Superman (2025)

Jul. 12th, 2025 05:49 pm
lirazel: Lead couple from Healer ([tv] lois and clark)
[personal profile] lirazel
I saw Superman! I liked it a lot!

Positive stuff:

+ Finally, a superhero movie that cares about every single life! I did not think we would ever see such a thing--superhero movies use "collateral damage" to raise stakes while not actually caring about the people who die. But this movie cares because Superman cares. And I love that so very very very much. Even if it hadn't done anything else, I would have thought it a success for that.

+ Honestly, Superman is my favorite superhero because he's so ridiculously good and decent, and this movie gets that. It's earnest and sincere and isn't winking at you but it also isn't saccharine--it knows that it can be HARD to be good, and intentions aren't everything.

+ Top tier casting. Everyone is doing a fantastic job. Corsenswet, Brosnahan, and Hoult ARE their characters. They were just as good as I hoped, but I was not expecting how much I would love Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific.

+ This movie loves the relationship between Clark and Lois, which means that this movie has good taste. Their chemistry is lovely and the scene where they're doing the interview is probably my favorite scene in the whole thing.

+ Lex is realistically evil in a way that many of our real billionaires are, which I appreciated a lot. His motivations are completely foreign to me, but I only have to look at the real world to see that there are really people who are like that.

+ The twist involving Superman's backstory was so ridiculously good and meaty. A really bold writing choice, but a great one.

+ I thought the pacing was really good! It never felt like it lagged!

+ Everything was bright! You could see what was going on even in the dark scenes!

+ Lots and lots of fun details that made it feel like the people who were making the movie were having fun making it.

+ Krypto!

Mixed stuff:

+ Being a rabid John Williams fan, I was delighted that they adapted his Superman theme for the film, but I really wish we had gotten just one scene where they used the full-throated original. None of the music was that level of thrilling.

+ I could have done with a lot more Clark at the Daily Planet, living his normal life, letting us get to know the Daily Planet people. The action scenes were very good action scenes, but as always in an action movie, I want way more of characters interacting. Imagine how much more Clark & Lois we could have had! However, I understand that the masses do not share my taste so I get why there wasn't more of that, and there was enough that I'm not angry about it.

+ The plot could have been better. It wasn't bad, and it provided a fine backdrop and set piece for the characters to show who they are, but I didn't love it, you know?

+ #teamsomebodyloveeve

+ I wish we'd had a smidge more showing us how Lex inspires loyalty in other people. I mean, yes, in real life, there are a bunch of people who will follow a billionaire that they think is smart without thinking about his morality at all. It's very realistic! but I want to know about this specific dynamic. Is he paying them obscene amounts of money? What is his view of the world that he could convince the engineer to do what she did to her own body?

Negative stuff:

+ Okay, what was the Kents' accents???? If the movie had been set in Alabama, sure, that would be reasonable, but I do not believe that people in Kansas talk like that? Nobody Iw've ever known from Kansas talks like that? It’s so weird how media uses "very southern accent" as stand-in for "country" even when the country the people are from is the Midwest.

If you are from Kansas and I am wrong about how people talk there, please tell me so I can stop being annoyed about this.

[as an aside, Mister Terrific's accent was so lovely that I immediately looked to see where Gathegi grew up, and to my shock found he grew up in California! I would never have guessed it! His southern accent was so realistic! Well done, sir!]

Me trying to work out the geography of these made up countries: ??????? The one is clearly Russia, the other is inspired by Pakistan, Afghanistan, or possibly a province of India, yet we're told this is all happening in Europe. Which makes no sense. Russia is half in Asia, it would have made so much more sense to just say Asia instead????

But my complaints are small.

So yeah! A fun movie! I recommend it even if, like me, you're not such a big superhero person and are exhausted by too many superheroes.

Now can we pretty please have a prequel movie about how Clark and Lois met and how she found out he's Superman???????

Murderbot News!

