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Things I Have Been Putting in My Eyeballs
Apr. 29th, 2023 06:16 pmBooks
The Black Jersey by Jorge Zepeda Patterson - A murder mystery set on the Tour de France when persons unknown start taking out competitive riders. Cycling isn't a sport I follow super closely, pretty much only at the Olympics, and I thought the book did a really good job of stopping me getting confused by the cycling lingo and all in all it was a really interesting and compelling setting full of psychodrama. It was a great read right up until the answer to the mystery, which was a melodramatic mashup of Everyone Did It/The Call is Coming From Inside the House.
I'm probably still not going to watch the tour, but I feel like I understand what I'm missing a little better.
The Fiancee Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur - An f/f romance where a shy bookseller invents a relationship with a romance novel cover model to get out of family obligations, she accidentally meets her fake girlfriend who turns out to be the millionaire heiress to a media empire (the modern equivalent to being a secret duke, I guess) who *gasp* needs to get married within the next three months to satisfy the terms of her inheritance.
Yes, this is tropey as fuck, but if you're in the mood for it, and I was, it is a delight.
Comics
Captain Carter: Woman Out of Time - Peggy Carter gets the super soldier serum, is frozen in ice, and wakes up just in time be just as disappointed in Brexit Britain as the rest of us are. The story and art are only so-so, but the UK stuff is brilliant. There's a bit where the entire ruling class of the UK turns out to be secretly vampires, and if that happened in real life I'd be all 'Sure, that makes as much sense as anything else.'
btw, I love that Peggy!Cap is increasingly a thing.
Telly
Star Trek: Prodigy S1 - While I was being disgruntled about Picard S3 I was simultaneously being delighted by Prodigy. I was a little confused as to what ages it was aimed at; the first few episodes seemed to be aimed at properly little kids, but by the midseason it seemed to be pitched at younger teenagers. I started it as just something to have on while I pottered about doing housework, but over the season I found myself getting properly gripped. So maybe it's for kids of all ages?
Also, Rok-Tahk - who is a talking rock, yes - is my new favourite Star Trek character and I will be taking no questions at this time.
The Mandalorian S3 - It does feel like The Mandalorian reached its natural conclusion when Grogu was returned to the Jedi, and no one is entirely sure why they're still doing this aside from the fact that the Bo-Katan stuff is going to be important somewhere down the line and the've got to squeeze it in somewhere.
Like, take the episode about the New Republic rehabilitation program and the one with Lizzo and Jack Black, both individually really good episodes, but they didn't feel like they were part of the same season or even the same show.
The Last of Us S1 - The Bill and Frank episode will be forever in my top five hours of television that I never, ever want to watch again. The show was actually at its best when it diverted from the game. Like, some of the scenes that were straight up gameplay recreations - after an initial 'Ah, cool, I remember this bit' - I found my thumb twitching to toggle Joel to crouch.
I am tentatively excited for season two, extremely tentative to be honest. I actually like the second game more than the first, and while I want to believe that mainstream television watching audiences will be less feral than capital G gamers, or at least differently feral, I don't want to have to go through Abby discourse again.
Video Games
God of War: Ragnarok - I have only just finished this despite having started it at Christmas because I'd forgotten that after the credits of a God of War game is an equally long but much harder God of War game. Can't say they didn't give me my money's worth, I suppose.
Despite having only been so-so on the first game (I think I finished it on the third attempt when I was quarantined and climbing the walls) I really loved this one. Partly because there were actually women in it this time, we get to meet Kratos' wife in flashbacks and Freya gets a satisfying arc as well as being your companion character for a chunk of the game, but also the combat felt more varied and the traversal less clunky.
I do hope that if the rumours are true that they're making an Atreus game next they work on making his combat have more heft, because he felt very floaty compared to Kratos. And it's not like you can't make an agile archer character feel weighty. I mean, the Horizon games exist.
Speaking of, I am in a mood about gaming at the moment because I really wanted to play the Horizon DLC but it's PS5 only, and when they announced that I thought, well, maybe there's something really cool in it that they can't do on PS4, but apparently all it is is better cloud fidelity. That's a five hundred quid cloud, you bastards!
I will have to get a PS5 eventually, because my PS4 sounded like it was trying to take flight during some bits of Ragnarok, but still, fuck you!
