#fiction blather

[azzandra]

I read the Vorkosigan Saga as a teenager, but other than The Warrior's Apprentice (which I loved so much that I reread regularly every few years), I had no memory of the rest of the series.

So I've been listening to the audiobooks recently, and since I never knew when starting a book if I'd read it, I would go through it a bit puzzled and unsure if anything sounded familiar.

Except once in a while when a scene comes up of Miles acting absolutely ridiculous, at which point my memory blares like NO YEAH YEAH YEAH I REMEMBER THIS PART, FUCKIN' MILES, OH MY GOD.

[azzandra]

Honestly wondering what kind of cultural impact this period of time will have on the media, because I fully expect one year from now some netflix series called ‘Quarantine’ or something to pop up, where attractive people in facemasks will be killing each other over dwindling resources in a quarantined city, in-between having medically ill-advised sexual encounters.

[azzandra]

I started listening to The Magnus Archives yesterday. I’m only on episode 15 so far.

I avoided listening to this podcast for a very long time because I am just too wimpy for horror. Sorry, I am a scaredy cat, and it’s a genre I avoid. Also I was spoiled too hell and back because so many people on my dash/discord servers I frequent are in this fandom, that I saw a lot of discussions about the lore and characters before listening to even one episode.

However, I very rarely mind spoilers, and I think having so many aspects of the story revealed to me in advance helped me pluck up the courage to try it.

So I figured, hey, if I get scared, I don’t need to finish listening to it. But actually, I find the horror in TMA very palatable. There hasn’t been anything so far that I couldn’t handle or that gave me nightmares, even with stuff like body horror that usually has me running for the hills (oh boy, what was Squirm. Why. No. Stop.)

And also, the other thing that helped, and the reason spoilers were inconsequential to my enjoyment of the podcast, is that the storytelling stands on its own. Like, every episode has a self-contained and interesting story that, even devoid of any context, was interesting to listen to on its own. Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward for the overarching plot to kick in, but in the meantime, I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.

idk what my conclusion here is. Spoilers aren’t bad? Maybe I’m not as big of a coward as I used to be? TMA is great actually? All of those.

[azzandra]

The weird thing about Castlevania using real cities was that, for one, when Greșit came up, I immediately knew that it wasn’t a real city, because what kind of fucking name is that.

But on the other hand, I still had my doubts, because the name was just stupid enough that it could feasibly be a real place name. In fact, though I haven’t checked, I bet there’s some godforsaken village somewhere in Romania named   Greșit.  I bet there’s several. It’s so stupid, it’s got to be real. So, like, okay.

But then I had to come to the conclusion that the name wasn’t, like, chosen randomly by people who didn’t know the language. Because “greșit“ means wrong or incorrect in Romanian, but... it can also mean mistaken, or sinful.

I didn’t realize until I revisited the scene in which the bishop who burned Lisa was killed, but the name of the town might’ve been chosen specifically to tie in thematically with the bishop’s erroneous beliefs. He was the Bishop of Greșit because that was as close as they could get to calling him the Bishop of Ding Dong You Were Wrong.

[azzandra]

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts seems to scratch the same itch as Avatar: the Last Airbender, which is impressive considering how many shows have wanted to be the next Avatar.

[azzandra]

I’m watching this Netflix movie called ‘I Am Mother’ about a girl raised by a droid thinking that humanity’s extinct, and the twist better not be ‘hurr durr robots are evil’.

[azzandra]

If you’d told me when I only just started watching FMA:B that the series was going to end with Ed fistfighting God in a parking lot, I’d... honestly have been like ‘yeah, that feels like where his character arc is going.’

[azzandra]

Star Trek and Star Wars both present this one particular flaw of philosophy, where being a good person means lacking the capacity for negative emotions.

Like, Roddenberry actually had this dumbass policy for TNG that Starfleet officers couldn’t have conflict or mad feelings. And Lucas set up the whole thing in Star Wars where Feelings Lead to the Dark Side.

And it’s such a terrible approach, because everybody, every person alive has bad feelings, and bad thoughts, and stupid conflicts both within themselves and with others. But the moral premises of both franchises at various points were that having Good Morals meant you were the kind of person who didn’t experience Bad Feelings in the first place.

Whereas I don’t believe that. Good Morals are how you deal with the Bad Feels that you will inevitably, just as part of everyday living, you are going to have at some point.