media journal. this is a place to dump my scattered thoughts on books, comics, graphic novels, movies, and tv shows. most recent on top. here there be spoilers.

jan. – mar. 2025 | 📚 20 ∙ 📽️ 18 ∙ 📺 8

• 📺 ♡ severance, season two — watching this week-by-week was honestly agonizing lol. i need to rewatch it to come to a firm conclusion on this season. i bet it makes more sense in a binge. i do have two comments: 1) poor gemma! gemma now also has my heart along with mark. sorry to all the other characters; and, 2) i want season three to be with gemma as the main character tbh. dichen lachman is so good, and after episode 7? gemma! gemma all the time! anyway gonna rewatch soon. watched jan. 20 – mar. 21, 2025
• 📽️ ↺ ♡ shrek 1 & 2 (2001 – 2004) — the book i'm reading is the opposite of happy fun times, so to counter that i like to watch something that is happy fun times, and shrek fits the bill. that muffin man joke still lands so hard for me 25 years later. and puss in boots! i love puss in boots! i can't believe i haven't rewatched these since the mid-'00s! rewatched mar. 20, 2025
• 📽️ still: a michael j. fox movie (2023) — as a '90s kid, i've always really liked michael j. fox. watching him on spin city, his '80s movies, and, of course, being emotionally traumatized by homeward bound was definitely a part of my childhood. so, i've always admired his resilience—as best as he could do—when diagnosed at such a young age with parkinson's. this documentary was really just about his life, and how he was hiding the tremors on screen for seven years, which—wow—was really interesting: using a bit of business to disguise them, overmedicating...truly, the public had no idea anything was wrong until he announced it in 1998. i liked the mix of footage from his filmography, current day interviews, and behind the scenes footage because it really highlighted what a remarkable life he's had despite it all; in our increasingly pessimistic times, he's still an optimist and he still has hope even after 30 years. as he himself has said: "with gratitude, optimism is sustainable." watched mar. 18, 2025
• 📺 pachinko, season two — another excellent season and now we're halfway through the book. the book was great — easily one of the best i've read in my life, especially because of how well developed the characters are. they do a really good job maintaining that on the show, i think. sunja is, without doubt, one of my favorite female characters ever. at first i was a bit skeptical that they'd want four seasons to adapt the book, but it has been several years since i read it and i forgot just how dense this story is and just how much of it is about the little moments in life and the relationships between all these characters. just wonderful, honestly. that said, this season especially i found the height difference between lee minho and literally everyone else kind of hilarious—especially in over-the-shoulder shots because the camera always has to be angled up at him to capture the pov of the character he's taking to and, idk, it's just so funny to me how he towers over absolutely everyone. kind of like his character does, in a way (see, i get it! doesn't make it less funny though!). apple tv+ better give us the last two seasons, stat! watched mar. 15 – 16, 2025
• 📚 red star tales, yvonne howell, ed. — an interesting collection. i forgot how obsessed sci-fi writers in the early 20th century were with reanimation, especially of heads. yeesh. the number of these that were simply excerpts rather than full stories was disappointing, though. read feb. 18 – mar. 16, 2025
• 📽️ ↺ melancholia (2011) — i believe this is the only thing i've seen by lars von trier that i can say i actually really like. the way of juxtaposing characters representing depression and anxiety against the end of the world due to a freak astronomical accident is just... *chef's kiss*. it isn't perfect and it is very slow, but it always lands for me. rewatched mar. 11, 2025
• 📚 ↺ ♡ imzadi forever, peter david — the second book remains just fine, but the first book is still a comfort read of mine and a nice one to read before bed. i have always thought that peter david had the perfect career for a fan: go from writing fanfiction for star trek zines and transition into writing companion novels where the audiobooks are narrated by the actors. what a career! i'm sure nothing like it is even remotely possible any longer, sigh. reread feb. 20 – mar. 10, 2025
• 📽️ ↺ 기생충 ‹ parasite › (2019) — such a finely crafted, excellent piece of art. it's both unique to the socioeconomic situation in south korea and also applicable to the socioeconomic situation elsewhere, like in the u.s. right now. truly outstanding and a pleasure to rewatch. nothing else that was up against it for best picture stood a chance, imo. this is about as perfect as a film can be. rewatched mar. 8, 2025
• 📽️ ↺ birdman or (the unexpected virtue of ignorance) (2014) — what i've always enjoyed about this film is how it's operating on multiple levels: a critique of film criticism, a satire of film vs. stage rivalries and the ego of actors, a metaphor for the catch-22 of being an artist, and a commentary on the state of film-making in 2014. i haven't seen this in quite a long time, and this time the underlying (but purposeful and self-reflective) pretension didn't work for me. maybe i'm just not as pretentious as i was in my 20s so this no longer speaks to that part of me? probably. that said, it's such a well-crafted movie and the performances are outstanding. i understand why it won best picture, even if i still think it should have gone to whiplash that year. rewatched mar. 5, 2025
