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Blanket permission: Please feel free to remix, podfic, or really do anything you like with anything I've written. I'd love it if you'd drop me a link when you're done, though.
( Whoniverse )
( Merlin )
( Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire )
( Misc. fandoms: Legend of the Seeker, Discworld, Being Human, The West Wing, Warehouse 13, The Queen's Thief, Once Upon a Time )
( Crossovers & Fusions )
In a fit of unrealistic optimism I signed up for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ficinabox, because, sure, after having not written any fic in a year I could definitely write 10k in quick succession.
(Narrator: she couldn't.)
I ended up having to drop a bunch of that wordcount because I suck and have forgotten how to make words happen, but I did enjoy writing again.
(Narrator: she didn't. It was like pulling teeth.)
And I'm pretty proud of what I did manage to write.
(Narrator: Actually, kind of, yeah.)
Bella Ciao (ciao ciao ciao) (Andor; Vel/Kleya; post-series; 5k)
“I’ve never–” Kleya panted.
“With a woman, you mean.”
“With anyone.”
“What?” Vel pushed herself up, and Kleya slid off her lap to one side.
Vel had lost her virginity to an older cousin of Perrin’s who'd fingered her in an empty shuttle at Mon’s wedding, and who afterwards had cried and begged Vel not to tell anyone or it would ruin her life.
“I’ve been busy,” Kleya said archly.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (The Marvels; Carol/Valkyrie; 2k)
“What does Asgardian divorce look like, anyway?”
“Oh, it’s quite easy,” said Val cheerfully, “I’d just have to publicly denounce you for sexual inadequacy and then punch you in the face.”
“...How publicly, exactly?”
Or,
Four times Carol and Val don’t get divorced.
In continued unrealistic fits of optimism I am both considering signing up forrarefemslashexchange, and trying to write a Pluribus fic before the finale airs on Wednesday, because, Jaysus, I have so many feelings about that show.
ficinabox, because, sure, after having not written any fic in a year I could definitely write 10k in quick succession.(Narrator: she couldn't.)
I ended up having to drop a bunch of that wordcount because I suck and have forgotten how to make words happen, but I did enjoy writing again.
(Narrator: she didn't. It was like pulling teeth.)
And I'm pretty proud of what I did manage to write.
(Narrator: Actually, kind of, yeah.)
Bella Ciao (ciao ciao ciao) (Andor; Vel/Kleya; post-series; 5k)
“I’ve never–” Kleya panted.
“With a woman, you mean.”
“With anyone.”
“What?” Vel pushed herself up, and Kleya slid off her lap to one side.
Vel had lost her virginity to an older cousin of Perrin’s who'd fingered her in an empty shuttle at Mon’s wedding, and who afterwards had cried and begged Vel not to tell anyone or it would ruin her life.
“I’ve been busy,” Kleya said archly.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (The Marvels; Carol/Valkyrie; 2k)
“What does Asgardian divorce look like, anyway?”
“Oh, it’s quite easy,” said Val cheerfully, “I’d just have to publicly denounce you for sexual inadequacy and then punch you in the face.”
“...How publicly, exactly?”
Or,
Four times Carol and Val don’t get divorced.
In continued unrealistic fits of optimism I am both considering signing up for
rarefemslashexchange, and trying to write a Pluribus fic before the finale airs on Wednesday, because, Jaysus, I have so many feelings about that show.Things I Have Been Putting In My Eyeballs
Nov. 30th, 2025 10:28 pmI recently had to do a bit of wardrobe update as I realised mine contained entirely too many pairs of ripped jeans and sleeveless t-shirts to survive another Glaswegian winter; nothing dramatic, a couple of smart jumpers, good boots, new Big Coat, jeans that aren't ripped to fuck. I was round my parents after and my dad goes: "You look very smart. That's different."
And I, affronted, go: "What do I normally look like?"
"You usually look-" and here there is an extremely long pause as a seventy-two year old Scottish man tries to think of a synonym for gay that isn't gay "-practical."
A day or so later, still affronted, I'm relaying this story to my buddy Cameron in the pub and he just looks at me deadpan and goes: "You're wearing a flannel shirt under a denim shirt."
It was November. I'd walked there. It was chilly. I think that's a fine style choice.
Anyway.
Books
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones - I don't read much in the way of horror because I am, and this is the technical term, a big jessie, but this one kind of blew me away. It's set in the early days of Montana being a state and features a native american vampire recounting his very long life story to a pastor who has a sinister connection to a massacre half a century earlier. It's a revenge story, except it can't be, because how, even as an immortal monster, can you ever get revenge for a crime as large as genocide, you have to pick a crime within the crime. It also has this really unique take where vampires become what they eat, so that when the protagonist tries to feed on only white hunters he can't without losing himself, and the only way to defeat a vampire is to trap it and feed it only harmless small animals until that's what it becomes. It is super interesting in about twelve different directions.
The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett - Ah, I wanted my love for the Shadow of the Leviathan series to be uncomplicated and pure. In a fantasy empire beset by leviathans from the sea a Holmes and Watson analogue investigate high crimes and corruption aided by the superhuman abilities the empire grants its servants by way of distilled leviathan blood, in their case a photographic memory and prodigious deduction skills respectively. And all of that's so awesome! None of the elements are super original, but they are all done so well that it doesn't really matter. But there's one thing that's niggling at me... So, in the first book, our pov character Din, the assistant investigator, has a little romance with another dude, it's pretty chaste, mostly happens off page, and doesn't really effect the plot. But it's a cool little detail to have, our main character is a gay guy. Anyway, when we pick up with Din in book two he's in a bar trying to pick someone up and he thinks something about how he mostly likes men but none of the guys in this bar appeal to him so he picks up a woman. And, like, okay, a preference for the same sex but with exceptions is a very real sexuality. This relationship also doesn't really impact the plot, the love interest isn't really much of character either, the only difference is they bang on page, like, a lot. I'm not entirely sure why I feel a bit ick about this, except that it feels like a Decision Was Made. I am planning to read book three, though, so it's obviously not a dealbreaker.
Lady Like by Mackenzi Lee - I did, er, not enjoy Mackenzi Lee's YA historical romances. Less to do with the books, I'd guess, than that I have long since reached the age where the doings of young people are simply none of my business, especially as this one, which in not YA, I really liked. Two women are pursuing the same Duke, one is an actress, a rake, and illegitimate daughter of the crown prince who wants to marry the only man she thinks will allow her to both keep her inheritance and keep banging her way through her sapphist theatre company, the other is a proper country miss who needs a titled husband to convince her parents to let her out of her betrothal to a man she suspects of killing his first wife...and they were romantic rivals, oh my god, they were romantic rivals.
The Devil She Knows by Alexandria Bellefleur - A pastry chef is heartbroken when her vapid influencer girlfriend rejects her marriage proposal, so heartbroken that a demon (a hot blonde demon, to boot!) offers her six wishes to get her ex back in exchange for her soul. It's deep as a puddle, but in the best possible way. It's adorable, cannot recommend it highly enough!
Comics
Peacemaker Tries Hard! - There's a dog in this! A tuxedo french bulldog called Bruce Wayne because he's a little fancy man! On the off chance you don't decide whether or not to read something based on whether or not there's a dog in it (the only correct method!) this is charming and fun. It's less canon compliant post S2 but still worth it, I'd say.
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth - Diana wakes up on a post apocalyptic Earth only to discover that the world ended following a war between humans and Themyscira. This was really good, and I was wondering why I hadn't heard of it until my buddy's wife insisted that he get rid of any trade paperbacks he also had digitally - it was more than 1000 trades. I have a had a comics windfall, my friends - until I saw it came out in March of 2020, when it's fair to say that I had other things on my mind.
Movies
Frankenstein - I'm really surprised this didn't get more of a cinematic release. Like, I feel like Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, put out the week before Halloween, would have been a hit, especially with how awesome it feels like it would have looked on a bigger screen. The costuming especially was gorgeous, I thought. It held my attention all the way through, which is not something that can be said of extruded Netflix product of late. And while it became obvious in the last third of the movie that del Toro was much more interested in Victor than the monster, I still think it is well worth a watch if you haven't yet.
Hedda - Speaking of gorgeous costumes, I really enjoyed Hedda, although if you've any issues around social cringe, especially in relation to alcohol, you should have a cushion ready to hide behind, or an excuse ready for why you have to leave the room. I am one of ten(s) of people who enjoyed The Marvels but I'm glad Nia DaCosta's career doesn't appear to be suffering from Disney having sent that one out to die.
Telly
Peacemaker S2 - First thing, the opening dance number is not as good as S1, which should have been my first clue. Like, it's good, but it felt like two seasons jammed awkwardly together, the madcap hijinks of Nazi world, which was fun and all, but not enough to fill a season which is why every episode was about half an hour long, and the character focused, sobriety metaphor first and last episodes. Also did he finale feel a lot like late in the day edits/reshoots to anyone else? Like, there was clearly meant to be a Rick Flag snr. twist that just didn't happen.
Currently really enjoying Plur1bus, and obviously shipping Carol with the avatar of the hivemind because I'm me, and kinda sorta enjoying The Mighty Nein even though Molly's accent feels like even more of a hate crime than it did in the campaign.
And I, affronted, go: "What do I normally look like?"
"You usually look-" and here there is an extremely long pause as a seventy-two year old Scottish man tries to think of a synonym for gay that isn't gay "-practical."
A day or so later, still affronted, I'm relaying this story to my buddy Cameron in the pub and he just looks at me deadpan and goes: "You're wearing a flannel shirt under a denim shirt."
It was November. I'd walked there. It was chilly. I think that's a fine style choice.
Anyway.
Books
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones - I don't read much in the way of horror because I am, and this is the technical term, a big jessie, but this one kind of blew me away. It's set in the early days of Montana being a state and features a native american vampire recounting his very long life story to a pastor who has a sinister connection to a massacre half a century earlier. It's a revenge story, except it can't be, because how, even as an immortal monster, can you ever get revenge for a crime as large as genocide, you have to pick a crime within the crime. It also has this really unique take where vampires become what they eat, so that when the protagonist tries to feed on only white hunters he can't without losing himself, and the only way to defeat a vampire is to trap it and feed it only harmless small animals until that's what it becomes. It is super interesting in about twelve different directions.
The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett - Ah, I wanted my love for the Shadow of the Leviathan series to be uncomplicated and pure. In a fantasy empire beset by leviathans from the sea a Holmes and Watson analogue investigate high crimes and corruption aided by the superhuman abilities the empire grants its servants by way of distilled leviathan blood, in their case a photographic memory and prodigious deduction skills respectively. And all of that's so awesome! None of the elements are super original, but they are all done so well that it doesn't really matter. But there's one thing that's niggling at me... So, in the first book, our pov character Din, the assistant investigator, has a little romance with another dude, it's pretty chaste, mostly happens off page, and doesn't really effect the plot. But it's a cool little detail to have, our main character is a gay guy. Anyway, when we pick up with Din in book two he's in a bar trying to pick someone up and he thinks something about how he mostly likes men but none of the guys in this bar appeal to him so he picks up a woman. And, like, okay, a preference for the same sex but with exceptions is a very real sexuality. This relationship also doesn't really impact the plot, the love interest isn't really much of character either, the only difference is they bang on page, like, a lot. I'm not entirely sure why I feel a bit ick about this, except that it feels like a Decision Was Made. I am planning to read book three, though, so it's obviously not a dealbreaker.
Lady Like by Mackenzi Lee - I did, er, not enjoy Mackenzi Lee's YA historical romances. Less to do with the books, I'd guess, than that I have long since reached the age where the doings of young people are simply none of my business, especially as this one, which in not YA, I really liked. Two women are pursuing the same Duke, one is an actress, a rake, and illegitimate daughter of the crown prince who wants to marry the only man she thinks will allow her to both keep her inheritance and keep banging her way through her sapphist theatre company, the other is a proper country miss who needs a titled husband to convince her parents to let her out of her betrothal to a man she suspects of killing his first wife...and they were romantic rivals, oh my god, they were romantic rivals.
The Devil She Knows by Alexandria Bellefleur - A pastry chef is heartbroken when her vapid influencer girlfriend rejects her marriage proposal, so heartbroken that a demon (a hot blonde demon, to boot!) offers her six wishes to get her ex back in exchange for her soul. It's deep as a puddle, but in the best possible way. It's adorable, cannot recommend it highly enough!
Comics
Peacemaker Tries Hard! - There's a dog in this! A tuxedo french bulldog called Bruce Wayne because he's a little fancy man! On the off chance you don't decide whether or not to read something based on whether or not there's a dog in it (the only correct method!) this is charming and fun. It's less canon compliant post S2 but still worth it, I'd say.