Jul. 11th, 2025 10:53 pm
chomiji: An image of a classic spiral galaxy (galaxy)
[personal profile] chomiji

‘Murderbot’ Renewed for Season 2 at Apple TV+

The news comes ahead of the Season 1 finale on July 11. Based on “All Systems Red,” the first novella in Martha Wells’ series “The Murderbot Diaries,” the season stars Alexander Skarsgård as “a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients” that “must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe,” per the official logline ... .

lirazel: A drawing of Emma M. Lion against a yellow background ([lit] imperterritus)
[personal profile] lirazel
I want some conversation! So let's talk about the stuff we love that nobody else loves. I feel certain I've asked about this before, but it can never hurt to ask about it again!

What is the one (or two or three) canon that you love so very much that you're ravenous for fic/meta/fanart/squee about it but you simply can't find it?

The three that come to mind for me are:


+ The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, which has such rich worldbuilding and side characters that I wish could read a thousand fics about virtually anything!

+ M.M. Kaye's The Shadow of the Moon, which has one of my ultimate OTPs, who I would like to read a thousand canon divergence fics in which Alex and Winter fall in love in a thousand different ways.

+ Shut Up! Flower Boy Band, a kdrama about a rock band that has a brush with fame, which has such rich characters and relationships that I would could (again) read a thousand fics about these characters bumping into each other! Jamie wrote me one OT4 fic back in the long-ago days after the show came out, but other than that, there's almost nothing.
pauraque: Picard reads a book while vacationing on Risa (st picard reads)
[personal profile] pauraque
In this first book of a hard SF trilogy, nanomaterials expert Wang Miao is recruited to help investigate the suicides of several prominent scientists. His inquiries lead him to a strange VR video game called Three Body, in which the player is challenged to solve the mystery of why the game's simulated world keeps falling victim to unpredictable changes in climate that cause its civilizations to inevitably collapse. Interwoven with the book's near-future narrative is a story of the past, in which an astrophysicist who lost everything in Mao's Cultural Revolution is assigned to a secret military base that she comes to realize is dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. These two seemingly unrelated threads come together to reveal a multilayered conspiracy of world-ending stakes.

I had this on my TBR list for so long that I'd completely forgotten what it was about, and I think that worked out well for my experience of it. I never knew where it was going to go next, and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. Liu has a flair for creating epic set pieces of jaw-dropping cinematic scope that nonetheless follow naturally from the speculative science. I consumed a lot of popular science media in the 2000s, specifically, so for me the science in this book felt... oddly nostalgic? Not that it's obsolete, necessarily, but the particular preoccupations of that era and what was cutting-edge are strongly represented here. It made me want to go read a Brian Greene book.

The translation by Ken Liu reads nicely and I appreciated the informative but not excessive footnotes helping with some points about Chinese culture and history. I love that they let him write an afterword about the translation process!

The book is definitely more interested in ideas than people, and it's particularly weak on female characters. I was not entirely surprised to hear that the Netflix adaptation makes some of the male characters women, including Wang Miao. (I guess it also changes the nationality of a lot of characters, which makes less sense to me since the Chinese setting seems crucial to the book's themes, but I haven't actually watched the adaptation so it's not for me to say how well it works.)

I do plan to continue with the trilogy, though I have a suspicion that it might turn out to be too pessimistic in its outlook on the future for my taste? But I guess it depends on where the story ends up. My library hold on the second book just came in.
duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

There is much to look at in the sanctuary, but let us start with the altar. It recreates the altar where drugged captives were once placed before undergoing the Rite of Death, which represented their entry into a Living Death. It was at this stage that new slaves had iron masks locked securely onto their heads, which could not be removed except in the unlikely event that they survived long enough to be freed.

Here on the altar, if you wish, you may place a piece of the jackalfire tree, representing your wish that the evils of the past may be transformed by all of us in the present, bringing about rebirth.

[Translator's note: Yet again, Death Mask is the place to learn more about such matters.]

Goblin Emperor and Midsummer

Jul. 10th, 2025 01:24 am
chomiji: hand with crystal orb and word Magic (Fantasy Orb)
[personal profile] chomiji
 Given that Edrehasiver VII became known as the Winter Emperor, I’m not shocked that we don’t have much info about how Midsummer is celebrated in the Ethuveraz (Elflands) in the first book.

