Reviews October 2021
Oct. 28th, 2021 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrLive action TV: Only Murders in the Building
Animated TV: Star Trek Lower Decks Season 2
Manga: Game-ya BL
Books: Transmigrating into the Heartthrob's Cannon Fodder Childhood Friend
Games: Melvor Idle
Live action TV:
Only Murders in the Building: Well made comedy/drama murder mystery TV show, where two mismatched old showbiz men (Steve Martin and Martin Short) befriend a young woman (Selena Gomez) who lives in their fancy apartment building when it turns out they are all fans of the same true crime podcast. The three team up to try and solve the murder of a man in the building, and make their own podcast about it. I liked the comedy and drama parts of this a lot, it's witty and charming and emotionally complex with great characters. Unfortunately, the murder mystery plot (which kicks in more as the show progresses) isn't bad for what it is, but used a lot of Typical Murder Mystery Tropes that I am really not a fan of. I have mixed feelings about the treatment of disability and ethnicity. But it's otherwise great.
Animated TV:
Star Trek Lower Decks Season 2: This was great. It reminds me a lot of Futurama, the mixture of (sometimes very crass) humour with genuinely likeable characters and a deep love of scifi/Star Trek. They upped the queerness a bit too, albeit mostly with tiny things like the protagonist mentioning she likes "Bad boys, bad girls, bad non-binary babes..." while hitting on a guy. The primary bad guys are a 'stupid' species that hits some uncomfortable buttons.
Manga:
Game-ya BL: A silly, light hearted m/m manga about an earnest young game developer falling in love with his grumpy old boss. They're a bit antagonistic towards each other until they end up magically trapped inside a survival game the company is working on and have to work together. And then they got together and the next chapter was about a ZOMBIE GAME, so I stopped. Cute but not very deep.
Books:
Transmigrating into the Heartthrob's Cannon Fodder Childhood Friend: A m/m Chinese webnovel where a guy transmigrates into the Tragically Doomed Childhood Friend of the mistreated woobie protagonist of a rapey m/m novel, and decides to save them both. Except the protagonist is not the original innocent woobie he appears to be, but instead the bitter 20 something he became. I liked the idea of this, and enjoyed a few cute moments, like when these two 20 somethings who know the novel's plot are pretending to be clueless teenagers at each other, but it very quickly descended into the two of them being ridiculously competent and getting revenge on everyone who'd ever wronged the protagonist, and it was mean-spirited and boring.
Games:
Melvor Idle: An idle RPG. No plot, just setting tasks going in the background in your browser and making choices about inventory management/upgrades etc. I ignored the combat as long as possible to focus on tree-chopping and gardening but then combat turned out to be the best way to get certain seeds, and it's fun for what it is.
Overboard: Narrative game where you play a woman who murdered her husband, and try not to get caught. Looks too tense for me but since a few of you expressed enthusiasm for games where a woman murders her husband, here you go!
Star Wars The Old Republic: I finally decided to try this out but there were so many huge updates I eventually gave up on trying to download them all on my Windows machine's weirdly slow internet. Which isn't really a review but I felt like complaining.
Animated TV: Star Trek Lower Decks Season 2
Manga: Game-ya BL
Books: Transmigrating into the Heartthrob's Cannon Fodder Childhood Friend
Games: Melvor Idle
Live action TV:
Only Murders in the Building: Well made comedy/drama murder mystery TV show, where two mismatched old showbiz men (Steve Martin and Martin Short) befriend a young woman (Selena Gomez) who lives in their fancy apartment building when it turns out they are all fans of the same true crime podcast. The three team up to try and solve the murder of a man in the building, and make their own podcast about it. I liked the comedy and drama parts of this a lot, it's witty and charming and emotionally complex with great characters. Unfortunately, the murder mystery plot (which kicks in more as the show progresses) isn't bad for what it is, but used a lot of Typical Murder Mystery Tropes that I am really not a fan of. I have mixed feelings about the treatment of disability and ethnicity. But it's otherwise great.
Animated TV:
Star Trek Lower Decks Season 2: This was great. It reminds me a lot of Futurama, the mixture of (sometimes very crass) humour with genuinely likeable characters and a deep love of scifi/Star Trek. They upped the queerness a bit too, albeit mostly with tiny things like the protagonist mentioning she likes "Bad boys, bad girls, bad non-binary babes..." while hitting on a guy. The primary bad guys are a 'stupid' species that hits some uncomfortable buttons.
Manga:
Game-ya BL: A silly, light hearted m/m manga about an earnest young game developer falling in love with his grumpy old boss. They're a bit antagonistic towards each other until they end up magically trapped inside a survival game the company is working on and have to work together. And then they got together and the next chapter was about a ZOMBIE GAME, so I stopped. Cute but not very deep.
Books:
Transmigrating into the Heartthrob's Cannon Fodder Childhood Friend: A m/m Chinese webnovel where a guy transmigrates into the Tragically Doomed Childhood Friend of the mistreated woobie protagonist of a rapey m/m novel, and decides to save them both. Except the protagonist is not the original innocent woobie he appears to be, but instead the bitter 20 something he became. I liked the idea of this, and enjoyed a few cute moments, like when these two 20 somethings who know the novel's plot are pretending to be clueless teenagers at each other, but it very quickly descended into the two of them being ridiculously competent and getting revenge on everyone who'd ever wronged the protagonist, and it was mean-spirited and boring.
Games:
Melvor Idle: An idle RPG. No plot, just setting tasks going in the background in your browser and making choices about inventory management/upgrades etc. I ignored the combat as long as possible to focus on tree-chopping and gardening but then combat turned out to be the best way to get certain seeds, and it's fun for what it is.
Overboard: Narrative game where you play a woman who murdered her husband, and try not to get caught. Looks too tense for me but since a few of you expressed enthusiasm for games where a woman murders her husband, here you go!
Star Wars The Old Republic: I finally decided to try this out but there were so many huge updates I eventually gave up on trying to download them all on my Windows machine's weirdly slow internet. Which isn't really a review but I felt like complaining.
Tags:
- book,
- computer game,
- manga,
- murder mystery,
- rec,
- review,
- rpg,
- slash,
- star trek,
- tv
