Taskmaster s13 finale, more Ms Marvel, a book! and Hugos
Taskmaster series 13 finale -- SPOILERS!!
Sophie won!! I feel very happy for her -- she seemed really, genuinely moved -- and sad for Chris, who clearly also really, really wanted to win, and was so into the whole thing, and it was so close! (There were other close series, but somehow it didn't feel that way -- Guz was just 1 point behind Morgana, apparently?? Kerry was only 1 point ahead of Jessica (I knew this but keep forgetting it, because Jess somehow never felt like a powerhouse on that series the way Kerry did), and of course Josh famously won by the "beans" point, and even Mike and Sarah, Daisy and Richard, and Jon and Katherine Ryan were only 4 points apart (though 4 was a higher percentage by quite a lot in the much shorter s2) Or maybe it was just the act that this one I was watching without knowing the outcome a priori. Except for the last episode, where I made a point to google and spoil myself for the winner before I watched the episode because I didn't want to be tense watching it. So, anyway, what a great series, pity they couldn't both win.
And also a pity that Judi never got to win an episode. I was saying in the comments on my last post that it felt like the narrative was building up to Judi winning the last episode after several close calls, but that I didn't think the show would sacrifice the integirty of the show / he chaos by ensuring a Judi win. And, indeed, it did not, and instead just leaned into the fact that Judi never did win an episode after all, with Alex saying things like "Well, we're all hoping Judi will win an episode finally, but she's currently in the last place." and later reporting that she was dead last. But she got to be the highest scoring loser at least -- that's something!
And now my thoughts on the episode in order:
ARDAL WORE THE SQUEAKY RED JACKET! I also highly approve of Sophie's sunflower getup.
This was another prize task I liked a lot. Sophie sold the hell out of that battered rice cooker (Greg: "I'll be honest, Ardal. She's done a pretty good job of emotionally manipulating me.") Bridget blithely de-acronymizing DNA and then simultaneously curtsying and flipping Ardal off. I'm glad Greg chose to give 4 points to Chris's Godfather coffee table, Ardal's biscuit tin of ancestor papers ("Do I question the Wesh giants you're descended from?"), and Sophie's prize, but I guess I can see why he gave 5 points to Bridget's box of hair and teeth XD
Identifying liquids task was a fun classic Taskmaster thing, a lot of things going on and a lot of weird restrictions. Super impressed with Chris nailing "pickled onion vinegar" out of the gate, and I loved the anguished "why is it warm?!" shout. Everyone got tea, and I guess stock was also relatively easy to get, though not everyone did. Interesting that Judi and Sophie got lychee very quickly but the others were stumped; maybe they've just never had lychee? I feel like it's got a pretty distinctive flavor. And of course the stumper was the cream of mushroom soup which did indeed look very, very gross. Fun task to watch, and fun to finally have the context for Bridget going mlem mlem mlem in the credits. And lol at Alex finally taking pity on Sophie who was wrestling with the valve cap with chopsticks.
The bike task!!! (which I guess is the task Alex teased as the one he regrest the most -- he did look pretty beat) The quiet moment with Sophie after she'd finished: "I do everything for him" and Greg gently brushing Alex's cheek -- oh my god, I think I get what that person who wrote that fic after watching the finale live was talking about now XD Overall, the biking + ducks task was brilliant! Chasing down Alex on the bike while running forwards and backwards was so up Chris's alley! -- and we got classic Chris, kicking ass in a fairly route one way while shouting about how terrible the task and Alex are. And Ardal's flaling for increasingly unlikely magic words ("Architecture!") without ever getting one was also entirely on brand. Sophie being a literal Looney Toon and reversing the arrow to keep Alex going in circles was GENIUS! But of course even more genius, in its simplicity, was Bridget just taking off the basket and filling it leisurely with ducks. And then whatever that was that Judi transmuted the task into XD (Sophie on the podcast described it as "classic bullying", which, yeah, point XD) and her explanation that "the ducks felt some motherly instinct towards me". So sad that Bridget got disqualified at the end, although the video of her double-fisting the ducks with the voiceover of her repeating "one duck at a time" in various ways was, quite simply, high art.
Chris, my darling nerd, coming up with "Tungsten Diamonds" as the band name ♥ Alex gaslighting Ardal and Chris about the tasks they sang/rapped about that were never shown (and apparently that the girls' team never got to do either). But I do have to agree the girls' song was better, with the return of Sophie's attempts at rap.
Greg: "I'm going to miss these guys. I don't always say that... but that doesn't make it any less scripted."
Chris and Bridget did a really good job with the nosehole self portraits in the live studio task, and I think Chris shouuld've gotten 5 points and Bridget 4 (and Sophie 3), but it wouldn't have mattered for the series standing.
I loved watching Bridget celebrate with the trophy, and the others starting up a little Bridget dance, which Sophie eventually also joined -- they really look like such a fun group, and like they've genuinely bonded. (Sophie, on the podcast, also mentioned there was a moment that wasn't shown, where they all held hands after the studio task. Aww!)
I would've been happy to get another episode of the podcast with Sophie or with Chris, and for sure enjoyed the one we got. Sophie's description of winning was: "It was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life." And lol at the revelation that Sophie's baby nephew from America tried to destroy the trophy and made a hole in it XD
One of the emails from listeners asked the brilliant question, "Who was the more baffling team mate, Bridget or Judi?" Equally baffling, according to Sophie, but Bridget's lack of competitive streak was most frustrating (which is what I would have expected; I was noticing Sophie getting exasperated with her back in the first team task). And then she had a great line re: the House Queens' performance: "We are all in this together, and, objectively, Bridget looks more stupid."
