• Watson and Moriarty from "Watson." Image source: CBS
    opinions,  television

    Watson (2025 CBS) is a lukewarm Sherlock Holmes adaptation

    2025-05-14 /

    The old CBS show “Elementary” is among my favorites. It might be my ultimate comfort watch. Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller deliver pitch-perfect performances for seven straight seasons, and while it has its rocky story moments, no singular season is skippable, the themes are compassionate, and the stories are engaging.

    “Watson” is from the same network and the same showrunner. I didn’t feel the need to fill any void after “Elementary,” but I figured I might as well try its spiritual successor.

    In this adaptation, Holmes has fallen of Reichenbach Falls with Moriarty. Watson jumped after them in a rescue attempt. As far as Watson initially knows, he’s the only survivor.

    Doyle’s characters show up in various adapted forms, as with “Elementary”: Clyde is a robot rather than a turtle, Shinwell is a series regular, and Mary Morsten is an ex-wife instead of a boyfriend who gets poisoned. After watching so much “Elementary,” it’s a little jarring to see these characters revised in new ways from the same mind. You can tell the creation is by the same person with the same interests, but he shifted everything to the left.

    An extremely familiar story with new faces.

    “Watson” manages to stay fresh by focusing on medical drama instead of a police procedural. The cast is populated with Watson’s younger doctor apprentices, who are talented, genius, and so disinteresting to me that I can’t tell you what any of them are named. I guess I could look it up.

    All the actors rise well to the occasion presented, but Morris Chestnut is the main standout. His performance is always majestic. The man has gravitas. His Watson is concerned with medical justice as much as anything else, and he will make non-medical things his problem if injustice has been done.

    Full-season spoilers ahead.

    Moriarty is present throughout the entire season, here and there. I never got the feeling he was a powerful mad genius with amazing powers of deduction and manipulation. He was just a guy who kept blackmailing people into bad behavior.

    Gene editing allows Moriarty to target Watson’s team. Maybe this would have been more compelling if I cared about his team. By the time the twin doctor guys got sick, I was actually just hoping it would kill one of them off. I didn’t like the performance by that actor as two different guys. They weren’t very distinctive to me outside whether or not they were wearing glasses. He mumbled through all his lines. Knocking one of them off would have made sense and given the actor time to focus on developing just one of them.

    Alas, it was not to be so. All the good guys were saved. We rolled toward the end of the season leaving me feeling mildly entertained – not excited, but also not really dissatisfied.

    My opinion crashed and burned at the end.

    “Watson” ultimately lost me on its last episode. At the end, Watson chose to kill Moriarty via a fatal stroke. His argument was that Moriarty was too dangerous to let live.

    Nothing I saw from Watson to that point suggested he would be willing to kill a man, even one who demonstrably deserved it. Watson fanboys for his “dead” BFF Sherlock Holmes, but he doesn’t seem especially vengeful; he’s focused on medicine, not going after Holmes’s murderer. Watson history with the military was downplayed because he was always more doctor than soldier. He helped Irene Adler, knowing she was likely manipulating.

    He always erred on the side of doing no harm.

    Ethical gray areas don’t seem to imply a willingness to kill, either. It wasn’t like he bonded with his favorite student (whose name I still don’t remember) because she killed her father. A moment where he heatedly announced, “I would have killed him too,” might have been enough to convince me.

    Nothing like that happened. At least, not that I recall. I slammed the season in about two days – details may have escaped me.

    I thought about rewatching the season to see if they supported this character moment in ways I didn’t observe. But this is the ultimate indictment of “Watson”: I didn’t like it enough, care about the characters, or feel any desire to spend time rewatching it. At all. Even to analyze the story better.

    It feels like they just wanted to have Watson do the practical thing and kill the bad guy. It’s a long discussion in various fiction circles: isn’t the most compassionate thing a hero could do is kill a dangerous villain? Why doesn’t Batman end the Joker’s reign of terror and kill him instead of sending him to Arkham Asylum?

    I don’t buy into “Good Guys Just Don’t Do Things Like That” as an argument. But this feels like a totally unsupported character moment that exists only to say, “See? Batman really should just kill The Joker.” (Although in this case, Watson is arguably more Nightwing than Batman.)

    It’s hard to imagine anyone getting too attached to “Watson,” but let’s give it a chance.

    Lukewarm reaction aside, “Watson” deserves more seasons. I watch a lot of TV shows through the course of my day. I always have something going while I play video games, clean house, practice illustration, etc. Thus I  can authoritatively say that it’s normal for the first season of a show from any era to kinda suck.

    A wise network is one that sees the good points – of which “Watson” has many – and chooses to nurture it through an awkward phase.

    Rochelle Aytes is a great Mary Morsten who actually survived the season (which I didn’t expect). Clear ambiguity around Moriarty leaves opportunities for more stories with him, even if he’s dead.