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth - Diana wakes up on a post apocalyptic Earth only to discover that the world ended following a war between humans and Themyscira. This was really good, and I was wondering why I hadn't heard of it until my buddy's wife insisted that he get rid of any trade paperbacks he also had digitally - it was more than 1000 trades. I have a had a comics windfall, my friends - until I saw it came out in March of 2020, when it's fair to say that I had other things on my mind.
Movies
Frankenstein - I'm really surprised this didn't get more of a cinematic release. Like, I feel like Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, put out the week before Halloween, would have been a hit, especially with how awesome it feels like it would have looked on a bigger screen. The costuming especially was gorgeous, I thought. It held my attention all the way through, which is not something that can be said of extruded Netflix product of late. And while it became obvious in the last third of the movie that del Toro was much more interested in Victor than the monster, I still think it is well worth a watch if you haven't yet.
Hedda - Speaking of gorgeous costumes, I really enjoyed Hedda, although if you've any issues around social cringe, especially in relation to alcohol, you should have a cushion ready to hide behind, or an excuse ready for why you have to leave the room. I am one of ten(s) of people who enjoyed The Marvels but I'm glad Nia DaCosta's career doesn't appear to be suffering from Disney having sent that one out to die.
Telly
Peacemaker S2 - First thing, the opening dance number is not as good as S1, which should have been my first clue. Like, it's good, but it felt like two seasons jammed awkwardly together, the madcap hijinks of Nazi world, which was fun and all, but not enough to fill a season which is why every episode was about half an hour long, and the character focused, sobriety metaphor first and last episodes. Also did he finale feel a lot like late in the day edits/reshoots to anyone else? Like, there was clearly meant to be a Rick Flag snr. twist that just didn't happen.
Currently really enjoying Plur1bus, and obviously shipping Carol with the avatar of the hivemind because I'm me, and kinda sorta enjoying The Mighty Nein even though Molly's accent feels like even more of a hate crime than it did in the campaign.
Things I Have Been Putting In my Eyeballs
Sep. 27th, 2025 05:44 pmI have had a circular journey with the movie The Mandalorian and Grogu. At first I thought 'That's not a real movie', then I thought 'Well, maybe the movie is real but that's obviously a joke name the internet has given it,' and then I wondered 'Did Disney forget to swap out the working title?' And now, having seen the trailer I have come all of the way back around to 'This movie isn't real.'
Speaking of movies that aren't real, The Thursday Murder Club is less an actual movie than it is an extremely pricey episode of Midsomer Murders
Telly is real, though.
I frickin' adored Alien: Earth even though, had you been in the room with me while I was watching it, all you would have heard was a near constant litany of 'OH, NO. EW, GROSS. AGHH! THAT'S SO UNPLEASANT. PUT THAT BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT OR SO HELP ME!
Some things I particularly enjoyed: Boy Kavalier being the sort of SBF/Altman/Musk amalgamation so icky that you want to join the Xenomorph war on he side of the Xenomorphs. Weyland Yutani's continued insistence on sending people so underpaid/underequipped/unqualified that they don't know about shatterproof glass to collect the universe's most dangerous biological specimens. The unsubtle, tonally jarring, but completely epic mic drops at the end of each episode. The adult actors playing children in grown up bodies by moving like they didn't know what a back spasm was. That they didn't try to hide what the Xenomorph looked like as though we didn't all know.
One thing that I did not like: The horrifying eyeball monster/evil sheep combo. Kill it with fire. And rocks. And rocks which are on fire.
'This is not a good television show,' I say to myself at three o'clock in the morning as I hit 'next episode' on The Hunting Wives. I guess I will once again reiterate that 'good' and 'great' are not the same thing.
My two favourite bits of this show were i) the flashback to how the main character met her husband and it's just that he happened to be the first man who ambled into her field of view when she was having a moment of gay panic, ii) when one of the secondary characters keeps saying to the woman she's in love with that they can't be together openly, and, like, obviously not, because she's a horrible murderer who is only pretending to take you back so she can find out if your sheriff husband (also gay) suspects her, but I do not think that is what you meant.
A lot of the Marvel telly stuff of late has had a whiff of 'What's the point?' about it, having obviously been put in motion before Marvel pivoted and now being sent out to die, which is a bummer in the case of the two most recent animated shows which were pretty solid.
Eyes of Wakanda had an awesome art style, expanded the world of Wakanda without getting tangled in the weeds of Boseman's passing, and gave us an Iron Fist that didn't suck.
I don't think anyone had particularly high expectations of a spin-off from a 2021 episode of a show that has since fizzled out, but Marvel Zombies went so much harder than it had to. It was neat to see Kamala, Shang-Chi, Kate and other characters that I don't think are coming back in live action in any meaningful way get room to play.
It did seem to be angling for a second season at the end there, but, like...come on, bro, be realistic.
Speaking of movies that aren't real, The Thursday Murder Club is less an actual movie than it is an extremely pricey episode of Midsomer Murders
Telly is real, though.
I frickin' adored Alien: Earth even though, had you been in the room with me while I was watching it, all you would have heard was a near constant litany of 'OH, NO. EW, GROSS. AGHH! THAT'S SO UNPLEASANT. PUT THAT BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT OR SO HELP ME!
Some things I particularly enjoyed: Boy Kavalier being the sort of SBF/Altman/Musk amalgamation so icky that you want to join the Xenomorph war on he side of the Xenomorphs. Weyland Yutani's continued insistence on sending people so underpaid/underequipped/unqualified that they don't know about shatterproof glass to collect the universe's most dangerous biological specimens. The unsubtle, tonally jarring, but completely epic mic drops at the end of each episode. The adult actors playing children in grown up bodies by moving like they didn't know what a back spasm was. That they didn't try to hide what the Xenomorph looked like as though we didn't all know.
One thing that I did not like: The horrifying eyeball monster/evil sheep combo. Kill it with fire. And rocks. And rocks which are on fire.
'This is not a good television show,' I say to myself at three o'clock in the morning as I hit 'next episode' on The Hunting Wives. I guess I will once again reiterate that 'good' and 'great' are not the same thing.
My two favourite bits of this show were i) the flashback to how the main character met her husband and it's just that he happened to be the first man who ambled into her field of view when she was having a moment of gay panic, ii) when one of the secondary characters keeps saying to the woman she's in love with that they can't be together openly, and, like, obviously not, because she's a horrible murderer who is only pretending to take you back so she can find out if your sheriff husband (also gay) suspects her, but I do not think that is what you meant.
A lot of the Marvel telly stuff of late has had a whiff of 'What's the point?' about it, having obviously been put in motion before Marvel pivoted and now being sent out to die, which is a bummer in the case of the two most recent animated shows which were pretty solid.
Eyes of Wakanda had an awesome art style, expanded the world of Wakanda without getting tangled in the weeds of Boseman's passing, and gave us an Iron Fist that didn't suck.
I don't think anyone had particularly high expectations of a spin-off from a 2021 episode of a show that has since fizzled out, but Marvel Zombies went so much harder than it had to. It was neat to see Kamala, Shang-Chi, Kate and other characters that I don't think are coming back in live action in any meaningful way get room to play.
It did seem to be angling for a second season at the end there, but, like...come on, bro, be realistic.
Films! Some Films!
Sep. 22nd, 2025 09:24 pmRenfield - Nicholas Hoult! Awkwafina! Shohreh Aghdashloo! Talk about a movie that was less than the sum of its parts!
A Working Man - I have had a soft spot for Statham ever since Spy. This was fine, but the peak dumb Statham action flick is still the The Beekeeper.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods - A kid says a magic world and turns into an adult man with superpowers was a cute premise for a movie; a grown man says a magic world and turns into a different, worse adult man less so.
Thunderbolts - Er...why did this look like it was filmed in a cupboard?
Becky/Wrath of Becky - Killin' nazis in the woods!
Sisu - Killin' nazis in the snow!
Red Sonja - Was this film good? Good grief, no. Was the film excellent? Hell yeah!
Heathers the Musical - Candy Store is a bop. Do the kids still say bop?
What should I watch next? Killin' nazis optional but obviously preferred.
A Working Man - I have had a soft spot for Statham ever since Spy. This was fine, but the peak dumb Statham action flick is still the The Beekeeper.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods - A kid says a magic world and turns into an adult man with superpowers was a cute premise for a movie; a grown man says a magic world and turns into a different, worse adult man less so.
Thunderbolts - Er...why did this look like it was filmed in a cupboard?
Becky/Wrath of Becky - Killin' nazis in the woods!
Sisu - Killin' nazis in the snow!
Red Sonja - Was this film good? Good grief, no. Was the film excellent? Hell yeah!
Heathers the Musical - Candy Store is a bop. Do the kids still say bop?
What should I watch next? Killin' nazis optional but obviously preferred.
Reading, or Lack Thereof
Sep. 16th, 2025 03:27 pmI talk a good game about giving up on books you're not enjoying, and I am pretty good at DNF-ing books at, like, 10-15%, but I find it very difficult to give upon a book after I've gotten much past that.
Which is probably why I have spent weeks now trying to convince myself that I really am going to go back to Awakened by A.E. Osworth (put down at 40% sometime in mid August). I so wanted to like it - the summary is a coven of trans witches fight an evil AI. Cool, eh? I never got to that bit, I bounced off it for, actually, the same reason I can't get on with the Gideon the Ninth books; the narrator has the same too online, wryly twee, queer elder millennial voice. And I know that the reason I find that voice oh so grating is that I talk like that. During one of the hotter days this summer I was in a pub beer garden with a mate and I described our environs as 'a bit fire hazard-y.'
Moving on, what should I read instead? Read anything good recently?
Comics wise I did read Absolute Wonder Woman: The Last Amazon which I loved almost as much as Absolute Superman. The AU is that Diana was raised in Hell by Circe the witch. So like, she's still Wonder Woman, still extending her hand in friendship, but she is riding a skeletal pegasus, and performing dark magic, and constantly covered in blood. She's got a magic prosthetic arm because she sacrificed her real arm as part of, like, a blood spell. It's badass...and Steve Trevor is still kind of a lame love interest.
I only got as far as the first issue of Absolute Batman, but I am generally a harder sell on Bruce in general. I do want to give some of the other absolute runs a shot before they get folded into the wider DC universe or some sort of giant, ridiculous crossover event and I completely lose interest.
And I did read the first issue of G. Willow Wilson's Black Cat, which seems like it's going to be a lot of fun, although I will be bummed if it turns out Felicia wasn't actually flirting with Night Nurse.
Speaking of comics, I think I got my friend Al in trouble with his wife. So Al has no fewer than one thousand (1000) trade paperbacks stacked up in his garage, and the reason that he has been giving for why he hasn't gotten rid of them yet is that I was going to come round to go through them and take anything I wanted. So the other week I'd been round watching a movie with the wife and she said "Hey, while you're here do you want to have a look at those comics in the garage?" and I said "Huh?" while clearly wearing the facial expression of someone who was just learning this information for the first time.
Oops.
So someday soon I have to clear a morning so I can go round and stand in Al's garage going through a literal ton of comics.
Which is probably why I have spent weeks now trying to convince myself that I really am going to go back to Awakened by A.E. Osworth (put down at 40% sometime in mid August). I so wanted to like it - the summary is a coven of trans witches fight an evil AI. Cool, eh? I never got to that bit, I bounced off it for, actually, the same reason I can't get on with the Gideon the Ninth books; the narrator has the same too online, wryly twee, queer elder millennial voice. And I know that the reason I find that voice oh so grating is that I talk like that. During one of the hotter days this summer I was in a pub beer garden with a mate and I described our environs as 'a bit fire hazard-y.'
Moving on, what should I read instead? Read anything good recently?
Comics wise I did read Absolute Wonder Woman: The Last Amazon which I loved almost as much as Absolute Superman. The AU is that Diana was raised in Hell by Circe the witch. So like, she's still Wonder Woman, still extending her hand in friendship, but she is riding a skeletal pegasus, and performing dark magic, and constantly covered in blood. She's got a magic prosthetic arm because she sacrificed her real arm as part of, like, a blood spell. It's badass...and Steve Trevor is still kind of a lame love interest.
I only got as far as the first issue of Absolute Batman, but I am generally a harder sell on Bruce in general. I do want to give some of the other absolute runs a shot before they get folded into the wider DC universe or some sort of giant, ridiculous crossover event and I completely lose interest.
And I did read the first issue of G. Willow Wilson's Black Cat, which seems like it's going to be a lot of fun, although I will be bummed if it turns out Felicia wasn't actually flirting with Night Nurse.
Speaking of comics, I think I got my friend Al in trouble with his wife. So Al has no fewer than one thousand (1000) trade paperbacks stacked up in his garage, and the reason that he has been giving for why he hasn't gotten rid of them yet is that I was going to come round to go through them and take anything I wanted. So the other week I'd been round watching a movie with the wife and she said "Hey, while you're here do you want to have a look at those comics in the garage?" and I said "Huh?" while clearly wearing the facial expression of someone who was just learning this information for the first time.
