Log 27.4.23
last night i read The Prophecy of Bees by R.S. Pateman. it was.... bad. I almost gave up about fifty pages in but decided to get through it all so I could get rid of it in clear conscience. the prose was awful - verbose, stilted, melodramatic. I'm a big fan of religious horror, generally, but this was garbage. the protagonist was theoretically a punk (? it's unclear) but so, so boring and irritating. it's very clear that the author doesn't know shit about alternative subcultures and thinks they're all about dressing up and listening to sad music - which is a part of it for sure, but come on. very much 'teenage girl written by old guy' syndrome. the ending was also deeply unsatisfying. but to be honest i could have looked past all that if the prose wasn't so goddamn terrible - the whole thing reads like a bad monologue from a fictional character with depression written by someone who doesn't know shit about depression. it was just bad, ok?

Log 26.4.23
last night i picked up Nevermoor! i decided i needed something that was easy to read as a break from what i'm currently trying to get through. it was really good - i've read it a few times before and enjoyed it a lot. it was nice to finish something quickly (start to finish 2 hours) for once!

Log 24.4.23
Recently I got a collection of Hitchcock classics from the library - Psycho, Rear Window and The Birds. I loved all of them and will probably rewatch them again before I have to return them - but obviously they weren't perfect.

Psycho was brilliant. I was having the most wonderful time until (in the last ten minutes) they went for the classic "people with DID are inherently scary and/or dangerous" angle. A little bit of transphobia in there for fun too. If you can look past the bigotry of the ending though, the movie was excellent, cinematography was amazing, just generally an excellent time. Anthony Perkins did a brilliant job as Norman Bates, really worth watching. Marion was really fun to watch as well.

I wouldn't exactly classify Rear Window as horror, I don't think. I watched it with my mum, it was just a fun lighthearted time. I appreciated how they depicted the police as generally useless (accurate) even if they did come in and save the day at the end. I LOVE Hitchcock women - they all actually get to be people which I really appreciate, even if it is tempered by the politics of the time.

The Birds I'd seen before, but not to the end - I've been interrupted trying to watch it twice before. This time I got all the way to the end. Such an unsettling ending too.. it's impossible to pick a favourite between the three films, but I love Melanie so much. The computer effects elements were obviously pretty dated-looking, but the parts with actual live birds were incredible. I finished the movie and then had to sit on the couch in silence for another ten minutes to process it.

I also watched Volume 9 of RWBY. It was bad. The first half was AWFUL. The second half was just alright. Glad to see they didn't chicken out re: Blake and Yang, though.

Currently I'm reading an absolutely garbage excuse of a book called "Redeeming Mathematics". It's about how maths proves the Christian god, or whatever. It's awful, and I'm going through and annotating it in rebuttal essentially line-by-line. I'm 1.5 chapters in, 17 to go, and I don't think I'll make it through the whole thing though. I'm giving it a shot because my grandmother (who definitely means well) gave it to me - I don't think she envisioned this being my reaction though.

Also, I went to an MCR concert and I feel like that rewired my brain. Not sure where else to mention that but I feel it's crucial knowledge.