media round-up

[sideways]

• Severance had such a strong first season, so I really hate to admit I have mixed feelings about the follow-up. It started off so well, but after episode three... the reveals did not always justify the build-up, the character motivations (and focus) grew increasingly wobbly, and there were an awful lot of long artistic scenes that did not sufficiently distract me from how little material forward progress was being made. If Arcane's season 2 frustrated me in part because I felt it needed to be split into two seasons, Severance makes me want to tap on Ben Stiller's window like, hey, I think you could have fit a lot more in here, actually. I did still enjoy having something weekly to chime into.

• Comfort food: Schitt's Creek and His Dark Materials, which incidentally pair well because daemon-typing the SC cast is very entertaining (bird-of-paradise for Moira Rose and I won't hear otherwise). HDM has its own minor frustrations, of course. The first book is one of the richest and most thoughtfully detailed explorations of another world I've ever read, and then Pullman spends the rest of the series never quite devoting the same time or care to it. I haven't found myself a fan of the sequel trilogy either.

• I think I have to reluctantly put Angelmaker back on the shelf for now. I'm intrigued! But Harkaway's particular style of "never say in ten words what you can say in four theatrical pages" just isn't holding my tired and fractured attention and I keep forgetting who people are. One day.

• I am similarly finding myself thwarted in my attempts to play Avowed! It doesn't help that my poor laptop can barely run the thing.

Comments

[cosmicjellyfish]

Now I’m really curious to know what you thought was going on with the Voice! I’m in endgame now and… my #1 prediction didn’t come true, but wasn’t entirely off base.

Ooh, is this the fungal plague story set in a non-Pillars universe?

[sideways]

World-soul theory! The reincarnation cycle existed before the Engwithans slapped their custom-built gods and Wheel over the top to force it to work the way they wanted, and the world has always been seeded with adra - seemed a good set-up for the revelation that there was in fact a massive living soul at the centre of Eora, just casually doing its own thing without special interest in its occupants or need of worship. Sapient exceptionalism decided kith could run nature better than nature itself and now everything's going to shit and it's tapping on the glass to say hey, cut it out. Sounds familiar.

And yes, the fungal plague! Because. You see. The twist there was always that the plague had actually been caused by the emergence of a new god that was then aggressively suppressed by the territorial existing pantheon (sending it into deep dormancy with its anchors to the world remaining in a handful of plague survivors). So. You can understand why Avowed is turning out to be very funny to me.

[cosmicjellyfish]

Oooh, yes - that idea is both very fun and very plausible. Definitely not too far off the actual truth, either! Also, the Cool Factor of getting revealed to be an Eora godlike…

I’m CACKLING. You are prescient!!