Reading, watching, listening, and Yuletide tagset roundup
43. Nicky Drayden, The Prey of Gods over the last couple of years, and I finally got around to it, I forget by what happenstance. Based on what I'd heard from 
ambyr, I was expecting it to be weird. I was not necessarily expecting it to be weird in this way, and I didn't really know what to expect from this specific book content-wise, so it was like going in cold, really. And it was... a wild ride, I guess? I'm still not really sure what I think of it, just as I wasn't sure at any point from about the 40% mark on. I was having a good time while I was reading it, even though none of the tropes or subgenres it's playing with are necessarily really my thing -- there were funny bits, and affecting bits, and thought-provoking bits, and the writing is really well done throughout -- but the whole thing, I dunno, my final impression is of a mad mosaic where there are miniature scenes scattered all over that are really cool, but it doesn't gel into a compelling novel for me when considered as a whole. I am curious to read more of Drayden's work, but will be approaching it cautiously now that I have a bit more of a feel for what to expect.
I was really liking the beginning of the book, which seems to be proceeding along novel-shaped foundations -- there are our two young people who seem like they are going to be the protagonists, and they are sympathetic individually interesting, and nicely different; there is the character who is going to be the villain, and she is both horrible and a fun POV -- and then there are Stoker and Riya, who I had no idea what was going on with them, and whether they were going to turn out to be aiding our heroes or roadblocks to them or what, but Stoker at least was pretty fun (Riya was and remained my least favorite POV). So I was reading merrily along, and then SPOILERS I hit the chapter with Nomvula getting in touch with ire as a source of power, and I had NOT been prepared for any of that -- her experience of the mob, her actions in response to it -- by the breezy overall tone of the book till then. Like, no, obviously, I was getting how horrible Nomvula's actual circumstances were even before that -- her mother is catatonic and deeply traumatized and has apparently been that way for as long as Nomvula can remember, she's reliant on the kindness of strangers to keep from starving, she's ostracized, even the kindness from Mr Tau is a very creepy kind of kindness, though Nomvula doesn't perceive it like that (though Muzi and Elkin immediately get that vibe, when they meet him). But at tht point the horribleness is kind of locked away behind the unreliable narrator POV of a child for whom this is her normal, and it worked very well for me on that level -- affecting without being overwhelming. When I got to chapter 16, I had to put the book down and set it aside for about a month. Different degrees of "child in danger" affect me differently -- it's always a powerful lever on me (since I became a parent, it's very weird, the way one's brain chemistry changes apparently), but sometimes it's affecting and just heightens the reading experience, and sometimes it's just not something I can deal with, which is why it took me something like two years to read The Obelisk Gate. I guess, extrapolating from Nassun and Nomvula, the thing that tips it over into "content warning" territory for me is getting the POV of the child in danger AND that child having a certain degree of awareness about what's going on -- like, not an adult-like awareness, but enough that they realize the degree of danger they are in.
Anyway, so I had to take a break there, and when I eventually went back, I was reading much more cautiously. Because I think the way the book bounces from zany idea to zany idea -- dik-diks as a menace! drug trip that makes you see yourself as a crab and get magic powers! rhino-lion-hawk hybrids with human intelligence on a rampage! (with bonus bestiality?/xeno?); your mom is a tree spirit and also there are snakes?? your consciousness is now in the body of a robot PDA! and now you're wearing a mech suit built of robot PDAs! also, there are random phase-shifting powers, apparently ("your" = a number of POV characters in this case) -- you don't really get a sense of where the book is going, as a whole -- or at least I did not. And so some new crazy thing would happen, and I would be like, is this going to end in a rocks fall everybody dies tragedy? some kind of happy deus ex machina where everybody gets a happy ending, including the villains? I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA. Which, like, it's an interesting reading experience, but not one I find fundamentally satisfactory. It's a bit like reading crackfic, which can be fun for a bit, but doesn't pay off for me in ways that a novel usually does. Because after about the halfway point, I didn't feel like what was going to happen in the book depended on the choices and actions of the characters, so much as on what crazy thing Drayden wanted to write about next. And, like, everything she wanted to write about next was very inventive and often interesting, even though overwhelmingly Not My Kink (but, like, kudos to Nicky Drayden for unapologetically indulging in hers, which I mean unironically).
So, where does that leave me? I was rooting for Stoker, who somehow ended up as my favorite character despite the whole trying-to-kill-Gregory thing early on, so I'm very glad that Councilperson Stoker made it through the mayhem OK, is happily out as Felicity, and wish her well in her presidential bid. I was also rooting for Muzi and Elkin, although around the time Elkin was trampled to death by a mob and then had his corpse mangled by the anti-human part of the robot uprising sect, I couldn't really see any way for them to get a happy ending; clearly I just needed to have more faith in Nicky Drayden's crackfic skills (body swap with a clone body after a waystop inside a robot, which includes Elkin getting to pilot the Mega-Muzibot mecha suit with phallic descriptions of the flight stick and surging impluses and all that -- so obvious in retrospect, how could I have not seen that coming XD). I'm also really happy Nomvula got a family to take care of her by the end, although this is the part I believe way less than Stoker embracing the rhionhawks as a symbol or the robot-clone-bodyswap shenanigans: Riya's maternal impulses seemed to have come from nowhere, I do not but Riya/Rife as any sort of healthy relationship. So that was definitely a weakness of the ending for me, and, really of the whole novel -- I don't think I would've missed the Riya POV if it had been cut.
But if it wasn't 100% satisfying, it was definitely an interesting experience. I'm not in a hurry to throw myself into more Drayden, but I will definitely be on the lookout for more of her books.
Quotes:
Muzi: "enough potato salad to feed the entire South African Army... well, obviously not including the robot infantries"
Sydney "puts on a smile that's somewhere south of sincerity but north of keeping her job"
Sydney: "These humans, they don't believe in anything anymore, besides capitalism, of course."
Sydney: "Nobody wants to worship a frumpy god."
Robots: "That neaky, no good, son of a bit." (Nicely played XD)
re: Mr Tau
Nomvula: "He's very wise."
Muzi: "If by wise you mean a sadistic asshole, then yeah. I agree."
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I'm, weirdly, continuing to mainly consume media in forms other than reading.
I listened to the first couple of chapters of The Sandman, Act 1 on Audible (after
bearshorty reminded me of its existence). Audiobooks don't work for me as a vehicle for "what happens next", but "rereading" in audio is not too bad -- and with the Be The Serpent podcast ending in a couple of months, I need to have something else to listen to to entice myself into doing dishes. Anyway, some random thoughts, mostly on the adaptation:
Wow, I remember very little about early!Sandman besides the basic premise and the weird presence of superheroes, Arkham Asylum, etc.
The transition from comic book to "narrator describes people and action" is, hm. It's certainly a very different experience, but it for sure helps that I love listening to Neil Gaiman's voice.
It's definitely neat to get this in a radioplay format, but some voices work better for me than others. The "casting a magic spell" scenes with the swelling music are super cool -- I find them way more effective than I remember them being from the GN. Groans and such work pretty well to imply action without describing it. I like the Satanic buzzing of Beelzebub, I like the Wyrd Sisters voices a lot -- it's just a neat mix. Dream is not working for me particularly well; his voice feels too ordinary, compared to the distinctive speech bubbles. I was wondering how MacAvoy would work for me in that role once the cast was announced -- he didn't seem like the Morpheus type necessarily, though I've liked him a lot in other things -- and, yeah, I continue to find that an odd choice. And I don't remember finding Cain and Abel particularly interesting in the GN, but oh man is Abel's stuttering annoying to experience in audio form.
And I've been watching things, which is great for procrastinating on my PE application:
What If... Episode 9 (Finale) -- Spoilers! Aww, Tony doesn't get to be chosen -- poor Tony XD But at least he doesn't die again. I did kind of wonder where Gamora had come from -- like, we got to see Captain Carter, Star Lord T'Challa, Black Panther Killmonger, Party Thor, and Misguided Strange in their own episodes, so I wondered if there was a tenth episode that had been cut -- and apparently there had been. And I'd been wondering, like, what, no Nat or someone from the zombie episode? -- and then zombie!Scarlet Witch showed up and WHOA. And of course we did get a Natasha, too. Captain Carter and Natasha -- "I believe the term is BFF" XD I did not see Killmonger claiming the Stones for himself coming (though I had been wondering what he was even there for really until then). I did wonder what confidence they all had that Zola was not just going to claim Ultron's power for himself, so was gratified to see that I was right to wonder about that. I was thinking, interesting that Peggy asks for what Steve got at the end of Endgame -- the chance to go back to a happy ending -- but the Watcher convinces her to go back to her own world -- and then Steve is there anyway. And that postapocalyptic Natasha gets sent to a world c. The Avengers that can use her. The YouTube video I was watching pointed out this was the world from episode 3, where the prospective Avengers all got killed off, and that having Nat there at the pivotal moment derails Loki's Earth domination plans. So that was a nice way to tie in that remaining episode.
