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259.
Oh, man. I'm about to show my ass and embarrass myself with what I've been watching.
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reading
I'm currently reading The Witcher: Baptism of Fire. I'm currently finding it a lot easier to read than Time of Contempt (I found that too slow and filled with too many characters I didn't care about), but so far Baptism seems okay. Yennefer is my favourite character and she hasn't appeared in the first 100 pages. I'm not usually a fantasy reader, so I struggle through all the fantasy-like stuff, but the characters are really enjoyable so I persevere.
My Goodreads updates literally consist of "Where is Yennefer?" because WHERE IS SHE?
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I did buy The Viscount Who Loved Me since I have been enjoying all the trailers for the new season of Bridgerton. (I may have rewatched that trailer around 50 times.) Totally suspect that I will be annoyed by it since I've read excerpts and I dislike some of the more, uh… misogynistic value systems that exists in this world. More on this below.
NGL, I started reading this last night. It's easy to read. I already know I prefer the show.
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watching
For Friday night movie night, I picked 10 Things I Hate About You. Still a classic. Still so much fun. I have found that the late 1990s and early 2000s movies contain words and plot tropes that we wouldn't necessarily accept in 2020+. Aside from one slur, I did find that the movie still holds up 20+ years later.
I do wish that we got more fallout of the big reveal, though. Does Kat not know Bianca knew about the plot to pay someone to take her out so Bianca could go out? I felt the resolution was a bit rushed. We went from Kat being rightfully pissed to her reading out her beautiful poem, but we didn't really get to see her talk about how she felt at all. Patrick got to be mad at her for doubting his intentions (which she ended up being bloody right about) but we didn't get to see Kat be mad for more than a scene. How does that work?
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I'm watching Killing Eve and did not expect to enjoy it so much. Somehow I'm in season 3. Villanelle is so much fun to watch and is so unhinged (I love it when she randomly yells and does things to stir people up), and Sandra Oh is amazing as always. Every time I start watching an episode, I immediately see Cristina Yang, but Sandra disappears into Eve. Eve is so, so different to Cristina—she's not so self-assured and she's a little more swayable than Queen Yang. (For one, I think Cristina would be dragging Villanelle's ass for fifth.)
I also did not expect for the show to actually go down the F/F route and have Eve and Villanelle obsess over one another to a romantic degree! Their chemistry sells it so it's been so much fun to watch this fucked up and twisted and convoluted dynamic.
I'm a bit sad Niko didn't die. Surely the blood loss would've gotten him? A pitchfork to the neck is not something I'd want to survive, in all honesty. I get that Eve was very forgetful and didn't tend to him and their relationship, but… I was okay with him dying. Less men.
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I binged Bridgerton season 2 and I fucking LOVE IT. I'm going to be rewatching this over and over and over (and already am rewatching it). I love the inclusion of a desi woman as the lead. I loved the enemies to lovers plotline. I loved the development and chemistry of the characters. This season was so much more fun—characters got to be funny and some actors got to lean into comedy which really livened their characters up for me. (Anthony got rid of his hideous sideburns.) This was so much better than season 1 imo.
AND IT HIT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE TROPES.
I know a lot of people didn't like the pacing, but I fucking loved it. I'm a big fan of seeing the courtship of two characters more than seeing them established. I didn't enjoy Simon and Daphne as much because they got together so quickly and I didn't like the fact we didn't get the angst, the miscommunication and yearning that we get with Anthony and Kate. (I also didn't like Daphne in season 1. I just found her to be a bit try-hard despite her best intentions. Simon is also highly overrated imo.)
With Anthony and Kate, I loved the pining and the yearning and I felt it worked perfectly. I feel like where Simon and Daphne miscommunicated wherein Simon didn't explicitly state why he didn't want kids and Daphne didn't state she had no idea how sex worked (and asked "Hey… why the fuck do you pull out?"), Anthony and Kate's miscommunication is more like "You act like you hate me but really you're picturing me naked and I can't think that you're not sincere in loving me because of that" (which I loooooove).