    They cast a wonderful voice to portray Sherlock Holmes, and I would chop off my favorite toe to see Matt Berry in a homosexual love spiral with Morris Chestnut.

    Although I didn’t really care about the younger doctors, there’s a lot of sapphic potential in the tension between the two women that would make me happy to return to them.

    And who knows? Maybe they’ll knock off one of those twins and make me really happy.

    You can stream Watson Season One on CBS All Access.

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  • opinions

    Does ethical generative AI usage exist?

    2025-05-03 /

    Generative AI remains a polarizing topic of conversation. It feels like everyone has a strong opinion, and it’s either “love it, use it” or “hate it, deride it.” I often fall on the side of “NO, no way,” but I keep vacillating between that and “why bother?” and also “eh, maybe?”

    As background: I initially played around with genAI for image creation but stopped once I realized that the datasets were produced by scraping the internet without regard for the creators involved. The idea that huge companies are profiting off of this sticks in my craw.

    I can’t get over the way this helps steal labor and consolidate more wealth in the ruling class. I can’t understand how AI proponents don’t see the way this is the worst manifestation of our society in hyperdrive.

    That said, I also find I cannot stand uniformly opposed to generative AI, either. I’m usually an early adopter to tech. I love the ways that technology have changed and grown throughout my lifetime.

    What we now call “AI” has become an extremely large basin holding an extremely diverse array of technology. A lot of these uses are harmful. Others are useful. I don’t want to throw the robot baby out with the AI slop water.

    Adobe Photoshop has had “content aware fill” for a long time now. The idea is that you select a part of an image, and Photoshop will fill in what it expects should occupy that space using the pixels around it. I’ve been using content-aware fill since at least Photoshop 2019. For personal photos, this has been a quick way to remove things like telephone poles from the sky. What it produces is not much more sophisticated than a clone stamp. I class this as a useful tool–though it’s also not generative AI.

    Later, Adobe added “generative fill,” which is like content aware fill on steroids. It uses their family of generative AI models, called Firefly, to create a more complicated image that the average person will recognize as GPT-like.

    According to Adobe’s FAQ about Firefly, the dataset is trained on public domain images and its large stock library. If you’ve contributed to the stock library, your work is in the dataset. This is part of the terms of service, although I don’t know how and when this usage was added.

    How well did they inform contributors? Did everyone know in advance what this would mean? How many contributing artists belong to agencies whose managers made those decisions above their heads?

    It’s hard to say, but it’s still better than Meta deciding it’s fair use to steal from authors because their books have no value.

    Where does Microsoft’s experimental AI engine fall on this spectrum?

    John Carmack, a game dev elder and co-originator of the most classic boomer shooters, describes this AI use as a useful tool. I’m not inclined toward authoritarianism — here meaning that an authority’s opinion is only an opinion, and not above scrutiny — but I think he’s right that AI algorithms will be a growing part of the workflow.

    I tried playing Quake II (one of my all-time favorite shooters) in this format. It’s obviously not yet a playable commercial game. It’s dreamy, foggy, and forgetful. At best, we can say it’s recognizable as the original game, and you can move inside of it.

    But this is the first time I’ve glimpsed something that genuinely feels like a future successor to current game engines. Can it become markedly better? Is the output always going to be worse? Will it deprive game devs of jobs? I don’t know yet. I do find it interesting, though. I don’t want to discount it out of hand.

    Ultimately, I evaluate individual tools falling into the AI bucket like this:

    1. Does it reduce desirable work for creatives? I don’t think it’s a big deal when people use AI models for silly little personal projects. I don’t care if people want to see their face on a Bridgerton character. Also, using generative tools to make photo editing slightly less onerous will make a creative’s life more pleasant. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that it’s easier to isolate models and remove that one patch on their jacket sleeve these days. I don’t miss clone-stamping and painting that stuff away.
    2. Does it disrupt necessary career progression? Replacing junior developers with AI blasts apart the entire industry in counterproductive ways. How does a senior developer become a senior developer if she can’t make a living as a junior developer first? How will artists ever graduate from Art As A Side Job to Art As A Full Time Job if all the jobs freelancing are replaced by people whipping up some muddy AI garbage?
    3. Does its usage on an individual level harm other creatives? Using datasets with material that artists did not consent to including is harmful. When you are generating art in many models — especially when you use specific artists’ names in the prompts — you are personally inflicting harm on creatives. Whole-image generation is likelier to resemble preexisting work by a single artist, which should be regarded as plagiarism. Adobe Firefly is maybe okay to use where you would otherwise normally use Adobe Stock, although it’s a horrible gray area.
    4. How significant is the environmental impact? As with most environmental issues, individual use is never as impactful as institutional use. Microsoft’s Copilot has been forced onto vast numbers of desktop computers and devours computing power whether or not you like it. On the other hand, Apple’s on-device AI performs processing on your phone, and it might demand charging your phone slightly more. It’s probably not a big deal. And an individual doing a couple of prompts is a drop in the ocean compared to Google adding AI processing for every single search engine query. Over time, as processing power becomes overall cheaper, environmental impact will decline. It’s alarming right now. It will improve.
    5. Does it do a good job? Whole-image generation can look as glossy as you want these days, but the algorithm doesn’t have intention, purpose, and an individual’s life experience to create a distinctive lens. Even when you’re editing out errors, you’re still leaning on the most bland, generic, commercial imagery that is possible. Things tend to look plastic. Women are homogenized into their most offensively attractive forms. And I still haven’t read any AI-generated text that isn’t a circuitous, unfocused, tension-free disaster of word soup. Trying to make AI output usable takes just as much work as making the thing yourself.

