TV BLOG Unfuckery Afoot

Not too sure why but I have been feeling such a strong surge in lack of motivation recently. I haven't worked on a goddamn thing for my TV recap blog so since the beginning of this year - 3ish weeks- my posts have been entirely off of scheduled posts that I wrote months ago. Which means I haven't been updating show's gallery links, nor in putting "previously on" links on current posts. I used to REALLY be on top of that but for the past 3 weeks I have been in a real slump so I haven't been doing that. I'll spend today and maybe the weekend to catch up on that.

The struggle is real.

As much as I loved the premise of this blog it just isn't attracting blog views as much as anticipated so that's why I have experienced such a slump in excitement to update this blog. I am even struggling to write new posts! I have often been able to write multiple tv recaps in a single day! Yesterday when I tried to get back in the saddle and write a recap for Interview with the Vampire for episode 5, I barely reached half of the episode recap in my draft before I called it a day. I truly am burned the fuck out. It would have totally helped if I knew there were more visitors to this blog.

I mean, I even revamped the blog layout a little bit. Experimenting here and there. I only did that because due to me posting too many pictures on a given post it would affect how many posts showed on the front page. I did find a loophole but I had to have a new layout for it to work. Oh well.

I have like 30ish posts left in my schedule to be posted but upon some auditing, many of those don't have pictures!!!! So maybe I should focus more on that then writing recaps.

So that's the update. I also wanted to try to focus more of my time to my Beyond Bizarre blog. I want to at least post one post a month. Ideally I want more but I am also struggling with that blog as well. 

I really thought that if I took a long enough break then I would get back to writing like a mad man like I did around this time last year but nope. I am just a fucked up person and every little thing seems to piss me off. I really need to get into meditation. I have all these creative ideas in my head that it truly does get overwhelming and nothing productive ends up getting done. I guess I need to just focus on baby steps. Eventually those baby steps will turn into bigger steps and accumulate to a much bigger accomplishment. I just need to keep reminding myself of that. I wish I didn't get so burned out so easily on everything.

Death's Game

New show I started watching!!!!

It's currently on Amazon Prime and it's called Death's Game. Holy hell I literally love the premise! It's like a mix of Quantum Leap with Final Destination. It's a South Korean show about this dude who commits suicide but Death, in the form of a pretty lady, tells him that he is bound for Hell for insulting death while he was alive. His 2nd chance is that if he can avert an abrupt yet imminent death in someone's life (that he will temporarily possess their body), he will get a 2nd chance and be able to live out the rest of that person's life he saved. If not then he is going straight to fucking HELL. He has 12 chances in 12 bodies to avert the death which also takes form of a clock that ticks down for every death he is unable to prevent.

He finds himself leaping from life to life. Struggling to put back what once went wrong....okay so this line is the opening to OG Quantum Leap but it interestingly still strikes quite the resemblance to Death's Game.

I am totally not the best person to explain stuff but yeah this is one awesome show. I quickly noticed that Death is played by that one chick in Parasite (the daughter). I quickly noticed that!!! Cool. I also looooove how different lives often connect to each other. Like how the bully from one life appeared in a life further down the line. More examples but holy shit my mind is blown.

I am currently on Episode 4. There's only 8 episode! Ugh. I am totally going to put this on my blog. Will definitely take a long ass while until it lands on there though. Highly recommended to watch!!!

Update: I finished the show. BUT...

I ended up disliking the final 8th epiisode and even disliking this show as a whole at at the ending.

Why?

It honestly ended up a dramatic PSA of anti-suicide and basically shaming people who even dare to thinking about suicide by saying they are a selfish person that has no right to feel sad because "someone always has it worse than you" narrative. If you feel otherwise then that just makes you an ungrateful brat.

Really gave me the impression that the creators behind this show see suicide as a very black and white issue. It is honestly frustrating to see that they fail to see suicidal ideation more complex than just being down on your luck.