This is a really good article about the pacing and plot for this season. (It is spoilery.) Apparently it's very reminiscent of Bollywood… and I just love that. (Maybe I should actually watch Bollywood movies? Slowburn yearning seems to be my thing and it seems like I'm missing out.) I honestly don't think the love triangle is reminiscent of Hollywood's love triangles. I feel like it's a triangle between Kate's need to be dutiful and self-sacrificing, Anthony's need to be dutiful and then struggling to allow himself to believe that loving Kate and letting her in won't lead to death like Violet/Edmund, and Edwina stepping out from Kate's wing to say "You prepared me; I can look after myself now while you look after you".
I know some people are mad about Edwina liking Anthony, but I honestly don't think she genuinely loved him… I think she believed she did because she knew she had to marry. (This is where knowing her backstory with her father would've been good. When did he die? Did she get to see a loving relationship between him and Mary? Was she telling herself she could have that with Anthony? Was she hoping for it? Did she expect all marriages to be like that? Where does her context come from?) Their whole purpose of being in England was for her to marry. I think Edwina, who we're told has been taught to be skilled and adaptable enough to win over people's hearts, knew this despite her naïveté. She thinks Anthony is a good and kind man—something she says to Daphne—and so she wants to marry him because she thinks he'll treat her right and give her the life she wants. In turn, he'll give her family the stability that they need, hence their return to England and the Ton. Viewers are paying Edwina disrespect when they say she genuinely loved Anthony. Edwina broke down in Aubrey Hall to Kate saying she didn't "say the right things, I didn't study enough, I should've known their hobbies". Edwina is a perfectionist putting a lot of pressure on herself because she knows she is her family's security ticket. It's right there in the text. If the writing handled itself better and cut half the subplots, we could've deep-dived into that.
I did expect that one scene in the trailer was of Kate and Anthony's wedding (it's their last dance which is just so chef's kiss), but we don't see that… and I wish we did. I would've loved to have seen Kate in a sari. I would've loved for Kate to get an Indian wedding in contrast to the very English and white wedding Edwina was set to have. I also would've loved to see Anthony eat Indian food as well. (Look, I just want to see him eat curry, okay?)
I do have a gripe that despite the pacing (which, again, I loved), I found the subplots to be extremely annoying. I feel like season 1 let Simon and Daphne be the central focus, but this season felt slightly off-balance. As much as I love Lady Portia Featherington, I didn't want to see her plot take up what felt like 20 minutes every episode. As much as I enjoy Penelope, I didn't want to see her plot take up the majority of the final episode when we should've been focused on Kate and Anthony. I also found that Colin/Penelope took up a lot more time than I felt they should've. (I also… don't really like them. Penelope's actress can sell that Penelope's into Colin, but I don't feel much from the Colin actor and I think I have trouble believing them as a couple.) Considering Anthony/Sienna was another prominent ship in season 1, I felt that they didn't take up so much time that you felt yourself wondering if the season's focus wasn't actually meant to be on them instead of Simon/Daphne. Season 2 needed to cut a lot of the fat.
If they had cut the fat, we would've been able to see more of Anthony and Kate having conversations to thicken up their romance. I still believe it and I still love them, but I wish we got more than just Kate understanding Anthony's trauma. I'd love to have seen him pry her to know what she likes, them talking about being older siblings, them discussing anything. We missed out on good Kathony content because of the inclusion of the Featheringtons' obnoxious plots.
The subplots meant we didn't get to explore Kate, Mary and Edwina. I wanted flashbacks on Mary's time in the Ton. I wanted to know more about Kate's father and mother. (I wanted to see more focus on Kate and how her maternal grandparents via Mary refuse to acknowledge her. I can relate to this a lot with extended family and it was so good to see it in here, but it wasn't explored. Once again, her trauma was brushed under the rug.) I wanted more than us to focus on all these other plots and histories that noticeably belong to white characters. It was just a missed opportunity for us to see Lady Danbury, Mary and the queen's backstories and previous friendships. I was so intrigued by the tension between these three women. (Also, uh… they're three WOC, so I wanted to see MORE.)