Oops.
So someday soon I have to clear a morning so I can go round and stand in Al's garage going through a literal ton of comics.
That Sure Was a Season of Star Trek
Sep. 14th, 2025 06:15 pmStrange New disappointments
Straight New Worlds
Strange New Worlds
I frickin' loved the first season of SNW. The second season included one of my all time favourite episodes of Star Trek (the Lower Decks crossover). I was so hyped for season three...and, like, it was bad? So bad that I was like...did I hallucinate this show ever being good?
Thus follows a brief list of my gripes about S3 of SNW:
1. It's not funny. I agree with the reviewer who said that this season desperately wants to be Lower Decks, except the writers don't have the comedy chops, so you end up with a season that is 50% "comedy" episodes, culminating in the episode Four and a Half Vulcans a thuddingly unfunny episode of television that was nonetheless teased at comic con last year, like they inexplicably thought that was them putting their best foot forward.
2. Speaking of Lower Decks, the nostalgia bait of LD worked because sometimes it was super weird, and sometimes it was a deep cut, but it always felt like it was written by people with a deep knowledge and love of Star Trek, while the callbacks in SNW all feel like they were written by people who vaguely remember having watched The Original Series as kids.
Like, at the end of the episode Terrarium, actually one of the better episodes of the season, the freakin' Metrons turn up to monologue, all like, "We have trapped a human and a Gorn together on a planet, and we will do it again!" And, like, we all remember the episode with Kirk and the Gorn. It's a very famous episode! They made fun of it in Galaxy Quest. And, like, anyone who doesn't know, doesn't know who goshdarn Metrons are either!
3. The overwhelming, bordering of offensive, heterosexuality of SNW is not new - I've said before that making a big ensemble show in the 2020s with not even a token queer character feels like a very deliberate choice has been made - but it did feel like it's stepped up a gear this season. There was a trailer for S3 that went like: "All New Worlds! All New Adventures! All New Relationships!"
And, like, Sorry? What? Pardon? Who is watching Star Trek for the romance?
This gripe has sub clauses, y'all
a) I did not especially care for the Spock/Chapel ship in the first two seasons, it felt like it took over the show slightly, and turned what was basically 'two co-workers have a weird vibe because one has a crush on the other and maybe they had an inadvisable snog at the work x-mas party' into an interminable story of star-crossed lovers. Then they dropped it like a hot potato, because it felt like the writers belatedly realised that the ship as written didn't jibe with turning SNW into the Original Series.
b) I didn't actually hate Spock/La'an; it was low key, didn't overwhelm the show the way it felt like Spock/Chapel had, made sense for both characters. It was just that it fit into a pattern this season of the writers having no interest in their female characters beyond deciding which dude's tongues they were going to shove into their mouthes.
c) I like Patton Oswald, and I'm usually happy to see him pop up, and I might have disliked this less if I felt like I had learned anything about Una this season other than she's definitely straight y'all.
d)Beto Ortegas--
Hang on, this sub clause has addendums
i. Erica Ortegas has a brother, doubling her number of known character traits to 1) flies ship, and 2) has brother.
ii. That brother is the pivotal character in an episode called What is Starfleet? which concludes that Starfleet is a bunch of people who almost do a warcrime and then decide not to at the last minute.
iii. Said brother has a stilted, awkward, and unconvincing romance with Uhura. I mean, it wasn't like they were doing anything else with the iconic character of Nyota Uhura, right?
iv. There is an episode where Erica is lost on a hostile planet and Uhura is orders of magnitude more upset than the rest of the crew which would have made a bajillion times more sense if Erica and Uhura had been the ones to have the flirtation/relationship.
I know writers who use compulsory heterosexuality, they are all cowards.
4. Captain Pike has a love interest named Captain Batel. She nearly died at the end of S2, he was very sad about that; at the end of S3 she turns into a statue, and Pike is very sad about that too. I have no idea what Marie Batel thinks about this Nu Who ass ending because the show cares about her character so little that it can't even be bothered to decide what her job is, over the course of her guest appearances she is 1) a starship captain, 2) a courtroom lawyer, 3) a starship captain again, 4) on the supreme court, I guess.
Anyway, she's a statue now.
Strange New Worlds
I frickin' loved the first season of SNW. The second season included one of my all time favourite episodes of Star Trek (the Lower Decks crossover). I was so hyped for season three...and, like, it was bad? So bad that I was like...did I hallucinate this show ever being good?
Thus follows a brief list of my gripes about S3 of SNW:
1. It's not funny. I agree with the reviewer who said that this season desperately wants to be Lower Decks, except the writers don't have the comedy chops, so you end up with a season that is 50% "comedy" episodes, culminating in the episode Four and a Half Vulcans a thuddingly unfunny episode of television that was nonetheless teased at comic con last year, like they inexplicably thought that was them putting their best foot forward.
2. Speaking of Lower Decks, the nostalgia bait of LD worked because sometimes it was super weird, and sometimes it was a deep cut, but it always felt like it was written by people with a deep knowledge and love of Star Trek, while the callbacks in SNW all feel like they were written by people who vaguely remember having watched The Original Series as kids.
Like, at the end of the episode Terrarium, actually one of the better episodes of the season, the freakin' Metrons turn up to monologue, all like, "We have trapped a human and a Gorn together on a planet, and we will do it again!" And, like, we all remember the episode with Kirk and the Gorn. It's a very famous episode! They made fun of it in Galaxy Quest. And, like, anyone who doesn't know, doesn't know who goshdarn Metrons are either!
3. The overwhelming, bordering of offensive, heterosexuality of SNW is not new - I've said before that making a big ensemble show in the 2020s with not even a token queer character feels like a very deliberate choice has been made - but it did feel like it's stepped up a gear this season. There was a trailer for S3 that went like: "All New Worlds! All New Adventures! All New Relationships!"
And, like, Sorry? What? Pardon? Who is watching Star Trek for the romance?
This gripe has sub clauses, y'all
a) I did not especially care for the Spock/Chapel ship in the first two seasons, it felt like it took over the show slightly, and turned what was basically 'two co-workers have a weird vibe because one has a crush on the other and maybe they had an inadvisable snog at the work x-mas party' into an interminable story of star-crossed lovers. Then they dropped it like a hot potato, because it felt like the writers belatedly realised that the ship as written didn't jibe with turning SNW into the Original Series.
b) I didn't actually hate Spock/La'an; it was low key, didn't overwhelm the show the way it felt like Spock/Chapel had, made sense for both characters. It was just that it fit into a pattern this season of the writers having no interest in their female characters beyond deciding which dude's tongues they were going to shove into their mouthes.
c) I like Patton Oswald, and I'm usually happy to see him pop up, and I might have disliked this less if I felt like I had learned anything about Una this season other than she's definitely straight y'all.
d)Beto Ortegas--
Hang on, this sub clause has addendums
i. Erica Ortegas has a brother, doubling her number of known character traits to 1) flies ship, and 2) has brother.
ii. That brother is the pivotal character in an episode called What is Starfleet? which concludes that Starfleet is a bunch of people who almost do a warcrime and then decide not to at the last minute.
iii. Said brother has a stilted, awkward, and unconvincing romance with Uhura. I mean, it wasn't like they were doing anything else with the iconic character of Nyota Uhura, right?
iv. There is an episode where Erica is lost on a hostile planet and Uhura is orders of magnitude more upset than the rest of the crew which would have made a bajillion times more sense if Erica and Uhura had been the ones to have the flirtation/relationship.
I know writers who use compulsory heterosexuality, they are all cowards.
4. Captain Pike has a love interest named Captain Batel. She nearly died at the end of S2, he was very sad about that; at the end of S3 she turns into a statue, and Pike is very sad about that too. I have no idea what Marie Batel thinks about this Nu Who ass ending because the show cares about her character so little that it can't even be bothered to decide what her job is, over the course of her guest appearances she is 1) a starship captain, 2) a courtroom lawyer, 3) a starship captain again, 4) on the supreme court, I guess.
Anyway, she's a statue now.
MCU meme thing-y
Aug. 11th, 2025 09:30 pmHey! A wild meme that I can distract myself with while I pretend that I'm not worried as I wait for the vet to call me to pick Freya up. She's in getting two teeth pulled because her life long endeavour of 'everything is food if you try hard and believe in yourself' has finally caught up with her. It's not major surgery, but is under anaesthetic, and she's an older pup now...
Anyway.
( What parts of the MCU have I watched )
The funny thing is, everyone I've seen post this has had roughly the same arc of having been super into the early MCU and then gradually falling off. Whereas my arc is more like aggressive disinterest in the early movies shading into outright dislike of the OG Avengers, a brief period of, like, Ragnarok, Black Panther, Captain Marvel that I actually really dug, that eventually turned into 'It's free on Disney+' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway.
( What parts of the MCU have I watched )
The funny thing is, everyone I've seen post this has had roughly the same arc of having been super into the early MCU and then gradually falling off. Whereas my arc is more like aggressive disinterest in the early movies shading into outright dislike of the OG Avengers, a brief period of, like, Ragnarok, Black Panther, Captain Marvel that I actually really dug, that eventually turned into 'It's free on Disney+' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Things I Have Been Putting In My Eyeballs
Jul. 20th, 2025 12:06 pmComics
Absolute Superman: Last Dust of Krypton - Hi, I have a new favourite comic series. So, this is an alternate origin where an incredibly class stratified Krypton was destroyed when Kal-El was a teenager, and the Els are at the bottom of the heap. The S is the symbol of the working class, and when Kal gets to earth he starts finding mines amd farms and sweatshops that use slave labour or have abusive labour practices and protecting the workers. I didn't know how much I needed working classs hero Superman! Best enjoyed while blasting Springsteen!
Poison Ivy: Human Botany - I am still very much enjoying my other favourite comic series, where lesbianism continues to be the cause of, and the solution to, all of Ivy's problems.
Books
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling - We are in a low fantasy medieval castle under siege and on the verge of being starved out when the literal Gods of this world turn up to intercede. The gods are fairies, and maybe also bees? There is unrelatedly a monster living in a crack in the walls. There is a noble lady knight who cannot pass a wisdom check to save her life trying to protect people. There is a dispossessed noblewoman living in the walls waiting for a chance to get revenge on the knight. There is a madwoman in a tower who may be their only hope. All three of these women kind of want to fuck in various combinations.
It has a lot more cannibalism and mutilation than I usually like in my books.
It is the blood soaked fever dream of a mind clearly going through some stuff. I also kind of think it is hella good?
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab - The tagline for this book was The toxic lesbian vampires are coming and, like, yes, that is an accurate description of the book, but I also think it writes a check that the book can't quite cash, because even though it is shelved as adult it is very YA coded, like, there's a lot of sex and violence happening just off the page and what there is is very PG-13.
Like, it's good. It's very readable, the villain is delightfully awful, it does a good job of eliding how awful the supposedly sympathetic antihero is until the end, one of the characters is Scottish and I will always bump you up a letter grade for that. So, I did enjoy it, it was just a little more YA feeling than I was maybe hoping for.
Telly
Ironheart - I was not expecting to like this, it was filmed years ago before Disney pivoted away from the tv shows, and was clearly pushed out to die. I hadn't loved the character of Riri in Wakanda Forever, a movie I'd thought was already stuffed to bursting before she arrived. But on her own show, with her own supporting cast, she shone, they all did. It had that same thing that I'd really enjoyed with Ms. Marvel too, where the comic book shenanigans were rooted in a sense of a real place and and a real community.
But.
It was six episodes and it really should have been nine. It felt like they made the first two acts of a three act structure and then just...stopped.
Murderbot - I read the Murderbot novellas when they first came out, and kind of didn't see what all the fuss was about. Like, I enjoyed them as bits of fluff, and I could see they were objectively very good, but they just kind of skated off my brain without really going in. So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this show, which was a whole hell of a lot. I thought it married the aesthetics of streaming era science fiction with the format of a zany workplace comedy, except that the workplace in question is that you are a horrifying murderbot.
I also watched the first two episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the first of which was a perfectly serviceable conclusion to a cliffhanger, even if the Gorn will always be a bit 'we have xenomorphs at home', and the second of which made me say OH FUCK OFF out loud on three separate occasions.
Movies
Superman - I took the day off work the Friday Superman came out, so there I am, at the cinema at half past nine in the morning, in a Superman t-shirt, and the chick at the concession stand, in a fine display of deadpan comedy, goes 'What are you here to see?'
I told my buddy Cameron that I was using up some annual leave to see the movie and he was like, 'I thought this whole you being hyped about Superman thing was you doing a bit?' and I was like, 'NO, IT IS VERY EARNEST.' And then he was like, 'Was it always for real, or did it start as a bit and you talked yourself into it?' and I was like, 'I DON'T KNOW.'
