Stardew Valley and The Expanse

[enemyofperfect]

Hello, Dreamwidth. I seem to be having trouble keeping up with you lately. Everything is more or less fine in my own tiny corner of the world, there's no emergency that's been keeping me away, it's just... really sad knowing how much isn't fine, and isn't going to be fine any time soon.

But have some Wednesday things.

READ

I actually read a few different Adoribull fics by venndaai, and they were all great, but my favorite was probably maraas kata, which follows Bull as he heads back into Seheron because he can't (won't) let Dorian go alone. Plenty of warnings in the tags, as you might expect. I really liked the way it depicted his PTSD.

Apparently it left me wanting Dorian whump, though, so I went and found Ultima Ratio, in which Dorian's father, after failing to rewrite his orientation with blood magic, went on to rape him. (Additional content note for the possible death of an unnamed character whose blood powered the spell.) I wish I could check out the author's other work, but I don't even know if there is any, because they're anonymous! But at least I can happily rec it to anyone whose tastes in angst overlap with mine.

Bitter by Mr_Customs_Man, meanwhile, explores a similar scenario, but with the twist that Dorian's father also used magic reshape Dorian's body so it looks and functions like a cis woman's. Dysphoria, dissociation, and childbirth, but certainly not motherhood. The title suits it very well.

I also enjoyed the Witcher longfic Meet Death Sitting by bomberqueen17, as well as some of its sequels. It takes place after the Netflix series, I think? It's got the tiredest, most resignedly altruistic Jaskier, and eventually some Jaskier/Geralt, and a really lovely brave Ciri, and also a sequel where Yennefer sort of dubcons Jaskier (just, not in a way he seems to greatly mind?) into letting her peg him and it's incredibly hot. It's so hard waiting to read the installments that are still in progress! But I've been brave so far!

Also, this ficlet about Finch and Reese and a pomeranian puppy by argylepiratewd for sholio's Happy Distracting Comment Fest is incredibly adorable, with spot on character voice, and I love it. ♥

PLAYED

Mostly Stardew Valley these past couple of weeks!  My astonishingly gullible vestibular system apparently finds the charming pixel art so convincing that it gives me motion sickness if I spend too much time walking around in the game, but I get really invested in these fetch quests, so I do my best.

It's funny, because when I first picked up this game a couple of years ago I had no opinion on any of the love interests, and that's still nearly true -- but somehow since coming back to it this month, I've grown wistful about Robin and Demetrius not being romanceable in a polyamorous fashion.  This is so completely on brand for me.

WATCHED

The Expanse through the entire first season! I really wasn't sure I was going to like it after the first episode, given that I was hard pressed to identify any characters who weren't morally compromised and it wrapped up with a woman being fridged, when neither of those are really my kind of thing. But I actually ended up really glad we kept watching it! There's actual plot that actually kind of holds together, the space politics and environments are pretty interesting, and most importantly, there's a character who makes my id extremely happy.

At first, I was completely guilty of writing off Amos as a boring belligerent thug, but he caught my attention in the second episode, when Jim casually assumes that if Amos is loyal to Naomi, it's probably because they're having sex, and Amos is like, you know what, it's fine that you think that little of my judgment, because hell, I'd probably do something foolish like kill you right now if I didn't figure it'd bother Naomi. It's fantastic. He shuts Jim's attempt at toxically masculine bonding down so hard!

And he goes on to be not just amazingly, ruthlessly, and unquestionably platonically devoted to Naomi, but also shockingly decent to sex workers, which is a really nice change from some other science fiction characters I could mention, even in this same show. I don't want to make Amos out to be some kind of saint, because he would very definitely murder a bunch of people to protect what he cares about, but it makes me so happy that he and Naomi are the two characters most commonly tagged on the AO3, okay. That is exactly the way it should be.

As for the rest of the cast... well, I don't like Chrisjen, given the whole torture thing, but she's magnetic when she's at work. And I'm a little sorry Havelock seems to be gone now: he was a privileged baby for sure, but he was really trying, and I liked that.

I wouldn't recommend this show without qualifications -- it's fairly heavy on white dudes, and it's got some mild to moderate sexism going on, in that it's got some genuinely interesting female characters, but the narrative can get kind of weird about them. There are also several applicable content warnings: lots of violence, death, and despair, a scene with some really gross attitudes about sex workers, and a fair bit of body horror. But I've ended up enjoying it, and I'm looking forward to watching more!

Sym-Bionic Titan through episode 1x10, "Lessons in Love". Animal harm warnings for "Tashy 497", but this show really seems to have hit its stride. Octus is so adorable? A teenage girl got to have emotional complexity? I really enjoy things so much more when they aren't just all fight sequences all the time!

Comments

[amovingtarget]

My astonishingly gullible vestibular system apparently finds the charming pixel art so convincing that it gives me motion sickness

I can't with you :')

[enemyofperfect]

Well I can't with my brain, so I guess we're even! Or... something! *flails*