Bridgerton

I discovered this show through a meme. A meme in French nonetheless shared on Facebook by my old French roomie from the days in Tokyo. Such a roundabout way to find out about a show! xD

I was curious, looked at the trailer, figured why not and set to watch the first episode. It's Shonda Rhimes so I was expecting all the drama and heartbreak and action from all the other shows of hers that I've watched, and with Grey's Anatomy at the top, it's not like Bridgerton could be bad, right?

And it wasn't. It was really good. I want to say glorious but it's still the first season of what I hope aspires to be a longrunner, so it may have come across as a little tame. I'm smarter than Eloise, I figured out who Lady Whistledown was after four episodes. The end only confirmed what I already knew. 

But I'm definitely invested in this show now so I hope there'll be another season. I need it.

The Queen's Gambit

I saw that this show featured chess and I was vaguely intrigued so I chose to pick it up. I fell in love with it pretty quickly, because even if it features chess as the one thing the protag's whole world revolves around, the show and story is about Beth Harmon; an angry little orphan who gets addicted to tranquilizers at a young age, discovers chess, goes on to wow the world all the while digging herself deeper into a hole of alcohol and destruction. 

It doesn't hurt that I like chess, though. I used to play chess as a child but I was never any good at it and I didn't have the motivation to study and practice and get better. Knowing the basics of chess probably helped to appreciate this show on a different level, but even if you know nothing about chess you'll like it if you enjoy stories about complicated people. 

And Anya Taylor-Joy is probably the prettiest person I've seen in ages. Damn, those eyes *w*

Anyway, this show's got so many layers and watching it I couldn't wait to see what Beth would do next. How would she get herself out of her next mess? Really rooting for her to come through this time. Groaning internally as she fell off the wagon again. Rinse and repeat. Even though it's just eight episodes.

The end was glorious. I was smiling like a fool.

 

If the trailer doesn't convince you then have a look at the Behind the Scenes. There may be some light spoilers, though, but it mostly concerns plotting, casting and wardrobe.

 

The Alienist season 2

I'm not okay.

This was not okay.

This season takes up where the last left off. Sara now has a detective agency of her own, employing only women, but as women detectives aren't really taken seriously in the 19th century she only gets small cases from eccentric rich women whose servants are "stealing" their silverware. That is until the case of a missing baby is given to her. John is now working at the Times and is engaged to the daughter of William Randolph Hearst even though everyone knows he's still in love with Sara. Laszlo carries on like usual with his Institute.

The case of the missing baby leads to a woman who's mentally deranged from having misfortune upon misfortune happen to her over the course of her life. Her mother didn't want a child but had one anyway because it was expected of her (this season delves very much into doing what society expects of you versus doing what you actually want) and her father killed himself when she was very young. Her father's suicide led to her and her mother losing the family estate and most of their money. She was sent to a mental institute and when she left it she had a baby. Her mother had that baby taken from her claiming that she had tried to kill her. The loss of the baby on top of everything else makes her kidnap other people's babies and take them for her own, but every time the baby acts out or doesn't behave like hers did she kills them for being "wrong". It's a very interesting psychological case and this season is a wild ride from start to finish. Several times you belive the case to be wrapped up and finished only for it to continue. 

Laszlo calls upon a female colleague to help with this case since he feels himself inadequate in formulating theories concerning women and children and/or motherhood. This woman later gets an invitation to come work with Dr Freud in Vienna and Laszlo spends the last few episodes trying to decide whether to stay in New York or go with her. 

I loved that this season forced the trio to work alongside Byrnes, which made them all bury the hatchet from the first season. I was very pleased with how that all turned out.

I still want Sara to end up with Laszlo, but any kind of spark they may have had in the first season was purposefully shut down in this season. In the end all three of the main characters seem set on doing what they want instead of doing what society wants from them, but at the last second it all goes awry and they end up going separate ways and I'm not okay. Why would you do this?!

Anyway, I got very invested in this show and I just bought the books.

Watch it.

