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Oct. 24th, 2025 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterThe Incandescent by Emily Tesh was a delightful read. snickfic described it as "aggressively pleasant" but not life-altering, which I think is very accurate, but it won extra points with me because I am pretty much exactly the target demographic: bookish, bisexual younger Millenial women who formed a key part of their identity around Harry Potter but have since become conscious of flaws in the worldbuilding and grown to identify more with the adult characters than the kids. The Incandescent is about a teacher at a modern day magical boarding school who must battle the demonic forces threatening to devour her students while balancing her ordinary administrative obligations and her rather stunted personal/romantic life. It is drily witty, relatable to anyone who regularly deals with kids, and extremely fun if you're the kind of person who finds fantasy-flavoured bureaucratic tedium fun.
Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: an examination of which animals we consider to be pests, how different animals have gained and lost the label in various times or places, and how rooted the very concept of a "pest" is in our own species' urge to exert control over our natural environment. Essentially, a pest is any creature with the temerity to exist where we don't want it, and our disdain for pests - not just a pragmatic need to preserve our grain stores, but a vicious, morally tinged desire for their total eradication - is tied to the Western imperialist mindset, to industrialisation, urbanisation, and an internalised sense of righteous dominion over nature itself. This was an enjoyable and informative read, though as someone who already keeps rats as beloved pets, I was disappointed by the author's choice to focus on more "palatable" pests and exclude invertebrates entirely. I was rather hoping she'd challenge me on my personal yearning for a worldwide cockroach extinction event. It deserves to be challenged, but I don't know how to do it myself - the kneejerk is too strong.
Thunderbolts* is the "just one more, for old time's sake" MCU movie I thought I was never actually going to watch. But I enjoyed it! Yelena, still mourning her sister's death, reluctantly partners with a squad of mediocre not-really-heroes to defeat a threat that even in-universe is very clearly more about mental health than superpowers. I appreciated that this one wasn't trying to escalate the stakes from prior films or convince us that it was an important part of some massive unfolding multiverse apocalypse; it was humans dealing with regular, relatable human shit, with the capes and telekinesis mostly just there for the aesthetic. It wasn't enough to resurrect my dead interest in the MCU as a fandom but I don't regret watching it.
Hunter x Hunter is more my husband's thing than mine, but it's so rare for him to get consumingly obsessed with a piece of media that I'm happy to be along for the ride! He's rewatching episodes. Listening to podcasts. That never happens.
Anyway, if you don't already know what this anime is about, I'm not sure I'm in a position to help yet - it's shonen fighting with your typical ill-defined superhuman powers? A plucky kid is on a quest to become a hunter and track down his absentee father? He's winning hearts and minds along the way? It's silly and fun and reminds me of the old days binge-watching Bleach, I guess mostly because it's from around the same era and aimed at the same demographic. I like the main characters but so far I'm finding the antagonists pretty much all uniformly repulsive, which is disappointing. There's a very horny serial killer dressed up like a deck of cards, and a nasty little middle-aged man with pungent feet whose evil schemes mostly seem to involve diarrhoea, and a creepy robot full of pins who shape-shifts into one of the heroes' even creepier abusive brother. Give me a proper, sexy villain who I can stan and THEN I suspect I'll suddenly find the plot much easier to follow.
snickfic described it as "aggressively pleasant" but not life-altering, which I think is very accurate, but it won extra points with me because I am pretty much exactly the target demographic: bookish, bisexual younger Millenial women who formed a key part of their identity around Harry Potter but have since become conscious of flaws in the worldbuilding and grown to identify more with the adult characters than the kids. The Incandescent is about a teacher at a modern day magical boarding school who must battle the demonic forces threatening to devour her students while balancing her ordinary administrative obligations and her rather stunted personal/romantic life. It is drily witty, relatable to anyone who regularly deals with kids, and extremely fun if you're the kind of person who finds fantasy-flavoured bureaucratic tedium fun. Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: an examination of which animals we consider to be pests, how different animals have gained and lost the label in various times or places, and how rooted the very concept of a "pest" is in our own species' urge to exert control over our natural environment. Essentially, a pest is any creature with the temerity to exist where we don't want it, and our disdain for pests - not just a pragmatic need to preserve our grain stores, but a vicious, morally tinged desire for their total eradication - is tied to the Western imperialist mindset, to industrialisation, urbanisation, and an internalised sense of righteous dominion over nature itself. This was an enjoyable and informative read, though as someone who already keeps rats as beloved pets, I was disappointed by the author's choice to focus on more "palatable" pests and exclude invertebrates entirely. I was rather hoping she'd challenge me on my personal yearning for a worldwide cockroach extinction event. It deserves to be challenged, but I don't know how to do it myself - the kneejerk is too strong.
