chaosworks.org

13 March 2025

Horror story reviews, by someone who doesn’t like horror

I’m not a big fan of horror movies or TV shows, because I’m not a big fan of jump scares. I’m generally way more into fantasy, sci-fi and dystopian fiction than any other genre – except perhaps some of Anne Rice’s works/adaptations. But every once in a while, a horror movie or TV show comes along that I do actually enjoy. Hannibal was such a case. In more recent years, I’ve discovered the works of author/director Mike Flanagan, and after having watched 3 of his shows, I think what he does is absolutely brilliant. His works are not just horror […]

3 March 2025

Blog Question Challenge 2025

Browsing Moxie’s blog, I found the Blog Question Challenge 2025, which originated on Ava’s blog. Back in the golden age of blogs, these challenges were quite fun to participate in. Today, I think it’s a nice thing to do to highlight why I returned to blogging (part of that also has to do with quitting social media). Well, here we go! Why Did You Start Blogging In The First Place? I started “blogging” when I was a bored teenager living in a small village at the ass end of the world, and it was my outlet to communicate with more […]

24 February 2025

Seeing the present through the past: The Newsreader

If you’ve followed the news today, you’re probably just as depressed as me by the German election results, with actual fascists having gotten 20% of the votes, and the majority of Germans still having voted for the less fascist yet conservative party CDU. Don’t expect any progress in this country. And that’s just German politics, let’s not even mention the sheer insanity that is going on in other countries. Well, needless to say, I’m not a fan of reading the news anymore. I gave up on that years ago, because it’s just absolutely horrible for my mental health. Attention-grabbing social […]

19 February 2025

Original Sin & New Blood: Dexter revisited

Back when Dexter first released, I was a big fan. I even wrote a review about the first season, which was phenomenal and probably one of the best seasons of television I’ve seen, thanks to its plot twists. That was 18 years ago! I continued to watch new seasons of Dexter as they aired, but as we probably all know, the show sadly experienced a massive decline in quality over the years. For me personally, S1 still remains the best and cannot be topped in the severity of its mind-blowing plot twists. Season 2-3 were also generally good, and while […]

17 February 2025

Romantasy is not for me

I jumped on the Fourth Wing and Romantasy bandwagon in 2023, when I was researching cool books to read. Back then bookstores were plastered with these novels, so I honestly wanted to find out what the hype was about?! Fantasy is one of my most favorite genres and I always enjoy a good fantasy book. Romance? Well, I can’t say I’ve ever read any proper romance novels, aside maybe from some fanfiction 🤔 But why not? Well, my first Romantasy novel was the ubiquitous Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I jumped on the hype train with this book, mainly because […]

3 February 2025

Alternatives to Goodreads

If you, like me, are trying to gradually move away from online services that are run by corrupt American megacorporations, then perhaps this overview of alternatives to Goodreads might help you find a new home for your reading journal. I have been using Goodreads since 2009, which was long before it was sold to Amazon. Back then it was the only website of its kind. Goodreads is still the website with the most comprehensive functionality for everything I need to organize my books. The only problem (aside from it being owned by Amazon) I see is that recommendations focus immensely […]

16 January 2025

6 Mindbending TV Shows

If you, like me, enjoy watching weird and mind-bending TV shows, often with a bit of a sci-fi twist, I have a few mini-reviews for you of shows that I have watched in the past couple of months or so, and that I greatly enjoyed: Station Eleven This is without a doubt one of the smartest, most brilliant TV shows I have watched in a long, long time. It’s been on my watchlist for probably over a year, and I really don’t know what took me so long. Perhaps the less-than-appealing posters? But trust me, this is 100% worth if […]

7 January 2025

From the Chronicles of Dawnmaster Aeneas, The Morninglord’s Chosen

SPOILER WARNING: This entire post contains heavy spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3, and in particular The Dark Urge origin! Proceed to read at your own peril! Written in the Year of Three Ships Sailing, 1492 DR, the following are extracts from the Chronicles of Dawnmaster Aeneas, a Bhaalspawn who was at the center of the events of the Mindflayer invasion. Together with a group of similarly lost souls, he was instrumental in the defeat of the Elder Brain that threatened to destroy Baldur’s Gate and most of the Sword Coast. Having woken up without recollection of who he was, he […]

31 December 2024

2024 and the Half-Life of a Millennial

I used to diligentially chronicle my achievements of the year in my blog, back when it was actually a somewhat active blog. With everything being quantifiable I could sure data science the shit out of my life with fancy charts of how many books I read, how many TV shows I watched, how many games I played, how many kilometers I went running, etc. While I love stats, I guess I’m getting too old for this shit and I’d rather read books in my hobbit hole than give myself more work. It was a challenging year for me. Shit blew […]