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So this I LOVED. It's exactly what I wanted: a fun reboot of the original which is funny and thrilling and charming and also feminist. Women being competent and weird and unsexualised and having complex relationships with each other and saving the world!! FORTY SOMETHING SCIENCE LADIES :D FAT LADIES :D AS CLOSE TO QUEER AS THE STUDIO WOULD ALLOW LADIES :D (which is not very queer. Holtzman flirts a little) ONE POC LADY WHICH IS BETTER THAN NOTHING I GUESS.

It was a very deliberate reversal of 80s comedy tropes, with Chris Helmsworth having a ball as the dim but pretty secretary who needs to be rescued. There's no romance, ones a little swoony over how pretty he is but seems to know intellectually that he'd make a terrible boyfriend. Instead there's just some really lovely female friendships (which are absolutely perfect for femslashing ;))
( Some more thoughts, no spoilers )

No spoilers but under a cut anyway because I know some people want to go in with no preconceptions.
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Last one! I put all the remaining serious-ish topics together. Homestuck panel notes to appear once I have them tidied up!

EDIT: Do not trust the recs. They are a VERY mixed bag.

( Queer women in sff )
( Happy Queer Sff )
( Gender Ambiguity in pop culture )
( Why we like misery and violence in fiction )
( Matriarchies )

Flight Rising Registration opens again April 14!

It continues to be fun and they're doing better with the bugs, the main issue is that you have to just accept the weird ups and downs (mainly downs) of the economy instead of expecting the devs to make sure your investments pay off eg I paid 150K treasure for a dragon whose babies now net me like 10K if I'm lucky. But they are all very pretty babies and that's what really matters :)

I did an Evangelion fusion recently (which I will link to next time I do a creative stuff post) and ever since I keep almost remembering some other story, I think something I was reading/watching around the same time as I saw this very interesting discussion about the anime. The memories are...non verbal or something, distinct but nothing I can put into words and they vanish again really quickly. Something about pretend heirs to a company maybe? Could it be Un Lun Dun?? It's been happening for over a day and is like something I can almost see out the corner of my eye, quite disconcerting.

Saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier and quite enjoyed it! A well made superhero movie with interesting characters, some mild social commentary, THREE named female characters and (EDIT) TWO black guys who get to be competent, lots of explosions. Don't think about it too hard, or expect it to focus too much on anyone who isn't Steve. It did however highlight my issues with the first Captain America movie: Steve himself is a perfectly well written "decent man in a less than decent world" character, but they wallow a bit too much in the lie that the past was a Simpler Time, that it was only after WWII that the US "lost it's way" morally/politically/in war etc. Yes, the US were absolutely the good guys in WWII but only because the Nazis were so terrible by comparison. The US military and government have always been morally shady, and to pretend otherwise is a massive insult to all the people they mistreated.

I keep putting this off until I can remember them all but this has inevitably led to a negative spiral since then there's just more to remember. So! WHAT I CAN REMEMBER RIGHT NOW.

TV:
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Movies:
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Games:
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Books:
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I am suuuuper tired today.

Recently:

Despicable Me 2: An ok sequel, barrelled along at an entertaining pace and was mostly sweet and funny but had some unfortunate subtext about gender and race (and a plot point which was weirdly reminiscent of a bad dream I had the night before the movie, but I GUESS I can't blame them for that)

Currently:

"Haunted" by Kelley Armstrong
Another "Women of the Otherworld" book. The romance aspects are kind of understated and meh but as a story of a somewhat amoral but kickass woman not letting death get between her and her goals it's pretty fun. I have a prediction about the villain based on tired romance novel tropes LET'S SEE IF I'M RIGHT.

Am currently listening to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, which is disturbing and funny and oddly sweet, like a radio station set in a modern US version of Fallen London.

Orphan Black: Got Cam to spoil me for anything that might freak me out, am finding it less tense and thus more watchable but still slow going. It is good! It just isn't GRABBING me.

Dalja's Spring: Kdrama about a 33 year old woman who drunkenly hires a 27 year old guy to pretend to be her boyfriend to spite an ex, increasingly dramatic shenanigans ensue. The romance feels more like a cute friendship to me but it's pretty sweet and enjoyable, though a moustache twirling antagonist has shown up who feels a bit out of place. Also she keeps going on about how OLD 33 is, IT'S NOT THAT OLD.

I tried playing Undertale, a cute RPG by Toby "Radiation" Fox, one of the key music/gaming people involved with Homestuck, but it (a)has set save points and (b)closes without asking if you want to quit when you press 'escape" (eg the "menu" button on 99% of the other games I play) Which added up to me deciding it was all too much effort.

