The Tea Dragon Festival by Katie O'Neill -- This graphic novel for kids is a loose sequel to The Tea Dragon Society but you could read it as standalone. The story is about an NB kid who likes to cook who makes friends with a dragon. It's all very sweet and charming and the art is very pretty with lot of nature scenes and yummy looking food.
Nirvana in Fire eps 45- 47 Since R was away last week we didn’t make much progress on this. Its hard when you have small kid, one of you works evenings, an the other one you needs to not look a screens for a bit before bed. I want to rush to the end, but it's not really possible.
Something happened in the last episode that cause my suspended disbelief to come crashing down, which was a shame. I would have liked to feel feelings about the characters rather than trying not to laugh about the worldbuilding. I think this mostly a cross cultural failing on my part. I have trouble remembering that Nirvana in Fire is fansty because most of it is people doing politics -- but every now and again there’s fantastical martial arts, or strange medical stuff and it throws me. Generally not as hard as this thing threw me though. Hopefully I can get back in the right mindset for the next episode
Heaven Official’s Blessing by 墨香铜臭 This is another web novel by the author of Mo Dao Zu Shi aka Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation aka the novel The Untamed is based on. A helpful person on twitter sent me a fancomplied ebook of the fan translation which is a lot more accessible to me than reading it online. It's still is really long. I’m about one third of the way through. But I like it a lot so far. The main character is a god who wants to save the world and help the common people but is also disillusioned and bad at heavenly court politics, and I like him a lot. There’s quite a lot in here about fate and luck and trying to change things.(Content note: gore, undead, child harm including death, war, body horror causing disease)
The Okay Witch by Emma Steinkellner Since the library catalog was updated is started showing me new books when I log in. Which is how I discovered this delightful graphic novel about a teen witch. It’s got a central mother-daughter relationship, a talking cat, and cute art!
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid episodes 3 -10 This is still mostly very cute, with lots of domestic life and dragons trying to fit into the human world. There are some bits that are uncomfortable though: one of the characters gets drunk and behaves badly, the show likes to focus on how large breasted the characters are. However the most concerning thing is the way it sexualises kids. One of the plotlines involves an elementary school girl having a crush on another girl, and the way the camera pans over the crush is gross considering she is a child. There’s also a few bits of an adult sexually harassing a kid which is played for laughs. Lucky these bits are pretty short. I’m still enjoying the main relationship between the two women which is very cute and queer coded. They had bento making contest, went to the school sports fair, and put on a play. It was very adorable.
“Glass Cannon” by Yoon Ha Lee, included in Hexarachate StoriesThis novella is squeal to the The Machineries of Empire trilogy. It was nice to spend more time with this character, but I’d forgotten how dark and violent this series can get, especially since the rest of this collection was much fluffier. Still glad I read it.
Nirvana in Fire eps 45- 47 Since R was away last week we didn’t make much progress on this. Its hard when you have small kid, one of you works evenings, an the other one you needs to not look a screens for a bit before bed. I want to rush to the end, but it's not really possible.
Something happened in the last episode that cause my suspended disbelief to come crashing down, which was a shame. I would have liked to feel feelings about the characters rather than trying not to laugh about the worldbuilding. I think this mostly a cross cultural failing on my part. I have trouble remembering that Nirvana in Fire is fansty because most of it is people doing politics -- but every now and again there’s fantastical martial arts, or strange medical stuff and it throws me. Generally not as hard as this thing threw me though. Hopefully I can get back in the right mindset for the next episode
Heaven Official’s Blessing by 墨香铜臭 This is another web novel by the author of Mo Dao Zu Shi aka Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation aka the novel The Untamed is based on. A helpful person on twitter sent me a fancomplied ebook of the fan translation which is a lot more accessible to me than reading it online. It's still is really long. I’m about one third of the way through. But I like it a lot so far. The main character is a god who wants to save the world and help the common people but is also disillusioned and bad at heavenly court politics, and I like him a lot. There’s quite a lot in here about fate and luck and trying to change things.(Content note: gore, undead, child harm including death, war, body horror causing disease)
The Okay Witch by Emma Steinkellner Since the library catalog was updated is started showing me new books when I log in. Which is how I discovered this delightful graphic novel about a teen witch. It’s got a central mother-daughter relationship, a talking cat, and cute art!
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid episodes 3 -10 This is still mostly very cute, with lots of domestic life and dragons trying to fit into the human world. There are some bits that are uncomfortable though: one of the characters gets drunk and behaves badly, the show likes to focus on how large breasted the characters are. However the most concerning thing is the way it sexualises kids. One of the plotlines involves an elementary school girl having a crush on another girl, and the way the camera pans over the crush is gross considering she is a child. There’s also a few bits of an adult sexually harassing a kid which is played for laughs. Lucky these bits are pretty short. I’m still enjoying the main relationship between the two women which is very cute and queer coded. They had bento making contest, went to the school sports fair, and put on a play. It was very adorable.
“Glass Cannon” by Yoon Ha Lee, included in Hexarachate StoriesThis novella is squeal to the The Machineries of Empire trilogy. It was nice to spend more time with this character, but I’d forgotten how dark and violent this series can get, especially since the rest of this collection was much fluffier. Still glad I read it.
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