Media Consumed: March 2018
Mar. 25th, 2018 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrA whole lot of strongly recommended things this time including a scifi book, animated tv, and video games.
Books:
Hellspark by Janet Kagan: 80s science fiction about a linguist who goes to a human colony on a newly discovered planet to help decide if the local aliens are sentient. There's also a darker mystery and various other shenanigans. I have been wanting to read this book since around 1998, when I was recommended it by a remarkably effective book reccomending site(*), but couldn't find a copy. Until now, on iBooks! Despite the 20 year wait, I quite liked it. All the (minimal) romance is m/f but it's still enjoyably lacking in heteronormativity for something from 1988 and has some great female characters with interesting relationships, as well as some soft but engaging scifi. It left me feeling very happy.
The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian: A quite enjoyable m/m regency romance about a swindler taking a job as a reclusive Earl's secretary and the two falling in love. The Earl's "madness" (I think he was autistic? I must have been very tired when I read this, I can't remember it very well) is treated in a well meaning if sometimes anvilicious "there's nothing wrong with being mad but you are not" way.
Royally Ever After by Loretta Chase: Two fluffy and forgettable but inoffensive romance novellas.
Beauty by Tanith Lee: A scifi retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I forgot I had read this already until I got to the end and remembered how much I hated the ending.
Animated TV and Movies:
The Ancient Magus' Bride: Have I really not reviewed this already? Anyway: a deeply depressed Japanese teenager, whose psychic powers cause her to be surrounded by monsters only she can see, ends up sold to an inhuman wizard, who makes her his apprentice and fiance. As she finds her place in the world of magic she makes friends and heals from her trauma. Despite the title their relationship is not explicitly romantic, I kind of get the feeling he likes the idea of a wife as an abstract Thing Humans Have. Goes through periods of ANGST so I am taking a break, but season 1 makes for an enjoyable arc.
Land of the Lustrous: dreamy scifi about a planet of immortal, genderless humanoids made of gemstones fighting off another species of humanoids. It didn't click for me but was interesting!
Steven Universe: A very different scifi show about immortal, genderless humanoids made of gemstones :D The main character is a half-human boy who lives with the last remaining Gems on Earth, learning to use his powers to help them fight gems gone bad. This starts out incredibly childish, with everyone behaving like good natured but bratty toddlers who never suffer any consequences for their terrible decisions. It gets much more enjoyable about 10 episodes into season 1, and there's an involving plot, interesting scifi concepts (including poking at The Nature of Self), engaging characters, and evolving relationships. Also a lot of canon femslash, albeit with a veneer of alien weirdness to get past the censors. Unfortunately it can be very inconsistent between episodes in terms of tone and attitude, which can lead to emotional whiplash and frustration, especially given the show's tendency to make a big deal about The Moral ("That's the opposite of the previous Moral!" etc). Also, it tries to be progressive but doesn't always succeed. Luckily I went in forewarned and have mostly been able to let the flaws wash over me and enjoy it.
Justice League Dark: A movie where Batman, John Constantine, and Zatanna investigate Bad Magical Stuff. A shallow attempt at Dark Horse-esque Adult Storytelling with a lot of tired emotional beats and a story that didn't entirely make sense. Not unwatchable, I guess?
Games:
Horizon Zero Dawn: A playstation 4 only open world action RPG that combines two games: a gently bittersweet post-apocalyptic fable about the futility of war and SHOOT ROBOT DINOSAURS WITH A BOW AND ARROW. Both games are very good but the tonal dissonance can be a bit jarring. "Weapons are terrible...EXCEPT THIS AWESOME FLAMETHROWER" etc. The environmental storytelling is amazing: forests growing around the remains of a freeway, stone age villages in the shadow of rusting machines of death etc, all scattered with recordings from before and during the apocalypse that destroyed modern civilisation. Indigenous American groups have rightfully complained about the cultures being pretty blatantly quasi!Indian/quasi!Inuit/quasi!Aztec yet the protagonist is a pale redheaded woman. On the upside there are a lot of well drawn POC secondary characters and the tribal cultures are presented as complex and valid. Also there's a lot of other cultural influences. But it's still unfortunate, and I'm not sure how I feel about the portrayal of fraught topics like religion and war crimes. Other than that it's a quite enjoyable if sometimes implausible scifi story, with some cool AIs and beautiful moments of story telling, both in the main arc and all the little optional side stories. There's no constant companions but you befriend some well drawn characters along the way. The choices you can make tend not to affect much but add to the immersion. It's also pretty fun playing a female warrior and having men from the more technological and sexist tribes look down on you only to beat the pants off them :D And it's SO PRETTY, sometimes I just wandered around looking at the scenery. The fighting is also SUPER fun, though it made me sad that you can't ever really befriend the robots. The "story" mode was pretty easy, but I still had to pay attention, and it doesn't make any of the non negligible amounts of jumping any easier. I am bad at jumping and fighting and got by, even if I fell to my death a lot.
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds: a large and quite enjoyable DLC set in the frozen North. There was even more jumping than in the original game, which got annoying, and the plot wasn't quite as well done, but overall I enjoyed it.
Subnautica: Finally finished it! The end is a little less polished than the rest of the game, but overall I really enjoyed it. It makes me wish there were more games about exploring beautiful, strange places (in this case an alien ocean planet) with gathering/crafting components and a plot but no focus on killing things.
Butterfly Soup: a justly beloved f/nb visual novel about a group of Asian American teenage girls who join a baseball team. Not a dating sim, since your choices don't affect the plot but are just there for humour and immersion, but it has a really cute romance arc. The non binary character's gender is pretty understated but handled ok.
