A Restless Truth, mostly.

[got_quiet]

It's been a busy few weeks for me so here's a random dump of what I've been reading and watching and never had a chance to post as I was reading and watching it.

 

A Restless Truth

I liked this a lot more than I liked a Marvelous light and I enjoyed A Marvelous Light well enough. The plotting in this one was better, and the characters more interesting. The biggest improvement is that there is no deus ex manor house, and the problem of finding a stolen Macguffin and outwitting dangerous enemies is solved in a better and more direct way -- through the agency of the characters. This story satisfied the mystery lover in me significantly more than the first one did.

With A Marvelous Light it felt like the focus was too zoomed in on Robin and Edwin. The other characters did exist but sort of went in and out and felt more like bit players, but in this book they have a little more time to be more interesting all by themselves. Hawthorne shows up again and while he's still an asshole he's a more interesting asshole. Lady Navenby dies right away but unlike Flora in the first book she still gets to have her say in some respects. The main couple were more flawed, and their relationship felt more natural even though it was more whirlwind. Maud was great. She had the same moral core as Robin but her weaknesses and insecurities were a bigger driver of her behavior. She also had some massive ADHD energy.  With Robin I liked him quite a bit but his biggest "flaw" was that he was a little avoidant about dealing with his inheritance. That's not a particularly interesting flaw. Maud worries about being good enough to take on a serious task, is eager to break out of the confines of social norms but hasn't quite figured out how to do that, needs to manipulate people and is very good at it but doesn't always get it right and doesn't enjoy it, and is just sweet in a way that I really liked. Violet was likewise an interesting personality, and her coldness wrapped in rambunctiousness and fear of exposing her true self felt like a more interesting obstacle to her relationship with Maude than Edwin's pricklyness was with Robin. It felt like the boys kind of solved things in one scene where there was a lot of negotiation between the two women.

And I did like Hawthorn a lot. I like my mean, traumatized boys. The book teases a little bit about his past but doesn't explain it really, so he remained an intriguing mystery the whole way through, and the fact that he kept professing a disinclination to be helpful well past the point where he was clearly actively helping added a touch of humor to the whole situation. He's also a guy who just shrugs and goes with it when a lady shows up and says "Hey, finger me, dude" and I respect that lol.

I don't know if the next book will be able to really pull together this whole ordeal with the Last Contract but A Restless Truth left me more optimistic about it than the first book.

Nimona

I didn't read any of the comics but I was absolutely wiped a couple days ago and decided fuck it I'm going to watch something. I enjoyed the movie a ton! Nimona was great and her angst was very relatable. The animation was rough in a few points I much prefer a good story with adequate animation to a half-assed story that almost killed dozens of animators to complete. And the voice acting was excellent. It wasn't hard to guess the big bad immediately, but this is definitely one of those shows where you just relax and enjoy the emotional journey. Ballister's growth felt perfectly paced and the climax had me crying. I'm tempted to check out the comic now. I wonder how long the hold wait is at the library...

--

Blizzard is finally coming out with a little series of animated shorts for Overwatch. They're significantly lower quality than any of the shorts they've done previously outside of the hero intros that were glorified slideshows (but I preferred the slideshows, honestly). The voice acting in particular is leaning towards the bad side. It feels almost like dub quality, like the animators didn't know how to time the lips and then the VAs had to just try going with it. I'm kind of confused by how rough it was, and as far as the story itself basically nothing happens. A bunch of characters are like, we were in a utopia and all the bots just made life better and post scarcity or whatever but then this Dr. Liao just had to go and create true intelligence and then ~everything changed~ and I guess we get to wait for the next installment to see the change. I have a feeling that by the final installment the only info we'll have is the exact same info we already have. There was a super intelligence, it rebelled, we got a war, yay.

--

I'm at the tail end of of the season of work stress which is nice. There are a ton of work trips planned. We're fully back into pre-pandemic nomadism again. Last week I was traveling and ended up watching Avatar 2. The first one deserved all the criticism it got but even then it was a good looking spectacle of a movie that I enjoyed when I was watching it. I didn't see the second in theaters cause I figured it would just be the same movie as the first  and I feel like that was basically the case. The plot was again pretty basic but it did its job, and the visuals were still great, and the worldbuilding remained somewhat conservative but with strong vibes. Were we dealing with fantasy pacific islanders? Yes, and in such a blatent way it was a little comical, but I kind of like the expansion of Sully's family and the struggle between trying to protect them or be a warrior and live as a guest in a new culture etc. Because CG and animation in general has advanced a lot since the first movie came out this one didn't have that same wow factor, but it was still pretty good.

I ended up dropping Babel and One For My Enemy. With how busy my life is I need to be sucked in or I'm not going to stick with something.

 

I signed up to fandomgiftbasket

 with a handful of fandoms, and included a non-fandom request in the (probably high?) likelihood that no one cares about what I care about. I kind of hemmed and hawed about that one because while I will certainly be happy to get some music recs I also feel like if I request something non-fandom that's definitely what I'm going to get. I'm going through all the baskets as they get posted and looking for anything that I can fill, and there are a few possible hits, but it's so hard for me to write without being driven by some sort of mania, which is why I don't do exchanges! Even the baskets that share canons don't seem to fit quite well into what I like. In particular I noticed that I said that bad ends and tragedy was great and that's like a DNW for 50% of the signups lol. I just like suffering, okay?

 

Comments

[autumndaze]

Nimona is only one graphic novel, so while the hold is possibly high at your library, it shouldn't be too bad! I also personally prefer the comic to the movie, though I love both. They are in many ways similar but also very different (this is not a direct adaptation at all, though I do think the movie got a core part of the spirit and a number of themes of the comic). I will say I saw the movie in theaters and the entire theater was crying so loudly I could hear it lol Like it's not "lol why are you crying" but I've NEVER heard a theater of folks ALL sobbing that much. It was incredible.

I'm mixed on the Overwatch shorts. I think the first was boring and generic. The second at least had more happening, so that was more interesting. The animation's nice. But knowing that AKB can do so much better with its animated shorts, including the ones for Overwatch, makes this kind of odd. Like "The Last Bastion" didn't even have any dialogue. "Infiltration" had great character interactions. And "Rise and Shine" was excellent. What happened with this lol Genndy Tartakovsky made micro-2D episodes work for the "Star Wars" interquels. So it IS possible.

[got_quiet]

It looks like there's actually a copy available at my local branch so I'mma check it out!

Those last few minutes of the movie hit hard and I'm not surprise the whole theater was weeping.