August's End

Half of the year has already passed. August is the type of month when you look back at all the months that came before it and wonder, how the hell did I get here? Time becomes both real and absurd. From one perspective, it passes like a flash of light, and from another, it feels eternal.

Now, September brings a different feeling to one's life. In South America, spring starts in September. It brings life, allergies, and a newfound appreciation for every little detail of everyday life. In the Northern Hemisphere, it comes with a palette of my favorite colors, with warmth despite the arriving cold, and with sweet treats that bring some excitement to this second half of the year.

So, I thought I'd drop a list of random movies I believe should accompany you through this passage... or, at least, movies that remind me of this part of the year. That strange point when you realize how serious things feel when time passes this fast and, from another view, how tedious life can become when the end of the current month seems like it'll never arrive.

During these periods of instability, I usually like to take my mind off things with movies that lets me suspend reality for a while and live in a little bubble of nostalgia and good times.

To keep in mind...

📽 The Father of the Bride (1991)

📽 The Fabelmans (2022)

📽 Dogfight (1991)

📽 Leap Year (2010)

📽 Ever After (1998)

📽 The Lake House (2006)

📽 Say Anything (1989)

📽 The Princess Diaries (2001)

📽 The Way Way Back (2013)

All these movies in some way or another have some romantic notion of a principle in life, I believe. I'm into sentimental movies a lot so, yeah... 

You can let me know which movies you consider your favorite mid-year watches in the comments :)

Weekly thoughts

I doubt this will be a weekly thing, but this is the name I'm sticking with. Anyway, here are some of the things that have been on my mind these past few days... which, by the way, have been a rough couple of days.

Let's dig in... 

Watching the same again and again and again and again

I know it. You know it. The aliens hovering probably know it too. They're feeding us the same thing over and over again. So much so that, whereas there were once people who actually enjoyed this wave of sequels, remakes and reboots because it meant their favorite thing was back again (me once upon a time with The X-Files - no words...), it rapidly turned into fatigue. You cannot go on any social media platform without seeing that someone has decided to bring something from the 00s back.

I wasn't going to get into this, except perhaps in one of my thoughts lately posts, but the universe somehow conspired to have me reading the news about a How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days sequel at the same time as some texts we've been reading in my Communication Theory class, and I guess it made me want to vomit some of it here as well since, like every sociological text, it was written ages ago but still feels incredibly relevant today.

The Worst Romantic in the World

I've been going through stuff lately. This should probably be the line I'm remembered by when I die.

I'm a bit dramatic, and I'm always going through some stuff, though if you ask me about it, I probably don't have much to say.

Does this happen to you? Your insides being a constant tangle of ideas and thoughts, all pulling at each other, while your shell is just... plain?

In the book of Interactions 101, I learned to ask and listen. Most of the time, when the questions are asked back at me, I try to get them out of the way as fast as I can. Partly because I feel like whatever I say will sound boring, but mostly because I genuinely don't think I have anything to say at all.

The Worst Person in the World, 2021

Which then makes me wonder... what do I consider an interesting topic of conversation? Not for myself, but the one I believe others will find interesting. And you know what immediately pops into my head? Scanning the conversations I've been in with different people, from different ages, the most basic, stereotypical cliché becomes the answer. I discovered that I apparently believe I'm boring to talk to because I don't talk about relationships or romantic drama.

Our loser neighbor is finally cool!

Is this a safe space? I hope it is because, as a longtime former MCU fan, I have to sit down and admit that, deep down, I never really thought Tom Holland had that Spidey it quality. Wait. Put the pitchforks down. Let me rephrase that. I always thought the writers were doing a pretty bad job with Spider-Man in the MCU. There. It was never really about Tom (maybe a little).

But in all fairness, my teenage self got deeply invested in Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man. Not just because of all the teenage-girl feelings he stirred in me, but because, out of all of them, I always felt like he was the only one who actually got it. In fact, I’m going to talk about the latest Spider-Man installment, Brand New Day, and praise the hell out of it, but I’ll also say that I think they’re still trying to capture that quick-witted, fast-talking version of Spider-Man, and it still doesn’t quite work. I think Andrew was the only one who ever truly nailed it.

But we’ve moved past the other Spider-Men. This is Tom Holland’s era, and he absolutely deserves it.

So, shall we dig into the roots of what makes everyone’s favorite friendly neighbor so beloved? At least from my point of view.