I also listened to the People's Podcast episode which revealed that Sophie is now the top contestant by points per task -- and Chris is right behind her! And that Chris would have won if ANY ONE of the following had not been part of the game -- live tasks, or prize tasks, or team tasks his filmed tasks average score is super-duper high. And Chris would have also won if anyone other than Sophie had been the one to guess that guy's name during that one task that went on forever. Which of course is not to say that Sophie didn't "deserve" to win -- it's all nonsense and luck of the draw, at that separation -- just a sign how close this series was. Which made it great fun to watch, but I do feel bad for Chris.
So, anyway, that was fabulous. I really AM going to miss these guys. Series 13 is going somewhere among my top series; there's probably too much recency bias for me to decide whether it's with series 7/11 at the very top or in the next one down, but I think it might be at the top. I liked most of the cohort a whole lot, and I would definitely list Chris and Sophie among my favorite contestants now, with Bridget as a secondary sort of fave. And I think, weirdly, because I was kind of ho-hum on him when the series started, because he seemed a bit basic compared to Sophie-Judi-Bridget, Chris has ended up as my top favorite for the series and a top tier contestant for me in general, using my definition of "contestant I enjoy watching doing absolutely anything" (which is true for me of people like Rhod Gilbert, Mike Wozniak, and Liza Tarbuck). A big part of it is just, he is having so much fun, and he is so expressive about it. His laugh may not be as distinctive as Nish's, but you can hear him laughing ALLL the time, and he has the best delighted/baffled expressions and little exclamations of dismay and/or delight, and just seems to be having a blast. And the other part of it is, was hearing Chris on the podcast and realizing that it's not that he swotted up for how to Taskmaster, it's that he's naturally on this wavelength of merry madness. And also discovering over the episodes how much of a nerd he is, which definitely wasn't evident from the initial impression he makes (which his wife also commented on in the podcast).
Other Taskmaster-adjacent things: I watched some more outtakes, which I'm stashing here mainly for Chris's comment that "My solar system was also a fanny" (after Judi tried to spin her "tower of love" as a womb). And I went on Chris's Twitter after the finale, to see if he had some reaction, but instead found a link to this amazing Lego set, which led me to this full concept (which you can actually show support for, and if it reaches 10k supporters it has a shot at being made for real) and this (Lego!Liza! and Rhod! and Phil! and Mark! XD)
**
I wached the second episode of Ms.Marvel, and it was still enjoyable but I liked it quite a bit less than the pilot -- I think just because the focus was on aspects I enjoy/care about less.
Kamala is still adorable, and I especially enjoyed her comparing herself to Ant-Man. But spoilers the whole thing with the crush on Kamran, and especially the love(/attention?) triangle with Bruno is already feeling tedious and I'm not looking forward to more of it (maybe they'll subvert it? that would be nice). Also, go to the Caltech program, Bruno; Kamala will be fine. I'm also kind of conflicted about Nakia, whom we got a much better look at this episode. She is a well-realized, vibrant character (in particular I thought her explanation of why she is wearing a hijab was interesting), but while I could see myself hanging out with Kamala and Bruno in high school, Nakia is just not the type of person I enjoy spending time with, including watching her on screen, which is sad, because it seems like she will have a B/C plot of her own in this series. I also thought this episode was quite infodumpy, with Kamala's family history (which required some infodumping of the Partition history as well), and while I think the infodumps were delivered reasonably charmingly via Kamala's father and the Illumin-Aunties (best joke of the whole episode!), it still felt slow and unnatural.
I did like things about this episode, though! My favorite bit was probably the summary of the differnt mosque cliques -- the Illumin-Aunties in particular, which I already mentioned, but also the mosque bros and the others. Mr Wilson continues to be very funny, with his references (the YouTube channel I watch pointed out that so far his references are all to Disney properties -- Mulan in the first ep and now Star Wars -- well, it's not like they'll run out of things to reference any time soon XD). Kamala's parents continue to be really cute -- I like that while Kamala has to deal with them as strict authority figures, you can see that they have a whole life of their own (that she tries not to think about XD) -- and I loved learning that her pious, traditional brother had a goth phase. I think some of the stuff the show is doing with Kamran and Kamala is a bit too anvilicious for my taste -- like him telling Kamala she doesn't have to explain to him what "ammi" is -- I don't think you'd need to explain to to anyoneone, really, it's pretty cler from context -- I did enjoy them geeking out over shared Bollywood references (not anything I know anything about, but shared cultural references are nice, and I liked the way Bruno also knows those references but Kamran is kind of excluding him from the conversation by expressing his surprise that Bruno knows what they're talking about -- it's this kind of turnabout that you don't see a lot but it's neat to see it represented), and also Kamran putting on a Pakistani accent when he is pretending to be Kamala's cousin -- again, that's something I've seen a lot of second-gen kids do in real life, not mockery (though it would be from anyone not in the in-group) and not quite code-switching (though it's somewhat related to switching between dialects, I think? because it's not JUST an accent, it's also other things like sentence construction and tone and gesture) but haven't seen in media much.