But after some searching, I’m saddened to report that there’s nothing in the entire Cemeteries of Amalo on the subject either.  In fact, The Grief of Stones has not a single mention of the word “summer,” and the other two only mention it in reference to things like the summer homes of the nobility.

I’m trying to come up with something for a project, and so far I’ve only come up with fireworks and summer fruits like strawberries and plums.   I imagine that there are various agriculture-related  activities in rural areas among commoners (for example, bonfires rather than fireworks), but does anyone else have any inspirations for Summernight activities among the nobility?

What Am I Reading Wednesday - July 9

Jul. 9th, 2025 09:33 pm
lebateleur: Ukiyo-e image of Japanese woman reading (TWIB)
[personal profile] lebateleur
The first six months of this year really tanked my standard reading pace, but as it seems to be picking back up in recent weeks, let's get back into the swing of:

What I Finished Reading This Week

The Twelfth of Never – Ciaran Carson
Although I'm much more of a lyrics person, I will read Ciaran Carson's poetry any day of the week. The 77 linked sonnets in The Twelfth of Never are as trippy and beautifully written as anything he's ever penned, and I'll definitely need to read this once more to get a handle on everything that's going. As a bonus, the volume also contains some vintage 80s "Japan is just so weird" goggling, apparently occasioned by a junket Carson took to Tokyo.

The Party and the People – Bruce Dickson
The first half of this book is excellent: Dickson's writing is crisp and informative. Unfortunately, the quality—in terms of proofreading, thoroughness, and argumentation—drops precipitously in the later chapters, as if Dickson was forced to rush through them, or possibly even author them.

Scotland's Forgotten Past – Alistair Moffat
I was worried this book would be superficial listicle-style content. My concerns were misplaced. Scotland's Forgotten Past is engaging and informative. Moffat touches on geography, politics, culture, and more, focusing on both the good (e.g., the Scottish Enlightenment) and the bad (e.g., antisemitism) with a deft and objective touch. I'll definitely read this one again and look for more by this author.


What I Am Currently Reading

How To Dodge a Cannonball – Dennard Dayle
It took about 100 pages for this book to find its footing, but it's pretty enjoyable now that it has.

The Third Revolution – Elizabeth Economy
Economy also has a wonderfully crisp and informative style; I'll probably finish this book by the end of next week.

Under the Nuclear Shadow – Fiona Cunningham
Cunningham, by contrast, does not. There's some thought-provoking stuff in here, but dear god are her sentences convoluted.

The Woman's Day Book of House Plants – Jean Hersey
It's interesting (and occasionally perplexing) to compare Hersey's notes on plant care with the guidance circulating in the 21st century.

Mother, Creature, Kin – Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
In a month of extreme weather (both locally and in the news), this book is hitting hard.


What I'm Reading Next

This week I picked up Zen at Daitoku-ji by Jon Covell and Yamada Sōbin, and Recorder Technique by Anthony Rowland-Jones.


これで以上です。

Dept. of Birthdays

Jul. 9th, 2025 08:06 pm
kaffy_r: (Big Barakomon grin)
[personal profile] kaffy_r
Hey, [personal profile] masakochan !

I hope you've had a Happy Birthday, and may the coming year be good for you. I'm glad I know you!

Dept. of Stupid

Jul. 9th, 2025 07:10 pm
kaffy_r: gif w/cartoons asking Darwin to get rid of stupid people (Darwin!)
[personal profile] kaffy_r
Just When You Think It Couldn't be More Stupid 

Now come six proofs that you can have the IQ of a broken toaster and still make it to Washington D.C.

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; four U.S. House Representatives from Minnesota, and two from Wisconsin, sent a letter to the Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. 

Their subject? The smoke from Canadian wildfires that were coming south and preventing people in their states from enjoying outdoor summer activities. 

Seriously. 

Since I would not be surprised in the least if you've already started snickering, sure that I'm having you on, here's the story.  It's not behind a paywall, I swear. And it notes with a perfectly straight face, the smoke from U.S. wildfires heading northward. The "Are you actually humans, or malfunctioning Chat GPT programs?" is unspoken.  

These six examples of Darwin's Law are either fully aware of the fatuous asininity exhibited in this letter and are doing it to ingratiate themselves with Dear Leader or to their own MAGA constituents ...

