Welcome to Halftone’s End of Year Wrap-Up, the diet version of our annual Toneys! While it isn’t necessarily the end of the year, it’s the end of Rowan’s year — and isn’t that all that matters? Join this semester’s graduating interns as they describe their guilty pleasures, faves, and most abhorred picks from the past few months. You can join us for a trip down memory lane, or maybe you’ll find something new! In the end, it’s about the journey — not the destination. Unless you’re still cramming for finals… then it might be about the destination.

Guilty Pleasures

Despite all of the glamour and prestige that being a Halftone intern brings, we’re simply human. With that, we sometimes have opinions that go against the convention: Media that by all measures should be bad, but has somehow wormed a special place into our tender little hearts. Without further ado, here are some of our favorite guilty pleasures from the past school year:

Piper’s Pick: Honey Don’t!

My pick for “Guilty Pleasure” is a film that I don’t think should be one, but people seem to hate it, so whatever. Honey Don’t! (2025) is the second film in Ethan Coen’s “lesbian B-movie trilogy” — both of which so far have starred Margaret Qualley. Both Honey Don’t! and 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls are intentional overloads of lesbian-led camp, parodying noir and road trip films respectively. Honey Don’t! hit streaming services in the fall and was met with very poor reviews. Averaging a 2.3/5 on letterboxd, a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 5.2 on IMDb, you’d think this movie was just awful, but it really… isn’t? Honey Don’t! does exactly what it sets out to do, telling a silly parody of a small town detective and corrupt church leader. The film is pitched and advertised as a “lesbian B-movie” and it is a well-directed and exceedingly competent take on exactly that concept. So why all the hate? I really feel like context is queen with this — if you go into this knowing what it’s trying to be, you’ll probably have a great time. If you go into this expecting something the film never claims to be (i.e. a serious noir film) you’ll be disappointed. So much of the hate for Coen’s lesbian B-movie trilogy feels like people are missing the point? No one is going to go to a horror movie and then complain that it wasn’t a comedy. I think we should all take films for what they’re setting out to do and not what we think they should be doing. Honey Don’t! absolutely nails what it’s trying to do and I unironically love it for it.

Gavin’s Pick: Tiny Bunny

I will admit that this is a hard one. In the last school year, there is not a long list of media I would really consider a “Guilty Pleasure.” Most things I either hate or adore. But I do have something that comes close — the game Tiny Bunny. It started being released back in 2022, but had its final chapter released in December of 2025. Where I stand on Tiny Bunny is I vehemently hate it — with like my whole chest. But, when I first started playing, I loved it so much. The art is beautiful, the voice acting and music are charming, and the tone is fittingly grim and somber while remaining grounding. The first three chapters of the game have this very unique horror of aching powerlessness in the face of a world that hates you, undercut by supernatural things that don’t feel entirely hostile but that you also can’t comfortably let your guard down around. It is a very nice balance that gives me a horror experience I’ve yet to see elsewhere. But then chapter 4 and 5 come in and throw all of that out the window. The game suddenly gets a lot more graphic, loses a lot of subtlety, gets a lot more aggressive with its horror, and basically amplifies the worst parts of its previous story. For example, it has a habit of pretending it’s gonna play a given trope straight and then U-turning into subverting it and basically making fun of the player and characters for thinking the trope will happen. The characters become confusingly vile as well, and some moments verge on exploitation for the pure shock value. Basically everything I loved from it disappears moments away from the finish line. But those good elements — the aching horror, the sense of powerlessness, the wonderful cast, the amazing art — make me mentally return to this story, trying to wipe off all the sludge that coats the gold nugget I fell in love with.