Don't get me started on the ending. SPOILERS but as expected, the main character restarts his life which now leaves a number of plotholes. All the lives he was in was mostly interconnected with each other, including the killing of the love of his life. It's a whole ass butterfly affect so...if he changes history and doesn't kill himself then many of these catastrophic events and deaths would not have happened...so they just don't die????

And what the fuck was with that insane time loop?!?! You know what I am  talking about. He basically created his own trauma of seeing a man die before his eyes. In one of his lives, he was THAT MAN. I knew that opening scene in 1st episode had a significance!!! That itself is one of the many plot holes. My brain is just on the verge of short circuiting the more I think about the plot holes.

Anyway, I felt the ending was a huge fucking let down. I felt it would have been more impactful to NOT have a happy ending and for him to embrace death but nahhhhh After his 12th and final death he BEGS for another chance and Death graciously gives him that? She puts a bullet (signifiying his chance to restart his real life) in a chamber and says if the bullet shoots at him then he will get just that. As per usual and against all odds he gets that bullet and averts his suicide to pick up that phone call from his mom.

A good ending would to leave that last 15 second visual out and end it with a fade to black and a shot.

AN EVER BETTER ENDING  was like I said before, embrace his fate and take that L. While I don't ever believe he should go to hell, he should have been walking through those doors to be judged by "God" and accept his fate.

The world is not ready for such a somber ending like that and without a doubt have have caused a huge backlash from fans of the webtoon and new fans like me. 

So I get why I just don't agree with it. A different ending would have been more impactful.

I have this same issue with Disney's Soul. It's about where a guy dies and his soul lands in a cat. Man was destined to die so the ending should be having him accepting death when he actually died but then again DISNEY where right when he is on his way to the GREAT BEYOND, that astral guide magically gives him an unprecendented 2nd chance at life. BULLSHIT MOVIE but I am way more lenient because it's Disney but they really blew their chance to truly explain death to kids in a very easy to digest manner. Oh well. This movie is hella years old at this point.

New Year New Blog!

It is the beginning of a new year and without further ado, here is what's popping:

I came across this new Indian horror show called The Village. The first scene is so freaking gory!!!! Brutal deaths so if you can get past that scene then I have a feeling you will enjoy this series. It's about a man and his family who get stranded and arrive at this abandoned village filled with mutants, lepers. Gory deaths ensue. It's more bloody that Adhura. I am just fangirling the hell out of Indian horror stuff. It feels like a whole new world I'm being exposed to since I was so used to American and American-adjacent media that I've grown to dislike their style of writing. My interest gets more likely to get piqued in foreign media. Thus, being why I made 2 blogs dedicated to least a huge portion of it to foreign movies and tv shows. I still like select stuff from the USA so don't get it twisted.

Pro tip should you watch this: change the audio to தமிழ் which is their mother language, Tamil. Amazon Prime defaults it to "English" and by that it's actually Indian voice actors dubbing in..well, English. Turn on English subtitles and enjoy. It personally drove me crazy to see in inaccurate subtitles to English dubs. It was literally every line that was slightly changed!!! 

Black Friday Streaming Deal Additions

 Sort of good news. I decided to dive in a couple of Black Friday deals for a few streaming services. Some I am doing only for the limited promotional time which will give me a boost to start writing some more tv recaps. The ones I got are:

Paramount+

ALLBLK

Starz

I also renewed  Max and Hulu with Disney+ add on. So yeah that is plenty. The 3 listed above are Amazon Prime add on's.

Here are a few shows I took a peek at.

Wicked City looked promising and is the only reason why I got the ALLBLK promotional price and it wasn't too bad. $1.50 for 3 months which is the cheapest of the bunch and I later learned it's for a reason. Limited library but a good chunk of originals. I watched the 1st episode and it just comes off as a rip off of The Secret Circle...well the opening scene at least. It was predictable as fuck. Also, this show is raunchy as hell so don't watch in front of the kiddos. It's very sex driven so if you are okay with that then go ahead and check it out. I'm 50/50 if I want to continue with this show. It does have 3 seasons so far so it must be good. A little bummed at the lack of diversity in the cast. Oh geez, acting is cringe at times but I'm going to keep watching it to see where it goes.

