Years ago, (no more than six according to what I’ve been able to find, despite it feeling like much longer ago), I heard this strange song about a person on a plane watching someone beside them write an email while they waited for the plane to fill up and taxi away from the gate. It was interesting, since it was fairly long for such a light song and it felt like such an incredibly human experience to immortalize in song. It somehow walked the line between fantastical and entirely real in a way that left me wondering if the performer was drawing on a lived experience or if they’d made the whole thing up. I didn’t really keep track of the song and it faded from my consciousness until a couple years later when I found a video circulating around Imgur that was someone’s senior project, an animated music video of a cover of the song that changed the gender of some of the characters in the story. It was a lovely video and it reminded me of the song I’d first heard a couple years prior. This time I looked up the artist for the original song and learned that the song, Dear McCracken by Bug Hunter, was just one part of a larger collection of music, available via YouTube videos and various music platforms. I am pretty sure I made a note to myself to listen to more of his music, but this was the summer I separated from my family and I lost track of a lot of things that summer, this artist included.
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Sea Of Stars Was Worth The Wait
The very first thing I did after finishing Baldur’s Gate 3 was start playing Armored Core 6. The second thing I did was stop playing Armored Core 6 and start playing Sea of Stars. Armored Core was fun, but it was more intense that I was up for in the first full week of September since it had been just over twenty-four hours since I learned my grandmother was fading and I just did not have a grindy, punishing game in me. I’ve since learned that AC6 is a lot easier to play if you do it super aggresively, with a heavy emphasis on melee combat, so I think I’ll have a better time when I go back to it, but I needed something calming and Sea of Stars seemed like a better bet. Plus, since I bought it on my Switch, I’d be able to take it with me anywhere I needed to go. This turned out to be the right decision, though I suspect my sleep schedule would be in better shape if I was playing AC6 since I doubt I’d want to stay up super late playing that. Sea of Stars had been described online (mostly by people posting on forums and not at all by any advertisement coming from the game’s creators) as being similar to Chained Echoes and while I think the comparison was useful since it got my attention, I think it really does both games a disservice. Sea of Stars is wonderful and a joy to play in its own ways that have absolutely nothing to do with what makes Chained Echoes one of my top recent games.
Continue readingI Found My Own Holy Grail: A Great Queer Adaption of Arthurian Legend
Recently, while doing my usual internet browsing during the spare moments between the events of my day, I came across some book recommendations. I can’t, for the life of me, remember where I found them or who was providing them. All I remember is that the first book this person recommended was one I’d recently read and loved (though I can’t remember what this book was either), so I wound up browsing the rest of the recommendations and bought all of the ones that sounded interesting. In my own defense, I haven’t been sleeping well for a while now and my memory has been pretty spotty. I probably wouldn’t have remembered this book at all if I hadn’t ordered it immediately since I have absolutely no memory of placing this order. But I did order it and, as it turns out, all the other books that I chose were preorders for things releasing this fall, so I had just one new book to read. After sitting on my table for a while (I was in the middle of my Dresden Files reading binge when I ordered it), I finally cracked it open during the day I was restlessly pacing my apartment a couple weekends ago.
Continue readingThe Next Jujutsu Kaisen Arc Is A Birthday Present For Me
At some point this year, I became aware of some new Jujutsu Kaisen episodes. Labeled “Season 2,” I was a little trepidatious about diving into a new season since the titles implied a bit of parallel story-telling rather than a direct continuation of the story that ended with Season 1. Eventually, though, I got over my trepidation, rewatched the entirety of season 1, and then watched the five episodes that exist of season 2. According to what I could find, more is going to start dropping on the thirty-first of this month, which is my birthday. It’s a lot more exciting to be focused on this upcoming release than it is on the unknown number of years it will be before the next bit of Demon Slayer comes out (since all we’ve got is pure conjecture at this point) and while the shows are incredibly different in theming and the episode-to-episode contents of their show, they’re both about slaying horrible monsters and bringing down the organization guiding the upper levels of those horribel monsters. I’m not really in-tune with anime trends enough to tell if this is an emerging trend (or it’s a dwindling one, considering how old Bleach is), but it does seem pretty funny to learn that two hit shows these days are both about slaying monstrous creatures that are varying degrees of intelligent and sapient.