After all that I am delighted to report that I thought the movie was wonderful. Like, it's not perfect, Hawk Girl doesn't get enough to do, and Eve Teschmacher is too good for Jimmy Olsen. But it's got this core of kindness, of earnestness, of all is not lost silliness that was exactly what I needed right now.
The Old Guard 2 - Oh no.
Not since Joker: Folie à Deux has a movie so fundamentally misunderstood what people liked about the first one - actually that's not true, Joker 2 got what people liked, it just made the very deliberate decision to call them dickheads. Old Guard 2 was worse, a film made by committee for an audience of no one.
One of my favourite podcasts has a phrase 'The Game is On' to describe movies that end with sequel bait for a next instalment that is never, ever, in a billion years going to happen, and, yup.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim - I missed this when it was in the cinema, and I kind of understand why. Like, how in the hell were they going to advertise this: it's a Lord of the Rings prequel, but it's also an anime, and it's kind of a girl power story, except it can't be really because there canonically wasn't a ruling queen of Rohan, and also we can't say 'girl power' because have you seen the state of the discourse!?
I really liked it, both because I found it delightful by its own merits, but also because I like a big swing, and if the future of the franchise is weird experiments like this or that Golum movie that I still think is a trick the internet is playing on me and not a real movie, I will take this every time!
Predator: Killer of Killers - Is it kind of weird that of all the big franchises Disney owns Predator is the one that seems to be on track and doing cool and interesting things? Sure, a bit. But also, MORE OF THIS KIND OF THINGS.
Absolute Superman: Last Dust of Krypton - Hi, I have a new favourite comic series. So, this is an alternate origin where an incredibly class stratified Krypton was destroyed when Kal-El was a teenager, and the Els are at the bottom of the heap. The S is the symbol of the working class, and when Kal gets to earth he starts finding mines amd farms and sweatshops that use slave labour or have abusive labour practices and protecting the workers. I didn't know how much I needed working classs hero Superman! Best enjoyed while blasting Springsteen!
Poison Ivy: Human Botany - I am still very much enjoying my other favourite comic series, where lesbianism continues to be the cause of, and the solution to, all of Ivy's problems.
Books
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling - We are in a low fantasy medieval castle under siege and on the verge of being starved out when the literal Gods of this world turn up to intercede. The gods are fairies, and maybe also bees? There is unrelatedly a monster living in a crack in the walls. There is a noble lady knight who cannot pass a wisdom check to save her life trying to protect people. There is a dispossessed noblewoman living in the walls waiting for a chance to get revenge on the knight. There is a madwoman in a tower who may be their only hope. All three of these women kind of want to fuck in various combinations.
It has a lot more cannibalism and mutilation than I usually like in my books.
It is the blood soaked fever dream of a mind clearly going through some stuff. I also kind of think it is hella good?
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab - The tagline for this book was The toxic lesbian vampires are coming and, like, yes, that is an accurate description of the book, but I also think it writes a check that the book can't quite cash, because even though it is shelved as adult it is very YA coded, like, there's a lot of sex and violence happening just off the page and what there is is very PG-13.
Like, it's good. It's very readable, the villain is delightfully awful, it does a good job of eliding how awful the supposedly sympathetic antihero is until the end, one of the characters is Scottish and I will always bump you up a letter grade for that. So, I did enjoy it, it was just a little more YA feeling than I was maybe hoping for.
Telly
Ironheart - I was not expecting to like this, it was filmed years ago before Disney pivoted away from the tv shows, and was clearly pushed out to die. I hadn't loved the character of Riri in Wakanda Forever, a movie I'd thought was already stuffed to bursting before she arrived. But on her own show, with her own supporting cast, she shone, they all did. It had that same thing that I'd really enjoyed with Ms. Marvel too, where the comic book shenanigans were rooted in a sense of a real place and and a real community.
But.
It was six episodes and it really should have been nine. It felt like they made the first two acts of a three act structure and then just...stopped.
Murderbot - I read the Murderbot novellas when they first came out, and kind of didn't see what all the fuss was about. Like, I enjoyed them as bits of fluff, and I could see they were objectively very good, but they just kind of skated off my brain without really going in. So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this show, which was a whole hell of a lot. I thought it married the aesthetics of streaming era science fiction with the format of a zany workplace comedy, except that the workplace in question is that you are a horrifying murderbot.
I also watched the first two episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the first of which was a perfectly serviceable conclusion to a cliffhanger, even if the Gorn will always be a bit 'we have xenomorphs at home', and the second of which made me say OH FUCK OFF out loud on three separate occasions.
Movies
Superman - I took the day off work the Friday Superman came out, so there I am, at the cinema at half past nine in the morning, in a Superman t-shirt, and the chick at the concession stand, in a fine display of deadpan comedy, goes 'What are you here to see?'
I told my buddy Cameron that I was using up some annual leave to see the movie and he was like, 'I thought this whole you being hyped about Superman thing was you doing a bit?' and I was like, 'NO, IT IS VERY EARNEST.' And then he was like, 'Was it always for real, or did it start as a bit and you talked yourself into it?' and I was like, 'I DON'T KNOW.'
After all that I am delighted to report that I thought the movie was wonderful. Like, it's not perfect, Hawk Girl doesn't get enough to do, and Eve Teschmacher is too good for Jimmy Olsen. But it's got this core of kindness, of earnestness, of all is not lost silliness that was exactly what I needed right now.
The Old Guard 2 - Oh no.
Not since Joker: Folie à Deux has a movie so fundamentally misunderstood what people liked about the first one - actually that's not true, Joker 2 got what people liked, it just made the very deliberate decision to call them dickheads. Old Guard 2 was worse, a film made by committee for an audience of no one.
One of my favourite podcasts has a phrase 'The Game is On' to describe movies that end with sequel bait for a next instalment that is never, ever, in a billion years going to happen, and, yup.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim - I missed this when it was in the cinema, and I kind of understand why. Like, how in the hell were they going to advertise this: it's a Lord of the Rings prequel, but it's also an anime, and it's kind of a girl power story, except it can't be really because there canonically wasn't a ruling queen of Rohan, and also we can't say 'girl power' because have you seen the state of the discourse!?
I really liked it, both because I found it delightful by its own merits, but also because I like a big swing, and if the future of the franchise is weird experiments like this or that Golum movie that I still think is a trick the internet is playing on me and not a real movie, I will take this every time!
Predator: Killer of Killers - Is it kind of weird that of all the big franchises Disney owns Predator is the one that seems to be on track and doing cool and interesting things? Sure, a bit. But also, MORE OF THIS KIND OF THINGS.
More Books!
Jun. 21st, 2025 02:20 pmHaving spent far too long slogging through Private Rites by Julia Armfield grouchily going 'this should have been a novella' I decided to start off June with a couple of actual novellas.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite - Olivia Waite is someone I had previously encountered through her series of f/f historical romances, so when I heard that her next book was going to be a cozy mystery set in space I was intrigued. A Miss Marple type detective is taking a well earned sabbatical in the ship's memory core before being decanted into a new body, when she wakes in a young body that isn't hers. It's cute, but it is very...slight. But I do increasingly think that it's an admirable skill to know and accept when a one hundred page idea is a one hundred page idea and not dragging it out to novel length.
Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard - This was a little bit longer at one sixty odd pages, and there was a lot going on - navigators are people who can navigate unreality with the help of some sort of magical/sci-fi power called shadows, a monster escapes from unreality, there's a murder mystery, four expandable junior navigators all with their own traumas and neurodivergences have to learn to work together, there's an odd couple romance - and it's very interesting and all, but none of it gets enough room to breathe, so it doesn't really land.
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older - I absolutely adore this series about awkward lesbians solving fairly low stakes myteries in a future where humanity has fled a dying earth to a system of interlinked platforms around the rings of Jupiter. They actually remind me a little bit of Murderbot, not so much content wise, but, like, vibes, and the way they go down so easy. If you haven't read them, there are three of them now, and you're in for a treat!
Cover Story by Celia Laskey - You know that feeling where you're reading something at a clip and having a great time, and then you get to the end and are like, I don't actually think that was that good? Yeah, it was one of those. So that the set-up is that it's 2005, the beginning of the smartphone and blogging era, and a neurotic publicist falls in love with the up and coming actress she's charged with keeping in the closet. It was pacey and frothy and I read it over a couple of days, and then I got to the end and the one (1) thing about it that had stuck with me was there's this line in one of the sex scenes "her vagina gulped for air", and, I'm sorry, but whoever let that line stay in the final draft hates you and wants your endeavours to fail.
The Heiress by Molly Greeley - Modern takes on Austen can be of, uh, variable quality, but this one, where Anne de Bourgh fights her way out of her laudanum induced haze to take control of Roslings, her destiny, her queerness, her desire not to be a mother is probably the best one I have ever read. Highly recommended!
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite - Olivia Waite is someone I had previously encountered through her series of f/f historical romances, so when I heard that her next book was going to be a cozy mystery set in space I was intrigued. A Miss Marple type detective is taking a well earned sabbatical in the ship's memory core before being decanted into a new body, when she wakes in a young body that isn't hers. It's cute, but it is very...slight. But I do increasingly think that it's an admirable skill to know and accept when a one hundred page idea is a one hundred page idea and not dragging it out to novel length.
Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard - This was a little bit longer at one sixty odd pages, and there was a lot going on - navigators are people who can navigate unreality with the help of some sort of magical/sci-fi power called shadows, a monster escapes from unreality, there's a murder mystery, four expandable junior navigators all with their own traumas and neurodivergences have to learn to work together, there's an odd couple romance - and it's very interesting and all, but none of it gets enough room to breathe, so it doesn't really land.
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older - I absolutely adore this series about awkward lesbians solving fairly low stakes myteries in a future where humanity has fled a dying earth to a system of interlinked platforms around the rings of Jupiter. They actually remind me a little bit of Murderbot, not so much content wise, but, like, vibes, and the way they go down so easy. If you haven't read them, there are three of them now, and you're in for a treat!
Cover Story by Celia Laskey - You know that feeling where you're reading something at a clip and having a great time, and then you get to the end and are like, I don't actually think that was that good? Yeah, it was one of those. So that the set-up is that it's 2005, the beginning of the smartphone and blogging era, and a neurotic publicist falls in love with the up and coming actress she's charged with keeping in the closet. It was pacey and frothy and I read it over a couple of days, and then I got to the end and the one (1) thing about it that had stuck with me was there's this line in one of the sex scenes "her vagina gulped for air", and, I'm sorry, but whoever let that line stay in the final draft hates you and wants your endeavours to fail.
The Heiress by Molly Greeley - Modern takes on Austen can be of, uh, variable quality, but this one, where Anne de Bourgh fights her way out of her laudanum induced haze to take control of Roslings, her destiny, her queerness, her desire not to be a mother is probably the best one I have ever read. Highly recommended!
Just had a lovely walk with Freya around the park. Met a dog called Elmo, a dog called Fenrir, and a dog called Gus, which cover all three of the platonic ideals of dog naming, 1) this is a muppet, 2) this is a wolf, and 3) this is an elderly human.
Freya and I also took a little trip last weekend up to Inverness to hang out with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tamoline and her wife who were on holiday up there, which was a lot of fun, not least because Freya accidentally tobogganed down their stairs, got herself trapped in their kitchen, and then decided that she wanted to live with them. If you are ever meeting online friends for the first time and are worried that it might be a little awkward I can highly recommend taking a stupid wolf with you as a conversation starter.
I happened to mention to my mum later that I'd gone up north to spend the day with some online friends who were up from England, and after a long pause she said '...I thought your internet friends lived in Germany?' To which I indignantly pointed out that I'm personable, people like me, I have more than one friend; this was met by a more sceptical look than you want from your mother.
We watched the series finale of Doctor Who, to which my reaction was, and still remains, holy, hail Mary pass, Batman! I am generally of the school of thought that spreadsheet dorks are a curse on most forms of entertainment, but I also kind of want to go to the pub with a Disney accountant just so that after, like, three drinks I can go 'So, Doctor Who, how's that math mathing?'
I also have gripes about how heteronormative the finale was, but that's increasingly the new normal, isn't it? I love living through a time of enormous backlash to any and all social progress orchestrated by history's greatest fuckwits.
In gayer news, here are some books that I have been reading:
The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Linz McLeod - Publishing a series of lesbian romances about Jane Austen characters is God's work, so I don't want to criticise it too harshly, not least because as a f/f regency romance it is perfectly delightful, but as a piece of Austen fanfiction it was, eh, Charlotte Lucas felt really true to character, but Mary Bennet could have been anybody, she felt half author's OC, half thinly veiled Lizzie.