    I’m sure I’m missing a few points, but these are the ones off the top of my head. And with this litmus test applied, there isn’t a ton of common AI usage that I would consider appropriate.

    But there is some.

    Many artists agree that using AI to generate mock-ups is no big deal. Anything where an individual isn’t putting AI into a final, sellable product is probably okay. AI that makes parts of unappealing labor go faster (like finding the exact code you want in a library) is helpful rather than thieving. These are natural progressions of existing technology, and they will become less damaging as environmental concerns are addressed and (hopefully) more datasets are made with material provided consentingly by accredited, compensated creators.

    The very fact I believe “appropriate AI usage” is up for personal evaluation makes me feel more generous to all the individuals involved. We’re all trying to figure out how to navigate a complicated world. The problem isn’t really the technology, but the fact a sickly society can only use new tools in sickly ways.

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    Watson and Moriarty from "Watson." Image source: CBS

    Watson (2025 CBS) is a lukewarm Sherlock Holmes adaptation

    2025-05-14
  • A cute pink walking salamander sitting at the bottom of a tank
    sara reads the feed,  science news

    God save the axolotls

    2025-05-03 /

    The axolotl is my kid’s favorite animal. What’s not to love about them? Thanks to something called obligate neoteny, axolotls are magical little amphibians who (almost) never metamorphose from their aquatic form to a terrestrial one. As I would squeal to my husband, “THEY FOREVER BABIES.” They also belong to a small ecosystem that exists only in Mexico.

    A popular pick for the exotic pet trade, the ever-smiling, feathery-gilled axolotl is easily bred in captivity, having further piqued the interest of scientists and geneticists through its ability to regenerate parts of its body, such as its limbs, eyes, heart, spinal cord and parts of its brain. As such, the species’ plight is regarded as a conservation paradox: although abundant in captivity, rampant habitat degradation and disturbance has rendered the species critically endangered in the wild.

    Even weird animals occupying small niches in the ecosystem are critical. Even if they weren’t impossibly cute, the endangerment of axolotls would be a major concern.

    But they are really cute, too.

    Scientists who are surely compelled more by ecosystem restoration than Protecting The Babies have done the important work of finding out if we can get axolotls from scientists’ fish tanks back into the wetlands where they belong.

    And indeed, it turns out that we can improve the axolotl population in Mexico by introducing captive-bred animals.

    This study evaluates the viability of restored and artificial wetlands for axolotl conservation by comparing movement patterns, home range sizes, and habitat use. Using VHF telemetry, we tracked captive-bred axolotls released into both environments. Axolotls survived and foraged successfully in both sites, with those in an artificial pond in La Cantera Oriente exhibiting larger home ranges (mean: 2,747 m²) and greater daily distances traveled than those in a restored chinampa in Lake Xochimilco, where home ranges were smaller (mean: 382 m²).

    If you read the entire abstract, you’ll find that the axolotls even gained weight under these conditions–meaning they are thriving. And chubby. Being chubby is SO important.

    NPR interviewed these cuteness-saving scientists.

    “This is pretty big news because when you have animals in captivity, they lose a lot of their behaviors. Like, they don’t know how to recognize a predator, they don’t know how to catch prey, and so we were a bit nervous when we released them because we didn’t know if they were going to be able to survive,” she continued.

    But the charmingly cartoonish salamanders, also known as Mexican walking fish, didn’t just survive in their new wild homes, they thrived.

    “The ones that we recaptured, they had gained weight. So that means they were doing really, really well,” Ramos said.

    “They were hunting, they were eating, and they were avoiding predators. So this was really big,” she said.

    This is wonderful news for the planet, of course, but also for kids who have fallen in love with axolotls thanks to Minecraft.

    There are quite a few species that are extinct in the wild and now only exist in captivity. It would be amazing if axolotls didn’t join that number.

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  • Diaries,  writing

    The Style Spectrum, and Why I’ve Put “The Liar’s Throne” on Hiatus

    2025-04-01 /

    I tend to think of my books spanning a spectrum of stylism. There are narratively simplistic books running on linear timelines (like Witch Hunt), a middle point of style balanced with clarity (like Atop the Trees, Beneath the Mountains), and then the rare all-style bonanza where style is substance (like Insomniac Cafe).