I was emphatically under by the actual superhero stuff in the first episode. I liked it better in episode 2, or at least some aspects of it I did. The training montage was cute! It reminded me of Shazam!'s, although that one was a lot funnier (and also longer, on account of how that was a movie). I do like that Kamala's superpowers don't give her strength or agility she did not previously possess, and she has to work for whatever physical prowess she needs to complement her "hard light" magic. (Maybe it was because Mr Wilson put it in my head last time, but her saying she wished she'd done better in PE made me think of "Boy, was I a fool in school for cutting gym" from Mulan/"I'll Make a Man out of You".) I missed this when watchng, but once the YouTube videos I watched pointed it out, I liked the way Kamala comes up with the platforms of hard light idea she uses to rescue the kid from a video game. My favorite part of the superhero stuff was her deliberately stepping away from the kid she saved to do a completely unnecessary superhero landing on a rooftop -- that was cute! But her visions or whatever are still not interesting to me. I feel like I'm supposed to be interested in where her superpowers came from and I'm just totally not; I don't care where her superpowers came from, and don't really care for the superpowers themselves, I want more immigrant family sitcom and dorky teenager friends dynamic.
I will definitely keep watching, as I do still like it on the whole, and hopefully this episode got a lot of the infodumpiness out of the way, but I have also adjusted my expectations downward a bit, from where the first episode had raised them.
*
I also -- drumroll, please! -- read a book! I know, I'm shocked, too.
3. Ilona Andrews, Fated Blades -- so what happened was, cafemassolit mentioned she was reading this and having fun, and explained the premise, which sounded Relevant To My Interests. This is a sci-fi romance, and it's not high literature by any means, but it's iddy in ways that (for the most part) align very nicely with my id. There's a battle couple! Enemy Mine! Complicated families with complicated intra- and inter-family stuff going back generations! Competence kink! (If you notice a significant overlap with things I list as likes in my Yuletide letter, that probably goes a long way towards explaining why I managed to read this in a year where I'm not reading pretty much anything other than fic. And even ten it took me two weeks to read what is quite a short book -- I guess it's actually a novella, according to Goodreads.) Also, I guess this is technically book 3 of the Kinsmen series, but the other books are from 10+ years ago, and don't seem to feature the same things I liked about this one, so I don't think I'll be tracking them down.
The premise is quite fun -- you have a group of famiies who are descendents of a genetically engineered military unit who can manifest unstoppable blades and impenetrable shields from their bodies (it's nanobots), and the people who possess those abilities -- the ability to control these blades, seco, doesn't always breed true -- are unstoppable killing machines. Oh and by the way, spoilers from here the thing that makes them even MORE unstoppable is synchronizing with another secare, which has overtones of a psychic bond kind of thing but without the creepy-to-me aspects of fated mate/soulbond type of deal. Our protagonists are the heads of rival secare/Kinsman families with the enmity borne of betrayal generations ago (except only one of them knows what's at the root of the family feud). They must join forces and work together when their arranged marriage spouses run off together with corporate secrets stolen from both of the clans and plan to sell them to a group of off-world butchers. It is all very straightforward: Our Heroes are very good at everything and also decent people who care about not just their families but also justice and helping people and stuff. The faithless spouses are shallow and useless and awful, as are their families (the families of the protagonists get a little bit more nuance, but it's really not about them). The off-world mercenries they're trying to stop from getting their hands on the secrets are The Worst. But the two leads admiring each other's competence in business and in battle and in dealing with people, admiring each other's character, and admiring how hot the other person is (in a deadly way) and deadly (in a hot way) -- well, basically, it didn't need to be high literature to appeal to me. There's feats of ace piloting, and fighting side by side, and tending to each other's injuries, and the guy gets to grab her cheating husband by the throat, not because she is not capable of doing it herself -- she just killed a whole bunch of bad people spectacularly right before this -- but because she considers him weak and not a threat and wouldn't use violence against him and he's been banking on that. There's also rather a lot of pining, first of the "I can't be fantasizing about this person who is my family's sworn enemy, why did it have to be her/him" variety and then (kinda improbably) of the "we want to but we can't because we're still married" variety, but it turned out that I enjoyed the UST more than the resolution (the one sex scene at the end is not bad but not, like, a selling point). I did like that he proposed immediately after -- that was amusing.
There is a bit of humour, but not as much as in other Ilona Andrews books I've read and enjoyed. I ended up skimming some of the longer fight scenes, but they were enjoyable on the whole. This is probably an artefact of reading book 3 in a series without reading the first two, but the upshot was that I felt that the worldbuilding was both nicely lived in and didn't feel unnecessarily over-explained. Certainly I didn't feel like I was missing any important explanations, although it was only after reading the blurbs for the other books that I realized what the other, non-secare, Kinsman families were like in terms of genetically engineered powers.
Anyway, this was just the right level of froth for my current fiction-consuming powers, and a nice distraction for my brain during the one train commute I had in the last two weeks. And now I've read THREE whole books the year! At this rate I might make it to more books than I can count on one hand! o.O (My primary leisure activity at the moment is still Sudoku, lol.)
*
This did not stop me from buying my supporting Hugo membership. Mostly because I want to make sure to vote for Terra Ignota (best series) and Be the Serpent (fancast) while I can, and the few categories where I happen to have strong a priori opinions (Astounding, from last year's Hugo homework) or any opinions at all (I have naturally read or seen a few of the nominated things) -- but also in part because the Hugo voter packet has come out, and it contains some books I can finally give back to the library, LOL.
File770, as usual, has a full list, but for my own records, the things I'm interested in checking out, either in time for voting or whenever I get around to it:
Astounding:
- Iron Widow!
