Meida Round Up: Last Media of 2024
Jan. 3rd, 2025 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryI have stared off 2025 with a terrible cold which meant doing lot of nothing! But today I'm feeling a better and my brain is clearer. I hope the start of the year has been kinder to all of you!
Anyways here are some thoughts on media from the end of 2024. Some of these overlap with my DecRec posts
Gender, Power, and Talent: The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China by Jinhua Jia—More or less what it says on the tin. Lots of profiles of interesting Tang dynasty women here! I do think the author not sceptical enough of official histories, and I ended up skimming most of the literary analysis.
What The Hell Is Love ep 1-10—This Taiwanese drama, is modern but with ghosts -- but the ghosts are represented by people covered in green makeup, also sometimes the ML has visions of Diyu which is shown as industrial ruins with trippy lighting. This is not a complaint. I enjoyed the silly special effects.
It was pretty fun for a while, though definitely a bit 'Am I confused because the subtitles are bad, because I lack cultural context, or because this is some nonsense?" But then the show moved away from ghosts and cases to have some heterosexual nonsense, and I wasn't finding any of the romance stuff compelling at all, but when it finally got to another case it was storyline that I was just extremely Nope about
Content notes: death and grieving, cancer, medical fiances, infertility, rape
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night by Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma — A friend suggested a group read along of this book for the solstice, which I thought was an excellent idea. I had read this and loved it when it first came out, but I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered it. But it was! It’s a contemporary fantasy story about two metamores who dislike each other but have to work together to save their mutual boyfriend. It’s extremely good, the writing is beautiful, the characters are great, the magic makes sense while at the same time feeling numinous, and everything is just so keenly observed.
It was lovely to reread this with friends reading it for the first time. One thing I love about this book is how it makes me and many people I know feel seen in ways we don’t often feel seen by the media.
Snowspelled by Stephanie Burgis—Once I reread one of my favorite solstice themed novellas I thought it would be fun to reread the other one. This is such a delight I forgot that Cassandra Harwood is such a super smart disabled chaos muppet, but I love her so much! Her family is great too!
Laid-Back Camp, Vol. 1-14 by Afro—I read the first ten of these a while back then a few years ago I watched the anime. I thought it would be nice to return and read the volumes that have come out since then. It’s a very charming slice of life story about high school girls going camping, with lots of food and friendship. Having watched the anime where the characters have different colored hair I found it easier to tell them apart than the last time I read this. I got these in paper form the library but it turns out that paper maga and my hands don’t play well together– so I should probably return the other manga I checked out at the same time without reading it. (content note: fatbopia and diet culture, excessive drunkenness )
Anyways here are some thoughts on media from the end of 2024. Some of these overlap with my DecRec posts
Gender, Power, and Talent: The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China by Jinhua Jia—More or less what it says on the tin. Lots of profiles of interesting Tang dynasty women here! I do think the author not sceptical enough of official histories, and I ended up skimming most of the literary analysis.
What The Hell Is Love ep 1-10—This Taiwanese drama, is modern but with ghosts -- but the ghosts are represented by people covered in green makeup, also sometimes the ML has visions of Diyu which is shown as industrial ruins with trippy lighting. This is not a complaint. I enjoyed the silly special effects.
It was pretty fun for a while, though definitely a bit 'Am I confused because the subtitles are bad, because I lack cultural context, or because this is some nonsense?" But then the show moved away from ghosts and cases to have some heterosexual nonsense, and I wasn't finding any of the romance stuff compelling at all, but when it finally got to another case it was storyline that I was just extremely Nope about
Content notes: death and grieving, cancer, medical fiances, infertility, rape
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night by Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma — A friend suggested a group read along of this book for the solstice, which I thought was an excellent idea. I had read this and loved it when it first came out, but I was a little worried that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered it. But it was! It’s a contemporary fantasy story about two metamores who dislike each other but have to work together to save their mutual boyfriend. It’s extremely good, the writing is beautiful, the characters are great, the magic makes sense while at the same time feeling numinous, and everything is just so keenly observed.
It was lovely to reread this with friends reading it for the first time. One thing I love about this book is how it makes me and many people I know feel seen in ways we don’t often feel seen by the media.
Snowspelled by Stephanie Burgis—Once I reread one of my favorite solstice themed novellas I thought it would be fun to reread the other one. This is such a delight I forgot that Cassandra Harwood is such a super smart disabled chaos muppet, but I love her so much! Her family is great too!
Laid-Back Camp, Vol. 1-14 by Afro—I read the first ten of these a while back then a few years ago I watched the anime. I thought it would be nice to return and read the volumes that have come out since then. It’s a very charming slice of life story about high school girls going camping, with lots of food and friendship. Having watched the anime where the characters have different colored hair I found it easier to tell them apart than the last time I read this. I got these in paper form the library but it turns out that paper maga and my hands don’t play well together– so I should probably return the other manga I checked out at the same time without reading it. (content note: fatbopia and diet culture, excessive drunkenness )
no subject
Date: 2025-01-04 10:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-04 12:15 pm (UTC)Being skeptical of official narratives is an essential skill to learn in historiography in general but especially if one researches women in a patriarchal culture so I'm sorry you had a bad experience in this regard.
To many more interesting media this year.