#it was so well built on the books but the series does not deliver on setting it up at alL

[magneticflower]

It irks me the way that the fight scene in Per Haskell's bar makes little sense in the show because they decided to for some reason forgo Per Haskell and Kaz's real relationship even though his assent through the ranks of the Dregs and the blood, sweat, and tears he put in into making the Dregs into an actually reputable gang is a big part of his journey into who he is today. He put everything into that gang because he had always intended to get to the point where he could come and collect on his hard work when the time came for him to stake his claim as the real leader of the Dregs that they are today because Per Haskell was not that by a long shot. Why they decided to omit that I'll never understand.

[kuiperblog]

Book Review: I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

I have finished reading I'm Starting to Worry About this Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin.

The premise of this book is simple, and rather than trying to summarize it myself, I will give you the author's blurb:

One day, a woman you've never met before offers you $100,000 in cash to drive her across the country—half now, half when you arrive. It’s a 2,600-mile trip, but there's a catch. She has a large, locked black box, big enough for someone to crawl inside. You're not allowed to look inside the box or even ask questions about it. She insists you leave behind all devices that can be tracked—no phone, no laptop, no credit cards, no GPS. You'll be paying with cash and navigating with a paper map the entire way. And finally, you can't tell anyone where you're going. There's no time to think; she says you must leave now. You hesitate, and she doubles the offer. Would you do it? Maybe, if you're brave or desperate enough. And besides, you think, what’s the worst that could happen?

I read it. I enjoyed it! I think it's my favorite Jason Pargin novel. One of the things that I have always liked about his novels are the fun action set pieces, and the way he builds tension throughout a scene, and across an entire book. He delivers on that here, and I am incredibly impressed with how he managed to stick the landing on this one: near the end of the book, I found myself thinking, "there's no way that this could have a climax that manages to surprise me without being a total letdown," but he proved me wrong: the big climax was completely unexpected, yet expertly "earned" by all the little bits that built up to it. It really all came together in the end in a way that far exceeded my expectations.

Jason writes humorous books, or so I've been told. I enjoy his Zoey Ashe books, and they are fun, but I've never found them to be particularly "funny." The Zoey Ashe series presents lots of absurd situations that entertained me, but none that really tickled my funny bone. However, Black Box of Doom made me laugh out loud multiple times. Maybe it's the fact that, unlike Zoey Ashe (which is science fiction), Black Box of Doom is set in "our world" in a way that feels incredibly true to life. And it feels like "our world" in a way that a lot of "real world" stories don't, largely thanks to the specificity.

Rendering the world we live in with high specificity is risky, because it's the sort of thing that is prone to "age rapidly," but I think that in 10 years, people will look back on this as an interesting period piece about 2020's culture. When Jason Pargin writes about TikTok, and Reddit, and Twitch, and the way the characters in his book engage with these platforms, you get a sense that he understands them deeply, and he is more interested in rendering them in high fidelity than he is in making a value judgment about them, or trying to poke fun at them. And yet, because he understands them so deeply, he also understands all of the things about them that are deeply funny and absurd, and so he can render those parts to great humorous effect without ever having to exaggerate. The moments of absurdity that manage to be pointed without feeling artificially "heightened" are some of the funniest, and give the book a very Dave Barry-esque quality.

Pargin ends the book with an afterward about karma how does not exist in this universe: this is a book where bad things can happen to people who behave well, and good things can happen to people who behave poorly. That much seems obvious enough that it seems unnecessary to explain it in a disclaimer, but Pargin wishes to disclaim something more specific: he wants us to know that if good things happen to a character, that is not a case of the author "rewarding" the character for being "right," nor are the bad things that happen to other characters in a case of Pargin "punishing" them for being "wrong."

Before editing this post, I wrote the previous paragraph about how "sometimes good things happen to bad people, and sometimes bad things happen to good people." But I rewrote those sentences, because I think that Pargin would reject the essentialist framing of "good person" vs "bad person." Everyone you know has done bad things at some point in their lives, and everyone you know has good qualities that might cause you to like them in certain contexts. Can anyone really make a judgment about whether that makes them a "good person" or "bad person?" If you go through someone's life looking for the one piece of evidence that will allow you to render a "good person or bad person" view of them, you will end up with a pretty low-fidelity picture of who they are, and a pretty low-fidelity picture of how the world works. All of the characters in this book do things that you probably don't approve of. Some of those things might even make you dislike them. But all of the characters in this book are fun to spend time with.

There are two interesting tricks that Jason Pargin pulls in Black Box of Doom that played with my expectations. One of which comes near the beginning, and one of which comes near the middle. Anyway, this is the part of the review where I get into descriptions that are specific enough to feel like spoilers.

First, the part that you learn as you read the first chapter:

Part of what Pargin does with his blurb is invite you to consider: what kind of man would be brave or desperate enough to accept someone offering $100,000 in cash to transport a mysterious black box across the country with no phone or GPS? What kind of hardened badass would accept a deal that is obviously pulling him into a world full of legally-questionable shenanigans and people who are obviously up to no good, with the confidence that he'd be able to handle himself in that hardscrabble world and come out alive?

And the answer is that the main character is none of those things. He's not brave; he's cowardly. He's not strong; he's weak. In fact, that's how he gets roped into this situation: he's anxiety-ridden. He's really bad with confrontation; he doesn't know how to handle conflict. And that is why he essentially allows himself to get bullied into participating in this insane errand: he doesn't know how to put his foot down and say "no." He tries to take the path of least resistance, basically procrastinating on the task of saying "I'm sorry, I can't help you," thinking "maybe if I go along with this, there will be a better opportunity for me to say no later," and of course once the ball gets rolling he can't stop it.

So, in a sense, the main character is kind of the opposite of who you think he would be based on the elevator pitch, and it's funny, and yet true-to-life, and makes for a story full of ways to put that socially-anxious guy into all sorts of crazy situations that he things are way beyond his capacity. And yet, of course, he deals with all of them, as best he can, because he must, and that's what most of life is.

Then there's something we find out partway through the story, closer to around the middle of the book.

You see, Jason Pargin has done yet another head fake with the main character, leading us to think one way before revealing something that feels almost the opposite. There is a real sense in which this story starts off with a poor put-upon guy who is roped into traveling across the country with a mysterious woman. You spend a good portion of the early part of the book fearing for his safety. He's here, but he doesn't particularly want to be here, and it's deeply unfortunate that he's stuck with the woman who roped him into this tense and chaotic mess.

But this is a road trip novel, and as the story goes on, you get a better sense of who these characters are, the cowardly driver, and the woman who hired him. You see more and more glimpses of the sort of people they are as they confront various situations. And, over time, you shift from feeling like he's deeply unfortunate to be stuck here with her (and gosh I'm terrified of what might happen to him if things go wrong), to starting to think about how deeply unfortunate she is to be stuck with him (and gosh I'm terrified of what might happen to her if things go wrong).

Just in the same way the blurb book invites us to think, "what kind of brave or desperate person would accept this insane business proposition," we're also left to contemplate, "what kind of brave, desperate person would offer this kind of insane business proposition?" What kind of woman would find herself in a situation where she was hailing a Lyft, and then ambushing the driver to tell him that she was ready to pay him six figures, in cash, to drive her and a box to the other end of the country?

That is one of many questions that is answered by the text of the book. I enjoyed discovering the answer, and many of the other answers we encounter along the way.

[brickcentral]

Review: LEGO Ideas 21348 Dungeons & Dragons

After many Lego Ideas attempts and a massively successful Ideas challenge campaign, Lego is finally releasing a set to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons. The winner of the challenge, Dragon's Keep: Journey's End, designed by BoltBuilds, was selected through an exciting fan vote. Although the set is not an exact copy of the submission, which is to be expected, it delivers an incredible experience.

The sets presents itself like a One-Shot Adventure. There is a QR code with a link in the build instructions to download the adventure, with pre-designed characters and a few scenarios to feed the adventure. There is a brief description on the monsters and the characters and some intro to the Dungeons & Dragons history. Full disclaimer, I haven't had my hands on the actual adventure that comes with the set (the code does not work yet), so this is mostly based on intuition and guesses. I will try my best to avoid any spoilers.

If you are a DnD player, or even more a dungeon master, building the set itself is pure joy. As you go along creating the parts of the set, you also go along building secrets, treasures, traps, monster hideouts... No brick is placed randomly and there is a purpose for even the smaller space. You feel like you are preparing the stage for your players.

The heroes and the NPCs

The adventure comes with four pre-designed heroes: A Dwarf Cleric, a Gnome Fighter, and Orc Rogue and an Elf Wizard. All three come with two different heads, male and female, with the exception of the orc that just has two different expressions. They are customizable up to a degree, including weapons and spells.

Besides the heroes, we have two NPCs: the innkeeper (also two heads for male/female) and a green dragonborn, which uses the head mould from the Vidiyo series.

The monsters

There is a surprisingly large selection of monsters in the set. A gelatinous cube (which was teased on social media), a beholder, an owlbear, a mimic (or two?), a displacer beast, a treant, two Myconid? (I'm not sure if that's what they are meant to be), several skeletons and a large red dragon.

The smaller monsters are all brick-built and very well made, in perfect proportion for the heroes and to fit inside the scenarios. The owlbear and the beholder however might be too big to put inside the buildings or ruins though, so maybe they will just appear in specific places, but both of them are gorgeous builds.

The dragon itself is huge and beautiful, but delicate. I keep having to reattach the legs often when trying to pose it. The head also keeps looking down, since there is not much friction on the ball joint and the head is too big and heavy for it. And yes, there are printed tiles for the eyes! They are just almost impossible to see behind the horns.

The scenarios

The set is divided into four different builds with their respective books of instructions: the inn, the forest/dungeons, the tower, and the dragon. All three have different styles and building techniques, so it makes the building experience entertaining. I'm not a fan of the blue/purple roof of the inn, but I agree that it needed a color pop to separate it from the rest of the build and the dragon.