That said, I will be picking up next year's The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley as soon as it comes out because God's work.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh - I was so excited for this because Tesh's previous facist punching novel Some Desperate Glory had easily been my favourite of that year, so I was kind of bummed that I didn't like this one as much. Maybe it was the genre change, instead of sci-fi it was magical realism set at a contemporary magic school; maybe it was my class chippiness, I'm not entirely sure that private school pupils don't deserve to be eaten by demons; maybe it was that it was heavily talked up as having a central f/f relationship, which honestly felt kind of tacked on, while much more time was spent on the het relationship with a dude that the reader realises is the villain, like, a hundred pages before the protagonist.
Like, it's fine, it's good even, my expectations were just a bit out of control. Also, go read Some Desperate Glory.
The Vengeance by Emma Newman - Pirates, and werewolves, and vampires, and lesbians, oh my! Our protagonist has spent her life at sea during the golden age of piracy when she discovers her "mother" is no such thing, and embarks on a fish out of water road trip through pre-revolution France, running from werewolves, kissing girls, and fighting vampires.
Is it a lot? Yes. Is it totally awesome? Also, yes!
Freya and I also took a little trip last weekend up to Inverness to hang out with
tamoline and her wife who were on holiday up there, which was a lot of fun, not least because Freya accidentally tobogganed down their stairs, got herself trapped in their kitchen, and then decided that she wanted to live with them. If you are ever meeting online friends for the first time and are worried that it might be a little awkward I can highly recommend taking a stupid wolf with you as a conversation starter. I happened to mention to my mum later that I'd gone up north to spend the day with some online friends who were up from England, and after a long pause she said '...I thought your internet friends lived in Germany?' To which I indignantly pointed out that I'm personable, people like me, I have more than one friend; this was met by a more sceptical look than you want from your mother.
We watched the series finale of Doctor Who, to which my reaction was, and still remains, holy, hail Mary pass, Batman! I am generally of the school of thought that spreadsheet dorks are a curse on most forms of entertainment, but I also kind of want to go to the pub with a Disney accountant just so that after, like, three drinks I can go 'So, Doctor Who, how's that math mathing?'
I also have gripes about how heteronormative the finale was, but that's increasingly the new normal, isn't it? I love living through a time of enormous backlash to any and all social progress orchestrated by history's greatest fuckwits.
In gayer news, here are some books that I have been reading:
The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Linz McLeod - Publishing a series of lesbian romances about Jane Austen characters is God's work, so I don't want to criticise it too harshly, not least because as a f/f regency romance it is perfectly delightful, but as a piece of Austen fanfiction it was, eh, Charlotte Lucas felt really true to character, but Mary Bennet could have been anybody, she felt half author's OC, half thinly veiled Lizzie.
That said, I will be picking up next year's The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley as soon as it comes out because God's work.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh - I was so excited for this because Tesh's previous facist punching novel Some Desperate Glory had easily been my favourite of that year, so I was kind of bummed that I didn't like this one as much. Maybe it was the genre change, instead of sci-fi it was magical realism set at a contemporary magic school; maybe it was my class chippiness, I'm not entirely sure that private school pupils don't deserve to be eaten by demons; maybe it was that it was heavily talked up as having a central f/f relationship, which honestly felt kind of tacked on, while much more time was spent on the het relationship with a dude that the reader realises is the villain, like, a hundred pages before the protagonist.
Like, it's fine, it's good even, my expectations were just a bit out of control. Also, go read Some Desperate Glory.
The Vengeance by Emma Newman - Pirates, and werewolves, and vampires, and lesbians, oh my! Our protagonist has spent her life at sea during the golden age of piracy when she discovers her "mother" is no such thing, and embarks on a fish out of water road trip through pre-revolution France, running from werewolves, kissing girls, and fighting vampires.
Is it a lot? Yes. Is it totally awesome? Also, yes!
Look For The Light
May. 30th, 2025 05:52 pmI'm trying to post here more. Sorry about that.
So I finished the second season of The Last of Us, a season of television that was...fine. There wasn't a single outright bad episode; there also wasn't an out and out banger like the Bill and Frank episode from S1, where it felt like they'd remembered that this was a television show and not a video game and took advantage of that. If anything, I thought it hewed too close to the game. And I say this as someone who liked the game - and by 'liked' I mean I played it to credits, broadly enjoyed the experience, and didn't go immediately insane and spend the next five years screaming into a front facing iPhone camera like a total weirdo.
And there were a few things that I thought the show did better than the game. The first was the attack on Jackson, which I though was pretty epic set piece. The second was Eugene's fate, in the game he's just an old guy who likes weed and has died of a stroke, here he serves as a neat bit of unflattering characterisation for both how cold Joel can be and how selfish Ellie can be, and marks the real beginning of their relationship breakdown. The third was Jesse, who is the very definition of an npc in the game, he has no strong feelings about his girlfriend dumping him for Ellie, about becoming a father, or being trapped in a war zone right up until he gets shot in the face, something he would presumably also be nonplussed about. I appreciated that the show let him be furious at Ellie the entire time he was in Seattle, and I thought it was kind of a cop out to have them make up immediately before the aforementioned face shooting.
But the main thing I thought the show did better than the game was the Ellie/Dina relationship. I really wanted to like it, too - it was a big triple A game with central f/f relationship - but the pregnancy plot twist was one of the spoilers that got leaked, and I was immediately so cross that I forgot to care that Joel died. I hate the 'unknowingly pregnant when they get together' storyline that was for a while endemic in f/f stories so much; I think I would hate it a lot less if even 5% of the time it ended in 'Look, I like you, but this relationship is a minute and a half old, and I don't want to be a parent' but, nope, it was always insta family.
I feel like I should clarify, because when I was talking about Andor I was kvetching about the Bix pregnancy storyline too, and, like, I like kids, I enjoy spending time around them - even right now, when my friend's kids are exclusively communicating in lines from the Minecraft movie - but, by God, I am a hard sell for stories about pregnancy.
Anyway, I liked the Ellie/Dina relationship a lot more on the show. The actress who played Dina was probably the MVP of the season, the actors had great chemistry, and I really liked the change where it was Dina who was with Joel when he ran into Abby's crew, it gave her a reason to go with Ellie to Seattle other than just because she's the love interest. Changing the speed at which Ellie and Dina's relationship developed so that they didn't properly get together until after they both knew Dina was pregnant changed that story from one I hated to one I merely disliked. I actually kinda liked Ellie's 'I'm gonna be a dad' line, both because I thought it was a cool line, and for Bella Ramsey's delivery, but it didn't solve the underlying problem for me, that show!Ellie, even more than Ellie from the games, does not seem like someone who wants to be a parent at nineteen or would be in any way good at it.
I badly wanted to be proved wrong, but I still think Kaitlyn Deaver has been horribly miscast. And, like, I don't want to slight her, she's been excellent in pretty much everything else i've seen her in, but her casting as Abby only makes sense to me if I assume she was slotted in as Abby after ageing out of playing Ellie (presumably without auditioning anyone else for Abby.)
The pacing was also weird as balls. Seven is an odd number of episodes, and if you're determined to keep the main character switch, why not just do one season of 12/14 episodes? You could even have a hiatus over the summer if you wanted to differentiate them.
The switch to Abby's perspective on the same three days, something that barely worked in the game, if that, given how divisive it was, is not something that is going to work when the show comes back in 18-24 months. And it feels like at least someone involved knew that, which is why the big emotional beats of the back half of the game (why Abby killed Joel/that Joel and Ellie were trying to patch things up) got moved up, because who's going to remember and/or care in two years?
What else? Let's see.
The converse of it all. I understand that Ellie, not unlike myself, is trapped in the terrible fashion choices of 2003, but trainers with no grip, no ankle support, and which rot if you get them wet are a terrible choice of footwear if your day job is fighting zombies in the snow.
Also, the amount of abuse that got thrown Ramsey's way, and HBO's lack of any kind of a response does not bode well for what, if any, safeguarding measures are being taken to protect the kids in the misbegotten HP reboot. God, that show is so fucked...
So I finished the second season of The Last of Us, a season of television that was...fine. There wasn't a single outright bad episode; there also wasn't an out and out banger like the Bill and Frank episode from S1, where it felt like they'd remembered that this was a television show and not a video game and took advantage of that. If anything, I thought it hewed too close to the game. And I say this as someone who liked the game - and by 'liked' I mean I played it to credits, broadly enjoyed the experience, and didn't go immediately insane and spend the next five years screaming into a front facing iPhone camera like a total weirdo.
And there were a few things that I thought the show did better than the game. The first was the attack on Jackson, which I though was pretty epic set piece. The second was Eugene's fate, in the game he's just an old guy who likes weed and has died of a stroke, here he serves as a neat bit of unflattering characterisation for both how cold Joel can be and how selfish Ellie can be, and marks the real beginning of their relationship breakdown. The third was Jesse, who is the very definition of an npc in the game, he has no strong feelings about his girlfriend dumping him for Ellie, about becoming a father, or being trapped in a war zone right up until he gets shot in the face, something he would presumably also be nonplussed about. I appreciated that the show let him be furious at Ellie the entire time he was in Seattle, and I thought it was kind of a cop out to have them make up immediately before the aforementioned face shooting.
But the main thing I thought the show did better than the game was the Ellie/Dina relationship. I really wanted to like it, too - it was a big triple A game with central f/f relationship - but the pregnancy plot twist was one of the spoilers that got leaked, and I was immediately so cross that I forgot to care that Joel died. I hate the 'unknowingly pregnant when they get together' storyline that was for a while endemic in f/f stories so much; I think I would hate it a lot less if even 5% of the time it ended in 'Look, I like you, but this relationship is a minute and a half old, and I don't want to be a parent' but, nope, it was always insta family.
I feel like I should clarify, because when I was talking about Andor I was kvetching about the Bix pregnancy storyline too, and, like, I like kids, I enjoy spending time around them - even right now, when my friend's kids are exclusively communicating in lines from the Minecraft movie - but, by God, I am a hard sell for stories about pregnancy.
Anyway, I liked the Ellie/Dina relationship a lot more on the show. The actress who played Dina was probably the MVP of the season, the actors had great chemistry, and I really liked the change where it was Dina who was with Joel when he ran into Abby's crew, it gave her a reason to go with Ellie to Seattle other than just because she's the love interest. Changing the speed at which Ellie and Dina's relationship developed so that they didn't properly get together until after they both knew Dina was pregnant changed that story from one I hated to one I merely disliked. I actually kinda liked Ellie's 'I'm gonna be a dad' line, both because I thought it was a cool line, and for Bella Ramsey's delivery, but it didn't solve the underlying problem for me, that show!Ellie, even more than Ellie from the games, does not seem like someone who wants to be a parent at nineteen or would be in any way good at it.
I badly wanted to be proved wrong, but I still think Kaitlyn Deaver has been horribly miscast. And, like, I don't want to slight her, she's been excellent in pretty much everything else i've seen her in, but her casting as Abby only makes sense to me if I assume she was slotted in as Abby after ageing out of playing Ellie (presumably without auditioning anyone else for Abby.)
The pacing was also weird as balls. Seven is an odd number of episodes, and if you're determined to keep the main character switch, why not just do one season of 12/14 episodes? You could even have a hiatus over the summer if you wanted to differentiate them.
The switch to Abby's perspective on the same three days, something that barely worked in the game, if that, given how divisive it was, is not something that is going to work when the show comes back in 18-24 months. And it feels like at least someone involved knew that, which is why the big emotional beats of the back half of the game (why Abby killed Joel/that Joel and Ellie were trying to patch things up) got moved up, because who's going to remember and/or care in two years?
What else? Let's see.
The converse of it all. I understand that Ellie, not unlike myself, is trapped in the terrible fashion choices of 2003, but trainers with no grip, no ankle support, and which rot if you get them wet are a terrible choice of footwear if your day job is fighting zombies in the snow.
Also, the amount of abuse that got thrown Ramsey's way, and HBO's lack of any kind of a response does not bode well for what, if any, safeguarding measures are being taken to protect the kids in the misbegotten HP reboot. God, that show is so fucked...
I've been watching Andor every week with friends, and honestly I've really liked the three episodes a week release schedule, it's made every week feel like an event, and the show has been mostly immaculate.
Mostly immaculate.
We got to the finale and I was asked what I thought...and there was a long pause...followed by a second long pause....and then, 'I do not think Bix should have been in season two.'
I hated, hated, that the final shot of the show was Bix With Cassian's secret baby. I thought that it horribly undercut his final hero walk through Yavin past the surviving members of Luthen's resistance accompanied by swelling heroic music. I've heard people suggest that it meant that Cassian's sacrifice wasn't in vain, and, like, it already wasn't. He succeeded. He got the plans out. He's the reason that Luke could take out the Death Star, that the Empire was defeated, that Anakin turned away from the dark side.
I've always hated the idea that having a biological child is the only thing that makes your life meaningful or gives you a legacy. It's why I hate the third season of Star Trek: Picard, a competently made season of television that I have borderline violent feelings towards.