- Legendborn (which I've already read last year) has an accompanying essay and a short story
- She Who Became the Sun (which I already possess)
- Winter's Orbit (which I already own)
- Unspoken Name (which I don't remember if I own from last year or not)
Lodestar (besides the ones represented above):
- Redemptor and The Last Graduate only excerpt in PDF, alas
- Chaos on Catnet! (I haven't read the first one)
- Victories Greater than Death, which I don't think I want to read
Best Editor Long Form:
- Ruoxi Chen -- looks like the packet includes A Marvelous Light an Master of Djinn (which I already own) but also The Chosen and the Beautiful, which I might check out, and something I'd never even heard of called StarEater, which sounds like not-my-thing.
Best Novella:
- A Spindle Splintered (which is one of my library hostage books)
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built -- FINE, I guess I'll read it, and probably be annoyed by it
- Across the Green-Grass Fields (aka the latest Seanan McGuire Wayward Children thing) -- see above
- The Past is Red -- this is Cat Valente, and normally I would just skip it, BUT it is an expansion of a short story that I read and actually enjoyed, so I actually plan to give it a shot
- Elder Race -- will this be the thing that makes me read Adrian Tchaikovsky finally? Stay tuned
- there's also an Aliette de Bodard thing, but I'm not even going to pretend I'll get around to reading it
Best Novel:
- A Light from Uncommon Stars - another one of my library hostage books
- The Galaxy and the Ground within, which I've read and I think own. A Master of Djinn and She Who Became the Sun which I also now own.
- A Desolation Called Peace which I've read and do not feel the need to own, emphatically
- the Andy Weir thing in PDF, meh, so if I end up reading it, it won't be thanks to this
Best Series:
- for White Rat: only Swordheart, which I already own
- for Terra Ignota: only Too Like the Lightning, which I of course already own (and, indeed, this is the book I own in e-copy because it was a freebie at some point)
- for Kingston Cycle: only Soulstar, which I guess is book 3? So I'm not sure I'm going to bother with that; if it was the sequel to the one I read, morbid curiosity might've made me check it out
- Wayward Children with the same book as the novella
- Fonda Lee: very annoyingly, as this is the one that I was hoping to get a copy of, this one's only in PDF, which I'm not going to bother with
- two things for Merchant Princes, but I wrote that one off a long time ago
(so this is actually fairly disappointing as a haul, especially compared to last year's bounty on series. I wonder if people abused it and the authors/pubishers saw the effect and pulled back on freebies)
I also cast my initial ballot pass, in case I completely forget about the Hugos in the next month and a half. (Dear Chicon, have you heard of a Save All button?) I voted for the partial categories based on what I've read/watched/listened to 'naturally', and also on the categories that are quick to review in full:
Fan Artist:
- Sarah Felix -- man, I just still love those tiaras! The spider one! and the malachite fae! those two are my particular favorites, but I like all of them.
- Ariela Housman -- I do like her work (the orrery thing is particularly neat!), and I think fannish calligraphy is neat as a concept, but also in large part I keep voting for her because of how she got screwed over by that past Worldcon
- Nilah Magruder -- cute!
- Iain Clark -- suffers for me by being mostly about fandoms I have no interest in and conventions I have no association with
- Lorelei Esther -- kind of like above, but I do like that it's traditional media and the range of styles
- Lee Moyer -- OK, this small gods stuff is cool! I don't actually know how it's fannish, though? But I like them a lot! and are the tiaras explicitly fannish?
Fan artist: Sarah Felix, Ariela Housman, Lee Moyer, Nilah Magruder, Lorelei Esther, Iain Clark.
Pro Artist:
- Alyssa Winans -- I like her style, and have voted for her to win previously, but this year's pieces are grabbing me less.
- Tommy Arnold -- oh hey, he is also illustrating Witcher these days? neat! My favorite is actually Desert Prince, which is the only one I have no knowledge of, but I do have to admit that the Murderbot illustrations are a good match for the canon -- I just don't especially like the style.
- Rovina Cai -- I always like her style, but did not realize she was also doing covers for Temeraire -- I really like those!
- Ashley Mackenzie -- a new name for me, and I'm mixed on the packet, but the wraparound cover for Iron Widow is GORGEOUS.
- Will Staehle -- OK, a very different kind of art, but I actually really like it, especially the semi-symbolic covers for 'Villains' and The Echo Wife.
- Maurizio Manzieri -- I know this is magazine covers, which probably explains the different style, but it's just not a style that I like.
Pro artist: Rovina Cai, Will Staehle, Tommy Arnold, Ashley Mackenzie, Alyssa Winans, Maurizio Manzieri.
I also might as well get Editor Long Form out of the way,
- PNH -- I somehow completely forgot that he was the editor for both Perhaps the Stars and Baron of Magister Valley. And considering BoMV was pretty tight for a Paarfi, I might have to bump him up the list above the person I thought I'd be voting at the top.
- Ruoxi Chen - A Marvelous Light and A Master of Djinn are both hers, of books I have exposure to. I also like her editorial statement.
- Brit Hvide -- I've voted for her in the past, but don't have any experience with this year's crop
- Navah Wolfe -- I've voted "against" her in the past (not below No Award, but low on the list) on account of things like Space Opera, but don't have any experience with this year's crop.
- Nivia Evans and Sarah Guan -- nothing I've read or am likely to read, so will be leaving them off my ballot.