I also finished watching season 1 of The Expanse
Spoilers for all of book 1 and for season 1, episode by episode (I wrote the episode reactions as I watched, so they don't contain spoilers for later episodes)
Expanse 1x02 -- OK, so show!Holden is just an idiot then, instead of an optimist/idealist XD Whom everyone else on the crew rightly ignores. I mean, I hate this characterization choice, but it makes it easier not to be disappointed by not liking the casting, I guess? Anyway, good thing they have Naomi to do the sensible things, and apparently also be Amos's moral compas in this version? I'm definitely on board with more evidence of Naomi being MVP. I was really surprised that they decided not to have Holden announcing to the solar system that Martian technology was involved in the Scopuli/Canterbury incident be the inciting incident for the Donnager showing up, but rather he makes his first (only so far) broadcast as insurance because they believe the Donnager has "come to finish the job". That's a very different character moment... Shed freaking out was great, hypoxic Alex was great, the two of them buddy-breathing was great, although, wow, this show is going to be bad for my "asphyxiation-in-space" thing, isn't it... On Miller's side of the story, it makes it maaaarginally less weird that he fixates on Julie when he's at least seen video messages of her, instead of a photograph and some emails, so good call there. What was the deal with the hamster? -- I assume this is not a live hamster but a mechanical pet or something, since it's still alive, but that was definitely unexpected (Julie Mao and Bel Thorne, space!hamster owners...) I totally guessed he was going to use Julie's water ration, though, heh.
Expanse 1x03 -- Aww, Havelock was paying by the hour to learn Belter patois and broad gestures, cute. Despite the cuteness and what I might have surmised from that in a cop show, I wasn't expecting that cliffhanger ending and checked google that he wasn't actually dead. Speaking of the Ceres storyline, I haven't mentioned before, but I like this version of Shadid, and the actress playing her. And we get to see space!Mormons instead of just hearing about them later with the Nauvoo, nice. Over with the survivors of the Cant, hm. I understand the interpersonal conflict makes for better television, but I had actually liked the way the book guys were solidly together as a crew even though they were Earthers, Martian, and Belter (and whatever Shed is), even when they disagreed. I do like the Amos and Naomi bond -- it's handy that my two favorite characters from the book so clearly care about each other -- and I'm liking Shed getting more to do -- he adds some much-needed humour to the proceedings. Chrisjen and that set get an interesting storyline in this one / I finally have enough feel for her character, and I'm liking the addition of this storyline to this part of the proceedings. I like that for all her HIGHLY unscrupulous and criminal techniques (I mean, torture, for starters, and also manipulating someone who is a friend, which is a different level of severity but also not great), she does seem to be motivated by "the greater good" -- preventing a war rather than, I'm assuming, personal ambition, since she immediately explains that she must've been wrong in her assertion that Mars had been feeding stealth technology to the OPA.
Expanse 1x04 -- I like the scene with Chrisjen on the roof, watching the sky and talking about people who throw rocks. I'm not sure I would've picked up on it without having read the book, but given that it's the threat of orbital bombardment that's the big scary thing looming over the planets and stations when the war starts (and at the end, with Eros), that's a really fitting opening and a lovely image of her on the roof, in the gorgeous sari, underneath the starry sky. On a different note: Holy shit, Shed's death! I knew it was coming, and I even knew what happened, but I didn't necessarily expect it right then, and I certainly didn't expect the visual of his blood being sucked into vaccuum, until gravity returns. Jeez. But it also generates a nice moment of Amos, Naomi, and Alex all working together to plug the holes, after Alex and Amos had been fighting the whole time in captivity. Alex taking the sedative shot, Amos and Naomi holding hands (his still covered with Shed's blood from sealing the hole where Shed's head had been) -- there's a lot of powerful moments here. And the space battle was really cool! But having Holden not be with the others where most of the stuff is going down just keeps making me less interested in Holden (he went back for them, big whoop), and the escape to the Tachi/Rocinante-to-be worked much better for me in the book -- the action in low-gravity here was both kinda comical and confusing. I'm also not sure why Lopez replaced Kelly as the MCRN dude to get them on board, but I found the Martian marines just kind of grimly and quietly doing what had to be done in the book more effective than soliloquies about Earthers wrecking their climate and oceans on Mars. (I assume Lopez dies from the acceleration as Kelly does in the book, but it's not clear from this episode, and maybe not. Oh, and first view of Fred, who doesn't match my mental image -- I was imaginging someone with more military bearing, less professorial, but I like him fine.
Expanse 1x05 -- The Roci is officially the Roci! (I have to concede, Holden is at least better at one thing than others on the crew, and that is naming ships, although Alex's suggestions were pretty amusing). I'm still kind of annoyed that the show is playing the Roci bunch as being at odds; like, it's just Alex taking care of the dead MCRN marine, where in the book everyone acknowledged his sacrifice and treated him with respect. I do find the different dynamic disorienting. And what's Naomi's deal with Tycho or Fred? Speaking of Fred, I was not expecting an actual flashback to Andersen Station, but that was a neat take, definitely more affecting than just talking about it (though I assume we will learn more about why UN1 couldn't hear the surrender? or had he just been instructed to ignore it and followed orders?) Over on Ceres, I forgot to mention it before, but I like/am intrigued by this version of Dawes much more than book!Dawes. I'm continuing to find Miller surprisingly non-boring considering how much I was bored of his book counterpart. And his "And me without my wallet" line to Havelock's girl is I think my favorite line on the show so far. His plot is being quite different from the book, but as that means there is less moping and incipient hallucinations, I'm acgtually not minding that part at all.
Expanse 1x06 -- Huh, so, the relationship with Fred is starting off pretty different, too. I noticed Amos's Hebrew tat (or, apparently, the actor's). Amos and Alex drinking at the bar got some interesting background, though if it's background congruent with the book, that did not come up in book 1 at all. Anyway, it looks like the Roci crew has finally caught up to where they were in the book from the start, and Miller is fired now (although in a very different way than in the book, though hopefully it will spare us some measure of moping), and presumably those lines will intersect in the next episode. I guess we got to see Miller being competent cracking the Julie case so we don't need him to demonstrate his detective prowess by tracking the Rocinante. Oh, and I guess Diogo is going to be a periodic character in this too, rather than just showing up as a random OPA youngster later (when Miller is hanging around the OPA/crashing in his bunk after Holden kicks him out).
Expanse 1x07 -- Huh! So this was an episode that was basically completely not-in-the-book stuff, which was interesting. I mean, there was a little bit of Miller arc that was in the book, but IIRC all of that was told, not shown, so even that felt new. Interesting to see the Belt equivalent of a Greyhound bus, I guess; it looks about as cheerful. And the spy/stowaway on the Roci, the standoff with the Martian inspectors and the stuff with cracking the safe and pretending to be MCRN black ops was all new. Alex talking to the MCRN guys was hilarious -- he is firmly my favorite show character at this point, he's just so fun! Amos was really interesting here, with the spy and especially with Holden (who is being an idiot, but what else is new). Show!Amos doesn't seem t be much like book!Amos, although it's of course entirely possible that they just express the same brokenness in different ways. I find book!Amos more fun, but show!Amos seems to be a more interesting character. Oh, and on a random note, it's nice to have a visual for what the Roci looks like disguised as a gas freighter; pretty unwieldy! This was one of my favorite if not the favorite episode for the Cant survivors storyline, and it's interesting, because all of that is new, rather than adapting from the books. I think that's part of why, actually; the show characters are sufficiently different from their book counterparts that either I miss the easier camaraderie from the book, or I miss the way their book personalities reacted, but if it's all new stuff, I can just enjoy what's in front of me without remembering what's missing. Over on Earth, oho, we get to meet Holden's parents! or some of them, at least. That's an interesting backstory, and I guess explains some of his less... pragmatic tendencies, although I have a hard time believing that the universe, as it is in The Expanse, has not trained him out of such idealism by now. Re: the Cervantes -- "I never broke to him that it's a tragedy" is a nice line; it almost makes up for the show choosing to spell out that Holden thinks of himself as a knight (I guess not everyone might've gotten the Rocinante reference? and the windmills reference which is this episode's title...) Anyway, that's a neat backstory, but the more I think about it, the less I buy it as a backstory for this Holden, he's just too blunder-y and IDK, naive in a way that I find it hard to believe result from that upbringing, even if Elise and the others shielded him from what stories about idealism would end in given a universe like this. A different actor could've sold me on this, probably, but this Holden... *sigh*
Expanse 1x08 -- I'm amused that so many people in this world apparently have no idea what "Anubis" refers to and keep mispronouncing the name of the ship (a bit surprised it doesn't happen with the other non-intuitively named ships, like Scopuli). Poor DeGraaf -- I'd liked him, in the early episode where he was having dinner with Chrisjen. I'm assuming this isn't actually suicide because he's pining for Mars but something more sinister, but probably Chrisjen is indirectly responsible for that, too, in the sense that her ploy in that earlier episode put him in the path of whatever harm this ends up actually being. Roci bunch: so we get a good look at both what the protomolecule goo looks like (blue sand-goop kind of stuff, not bad at all compared to the grossness of the book) and what it does to human bodies (grosser, but also not nearly as bad as what the book described). If this'll be the worst it gets, I can totally deal with that. I'm developing the following problem with the Rocinante crew: Holden is now stepping into the role of being the person in charge, but every time he gives someone an order or says something else in authoritative fashion, I just want to tell him to shut up. Unlike book!Holden, I don't see at all how he's earned the right to lead anyone -- just because he went back for them on the Donnager? Whatever. Jumpy Alex brandishing his gun after the firefight and Amos sort of gently lowering his gun arm was amazing, though. And we get to see Semi in the flesh, and he's pretty nice. (It looks like he's maybe absorbing part of book!Havelock's role in being someone who can warn Miller about thugs having taken over Eros police.)
