Entry tags:
media round-up
I've gotten so far behind my media round-ups that I think this is going to have to be a 'greatest hits of the interim' post or it's going to go on for far too long.
• I have a soft spot for cephalopods, so the premise of The Mountain in the Sea was instantly attention-grabbing: a scientist is hired to investigate the possibility that a population of wild octopuses have developed a level of consciousness and intelligence comparable to humans, and the consequences of this possibility slowly spiral outwards through adjacent plotlines. I ultimately enjoyed this book, as there were a lot of interesting ideas thrown around, and the writing style was refreshingly brisk. I don't think it rose to its full potential, though; the octopus were there and I loved every second of them, but in a way the story was less about the discovery of a new, non-human culture as it was a treatise on communication and social identity, explored through a series of near-future sci-fi thought concepts. The character voices in particular were pretty weak. This is the author's first published novel, though, and it will be interesting to see if he grows more adept at spinning a truly extrapolative story with more long-form writing experience.
• From the future to the past: We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my first Shirley Jackson outside of The Lottery, and whoo. Whoo. There really is just something about the greats and their ability to re-write your brain a little, isn't there? I find myself fascinated with the way Jackson works with absence; the story is as much, if not more so, about what isn't on the page as what is, and it leaves so much room for the reader to insert themselves into the experience. This book troubled me for days.
• Galavant is easy and fun. Apparently its creators claim it as a mix of Princess Bride and Monty Python, which are some rather large boots I don't quite think they fill, but I'm a sucker for musical comedy and the cast is very charming.
• I never dabbled in Critical Role, mostly because that is just a lot of time to give over to a single story good grief. Thank goodness for cliff-notes then! The Legend of Vox Machina promised well-animated fight scenes, which as usual is an easy sell for me. There really aren't many complaints I can make that aren't immediately explained away by the fact this is a fan-funded project based on a tabletop game that a bunch of friends played together for the lulz, and given that foundation I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the accompanying storytelling. Like, yes, it could use a pre-season to actually get to know everyone before we launch into major dramatics, but I know why it doesn't exist and I accept I'm not the priority audience. Maybe the pacing could be better; it does well enough. Maybe the quantity of crude jokes aren't to my taste; I guess they were to somebody's. The animation and soundtrack are both fantastic. I'm looking forward to season three.
• A couple of movie nights with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
weirderwest worked us through Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves and Alien, which were entertaining in, um... very different ways. D&D was very silly, but wow, loved the platonic life partnership at the centre. Alien was also sort of silly, but mostly in the sense of watching a pop culture tragedy and going noooo stop making all these inevitably terrible decisions!! Love that old school sci-fi aesthetic though, truly we've gotten more boring.
• A whimsical rewatching of the ever-classic Muppet Treasure Island ended with me starting to pick through a sampler of The Muppet Show itself. I keep thinking 'wow, why haven't they brought this back, it's such a simple but fun formula' and then I remember they did do that and it apparently sucked. Something something worst timeline.
• Like ten months after my parents showed me the first couple of episodes I've FINALLY finished Deadloch - the delay was less because I didn't want to continue and more because it's taken me this long for me to grudgingly sign up for Amazon Prime. The ratio of comedy to drama was weighted rather more in the latter's direction than I expected over the course of the show, but I ended up really invested in the mystery, and the character arcs were compelling as well. I think my only real whinge is I wish they'd folded Tammy and Miranda's B plot more snugly into the A; for a second in the final episode it looked like they would, and then they weirdly veered away from it? Let the girls be plot-critical! The actors were great, they deserve it.
• I've hit a bit of a wall with Baldur's Gate 3... Act III is definitely the roughest, aheh.
• I have a soft spot for cephalopods, so the premise of The Mountain in the Sea was instantly attention-grabbing: a scientist is hired to investigate the possibility that a population of wild octopuses have developed a level of consciousness and intelligence comparable to humans, and the consequences of this possibility slowly spiral outwards through adjacent plotlines. I ultimately enjoyed this book, as there were a lot of interesting ideas thrown around, and the writing style was refreshingly brisk. I don't think it rose to its full potential, though; the octopus were there and I loved every second of them, but in a way the story was less about the discovery of a new, non-human culture as it was a treatise on communication and social identity, explored through a series of near-future sci-fi thought concepts. The character voices in particular were pretty weak. This is the author's first published novel, though, and it will be interesting to see if he grows more adept at spinning a truly extrapolative story with more long-form writing experience.
• From the future to the past: We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my first Shirley Jackson outside of The Lottery, and whoo. Whoo. There really is just something about the greats and their ability to re-write your brain a little, isn't there? I find myself fascinated with the way Jackson works with absence; the story is as much, if not more so, about what isn't on the page as what is, and it leaves so much room for the reader to insert themselves into the experience. This book troubled me for days.
• Galavant is easy and fun. Apparently its creators claim it as a mix of Princess Bride and Monty Python, which are some rather large boots I don't quite think they fill, but I'm a sucker for musical comedy and the cast is very charming.
• I never dabbled in Critical Role, mostly because that is just a lot of time to give over to a single story good grief. Thank goodness for cliff-notes then! The Legend of Vox Machina promised well-animated fight scenes, which as usual is an easy sell for me. There really aren't many complaints I can make that aren't immediately explained away by the fact this is a fan-funded project based on a tabletop game that a bunch of friends played together for the lulz, and given that foundation I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the accompanying storytelling. Like, yes, it could use a pre-season to actually get to know everyone before we launch into major dramatics, but I know why it doesn't exist and I accept I'm not the priority audience. Maybe the pacing could be better; it does well enough. Maybe the quantity of crude jokes aren't to my taste; I guess they were to somebody's. The animation and soundtrack are both fantastic. I'm looking forward to season three.
• A couple of movie nights with
weirderwest worked us through Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves and Alien, which were entertaining in, um... very different ways. D&D was very silly, but wow, loved the platonic life partnership at the centre. Alien was also sort of silly, but mostly in the sense of watching a pop culture tragedy and going noooo stop making all these inevitably terrible decisions!! Love that old school sci-fi aesthetic though, truly we've gotten more boring.• A whimsical rewatching of the ever-classic Muppet Treasure Island ended with me starting to pick through a sampler of The Muppet Show itself. I keep thinking 'wow, why haven't they brought this back, it's such a simple but fun formula' and then I remember they did do that and it apparently sucked. Something something worst timeline.
• Like ten months after my parents showed me the first couple of episodes I've FINALLY finished Deadloch - the delay was less because I didn't want to continue and more because it's taken me this long for me to grudgingly sign up for Amazon Prime. The ratio of comedy to drama was weighted rather more in the latter's direction than I expected over the course of the show, but I ended up really invested in the mystery, and the character arcs were compelling as well. I think my only real whinge is I wish they'd folded Tammy and Miranda's B plot more snugly into the A; for a second in the final episode it looked like they would, and then they weirdly veered away from it? Let the girls be plot-critical! The actors were great, they deserve it.
• I've hit a bit of a wall with Baldur's Gate 3... Act III is definitely the roughest, aheh.