Aurora's Sundry Notes

On a positive note, a new mini-episode of The Strange Case of the Starship Iris dropped today! It was lovely and there were some familiar voices!!

Apparently it'll take until autumn before there's a full Season Two. I had... probably heard that but not remembered? Well, at least it means I'll have time to re-listen to Season One first! And read more fanfic. And write fanfic.

If you don't know it and are wondering, The Strange Case of the Starship Iris is this lovely queer space opera with found family feels and rebellion against an evil space government and fabulous characters and one of my favourite f/f ships. I've also seen it described as "Firefly but with real Asians" but I have no idea how accurate this is, other than the "with real Asians" part, because I've never seen Firefly. Yes, my nerd cred is terrible sometimes. I don't care, I'm making my own nerd cred and it involves queer things and rebellious things and podcasts.

I thought I'd try a thing where, in place of the standard Reading Wednesday that goes around, I'd have a general What Culture I Have Been Consuming Lately feature. That'd also get me to handily talk about the podcasts and TV episodes and things like that which I've been into, without needing to have the energy to do a Proper Post about them otherwise. We'll see how this turns out! And I know it's not Wednesday now, hush.

Books

It feels like in the early weeks of the year, I've been reading but not progressing. But recently I got properly back on the reading track again. I've started the year with a couple of f/f romances - Melissa Brayden's Back to September, a contemporary romance, and Olivia Waite's The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, a historical romance with science women. I enjoyed both of them very much. I had some writing-related issues with the latter, but on the other hand it was full of stuff I'm crazy about - f/f, early 19th century history, history of science, women doing science, women supporting one another, and women's crafts. And the writing-related issues didn't keep me from enjoying the story, it's just that it could have been even better if some of those had been fixed. Stuff like pacing - the romance develops a bit too fast for my liking - and some POV issues and overuse of epitheths.

Now I'm just planning to get back to Tasha Suri's Realm of Ash, which I've neglected too long when trying to finish other books, because it's amazing and I want to focus on reading it properly.

Though I feel like I haven't read a lot of books, I have been reading an awful lot of fanfic lately. Especially in the podcast fandoms! Should maybe get into the habit of rec posts.


Podcasts

I've been listening to so many things! I finished The Bright Sessions early this year (other than the post-series specials, which I haven't yet started listening to because I need a breather) and that definitely still needs its own proper post. I love it deeply, though.

There has been more podcast-finishing and podcast-catching up recently. I finished S1 of The Strange Case of the Starship Iris and S2 of Moonbase Theta Out slightly before Christmas, and I think I finished S2 of The Far Meridian in early January. Just recently I finished Midnight Radio, which is a beautiful one-season, ten-episode complete story in 1950s radio show format, with queer women, and I love it so much and find it unfair there's hardly any fic. I should probably write some. And I need to do a proper mini-review or rec post on it so I can get other people to listen to it and talk about it with someone. I already started listening to it again because it's just so lovely.

Recently I started listening to The 12:37, which is a new show involving a time-travelling train and lots of queer folks including an f/f ship, and honest treatment of mental illness. So yeah, lots of things I'm so there for. There's one season out and I already finished it. In probably less than a week? So, so much recommended! Also, it's British, which is a nice change, as most shows are US-made with US actors, and my ears are a bit more comfortable with British accents.

I also started listening to The Pilgrimage Saga, which is a small-cast spacefaring show about a spaceship on a mission to return humanity to the Earth after humans had to flee to another planet when Earth became uninhabitable, and this new planet is already inhabited by aliens. I've listened to five episodes so far, and I find the characters and their interactions delightful, and there seems to be some kind of a plot cooking up and I'm curious about what it'll be. Also, it has gorgeous music.

