It’s striking to think that it was just two years ago that Gretchen Felker-Martin was an enfant terrible debut author. Now here we are with her third book, and a fourth on the way for 2026—a striking pace that’s rapidly turning her into a major horror writer with a serious body of work. But a crucia| Eruditorum Press
It’s always useful to take stock of where you are, so hey. It’s May 31st, 2025. I think I read that Morgan Wallen is at number one. But never mind that. On television, Doctor Who has just lurched into an uncertain non-existence, there’s a trailer for the Sea Devil spinoff, and we just Introduced Billie Piper, though pointedly not as the Doctor. The episode was wholly embargoed for a genuine world wide premiere, and so I’m reacting in real time with the rest of the world in attempting ...| Eruditorum Press
Well that was fucking rubbish. It’s entirely possible that next week, and by extension the story at large, won’t be. There are component pieces here that are lovely, after all. The basic premise “the Rani destroys the world trying to bring Omega back” is… OK, I mean, yes, that sounds like a bad Big| Eruditorum Press
Shooting on this season began on October 23rd, 2023, by which point five thousand people had already died in Gaza; Israel’s actual invasion of the territory would not even begin until five days later. Doing the math, you figure this must have started shooting late March. Somewhere around, say, the 28th, when the death toll was at 32,552. Seventy-one more people died that day, eight when Israel bombed a refugee camp. But Juno Dawson’s script for this must have been ages earlier. Most of ...| Eruditorum Press
“I was turning 40 and thinking, Oh dear, I’m probably going to have one of those midlife crisis things which always just bore the hell out of everybody. So it would probably be better if, rather than just having a midlife crisis, I just went completely screaming mad and declared myself to be a magician.”[1] –Alan Moore “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”[2] The prophet Aleister Crowley once claimed to begin all his writing, even letters to his butcher,[3] with this ...| Eruditorum Press
The problem here—if you even want to call it a problem—is that absolutely none of the plot beats are earned or make a goddamn lick of sense. Abena is almost wholly swallowed in the mix, the Barber is wildly too complicated a premise to justify in the time allotted, none of the characters in the barbershop are fleshed out, and the plot is little more than a bunch of themes gesticulating wildly. I’m sure that, if I were to bother looking up other people’s reviews and reactions, I’d se...| Eruditorum Press
Looking at the episodes this season and what we knew about them, this one was very much the one you least knew quite what was going to be. Big dumb robot premiere was dumb, Lux always had promise, and the Midnight sequel always sounded desperate. If you’re wondering, next week should be absolutely g| Eruditorum Press
Well it’s nice that Gatwa gets a perfect episode. He’d not really had one yet, save perhaps Dot and Bubble. But here we’ve got one that it’s legitimately hard to see getting unseated as my season favorite. More to the point, we’ve got one you can just unapologetically hand to your lapsed fan friend and go “look, it’s good again.” It’s probably even worth doing—boosting the Disney+ numbers can’t hurt lolsob. Just a stone cold classic, everything you want from Doctor Who e...| Eruditorum Press
As someone with my finger on the pulse, I naturally watched Twilight for the first time in 2025. It's OK — trashy pulp romance. No worse than anything else Hollywood was pumping out in the Aughts, or even the Forties. Chicks in 2008 needed a fantasy where their dirtbag boyfriend was transgressive an| Eruditorum Press
More than most episodes, it pivots in the middle, at the Midnight reveal. I knew it was coming, because that’s how life is, and was sus. And I can’t say I liked it. I stared bitterly at the sequence of mounting realization. Especially because it’s so unprompted. “We don’t know what it is”? Seriously| Eruditorum Press