I’m slowly slogging my way through another Wheel of Time brick, so as promised rather than skipping a week or forcing myself to read more about the necessity of lace in men’s fashion and the many uses of braid pulling as a method of self expression than I can stomach in a single sitting I’m doing a filler review.
I’m a sucker for superhero shows and movies, so when I heard about this one from a coworker I pretty much had to give it a try. Most of a day later, I finished the last episode and finally went to sleep about five hours before I had to clock in at work the next morning. So if you’re just looking for my personal yes or no on the question of whether or not it’s a bingeable show, I’d have to give it a yes. If you want a little, but not too much, more detail then stick around.
If you haven’t seen the show, or the trailer, I’ll warn you right now that this is a show that likes to occasionally revel in ludicrously gory violence. And the entire premise is built around exploring just how terrible people can be when they think no one can restrain them.
Now that the series is over, I have to say I shouldn't have been so surprised and disappointed over the years at just how many people didn't or weren't willing to understand that Homelander was a pathetic broken wreck of a creature from day one.
I thought the series finale was better than I was expecting, and fit the direction the show had taken quite well.
The Boys leaves me a problem. Before it, I really hadn't internalized just how thoroughly true it is that there is no such thing as an anti-war film. There is apparently no level of blunt, direct, repetitive messaging that is sufficient to actually make people understand that you're expressing an idea that they disagree with.
I keep getting tempted to start reviewing books again. But I'm just so exhausted these days.
There's a hole in my life, and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to fill it.
You see, my favorite webcomic and one of my favorite works of science fiction just came to an end on friday after just over twenty years of daily releases without a single skipped day.
Schlock Mercenary is the tale of Schlock, a mercenary who happens to look like a great big pile of poop with eyes. It's also the story of a galaxy being turned on its head by a rapid succession of technological advances.
It's primarily a comedy/adventure series, and it does both pretty well. And, honestly? It gets better at both as the series goes on, and quite a few of the more cringe-inducing bits from the earlier strips like the recurring joke about murdering lawyer-drones just sort of fade away. And that's without mentioning the art, which starts at this:
And ends at this:
I read the story from the beginning, but honestly I’d recommend starting somewhere else and going back to the beginning if you like what you see. Page one of the actual comic recommends that you start here, and the archive page recommends that you start here.
Wherever you start though, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO READ THIS COMIC IN ONE SITTING!
I’m considering reviewing all twenty books of the comic as a way of easing myself back into my doing my reviews. We’ll see how I feel next week.
America, I say this as politely as I can. All y'all need to calm the fuck down.
I take two days off, Trump gives a speech, and I come back to a 12 hour nightmare shift. On a Thursday. No one goes grocery shopping on Thursday.
And before you ask, yes we’re out of toilet paper. The last of it sold about fifteen minutes after the store opened. And yes, it really is silly and rude and inconsiderate of everyone to be hoarding the things you want. And they’re all totally overreacting. And by the way, what brings you here on a Thursday morning? Because I’ve known your face for years, and you never shop on Thursday morning.
Look, I know it sucks, but in the ordinary course of events we keep at most a week’s supply of most goods in the store. Hell, for things like toilet paper that come in five or six days a week, we shoot for a 2-3 day supply. And our back room? It’s about as large as one of our aisles. And the warehouse is more of a staging area than a long-term storage facility. Which is why they were only able to send us a one day supply of paper this morning.
Calm down. Stop hoarding. This just in time supply chain business our economy is married to only works if we can predict demand well ahead of time.
Also, for the three of you that actually read my blogs, basically everything but the advice column is going on an irregular schedule until further notice.
Minus last week but one's novella, it's time for the Analog double issue.
We have one more novella, a trio of novelettes, and a trio of short stories. Plus, we have the conclusion to the Quantum Rose serial.
Please accept my thoroughly insincere apology for the delay in this review, and proceed beyond the cut.
Serial
The Quantum Rose, Catherine Asaro
Ok, so over the last two episodes our heroine avoided being forced into a marriage by being forced into another marriage, learned her new husband was a telepath with a drinking problem, and also learned that she was part of a genetically engineered slave-race. Fun stuff.
