Some of My Favourite Media:
Lotte's Latest Highly Rated:
LOTTE
Hi! I’m Lotte, and I’m a ~creative~. I spend most of my free time making stuff, be it drawing, sewing, making music or even games. I’m the one who manages the website, so if you have complaints about the functionality of the site, I’m the one you want to harass.
My standard for media honestly isn’t very high. The most important thing to me is whether something is fun. I don’t believe liking things that are “grimdark” makes you edgy and cool. We get it, life sucks sometimes. Why would you want it to also suck in the worlds you escape to for fun?
One thing I struggle with as a reviewer is negativity. I don’t like to be negative about things that other people love. At the same time, that is what I am sometimes called to do on the site, and I don’t want to refrain from giving my opinion just because others might disagree with it. I also know that negative reviews are often the most fun to write, and the most fun to read. I’d like to stress that even when I think something is hot garbage, my opinion shouldn’t matter to you if you love that thing. If you really like Cloud Atlas I definitely don’t think you have poor taste – it just differs from mine.
- Seemingly dumb ideas with excellent execution
- Shows and movies with excellent premises and ideas that constantly miss the mark on their execution so you end up comically frustrated but somehow also inspired
- Proper lgbtqia+ and bipoc representation
- Character driven stories
- Things that are both high-stakes AND funny – now that’s realism
- Worldbuilding that is incomprehensible and boring/politics where politics aren’t called for.
- Poor writing or otherwise bad use of the chosen medium.
- Mistreatment of, and violence against oppressed groups to make things “grimdark”
- Male characters who are rude to everyone but are snarky and good at A Thing so we’re expected to like them? Learn to be nice.
- Board games
Pet PeeveS
Strawman feminism where the bad guy is so cartoonishly sexist that you can easily frame your boring protagonist as a woke girlboss
People who know nothing about corsets, writing about characters wearing corsets (literally do not get me started on this)
Movies that start with a block of text as if I’m gonna read that shit
Ugly costumes. Why.
Games without horses or dogs. WHY.
Thing that has dragon in the title but no dragon in the content. This should be illegal.
Recent Contributions
Review: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries – Heather Fawcett
Emily Wilde is a Dryadologist, a scholar specialising in the world of the fae. When she arrives in the Scandinavian village of Hrafnsvik to research the local faery population, she doesn’t intend to befriend the human townsfolk. She is also less than happy to discover that her dashing colleague, Wendell Bambleby, has followed her to the North. Before long, Emily finds herself closer than ever to the world she’s spent her whole life studying, and she finds out just how important friendship can be.
Review: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – Ubisoft
The peloponnesian war is raging in Ancient Greece, and you are a mercenary trying to reunite your broken family and stop the mysterious cult of Cosmos. Throughout your quest, you meet philosophers and historians, and you fight ancient warriors and mythical beasts.
Review: Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones
On a normal day selling hats in the shop, hatmaker Sophie has the bad luck to be cursed by a witch to look and feel like an old crone. Previously having resigned herself to her dull fate, she now promptly leaves the shop and knocks on the door of the wizard and notorious womanizer Howl to get her curse lifted. She comes to an agreement with the fire demon living in Howl’s hearth instead.
Review: The Sins on Their Bones – Laura R. Samotin
Dimitri used to be the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo – until he was usurped by his husband Alexey, who turned out not to just be abusive, but also a dark sorcerer. Having lost his husband as well as a civil war, Dimitri has fallen into depression and is now in exile, holed up in a foreign city with a handful of his most loyal followers, trying to think of a way to kill an immortal man and put Dimitri back on the throne of his empire. Perhaps the most important of those followers is Vasily, Dimitri’s former spymaster, who must find a way to infiltrate Alexey’s court – while also navigating complex feeling towards Dimitri. Alexey, meanwhile, is trying to forget Dimitri – and to focus on his plans for world domination.
Review: Fourth Wing – Rebecca Yarros
Violet Sorrengail has spent her entire life training to be a scribe like her father, but when conscription day comes around, her mother forces her to join the Rider’s Quadrant. Because she’s so small and weak, Violet has to use all her wit to survive and one day become a dragon rider like her mother and sister. Meanwhile, she finds herself impossibly attracted to the son of her mother’s worst enemy.