    When I’m planning a project, I consciously place my book on this spectrum. I consider myself restrained if I can write linearly, clearly, without theme overtaking plot. These are surface-level books where what happens is what matters the most, in a very intuitive way. These are usually more commercially appealing.

    The further along the spectrum I move in the other direction, the narrower its potential audience becomes. High style requires high engagement to intuit meaning.

    Whenever I’ve stayed on the safer end of the style spectrum, they have sold fairly well. Preternatural Affairs, led by Witch Hunt, became one of my most popular series. Writing them was frustrating sometimes. They didn’t scratch a particular creative itch.

    On the other hand, I had a fantastic time making Insomniac Cafe–which nearly nobody has read.

    I’ve rationalized writing the low-style books because I need books to pay bills, but at this point, I find it so difficult to reach readers that income isn’t much of a consideration. I need to enjoy the process of creating a book because that’s most of the good I’ll get from it now.

    I don’t feel the whim to go as far off the deep end as I did with Insomniac Cafe, so I thought I would try to write The Liar’s Throne on the low-style end of the spectrums. Events are unfolding in order. Mysteries may be held between the characters, but not between plot and reader. The focus is the plot rather than the themes.

    I’ve gotten quite far through the book writing like this–probably around sixty thousand words, although I haven’t typed up everything in my journals. Unfortunately, it’s also made me quite unhappy. I’m finding it difficult drag my feet through the back half.

    The other night, while I was meditating, I got a few ideas for livening up the format and jacking up the stylism. I’m going to use a lot of what I’ve already written. But it’s going to get remixed.

    Since this will demand major edits, I won’t be continuing to serialize The Liar’s Throne on Royal Road and AO3. I’ll leave what I already published for now. I’ve got plans for a book I can definitely serialize in its entirety, so I’ll have a replacement soon.

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  • publishing,  writing

    make bad art.

    2025-03-28 /

    you really don’t need genAI. just draw a lot and accept that you’re gonna kinda suck at it.

    It’s so satisfying. You learn stuff. And it’s okay to be kinda sucky.

    i genuinely think, from talking to people who are using genAI, that it appeals to depthless insecurity. they have never felt Good Enough to Do the Art. “we’re different. you have talent,” they say, and also, “you have THE EYE,” unaware that talent is developed rather than innate.

    AI appeals to hustle culture, to the need to monetize everything. your art doesn’t start out commercially viable. genAI needs only a few words to produce something that looks way better than you think you can do. “i can’t afford to work at art for a year or two until i’m better,” you say, as if the ART is the pain point preventing you from making a living in this hellscape called reality. the AI looks like an easy escape route, but it’s pretending to solve problems by making things worse for artists. a year or two will pass whether or not you work on improving yourself. take the time.

    self-esteem, self-worth, and a willingness to practice something you suck at is so important. it is very, very hard. many of us have had our emotions invalidated throughout life. sometimes the people closest to us have said horrible things about us, and those voices linger.

    art asks a lot of you. it asks for honesty and insecurity and an ability to accept your limitations. but it gives you so much in return: a portfolio of accomplishments, a true expression of your internal state, the visualization of your voice.

    i tend to think i have a nuanced view of AI. i am strongly opposed to using it in professional products – that means book covers, the text in books, supplemental art, advertisements, audiobook generation, etc. i think using it for fun, like modding games or silly “how I look in Bridgerton” filters, is relatively benign despite the environmental impacts (personal impact is overrated compared to systemic responsibility). i think it’s simply bad at what it does when given the burden of creation (book cover components) while smaller tools like Adobe’s Content Aware Fill are just sensible developments to improve workflow.

    but on a purely human, emotional level, i wish i could plead with everyone to do something extremely radical and Just Make Sucky Art. I truly believe the world gets worse whenever we use AI and even your worst art makes the world better. i wish i could ask everyone to let themselves be vulnerable in whatever medium they like, even though it’s a HUGE request. i wanna ask everyone to waste their time dicking around with things that aren’t profitable or productive because i think it will heal you, and playing like a kid is important at every age, and it’s cheaper than buying credits to make yet another soulless Bratz doll romantasy character card.

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  • White text on a gold background that reads "2024: Movies".
    Uncategorized

    Rory’s 2024: Movies

    2025-03-02 /

    How I track film

    It’s all about Letterboxd! Late in the year, I upgraded to a pro account, and I got more stats as a result. I’m happy to support them in my small way; Letterboxd brings me a lot of joy, both from direct use of their website and through their short-form videos and interviews. Yes, I will watch an actor I’ve never heard of share their four favorite films, thank you very much.

     

    Older films of note watched in 2024

    I usually focus this post on 2024 films, but here’s a quick peek at some older films I watched in 2024.