This time she gets kidnapped, forced back into the original marriage, raped repeatedly, and then stuck in the middle of a really obnoxious trial centered around coercing her into talking about who exactly is coercing her more.
Cheery.
Novella
Emperor Penguins, Joseph Manzione
As far as reasons for advanced cultures initiating first contact go, using us as an excuse to advance legislation allowing males to sue for custody of their children in a divorce is... well the particulars are a bit rare but the general tone is about average I'd say.
Novelettes
As Time Goes By, Amy Bechtel
More in the ongoing adventures of a vet, some sea monsters, and a few other people.
Eh, it was a nice little bit of weirdness.
Live Bait, Shane Tourtellotte
In the future, people will entertain themselves by passing through living not-whales the long way. Some other people with have problems with this. Also murder.
Because of course the environmentalists have to be murderers.
E-Mage, Rajnar Vajra
Ugh. Why do so many hacking stories inexplicably involve VR and bizarre metaphors?
Don't answer that.
Short Stories
Tempora Mutantur, H.G. Stratmann
Time travel, a stupid hoax that wouldn't work, and the world's worst brother.
You lost me at time travel.
Out of Warranty, Gordon Gross
Nanites and evil corporations.
I'm pretty sure I've reviewed an almost identical and clearly superior story, although whether it was in Analog or Asimov's I couldn't tell you and I'm not willing to go looking.
GCEA, Laurence M. Janifer
It's a carnival mystery story with like two throw away lines to make it SF. Also random ukelele references that I had to look up and be disappointed by.
The whole "I forgot this story was supposed to be SF, better make it IN SPACE." thing keeps almost getting me in trouble with my fake advice column. So I sympathize.
Final Thoughts
I mean, I guess I could with this one, but let's just let it slide.
You know, I was already falling behind on my posting thanks to the editing work I’m supposed to be doing on my own book and the extra shifts I’ll be picking up for the next year or so paying off my new AC. So maybe the timing wasn’t the greatest in the world to start spending 30-45 minutes a day brushing up on my Spanish with Duolingo. Anyway, the Analog issue I was supposed to review yesterday is a double, so for part one you get the first novella. The rest will come next week.
A boy who looks like an alien becomes an astronaut and finds life and death on Mars. Along the way we’ll be made to read about the authors’ grudges against and obsessions with political correctness, astrology, the media, and Batman. So in other words, it’s a story that manages to gloss over its own plot entirely and yet somehow make 40 pages feel bloated.
I’ve said it before, but I’m not sure if the authors of these harrowing and often fatal Mars exploration stories realize just how much they aren’t helping make the case that human exploration of space isn’t a pointlessly dangerous and hideously expensive waste of time.
“We spent a year’s worth of GDP to verify that the face on mars isn’t actually a face, and got one of our astronauts killed, but we totally found life so it’s worth it right?
Well yes, any rover with a camera could have found this particular life just as easily and our astronaut died without bringing back his samples, but... He could have brought it back if he hadn’t died. So that’s something right?
Plus the other three astronauts only almost died. Several times. Each.”
Well it wasn't exactly a hiatus, but it's been a while since I've been reviewing the standard entries for this series. So lets jump right back in with Asimov's
A novella, two novelettes, and four short stories this time.
Novella
The Executioners' Guild, Andy Duncan
There's some mind-reading nonsense, but this is mostly just a slow and atmospheric tale about what's probably a technically legal lynching.
Novelettes
Fossils, William H. Keith, Jr.
A posthuman learns what it means to be human: suicidal recklessness.
The Window, Judith Berman
A young boy being kept as a pet by a flatulent alien overlord escapes and then returns to captivity.
Short Stories
Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
The title is the story.
Suburban Ecology, Valerie J. Freireich
Your dog is lucky it's too stupid to realize that it's trapped in Hell.
Woman's Work, Tom Purdom
For want of some mold, Wilbur Wright died without a flyer. Women inherit the earth.
Also Imperial Japan appears to have conquered half the world during WWII? No word on Germany or the Soviet Union.
Into the Blue Abyss, Geoffrey A. Landis
Alien life in unexpected places, blah blah blah tenacity something something horizons. Also, 'My partner on this upcoming dangerous mission told me that she'd gleefully murder me if the mission actually found what it was looking for. I'll just ignore that and hope for the sweet release of death.'
