Shark Week Art Update #2

Well, another Shark Week has come and gone, but it was jawsome while it lasted! 😀 My last 2 pieces I did for Shark Week include an adorable drawing of King Shark from the hilarious cartoon Harley Quinn. ❤ It seemed fitting since the new season just started AND it has my absolute favorite version of King Shark, voiced by none other than the always-awesome Ron Funches.

For the final piece, I wanted to mix things up and make a mer-shark. Mermaids are cool and all, but I would 100% want to be a mer-shark. ❤

I really enjoyed myself this year with Shark Week. We did so much at work to celebrate sharks, and I had fun nerding out with friends about sharks and watching as much shark content as I could squeeze in! 🙂

How was your July?? What are you looking forward to most in August? 🙂

January 2022 Wrap-Up

Well, after dodging covid for nearly 2 full years, it finally reared its ugly head in our home. My husband and I had both been having these weird headaches for a few days and honestly, we have been so careful and had barely even gone anywhere around the time this happened other than the grocery store (both of us were even off work when this all happened) so the last thing we were expecting was covid. Well, my husband was due for surgery that week so he had to get tested and sure enough, he tested positive. 😦

Thankfully, other than being tired and having the bad headaches it was all very mild. Thanks, Science! 😀 Very, very glad we were both vaccinated and had our boosters. It could have been so much worse. Anyway, my husband’s surgery had to get postponed, so that’s coming up this week. We both had masks on when we went to the store, so that is just further proof that this Omicron variant isn’t fucking around. Be careful out there, guys. ❤

There were several other things that made January kind of a rough month, but I’m just thankful none of it was as bad as it could have been. Anywayyy, here are some things that brought me some joy in a month I would otherwise sum up as “mildly horrible”. 🙂

Books Read: 3

Vicious (Villains #1) by V.E. Schwab

I absolutely LOVED this book. Cupcakes & Machetes had read and raved about it years ago so it’s been on my radar for quite some time and I’m so glad I finally got around to reading it. I would have immediately dove right into the sequel but C&M and I are doing our annual beginning-of-the-year Harry Potter buddy read. It’s the fourth year, which means it’s time for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, baby! 😀

I recently decided that I wanted to re-visit some of the spooky comics I loved back in my teenage years, so I started re-reading the GloomCookie series of graphic novels by Serena Valentino. Volume 1 held up, with gothic modern fairy tale-like stories and spooky-cute characters and humor. I still enjoyed volume 2 as well, but not quite as much as the first one. A lot of the characters were just too angsty and bitchy this time around for me. Still gonna continue reading the series though. 🙂

Baking Buddies: New Achievement Unlocked!

I’m usually the baker in our household, but my husband joined in on the fun last month and we ended up making 3 different desserts together. 2 were great, and the other was “meh”, but I enjoyed having a partner in confectionery crime. 🙂 He made a delicious peanut butter buttercream for one of the desserts, and it was his first time making any kind of frosting, so kudos to him! We share quite a few hobbies already so it was fun trying something new together.

Some of my Favorite Things I Watched:

The Lost Boys (You can check out the buddy review C&M and I did for it over on our joint-blog Sugar and Scream if you’d like!)

Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train (OMGGGG! Amazing animation and fight sequences, and it’s got me so hyped for season 2!!)

Attack on Titan, Season 4 Part 2 (If you aren’t watching this show yet, GET. YOUR. LIFE. TOGETHER. AND. WATCH. THIS. MASTERPIECE. Seriously, if it doesn’t pull you in by the first episode alone I’d be stunned.)

Hobbies: Drawing and Writing

I’ll have to do a post soon with the drawings I made during January. (I think I only did like 3 for the whole month, but one was a rough/practice comic page, so that was fun and different.)

As for writing, it was a pretty productive month for working on my book’s second draft, especially given how stressful things were.

