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revchainsaw · 3 years

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Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Prayers and Salutations Cult Members! I am your mysterious minister Reverend Chainsaw and this is another nights revival service at the Cult Film Tent Revival. I bring you a special word tonight. Tonight's word is about a person who roamed the earth, in a time where people were backward and warlike. A leader emerged into a kingdom full of eschatological expectation. This leader came preaching peace, and was killed for the sins of the world, but was resurrected. In that resurrection a new hope was brought to the planet, and true healing through the power of love in the face of violence is made possible. I am talking of course about Princess Nausicaa from the Valley of the Wind.

The Message

Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind is the film that put studio Ghibli and Hayoa Miyazaki on the map. No animated feature this grandiose and epic had been achieved by 1984, as much as Disney may beg to differ. The tale may be simple, and it may feel super 80s to us today, but Nausicaa is a masterpiece, and the fact that Howl's Moving Castle is brought up alongside Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away more often than Nausicaa is a farce and a tragedy.

The film takes place on a fantastic planet that seems to have suffered the ravages of an apocalyptic war. A war that involved gigantic warriors with powers so devastating they about made the entire planet inhospitable if not uninhabitable; save for a few areas. The fall out of this ancient war has left the earth in a state of repair, where the natural processes of a planet healing has creating giant toxic jungles.

Beyond these jungles lie two imperialistic factions, they seem almost to be city-states but it's not terribly clear. The Kingdom of Tolmekia, a militaristic proto-fascist society of almost Spartan sensibilities. Tolmekia is governed by the ambitious and cynical Princess Kushana, But I like to call her Furiosa. Just like Furiosa, Kushana is physically missing parts of herself, a visual metaphor for her metaphysical lacking and the parts of her humanity she has cut away. Kushana's world view is one of fear, a fear that can only be quelled by waging a genocidal campaign against her enemies.

Speaking of enemies, the Athens to Tolmekias Sparta would be the Pejite Kingdom. The Pejites might like to view themselves as simply responding to Tolmekian aggression, but the narrative of the film, and the story told quite visibly on the body of Kushana, is quite different. The Pejites are just as bloodthirsty if not more palettable in their approach, but like the Tolmekians, they believe only their own lives have any value. And thus, in this theatre of war, a Giant Warrior from the ages before is unearthed by the Pejite Kingdom, Stolen by the Tolmekians, before the forces of nature themselves, seem to conspire to drop the Giant Warriors "egg" right into the Valley of the Wind.

The Valley of the Wind is populated like the world of Avatar the Last Airbender, that is mostly of children and the elderly. The people of the Valley have been able to remain untouched by the ravages of war and the toxic jungles of the damaged world primarily due to geographic luck that's explained in minor exposition in the film. They are ruled by a King, and they are all deeply enamored by their beloved Princess Nausicaa.

Nausicaa is a gentle soul. She is kind to animals, she is empathetic, unreasonably patient, and bears pain and grief inflicted on her out of cruelty with a saintly understanding. She really is a thinly veiled Christ figure, scratch that. There is no veil. But she's also my favorite Christ figure. She does not preach a message, as much as she tries to save everyone from their own short sighted goals. She is not perfect, she does lash out and do some fantasy sword fight murder, but she regrets her actions so deeply that it seems to have played a part in motivating her to become even more compassionate and patient with the evils of the world.

Nausicaa discovers yet another plot by the Pejites, who are afraid of the possibility of the Tolmekians awakening the Giant Warrior, to use animal cruelty to enrage a group of almost invincible giant insects known as the Ohm. By luring the Ohm into the Valley of the Wind where the Tolmekians have become an occupying force, they hope to completely wipe out everything that threatens them. The Tolmekians DO awaken the Giant Warrior and pure pandemonium ensues. Nausicaa manages to save the Baby Ohm and calm the rage of the bloodthirsty Ohm swarm, and to defeat the warlike tendencies of both the Pejites and the Tolmekians. All the while fulfilling a prophecy fortold about a messianic savior figure called the Man in Blue.

Now that you have heard the Gospel of Nausicaa, please stand to receive The Benediction.

