Things I'm Into Right Now
"But I don't have anything interesting to say right now," I tell myself. "Well, except for those things which deserve a proper post with plenty of thought and organization, and I don't feel like that much work--"
Well. Never mind that. In the interests of putting something here other than exchange letters and "There was a house disaster" posts, here is, in no particular order, a series of things I'm really into right now:
1) Wilde Life, an urban fantasy webcomic with god damn pacing and arc plot and structure. Also, set in rural Oklahoma. Great art, sharp writing, characters I love, and a believable promise from the author that it's going to go specific places, not meander. I've talked about it here before; still highly recommended.
2) Ovid. I've been working casually and slowly through his Ars Amatoria, since I have a Bryn Mawr edition sitting around anyway. (I am told Ovid is difficult, but I think people are talking about other works of his, or working from editions without annotation. This is pretty simple so far.) It's charming and has such voice, and I still love his habit of just slapping a random noun into the ablative and using it as a locative because who's going to stop him, huh?
3) Genevieve Cogman's library series. The Invisible Library is going to be out in the US soon, which should make it far easier to recommend to friends, and I'm reading The Masked City much slower than such a fun book deserves, because apparently I am now so used to reading books on my phone that it takes me ten times as long to read them in paper. Lots of fun! World-hopping magic librarians, adorable aristocratic dragon sidekick, Sherlock Holmes expy, steampunk madness with hilariously melodramatic fae villains. Great stuff.
4) Interactive Fiction. Right now I'm working my way through learning Twine, because it requires a lot less "Oh god did I typo that chapter number" checking than doing things the manual way like I did with The Virulent. (Which I am still damn proud of, as a story, but I am also glad a friend is maybe putting it into Twine for me, because that'll make it easier for people to play.) I also really want to try out the Choice Of system, because I am enough of a gamer at heart to adore stats, but I'm trying not to over-reach.
I wrote a very short story called Trope Shop in Twine, which I am fond of, and if I ever figure out how to host it online usefully I'll link people to it. (Right now it's just an HTML file that I can email to people, which is handy, but not very efficient.) ETA: ...and you can find it here. I'm working on another one called Hubris Never Steered Me Wrong, courtesy of Arkady Martine, who will have to forgive me for taking such a great title and then filling it with tragedy and melancholy.
5) Starting short stories, and then never finishing them. I'm sorry. It's a habit.
6) Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I'm sure the rush will wear off after a bit, but between that, Jupiter Ascending, and Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015 was a great year for action movies that gave me a lot to think about afterwards. I can't really burble fannishly without spoilers, so let's just say it's a movie I enjoyed, and move on.
7) Steven Universe. It's always annoying when everyone tells you how great something is and then they turn out to be right, isn't it? Well. They were. I'm deeply into the flashback episodes, for all the additional worldbuilding they do, and also for showing how the protagonist really has changed the way people interact just by being himself. But also for showing how other characters were effective and cool and learning and growing because of each other even before he came along, kthx. It's a fine balance to walk in a show that surrounds a Chosen One protagonist with superpowered heroes who have been around for millennia, and Steven Universe pulls it off surprisingly well.
#
So, anyway. Stuff I've been really into lately. Back to snarling at this short story that isn't ending properly. Endings are hard, y'all.
This entry was originally posted at http://fadeaccompli.dreamwidth.org/120674.html. Comment wherever you like.
Well. Never mind that. In the interests of putting something here other than exchange letters and "There was a house disaster" posts, here is, in no particular order, a series of things I'm really into right now:
1) Wilde Life, an urban fantasy webcomic with god damn pacing and arc plot and structure. Also, set in rural Oklahoma. Great art, sharp writing, characters I love, and a believable promise from the author that it's going to go specific places, not meander. I've talked about it here before; still highly recommended.
2) Ovid. I've been working casually and slowly through his Ars Amatoria, since I have a Bryn Mawr edition sitting around anyway. (I am told Ovid is difficult, but I think people are talking about other works of his, or working from editions without annotation. This is pretty simple so far.) It's charming and has such voice, and I still love his habit of just slapping a random noun into the ablative and using it as a locative because who's going to stop him, huh?
3) Genevieve Cogman's library series. The Invisible Library is going to be out in the US soon, which should make it far easier to recommend to friends, and I'm reading The Masked City much slower than such a fun book deserves, because apparently I am now so used to reading books on my phone that it takes me ten times as long to read them in paper. Lots of fun! World-hopping magic librarians, adorable aristocratic dragon sidekick, Sherlock Holmes expy, steampunk madness with hilariously melodramatic fae villains. Great stuff.
4) Interactive Fiction. Right now I'm working my way through learning Twine, because it requires a lot less "Oh god did I typo that chapter number" checking than doing things the manual way like I did with The Virulent. (Which I am still damn proud of, as a story, but I am also glad a friend is maybe putting it into Twine for me, because that'll make it easier for people to play.) I also really want to try out the Choice Of system, because I am enough of a gamer at heart to adore stats, but I'm trying not to over-reach.
I wrote a very short story called Trope Shop in Twine, which I am fond of, and if I ever figure out how to host it online usefully I'll link people to it. (Right now it's just an HTML file that I can email to people, which is handy, but not very efficient.) ETA: ...and you can find it here. I'm working on another one called Hubris Never Steered Me Wrong, courtesy of Arkady Martine, who will have to forgive me for taking such a great title and then filling it with tragedy and melancholy.
5) Starting short stories, and then never finishing them. I'm sorry. It's a habit.
6) Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I'm sure the rush will wear off after a bit, but between that, Jupiter Ascending, and Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015 was a great year for action movies that gave me a lot to think about afterwards. I can't really burble fannishly without spoilers, so let's just say it's a movie I enjoyed, and move on.
7) Steven Universe. It's always annoying when everyone tells you how great something is and then they turn out to be right, isn't it? Well. They were. I'm deeply into the flashback episodes, for all the additional worldbuilding they do, and also for showing how the protagonist really has changed the way people interact just by being himself. But also for showing how other characters were effective and cool and learning and growing because of each other even before he came along, kthx. It's a fine balance to walk in a show that surrounds a Chosen One protagonist with superpowered heroes who have been around for millennia, and Steven Universe pulls it off surprisingly well.
#
So, anyway. Stuff I've been really into lately. Back to snarling at this short story that isn't ending properly. Endings are hard, y'all.
This entry was originally posted at http://fadeaccompli.dreamwidth.org/120674.html. Comment wherever you like.