Caoimhe @cailleach@abhlach.ie

I like to take a holistic approach as a doctor. I don't just look at the illness, but at all aspects of a patient's life, such as if I think they're fat. And then I base my treatments on that perspective, such as telling them to lose weight.

I joined a gym two weeks ago and the price is already going up.

The cat is currently trying to push my work laptop off of my desk.

I finally caught up on Better Call Saul. I meant to sit down and watch one episode last night but I just watched four in a row. My dishes are not done but it was worth it.

Improve myself? No, no. I'm trying to imp groove myself.

Going to Lidl in a bit, anyone need anything?

I've been on hold with Virgin Media for twenty minutes. Just let me speak to the fucking virgins I need to correct my direct debit details.

ba mhaith liom a bheith i mo chaitín

Also Cinnabar Island is based on Izu Oshima so Sadako Yamamura and Mewtwo are from the same place.

I thought there was going to be more hunting down the victims of the tape involved but within in the plot the Asakawa is only the fifth person to have ever seen it. I guess that's to keep his final choice more meaningful. He is completely capable of stopping any further spread.

That bad part is mostly Ryuji Takayama, a complete stupid edgelord who is a pain to have to read about constantly. I can express how much of a worthless character he is and adaptations generally (correctly) leave out the stuff about him that makes him unbearable.

The last scene is not him but actually making the new copies of of the tape with his family, but driving out to them, weighing the consequences of doing so. If he spreads the tape he expects the consequences to be nothing short of apocalyptic. All he has to do to stop it is destroy both copies of the tape and let his wife and daughter die, which he is not going to do. The climax is almost entirely mental which a novel allows you to do more easily than a film.

The word meme is never used but it's absence is felt. It also sticks the landing very well. Strong ending. Same fake-out happy ending as the films, with only two short chapters at the end where everything unravels and the main character realises what was really happening.

The central idea of the book is strong: The curse as a memetic virus, carried by the tape that doesn't just want to kill, but to spread. Ideas are compared to something something half alive, like a virus, and the theory of viruses as rogue, broken pieces of DNA is brought up.

That tension between the old and new doesn't become too central to the plot but I feel it never fully goes away either. Sadako is from Izu Oshima island and spends her life between there and the mainland in Toyko, which never treats her well. Her mother is from there as well and had her own psychic powers, which seemed to manifest after she restored a Buddhist shrine that was desecrated by occupying American troops after the Second World War.

Cat.
On my lap.
Cat cat.
On my lap lap.
Cat on my lap.
She gets a little kiss.

Also, unlike the more famous adaptations, there's a bit at the end of the tape stating that there is a way to avoid dying of the curse as long as you follow the following instructions. The teenagers who watched the tape before have taped over the instructions with an advert.

One bit I liked was that when he was driving out to the cabin where the kids watched the tape he was imagining some old, run-down scene out of Friday the 13th (Friday the 13th gets mentioned a few times) but the place is brand new, built less than a year ago, full of modcons.

He thinks people are scared of things either by evolutionary response or they're taught to be afraid of them. His small daughter was not frightened of seeing a Godzilla statue but was scared of a demon mask. Therefore there must be an evolutionary reason to be afraid of demons.