january media wrap-up
Jan. 31st, 2023 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookishdaggerI've decided I want to write more in 2023 (not just fic!) and also I like talking about the media I've experienced so for as long as I have the energy (hopefully the whole year) I will be doing monthly media wrap-ups! I'm going to try to be comprehensive but some things may slip through the cracks.
BOOKS
1. Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
This was the first book I read this year - it dropped on January 1st, and I read half of it at 1 am and the rest the following afternoon. I really, really, really loved this. The tone is so perfectly whimsical and I laughed out loud so many times while reading. I loved our protagonist - she is very much a conscious rejection of the 'not like other girls' paradigm, but at the same time she has a real character arc and agency. The magic system, as always, was so well-realized and I'm eager to see it pop up in other Cosmere novels.
2. Heaven's Official Blessing, Volume 2 by MXTX
I read vol. 1 several months ago, so I had to use the glossary a lot in the early stages of this book. Reading TGCF (the acronym for the original Chinese name of this webnovel) alongside MDZS is really fascinating, because they're SUCH different works. I find myself much more entranced by MDZS and by Wangxian than I do by TGCF and Hualian. There are a couple factors at play here, in my opinion. First, TGCF is paced a lot more slowly than MDZS and is also a LOT longer. There are 8 volumes of TGCF, but only 5 volumes of MDZS, so I'm much earlier in the broader narrative of the former than the latter. The other factor is that I just had a lot more pre-existing emotional attachment to the characters of MDZS (because of all the fic I read for it lol). Anyways, this was still an enjoyable read. MXTX has this amazingly wry and comedic writing style that makes it just so easy to fly through anything she writes. This volume also started introducing hints of backstory for our main character, Xie Lian, which I hope helps me get more attached to him.
3. The River of Silver by S.A. Chakraborty
I will not be reviewing this book here because it is published by HarperCollins. If you didn't know, employees of HarperCollins have been on strike since late November for better pay and a greater commitment to diversity, among other issues. Corporate representatives have refused to meet the union at the bargaining table, so the fight continues and will likely continue for quite some time. My impact in the book review world is so small as to be non-existent, but on principle alone I will not cross the picket line by reviewing this book. Maybe I'll talk about it one day, but not now. My thoughts and support go to the members of the HarperCollins union.
4. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I actually started reading this book much earlier in the month (if you've seen that picture of me sitting on the floor of a bookshop reading, that was this book) but I finally got it from the library. I'm not usually a horror person, but I AM a post-colonial literature girlie so this still hit for me. I took a class about gothic literature my very first semester of college and I think that helped somewhat in understanding the genre conventions at play here. I adore our protagonist, NoemÃ, so much - she's such a spirited character and it's very fun to read from her perspective. This book gets pretty dark, but I was never that affected by it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ways in which it tackled eugenics and white supremacy, although I have some qualms on a historical level with some elements (I can't dive into it here for spoiler reasons, but feel free to ask if you want to know).
5. A Master of Djinn by C. Djeli Clark
This is my favorite thing I read this month. It's just so FUN. A fast-paced detective novel starring a queer woman set in an alternate, steampunk-adjacent version of 1912 Cairo, with alternate history musings on colonialism - what more could I want? My one qualm is the ending felt a little bit rushed/unsatisfying, but that's mostly because this book is (for now) a stand-alone, so everything kind of had to come together in the end rather than being expanded across multiple books. This book is engaging, at times funny, has a lot of really immersive and thoughtful worldbuilding, and, like I said, the main character is sapphic. Actually, that's another thing I loved about this book - there are SO many prominent female characters, and they're all so different from each other and yet so well-rounded and well-realized. I would recommend this to fantasy fans, anyone who wants to read a book about women, or anyone who loves a good mystery.
6. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
This is a novella, not a novel, and I read it in one day. The best way to describe this is cozy. Becky Chambers doesn't shy away from conflict, or from humanity's worst impulses, but at the same time her books always have this profound undercurrent of hope, alongside a truly imaginative and transformative sense of worldbuilding. Our main character is non-binary, and it's just accepted in this society. Queerness and polyamory are also mentioned as the norm. There is no money, only the concept of acknowledging each other's labor and paying forward the help given to you. At times this felt more like a philosophy discussion board rather than a true story, but by the end I felt there was enough of a focus on our main characters for me to be satisfied with the story. This is nothing super substantial - it's only 149 pages. But if you want to feel a sense of comfort and catharsis, to imagine a better world, to be reminded of the beauty of nature, or to get a reminder that it's okay to just be, I would recommend this book (although you should read the prequel, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, first).