Lowkey disappointed it isn't a remake off the horror anime of the same name.

Next one on the same streaming platform is Terror Lake Drive. The thumbnail looks rad as fuck, doesn't it? I half assed watched the first episode and it definitely intrigued me a little bit more than Wicket City. No nudity or sex so def PG friendly at least for the moment from what I can tell. From what I can understand, it's about a single mother who just ups and moves herself and her son to a new city and it's got the creeps. I must admit, I didn't pay as much attention as much as I should but due for a rewatch later in the week. Much better acting than Wicked City in my opinion.

On Starz I checked out 1 episode of We Hunt Together and at first I was excited to see Eve Myles to see her in something other than Torchwood (her claim to faaaaame) but yeah this episode was too slow for my liking. Usually there should be at least something to keep my curiousity afloat and then drop a cliffhanger at the ending leaving me for more but...it just never came. At least Wicked City was moving along more fluidly. I might revisit this one later though for a 2nd chance viewing. By that way, watched this a few months ago.

In other unrelated news, I started reading the webtoon for Hellbound. I originally saw the entire 1st season Netflix (and LOVED IT!) and later learned it originated as a webtoon which basically means reading a vertical comic that you scroll down. Each episode is very short 5-ish minute reads. It's on the Webtoon app. 

I'm loving what I read so far. Netflix made some liberal changes to their adaption but nothing too extreme. The most noticeable difference is they changed the genders of the detective's teenage kid for some unknown reason. Son in the webtoon but girl in the Netflix adaption. 

The thing that is suckish about the Webtoon app is that you can only read up to 4 episodes a day. They give you 1 free daily pass (one episode) and 3 ads for 3 episodes and then you have to wait until the next day to repeat the process. At least the first 6 episodes are actually free so you can really binge a bit on it. However, I binged very quickly lol. 

I still recommend reading it even after watching the Netflix live action show. Both are good.

Quick sad rant. So I put 76 Horror Bookstore, a Taiwanese horror TV show, on my watchlist on Viki Rakuten as I've been subscribed for 3ish months now. When it came time for me to watch it, it magically is "no longer licensed in your region". I tried using a VPN for Japan even Taiwan itself but it still says the same thing. I am heartbroken. The trailer looks right up my alley. I watched a few minutes of it when I first subscribed but I put it on pause to circle back to it....and now it is NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Sucks, bro. I put in a request to bring it back but yeah...real bummer. I guess I can try to find the book this is based on. Tin of Fear or something like that.

It seems to have weirdly been yeeted to the American eye. Closest I came to was this Youtube video with all the episodes that now says "UNAVAILABLE". So sometime within the 4 months it was originally uploaded it got zoinked. Fuck. This only makes me want to find it even more now. I'll see what I can do with my VPN.

Update: Found 1st episode on DramaCool except there are no english subs. Back to square one.

It's Brahm Time

 So, I'm an idiot. Turns out I actually was able to watch Brahm on Zee5 platform but the bad news is that only the first episode is free. I thought the first episode is okay. I am tempted to buy a 1 month subscription to watch the rest. I'll wait until I can finish Viki Rakuten because that shit ain't cheap. $9.99 a month! Technically I could still watch Dark Hole for free but the ads pissed me off. The main reason is that the episodes tended to randomly restart after watching an ad and holy shit it really is littered with ads. And you guys thought YouTube was bad, huh? Buying the subscription is worth it even if for a month but keep in mind that there is a free trial. I used mine up a long time ago.

In other news, there is no news. 

I haven't been writing new recaps for the past couple of weeks. I really want to but I just haven't. I binged Dark Hole a lot but I only wrote the recaps, I still need to rewatch a good 7 episodes all over again to snap some pics for the blog post which I totally don't mind because I love this show.

Now, if only I had a better living situation, I know I could be doing these posts on a more regular basis but I mostly like to stay hidden. I significant other has no idea I blog about TV recaps because he's an asshole and puts me down no matter what I'm interested in. My son has a clue. But I try not to blog in front of him.