Editor long form: PNH, Ruoxi Chen, Brit Hvide, Navah Wolfe
Let's see what else I get to...
Sophie won!! I feel very happy for her -- she seemed really, genuinely moved -- and sad for Chris, who clearly also really, really wanted to win, and was so into the whole thing, and it was so close! (There were other close series, but somehow it didn't feel that way -- Guz was just 1 point behind Morgana, apparently?? Kerry was only 1 point ahead of Jessica (I knew this but keep forgetting it, because Jess somehow never felt like a powerhouse on that series the way Kerry did), and of course Josh famously won by the "beans" point, and even Mike and Sarah, Daisy and Richard, and Jon and Katherine Ryan were only 4 points apart (though 4 was a higher percentage by quite a lot in the much shorter s2) Or maybe it was just the act that this one I was watching without knowing the outcome a priori. Except for the last episode, where I made a point to google and spoil myself for the winner before I watched the episode because I didn't want to be tense watching it. So, anyway, what a great series, pity they couldn't both win.
And also a pity that Judi never got to win an episode. I was saying in the comments on my last post that it felt like the narrative was building up to Judi winning the last episode after several close calls, but that I didn't think the show would sacrifice the integirty of the show / he chaos by ensuring a Judi win. And, indeed, it did not, and instead just leaned into the fact that Judi never did win an episode after all, with Alex saying things like "Well, we're all hoping Judi will win an episode finally, but she's currently in the last place." and later reporting that she was dead last. But she got to be the highest scoring loser at least -- that's something!
And now my thoughts on the episode in order:
ARDAL WORE THE SQUEAKY RED JACKET! I also highly approve of Sophie's sunflower getup.
This was another prize task I liked a lot. Sophie sold the hell out of that battered rice cooker (Greg: "I'll be honest, Ardal. She's done a pretty good job of emotionally manipulating me.") Bridget blithely de-acronymizing DNA and then simultaneously curtsying and flipping Ardal off. I'm glad Greg chose to give 4 points to Chris's Godfather coffee table, Ardal's biscuit tin of ancestor papers ("Do I question the Wesh giants you're descended from?"), and Sophie's prize, but I guess I can see why he gave 5 points to Bridget's box of hair and teeth XD
Identifying liquids task was a fun classic Taskmaster thing, a lot of things going on and a lot of weird restrictions. Super impressed with Chris nailing "pickled onion vinegar" out of the gate, and I loved the anguished "why is it warm?!" shout. Everyone got tea, and I guess stock was also relatively easy to get, though not everyone did. Interesting that Judi and Sophie got lychee very quickly but the others were stumped; maybe they've just never had lychee? I feel like it's got a pretty distinctive flavor. And of course the stumper was the cream of mushroom soup which did indeed look very, very gross. Fun task to watch, and fun to finally have the context for Bridget going mlem mlem mlem in the credits. And lol at Alex finally taking pity on Sophie who was wrestling with the valve cap with chopsticks.
The bike task!!! (which I guess is the task Alex teased as the one he regrest the most -- he did look pretty beat) The quiet moment with Sophie after she'd finished: "I do everything for him" and Greg gently brushing Alex's cheek -- oh my god, I think I get what that person who wrote that fic after watching the finale live was talking about now XD Overall, the biking + ducks task was brilliant! Chasing down Alex on the bike while running forwards and backwards was so up Chris's alley! -- and we got classic Chris, kicking ass in a fairly route one way while shouting about how terrible the task and Alex are. And Ardal's flaling for increasingly unlikely magic words ("Architecture!") without ever getting one was also entirely on brand. Sophie being a literal Looney Toon and reversing the arrow to keep Alex going in circles was GENIUS! But of course even more genius, in its simplicity, was Bridget just taking off the basket and filling it leisurely with ducks. And then whatever that was that Judi transmuted the task into XD (Sophie on the podcast described it as "classic bullying", which, yeah, point XD) and her explanation that "the ducks felt some motherly instinct towards me". So sad that Bridget got disqualified at the end, although the video of her double-fisting the ducks with the voiceover of her repeating "one duck at a time" in various ways was, quite simply, high art.
Chris, my darling nerd, coming up with "Tungsten Diamonds" as the band name ♥ Alex gaslighting Ardal and Chris about the tasks they sang/rapped about that were never shown (and apparently that the girls' team never got to do either). But I do have to agree the girls' song was better, with the return of Sophie's attempts at rap.
Greg: "I'm going to miss these guys. I don't always say that... but that doesn't make it any less scripted."
Chris and Bridget did a really good job with the nosehole self portraits in the live studio task, and I think Chris shouuld've gotten 5 points and Bridget 4 (and Sophie 3), but it wouldn't have mattered for the series standing.
I loved watching Bridget celebrate with the trophy, and the others starting up a little Bridget dance, which Sophie eventually also joined -- they really look like such a fun group, and like they've genuinely bonded. (Sophie, on the podcast, also mentioned there was a moment that wasn't shown, where they all held hands after the studio task. Aww!)
I would've been happy to get another episode of the podcast with Sophie or with Chris, and for sure enjoyed the one we got. Sophie's description of winning was: "It was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life." And lol at the revelation that Sophie's baby nephew from America tried to destroy the trophy and made a hole in it XD
One of the emails from listeners asked the brilliant question, "Who was the more baffling team mate, Bridget or Judi?" Equally baffling, according to Sophie, but Bridget's lack of competitive streak was most frustrating (which is what I would have expected; I was noticing Sophie getting exasperated with her back in the first team task). And then she had a great line re: the House Queens' performance: "We are all in this together, and, objectively, Bridget looks more stupid."