VIDEO GAMES
Okay this says video gameS but I really made this section so I could talk about video GAME, singular. I beat The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero this month and I'm going to force all of you to read me ramble about it for who knows how many words. Some backstory, first. This game is the third game in the "Trails" series published by Nihon Falcom (they also make the Ys games, if you've heard of those). This series is set in a single interconnected world, and each subseries stars a different set of characters in a different country in this world. The worldbuilding is an absolute highlight of the Trails series as a whole - unique for JRPGs, it's set in a somewhat modern world that feels a lot more real than the swords-and-sorcery fantasy worlds of more traditional games.
The first series, which I played last summer, was set in the Kingdom of Liberl, and was a somewhat more traditional hero's journey/quest story. I can't start talking about the Sky games without going on for far too long, but suffice to say: I love them, a lot. Zero is the first of the Crossbell duology (set in the city-state of Crossbell) and is more akin to a detective story. This is because our main characters this time are essentially a semi-independent detective agency tied to the larger Crossbell Police Department. (Yes, I have lots of #Thoughts about copaganda re: this series, no I will not be getting into it here, ask if you're interested.) This game starts slow (as all Trails games do) but even in the slow moments the story is still about preventing gang wars and fighting the literal mafia. The characters are loveable enough and the writing witty enough to make up for the slower build of the broader plot of the game.
This game, along with the Trails games I've played so far as a whole, has a real preoccupation with childhood trauma and grief. All of our main characters (alongside some significant side characters) are thoroughly shaped by the trauma of their childhoods, or else by the trauma induced by losing their idyllic childhoods to death or other kinds of loss. This theme isn't developed with equal depth for every character (especially because this is the first half of the story - more on that later) but I'm kind of a sucker for those kinds of themes so I still enjoyed the snippets we did get.
I have my critiques, however. I think the handling of romance/sex in these games is, for lack of a better word, very anime (derogatory). Sometimes the jokes were warranted/genuinely important for character moments, but a lot of times I found myself rolling my eyes. The final dungeon was an absolute slog, which is a common experience for me with JRPGs, but still sucked. I also found the ending pretty unsatisfying, for reasons I can't fully explain without spoilers. I expressed this to someone who's played Zero and its sequel, Azure, and I was told it's best to think of Zero as one half a larger story, one that I'll appreciate more when I play the conclusion. In that light, I enjoyed most of my time with Zero quite a bit, and I can't wait to play Azure when it drops in March.
MUSIC
1. Emily I'm Sorry by boygenius
I somehow have never really boygenius-ed despite loving Phoebe Bridgers but a new set of singles gave me an excuse to dive in. I am intrigued! This song is very emotional and also hints at sapphic drama I cannot even begin to comprehend. 10/10 no no notes.
2. Moonlight Sunrise by Twice
Serotonin song of the month. I love women and I love Twice specifically!! I have had this song stuck in my head pretty much since it came out and it has not gotten old. Twice really are the masters of pop bangers. Very excited for the album and also potential tour. (Also, they look SO GOOD in this music video, I love women).
3. The Name Chapter: Temptation by Tomorrow X Together
I AM MOA!!!!!!! I was honestly kind of mixed on their last album but this is sooooooooo excellent I love every single song so dearly. I love me a concept album, I love genre diversity, and I love some intricate choreography and by god did TXT deliver on all of these fronts. The title track took some time to grow on me but I am now utterly obsessed with it. Favorite song is still Devil by the Window but Farewell Neverland is deeeeefinitely creeping up there. If Hybe don't announce a Chicago tour date I will d*e I want to see my BOYS. (Side note: no I am not ready to discuss Soobin thank you for your consideration in this trying time.)
COMICS
Once again this is really to discuss comic, singular. I read 52 this month. Most of you reading this Do Not Comic Books, so the TLDR about 52 is that it was a weekly series focusing on smaller (though not necessarily minor) characters in the DC universe during a year when Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were all out of commission were out of commission for various reasons. It was written by the four big star writers of DC at the time (Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, and Mark Waid) and is widely considered one of the best comic book events of all time. And I'm here to say the masses are....right they're completely right this is so freaking good. Not every storyline hit for me but by GOD did the ones that hit go so freaking hard. The ending didn't feel as epic as I wanted it to, mostly because a lot of the storylines were resolved well before the 52nd and final issue. On the whole though, this is an amazing comic that serves as a true love letter to the DC universe. Every comics fan should probably read this at some point.