Movies I watched in 2020

Let's clarify this title by saying that I mean modern movies. Because I watched a fair few of black-and-white old-timey horror movies as well.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
I watched this movie on my laptop during a pretty dead night shift and it was way better than I thought it would be. I'm not a fan of Jim Carrey; he tends to be too exaggerated imo, but he was pretty good as Dr Robotnik. I grew up watching the animated Sonic series and ofc I have played the Sonic games, so this was also a pretty neat nostalgia trip.

Birds of Prey (2020)
This is also a movie I watched on my laptop during a dead night shift. As always I really enjoyed the girl power in it. After everything bad I had heard about Suicide Squad I didn't have any expectations for this movie, which may be why I ended up liking it so much. But Harley has always been one of my favourite DC characters. 

Aquaman (2018)
We watched this for a date night and it was really good. Better than I thought it would be tbh. 

Detective Pikachu (2019)
Another date night movie. Both of us grew up with Pokémon and so we had a lot of fun with this movie. Best part was that Mewtwo didn't have to be the bad guy in this one.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
Another one I watched on my phone during a pretty dead evening shift (there were lots of dead shifts in spring 2020). As a Eurovision geek this movie hit all the right targets. I especially loved that Edinburgh was the host city for the competition (as if the UK would win lol). I was a little bit wary of watching a movie with Will Ferrell in it since he's usually in movies I cringe at, but this movie was just the right level of funny. I loved the song along and all the known Eurovision faces/songs that showed up in that scene. It got all the glittery, gay, tacky, over-the-top bs about Eurovision right. I only recently learned that Graham Norton is the Eurovision host in the UK, but after watching this movie I wish I could tune in to watch Eurovision in the UK every year. I could definitely watch this again. PLAY  JA JA DING DONG!!

It: Chapter Two (2019)
We watched the first part at the cinema, but then life happened and we somehow missed that part two got released. So we watched this one on Netflix one night. The adaptation is really, really close to the book. And I'm still disappointed about It's actual appearance. 

Joker (2019)
This movie was amazing. I'm going to assume everybody has felt like they're going to go insane by society's expectations at some point, which is what makes this scarily relatable but also so so good. Probably movie of the year for me. 

Venom (2018)
We like superhero movies so it was a given that we would watch this at some point. We talked about seeing it at the cinema in 2018, and then talked about watching it all of 2019, and then we finally did in 2020. Good things come to those who wait? Meeeh. This movie was pretty meh. Entertaining but probably in the bottom tier of the movies we watched in 2020. 

Enola Holmes (2020)
I made us watch this. I was excited for this movie. I really liked this movie. It was upbeat and fun and just the right amount of girly. Toni felt it was very very meh. I want to watch it again. Sometimes we commit to the stereotypes. (Very rarely).

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
For Halloween week we decided it was time to watch a scary movie for date night. I looked up a bunch of trailers on Netflix, pitched the ones I liked the most to Toni and then we decided on this one. Both of us are kind of wary when it comes to horror movies, because they usually follow the same pattern and end up being just thoroughly disappointing. This one was actually good. We both liked this one. First scary movie we've watched in years and we both enjoyed it. Thanks, Netflix.

Annihilation (2018)
With the previous success we decided to watch another horror movie. But this time we didn't do the research. The trailer for this looked good when we were scrolling through Netflix. It started with so much potential and ended up being really... dumb. And that's what we both dislike about horror movies. They start out so so promising and then they just fall flat on their face. Like this one did. Even with Natalie Portman in it.

Before I Wake (2016)
The last movie of the year continued the horror theme, but this time we did the research. Or rather I did. Same procedure as for Scary Stories. And this one was also really good. Not as good as Scary Stories, but it didn't fall flat and we both enjoyed it. The premise has been done before, but not to death, so that was a nice change. I loved the ending. Which was also a nice change for a horror movie. 

My last 4 books of 2020

1. Overwatch Anthology 1. I have a few friends who are reaaaaally into Overwatch and I was talked into joining them in a few games. Which I did. And had a bunch of fun. But I really lament the lack of a story mode in the game and so I started researching the characters, watched the Overwatch cinematics on Youtube and bought the comics anthology. I would've liked the comics to be a bit longer. They were all a bit on the short side. That said I did enjoy the comics starring Ana, Soldier and Reaper. The OG. I also had a lot of fun reading the comic about Torbjörn and Bastion, mainly because of the signs and headlines in Swedish (and actually grammatically correct Swedish unlike Brigitte's name and the fisherman outfit in the game). I'm a big fan of both Reaper and Tracer in the game and I also liked Tracer's comics in this anthology, especially her origin story. I hope there'll be a second anthology, but until that happens, I guess I have to read the rest of the comics on Blizzard's website. 

