february 2026 media wrap-up

✩‧₊˚ February 2026 | Monthly Media Wrap-Up ˚₊‧✩

─────⋆⋅☆WATCHED☆⋅⋆─────

My partner and I have been watching the first season of Total Drama (Island) bc he’s never seen it and I feel like it’s essential viewing. But dude. This show is lowkey fucked up LMAO ??? The “mean girl” character called the one (1) Black girl character “ghetto” at one point which is CRAZY?? Overall the show is pretty challenging and not as fun as I remember it being.

Update from the end of Feb: We stopped watching it after a couple episodes lol.

I don’t actually remember why we decided to rewatch Diary of a Wimpy Kid 1 but we sure did. It was lowkey kind of ass lol?? It’s mostly just a collage of different events happening and then Greg basically learns nothing by the end of it. 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 was surprisingly way better story-wise LOLLL it actually had a plot and made more sense. I think it was funnier honestly too. 

I heard about this documentary, The Encampments, and really wanted to watch it with my partner so we did! It’s about the anti-Israel college protests that happened at a ton of major universities in the U.S., the first and most prominent one being the one at Columbia university. The way it 

Rewatched Fyre (the one on Netflix, I think there’s a different one elsewhere too?). One of my favorite docs for sure. Just such a crazy amalgamation of bullshit. 

We were in the mood for more docs so we tried out Three Identical Strangers since we’ve heard it’s a crazy one but dude. It was lk not very good and actually just pmo bc it felt like they were taking a super interesting story and completely butchering it by telling it in such an ineffectual way. Maybe I’m just a hater but this was not nearly as good as people make it out to be. 

The Perfect Neighbor was another doc we tried and this one was actually really good and super effective! It had a lot of body cam footage so it really all came together as a story. I’ve learned that I think I generally prefer documentaries when they actually have footage from the Thing instead of just showing like recreations or stock footage or testimonials or whatever for the majority of it. 

Been meaning to watch One Battle After Another for a while but have been kind of adverse toward it bc Leo DiCaprio kind of pmo these days, but we decided to give it a go. I can see why people like this movie but it really didn’t work for me—I was confused for most of it what the tone was supposed to be…like it seemed like it was trying to be funny, suspenseful, emotional, etc. at different points but it really failed to achieve the tone for me or make me feel anything. 

Started watching The Chair Company bc some people in one of my English classes were talking about it and it is SUPER GOOD! Just all around great writing which is always really refreshing from TV. I find it so hard to find good shows recently but this is definitely one of them. It’s also fucking funny as hell so we’ve been having a really good time so far. 

─────⋆⋅☆READ☆⋅⋆─────

Read Kill or Be Killed, Issue 1 by Ed Brubaker for the graphic novels class I’m taking and enjoyed it more than Criminal, the other Brubaker we read. Was thinking a lot about how people are radicalized, especially towards libertarianism, which the story plays around with a bit. I only read the first issue so I might come back to this and read more eventually. 

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn—sapphic proto-vampires?? SIGN ME UP! It’s a retelling of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu which is one of the first vampire stories (at least in the English language), predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula by like 25 years! And it’s supposedly gay as hell! I’ve been meaning to read it forever and I kind of wish I had read it before Hungerstone, but whatever. I’ll get around to it eventually.

Blankets by Craig Thompson was another graphic novel I read for the graphic novels class and really really loved. It’s such a beautifully crafted story,, it made me think a lot about parallel stories and/or weaving in themes with live events and how well done it is in this. The book does this a lot by using biblical stories and putting them up against the events happening to Craig and it really works for establishing the tone and helping us understand his religious trauma and how ingrained it is in his daily life. 

My third Brandon Taylor novel now, Filthy Animals. This one might be my least favorite of his so far but GOD does this man know how to write a captivating story. I was thinking a lot about why his books are so compelling to me, but I still don’t have a concrete answer. Something about the sort of gray(?), monotonous feel of the characters’ lives that Taylor is able to translate through the prose is so endlessly interesting, cathartic, and sort of relaxing for me?? IDK obviously his characters are always dealing with some fucked up shit but it’s like believable, tangible shit that doesn’t feel shocking or unique, I guess. I’ve been thinking a lot about visual art styles and how they sort of translate to literature, and I guess Taylor’s style is a great example of impressionistic prose. It depicts reality based solely on the “impression” of the character, and all of the different POVs have a different impression on the same world. Idk. 