So I’m being lazy, but at least I’ll give you the filler a day early.
Danmemo’s halfway through its collaboration story with Goblin Slayer, and I thought I’d take a second to comment about the game again and speculate on the units for the second half of the game.
Oh, looks like we’re only getting one new banner for part two of the collab. It seems like it’s going to be Sword Maiden as an assist, with Amid and Ryu as adventurers. Very nice. And only having one banner means that my poor depleted iris reserves can actually make it to the end of the collab. Plus, I now get to contemplate doing another three steps on the OVA hestia banner before it goes away. Choices choices choices.
So I’m being lazy, but at least I’ll give you the filler a day early.
Danmemo’s halfway through its collaboration story with Goblin Slayer, and I thought I’d take a second to comment about the game again and speculate on the units for the second half of the game.
I’ve finally gotten through all of the story content, other than the Hermes character missions. And, wow, there was a lot to go through. Most of it was really silly and lighthearted and fun. Which, you know, isn’t a bad place to be for side stories in a mobile game. But there is an absolute ton of character development poured in.
Case in point:
Tiona there on the left is an absolute, shameless, hero geek. Which isn’t to say that she’s obsessed with strength.
And that’s a good thing for her, because there’s maybe a dozen or so adventurers in the setting who are as strong as Tiona is.
And Chigusa, who is on the right, definitely isn’t one of them.
Exactly Tiona, exactly.
But the collab.
So, the basic idea seems to be that a handful of adventurers from Danmachi, and a handful from Goblin Slayer both seem to be trapped in something like a famous dungeon of the Goblin Slayer setting. They’re currently scattered into several groups, but they seem like they’re about to reunite and then they’re sure to dive deeper into the dungeon, face terrible enemies, prevail, and return home triumphant but without any impact on the status quo. This is a non-canon story for both settings, after all.
It’s an interesting choice of shows to mix together. Danmachi is a fairly traditional shonen manga adventure setting, with its massive power scaling, relentless obsession with the suicidal determination of its main characters, and the general moral that the trick to life is to just give it your all and everything will work out. Goblin Slayer is, infamously, not.
I used to pay a fair bit of attention to D&D in the 3.whatever era. So, in D&D terms, Danmachi is a conventional campaign that’s always moving on to bigger and more epic threats. Goblin Slayer is E6, a variant that stops leveling at level 6. And in that kind of setting, even the most minor enemies never stop being a truly lethal threat. Sounds good? Interesting maybe? There’s one problem.
Goblin Slayer is a little lazy as a story. For example, the main character’s name is Goblin Slayer, and the priestess who travels with him is named Priestess. And, here’s the part that makes the story infamous: the way we know that goblins are evil is that in the Goblin Slayer world they’re obligate rapists.
As I said the last time this came up in a story: It’s lazy. It’s grotesque. It’s pointless.
I get why the author wanted the goblins to cross a line. Goblin Slayer himself is supposed to be pragmatic and ruthless, and the things he does in fighting off goblins could easily make it difficult for the readers to sympathize with him. I just don’t like the way the author did it, or the line he chose.
And it’s a shame, because otherwise I really enjoyed the anime.
So yeah, that’s the series and the goblins that your Danmemo waifus are now stuck dealing with...
So far on the Danmachi side, we’ve gotten an Ouka adventurer and a Chigusa assist. And on the Goblin Slayer side we have Goblin Slayer, Priestess, Cow Girl, High Elf Archer, and Noble Fencer. So who’s left?
Well art seems to have spoiled that Ryu from Danmachi is probably getting a unit, almost certainly an adventurer. And Sword Maiden from Goblin Slayer already has enough art and voice work that it would be surprising if she didn’t get a unit, probably an assist. So if there are two banners coming, that probably leaves 3 or 4 other characters that could slot in. We’re likely to have at least one danmachi character on each banner, two adventurers on each banner, and either an assist on each banner or one assist shared between the two. We could also see an adventurer and an assist on each with a shared adventurer.