• 📺 futurama, season seven (or nine & ten) — much improved from the prior revival season! hilarious that it ended for the second time here, and now there's a revival of the revival. anyway, the only really bad part of this season (and the revival) was no amy and kiff goodness, and also barely any robot devil. the robot devil is hands-down the best character and i want more of him! watched nov. 19, 2024 – mar. 5, 2025
• 📽️ coda (2021) — while i don't think winning best picture at the oscars is always a sign of quality, i do think sometimes the choice says a lot about the state of american culture at the time. this is a perfectly fine-if-slightly-elevated hallmark channel or disney channel original movie, which are practically the epitome of comfort films. so it won best picture during the height of the covid pandemic, naturally. genuinely a comforting film to watch but really, really standard in every way. watched mar. 3, 2025
• 📚 the serviceberry: abundance and reciprocity in the natural world, robin wall kimmer — generally, i've never understood the idea that humans should be totally divorced from the natural world they live in that represents the majority view in our current society, and it's gratifying to see such ideas getting more mainstream. short, to the point, and easily presents a new way of thinking about how we interact with nature. also, juneberries (the name i know for serviceberries) are delicious and a lovely summer treat. listened on mar. 1, 2025
• 📽️ a real pain (2024) — the kieran culkin performance is everything people say, but the jesse eisenberg monologue at the dinner table is also outstanding and, in my opinion, really brings the film together. i'm not the biggest fan of his as an actor, but as a director and writer he did really well making important character scenes just uncomfortable enough without making it unwatchable for me. watched feb. 27, 2025
• 📽️ stardate revisited - the origin of star trek: the next generation (2012) — a documentary included in the season 1 blu-ray bonus features. covers a lot that i already knew. had to resist the urge to exclaim "fuck you, rick berman!" every time i saw him on screen lol. i get he did a lot for the franchise, but the way he treated the women... much rage. at least they never showed me maurice hurley. might have broken my tv throwing something at it! watched feb. 20, 2025
• 📺 ↺ star trek: the next generation, season one — it's been about a decade since i sat down and rewatched this show straight through, which is good because i always need the time to wipe most of this season from my brain. it's honestly both charming and terrible with only a few episodes actually worth watching. it's understandable why the cast thought it would be canceled lol and yet it became a cultural phenomenon not long after. anyway, the hd remaster is so pretty and i'm very glad i bought this on blu-ray. the jumpscare to the original sd in the special features sure was something. and to think that i watched this show in even worse quality after years of rewatching and recording over and rewatching on my old vhs tapes as they degraded and degraded and which are absolutely still floating around my parents' house lmao. rewatched jan. 1 – feb. 20, 2025
• 📚 georgie, all along, kate clayborn — a random recommendation by the local library. i enjoyed this! it wasn't anything amazing, and i don't like two povs both written in the first person which kinda dragged it down for me. i'm also not sure that the fmc really grew at all? but whatever, it was a fun read. sometimes that's all you need. read feb. 13 – 17, 2025
• 📚 the penguin book of haiku, adam l. kern — i learned a lot about japanese short-form poetry from this. not unsurprisingly, it's actually nothing like the exported, sanitized, pop culture version. i do not recommend reading this in a public place—there are some nsfw woodblock prints and verses! read jan. 11 – feb. 17, 2025
• 📽️ nostalgia de la luz ‹ nostalgia for the light › (2010) — this was beautiful and emotional and sad, but it was more arthouse film than documentary. i wanted more about what happened during pinochet's regime—like how people were classed as political enemies that led to their disappearance. i also wanted them to go into more detail about what the local scientists were doing at the observatory. the interviews were good, but there were so few of them and they all agreed with each other to the point where it was almost indistinguishable who said what. watched feb. 15, 2025
• 📚 ↺ ♡ jane eyre, charlotte brontë — this is usually marketed as a romance novel, but it's actually more just the story of an orphan girl finding her way in the world. it's remarkable how real and well-developed jane feels. i really love this book. reread jan. 26 – feb. 13, 2025
• 📚 i heart skull-crusher!, josie campbell & alessio zonno — basically the hunger games with less interesting characters that doesn't really go anywhere. ya isn't my genre either, so this was a miss for me. the best part was david the mutant bear-man who's actually just a bear—he had some real fun moments and was the only character i was cheering for. give that bear some more honey! read feb. 8 – 10, 2025