Expanse 1x09 -- OK, now the Julie transformation stuff is pretty gross, although still not as gross as in the book. More frustratingly, Julie's acting just was not working for me, either as herself before shit went down, or especially during the more fraught points of being on the run and the transformation. A large part of that is the writing -- I find the words she has to say boring and overblown -- but the acting doesn't help. Dresden looks and acts nothing like my mental image of him from the book -- he's just... insufficiently corporate, insufficiently high-handed, just not right for the role. It was interesting making Julie's father actually in charge of the protomolecule thing, rather than just vaguely aware that something bad was going to go down in the Belt. "How did they know a ship would blow up in the docks? ... They blew it up themselves." -- gold star, show!Holden. Well done XD And, OK, I don't exactly condone Miller shooting people in cold blood ("Let's get this poor officer some help") -- though I do find it a lot less tedious here than in the book, where we got to hear him reflect on it and shit -- but I do find myself sort of automatically rooting for anyone who ISN'T show!Holden in a scene, so there's that. On a different note, Chrisjen manages to look fabulous even dressed in somber colors for mourning. And I do feel like she was both genuinely saying good-bye to a close friend she'd known her whole life/parental sort of figure AND of course taking the opportunity to see if anything was amiss (the blood smear) and snoop around.
Expanse 1x10 ("Leviathan Wakes", the Hugo winner in 2017) -- Miller to Holden: "but you're really kinda clueless, aren't you?" Thank you, Miller, for saying that out loud. "Optimism is for assholes and Earthers" is also a pretty good line. Also, why is Miller apparently suffereing a lot more from radiation poisoning than Holden? Is it because Holden is too pretty to vomit up blood? And what the hell was that scene with Holden shooting past the spy? What was the POINT of that?? Conversely, I'm glad that Miller got to shoot the guy who had tried to kill Havelock, the long way around. (I note, however, that show!Holden doesn't seem to have the same problem with Miller being trigger-happy that book!Holden had, or at least he's not showing it yet.) I was wondering if they were going to keep the Julie hallucinations/how they were going to do them; can't say I'm thrilled they're going to be a thing. Wait, so, Naomi *is* (ex-?)OPA? Or how does she know about the tunnels? I understand that since the show is not limited to just Miller and Holden as POV characters (which I'm very grateful for, btw), they can't just have Naomi and the others sitting around on the Roci offscreen, so I understand why they get the whole thing with the tunnels and assorted locals, and it does add to the sense of the Eros tragedy -- a heap of dead guys growing crystals is one thing; getting to see some actual people who are going to end up very, very dead is a different effect. Amos being protective of the random Eros kid they picked up, and Alex trying to entertain her with clumsily executed coin tricks was very cute (Amos & Alex have really grown on me as a dynamic). The Naomi-Semi-Amos standoff was legitimately a great scene (though I figured that was coming), but aww, that's character assassination for book!Semi (...probably). But I'm kind of sad that Amos's "You guys look like shit" was not the final line of the season XD Overall episode verdict: I don't know that I'd consider this Hugo-worthy over some of the other episodes (at least given that nothing in the plot surprised me since I'd read the book), but this was pretty good!
So, seems like a good time to pause and take stock of s1 as a whole. I did enjoy it, but I don't know if I can really say that I'm enjoying the show more than the book, because this only takes us through about half of book 1, and by that point in the book I was still having a lot of fun with it. And as the last two episodes got more into the protomolecule stuff, I've been less interested -- so it wouldn't surprise me if I followed the same trajectory as with the book for the "second half".
On the character front, I'm still liking Miller a lot more than I'd expected, but with the same caveat -- he was really starting to get on my nerves in the book after this part. In the book, I went from liking Holden to being kind of meh on him to being annoyed at people seeing him as some kind of shining ideal of righteousness; in the show, my trajectory has been from mild dislike at the start to really not being able to stand him at this point -- I just didn't think he was anything like book!Holden in the feckless early episodes; now that he's trying to do book!Holden's role anyway, I would rather be watching anyone else. At least I do like the other Rocinante folks, though not necessarily in the same way / order as their book counterparts. Alex is wonderful on the show when he was the least interesting of the three for me in the book. Amos is different -- he honestly doesn't feel like the same character in book 1 vs season 1 of the show, and I do miss the louder and I think happier book!Amos, but this one is interesting, and I like his dynamic with both Naomi and Alex. Naomi I feel weird about, because I really liked her in the book, and I like her in the show -- her actress, her dialogue -- and it seems fairly consistent with her book self, but she's also not standing out for me nearly as much as she did in the book. I think the reasons for that are two-fold: First, Alex and Amos got some additional detail in the show, Alex's family, Amos's rough past and philosophy, but what Naomi gets beyond her book story is secrets and hints (Eros tunnels, "I'll give you a name"), which doesn't actually ADD much to her character. Second, while the TV show not being locked into only one or two Rocinante POVs like the book, I feel like book!Naomi actually benefitted a lot from the limited POV, because Holden's POV kept singing praises of her continuously, and Miller's immediately respected her, too. Holden's POV in particular fixated on Naomi (positively) in group scenes in a way that the more "objective" camera lens does not, so Naomi always felt as more prominent in the book. But also I think she might have simply gotten more to do, in the sense of more agency, because the book!Roci had an actual chain of command and she was Holden's XO (whom he tended to lean on too hard), whereas on the show it's more of a free-form group with everyone pulling their own way and doing their own thing. Anyway, I like show!Alex way more than book!Alex, and am happy to get to know this more complex-seeming show!Amos, but I miss book!Naomi's greater... weight on the narrative, I guess. Especially because I feel like the actress looks and sounds perfect. And I definitely enjoyed the addition of Chrisjen Avasarala, who is always neat to follow around; even if I don't understand what machinations she's pulling off in a given scene, I get to admire her gorgeous saris and jewelry.
The scenery and the ships and the station backgrounds are all still awesome. I really like the way the Belter interiors have a weathered, hard-used look -- hazard signs and metal floors, the whole thing looks appropriately industrial. And the way Belters are so often dressed in company jumpsuits -- like, I'm sure it's practical, but it's also continuously driving home the point of what the OPA is rebelling against. (I thought it was a particularly neat contrast on the Donnager, when the others were wearing their Pur'n'Kleen jumpsuits while Alex was in the crisp black-with-coral-piping MCRN uniform.) Oh, and randomly, I really like the way the mag boots were realized -- everything from how you activate them to the lights to how they sound as the characters walk just feels really... solid and real to me. And just in general, like, having spent a fair bit of time inside an industrial environment where people hang out and work for hours wearing specialty clothing and tools about their person (in my case, not a spaceship/space station but a semiconductor fab), the vibe just feels right in a way that I haven't seen on a sci-fi show before. Like Serenity in Firefly feels like a quirky RV, Lucy on Killjoys feels like a house, Moya on Farscape was this... weird living cave thing that I never really warmed up to, the B5 station feels like a corporate building or indoor mall, depending on where you go, but this really nails the specific "people were brought here to do a job, and, oh yeah, I guess they live here now, too" vibe that I found so interesting about the worldbuilding of the book. So, that's still the best part of the show for me, like with the first episode.
Favorite character: Alex
Least favorite character: HOLDEN
Favorite episode: I think 1x07 (the "donkey balls" one) -- it's Roci heavy, it's funny, it's got some cool scenes with Chrisjen
Least favorite episode: Mm, not sure -- I had the least to say about 1x06 (the one where the Roci crew meets Fred), and I remember being fairly bored of 1x08, and that's also where my annoyance with Holden started building to a new level. So probably 1x08. Or maybe 1x09, because it had lots of gross stuff and mostly focused on the things I don't care about? But 1x08 is the one I remember being the lull in my enjoyment, so I guess let's go with that.
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Finally, now is the time for my annual Yuletide tagset browsing:
- Angel of the Crows, with Doyle, Crow, Mary, and Kate Moriarty
- Attachments -- like last year, with Beth, Jennifer, and Lincoln
- Bedlam's Bard -- with Beth, Eric, Korendil and an elf I don't remember. I barely remember what happens in these books, except the Loma Prieta earthquake, but if it leads to elf threesome fic, I'm in.
- Beowulf -- with just Beowulf nominated.
- Binti -- with Binti, Okwu, and Worldbuilding, the last of which could actually be pretty interesting. Actually, any part of it not involving Binti.
- The Blending -- including Worldbuilding as a nomination, which was definitely the best part of this series.
- The Book of Dust (His Dark Materials sequel series) with JUST Worldbuilding nominated, hm!
- Chalion -- worldbuilding + lots of characters, including the Bastard. Relevant to me Adelis, Nikys, Penric, and Desdemona are all nominated.
- Elantra, including Bellusdeo
- Conspiracy of Truths -- with Consanza, Chant, and Ylfing
- Craft -- with Caleb and the King in Red (but not Temoc??)
- Cyteen -- Grant, Caitlin II and Florian II, and a non-azi person whom I don't remember at all, oops.
- Daevabad -- with the al Qahtani siblings, Jamshid, Nahri, and Dara
- Demon's Lexicon -- Alan, Nick, Mae, and Sin
- Docile -- not that I've read it, I'm just curious to see it show up
- Doctrine of the Labyrinths -- Felix, Mildmay, Mehitabel, and Thamuris
- Dragaera -- I had at least one fellow nominator, who added Cawti, Kiera, Kragar, and Teldra to my Morrolan, Vlad, Aliera, and Zerika. Interesting that there are no purely Paarfi folks on the list this year, although my Zerika nom is a Paarfi-based one.
- Dread Nation -- Jane and Katherine, and two people I don't recall
- Dune -- lots of nominations -- is this a boost from the movie coming out?