Best Character: Half a Person

Now that I've spent the better part of this review gushing about our Lord and savior Nausicaa. I have to admit, she's at times a bit too perfect, a bit too saccharin. Even her flaw, or her one weakness and her failing to be perfect, just adds to the perfection. I can't even say she never makes mistakes cuz she made one, and that's infuriating. It's even more infuriating that I still think she's a great character. Normally this kind of thing really kills a hero. Most Chosen Ones are the most boring and least likeable characters in their narratives. I don't know how Nausicaa avoids this trap, but she does. I'll have to do some meditating on that.

However, just like in your typical Chosen One fantasy narrative, the hero is a lot less fun than the villain. I'm going to say the best character in Nausicaa is Kushana. I want to be like Nausicaa, but I don't understand her. She's almost alien, even though we learn all about her. Kushana is mysterious, secretive, and enigmatic, yet I understand her. She barely has an arc, she doesn't really change. She's cold and cynical to the bone, but I don't need to see much of her situation to completely understand why she is the way she is. I usually hate totalitarian bad guys, but Kushana I like. Sue Me.

Also fun fact, did you that Nausicaa means 'Sinker of Ships'. That's kinda fun.

Best Scene: Spoiled for Choice

I'm going to be lazy and say take your pick. There is really not a bad seen in this movie. If the action isn't going, then there's intriguing dialogue. If there's no dialogue then you may be about to get hit with a forceful burst of whimsy. There's horror, there's swordfights and aerial dogfights. The only thing in Nausicaa I don't like to see, is the bloody tortured Ohm Baby. It's like a god damned Sarah Mclachlan commercial.

Best Creature: Foxy Shazam!

The Ohm are so simplistic yet so detailed. The number of eyes is alien, but the way they are used is expertly expressive. Who'd think you could get me to love what basically amounts to a silverfish with the intensity that I love a kitten. How did Miyazaki pull an Okja with a creature that should be haunting our dreams? I don't know.

And what about the Giant Warrior! If you are an Evangelion fan then you probably already know that Hideaki Anno designed and animated the melting goopy biomechanical beast. Surely a sight that would make both H.R. Giger and Clive Barker giddy with excitement. Just the image of the silhouettes marching amidst the desolation of the old world is burned into my brain.

So which of these is the best creature from Ghibli's first outing? It's fucking Teto. It was always gonna be Teto you idiot. Just look at Teto, he's adorable. He's too cute to exist. I'm so alone. I need a pet.

Best Character Design: Tolmekian Regalia

I originally included this category to talk some about Kushana, however, at that time I also thought I was going to say Nausicaa was the best character. I thought hard about deleting it, but I think it's a different category and you can't accuse me of playing favorites because my favorite character is clearly Teto. Just to keep it simple. It's the two costume shift from full military regalia in white and gold, to the one metal arm, warrior princess get up. It's a great costume and a great look. Get on this shit cosplay nerds. It's great for Cons in Canada, you have to think about layers, and you can't keep going as Mr. Plow. It's lazy.

Best Excuse to Talk About Patrick Stewart's Character: Lord Yupa

I just realized that I was about to write this whole review without talking about Lord Yupa. Lord Yupa is a sword saint and all around badass I think a lot of entertainment, especially in the west is lacking bad ass old men. Lord Yupa particularly shines in the early half of the film as a warrior and as a wise council to Nausicaa. If she's Jesus then Yupa is John the Baptist. He is also voiced by the elegant and eloquent Patrick Stewart. He also comes with 2 chocobos!

Worst Character: For Whom Asbel Tolls

This might also be the worst actor category as well. Actual Cannibal (haha meme) and actual monster (haha real life) Shia Labeouf doesn't so much act in the role as he read the lines and it was recorded. The good news it doesn't effect the film too much because Asbel is completely forgettable. He is a catalyst to some of the action, but besides that I don't really care for him.

Worst Aspect: To Be Fair ...

It would be unfair to completely ignore anything negative about Nausicaa. I have already mentioned in many places that there are some pretty corny, or pretty predictable tropes to this movie. But what I can't capture in words is exactly why it feels fresh when it's done in this movie. I suppose that's what makes it good. It's just so good that it's weak points are lifted up by it's strengths. Some people may bored of Nausicaa's unyielding goodness, or that she very rarely chooses to take action as much as she chases and pleads with her surroundings, but I mean, she does pay for that eventually. It's a fantasy story and it hits a lot of timeless themes that have been hit in stories for as long as human beings have been telling stories. Some people may feel that it doesn't do enough to stand out.

