Spoilers! Jesus…

This is all the stuff I’ve been experiencing lately on the media front! It was originally a section of Monday’s post, but it got so long it’s a standalone now. What an exciting time to be alive.

~ * ~ * ~

Reading

I finished The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson a bit back and found myself drawn to dive into the next book, which is unusual for me with epic fantasy. The audiobook format probably helps quite a bit. As such, I’ve started wading into the second book of the series, Words of Radiance, and after listening to the first handful of minutes and then putting it down for like two weeks I’m now properly chugging along. It’s nice reading them back to back, because everything’s fresh and I had the unique joy of going “hey, it’s that asshole!” about a minor character showing back up whose name I probably wouldn’t have remembered with more of a lag between readings.

I’m also very close to being done with The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. The only issue is that it makes me very sleepy much of the time when I’m reading it. Not a slag on the book, I’ve just been tired lately and unlike with audiobooks I can’t be doing other physical stuff while I read, so I’m more susceptible to fall towards slumber, especially given I often am reading this one in bed just before going to sleep.

Tools of the Titans by Tim Ferris has fallen by the wayside. There’s nothing wrong with it on its own, but there were a few too many interview subjects in a row making blanket absolutist proclamations about signs of health in the section I was reading and I got tired of it. I think I just hit a rough patch of the book, honestly. I’m not feeling up to absorbing more health stuff right now while staying on top of my properly-skeptical game, and the ebook format makes it hard for me to casually skip ahead to the not-health sections and come back to it later. I’ll likely get back into it at some point. Just generally burnt out right now and I don’t think that book would help.

Watching

I did watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for Halloween. I don’t have any brilliant observations on it, story-wise. I was struck by the animation, specifically the painted (I think?) backgrounds. They add texture to the animation while still integrating well with the crisply drawn characters and make the whole process feel like a labor of love and art. I also had that vibe from the Christmas special. On both they could have just been quick cash ins, but they feel like the creators really wanted to make something special and took it seriously, and that comes through in the work.

I’ve been watching Black Sails. Finished Season 1, a few episodes into Season 2. I like it! People actually mostly have understandable motivations for the terrible things they do to each other, and those terrible things take a clear toll on them emotionally, which is a lovely change from a lot of stories. I also was reading some bit about the series and they were like “hey it’s a prequel to Treasure Island” which immediately made me go “wait, what?” followed by “huh I guess I know who definitely survives now.” Which isn’t a bad thing at all, even if by then looking at the Treasure Island wikipedia page I learned before it was revealed on the show that a character I suspected hadn’t actually died did, in fact, survive.

I’m somewhat waiting for the show to fall flat on its face when it comes to characterization and plot between now and the end of the series, because almost no show makes it four seasons with tight writing, even if they’re short seasons. But hopefully they’ll keep it together. As is, it’s not a perfect show, but there’s no enormous missteps that make me want to stop watching, so good for ‘em.

It’s also gorgeous. The costumers, props folks, and set designers deserve many awards.

Outside of that it’s been mostly MissieMae’s Fallout: New Vegas Let’s Plays and Ghostwizards’s Phoenix Point Twitch streams. Sometimes you just need that good good parasocial time, especially when living alone and not having a job to go to/coworkers to talk with. It’s reminding me some of my experience with media consumption during the pandemic, which isn’t a great mindspace to brush up against, but so it goes.

Listening

Podcasts

I’ve been doing a re-listen of Failure to Adapt, a lovely podcast about adaptations from books to other mediums that’s fun and light with great chemistry between the hosts. I also caught up on The Film Reroll, and was very excited when I saw they did It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for Halloween. It was great! Everyone is good, and Andy Hoover is an eternal gem who I hope I get to work with someday.

Beyond that it’s the usual weekly suspects, e.g. Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. I’ve also been enjoying If Books Could Kill when new episodes drop, and have caught a few of the new episodes of You’re Wrong About, though I’m hopelessly behind on that one.

Music

I’m mostly being Basic and listening to a couple of cafe/smooth jazz/bossa nova/etc. live channels and Lofi Girl chillout. I should really listen to more music again instead of just constantly mainlining podcasts, but living alone and being unemployed having something more for my brain to latch onto than just music is usually a good thing.

Playing

Video Games

Baldur’s Gate 3 is dominating my video/computer game space. I’m about fifty five hours in now, stumbling along through Act 2. I’m annoyed I think I missed my romance chance with some characters, but I’m hoping if only from a game design perspective that I’ll get a second chance to initiate things. That said, I wish it was more clear how to just be friends with members of this pack of chaos dorks. The expression on Wyll’s face when I was like “I would like to not make out with you, kthnx” was heartbreaking and I’d rather have just had an option to, I dunno, have a nice tender moment of a more platonic variety to end the scene.

I would also settle for it being flagged if you could get with multiple characters without it being a problem.

Also one of the side characters in the camp will just fucking roast you for not hooking up with anyone by a certain point in the game, which is hilarious but also made me want to go “hey, fuck off.” Only a little. I had a more polite response in-game, though.

I think I still have the chance to get with Karlach, though. Fingers crossed. Holdin’ out for a hellion!

I’ve started clicking through some of the voice acting and just reading the text in conversations, which I feel bad about given the voice acting’s so good. There’s just a LOT of dialog and otherwise-voiced text in this game.

Tabletop

On the tabletop front I played Discworld: Ankh-Morpork with three friends recently. I’ve never played that game with four players, and it plays very differently with 4 instead of 3, in a good way! It’s harder for any one person to pull ahead, and it makes it hard to figure out which victory condition any given person is going for. It also gave me a chance to hang out with a friend I met through my ex for the first time since the breakup, and it was lovely to see him.

~ * ~ * ~

And that’s it for now, folks! Next update is probably next week.

What have y’all been enjoying?