Books, tv, and games
Games:
Beyond Light Advent: A well made hidden object game about a female astronomer defeating an alien invasion in the 1950s with the help of an alien friend. I overall enjoyed it, with one major caveat: The Native American characters are painfully cliched. And while they're all sympathetic, once the game is done with their subplot it just kills them all for cheap angst! (this is so awful I think it's worth spoiling) And literally every other non villain gets a name but they're all "friend". From the same company that did "Candenza", which did much better on race but was awful on disability. Sigh. Oh, also, had a few timing puzzles, I could do them ok and there's a skip function but they could get a little tricky.
Awakening: the Redleaf Forest: The end of the series, and overall as fun as the others, if a bit heavy handed with it's moral about tolerance. Unfortunate usage of First Nations symbols in an otherwise cliched pseudo-medieval Europe full of white people (in a significant way, not just the typical random anachronistic collection of objects in hidden object scenes)
US TV:
Wet Hot American Summer: comedy show pastiching 80s summer camp movies. Wasn't quite funny enough to get me through the second hand embarrassment/awkwardness but seemed ok.
Master of None: Aziz Ansari slice of life comedy about being a single 30 something actor. Also a bit awkward but slightly funnier and not quite as silly so am more enthused.
Anime:
Mr Osomatsu: The first episode is one long joke about being a reboot of a 60s anime, and has lots of fun meta references to modern anime trends but zero plot or consistency. It had so many parodies they got into legal trouble and had to take it down. I mean to watch the rest when I'm in the mood for silliness.
Books:
True Pretenses by Rose Lerner: really fun regency romance about a poor Jewish con man who is trying to set his brother up with a nice upper class Whig girl so he can go straight, except he falls for her himself. Manages to make the politically conservative (and very political!) female love interest sympathetic while subtly critiquing her point of view, and is overall charming and sweet.
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch: urban fantasy about a young mixed race British policeman who gains the ability to see ghosts and gets drawn into the secret magics of London as he tries to solve a murder. Mostly pretty enjoyable, but the way he kept perving on women irritated me, and I came out of it feeling slightly gross for reasons I can't explain, so while I enjoyed it well enough may not read more.
Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner: I didn't feel like I was learning anything and got increasingly sick of the unfortunate subtext to many of the examples. Bailed at "disabled women are hilariously unattractive".
****NOTE: the next two reviews discuss the plots of books containing rape and other triggers****
Nor Iron Bars a Cage by Kaje Harper: Enjoyable free pseudo-medieval fantasy original slash hurt/comfort. A mage with PTSD, self harm tendencies, physical disability, and suicidal tendencies from sexual and other trauma gets drawn back into adventure by an old friend. While the main couple do fit the pretty blonde young angsty uke, older stronger brunette seme cliche they were sweet together and there was a strong emphasis on consent and slow, patient recovery. A lot of the typical flaws apply though: the love interest was a somewhat shallow fantasy of the perfect, supportive, loving boyfriend. The world was set up to make homosexuality accepted but have zero female characters in any "important" roles. The female characters who do show up are treated ok, but get maybe a paragraph of lines in the first chapter or so then vanish entirely. The warmongering enemy country is dark skinned, which is treated ok but seems unnecessary. And while the author was obviously trying very hard to write self harm, PTSD and rape trauma in a thoughtful way it was a bit gratuitously woobyish in parts and the ending had some very unfortunate implications about self harm which were bad for my head. In general the worldbuilding is nothing very original but held together ok, and worked really well with the plot. Overall a happy romance but has some stressful/sad scenes.
The Just City by Jo Walton: The viewpoint character is a rapist. The book was very clearly anti rape, and it's described very indirectly, but it was still more than I could handle. Apparently a very good book, otherwise!
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