I've started on S2 of The Penumbra Podcast. Though I'm taking it a bit slow because the Juno Steel stories nearly always find a way to break me a bit. There are more Second Citadel stories in this season, and they're starting to find their voice and are getting delightful. I've recently encountered Sir Damien, Rilla, and Lord Arum, and if anyone who listens to the show is reading, I'm sure they know just how delightful that is. I hope I get around to doing a proper spoiler-cut Penumbra post where I can just ramble and rave about the episodes I've heard lately.

Also, I kind of got going with EOS 10 after all. It turned out that after the first couple of episodes, the alcoholism/addiction content dropped to a level I was okay with (I'm fine with people being messes and having bad ways of dealing with stuff, I just don't like plots being focused on addiction/alcohol). By "I kind of got going" I mean that I've already made it through the first two seasons. In about two weeks. Oops. I think I'm taking a break now before going on to S3. Anyway, I find the characters' relationships delightful, and the quirky humour is mostly starting to find its mark for me. I love the bickering relationship that's grown between Ryan and Dr. Urvidian, and I just love Jane. Jane is fabulous. I also rather love that her name is Jane, because Janes of fiction aren't often badass powerhouses.

Most recently I started listening to Ars Paradoxica. I'd had the first episode saved for a while, and after getting through The 12:37 far too quickly, I decided I needed more time travel shows. I've only listened to one episode, but I really enjoyed it.

I continue listening to S1 of Tides, which is a show about a scientist who lands on an alien planet and explores the life there while trying to get in touch with her spaceship crew again. It feels like a podcast version of Becky Chambers's To Be Taught, If Fortunate; it has that same degree of "OMG isn't life and xenobiology amazing, let's just talk about how weird and fascinating life could be and how weird and fascinating it is even on Earth" and I love it. It's not really something to binge the way some of these other shows, but I listen to roughly one episode per week or thereabouts.

Also, I've already started to re-listen to Kaleidotrope, and am through the first four episodes again. It works excellently as a comfort feel-good listen the second time around, too.

Okay, I went on for so long about the podcast dramas that I'm not even going to mention non-fiction stuff. Maybe I'll do those on occasion, too, if I get around to doing this regularly enough that I don't have a million things to update at once!


TV and films

Most weeks I won't include films in this part, because I'm not a big film watcher, but this time I actually have one! I recently watched Ocean's 8 - had borrowed it on DVD from the library. I'm really bad at watching films, so I hadn't got around to this one either. But it was lots of fun! Loved the characters and the hijinks. Such a breezy fun heist story.

As for TV, I've mostly been watching the newest Doctor Who season, as you maybe can tell. But I also have started a little on S2 of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. That show is so pretty and fun, and usually has the perfect-for-comfort-viewing ratio of gorgeous 1920s outfits, and flirty banter to sleuthing and mysteries. But the end of S1 got kind of dark - the second-last episode creeped me out so much I couldn't continue for months, and when I tried watching the last one, it was too violent for me, so I just read the summary to know where the overarching plot was going. But I seem to do all right with the second season.

Other

I can't often afford going to the theatre these days, and also I don't always have the spoons for it. But last night I got the opportunity to see some theatre for free, so I took it. It was a preview of a new production of Wuthering Heights. It was… very good, in that it was extremely intense and powerful, and it did not romanticise the story. Ever since I actually read the book, I've not been able to understand people who think Wuthering Heights is some kind of great tragic romance. But this one treated it as it should, that is, a story about terrible people being terrible and making each other more terrible in the process. It was extremely powerful as such. On the other hand, it made for really uncomfortable watching seeing as I was recovering from a couple of not-so-great mental health days. The director's style is very powerful, visceral and weird, and I think it's a good match for the story but it was too much for me. I had to look away from the stage sometimes, and it still left me feeling quite dire.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed how they used music in the play, though it was no musical. Also, the actors and visual design were great. But when I got home, I had to spend quite a lot of time eating cheap chocolate and reading fluffy/comforting fanfics before I trusted myself to feel calm and balanced enough to go to sleep. Well, I'm all right now, after sleeping the night. But I think I want to see something fluffier the next time I go to theatre!

