Aurora's Sundry Notes

Hey, let's have a recent culture & media round-up since I've actually got stuff to report for, and I feel like posting something! It's also very rainy here, which feels like the appropriate mood for some cultural posting. I think I'll start calling these recent culture round-ups rather than "culture consumed" which stuck to me from some fannish podcast but doesn't really work for me.

Books

Very promisingly, it seems that my reading block might be lifting! Since I last posted about books, I finished The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I also read two novellas: Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather, which is nuns in space and living spaceships and other cool space biology stuff, as well as an f/f subplot, and it was good; and Snowspelled by Stephanie Burgis, which is the first of her alternate historical fantasy of an England where men are mages and women rule politics, because that whole thing with Boudicca and the Romans went rather differently than it did in our universe. It was really enjoyable, a sweet bit of feel-good escapism that still wasn't too fluffy or insubstantial. I really look forward to reading the rest of the series, and the third novella is going to be an f/f romance. This one was m/f romance, but for once it was an m/f pair I totally adored and enjoyed! Yay!

Currently I'm reading Yoon Ha Lee's Dragon Pearl, which is middle-grade space opera science fantasy and it's totally, totally awesome. I'm not even finding it as easy as before to read middle-grade or YA books, but here it all totally works for me, while I'm sure it also works for younger readers and damn would I have liked to have something like this to read when I was a kid. If someone's curious to try Yoon Ha Lee's work but is scared to dip into the Machineries of Empire series for whatever reason, this could be a good one to try!

I've also started reading Justina Ireland's Dread Nation, which is alternate history steampunk-ish historical-fantasy-horror with black girls being badass at killing zombies. I'm not great at reading about zombies without getting squeamish, so this is progressing more slowly than it deserves - the writing is great and the story super engaging. Anyway, this means I'm currently reading about two Very Bad Teenage Girls who it would be a horror to be in any way responsible for. I'm finding this very empowering.

Podcasts

In non-fiction podcasts, I continue to enjoy Exolore's exploration of fictional alien planets and the life that could develop on them. I have listened to other shows as well, but my mind's a bit of a sieve.

In fiction podcasts:
In The Penumbra Podcast, I finished Juno Steel and the Long Way Home (very exciting ending, and I cried a bit at a certain point, and I look forward to the next story but need to be in the right mindset for it) and I also listened to the Second Citadel Story The Spiral Sage, which was awesome. I in particular enjoyed Rilla's speech in the courtroom, hee. *squees a bit* Not saying more here because of spoilers - at some point I should do a proper spoiler-cut post just about the Penumbra. Anyway. This means I've only got two stories of each left before the end of S2 - it's actually in sight! Two Juno stories, each of them two episodes, and two Second Citadel stories, one of them two episodes and the other five (!) episodes, plus a one-episode special for the Second Citadel. Very exciting!

I've started listening to S4 of Wolf 359. Extremely exciting! I've listened the first three full episodes plus the minisode after the first episode. All very intense stuff. I was amused / surprised by Zach Valenti's intro to the season, though, because it turns out there's absolutely no difference between hyper-excited Eiffel and hyper-excited Zach Valenti, at least in how they speak. Heh.

I finished listening to the Far Meridian minisodes, and am now waiting for S3 with queer longing.

Other stuff

I've actually watched some things! I watched the recording of the Globe Theatre's A Midsummer Night's Dream that was available on YouTube for about a week after Midsummer. Then I also watched the National Theatre / Bridge Theatre version of the same. I of course had to watch both just before the time to watch them ran out because I'm like that. But anyway, I enjoyed them both, but found the NT/Bridge Theatre one particularly great, it really did something unique with the play and the characters, and I felt the changes they did worked, and made sense in the context of the production, which is more than you can say for many other reworked productions of classics, and they dealt really well with some aspects of the play that are... rather uncomfortable if you think about them. I was so excited by this experience I might actually get around to watching more of these theatre recordings online as they're available. We'll see! It would be nice. I used to be such a theatre nut, and it's been bothering me that I haven't been able to take advantage of all that's been offered online for free in the past months. Though I do wish I could afford to donate. Maybe later.

I'm wondering if I need to start including a section for gaming... Not that I've got a wide range of games I play, but this year I've started playing a few mobile phone games, mostly for distraction and comfort during stress and bad times. I've been playing too much Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp since I started it a couple of months ago, but it does make me feel good. Anyway, this week I learned about a game called June's Journey, where you play a 1920s lady who ends up having to investigate the suspicious deaths of her sister and brother-in-law. You alternate between solving mystery scenes by finding clues etc. and restoring and building up the fancy estate she's now in charge of. It's extremely pretty and atmospheric, the gameplay is really good and the balance between the different aspects works for me, and the main character looks very Miss Fisher-like, which makes me want to watch some Miss Fisher. I might do some of that next. I'm also mostly managing not to call her Juno instead of June, which I think is very good of me.