I do want to read the book to see what the book has in it and see if I can fill in any of the gaps that I found intriguing. A lot of book fans are hating the season, but I feel like they forget that the book is the book and the television show isn't going to follow the book to the letter. (I personally feel the show improves on the book based on what I've read. Agency and choice are prominent in this season whereas in the book it seems more like Anthony and Kate are forced to get married against their wishes. I've had a quick skim of some pages and at one point Anthony says Kate's denying him "my rights" by not wanting to have sex on the wedding night. Not once does show!Anthony state this or act as though Kate's body is his to have access to whenever he wants. I think this is a pretty poignant change and one that sets them on an equal footing.)
I also suspect I'll like book!Edwina a lot more than show!Edwina. I did like the show's version of her, but I felt like we never got to experience closure with Edwina's episode-long hate of Kate. I wish we got to see Edwina do some soul-searching rather than blaming Kate for her naïveté. (Kate isn't completely blameless, but I wish they had a proper conversation of "You've protected me from so much and stifled my growth" and "I did that because I didn't want you to struggle as I did".) Edwina never sought to understand why Kate shielded her from everything. She never listened to Kate or pried into why Kate happened to say that she wanted Edwina to avoid experiencing the hardships Kate did growing up. Edwina also threw Kate being her half-sister at her and never apologised. I feel like Kate got shat on and no one really checked in on her until she had her accident. (We never got to see Edwina with Kate while Kate was dealing with the ramifications of her accident, either. Why were we on other subplots when we could've seen the Sharmas fret about Kate?)
I also have to say the close-ups of the horse riding scenes annoyed me because it was so clearly CGI. But that's my only gripe for Anthony/Kate content (other than we deserved more).
I also wish we got more on Kate and her family. She's lost her biological mother and father, we never hear anything about her mother, and while Mary is absolutely a dream step-mother who accepts Kate as her own, I wanted more because when they got to be together in a scene, it was so good. We lacked Mary and Kate scenes which would've been a fantastic juxtaposition to Violet and Anthony. I feel like Mary and Kate have this mutual understanding and respect, and I feel that they are close while Violet and Anthony have struggled to relate to one another since Edmund's death. I did like Lady Danbury being a mentor and mother figure to Kate, but I'd have loved to see Mary play a role, too.
And I love Kate. I love her so much. IT IS SO FUCKING FANTASTIC TO SEE MYSELF ON SCREEN. I loved hearing the Sharma's accents. (I do not sound Indian at all, but it's so great to hear the accent be appreciated and not hidden nor said in the text "We must hide our accent to blend in and be palatable with these people". But then… Kate was never introduced as "Kathani Sharma" so I'd like to know WHY.) They sound like my paternal family! I loved seeing who I am on screen and be celebrated. I love reading comments from other fans who have expressed the same thing. I would have died as a kid to have seen this. (I do wish that people would allow minorities to have these moments of representation—and I wish minorities would allow other minorities this opportunity to enjoy it without being shat on for it, too. South Asians receiving this does not take away from other minorities. The first time I saw myself on west tv was in Bend It Like Beckham. The second was The Witcher and the third was Never Have I Ever. Never came out in 2020. Bend It came out in 2002.)
She was such a fun character to watch and follow, and I only wish we got to deep dive into her past. I know Anthony is the titular character, but she's his leading lady and we got a whole plot focused on Simon and his refusal to bear an heir last season. Why couldn't our desi lead have trauma alongside the white lead?
I came out of this as a hardcore Anthony/Kate shipper. It was super enjoyable and season 2 is going on my "rewatch until I die" list. I'm honestly counting down the minutes until I start writing fic for them lmfao. I, like Anthony, recognise that I am a clown for Kate Sharma.