Gracie’s Pick: The Shawna-Verse

While it’s definitely a guilty pleasure, I would by no means qualify the Shawna-verse as bad. Originally an unconnected series of silly and cathartic skits from a mother trying to find her creative outlet, Shawna Lander has evolved her short-form content into what is effectively a long-form series. Anytime I notice a new YouTube compilation dropping, my best friend will immediately get the text: “Everybody QUIET. My soaps are on.” Lander has created a cast of deeply thought-out and multifaceted characters, taking time to not only plan for but thoroughly explore how their backstories inform how they interact with the world and people around them. At the end of the day, this series is a testament to the evolution of art: a series of TikTok skits about bratty mother-in-laws has evolved into one of the most character-driven drama series around right now. Her background as an actor is an amazing addition, with fans of the one-woman-show constantly joking about the level of chemistry she has with herself. Now be QUIET! My soaps are coming on…

Julia’s Pick: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

I grew up as a Five Nights at Freddy’s kid. Are the film adaptations all that great? Absolutely not! But they definitely fill a hole in my soul and remind me that I love this video game series so deeply. I love the different (and maybe not so incredible) takes the films have on it, too. When I watched Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 during opening weekend, I was overjoyed to even be seated in the theater. And when the movie started, I knew it wasn’t going to be my favorite movie in the entire world, but I loved it anyway, regardless of its flaws and its strides in the opposite direction of the game lore I’d grown to know so well. Even in this new direction that I was unfamiliar with and maybe wasn’t the biggest fan of, I still loved this movie and its sometimes laughable plot. And you know what? Megan Fox was made to be Toy Chica.

Ryan’s Pick: War of the Worlds (2025)

Let me emphasize: there is nothing good about this movie… at all. However, despite its imperfections (and being arguably the worst film of the year), it is the most entertaining movie of last year.  The film follows Ice Cube watching the world end from live camera footage at his desk. That’s it — there are no other settings that we are immersed in. Personally, I think the highlights of this film include Ice Cube reacting to these world ending catastrophes as if he’s a Twitch Streamer. He watches footage of his family and friends being chased by aliens, and when those screens go black, he reacts like he just got killed in Black Ops. On top of that, the decisions that the characters make in this movie are insane. Despite the world literally crumbling behind them, they find time to record it, upload the footage to social media and stay on the phone with Ice Cube (while their AirPods are still in).  Meanwhile, Ice Cube is yelling at them to “get out of there!” Because, you know, when the world is crumbling to pieces, their first reaction is to stick around?  As if Ice Cube’s reactions aren’t funny enough, maybe the alien’s motivation for invasion being data from surveillance systems will give you a laugh. Or, to quote Ice Cube: the government “risked our lives to spy on people’s Amazon carts.” It’s just as moronic as it sounds. That being said, it is absolutely hilarious and honestly worth your time. 

The Whinies

Here at Halftone, we try to stay relatively positive. If we’re going to critique something, it will be in a format where we can talk about it constructively and find some way to learn from it as both creatives and consumers. Today, though, we’ll be breaking our own rules and letting loose both spicy hottakes and pure hatred, ruthlessly bullying the media that has earned our ire. Let’s not wait any longer — here’s the best of the worst:

Piper’s Pick: Netflix’s The Witcher

I love The Witcher. The games are some of my favorite western fantasy RPGs, the books are some of the best fantasy storytelling of all time, and the lore is a beautiful love letter to Polish and slavic culture — something woefully underrepresented (at least in a positive light) within most other western media. One of my first tattoos was about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I have multiple special collector’s editions of the books, and I am constantly recommending people to check out this incredible fantasy world. The problem is that the most accessible way to do so, the Netflix series, absolutely sucks. I’m not going to mince words here — Netflix’s The Witcher is one of the worst adaptations in the history of television and film and is so bad even on its own merits that it can’t even keep its own cast stable. The heart and soul of the source material is entirely lost on the writers. Plotlines and character arcs are arbitrarily changed near-universally for the worse, the directing looks more ABC Family teen drama than fantasy epic, the costume and set designs are incomprehensible amalgamations of every European culture except the actual Polish origins of The Witcher, and the writing, from dialogue exchanges to macro-storytelling, is a mess and a half. Season 4, featuring a recast to the protagonist, just released last fall — and to what, even lower reviews than this middling excuse for television had managed to squeeze out for the last three seasons? I hate Netflix’s The Witcher. It actively harms the cultural perception of the source material and is a long-dead, dilapidated horse that needs to stop being beaten.