Ok so. These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever. This book actually fucked me up lol. It was so anxiety-inducing and I’m honestly really glad to be done reading it, because my whole body was like in like fight-or-flight while I was reading this thing. But holy shit was this a captivating story. I sort of accidentally stumbled on this one bc I was waiting for one of my holds at the library to be ready and I was just browsing the “available now” section for lgbtq+ fiction audiobooks and this one came up. I saw people saying that it’s very Hitchcock-esque and I figured that they meant Rope and Strangers on a Train since those are both homoerotic murder stories, which did seem to end up being the case. God. I feel like I have so much to say about this damn book, especially about Paul and how fucked up and interesting of a narrator he was. Paul is so dead-convinced that Julian doesn’t love him, that he’s just being used, etc., because he hates himself so much, but what I found particularly interesting is how much this ended up affecting Julian. He’s constantly trying to convince Paul that he loves him/that he needs him (bc those two things end up kind of being the same for them) but Paul is so unbelievably unconvinced and it really starts to wear Julian down, so much so that he comes up with the idea to plan a murder together that implicates them both equally, one not being able to “go down” without the other, as this ultimate display of unconditional trust and codependency. Despite how obsessed with Julian Paul is, we don’t actually really ever learn that much about Julian—we get the vague idea that he is an SA survivor and is also possibly physically abused by his father but Paul never actually gets that much information out of him. Despite this, Paul knows Julian’s mannerisms and habits incredibly well and describes him in such vivid detail that you get the sense that Paul knows Julian better than anyone. But also maybe that’s just Paul convincing us of that. I do love the whole doomed-from-the-start chess game thing that Julian is obsessed with, as well, and thought it was a great way to wrap everything up at the end. I will probably be thinking about this book for a long time. 

Read another graphic novel for class, This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, which I’ve seen floating around in queer spaces online for a long time, but is actually not a queer story lol, but it IS extremely good nonetheless. Not only is the art incredibly beautiful but the story is so well-crafted, with so many relatable themes, many of which about girlhood and womanhood (unwanted pregnancy, internalized misogyny, the shame that often comes with miscarriage, motherhood, and just general misogyny, etc.). The mom in particular really stood out to me—she’s clearly dealing with pretty severe depression and everyone is always telling her to just relax and try to enjoy the vacation, etc., which I unfortunately found extremely relatable. At the same time, she is emotionally and sometimes physically (i.e., automatically agreeing to let her drink soda late at night, not making sure she has dinner, etc.) neglecting her kid, which reminded me of my mom which was also too real lol. 

Read my FOURTH Brandon Taylor with Minor Black Figures and holyyy moly does this one get metafictional. Taylor, as a Black artist who writes “Black books”, is writing about a Black artist who is trying to figure out how to depict Black people in his art. That’s basically the whole book lol and it’s incredibly good!! I love when fiction is able to explore really complicated concepts and ideas and Taylor executed it so beautifully. I just love this man’s books. Goddamn. Also not my boy Lionel from Filthy Animals making an appearance only to also get fucked around emotionally by Wyeth. Can this man catch a break. 

I picked up The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde bc I feel like it’s one of those classics that I hear about all the time and feel left out about. Let me say I’m really glad I read it bc it had me THINKING. A lot of the reviews analyze it as a story condemning vanity and overindulgence but I have to disagree bc something about that doesn’t feel right or feel like Wilde to me. I mean, Dorian is kind of an exaggerated Wilde, really, right?? With his fur coats and flowers and abundance of lovers and obsession with art. I think Wilde was more so trying to critique English “high society” and how those who live within it who value true beauty and art are seen as indulgent/degenerate/maybe even monstrous. I don’t think the story posits Dorian as any sort of “hero,” obviously, since he literally murders the artist of the painting, but I do think it wants to show us an exaggerated version of how living in a society that doesn’t value the things you value can drive you insane. I mean, he murders the artist bc he blames Basil for making him so obsessed with art and beauty,, he wishes he never saw the painting and fell in love with art bc he thinks it’s the thing that’s driven him mad, when really, I think Wilde was trying to say that it’s England that really truly drives you crazy lol. 

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica was mid I fear. I think it was too fantasy-oriented to really grab my interest. I just have such a low tolerance for magic systems and worldbuilding these days, idk. Maybe that’ll change but for now I think I’m gonna take a break from this sort of stuff. 

I also read Black Hole by Charles Burns, another graphic novel for class, and had mixed feelings about it. I really enjoyed the art for the most part—I love blackwork and thought Burns’ use of it was super creative and interesting. I think mainly I just don’t get it. We talked about this a lot in class, so it’s had me thinking about art that is more abstract and how the story might not “add up” to something that really makes much sense, and how that’s maybe the point. It made me think of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—which is kind of another sort of ‘black hole’, maybe—and how the point of that book is to kind of equate the "heart of darkness” with a ton of different things, none of them exactly quite right, to try and pinpoint just how abstract and unknowable the concept is as a whole. Idk if that’s what this one is trying to do, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. 

─────⋆⋅☆LISTENED☆⋅⋆─────

Flatroom !! had a new single “Every Second Counts” come out that I am really digging. It seems like their production has gotten a lot more crisp and I’m really looking forward to whatever their next project is !!

New Fraxiom album came out that I’ve been listening to a bit! Not my favorite stuff from Frax but I still like it and want to give it some more full listens. 

Still been enjoying the Bleary Eyed album that I found in January. It’s just such a vibe. 

I finally listened to Adison, the Adison Rae album and really enjoyed it !! I was listening to it NONSTOP at first but I’m kind of over it now lol??

I tried the new MGNA CRRRTA  album, Beautiful Disaster, and have been LOVING it. “Heels broke = died” and “Pür Love” are prob my favorite tracks.