(*) It had a name like "The Library of Alexandria" and got me into Lois McMaster Bujold and Dorothy L Sayers.
Books:
Hellspark by Janet Kagan: 80s science fiction about a linguist who goes to a human colony on a newly discovered planet to help decide if the local aliens are sentient. There's also a darker mystery and various other shenanigans. I have been wanting to read this book since around 1998, when I was recommended it by a remarkably effective book reccomending site(*), but couldn't find a copy. Until now, on iBooks! Despite the 20 year wait, I quite liked it. All the (minimal) romance is m/f but it's still enjoyably lacking in heteronormativity for something from 1988 and has some great female characters with interesting relationships, as well as some soft but engaging scifi. It left me feeling very happy.
The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian: A quite enjoyable m/m regency romance about a swindler taking a job as a reclusive Earl's secretary and the two falling in love. The Earl's "madness" (I think he was autistic? I must have been very tired when I read this, I can't remember it very well) is treated in a well meaning if sometimes anvilicious "there's nothing wrong with being mad but you are not" way.
Royally Ever After by Loretta Chase: Two fluffy and forgettable but inoffensive romance novellas.
Beauty by Tanith Lee: A scifi retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I forgot I had read this already until I got to the end and remembered how much I hated the ending.
Animated TV and Movies:
The Ancient Magus' Bride: Have I really not reviewed this already? Anyway: a deeply depressed Japanese teenager, whose psychic powers cause her to be surrounded by monsters only she can see, ends up sold to an inhuman wizard, who makes her his apprentice and fiance. As she finds her place in the world of magic she makes friends and heals from her trauma. Despite the title their relationship is not explicitly romantic, I kind of get the feeling he likes the idea of a wife as an abstract Thing Humans Have. Goes through periods of ANGST so I am taking a break, but season 1 makes for an enjoyable arc.
Land of the Lustrous: dreamy scifi about a planet of immortal, genderless humanoids made of gemstones fighting off another species of humanoids. It didn't click for me but was interesting!
Steven Universe: A very different scifi show about immortal, genderless humanoids made of gemstones :D The main character is a half-human boy who lives with the last remaining Gems on Earth, learning to use his powers to help them fight gems gone bad. This starts out incredibly childish, with everyone behaving like good natured but bratty toddlers who never suffer any consequences for their terrible decisions. It gets much more enjoyable about 10 episodes into season 1, and there's an involving plot, interesting scifi concepts (including poking at The Nature of Self), engaging characters, and evolving relationships. Also a lot of canon femslash, albeit with a veneer of alien weirdness to get past the censors. Unfortunately it can be very inconsistent between episodes in terms of tone and attitude, which can lead to emotional whiplash and frustration, especially given the show's tendency to make a big deal about The Moral ("That's the opposite of the previous Moral!" etc). Also, it tries to be progressive but doesn't always succeed. Luckily I went in forewarned and have mostly been able to let the flaws wash over me and enjoy it.
Justice League Dark: A movie where Batman, John Constantine, and Zatanna investigate Bad Magical Stuff. A shallow attempt at Dark Horse-esque Adult Storytelling with a lot of tired emotional beats and a story that didn't entirely make sense. Not unwatchable, I guess?
Games:
Horizon Zero Dawn: A playstation 4 only open world action RPG that combines two games: a gently bittersweet post-apocalyptic fable about the futility of war and SHOOT ROBOT DINOSAURS WITH A BOW AND ARROW. Both games are very good but the tonal dissonance can be a bit jarring. "Weapons are terrible...EXCEPT THIS AWESOME FLAMETHROWER" etc. The environmental storytelling is amazing: forests growing around the remains of a freeway, stone age villages in the shadow of rusting machines of death etc, all scattered with recordings from before and during the apocalypse that destroyed modern civilisation. Indigenous American groups have rightfully complained about the cultures being pretty blatantly quasi!Indian/quasi!Inuit/quasi!Aztec yet the protagonist is a pale redheaded woman. On the upside there are a lot of well drawn POC secondary characters and the tribal cultures are presented as complex and valid. Also there's a lot of other cultural influences. But it's still unfortunate, and I'm not sure how I feel about the portrayal of fraught topics like religion and war crimes. Other than that it's a quite enjoyable if sometimes implausible scifi story, with some cool AIs and beautiful moments of story telling, both in the main arc and all the little optional side stories. There's no constant companions but you befriend some well drawn characters along the way. The choices you can make tend not to affect much but add to the immersion. It's also pretty fun playing a female warrior and having men from the more technological and sexist tribes look down on you only to beat the pants off them :D And it's SO PRETTY, sometimes I just wandered around looking at the scenery. The fighting is also SUPER fun, though it made me sad that you can't ever really befriend the robots. The "story" mode was pretty easy, but I still had to pay attention, and it doesn't make any of the non negligible amounts of jumping any easier. I am bad at jumping and fighting and got by, even if I fell to my death a lot.
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds: a large and quite enjoyable DLC set in the frozen North. There was even more jumping than in the original game, which got annoying, and the plot wasn't quite as well done, but overall I enjoyed it.
Subnautica: Finally finished it! The end is a little less polished than the rest of the game, but overall I really enjoyed it. It makes me wish there were more games about exploring beautiful, strange places (in this case an alien ocean planet) with gathering/crafting components and a plot but no focus on killing things.
Butterfly Soup: a justly beloved f/nb visual novel about a group of Asian American teenage girls who join a baseball team. Not a dating sim, since your choices don't affect the plot but are just there for humour and immersion, but it has a really cute romance arc. The non binary character's gender is pretty understated but handled ok.
(*) It had a name like "The Library of Alexandria" and got me into Lois McMaster Bujold and Dorothy L Sayers.
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