Summary

I have defined the S tier for myself as "near perfect and personal favorite" films. I like to think that Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind is near perfect. Some may say that it looks like it might just be a personal favorite. In the case of Nausicaa, I'm having a very hard time telling the difference. I think it would be overly simple to claim that Nausicaa is just an ancient archetypal heroes journey with an 80s anime coat of paint. I think it's doing quite a few new and interesting things with that formula, those things are just playing out all around that narrative as opposed to being at it's center. For a first full length outing by the studio, you can really see Miyazaki's heart and the values he holds close to. I'll repeat myself so that we are completely clear on the matter. I think Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind is a near perfect movie.

Overall Grade: S

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inficetegodwottery · 6 years

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I have been searching on and off for the past four or five years at least once every few months for this content creator who used to exist on either deviantart or tumblr, who had a bunch of fucking radical alien species and ocs with some fantastic concepts behind them. Thing is, I have literally zero leads. I lost the hard drive with those bookmarks a long time before I started looking again.

The only thing I remember is that one of their species was this aquatic humanoid with a caste system based on the fact that males die immediately after mating. This led to a highly matriarchal society and a subculture of “neutered males” who chose to undergo surgery in order to never mate and thus not die.

I think there was also another species that was super quiet because their snowy home planet was infested with predators? Also a super smart species? There was definitely a captain lady who was a former member of some super militaristic species-wide empire and like a guard of the queen of something.

If anyone has an inkling of who the creator might be, please give me a holler. This has been killing me for way too fucking long. Even if they deleted all their stuff off the net, just knowing that would be better than this.

#aliens #xenobiology #alien ocs #alien #alien species #alien races #original aliens #alien characters #lost content #original species

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daresplaining · 7 years

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Iron Fist Countdown: 4 Days

K’un-Lun, the Immortal Weapons, and the Capital Cities of Heaven

Heart of the dragon! With only a few short days left before the show, we’re doing a deep dive into the details of the Iron Fist mythos and the eternal city of K’un-Lun!

K’un-Lun, the Shining City

Occasionally, early Iron Fist comics will refer to K’un-Lun as a city hidden deep in the Himalayas-- but that doesn’t come close to describing its remoteness. Technically, it only exists in the same physical space as the Himalayas for a single day, once every ten years. The rest of the time, K’un-Lun is located in an alternate dimension, on an alien planet called H’ylthri. Not much is known about the actual rest of the planet (the citizens of K’un-Lun don’t tend to venture far from the city), but we do know that it is inhabited by a race of maneating sentient plants, also called H’ylthri, and that the valley surrounding the city is infested with extremely aggressive, possibly crazed wolves.

[Power Man and Iron Fist vol. 1 #75 by Mary Jo Duffy, Kerry Gammill, and Christie Scheele]

The ten years rule is really more of a guideline than anything, and since practically the moment it was introduced, writers have been scrambling to find ways around it. The city is only accessible in the normal way once every ten years, yes-- but any number of portals and magical forms of travel can get you there. Lei Kung the Thunderer (who we’ll talk about in a moment) once ripped through the fabric of spacetime(!) to make a temporary entrance into the city. Inventor Phineas Randall, the father of former Iron Fist Orson Randall, built a steampunk-style gateway that allowed for passage between the worlds. And Danny once linked the city to his heartbeat to pull it onto the earthly plane permanently-- which worked out about as well as you might expect.

[Iron Fist/Wolverine #1 by Jay Faerber and Jamal Igle]

Referred to as paradise by its inhabitants (and the “City of the Damned” by the H’ylthri, who are kind of bitter about its presence on their planet), K’un-Lun is an ancient civilization, laced in magic and long-held traditions. The people who live there are functionally immortal-- that is, they can be killed in combat, but will otherwise live forever. Those not born in the city can be gifted with immortality, if they are deemed worthy of it, and those who break serious enough laws can have their immortality revoked.