I've been thinking a lot about Andor in relation to Arcane, two shows that were originally planned to go five seasons, had excellent, albeit very slowly paced first seasons, then were reworked to be over in two. Andor is admittedly the more sympathetic example, where the creative team were burned out and didn't feel like they could do five, whereas it seems like Arcane was cut down because it wasn't driving enough new players to League of Legends.
And, honestly, no one should play League of Legends, unless your idea of a good time is being called a slur by a child, in which case Go with God.
But Arcane tried to solve the problem by having fours seasons of plot happen in one, and ended up with a season of pretty rushed and occasionally incoherent television. Whereas I think Andor handled it much better; the four act structure, with every act skipping forward a year, really worked for me. I think it also helped that it had the skeleton of Star Wars to hang on, so that when the rebellion jumps from being Luthen and assorted lunatics running around the galaxy sticking spokes in the wheels where they can to a military/government in waiting on Yavin you don't find it jarring, it's like, Oh, yeah, this is where I came in in A New Hope.
And the pacing really worked when it came to the rising tensions of Ghorman, that it took years, but by the time the massacre happened not only did no one come to help, no one was ever going to because the propaganda arm of the Empire had successfully reduced the people there to some kind of inferior, unworthy form of persons who had had brought this on themselves.
Where the pacing didn't quite land for me was with the characters, the show rightly seemed to have some pretty clear ideas about where the characters would end up after five years, but because they only had twelve episodes the character development had to be sketched in broad strokes.
And, yeah, some of them were playing on easy; Luthen dies before seeing his new dawn, just as he said he would; Mon Mothma defects and is an open member of the rebellion, because we already know that's what happens.
Some of them just work; like, I don't need to see any more of Dedra and Syril's relationship to get it. And the endings both characters got were pitch perfect.
RIP Syril, you were this close to being a person; Long life, Dedra, no sympathy for fascism Barbie.
I did really appreciate the way the show showed both that fascism eats its young, and that it took so long for the Rebel Alliance to get its shit together because it was for the longest time a leftist circular firing squad.
But the story pacing v. character development thing brings me back to Bix. Like, it felt like there was a version of this show that went five seasons where Bix dealing with her torture at the hands of the Empire and getting her revenge is her season two arc, but because we have to wrap this up in twelve episodes that gets one scene, and then Bix is just kind of hanging around because her being there with Cas's baby in the final shot has already been penciled in.
The other bum note in the series was the way the Cinta/Vel stuff was handled. And, like, I've been noodling on this, because I don't hate that Cinta died in principle, but I do hate that in an otherwise immaculately written show it was like someone had gone 'Chat GTP, write me a dead lesbian storyline.' I also kind of hate that in the first season Cinta/Vel was written in that annoyingly 'plausibly deniable, live slug reaction, this has to edited out for hostile markets' Disney Star Wars way, only for season two to make it explicit only to kill the the non-white one, like, I have limited patience for straight people being very proud of themselves for reinventing the Hays Code.
I am a fucking hypocrite though, becuase I have been shipping Vel/Kleya ever since Vel eyed her up at the wedding and I was only delighted that she show ended with one of my favourite shippy dynamics: to whit, a literal drowned rat of a woman has somehow become the responsibility of another, differntly fucked up woman who emphatically did not sign up for this,
Anyway, I freakin' love this show. Like, I've got niggles, sure, but it's like.... it's like, Star Wars is never going to feel like t did when you were nine, because you're not nine anymore, but sometimes. when the stars align, it can feel like this.
Mostly immaculate.
We got to the finale and I was asked what I thought...and there was a long pause...followed by a second long pause....and then, 'I do not think Bix should have been in season two.'
I hated, hated, that the final shot of the show was Bix With Cassian's secret baby. I thought that it horribly undercut his final hero walk through Yavin past the surviving members of Luthen's resistance accompanied by swelling heroic music. I've heard people suggest that it meant that Cassian's sacrifice wasn't in vain, and, like, it already wasn't. He succeeded. He got the plans out. He's the reason that Luke could take out the Death Star, that the Empire was defeated, that Anakin turned away from the dark side.
I've always hated the idea that having a biological child is the only thing that makes your life meaningful or gives you a legacy. It's why I hate the third season of Star Trek: Picard, a competently made season of television that I have borderline violent feelings towards.
I've been thinking a lot about Andor in relation to Arcane, two shows that were originally planned to go five seasons, had excellent, albeit very slowly paced first seasons, then were reworked to be over in two. Andor is admittedly the more sympathetic example, where the creative team were burned out and didn't feel like they could do five, whereas it seems like Arcane was cut down because it wasn't driving enough new players to League of Legends.
And, honestly, no one should play League of Legends, unless your idea of a good time is being called a slur by a child, in which case Go with God.
But Arcane tried to solve the problem by having fours seasons of plot happen in one, and ended up with a season of pretty rushed and occasionally incoherent television. Whereas I think Andor handled it much better; the four act structure, with every act skipping forward a year, really worked for me. I think it also helped that it had the skeleton of Star Wars to hang on, so that when the rebellion jumps from being Luthen and assorted lunatics running around the galaxy sticking spokes in the wheels where they can to a military/government in waiting on Yavin you don't find it jarring, it's like, Oh, yeah, this is where I came in in A New Hope.
And the pacing really worked when it came to the rising tensions of Ghorman, that it took years, but by the time the massacre happened not only did no one come to help, no one was ever going to because the propaganda arm of the Empire had successfully reduced the people there to some kind of inferior, unworthy form of persons who had had brought this on themselves.
Where the pacing didn't quite land for me was with the characters, the show rightly seemed to have some pretty clear ideas about where the characters would end up after five years, but because they only had twelve episodes the character development had to be sketched in broad strokes.
And, yeah, some of them were playing on easy; Luthen dies before seeing his new dawn, just as he said he would; Mon Mothma defects and is an open member of the rebellion, because we already know that's what happens.
Some of them just work; like, I don't need to see any more of Dedra and Syril's relationship to get it. And the endings both characters got were pitch perfect.
RIP Syril, you were this close to being a person; Long life, Dedra, no sympathy for fascism Barbie.
I did really appreciate the way the show showed both that fascism eats its young, and that it took so long for the Rebel Alliance to get its shit together because it was for the longest time a leftist circular firing squad.
But the story pacing v. character development thing brings me back to Bix. Like, it felt like there was a version of this show that went five seasons where Bix dealing with her torture at the hands of the Empire and getting her revenge is her season two arc, but because we have to wrap this up in twelve episodes that gets one scene, and then Bix is just kind of hanging around because her being there with Cas's baby in the final shot has already been penciled in.
The other bum note in the series was the way the Cinta/Vel stuff was handled. And, like, I've been noodling on this, because I don't hate that Cinta died in principle, but I do hate that in an otherwise immaculately written show it was like someone had gone 'Chat GTP, write me a dead lesbian storyline.' I also kind of hate that in the first season Cinta/Vel was written in that annoyingly 'plausibly deniable, live slug reaction, this has to edited out for hostile markets' Disney Star Wars way, only for season two to make it explicit only to kill the the non-white one, like, I have limited patience for straight people being very proud of themselves for reinventing the Hays Code.
I am a fucking hypocrite though, becuase I have been shipping Vel/Kleya ever since Vel eyed her up at the wedding and I was only delighted that she show ended with one of my favourite shippy dynamics: to whit, a literal drowned rat of a woman has somehow become the responsibility of another, differntly fucked up woman who emphatically did not sign up for this,
Anyway, I freakin' love this show. Like, I've got niggles, sure, but it's like.... it's like, Star Wars is never going to feel like t did when you were nine, because you're not nine anymore, but sometimes. when the stars align, it can feel like this.
Books! Some Books!
May. 17th, 2025 02:27 pmThe Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo - So this is a horror-ish novella set in 1920s Appalachia where a trans man (not the language used, obvs) working as a sort of roaming nurse comes to a small town that's suffering a fit of religious mania that's manifesting both as hostility to outsiders and the town collectively trying to take their local gender nonconforming teenager in hand. And it was working for me as a tale of 'we have always been here/some places can be basically safe to be a weird kid in right up until they aren't.'
Then it took a turn towards rape revenge fantasy that I wasn't wholly onboard with, then a sharp right turn towards graphic monsterfucking.
So, uh, that was a bit weird.
Hot Summer by Elle Everhart - I don't like reality television. I don't think it's bad, I don't think liking it is some kind moral failing, it's just by and large not my cup of tea. That said, there is one reality show that I do think should not exist and no one should watch, and that's Love Island, a show that has a death toll.
So if you can forget that this is a lightly fictionalised version of Love Island (something I only could intermittently) and if you are lucky enough to have never seen the show and so not get hungup on 'Hang on, there's no way there would ever be a queer love story on Heterosexuality: The Show' then this is a cute enough contemporary f/f romance.
A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling - Obviously I read this because of the title, and the actual book doesn't quite live up to it, but this tale of a bunch of libertarians who move to a small town to prove that their ideas can work, and run smack bang into that fact that, like most things government does, there were bear control laws in place for a reason was pretty compelling, especially now that *gestures at everything*
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Hostile Alien Planets and Why You Should Not Get Trapped On Them. My new favourite Tchaikovsky; yes, more than the spider planet one, yes, more than the one narrated by the Good Boy. It's just that good.
I got outbid on some fancy Tchaikovsky special editions in the genre creators for trans rights auction, which was fine, good cause and all. But I saw Tchaikovsky talking about the auction on bluesky, and he said something like if you'd read his work he hoped you'd already know he was a a supporter of trans rights, and, like, it's always good to get confirmation that someone you're a fan of is a good egg, but I have read thousands of pages of that man's work and all I could have said about him with any certainty is 'I think that man likes bugs.'
Private Rites by Julia Armfield - 'King Lear and his dyke daughters.' I'm not paraphrasing, that's a line in the book. I really enjoyed Armfield's novella Our Wives Under the Sea, and her first full length novel has a lot of the same themes, to whit, queer women being sad while soaking wet. It is longer, so, um, there's that.
Then it took a turn towards rape revenge fantasy that I wasn't wholly onboard with, then a sharp right turn towards graphic monsterfucking.
So, uh, that was a bit weird.
Hot Summer by Elle Everhart - I don't like reality television. I don't think it's bad, I don't think liking it is some kind moral failing, it's just by and large not my cup of tea. That said, there is one reality show that I do think should not exist and no one should watch, and that's Love Island, a show that has a death toll.
So if you can forget that this is a lightly fictionalised version of Love Island (something I only could intermittently) and if you are lucky enough to have never seen the show and so not get hungup on 'Hang on, there's no way there would ever be a queer love story on Heterosexuality: The Show' then this is a cute enough contemporary f/f romance.
A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling - Obviously I read this because of the title, and the actual book doesn't quite live up to it, but this tale of a bunch of libertarians who move to a small town to prove that their ideas can work, and run smack bang into that fact that, like most things government does, there were bear control laws in place for a reason was pretty compelling, especially now that *gestures at everything*
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky - Hostile Alien Planets and Why You Should Not Get Trapped On Them. My new favourite Tchaikovsky; yes, more than the spider planet one, yes, more than the one narrated by the Good Boy. It's just that good.
I got outbid on some fancy Tchaikovsky special editions in the genre creators for trans rights auction, which was fine, good cause and all. But I saw Tchaikovsky talking about the auction on bluesky, and he said something like if you'd read his work he hoped you'd already know he was a a supporter of trans rights, and, like, it's always good to get confirmation that someone you're a fan of is a good egg, but I have read thousands of pages of that man's work and all I could have said about him with any certainty is 'I think that man likes bugs.'
Private Rites by Julia Armfield - 'King Lear and his dyke daughters.' I'm not paraphrasing, that's a line in the book. I really enjoyed Armfield's novella Our Wives Under the Sea, and her first full length novel has a lot of the same themes, to whit, queer women being sad while soaking wet. It is longer, so, um, there's that.
May the Fourth Be With You
May. 4th, 2025 12:52 pmHappy Star Wars Day/My Birthday to all who celebrate.
I am forty-two, so presumably someone will be along any second to give me the envelope with the answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything, or at least a five pound note.
I am forty-two, so presumably someone will be along any second to give me the envelope with the answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything, or at least a five pound note.
Following the UK Supreme Court's appalling decision the other week I've seen it suggested a couple of places that cis people should try to show our support more overtly visually, wearing trans pride badges and the like, which is one of those things that doesn't feel like it's enough, but also can't fucking hurt, right.
It did make me think of this one time last year when I ran into a distant acquaintance on the bus, and we were making awkward small talk until someone's stop when they noticed the trans pride badge I had pinned to my beanie and sort of went "Oh...I didn't know you were..."
And I panicked and and went, "Oh! I'm just a fan of their work!" and got off the bus.
I'm suave in real life.
