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ladybusinessHello friends! I have been challenged to write more posts that are short(er) and low(er)-stakes because I have a PROBLEM with writing 5K+ monsters that I get really hung up about and worked up over. So here is a quick list! IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER because thinking about order is against the point of this exercise STRAP IN HERE WE GO!
The Fifth Gable by Kay Chronister — This is a short story I have not actually been able to stop thinking about since I first read it two years ago. It's about women and the relationships between them; about creating and about failing. It is atmospheric, rhythmic, creepy, sincere. It is painful. I come back to it occasionally to see if I understand it better. That's honestly some of the best praise I can have for a work: That I keep coming back to it, looking for new things.
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions — A brilliant game about what history gets wrong. History is written by the victors, and this game is about the other side of that coin: the people who moved mountains but ended up on the losing side anyway. Features a variety of great female characters, themes of loyalty and betrayal and growing apart, class struggles, and, oh, the language. Ivalice Alliance — the larger universe this game is part of — has had a fantastic translation and localization team, with Joe Reeder, Alexander O. Smith, and Tom Slattery being collectively responsible for the unique feel of the language in this universe. What kills me is that this gem is underappreciated not only within the community of Final Fantasy fans, but also by people not particularly interested in either Final Fantasy games in particular or gaming in general. It's a fabulous entry in the Ivalice Alliance universe, has excellent class-based gameplay that's relatively approachable for non-gamers, (as it is entirely turn-based), and is all-around quality stuff. And now it's available on iOS, so you don't even need a gaming platform to play it!
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how hard the title of this show turned me off. Like, wow. It's so gendered. It's so ableist. And I now fully believe the title is a ruse to draw in ableist misogynists. Because the show is actually very feminist and is the most nuanced, realistic, and sympathetic portrayal of mental illness I can think of ever airing on network television. While it can feel like it takes a while to get out of "protagonist + wacky hijinks" territory, the warning signs that something is Seriously Wrong are there from the first episode, and the show builds very consistently and very believably to revealing and discussing what Rebecca's mental illness actually is and how it causes her to behave. Because she does have an actual mental illness that, untreated, causes her behaviour for the first two seasons. Once we hit the actual diagnosis, it's really fascinating to see how Rebecca interacts with the fact of her condition. ...Oh and the show is a musical. It's a fantastic musical. Be prepared for the songs. The songs are, on the whole, amazing pastiches — that's what they are, they are pastiches of popular genres or sometimes even specific popular songs, and I love this about them — but some people find that the combination of serious mental health stuff and the 2+ musical numbers per episode is not for them.
Prisoners of Peace series by Erin Bow — This series is a fascinating exploration of... oh gosh... What it means to be an AI and what it means to be human, and where those edges meet, and fit together, or don't. About logic versus emotion, except it's not a "versus" situation and never has been, and the coexistence and intermingling of the two is necessary for healthy decision-making. About children and parents, about friendship, about mutually assured destruction and mutually assured salvation. They're delightfully unpredictable books, and I have a very vivid memory of finishing the first book and then frantically trying to purchase the second one on my phone before my metro train arrived and I would lose my signal. I NEEDED to read that next book IMMEDIATELY. Read these books.
Dessa — This is one of my favourite musicians ever. She's a female hip hop artist, and she's got such a way with words, with rhythm, with piercing down to the bone. This is feminist hip hop; this is poetry. I love her. I have six individual vids planned to her music. Oh, which of her songs? Golly, it's almost like I have favourites.