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reading
I'm currently reading The Witcher: Baptism of Fire. I'm currently finding it a lot easier to read than Time of Contempt (I found that too slow and filled with too many characters I didn't care about), but so far Baptism seems okay. Yennefer is my favourite character and she hasn't appeared in the first 100 pages. I'm not usually a fantasy reader, so I struggle through all the fantasy-like stuff, but the characters are really enjoyable so I persevere.
My Goodreads updates literally consist of "Where is Yennefer?" because WHERE IS SHE?
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I did buy The Viscount Who Loved Me since I have been enjoying all the trailers for the new season of Bridgerton. (I may have rewatched that trailer around 50 times.) Totally suspect that I will be annoyed by it since I've read excerpts and I dislike some of the more, uh… misogynistic value systems that exists in this world. More on this below.
NGL, I started reading this last night. It's easy to read. I already know I prefer the show.
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watching
For Friday night movie night, I picked 10 Things I Hate About You. Still a classic. Still so much fun. I have found that the late 1990s and early 2000s movies contain words and plot tropes that we wouldn't necessarily accept in 2020+. Aside from one slur, I did find that the movie still holds up 20+ years later.
I do wish that we got more fallout of the big reveal, though. Does Kat not know Bianca knew about the plot to pay someone to take her out so Bianca could go out? I felt the resolution was a bit rushed. We went from Kat being rightfully pissed to her reading out her beautiful poem, but we didn't really get to see her talk about how she felt at all. Patrick got to be mad at her for doubting his intentions (which she ended up being bloody right about) but we didn't get to see Kat be mad for more than a scene. How does that work?
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I'm watching Killing Eve and did not expect to enjoy it so much. Somehow I'm in season 3. Villanelle is so much fun to watch and is so unhinged (I love it when she randomly yells and does things to stir people up), and Sandra Oh is amazing as always. Every time I start watching an episode, I immediately see Cristina Yang, but Sandra disappears into Eve. Eve is so, so different to Cristina—she's not so self-assured and she's a little more swayable than Queen Yang. (For one, I think Cristina would be dragging Villanelle's ass for fifth.)
I also did not expect for the show to actually go down the F/F route and have Eve and Villanelle obsess over one another to a romantic degree! Their chemistry sells it so it's been so much fun to watch this fucked up and twisted and convoluted dynamic.
I'm a bit sad Niko didn't die. Surely the blood loss would've gotten him? A pitchfork to the neck is not something I'd want to survive, in all honesty. I get that Eve was very forgetful and didn't tend to him and their relationship, but… I was okay with him dying. Less men.
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I binged Bridgerton season 2 and I fucking LOVE IT. I'm going to be rewatching this over and over and over (and already am rewatching it). I love the inclusion of a desi woman as the lead. I loved the enemies to lovers plotline. I loved the development and chemistry of the characters. This season was so much more fun—characters got to be funny and some actors got to lean into comedy which really livened their characters up for me. (Anthony got rid of his hideous sideburns.) This was so much better than season 1 imo.
AND IT HIT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE TROPES.
I know a lot of people didn't like the pacing, but I fucking loved it. I'm a big fan of seeing the courtship of two characters more than seeing them established. I didn't enjoy Simon and Daphne as much because they got together so quickly and I didn't like the fact we didn't get the angst, the miscommunication and yearning that we get with Anthony and Kate. (I also didn't like Daphne in season 1. I just found her to be a bit try-hard despite her best intentions. Simon is also highly overrated imo.)
With Anthony and Kate, I loved the pining and the yearning and I felt it worked perfectly. I feel like where Simon and Daphne miscommunicated wherein Simon didn't explicitly state why he didn't want kids and Daphne didn't state she had no idea how sex worked (and asked "Hey… why the fuck do you pull out?"), Anthony and Kate's miscommunication is more like "You act like you hate me but really you're picturing me naked and I can't think that you're not sincere in loving me because of that" (which I loooooove).