Leveling up to 35: My Birthday

With everything going on, it ended up being a very low key kind of birthday. My husband gifted me with a bounty of awesome books/graphic novels, and we got takeout from one of our favorite local restaurants (with cookie butter cheesecake for dessert!) 😀

Well, that pretty much sums up my first month of 2022. I hope you guys had a better start to the new year! ❤ What was your favorite part of January? Any plans for February that you’re excited for?

No-Spoiler Review: Love, Death & Robots (Netflix)

It’s been a hot minute since I actually watched this one, but in the spirit of catching up on all the reviews I’ve fallen behind on, let’s do this! Before we get too far into this review, let me just start by saying this collection of (mostly) animated shorts is fully loaded with nudity (both male and female), loads of violence, blood and gore, profanity, horrific monsters and aliens, and sexually explicit content pretty much the whole way through. We’re talking lots of boobies and floppy wieners, guys, so if that bothers you, I’d keep on scrolling through your Netflix options. 😉

To give you an idea of what you’re in store for with Love, Death & Robots, I’ll give you a fun fact about the series. It was originally intended to be a theatrical rehaul of Heavy Metal. For whatever reason, this did not come to fruition so instead we wound up with 18 original shorts with unique animation styles and stories, most of which I really enjoyed. 🙂 Much like Heavy Metal, the stories often run in the genres of science fiction, horror and comedy. The animation is fantastic, with some of it being a more simplistic 2D style and some of it being so convincing it might take a couple minutes of watching it to realize it isn’t live action. Some of the shorts feel complete and others leave you wanting more because the possibilities it leaves you with are so endless.

A humorous trio of robot tourists exploring the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city, werewolf soldiers and other shapeshifters galore, farmers with mech suits who gotta protect themselves and their cows from insect-like aliens, and a haunted desert where the ghosts aren’t your typical human spirits make up only a sampling of what you have to look forward to with this collection of tales. Some were definitely better than others, but overall I enjoyed watching most of them. Plus, if you’re not digging one, fret not because they’re all pretty short. 😉 This is absolutely not for kids, and honestly probably not even for some adults. (Trigger Warnings galore for this anthology, just sayin’.)

If you’re a fan of exploring different animation styles and entertainment in the vein of Heavy Metal, it’s definitely worth binging your way through the anthology. Science Fiction and Horror with a dash of Comedy are the dominating genres in this series. I enjoyed most of the animated tales myself, but I could certainly see it not being everyone’s cup of tea. Most of them all brought something cool and interesting to the table, be it the animation style, plot, or characters, but I gotta give a special shout-out to my favorite (and also my LEAST favorite) stories.

My pick for the top 3 stories I enjoyed (in no particular order) would have to be:

1. Sonnie’s Edge
2. Three Robots
3. Shape-Shifters

And my pick for my LEAST favorite 3 of the series, also in no particular order are:

1. Alternate Histories
2. Ice Age
3. When the Yogurt Took Over

What about you guys? Anyone give this one a watch? What did you think? 🙂

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) Review

With great power comes great responsibility, and the creators of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse MUST have felt some sort of responsibility to the fans when making this, because they knocked it out of the park! I’m so glad I was able to see this one while it is still in theaters. In fact, I would happily go back just to watch it a second time. If you get the chance, the animation is so good that you’d be doing yourself a favor to go see it on the big screen while you still can. The artistry is top notch, with utterly fantastic color schemes and character designs. It was a real treat visually, but rest assured, there is much more to the film than just that.

It’s the age-old story: boy meets spider, spider bites boy, boy turns into Spider-Man. If that wasn’t enough of a game changer for young Miles Morales, getting bombarded with other Spider-Men, Spider-Women, Spider-Pigs and Robots from different parts of the multiverse just might be. Miles will have to be a quick learner and get his Spidey sense and abilities under control if he hopes to save his own little corner of the spider-verse from being torn apart.

I genuinely think this is a film that longtime fans and even non-fans could both enjoy. There are all kinds of fun references throughout the film, but they’re not something that would leave you feeling lost if you didn’t get them from prior Spidey material. There were even some surprisingly touching parts that really tugged at my heartstrings. (Especially a certain cameo if you know what I mean.)