I also listened to the People's Podcast episode which revealed that Sophie is now the top contestant by points per task -- and Chris is right behind her! And that Chris would have won if ANY ONE of the following had not been part of the game -- live tasks, or prize tasks, or team tasks his filmed tasks average score is super-duper high. And Chris would have also won if anyone other than Sophie had been the one to guess that guy's name during that one task that went on forever. Which of course is not to say that Sophie didn't "deserve" to win -- it's all nonsense and luck of the draw, at that separation -- just a sign how close this series was. Which made it great fun to watch, but I do feel bad for Chris.
So, anyway, that was fabulous. I really AM going to miss these guys. Series 13 is going somewhere among my top series; there's probably too much recency bias for me to decide whether it's with series 7/11 at the very top or in the next one down, but I think it might be at the top. I liked most of the cohort a whole lot, and I would definitely list Chris and Sophie among my favorite contestants now, with Bridget as a secondary sort of fave. And I think, weirdly, because I was kind of ho-hum on him when the series started, because he seemed a bit basic compared to Sophie-Judi-Bridget, Chris has ended up as my top favorite for the series and a top tier contestant for me in general, using my definition of "contestant I enjoy watching doing absolutely anything" (which is true for me of people like Rhod Gilbert, Mike Wozniak, and Liza Tarbuck). A big part of it is just, he is having so much fun, and he is so expressive about it. His laugh may not be as distinctive as Nish's, but you can hear him laughing ALLL the time, and he has the best delighted/baffled expressions and little exclamations of dismay and/or delight, and just seems to be having a blast. And the other part of it is, was hearing Chris on the podcast and realizing that it's not that he swotted up for how to Taskmaster, it's that he's naturally on this wavelength of merry madness. And also discovering over the episodes how much of a nerd he is, which definitely wasn't evident from the initial impression he makes (which his wife also commented on in the podcast).
Other Taskmaster-adjacent things: I watched some more outtakes, which I'm stashing here mainly for Chris's comment that "My solar system was also a fanny" (after Judi tried to spin her "tower of love" as a womb). And I went on Chris's Twitter after the finale, to see if he had some reaction, but instead found a link to this amazing Lego set, which led me to this full concept (which you can actually show support for, and if it reaches 10k supporters it has a shot at being made for real) and this (Lego!Liza! and Rhod! and Phil! and Mark! XD)
**
I wached the second episode of Ms.Marvel, and it was still enjoyable but I liked it quite a bit less than the pilot -- I think just because the focus was on aspects I enjoy/care about less.
Kamala is still adorable, and I especially enjoyed her comparing herself to Ant-Man. But spoilers the whole thing with the crush on Kamran, and especially the love(/attention?) triangle with Bruno is already feeling tedious and I'm not looking forward to more of it (maybe they'll subvert it? that would be nice). Also, go to the Caltech program, Bruno; Kamala will be fine. I'm also kind of conflicted about Nakia, whom we got a much better look at this episode. She is a well-realized, vibrant character (in particular I thought her explanation of why she is wearing a hijab was interesting), but while I could see myself hanging out with Kamala and Bruno in high school, Nakia is just not the type of person I enjoy spending time with, including watching her on screen, which is sad, because it seems like she will have a B/C plot of her own in this series. I also thought this episode was quite infodumpy, with Kamala's family history (which required some infodumping of the Partition history as well), and while I think the infodumps were delivered reasonably charmingly via Kamala's father and the Illumin-Aunties (best joke of the whole episode!), it still felt slow and unnatural.
I did like things about this episode, though! My favorite bit was probably the summary of the differnt mosque cliques -- the Illumin-Aunties in particular, which I already mentioned, but also the mosque bros and the others. Mr Wilson continues to be very funny, with his references (the YouTube channel I watch pointed out that so far his references are all to Disney properties -- Mulan in the first ep and now Star Wars -- well, it's not like they'll run out of things to reference any time soon XD). Kamala's parents continue to be really cute -- I like that while Kamala has to deal with them as strict authority figures, you can see that they have a whole life of their own (that she tries not to think about XD) -- and I loved learning that her pious, traditional brother had a goth phase. I think some of the stuff the show is doing with Kamran and Kamala is a bit too anvilicious for my taste -- like him telling Kamala she doesn't have to explain to him what "ammi" is -- I don't think you'd need to explain to to anyoneone, really, it's pretty cler from context -- I did enjoy them geeking out over shared Bollywood references (not anything I know anything about, but shared cultural references are nice, and I liked the way Bruno also knows those references but Kamran is kind of excluding him from the conversation by expressing his surprise that Bruno knows what they're talking about -- it's this kind of turnabout that you don't see a lot but it's neat to see it represented), and also Kamran putting on a Pakistani accent when he is pretending to be Kamala's cousin -- again, that's something I've seen a lot of second-gen kids do in real life, not mockery (though it would be from anyone not in the in-group) and not quite code-switching (though it's somewhat related to switching between dialects, I think? because it's not JUST an accent, it's also other things like sentence construction and tone and gesture) but haven't seen in media much.
