Media Recap #1
I’ve wanted to do more long-form media reviews on this site, like the one I did for the Saint of Steel series, but it’s felt too much like work.
So, I figured a list of smaller reviews might be more manageable!
Inspired by throneofsalt, anhvn, and Raechel Anne Joelie, here’s a breakdown of some things I’ve read/watched/played in the last couple of months!
NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: oh my god this post ended up so much longer than I expected. I added this table of contents…
Watching
Kid Vampire by Mummy Joe
Kid Vampire is a series of short (2 min) cartoons about a vampire kid and his misadventures at human school.
It’s wholesome, and silly, and a balm for these hard times.
If you take any recommendation from this blog post, it would be to watch this. It made me so happy.
Reading
Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en
Journey to the West is the collection of stories from the 1500s about the immortal hero Sun Wukong (Monkey) as he helps a Chinese Buddhist monk travel to India to receive holy scriptures.
This edition was translated into English and edited by Julia Lovell. I liked her translation – I found it easy and pleasant to read. My understanding is she cut out some of the more similar stories for brevity, but I can’t really comment, having only read this edition.
My understanding is that for China and Southeast Asia, these stories are maybe a little bit like King Arthur or Lord of the Rings in the Anglo-sphere. Everybody knows of them, they’ve had a whole bunch of modern day retellings, and they’ve formed the basis for whole new genres of stories (Xianxia and Fantasy respectively). Please correct me if I’m wrong with that comparison!
Overall, I liked it! I really liked the first section, about Monkey’s origin before he got sent on the quest. Monkey was a fun character, and I liked the story of him becoming immortal and the shenanigans he got up to in the Jade Emperor’s court. Heaven as a whole felt like a bit of satire that I didn’t have the context for, but I bet it was great if you lived in the Ming Dynasty :D
The second section (the actual Journey to the West) felt a bit repetitive to me. And half the stories end with Guanyin swooping down to save the day. I feel like the stories would probably have been better told in person (“hey, have you heard the one about Tripitaka and the King Bull Demon?”) than read straight through. But so it goes!
There were some bits that put me off (Tripitaka’s mother’s suicide, and Monkey causually killing the children of his enemies), but were considered normal by the story.
Along the same lines, the concepts of familial and marital duties felt foreign to me, though not that far off from Western patriarchial bullshit. But that’s just how it goes, especially when reading something that old. Really, I was impressed that there wasn’t more of it, and there was certainly less colonialism than a European book from the 1600s would’ve contained.
Overall, the stories were funny and entertaining. Really, they felt pretty similar to modern superhero/shonen stories, which is fun! Do recommend!
The Only Good Indians by Steven Graham Jones
Whoa boy, this book was a lot. I didn’t know it was a Slasher before I read it, and it was a lot more violent than I personally like.
Though I do think the violence worked thematically, as it was compared to the violence of the protagonists slaughtering a herd of elk while hunting.
This was my first book by Jones, and I really like his style of writing. His descriptions are evocative but easy to follow, his characters dynamic and full of life.
His manages to make the whole book emit this vibe, this feeling of hardship and stress. It gets you into the headspace of poverty, stress and oppression (but also hope and resilience) that American Indians so often live in. The scariest thing in the book isn’t the Elk Headed Woman, it’s colonialism.
What white settlers (like myself) have done and continue to do in this land is fucking horrifying. America is Gaza if Israel gets its way, just 400 years later.
A slasher horror novel isn’t the only way to hear that story, but it’s one that worked for me, and I’m grateful. It’s inspired me to try and do and learn more.
I will note, that this book, as a slasher, will not be everybody’s cup of tea, so if you’re interested, be sure you’re up for it.
Swordheart by Ursula Vernon
This book is a prequel to Vernon’s Saint of Steel series, and was a sorely needed lighthearted story, given the everything that’s going on at the moment.
It originally came out in 2018, but there was a new hardcover printing earlier this month, which put it on my radar. I ended up getting the eBook version though, since I find hardcovers a bit ergonimically difficult to read.
I liked it more than her earlier Clocktaur books, and less than Paladin’s Grace. Compared to the paladin books, this felt much more D&D-y. I felt that the non-warrior characters took to killing a little too easily, and the amount of random bandits on the roads felt unrealistic.
That said, the crooked cops priests and abusive relatives
felt real. And the Vagrant Hills (also present in the Clocktaur books),
a forest that can kidnap you, is very D&D-y but I love it, so that’s
fine.
The romance was fine, but not particulary interesting to me. My favorite duo in the story were actually Hala and Zale, Zale stealing every scene they were in. “negotiates like each coin is a childhood friend” indeed!
I did like that we were introduced to a few characters that show up in the future Paladin books, that’s always fun. Bindle continues to be the best.
