Things I have watched, played, and read
Books:
Prisoner by Lia Silver: (Free!) science fiction romance about a werewolf marine who gets captured by an Evil Science Lab and the bitter female assassin he encounters there. This didn't 100% work for me as romance (I was fine with it right until the end, which was too fast and fluffy for me), but was a great light science fiction story with thrills and action and likeable characters and a refreshingly unheteronormative m/f relationship with a POC male lead. Am putting off reading the sequel, Partner, while I enjoy the happy-ish ending, since things will presumably get tense again for a while.
(nb Partner is hard to buy outside of Amazon so I got it direct from
rachelmanija)
Games:
Hexcells series: decided to play through these again, it has been super fun. Like a pretty, calming minesweeper with pure logic instead of guessing!
Antique Road Trip USA: A very light hidden object game about a couple helping people find/classify/restore antiques across the US. Actually had ethnically diverse secondary characters??? But the only appearance of Native Americans is nostalgic racist memorabilia and artifacts etc, which felt a bit gross. I enjoyed how fluffy and low tension it was.
The Broken Sword 1: Shadow of the Templar: Finally finished this revamped 90s point and click adventure game after getting bored a third of the way through. Eventually I gave up and opened up a walkthrough and used it every time I got remotely stuck, making the rest go very quickly. Overall I quite enjoyed it, a fun mystery adventure about Secret Societies and Hidden History etc. I was absolutely right to suspect that the cool French female "protagonist" would become a Strong Female Character and have her arc entirely subsumed by the dorky male American tourist's, but at least she got some closure and he was funny and likeable enough in and of himself. For a 90s game set in Europe and Syria it was only middling racist. The sequel looks to be about Exotic Scary Mayans so... eh.
LOOM: Another 90s point and click adventure game! Could not get the save menu to open :(
Sam and Max hit the road: Irreverently funny 90s point and click adventure game, about two violent "freelance police". Only just started this, but it was pretty funny and at least I could get the save menu to open.
Amnesia: Memories: translated Japanese dating sim about waking up with no memory (because it was 90% off) Just started it, and it was surprisingly compelling, but since it's on the Windows machine haven't had many chances to play it.
Coursera course:
Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World: I'm only on week 3 but am really enjoying this, the lecturer is Iranian and manages to get across a lot of complex ideas and history in an accessible way without oversimplifying too much. He has some biases even to my ignorant eyes, but I still feel like I'm getting a much better understanding of the world and he's obviously trying to give a balanced point of view. Lets you learn at your own pace, too, which is good because there are a lot of videos per "week", even with me skipping all the readings. The assessments have thus far been easy multiple choice but there is an essay coming up.
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