deerna | Entries tagged with rec

i didn't dislike it but man choices were made

Before you start reading:
this is a review of The Nightmare of the Wolf (2021) directed by Han Kwang-il and it contains spoilers.
Read my review on Letterboxd if you don’t want to be spoiled.

the good: good quality animation, great banter and some very interesting original characters, another look into the lore of the world of the witcher, cool monster design

the bad: weird choices about the timeline, some questionable narrative choices ...and SPOILERS.

i was looking forward to this movie. the witcher s2 is so far away still, and i have no way to justify a third playthrough of wild hunt, so i really hoped it would help me get some kind of fix. the good news is that the mood is right: we have a witcher fighting monsters, we have the intrinsic tragedy of being a witcher, and we have excellent animation to tell us that story. there's also a lot of stuff that left me with a bitter aftertaste in my mouth though. i enjoyed myself, but i wish i liked it more.

( Rambly and spoiler-y recension under the cut )

i should be writing but i can't get in the flow so i might as well catch up a little

challenge #06: rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create

first of all im going to cheat and redirect you to my other two reclists -- one for series and one for single fics.

the three stories i rec'd are huge, cover heavy themes either psychologically or emotionally, and are very different between them, for genre, pairing and style, so I think they make for a nice morsel for someone who -- well, wants to look into my tastes in fanfiction i guess haha. please give these people all the kudos because they deserve them.

three stories that consumed me

tap tap tap, by lemmingdancer geralt/eskel, geralt/jaskier | angst with a happy ending | 45k | link
this fic is long. it spans their whole lives, from childhood to retirement, and it's deliciously painful. one of my favorite things about it is geralt's transformation after the second trials, how he has to put an effort in learning how to act human again. and i love how eskel and jaskier go at it, with their flaws and their sweetness. i loved the issues and the mistakes and the feelings and the tap tap tap. and after a lot of pain — a happy ending. truly a must-read. // warning for minor spoilers for the games

Silver and copper, by heronfem geralt/jaskier | canon au, alternative meeting, horror and violence | 56k | link
jaskier has a very good reason not be a bard, and geralt happens to pass through lettenhove and fix it. this is a horror story (to the point that i regretted reading it at night) and there's some truly horrifying stuff going on about the curse, so heed the tags. it's also a mystery story, which reminded me a little of the side quests you can play in tw3 but with a lot more frustrated meandering and false leads, which keep you on the edge of your seat. there's also a lot of hope and love, though — the truly selfless kind, the kind that doesn't give up on you, the kind that waits for you to come back, the kind that adopts you even if it has no reason to do so.

out in the pouring rain (down on your knees) by SummerFrost geralt/jaskier/yennefer | modern au, BDSM | 45k | link
it starts out as jaskier doing a favour to yennefer and geralt, to satisfy a cuckhold fantasy, and then it turns into something much more complicated. i'm extremely picky with modern aus but this pushes all my buttons re: kink & the witcher cast. also, i almost feel like i should've tagged this as jaskier/yennefer because that's what mostly is - geralt is off screen a lot, but he's the elephant in the room and the reason everything is happening and everyone is feeling. the pining hits hard and the burn is slow; by the end of it i felt consumed by it, in the best of ways.
special mention: ciri! she's trans (i know that folk look for that kind of thing) and adorable and her parents and jaskier love her very much and i appreciated the whole thing so much.

code by tessisamess | icons by honeymoonedit, twelveedits & retroicxns

challenge #05: talk about a canon you love

Nobody will be surprised to see that this post is about the Witcher, since apparently it’s all I think about these days. I don’t actually talk about it much on any of my online spaces - I’m not great at meta and I always feel like other people have more interesting things to say. Fiction is usually my way to say things about my canons, so that’s what I usually write — but this is a challenge so I felt like challenging myself.

Before the netflix show came the games, and before the games came the books, which I had the pleasure to discover during the entirety of 2020 — so I’m going to gush a bit about the opening scene of the short story that started it all.

( spoilers about the books under the cut )

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner featuring a wrapped giftbox with a snowflake on the gift tag. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31

and now the count is three (3) counting the Witcher. Goddammit.

credit

Before you start reading:
this is a review of Enola Holmes (2020) directed by Harry Bradbee and it contains spoilers.
Read my review on Letterboxd if you don’t want to be spoiled.

the good: overall fun and engaging, nuanced acting despite the risk of cartoonish performance, a good management of trope-inversion up to a point, Feel-Good messages about feminism, the future and hope.

The Bad: a slow beginning, Spelling Out Absolutely Everything, and eyeroll-worthy vibes of performative wokeness™

Yes, I watched this movie because Henry Cavill is in it and I’m still riding the Witcher high. I have no qualms admitting that. I also like Millie Bobby Brown quite a lot — people tell me she’s overrated, but I enjoyed her acting in Stranger Things — and the premise looked fun (I am not familiar with the books though) so I watched it.

I was looking for something undemanding to wind down after a heavy day — and Enola delivered. She managed to engage my brain for a couple hours and it made me itch for more, which is always a good thing, so that's a win in my book.

I started writing this entry back in September, but then things happened, and I couldn't be arsed to re-watch the movie in the meanwhile, so there might be inaccuracies. Have mercy on my scatterbrained soul.

( Rambly and spoiler-y recension under the cut )

"I swear I won't be mad about Artemis Fowl", they said, ranting about Artemis Fowl.

Before you start reading: this is a review of Artemis Fowl (2020) directed by Kenneth Branagh

the good: they got the visuals right, the cast was amazing, there were a few clever additions that I really loved and a few changes I didn't mind.

the bad: the pacing was a mess, the premise was a mess, Artemis was mischaracterized and basically rendered unrecognizable.

Movies adapted from books are notorious for being, more often than not, a miss. Myself, I spent the best time of my teenage years joyfully shredding through movie adaptations of my favourite books, judging and criticizing and pointing out all the passages where they differentiated from the original text-- at the time it seemed an absolute sin. Why make it in a movie at all, if you weren't going to keep 'the good bits'?

Then I grew up and I started studying screenwriting storytelling. Turns out that writing a script is pretty fucking hard. Turns out that adaptation is not only hard but, just like translation, is also very much not an exact science. Prose and script are as similar languages as english and japanese, and trying to make a one-to-one transfer is not going to work. As much as I suffered to admit it, you can't keep everything, so you have to make a choice. The fans of the book are gonna gut you anyway.

After years spent comparing the movies and their book counterparts, I feel like a good adaptation should keep at the very least the same feel of the origin material; on top of that it should have the same characters, the same themes, and the same overall plot. Sometimes adjustments are necessary because maybe there's too much stuff going on, or because it might be hard to get across on screen, or because the book is garbage but the concept is too good not to try and expand on it (and even then, good luck trying to make something that doesn't suck).

Artemis Fowl (2020) is not a good adaptation.

Read my spoiler-free review on letterboxd.

( Full spoiler-y, rambly review )

Unhealthy Obsessions

Entries tagged with rec

some kind of witcher prequel

fandom snowflake challenge #6

fandom snowflake challenge #5

another movie where i liked henry cavill

artemis fowl and whatever the fuck

Links

Custom Text