    • Jesus Christ Superstar (1973): I’ve seen other versions, but this was my first watch of the older theatrical film. It’s a good way to get the vibe closer to the time JCS was first big, you know? (Yes, this was part of my ALW spiral, as documented in the music post.)
    • Weekend: An all-time favorite that is absolutely going to make my four favorites at some point. Love in a weekend! A beautiful, slightly bittersweet queer romance and character study that makes me cry every time.
    • Paranormal Activities: I’m pretty sure I rewatched Paranormal Activities 1-4, but I don’t see 1 in my diary? Either way, I have a soft spot for this franchise. Three is my favorite; I watched it twice in 2024. If you watch, I’d stick to 1-3 to get the core story. Four continues it a bit, but it’s not good enough for me to recommend.
    • The first three Scream movies: Can you believe I’d never seen any Scream movies before 2024? What a fun time. The first one was my favorite, but I’ve been thinking about three constantly since I saw it. Its specific flavor of meta commentary with Harvey Weinstein as a producer sure was dark.
    • [REC]: I don’t scare easily with horror, but I found the end of [REC] actually terrifying. Not bad for a lower-budget zombie horror flick! I know there’s a US remake, but I have zero interest in it after seeing how great [REC] was.
    • Perfect Days: This didn’t get US distribution until 2024, so I saw it on both 2023 and 2024 recap lists? I didn’t see it until 2024, but I loved its quieter qualities and wanted to include it somewhere. Gentlest and most cathartic cry of the year, for sure.

     

    2024 films I didn’t watch (yet)

    It’s as important to know what I didn’t get a chance to see or didn’t want to see in 2024 to gauge how I’m evaluating the films I did see. A selection, pulled from the most-popular films on Letterboxd:

    Deadpool and Wolverine, Anora, Alien: Romulus, Civil War, The Wild Robot, We Live in Time, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Fall Guy, Twisters, Maxxxine, A Real Pain, Trap, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, Babygirl, Kinds of Kindness, Smile 2, Blink Twice, Flow, Immaculate, Juror #2, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, It Ends With Us, Queer, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul, Megalopolis, Saturday Night, Venom: The Last Dance, My Old Ass, Cuckoo, Didi, The Apprentice, A Different Man, I’m Still Here

     

    Top 10 films, ranked

    Note: This list excludes Oscar nominations for simplicity.

    10. Heretic: I didn’t get everything I wanted out of this film—I was hoping it was Mormon-specific horror, but it was more about high-control religion generally and how it dominates your life—but I really liked some pieces of it. The Air That I Breathe-Creep part was my favorite.

    9. Lisa Frankenstein: Diablo Cody is hit-or-miss for me, but this was a definite hit. Kathryn Newton was the perfect lead, and Zelda Williams’s direction combined with an acidic 80s look left a real impression on me. I don’t know that I’ll watch this every Halloween, but it’s definitely going in the pile as a possibility.

    8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga: I really dragged my feet on Furiosa because I didn’t see the need for the story, and I thought the action sequences looked like they were done less practically than Fury Road’s, so it didn’t have the same thrill quality in the trailers. I was wrong about the former and partially right about the latter. The parts with young Furiosa in particular were electric. Wish I could have seen this one in the theater.

    7. The First Omen: I’m such a sucker for visually-stunning horror, and The First Omen fits the bill in spades. It’s specifically a modern take on ‘60s/’70s horror, which makes perfect sense for the story and series. Some of my favorite shots of the year came from The First Omen. The weird franchise-style ending doesn’t fit the rest of the film at all, but I liked the family elements of it.

    6. Love Lies Bleeding: In another year, this would have been number one. I love muscular, bloody lesbians in heightened style existing in a desert that reminds me of the one I live in. I haven’t rewatched it, but that’s only because it left such an impression on me that I can basically play it in my head whenever I want.

    5. Daniel Howell: We’re All Doomed: We’re All Doomed was a live comedy show, and this was the filmed version. I didn’t see it live because doomer/apocalyptic thinking can be hard for me, and I think it was the right move. Still, the filmed version was one of my favorite experiences of the year. The way the show itself pokes fun at doomer ideas before turning into an honest look at how damaging that line of thinking is really stuck with me. I particularly love that the show ended up being the way Dan Howell deliberately addressed his own depression and nihilism head on. I saw him (and Phil Lester) live in Terrible Influence in 2024; there will probably be a filmed version released in 2025, and it will probably be in next year’s version of this post.

    4. Monkey Man: I could see a version of this list where Monkey Man ranks lower because I had some quibbles with its execution, but the film’s absolute sincerity really stuck with me. I get why Jordan Peele stepped in and got it theatrical distribution. I hope Dev Patel makes a million more movies. (And if he stars so I can stare at his face, so much the better.)

    3. Challengers: Welcome back, erotic thrillers! It’s not easy to make a good character piece with this much energy, but Luca Guadagnino made it look effortless. The way the driving score would interrupt moments that other films would make dead silent…I grinned every single time it happened. A movie that tells you it’s gonna edge you with a wink and then does it? Immaculate.