I was emphatically under by the actual superhero stuff in the first episode. I liked it better in episode 2, or at least some aspects of it I did. The training montage was cute! It reminded me of Shazam!'s, although that one was a lot funnier (and also longer, on account of how that was a movie). I do like that Kamala's superpowers don't give her strength or agility she did not previously possess, and she has to work for whatever physical prowess she needs to complement her "hard light" magic. (Maybe it was because Mr Wilson put it in my head last time, but her saying she wished she'd done better in PE made me think of "Boy, was I a fool in school for cutting gym" from Mulan/"I'll Make a Man out of You".) I missed this when watchng, but once the YouTube videos I watched pointed it out, I liked the way Kamala comes up with the platforms of hard light idea she uses to rescue the kid from a video game. My favorite part of the superhero stuff was her deliberately stepping away from the kid she saved to do a completely unnecessary superhero landing on a rooftop -- that was cute! But her visions or whatever are still not interesting to me. I feel like I'm supposed to be interested in where her superpowers came from and I'm just totally not; I don't care where her superpowers came from, and don't really care for the superpowers themselves, I want more immigrant family sitcom and dorky teenager friends dynamic.
I will definitely keep watching, as I do still like it on the whole, and hopefully this episode got a lot of the infodumpiness out of the way, but I have also adjusted my expectations downward a bit, from where the first episode had raised them.
*
I also -- drumroll, please! -- read a book! I know, I'm shocked, too.
3. Ilona Andrews, Fated Blades -- so what happened was, cafemassolit mentioned she was reading this and having fun, and explained the premise, which sounded Relevant To My Interests. This is a sci-fi romance, and it's not high literature by any means, but it's iddy in ways that (for the most part) align very nicely with my id. There's a battle couple! Enemy Mine! Complicated families with complicated intra- and inter-family stuff going back generations! Competence kink! (If you notice a significant overlap with things I list as likes in my Yuletide letter, that probably goes a long way towards explaining why I managed to read this in a year where I'm not reading pretty much anything other than fic. And even ten it took me two weeks to read what is quite a short book -- I guess it's actually a novella, according to Goodreads.) Also, I guess this is technically book 3 of the Kinsmen series, but the other books are from 10+ years ago, and don't seem to feature the same things I liked about this one, so I don't think I'll be tracking them down.
The premise is quite fun -- you have a group of famiies who are descendents of a genetically engineered military unit who can manifest unstoppable blades and impenetrable shields from their bodies (it's nanobots), and the people who possess those abilities -- the ability to control these blades, seco, doesn't always breed true -- are unstoppable killing machines. Oh and by the way, spoilers from here the thing that makes them even MORE unstoppable is synchronizing with another secare, which has overtones of a psychic bond kind of thing but without the creepy-to-me aspects of fated mate/soulbond type of deal. Our protagonists are the heads of rival secare/Kinsman families with the enmity borne of betrayal generations ago (except only one of them knows what's at the root of the family feud). They must join forces and work together when their arranged marriage spouses run off together with corporate secrets stolen from both of the clans and plan to sell them to a group of off-world butchers. It is all very straightforward: Our Heroes are very good at everything and also decent people who care about not just their families but also justice and helping people and stuff. The faithless spouses are shallow and useless and awful, as are their families (the families of the protagonists get a little bit more nuance, but it's really not about them). The off-world mercenries they're trying to stop from getting their hands on the secrets are The Worst. But the two leads admiring each other's competence in business and in battle and in dealing with people, admiring each other's character, and admiring how hot the other person is (in a deadly way) and deadly (in a hot way) -- well, basically, it didn't need to be high literature to appeal to me. There's feats of ace piloting, and fighting side by side, and tending to each other's injuries, and the guy gets to grab her cheating husband by the throat, not because she is not capable of doing it herself -- she just killed a whole bunch of bad people spectacularly right before this -- but because she considers him weak and not a threat and wouldn't use violence against him and he's been banking on that. There's also rather a lot of pining, first of the "I can't be fantasizing about this person who is my family's sworn enemy, why did it have to be her/him" variety and then (kinda improbably) of the "we want to but we can't because we're still married" variety, but it turned out that I enjoyed the UST more than the resolution (the one sex scene at the end is not bad but not, like, a selling point). I did like that he proposed immediately after -- that was amusing.
There is a bit of humour, but not as much as in other Ilona Andrews books I've read and enjoyed. I ended up skimming some of the longer fight scenes, but they were enjoyable on the whole. This is probably an artefact of reading book 3 in a series without reading the first two, but the upshot was that I felt that the worldbuilding was both nicely lived in and didn't feel unnecessarily over-explained. Certainly I didn't feel like I was missing any important explanations, although it was only after reading the blurbs for the other books that I realized what the other, non-secare, Kinsman families were like in terms of genetically engineered powers.
Anyway, this was just the right level of froth for my current fiction-consuming powers, and a nice distraction for my brain during the one train commute I had in the last two weeks. And now I've read THREE whole books the year! At this rate I might make it to more books than I can count on one hand! o.O (My primary leisure activity at the moment is still Sudoku, lol.)
*
This did not stop me from buying my supporting Hugo membership. Mostly because I want to make sure to vote for Terra Ignota (best series) and Be the Serpent (fancast) while I can, and the few categories where I happen to have strong a priori opinions (Astounding, from last year's Hugo homework) or any opinions at all (I have naturally read or seen a few of the nominated things) -- but also in part because the Hugo voter packet has come out, and it contains some books I can finally give back to the library, LOL.
File770, as usual, has a full list, but for my own records, the things I'm interested in checking out, either in time for voting or whenever I get around to it:
Astounding:
- Iron Widow!