Thunderbolts* is the "just one more, for old time's sake" MCU movie I thought I was never actually going to watch. But I enjoyed it! Yelena, still mourning her sister's death, reluctantly partners with a squad of mediocre not-really-heroes to defeat a threat that even in-universe is very clearly more about mental health than superpowers. I appreciated that this one wasn't trying to escalate the stakes from prior films or convince us that it was an important part of some massive unfolding multiverse apocalypse; it was humans dealing with regular, relatable human shit, with the capes and telekinesis mostly just there for the aesthetic. It wasn't enough to resurrect my dead interest in the MCU as a fandom but I don't regret watching it.
Hunter x Hunter is more my husband's thing than mine, but it's so rare for him to get consumingly obsessed with a piece of media that I'm happy to be along for the ride! He's rewatching episodes. Listening to podcasts. That never happens.
Anyway, if you don't already know what this anime is about, I'm not sure I'm in a position to help yet - it's shonen fighting with your typical ill-defined superhuman powers? A plucky kid is on a quest to become a hunter and track down his absentee father? He's winning hearts and minds along the way? It's silly and fun and reminds me of the old days binge-watching Bleach, I guess mostly because it's from around the same era and aimed at the same demographic. I like the main characters but so far I'm finding the antagonists pretty much all uniformly repulsive, which is disappointing. There's a very horny serial killer dressed up like a deck of cards, and a nasty little middle-aged man with pungent feet whose evil schemes mostly seem to involve diarrhoea, and a creepy robot full of pins who shape-shifts into one of the heroes' even creepier abusive brother. Give me a proper, sexy villain who I can stan and THEN I suspect I'll suddenly find the plot much easier to follow.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 07:55 am (UTC)I vaguely remember Hunter X Hunter from my formative youth days as well! It was here first published in a monthly magazine (called "Banzai!", proper Japanese-style, haha) along with series like Shaman King (which I liked better) and Naruto (I lost interest here quickly).
Give me a proper, sexy villain who I can stan and THEN I suspect I'll suddenly find the plot much easier to follow. - This!! I guess that's why I had to switch to series targeting girl audience. 🤣
no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 10:28 am (UTC)I lost interest quickly in Naruto, too. It was ALL THE RAGE when I was in high school - our resident weebs used to spend their lunchtimes sprinting around the quad with their arms flapping behind them, which to their credit was more exercise than the rest of us nerds were getting - but it never really landed with me. I might have liked Hunter x Hunter better if I’d heard of it, though the lack of attractive villains would still have been a problem. I’ve always loved a good sexy villain.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 11:24 am (UTC)Haha, your resident weebs' pastime sounds excellent!! Did you read manga back then, and if yes, what were your favourites?
no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 04:13 pm (UTC)To be honest, manga in general never really stuck with me until after high school - I know I tried a handful of things (Fruits Basket was another one that was wildly popular among my peers) but at that point in my life I was a horrid faux-intellectual creature who thought reading doorstopper fantasy and classic gothic literature made her a culturally superior kind of nerd. Then in my early twenties I was humbled (and greatly improved, tbh) by falling into an intense obsession with Bleach, a couple of years after all the other animanga fans stopped considering it in any way cool. It’s still not my go-to form of media (I think in my heart I’ll always prefer written word with no pictures) but the whole door of the format is at least open to me now!
(I still think Naruto is boring, though.)
no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 06:30 pm (UTC)I'm sorry you came late to the Bleach party, what a bummer. Hopefully that didn't twart your enjoyment! I thing we're around the same age (born in '85), so yeah, I was also too late for that show. ;)
BUT in case you're still open to the very best series ever (manga, mind, not so much the anime, there is so much flair and atmosphere lost; and I haven't seen the movie adaption so far, although it's from Takashi Miike!), I'd like to recommend Blade of the Immortal to you: author Samura Hiroaki has such a superior style, I haven't seen anything more gorgeous ever. Unusual perspectives, intimate details, OTT weapons and totally nuts villains (some hot, some half-villains, some beyond redemption), morally ambiguous protagonists and their sidekicks. And all the ladies are 100% perfect! I'm still in love this thing. 🤩 You're welcome to just google the title + pages or something to get a good picture. Maybe your local library can provide you something to put your nose into. :D (Plus: there is some SCORCHING fanfic out there for my favourite pair of villains, it transcends time and space!!)
no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 04:02 pm (UTC)(I’ve just hit that point myself with another book Ninefox Gambit, which I’ve read about 1/5th of and is now due back and non-renewable. I was actually really LIKING it, but the worldbuilding is very opaque and right now that kind of brainpower just isn’t happening for me. Sometimes the library loan system forces us to confront small truths about our reading plans lol.)
no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-24 04:06 pm (UTC)