We had waited and waited for this season. The last one. The climax. The resolution. And just with the previous two seasons every episode was so good. Every episode feels like a movie and the quality is just staggering.
I loved finding out the truth about SAR and Scarecrow and Robot. Loved seeing the kids figure everything out while the adults struggled with fear and paranoia and what-ifs.
And Will has come such a long way. From the hesitant, sensitive little kid to a literal hero trying to save humanity in space while also trying not to sacrifice himself, but absolutely not ruling it out and is up to the task, should it happen. I'm just so proud of him.
And that ending is just the best possible ending to the entire show. When the whole thing was over I just felt happy and content. This was so good and it was perfect.
This show is completely worth every minute. Watch it.
I played the first and second Van Helsing games in 2013 and 2014 respectively. The first game was probably one of the first games I ever bought on Steam. Then the third installment completely fell off my radar and I discovered this Final Cut several years later. Final Cut is a compilation of the three installments with a few things added and some other things removed to spice it up for returning players.
So this is a Diablo-esque action RPG in a gothic noir setting and I'm all for it. You know every monster and legend and weird science in the gothic stories of the 19th century (and the early 20th century)? You'll get to immerse yourself in a world full of them; fight most of them and help some of them. There are mad scientists and steampunk-y cyborgs and legends come to life. The humour is sarcastic and witty and the game is full of references to pop culture. I love everything about this.
As for the classes you can be a gun-toting hunter or a sword-wielding knight or sorcerer (scientific sorcerer) or summoner. I played this as the classic gunner and based my own build on poison damage with ice as back-up in case of poison resistance. With a bit of summoning on the side.
As for the story it's a simple monster slaying story with the gothic noir twist I love. You are Van Helsing, son of the legendary Van Helsing. Your father was sent a message asking for assistance from the country of Borgovia, but since he doesn't take cases anymore you get to go off on this adventure, and with you is Lady Katarina - a ghost bound to serve the Van Helsing family.
In the first installment you fight the mad scientist Fulmigati and his minions created by weird science. Alongside them are several different kinds of mythical creatures and if you pay attention you get to pull the Excalibur out of the stone, you get to fight the murderous rabbit from Monty Python's Holy Grail (this rabbit show up in every installment), and a whole lot of other things.
In the second installment you create the Resistance and fight General Harker and his cyborg minions. You have an unusual ally throughout this part. The Resistance offers war table missions, which I'm all for. If you pay attention you can find Gandalf, and Sherlock Holmes' home among other things.
In the third installment you fight Koschei the Deathless and this part binds all of them together beautifully. This installment takes you through the Underworld and you also find out Katarina's backstory. Here you can, among other things, find out the truth about Hansel and Gretel.
After I had finished the mainstory of the Final Cut I went back and played the third Van Helsing game separately. There's also a game called Deathtrap that's based on the Van Helsing game but only the Tower Defense parts of it. So Deathtrap is simply a Tower Defense game in the same style and universe as the Van Helsing games.
I started to write this review when I felt done with the Final Cut, but having written this... I kind of want to go back and play through the whole thing again. This gothic-noir action-RPG with tower defense elements is one of my absolute favourites.
1. Rule of Wolves, by Leigh Bardugo. This book is just... I can't even... Wow. I love Nikolai. I love Aleksander and I adore Kaz Brekker and they're all in this together and I can barely contain my joy. I've never liked Zoya (although the author makes it clear time and again that she does) but in this book Zoya kind of grows on me. I never enjoyed Nina's POV in Six of Crows but in King of Scars and especially in Rule of Wolves she really grows on me and she has gone from being one of those character POV that I just had to get through, to being one of my favourites. Shu Han becomes an actual place in this novel and stops being a mythical land. I had so much fun reading this book and I really didn't want to put it down ever. There were so many instances when the real battle started that I thought that Nikolai wouldn't make it, we were getting close to the end of the book (and duology) after all... I was just sat there... "If Nikolai dies, I'mma riot." The ending was just perfect. Redemption for the Darkling. Nikolai gets to keep the throne without being on the throne. My lovely, relatable Hanne gets to live her best trans-life in the best way possible and Nina gets to be the queen she deserves to be. We've come a long way from the Little Palace, haven't we? I can't wait for the next Grisha-book.
2. The Lives of Saints, by Leigh Bardugo. A little anthology of fairy tales. This is the Istorii Sankt'ya from Shadow and Bone. I kind of expected more, but at the same time it's exactly what I expected. Mostly it's a bunch of tales about how much humanity sucks and how we always manage to make the choice that will end up being the worst for us. Most of the stories were only two pages long and this book is a great example of how you can say a lot with few words. My favourite stories were Sankt Nikolai, Sankt Vladimir, Sankta Yeryin, Sankt Lukin, Sankta Magda, Sankt Dimitri, and The Starless Saint. Absolute favourite would probably be Sankt Dimitri because of the pure preposterousness of that ending. The only one of these stories that made me chuckle. Definitely recommend if you're a fan of the Grishaverse, but only if you have read the rest of the books up until Rule of Wolves because the last story in this book could be considered a spoiler.