The Black Jersey by Jorge Zepeda Patterson - A murder mystery set on the Tour de France when persons unknown start taking out competitive riders. Cycling isn't a sport I follow super closely, pretty much only at the Olympics, and I thought the book did a really good job of stopping me getting confused by the cycling lingo and all in all it was a really interesting and compelling setting full of psychodrama. It was a great read right up until the answer to the mystery, which was a melodramatic mashup of Everyone Did It/The Call is Coming From Inside the House.
I'm probably still not going to watch the tour, but I feel like I understand what I'm missing a little better.
The Fiancee Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur - An f/f romance where a shy bookseller invents a relationship with a romance novel cover model to get out of family obligations, she accidentally meets her fake girlfriend who turns out to be the millionaire heiress to a media empire (the modern equivalent to being a secret duke, I guess) who *gasp* needs to get married within the next three months to satisfy the terms of her inheritance.
Yes, this is tropey as fuck, but if you're in the mood for it, and I was, it is a delight.
Comics
Captain Carter: Woman Out of Time - Peggy Carter gets the super soldier serum, is frozen in ice, and wakes up just in time be just as disappointed in Brexit Britain as the rest of us are. The story and art are only so-so, but the UK stuff is brilliant. There's a bit where the entire ruling class of the UK turns out to be secretly vampires, and if that happened in real life I'd be all 'Sure, that makes as much sense as anything else.'
btw, I love that Peggy!Cap is increasingly a thing.
Telly
Star Trek: Prodigy S1 - While I was being disgruntled about Picard S3 I was simultaneously being delighted by Prodigy. I was a little confused as to what ages it was aimed at; the first few episodes seemed to be aimed at properly little kids, but by the midseason it seemed to be pitched at younger teenagers. I started it as just something to have on while I pottered about doing housework, but over the season I found myself getting properly gripped. So maybe it's for kids of all ages?
Also, Rok-Tahk - who is a talking rock, yes - is my new favourite Star Trek character and I will be taking no questions at this time.
The Mandalorian S3 - It does feel like The Mandalorian reached its natural conclusion when Grogu was returned to the Jedi, and no one is entirely sure why they're still doing this aside from the fact that the Bo-Katan stuff is going to be important somewhere down the line and the've got to squeeze it in somewhere.
Like, take the episode about the New Republic rehabilitation program and the one with Lizzo and Jack Black, both individually really good episodes, but they didn't feel like they were part of the same season or even the same show.
The Last of Us S1 - The Bill and Frank episode will be forever in my top five hours of television that I never, ever want to watch again. The show was actually at its best when it diverted from the game. Like, some of the scenes that were straight up gameplay recreations - after an initial 'Ah, cool, I remember this bit' - I found my thumb twitching to toggle Joel to crouch.
I am tentatively excited for season two, extremely tentative to be honest. I actually like the second game more than the first, and while I want to believe that mainstream television watching audiences will be less feral than capital G gamers, or at least differently feral, I don't want to have to go through Abby discourse again.
Video Games
God of War: Ragnarok - I have only just finished this despite having started it at Christmas because I'd forgotten that after the credits of a God of War game is an equally long but much harder God of War game. Can't say they didn't give me my money's worth, I suppose.
Despite having only been so-so on the first game (I think I finished it on the third attempt when I was quarantined and climbing the walls) I really loved this one. Partly because there were actually women in it this time, we get to meet Kratos' wife in flashbacks and Freya gets a satisfying arc as well as being your companion character for a chunk of the game, but also the combat felt more varied and the traversal less clunky.
I do hope that if the rumours are true that they're making an Atreus game next they work on making his combat have more heft, because he felt very floaty compared to Kratos. And it's not like you can't make an agile archer character feel weighty. I mean, the Horizon games exist.
Speaking of, I am in a mood about gaming at the moment because I really wanted to play the Horizon DLC but it's PS5 only, and when they announced that I thought, well, maybe there's something really cool in it that they can't do on PS4, but apparently all it is is better cloud fidelity. That's a five hundred quid cloud, you bastards!
I will have to get a PS5 eventually, because my PS4 sounded like it was trying to take flight during some bits of Ragnarok, but still, fuck you!