- Earthsea -- including Ged (but no Tenar)
- Eleanor and Park, with Eleanor, Park, and Park's parents again
- Fandom for Robots with no characters
- First Law -- with Ardee West, Glokta, Monza, Shivers, and a few other folks I either didn't get to or forgot
- Flatland (including worlduilding)
- Cruel prince -- including Madoc and Oriana
- Foundryside -- including Orso
- Goblin Emperor -- with 16 character nominations, some of whom I think are from the sequel?
- Graceling Realm -- including Fire, Brigan, and worldbuilding
- The City We Became, with Bronca, Brooklyn, Queens, Veneza, Manny, and the Avatar of NYC -- but not Aislyn, I note -- and London, Moscow, and Paris, who are only named, plus worldbuilding.
- Greenhollow -- Tobias, Henry, Mrs Silver, Maud
- Potato Peel Society
- Hollow Kingdom -- Marak, Kate, and worldbuilding (I'm curious if this gets any bites! I liked the series and was surprised it didn't seem to have more presence in fandom)
- Ancillaryverse -- the usual suspects, Athoek Station, plus worldbuilding
- Interdependency -- oh, this is interesting! only Rachela (the founder) and Worldbuilding are nominated.
- Jackalope Wives -- worldbuilding, plus the same characters as usual, including Grandma Harken
- JSMN -- aww, what, no Mr Norrell? Jonathan, Arabella, Lady Pole, Childermass, Stephen, the Raven King, plus worldbuilding (no Mr Norrell under the TV show either, but Colquhoun Grant, John Segundus, Mr Honeyfoot, and Childermass again)
- Kate Daniels -- including Kate, Hugh, Roland, Erra, and worldbuilding
- Kubla Khan is nominated with the Khan and worldbuilding, huh!
- Kushiel -- including Barquiel, Joscelin, Imri, Lucius, Maslin, Mavors, Sidonie, and worldbuilding (among others not relevant to my interests)
- Kyoshi duology made it in, following the evidence post disambiguating it from AtLA
- Lady Astronaut -- huh, I was not the only nominator. Helen, Nicole, and Myrtle are not mine, so I'm assuming this was from an all-women nomination which overlapped with mine on Elma.
- Legendborn -- Bree, Alice, Selwyn, Nick
- Locked Tomb squeaked inside with worldbuilding and a large cast of characters, including Palamedes
- Lynes and Mathey -- oh, GOOD CALL on worldbuilding for this one! (in addition to Julian and Ned)
- Machineries of Empire -- worldbuilding on top of the usual suspects (both Jeados, Kujen, Mikodez, Zehun, Ruo and others)
- The Martian -- book and movie
- Tithe-verse -- Roiben, Kaye, Luis, and Corny
- Monstrous Regiment -- with Jackrum only, huh! this is usually overrun with Polly/Mal folks...
- Murderbot (which had 20 nominators or something) has 19 characters nominated, including worldbuilding (and of course ART, who apparently doesn't get a Perihelion pipe)
- Nightrunners -- Alec, Seregil, Thero
- Toby Daye with 33 individual characters, WTF
- Philosopher's War -- ooh! someone besides me is aware this exists! Worldbuilding is nominated, as well it should be, along with Robert and Danielle
- Piranesi -- Piranesi, the Other, Sixteen, worldbuilding, and that person who is very interested in Angharad Scott, I guess
- The Poppy War -- Rin, Kitay, Venka, Nezha
- The Princess Bride -- with Simon Morgenstern as the only person nominated. Curious!
- Provenance -- but just with Ingray folks, not the characters I'm actually interested in
- Rebecca -- with Rebecca, Maxim, Narrator, and Frank Crawley
- Rivers of London gets only 9 characters. The expected ones like Peter, Nightingale, Molly, Beverley, and Abigail are there, but the other four are David Mellenby, Dom, Elsie Winstanley, and Peter's mum -- those are some deep pulls! (but I, too, want to know how Elsie and Peter's mum know each other)
- Asimov's Robots -- alas, neither of the duos I care about, just some Susan Calvin stuff
- Scholomance -- including both The Scholomance as character and worldbuilding (plus also actual people)
- Seraphina -- the trio plus Orma
- Unspoken Name -- Csorwe, Shuthmili, Tal, Belthandros, Oranna, plus the serpent lady, the goddess, and worldbuilding. Nice, nice!
- Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night
- The Space Between Worlds with very complicated character disambiguation, LOL, but actually surprisingly little overlap in characters
- Spinning Silver -- including Miryem, Irina, Wanda, Mirnatius, the Staryk Lord, Chernobog, and worldbuilding
- Sun Moon Dust -- just Allpa and Moon
- Sunshine -- including worldbuilding
- Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, because what else to you need?
- Tarot Sequence -- Rune, Brand, Lord Tower, Addam, Max, and Quinn
- Space Aztecs -- down to only 8 nominated characters this year, including worldbuilding (Mahit, Three Seagrass, Yskandr, Six Direction, Nineteen Adze, Eight Antidote, and Thirty Larkspur for some reason)
- Temeraire -- Temeraire, Laurence, Tharkay, Napoleon.
- Temple of the White Rat -- huh! Halla and Zale and Brindle but no Sarkis? Worldbuilding, though.
- Terra Ignota -- even more HUH, since Mycroft is not on the list, even though it looks like 2 people must've nominated. Worldbuilding, very good call. But -- Apollo, Seine Mardi, Cornel MASON I get. MASON plus JEDD plus Martin I get. But what is Saladin doing there without Mycroft?
- Uglies -- Shay, Tally, Dr Cable, Zane
- Unnatural Magic-verse -- Della, Winn, and Winn's parents
- Upright women Wanted -- Cye and Esther (really?)
- Uprooted -- Agnieszka, Sarkan, Solya, Marek (nominator, you're a person after my own heart, I feel)
- Warchild -- I did not nominate this time, but that makes it interesting to see what the noms looks like without me. Jos, Ryan, Yuri, Evan, Finch -- plus Admiral Ashrafi, who I guess belongs with Ryan? No Cairo, but that's OK -- I decided not to request him this year, because Lowachee had basically written my favorite prompt in the Omake book already.
- The Waste Land -- worldbuilding. Oooh, damn, actually. I wonder what they want, but this could be really interesting!
- Watchmaker of Filigree Street -- Mori, Thaniel, Six, Pepper, Grace, and Akira
- Wayfarers -- so many people... relevant to me: Corbin, Roveg, Owl and Sidra and Pepper, and worldbuilding, which, really, this fandom was made for.
- Wayside School -- aww, these books!
- Wayward children -- Jack, Kade, Layla the baker, Eleanor West, and Nancy
- Whyborne and Griffin -- Whyborne, Griffin, Christine, Iskander, and I guy I don't recall at all
- Will Darling Adventures -- the foursome plus I guess the group from the other books?
- Wind Will rove -- the Hugo-nominated Sarah Pinsker novelette I liked a lot, nominated for worldbuilding
- Winter's Orbit (yay!) -- Kiem, Jainan, Bel, Ressid, Gairad, and worldbuilding
- A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- Mona, Aunt Tabitha, Gingerbread Man, and Lord Ethan (what?? no Bob???)
- Yudah Cohen series by Rebecca Fraimow (with no characters)
- Looks like I was the only Ponedelnik nom, but there's a nomination for Sobach'ye Serdtse, which is nice to see.
- Worldbuilding for several book series where it suddenly made me realize that worldbuilding is the fic I'm most interested in there: Raksura, Broken Earth, McKinley's Chalice, Steerswomen (!!)
- On a Sunbeam -- worldbuilding in nominated along with three people whom I don't remember at all, LOL. But worldbuilding could actually be really interesting in this fandom, because NONE OF IT -- not the fish ships, not why there are no biological males apparently -- is explained in canon.
- What If...? -- 7 out of 9 episodes got nominated (since this was being treated as an anthology). And looks like there were at least two nominees for five of the seven. I'm actually not sure that by the end it needed to be treated as an anthology, since episode 9 was a massive crossover (it's not one of the nominated ones), but I guess it would be extremely hard to disambiguate the characters otherwise. There's a heroic effort to do so as is already XD Anyway, I'm glad (and unsurprised) to see that Killmonger and Strange Supreme both made it.
- Aladdin 2019 -- Jafar
- Cats 2019 XD -- was there someone who genuinely liked the movie?
- Eurovision movie -- Lemtov, Xita, Sigrit (good choices)
- the Mitchells vs the Machines -- Katie, Aaron, and the bots
- Raya and the Last Dragon, including worldbuilding
- The Good Place -- Team Cockroach, Simone, some demons, and Manisha Al-Jamil
- Grace and Frankie -- Grace, Frankie, Brianna, Bud
- Killjoys, a bunch (but no worldbuilding)
- Brands of Tea Anthropomorphic (but not brands I have opinions on, actually, lol)
- Classical Rhetorical Exercises made it in, featuring Disinherited Son, Rape Victim, Tyrant, and War Hero
- Cannibal Ants in a Polish Bunker with Ant, Bat, Soldier, and Researcher characters. Good lord, if there was ever a thing I personally did not want fic of XD
- Cracking the Cryptic -- I saw the query about it and started watching the YouTube channel, so was really curious to see what the Yuletide requester wanted. The characters alone don't tell me that, but I hope there's a letter.