The other danmachi characters seen and heard so far without units in the event are Bell, Amid, and Freya. Freya is spectating and gambling on the outcome, so she isn’t too likely. Bell has far too many units, so he’s most likely. And a new Amid would be really nice, particularly since her last unit was fairly awesome but had the bad luck of being released at more or less the same time as Haruhime, so it’s probably not her.
For Goblin Slayer, other than Sword Maiden, all the characters we’ve seen already have units. Stand out characters we haven’t seen are Dwarf Shaman, Lizard Priest, Spearman, and Witch. My hope is that it’s Spearman and Witch. Who, as it turns out, share VAs with Bell and Freya and are definitely working in the event already.
So what I’d like to see for the new banners is this: adventurer units for Ryu, Amid, Spearman, and Witch with Sword Maiden as an assist on both banners. And if Bell absolutely needs a unit he can take the assist slot on one of the banners. But I’d rather he got kidnapped by goblins and we had to spend the event trying to rescue him with Ryu as the main Danmachi viewpoint character.
What I’m worried we’ll get is new Bell and Ryu adventurers, a Sword Maiden assist, and different versions of Goblin Slayer and Noble fencer to round out the banners.
A little slower than last year. Still, I think it’s working out well for me to switch over to miscellaneous reviews when I’m getting behind or otherwise tempted to do a skip.
A bit of cleaning a few weeks ago uncovered a book I thought I’d lost. So here we go with one of the true classics.
Nearly everyone is familiar with the story of Frankenstein’s monster. A mad scientist stitches together corpses to create a man, who turns out to be a near-mindless horror bent on nothing but murder. That isn’t this story, although this story did inspire that one.
In this story, an insufferable upper class twit spends his dying days telling the captain of an arctic expedition about his lifelong failure to ever learn a damned thing.
Frankenstein studied alchemy in his youth, because he was too proud and blind to believe his own father when he was told that alchemy was superstitious nonsense. He turned to math when he discovered alchemy’s failure for himself, and then chemistry when he found a teacher who was willing to soothe his fragile ego over the whole falling for alchemy thing. This naturally led to robbing graves and stitching together corpses in an attempt to create life. Chemistry is just kind of like that, particularly for laudanum aficionados.
Anywho, our de-re-recovering alchemist made a man, decided that his newly made corpse-man was just too ugly for his exacting standards, and then spent like a year on a fainting couch without the slightest curiosity about what happened to his newly formed creation. Until, of course, that creation strangled his younger brother to death and framed an innocent young woman with the murder.
Things get worse from there. And Frankenstein himself is no help whatsoever, as he spends months at a time recovering from vague illnesses brought about by mental shock every time something bad happens.
Imagine a memoir written by the abusive and neglectful father of a murderer. And imagine that memoir contains absolutely no remorse for the abuse or neglect. That’s this book.
Maybe I should have saved it for Father’s day.
As for the book itself? The framing device is a bit awkward. Frankenstein and the monster both suffer from a complete inability to get to the point, although the monster’s words come to us through Frankenstein so it might just be him after all. The classism is obnoxious, and feeds into Frankenstein’s character flaws which in turn lead to the monster’s unfortunate start. But despite everything, once I was done with the slog leading up to the monster’s creation the story was engaging right up to the end.
Poor Elizabeth though. Adopted at a young age for the sole purpose of becoming Frankenstein’s wife. I really hope she at least had a few decent lovers while he was touring Europe and constantly fainting under the oppressive weight of his own imagined nobility.
And it’s the last volume of the Viz run of Guyver.
Sho and co are hiding in a basement, Aptom is demonstrating his hideously game-breaking and obviously soon-to-be-nerfed powers, and Gyro is doing his best to not die while running away from Arkanfel, who is completely no-selling Gyro’s best attacks without even bothering to transform into his own battle form.
Everything is ramping up fast to a major showdown and then... series cancelled on a cliffhanger.
Brutal.
It’s possible, although slightly more difficult than with most manga, to find fan translations of the more recent volumes. I’m not going to be reviewing those. It’s a shame that there isn’t a more clearly legal way to get an english version of this series.
Because, honestly? I’d buy the hell out of it if I could.
Ok, so two chapters that are 80% or more recap followed by four chapters that are bogged down with drive-by introductions to characters we don’t really have any reason to care about yet and won’t for quite some time.