All three are open in the back, to allow the players to move around. For a toy photographer, this gives the chance to shoot many different scenes. They are also modular and can be easily separated, I'm assuming to allow players to go around discovering each one individually as they explore the environment. On their own, the scenarios are small, so I'm guessing movement will have to be limited or counted by studs.

Everyone knows a good adventure starts and ends on an inn. Our heroes need a place to rest and prepare for the coming adventure, so I'm guessing this is where the adventure will begin.

Some details will have to be described by the Dungeon Masters, otherwise I don't see how four players's heads can look into the tiny inn and say: "Hey, I want to investigate the chest, it looks interesting" or "That brick has a different color, I want to know if I can move it". It will also look very cramped if all four minifigures try to be in the same room investigating or fighting a monster.

There are already a few secrets on the inn for the more curious adventurers, and food and drinks for the more relaxed ones.

As they leave the inn they will most likely step into the forest, and from there, several paths can be followed. One could go through the ruins, or the dungeons, explore both, or find a completely new path to the tower (which I assume is the final destination).

On the way, there will be treasure to be found, weapons and spells, some potions... These are things to prepare for the upcoming final battle. But to get to those there will be monsters and traps and mysteries to be solved.

As with the inn, the space is very small to see and put all the players in, so the Dungeon Master must be very involved in describing and hinting so the players can be more successful at finding these secrets.

Eventually, they would reach the tower where there is a climb up to the adventure finale. I don't want to show much there to avoid spoilers, but the same applies here. Secrets to be found and possibly the story will unfold into an unexpected conclusion.

Verdict

With a high price of 359,99€/$359.99 and 3745 pieces, it is a large and expensive set. But for both LEGO and Dungeons & Dragons fans, if you can afford it, this one is worth it. The joy of physically building the adventure and being able to play with the characters and monsters is for me what makes it so great.

I also believe that most of the scenes are rather a visual reference than a playing grid, it does feel small for four players to move around and still be able to see the surroundings, let alone have full battles in a few squared studs. But I'm more than happy to try!

I would also say that fans of medieval fantasy would probably enjoy the set, but perhaps some of the lore will pass unnoticed. However, for those who are not DnD or Medieval theme fans, it might not be worth it at all.

As a toy photographer, heavily invested in fantasy themes, I love all the different backgrounds and characters that come with the set. It feels like there are so many storytelling possibilities, so many moments to capture, and it has so much potential for modifications. You could add your own characters for the story, add a few more treasures and traps, or create your own adventure.

[carriagelamp]

What are the Christmas holidays for if not for being cosy and snug and reading a book? It has been a very pleasant December for me, and I've really gotten to indulge my love of reading winter themed books in winter

The Bellybuttons

A quebecois bande desinee I’ve heard about and decided to pick up the first book of — I read this one in English. It was pretty amusing! At times quite funny as it does a gag-a-page format pretty well, but also at times deeply frustrating since the series is predominantly about Karine, who is a sweet, somewhat awkward teenaged girl, and the rather nasty popular girls she’s “friends” with. Karine acts as a foil and a general punching bag for most of the book. It does make her standing up for herself at the end of the album deeply satisfying. A worthwhile read if you enjoyed Mean Girls and would like that in a comic format.

Bookshops & Bonedust

A prequel to Legends & Lattes that I’ve been very eagerly anticipating! In this book Viv is just beginning her career as a mercenary but has been laidlow by a injury. Forced to stay behind in a seaside town while her leg heals, she gradually gets drawn into the lives of the various town residents, including a beleaguered ratkin who’s desperately trying to keep her little bookshop afloat. Add in a dash of baked goods and necromantic plots, and it’s a really fun read! If you haven’t read the original yet, I highly recommend both it and this one.

A Christmas Story

I love this movie and only just realized it was originally based off a series of radio stories that were adapted into print. If you are unfamiliar with the Christmas film, it follows the Parker family through a series of mundane misadventures on the build up to Christmas, including Ralphie’s desperate need to get a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle for Christmas.

This book, A Christmas Story, collects a handful of stories from two different anthologies that were used when creating the iconic movie. It’s fun how many lines are word-for-word from the original stories; they’re all hilarious and the language is just fantastic. Hard to put down.

Every Heart a Doorway

A fascinating short story about a boarding school for the “chosen ones” who have returned from whatever magical world drew them in and then spat them back out. It’s a school of children who have learnt to survive in strange worlds built around strange, incomprehensible rules and who must now learn to re-adapt to the mundane world. They are all desperate to get back, to find their own doorways, and struggle with being trapped back in a world that doesn’t understand them. Things only get worse when the murders start.

Hogfather

One of my favourite Discworld novels. On the Discworld, it’s a boar-themed entity known as the Hogfather that travels around the world delivering presents to boys and girls on Hogwatchnight. Except this year something has happened. The Hogfather is nowhere to be found, and someone else has been forced to take his place. With Death now attempting to deliver holiday cheer, and his granddaughter reluctantly drawn into unravelling a plot on the Hogfather’s life, this is easily one of my favourite “Christmas” books to read. And the ending always hits me like a ton of bricks, it makes me really emotionally. Highly recommend the read, even if you’ve never touched a Discworld book before. As long as you like high fantasy and can suspend disbelief, it’s easy to jump into.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

So, this book absolutely destroyed me. Would recommend. I love this author, and this novel did not disappoint. It’s about a hand-crafted, specially commissioned, porcelain rabbit doll named Edward Tulane. Edward Tulane, with his exquisite wardrobe and delicate features, is beautiful and precious and he knows it. He doesn’t care anything for the little girl who loves him and resents her family who patronizes him. Everything changes for Edward Tulane though when, during a sea voyage, he is thrown overboard and finds himself separated from his girl and lost to the black silence of the ocean floor…

Moominland Midwinter

Magical and chilling, this book really understands and articulates the other side of the winter season. The longest nights of the year, the darkness, the cold, the way the entire world sleeps and changes and becomes strange.

Moomins always hibernate through the winter, but this year little Moomintroll wakes up early. He finds himself completely alone in the middle of winter while his family sleeps around him. He’s forced to venture forth and learn about this dark, strange season, to find the friends he can and come to terms with the harsh strangeness of winter while waiting for the sun to return.

A Mouse Called Miika

A very middling book. There is a mouse who lives in the North Pole. He likes cheese. He has a very unpleasant friend. He gets magical powers of some sort or another. He tries to steal a very important cheese. I genuinely don’t remember the plot well enough to go in any more detail. If you’re desperate to read something Christmassy, it’s not bad, but I wouldn’t bother seeking it out.

Beezus and Ramona // Ramona and her Mother

You know, I’ve never in my life read a Ramona book. I’ve read and enjoyed other Beverly Cleary books, but never the Ramona series. I ended up reading Ramona and her Mother first and afterwards I picked up Beezus and Ramona just to see how the series began. I can… see why it’s popular, especially for the time. It’s a fun, silly, slice-of-life series about the wacky hijinks of Ramona Quimby, a rambunctious kindergartener. I can really, genuinely say though that this is not a series made for me. Ramona and her Mother I found agonizingly dull, with only a few interesting moments interspersed. Beezus and Ramona was a bit more interesting, but they made Ramona so incredibly annoying that I could hardly get through it. Maybe part of the blame lies in me listening to an audiobook for that one and the narrator using the single most grating voice I have eve heard in my life, but my god it drove me nuts. 

System Collapse

New Murderbot book! New Murderbot book!! Woohoo! If you haven’t read the Murderbot series, go start on All Systems Red and continue from there, you won’t regret it! The series follows a synthetic being known as a Security Unit — an artificial construct that isn’t meant to be self-aware or self-governing, except that they are. When Murderbot succeeds in hacking its governor module and gaining full control of itself, it briefly considers going on a murderous rampage… until it realizes it’s much more enjoyable to just download a lot of soap operas into its brain and get on with things. In this new book, Murderbot continues on a mission with ART’s crew and those from Preservation. Things are heating up as Barish-Estranza attempts to take control of the planet, new SecUnits have been deployed, and there may or may not be a rampant alien plague. Worse yet, something is wrong with Murderbot, related to [REDACTED]. If it can’t figure out how to fix what’s wrong soon, its humans may soon be in peril.

Heaven Official's Blessing v5

I continue to read Heaven Official’s Blessing! I continue to love it! The desperate scramble towards Mount Tonglu has been a blast. I’m getting Very Concerned about what may or may not be the return of the White Calamity though… whatever is going on and whatever it is, everything seems like it’s heating up to some serious bad news in the next book.

Twelve Doctors of Christmas

An alright anthology of Christmas-themed Doctor Who stories. If you want something Christmassy and you want Doctor Who, this delivers. It’s festive, light, and has a few pretty good stories in it. However I wouldn’t say it was my favourite Doctor Who short story anthology by a long shot. Time Lord Fairy Tales or 13 Doctors 13 Stories are both more impressive story collections imho

[lauraallean]

Review: Violet Made of Thorns

Originally posted to my Wordpress journal on February 14, 2023.

When I first picked up Violet Made of Thorns, I wasn’t expecting anything particularly groundbreaking. On first glance, it had all the staples of a familiar YA fantasy novel. The titular Violet possess a unique talent which has bestowed upon her not only a position at court and the ear of the king but also a terrible burden. While the story rings of notes similar to that of Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series or the Folk of the Air books by Holly Black, Gina Chen delivers memorable twists on some familiar tropes in this fantasy debut.

What really hooked me at the onset was the blurb from the back of the book:

“Violet is a prophet and a liar, influencing the royal court with her cleverly phrased—and not always true—divinations.”

In particular, those first seven words got my attention not only for their contradictory nature but their bluntness. Though any well-rounded character has flaws, most authors will try to mask their protagonist’s less desirable traits by highlighting their loyalty, cleverness or plucky attitude. But Chen is upfront from the get-go that Violet Loon isn’t a particularly likeable person. She’s cut rough around the edges, pugnacious and a bit of a cynic. Orphaned as a child, she uses her gift as a seer to gain a place at court but she never truly feels like she belongs there. She has no qualms about keeping her divinations vague and even outright bending the truth if it means maintaining the comfortable life she’s made for herself. It’s a refreshing change of pace in a main character.