    2. Longlegs: I didn’t get many theatrical viewings in 2024 for a lot of reasons, but I managed to see Longlegs that way, and I’m so happy that I did. I love movies that click with me emotionally before I catch up logically with the plot, and Longlegs did a great job of conveying fogginess and dread before sharpening in the end. The look is wonderful, the vibe is perfect, and Nicholas Cage was a good combination of eerie and comedic.

    1. I Saw the TV Glow: Forget 2024 releases. I Saw the TV Glow immediately became one of my favorite movies of all time on first watch. I’ve never seen a movie that spoke so directly to both my past experiences and current reality, while conveying a vibe and aesthetic that’s creepy and beautiful. (And I thought We’re All Going to the World’s Fair spoke to a part of me that no one had ever seen before! Jane Schoenbrun, your mind!) I think a lot of people can relate to the weird constructed parts of our lives, especially where gender and pop culture intersect, but man. Do cis/straight white guys always feel this spoken to?

     

    Oscar nominees I watched, ranked

    If you looked at the list of 2024 movies I saw, you know I didn’t reach my goal of seeing all the Best Picture nominees. It was impossible to do legally; I’m Still Here was completely inaccessible to me. (I wish I had an in for screeners!) Once I realized that wasn’t happening, I decided not to push to see the others if I didn’t want to see them. I would have skipped a couple of these if I had known earlier that completion wasn’t possible. Alas.

    Still, I got a sampling of Oscar nominees under my belt, and I had a much better time watching than I did with a completed Best Picture run last year. (Don’t be me and ever watch Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, and The Zone of Interest back-to-back if you want a happy week.) Here’s my ranking of the nominees I watched this season.

    9. Gladiator II: This is not a Maestro-in-last-place ranking; this is a I-loved-Gladiator-and-I-was-deeply-disappointed ranking. The film served its actors badly; there were so many people I’ve liked elsewhere and found lacking here. Denzel Washington was absolutely the best part of the movie and still overhyped.

    8. Emilia Pérez: What a terrible film. That this movie received a million nominations the same year I Saw the TV Glow released is a real low. The only reason it isn’t in last place is because the La Vaginoplastia song made me laugh.

    7. Inside Out 2: Inside Out 2’s ending is astonishingly good. Rylie’s character arc gets better the more I think about it. Unfortunately, the emotions get completely shortchanged by comparison; Joy and Sadness fill out the middle of the first movie, and there’s nothing similar in the second. It’s not the worst sequel ever, but I was disappointed.

    6. Wicked: I get that adapting any story will change from format to format, and I get that splitting a story in two means filling in some space. But the good rhythm established in the Wicked stage show was destroyed in the first movie, to the point where I was dying for a musical that I’ve loved for twenty years to end. The way I bounced off Ariana Grande’s performance didn’t help, either. Still, I’m glad audiences liked it. Maybe we can get more big musicals in the future? And Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba is fantastic.

    5. Dune: Part Two: I recently rewatched both Dune entries, both to prep for this post and to see if my opinions on them changed. They haven’t. I think the first movie has worse action scenes with better emotional buy-in; I think the second has excellent pacing with colder distance. Both suffer from extracting the weirdness from its source material. Timothée Chalamet worked for me as Paul until the power switch two-thirds of the way in, and then I didn’t buy him remotely. (That there was a personality switch was totally appropriate to the story! I don’t think he accomplished what he was going for in that regard, though.) I liked it enough that I’ll see Part Three or Messiah or whatever they’re calling it, but I wouldn’t give it Best Picture.

    4. Conclave: I find this an extremely competent film with good performances, but I’m turned off by even remotely positive depictions of the Catholic Church. (One of my all-time favorite films is Spotlight, if that gives you perspective.) I keep thinking about the ending in context with the story they were telling and like it better than when I was watching it, though. I want to give this a rewatch with the ending in mind. Maybe later in the year. In the meantime, the memes are fun!

    3. The Substance: Finally, a movie I genuinely enjoyed! At times glossy and exploitative in its gaze, at other times disgusting and gory, The Substance is the story of a white woman taking the violence done to her and internalizing it until she explodes. Literally. The story is specific, but the metaphor works on so many levels, from ageism to ableism and, obviously, gendered marginalization. The filmmaking is confident, the performances are fantastic, and I had such a good time with the heightened levels of gore. Not a film for everyone, but definitely a movie for me.

    2. Nosferatu: The gothic Dracula lover enjoyed a Dracula interpretation? Everyone’s shocked, I’m sure. I haven’t seen any Nosferatus before, so people who like the Nosferatu line of the story might not like it, but this Nosferatu gave me a level of brutality and sexual directness that I found really refreshing from the Dracula side of things. I love Robert Eggers as a director, and how he’s less inclined to play to modern sensibilities than following his world’s internal consistency to its full conclusions. (I respect it even with films like The Lighthouse, which I couldn’t finish.) There’s so much I could talk about here; I might have to write a full essay about Nosferatu later. Where I’ll leave it for now is that the sequence where Thomas gets sucked into the castle is my favorite of the year…outside of a lot of the next film, that is.