It did make me think of this one time last year when I ran into a distant acquaintance on the bus, and we were making awkward small talk until someone's stop when they noticed the trans pride badge I had pinned to my beanie and sort of went "Oh...I didn't know you were..."
And I panicked and and went, "Oh! I'm just a fan of their work!" and got off the bus.
I'm suave in real life.
Been watching some good shows recently, chaps.
I watched Adolescence the week it was all anyone was talking about, and it was both as good as people say, I watched all four episodes when I'd only meant to sit down to watch one, and immediately became hugely overhyped. Netflix offered it to schools to show for free, and I can't think of much more likely to radicalise teenagers against a topic than making them watch a four hour drama that their parents/teachers think is worthy; also pretty ironic given that protracted subplot in episode 2 about how terrible it is that schools are just dumping kids in front of videos rather than actually teaching/interacting with them. Like, it is a very good show and I would recommend it to the three (3) people who missed it when it came out, but it did immediately fall into that peculiarly British political trend, last seen with Mr. Bates vs the Post Office where having watched a TV show about a difficult problem becomes a substitute for doing something.
"Minister, does your government have a plan to deal with Horizon IT scandal/online radicalisation/insert other crisis?"
"No, but we did have a group viewing of That Show and hope it winning a bunch of Baftas will solve the problem for us."
Anyway.
I watched the new Disney Daredevil, which first of all reminded me that I am still using the Netflix account of someone whose password I borrowed 'for a weekend' to watch the first season of Daredevil a decade ago, and second of all was really quite good. I do know that they changed showrunner halfway through because their first attempt wasn't landing, which is a step in the right direction for Disney whose output has recently tended towards the 'fuck it, that'll do' so that was obviously the right decision. It did mean that we got a bunch of pretty meh episodes in the middle (honourably excepting that one with Kamala Khan's dad, which was adorable) bracketed by a brilliant opener and finale.
I watched Cap 4 Captain America: Brave New Bird a while ago and it was a movie whose main message seemed to be 'The Walt Disney corporation has no stance on current politics, or indeed anything else' so it was a nice surprise to see Daredevil taking such bold stances as 'criminals seeking high political office for personal enrichment is bad' and 'cops cosplaying as the Punisher to enact extrajudicial violence are clowns, per Frank Castle.'
I did have a little giggle at that bit in the last episode where they were showing that Kingpin has all the vigilantes locked up in cages, but they have to pan really fast to disguise the fact that there's no one we know. That said, I am really looking forward to the next batch of episodes.
I had fallen off Wheel of Time after season one which I thought was...fine, but I was persuaded to catch up in time for season three and I'm so glad I did cause I had so much fun watching this. I've not read the books so I was frequently confused, although the show kind of makes me want to. Well, not read them, obviously, I have but one brief and wonderous human life, but at least listen to the audiobooks Rosamund Pike narrates. My favourite character continues to be Liandrin, who, yes, made a very literal deal with the devil, but under the circumstances, wouldn't you? I also think a lot of the gang's problems could be solved if people would only stop having sex dreams about Lanfear, although, again, perfectly understandable.
I really hope there's another season, although I do wonder if there's a spreadsheet somewhere at Amazon flashing red because this season looked astonishingly good, especially as Amazon has apparently decided that a bunging a bribe to the White House for the dubious honour of making a Melania documentary that no will watch is a good use of money.
My reaction to season two of Yellowjackets was mostly 'Oh No' so I was pleasantly surprised to find that season three was much more my jam. Although, making Hilary Swank wear that backwards pink baseball cap so people knew she was adult Melissa has got to be an example of not trusting your audience so egregious that it's going to be taught in screenwriting classes for years. I enjoyed the finale so much that I immediately went back and watched the pilot, and really appreciated the reframing/playing with memory of watching those two episodes back to back. Thinking back on season one it is pretty weird and cool that I am now firmly in the 'Misty is the only one of the adult characters who deserves the gift of human life' camp.
So, my friend Louisa was telling me her mum has been watching Yellowjackets and not really getting it, and has asked her to explain it, and, honestly I don't know how you explain this show without going: IT IS ALL A GIANT METAPHOR FOR LESBIANISM.
I am a big wimp when it comes to anything scary, so I belatedly watched The Haunting of Bly Manor, by which I mean I tricked people into watching it with me and telling me where all the scary bits were. It was excellent and not too scary.
Speaking of too scary. I knew, I knew, that The Substance was going to be too much for me, but I wanted to watch it anyway. Well, when I say 'watch', my eyes were closed pretty much the entire time. It was, as far as I could tell, a very good movie made up exclusively of a series of increasingly upsetting sound effects.
Also, some shows I was hyped about have come back...
Andor has not lost a step. Which is cool, because some people I know were really relying on this show to get through our current trying times. Not me, I have anchored my metal health to the new Superman movie being good. You know, like a normal person. Also, Mon Mothma getting blotto and trying to dance the fascism away...like, mood?
I was pleasantly surprised that the internet did not go insane at THAT bit of The Last of Us season two, which just goes to show that the howler monkeys last time were lunatics who should have been bullied off the internet at the very least. It is nice to see Bella Ramsey back as Ellie, although I do wish I was more on board with Kaitlyn Dever. I hope to like her more as the season goes on, but at the moment she feels as likely to beat someone to death with a golf club as I do (to whit, not likely).
The new series of Doctor Who continues delightful.
I watched Adolescence the week it was all anyone was talking about, and it was both as good as people say, I watched all four episodes when I'd only meant to sit down to watch one, and immediately became hugely overhyped. Netflix offered it to schools to show for free, and I can't think of much more likely to radicalise teenagers against a topic than making them watch a four hour drama that their parents/teachers think is worthy; also pretty ironic given that protracted subplot in episode 2 about how terrible it is that schools are just dumping kids in front of videos rather than actually teaching/interacting with them. Like, it is a very good show and I would recommend it to the three (3) people who missed it when it came out, but it did immediately fall into that peculiarly British political trend, last seen with Mr. Bates vs the Post Office where having watched a TV show about a difficult problem becomes a substitute for doing something.
"Minister, does your government have a plan to deal with Horizon IT scandal/online radicalisation/insert other crisis?"
"No, but we did have a group viewing of That Show and hope it winning a bunch of Baftas will solve the problem for us."
Anyway.
I watched the new Disney Daredevil, which first of all reminded me that I am still using the Netflix account of someone whose password I borrowed 'for a weekend' to watch the first season of Daredevil a decade ago, and second of all was really quite good. I do know that they changed showrunner halfway through because their first attempt wasn't landing, which is a step in the right direction for Disney whose output has recently tended towards the 'fuck it, that'll do' so that was obviously the right decision. It did mean that we got a bunch of pretty meh episodes in the middle (honourably excepting that one with Kamala Khan's dad, which was adorable) bracketed by a brilliant opener and finale.
I watched Cap 4 Captain America: Brave New Bird a while ago and it was a movie whose main message seemed to be 'The Walt Disney corporation has no stance on current politics, or indeed anything else' so it was a nice surprise to see Daredevil taking such bold stances as 'criminals seeking high political office for personal enrichment is bad' and 'cops cosplaying as the Punisher to enact extrajudicial violence are clowns, per Frank Castle.'
I did have a little giggle at that bit in the last episode where they were showing that Kingpin has all the vigilantes locked up in cages, but they have to pan really fast to disguise the fact that there's no one we know. That said, I am really looking forward to the next batch of episodes.
I had fallen off Wheel of Time after season one which I thought was...fine, but I was persuaded to catch up in time for season three and I'm so glad I did cause I had so much fun watching this. I've not read the books so I was frequently confused, although the show kind of makes me want to. Well, not read them, obviously, I have but one brief and wonderous human life, but at least listen to the audiobooks Rosamund Pike narrates. My favourite character continues to be Liandrin, who, yes, made a very literal deal with the devil, but under the circumstances, wouldn't you? I also think a lot of the gang's problems could be solved if people would only stop having sex dreams about Lanfear, although, again, perfectly understandable.
I really hope there's another season, although I do wonder if there's a spreadsheet somewhere at Amazon flashing red because this season looked astonishingly good, especially as Amazon has apparently decided that a bunging a bribe to the White House for the dubious honour of making a Melania documentary that no will watch is a good use of money.
My reaction to season two of Yellowjackets was mostly 'Oh No' so I was pleasantly surprised to find that season three was much more my jam. Although, making Hilary Swank wear that backwards pink baseball cap so people knew she was adult Melissa has got to be an example of not trusting your audience so egregious that it's going to be taught in screenwriting classes for years. I enjoyed the finale so much that I immediately went back and watched the pilot, and really appreciated the reframing/playing with memory of watching those two episodes back to back. Thinking back on season one it is pretty weird and cool that I am now firmly in the 'Misty is the only one of the adult characters who deserves the gift of human life' camp.
So, my friend Louisa was telling me her mum has been watching Yellowjackets and not really getting it, and has asked her to explain it, and, honestly I don't know how you explain this show without going: IT IS ALL A GIANT METAPHOR FOR LESBIANISM.
I am a big wimp when it comes to anything scary, so I belatedly watched The Haunting of Bly Manor, by which I mean I tricked people into watching it with me and telling me where all the scary bits were. It was excellent and not too scary.
Speaking of too scary. I knew, I knew, that The Substance was going to be too much for me, but I wanted to watch it anyway. Well, when I say 'watch', my eyes were closed pretty much the entire time. It was, as far as I could tell, a very good movie made up exclusively of a series of increasingly upsetting sound effects.
Also, some shows I was hyped about have come back...
Andor has not lost a step. Which is cool, because some people I know were really relying on this show to get through our current trying times. Not me, I have anchored my metal health to the new Superman movie being good. You know, like a normal person. Also, Mon Mothma getting blotto and trying to dance the fascism away...like, mood?
I was pleasantly surprised that the internet did not go insane at THAT bit of The Last of Us season two, which just goes to show that the howler monkeys last time were lunatics who should have been bullied off the internet at the very least. It is nice to see Bella Ramsey back as Ellie, although I do wish I was more on board with Kaitlyn Dever. I hope to like her more as the season goes on, but at the moment she feels as likely to beat someone to death with a golf club as I do (to whit, not likely).
The new series of Doctor Who continues delightful.
I Wrote a Thing!
Mar. 1st, 2025 12:36 pmI signed up for rarefemslashexchange and had kind of mixed feelings when I matched on ASOIAF fandom. On the one hand, it's not a fandom I have much interest in these days; the show ended with a whimper, I say this without rancour but the next book is never coming out, and House of the Dragon contains approx. seventy-three interchangeable blonde men that I cannot tell apart. On the other hand, it is a fandom I'm so comfortable writing in that it's like pulling on a pair of cozy, comfy old jammies.
Also, the requested pairing was Cersei Lannister/Lyanna Stark, which wasn't something I'd ever written or even really thought about, so that immediately had my brain fizzing with ideas. I ended up going with one where Lyanna survives the rebellion and is so messed up by this that fucking Cersei Lannister seems like a reasonable course of action, you know, as you do.
Castle of Rats (ASOIAF; Cersei/Lyanna; 3k)
You might have thought that after the realms tore themselves apart in Lyanna Stark's name people would have been happier when the girl herself was found alive in some godsforsaken corner of Dorne, but of course the men who had killed and died for Lyanna had done so for some imagined, untouched, silent paragon, and the grief stricken, vengeful, very much touched girl who returned only served to make them angrier.
So, yeah, that was fun. I should try to write more. I've missed it.
rarefemslashexchange and had kind of mixed feelings when I matched on ASOIAF fandom. On the one hand, it's not a fandom I have much interest in these days; the show ended with a whimper, I say this without rancour but the next book is never coming out, and House of the Dragon contains approx. seventy-three interchangeable blonde men that I cannot tell apart. On the other hand, it is a fandom I'm so comfortable writing in that it's like pulling on a pair of cozy, comfy old jammies. Also, the requested pairing was Cersei Lannister/Lyanna Stark, which wasn't something I'd ever written or even really thought about, so that immediately had my brain fizzing with ideas. I ended up going with one where Lyanna survives the rebellion and is so messed up by this that fucking Cersei Lannister seems like a reasonable course of action, you know, as you do.
Castle of Rats (ASOIAF; Cersei/Lyanna; 3k)
You might have thought that after the realms tore themselves apart in Lyanna Stark's name people would have been happier when the girl herself was found alive in some godsforsaken corner of Dorne, but of course the men who had killed and died for Lyanna had done so for some imagined, untouched, silent paragon, and the grief stricken, vengeful, very much touched girl who returned only served to make them angrier.
So, yeah, that was fun. I should try to write more. I've missed it.
Books n Movies
Feb. 11th, 2025 03:45 pmBooks
idk, I guess I was going through my kindle alphabetically...
A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage by Asia MacKay - Two serial killers who spent an extended honeymoon on a murder spree of dipshit men throughout Europe have settled down in the home counties with a baby and are trying to go cold turkey on the whole murder thing. If this sounds like it's just Mr and Mrs Smith but with serial killers then that's because it kind of is.