• 📚 some of the best from reactor: 2024 edition, various — many of these were in the smaller ebooks released throughout the year, so i skipped over most of those. several good stories, but a lot of meh ones too. i think this year i'll just wait for the end-of-year omnibus from reactor/tor rather than read the monthly ones. read jan. 30 – feb. 9, 2025
• 📺 ✖ dark matter, season one — i'm realizing that watching a thriller i read and know the ending to isn't that interesting. for a long time i rarely watched adaptations of things i've read; seems like i should go back to that. anyway, this was boring only because i knew exactly what was happening at all times. also: jason2 is still a dick! fuck that guy! watched jan. 30 – feb. 9, 2025
• 📽️ ↺ memento (2000) — guy pearce! i always enjoy him in anything i see with him, but this is by far his best role. this is also one of my favorite nolan films, largely because it works really well with his emotionally cold style. i hadn't seen this is about 20 years and it is still really good and really clever without being too clever. rewatched feb. 4, 2025
• 📚 ↺ ♡ the last conversation, paul tremblay — i have thought about this short story nearly weekly since i first read it last march. i decided to reread it to see if it's as good as my memory thinks it was, and indeed i really, really like this. so short, but so impactful. i'm gonna check out more by this author. reread jan. 30, 2025
• 📚 reactor magazine short fiction jul/aug 2024, various — continuing the quality of the last one. worked well for falling asleep to, which is usually what i like from my ebooks since i read them in bed. only one story really worked for me. the rest just...went nowhere. at least it was free. read jan. 26 – 30, 2025
• 📽️ häxan (1922) — one of my resolutions for this year is to watch and read more nonfiction. this was my first documentary in years. a lot of modern documentaries are less interested in the facts and more interested in pushing a narrative/agenda, so i usually avoid them. i decided to watch something from over 100 years ago, which was fascinating. it did a good job, but it was clearly before the idea of the patriarchy as a construct was really being discussed. it never got into the whys behind the witch hunts, and instead kind of made it seem like they were all just "hysterical" women mistaken for being in league with the devil due to their "hysterical" symptoms. it did touch on the reason why the old and poor were targeted...because they were old and poor and society couldn't care for them. for its time, this is really well done, honestly. it just fell into the trap of making specious assumptions at the end. watched jan. 26, 2025
• 📽️ ↺ ♡ men in black trilogy (1997 – 2012) — i am still sick—this time with my third illness of the month—so i decided some comfort watching was in order. the original film from 1997 was one of my favorites as a child and i've seen it many times, and i still enjoy it immensely while sniffling miserably on the couch with a cold. the sequels are all fine but unnecessary! i remember liking the third one more when i saw it in theaters, but emotional gut punch moments work far better on me in a darkened cinema so it wasn't as impactful to me this time around. still...will probably rewatch sometime when i'm sick again. the chemistry between the grumpy and sunshine partners/bffs for life is delightful and brings me such joy! also thank fuck january is almost over, wtf. rewatched jan. 25, 2025
• 📚 orbital, samantha harvey — a series of nice meditations but ultimately amounts to nothing. i see why it won the booker, but needed a little more to it. read jan. 22 – 25, 2025
• 📺 ✖ silo, season two — i'm trying to be better at giving up on things when they aren't doing it for me rather than finishing something just to finish it, and silo just isn't doing it for me. it is so. slow. and i've read the books, so i know there is no actual good reason for it to be this slow. none of these characters are that interesting to me, and knowing there is far more interesting things they could be covering on the show by this point isn't helping. so, dropped! good luck, little show. lots of people seem to love you, i'm just not one of them. watched jan. 10 – 24, 2025
• 📚 layover, emily henry — this is a single chapter bonus epilogue for beach read and it was quite nice. honestly, i wouldn't be mad if there's a whole series about january and augustus and their dumb lives on the lake michigan coast. give me more, emily henry!! (please?) read jan. 21, 2025
• 📚 ♡ beach read, emily henry — honestly, emily henry's titles are kind of shit; there was barely any beach in this! anyway, i loved this and not just because it was a comfort read through my second awful illness of the month (i quit you, january 2025, what the fuck.). it has all the tropes i love including the second chance romance where they were never really romantic partners but he was secretly in love with her since forever and she kinda hated him, aw man. i enjoyed this immensely and will absolutely re-read it when i need another comfort read. this is way better than book lovers and i really liked that one, too! read jan. 20 – 21, 2025