Gavin’s Pick: Pokémon Legends: Z-A

Ok, to preface this, I will have you know I was a Pokémon kid. It was basically my entire personality for most of my life. I got into writing, video games, and art directly because of Pokémon. This series has embedded itself in my heart. This is also why the series has been disappointing me in recent years. It started with Sword and Shield, but has only grown worse over time. This disappointment came to a head this year with Pokémon Legends: Z-A, something that I can only ever feel like is just one big cash grab that was rushed out. The game looks good for a 3D Pokémon game, but when compared to anything else on the Switch 1, it is just depressing. Not to mention the new Pokémon designs are… unimpressive. Megas can be hit or miss with me but these are majority misses. The game has done nothing to impress me or make me see it as anything except yet another empty cash grab. And that’s saying nothing of the fact they released a paid DLC a month after the base game’s release, turning this game as a whole into a $90 experience just for content that should have been in the base game. 

Gracie’s Pick: Merv (2025)

Merv might be the worst movie I watched last year, and I don’t even know who to blame for where it went wrong. The movie’s concept could be funny — an ex-couple sharing custody of a dog with clinical depression — if it decided to do anything humorous with it. Instead, it lets that concept steep for the entire film without any real additions, circling its two actors around one another in a thin replacement for any real chemistry. While many stories to come before it have found strength in subtle performances and writing that hints at larger problems kept under wraps, Merv does not show enough of its problem’s impact to warrant its end-of-movie dramatic reveal. Ultimately, it feels like a cop-out to try and justify the film’s existence — but the jokes aren’t funny enough to pull it back up, and the story feels more like a kid playing with dolls than it does a multi-million dollar MGM production. In the end, I’m the fool. I wasted my Christmas watching what should have been a direct-to-DVD movie — I mean, what else was I going to do? Spend it with friends and family?

Julia’s Pick: Stranger Things 5 “Chapter Eight: The Rightside Up”

When Stranger Things first released on Netflix, I was eleven years old. I fell in love with it almost immediately, and it quickly became a series my twin sister and I found ourselves bonding over and enjoying together. We began to memorize the scripts by heart with how often we would watch and rewatch this show. It became a staple to our personalities. So when we saw the finale to Stranger Things 5 in theaters on New Years Eve, it’s needless to say that we were severely disappointed. Yes, we sobbed in the theater because the finale really was a tearjerker, especially for kids who grew up watching this show. But, when we took some time to reflect on it afterwards, we saw all of its flaws and shortcomings that made it not quite the finale we were expecting after the almost four years we’d waited since the previous season. 

Ryan’s Pick: The Boys Season 5

When The Boys first released its new season, it immediately took off with a bang. Starting off with the death of a major character, it seemed that The Boys was not pulling any of its punches. However, with the recent release of the newer episodes, there has been something noticeably offputting about it. Rather than an epic culmination of 6 years of narrative build, it often feels like more of a setup for something else. Rather than maintaining a tight focus toward its already established characters, it takes the time in episode 4 to establish new characters that will appear in a prequel series (that don’t have much to do with the current plot). Now, for those unfamiliar with The Boys, they are notoriously known for parodying the modern superhero culture, the shared ‘cinematic universes’ they spawn, and the corporate push for more sequels and prequels that this entails. While these episodes have been relatively entertaining, it does not excuse the fact that they have kind of become the sole thing they have been parodying for years.

Comfort Media

Ok, let’s face the facts: Sometimes you just need a good piece of media to keep you company. Something to enjoy while you kick your feet up after a horrible day, or motivate you to get through one that’s even worse. These pieces can be amazing things, whether they feel like an indulgent gourmet meal or a Tastykake with enough preservatives to mummify you. 