... or they're really that stupid. 

JFC. Once I would have laughed merrily at this. Today I'm perilously close to weeping. 

Washington State: Day 2 – Saturday

Jul. 9th, 2025 12:45 pm
lovelyangel: (Meiko Smile)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
The View from Pike Place Market
The View from Pike Place Market
Seattle, Washington • June 14, 2025
Nikon Z6 • NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S
f/4 @ 24mm • 1/2000s • ISO 100

On the second day of our two-day trip to Washington state, Jenni and I planned on a leisurely trip back home. We had planned a few stops.

tl;dr: Jenni and I Visit Seattle, Washington )

Washington State: Day 1 – Friday

Jul. 9th, 2025 12:13 pm
lovelyangel: (Meiko Smile 2)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
2025 Edmonds Art Festival
2025 Edmonds Art Festival
Edmonds, Washington • June 13, 2025
iPhone 13 mini photo

(I am waaay behind on my journaling, and I rely on my blog as a compilation of memories I can refer to years down the road. It’s been almost a month since Jenni and Amy’s Excellent Adventure in Washington State. My schedule continues to be a mess.)

I had hoped to attend this year’s OCF with my friend Jenni, but she had a schedule conflict with a family wedding, so she had to skip OCF this year. To make up for missing out on that road trip, I suggested a road trip to Seattle to attend the Edmonds Art Festival. I had been to this festival just once – 20 Years Ago. Jenni had never been, and she agreed to go.

tl;dr: Jenni and I Visit Edmonds, Washington )

Sunshine Revival Challenge #3

Jul. 9th, 2025 12:14 pm
pauraque: Kirk and Spock walk near the Golden Gate Bridge (st san francisco)
[personal profile] pauraque
[community profile] sunshine_revival's next challenge is:
Snack Shack
Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?
Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes.
When I was growing up, the most coveted summer treat was universally acknowledged to be the It's-It. This is an ice cream sandwich made with soft oatmeal cookies, coated in a thin layer of chocolate. It was invented in San Francisco in 1928 and for decades it was sold only at the local amusement park Playland at the Beach. The Playland era was before my time, though; now It's-Its are sold prepackaged in stores and from roving food trucks all over the Bay Area.

I didn't realize until I moved away that It's-Its are made by a local company and nobody outside California had heard of them. I also didn't realize what a weird name they have until I tried to explain to other people what they were. "Itsits? What does that even mean?" I guess it made sense in the context of the 1920s when everyone was talking about "it girls" and having "it." (The movie It starring Clara Bow sounds like a horror title now, but it didn't in 1927!)

As a kid I never questioned it. The origin of the name did not matter. All that mattered was sitting on a sunny park bench after waiting patiently in line at the food truck, and finally biting into your precious It's-It, which instantly started melting, and trying to contain the ice cream in the flimsy crinkly plastic but always failing, having it drip all over your hands as it squeezed out from between the cookies with the chocolate coating cracking into melty bits. Pure summer childhood bliss.

You can actually order It's-Its online if you're in the US, and I've read that in recent years they've been selling them at brick and mortar stores outside California, though I haven't run into any in the wild. I've been told that they're pretty good even if the mere sight of them does not overwhelm you with nostalgia.

what i'm reading wednesday 9/7/2025

Jul. 9th, 2025 10:10 am
lirazel: Anne Shirley from the 1985 Anne of Green Gables reads while walking ([tv] book drunkard)
[personal profile] lirazel
What I finished:

+ A Lonely Death by Charles Todd, another Ian Rutledge mystery. I don't really have anything to say about this! It's an entry in a mystery series--you know what you're getting!

+ The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is only the second Tchaikovsky I've read--I've started a few but up till now, the only one I liked enough to finish is Elder Races. I don't read nearly as much scifi as I do fantasy, mostly because most scifi (emphasis on most) seems like it's more focused on the ideas than on any of the other stuff that makes a book for me--characters, emotional resonance, even worldbuilding from a cultural perspective rather than a technological one.