Gaming at the Edge by Adrienne Shaw — This is an academic-type nonfic text that does what it says on the tin. But like. Read the tin. Is that not a fantastic tin? Don't you want to read 300 words of actually pretty accessible academic work on marginalized identities in gaming? This book has only 37 ratings on goodreads right now, and that's just criminal. This is a fantastic look at gamers with marginalized identities and how they interact with games as texts, how those texts interact with them, and broader trends in gaming and the study of gaming when it comes to marginalization. Good, good stuff. Put this book on your nonfiction reading list.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood — If you're not into anime, please just hear me out. FMA:B is a great anime for people who are not generally into anime. It relies on very few anime conventions in either storytelling or presentation and it is here to get the story DONE. And what a story it is! Arakawa Hiromu is the creator who did the manga this anime is based on — this is a woman working in a HIGHLY male-dominated field, for those playing the home game — and she has put together a story that has amazing worldbuilding and deals with military regimes, control of information, MANY VARIED WOMEN, racial politics, genocide, um... I realize that's mostly kind of a dark list... It's actually pretty funny a lot of the time? And focuses on a super strong relationship between two brothers (one of whom is the most precious thing that has ever lived). Actually the protagonist, Edward Elric, is disabled. He has two prosthetic limbs, and while this is definitely a fantastical setting, the series does deal with the realities of prosthetics. He outgrows them (he was 12 when he first got the prosthetics) , or damages them, and they have to replaced. They're really finicky about temperature. He gets phantom pain. He compensates so much for the weight and other physical characteristics of the prosthetics that he has to readjust his entire body mechanics when he goes without them or has to use ones he's not adapted to. It's in general a really well-researched take on fantastical prosthetics. The prosthetics specialist he works with is great too, and she's one of the many excellent ladies in the series. OH AND HAVE I MENTIONED THE LADIES. CAUSE THE LADIES ARE GREAT okay I'm done just watch the series.
Thief: The Dark Project (Gold Edition) | Thief: The Metal Age | Thief: Deadly Shadows — This is the Thief series, and it is gr9. These games have verrryyyyy dated graphics at this point but it doesn't even matter because I'm here for the phenomenal writing, fantastic voice acting, huge varied maps, fascinating worldbuilding, genre-defining gameplay, and painterly cutscenes. This series of games, unlike my other gaming item on this list, is definitely less friendly to non-gamers, but just in case there's someone gaming-inclined out there that has heard the Thief series talked up but never tried it because it's old and anyway the new game wasn't that good (whether you mean Deadly Shadows or the 2014 reboot): THIS IS MY PLEA TO YOU. Try these games. Play them start to finish, as there a very worthwhile overarching story that ties them together and all the development works best sequentially. This is the series that MADE the first person stealth genre, but it wasn't just about gameplay mechanics. It was about really delivering a full, immersive gaming experience: a world that feels lived-in; characters that feel like real people; stories about divisiveness and apathy and cycles. Give them a try.
___
Honorable Mention: The entire Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold — I know everyone's heard about this series and while I'm happy to keep reccing it anyway, right now I want to make a specific recommendation aimed at a specific audience: Anyone writing advanced-technology speculative fiction that still puts the burden of perpetuating the species on afab people's bodies. Why? Pourquoi? Pochemu? So often in spec fic artificial wombs are presented as being in some way dystopian and just... listen to me... no... Read Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen; educate yourself.
___
So that was a quick hit! How'd I do? Got any recs of your own?
The Fifth Gable by Kay Chronister — This is a short story I have not actually been able to stop thinking about since I first read it two years ago. It's about women and the relationships between them; about creating and about failing. It is atmospheric, rhythmic, creepy, sincere. It is painful. I come back to it occasionally to see if I understand it better. That's honestly some of the best praise I can have for a work: That I keep coming back to it, looking for new things.
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions — A brilliant game about what history gets wrong. History is written by the victors, and this game is about the other side of that coin: the people who moved mountains but ended up on the losing side anyway. Features a variety of great female characters, themes of loyalty and betrayal and growing apart, class struggles, and, oh, the language. Ivalice Alliance — the larger universe this game is part of — has had a fantastic translation and localization team, with Joe Reeder, Alexander O. Smith, and Tom Slattery being collectively responsible for the unique feel of the language in this universe. What kills me is that this gem is underappreciated not only within the community of Final Fantasy fans, but also by people not particularly interested in either Final Fantasy games in particular or gaming in general. It's a fabulous entry in the Ivalice Alliance universe, has excellent class-based gameplay that's relatively approachable for non-gamers, (as it is entirely turn-based), and is all-around quality stuff. And now it's available on iOS, so you don't even need a gaming platform to play it!