Continue readingDemon Slayer is a Cut Above the Rest
In my on-going quest to actually watch TV shows and movies on my own, rather than wait for the opportunity to watch them with someone, I did a full re-watch of the first two seasons of Demon Slayer and then watched season 3 (called the Swordsmith Village arc). The whole show is visually stunning, and not just in the quality of the animation (which is consistently high, a fact made possible by the lengthy time between each season or arc’s release). Every visual is gorgeous, from the various moves performed by the titular Demon Slayers to the flashy, powerful maneauvers of the more powerful demons. The whole series does a great job of balancing interesting, unique characters, absolutely killer fight scenes, and plot progression, even if the pacing of individual episodes frequently feels off to me. Specifically, some of the episodes hit their mid-episode break with a scene that I feel should have been the end of an episode and sometimes an episode ends at a point where I’d expect to find a quick commercial break. The beat-to-beat pacing is absolutely stellar, though, so I’m not sure there’s much they could do to fix the episode thing and I’m pretty sure it’s just me and my mind’s desire to find patterns in everything.
Continue readingStar Wars Jedi: Survivor Was a Great Sequel
After almost two months of intermittent playing, I’ve finally finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. It was a lot of fun, even if I struggled with just how many collectibles there are (though the game gets points for giving you the ability to eventually unlock map icons for all of them) that I just did not care about. Honestly, the thing I was most-consumed with hunting down was enemies, so I could unlock the extensive collection of skills that were made available to me over the course of the game (and I’ve still got about a third of them to unlock despite having run through as much of the game as I care to at this point). The variations in combat options was incredibly refreshing, as was the variation in enemy combatants. Sure, it could be frustrating at times if my loadout was absolutely not the right set of powers and moves to be using in a given combat situation, but the number of options available within those loadouts meant only that I’d need to be a little creative to overcome these limitations. Throw in an interesting plot, some fun references to the greater Star Wars universe, a cast of great characters, and I’m willing to overlook the buggy and visually lackluster experience I had playing the game.
Continue readingI Saw Across the Spider-Verse and Here’s a Rant About Movies That Are Too Long
I went to see Across the Spider-Verse last weekend. It was my third time seeing a movie in the theaters since the pandemic started. Last one was earlier this year, a couple months ago really, to see the Dungeons & Dragons movie, and then before that it was when a friend’s family rented out an entire theater for her birthday to see the latest Spider-Man movie (No Way Home). I really haven’t gone to the movies much, given that Covid-19 is still a problem (one that seems to be getting worse again, given how many people seem to be getting Covid from going to conventions) and I don’t really want to sit crammed into close proximity with a bunch of unmasked people who might be carrying it and still going out because it’s “just allergies” or “just a cold” or whatever bullshit people use to rationalize this kind of behavior. Still, I’m an avid Spider-Man fan and Into the Spider-Verse was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, so I wanted to make sure I caught the sequel while it was still in theaters.
Continue readingNimona Is A Wonderful And Powerful Movie
Last week (when I wrote this), I opted to purchase myself a month of Netflix. I will probably wind up using this month to watch The Witcher and whatever other Netflix stuff I’ve missed over the last few years of not wanting to watch shows by myself (like Stranger Things season 4), but the reason I paid for a month of Netflix was because I wanted to watch Nimona. It hit Netflix on the 30th of June and I knew it was something I wanted to watch, even if I had to do it by myself. I’ve been following ND Stevenson for years and found his posts, comics, and online journaling about his gender identity incredibly informative and helpful. I was excited to see the movie made about the comic that wound up being so unintentionally about his identity and journey, even though I’d never read the comic. It was one of those things that I always meant to read but never got around to reading. Then, when I heard there was going to be a movie I decided to wait until after it came out. I almost broke down and read the comic when the movie got canned by Disney, but wound up being glad I waited when Netflix announced they’d picked it. Now, I’ve watched the movie and am preparing to read the comic (as soon as I have the time required to that, since I’m writing this less than 24 hours after watching the movie).
Continue readingJohn Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society Is A Delightful Literary Treat
As part of my recent reading kick, I’ve absolutely blasted through a few John Scalzi books. Most of them are things I’ve read before, some to their completion and some only partially because I got distracted by life in 2020 and never picked them back up, but I’ve read some of his newer stuff as well. One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about Scalzi’s books is that they’re dependably enjoyable. If you like anyone one of them, you’ll probably like all the rest. He isn’t exactly the most progressive writer out there, but he is definitely on the right side of history, so there’s little to worry about beyond a few rather obvious lacks (in terms of representation, mostly) in his earlier books. His more modern stuff is better, in my opinion, but I feel like that’s true of just about any writer since we tend to age like fine wine rather than dairy products. Anyway, I’ve gotten away from the point I was planning to make. I recently read his Spring of 2022 book, The Kaiju Preservation Society, and it was an absolute delight.
Continue readingChuck Wendig’s Wayward Felt Too Realistic To Be Called Hopeful, But That’s Still How I’d Describe It
Just as a note, there will be heavy plot spoilers for Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers since this blog post is about the sequal, Wayward. There will also be some spoilers for that, but not as many. The final end and major plot points of Wanderers will definitely come up, but I’ll be avoiding most of the plot of Wayward except for a few non-specific mentions here or there.
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