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Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Ben Winters
It's a funny concept and often well executed, that so much of the plot of Sense and Sensibility is driven subtextually by the omnipresence and seriousness of disease in a way that could, until recently, escape a modern audience. In Winters' version, any time disease or death is threatened, Sea Monsters take the place. There's also some extra sea monster stuff to fill things out, giving the whole thing a sort of gothic steampunk feel.
The problem is there is so much unnecessary added racism, a whole subplot with Lady Middleton being a kidnapped island woman forced to marry her captor. I don't know how many times we need to say this, just because they were overtly racist back then doesn't mean we need to imitate their racism now. By the middle third of the book, I was skipping anything that featured Middletons. Which, fair enough, I sometimes do when I read the original book too. :P
Xenotech Rising by Dave Schroeder
A funny, insubstantial SFF romp about a guy who provides tech support for alien wormhole technology. If that basic premise sounds fun to you, you'll enjoy this, but it does not in any way transcend the material.
The Good Fight Season 4
The first two episodes have come out and they are funny and savage and devastating and leave you wanting so much more. Jonathan Coulton's end of Episode 2 Quarantine sing-a-long was beautiful (esp. Audra McDonald stealing the show! <3)
Episode 1 is set in an AU that deviates from the iconic opening shot of Season 1 Episode 1, with Diane processing Donald Trump's victory in the election. In Episode 4 Season 1, we see Diane jubilant as instead Hillary Clinton wins the election. Everything looks great until Diane realizes that with a Democratic woman in the White House, the #metoo movement never got off the blocks, and she is forced to represent Harvey Weinstein as a client. It is everything you expect from The Good Fight, dark humor and moral grey and a soak in the crushing absurdity of the modern news cycle.
Episode 2 returns to more typical Good Fight storytelling, with Julius discovering that being a Trump judge comes with invisible strings and Adrian and Liz coping with the mysteries of Corporate America.
Brooklyn 9-9
The early Halloween Heist episodes have a wonderfully manic energy that I love, but the last few have just been TOO FUCKING MUCH. Too many nested levels of injoke, too many obligatory references even if they're no longer funny.
Grey's Anatomy
The finale was fine, I guess, though it didn't really save the mess that was the Richard/Catherine storyline. How many times to do I need to say this, lampshading a plot problem doesn't make the plot problem go away! There's a throwaway line in the finale about how Catherine's board is unhappy that she bought a hospital to spite her husband, but like, of course they're unhappy, it's one of the most foolish things I've ever heard of. It doesn't make it any less foolish to acknowledge that in universe people also think it was foolish.
What makes it worse for me is rewatching the S9 plotline where they buy the hospital, and seeing the contrast between how seriously they took that storyline back then, and how unseriously they took it htis season. Grey's Anatomy repeats, first as tragedy and then as farce?
Also, I made another vidlet for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
vexercises based on a storyline from early S9.
The Scientists Dr. Yang/ Dr. Thomas
It's a funny concept and often well executed, that so much of the plot of Sense and Sensibility is driven subtextually by the omnipresence and seriousness of disease in a way that could, until recently, escape a modern audience. In Winters' version, any time disease or death is threatened, Sea Monsters take the place. There's also some extra sea monster stuff to fill things out, giving the whole thing a sort of gothic steampunk feel.
The problem is there is so much unnecessary added racism, a whole subplot with Lady Middleton being a kidnapped island woman forced to marry her captor. I don't know how many times we need to say this, just because they were overtly racist back then doesn't mean we need to imitate their racism now. By the middle third of the book, I was skipping anything that featured Middletons. Which, fair enough, I sometimes do when I read the original book too. :P
Xenotech Rising by Dave Schroeder
A funny, insubstantial SFF romp about a guy who provides tech support for alien wormhole technology. If that basic premise sounds fun to you, you'll enjoy this, but it does not in any way transcend the material.
The Good Fight Season 4
The first two episodes have come out and they are funny and savage and devastating and leave you wanting so much more. Jonathan Coulton's end of Episode 2 Quarantine sing-a-long was beautiful (esp. Audra McDonald stealing the show! <3)
Episode 1 is set in an AU that deviates from the iconic opening shot of Season 1 Episode 1, with Diane processing Donald Trump's victory in the election. In Episode 4 Season 1, we see Diane jubilant as instead Hillary Clinton wins the election. Everything looks great until Diane realizes that with a Democratic woman in the White House, the #metoo movement never got off the blocks, and she is forced to represent Harvey Weinstein as a client. It is everything you expect from The Good Fight, dark humor and moral grey and a soak in the crushing absurdity of the modern news cycle.
Episode 2 returns to more typical Good Fight storytelling, with Julius discovering that being a Trump judge comes with invisible strings and Adrian and Liz coping with the mysteries of Corporate America.
Brooklyn 9-9
The early Halloween Heist episodes have a wonderfully manic energy that I love, but the last few have just been TOO FUCKING MUCH. Too many nested levels of injoke, too many obligatory references even if they're no longer funny.
Grey's Anatomy
The finale was fine, I guess, though it didn't really save the mess that was the Richard/Catherine storyline. How many times to do I need to say this, lampshading a plot problem doesn't make the plot problem go away! There's a throwaway line in the finale about how Catherine's board is unhappy that she bought a hospital to spite her husband, but like, of course they're unhappy, it's one of the most foolish things I've ever heard of. It doesn't make it any less foolish to acknowledge that in universe people also think it was foolish.
What makes it worse for me is rewatching the S9 plotline where they buy the hospital, and seeing the contrast between how seriously they took that storyline back then, and how unseriously they took it htis season. Grey's Anatomy repeats, first as tragedy and then as farce?
Also, I made another vidlet for
vexercises based on a storyline from early S9.The Scientists Dr. Yang/ Dr. Thomas