This is a really good article about the pacing and plot for this season. (It is spoilery.) Apparently it's very reminiscent of Bollywood… and I just love that. (Maybe I should actually watch Bollywood movies? Slowburn yearning seems to be my thing and it seems like I'm missing out.) I honestly don't think the love triangle is reminiscent of Hollywood's love triangles. I feel like it's a triangle between Kate's need to be dutiful and self-sacrificing, Anthony's need to be dutiful and then struggling to allow himself to believe that loving Kate and letting her in won't lead to death like Violet/Edmund, and Edwina stepping out from Kate's wing to say "You prepared me; I can look after myself now while you look after you".
I know some people are mad about Edwina liking Anthony, but I honestly don't think she genuinely loved him… I think she believed she did because she knew she had to marry. (This is where knowing her backstory with her father would've been good. When did he die? Did she get to see a loving relationship between him and Mary? Was she telling herself she could have that with Anthony? Was she hoping for it? Did she expect all marriages to be like that? Where does her context come from?) Their whole purpose of being in England was for her to marry. I think Edwina, who we're told has been taught to be skilled and adaptable enough to win over people's hearts, knew this despite her naïveté. She thinks Anthony is a good and kind man—something she says to Daphne—and so she wants to marry him because she thinks he'll treat her right and give her the life she wants. In turn, he'll give her family the stability that they need, hence their return to England and the Ton. Viewers are paying Edwina disrespect when they say she genuinely loved Anthony. Edwina broke down in Aubrey Hall to Kate saying she didn't "say the right things, I didn't study enough, I should've known their hobbies". Edwina is a perfectionist putting a lot of pressure on herself because she knows she is her family's security ticket. It's right there in the text. If the writing handled itself better and cut half the subplots, we could've deep-dived into that.
I did expect that one scene in the trailer was of Kate and Anthony's wedding (it's their last dance which is just so chef's kiss), but we don't see that… and I wish we did. I would've loved to have seen Kate in a sari. I would've loved for Kate to get an Indian wedding in contrast to the very English and white wedding Edwina was set to have. I also would've loved to see Anthony eat Indian food as well. (Look, I just want to see him eat curry, okay?)
I do have a gripe that despite the pacing (which, again, I loved), I found the subplots to be extremely annoying. I feel like season 1 let Simon and Daphne be the central focus, but this season felt slightly off-balance. As much as I love Lady Portia Featherington, I didn't want to see her plot take up what felt like 20 minutes every episode. As much as I enjoy Penelope, I didn't want to see her plot take up the majority of the final episode when we should've been focused on Kate and Anthony. I also found that Colin/Penelope took up a lot more time than I felt they should've. (I also… don't really like them. Penelope's actress can sell that Penelope's into Colin, but I don't feel much from the Colin actor and I think I have trouble believing them as a couple.) Considering Anthony/Sienna was another prominent ship in season 1, I felt that they didn't take up so much time that you felt yourself wondering if the season's focus wasn't actually meant to be on them instead of Simon/Daphne. Season 2 needed to cut a lot of the fat.
If they had cut the fat, we would've been able to see more of Anthony and Kate having conversations to thicken up their romance. I still believe it and I still love them, but I wish we got more than just Kate understanding Anthony's trauma. I'd love to have seen him pry her to know what she likes, them talking about being older siblings, them discussing anything. We missed out on good Kathony content because of the inclusion of the Featheringtons' obnoxious plots.
The subplots meant we didn't get to explore Kate, Mary and Edwina. I wanted flashbacks on Mary's time in the Ton. I wanted to know more about Kate's father and mother. (I wanted to see more focus on Kate and how her maternal grandparents via Mary refuse to acknowledge her. I can relate to this a lot with extended family and it was so good to see it in here, but it wasn't explored. Once again, her trauma was brushed under the rug.) I wanted more than us to focus on all these other plots and histories that noticeably belong to white characters. It was just a missed opportunity for us to see Lady Danbury, Mary and the queen's backstories and previous friendships. I was so intrigued by the tension between these three women. (Also, uh… they're three WOC, so I wanted to see MORE.)