    1. Nickel Boys: I went into Nickel Boys only knowing about the camera work as a conceit, and I can’t recommend doing that enough if you can. (If you need to look up trigger warnings, you absolutely should, although the movie does a good job depicting the after effects of trauma without directly showing the causes.) I’ve never seen a film convey the experience of living and remembering more than Nickel Boys does. It’s a drama with a lot of heart and beauty.

    Note: Out of the above, Nickel Boys, Nosferatu, and The Substance would make an overall top-ten-of-the-year list, although I’m not sure how I would rank them.

     

    The end(?)

    My movie post(s) are usually the end of the 2024-in-review posts. This year, I have the beginnings of a long- and short-form video post, as well as some outtakes from this post that I could group together with my reactions after the Oscars. If I write either or both of these posts, they’ll go live in the next week or two. If I don’t, I’ve decided to move onto other projects.

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    Rory’s 2024: Books

    2025-03-01 /

    How I track reading/what I read

    I use Storygraph to keep track of my books these days. Still, I don’t review/star on there like I do on Letterboxd. I’m way less likely to finish a book under three stars than a movie, you know? Much less time investment with film; much more to talk about with most books.

    Earlier in the 2020s, I had focus problems that made audiobooks the easier way to experience books. In 2024, I read a lot more than I listened. Like previous years, most of my reading was done through library check-outs in Libby, with some purchased audiobooks to bridge availability gaps. It made for a good year!

    Stats gathered by Storygraph

    • 85 books read: This counts quick reads like graphic novels, but it doesn’t cover DNFs. If I pushed, I could probably do 100 books in a year. I don’t push because I’d end up prioritizing quick and easy reads, and I like to leave space for more challenging books.
    • First book: Captive Prince and Shortest book: Fence #2 by C.S. Pacat: Because I ended 2023 having a lot of feelings about C.S. Pacat’s Dark Rise series, I reread the Captive Prince trilogy (Captive Prince, Prince’s Gambit, and Kings Rising) in early 2024. I also read two volumes of the Fence comic mid-year, which was all my library access would grant. I wish I had a way to finish the series!
    • Last book and Longest time spent with a book: How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe (363 days): Here’s a great example of how much harder audiobooks were for me in 2024! I literally spent the whole year trying to get through How to ADHD (extra ironic) and finally pulled it off as my last finish of 2024. I liked the book, but I think I would have taken in more information through text than audio.
    • Longest book: A Dragonriders of Pern omnibus by Anne McCaffrey: I don’t technically count this as one book because it was actually three (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon). Still, this stat lets me talk about how much Anne McCaffrey I reread in 2024. I also reread the Harper Hall trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums, although the last one isn’t in my books for some reason) and the Crystal Singer trilogy (Crystal Singer, Killashandra, and Crystal Line). Both my house growing up and my hometown library were stuffed with Anne McCaffrey books, so I’ve read and reread a lot of them over the years! Crystal Singer and Harper Hall are probably my favorites.
    • Shortest time spent with a book: I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Madeline Pendleton (1 day): One big shift for 2024 was getting book recs from TikTok. A lot of what was suggested ended up either in my DNFs or my library holds, so they might be a bigger presence in 2025. Still, I Survived Capitalism was a memoir/advice book from leftist business owner Madeline Pendleton, who shows up in my FYP not infrequently, and Slewfoot by Brom was a frequent Halloween recommendation. I wouldn’t call them my favorite books of the year, but it felt good to stretch out of my comfort zone.
    • Most shelved: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang: Yellowface wasn’t my favorite R.F. Kuang—The Poppy War left a huge impact on me, and Babel was one of my favorite 2023 reads—but it was as readable as her other books and found a broad audience, so I’m glad to have read it!
    • Least shelved: Just Friends by Ana Oncina: One of my favorite kinds of books to read is queer graphic novels, and my access to the Queer Liberation Library has been great for finding less-mainstream entries in the genre. My favorite of the year was Mimosa by Archie Bongiovanni, which captured the vibe of an over-thirty queer friend group well. Some other 2024 standouts (from QLL, my local library, and the Japan Foundation) include the I Think Our Son is Gay series by Okura, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Princess Princess Ever After by K. O’Neill, Homebody by Theo Parish, Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki, and Liberated by Kaz Rowe.
    • Highest rated: The Bakery Dragon by Devin Elle Kurtz: A nice children’s book by an illustrator I’ve long admired!
    • Read 41 new-to-me authors this year: Don’t trust this stat too much! I haven’t filled Storygraph with every book I’ve read, and I know I did a lot of rereading in 2024. Still, since I read a lot more new authors now than ever, I thought I’d include this.
    • 48 books were part of a series and Most popular authors: Tamora Pierce (7 books), Alice Oseman (7 books), Garth Nix (6 books): Rereads and series are a great way to add books without making reading too much harder! I already said I like to leave myself space to read more challenging books, but I also like to progress through books regularly. (This balance is why I don’t set a formal reading goal each year.)

