Escapist Amusements

[lucymonster]

…are few and far between at the moment, because my life is on fire and the world is on fire-er and my PPD is SO BACK, BABY. But I’ve managed to find some things to keep the good brain chemicals flowing.

Firstly, rhoda_rants made an amazing Halloween mix and mailed me a copy as a physical CD, which is the most delightfully nostalgic thing that’s happened to me in forever! ❤️❤️❤️ The mix absolutely rocks and I’m keeping it on permanent rotation, because spooky season never ends in this household.

Also on the music front, I’m loving Nordic Gothic by Cemetery Skyline. It’s the goth-inspired side project of a bunch of big names in metal, including guys from Insomnium and Dark Tranquility, and their take on the genre manages to be both faithful in essentials and wonderfully fresh in execution.

Ymir by Rich Larson is a fantastic sci-fi thriller novel. I never know exactly how to talk about thrillers, because I don’t want to say anything that spoils the suspense, but basically this is a story about a guy who joins the corporate empire taking over his home planet, and the freedom-fighting brother he betrays by doing so. It’s a deeply compelling portrait of a villain who believes he’s a victim, carried along by a pacy space-militia plotline and absorbingly gritty worldbuilding. I picked it up solely on the strength of its having been blurbed by Tamsyn Muir, and I’m so glad I did!

I’m also enjoying yet another Skyrim playthrough that doubles as catharsis for *cough* recent global events, since my new character is a Dark Elf who enthusiastically sides with the Stormcloaks (because surely the leopards won’t eat her face!). She’s a stealth archer because I can’t help myself, but I’m shaking things up a bit by investing in my alchemy and enchanting skill trees as well, and going much deeper into the roleplay than I usually do.

And finally, in Star Wars news, they’ve recently announced a new comic series called Star Wars: Legacy of Vader which, despite the title, is going to be mainly about Kylo Ren! It’s by Charles Soule, who writes great Kylo Ren and also great comics in general, and the fact that it’s not coming out until Feb 2025 is unbearable. Three months! I can’t wait three months!

Comments

[fiachairecht]

Since you mention Skyrim, it is my legal duty to inform you (as hollowbolding informed me) that the game is now a teenager! You're welcome!

*adds Nordic Gothic to the wishlist*

[lucymonster]

I’m sorry it is WHAT? How? How can it be that old???? Skyrim darling don’t listen to them you haven’t aged a day.

For reasons I’m sure you’ll guess if you give the album a listen, Violent Storm is my Reylo song at the moment. It’s got me all in my feels and wanting to write fic again…

[fiachairecht]

It's fine you got me back quite well reminding me that 2025 is in LESS THAN THREE MONTHS >:|

I still have yet to listen to the album because the new media part of my brain is ENTIRELY limited to Agatha All Along/Arcane rn but having looked up the lyrics: oh wow, yeah.

[osprey_archer]

I love that one of your friends emailed you a physical CD! So delightfully nostalgic, as you say. There's just something about physical media.

I've taken up scrapbooking recently, which has involved printing out a lot of photographs, and if one of the photos I'm printing is a good picture of a friend (or a friend's pet), I've started printed out an extra and sending it along to them. People really seem to enjoy it.

[lucymonster]

That’s a lovely project, and I’m not surprised your friends are enjoying it so much! I have such mixed feelings about the seemingly irresistible tides of digitisation - it’s so damn convenient, but tactile reality adds something to any experience that you just can’t make up for. Being emailed a link to the same playlist wouldn’t have been the same.

[osprey_archer]

Part of the reason I started this scrapbooking project is that I realized how ephemeral digitization can be. It's very convenient in the moment, and it bills itself as lasting forever, but (as my friend the archivist explained to me) it's actually much more ephemeral than physical media. You can ignore a physical archive for fifty years and, barring disaster, it will be basically intact. Ignore a digital archive for fifty years and the files will all be corrupted and you probably won't have the tools to access them, anyway.

Apparently archivists have known this forever and call our current era "the Digital Dark Age," as people in the future will probably be able to access very little of our stuff.

[rhoda_rants]

Yay!! I'm so glad you're enjoying the mix! I'm very happy with how that one turned out. ♥

Ymir sounds really interesting, especially right now. So much great sci-fi is either prescient about current events or a clear warning bell about what *could* happen. I think people who disregard speculative fiction in general don't realize that.

Speaking of which, I really should try to read The Locked Tomb again. I tried it once, and didn't get very far. I think I was just burned out on snarky narrators at the time.

Listen: I have a looooot of feelings about Kylo Ren. I don't really read the comics, but we do have most of them at the library, so there's no reason I couldn't start. (Part of that is because, as a collection, they are a pain in the ass to keep in order. Because there's so many of them! And so many are spin-offs or side quests for the same half dozen characters, and the patrons always put them back in the wrong place. Second only to The Flash for comics I dread having to organize, lol.)

[lucymonster]

So much great sci-fi is either prescient about current events or a clear warning bell about what *could* happen. I think people who disregard speculative fiction in general don't realize that.

Oh man, yes, THIS. Sci-fi is never really about spaceships or aliens ime. It’s about us, and our society, and our near-term future, and the spaceships and aliens are what makes the delivery palatable. I definitely would recommend Ymir to anyone who has strong feelings right now about betrayal and complicity and the horrors of unchecked capitalism but prefers to work through them with a lightly metaphorical intermediary.

FWIW, it took me two tries to get into The Locked Tomb, and my first impressions were so unenthused that I ONLY persevered because of the sheer number of people whose taste I trust who were gushing about it. The narrator and her co-main character both take some warming up to - it took a good few chapters before I started enjoying it.

Not to pounce too desperately on anyone who shows the remotest willingness to indulge my Kylo Ren obsession, but he’s actually a really easy entry point to Star Wars comics: other than a few standalones and guest appearances, he has only starred in one single four-issue series called The Rise of Kylo Ren. Legacy of Vader will be his second major appearance, which is why I’m falling over myself with excitement. I’m so hungryyyy I need to be feddddd.

But oh man, I don’t envy you having to shelve those comics. Finding the ones I want is exhausting enough as a heavily invested reader!

[rhoda_rants]

I will have to see if the library has it! I'm actually getting through my TBR pile a bit quicker than usual, so it's almost time for me to get more things. Why not?

FWIW, it took me two tries to get into The Locked Tomb, and my first impressions were so unenthused that I ONLY persevered because of the sheer number of people whose taste I trust who were gushing about it.
This is good to know, because that's about where I am in my impression of it right now. Like, surely all these groovy people wouldn't be saying nice things about it if they didn't mean it. But yeah, I did not enjoy Gideon on first meeting her. I'll give it another try. (Eventually.)

Pounce away! Listen: I appreciate anyone willing to indulge *my* Kylo Ren obsession. So many of the early fans were misogynistic fanboys who liked him for the wrong reasons, and so many of my friends hated him because of that, but I keep wanting to dig into his psyche and backstory. A four-issue series sounds like the perfect place to start!

And if you'll indulge me: I wrote this shortly before the first wave of Covid put everyone into lockdown, and it's still pretty much in line with how I feel about the character.