If you made it this far into my rambling thank you so much for reading!! I will see you all next month for my February media wrap-up. <3333
BOOKS
1. Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
This was the first book I read this year - it dropped on January 1st, and I read half of it at 1 am and the rest the following afternoon. I really, really, really loved this. The tone is so perfectly whimsical and I laughed out loud so many times while reading. I loved our protagonist - she is very much a conscious rejection of the 'not like other girls' paradigm, but at the same time she has a real character arc and agency. The magic system, as always, was so well-realized and I'm eager to see it pop up in other Cosmere novels.
2. Heaven's Official Blessing, Volume 2 by MXTX
I read vol. 1 several months ago, so I had to use the glossary a lot in the early stages of this book. Reading TGCF (the acronym for the original Chinese name of this webnovel) alongside MDZS is really fascinating, because they're SUCH different works. I find myself much more entranced by MDZS and by Wangxian than I do by TGCF and Hualian. There are a couple factors at play here, in my opinion. First, TGCF is paced a lot more slowly than MDZS and is also a LOT longer. There are 8 volumes of TGCF, but only 5 volumes of MDZS, so I'm much earlier in the broader narrative of the former than the latter. The other factor is that I just had a lot more pre-existing emotional attachment to the characters of MDZS (because of all the fic I read for it lol). Anyways, this was still an enjoyable read. MXTX has this amazingly wry and comedic writing style that makes it just so easy to fly through anything she writes. This volume also started introducing hints of backstory for our main character, Xie Lian, which I hope helps me get more attached to him.
3. The River of Silver by S.A. Chakraborty
I will not be reviewing this book here because it is published by HarperCollins. If you didn't know, employees of HarperCollins have been on strike since late November for better pay and a greater commitment to diversity, among other issues. Corporate representatives have refused to meet the union at the bargaining table, so the fight continues and will likely continue for quite some time. My impact in the book review world is so small as to be non-existent, but on principle alone I will not cross the picket line by reviewing this book. Maybe I'll talk about it one day, but not now. My thoughts and support go to the members of the HarperCollins union.
4. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I actually started reading this book much earlier in the month (if you've seen that picture of me sitting on the floor of a bookshop reading, that was this book) but I finally got it from the library. I'm not usually a horror person, but I AM a post-colonial literature girlie so this still hit for me. I took a class about gothic literature my very first semester of college and I think that helped somewhat in understanding the genre conventions at play here. I adore our protagonist, NoemÃ, so much - she's such a spirited character and it's very fun to read from her perspective. This book gets pretty dark, but I was never that affected by it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ways in which it tackled eugenics and white supremacy, although I have some qualms on a historical level with some elements (I can't dive into it here for spoiler reasons, but feel free to ask if you want to know).
5. A Master of Djinn by C. Djeli Clark
This is my favorite thing I read this month. It's just so FUN. A fast-paced detective novel starring a queer woman set in an alternate, steampunk-adjacent version of 1912 Cairo, with alternate history musings on colonialism - what more could I want? My one qualm is the ending felt a little bit rushed/unsatisfying, but that's mostly because this book is (for now) a stand-alone, so everything kind of had to come together in the end rather than being expanded across multiple books. This book is engaging, at times funny, has a lot of really immersive and thoughtful worldbuilding, and, like I said, the main character is sapphic. Actually, that's another thing I loved about this book - there are SO many prominent female characters, and they're all so different from each other and yet so well-rounded and well-realized. I would recommend this to fantasy fans, anyone who wants to read a book about women, or anyone who loves a good mystery.
6. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
This is a novella, not a novel, and I read it in one day. The best way to describe this is cozy. Becky Chambers doesn't shy away from conflict, or from humanity's worst impulses, but at the same time her books always have this profound undercurrent of hope, alongside a truly imaginative and transformative sense of worldbuilding. Our main character is non-binary, and it's just accepted in this society. Queerness and polyamory are also mentioned as the norm. There is no money, only the concept of acknowledging each other's labor and paying forward the help given to you. At times this felt more like a philosophy discussion board rather than a true story, but by the end I felt there was enough of a focus on our main characters for me to be satisfied with the story. This is nothing super substantial - it's only 149 pages. But if you want to feel a sense of comfort and catharsis, to imagine a better world, to be reminded of the beauty of nature, or to get a reminder that it's okay to just be, I would recommend this book (although you should read the prequel, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, first).
VIDEO GAMES
Okay this says video gameS but I really made this section so I could talk about video GAME, singular. I beat The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero this month and I'm going to force all of you to read me ramble about it for who knows how many words. Some backstory, first. This game is the third game in the "Trails" series published by Nihon Falcom (they also make the Ys games, if you've heard of those). This series is set in a single interconnected world, and each subseries stars a different set of characters in a different country in this world. The worldbuilding is an absolute highlight of the Trails series as a whole - unique for JRPGs, it's set in a somewhat modern world that feels a lot more real than the swords-and-sorcery fantasy worlds of more traditional games.