[Iron Fist vol. 4 #4 by James Mullaney, Kevin Lau, and Omar Dogan]

K’un-Lun is ruled by a hereditary monarch called the August Personage in Jade (or Yu-Ti, if you’re nasty). He is advised by a council of Dragon Kings, who occasionally turn into actual dragons. While functionally immortal like the rest of the citizenry, there is a reasonably regular turnover of the line of succession, because kings always have short lifespans-- particularly in militaristic societies like K’un-Lun’s. Nu-An, the most recent long-serving Yu-Ti, is a particularly bad egg, engaging in everything from corrupt business dealings on Earth to alliances with malevolent gods. He also indirectly killed Wendell (his adopted brother) and Heather Rand, so Danny isn’t a huge fan.

The city faces many threats-- from the H’ylthri (who can get pretty violent, for plants), from the other Capital Cities (we’ll get to those in a minute), from internal unrest, and even occasionally from Earth-based forces. The responsibility of maintaining K’un-Lun’s national security falls partly on the city’s war-master, the Thunderer. This position has been held for the past few hundred years by a super cool guy named Lei Kung.

[Immortal Iron Fist #8 by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Roy Allan Martinez]

Lei Kung is a fascinating character, and someone who we’re hoping will get his live action due in the Netflix show. He is often the voice of reason in the midst of K’un-Lun’s internal conflicts. He is respectful of tradition, yet able to see when and where laws need to be broken for the betterment of the city. And he is a strict-yet-caring teacher, responsible for training all of the young fighters in both physical combat and moral fortitude. Plus, as those for whom he has played father figure over the years would probably attest, he has a soft spot for misfits. (He’s not a great father to his biological son, but that’s another story...)

[Iron Fist: The Living Weapon #3 by Kaare Andrews]

When we talk about formal martial arts training in K’un-Lun, of course, we’re talking about men. The city upholds a strict occupational gender divide: Boys are trained in the martial arts, women are taught academics, and the two life paths are kept rigidly separate. (So yes, for anyone who may have been wondering-- Danny probably still has a fourth grade education level when he returns to Earth). Teaching a woman martial arts results in very serious punishment for everyone involved, and hitting a woman can get a man kicked out of the city.

[Marvel Premiere #24 by Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick, and Phil Rache]

For this reason, Danny is initially thrown off-balance by the fact that the first two friends he makes upon returning to New York, Colleen Wing and Misty Knight, both kick serious butt-- in public!-- on a daily basis.

However, this is one rule that has been undermined for probably centuries. There is a long history of women illegally learning martial arts, and most of the K’un-Lun women who show up in the comics know how to fight. This recently became an organized movement, with Lei Kung helping to train an entire army of women in secret.

[Immortal Iron Fist #14 by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Tonci Zonjic]

K’un-Lun is currently in a bit of a mess, but it’s very likely that when it is restored to its former glory, this rule is one that will be consigned to the garbage heap of history.

No word on whether men will get to study academics, though.

K’un-Lun Slang

Listen. If they can make “Sweet Christmas” work in the context of the MCU, they can give us some of this hip K’un-Lun slang too, right?

The Iron Fist Legacy and the Ch’i-Lin

Bei Ming-Tian: “I am the Iron Fist. I stand before the unstoppable hordes... and I hold them back. That’s what I do. What I’ve always done.”

[Immortal Iron Fist #1 by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Travel Foreman]

The rest of the responsibility for defending K’un-Lun falls, of course, on the Immortal Iron Fist. Sixty-six of these dragon-powered warriors have protected the city over the span of nearly a thousand years, and more will continue to do so far, far into the future. The Iron Fist legacy began partly by chance, born out of a period of great darkness in K’un-Lun’s history. According to the most recent version of continuity, a creature called Changming summoned a horde of monsters to terrorize the city. One of them was a dragon with the snappy name of Shou-Lao the Undying.

Immortal Iron Fist #23 by Duane Swierczynski, Tonci Zonjic, et al.]

Shou-Lao found a home in a cave just outside the city and settled in for a long stay. It was thought to be unkillable (note the “Undying” epithet) because its heart was outside of its body, hidden deep inside the cave. To kill the dragon you had to get to the heart-- and obviously, Shou-Lao felt pretty strongly about not letting that happen. The dragon continued to terrorize the citizens of K’un-Lun, until a young man named either Bei Ming-Tian or Quan Yaozu (depending on which writer you ask) had an idea. He ventured out to the cave and fought the dragon. When the opportunity presented itself, he grabbed Shou-Lao around the middle and used his body to block the hole in the dragon’s chest through which its heart had been removed. This cut off the flow of chi between Shou-Lao and the heart, causing the body to die. Having survived this, the young man went over to Shou-Lao’s still-beating heart and plunged his hands into it (because why not?), absorbing the dragon’s chi and becoming the very first Iron Fist. And that’s how it’s been done ever since.