ETA: I'm a bit behind on comments once again, sorry about that, and I haven't commented on other people's posts much. My brain hasn't been helpful with that kind of stuff lately - it took me long enough to get this written. But it's still easier to just babble about media I've enjoyed that it is to respond to other people in a way that makes actual sense. I'll try to get there!

Season 12 of Doctor Who will only start airing in Finland on January 9th; we'll get both parts 1 and 2 of Spyfall on that day. I assume after that we'll get the episodes very soon after the UK premiere as we did last year, but I'm not going to see Spyfall part 1 before the 9th. If you think that before that date, you might not manage to avoid posting spoilers without cut-tag, posting spoilery icons or other spoilery stuff that can't be cut, would you please let me know e.g. in comments to this post? I can make myself a spoiler-free filter to read until then. I'm not the sort of person who minds every single spoiler (like, I don't know, generic promotional pictures of the TARDIS team or other people we've already known will be in the episode; basically I've seen the trailers that were published before the first episode aired), but I'd rather not learn big plot details or other major stuff before the first time I see it for myself.

Mind you, I've probably seen one major spoiler (I say probably because I very quickly looked away and didn't exactly dig into it to make sure) and I'll whine about that when I know for sure if it's what I thought it was. But at least I'd rather not get any more, or have that one confirmed before I see the episode. (For the record, I didn't see the possible-spoiler on DW/LJ. So far nobody here has spilled anything that was a problem but it's pretty hard to avoid the entire internet for a week.)

In other fannish matters, I'm sort of planning to take part in snowflake_challenge but I've only begun to write the introduction and am not finished yet. I figure this journal could use a general public intro post anyway, so the timing is good, I've just been tired and not good at getting things done. It's not that easy to write one, especially since I'm always wordy. I don't intend to respond to every challenge, but I'm trying to do a few that inspire me, at least.

In podcast dramas, I started listening to EOS10 today, after hearing a lot of recommendations for it. If there are those among my friends/readers who are further into it - for how long does it continue to focus so heavily on alcoholism and addiction? I listened to the first two episodes, and for fairly short episodes they focused a lot onthat subject, and it's a topic I don't enjoy. I live in a country that has a... very problematic attitude towards alcohol as a culture, and where most of the art and entertainment features drunkenness and alcoholism, while I'm a person who doesn't drink a lot, and doesn't particularly enjoy getting drunk... look, it didn't exactly make social life easy when I was younger. I'm also just plain sick of the topic by now. I don't mind it in moderate amounts (say, the way it's handled in The Bright Sessions), but this feels like much. The podcast sounds well made and I'm always interested in space stories, so I'm willing to power through if it'll soon switch to other topics, but I'd like to know for how long I have to listen to guys talking about alcoholism, because I've kinda done a lot of that just through being born in Finland.

(And I realize alcoholism is a serious mental health problem in itself and there are undoubtedly people who really benefit from it being handled in fiction. It's just that, well, I explained it above already, I've got my reasons.)

To end on a positive note, I think I've finally got my library books problem under control. Not though speed-reading everything at once, but 1) I was able to renew Realm of Ash so I'm no longer in a hurry, 2) I'm just going to buy an ebook of The Priory of the Orange Tree and read it leisurely, and it's easier to hold up that way given it has about 800 pages, and 3) I read a bit of Middlegame and poked around reviews and decided that it's too dark for me at this point, so I returned it to the library. Now I'm just going to read my currently ongoing books without stressing about deadlines for finishing each, and after that I'll take care not to place so many holds anymore.

There'll be a Yuletide post soon, but first I've got to type out some thoughts on another story thing entirely. Because I've been so disorganized lately, I haven't got around to writing much here about how much I've fallen in love with podcast dramas in the past year and especially the past few months, when I've found some really amazing stuff. I've commented on podcastjoy about my discoveries semi-regularly, but nothing much here. In the latest friending meme I've acquired a few more friends/subscribers who are also into podcasts, so at least there are more than one or two people who may know what I'm going on about.

