media round-up
Aug. 7th, 2022 07:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Returning to the format of old because I'm clearly not organised enough for anything else, haha.
• Like most of the internet I eagerly jumped on Stray when it released, which proved to be a quick and largely delightful little game with more plot than I was expecting. The care taken in rendering dozens of small interactions and discoveries, flush with cat humour and familiar behaviours, was honestly a greater joy than the overarching story though.
• I picked The Space Between Worlds off a sci-fi rec list, and it was decent: I enjoyed the premise, in which 'traversers' are hired to travel to adjacent spheres across the multiverse to collect data for fun and profit (mostly the corporation's profit, of course). The protagonist had a compelling narrative voice, full of cutting bitterness and longing. It lost points for wobbly worldbuilding, though - after a point you can't help but notice how little description we get of anywhere outside two neighbouring population centres, which sits poorly when your personal standard is the works of Hobb or Cherryh or Reynolds - and I found the main romance fairly dull, in part because the love interest receives so little characterisation outside the narrator's perceptions. An understandable trap when you're writing in first person, but one that could have been avoided with a little more effort. Thematically, there was a lot of focus on class and race, and it seemed to be handled well.
• Dug up a bootleg of Jujutsu Kaisen 0 because it's otherwise taking a longass time to come to streaming, and it was pretty much exactly what I expected based on my watch of the first season: incredibly animated and inescapably corny. Every possible declaration of "I will fight for my friends who have made it possible for me to exist in this world!" you could hope for. So yeah, I had fun. I groaned lot, but I had fun. I only wish they did more with Rika because that whole situation had so much potential.
• I don't think I've read such a brutal, bizarre black comedy as Slaughterhouse Five since Catch-22. Apparently war does things to people, who knew. Hard to say I enjoyed it, but at minimum it was interesting to at last experience Vonnegut's peculiar writing style. There's an argument to be made about the extent to which fanfic is often unexpectedly Vonnegutian.
• Watched the first episode of the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman. Interesting enough? Will probably continue? I've never read the comics so at least I can worry less about dissatisfaction than I had to with Good Omens. EDIT: Finished it, loved it :)b
• Like most of the internet I eagerly jumped on Stray when it released, which proved to be a quick and largely delightful little game with more plot than I was expecting. The care taken in rendering dozens of small interactions and discoveries, flush with cat humour and familiar behaviours, was honestly a greater joy than the overarching story though.
• I picked The Space Between Worlds off a sci-fi rec list, and it was decent: I enjoyed the premise, in which 'traversers' are hired to travel to adjacent spheres across the multiverse to collect data for fun and profit (mostly the corporation's profit, of course). The protagonist had a compelling narrative voice, full of cutting bitterness and longing. It lost points for wobbly worldbuilding, though - after a point you can't help but notice how little description we get of anywhere outside two neighbouring population centres, which sits poorly when your personal standard is the works of Hobb or Cherryh or Reynolds - and I found the main romance fairly dull, in part because the love interest receives so little characterisation outside the narrator's perceptions. An understandable trap when you're writing in first person, but one that could have been avoided with a little more effort. Thematically, there was a lot of focus on class and race, and it seemed to be handled well.
• Dug up a bootleg of Jujutsu Kaisen 0 because it's otherwise taking a longass time to come to streaming, and it was pretty much exactly what I expected based on my watch of the first season: incredibly animated and inescapably corny. Every possible declaration of "I will fight for my friends who have made it possible for me to exist in this world!" you could hope for. So yeah, I had fun. I groaned lot, but I had fun. I only wish they did more with Rika because that whole situation had so much potential.
• I don't think I've read such a brutal, bizarre black comedy as Slaughterhouse Five since Catch-22. Apparently war does things to people, who knew. Hard to say I enjoyed it, but at minimum it was interesting to at last experience Vonnegut's peculiar writing style. There's an argument to be made about the extent to which fanfic is often unexpectedly Vonnegutian.
• Watched the first episode of the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman. Interesting enough? Will probably continue? I've never read the comics so at least I can worry less about dissatisfaction than I had to with Good Omens. EDIT: Finished it, loved it :)b
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Date: 2022-08-07 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-07 11:17 pm (UTC)The thing with Dell just honestly wasn't necessary - there was a compelling enough story in their little tragedy of miscommunication without it being plumped up as a grand romance. Alas, whatever was going on with Esther and Mr Cheeks managed to be more convincing.
Fun fact, I was convinced early on the big twist would be Cara ascending into the multiplanar stream and becoming Nyame.
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Date: 2022-08-07 07:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-08 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-10 07:08 am (UTC)Agreed.
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Date: 2022-08-07 03:06 pm (UTC)I do agree with you about Rika and that the situation could have been explored more. In general I kind of thought the JJK 0 felt like a bit like speedrunning a much longer series though I'm not sure we'd have necessarily gotten more about Rika there either, given my experience with shonen.
I liked it well enough that I think I'll join him and his friends when they watch JJK 0 if they do it at a time that I don't mind being awake at. He showed me the first few episodes of the show too and I'd like to keep watching it with him I'm not really interested in continuing it on my own. I'm more interested in what my brother sees in it than what I do.
I read the Sandman comics and quite liked them but I'm not sure I'll check out the show because it would be weird for me to see these characters portrayed as real live action people. I am curious about how they'll adapt some of the stories *cough* A Game of You *cough* in light of modern-day sensibilities though I think most of them hold up decently.
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Date: 2022-08-08 12:51 am (UTC)JJK 0 did feel a little rushed, but I'm not too surprised - I'm sure the choice was either change the story so it suited a movie format better or represent the manga accurately, and of course established fans are going to prefer the latter. It was really more three or four episodes strung together into one longer movie, but that's alright. As you say, it's shounen :P
I've been meaning to read the Sandman comics for yonks but never got around to it. That may work out for me though; it IS sometimes very hard to appreciate a live action adaptation, whereas now I get to enjoy the story fresh and then go check out the acclaimed original. And yes, I have to assume Neil is savvy enough to have pitched in with smoothing out anything that didn't age well.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-12 03:43 pm (UTC)I loved Slaughterhouse-Five as a teenager, but have not reread it since then. Maybe I'm overdue. Also: There's an argument to be made about the extent to which fanfic is often unexpectedly Vonnegutian. I'm curious!
The Space Between Worlds sounds like it has an interesting premise, even if the romance and worldbuilding were a letdown. I might keep an eye out for it at the library.
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Date: 2022-08-14 04:38 am (UTC)It's a fairly short read at least, so it would be an easy enough re-visit! And mostly I'm thinking about things like opening the story with "Listen:" and spinning the whole thing out in short fragments and being incredibly self-referential. It's not standard for a novel, but it's not uncommon for a fanfic.
I'd def give TSBW a go, it wasn't perfect but I enjoyed it overall.