[Immortal Iron Fist #7 by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Leandro Fernandez, et al.]

Thus began a sustainable source of magical warriors for the city-- because Shou-Lao always comes back. A certain period of time after dying, an egg appears in the cave, which eventually hatches and grows into another Shou-Lao, ready to be killed by another future Iron Fist. While the procedure for winning the dragon chi has remained the same since the beginning, a certain amount of ritual has been added since. Having acquired the chi of Shou-Lao, Iron Fists are now forced to test their new powers in the Challenge of the Many and the One, in front of the entire population of K’un-Lun.

[Iron Fist: The Living Weapon #5 by Kaare Andrews]

During the periods of time between the death of one Iron Fist and the rise of another, the graduating classes from Lei Kung’s school will annually fight to win the right to face the reborn dragon. It’s not an easy feat, and most of those who try to kill Shou-Lao end up dead, so there can be long periods between one Iron Fist and the next. When there is an Iron Fist, anyone else who thinks they have what it takes can, seemingly, challenge the current champion to a formal duel and try to take their chi.

[Iron Fist vol. 2 #2 by James Felder, Robert Brown, and Mike Thomas]

But as it stands, most Iron Fists don’t last long. As warriors and adventurers, they lead dangerous lives anyway, and nearly all them have died at the age of thirty-three at the hands of a creature called the Ch’i-Lin.

[Immortal Iron Fist #18 by Duane Swierczynski, Russ Heath, and Matt Milla]

This creature eats Shou-Lao’s eggs-- and to do so, it hunts down Iron Fists by tracking their chi. It travels around in a human host who uses the name Zhou Cheng (remember that name.) This chi awareness makes the Ch’i-Lin almost impossible to fight. It can predict any move that the Iron Fist it is hunting might make, and the chi of Shou-Lao has no effect on it. Having beaten the Iron Fist into submission, the Ch’i-Lin will rip out their heart and use it as a gateway to K’un-Lun. Once there, the K’un-Lun army will try and prevent it from getting to Shou-Lao’s egg. If the egg is eaten, the city will lose its chance of having any future Iron Fists-- so this is kind of a big deal. Only two Iron Fists have managed to survive their encounters with the Ch’i-Lin: Orson Randall, who drugged himself up on opium to the degree that the creature could no longer detect his chi; and Danny Rand, who had the advantage of teaming up with the other Immortal Weapons.

The Immortal Weapons

K’un-Lun is not alone in the cosmology of magical, dimension-shifting cities. It is part of a collective referred to as the Capital Cities of Heaven. Officially, there are seven cities, each cycling through spacetime at a different rate, and all intersecting with Earth at various points. Each city has its own champion, with their own chi-based powers, who operates along the same lines as the Iron Fist. These superpowered badasses are collectively known as the Immortal Weapons:

[Immortal Iron Fist #8 by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja, and Matt Hollingsworth]

The traditions surrounding each of these champions vary, as do their powers and methods of acquiring them. As Weapons, they are intended to be “wielded” to best serve their city’s interests. All interactions between Weapons can thus be seen as diplomatic in nature. The capital cities maintain a delicate power balance, and past aggressions between Weapons have been enough to create long-held animosity between their corresponding homelands. One of the most important job requirements for the Immortal Weapons is to battle each other every 88 years, during the rare period when all seven cities intersect. The outcome of this pan-dimensional tournament determines the celestial cycling for the next 88 years, and how frequently each city will have access to Earth.

[Immortal Iron Fist #9 by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja, and Matt Hollingsworth]

Because as far as the Iron Fist mythos is concerned, when you get past the complex worldbuilding and endless minutiae, it all comes down to cool kung fu fights. And we wouldn’t want it any other way.

We are extremely eager (and just a little bit nervous) to see how all of this will be adapted into the relatively grounded world of the Netflix shows. We really hope they go all out with it. After all, this is Iron Fist. They knew what they were getting into when they picked the character.

