October 2024 Media Recap

[tullycat]

Posting this to distract myself from the election yayyy.


Books

• Fevered Star, by Rebecca Roanhorse
  • Book 2 in the Between Earth and Sky series. I really enjoyed Black Sun when I read it last year, but Fevered Star was such a book 2 for me. It didn't really go anywhere.
• Mirrored Heavens, by Rebecca Roanhorse
  • Book 3 in the series. This was honestly a let down...once again it felt like a book 2, but worse, it was 600 pages. So many things happened for no reason, so many plotlines dropped or had no consequences, the central conflict set up in book 1 I guess was resolved in book 2 because we barely saw it here. There were two main romances in the book and I was absolutely not convinced by one of them - they spent all of book 2 and most of book 3 apart. The other romance was queer but ended umm unhappily and never had an on screen sex scene - which would be fine, if the other romance hadn't gotten one. One of the characters in the queer romance is nonbinary and it did just feel....weird the way this romance was treated compared to the other. ESPECIALLY since in the straight romance, the woman is raised in a lesbian society and basically comes out as straight to her mom okay I'm annoyed again. In general I really thought these last two books were a mess and I wish the first book had been a stand alone.
• Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
  • After watching the movie and the show, I finally read the book with pop. Maybe this is sacrilege, but I do think the show improved on the book a lot. We spend so much time in Louis's head in the book and he is quite emo, so I found these parts more of a drag to get through. Also the more I learn about Anne Rice the more I'm like damn she really was just writing for herself which is aspirational tbh.
• Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell
  • A shapeshifting wyrm named Shesheshen is awakened from hibernation by hunters trying to kill her. She flees and runs into Homily, who becomes her girlfriend. Except Shesheshen soon learns Homily is from the family that's trying to kill her. So based on my reading preferences and that description, I feel like i should've hated this book but somehow I did not. It was cutesy in a way that didn't annoy me. I thought the plot made sense and wrapped itself up nicely. There was a plothole that bugged me - how did Shesheshen manage to continue looking human while Homily was taking care of her after being injured? - but overall it was cute. Homily is written explicitly as a fat character and the book is written positively towards Homily, but I am curious to see if it landed for other reader since I didn't see much mention of it in Goodreads reviews (maybe that's a yes?).
• My Darling Dreadful Thing, by Johanna van Veen
  • Roos, a young woman with a spirit companion, is taken in by Agnes, an older woman who also has a spirit companion, though Agnes and the house are haunted by more than the spirits. This book kind of hit the same spot as Mexican Gothic for me (though I liked Mexican Gothic better), but it had the same feeling of 'this author knows what genre they are writing.' The author and characters explicitly mention The Turn of the Screw, which I haven't read, but based on the summary seems like a fairly accurate inspiration. The book is asking whether the supernatural is happening or if Roos is just a crazy woman. The book set in the Netherlands in the 1950's and Agnes is a woman of color, which is a new and appreciated combination of settings/characters for me. And it's explicitly sapphic, yay, though I found myself wishing it were more horny? Maybe that was just me.

Music

• Artists
  
  • The Boyz (261)
  • Seventeen (125)
  • Kiss of Life (84)
  • Ateez (65)
  • Billlie (60)
• Tracks
  • Bite Back, The Boyz (33)
  • bAd, Trigger, The Boyz (31)
  • Slip Away, The Boyz (30)
  • Re-Wind, The Boyz (29)
  • They See Me Dream, The Boyz (28)
  • Eyes on You, Seventeen (15)
  • 1 to 13, Seventeen (14)
  • Candy, Seventeen (14)
  • Love, Money, Fame, Seventeen (the uh carat edited version without DJK lol) (14)
• Albums
  • Trigger, The Boyz (182)
  • Lose Yourself, Kiss of Life (82)
  • Spill the Feels, Seventeen (76)
  • Golden Hour : Part.1, Ateez (58)
  • Of All We Have Lost, Billlie (52)

Golden Hour has finally been dethroned omg. Trigger, Lose Yourself, and Of All We Have Lost are all great. Spill the Feels was...mid unfortunately.

Concerts

DPR (Artic, Cream, and Ian)

• I was not prepared for how packed this venue would be omg. The sides of the venue cut off a lot of the sightlines so my view once DPR Ian came out was basically nonexistent. But it's fine - at one point confetti came out and I had a feeling of like 'oh I have no emotional investment in this' /pos. It's nice actually to go to shows on a whim and have no post concert depression when you get home. However, I wish I had been able to see his staging better, simply because I've heard he does a lot with a little.

DKB

• Another group I went to not really knowing because a friend wanted to. I took the seat with the worse view so she could see better so once again I was simply vibing. They had a couple songs that I told my friend I was enjoying and my concert biases were E-Chan, D1, and Yuku. However I haven't done anything with them since the concert so.

Fic

• I posted a kyuhak Hakoween fic! I cannot resist running a lil fest apparently...thank you to everyone who participated <3
• My word count for Oct was 10.8k, very solid.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

Thank you for reading the Roanhorse series so I can now decide ok I never will.

I think there are some diehard book canon fans in IWTV fandom but tbh that has always been one of the more divisive books. I like the book but agree with you, I think the tv adaptation is so brilliant.

HAKOWEEN!!! Our fave little guy...

[tullycat]

I didn't dislike the book, but perhaps I should've read the book before the show so the show wouldn't have completely overshadowed it....oh well!