Although Violet was a breath of fresh air, the setting of the story was a bit more stale. The Sun Continent feels like a pretty typical YA fairytale setting, lost in a blended, time-period mishmash of knights, court drama, and ladies in pretty gowns. At the same time, other elements felt out of place, most glaringly, a pistol that appears once and is never mentioned again. And it’s made all the more frustrating when the same character later uses a knife that could have at the very least made the pistol’s inclusion earlier in the story feel warranted rather than a huge misfiring of Chekhov’s gun. While it wasn’t enough to ruin the story as a whole, the lack of vision within the world building definitely didn’t earn the novel any memorability points.

As the plot relies heavily on Violet’s visions, I did feel like there wasn’t enough time spent exploring the rules behind her powers. One of the first conflicts encountered in the story exists in part because she used her foreknowledge to save a life and change the future, in effect “stealing” him from the Fates. On the other hand, a large part of Violet’s daily routine involves reading the “threads” of her patrons to glean insight on their pasts and futures and provide them with guidance. And while she usually keeps her readings vague and implies the mutability of the future, it’s never made clear as to how much influence she’s allowed to exert on the future or why that particular event was different. Once things were explained, quite close to the novel’s conclusion, the overall reasoning felt sound enough when paired with the revelation that it accompanied. But because so little is ever explained about Violet’s powers and the rules surrounding her visions, it left me feeling like the stories conflict was being manipulated into existence.

And while Violet makes it clear from the get go that she has only the most surface level understanding of her powers, she seems disinterested in changing that, even as questions arise in connection to her visions. Chen does her best to justify this lack of knowledge with the reasoning that Seers are far and few between, highly sought after and sometimes traded between kingdoms. But Violet’s home, a tower of enchanted vines and perhaps the most memorable part of the setting, was home to:

Centuries of Seers built up clutter, and people are too afraid of committing accidental blasphemy to throw anything away. I did the next best thing and stuffed everything I didn’t need into the cabinets to never see light again.

And indeed, the clutter of her predecessors is almost entirely buried away, used only once to help along a rather small plotline. Perhaps in the future, Violet will better explore the relics and knowledge left to her by previous Seers but with this first novel so full of questions, it seemed like a natural place for anyone to start looking and I felt a bit frustrated that Violet never did.

Normally, I find that characters like Cyrus, the romantic interest of the story, fall flat, relying too heavily on the idea of the fairytale prince exemplifying virtues of honor and chivalry. And while his personality does play into these tropes, his outward dislike of Violet who represents his moral opposite, makes for an engaging dynamic. And the motivation for his treatment of her feels more authentic then most. Instead of relying on infighting between classes or political derision, it’s Cyrus’s guilt over his feelings of responsibility toward the type of person Violet became.

A girl comes from out of nowhere, pulling him away from certain death like a blessing from the Fates. A dirty, lovely thing. A miracle. He brings the girl home to his hungry father and his hungry court. They place her in a tower, whisper promises that sate her own hunger. He watches her become everything anathema to him. He hates what she becomes, silver-tongued and sly. He hates everyone else more for making her that way.

Although the foundation for their relationship felt solid, the execution felt a bit messy, especially towards the novel’s end. They have a very on-again/off-again romance due to their past dislike of one another and the current political situation but there came a point in the narrative where their arguing felt like it was being forced for the sake of splitting them up again. The author tried briefly to shoe horn a potential love triangle into the mix too when Violet starts to fantasize about her friend Dante which felt like it came flying in out of left field and it then ended just as abruptly. Towards the later half of the novel, this did result in the story feeling rushed and left me feeling like we were missing out on what could have been more than just their physical romance. By the stories end however, Cyrus and Violet find that not only do they care about one another but to a large degree, need one another if they plan to survive.

While some edits could have transformed Violet Made of Thorns into a solid stand-alone fairytale with a happy ending, Chen did a fantastic job of leaving room open for the second half of this planned duology. I do hope we get to see less bickering between these once-rivals and some further exploration of the extent of Violet’s powers, especially after the reveal at the stories end. And I can’t wait to find out just how powerful Violet and Cyrus can be if they decide to cooperate in the as-of-yet unnamed sequel.

[small-screen-superman]

Plastic Man No More! #1 Review (Plus Some Thoughts on Fan Reactions)

For an enhanced experience, read this post on my personal blog! https://www.sssuperman.com/blog/plastic-man-no-more-1-review/

Plastic Man No More! is a new DC Black Label comic series written by Christopher Cantwell about Plastic Man potentially dying as his body melts. It’s a surreal premise with a lot of potential for both introspection and body horror, and though it’s only one issue in, it’s delivering so far. DC Black Label is usually intended for more mature, out-of-continuity stories, so it seems to be a perfect fit.

This issue basically does two things: establish who Plastic Man is (including his backstory and current life) and begin the current story. As a result, the amount of stuff that happens in the present story isn’t a lot, but that feels perfectly fine. The comic still feels content-rich since it efficiently conveys quite a lot about the title character, including various different eras of his history, his relationship with his family, his relationship with the Justice League, and his insecurities and regrets. To me, it’s a mark of a great comic to be able to say a lot with relatively few pages or panels, especially if you do so using the conventions of the medium to their fullest.

Some comics lean heavily on just one or two tools, such as relying heavily on just narration boxes to tell their story, but this one takes advantage of a breadth of storytelling tools comics have to offer. For example, there are a couple instances of panel montages to convey a lot about Plastic Man’s life in just a page or two.

Another excellent utilization of the comic book medium is its usage of two different art styles drawn by two different artists, Alex Lins and Jacob Edgar (and a colorist, Marcelo Maiolo, using two distinct coloring styles). The main style, Lins’, has a certain roughness and dinginess with colors tending towards the dark and desaturated, while Edgar’s is clean, bright, and classic. The latter style is used for scenes with the Justice League and a couple of “happy” panels. Both styles are realistically-proportioned but a bit cartoony, especially the latter. (Cartooniness seems like a good fit for Plas in general.)

This art style contrast extends to the fact that the Justice League scenes have bright lighting (taking place outside during the day or in the well-lit Hall of Justice), while the other style is used for night scenes. It was written to ensure this wonderful visual contrast makes sense in-universe too.

So much depth and interest is generated in a scene like this. Though the League seems oblivious and even uncaring, it’s clear that some of their reaction is also due to Plastic Man’s self-presentation. Joking almost seems like a compulsion for him, a coping mechanism built up so strongly over the years that it’s hard to stop. It makes me excited to dive deeper into Plas psychologically.

I also liked the body horror; it’s gross and disturbing but also appropriately goofy and strange. The color and texture added by the colorist certainly helps with the gross factor. The art in general is great; I particularly loved Jacob Edgar’s bright and classic art, while Alex Lins’ (the main artist) wasn’t as beautiful to look at, but was extremely effective in setting the tone and conveying emotion. All in all, this issue delivered what it promised and was enjoyable, intriguing, and dramatic, and I think this series has huge potential.

Before I end this review, I’d like to share my opinion on some negative reactions to this book.

Some Negative Reactions & My Response

To be clear, this book is receiving a great reception from many corners. I’m not claiming it’s not, nor am I trying to claim that anyone’s opinion about this book or its premise is illegitimate. I just want to mention a couple arguments against this book and why I understand where they’re coming from, but don’t fully agree.

First of all, there are some people who dislike this book’s premise because Plastic Man stories are generally more light-hearted. This isn’t “wrong”, of course; we all have our own preferences. But I guess it seems a little limiting. I actually think it’s pretty cool to find potential for a character to be used in new ways that, despite going against what that character is usually used for, still make use of their unique traits. This story is clearly leveraging the established facts about Plas despite using him in a tonally different story. It’s not a direction everyone will like, and that’s fine. But considering it’s not even an in-continuity story, I think it should be given a chance.

Even for characters who I’m more attached to than Plastic Man (I confess this is actually the first comic of his I’ve read!), I don’t like the idea of limiting superheroes too much, when many of them are actually quite versatile. For example, I don’t think the idea of Superman stories being dark or having a dour tone is inherently bad (though it needs to be done with care, of course).

I somewhat understand the fact that, since Plastic Man doesn’t have another title right now (or even a series where he appears regularly), it’s annoying to some that he finally gets his own title, and it’s not what anyone would expect a series starring him to be. But on the other hand, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that, if this title didn’t exist, a more conventional Plastic Man series would be released.

For me, the big thing is that this is it out-of-continuity. Things don’t have to be the same as the mainstream comics.

Especially with the above point being the case, it’s generally more important that characterization serves the story than that it conforms to canon or expectations.

The characterization of the Justice League isn’t that bad. It’s somewhat believable that they would be too preoccupied to understand the seriousness of the situation.

All this to say, I don’t exactly disagree with the notion that the Justice League’s characterization is bad. It just doesn’t really matter in this particular context. It still annoys me a little bit, but I can accept it for the sake of the story.

To conclude, the negative reactions to this book are the kind of reactions you see a lot in fandom, especially superhero fandoms. It’s justified in many cases, but sometimes it annoys me if I feel like people aren’t being open-minded to new ideas, or aren’t thinking about the context or goals of the specific story.

[charliethomascoxuniverse]

Marvel is Right to Have Faith in Daredevil - Despite Charlie Cox's Doubts

By Joshua M. Patton  December 27, 2022 (X)

Charlie Cox keeps tempering expectations about his Daredevil: Born Again return, but everyone else - from Marvel Studios to fans - has faith in him.

Charlie Cox has been recently doing rounds of press, invariably being asked to talk about Daredevil: Born Again. In one, he expressed concern that the massive 18-episode solo series may not "hit the spot," resulting in him setting down the horns for good. It's a fair guess, especially with streaming services' strategy for originals narrowing in focus. Yet since he was the star of the most successful of the Marvel Television series on Netflix, Marvel Studios and Disney+ have clear faith in his ability to deliver.