The story was fun, the pacing good, the dialogue funny. It wasn’t as deep or emotive as some of Vernon’s other books, but it was exactly what I needed during a difficult time :)
Birds of Maine by Michael Deforge
A comic about anarchist birds living on the moon, what’s not to love? I originally mentioned it in Note 12, and finished it since then.
My only complaint is that the blurb at the back of the book completely lies about what the book is. It promises a plot, where “a human crash-lands from Earth and threatens to change everything”.
But this comic is very slice-of-lifey, with no overarching plot. That human astronaut does show up about halfway through the book, but is completely forgotten about. This is a series of vignettes, not a three-act story.
I binge read the book though, looking for the plot, and ended up exhausting myself. This isn’t a series to be read in one go, it’s a series to pick up every now and again, to enjoy over a long period of time (it was originally released as a weekly web comic after all).
Complaining about the blurb aside, I really liked this book. It does a great job of critiquing our capitalist society while imagining a better one. It’s like a much chiller Dispossessed.
Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho
This is a bit of a sneaky entry for me, because I read most of these short stories a couple years ago.
But I picked it up again after reading Monkey King, because Cho had written a short story (Monkey King, Faerie Queen) about Monkey meeting the Faerie Queen of the British Isles. It was even better with more context, and shows what a fun template Sun Wukong is for story telling.
After finishing that story, I realized there were a couple of stories in the book that I hadn’t read! I jump around in short story collections, and sometimes I miss one…
So I went ahead and read Liyana and The Four Generations of Chang-E.
Liyana was very sad, but I felt like it wasn’t quite for me. It’s a story about being forced to sacrifice one’s life for one’s familial elders, which is not the cultural context I grew up in. Still, it was good, and the metaphor of young women getting turned into houses to literally support their family was well done.
The Four Generations of Chang-E hit me harder, since it’s a story about immigration and diaspora. I’m first generation American so some of it really resonated with me, but I’m also white (English and Irish), so I haven’t faced the same other-ing that our protagonists do. Still, this was a good story, especially for anybody who feels like a foreigner in their own home.
I recommend the rest of the stories in this book, Zen Cho is one of my favorite writers and I think more people should read her! I also recommend her longer-form novel Black Water Sister.
Relatedly, one other thing I read recently is an essay called The SEA is Whose? by Ng Yi-Sheng, talking about how Southeast Asian authors on the international stage aren’t racially representative of the region.
To quote:
For years now, I’ve been a passionate champion for Southeast Asian speculative fiction—just check out my Strange Horizons essay, “A Spicepunk Manifesto”, in which I praise its creation as a decolonial act. At the same time, I’ve struggled with an imbalance at the heart of this genre, obvious to insiders but otherwise almost invisible.
Simply put, the best-known authors of Southeast Asian SFF aren’t racially representative of the region. We’re ethnically Chinese. I’m talking about celebrated names like Zen Cho and Cassandra Khaw from Malaysia; Pim Wangtechawat and SP Somtow from Thailand; Jes and Cin Wibowo from Indonesia; Isabel Yap and Rin Chupeco from the Philippines; Neon Yang and Wen-yi Lee from Singapore; the editors of the landmark anthology The SEA Is Ours, Joyce Chng and Jaymee Goh—and myself, I guess, though I’m not that big on the celebrity scale. We’re members of a diasporic community, constituting less than 5% of the 700 million-strong population of Southeast Asia,[2] but serving disproportionately as its cultural ambassadors.
I feel very unqualified to give commentary on this as a white American, and am not trying to judge anything.
I certainly don’t think we should avoid, say, Chinese Malaysian authors (read Zen Cho everybody!).
But, speaking as a White American here, I think it means I should recognize what I’m reading, and that I shouldn’t assume that these stories are all that SEA is.
It makes me want to try and read more voices, and to uplift stories that aren’t getting visibility here at home.
Playing
Tactical Breach Wizards
This game’s awesome. It’s a turn-based urban fantasy strategy game, where you play as a band of rag tag wizard commandos trying to prevent a world war.
I originally mentioned it in Note 3, where I promised a full review, but, er, this is what you’re getting!
The main strength of the game is it’s writing. Everything is on point:
- There’s so many great brick jokes and they all pay off
- The seamless integration of gameplay mechanics and setting
- e.g. your character already owns all the unlockable cosmetics, they just don’t have the confidence to wear them until you beat your enemies with style
- Rion is a reverse werewolf!!!
I would say the plot dragged a little bit halfway through. I liked the Kalani revolution plot as a stand-alone thing, but it did kill some of the momentum around trying to find Liv Kennedy (Banks has the same complaint in-game! yay writing!)
The gameplay was super engaging. These Into the Breach style strategy games are pretty hit or miss for me, because they can really trigger my perfectionist tendencies. I feel like I can’t move on unless I’ve done things 100% optimally, and so the game feels like a slog.