A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence by Jess Everlee - Historical romance where a bookseller in a lavender marriage falls in love with the lady doctor she hires to take care of her husband's pregnant mistress.
Both of these were frothy, forgettable fun, but I think I'm going to branch out into a different naming convention.
Movies
Civil War - I actually saw this before I did my last movie roundup but I immediately forgot that I'd watched it, which is kind of a damning indictment of a film that seems to think that it has a lot to say.
Red Rooms - Excellent, tense French Canadian psychological thriller/horror about True Crime Brain set around the trial of a horrifying serial killer, that crucially for anything horror related, was not too scary for me.
Benedetta - You are a fifteenth century nun and you want to fuck a novice so bad that you start hallucinating transguy Jesus and commit heresy against Rome; someone is playing the dulcimer, Charlotte Rampling is here for some reason. Oh Paul Verhoven, never change.
Star Trek: Section 31 - Is this a good Star Trek movie? No, obviously not. But is it a fun Michelle Yeoh space romp? Also, no. It is Minimum Viable Product: the Movie.
idk, I guess I was going through my kindle alphabetically...
A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage by Asia MacKay - Two serial killers who spent an extended honeymoon on a murder spree of dipshit men throughout Europe have settled down in the home counties with a baby and are trying to go cold turkey on the whole murder thing. If this sounds like it's just Mr and Mrs Smith but with serial killers then that's because it kind of is.
A Bluestocking's Guide to Decadence by Jess Everlee - Historical romance where a bookseller in a lavender marriage falls in love with the lady doctor she hires to take care of her husband's pregnant mistress.
Both of these were frothy, forgettable fun, but I think I'm going to branch out into a different naming convention.
Movies
Civil War - I actually saw this before I did my last movie roundup but I immediately forgot that I'd watched it, which is kind of a damning indictment of a film that seems to think that it has a lot to say.
Red Rooms - Excellent, tense French Canadian psychological thriller/horror about True Crime Brain set around the trial of a horrifying serial killer, that crucially for anything horror related, was not too scary for me.
Benedetta - You are a fifteenth century nun and you want to fuck a novice so bad that you start hallucinating transguy Jesus and commit heresy against Rome; someone is playing the dulcimer, Charlotte Rampling is here for some reason. Oh Paul Verhoven, never change.
Star Trek: Section 31 - Is this a good Star Trek movie? No, obviously not. But is it a fun Michelle Yeoh space romp? Also, no. It is Minimum Viable Product: the Movie.
Things I Have Been Putting in My Eyballs
Jan. 25th, 2025 12:17 pmStorm Éowyn didn't hit quite as hard as forecast here, though I will say that my dog was very determined to go outside for an animal with no natural defences against 90mph winds.
Comics
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Vol.1: Fortune and Fate and Doctor Aphra, Vol.2: The Engine Job - A while ago I askedambyr what was the best place to start with the Aphra comics, and received a long, thoughtful, and helpful answer, from which I honed in on exactly one line suggesting that if I wanted it to be All Queer, All the Time I should start with Alyssa Wong's run, and did just that. What? I never said that I wasn't predictable.
I had a rollicking good time with these comics. I did find myself wishing for a Disney+ series about fuckboy lesbian Indiana Jones running around the Star Wars universe, and then I thought about what the howler monkeys of YouTube would do to the discourse and then I didn't want that anymore.
Books
Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewell - For secret reasons, Marvel decided to release a series of prose crime novels, and this first one is about Jessica Jones. The next one is about Daredevil, a character I am physically unable to care about, and at one point there was meant to be a Luke Cage one by SA Cosby, but, idk, that seems to have vanished. The book was broadly fine, but there were obvious points where the author was clearly consulting the cheat sheet Marvel had handed her, because the comic book elements were perfunctory at best. There was a bit where Madam Webb turned up, which wouldn't have been so funny before the movie but is hilarious now.
A Well Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings - This memoir of Levings' abusive marriage as her husband drags their family further and further into Christian Nationalism is visceral and deeply upsetting. Her writing towards the end about how what she went through is what a lot of powerful men want for US women seems both straighforwardly correct and messy and unconvinced of itself, as is probably unavoidable when someone is writing about something that they are still working through.
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky - This one is about a robot searching for purpose at the end of the world. It's a little bit Asimov and a little bit Murderbot, and was only okay. The good thing about Tchaikovsky is that he is so prolific that if you don't like one then another one will be along in a minute.
Lady Eve's Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow - This is a queer heist novel in space. I say again this is a QUEER HEIST NOVEL IN SPACE. An early contender for favourite book of the year, I think.
Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo - The Singing Hills series of novellas is an absolute delight. This is probably my least favourite so far, only because I like it more when Cleric Chih is collecting stories rather than starring in them. But this is such a good series that 'weakest one' is still damn good.
The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster by John O'Connor - I enjoyed this so much more than I expected. Like, I think Bigfoot is silly, which is silly of me because I believe there is a dinosaur in Loch Ness. Well, not necessarily a dinosaur, but I do think there's something more than a lost family of seals down there. The author shows so much compassion and fondness for Bigfoot hunters while never missing a chance to get a dig in at Trump so we don't forget whose side he is on. Contains lengthy diversions on the psychological underpinnings of conspiracy theories as well as the hunt for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
It actually got me thinking about this theory of mine that I've been noodling on since I lost people down a couple of really ugly rabbit holes, which is that prior to the internet age we all had people in our lives who believed in, like, the Beast of Bodmin Moor or that the moon landing was fake. A bit weird sure, but basically harmless. But now the internet drives them further and further till they end up at fucking Q, blood libel shit.
Games
Star Wars: Outlaws and Dragon Age: The Veilguard - both games I played to credits, both games that left no lasting impression beyond big 'best game of 2017' vibes.
I feel like I'm spinning my wheels with games until Ghost of Yotei comes out. Sony really shat the bed with their doomed push into live service games, didn't they? It's always funny when a giant corporation fucks up in a way so obvious that even I - an idiot - could have told them exactly what was going to happen.
Movies
Wicked - I know nothing about Wicked. I hadn't seen the stage show or heard any of the songs. I think I read the book forever ago, maybe. So from my position of zero knowledge I shall just say this - this was delightful and Galinda and Elphaba should fuck it out.
65 - Okay, hear me out, I think there was too much Adam Driver and not enough dinosaurs in the Adam Driver dinosaur movie.
Hundreds of Beavers - Look, we're all having a rough go of it, and I'm not saying this delightful black and white slapstick comedy will make you feel better, what I am saying is at this point anything short of decanting absinth directly into your eyeballs has got to be worth a try.
Abigail - Recently I expressed an interest in a genre I call Horror for Babies (rated 15 max, basically) and this was recommended to me on the grounds that it was the same people who made Ready or Not, and while not as good as that one, this one about a bunch of crooks who kidnap a tween ballerina who turns out to be a vampire was very good indeed.
Telly
Creature Commandos - One of those delightful animated shows that could never have worked in live action, making the Bride of Frankenstein (voiced by Indira Varma, no less) the main character was an A+ choice, and I have been listening to the soundtrack on Spotify all week.
Superhero fatigue is real, but as soon as they announced that they were putting James Gunn in charge of DC I was like a baby making grabby hands at the keys someone was jangling in front of me.
Star Wars: Skelton Crew - Okay, this was a FUCKING DELIGHT. Best Star Wars thing since, jeepers, Andor. If you skipped it, which I nearly did, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a bit The Goonies, a bit E.T, and a lot what Star Wars felt like when you were nine.
I did notice that, unusually for a Star Wars thing, there wasn't a lot of conversation online about it. I do wonder if that's because the YouTube chucklefucks just didn't watch it, or because they know that being seen publicly bullying literal children would reveal their schtick for the ugly grift it really is.
Comics
Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Vol.1: Fortune and Fate and Doctor Aphra, Vol.2: The Engine Job - A while ago I asked
ambyr what was the best place to start with the Aphra comics, and received a long, thoughtful, and helpful answer, from which I honed in on exactly one line suggesting that if I wanted it to be All Queer, All the Time I should start with Alyssa Wong's run, and did just that. What? I never said that I wasn't predictable.I had a rollicking good time with these comics. I did find myself wishing for a Disney+ series about fuckboy lesbian Indiana Jones running around the Star Wars universe, and then I thought about what the howler monkeys of YouTube would do to the discourse and then I didn't want that anymore.
Books
Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewell - For secret reasons, Marvel decided to release a series of prose crime novels, and this first one is about Jessica Jones. The next one is about Daredevil, a character I am physically unable to care about, and at one point there was meant to be a Luke Cage one by SA Cosby, but, idk, that seems to have vanished. The book was broadly fine, but there were obvious points where the author was clearly consulting the cheat sheet Marvel had handed her, because the comic book elements were perfunctory at best. There was a bit where Madam Webb turned up, which wouldn't have been so funny before the movie but is hilarious now.
A Well Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings - This memoir of Levings' abusive marriage as her husband drags their family further and further into Christian Nationalism is visceral and deeply upsetting. Her writing towards the end about how what she went through is what a lot of powerful men want for US women seems both straighforwardly correct and messy and unconvinced of itself, as is probably unavoidable when someone is writing about something that they are still working through.
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky - This one is about a robot searching for purpose at the end of the world. It's a little bit Asimov and a little bit Murderbot, and was only okay. The good thing about Tchaikovsky is that he is so prolific that if you don't like one then another one will be along in a minute.
Lady Eve's Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow - This is a queer heist novel in space. I say again this is a QUEER HEIST NOVEL IN SPACE. An early contender for favourite book of the year, I think.
Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo - The Singing Hills series of novellas is an absolute delight. This is probably my least favourite so far, only because I like it more when Cleric Chih is collecting stories rather than starring in them. But this is such a good series that 'weakest one' is still damn good.
The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster by John O'Connor - I enjoyed this so much more than I expected. Like, I think Bigfoot is silly, which is silly of me because I believe there is a dinosaur in Loch Ness. Well, not necessarily a dinosaur, but I do think there's something more than a lost family of seals down there. The author shows so much compassion and fondness for Bigfoot hunters while never missing a chance to get a dig in at Trump so we don't forget whose side he is on. Contains lengthy diversions on the psychological underpinnings of conspiracy theories as well as the hunt for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
It actually got me thinking about this theory of mine that I've been noodling on since I lost people down a couple of really ugly rabbit holes, which is that prior to the internet age we all had people in our lives who believed in, like, the Beast of Bodmin Moor or that the moon landing was fake. A bit weird sure, but basically harmless. But now the internet drives them further and further till they end up at fucking Q, blood libel shit.
Games
Star Wars: Outlaws and Dragon Age: The Veilguard - both games I played to credits, both games that left no lasting impression beyond big 'best game of 2017' vibes.
I feel like I'm spinning my wheels with games until Ghost of Yotei comes out. Sony really shat the bed with their doomed push into live service games, didn't they? It's always funny when a giant corporation fucks up in a way so obvious that even I - an idiot - could have told them exactly what was going to happen.
Movies
Wicked - I know nothing about Wicked. I hadn't seen the stage show or heard any of the songs. I think I read the book forever ago, maybe. So from my position of zero knowledge I shall just say this - this was delightful and Galinda and Elphaba should fuck it out.
65 - Okay, hear me out, I think there was too much Adam Driver and not enough dinosaurs in the Adam Driver dinosaur movie.
Hundreds of Beavers - Look, we're all having a rough go of it, and I'm not saying this delightful black and white slapstick comedy will make you feel better, what I am saying is at this point anything short of decanting absinth directly into your eyeballs has got to be worth a try.
Abigail - Recently I expressed an interest in a genre I call Horror for Babies (rated 15 max, basically) and this was recommended to me on the grounds that it was the same people who made Ready or Not, and while not as good as that one, this one about a bunch of crooks who kidnap a tween ballerina who turns out to be a vampire was very good indeed.
Telly
Creature Commandos - One of those delightful animated shows that could never have worked in live action, making the Bride of Frankenstein (voiced by Indira Varma, no less) the main character was an A+ choice, and I have been listening to the soundtrack on Spotify all week.
Superhero fatigue is real, but as soon as they announced that they were putting James Gunn in charge of DC I was like a baby making grabby hands at the keys someone was jangling in front of me.
Star Wars: Skelton Crew - Okay, this was a FUCKING DELIGHT. Best Star Wars thing since, jeepers, Andor. If you skipped it, which I nearly did, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a bit The Goonies, a bit E.T, and a lot what Star Wars felt like when you were nine.
I did notice that, unusually for a Star Wars thing, there wasn't a lot of conversation online about it. I do wonder if that's because the YouTube chucklefucks just didn't watch it, or because they know that being seen publicly bullying literal children would reveal their schtick for the ugly grift it really is.
