Stuff consumed December 2018

[alias_sqbr]

Games:

Nameless: The One Thing You Must Recall: Since I didn't actually review it haha. This is a very enjoyable dating sim about a lonely teenage Korean girl who relies on her dolls for companionship in her empty house...and then they come to life as cute boys! I was worried I'd find the premise too silly but once I got my head around it found the Toy Story-esque emotional arcs surprisingly affecting. It reminded me of the way Labyrinth used dolls and fairtytales coming to life as a metaphor for adolescent mixed feelings about the changes of adulthood, including sex. In the end the focus is more on the protagonist's emotional arc than the romances, and the ending, while happy, left me writing fixit fic, but I still really enjoyed it. Be warned that the plot goes to some dark places, especially in the bad endings. But it's also quite funny, with a lot of cute platonic relationships and swoony romances.

Deltarune: A free demo for an upcoming sequel to the beloved rpg Undertale. Turns out I still love the art and characters and hate the fast-paced combat, so after enjoyably wandering around the introductory section I switched to a Let's Play. It's an AU where humans and monsters live together on Earth and our lonely, ungendered protagonist stumbles into a hidden dark world with their highschool bully, a monster girl who absolutely refuses to be a hero of light or save the world. OR DOES SHE. It's pretty cute and ends in a satisfying way, but you need pretty fast reflexes.

Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition: A classic, beloved RPG about a man who wakes, undying, in the morgue of death-worshippers. And then dies a bunch more as he tries to figure out who he is and what's going on. I already bought and ran out of momentum with the original version but thought the playability tweaks might make it more fun and they have! I haven't gotten further than I did last time yet but I feel like I probably will. Though I set the combat super easy and it made it hard to get killed when I wanted to for plot reasons lol.

Movies/TV:

Spider-man into the Spider-verse: SO GOOD??? Mile Morales, a young black boy from Brooklyn, finds himself one of multiple spider...people. The basic narrative is pretty standard superhero origin story, but it's amazingly well done, and the visuals are a SPECTACULAR mix of 3D animation and comic effects. Funny, affecting, exciting, and inspiring. LOTS of flashing lights. It's very much Miles' and Peter Parker's story but the female characters are treated well (and no points for guessing which minor female character I fell madly in love with lol). Some mild but repeated fatphobia about someone getting a little chubby.

Right or Wrong: A Taiwanese youtube m/m romance between a grumpy single father university lecturer and the student he hires as a nanny. I was told it avoided feeling too teacher/student and it did! Instead it's a Jerk Boss romance, and I stopped watching when they got together because while a lot of it was pretty cute I can only enjoy this genre when the boss un-jerks enough for my tastes, and he didn't.

Chinese M/M Transmigration Novels Where a Modern Chinese Man Dies and Wakes Up in Another Body, and Then is so Focussed on Thwarting His Rival He Doesn't Realise the Rival's Fallen in Love with Him, to Humorous Effect:

This is a much larger genre than I would have initially guessed! These just looked extra interesting and came recommended.

The Villain’s White Lotus Halo by A Big Roll of Toilet Paper: The protagonist keeps transmigrating into cannon fodder villains so decides to go out in a blaze of glory as a BIG BOSS villain using a device that makes him seem super intimidating. Except he fails to notice there was a screwup and the "halo" makes him seem saintly. The hero is a sweet natured guy who thinks he's horribly wronged the protagonist and keeps trying to make it up to him. More funny than romantic so far but the contrast between the protagonist's intentions and how people interpret them is pretty amusing.

Reborn As My Love Rival’s Wife by Shu Huai: A nerdy loser wakes up in the body of the pretty young wife of the guy his girlfriends dumped him for at uni, and decides to mess with him. This is wall to wall tropes (Genderswap! Rivalshipping! Identity porn! Fake dating! Kuudere millionaire boss! Sex pollen!) including some dubcon I found squicky. It's very explicitly not queer, but does acknowledge that queer people exist in a moderately sympathetic way, and I managed to read the protagonist as trans-masculine and genderfluid, especially the cute scene where the protagonist self consciously asks the love interest if he'd still be into protag "if I was a man and you were a woman" and the love interest says yes. Protag has some unfortunate ableist attitudes around breaking his leg, and goddamn Chinese gender roles are awful, but I still mostly enjoyed it. The translation is almost finished and makes for a cute, moderately complete romance. Also the author's notes are endearingly earnest as they respond to criticism and post AU snippets.

Every day the protagonist wants to capture me by Qing Duan: I keep seeing this recced as "just like Scum Villain's Self Saving System", and it does have the same initial premise: protag ends up in the body of the villainous mentor of the teen hero of a novel. But it's not as funny or well written, and was way more into sexualising the young teen hero, so I quit.

(haha screwed up the bolding oops HTML IS HARD)

Comments

[velithya]

Yeah I've heard very good things about the new Spider-Man! ... of course, I also heard about the flashing lights. Not good for epileptics/ppl with brain issues (one of my US friends had a stroke a few years ago... she won't be able to see it & is really bummed about it).

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, I feel for those people :(