but. i'm so bummed. i miss getting lost in them. that being said. i liked the solavellan ending. whatever. fuck that bald elf for making me care about him.

synopsis:
Investigating a letter from his late wife, James returns to where they made so many memories - Silent Hill.

thoughts:
replayed this game for dutch's sister! got the leave ending this time, which was my first ending in the original silent hill 2! i really love this remake, they did an amazing job. my only complaint is that i wish they'd done a little tweaking with some of the expressions because they can look a little blank.