- Maritime Shipping anthropomorfic -- Ever Given Container Ship and Suez Canal. Of course XD Of course XD
- Periodic Table anthropomorphic with Chlorine and Fluorine. I may have to offer this, as Fluorine is 100% my periodic table Problematic Fave XD
- Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up -- two of them XD Which, on the evidence post, led to possibly my favorite sentence to ever appear on
yuletide_admin: "please nominate each hypothetical rat movie separately"
App, for easy reference.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1157930.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).
ambyr, I was expecting it to be weird. I was not necessarily expecting it to be weird in this way, and I didn't really know what to expect from this specific book content-wise, so it was like going in cold, really. And it was... a wild ride, I guess? I'm still not really sure what I think of it, just as I wasn't sure at any point from about the 40% mark on. I was having a good time while I was reading it, even though none of the tropes or subgenres it's playing with are necessarily really my thing -- there were funny bits, and affecting bits, and thought-provoking bits, and the writing is really well done throughout -- but the whole thing, I dunno, my final impression is of a mad mosaic where there are miniature scenes scattered all over that are really cool, but it doesn't gel into a compelling novel for me when considered as a whole. I am curious to read more of Drayden's work, but will be approaching it cautiously now that I have a bit more of a feel for what to expect.
I was really liking the beginning of the book, which seems to be proceeding along novel-shaped foundations -- there are our two young people who seem like they are going to be the protagonists, and they are sympathetic individually interesting, and nicely different; there is the character who is going to be the villain, and she is both horrible and a fun POV -- and then there are Stoker and Riya, who I had no idea what was going on with them, and whether they were going to turn out to be aiding our heroes or roadblocks to them or what, but Stoker at least was pretty fun (Riya was and remained my least favorite POV). So I was reading merrily along, and then SPOILERS I hit the chapter with Nomvula getting in touch with ire as a source of power, and I had NOT been prepared for any of that -- her experience of the mob, her actions in response to it -- by the breezy overall tone of the book till then. Like, no, obviously, I was getting how horrible Nomvula's actual circumstances were even before that -- her mother is catatonic and deeply traumatized and has apparently been that way for as long as Nomvula can remember, she's reliant on the kindness of strangers to keep from starving, she's ostracized, even the kindness from Mr Tau is a very creepy kind of kindness, though Nomvula doesn't perceive it like that (though Muzi and Elkin immediately get that vibe, when they meet him). But at tht point the horribleness is kind of locked away behind the unreliable narrator POV of a child for whom this is her normal, and it worked very well for me on that level -- affecting without being overwhelming. When I got to chapter 16, I had to put the book down and set it aside for about a month. Different degrees of "child in danger" affect me differently -- it's always a powerful lever on me (since I became a parent, it's very weird, the way one's brain chemistry changes apparently), but sometimes it's affecting and just heightens the reading experience, and sometimes it's just not something I can deal with, which is why it took me something like two years to read The Obelisk Gate. I guess, extrapolating from Nassun and Nomvula, the thing that tips it over into "content warning" territory for me is getting the POV of the child in danger AND that child having a certain degree of awareness about what's going on -- like, not an adult-like awareness, but enough that they realize the degree of danger they are in.
Anyway, so I had to take a break there, and when I eventually went back, I was reading much more cautiously. Because I think the way the book bounces from zany idea to zany idea -- dik-diks as a menace! drug trip that makes you see yourself as a crab and get magic powers! rhino-lion-hawk hybrids with human intelligence on a rampage! (with bonus bestiality?/xeno?); your mom is a tree spirit and also there are snakes?? your consciousness is now in the body of a robot PDA! and now you're wearing a mech suit built of robot PDAs! also, there are random phase-shifting powers, apparently ("your" = a number of POV characters in this case) -- you don't really get a sense of where the book is going, as a whole -- or at least I did not. And so some new crazy thing would happen, and I would be like, is this going to end in a rocks fall everybody dies tragedy? some kind of happy deus ex machina where everybody gets a happy ending, including the villains? I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA. Which, like, it's an interesting reading experience, but not one I find fundamentally satisfactory. It's a bit like reading crackfic, which can be fun for a bit, but doesn't pay off for me in ways that a novel usually does. Because after about the halfway point, I didn't feel like what was going to happen in the book depended on the choices and actions of the characters, so much as on what crazy thing Drayden wanted to write about next. And, like, everything she wanted to write about next was very inventive and often interesting, even though overwhelmingly Not My Kink (but, like, kudos to Nicky Drayden for unapologetically indulging in hers, which I mean unironically).
So, where does that leave me? I was rooting for Stoker, who somehow ended up as my favorite character despite the whole trying-to-kill-Gregory thing early on, so I'm very glad that Councilperson Stoker made it through the mayhem OK, is happily out as Felicity, and wish her well in her presidential bid. I was also rooting for Muzi and Elkin, although around the time Elkin was trampled to death by a mob and then had his corpse mangled by the anti-human part of the robot uprising sect, I couldn't really see any way for them to get a happy ending; clearly I just needed to have more faith in Nicky Drayden's crackfic skills (body swap with a clone body after a waystop inside a robot, which includes Elkin getting to pilot the Mega-Muzibot mecha suit with phallic descriptions of the flight stick and surging impluses and all that -- so obvious in retrospect, how could I have not seen that coming XD). I'm also really happy Nomvula got a family to take care of her by the end, although this is the part I believe way less than Stoker embracing the rhionhawks as a symbol or the robot-clone-bodyswap shenanigans: Riya's maternal impulses seemed to have come from nowhere, I do not but Riya/Rife as any sort of healthy relationship. So that was definitely a weakness of the ending for me, and, really of the whole novel -- I don't think I would've missed the Riya POV if it had been cut.
But if it wasn't 100% satisfying, it was definitely an interesting experience. I'm not in a hurry to throw myself into more Drayden, but I will definitely be on the lookout for more of her books.
Quotes:
Muzi: "enough potato salad to feed the entire South African Army... well, obviously not including the robot infantries"
Sydney "puts on a smile that's somewhere south of sincerity but north of keeping her job"
Sydney: "These humans, they don't believe in anything anymore, besides capitalism, of course."
Sydney: "Nobody wants to worship a frumpy god."
Robots: "That neaky, no good, son of a bit." (Nicely played XD)
re: Mr Tau
Nomvula: "He's very wise."
Muzi: "If by wise you mean a sadistic asshole, then yeah. I agree."
*
I'm, weirdly, continuing to mainly consume media in forms other than reading.
I listened to the first couple of chapters of The Sandman, Act 1 on Audible (after
bearshorty reminded me of its existence). Audiobooks don't work for me as a vehicle for "what happens next", but "rereading" in audio is not too bad -- and with the Be The Serpent podcast ending in a couple of months, I need to have something else to listen to to entice myself into doing dishes. Anyway, some random thoughts, mostly on the adaptation:
Wow, I remember very little about early!Sandman besides the basic premise and the weird presence of superheroes, Arkham Asylum, etc.
The transition from comic book to "narrator describes people and action" is, hm. It's certainly a very different experience, but it for sure helps that I love listening to Neil Gaiman's voice.
It's definitely neat to get this in a radioplay format, but some voices work better for me than others. The "casting a magic spell" scenes with the swelling music are super cool -- I find them way more effective than I remember them being from the GN. Groans and such work pretty well to imply action without describing it. I like the Satanic buzzing of Beelzebub, I like the Wyrd Sisters voices a lot -- it's just a neat mix. Dream is not working for me particularly well; his voice feels too ordinary, compared to the distinctive speech bubbles. I was wondering how MacAvoy would work for me in that role once the cast was announced -- he didn't seem like the Morpheus type necessarily, though I've liked him a lot in other things -- and, yeah, I continue to find that an odd choice. And I don't remember finding Cain and Abel particularly interesting in the GN, but oh man is Abel's stuttering annoying to experience in audio form.
And I've been watching things, which is great for procrastinating on my PE application:
What If... Episode 9 (Finale) -- Spoilers! Aww, Tony doesn't get to be chosen -- poor Tony XD But at least he doesn't die again. I did kind of wonder where Gamora had come from -- like, we got to see Captain Carter, Star Lord T'Challa, Black Panther Killmonger, Party Thor, and Misguided Strange in their own episodes, so I wondered if there was a tenth episode that had been cut -- and apparently there had been. And I'd been wondering, like, what, no Nat or someone from the zombie episode? -- and then zombie!Scarlet Witch showed up and WHOA. And of course we did get a Natasha, too. Captain Carter and Natasha -- "I believe the term is BFF" XD I did not see Killmonger claiming the Stones for himself coming (though I had been wondering what he was even there for really until then). I did wonder what confidence they all had that Zola was not just going to claim Ultron's power for himself, so was gratified to see that I was right to wonder about that. I was thinking, interesting that Peggy asks for what Steve got at the end of Endgame -- the chance to go back to a happy ending -- but the Watcher convinces her to go back to her own world -- and then Steve is there anyway. And that postapocalyptic Natasha gets sent to a world c. The Avengers that can use her. The YouTube video I was watching pointed out this was the world from episode 3, where the prospective Avengers all got killed off, and that having Nat there at the pivotal moment derails Loki's Earth domination plans. So that was a nice way to tie in that remaining episode.