Cox is an adept actor, and his humility may also be a way to deflect from revealing things he's not supposed to. He was more convincing than Andrew Garfield in the run up to Spider-Man: No Way Home, at the very least. If Cox really does still have doubts about his ability to become the Robert Downey Jr. of Disney+, perhaps that's what makes him the perfect Matt Murdock.

Daredevil: Born Again's 18-Episode Series Order Is a Leap of Faith

Until 2022, the average Disney+ original series from Marvel or Lucasfilm ran for roughly six hours per season. Then Andor dropped 12 episodes, with another 12 currently filming. Tony Gilroy had a vision and Lucasfilm didn't want to risk getting it wrong. Daredevil: Born Again could be the Andor of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A long-game series that looks at the more TV-MA side of the MCU sounds just like the spot the studio is trying to hit.

When working as a young producer on the 2003 film adaptation, Feige championed the script. If it irked him that Daredevil was handed to Jeph Loeb and Marvel Television when the rights came back to Marvel, he's not taking it out on Cox. In fact, Cox helped erase the film version of the character from the fans' consciousness. This was a challenge his fellow The Defenders costars did not face. From the massive season order to his rumored appearance in Echo, the only person seemingly left with doubts is Cox himself. In fact, there was no reason to believe Daredevil would show up in Deadpool 3 until the actor denied it.

Kevin Feige is a big fan of Daredevil, and he wasn't allowed to use the character in the movies. Now he can and has the added benefit of being given an excellent actor to portray the character. It's clear that he no longer sees anyone other than Cox as capable of the role.

Marvel Studios and Disney+ Have Big Expectations for Daredevil and Charlie Cox

Cox may have expressed his doubts because he is aware of how important Daredevil is to Marvel Comics. He is, effectively, the Marvel equivalent of Batman. He is the king of their street-level heroes -- first on the scene for muggers, ninjas and all manner of mildly-powered individuals. In the comic books, he has also gone toe-to-toe with the galaxy's biggest baddies, including Mephisto. If Marvel Studios remains committed to establishing a TV side of the MCU, it will be built on Daredevil's back, just like Iron Man carried the films.

What makes Cox so important is how well he plays the character. His performance as a blind hero is nuanced and respectful to an impressive degree, according to Vice. During and immediately after fight scenes, his out-of-breath acting is some of the most intense in the game. Viewers believe that Daredevil clearly wins the fight, but he's wiped out after doing it. And with the help of Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll, he imbues Matt with a heart and pathos that makes all of his superhero work feel more than believable.

Charlie Cox is either truly humble or adept at using humility to deflect questions about projects he can't talk about. Either way, everyone from Feige to the fans knows that Daredevil: Born Again isn't his "last shot." It's what he's due for his accomplishments so far.

~*~

[averagejoesolomon]

I'm coming to the ultimate authority(other than Ally herself) in all things Gallagher girls to ask something that occurred to me recently. It's something that I really am surprised I haven't heard talked about before.

We know that Rachel is a protective mom and that Joe is protective trying to keep the rest of the Morgans alive? Right? How much do you think Cammie was protected without her knowledge? Ya we hear about all the trouble she did get into. She was 16- made 16 year old type choices. The circle was powerful and dangerous but Joe and Rachel knew that. We hear about them trying to protect her in the books but it was only after 1)Joe was in a coma and 2) Cammie left, that she got caught.

Do you think they did more protecting than Cammie/we saw? If so how?

Hoooo, thank you for this question bc one of my absolute favorite things about LYKY is how smart Ally Carter's adults are. Some YA books fall victim to Dumb Adults™ who's ignorance only exists as a way to make the young protagonist seem incredible in some way. Problem is, it almost never makes the protagonist looks good—it just makes the adults look like fools.

Not so, with Ally Carter's adults.

This is true of all Ally Carter books, but especially of the Gallagher Girls series and especially of LYKY. Ally's adults are usually one step ahead of the kids, but shenanigans are still allowed to happen, either because it's convenient, or it's not worth stopping, or in the case of the GG series, because it is good practice. So, when our protagonist truly does get one over on our adults, it makes our protagonists seem that much stronger—it's a well-earned respect, rather than a gimme. And make no mistake, Cammie absolutely shocks the adults in her life plenty of times.

I'll start by saying that, to me, the entire premise of the series is that Cam has a guardian angel—and it isn't her late father. It's Joe. Of course it's Joe. He comes to Gallagher to train her, he initiates the alliance with Blackthorne because she needs allies, he spends months engaging with a terrorist organization he barely escaped because there's a chance they might come after her, and then when doing so lands him on the wrong side of the law, he still risks everything to see her at the Thames and deliver the message that will give the answers he knows she needs. Rachel Morgan is a protective mother, perhaps, but Joe? Joe is the one who is constantly looking out for Cammie, because Joe doesn't feel he looked out for Matt.

So personally, I think that Joe is always just over Cammie's shoulder, and this is set up so perfectly in LYKY. Seriously, if you ever have the chance to re-read LYKY (and I recommend you do—it's even better than you remember), pay attention to how often Joe just...shows up.

When Macey first arrives at the mansion and everything starts to go wrong, Joe's around to step in and maintain cover.

When there's trouble at Cam's breakfast table and Bex tears Macey a new one, Joe's there to make sure nothing escalates (and then "punishes" them by making them run point in Roseville, even though we all know that was his full intention from the start).

When Cam is "decrypting" a note from Josh, Joe appears over her shoulder, absolutely sneaking a glance at what the note says—resulting in one of my favorite scenes of all time, where Cam stuffs the note in her mouth and Joe pretends not to notice (he totally tells Rachel right after though).

Even the lessons are tailor-made for her! I understand that, functionally, this is a common narrative trope that bolsters our protagonist, but narratively? The Roseville opp is built to test the limits of this generation's greatest pavement artist. The briefing right after is designed to scare the heck out of a young girl who lost her father too soon. He even tells them how to look through a mark's trash, conveniently, when the girls have hit a roadblock on their analysis of Josh. Joe Solomon was with Cam every step of the way, because Cam is a sixteen-year-old boarding school girl, and Joe is a veteran agent with years of rigid, heartbreaking experience.

And I know what you're saying—Sarah, Cam's good, though. And you're right! Cam is good! Darn good, and the adults even say so at the end of the book. She's good enough that Mr. Smith, one of the world's most paranoid agents, didn't even know she was tailing him in Roseville. But I'll remind you, dear friends, that Mr. Smith is not the world's greatest operative. If he was, he wouldn't need a new face every semester. Narratively, mechanically, and for the good of the story, Joe Solomon is the world's finest operative, and I'd bet good money that he knew just about everything that happened in that book.

This all-knowing-ness extends into CMH, too, although there is a notable exception after the Code Black. The scene in Rachel's office is the best evidence we have that Joe knows everything, because in this moment, for the first time, we see him when he doesn't know something—and he is scary.

As we progress through the series, we start to see Joe's certainty fade, and the safety that comes along with it fades too. DJGC is when we see our first, real attack and Joe doesn't seem too sure about any of it until the end of the book, when he reveals there was always a chance Cam was the target. In OGSY, Joe is the most uncertain thing about the series, but he's still present, and we're still pretty sure we can trust him.

By OSOT, we don't have Joe anymore, and that's on purpose. The Gallagher Girls series is a coming of age story, and Cam isn't able to step into her full potential unless Joe lets her. Thing is, Joe was never going to let her, so we had to put him in a literal coma. OSOT is when Cammie starts to leave behind that protection she's always had—although, notably! We do not see this!! We still only see the part of the story where she is home and safe, or protected by senior agents like Rachel, and Abby, and Townsend. And it all builds up the the loss of hope, the loss of naïveté, the loss of innocence when she does finally find her father's grave.

By the time we get to UWS, we've got to see Cammie on her own (I use that term liberally—Cam still has and has always had fiercely protective friends, as well as Joe and Rachel, but that's part of another theme entirely). The story only comes to a natural conclusion if Cam's training wheels come off. This isn't a test anymore, and she's bleeding on the streets of Roseville, the very same town where she was so deeply protected just years ago, with Joe just over her shoulder.

It's honestly genius. I can't get enough of it. Long story short, I think Cam is supremely protected, usually without her knowledge, but that dwindles as the world falls apart around her. As she grows older and learns that the world isn't black and white, and that not every agent comes home. Joe and Rachel do what they can, but at some point, a Gallagher Girl has to become a Gallagher Woman, y'know?

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

15, 34, 45 (for Pyro)

15. Tell me about a plotline that could have been interesting if anyone else wrote it.

Of course, I wish anyone other than Duggan had written Pyro's stint on Marauders, except maybe Sina Grace, who had Pyro make a cameo in the Iceman series just so Bobby could kick his ass and call him a washed-up loser. (Fair, but not how I want to see Pyro used as main cast member). I actually liked some of what Duggan did with Pyro, there were some good or funny moments, I just wish he was in the hands of a writer who took him seriously as a character or acknowledged any of his past history. I mean, he put Pyro on a boat delivering medicine to sick humans and gave him some vague crumbs of a redemptive storyline, and did not once make ANY mention of Pyro's Legacy Virus experience (even though it would have made perfect sense and built into the idea of redemption), or his heroic death saving Senator Kelly. There was so much potential in Marauders to DO something with Pyro that was genuinely interesting, and Duggan just left most of that on the floor. Pyro on Hellions under Zeb Wells would have been great, at least Wells knows how to write a balanced team book.

Also, after Pyro was revealed to have the Legacy Virus, and was staying on the island refuge of Empyrean (supposed charitable billionaire, actually a mutant villain who wanted to exploit the virus to gain power), the story of Empyrean showing his true colors could have been genuinely interesting. Showing the Brotherhood and Pyro himself having a falling out with Empyrean, because even though Pyro is a selfish bastard he doesn't want to see more mutants infected with Legacy, could have been a great story, but instead Empyrean was written out of Marvel continuity and left stranded in dinosaur times (official scientific term) in a Burger King tie-in comic.

34. Which retcon do you hate the most?

Obviously Pyro switching from English to Australian.