But for whatever reason, that didn’t happen to me with this game. I think a combination of the rewind mechanic allowing you to iterate quickly, and some of the bonus objectives being actually impossible depending on your loadout (you can go back and replay them with a different loadout later), meant I didn’t have the same stress.
Knocking enemies around the map (and out of windows) is super satisfying, and I felt like I had lots of different ways to beat each level.
If you like this kind of strategy gameplay, I highly recommend Tactical Breach Wizards!
The Bat by Chandler Groover
This is a text based Interactive
Fiction game where you play as Bruce Wayne’s Bryce
Wyatt’s valet, herding your man-bat employer while hosting a charity
gala.
It’s made by Chandler Groover of Fallen London1 fame, and it’s a brilliant critique of billionaires.
If you’ve never played an Interactive Fiction (IF) game before, this is a great one to start with. IF games are entirely text based, where you type commands (like “Go West” or “Pick up the matches”) to control your character.
They were the main way to make video games back in the 70s and 80s, and then they basically disappeared in the 90s as graphical games became more immersive. But there’s still a dedicated group of people that make them – this was made in 2024!
The main conceit of the game is that Bryce is acting like a bat, but none of his rich and powerful guests think he’s acting out of the ordinary. Because, ya know, billionaires aren’t geniuses – they’re just assholes.
The puzzles are satisfying and I never felt like I got overly stuck or confused. The game says its winnable from any point, which feels like a feat in puzzle design.
There’s a bunch of Batman references and the ending is satisfying.
’Bout the only bad thing I can say is that I didn’t like the mechanic in final part of the game, it felt like I had to just brute force it, but it’s only a few minutes long, so it’s ok.
The game took me maybe three hours total to beat. I definitely think you should give it a shot, especially if you haven’t played any text based games before!
Content warning: There is a lewd scene that did strike me as a bit male gaze-y, but was also maybe an interesting critique of what seems like queer freedom can still co-opted by power? I’m of two minds about it, but don’t think it should stop anyone from playing the game. (lmk what you think if you play it)
Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land (GBA)
I picked up a retro game player called the Miyoo Mini Plus over the summer.
I’ve tried out a few games, but didn’t really sink my teeth into anything other than Pokemon rom hacks.
This past couple of weeks though, I was sick with a bad cold and figured I’d try some games. I tried Final Fantasy 6, FF Tactics Advance, and Zelda: A Link to the Past, but couldn’t get into any of them.
I needed something simpler, to keep my mind off it. And I remembered a Kirby game I’d played as a kid, and found I could get it! And behold! It’s exactly what I needed.
The game is easy, but takes your mind off things, and the different abilities Kirby gets are fun to mess around with.
I haven’t beat it yet (didn’t as a kid either) – hopefully it holds up to the end!
Listening
The Magnus Archives
I’m on Season 2 of The Magnus Archives, and loving it. Not every episode is a hit, but when they hit, they hit.
It’s a horror podcast where the “head archivist of the Magnus Institute” records people’s written statements about their supernatural encounters. Combines gripping writing with creepy pasta like stories.
The first season had a meta narrative on top of the individual recordings, where the institute members had a supernatural encounter of their own.
This season is shaping up (hah, as if this is coming out now, and not in 2016) to have a similarly exciting meta story.
I’ve been listening to less of this now that I’m not driving as much, but still, try to when I can! Maybe one day I’ll catch up to the contemporary new Magnus Protocol pod :D
Hood Politics with Prop
Prop is a great teacher and a great human. His podcasts help me make sense of these crazy times we live in. Recommend you give him a listen.
Blogs
I’ve been reading lots of blogs lately. In no particular order, here’s some posts I read recently that I liked.
Baldur Bjarnason on AI and Esoteric Fascism
- I also liked his earlier post about how data centers are harming the environment in his native Iceland.
Anne Pasek’s zine about fighting data centers
David Bushell’s microblog is full of great stuff
Josh’s notes about watching Frozen with his daughter.
- I wrote a note about this here
James’s Translated Japanese fiction reading list
- Haven’t actually read any of these yet, but maybe one will be on my next media recap!
anhvn’s Media Recap 2024
- I absolutely love the header images. I had originally planned on making something like that for my Tactical Breach Wizards review, but it didn’t happen…
Peter Gelderloos’s substack sharing wisdom about how to fight back for this world
- His book Anarchy Works changed me
Sharon Chin’s Smoke Signals: On not leaving Malaysia
Phew, that was a lot! Took me way longer to write this than I’d expected.
Still, it’s nice to get it all out of my head.
If you end up watching/playing/reading any of these, I’d love your opinions! :)
Keep safe out there.
I’ll write a blog post about Fallen London and why I stopped playing (too much colonialism) some day↩︎