    Notes on the most popular authors

    Tamora Pierce: I revisited the entirety of the Immortals quartet (Wild Magic, Wolf-Speaker, Emperor Mage, and The Realms of the Gods) and the first two Song of the Lioness books (Alanna and In the Hand of the Goddess). I purposely reread all of Immortals because I usually reread my favorite, Wolf-Speaker, and call it a day. I wanted to know if I would see the series the same way as an adult. The answer is…yeah, pretty much. I like Wild Magic, love Wolf-Speaker and Emperor Mage, and find The Realms of the Gods a bit of a let down.

    With the first two Song of the Lioness books, I loved In the Hand of the Goddess as a kid and liked Alanna a lot, but it’s switched as an adult. I think Alanna the closest thing to a perfect YA adventure book that exists. I remembered liking the last two books a lot less than the first two as a kid, so I wasn’t rushing to revisit them, but I won’t rule out going back later.

    That’s six books. The seventh was new to me: Tempests and Slaughter, the first of The Numair Chronicles. I wasn’t expecting much, especially because I also read the alternate-perspective Kushiel’s Dart in 2024 and found it underwhelming. I shouldn’t have worried! Tempests and Slaughter took an important character from the Immortals quartet and used his POV to add complexity to a well-explored universe. I also felt the shifts in YA over time; Alanna almost feels like a middle-grade book in comparison. I can’t wait to read more in this series as it’s published!

    Alice Oseman: Most of this was a Heartstopper reread. (I do those a lot.) I also picked up a couple supplementary books in the series (as in, not the main graphic novels). The most notable part of my Alice Oseman reads was a first read of Solitaire, the novel that was written before Heartstopper and follows Charlie’s sister Tori. It’s a lot more dramatic than the usual works in this universe, but I enjoyed it (and the glimpses of Charlie and Nick through Tori’s POV). I doubt much of this will get folded into the Heartstopper show more than we’ve seen, but I liked reading it.

    Garth Nix: Sabriel and Lirael were two of my favorite books as a kid, and I figured a full-series read was in order, since I hadn’t read beyond Abhorsen. My favorite book was Clariel, which was a prequel to the Sabriel-Lirael events by a long time and showed a potential path for villains in this universe. The necromancy worldbuilding and dark tone of the series were my favorite parts as a kid, and that’s still true today. I was getting pretty sick of the way romance was written by the end of it, though.

    A few more books I want to talk about

    Hey Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson: A memoir by someone who escaped the MLM ecosystem. It was a fascinating read because the author was great at describing her experiences, to the point where you could see she hadn’t fully deconstructed what happened and had more of a journey ahead of her. I sincerely admire people who can be honest beyond their own self awareness.

    Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud: Possibly one of the best books on craft I’ve ever read. It’s philosophical in a way I’ve never seen from any book like it. I want to reread and do a full analysis of Understanding Comics later, but for now, I highly recommend it.

    Andrew Joseph White books: I read Hell Followed With Us, Compound Fracture, and The Spirit Bares Its Teeth for the first time in 2024. Trans YA horror is right up my alley. I thought The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was the best of the bunch—unsurprising coming from me, since it’s gothic—but an online mutual pointed out that the author’s content note neglected to center race, and that killed a lot of my love for the story. Quote from the book:

    …The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was inspired by Victorian England’s sordid history of labeling certain people “ill” or “other” to justify cruelty against them. Threats of violence enforced strict social norms, often targeting women, queer and disabled people, and other marginalized folks.

    It took me about five seconds of searching to find Victorian medicine shaped modern concepts of race for this post. Using “other marginalized folks” as a catch-all to hide racism is a dangerous oversight at best. I hope Andrew Joseph White proceeds more thoughtfully in the future.

    Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler: I’m probably one of the few people online who enjoyed this, but I also had my expectations adjusted. I get a lot of value out of reading memoirs from people in mental health settings, and the voice here, while unpolished, felt authentic to both Anna Marie Tendler and her experiences at the time. I’m glad I read it.

    Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus: Want to know about hot dogs and what America was like in summer 2021? Raw Dog was one of my favorite reads of 2024, and I want more people to read it. The mix of personal narrative, cultural analysis, and historical moment made for a compelling experience.

    The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop: I had no idea that Kelly Bishop’s life was like Miss Patty’s stories until I listened to this memoir. (I recommend audiobook over reading because Kelly Bishop reads it herself, and I love her voice.) Listening felt like seeing a one-woman show. I laughed, I cried, I made a mental note to watch A Chorus Line (even if Kelly Bishop wasn’t in the movie).

    More to come!

    We’re in the final stretch! I’m hoping to get my movie post out tomorrow before the Oscars starts, and my video post at some point this week. In the meantime, if you liked this retrospective:

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