• 📚 the moonflowers, abigail rose-marie — this is the last of the amazon prime first reads i'd had laying around, and it was a good one. a real bummer, to be sure, but a good one! it was interesting to read a story from the rural areas of kentucky that ties into the days before the jane collective was official in chicago, and all of the bravery that kind of work required just to provide women's healthcare and escape from abusive lives. read jan. 6 – 20, 2025
• 📽️ wine country (2019) — another funny choice for a bachelorette group watch, especially as we had all just returned from a whirlwind tour of texas wine in the texas hill country. is probably going to suffer in the future for being the last thing i watched before the norovirus took hold of me before my flight home, ugh. watched jan. 18, 2025
• 📽️ bridesmaids (2011) — pretty sure i've seen most of this but only in snippets, like randomly on cable when in hotel rooms over the years. it was pretty good, and i liked that the story centered around an imperfect woman who was kind of a shitty friend because she was going through it. that felt real. much of the "comedy" did not, like much of the era it was from so that really dragged it down for me. 2000s comedy never worked well for me! anyway, a hilarious choice for a bachelorette group watch. watched jan. 16 – 17, 2025
• 📚 recursion, blake crouch — a fun sci-fi thriller, but kinda typical blake crouch in a way i was hoping he would avoid after dark matter. there's an emotional unevenness to his writing where i can't always buy the full emotional lives of the characters, but that's blake crouch for me. this one didn't land as well as dark matter or summer frost for me, but it's miles better than the wayward pines trilogy which i found unreadable by book two. so, a nice way to spend a wintery sunday while recovering from rsv. read jan. 12, 2025
• 📺 ♡ shrinking, season two — i wish apple tv did better at marketing because it truly has quite the selection of really good to great shows (the movies...less so) that no one knows about. i watched this one randomly because of the cast and i heard it was pretty good, and i was not prepared for how much i would love it. it's like...healing and comforting and also heartbreaking all in one?! often in the same episode?!?! but always in a good way?!?!?! it's also very millennial indie rock coded (iykyk) so every time there's a heartbreaking scene with one of my favorite the national songs soundtracking it i'm just like, "this show's made for me!" anyway, this is super good and i wish more people watched it. also a great watch when sick—nothing like getting lightly weepy with the flu or whatever i had, but it also got me today after my fever broke with the last two episodes of this season (see: the national comment). jason segel does sad bastard being sad to sad bastard music so well! watched jan. 9 – 10, 2025
• 📚 immortal sergeant, joe kelly & ken niimura — ugh, i do not enjoy art that is clearly an extended therapy session for the artist. it was clear from the first page that this entire graphic novel was the author working through his relationship with his father, and then at the end he basically admits as much. this is my least favorite type of storytelling so i did not enjoy this. read jan. 10, 2025
• 📺 ↺ ♡ severance, season one — i am so thankful that i only got around to watching this show last winter and not in 2022 so i didn't have to wait three goddamn years for season two. one year was tough enough!!! this show is so good and i am so obsessed. mark s(cout) has my heart. anyway, watching this with whatever this cold-with-a-fever respiratory illness is that's going around has been fun because i'm too exhausted to do anything but stare at the screen and catch all the clues as the episodes autoplay. rewatched jan. 8 – 9, 2025
• 📚 reactor magazine short fiction may/june 2024, various — this was way worse than i expected from tor (now reactor)! wth. just five mediocre stories in a row. this makes me glad this was free. read jan. 4 – 6, 2025
• 📚 rich af, vivian tu — pretty solid financial explainer, including how to actually do the damn things. i didn't know everything in this book, so i already have a short list of things to look into to get into better financial shape asap. plus, the resources on the website are really great! read jan. 5, 2025
• 📚 ♡ north woods, daniel mason — i loved this. i loved the entire conceit, i loved the way it looped back in on itself, i loved the way it was ended for all. i'm gonna need to check out daniel mason's other work. read dec. 29, 2024 – jan. 4, 2025
• 📽️ anora (2024) — if this had come out 20 years ago, the first act of this would have been my whole personality for my early 20s. i see why this won the palme d'or, which has been awarding films that deal with class for a while now, but there is something missing from it that wasn't missing in sean baker's earlier films (to my memory): a true empathy for and development of the female protagonist. watched jan. 3, 2025
• 📚 daughter of fire, sofia robleda — i really enjoyed this. i found the characters more interesting and believable as real people than the usual ya-aged characters, and i learned quite a bit about the popol vuh as well. for an amazon first reads, this was much better than expected. read dec. 26, 2024 – jan. 1, 2025