Anyways, after the kid gets home from school, I usually stop and focus on other duties. Plus, I am the only one who cooks dinner around here so I have to constantly find new recipes to make. I also add to my DIY cookbooks. I gots many.

I really want to resume my movie blog so I'll make it a point to write at least one post a week. I miss that blog.

Ermagerd, Derk Herl

I'm so sad that I finish all these shows knowing it won't be on my TV blog for a reeeeeally long time. 

Dark Hole is such a diamond in the rough. This is the exact kind of show I have been looking for that USA productions can't seem to produce. The story line is dark and progressive and I love how that despite there is a woman and man protagonist, there is no sexual tension between those two despite both being attractive. That's what irks me about USA or Canadian productions. 

Take From, for example.

It's an MGM original about people being randomly zapped to a dilapidated down where monsters appear at night. Great premise and decent storyline except for the fucking love triangle between Kenny, Kristi and Marielle. It's so overdone, predictable, Kenny is whiney as fuck, Kristi being all shocked pikachu face all the fucking time and really makes me dread watching this show and you will definitely notice the more I irked the more the show progresses. I've long since finished with writing these recaps but...flashbacks, man. Plus I love Harold Perrineau he is just so funny when he says fuck and shit. Bro is my spirit animal. Recaps are being released on a slow roll out. Might be more frequent as time goes on.

I digress but yeah. Not all but most of the USA tv show and movies I watch follows the same cringy formula and while it may be the preference for others, it sure as fuck is not for me. That's why I usually like foreign media. Mind you, there are exceptions.

I randomly decided to try out the Chucky TV series and while it is annoying as fuck having to hear Billie Eilish's god awful annoying fucking voice in the opening scenes, I think I might be interested in continuing to watch. Acting is mid as fuck but I like the way the storyline is progressing. So I may have to start doing some write ups on that show soon. I hope they stop shoving Billie Eilish and copycat's music down my throat. I can't fucking stand her goddamn voice. I'm old so there's a lot I can't stand. BUT I WILL SAY that there is potential enough to not ignore. I will keep watching but sparingly to keep my sanity.

A while back, I took a shot at watching a few episodes of Shining Vale on Starz which looked like a cool horror tv show. Courtney Cox stars in it. However, the hype died down for me, personally. It is too goofy for my taste.

On another note, I am feeling good today so I am pondering on revitalizing my Instagram and maybe launch my TV account as well. I just need more time to draft some IG posts and am thinking of maybe making some memes or something to make that account stand out. Kind of like on my previous posts.

Crisis

There's so many times where I just wonder: Why do I bother dedicating so much of my time to a blog almost nobody reads? Why should I bend over backwards over writing all this stuff if there is no one around to appreciate it? My Horror TV blog is 1 year old but I have only been posting consistently for 6 months and my blog still sucks in views. It's almost at 10k views but that's literally nothing and I am pretty sure it takes into account MY OWN views.

I have 40-ish posts on the TV blog so I am going to let those play out to their regularly scheduled time. When those run out, if I don't have the spark still then that will be the end of the blog. Well uh, a little update on that. I decided to revoke my 31 Days of 31 TV Recaps for October because my blog officially has NO FUCKING VIEWS! No one has been stopping by lately. I reverted majority of my October posts back to drafts and will do a slow roll out to 2-3 posts a week. 

I have officially finished watching Adhura. Wow. Is all I can say. Intense, scary and immense sadness from this show. Mini spoiler but it has an open ended cliffhanger at the final scene. Not happy with that since the show does have a proper conclusion but it opened the doors to a potentially whole new plot for 2nd season. No word if it's cancelled or renewed, by the way so it's more torturous. 

Oh and I started sprucing up my dream journal with some AI generated pics. It's definitely never 100% accurate to my dream but it is sure damn close. Stop on by, YoDreamsCrazy is where it's at. Most of it is running off my archived dreams but I am starting to run out 😢 I totally need to work on remembering more of my dreams or else I will have nothing to add in a few months time.