Certain minor details in the trailers have suggested to us that K’un-Lun may exist in an alternate dimension in the MCU. We really hope this is the case, because that’s a detail they could have easily not used. If so, they may at least have changed the interval at which it intersects with Earth from ten years to fifteen, since that’s how long Danny is gone in this universe. Unless it takes him five years to find his way back to New York-- which isn’t out of the question.

There have been only a few suggestions of what form K’un-Lun will take in the show. While ideally, we’d love to see the ancient, complex, drama-filled city of immortals fully explored in live action, it seems likely that it will be downsized for the sake of storytelling convenience. Since so much of this season will be taking place in New York (as it should-- this is Danny’s origin story, after all) it probably won’t have the time to delve deeply into all of the details of K’un-Lun, or to develop it on the scale at which it exists in the comics. The biggest piece of information we have so far on the subject is from the recent Empire Magazine article, in which it is referred to as an “all-male monastery”. We’re not sold on this idea, but of course, we’re going to reserve judgement until we see how it is handled. Danny has also been referred to as a monk in some of the promotional material, which suggests a level of spirituality in his training that is absent in the comics. No one would ever call 616 Danny a monk-- even in DnD terms. He is a warrior all the way.

The actual role of the Iron Fist will be pretty much the same: serve and protect K’un-Lun. Since the Hand have been tied into all of this in this universe, the Iron Fist’s tasks will also include directly battling them. We know that-- like in the comics-- MCU Danny will have to juggle his duties and identity as the Iron Fist with his responsibilities on Earth, which will be a lot of fun to watch. Furthermore, we know that the Ch’i-Lin (or at least, Zhou Cheng) will be making an appearance-- but it’s anyone’s guess what form he might take.

We also know that the concept of the Immortal Weapons is alive and well in the MCU. Apart from Danny, the only other Weapon that’s definitely been confirmed so far is Bride of Nine Spiders.

But if there are two, there have got to be more, right?

Only four more days (well... three days and a few hours) until we find out!

#Whooo... this was a fun one #Iron Fist #K'un Lun #Immortal Weapons #Lei Kung the Thunderer #Shou Lao the Undying #Commentary #IF Countdown

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simonposting · 4 years

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here are some books I enjoyed in 2019

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe — Benjamin Alire Sáenz

is about a boy (aristotle) meeting a boy (dante), becoming friends, and then wondering why he doesn’t like hearing about him kissing boys at college (spoiler alert: it’s not homophobia (well, maybe a little), it’s the other thing!)

Ari is quite an angry young man, with an almost stream of consciousness narration that I found very compelling — the conclusion felt a little rushed to me, but overall: I loved it.

I read this at the start of the year and didn’t keep detailed enough notes so unfortunately don’t have much else to say. Sorry.

Children of Time — Adrian Tchaikovsky

an ark leaving the destruction of earth behind finds a habitable planet populated with Evolved Spiders

I got this for Alex as a Christmas present and he then suggested I read it and yeah, good choice, me. The spiders’ outlook is Weird and Alien and they really struggle to communicate with humans, even when they do manage to Make Contact, because both sides have very different understandings of what is obvious and therefore doesn’t need stating.

Some of the human ark sections felt a little unnecessary but you need to be invested in both sides of the inevitable confrontation for it to land properly, so fine.

There’s also some great stuff with a woman in stasis and an AI copy of her she left to keep things running for her.

The Magicians — Lev Grossman

Our protagonist discovers he’s a magician and packs off to magical boarding school, and despite this taking at least half the book, the actual plot is when he then discovers Legally Distinct Narnia is real and heads off for a jolly adventure that turns out to be largely horrific and traumatising.

The pacing is all over the place, and there’s the classic gay secondary character who doesn’t get to actually do anything despite ostensibly having a friendship with the protagonist close enough to consider him family (he even sleeps with him at one point, in a threesome with a woman, but the narrative and every character treats it as just the protagonist and woman sleeping together). But! Everything comes together in the end in a very satisfying conclusion which left my thoughts coming back to it for months afterwards.

The sequel is just terrible though.

In Other Lands — Sarah Rees Brennan

Is also about a boy discovering magic is real and heading off to magical boarding school, but this one is in the fairy realm, rather than just hidden Hogwarts style.