Nah, just kidding. I don't know if Pyro getting essentially "straight-washed" after the obvious and deliberate queer-coding by Byrne counts, but if it does, then that for sure. Or Duggan treating Jean Grey as Pyro's dream fantasy, although I still maintain that says much more about Emma, who was projecting the fantasy into Pyro's mind, than Pyro himself.

I'd also maybe say Duggan's re-imagining of Pyro as a drunk fratboy, but what the hell, Pyro's been portrayed as a violent idiot by other writers before. At least it was a fun version of Pyro, with more focus and depth I would have fully enjoyed it.

45. What’s the worst take you’ve seen about [x] (popular or not)?

Someone once called Pyro a would-be rapist, and their example was that one shitty issue of Daredevil where Blob and Pyro are being really gross about a mutant girl they are capturing. Even though there's no real evidence in the comic that Pyro actually did or tried to do anything with the girl, beyond just capture her for Freedom Force, and Blob is actually much grosser in his behavior. Pyro just seems to be paying lip service to the whole "oh yeah, pretty girl," thing, and is much more interested in fighting Daredevil. Also, the blog discussing the issue that this person linked for "evidence" was even saying that they thought Pyro and Blob were OOC in this issue. Like, I will gladly acknowledge all the ways that Pyro is and has been a piece of shit in the comics. He's vicious and mean, and he kills people quite gleefully at times. But he has barely shown any interest in women at all throughout his history, and he's not a character I would write as being a sleazy sex-pest or sexual assaulter because...he just isn't. The closest he comes is one scene of Ultimate Pyro suggesting sexual assault of a female hero, which made no sense even in that universe because Ultimate Pyro had previously been written as a good guy (it was during the absolute shit-show that was Ultimatum, where Blob also became a cannibal), and that one Daredevil issue. And I guess Pyro comically flirting with Rogue in TAS? Honestly, if your evidence of Pyro as a potential rapist is one OOC story in a non-X-Men book where the "rape" is vaguely implied at best, it's pretty flimsy.

Also that one person who claimed it was "canon" that Pyro had a crush on Kitty, based on an excerpt from his romance novel with a female character who doesn't resemble Kitty at all.

[mediaevalmusereads]

Bride. By Ali Hazelwood. Berkley, 2024.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Genre: paranormal romance

Series: N/A

Summary: Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again...

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was….

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: explicit sexual content, blood

OVERVIEW: I haven't read an Ali Hazelwood book, but I've seen the author's name around. I was vaguely curious, but contemporary romances aren't my jam; so when I learned that she wrote a paranormal romance, I figured I'd take a chance. Overall, I can see why people might like Hazelwood's work, but personally, I just found this book ok. It was written in a way that will feel dated as tastes change, and it doesn't do anything new or interesting with vampire/werewolf lore. Still, it was a clean manuscript and read quickly, so I think it deserves at least 2.5 stars.

WRITING: Hazelwood's prose is fairly clean in that it's quick, clear, and easy to digest. It's not overly descriptive and it has this light quality that I associate with the romance genre.

I do think, however, that it uses a brand of humor that will become dated after a while. A lot of the humor feels millennial, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was so ubiquitous that I personally found it a little grating at times.

Also (and this is a personal taste thing): this book is written in first person, and I think first person romances are awkward.

PLOT: The non-romance plot of this book follows Misery Lark, a vampire who marries an Alpha werewolf named Lowe Moreland in order to forge an alliance between their species. Misery is accustomed to being a hostage on account of having lived among humans during her childhood for similar reasons (to ensure peace). But when her childhood friend, Serena, disappears and her only clue points her to Moreland, Misery decides to use this marriage to her advantage to find her missing friend.

Personally, I found the non-romance plot to be a little weak. It doesn't feel like a priority, as it takes weeks and weeks to advance the plot. It also leads to a subplot involving Lowe's sister, Ana, which takes precedence and also advances slowly. Scenes that advance the investigation aren't all that smart and feel like they are there to deliver exposition or insert useless interactions, and though Hazelwood's prose is quick, I felt like the plot plodded along.

Related to that is the ending, which was kind of a letdown. I didn't think the investigation throughout the novel built up to a satisfying conclusion, and the antagonist does a thing I hate: monologuing and explaining how they did it and why. It just didn't read as a clever plot.

Also, I would have liked to see Hazelwood do something more interesting with vampire/werewolf lore. I'm well aware that there are a number of tropes that Hazelwood uses, perhaps for self-indulgent reasons. There's nothing wrong with making use of tropes that your audience will expect and love. But personally, I was hoping for something a bit more.

CHARACTERS: Misery, our protagonist and POV character, is simultaneously interesting and irritating. I liked the way her past informed her characterization in the present, particularly her feeling of not fitting in with neither humans or vampires and her reluctance to show her fangs. However, Hazelwood's brand of humor means that Misery walks around narrating everything using a flippant style commonly associated with millennial humor. It got tiring, and while I can understand a character who deflects and uses humor defensively, I just didn't vibe with it here.

Lowe, the werewolf love interest, is ok but bland. I liked that he had an interest in architecture and was a bit hung up about having to abandon his dreams to serve his pack, but the narrative didn't make much use of that. I did appreciate his insistence on consent and the fact that he didn't seem murderously jealous or possessive; it was a nice change from the expected. But he really didn't have much of a personality.

Supporting characters were ok. Most of the werewolves were fine but interchangeable. Same with the humans and vampires. They served their function but didn't really leave an emotional impact. The exception is probably Lowe's sister, Ana, who is most memorable because she's a kid and charms her way into Misery's heart. Serena is somewhat interesting and I'm glad Hazlewood included enough flashbacks to make her feel real, but her plot felt hollow and resolved abruptly.

ROMANCE: The romance between Lowe and Misery is, frankly, unexciting. I guess if you're a fan of some of the sexual dynamics that are present in Omegaverse/werewolf romances, you might like this, but personally, it felt less like the characters were falling in love and more like their biology stripped them of agency. I was hoping they would bond over their shared sense of duty; both Misery and Lowe have to diminish themselves in order to serve their respective communities, and while they do talk about it, it seems to be secondary to Misery's preoccupation with discovering Lowe's mate.

TL;DR: Bride might be a good romance for fans of smut containing mates, scent, marking, and knotting, but as a story, it doesn't bring anything new to the table. With a weak plot and lack of interest in emotional intimacy, this paranormal romance just didn't play with vampire/werewolf lore in a way I found compelling.

[cosmo-watches-movies]

Gallowglass (1993)

Triggerwarning: Suicide, Physical Abuse, Violence

Summary: Joe (Michael Sheen) was just released from a mental hospital but his foster parents wont take him back home. Desperate and having nowhere to go he attemps to commit suicide but is saved last minute by Sandor (Paul Rhys). Joe is now devoted to his saviour, who uses this to his advantage by further manipulating Joe up to the point where he aggrees to help kidnap a young woman.

Spoilers beyond this

Starting off with a punch in the gut (litterally)

Found this a bit uncomfortable to watch. Not necessarily because its bad, but because is portrays a very abusive relationship between Sandor and Joe. It’s proper fucked up, so that is kinda the point. Joe is almost obsessed with Sandor, constantly excusing his horrible behaviour and actions. You very much believe that Joe would do anything for him. It’s genuinely scary to watch.

Sandor saves Joe

After they successfully kidnap the young woman they where after it turns out Sandor isn’t after a ransom, but is in love with her and wants to free her from her (as he thinks) miserable life. She rejects him which he, after some drama, accepts. However Sandor ends up killing himself the same way Joe tried to earlier, by throwing himself in front of a train. And because he’s a total bastard he does it right in front of Joe. (poor guy can’t catch a break)

Throughout the series are short clips of Joe explaining the events in hindsight This shows a very different aspect of the character it’s almost jarring. But in a good way. You very much get the sense that this whole story scarred him even further, but he also seems more mature and reflected. In the end we see that he might be talking to a therapist (maybe even in a prison?) so I like to think that at some point in his life he manages to set himself free from that past trauma. “Tilly said Sandor was bananas, off the wall, after lunch…there seem to be a lot of words for mad. I told her never to say it. He wasn’t mad, he was just in pain…I know all about that, don’t I?” - fucking shivers down my spine The way he delivered that line, fucking genius. If you dont wanna watch the whole series, watch this one scene it’s so good. (it’s somewhat at the 44 minute mark of episode three)

The performances of the lead actors are way more convincing than I expected, it’s the most interesting part of the whole series imo. Joe starts off already broken and by the end he’s absolutely fucked up. He gets completely corrupted by his saviour to the point of kinda assuming his persona after Sandor died. Thats a pretty interesting dynamic and it left me feeling a bit icky afterwards.

I havent read the book but even with the great performances of the actors something about the story didnt quite capture me. Like the suspense was built up, but the payoff wasnt quite there. Maybe the stakes arent high enough? Idk something about the overall story couldve been pushed a bit more…

Anyway idk if this was Michaels very first time acting in front of a camera, but considering this was very early in his career he did an exeptionally good job. Michael has this way of completely disappearing in his characters its amazing to watch. And it blows my mind that he could do this so well already when he was just like 24 I think?

Joe calls the woman they intend to kidnap "the princess", after a story Sandor told him

His acting combined with Paul Rhys gives a very convincing dynamic. If it wasn’t for them this would’ve been an absolute bore.

Would I recommend watching this? Maybe, If you don’t have a problem going through a few unconfortable scenes and a overall mediocre story. If you absolutely want to see Michael play a very broken, fucked up young man, sure! There’s some good acting in it so at least it isnt boring. Just prepare for violence and some uncomfy stuff.

(Horrible Hair dye job, Sandor)

[thefirstcourtesan]

Misha’s Replay Rankings Pt.3

I decided to do three lists with a 1/3 of the alphabet each just to make it more readable. So part 3 will start with the letter Q.

Links to Part One and Part Two

Queen B

Story: A- (The story delivers exactly what it promises, it is a fun, fishy story about hot, rich college students and stupid popularity games. It is ridiculous, but it is supposed to be, and more importantly, it is entertaining.)

Art: A- (This isn’t one of the top books for art, but it does have some nice CGs and delivers in the big story moments).