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how hard the title of this show turned me off. Like, wow. It's so gendered. It's so ableist. And I now fully believe the title is a ruse to draw in ableist misogynists. Because the show is actually very feminist and is the most nuanced, realistic, and sympathetic portrayal of mental illness I can think of ever airing on network television. While it can feel like it takes a while to get out of "protagonist + wacky hijinks" territory, the warning signs that something is Seriously Wrong are there from the first episode, and the show builds very consistently and very believably to revealing and discussing what Rebecca's mental illness actually is and how it causes her to behave. Because she does have an actual mental illness that, untreated, causes her behaviour for the first two seasons. Once we hit the actual diagnosis, it's really fascinating to see how Rebecca interacts with the fact of her condition. ...Oh and the show is a musical. It's a fantastic musical. Be prepared for the songs. The songs are, on the whole, amazing pastiches — that's what they are, they are pastiches of popular genres or sometimes even specific popular songs, and I love this about them — but some people find that the combination of serious mental health stuff and the 2+ musical numbers per episode is not for them.
Prisoners of Peace series by Erin Bow — This series is a fascinating exploration of... oh gosh... What it means to be an AI and what it means to be human, and where those edges meet, and fit together, or don't. About logic versus emotion, except it's not a "versus" situation and never has been, and the coexistence and intermingling of the two is necessary for healthy decision-making. About children and parents, about friendship, about mutually assured destruction and mutually assured salvation. They're delightfully unpredictable books, and I have a very vivid memory of finishing the first book and then frantically trying to purchase the second one on my phone before my metro train arrived and I would lose my signal. I NEEDED to read that next book IMMEDIATELY. Read these books.
Dessa — This is one of my favourite musicians ever. She's a female hip hop artist, and she's got such a way with words, with rhythm, with piercing down to the bone. This is feminist hip hop; this is poetry. I love her. I have six individual vids planned to her music. Oh, which of her songs? Golly, it's almost like I have favourites.
- Warsaw (We all wanna hear that fight song / Car running like a nylon / Brights on / Time's right but the clock's wrong / Never set it, never settle in a time zone / Take what I need with me / Pray for rain but brace for whiskey / Something in the tank, money in the bank)
- Matches to Paper Dolls (Tried sweet talk, tried dynamite / But I sleepwalk, back to the battle site)
- Sound the Bells (The sun rose from the west today / I doubt we'll see it set)
- The Bullpen (Forget the bull in the china shop / There's a china doll in the bullpen / Walk with a switch, fire in her fist / Biting at the bit / Swing at every pitch / Coach put me in like)
- Call Off Your Ghost (We've lived too long too close / So call off your ghost)
- Skeleton Key (Don't waste your worry on me, I always find what I need / Come and go as I please, I've got my skeleton key)
Gaming at the Edge by Adrienne Shaw — This is an academic-type nonfic text that does what it says on the tin. But like. Read the tin. Is that not a fantastic tin? Don't you want to read 300 words of actually pretty accessible academic work on marginalized identities in gaming? This book has only 37 ratings on goodreads right now, and that's just criminal. This is a fantastic look at gamers with marginalized identities and how they interact with games as texts, how those texts interact with them, and broader trends in gaming and the study of gaming when it comes to marginalization. Good, good stuff. Put this book on your nonfiction reading list.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood — If you're not into anime, please just hear me out. FMA:B is a great anime for people who are not generally into anime. It relies on very few anime conventions in either storytelling or presentation and it is here to get the story DONE. And what a story it is! Arakawa Hiromu is the creator who did the manga this anime is based on — this is a woman working in a HIGHLY male-dominated field, for those playing the home game — and she has put together a story that has amazing worldbuilding and deals with military regimes, control of information, MANY VARIED WOMEN, racial politics, genocide, um... I realize that's mostly kind of a dark list... It's actually pretty funny a lot of the time? And focuses on a super strong relationship between two brothers (one of whom is the most precious thing that has ever lived). Actually the protagonist, Edward Elric, is disabled. He has two prosthetic limbs, and while this is definitely a fantastical setting, the series does deal with the realities of prosthetics. He outgrows them (he was 12 when he first got the prosthetics) , or damages them, and they have to replaced. They're really finicky about temperature. He gets phantom pain. He compensates so much for the weight and other physical characteristics of the prosthetics that he has to readjust his entire body mechanics when he goes without them or has to use ones he's not adapted to. It's in general a really well-researched take on fantastical prosthetics. The prosthetics specialist he works with is great too, and she's one of the many excellent ladies in the series. OH AND HAVE I MENTIONED THE LADIES. CAUSE THE LADIES ARE GREAT okay I'm done just watch the series.