Books:

Still just working through "Steampowered 2". But I've reserved the first "Circle of Magic" book from the library.

TV:

ELEMENTARYYYYY :D :D

Dr Who is over until my birthday. Stephen Moffat definitely has a shtick but since that shtick involves complicated time travel plots I'm still enjoying it well enough. This season hasn't wowed me but I like the characters (Jenny, Vastra and Strax are adorable) and I'm curious to see what's going to happen next.

Chihayafuru has been becoming exponentially slower as they catch up to the manga, so I'm not quite as smitten as I was, but slowness aside it's still fun.

Movies:

Victor Victoria: Julie Andrews plays an unemployed singer whose new gay bff persuades her to pretend to be a drag queen. She gains success but falls for a straight guy. Hiijinks ensue! Very silly and not exactly free of Issues but it was still fun and the core message is about the Power Of Love In All It's Forms which was nice. The central romance didn't convince me but there's an actual happy m/m couple at the end omg. The commentary was Julie Andrews and her husband, the writer director Blake Edwards. It was adorable if self indulgent, they spent several minutes in raptures about the acting ability of their son who has one line as a gay guy checking out the main character (played by his mother, lol)

Games:

Tomb Raider: Tried it out and as expected it is very good but really, really not my sort of game. I don't do running and jumping.

Dragon Age: Origins again! I am enjoying it very much. Here is my pretty pretty Dalish elf.
After several years of playing Bioware games the combat has gone from "so hard I gave up and used cheats early on" to "so easy I have yet to die" (on "easy" of course ;)) and I'm even EXPERIMENTING WITH THE TACTICS OMG. I was so proud of myself for not even having the console enabled...and then in Soldier's Peak the final battle refused to spawn and I had to kill Avernus with a cheat *hmmph*. Naturally my Mahariel's first major quest is going to be the Brecilian Forest, it's amusing how much friendlier all the elves are than on all my previous playthroughs. Anyway, not being in a hurry and just playing to enjoy it rather than hit any specific story buttons is fun. The combat is more fun than I remembered (even aside from being easier) and it's been long enough since I last played that the emotional buttons are fairly effective. Also it's fun seeing Flemeth etc and knowing the Part They Will Later Play.

In short: I liked it! Admittedly it helped that Iron Man 2 had set the bar so low, but there were a bunch of "woo!" scenes and hardly any "ugh" ones, and I don't remember ever being bored.

It is definitely a film about white men and specifically the Awesomeness of Tony, but Pepper and Rhodey get a few moments of awesome I quite enjoyed, and I actually liked Tony rather than wanting to slap him all film like in IM2. It would be nice if superhero films didn't reliably make me think "Oh no a disabled person this will end badly" (WHICH IT DID) but on the plus side it was way less racist than I was afraid of.

Anyway. Explosions, cute character moments, humour, robots, evil industrialists, and lots of SCIENCE. That's what wanted and that's what I got :)

(Possible spoilers in the comments)

I finished "The Birthday of the World", it was overall really good!I particularly liked "Paradises Lost", unlike the others it isn't about gender or sex but about the kind of culture that would develop on a generation ship. Reading Ursula K le Guin always makes other sf writer's cultural worldbuilding seem really shallow. Though the same limitations I mentioned before continued through the remaining stories and there was some really terrible ableism.

For anyone else left wanting more: The End and the Way by Luzula is a great fanfic about a single sexed Gethenian which features OMG a happy well adjusted platonic friendship between two unrelated people of different genders!

Last night I went to the local video store for the first time in ages. They are obviously trying to compete with the internet by offering exotic US confectionary (we tried a Twinkie. It was foul) and tshirts and stuff.

I watched The Sapphires and it was exactly what it appears to be: a light, feel good, music-filled film about a group of Koori (Aboriginal Australian) women forming a successful music group in the 60s. It touches on a bunch of heavy political issues very lightly and glosses over the issues around the Vietnam War completely, the Vietnamese characters are a faceless voiceless other. It reminds me a lot of Dreamgirls, but fluffier. Despite it's flaws it's still the only feel good movie about Indigenous Australians (by an Aboriginal Australian, even! Pretty obviously a guy but never mind) I have ever seen so I am incredibly glad that it exists and that I watched it. Kind of a pity they had to introduce a white guy to the story but Chris O'Dowd is quite charming and despite the apparently universal tendency for journalists to focus on his character the movie doesn't too much. Anyway. I came out feeling good and humming to myself which is the real sign of success :)

Am partway through watching season 1 of the New Girl and am quite enjoying it. Cam keeps saying "BUT IT'S SO BADLY WRITTEN AND MYSOGYNISTIC" but I am ignoring him because I like it. It's just a silly sitcom but I like the characters and the humour.