The first series, which I played last summer, was set in the Kingdom of Liberl, and was a somewhat more traditional hero's journey/quest story. I can't start talking about the Sky games without going on for far too long, but suffice to say: I love them, a lot. Zero is the first of the Crossbell duology (set in the city-state of Crossbell) and is more akin to a detective story. This is because our main characters this time are essentially a semi-independent detective agency tied to the larger Crossbell Police Department. (Yes, I have lots of #Thoughts about copaganda re: this series, no I will not be getting into it here, ask if you're interested.) This game starts slow (as all Trails games do) but even in the slow moments the story is still about preventing gang wars and fighting the literal mafia. The characters are loveable enough and the writing witty enough to make up for the slower build of the broader plot of the game.
This game, along with the Trails games I've played so far as a whole, has a real preoccupation with childhood trauma and grief. All of our main characters (alongside some significant side characters) are thoroughly shaped by the trauma of their childhoods, or else by the trauma induced by losing their idyllic childhoods to death or other kinds of loss. This theme isn't developed with equal depth for every character (especially because this is the first half of the story - more on that later) but I'm kind of a sucker for those kinds of themes so I still enjoyed the snippets we did get.
Beyond the characters, though, I loved the environment the game is set in as well. I absolutely adored the urban setting of Crossbell City, and for the majority of the game I took such joy out of simply playing it. Running around to do sidequests, following along with the plot, even the combat - all of it was just so fun. I got really sucked into this game - every time I played it I was sat in front of the TV for a minimum of 3 hours each time, which for me is a lot.
I have my critiques, however. I think the handling of romance/sex in these games is, for lack of a better word, very anime (derogatory). Sometimes the jokes were warranted/genuinely important for character moments, but a lot of times I found myself rolling my eyes. The final dungeon was an absolute slog, which is a common experience for me with JRPGs, but still sucked. I also found the ending pretty unsatisfying, for reasons I can't fully explain without spoilers. I expressed this to someone who's played Zero and its sequel, Azure, and I was told it's best to think of Zero as one half a larger story, one that I'll appreciate more when I play the conclusion. In that light, I enjoyed most of my time with Zero quite a bit, and I can't wait to play Azure when it drops in March.
MUSIC
1. Emily I'm Sorry by boygenius
I somehow have never really boygenius-ed despite loving Phoebe Bridgers but a new set of singles gave me an excuse to dive in. I am intrigued! This song is very emotional and also hints at sapphic drama I cannot even begin to comprehend. 10/10 no no notes.
2. Moonlight Sunrise by Twice
Serotonin song of the month. I love women and I love Twice specifically!! I have had this song stuck in my head pretty much since it came out and it has not gotten old. Twice really are the masters of pop bangers. Very excited for the album and also potential tour. (Also, they look SO GOOD in this music video, I love women).
3. The Name Chapter: Temptation by Tomorrow X Together
I AM MOA!!!!!!! I was honestly kind of mixed on their last album but this is sooooooooo excellent I love every single song so dearly. I love me a concept album, I love genre diversity, and I love some intricate choreography and by god did TXT deliver on all of these fronts. The title track took some time to grow on me but I am now utterly obsessed with it. Favorite song is still Devil by the Window but Farewell Neverland is deeeeefinitely creeping up there. If Hybe don't announce a Chicago tour date I will d*e I want to see my BOYS. (Side note: no I am not ready to discuss Soobin thank you for your consideration in this trying time.)
COMICS
Once again this is really to discuss comic, singular. I read 52 this month. Most of you reading this Do Not Comic Books, so the TLDR about 52 is that it was a weekly series focusing on smaller (though not necessarily minor) characters in the DC universe during a year when Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were all out of commission were out of commission for various reasons. It was written by the four big star writers of DC at the time (Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, and Mark Waid) and is widely considered one of the best comic book events of all time. And I'm here to say the masses are....right they're completely right this is so freaking good. Not every storyline hit for me but by GOD did the ones that hit go so freaking hard. The ending didn't feel as epic as I wanted it to, mostly because a lot of the storylines were resolved well before the 52nd and final issue. On the whole though, this is an amazing comic that serves as a true love letter to the DC universe. Every comics fan should probably read this at some point.
If you made it this far into my rambling thank you so much for reading!! I will see you all next month for my February media wrap-up. <3333