I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying! *sniffles*

The characters were great as well. Mistakes were made, no one was perfect, and our main character Miles was someone you could really root for.

Into the Spider-Verse took some great artistic liberties all while sticking close to the heart of the content and knowing what the fans would hope to see. It even has a good time poking fun at some prior moments in Spidey history. Even though I didn’t get the chance to see it until 2018 was technically over, it was hands down my favorite film of the year. ❤ It even ended up winning the golden globe for the year for best animated feature film! Did any of you guys get the chance to watch it yet? What did you think? What was your favorite film of 2018 (animated or otherwise). 🙂

 

Horses > Cars

Uuuggghhhhhh . . . grooooaaaan . . . grumble grumble . . . and lastly, but perhaps most importantly, Harumph!

Cars: amazing when they work properly, and absolutely infuriating when they don’t. Not to mention insanely expensive. As my car goes onto day three of repairs I am finding myself thinking more and more about how much better a horse would be. In honor of this notion, I share with you the gifs I found that only seem to confirm this notion that horses are vastly superior to cars (and in many cases people). I mean, if cartoons present it as such, surely it must be true, right?

So, yeah, to sum it up:

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

“Tale as old as time . . . Song as old as rhyme . . . Beauty and the Beast.”

Beauty and the Beast (1991) is definitely a favorite among many Disney fans. So when the new live action version of the film opened in theaters this past weekend, hopes were high to say the least. I think a lot of people had their torches and pitchforks at the ready just in case.

I, for one, LOVED it. The film was visually stunning. Emma Watson made a fantastic Belle, and the rest of the cast shined in their roles as well. The movie really stayed true to the animated version, but also added in more backstory and expanded on the relationships (friendships included) of so many of the characters. One of the characters I found much more fleshed out and enjoyable in this version was Gaston’s sidekick, LeFou, a character who has recently stirred a lot of controversy due to *MILDEST OF SPOILERS* his character being Disney’s first openly gay character in one of their films. Kudos to Disney for finally taking this important step in the right direction. To any of the theaters that refused to play this movie due to it having a gay character in it I simply say “Shame on you” and also “Your loss. Because LeFou is the shit.” ❤

The characters were awesome, but so was the music. The film included all of your favorite Beauty and the Beast songs as well as a few new ones. Nearly 24 hours later I still have the songs stuck in my head. And I am NOT complaining. 😉

I just want to gush and gush about this movie, but I will only say one more thing before I end this. If you think you enjoyed the library scene in the original, baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Well, Vacation’s Over

Vacation (aka- “work-ation”) is officially done and over with. I spent most of it working and doing paperwork/classes and being sick, but there were a few fun points sprinkled throughout it so I can’t complain too much.

My bestie made some amazing baked goods again today. Peanut butter fudge and banana bread. I am convinced she is trying to ensure everyone in the house one day has diabetes.

Got to have a (mostly) fun pizza/movie night with my boyfriend. I say “mostly” because this was the first night I was sick so that tends to put a damper on things. He was sweet and took care of me though, so that was nice. We watched Princess Mononoke (my first time seeing it). I really enjoyed the film, though I gotta say I was surprised by how much darker and more violent this one was than the other Studio Ghibli films I’ve seen. Not that that is a bad thing, just very surprising to say the least. I loved it though. I like darker animation in general though. Anyone who says cartoons are only for children clearly hasn’t ventured far into the world of animation.

Same, girl. Same.

I’d have to say that out of any of the Studio Ghibli movies I’ve seen so far, Princess Mononoke was by far the most mature. There has been a magical childlike quality in the others I’ve watched that I didn’t feel in this one but the magic is still definitely there. It’s just a different type of magic is all. The movie explores the relationship between humans and nature, focusing on the conflict of gods, beasts, and man (man, of course, being the biggest beast of them all) trying to share the same earth.

Well, I would write more but as I said at the start of this post: vacation has come to an end and I have to work in the morning. Off to bed now.