3. The Wisdom of Crowds, by Joe Abercrombie. I did not see that coming. But my boy Glokta is still my boy. Not so much boy anymore, though, but don't you dare kill him! How to talk about this book without spoiling everything? There's so much death and one, specifically, felt like a gut-punch. Honestly, after the events of this book I wish Orso had gone through with the execution at the end of The Trouble with Peace. It would've saved him so much trouble. Already before Savine pointed it out herself I noticed how she had ended up married to her father in a way. But Leo is a washed out, diminished version of the gloriousness that is Sand dan Glokta. What this book does, and does brilliantly, is pointing out that the people, the masses, don't really know what they want. They clamour for freedom, but once they get it they need someone to hold their hand and tell them what to do. People as an entity need their leaders and their government, people as individuals need their freedom and differentiating the two is a delicate balance - which Orso and Pike and Judge and so many more all find out. The irony of the title is that crowds don't have any wisdom. This book is full of references to the original trilogy and now I feel like I need to re-read it. It has been like ten years after all... I need to rediscover the origins of Old Sticks. I need to re-experience the sarcasm of young Inquisitor Glokta. The trilogy of this new generation has been a wild brilliant ride and it will take me weeks to get over this.
4. Very Good Lives, by J.K. Rowling. This short little book is just the commencement speech Rowling gave to Harvard's graduating class of 2008. I finished it in something like 15-20 minutes. It's very short and half of it is pictures. But what struck me in this (and what always strikes me in anything non-fiction she does) is how eloquent she is. She knows precisely which words to use and if words is a superpower, she definitely has it. And she makes a very good point throughout this whole speech, without being the boring adult who tries to tell a group of fresh graduates that she knows better, she tells them to live their best lives and not be afraid to fail. Reach for the stars and don't be afraid to fall. A lot of adults will tell you what you can't do, that some things are meant to remain as dreams and not reality, but how can you know without trying? One part of this speech struck a very personal chord with me: "I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself and what those closest to me expected of me. I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was write novels. However, my parents, [...] took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension. So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree." This is only 80 pages (and half of it pictures) but it still managed to make me smile and chuckle and even brought a tear to my eye at one point. If you want to truly discover Rowling's masterful way with words - this is it. I would very much like a collection of essays and non-fiction writing from Rowling in the future.
5. The Sandman vol 7: Brief Lives, by Neil Gaiman. It has been way too long since I read the previous Sandman volume. Years and years ago, but in true Gaiman spirit the story is simple enough to be easily remembered but intriguing enough to never get old and still intricate and complicated enough to generate so so many questions. Layers. The master of layers. I love Delirium in this. Everything she says is like talking to a small child; you know all the words but they don't fit together in your mundane adult mind the way they do for a child. And in this volume in every interaction between Dream and Delirium Dream is a perfect personification of how I feel interacting with children. They are colourful and whimsical and quirky and I'm mellow darkness. The end to Orpheus's story was fitting. Delirium and Dream set out to find Destruction, but in the end, what Dream discovers on their journey is that even if they are Endless they aren't static and change is inevitable. Dream and Death remain my favourites, but Delirium was an absolute delight (pun absolutely intended) in this volume and Desire was just *chef's kiss* Barnabas's claim that dogs don't make fools of themselves made me chuckle all the while remembering how the old family dog used to trip over her own feet while trying to catch a thrown stick before it hit the ground. I had a great time with this volume.
This show has been one of my guilty pleasures for the past eight years. For people who don't know (and I can't find any information on whether this show is actually broadcast in the US - although I feel like it should be) this is a Swedish reality show based on ten Swedish-Americans coming to Sweden to find their Swedish roots and the big prize at the end of the competition is a family reunion with the Swedish side of their family. It's great to watch the Americans find out about their history. It's also a lot of fun to watch their reactions to things that I find thoroughly normal but that they find super strange.
They usually film it during early summer. Around June mostly. and then broadcast it during the autumn scheduling. But in 2020 the show was cancelled completely due to covid. And in 2021 they had to postpone it and so this season was filmed in August and the broadcasting ended just yesterday.
Before this season started broadcasting it was announced as the last ever season of this show. Made me sad. But with the state of the world, I guess it's understandable. The world is a very different place now compared to when the show started in 2011.
But then I read a post from the host's Instagram where he states he hopes for another season. So maybe it's not completely dead and gone? Fingers crossed for more.
This show was my choice. I've had a weird fascination with Ju-On a.k.a The Grudge since I was 14 and saw the first American version movie for the first time. And Kayako has haunted me ever since. Since then I've seen every Japanese version I could get my hands on, as well as both the American versions. I haven't seen the one from 2020 yet. So when I saw this show in my/our recommended I decided I wanted to see it.
It's only six episodes long and every episode is only 30 minutes. It could easily be completed in a day. The storytelling is pretty confusing to begin with. The story is told in the wrong order. But I had all the wrinkles straightened out by the end. Except one that I don't think they answered... What happened to the child?
This show was a trip. It showcased the inherent evil in man, as well as the desire to do right. There was glimpses through temporal windows and a temporal effect where the future happened simultaneously as the past.
The story begins in 1988 and finishes in 1997 and it really stuck with me. The storytelling is pretty slow and it focuses largely on building suspense. Throughout the show each episode gives you a new thread, a new piece of the puzzle, and they don't clearly explain how they fit together - it's up to the viewer to connect the dots. And that kind of storytelling isn't for everybody.
The only thing I didn't enjoy about this show was the corpse reveal at the end.
This second season was leagues better than the first season for the sole reason that it was all in the right order. And this is where I realise that I never made a post for the first season.
I know already before going in on season one that it would be all out of order. The Last Wish is still the only Witcher book I've read and I recognised quite a bit from the first season of the show from both that book and the games.
This second season however is where we get a proper chronology, a proper chain of events, and we get some sort of background info on The Wild Hunt. Which is cool coming from only having played the games basically.
The way things are going in the show I assume we'll be introcuded to the Scoia'tael in the next season? Does that mean Zoltan will show up?
I need more chemistry between Geralt and Triss.
This season is going to take some time to digest. So good :3