I also finished watching season 1 of The Expanse
Spoilers for all of book 1 and for season 1, episode by episode (I wrote the episode reactions as I watched, so they don't contain spoilers for later episodes)
Expanse 1x02 -- OK, so show!Holden is just an idiot then, instead of an optimist/idealist XD Whom everyone else on the crew rightly ignores. I mean, I hate this characterization choice, but it makes it easier not to be disappointed by not liking the casting, I guess? Anyway, good thing they have Naomi to do the sensible things, and apparently also be Amos's moral compas in this version? I'm definitely on board with more evidence of Naomi being MVP. I was really surprised that they decided not to have Holden announcing to the solar system that Martian technology was involved in the Scopuli/Canterbury incident be the inciting incident for the Donnager showing up, but rather he makes his first (only so far) broadcast as insurance because they believe the Donnager has "come to finish the job". That's a very different character moment... Shed freaking out was great, hypoxic Alex was great, the two of them buddy-breathing was great, although, wow, this show is going to be bad for my "asphyxiation-in-space" thing, isn't it... On Miller's side of the story, it makes it maaaarginally less weird that he fixates on Julie when he's at least seen video messages of her, instead of a photograph and some emails, so good call there. What was the deal with the hamster? -- I assume this is not a live hamster but a mechanical pet or something, since it's still alive, but that was definitely unexpected (Julie Mao and Bel Thorne, space!hamster owners...) I totally guessed he was going to use Julie's water ration, though, heh.
Expanse 1x03 -- Aww, Havelock was paying by the hour to learn Belter patois and broad gestures, cute. Despite the cuteness and what I might have surmised from that in a cop show, I wasn't expecting that cliffhanger ending and checked google that he wasn't actually dead. Speaking of the Ceres storyline, I haven't mentioned before, but I like this version of Shadid, and the actress playing her. And we get to see space!Mormons instead of just hearing about them later with the Nauvoo, nice. Over with the survivors of the Cant, hm. I understand the interpersonal conflict makes for better television, but I had actually liked the way the book guys were solidly together as a crew even though they were Earthers, Martian, and Belter (and whatever Shed is), even when they disagreed. I do like the Amos and Naomi bond -- it's handy that my two favorite characters from the book so clearly care about each other -- and I'm liking Shed getting more to do -- he adds some much-needed humour to the proceedings. Chrisjen and that set get an interesting storyline in this one / I finally have enough feel for her character, and I'm liking the addition of this storyline to this part of the proceedings. I like that for all her HIGHLY unscrupulous and criminal techniques (I mean, torture, for starters, and also manipulating someone who is a friend, which is a different level of severity but also not great), she does seem to be motivated by "the greater good" -- preventing a war rather than, I'm assuming, personal ambition, since she immediately explains that she must've been wrong in her assertion that Mars had been feeding stealth technology to the OPA.
Expanse 1x04 -- I like the scene with Chrisjen on the roof, watching the sky and talking about people who throw rocks. I'm not sure I would've picked up on it without having read the book, but given that it's the threat of orbital bombardment that's the big scary thing looming over the planets and stations when the war starts (and at the end, with Eros), that's a really fitting opening and a lovely image of her on the roof, in the gorgeous sari, underneath the starry sky. On a different note: Holy shit, Shed's death! I knew it was coming, and I even knew what happened, but I didn't necessarily expect it right then, and I certainly didn't expect the visual of his blood being sucked into vaccuum, until gravity returns. Jeez. But it also generates a nice moment of Amos, Naomi, and Alex all working together to plug the holes, after Alex and Amos had been fighting the whole time in captivity. Alex taking the sedative shot, Amos and Naomi holding hands (his still covered with Shed's blood from sealing the hole where Shed's head had been) -- there's a lot of powerful moments here. And the space battle was really cool! But having Holden not be with the others where most of the stuff is going down just keeps making me less interested in Holden (he went back for them, big whoop), and the escape to the Tachi/Rocinante-to-be worked much better for me in the book -- the action in low-gravity here was both kinda comical and confusing. I'm also not sure why Lopez replaced Kelly as the MCRN dude to get them on board, but I found the Martian marines just kind of grimly and quietly doing what had to be done in the book more effective than soliloquies about Earthers wrecking their climate and oceans on Mars. (I assume Lopez dies from the acceleration as Kelly does in the book, but it's not clear from this episode, and maybe not. Oh, and first view of Fred, who doesn't match my mental image -- I was imaginging someone with more military bearing, less professorial, but I like him fine.
Expanse 1x05 -- The Roci is officially the Roci! (I have to concede, Holden is at least better at one thing than others on the crew, and that is naming ships, although Alex's suggestions were pretty amusing). I'm still kind of annoyed that the show is playing the Roci bunch as being at odds; like, it's just Alex taking care of the dead MCRN marine, where in the book everyone acknowledged his sacrifice and treated him with respect. I do find the different dynamic disorienting. And what's Naomi's deal with Tycho or Fred? Speaking of Fred, I was not expecting an actual flashback to Andersen Station, but that was a neat take, definitely more affecting than just talking about it (though I assume we will learn more about why UN1 couldn't hear the surrender? or had he just been instructed to ignore it and followed orders?) Over on Ceres, I forgot to mention it before, but I like/am intrigued by this version of Dawes much more than book!Dawes. I'm continuing to find Miller surprisingly non-boring considering how much I was bored of his book counterpart. And his "And me without my wallet" line to Havelock's girl is I think my favorite line on the show so far. His plot is being quite different from the book, but as that means there is less moping and incipient hallucinations, I'm acgtually not minding that part at all.
Expanse 1x06 -- Huh, so, the relationship with Fred is starting off pretty different, too. I noticed Amos's Hebrew tat (or, apparently, the actor's). Amos and Alex drinking at the bar got some interesting background, though if it's background congruent with the book, that did not come up in book 1 at all. Anyway, it looks like the Roci crew has finally caught up to where they were in the book from the start, and Miller is fired now (although in a very different way than in the book, though hopefully it will spare us some measure of moping), and presumably those lines will intersect in the next episode. I guess we got to see Miller being competent cracking the Julie case so we don't need him to demonstrate his detective prowess by tracking the Rocinante. Oh, and I guess Diogo is going to be a periodic character in this too, rather than just showing up as a random OPA youngster later (when Miller is hanging around the OPA/crashing in his bunk after Holden kicks him out).
Expanse 1x07 -- Huh! So this was an episode that was basically completely not-in-the-book stuff, which was interesting. I mean, there was a little bit of Miller arc that was in the book, but IIRC all of that was told, not shown, so even that felt new. Interesting to see the Belt equivalent of a Greyhound bus, I guess; it looks about as cheerful. And the spy/stowaway on the Roci, the standoff with the Martian inspectors and the stuff with cracking the safe and pretending to be MCRN black ops was all new. Alex talking to the MCRN guys was hilarious -- he is firmly my favorite show character at this point, he's just so fun! Amos was really interesting here, with the spy and especially with Holden (who is being an idiot, but what else is new). Show!Amos doesn't seem t be much like book!Amos, although it's of course entirely possible that they just express the same brokenness in different ways. I find book!Amos more fun, but show!Amos seems to be a more interesting character. Oh, and on a random note, it's nice to have a visual for what the Roci looks like disguised as a gas freighter; pretty unwieldy! This was one of my favorite if not the favorite episode for the Cant survivors storyline, and it's interesting, because all of that is new, rather than adapting from the books. I think that's part of why, actually; the show characters are sufficiently different from their book counterparts that either I miss the easier camaraderie from the book, or I miss the way their book personalities reacted, but if it's all new stuff, I can just enjoy what's in front of me without remembering what's missing. Over on Earth, oho, we get to meet Holden's parents! or some of them, at least. That's an interesting backstory, and I guess explains some of his less... pragmatic tendencies, although I have a hard time believing that the universe, as it is in The Expanse, has not trained him out of such idealism by now. Re: the Cervantes -- "I never broke to him that it's a tragedy" is a nice line; it almost makes up for the show choosing to spell out that Holden thinks of himself as a knight (I guess not everyone might've gotten the Rocinante reference? and the windmills reference which is this episode's title...) Anyway, that's a neat backstory, but the more I think about it, the less I buy it as a backstory for this Holden, he's just too blunder-y and IDK, naive in a way that I find it hard to believe result from that upbringing, even if Elise and the others shielded him from what stories about idealism would end in given a universe like this. A different actor could've sold me on this, probably, but this Holden... *sigh*
Expanse 1x08 -- I'm amused that so many people in this world apparently have no idea what "Anubis" refers to and keep mispronouncing the name of the ship (a bit surprised it doesn't happen with the other non-intuitively named ships, like Scopuli). Poor DeGraaf -- I'd liked him, in the early episode where he was having dinner with Chrisjen. I'm assuming this isn't actually suicide because he's pining for Mars but something more sinister, but probably Chrisjen is indirectly responsible for that, too, in the sense that her ploy in that earlier episode put him in the path of whatever harm this ends up actually being. Roci bunch: so we get a good look at both what the protomolecule goo looks like (blue sand-goop kind of stuff, not bad at all compared to the grossness of the book) and what it does to human bodies (grosser, but also not nearly as bad as what the book described). If this'll be the worst it gets, I can totally deal with that. I'm developing the following problem with the Rocinante crew: Holden is now stepping into the role of being the person in charge, but every time he gives someone an order or says something else in authoritative fashion, I just want to tell him to shut up. Unlike book!Holden, I don't see at all how he's earned the right to lead anyone -- just because he went back for them on the Donnager? Whatever. Jumpy Alex brandishing his gun after the firefight and Amos sort of gently lowering his gun arm was amazing, though. And we get to see Semi in the flesh, and he's pretty nice. (It looks like he's maybe absorbing part of book!Havelock's role in being someone who can warn Miller about thugs having taken over Eros police.)