However, I do like to read them now and then, and this was an example of one where the idea was indeed very intriguing--extradimensional cracks between worlds as an excuse to think about what sentient life might have looked like if it had developed at other points on the evolutionary tree. Very cool, actually! I liked the idea, I liked Tchaikovsky's prose well enough, I liked the unconventional way of giving information (via excerpts from a diegetic text--btw, can you use diegetic to talk about things other than sound? I am simply going to do so because I think it's a very useful word).

There's a wide-ranging cast of characters, too, which I enjoyed, varying in race, gender, and sexual orientation though not nationality (all the human characters are British). I could have done with some truly old characters--I am one of those people who thinks that every story can be improved by the inclusion of an old lady--but I won't complain about that since if I complained about that I'd have to complain about 90% of books. The characters were pretty well-developed but for reasons I can't articulate, I didn't emotionally connect very deeply with any of them. It was more like me going, "That's a good character design," than me truly caring about the characters. But I find this is true in a lot of scifi, and it's not a dealbreaker for me when there's other interesting stuff going on.

This is one of those books that ended up being so long that if I'd gotten the physical copy and seen that it was 600 pages, I might not have started it at all, but it was an ebook so I didn't know when I started! And I did read the whole thing over the course of a long weekend, so clearly it was readable enough even at that length. I thought the pacing was good, and the toggling between character perspectives was enough to keep it moving briskly, so it didn't feel as long as it is.

All in all, a book I enjoyed but did not love.

What I started but abandoned:

+ A Fate Inked in Blood, a Norse-inspired fantasy that was a massive bestseller, which I'd heard good things about from someone whose taste usually completely aligns with mine, but...nah, this isn't for me. I was initially intrigued by the fact that our heroine is married to a terrible guy, which is just not something you see a lot. But then in the opening chapter, along comes this super hot guy who is so clearly coded as Our Male Romantic Lead that I found it annoying, and then they started flirting, and I was like, "I am too ace for this," and I peaced out. I also wasn't impressed by the first person perspective/prose style, so I don't think this is any real loss for me.

What I'm reading/what's on pause:

+ On recommendation from [personal profile] chestnut_pod, I started Sofia Samatar's The White Mosque, and I am very enamored of it despite wishing that Samatar's prose style was about 15% more conventional (more on that when I actually write this up), but I have put it on pause. The book is a memoir about half-Mennonite, half-Muslim Samatar tracing the steps of a 19th century group of Mennonites who traveled through and settled in Central Asia for a few decades--one of those unexpected quirks of history that gets me wildly excited. But I got a chapter or so in and she referenced a nonfiction book about the same topic that covers the historical trip in detail, I saw that we have it at the library of the university I work for, and so I decided I would go read it before I read this book. But I am so looking forward to getting back to this. [personal profile] chestnut_pod was correct that this book is Extremely Relevant To My Interests.

+ I also started Godkiller by Hannah Kaner but I am literally a chapter and a half in so I can't possibly speak to whether I'll like it or not.

revisiting Animorphs

Jul. 9th, 2025 09:18 am
atamascolily: (Default)
[personal profile] atamascolily
I don't remember when exactly I started reading the Animorphs books but I remember them coming out periodically at intervals for a while, until eventually I caught up/fell out of reading them roughly about the time where the ghostwriters started. I remember being surprised to discover a few years after the series finished that it had finished, let alone that it had abruptly broken the status quo established at the beginning, where everything more or less "resets" after each adventure - I had assumed that it would go on ad infinitum and end with a deus ex machina because the writers wouldn't have the stomach for anything else, but neither turned out to be the case.

The first Animorphs book I ever read was #4, The Message, i.e., Cassie dolphin book. (Technically, each installment has a name but I identify them almost solely by their cover art.) The books are written in such a way you can pretty much pick them up wherever and figure it out, but starting here does have the side effect of making the first three books feel like Early Installment Weirdness (even more so than usual). So of course I did it again, then jumped to Megamorphs #1 - The Andalite's Gift, which is such a generic title. Thematically, both of these books feature Cassie Talking to Whales as a major plot point, so they actually work really well juxtaposed together, hahaha.