LIs: B- (The LIs in this book are handled so badly and I’ll never forgive this book for not letting me romance Carter).

Romance Scenes: A (Whatever lacklustre feelings I have about the quality of the LIs, the romance scenes themselves were well done.)

MC: B (This MC fits the story, but I wouldn’t want to hang out with her and I found her frustrating to play at times. Definitely not my favorite MC.)

Friend Group/Side Characters: A- (This book has a large cast and while some of the characters are pretty shallow and underdeveloped and it often feels like Zoey is our character's only real friend, the other characters are generally entertaining and some of the squad scenes are cute).

Villain/Antagonist: A- (Poppy is an intriguing combination of rival/frenemy/fuckbuddy and the overall build of the story is good, but the execution was painful at times).

Paywall: D+ (Oh this book is brutal on free play. The squad, the popularity content, the clues, all of it. There are so many paywalls. This is book that is fun if you are willing to pay)

Overall: B+ (This series is fun for what it is, not one of my favorites but it is fun and the second book is better than the first).

Previous Ranking: 28/50

New Ranking:

Rising Tides

Story: B+ (The story actually moves pretty quickly and a lot happens, but it is also so obviously done as a public service announcement that it takes away from the story but honestly there are a lot worse plots in the Choices universe.)

Art: B- (nothing spectacular, a lot of reused assets, but the MC does have the prettiest underwear of any Choices MC) and the LIs are genuinely attractive).

LIs: A (I genuinely liked both LIs, I thought they had roles that made sense in the story and I was honestly conflicted to the end which one my MC should end up with, which never happens. Neither was a top 10 LI for me, but they were both good characters)

Romance Scenes: A (They were good, we got a lot of family information and background info about the LIs, they built the romance, etc.)

MC: A- (I liked this MC. I like that she had a distinct personality, there were times I wished we could shape her beliefs a little more and it felt like Charlie was more the “main character” but this MC was generally fun to play)

Friend Group/Side Characters: A- (I didn’t love the best friend and Charlie got annoying at times, but I mostly loved the relationship between her and MC, the parents were great and I enjoyed the townspeople. Also Diego was adorable.)

Villain/Antagonist: B+ (Warner was a little stereotypical, moustache-twirling villain for me, but he was also a pretty good representation of the corporate billionaire so…)

Paywall: D (I feel like this book would be unplayable without diamonds, especially with the scenes to restore the town, but even the fact that a lot of the LI’s backstory and motivations were locked behind diamond scenes)

Overall: B+ (I enjoyed this book way more than I expected to. It was definitely not perfect, but for the most part it was genuinely enjoyable.)

Previous Ranking: 44/50

New Ranking:

Save the Date

Story: B+ (This book delivers what it promises and is a sweet, light-hearted romantic comedy but the formula gets a little repetitive and the drama feels manufactured at times, but mostly it is fun)

Art: B+ (Yes there are repeated faces, but the picture wall is cute and the variety of outfits are nice.)

LIs: A- (If this book was made today it would 1000% be a single LI book. The romance with Justin was a major plot point and Simon felt both bland and shoved in, at least Lindsay had an actual purpose. Still I really enjoyed the push-pull between Justin and MC and Lindsay is adorable.)

Romance Scenes: A (These are good, you learn a lot about the various LIs and get some cute and steamy moments.)

MC: B+ (I did not enjoy the first person as much as I did in MTFL and this MC felt like she was a lot, but also her emotional growth was limited. I didn’t hate her, but I definitely wouldn’t want to hang out with her).

Friend Group/Side Characters: A- (Nora and Monica are the best part of this book, Ali is a sweetheart and the various brides and grooms were utterly adorable.

Villain/Antagonist: D- (the ex boss is kinda hte villain, but he is basically a non-issue and I guess Justin is an antagonist, but he is also the main LI and it’s not that kind of story 😂. So yeah, this book does not do well with the whole villain thing.)

Paywall: B+ (I played this at least twice with minimal spending and enjoyed it, the only thing that is really affected is the picture wall/bonus scene at the end, but that is more of a cute epilogue rather than something you are really missing).

Overall: B+ (This is a cute, light-hearted book. It has some flaws but it is generally enjoyable).

Previous Ranking: 10/50

New Ranking:

The Shadow

Story: A- (It is a little short and choppy but a girl finding out she has been seeing a vampire and then having to figure out what to do about it in one night is a decent premis).

Art: F (there is no art)

LIs: D (are there really Lis? I mean, you can say you want to explore life with Dev or end up a vampire with Lucien, but romance is really not the point)

Romance Scenes: F (there are none)

MC: A- (I liked Sara. She was strong and kept a pretty good level head. I enjoy set MCs though.)

Friend Group/Side Characters: B- (Again this book was short and lacked depth but I did think Natasha was a decadent default bff adn helped keep the story moving).

Villain/Antagonist: A- (the villains were also the LIs, and who the villains were was also dependent on your POV and choices, which is really neat. I think this is one of the parts they did best).

Paywall: A+ (only a few diamond scenes and even buying everything, I am pretty sure I broke even).

Overall: D (This book struggles with my rating system due to the lack of romance and art, but I also wasn’t that invested in it.)

Previous Ranking: N/A

New Ranking:

Sunkissed

Story: A- (This is an excellent story about grief and how it can impact relationships and trying to rebuild a family in the aftermath of a devastating loss. The problem is it also tries to be,a lighthearted summer romance and that doesn’t work as well, but the story of grief is so beautifully done).

Art: B+ (There isn’t a ton of extra art for this book but the backgrounds and outfits are pretty)

LIs: B (None of them are bad, but none of them stand out and the imbalance of how they are developed and used in the story is very noticeable).

Romance Scenes: B+ (a lot of the scenes are orety rushed, but you do get some good character development from the LIs and are able to build the relationship appropriately).

MC: A (I really like this MC. I can relate to her wanting to keep her family together after tragedy but also how she gets frustrated with being the peacemaker and I thought her involvement in the other characters problems was normal level, which I also liked,)

Friend Group/Side Characters: A- (The only friends the MC has are the LIs, but that is because this is mostly a family book and ai love the relationship between the three women and how it grows and heals over the course of the book.)

Villain/Antagonist: A (this is controversial because there is no standard antagonist, but the villain of this book is death/grief and it is handled so well. The way grief can affect every aspect of your life, can damage your relationships and turn you into a different person).

Paywall: C- (I am making guesses here, since I have always spent at least some diamonds but a lot of the grifter/family stuff is locked behind diamond scenes, which is a problem, because that is really the heart of the story and I think without it this would be a much more shallow book),

Overall: A- (This is a sweet book and it really does hit me in a deeply emotional place. I think it is probably a very niche book, but it tells the story of grief and a family recovering from a deep loss very well and I appreciate that.)

Previous Ranking: 15/50

New Ranking: N/A

Villainous Valentine

Story: A- (I love the concept of this, but it gets marks taken away from how awful the fit story is. It does not fit at all, it is a villain I do not care about and a story that does not connect to the existing story. The other stories save it though and we’re all thoroughly enjoyable interludes.)

Art: B- (Nothing new here, but these are all series’ with nice art and backgrounds and that crossed over to this story),

LIs: B+ (Afain, the first story is awful and brings the general ranking down. The other LIs are actually all delightful and they come across, very in character. Maybe I would care more about the Empress if I had played far enough in Blades 2 to have met her yet, but as is I had zero investment in that scene and I found that “romance” awkward and creepy. But the other four options were all fantastic.)

Romance Scenes: B+ (The romance scenes are short and not particularly detailed and again, the first story really drags it down, but overall this series does a good job with the romance and the various levels of it, from people just meeting to a couple who have been fighting falling in love).

MC: A- (The MC in the first story was awful and had zero personality and I am personally offended she has the ACOR face, but the other MC’s in this book were perfect. I actually liked the CH MC in her chapter and she is one of my least favourite MCs, TRR MC was perfection and the alternative ID MC was so much fun to play as)

Friend Group/Side Characters: C (the short nature of this makes this category hard, but the TRR chapter did a good job of showcasing Liam and the ID chapter showed the banter and rivalry between Lewyn and Astoria well, so that counts for something).

Villain/Antagonist: B+ (This category is tricky because the LI is the villain, this is where the first chapter excels because well, she is evil. Radiance is still very much the villain as well. Olivia was always more antagonist than villain and doesn’t do anything villainous here and Astoria and Lewyn just show a disdain for human life, still overall the villain romance angle comes across well).

Paywall: A+ (Each chapter only has one diamond scene, which is just the love scene, but the romance still reached a conclusion without it and you don’t need that scene to tie up the story, so you could play it without spending diamonds. Of course, it is a VIP exclusive, so paywalled in another way, but that is a different discussion)

Overall: A- (I really loved the concept of this and the execution was almost perfect, except the first chapter really sucked. But the others were amazing and fit well into their respective series, a wonderful glimpse of what might have been or in the case of ID, a look into the lives of side characters. Overall, I really enjoyed this)

Previous Ranking: N/A

New Ranking:

Wake the Dead

Story: B+ (This is so not my genre but I think they did a good job with this story for the most part and you can tell that it had some of the same team as TC&TF. I like that it took place years into the apocalypse, I think that was a neat twist and for the most part the story worked but it felt a little rushed and a little flat at times with just too much happening and too much formula.)

Art: A+ (This is a gorgeous book in a creepy, apocalyptic kind of way, and the characters have scars!!! I think the attention to detail was very cool and they did a good job visually building the setting).

LIs: A (This is a good group of LIs, with different backgrounds and personalities that all add something to the story. I think with more books, they could have been one of my favorite groups, but they ended up a little less developed because it was a standalone but they are still a strong group of LIs who all have an important role in the story).

Romance Scenes: A- (You get some pretty deep moments here and get to learn about the characters and their motivations, but the romance feels a little like the afterthought and the scenes are more about character building.

MC: A+ (I like this MC. She is take-charge, rarely annoying and does what has to be done and I like the stubborn, can’t keep her mouth shut vibe. I enjoy when MCs have a bit of a set personality and this one does. Plus she kicks ass.)