Expanse 1x09 -- OK, now the Julie transformation stuff is pretty gross, although still not as gross as in the book. More frustratingly, Julie's acting just was not working for me, either as herself before shit went down, or especially during the more fraught points of being on the run and the transformation. A large part of that is the writing -- I find the words she has to say boring and overblown -- but the acting doesn't help. Dresden looks and acts nothing like my mental image of him from the book -- he's just... insufficiently corporate, insufficiently high-handed, just not right for the role. It was interesting making Julie's father actually in charge of the protomolecule thing, rather than just vaguely aware that something bad was going to go down in the Belt. "How did they know a ship would blow up in the docks? ... They blew it up themselves." -- gold star, show!Holden. Well done XD And, OK, I don't exactly condone Miller shooting people in cold blood ("Let's get this poor officer some help") -- though I do find it a lot less tedious here than in the book, where we got to hear him reflect on it and shit -- but I do find myself sort of automatically rooting for anyone who ISN'T show!Holden in a scene, so there's that. On a different note, Chrisjen manages to look fabulous even dressed in somber colors for mourning. And I do feel like she was both genuinely saying good-bye to a close friend she'd known her whole life/parental sort of figure AND of course taking the opportunity to see if anything was amiss (the blood smear) and snoop around.
Expanse 1x10 ("Leviathan Wakes", the Hugo winner in 2017) -- Miller to Holden: "but you're really kinda clueless, aren't you?" Thank you, Miller, for saying that out loud. "Optimism is for assholes and Earthers" is also a pretty good line. Also, why is Miller apparently suffereing a lot more from radiation poisoning than Holden? Is it because Holden is too pretty to vomit up blood? And what the hell was that scene with Holden shooting past the spy? What was the POINT of that?? Conversely, I'm glad that Miller got to shoot the guy who had tried to kill Havelock, the long way around. (I note, however, that show!Holden doesn't seem to have the same problem with Miller being trigger-happy that book!Holden had, or at least he's not showing it yet.) I was wondering if they were going to keep the Julie hallucinations/how they were going to do them; can't say I'm thrilled they're going to be a thing. Wait, so, Naomi *is* (ex-?)OPA? Or how does she know about the tunnels? I understand that since the show is not limited to just Miller and Holden as POV characters (which I'm very grateful for, btw), they can't just have Naomi and the others sitting around on the Roci offscreen, so I understand why they get the whole thing with the tunnels and assorted locals, and it does add to the sense of the Eros tragedy -- a heap of dead guys growing crystals is one thing; getting to see some actual people who are going to end up very, very dead is a different effect. Amos being protective of the random Eros kid they picked up, and Alex trying to entertain her with clumsily executed coin tricks was very cute (Amos & Alex have really grown on me as a dynamic). The Naomi-Semi-Amos standoff was legitimately a great scene (though I figured that was coming), but aww, that's character assassination for book!Semi (...probably). But I'm kind of sad that Amos's "You guys look like shit" was not the final line of the season XD Overall episode verdict: I don't know that I'd consider this Hugo-worthy over some of the other episodes (at least given that nothing in the plot surprised me since I'd read the book), but this was pretty good!
So, seems like a good time to pause and take stock of s1 as a whole. I did enjoy it, but I don't know if I can really say that I'm enjoying the show more than the book, because this only takes us through about half of book 1, and by that point in the book I was still having a lot of fun with it. And as the last two episodes got more into the protomolecule stuff, I've been less interested -- so it wouldn't surprise me if I followed the same trajectory as with the book for the "second half".
On the character front, I'm still liking Miller a lot more than I'd expected, but with the same caveat -- he was really starting to get on my nerves in the book after this part. In the book, I went from liking Holden to being kind of meh on him to being annoyed at people seeing him as some kind of shining ideal of righteousness; in the show, my trajectory has been from mild dislike at the start to really not being able to stand him at this point -- I just didn't think he was anything like book!Holden in the feckless early episodes; now that he's trying to do book!Holden's role anyway, I would rather be watching anyone else. At least I do like the other Rocinante folks, though not necessarily in the same way / order as their book counterparts. Alex is wonderful on the show when he was the least interesting of the three for me in the book. Amos is different -- he honestly doesn't feel like the same character in book 1 vs season 1 of the show, and I do miss the louder and I think happier book!Amos, but this one is interesting, and I like his dynamic with both Naomi and Alex. Naomi I feel weird about, because I really liked her in the book, and I like her in the show -- her actress, her dialogue -- and it seems fairly consistent with her book self, but she's also not standing out for me nearly as much as she did in the book. I think the reasons for that are two-fold: First, Alex and Amos got some additional detail in the show, Alex's family, Amos's rough past and philosophy, but what Naomi gets beyond her book story is secrets and hints (Eros tunnels, "I'll give you a name"), which doesn't actually ADD much to her character. Second, while the TV show not being locked into only one or two Rocinante POVs like the book, I feel like book!Naomi actually benefitted a lot from the limited POV, because Holden's POV kept singing praises of her continuously, and Miller's immediately respected her, too. Holden's POV in particular fixated on Naomi (positively) in group scenes in a way that the more "objective" camera lens does not, so Naomi always felt as more prominent in the book. But also I think she might have simply gotten more to do, in the sense of more agency, because the book!Roci had an actual chain of command and she was Holden's XO (whom he tended to lean on too hard), whereas on the show it's more of a free-form group with everyone pulling their own way and doing their own thing. Anyway, I like show!Alex way more than book!Alex, and am happy to get to know this more complex-seeming show!Amos, but I miss book!Naomi's greater... weight on the narrative, I guess. Especially because I feel like the actress looks and sounds perfect. And I definitely enjoyed the addition of Chrisjen Avasarala, who is always neat to follow around; even if I don't understand what machinations she's pulling off in a given scene, I get to admire her gorgeous saris and jewelry.
The scenery and the ships and the station backgrounds are all still awesome. I really like the way the Belter interiors have a weathered, hard-used look -- hazard signs and metal floors, the whole thing looks appropriately industrial. And the way Belters are so often dressed in company jumpsuits -- like, I'm sure it's practical, but it's also continuously driving home the point of what the OPA is rebelling against. (I thought it was a particularly neat contrast on the Donnager, when the others were wearing their Pur'n'Kleen jumpsuits while Alex was in the crisp black-with-coral-piping MCRN uniform.) Oh, and randomly, I really like the way the mag boots were realized -- everything from how you activate them to the lights to how they sound as the characters walk just feels really... solid and real to me. And just in general, like, having spent a fair bit of time inside an industrial environment where people hang out and work for hours wearing specialty clothing and tools about their person (in my case, not a spaceship/space station but a semiconductor fab), the vibe just feels right in a way that I haven't seen on a sci-fi show before. Like Serenity in Firefly feels like a quirky RV, Lucy on Killjoys feels like a house, Moya on Farscape was this... weird living cave thing that I never really warmed up to, the B5 station feels like a corporate building or indoor mall, depending on where you go, but this really nails the specific "people were brought here to do a job, and, oh yeah, I guess they live here now, too" vibe that I found so interesting about the worldbuilding of the book. So, that's still the best part of the show for me, like with the first episode.
Favorite character: Alex
Least favorite character: HOLDEN
Favorite episode: I think 1x07 (the "donkey balls" one) -- it's Roci heavy, it's funny, it's got some cool scenes with Chrisjen
Least favorite episode: Mm, not sure -- I had the least to say about 1x06 (the one where the Roci crew meets Fred), and I remember being fairly bored of 1x08, and that's also where my annoyance with Holden started building to a new level. So probably 1x08. Or maybe 1x09, because it had lots of gross stuff and mostly focused on the things I don't care about? But 1x08 is the one I remember being the lull in my enjoyment, so I guess let's go with that.
*
Finally, now is the time for my annual Yuletide tagset browsing:
- Angel of the Crows, with Doyle, Crow, Mary, and Kate Moriarty
- Attachments -- like last year, with Beth, Jennifer, and Lincoln
- Bedlam's Bard -- with Beth, Eric, Korendil and an elf I don't remember. I barely remember what happens in these books, except the Loma Prieta earthquake, but if it leads to elf threesome fic, I'm in.
- Beowulf -- with just Beowulf nominated.
- Binti -- with Binti, Okwu, and Worldbuilding, the last of which could actually be pretty interesting. Actually, any part of it not involving Binti.
- The Blending -- including Worldbuilding as a nomination, which was definitely the best part of this series.
- The Book of Dust (His Dark Materials sequel series) with JUST Worldbuilding nominated, hm!
- Chalion -- worldbuilding + lots of characters, including the Bastard. Relevant to me Adelis, Nikys, Penric, and Desdemona are all nominated.
- Elantra, including Bellusdeo
- Conspiracy of Truths -- with Consanza, Chant, and Ylfing
- Craft -- with Caleb and the King in Red (but not Temoc??)
- Cyteen -- Grant, Caitlin II and Florian II, and a non-azi person whom I don't remember at all, oops.
- Daevabad -- with the al Qahtani siblings, Jamshid, Nahri, and Dara
- Demon's Lexicon -- Alan, Nick, Mae, and Sin
- Docile -- not that I've read it, I'm just curious to see it show up
- Doctrine of the Labyrinths -- Felix, Mildmay, Mehitabel, and Thamuris
- Dragaera -- I had at least one fellow nominator, who added Cawti, Kiera, Kragar, and Teldra to my Morrolan, Vlad, Aliera, and Zerika. Interesting that there are no purely Paarfi folks on the list this year, although my Zerika nom is a Paarfi-based one.
- Dread Nation -- Jane and Katherine, and two people I don't recall
- Dune -- lots of nominations -- is this a boost from the movie coming out?
