Things I've been enjoying
Mar. 17th, 2021 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterBram Stoker's Dracula
This is a rewatch, obviously, but it's been so many years since my last viewing that I'd forgotten a lot of the movie-specific plot points, so I'm saying it counts. GOD I love it. I love the aesthetic, and I love the romantic/tragic twist on Dracula's backstory, and I love watching Sadie Frost float around in that beautiful red gown. It's also SO MUCH HORNIER than I remembered, and I remembered it being pretty damn horny. I don't normally go for the whole bestial lover thing, but that scene where beast mode Dracula feeds on Lucy out on that stone bench ... damn. I thought I knew my kinks pretty well but I guess I have some soul-searching and AO3-trawling left to do.
Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?!
My sister came to visit the weekend before last and insisted we watch this. She didn't have to insist very hard - it was endearingly silly and fun, and once she had me hooked on the first episode I willingly binged the rest of it in two sittings.
The show is a live-action adaptation of a BL manga. The premise, as the title so eloquently implies, is that people who hit age 30 without having sex gain magic powers (specifically, telepathy). It's through this plot device that quiet, awkward salaryman Adachi learns his most popular colleague Kurosawa is secretly head over heels for him. Their relationship deepens across a series of charmingly low-stakes professional and personal dramas, by the end of which Adachi has learned to see past the inadvertently selfish shutters of his social withdrawal and understand his fellow humans by talking to them instead of reading their minds.
Honestly, it was televised fanfic. I mean that as a compliment. Sometimes, you don't want to worry about the hows and whys of your chosen trope - you just want to dive straight in and enjoy it for the intentionally handwavey emotion delivery vehicle it is. Cherry Magic achieved that as well as any unabashedly iddy bodyswap or sex pollen or only-one-bed fic I've read.
Iris by Altars of Grief
I've made several attempts across the years to get into doom metal, for reasons of pure vanity - I mean, the name. DOOM. It just sounds like something I should like. But I don't like it. It's slow and droney and (I'm told) best enjoyed while smoking weed, and I don't smoke weed, and I get bored three minutes into every twelve-minute song.
Something about Altars of Grief is different. It's the black metal elements, probably. 'Blackened' is a promising keyword attached to even the most otherwise inaccessible-to-me genre - like the musical version of a bulletproof kink. The gorgeously depressive melodies and the overlaid harsh-and-clean vocals really work for me, especially on tired nights when I'm packing in early or taking a soak in the bath and can't choose between wanting something slower than usual but still wanting something metal.
What The Dead Men Say by Trivium
This one's just FUN, okay. I was on a long drive with a friend the other week and she was using Trivium to pump herself up for the final leg, and it got me hooked. Like a lot of more commercial metal, I tend to end up listening for specific songs rather than the full album, and the title track on this one is insanely catchy. I may have had it on repeat a time or two since the trip.
This is a rewatch, obviously, but it's been so many years since my last viewing that I'd forgotten a lot of the movie-specific plot points, so I'm saying it counts. GOD I love it. I love the aesthetic, and I love the romantic/tragic twist on Dracula's backstory, and I love watching Sadie Frost float around in that beautiful red gown. It's also SO MUCH HORNIER than I remembered, and I remembered it being pretty damn horny. I don't normally go for the whole bestial lover thing, but that scene where beast mode Dracula feeds on Lucy out on that stone bench ... damn. I thought I knew my kinks pretty well but I guess I have some soul-searching and AO3-trawling left to do.
Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?!
My sister came to visit the weekend before last and insisted we watch this. She didn't have to insist very hard - it was endearingly silly and fun, and once she had me hooked on the first episode I willingly binged the rest of it in two sittings.
The show is a live-action adaptation of a BL manga. The premise, as the title so eloquently implies, is that people who hit age 30 without having sex gain magic powers (specifically, telepathy). It's through this plot device that quiet, awkward salaryman Adachi learns his most popular colleague Kurosawa is secretly head over heels for him. Their relationship deepens across a series of charmingly low-stakes professional and personal dramas, by the end of which Adachi has learned to see past the inadvertently selfish shutters of his social withdrawal and understand his fellow humans by talking to them instead of reading their minds.
Honestly, it was televised fanfic. I mean that as a compliment. Sometimes, you don't want to worry about the hows and whys of your chosen trope - you just want to dive straight in and enjoy it for the intentionally handwavey emotion delivery vehicle it is. Cherry Magic achieved that as well as any unabashedly iddy bodyswap or sex pollen or only-one-bed fic I've read.
Iris by Altars of Grief
I've made several attempts across the years to get into doom metal, for reasons of pure vanity - I mean, the name. DOOM. It just sounds like something I should like. But I don't like it. It's slow and droney and (I'm told) best enjoyed while smoking weed, and I don't smoke weed, and I get bored three minutes into every twelve-minute song.
Something about Altars of Grief is different. It's the black metal elements, probably. 'Blackened' is a promising keyword attached to even the most otherwise inaccessible-to-me genre - like the musical version of a bulletproof kink. The gorgeously depressive melodies and the overlaid harsh-and-clean vocals really work for me, especially on tired nights when I'm packing in early or taking a soak in the bath and can't choose between wanting something slower than usual but still wanting something metal.
What The Dead Men Say by Trivium
This one's just FUN, okay. I was on a long drive with a friend the other week and she was using Trivium to pump herself up for the final leg, and it got me hooked. Like a lot of more commercial metal, I tend to end up listening for specific songs rather than the full album, and the title track on this one is insanely catchy. I may have had it on repeat a time or two since the trip.