Friend Group/Side Characters: B+ (There are a LOT of characters in this book, almost too many because we don’t really get to know post of them and many of them are cannon fodder but the Raiders are fun, along with some of the other colonists.)

Villain/Antagonist: B- (All of the villains of this book had potential, but none of them really lived up to it. I think this was the issue of the book being plotted as a series but becoming a standalone and that not happening, is the back half feels rushed and the villain stories feel crowded and convoluted.)

Paywall: C- (A free play requires a lot of skill and effort, but it does seem like it is possible to still get a decent ending, although you would be pissing out on the lore and a lot of extra content, but there does seem to be some effort to reward players for playing smart, unlike some books.)

Overall: B+ (Overall, not bad and I think it had a lot of potential and the biggest problem is that it feels rush and a bit shallow, mostly because it never got a sequel. But I hate zombies and I still mostly enjoyed this book.)

Previous Ranking: N/A

New Ranking:

With Every Heartbeat

Story: A+ (This book is exactly what it says it is, it is a tragic story of first love and it does it beautifully. The love story was beautifully done and I was sobbing by the end).

Art: C- (This is not an art heavy book, lots of recycled backgrounds and faces and that is fine. This one is about the story, not the visuals).

LIs: A (I don’t rate single LI books higher than A, but Dakota is pretty special and is a very well fleshed out character and it is a beautiful love story.)

Romance Scenes: A (The scenes in this book are very sweet and well done and build that feeling of first love).

MC: A (There were times this Mc annoyed me, as they often do, but she is also a teenager and I think they showed the growth well, especially given the situation she was in.)

Friend Group/Side Characters: A (I loved this group. Amy grew on me a lot and I liked her more than I did my first playthrough, I think because I bought more of her scenes, and Matteo and Lennox are precious. I also loved the way MC’s relationship with her mom grew.)

Villain/Antagonist: A+ (Cancer is a fucking bitch that ruins lives and this book did an amazing job showing that and the insidious ways it builds hope and takes it away.)

Paywall: C+ (This isn’t a book where you miss out on major plot details or clues, but you do miss out on emotional moments and bonding and this is a book that is all about the relationships so that is a lot. As I said, I felt the relationship with Amy a lot more once I bought more of the scenes).

Overall: A (This is a beautiful book that tells a sweet, heartbreaking story of first love. It is exactly what it advertises and it does it very well.)

Previous Ranking: 18/50

New Ranking:

[night-dark-woods]

2023 Book Recap!

i really figured out this year what i like and don't like in a book i think, at least for scifi/fantasy books.

that ursula le guin quote about genre: "Ignoring all this, our novice is just about to reinvent the wheel, the space ship, the space alien, and the mad scientist, with cries of innocent wonder. The cries will not be echoed by the readers. Readers familiar with that genre have met the space ship, the alien, and the mad scientist before. They know more about them than the writer does."

& something one of the boys on the stephen king podcast said, where he described being familiar with a genre or medium as seeing the seams, and then a bit later as being like an erector set, where you can see all the pieces.

and that's really it, like bc i have read so much scifi and fantasy, every novel is an erector set. i know what the pieces of the kit are, and what they're supposed to build, so i can recognize when its built well and when its built poorly, and i can recognize when someone does something really cool and different with those kit pieces. but if someone doesnt do anything good or interesting with them, its just a pile of pieces, and that's not enough for me.

so, in descending rating order, books i read this year:

5/5:

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemison: spectacularly original worldbuilding, heartwrenching story, delightful narrative devices. getting added to the favorites shelf with Baru.

The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin: very fun hard scifi book. if i don't have to google a math concept while reading your scifi book im not interested. i have not yet read the sequels but will.

Machineries of Empire Trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee: great military space opera with REALLY cool novel worldbuilding (the technology of the empire functions because of a high calendar maintained by ritual sacrifice!!!) and very neatly executed plots.

4/5:

How The Light Gets In by Louise Penney: perfectly enjoyable mystery novel i read to bond with my mother. old ladies who saw it sitting next to my register at work were at first delighted i was reading it and then aghast that i was reading one from the middle of the series out of order.

Dead Silence by S A Barnes: fast-paced scifi psychological horror, delivered exactly what i was expecting.

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner: doctor mechanic fic with the serial numbers scrubbed. also exactly what it says on the tin.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth: fun gay story that jumps around in time and has several cool narrative styles including whatever it is where there are in-universe texts included with the story narrative.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling: scifi cave-diving survival horror with a homoerotic relationship between the caver and her handler. loses a star for an underwhelming ending but overall it ruled i love survival books.

Blindsight by Peter Watts: this book made me the maddest a book has made me since i read The Word for World is Forest in high school and got so upset at one of the characters that i made myself nauseous. on the one hand the worldbuilding was very intricate and interesting and its a truly fascinating first contact story, and on the other hand i want to fight the author in a parking lot for how eco-fascist and misanthropic the thesis statement is. this book pissed me off but its also going to be something i will reread and also think about for a long time, and for that it can get a 4.

3/5:

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon: cool far-future post-apocalypse with ai gods, about bodily horror and autonomy when youre dealing with high tech divine possession. good book but not for me.

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar: fine, underwhelming. novel equivalent of a montage and the prose didn't wow me.

Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer: made me realize what i want from him is an actual ecology book i would love that but i hate his fiction.

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd: would have been higher if it had a stronger conclusion, fun concept though and it was fun to see the ways it referenced Hill House. speaking of:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: alright, i havent read enough horror to know what i like but this wasn't it, im glad i read it though.

2/5:

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang: fine, none of the story concepts were compelling to me so it was hard to like any of them, though the Tower of Babylon was fun.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: no stakes, boring, no thought put into the politics of the setting or the plot.

Authority by Jeff Vandermeer: absolute fucking slog of a book with a boring protag.

She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan: i dont like historical figures rewritten to be lgbt, i think the pacing and tone was inconsistent, and if youre going to write a book about a military campaign you need to actually care about writing military engagments and logistics. also as my friend Jake said. for a novel trying to do something with gender, there sure arent very many women.

1/5:

none apparently!

[thatqueercookie]

Got tagged by @luckshiptoshore (I've got the same first two as you)

8 shows to get to know me!

1. What We Do In The Shadows. This show really does have it all. A queer vampire polycule. A couple that's been together for 300 years and is still in love. The absolute BEST will-they-won't-they on television bar none. Guillermo's character arc is the best growth I've seen in a character in some time. It's hella sexy at all times. Everyone is so perfectly flawed and complicated. This show has inspired me to write more fanfiction than any show ever has! Also it's HILARIOUS, and tragic.

2. Our Flag Means Death. This is the sweetest purest love story and reminds me that no matter what you hate about yourself, or what others hate about you, there is someone out there who will love you for all those things! The representation is off the charts in this show and my love for every single babygirl member of the crew is immense. The only downside in the fandom is the discourse about Izzy. Like seriously, just let him be a part of the narrative. He's fun to hate and he's fun to play with in crack fic/art.

3. Doctor Who. This show will always and forever pretty much be my religion. The messages of love and intelligence over brute force and cynicism are so great. And the message that every single soul in the universe MATTERS and is important and unique and beautiful. And these messages are delivered through a gender fluid intergalactic nerdy tour guide with an infectious sense of WONDER for everything who takes you through time and space battling fascism and capitalism in a mess of camp effects and plot holes. I have seen all the classic and new series and I'm working my way through the Big Finish audios and EDA books.

4. The X-Files. Probably one of the best shows the small screen has ever seen. It's scary, it's suspenseful, it's funny, it's romantic, it's smart. It has simultaneously the longest non-sexual, emotionally intimate marriage AND the ultimate sexual slowburn. I could (and have) watch every episode a million times and enjoy them just as much every time.

5. Star Trek. I love every iteration of Star Trek, but The Original Series is my absolute favorite. It just gives me so much hope for the future. That someday, after all the human race's growing pains, after all the war and the racism, sexism, and homo/transphobia, after the greed and the poverty and pollution, we'll LEARN. We can be better. We'll explore and we won't explore to conquer or assimilate; we'll explore to learn about life and it's complexities and become even better versions of ourselves. And the friendship and sense of family on the Enterprise is just so beautiful. Also Kirk/Spock are the best definition of soulmates I've ever seen. The alien cultures within the world of Star Trek are just so well built and thought out (much better than in Star Wars). As an anthropology major, this FACINATES me.

6. Good Omens. The longest truest love story you have ever seen and one of the only (alleged) representations of romantic asexuality I have ever seen. Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel that doesn't fit in in heaven and a demon that doesn't fit in in hell but they fit with EACH OTHER and they love earth so dearly. It's humanism vs. religion and we win.

7. BBC Ghosts. I'm a sucker for the found family trope and this show does it so well. They're FORCED to become found family because there is literally no way for them to leave. All the ghosts are such nuanced (and autistic) characters and Mike is the best husband. He's so supportive of his wife and her crazy ghosts. BTW the U.S. version can go suck eggs in hell.

8. Willow. A return to the fun fantasy genre and the power of love and friendship that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's also a sapphic's dream! A demi-masc princess and her lady knight in a love story that kiss in the very fist episode? YES PLEASE! And Elora may be the chosen one but she sure does suck at it at first, and I LOVE that about her! The chosen one shouldn't be a perfect magic user, they should need to learn like anyone else. And THRAXUS BOORMAN!!!! Witty, slutty, leggy, longhaired, bisexual scoundrel who deserves to be in every single fucking scene! BUT RIGHT NOW IT'S ON THE KNIFES EDGE OF CANCELLATION SO GO SUPPORT IT ON DISNEY+ RIGHT NOW!

tagging: @someguywife , @indashadows , @glitter-mouse , @blakbonnet @bootlegsun , @nandorisms

[booksandwords]

The Wicked + The Divine: Okay by Kieron Gillen. Art by Jamie McKelvie. Coloured by Matt Wilson. Lettering by Clayton Cowles.