Here at Halftone, we’re no different. In fact, it’s kind of the whole reason we’re here… So, finally, here are the pieces of media that helped us get through this school year — from September to now:

Piper’s Pick: “Vivarium” by Ado

Ado, a Japanese singer of pop and rock music, is one of my favorite working artists. Her vocal prowess is legitimately stupefying and the variety between each song of hers always keeps everything fresh. Until a few months ago, Ado was completely faceless and physically anonymous, only appearing live while cloaked in shadow. This changed with the release of the song “Vivarium” in late February. The music video served as a pseudo-face reveal and, for the first time, a physical embodiment of what she was singing about. Her entire consistent output over the last year has been comforting, but “Vivarium” in particular struck a bit deeper. The song is equal parts confessional and love letter to her past self — a past self riddled with depression and self-esteem issues with little by way of outlet for either. The song is gorgeous and has been in constant rotation since it was released. I legitimately think I listen to it, at minimum, a few times a day.

Gavin’s Pick: American Mythology by Haunted Like Human

I’ve talked about Haunted Like Human so many times on Halftone over my time here, but I still just love them. Their newest album, American Mythology just condenses everything I love about the band into 13 songs. The music of this album feels like it took a cold spring night in rural Appalachia and turned it into a drink served with a little bit of whiskey. It has all the dark etherealness of the trees that feel like they just might be closing in, but also deep human love and empathy. Included in it all is a sadness that makes you miss somewhere you’ve never been. “Eurydice” and “Family Name” sincerely bring me to tears with the incredibly human sense of love, loss, and ache — they feel so comforting. I have often found myself using this album as a good way to recenter myself or when other music has burnt me out. It has that ethereal energy that can be engaging and powerful but not overwhelming. It’s something I can listen to when winding down as much as in an everyday situation. This album feels like it was made for me with a feel to it that I have yet to truly see captured anywhere else.

Gracie’s Pick: The Pitt

This semester, season two of The Pitt is what kept me going. Sometimes you need an emotional support procedural medical drama, even if it feels like the emotional support might be closer to emotional violence! The Pitt looks at the medical dramas to come before it and tries to elevate what they can be (limiting the timeline to one shift, incredibly precise medical accuracy and SFX, tackling social issues with a level of awareness not typically present in the 2000s) and does it so well that its second season almost struggles to keep up with the quality of the first. Overall, season two is fun: it still has dynamic characters, and, by keeping a majority of the same cast, is able to explore characters from angles previously cut for time. While it can lean heavy on the melodrama and quippy one-liners or read as a bit preachy at times, it’s all part of the fun and format of the show. Yes, this is an exploration of trauma and how it impacts healthcare workers, but it’s also just a fun Thursday night! And during this finals week, I’m really starting to miss it…

Julia’s Pick: I Love LA

As an avid Rachel Sennott fan, it’s no surprise that her HBO series I Love LA gave me life. I Love LA, written, directed, and starring Rachel Sennott centers around a clientless talent agent, Maia Simsbury (Rachel Sennott), struggling to be seen as worthy of a promotion at her agency, Alyssa180. But when her ex-best friend and New York “It Girl” Tallulah Stiel (Odessa A’zion) visits, Maia must navigate her codependent friend group and this new introduction to a friendship she never quite found closure in. I Love LA is wickedly funny and deeply relatable for girls everywhere, especially when it comes to the pressure of growing into yourself and finding your true career and ambitions. Amidst the laughter, I Love LA also homes in on remarkable moments of vulnerability in characters once believed to be made of steel, ultimately stunning viewers into the emotional depth within such a hysterical piece of media. 

Ryan’s Pick: Project Hail Mary (2026)

Whenever I’m having a rough day, sometimes all I need is a little dose of Ryan Gosling and his pet alien rock (Rocky) to perk me right up. Their chemistry is undoubtedly unmatched, bouncing off of each other to learn about their different ways of life with Rocky adorably trying to adapt to human nature. The thing that makes this move work so well is the strong emotional weight that is presented on screen. It is an absolute joy watching these two characters not only help each other, but form the strongest bond in the process. The other aspect that makes this movie so special is how Rocky is portrayed in comparison to other movies with extraterrestrials. While other movies depict aliens as grotesque or with malicious intent, this movie is the polar opposite. Rocky is empathetic, adaptable, and shows more humanity than others. This movie is genuinely special and is easily one to come back to when needing to decompress.