I do want to read the book to see what the book has in it and see if I can fill in any of the gaps that I found intriguing. A lot of book fans are hating the season, but I feel like they forget that the book is the book and the television show isn't going to follow the book to the letter. (I personally feel the show improves on the book based on what I've read. Agency and choice are prominent in this season whereas in the book it seems more like Anthony and Kate are forced to get married against their wishes. I've had a quick skim of some pages and at one point Anthony says Kate's denying him "my rights" by not wanting to have sex on the wedding night. Not once does show!Anthony state this or act as though Kate's body is his to have access to whenever he wants. I think this is a pretty poignant change and one that sets them on an equal footing.)
I also suspect I'll like book!Edwina a lot more than show!Edwina. I did like the show's version of her, but I felt like we never got to experience closure with Edwina's episode-long hate of Kate. I wish we got to see Edwina do some soul-searching rather than blaming Kate for her naïveté. (Kate isn't completely blameless, but I wish they had a proper conversation of "You've protected me from so much and stifled my growth" and "I did that because I didn't want you to struggle as I did".) Edwina never sought to understand why Kate shielded her from everything. She never listened to Kate or pried into why Kate happened to say that she wanted Edwina to avoid experiencing the hardships Kate did growing up. Edwina also threw Kate being her half-sister at her and never apologised. I feel like Kate got shat on and no one really checked in on her until she had her accident. (We never got to see Edwina with Kate while Kate was dealing with the ramifications of her accident, either. Why were we on other subplots when we could've seen the Sharmas fret about Kate?)
I also have to say the close-ups of the horse riding scenes annoyed me because it was so clearly CGI. But that's my only gripe for Anthony/Kate content (other than we deserved more).
I also wish we got more on Kate and her family. She's lost her biological mother and father, we never hear anything about her mother, and while Mary is absolutely a dream step-mother who accepts Kate as her own, I wanted more because when they got to be together in a scene, it was so good. We lacked Mary and Kate scenes which would've been a fantastic juxtaposition to Violet and Anthony. I feel like Mary and Kate have this mutual understanding and respect, and I feel that they are close while Violet and Anthony have struggled to relate to one another since Edmund's death. I did like Lady Danbury being a mentor and mother figure to Kate, but I'd have loved to see Mary play a role, too.
And I love Kate. I love her so much. IT IS SO FUCKING FANTASTIC TO SEE MYSELF ON SCREEN. I loved hearing the Sharma's accents. (I do not sound Indian at all, but it's so great to hear the accent be appreciated and not hidden nor said in the text "We must hide our accent to blend in and be palatable with these people". But then… Kate was never introduced as "Kathani Sharma" so I'd like to know WHY.) They sound like my paternal family! I loved seeing who I am on screen and be celebrated. I love reading comments from other fans who have expressed the same thing. I would have died as a kid to have seen this. (I do wish that people would allow minorities to have these moments of representation—and I wish minorities would allow other minorities this opportunity to enjoy it without being shat on for it, too. South Asians receiving this does not take away from other minorities. The first time I saw myself on west tv was in Bend It Like Beckham. The second was The Witcher and the third was Never Have I Ever. Never came out in 2020. Bend It came out in 2002.)
She was such a fun character to watch and follow, and I only wish we got to deep dive into her past. I know Anthony is the titular character, but she's his leading lady and we got a whole plot focused on Simon and his refusal to bear an heir last season. Why couldn't our desi lead have trauma alongside the white lead?
I came out of this as a hardcore Anthony/Kate shipper. It was super enjoyable and season 2 is going on my "rewatch until I die" list. I'm honestly counting down the minutes until I start writing fic for them lmfao. I, like Anthony, recognise that I am a clown for Kate Sharma.