So anyway, I've been meaning to do sort of organized posts about them where I'd rec a few favourite podcasts per post and then do cut-tag posts where I talk spoilery thoughts about specific ones, but I should have realized that's just too coherent and sensible for me. I must brace myself to the fact that I'm just going to occasionally blurt out lots of verbal flailing whenever one of them gives me TOO MANY FEELS. And that's what you're getting now. I am going to start with a bit of a not-really-spoilery introduction before I dive into all the FLAILS OF FEELS. I should note that I'm only capable of doing this because I first did some crocheting, dancing, and chocolate-eating to get myself back together.

Weirdly enough I'm starting about my very latest obsession, rather than one of those I've been listening to for months. The Penumbra Podcast has been on my radar for a while, as it's quite popular and you keep hearing about it if you read about podcast dramas, but I hadn't got around to checking it out yet; recently, on this brilliant Tumblr blog called Podcasts described badly, this podcast got the description "Pick a genre. Now it's gay." Bad description or not, I've rarely encountered a more enticing description of anything. I mean, that's basically my entire philosophy nowadays. I should add that in this context (both for me and the podcast) you need to interpret the word gay as encompassing everything not straight or cis. A preferred version might be "Pick a genre. Now it's queer."

Anyway. Yes. The concept of the podcast is that The Penumbra is a hotel with guests from "everywhere and everywhen" and in various episodes you go into different rooms to get the stories of various people from different universes and genres, which is a handy way of getting several different stories under the same roof. The first season especially contains some stand-alones - I only listened to one of them, a delightful f/f Wild West type of story involving a schoolteacher, a bandit and a bunch of orphans (and one very useless fiancé). The rest of the stand-alones sounded too dark or scary or triggering for me. One of the great things about this show is how meticulous it is about content warnings. But it has two long-running story series. One of them, The Second Citadel, seems to be a somewhat Pratchett-ian Medieval-ish fantasy romp. It only had one two-part story plus short bonus in the first season, and that story was a bit all over the place, but it had a fabulous female knight called Sir Caroline, so I'll be glad to stick around for more adventures.

The other long-running series made up most of the first season and seems to continue to many many more episodes in the second and third seasons - the Juno Steel series. Basically, it's queer space noir set on a future Mars inhabited by humans, full of delightful tropes but super queer. The central character is Juno Steel, a queer space noir detective who is an utterly fabulous and exasperating disaster bisexual - or can I call him bisexual when he's also non-binary? (While Juno goes by he/him pronouns and by Mr Steel, he's occasionally is referred to as a lady, both by himself and at least one person who knows him well, and he's cool with having the name of a goddess; also according to some fanficcers' comments, the creators have confirmed him being nb.) Well, he is a disaster queer in any case. There's also this suave and attractive master thief, and you see where this is going, don't you?

And there are lots of fabulous female characters, and lots of same-sex couples among supporting/guest characters. Juno has an extremely bubbly and frothy secretary/assistant who seems really flighty until she needs to be super capable and rock the world and she does that. I love her. When she gets asked about her preferences in one story, as in men or women, the only coherent answer she manages to give is "I ain't choosy". And there are all sorts of people with fascinating stories, and sometimes emotionally pretty hard but also brilliant stuff, and you really should give it a try unless some of the content warnings get you. (It isn't super dark - I could deal with it and I'm really sensitive, though admittedly I had to take one story very carefully - but the genre brings a certain amount of violence with it, Juno is pretty gun-happy as your space noir detectives are, and there are some distressing goings-on in some stories. But as I said, they're careful with content warnings.)

Anyway, the rest of this is going to be me flailing about Juno Steel and Season 1 with spoilers, so don't read below the cut if you haven't listened to this but want to (or have started but aren't done with S1).


( The Penumbra Podcast: Juno Steel, S1 with SPOILERS and CAPS LOCK ABUSE )