Thief: The Dark Project (Gold Edition) | Thief: The Metal Age | Thief: Deadly Shadows — This is the Thief series, and it is gr9. These games have verrryyyyy dated graphics at this point but it doesn't even matter because I'm here for the phenomenal writing, fantastic voice acting, huge varied maps, fascinating worldbuilding, genre-defining gameplay, and painterly cutscenes. This series of games, unlike my other gaming item on this list, is definitely less friendly to non-gamers, but just in case there's someone gaming-inclined out there that has heard the Thief series talked up but never tried it because it's old and anyway the new game wasn't that good (whether you mean Deadly Shadows or the 2014 reboot): THIS IS MY PLEA TO YOU. Try these games. Play them start to finish, as there a very worthwhile overarching story that ties them together and all the development works best sequentially. This is the series that MADE the first person stealth genre, but it wasn't just about gameplay mechanics. It was about really delivering a full, immersive gaming experience: a world that feels lived-in; characters that feel like real people; stories about divisiveness and apathy and cycles. Give them a try.
___
Honorable Mention: The entire Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold — I know everyone's heard about this series and while I'm happy to keep reccing it anyway, right now I want to make a specific recommendation aimed at a specific audience: Anyone writing advanced-technology speculative fiction that still puts the burden of perpetuating the species on afab people's bodies. Why? Pourquoi? Pochemu? So often in spec fic artificial wombs are presented as being in some way dystopian and just... listen to me... no... Read Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen; educate yourself.
___
So that was a quick hit! How'd I do? Got any recs of your own?
no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 02:26 am (UTC)(this is Jenny btw, Dreamwidth is mysteriously rejecting my OpenID situation lately and IDK why but I still want praise for badgering you into awesome stuff.)
no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 02:30 am (UTC)For those who do not share a hive brain with us: Jenny recommended Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Prisoners of Peace. Good recs! On the former especially she was instrumental to convincing me to give that show a try.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 07:27 am (UTC)By definition you can’t make a difference
If the big ambition
Is simply standing sentry to your innocence
no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 09:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 03:03 am (UTC)FMA is also aces! FMA:B is a good watch because it fixes a bunch of editorial-level stuff about the manga, like introducing several plot elements earlier, cutting out what little filler there is, etc. But honestly I love the manga because Arakawa's style is just... so engaging and unique. It's a pleasure to read.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 04:40 pm (UTC)I mostly learned about Dessa via fanvids & keep thinking I should explore more of her stuff. Thanks for pointing me at some songs :)
Right now I am all about screaming 'Read The Beautiful Ones' at people but I also really enjoyed Under The Pendulum Sun recently & feel like it deserves more attention than it's getting. I also perpetually wish more people would watch The Bletchley Circle but it only had 2 very short series so I get why it puts people off.
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Date: 2018-02-02 03:29 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy Dessa also =D
I have now put The Beautiful Ones ebook on hold at my library! Sounds like a good thing to read after Jade City. Under the Pendulum Sun was already on my TBR, so I hope I will get to it soon!
I had not heard of The Bletchley Circle but am now interested! I don't mind short series — do you know where it's watchable?
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Date: 2018-01-30 05:07 pm (UTC)This season has been amazing.
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Date: 2018-02-02 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-30 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-02 03:32 am (UTC)