A bunch of random stuff

[got_quiet]

The next two months are peak work related stress time so that's fun. I still spend some time doing frivolous things because one of the ways I express stress is avoidance, horray! I just feel physically ill while doing it.

Anyhoo!

I watched episode one of Chainsaw Man and looked like an interesting enough setup. I'm watching without subs, so I'm missing chunks of context, but immersion is both good practice and a good way to trick myself into practice. I'm way behind in Demon Slayers though because I picked up a whole chunk of Chainsaw man a while back and haven't had the time to hunt down to Demon Slayers episodes more recently. I'll get to it eventually.

Finally finished a round of Against the Storm on Viceroy difficulty. It was only my third try but I've been very lazy about ramping up the difficulty because Veteran is an easy and chill time and I've never lost, but Viceroy you suddenly have pay a little attention to your resources and can't just build every building willy nilly. The game gets significant balance and gameplay updates on the regular, and generally it feels like it's going in the right direction. I've been thinking there's some space to write some fic even though it's very much not a narrative canon, because the worldbuilding is interesting, and all the houses start with three people in them so instant threesome opportunity.

After playing through a bunch of Hyperlight Drifter I looked up whether or not it had more than one ending and was disappointed to learn that it didn't. I did enjoy the ending that we got. It's the mix of positive and sad that seemed to saturate the whole game from the beginning, but my desire to improve my completion rate was driven by the possibility that there was more narratively, and since it sounds like there isn't I don't know if I want to spend more time trying to complete more of it. Overall it was a great game though. Very cool art and music and a tight and challenging combat system.

The books finally coming out of hold on Libby I'm failing to read before they go back into the pool nowadays, but I did finish up one more book before the crunch choked out my reading habits.

A Marvelous Light is another M/M romance. It's set in late 19th century England and the worldbuilding is the familiar trope of everything being as usual except magicians live among us doing magician things but generally staying out of the limelight. Some spoilers below:

The beginning half was entertaining, largely because the two main characters had interesting flaws, slightly conflicting interests, and a decent rapport. The last bits were more boring once Edwin lost his edge a little bit and I didn't quite like the ending solution which felt a bit contrived. I also wasn't super fond of Edwin just being gifted an estate by an old woman who saw him for about five minutes before keeling over, and yeah I know narratively he wasn't gifted the estate by the old woman but just sort of accidentally claimed the estate for himself right after she died without him knowing, but the only reason I am ok with such a convenient coincidence is that I like the book overall. I particularly liked that the two main characters were introduced to each other largely by being annoyed and suspicious of each other.

Robin I liked a whole lot. Typically I go for the prickly one but there was something about Robin's laid back nature and understated intelligence that I enjoyed. He's a lord or something so one can't feel too bad for him when her reminisces about his bad childhood, but he's self-aware about this, and he's a character that's decided to be a good person despite the fact that he grew up in an environment that sucked. The particular type of suck where you grow up in a loveless household and are trained to serve your parents selfishness is not super common in books like this. Especially in m/m it seems like the angst is more likely to come from homophobia or aggressive gender role stuff than narcissism or whatever it was they had. And the way that Robin's background both gives him certain strengths in his ability to fit in easily with a crowd or spot liars and trouble makers gives him a well rounded sort of personality.

I don't know how I feel about these settings where magicians are chilling out in England and everything else is the same. I do like what I assume is late 19th century settings and I used to like magic is among us type of settings, but in terms of their worldbuilding it can be frustrating when nothing new is going on with the trope. It's very hard to match Clarke, who seemed to effortlessly fold magic into the world without having to rely on excuses of secrecy to avoid thinking about what magic in the world really could mean. But I do wish more people would try.

Comments

[autumndaze]

I'm not gonna lie, I apparently gave Marvellous Light a high rating in my review, but I remember basically nothing about it (and usually if I really like a book, I remember more about it). And while "The Montague Siblings" I loved enough to continue to the f/f sequel, this book did not grab me enough to compel me to give a sequel novel with an f/f pairing a shot. I definitely had some issues with pacing in it. But I've only heard good things from other people about it and its sequels.

[got_quiet]

I think I'll be in the same boat. I could kind of feel the whole book fading from my memory as soon as I finished it. I think the weaker second half is partly to blame for it. I'm going to give the sequel a look though because the preview suggested it was a murder mystery and I like those.

[autumndaze]

I hope you enjoy it!