It tries to do something with the very militaristic society, but I’m not sure it ever actually reaches a point (protagonist pushes for more diplomacy with other races and I guess succeeds but the results all kind of occur “off-screen” so don’t feel hugely meaningful), and likewise with the matriarchally sexist elfs (which doesn’t land because where the humans are patriarchally sexist, they have female warriors and leaders, who are important in the narrative even — the elfs have no male warriors or leaders, and also are notably more puritanical, so it doesn’t mirror well?). And the protagonist is constantly spectacularly annoying.

But it’s gay, so.

Carrie — Stephen King

I don’t need to tell you what Carrie’s about, right?

So, going into Carrie I already knew what the climax was, and I wondered if this would negatively affect my enjoyment of it. Turns out I shouldn’t have worried because it switches between the narrative as it happens, and journals/interviews/articles/etc. written about the events afterwards — “one of her surviving classmates” is mentioned very early on, so the fact that something terrible happens is somewhat of a foregone conclusion. Perhaps knowing exactly what does have an impact, but it’s unavoidable at this point really.

Also turns out the musical lifts a lot of very specific wording from the book to use in the songs, which is nice.

Meddling Kids — Edgar Cantero

when they were teens, four kids and their dog solved a mystery where a haunting was being faked by an unscrupulous property developer. now, three adults and the original dog’s grandchild have returned because maybe there was something else involved after all.

Obviously riffing off scooby doo (though none of the characters perfectly directly align) but with some Actual Supernatural Stuff — in tone I was expecting a sinister underlying mystery, where it’s actually a bit more just straight up fighting lake monsters (etc.), but it’s a good concept. The main obstacle in their re-investigation is their own reluctance to re-examine the traumatic experiences of their youth.

Some of the dialogue is written in script format? (But not all of it), which I got used to but I never understood why this choice was made.

Is also gay. Nice.

For the Time Being — Ruth Ozeki

is about a Japanese schoolgirl writing a journal about her life, and also about a Canadian woman who is reading said journal after it washes up on the coast.

I like reading books in which someone else reads a book, turns out. There are footnotes in the journal, often just explaining/translating specific Japanese terms, in context clearly put there by the woman reading it. She gets overly invested in reading this journal, to the point her husband has to gently point out that it was written years ago, you can’t find her to urgently help.

I was never 100% certain whether the journal was a true story or not, even setting aside any of the supernatural hints.

Ash Princess — Laura Sebastian

is about a princess of a magical kingdom that was invaded when she was child, who then grew up a captive in her own palace. now she’s going to seduce the prince in order to murder him and throw the occupiers into civil war

Quirky fantasy courtly intrigue. Has some good stuff about how the occupiers treat her culture (she hates that her people’s style of clothing is ‘back in fashion’ now), and about her best friend nonetheless being one of the occupiers, and how she barely actually remembers her own religion really. Goes back and forth on whether she can trust the prince or not.

Doesn’t really conclude though, just sets up for the next book, which I get, but always kind of hate.

Wayward Son — Rainbow Rowell

The sequel to Carry On, which I adore.

Opens with an epilogue, because, our magical chosen one accomplished what he was magically chosen to do last book! The end! But then life goes on. He is probably depressed, and his relationship is not going super well, so let’s go road trip across America.

It’s a tiny bit ‘second book of a trilogy’, and the Road Trip thing feels a bit ‘and then we went to X place and Y happened and then we moved on’ leading to a slightly less overall cohesive narrative? But I still love the writing and characters and there’s some wonderful playing with how the magic system works (words have power from repetition, so spells are all expressions/quotes/lyrics — this means trying to cast British idioms doesn’t work in America).

Ultimately I enjoyed it but I think Carry On stands fine on its own and I don’t really feel that this actually adds much.

I also read several Discworld books — Terry Pratchett

I read the colour of magic years ago and utterly loathed it, so never bothered reading anymore. Turns out they get better! I should have listened! I’m going through roughly in order but skipping ones I can’t be bothered with. things like Pyramids (“all our gods have become literally real and now there’s three of them in the sky physically fighting over the sun”) and Moving Pictures (“we started making movies and accidentally started altering reality a bit, whoops”) are very much my taste.

Here’s to more good books in 2020

Thanks for reading xoxo

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