- Legendborn (which I've already read last year) has an accompanying essay and a short story
- She Who Became the Sun (which I already possess)
- Winter's Orbit (which I already own)
- Unspoken Name (which I don't remember if I own from last year or not)
Lodestar (besides the ones represented above):
- Redemptor and The Last Graduate only excerpt in PDF, alas
- Chaos on Catnet! (I haven't read the first one)
- Victories Greater than Death, which I don't think I want to read
Best Editor Long Form:
- Ruoxi Chen -- looks like the packet includes A Marvelous Light an Master of Djinn (which I already own) but also The Chosen and the Beautiful, which I might check out, and something I'd never even heard of called StarEater, which sounds like not-my-thing.
Best Novella:
- A Spindle Splintered (which is one of my library hostage books)
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built -- FINE, I guess I'll read it, and probably be annoyed by it
- Across the Green-Grass Fields (aka the latest Seanan McGuire Wayward Children thing) -- see above
- The Past is Red -- this is Cat Valente, and normally I would just skip it, BUT it is an expansion of a short story that I read and actually enjoyed, so I actually plan to give it a shot
- Elder Race -- will this be the thing that makes me read Adrian Tchaikovsky finally? Stay tuned
- there's also an Aliette de Bodard thing, but I'm not even going to pretend I'll get around to reading it
Best Novel:
- A Light from Uncommon Stars - another one of my library hostage books
- The Galaxy and the Ground within, which I've read and I think own. A Master of Djinn and She Who Became the Sun which I also now own.
- A Desolation Called Peace which I've read and do not feel the need to own, emphatically
- the Andy Weir thing in PDF, meh, so if I end up reading it, it won't be thanks to this
Best Series:
- for White Rat: only Swordheart, which I already own
- for Terra Ignota: only Too Like the Lightning, which I of course already own (and, indeed, this is the book I own in e-copy because it was a freebie at some point)
- for Kingston Cycle: only Soulstar, which I guess is book 3? So I'm not sure I'm going to bother with that; if it was the sequel to the one I read, morbid curiosity might've made me check it out
- Wayward Children with the same book as the novella
- Fonda Lee: very annoyingly, as this is the one that I was hoping to get a copy of, this one's only in PDF, which I'm not going to bother with
- two things for Merchant Princes, but I wrote that one off a long time ago
(so this is actually fairly disappointing as a haul, especially compared to last year's bounty on series. I wonder if people abused it and the authors/pubishers saw the effect and pulled back on freebies)
I also cast my initial ballot pass, in case I completely forget about the Hugos in the next month and a half. (Dear Chicon, have you heard of a Save All button?) I voted for the partial categories based on what I've read/watched/listened to 'naturally', and also on the categories that are quick to review in full:
Fan Artist:
- Sarah Felix -- man, I just still love those tiaras! The spider one! and the malachite fae! those two are my particular favorites, but I like all of them.
- Ariela Housman -- I do like her work (the orrery thing is particularly neat!), and I think fannish calligraphy is neat as a concept, but also in large part I keep voting for her because of how she got screwed over by that past Worldcon
- Nilah Magruder -- cute!
- Iain Clark -- suffers for me by being mostly about fandoms I have no interest in and conventions I have no association with
- Lorelei Esther -- kind of like above, but I do like that it's traditional media and the range of styles
- Lee Moyer -- OK, this small gods stuff is cool! I don't actually know how it's fannish, though? But I like them a lot! and are the tiaras explicitly fannish?
Fan artist: Sarah Felix, Ariela Housman, Lee Moyer, Nilah Magruder, Lorelei Esther, Iain Clark.
Pro Artist:
- Alyssa Winans -- I like her style, and have voted for her to win previously, but this year's pieces are grabbing me less.
- Tommy Arnold -- oh hey, he is also illustrating Witcher these days? neat! My favorite is actually Desert Prince, which is the only one I have no knowledge of, but I do have to admit that the Murderbot illustrations are a good match for the canon -- I just don't especially like the style.
- Rovina Cai -- I always like her style, but did not realize she was also doing covers for Temeraire -- I really like those!
- Ashley Mackenzie -- a new name for me, and I'm mixed on the packet, but the wraparound cover for Iron Widow is GORGEOUS.
- Will Staehle -- OK, a very different kind of art, but I actually really like it, especially the semi-symbolic covers for 'Villains' and The Echo Wife.
- Maurizio Manzieri -- I know this is magazine covers, which probably explains the different style, but it's just not a style that I like.
Pro artist: Rovina Cai, Will Staehle, Tommy Arnold, Ashley Mackenzie, Alyssa Winans, Maurizio Manzieri.
I also might as well get Editor Long Form out of the way,
- PNH -- I somehow completely forgot that he was the editor for both Perhaps the Stars and Baron of Magister Valley. And considering BoMV was pretty tight for a Paarfi, I might have to bump him up the list above the person I thought I'd be voting at the top.
- Ruoxi Chen - A Marvelous Light and A Master of Djinn are both hers, of books I have exposure to. I also like her editorial statement.
- Brit Hvide -- I've voted for her in the past, but don't have any experience with this year's crop
- Navah Wolfe -- I've voted "against" her in the past (not below No Award, but low on the list) on account of things like Space Opera, but don't have any experience with this year's crop.
- Nivia Evans and Sarah Guan -- nothing I've read or am likely to read, so will be leaving them off my ballot.
Editor long form: PNH, Ruoxi Chen, Brit Hvide, Navah Wolfe
Let's see what else I get to...