Some things watched and read
Nov. 21st, 2021 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkShang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, MCU: The first MCU movie I watched in a while. It was fun. I especially liked the first two fight scenes (while during the big climactic battle I was too exasperated with what people were not doing to fully enjoy it.) Having recently watched Castlevania I also could not help but compare Xu Wenwu to Dracula.
Critical Role campaign 3: I do enjoy CR, the new characters are very promising (especially Taliesin's and Marisha's, and Sam's is fun), but 4 hours a week is a lot. I'm glad they'll take one week a month off, I'm already behind (I've watched the first three episodes so far.) I'm not sure yet if I'll continue watching, or if I'll do what I did for the second half of campaign 2, namely read the summaries each week and then decide to watch the episode if something particularly cool or interesting happened.
Taskmaster series 12: DD and I really enjoyed series 1 to 10, and then for reasons we forgot didn't watch series 11. We recently caught up with series 12 and it's so much fun. Victoria might be one of my favorite contestants ever. Only one more episode to go.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: People in magical giant robots fight monsters! And the heroine wants to burn down the sexist system that leads to female pilots being sacrificed. From reviews etc. before reading I knew that this book would have a poly relationship (I didn't know if V or triangle and was happy to find out it was the latter), but I didn't know that it had a disabled main character. Wu Zetian's feet were bound as a child and she can't take a single step without pain, so it's no wonder that she thinks of little else but revenge on the system that did this to her, and also killed her sister. We meet two other female pilots but both of them don't have their feet bound because they come from often-denigrated border tribes, while Wu Zetian is dependent on a cane or wheelchair, it's a shame we didn't get more interactions between them. In general I wished for more interactions with people and more character/relationship development, the pacing was somewhat rushed at times, but it was also hard to put down. Overall I enjoyed it a lot. It got fairly dark at times but not more than I should have expected. Most of the twists at the end I didn't see coming, and I'm very curious what the sequel will be like.
Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim: inspired by the fairy tale "The Six Swans" in an Asian fantasy setting. Unfortunately the main character left a bad first impression because coddled youngest child or not, a 16-year-old Imperial princess should know more about responsibilities and consequences than Shiori (and that reflects badly on her family too.) Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for YA? None of the plot twists were surprising, and I could only connect to the characters rarely. Overall, I don't regret reading it and it did have some enjoyable elements, but I'm not going to bother with any sequels.
So I'm a Spider, So What?, anime, up to episode 13: I thought this would be mostly silly fun, but, uh, the recent episodes took a much darker tun than I anticipated. Very cool plot twists, I did not see the story taking place in two timelines coming, though in hindsight it makes perfect sense. And Kumoko seemed to allude that she has a plan to save the world from an impending disaster, presumably her work as a demon lord is a part of that, but she does get more and more arrogant and bloodthirsty. Without spoilers, I'd appreciate some vague info about how dark this gets.
The first dozen episodes also had surprisingly catchy songs and I'm disappointed those changed.
Critical Role campaign 3: I do enjoy CR, the new characters are very promising (especially Taliesin's and Marisha's, and Sam's is fun), but 4 hours a week is a lot. I'm glad they'll take one week a month off, I'm already behind (I've watched the first three episodes so far.) I'm not sure yet if I'll continue watching, or if I'll do what I did for the second half of campaign 2, namely read the summaries each week and then decide to watch the episode if something particularly cool or interesting happened.
Taskmaster series 12: DD and I really enjoyed series 1 to 10, and then for reasons we forgot didn't watch series 11. We recently caught up with series 12 and it's so much fun. Victoria might be one of my favorite contestants ever. Only one more episode to go.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: People in magical giant robots fight monsters! And the heroine wants to burn down the sexist system that leads to female pilots being sacrificed. From reviews etc. before reading I knew that this book would have a poly relationship (I didn't know if V or triangle and was happy to find out it was the latter), but I didn't know that it had a disabled main character. Wu Zetian's feet were bound as a child and she can't take a single step without pain, so it's no wonder that she thinks of little else but revenge on the system that did this to her, and also killed her sister. We meet two other female pilots but both of them don't have their feet bound because they come from often-denigrated border tribes, while Wu Zetian is dependent on a cane or wheelchair, it's a shame we didn't get more interactions between them. In general I wished for more interactions with people and more character/relationship development, the pacing was somewhat rushed at times, but it was also hard to put down. Overall I enjoyed it a lot. It got fairly dark at times but not more than I should have expected. Most of the twists at the end I didn't see coming, and I'm very curious what the sequel will be like.
Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim: inspired by the fairy tale "The Six Swans" in an Asian fantasy setting. Unfortunately the main character left a bad first impression because coddled youngest child or not, a 16-year-old Imperial princess should know more about responsibilities and consequences than Shiori (and that reflects badly on her family too.) Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for YA? None of the plot twists were surprising, and I could only connect to the characters rarely. Overall, I don't regret reading it and it did have some enjoyable elements, but I'm not going to bother with any sequels.
So I'm a Spider, So What?, anime, up to episode 13: I thought this would be mostly silly fun, but, uh, the recent episodes took a much darker tun than I anticipated. Very cool plot twists, I did not see the story taking place in two timelines coming, though in hindsight it makes perfect sense. And Kumoko seemed to allude that she has a plan to save the world from an impending disaster, presumably her work as a demon lord is a part of that, but she does get more and more arrogant and bloodthirsty. Without spoilers, I'd appreciate some vague info about how dark this gets.
The first dozen episodes also had surprisingly catchy songs and I'm disappointed those changed.