Series: The Wicked + The Divine, #9 Read time: 1 Day Rating: 4/5

The quote: "Oh, David. I have done many awful necessary things. But you had a choice... ...and even at this late date, all your choices were bad. I'll tell you this. I've been around a long long time. And I am oh so bored of men like you." — Ananke

This is a great and fitting ending to a series. It wraps up the storylines well and leaves the reader with a message. It does this while delivering emotional hits with no less weight than other volumes (more importantly issues) in the series. The last pages are, I think, an echo of a moment earlier in the series. Characters are all given their own moments, moments to remind the reader that they are human, also reminders that "people never really die" (Laura) and the power of love.

This whole thing starts with a series of videos about Baal's last gig. One of them is just so adorable, Tom is an everyday person we've met before that I didn't see again. He appears in The Imperial Phase: Part 1 in a discussion with Persephone. "Please! We... have a question." "Uh-huh?" "Some texts say your cult wasn't allowed to say your name We... wanted to honour that. What do you want to be addressed as?" "The Destroyer." Tom does make it clear that this is him. He's not just a Persephone fan, he's a Baal fan. And like so many of us he thinks Inanna is hot. The video itself is him doing the fan thing, opening the ticket, queueing and going to the gig. It's an inside view of the gig and maybe a sense of the betrayal that fans will feel towards the remaining gods. Just after this three of our four heads (Jon, Inanna and Lucifer) get bodies back with the help of Nergal/Cameron after visiting him in the cathedral he has built for The Morrigan. He allows them to take The Morrigan's bodies in a moment of catharsis in a way. What I did notice is that Lucifer honours The Morrigan, specifically Badb, by keeping her red hair (though in Luci's iconic style).

I can honestly say that of all the books that have made me tear up this is the one I least expected. It's not the deaths per se it's the loss of potential and the way they happen. Just to be clear warnings for suicide, murder and attempted murder.

I don't remember seeing the birth names of all the gods before. This is a tiny bit spoilerly so read on at your own peril. • Persephone — Laura Wilson • Urðr — Cassandra • Skuld & Verðandi — Meredith and Zoe (the other two thirds of The Norn) • Lucifer — Eleanor • Baal — Valentine • Inanna — Zahid • Baphomet/Nergal — Cameron • The Morrigan — Marion • Dionysus — Umar • Woden — David Blake • Mimir — Jon Blake • Amaterasu — Emily Greenway • Tara — Aruna • I can't find names for Ananke, Minerva or Sakhmet in the volumes I have available.

I made the choice to skip Volume 8 of WicDiv because it is a collection of special issues set apart from the main storyline. If I was to come back and reread the series I would read Vol. 8: Old Is the New New. But am only half invested in the series, ie invested enough to want to know how the series ends but not invested enough to spend more time with the characters. As it is I have a bit of time pressure to finish the books and get them reviewed before I have to return them.

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, and some language

Score: 4 out of 5

The Evil Dead series has what may be the single best track record for quality out of any Hollywood horror franchise. With the big slasher franchises of the ‘80s, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I can name at least three movies from each series that are downright wretched. The Universal monsters fell off in quality during World War II and only came back when they let Abbott and Costello do an officially sanctioned parody of them. Saw fell off starting with the fourth movie and never fully recovered, even if it still had some decent movies afterwards. Even Scream and Final Destination each have one bad or otherwise forgettable movie marring their otherwise perfect records. Evil Dead, though? The original trilogy is golden and has something to offer for everyone, whether you prefer the first movie’s campy but effective low-budget grit, the second movie’s slapstick horror-comedy approach, or Army of Darkness’ wisecracking medieval fantasy action. The spinoff TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead was three seasons’ worth of horror-comedy goodness that fleshed out the franchise’s lore. Even the remake was awesome, a gritty, ultraviolent bloodbath that took the first film’s more serious tone and put an actual budget and production values behind it, making for one of the most graphic horror movies to ever get a wide release in American theaters. This latest film delivers on the same, with a tone and levels of violence akin to the remake and most of its strengths as a pure, straightforward, whoop-your-ass horror movie with lots of muscle and little fat once it gets going. It may not be revolutionary, but Evil Dead Rise is still as good as it gets, and exactly what I hoped for given this series’ high bar.

Like its predecessors barring Army of Darkness, this is a self-contained story set within an isolated, closed-off location, in this case the top floor of a Los Angeles apartment complex instead of a cabin in the woods. Our protagonists this time are a family, led by the single mother and tattoo artist Ellie with three kids, the teenage DJ son Dan, the teenage activist daughter Bridget, and the adolescent daughter Kassie, as well as Ellie’s sister Beth. After an earthquake reveals an old vault beneath the apartment complex (which used to be a bank), Dan explores it and discovers the Naturom Demonto, an evil-looking book bound in human flesh, along with three records recorded by the renegade priest who had last had that book a hundred years ago. Dan takes the book and the records back home, plays the latter on his turntable, and turns this into a proper Evil Dead movie, with Ellie winding up the first one possessed by the demon it unleashes.

Much like how the remake built its human drama around Mia’s friends staging an intervention for her, so too does this film root its central dynamic in the relationships between its human characters, in this case crafting a dysfunctional yet believable family. Lily Sullivan as Beth and Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie are the film’s MVPs, making their characters flawed yet sympathetic figures whose perspectives are understandable but who both clearly made mistakes in managing their relationship. Beth, an audio technician for a rock band, is visiting Ellie because she just found out she’s pregnant, but is naturally hesitant to tell her sister, given that Ellie sees Beth as a glorified groupie and still harbors some resentment for the fact that Beth wasn’t there for Ellie when her husband left her. News of a pregnancy would do little more than confirm Ellie’s suspicions of Beth and her lifestyle. After all, Beth abandoned Ellie and failed to return her calls, and Ellie readily sees that Beth’s motive for visiting is self-serving even without Beth telling her exactly why she’s there. Ellie herself isn’t blameless in the breakdown of their relationship, though. She clearly has a chip on her shoulder, somebody who sees herself as the more responsible sibling even though Beth is the one with a successful career while she’s living in a run-down apartment struggling to raise three kids after her husband walked out on her.

All of that is heightened when Ellie gets possessed, as the demon, inheriting all of Ellie’s memories, uses them to taunt Beth and go completely mask-off on all the things that she wouldn’t directly say in life, calling Beth a whore and her own children leeches. Not only do we get the metaphor of a family tearing itself apart made literal, it’s here where Sutherland truly shines as not just a working-class single mother but also as the terrifying demonic parody thereof that she turns into, demonstrating what separates the Evil Dead series’ “Deadites” from many other zombies: their sense of personality. The series takes George A. Romero’s already scary idea, that of a ravenous monster that looks human, used to be human, and is able to turn others into similar monsters with just a bite or a scratch, and adds the twist of a demonic component that gives the monster that person’s intelligence and memories as well, which it then uses to torment the people who knew them in life before it devours their souls. While the more comedic direction that the “main” series films and the TV series went in is more iconic, the remake showed that there’s just as much room for a straightforward horror take on the idea of combining a zombie film with a demonic possession film, and this movie takes that idea and runs with it even if it still retains a measure of camp in some of the one-liners and gore gags.

Dan and Bridget’s relationship, too, takes center stage in the second act as they have two very different reactions to the evil book that Dan brought back to their apartment, with Morgan Davies as Dan and Gabrielle Echols as Bridget giving their characters plenty of life and personality. Bridget is suspicious from the word “go”, and when Ellie gets possessed, she blames Dan for unleashing a dark, evil force in their lives, with implications that they had a fraught relationship even before this. Even Kassie, the youngest among them, was good, with Nell Fisher taking a role that could’ve easily turned annoying and making her character feel believably scared without being completely helpless or whiny, getting in one of my favorite lines when, after Beth tries to calm her down and tell her that they’ll be okay, she responds by telling Beth that she’ll be a great mother because she knows how to lie to kids. The only weak link in the cast was the family’s neighbors, who show up briefly early on but all of whom clearly existed as cannon fodder for Ellie to slaughter in a single sequence in the second act, even though some of them felt like they’d wind up more important or at least get more scenes to shine before they were killed. With how little they’re in the film, you could almost feel the pandemic filming conditions, getting the sense that some of them (particularly Gabe and the shotgun-wielding Mr. Fonda) were originally written to have larger roles but they couldn’t find a way to have that many actors on set at once.

Another thing I felt that made up for it, though, was this film’s unflinching brutality. One of the other things that even the more lighthearted entries in this series are known for is their absolute geysers of blood and gore, the fact that most of the carnage is inflicted on zombies seemingly giving it a pass in the eyes of an MPAA that normally slaps this kind of shit with an NC-17 when it’s done to living humans. And here, we get it all. Stabbings, a cheese grater to the leg, somebody getting scalped, an eye bitten out, multiple decapitations, a wooden spear through the mouth, Deadites puking up everything from vomit to blood to bugs, the good old shotgun and chainsaw (this series’ old favorites) taking off limbs, a woodchipper, and some gnarly Deadite makeup, most notably the freakish, multi-limbed monster at the very end. This movie does not play around, and it is not for the squeamish. The only gore scene that didn’t really work for me was one Deadite transformation that was let down by some dodgy effects shots of fake-looking black blood coming out of somebody’s face; the rest, however, was some seriously nasty-looking, mostly practical stuff. That’s not to say it’s just a parade of violence with no tension, though. Director Lee Cronin employs all the classic Sam Raimi tricks that have become staples of this series as much as Raimi’s career in general, knowing when to keep the monsters in the shadows, lurking ominously behind our characters, or coldly mocking them. Ellie especially is a key source of the film’s less bloody but no less effective scares, especially with how she tries to manipulate Kassie into letting her back into their apartment, as are the scenes of characters succumbing to possession and hearing voices in their head taunting them. Once the film gets going – and you will know when it gets going – it never once lets up or gives you much room to breathe, instead maintaining a heightened level of terror and suspense throughout.

The Bottom Line

This was a welcome return to the big screen for a classic horror franchise, especially with how certain plot threads at the beginning and end leave the door open for a sequel that, going by the box office returns this past weekend, is likely inevitable at this point. Right now, the Evil Dead series is five-for-five in my book.