One interesting thing is how short the paragraphs are, which helps for a quicker read. The lack of description works for the whole "this is redacted for safety" vibes while also allowing the reader to fill in a lot of gaps in their head--I think I was vaguely aware that the books were set in California, but always imagined something more local and specific, which I think was the point, or at least a convenient side effect. It's funny because I always aim for descriptions in my own work to try and convey my mental images to readers, but sometimes the opposite effect is desirable!

These books are so 90s. The cover art using then-cutting edge software, the diverse group of kids hanging out by themselves at a mall, the various pop culture references... At the time, we didn't notice it because it was like water; since then things have changed so much that in some ways, it's barely recognizable, while others are all too relevant, sigh.

Anyway, we'll see if I end up reading more or not - if so, it'll be wildly idiosyncratic and out of order, but even just browsing the covers fills me with such nostalgia. It's so interesting what we internalize and carry with us, even when--especially when--we're not fully aware of it at the time.
muladhara: (Default)
[personal profile] muladhara
Bullet points because I don't do coherent segues!

# I am not going to talk about how many hours I am working this week, suffice to say it's ridiculous. One shift was my own fault for taking it on, but the rest were not.

Maybe I'll whine about it next week.

# I was supposed to have counselling today, but I got a text from my counsellor very early on saying she was sorry, but she had to postpone our session because she wasn't feeling well. Which is fair! And also I'm relieved, because I didn't have anything specific to talk about, apart from telling her how my new meds are going. I'm hoping next time I speak to her, I will have a bigger update for her/something else to talk about, hopefully.

# I'm changing my mind about what I want to do with (some of) the walls in my house - I was originally going to wallpaper upstairs and paint downstairs, but now I think I might just paint the lot? Especially because I think the colour I picked for the hallway has been discontinued??? I have one can of it, but that won't be enough for all the walls that will need doing.

But it's annoying, because they've literally made this colour FOR YEARS, and now I choose it as the one I want, I can't get it anywhere!

(There is a similar colour by the same company, which hopefully is still in production, so I can get that, but I am currently very >:( at it all).

I don't know what I will do with the wallpaper I haven't used, though. (I did think about partially papering the front bedroom, but idk right now).

# Wyrdwood season 2 starts on Friday! I am very excite!! I won't get to watch it till at least Sunday evening, but I am excite all the same!
queenlua: (steller)
[personal profile] queenlua
Okay, yeah, as people watching my Tumblr may have already noticed, I gave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a try on a whim (mostly because of this post tbh) & I had a grand old time & now I'm here to dump some thoughts about it before I lose them forever.

Full disclosure, a big reason that I got SO into this game (devoured it in ~2 weeks) was because Bird Guy got into it too, at exactly the same time, and did you know it is VERY fun to blast through a big bombastic game in Your Favorite Genre alongside the love of your life? Highly recommend it. We were heckling each other and swapping strategy protips and speculating wildly about the plot together the whole time; it was SO weeby in our household lol.

We historically have somewhat divergent tastes in video games (he plays FPSes, Soulsbornes, and grand strategy games; I tend more toward turn-based tactical RPGs, narrative-driven RPGs, stealth-action games, and platformers). There's also a lot of places where our tastes overlap (we both love a good puzzle game, hence both of us getting oneshot by Blue Prince a few months back, and we both enjoyed e.g. Breath of the Wild), but up until now I don't think he's ever liked anything in the (admittedly fuzzy) space of "big, bombastic, narrative-heavy 90s/00s-style RPGs."

a list of all the ways this game is a big fat love letter to A Specific Era Of RPGs )

So, yeah, the game nailed a 10/10 on "bottling up a bunch of highlights from the RPGs-of-a-specific-era into a modern Essence Du Jour." This will probably make me sound either sappy or deranged or both, but I really do feel like it let me share something precious and lovely with my husband in a way that finally got him to enjoy it too, and I'm pretty grateful for that. Sort of like the first time I took him to see fireflies in Kentucky because he, a west coast boy, had never seen them before.

