Reviews April 2020
Apr. 6th, 2020 06:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrReviews: The Mandalorian, The Kiss Bet, Cheese in the Trap, Frozen 2, Jisei, Rebirth of a Movie Star, A Princess in Theory, The Year We Fell Down
Live Action TV:
The Mandalorian: A live action Star Wars show about a bounty hunter, basically a well made Western of the "jaded lonely gunslinger grumpily forms emotional connections with those he helps" variety. I'm not usually into this genre and have only watched a few episodes, but it's very entertaining for what it is.
Comics:
The Kiss Bet: A cute high-school rom-com Korean webtoon about a girl with a short temper who keeps letting her friend goad her into doing stupid things, including asking a random dude to kiss her. And then the random dude turns out to be her grumpy maths tutor and things spiral from there. It's currently stalled at the end of Season 1, the main romance is nowhere near finished but it makes for a cute story as is.
Cheese in the Trap: I already mentioned this Korean webtoon but it finished and I liked it. So! It's a complex romantic drama about an over-achieving uni student figuring out who she is and want she wants, and the seemingly perfect guy in her class who she suspects of being secretly Messed Up.
And now, a bunch of stuff I didn't enjoy so much, and mostly didn't finish:
Movies:
Frozen 2: I got a little way in and then realised I liked how Frozen ended, and didn't want to see that happy ending messed with. Also, it had thus far been pretty boring. So I stopped.
Games:
Jisei: A mystery visual novel from the creators of some dating sims I have enjoyed. I sadly did not enjoy it: the 'interactivity' was pretty thin so I never felt like I was solving the mystery, and as a story it was pretty meh.
Books:
Rebirth of a Movie Star: a chinese m/m time travel revenge story, where an actor dies after being mistreated by a bunch of people, then wakes up ten years earlier determined to avoid repeating his mistakes. The first thing he does is agree to be the kept man of this rich gay dude who treated him relatively decently despite being rejected, and them learning to genuinely care about each other was pretty sweet, but more like found-family-with-(briefly described and unsexy)-sex than a romance. It's mostly a revenge drama, where the guy repeatedly gives jerks the chance to back down but they just escalate things and so he and his boyfriend DESTROY them. It was fun at first but then I started to just feel kinda sorry for them all, especially since their relationships were usually also transactional but in a more toxic and sometimes dubconny way. So I skipped to the end, which was shmoopy but otherwise fine.
A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole: A black American woman finds out she is the long lost Destined Bride of an African Prince. I was enjoying this book a lot until the Prince shows up, and then had to stop. I couldn't deal with the contrast between the realistically drawn, likeable protagonist and the unthinkingly privileged asshole Prince from a paper-thin fake country. I am not immune to escapism about marrying a Prince, and while silly African Ruritanias always make me feel a little oogy(*) was fine with like...Black Panther and Coming to America. But I have very little patience for shitty nobility, especially in the modern day. Afaict this is a very unpopular book, even within this series, I think I got it for like $1 on sale. So I might try some of the later, apparently less annoying ones.
(*)And then I have self doubt about feeling oogy because it's not like I'm qualified to judge when Africans are being exotified. But even when they're both black, 'Enlightened American teaches dumbass African about egalitarianism' was not an arc I felt like reading.
The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen: YA romance between a girl with a spinal injury and a guy with a leg injury, as they bond about starting college with mobility issues. It was too Self Consciously Diverse YA for me and I gave up. The treatment of disability seemed fine for the genre, but I generally find YA annoying, and felt like the author was trying to Educate me about the Disabled Experience when I just wanted to read a romance novel.
Live Action TV:
The Mandalorian: A live action Star Wars show about a bounty hunter, basically a well made Western of the "jaded lonely gunslinger grumpily forms emotional connections with those he helps" variety. I'm not usually into this genre and have only watched a few episodes, but it's very entertaining for what it is.
Comics:
The Kiss Bet: A cute high-school rom-com Korean webtoon about a girl with a short temper who keeps letting her friend goad her into doing stupid things, including asking a random dude to kiss her. And then the random dude turns out to be her grumpy maths tutor and things spiral from there. It's currently stalled at the end of Season 1, the main romance is nowhere near finished but it makes for a cute story as is.
Cheese in the Trap: I already mentioned this Korean webtoon but it finished and I liked it. So! It's a complex romantic drama about an over-achieving uni student figuring out who she is and want she wants, and the seemingly perfect guy in her class who she suspects of being secretly Messed Up.
And now, a bunch of stuff I didn't enjoy so much, and mostly didn't finish:
Movies:
Frozen 2: I got a little way in and then realised I liked how Frozen ended, and didn't want to see that happy ending messed with. Also, it had thus far been pretty boring. So I stopped.
Games:
Jisei: A mystery visual novel from the creators of some dating sims I have enjoyed. I sadly did not enjoy it: the 'interactivity' was pretty thin so I never felt like I was solving the mystery, and as a story it was pretty meh.
Books:
Rebirth of a Movie Star: a chinese m/m time travel revenge story, where an actor dies after being mistreated by a bunch of people, then wakes up ten years earlier determined to avoid repeating his mistakes. The first thing he does is agree to be the kept man of this rich gay dude who treated him relatively decently despite being rejected, and them learning to genuinely care about each other was pretty sweet, but more like found-family-with-(briefly described and unsexy)-sex than a romance. It's mostly a revenge drama, where the guy repeatedly gives jerks the chance to back down but they just escalate things and so he and his boyfriend DESTROY them. It was fun at first but then I started to just feel kinda sorry for them all, especially since their relationships were usually also transactional but in a more toxic and sometimes dubconny way. So I skipped to the end, which was shmoopy but otherwise fine.
A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole: A black American woman finds out she is the long lost Destined Bride of an African Prince. I was enjoying this book a lot until the Prince shows up, and then had to stop. I couldn't deal with the contrast between the realistically drawn, likeable protagonist and the unthinkingly privileged asshole Prince from a paper-thin fake country. I am not immune to escapism about marrying a Prince, and while silly African Ruritanias always make me feel a little oogy(*) was fine with like...Black Panther and Coming to America. But I have very little patience for shitty nobility, especially in the modern day. Afaict this is a very unpopular book, even within this series, I think I got it for like $1 on sale. So I might try some of the later, apparently less annoying ones.
(*)And then I have self doubt about feeling oogy because it's not like I'm qualified to judge when Africans are being exotified. But even when they're both black, 'Enlightened American teaches dumbass African about egalitarianism' was not an arc I felt like reading.
The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen: YA romance between a girl with a spinal injury and a guy with a leg injury, as they bond about starting college with mobility issues. It was too Self Consciously Diverse YA for me and I gave up. The treatment of disability seemed fine for the genre, but I generally find YA annoying, and felt like the author was trying to Educate me about the Disabled Experience when I just wanted to read a romance novel.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-07 12:30 pm (UTC)Same, but I get the feeling the author was having fun with the DESTRUCTION.