Recent Media: Pretty Settings

[forestofglory]

Children of the Sea by Daisuke Igarashi, Vol 1 I don’t remember how I found out about this manga. It's about a girl who gets kicked off her handball team and ends up spending the summer hanging out at an aquarium with two strange and mysterious children. Featuring lots of pretty pictures of underwater life.

The Breakaways by Cathy G. Johnson comic about a middle school girls soccer team. It was cute and touched on some queer themes.

Mushi-Shi eps 1, 8-13 -- this was rec’ed to me as manga but the anime was easier for me to get a hold off so I have been watching that. The library is missing the 1st disk in the series. I tried watching an episode on Funimation but the ads are very annoying. So I am just skipping them since it is a very episodic show. So far it is a little slow and a little creepy and very pretty. There’s lots about what people owe the land. I like it quite a bit.

Hugo Shorts I’ve haven’t been reading a lot for the Hugo Awards this year but I decided to buckle down and read all the work in the short fiction categories at least. I had read several of these before finalist where announced so it wasn’t too big a project. I ended up deciding to skip “STET” because of the child death content note, and “The Only Harmless Great Thing” because it just sounded too dark and depressing. None of the new to me works where standout for me unfortunately -- and a couple have themes that I disagree with.

Nirvana in Fire eps 1-5 I have been hearing about this Chinese historical drama and how good it is for a long time so I convinced R to watch it with me. No one told me it featured a badass warrior princess! She’s far and away my favorite character so far. And she has an interesting complex friendship with another woman (who got sent off to investigate a problem at the beginning of the second episode but I’m told she’ll be back). There are also some scheming moms. They aren’t that interesting as characters so far, but hey I’m happy to have some moms is my media. So far we’ve watched five episodes and they all pass the bechdel test. The costumes are also gorgeous. I’m not sure that I’m following all of the plot as its very complex but I’m really enjoying the show so far.

My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder by Nie Jun This translated Chinese comic about a disabled girl called Yu’er and her grandpa who live a Hutong -- an older style neighborhood in Beijing. Its reminiscent of magical realism with magical things happening without any rules. I thought it was really sweet, and I loved the artwork!

I haven't really had a chance to get into all the recs for fanfic with moms people left on my post about reading fanfic but I'm so very excited to have giant pile to dive into! Thanks so much everyone who left recs!

Comments

[cahn]

STET was not a good story (it had a clever idea but I didn't think it was written well), you're not missing much. The Only Harmless Great Thing was a better story but yeah, super super depressing. I agree, a lot of the nominees didn't strike me as that good, really.

I am also watching NiF and loving it!! I'm a little farther than you (just finished ep 14) but am watching so slowly (one episode a week or two weeks) that you'll probably finish it before me, lol. I am totally not following all of the plot (zdenka is kindly letting me ask her lots of dumb questions about it) but am really enjoying it. One of the moms (Concubine Jing) is legit my favorite (I have a new fave every episode but she tends to remain in my favorite list) -- she hasn't had a huge amount of on-screen time but she's so great that she transcends that :) Oh! zdenka also linked me to this super helpful (for me) character list, because I keep forgetting what everyone's name is: https://lesbloggerables.tumblr.com/post/157788020760/nirvana-in-fire-character-guide

[ambyr]

I didn’t love any of the Hugo short stories this year, though I did quite like some of the novelettes. I agree with being bothered by several themes (though maybe not the same ones, who knows!)

[lunabee34]

I tend to skip stuff with child death/harm, too. It upsets me too much now.

[forestofglory]

I find stories with clever formats like that a bit hit or miss -- when they work they really work but a lot of the time they don't really feel like a story to me.

Concubine Jing is pretty great! She's got medical skills and she's good at sneaking. I wish there where more of her! Thanks for the link that looks super helpful. I hope when I'm done watching the show I can find good fic focused on the female characters because they are pretty great.

[forestofglory]

I did like some the two novelettes I'd already read (“If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again” and “The Thing About Ghost Stories"). Those two authors are some of my favorites so that's not a surprise. The one that really irritated me was “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” which I felt was mean about the value of feeding people.

And there where a bunch of 2018 story stories that I really liked and none of them made it to the ballot.

This is why nominating is more fun then voting. Nominating is just about shouting about the things that you like. Voting is having to rank things that other people like.

[forestofglory]

Yeah, exactly. It can be a little frustrating when people rec stuff with moms that also has child harm though. Probably the key example of this is The Broken Earth Trilogy I really wish I could read it for the key mom character but I can't handle it.