There’s something about Spider-Man that, even as we find ourselves in the middle of superhero fatigue and an oversaturated genre, still manages to fill theaters. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has even managed to surpass what I would consider the MCU’s most ambitious, and perhaps most self-important entry in its long-running saga, the culmination of everything that came before it, Avengers: Endgame. 

We always find ourselves rooting for the hero who comes from the bottom. The kid.

Twilight Dramatics and the Curse of Being the Female Castmate

This will be my first time (and definitely not my last) digging into the Twilight universe. One I feel quite protective of since I basically grew up in it.

These past few weeks, Kristen Stewart has been promoting her new movie, The Wrong Girls, and so journalists and influencers-masking-as-journalists have been going around asking the usual round of Twilight-related questions. Which is pretty normal for any actor who has been part of something so deeply ingrained in popular culture. It's just like they do with Robert Pattinson every chance they get, except I think Robert has discovered that if he is the one who brings it up first, they don't bother him about it quite as much.

All in all, I think they've both been quite graceful about their vampiric past.

But this week, Twitter users have been going back and forth over the difference in how they respond to these Twi-questions, particularly after an interview with Condé Nast Traveller magazine in which Kristen answered the forever Team Edward or Team Jacob query with “I don't give a fuck.”

Weekly thoughts

I'm an overthinker. And extremely opinionated. So here's a list of things I've been into lately and opinions that have been left on standby, waiting to be vomited out somewhere (guess this is the place).

Let's begin...

The Odyssey and Our Obsession with Coming Home

What Did I Get Myself Into?

That’s the first question I’m going to throw up into this wannabe essay, which is really just an attempt to put into words some of the things that have been stuck in my head since watching The Odyssey (2026) on a rainy Friday night, in a theater packed with people who weren’t there to see The Odyssey but another movie starring three of the same actors, one of them wearing that iconic red-and-blue suit.

I’m not here to talk about Nolan’s filmmaking or all the differences between the poem of The Odyssey and what ended up on the big screen (maybe a little).

Honestly, I don’t think I’m remotely prepared to dive too deeply into all the different ways Greek mythology can be interpreted, or what we choose to change and carry over when adapting it for a contemporary audience, because the subject just feels massive. It takes a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, and a lot of mythology to talk about one of those stories that somehow still echoes through our world today. And the truth is I still feel a little green when it comes to all of this.

But then I reminded myself that, at the end of the day, this is my blog. It doesn’t have to make perfect sense. My brain doesn’t exactly follow one continuous train of thought, so I guess it makes sense that I’d want to recreate some of that swarm on the page.

Let’s start…

Love is happening, I'm just not tuning in

Okay, book read, homework done. My first book back into romance was First Time Caller by B. K. Borison.

For a certain portion of this book, I was living, I was laughing, I was loving. This was my moment. Cozy romance, Sleepless in Seattle nostalgia. 

And then it hit me like a train, "this is falling under the same formula... oh look they're fucking. Yep."

My Second-Chance Romance With Romantic Books

I've tried it all.

Well, I haven't. I haven't read every romance book out there, but when you go through one, then another, and another, and another, and every single one has the same "tropes", the same formula, the same personalities copied and pasted over and over again, you begin to think you've actually read them all.

And then, because I actually haven't, I tell myself, don't give up on the genre. It's your favorite one! So I keep going and pick up another one from "BookTok's Top Ten Recommendation of the Month," another "you have to read this book, it's the best fucking thing ever," another "swooning," "marvelous," "life-changing," "not like the others"—only to get to the end and discover that some book recommendations should stay on the bookshelf, that we don't have to read every hyped-up release, that there's no such thing as "the best fucking book ever," and that it isn't swooning, marvelous, or life-changing. It's, in fact, the same fucking formula you've been reading ever since BookTok became a thing and romance novels turned into the default currency of bookstores, Kobos, and Kindles

What do we do when everything is the same? When it drives you mad that every page you turn (or swipe of your finger to get to the next one) only reveals that you're reading an endless continuation of the very same love story, just with different settings?

Is every romance author writing about the same female character? The one who's obsessed with coffee, quirky beyond comprehension, awkward in a cute way, somehow never actually shy, and always ready to get absolutely ravaged by the designated hot, green flag, never-has-done-anything-wrong-in-his-entire-life male character?