Combat, however—combat is very different than any mainline Final Fantasy game, and it rules, actually.

what the combat is like )

The plot's another thing I was a little apprehensive about going in. The premise sounded a little stilted/weird/cheesy to my ear, and the vague rumblings I'd heard about the game online made it sound like it was all going to be some sort of philosophical-dilemma-disguised-as-a-story sort of deal, which is just not interesting in to me. (I very seriously entertained majoring in philosophy; I've taken classes on "what if we were a brain in a vat tho" kind of dilemmas; I get the appeal. I just don't find it as appealing these days :P)

Without spoiling, I'd say it doesn't really demand deep philosophical wrestling any more than, say, Christopher Nolan's Inception does—it's there if you want it and I'm sure forum nerds are arguing about it at we speak (<3 you forum nerds, you are my people), but it's mostly focused on some broader thematic concerns and the attendant characters. I don't think the characters or their world are quite as juicy in terms of their interpersonal dynamics or as fully-fleshed-out-in-relation-to-their-world as, say, the Final Fantasy 10 cast... but they're interesting enough (Verso and Maelle prove particularly chewy), there's good synergy in the ensemble, and the game REALLY leans hard into the light-and-dark interplay suggested by the title. The bright/charming bits are SURPRISINGLY goofy and silly and disarming for it; the grim bits are grim in a PG-13 way but no less satisfying for it.

Okay that's al lthe general stuff. Some more spoiler-y and off-the-cuff thoughts below—no major spoilers but if you're like "I do not even wish to Know The Name Of Potential Bosses In The Game," yeah, here's your chance to stop reading.

vaguely spoilery stuff )

oh god also i forgot to mention the soundtrack. straight bangers, every single one of them. i have the sheet music for "alicia" and "verso" sitting on my piano as we speak. truly it is the 90s again and they got their own damn Uematsu lol
grayestofghosts: a sketch of a man reading a paper (reading)
[personal profile] grayestofghosts
Two books today, because I'm no good at getting these comments posted in time.

I think I was probably more disappointed by The House by the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune than I should have been because it was listed, for some reason, on a thread about fans of The Locked Tomb series looking for something m/m and this book has essentially no similarities and should not be mentioned in the same sentence as any Locked Tomb book, which isn't this book's fault.

It's a very cozy book with little sense of stakes, which is fine if you're into that kind of thing, but also I feel like it is kind of a prime example of books for adults feeling "fanfiction"-y. A lot of fanfiction is low-stakes because the source material is often high-stakes so the fanfiction fills in holes of the source material, I think, so what many people think of as fanfiction-y overlaps heavily with "cozy."

But I think probably my disappointment was more not necessarily this book’s fault, but more that like Asako Yuzuki's Butter, it refused to “go there” — I honestly for some reason though that Arthur would be revealed to be an incubus or something, which would explain his affinity for working with Lucy, why he thought the best idea to keep the house open was to charm Linus, and Linus could be concerned that he was being seduced, should a sex demon even be in charge of caring for children in the first place or would it be a problem considering their inherent nature — but instead, we got a ‘phoenix’, a creature which doesn’t really seem to have a lot of meaning besides a symbol and flame based power, boring. I think if I want a book to “go there” unlike The House on the Cerulean Sea and Butter, I might just have to do it myself.

Anyway, given all these frustrations, I went ahead and borrowed Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu from the library, you know, one of the first vampire books that predates Dracula by about 25 years. I guess it’s more of a novella, not a novel, considering it’s very short, but I’m going ahead and counting it here. Anyway, this book delivered exactly what I expected. Gothic, spooky castle, old-fashioned sapphic-sploitation for tittillating purposes, etc. No real notes. If this is the sort of thing you’re interested in reading it, you can get a free copy at Project Gutenberg.

2025 week 27

Jul. 7th, 2025 08:54 pm
larissa: (X ☄ ⌈昴流 ; taken away⌋)
[personal profile] larissa

bad brain day, so i will be brief.

  • have managed to work on fic for the first time in months and months. unfortunately what i need to do is revision, which i have always struggled with, but i'll do my best because i really want this fic done and out already. i wrote the first draft in 2023 and it's been languishing since... i gotta just get it done. (it is the endwalker installment of my wolgraha fic series.)
  • started trails in the sky the 3rd, but haven't gotten very far in yet.
  • no progress on site stuff yet. maybe this week? we'll see.

onwards.

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