2. Whispers Under Ground, by Ben Aaronovitch. Really getting into this series now and it's starting to get interesting. Different kinds of magical folk, new kinds of magic and a sinister plot that we're only just beginning to uncover all dolled up as a common police procedural? I'm all for it! I love how Peter is basically just throwing his secret around and Nightingale is wincing at every turn over his lack of respect for the secrecy. The dynamic between the characters is half the fun of this series, along with all the references to Harry Potter, Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings. Just like the last book was all about jazz, this one was all about art and specifically pottery, but I enjoyed this subject a lot more than the jazz. Especially so since it offered a deep-dive into London history. In this book we have a proper murder investigation going and the victim is American so the FBI gets brought into the mix. I had a lot of fun reading this book and I'm tempted to get the rest of the series in one go and read them all in succession. But my reading backlog would hate me if I did. 

3. King of Scars, by Leigh Bardugo. I love, love, love the Grishaverse! The majority of this book was bittersweet nostalgia from the Shadow & Bone trilogy, but it was also peppered with references to Six of Crows. This book is probably the first time I've enjoyed reading about Nina. I loved Nikolai already in the first Grisha trilogy and I loved him when he showed up in Crooked Kingdom and I still loved him in this book. After five books in the Grishaverse, as a reader you feel pretty confident that you know how it works with the powers and the Saints and everything, but in the second half of this book Bardugo turns it all upside down and makes the reader reevaluate everything they think they know. I really appreciate when authors do that and when they do it so that the reader's preconceptions have to be reevaluated at the same pace that the characters' do. I really didn't see the end coming and Rule of Wolves promises to be very interesting. The ending had me actually filled with dread and anticipation of what's to come, and at the same time I'm super excited because Rule of Wolves promises the return of one of my favourite characters from Shadow & Bone. I'm stoked!

4. Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo. At this point I'm willing to read anything Leigh Bardugo puts her name on. This book was way different than the Grishaverse books she has written before, for one it's an adult novel; not YA, and for another it's urban fantasy. It did take a while to get into and the timing of the plot was a little bit confusing to begin with, but once I got to around 70-100 pages the rules of this new world had settled and things started to make sense. The most profound (and also feminist) quote of the book is: "Did she seem depressed? She was distant. She didn't make many friends. She was struggling in her classes. All true. But would it have mattered if she'd been someone else? If she'd been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she'd been a straight-A student, they would have said she'd been eaten alive by perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died." There were always excuses for why girls died. This one sentence is the basis for the whole book and it matters in ways I couldn't even imagine in the first half of the book. Heck, those words' meaning for the plot didn't become obvious until the last fifteen pages. The way the pieces of the puzzle come together is beautiful. The story is compelling. I loved this book.

Game discovery of the year: Overwatch

I'm probably the last person to the party when it comes to this game. But I've never been one to keep up on trends quickly. 

I have a few online friends who are really into this game and have been for years. I met two of them for the first time in September 2019 and after that I bought the game, although I didn't play until May 2020. 

It's not a game that I pick up to play alone, but playing it with friends it's great fun. I like how quick a match is and how fast and intense the gameplay is. Although that was a challenge for my first few games because I didn't know the maps and everyone was just so much quicker than I was.

I'm not great at shooters, any kind of shooter, be it single-player or multiplayer. But when a match is so quick it doesn't really matter as long as you're not playing comp and I doubt I'll ever set my foot in comp. 

This far I've played the game five evenings of 2020 and mostly I've had a lot of fun. I've experimented with Soldier, Tracer, McCree, Genji, and Ashe, but I always come back to Reaper. Anybody surprised that my fave is the edgyboi? No? Me neither =D

I won't say that I'll never sit down to play this game on my own, but it seems like a game that's better suited to play in good company. Too much salt otherwise. 

I got my first Play of the Game for this stunt: