Reading and watching roundup with Revenant Gun, Love Simon, The Good Place s2

[hamsterwoman]

51. Ursula Vernon, Giant Trouble (Hamster Princess 4) -- these are still super cute! In this one, Harriet takes on "Jack and the Beanstalk". The humour in this one, a lot of which had to do with the giant (a giant lop hare :D) having really stinky feet, but, OK, target audience.

Comments

Also SPOILERS for The Good Place

[author_by_night]

People reading the comments, I spoil EVERYTHING. So. Scroll like a bat out of the Bad Place if you don't want to be spoiled!

- whoa, whoa whoa, you can't just montage-tease us with "This is your soulmate Tahani"! I wanna see THAT attempt. (There are five zillion fics written of it, aren't there? XP)

There probably are! I want to look them up, but I'm not sure if they'll just be smut or if it'll be a deeper look at how that would go down. (I want the deeper look, not PWP.)

Episode 3 -- Team Cockroach! :D I do like this development, because Michael is a lot of fun and having him work more closely with the four humans is great.

Yes.

wow, I both found myself genuinely moved and laughing at Eleanor crying into a plunger after the family toothbrushes encounter.

I was the same!

Episode 8 ("Leap to Faith") -- I really like this one. Parts of the roast were genuinely funny ("Grace, elegance, sophistication... but enough about your sister"), and I thought Michael's double-agenting was sufficiently subtle that I wasn't 100% sure

RE: Also SPOILERS for The Good Place

[author_by_night]

Okay, so I have an answer for my own simulation question: https://news.avclub.com/mike-schur-has-finally-explained-what-was-happening-in-1826781702?rev=1528851625153&utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=Main&utm_campaign=SF&utm_medium=SocialMarketing Not sure if you would consider it a spoiler?

Re: Also SPOILERS for The Good Place

[hamsterwoman]

but I'm not sure if they'll just be smut or if it'll be a deeper look at how that would go down.

I haven't dipped into fic yet, but I do know a bunch was written for Yuletide, so I probably should, and I'll report back if I find anything deeper than PWP for the "Eleanar and Tahani are soulmates" attempt.

wow, I both found myself genuinely moved and laughing at Eleanor crying into a plunger after the family toothbrushes encounter.
I was the same!

It's really impressive that a show can manage to do that!

Maybe she can imitate? So she can't say something bad out of her own volition, but if she's speaking AS Bad Janet exactly, she can do it? Maybe?

Hmm! I could see it being easier for her to copy if she was a Bad Janet doing a specific Bad Janet job. So, maybe!

Another thing I didn't pick up on. You're right!Heh, it helped that I binged those episodes within, like, 24 hours :P

[ikel89]

ok ok *cracks knuckles

[hamsterwoman]

if you'd have thoughts besides "dont be mean to Dima and appreciate your sirniki pls"Haha, that's a fair summary of my primary feelings, but yeah, there's a bit more. So, fun fact, when I was in high school, I was also very proud of having no discernible Russian accent (I do have a slight accent still, but one that most people don't hear, and the rest place as a regional accent or personal way of speaking or generically from-somewhere-else accent; I've only ever had one person both pick up on the accent and figure out where it was from, and he knew my last name and had been in the military, so maybe he was trained in counterintelligence or something, IDK) -- anyway, proud of not having an accent / "passing", and was pleased that my last name didn't have an ending that immediately jump out as Russian, and did not hang out with the other Russian kids in my school. But the reason I didn't was that they were into partying and other such things that were really boring to me. In fact, they were probably more like Anya in some ways (than

[ikel89]

I'm just laughing forever at overwhelming not like other girlness of this comment XD XD XD Even self-aware one!

I'll try to ping Y to tempt her into reading this comic for science! We need more representative data :D

I was so stunned by Siobhan thing that I spend a good half hour listening to how to pronounce Irish names XD Can't say I remember anything except Siobhan = shee-van? I think? I'm so inadequate at this!

[hamsterwoman]

I'm just laughing forever at overwhelming not like other girlness of this comment

Guilty as charged, I'm afraid! (Teenage!me had a lot of Ideas.)

Siobhan = shee-van?

I think so too... I don't actually know any Siobhans, so have never heard it pronounced live.

But I do work with two Niamhs (= neeve, like in the Raven Boys), and there was also an Irish dude I worked with for years who I was convinced was a woman, because his name was Dara. (Which is to say, we spent years exchanging emails, and then he called me up one day, and I couldn't figure out who this was, because the voice was clearly masculine and it just didn't compute. XD)

[lyssa027]

Did you ever read Jim Hine's princess chronicles? I really liked that series, but wasn't a fan of his other stuff. [forgive me if I've asked this before]

I really enjoyed Book of Dust more than I thought I would :)

[hamsterwoman]

I haven't! (though I know the series exists) Libriomancer is what I came across first, and when that didn't really click with me, I didn't track down more of his books. But come to think of it, I've heard good things about the princess series from multiple people and never really heard much about the Libriomancer books, so maybe I shouldn't dismiss the princesses based on that experience.

And glad to hear you enjoyed Book of Dust, too. I also enjoyed it more than I'd expected.

[lyssa027]

I really enjoyed the princess series, def check it out :) the first is The Stepsister Scheme ;)

[hamsterwoman]

Thanks! I'll add it to my list to look up at some point :)

[hamsterwoman]

I don't think you need to reread HDM before Book of Dust, since 'Dust' is a prequel, and a fairly stand-alone one. It's been, oh, probably 20 years since I read the books, and 10 years since I had any interaction with the fandom, via the Golden Compass film, and, other than not picking up on one of the characters having appeared in the Lyra books, I don't think I missed anything by not refreshing my memory. (I did still remember basics of worldbuilding, Lyra (who is a baby in this), her parents, and Fader Coram (vaguely), and that was enough for me to enjoy the book.)

[qwentoozla]

I really enjoyed Book of Dust and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get into it, given that I only read the His Dark Materials once about 10 years ago. The beginning was slow for me too, but once they left in the boat I was super hooked. I thought the original series was well-written and original and interesting, but I remember not being so into the metaphysics and angels stuff too. Reading the new book, I was surprised by some of the things I did remember, like the shape of Lord Asriel's daemon. There's something very visually vivid about parts of HDM--the daemons, and the witches too. But yeah, I didn't remember Hannah at all!

I was delighted about the casting of Lyra in the adaptation too! That girl is such a good actor. I wouldn't have pictured James McAvoy either--or Lin-Manuel Miranda!--but I think it will be good.

I still haven't seen Love, Simon, but it was interesting to hear about the differences in the adaptation! It sounds like the book was definitely better.

[hamsterwoman]

d was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get into it, given that I only read the His Dark Materials once about 10 years ago

Yeah, same. I found I remembered a lot, even though I also haven't touched the fandom in 10 years at least and the books in longer. I remembered both of Lyra's parents' daemon shapes, and surprised myself by recognizing Coram as a character from the HDM books. Definitely not Hannah, though! But I think she was fairly minor? Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

or Lin-Manuel Miranda!

LOL, I hadn't heard the LMM news, and even when I went to google that, Lee Scoresby was NOT who I was expecting him to play XP (I actually really liked movie!Lee -- that was probably my favorite bit of casting not counting McKellen voicing Iorek.

Laura in Logan was my favorite performance last year and my favorite thing about Logan. She's going to be an AMAZING Lyra

[qwentoozla]

Yes, I recognized Coram too!

I was definitely not expecting Lee Scoresby to be who Lin-Manuel was playing either! I agree that the movie casting of Lee was pretty perfect.

[hamsterwoman]

Well, I'm curious to see LMM's Scoresby now :)