The things we learn are basically: everyone survived (except Sho’s dad), there’s a resistance movement among Chronos scientists, do NOT pick fights with well-dressed elves, and Gyro has a guyver stealing thing of some sort.
I kind of feel like this volume wanted to be much better, but suffered from publication deadlines. The art’s still great and there’s clearly plenty of story left, but the ratio of filler to plot took a sudden and staggering lurch in the wrong direction. There were piles and piles of things that I think didn’t need to be retold, or told so explicitly at all rather than shown.
It’s still good, but it’s not a good sign for the future.
Retail hell season is basically over for now, but I still have my project to finish. And a couple of Guyver issues left to hopefully give me a chance to do most of that project finishing.
So it's Aptom time!
So last issue, Guyver III died (lol) heroically facing off against Gyro in his Zoalord form. Sho was off trying to find Mizuki at the time, which was probably just as well because he'd forgotten how to transform into his own Guyver form.
Thankfully Aptom, one of Chronos' lab experiments with a bit of a grudge against Sho, has an idea how to motivate our young hero. Unfortunately that involves threatening Mizuki and shredding all of her clothes off, hence the cover image.
Aptom's plot works, and Sho is back in fighting form and ready to... not do much of anything for the rest of the volume after his duel with Aptom. We're still introducing our new anti-hero here, and Aptom makes good use of his chapter to establish himself as a powerful wild card in the conflict by eating one of Chronos' strongest zoanoids, stealing its powers, and making it very clear that he has no intention of stopping until Chronos' leaders have paid in full for what they did to him and the other Lost Numbers.
So the verdict? The duel was nice, I liked Aptom's demonstration of his ability to merge and adapt the powers of the Zoanoids he's sampled, and the running fight Sho has with the rapidly transforming town of Takeshiro helps really drive in the idea that Chronos is just about done playing around with this secret society business and ready to take on the whole world.
I wish Mizuki was something other than a completely useless load, but short of dropping another guyver unit in her lap, somehow processing her into a Zoanoid without the brainwashing, or giving her several years worth of education and training in some sort of useful role it just isn't realistic for her to be anything but useless in any role other than moral support.
Which actually... considering how screwed up everyone's situation is? Someone get that girl into a therapist training program, stat!
I'd recommend Sho's dad for that role normally, but well... um... that's not really an option anymore.
Spoilers below the cut, because my opinion of this movie is somewhat plot-dependent.
It's been a few days since I watched The Rise of Skywalker, and I'm still stuck on my original impression. I enjoyed myself, mostly, but if you were to ask me today what the best way to experience the nine main Star Wars movies as a single overall story was? Well I'd tell you to watch The Empire Strikes Back, and then stop.
I guess that shouldn't be surprising, considering my opinion that trilogies are best experienced by reading book two and throwing one and three away, but it wasn't my opinion for Star Wars until just the last few days.
So what was it about The Rise of Skywalker that changed my stance? The way it turned out to be: The Return of the Jedi, Remastered!
And that's a problem for me. Replaying the same confrontation as in Jedi and ending it with the same exact resolution means that the events in Jedi just didn't matter. Who cares about the Skywalker family and their struggle for their own souls when the Palpatine family casually erases them with their own struggle? So if I don't have any reason to care about Luke, why would I care about Anakin? And well... there goes movies 1 through 6. They don't matter. They’re just backstory for a sniveling mess of a villain/stalker.
And that pretty much leaves the final trilogy as all that can matter, except... Well honestly the villains in movies 7 through 9 are all such pathetic bumbling incompetents that I can't bring myself to view them as a real threat.
I mean, look. The First Order was a massive and overwhelming threat to Rey and to Leia's Resistance. And the Final Order is orders of magnitude more powerful, right? And it takes Lando Calrissian something like four hours to gather a fleet large enough and powerful enough to completely overwhelm the Final Order despite not having any sort of organization or strategy. Which means that the galaxy was basically just waiting for all of these idiot force-using children to settle their squabbling before slapping down the winner so the adults could finally get back to business.
On the other hand, I’ve seen yaks on Star Destroyers now so at least that's something.