- Earthsea -- including Ged (but no Tenar)
- Eleanor and Park, with Eleanor, Park, and Park's parents again
- Fandom for Robots with no characters
- First Law -- with Ardee West, Glokta, Monza, Shivers, and a few other folks I either didn't get to or forgot
- Flatland (including worlduilding)
- Cruel prince -- including Madoc and Oriana
- Foundryside -- including Orso
- Goblin Emperor -- with 16 character nominations, some of whom I think are from the sequel?
- Graceling Realm -- including Fire, Brigan, and worldbuilding
- The City We Became, with Bronca, Brooklyn, Queens, Veneza, Manny, and the Avatar of NYC -- but not Aislyn, I note -- and London, Moscow, and Paris, who are only named, plus worldbuilding.
- Greenhollow -- Tobias, Henry, Mrs Silver, Maud
- Potato Peel Society
- Hollow Kingdom -- Marak, Kate, and worldbuilding (I'm curious if this gets any bites! I liked the series and was surprised it didn't seem to have more presence in fandom)
- Ancillaryverse -- the usual suspects, Athoek Station, plus worldbuilding
- Interdependency -- oh, this is interesting! only Rachela (the founder) and Worldbuilding are nominated.
- Jackalope Wives -- worldbuilding, plus the same characters as usual, including Grandma Harken
- JSMN -- aww, what, no Mr Norrell? Jonathan, Arabella, Lady Pole, Childermass, Stephen, the Raven King, plus worldbuilding (no Mr Norrell under the TV show either, but Colquhoun Grant, John Segundus, Mr Honeyfoot, and Childermass again)
- Kate Daniels -- including Kate, Hugh, Roland, Erra, and worldbuilding
- Kubla Khan is nominated with the Khan and worldbuilding, huh!
- Kushiel -- including Barquiel, Joscelin, Imri, Lucius, Maslin, Mavors, Sidonie, and worldbuilding (among others not relevant to my interests)
- Kyoshi duology made it in, following the evidence post disambiguating it from AtLA
- Lady Astronaut -- huh, I was not the only nominator. Helen, Nicole, and Myrtle are not mine, so I'm assuming this was from an all-women nomination which overlapped with mine on Elma.
- Legendborn -- Bree, Alice, Selwyn, Nick
- Locked Tomb squeaked inside with worldbuilding and a large cast of characters, including Palamedes
- Lynes and Mathey -- oh, GOOD CALL on worldbuilding for this one! (in addition to Julian and Ned)
- Machineries of Empire -- worldbuilding on top of the usual suspects (both Jeados, Kujen, Mikodez, Zehun, Ruo and others)
- The Martian -- book and movie
- Tithe-verse -- Roiben, Kaye, Luis, and Corny
- Monstrous Regiment -- with Jackrum only, huh! this is usually overrun with Polly/Mal folks...
- Murderbot (which had 20 nominators or something) has 19 characters nominated, including worldbuilding (and of course ART, who apparently doesn't get a Perihelion pipe)
- Nightrunners -- Alec, Seregil, Thero
- Toby Daye with 33 individual characters, WTF
- Philosopher's War -- ooh! someone besides me is aware this exists! Worldbuilding is nominated, as well it should be, along with Robert and Danielle
- Piranesi -- Piranesi, the Other, Sixteen, worldbuilding, and that person who is very interested in Angharad Scott, I guess
- The Poppy War -- Rin, Kitay, Venka, Nezha
- The Princess Bride -- with Simon Morgenstern as the only person nominated. Curious!
- Provenance -- but just with Ingray folks, not the characters I'm actually interested in
- Rebecca -- with Rebecca, Maxim, Narrator, and Frank Crawley
- Rivers of London gets only 9 characters. The expected ones like Peter, Nightingale, Molly, Beverley, and Abigail are there, but the other four are David Mellenby, Dom, Elsie Winstanley, and Peter's mum -- those are some deep pulls! (but I, too, want to know how Elsie and Peter's mum know each other)
- Asimov's Robots -- alas, neither of the duos I care about, just some Susan Calvin stuff
- Scholomance -- including both The Scholomance as character and worldbuilding (plus also actual people)
- Seraphina -- the trio plus Orma
- Unspoken Name -- Csorwe, Shuthmili, Tal, Belthandros, Oranna, plus the serpent lady, the goddess, and worldbuilding. Nice, nice!
- Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night
- The Space Between Worlds with very complicated character disambiguation, LOL, but actually surprisingly little overlap in characters
- Spinning Silver -- including Miryem, Irina, Wanda, Mirnatius, the Staryk Lord, Chernobog, and worldbuilding
- Sun Moon Dust -- just Allpa and Moon
- Sunshine -- including worldbuilding
- Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, because what else to you need?
- Tarot Sequence -- Rune, Brand, Lord Tower, Addam, Max, and Quinn
- Space Aztecs -- down to only 8 nominated characters this year, including worldbuilding (Mahit, Three Seagrass, Yskandr, Six Direction, Nineteen Adze, Eight Antidote, and Thirty Larkspur for some reason)
- Temeraire -- Temeraire, Laurence, Tharkay, Napoleon.
- Temple of the White Rat -- huh! Halla and Zale and Brindle but no Sarkis? Worldbuilding, though.
- Terra Ignota -- even more HUH, since Mycroft is not on the list, even though it looks like 2 people must've nominated. Worldbuilding, very good call. But -- Apollo, Seine Mardi, Cornel MASON I get. MASON plus JEDD plus Martin I get. But what is Saladin doing there without Mycroft?
- Uglies -- Shay, Tally, Dr Cable, Zane
- Unnatural Magic-verse -- Della, Winn, and Winn's parents
- Upright women Wanted -- Cye and Esther (really?)
- Uprooted -- Agnieszka, Sarkan, Solya, Marek (nominator, you're a person after my own heart, I feel)
- Warchild -- I did not nominate this time, but that makes it interesting to see what the noms looks like without me. Jos, Ryan, Yuri, Evan, Finch -- plus Admiral Ashrafi, who I guess belongs with Ryan? No Cairo, but that's OK -- I decided not to request him this year, because Lowachee had basically written my favorite prompt in the Omake book already.
- The Waste Land -- worldbuilding. Oooh, damn, actually. I wonder what they want, but this could be really interesting!
- Watchmaker of Filigree Street -- Mori, Thaniel, Six, Pepper, Grace, and Akira
- Wayfarers -- so many people... relevant to me: Corbin, Roveg, Owl and Sidra and Pepper, and worldbuilding, which, really, this fandom was made for.
- Wayside School -- aww, these books!
- Wayward children -- Jack, Kade, Layla the baker, Eleanor West, and Nancy
- Whyborne and Griffin -- Whyborne, Griffin, Christine, Iskander, and I guy I don't recall at all
- Will Darling Adventures -- the foursome plus I guess the group from the other books?
- Wind Will rove -- the Hugo-nominated Sarah Pinsker novelette I liked a lot, nominated for worldbuilding
- Winter's Orbit (yay!) -- Kiem, Jainan, Bel, Ressid, Gairad, and worldbuilding
- A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- Mona, Aunt Tabitha, Gingerbread Man, and Lord Ethan (what?? no Bob???)
- Yudah Cohen series by Rebecca Fraimow (with no characters)
- Looks like I was the only Ponedelnik nom, but there's a nomination for Sobach'ye Serdtse, which is nice to see.
- Worldbuilding for several book series where it suddenly made me realize that worldbuilding is the fic I'm most interested in there: Raksura, Broken Earth, McKinley's Chalice, Steerswomen (!!)
- On a Sunbeam -- worldbuilding in nominated along with three people whom I don't remember at all, LOL. But worldbuilding could actually be really interesting in this fandom, because NONE OF IT -- not the fish ships, not why there are no biological males apparently -- is explained in canon.
- What If...? -- 7 out of 9 episodes got nominated (since this was being treated as an anthology). And looks like there were at least two nominees for five of the seven. I'm actually not sure that by the end it needed to be treated as an anthology, since episode 9 was a massive crossover (it's not one of the nominated ones), but I guess it would be extremely hard to disambiguate the characters otherwise. There's a heroic effort to do so as is already XD Anyway, I'm glad (and unsurprised) to see that Killmonger and Strange Supreme both made it.
- Aladdin 2019 -- Jafar
- Cats 2019 XD -- was there someone who genuinely liked the movie?
- Eurovision movie -- Lemtov, Xita, Sigrit (good choices)
- the Mitchells vs the Machines -- Katie, Aaron, and the bots
- Raya and the Last Dragon, including worldbuilding
- The Good Place -- Team Cockroach, Simone, some demons, and Manisha Al-Jamil
- Grace and Frankie -- Grace, Frankie, Brianna, Bud
- Killjoys, a bunch (but no worldbuilding)
- Brands of Tea Anthropomorphic (but not brands I have opinions on, actually, lol)
- Classical Rhetorical Exercises made it in, featuring Disinherited Son, Rape Victim, Tyrant, and War Hero
- Cannibal Ants in a Polish Bunker with Ant, Bat, Soldier, and Researcher characters. Good lord, if there was ever a thing I personally did not want fic of XD
- Cracking the Cryptic -- I saw the query about it and started watching the YouTube channel, so was really curious to see what the Yuletide requester wanted. The characters alone don't tell me that, but I hope there's a letter.
- Maritime Shipping anthropomorfic -- Ever Given Container Ship and Suez Canal. Of course XD Of course XD
- Periodic Table anthropomorphic with Chlorine and Fluorine. I may have to offer this, as Fluorine is 100% my periodic table Problematic Fave XD
- Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up -- two of them XD Which, on the evidence post, led to possibly my favorite sentence to ever appear on
yuletide_admin: "please nominate each hypothetical rat movie separately"
App, for easy reference.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1157930.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).