A note: sorry I'm taking quite a while replying to all the character meme prompts - I will get to them! Just turns out I'm a bit slow at doing it, and lately I've had a lot of RL things going on. Not in a bad way, just in the "have a lot to do" kind of way.

But let's try to do the culture consumed thingie now! On a Wednesday, too, so it sort of replaces the Reading Wednesday thing which I almost never managed to do on Wednesdays anyway!

Books

Good news - I'm starting to be able to read again! Still slower than I'm used to - or rather, for shorter periods of time, which makes my speed slower overall - but it's not a hardship and doesn't make me tense like mad and I'm able to enjoy it and even lose myself into it for bits of time! This is such a relief, though I still feel vague sense of inferiority when I see other people speed through tons of books or rejoice about the prospect of libraries reopening (I've finished only a few out of the literally dozens of books I have checked out from the library). I know it makes no sense whatsoever to feel bad about it, we all deal with stress and upheaval in different ways, but reading's been tied to my identity and sense of self for so long that this is seriously weird.

I haven't finished anything new yet since the last post, but that's partly because most of my reading time has gone to The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which is a 700-800-900 page brick of a book depending on the edition. (I have it on e-book, which makes it less literally heavy reading.) I've been really loving it. It took me some time to get properly into it - it really got me rolling some time after the 30 % mark - but I don't know if that has anything to do with the book itself or if it's only because I was trying to read too many books with return-by deadlines at the same time, and then my reading crisis started.

But anyway, I'm really loving this chance to read a sweeping epic fantasy that's really female-centric and also super queer. And I just read a positively swoon-worthy chapter...

I'm also reading the Finnish YA fantasy book I probably mentioned in my last post. It's been going okay, though I feel like I'm not in as much of a YA reading mindset as I used to be. Enjoying the chance to read well-written fiction in my own language, though. I've also been reading some non-fiction about space, For Reasons.

Podcasts

In drama podcasts, the most attention-consuming has been Wolf 359. I first finished listening to the mid-S3 minisodes - one of which gave me a terrible trash ship, meep. Then I went rather quickly through the second half of S3, which was hella intense and, at certain points, devastating. And of course once again ended on a note that makes me want to know WTF is going on, but I am going to need a breather before I proceed to the fourth (and final) season. But I'm pretty solidly a fan of the show by now, even if it sometimes likes trampling on the pieces of my tiny fragile heart.

On more comforting note, I've sped through my re-listen of S1 of The Strange Case of the Starship Iris. Am in the middle of listening to episode 7. I've been re-listening to the Far Meridian more slowly, because this part (early S2) is pretty intense stuff emotionally. On the first time around I went through the first half of S2 really quickly because I needed to see if Peri got reunited with (*SPOILER REDACTED*) but now that I know what's going to happen anyway, I've been taking the time with the relationships she's going going on in this point.

With the Penumbra Podcast, I've started on Juno Steel and the Monster's Reflection, but it's not the lightest of episodes, so I'm taking care not to go through it too fast. Really intense and good so far, though.

In non-fiction podcasts, my steady weekly ones continue: hrj's Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, Astronomy Cast by Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay, and whichever of Be the Serpent or Worldbuilding for Masochists is releasing each week. Though I haven't yet listened to this week's Be the Serpent, because I'm currently, excitingly, Actually Not At Home. Saving it for when I am and need to listen to chatter by familiar-sounding people. I've also enjoyed the recent episodes of a Finnish musical theatre podcast I listen to; because theatres are closed for this spring, the hosts decided to spread cheer by asking listeners to send in good things they want to say to people involved in theatre/musicals, whether it's actors, directors, translators, costume and set designers, other fans, etc. And a selection of those things have been read out loud on the show, and it's been super nice and feel-good.

Also, though I've otherwise had to stay away from Doctor Who podcasts for Complicated Feelings About the Finale reasons, I listened to the recent Verity! episode about Doctor Who quarantine houses, and that was very fun and cheerful.

TV & Other media

I've continued watching Gentleman Jack and enjoying it. Though I'm awfully slow - one of the reasons I don't often pay for streaming services. It's generally cheaper for me to buy a DVD, but an occasional streaming service for a bit helps me check out new shows. I haven't yet got back to watching His Dark Materials, because I'm not sure how well I'll handle the darkness, but I do want to continue at some point.

I feel kinda bad sometimes that despite the outpouring of free streamings of culture content that has been coming from everywhere, I've barely been able to get myself to watch any of them, other than a couple of brief impro livestreams involving an actor I like. But recently I managed to listen to most of the Finnish National Opera's Great Choir Gala that became available on their video service on the eve of the May Day (I stopped when they reached depressing Finnish opera choir songs - other operas may also have depressing songs, but I understand the Finnish lyrics better even when operatically sung...). And I watched the first act of Mozart - l'Opéra Rock, a French musical about Mozart, which I've seen once before but now have my own copy of the DVD. I meant to watch the whole thing, but started too late and haven't yet got around to continuing. It's very glittery and fabulous, and when I'm done watching I'll have to try to do a fandom promo thing on historium because I've been way too inactive there lately and people should know about this.