[hamsterwoman]

I'm happy to see someone besides me did not enjoy "STET". I was intrigued by the idea of a story told through footnotes, but as a story it didn't work for me. Gailey's writing mostly seems not to, so it's not a surprise, but I've seen almost entirely rave reviews of it.

Agreed that The Only Harmless Great Thing was a better story, but also very depressing (although less emotionally affecting for me personally than I was expecting it to be, given how I feel about radiation sickness and animal harm...)

[hamsterwoman]

I was going to ask which were the Hugo shorts that you didn't like the themes of :)

"The Thing About Ghost Stories" was at the top of my nominations ballot, and is still at /near the top of my voting ballot -- "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth" was the other one I liked a lot.

I'd be curious to hear more about what you mean about "The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections" and the value of feeding people. (I liked it a lot, but am always curious to see why some things that work for me don't work for other flisters and vice versa.)

This was my first year making a concerted effort at Hugo nominations, and I think I agree that it's more fun than voting.

[hamsterwoman]

I love the series, but it took me over a year to get through book 2 of Broken Earth, because whenever I got to the daughter's POV, I had to take a break every page or so -- it was too hard to read through all the terrible things happening to her.

[cahn]

Huh, interesting! I too would like to know more about how you felt it was mean. I actually really liked it because it was about food, and I love people writing about food, hee.

[cahn]

Heh, I think several people on my f-list didn't like it :) As for me, I liked the "being told through footnotes" part but I thought it was too anvilicious and the character of the editor was so dense as to be effectively completely unbelievable.

I thought "Harmless" was a very well-written story, but I felt like the worldbuilding... did not adequately explain why you would be mashing up Topsy and the radium girls.

[hamsterwoman]

Heh, I think several people on my f-list didn't like it :)

Oh good! I'm further reassured :) (So, SO anvilicious. And, yeah, I basically did not believe that anyone would actually have this conversation via footnotes, so that contributed to the story not working for me. But also, this was the one story where I disagreed with the theme.)

but I felt like the worldbuilding... did not adequately explain why you would be mashing up Topsy and the radium girls.

No, I didn't think it did, either. And I felt like there was a lot of worldbuilding piled on top of each other which was interesting but didn't really cohere into a believable whole. I did like the elephant sign language, though!

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder by Nie Jun rec--sounds like totally my jam.

[cahn]

That's also a good point! And yeah, I was side-eyeing all the AI stuff too.

And I felt like there was a lot of worldbuilding piled on top of each other which was interesting but didn't really cohere into a believable whole.

Yes, exactly this! I also liked the elephant sign language (and the elephants in general), even if I didn't quite exactly understand what they were doing there :)

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

I'm not familiar with that series, but yeah.

[forestofglory]

I know its kind of subjective but I felt Temporal Confections really poo pooed her bakery job while suggesting her sisters active resistance was more effective -- even though we don't actually she her sister making a difference. I mean the main character didn't think of her job at the bakery as possible site of resistance -- but I really wanted her to.

I was irritated by the way the story world was set up so that they only need to incapacitate one dude before everything can go back to normal. That felt really unrealistic to me.

[forestofglory]

I wrote a bit more about why it didn't work for me in response to the comment above this one.

I felt like the story was only kind of about food -- I wanted more description of how the food tasted and also maybe some thoughts about the connections between food and memory.

[forestofglory]

Its really popular and well regarded in the bits of SFF book fandom that I hang out in, so I get reced it frustratingly often.

[forestofglory]

Oh good! I hope you like it.

[hamsterwoman]

Oh, interesting! Because one of the reasons I did like Temporal Confections was that I felt it did a good job of showing that the sister's way of resisting wasn't the only way or even the most effective way. I really liked that Saffron and Danny's way of fighting back doesn't change who they are as people, is still about craft and feeding people and compassion.

I do completely agree with your second point, though. The Evil king's Evil regime crumbling as soon as he personally was not around to reinforce it did not eem realistic to me at all, and that only worked for me as an ending if I took it as a sort of fairy tale resolution rather than a realistic one.

[forestofglory]

Its definitely a personal take -- I'm glad it worked better for you.

[aoftheis]

I love Mushishi! It's what I would call "ecological" fantasy, because of the Shinto influence — I wish there were more stories about what people owe the land/living in harmony with the land.

You definitely can skip around, so don't worry about missing the first disc. It's almost entirely episodic.

[forestofglory]

I love ecological fiction! Thanks for reassuring me that its ok to skip the 1st disk - those ads really ruined the mood.