Cadence Eastman – privileged and somewhat sheltered – spends every summer at an island villa with friends of a similar background. She finds love in the form of Gat: idealistic, and very much the only Brown kid in all of this, certainly the only one who gets any lines at all. It's all great until she turns 15. All she knows is that something happened, but she doesn't remember any of it and everyone is determined to hide it from her. Whatever it was, it leaves her with debilitating migraines and residual neurology, which changes the course of the rest of her life.
It makes a weak attempt to say something about intersectionality – in that Cadence's disability and chronic pain doesn't make her automatically an expert in every hardship – as Gat points out repeatedly. But ultimately it takes a while to get to the point, and although it isn't the point but Cady isn't brilliantly likeable. This is a sort of coming of age story in reverse, I guess.
It suffers from a writing style that favours sentence fragments and what starts as pithy short sentences. This strikes this reader as being more dramatic and coy for the sake of it rather than any genuine atmosphere.
There was not much of a journey to Discover The Truth either, which I expected to be the focus – there was little effort required on Cady's behalf. Not very satisfying, given I am usually a fan of this kind of narrative.
it's guilty because its premise is awful. a British detective inspector joins a Caribbean island police team for a few seasons at a time, with hijinks.
at first, most of the inspectors (by and large, up until the latest season, white British men) struck me as neurodivergent coded; Humphrey Goodman for example could well personify unmedicated ADHD; Neville Parker, autism, perhaps. but I realised that – really – all the inspectors are just written as “weird outsiders”.
many of them have poor social skills and/or strike the rest of the (painfully neurotypical) team as weird, erratic, rude, or awkward. many of them have beloved routines they carry over from the UK which they insist on bringing to Saint Marie, and their story arc always involves some level of compromise – some adaptation to a place they have to consciously accept as a new home.
and equally their weirdness comes with a preternatural gift for observation, attention to small details, their ability to make connections and spot patterns – all traits commonly described with autistic and ADHD worldviews.
in each of these arcs, their outsider status pushes them to an overseas outpost – but is also what makes them exceptional. and excepting the colonialism and the whole... cop show schtick, is a rather hopeful message, all things considered.
These follow the format COMPOSER'S SURNAME – PIECE TITLE – SUBSECTION (if applicable) for ease of Internet searching. Basically I'm hoping plugging in each line with “easy piano” will get you a video and sheet music.
This list is arranged in roughly time order of when they were composed.
JS Bach – Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 – Prelude 1
JS Bach – Minuet in G major (BWV Anh.114) (super short, you might have heard this one before)
Mozart – Piano Sonata No.16 in C major, K.545
Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata (the 1st movement is the most well known but 3rd, while more difficult, is a banger imo)
Beethoven – Sonata Op 49 no. 1
Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition (it's a series of short pieces; Promenade would be a good one to start)
Grieg – Peer Gynt Suite – Morning Mood (again all the pieces are v tuneful)
I finally got Stardew Valley this year. Which is about right, it seems I only play games a decade after they're released... but in a shockingly short time I've spent over 300 hours playing it.
Unsurprisingly it features the dramatically-named “dark patterns” (https://www.darkpattern.games/pattern/4/psychological-dark-patterns.html) – features that incentivise playing on and on and on... I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing necessarily. But if you are anything like me and you get caught up easily in things, flow state or no, then it's worth being aware of...
It starts when Rachel's therapist challenges her to set boundaries with her mother – no communication for 90 days – her mother who shaped her own view of her body and fatness; nudged her over the years into a life defined by calorie restriction
It essentially skirts around this orthorexia without calling it an eating disorder, but fittingly the story embraces queerness and a delight in the female body. Rachel's initial self-loathing evolves into rejoicing in eating and food: there is a lovely dinner scene with lush descriptions of Jewish home cooking.
Lots of themes of family, faith and romance/lust
ymmv, but I found the sexual fantasies quite heavy-handed
bittersweet ending. No tragic lesbians here, but it's not a happy ever after either.
Once again I've moved @cityexplorerbot around. First it wa the Twitter API kicking all the bots out, then it was botsin.space becoming too unwieldy to run. On hindsight, I guess it wasn't surprising that an instance populated by mostly bots was going to take up loads of server space.
Nonetheless, it is fitting that a bot about explorations should move around from time to time.
In which Olivia Colman gets to swear colourfully and fluently.
It's respectability politics. It's slightly romanticised small-town politics and malignant gossip. It's white woman tears, weaponised, and a whole “cycle of abuse” storyline.
This was quite fun to watch, and had a decently satisfying ending.
I didn't initially realise that this was part of a series of Branagh-directed Poirot films. It's an atmospheric, creepy murder mystery. Set mostly in a country house, like locked-room-style Poirot stories, it almost feels claustrophobic, and it could probably be set anywhere, not specific to Venice. The story is interesting enough though: a murder in the framing of a ghost story; post-war memories; strong characters.
Speaking of aesthetic, Branagh's moustache is impressive.
Heartwarming, warm fuzzy story about a white man helicoptered in to save the struggling football team of American Samoa.
It's basically a found family narrative, but we don't really get much development on anyone beyond the captain, Jaiyah (Kaimana), and the aforementioned white coach, Thomas Jongen (Michael Fassbender).
The general gist is: Sports as a way to unite a scrappy team, and finding redemption in family/community. Although, yes, the team was already quite tight-knit and devoted to each other, it was more a matter of letting this stranger in. The religiosity of the tight-knit community is sometimes played for laughs, but is actually generally sincere.
The captain, Jaiyah Saelua, is fa'afafine/third gender [1], and her storyline reads like a trans story for cishet comfort in some senses, although there is some good about it. Bearing in mind that I'm writing this being cis:
* the film discusses medical and surgical transition openly, mostly in a positive to neutral way
* her team is consistently supportive and never misgenders her
* Jaiyah is valued as a independent, beloved leader in her team and community – this is explicitly said by the coach
* the coach does, initially, as a way of exerting control
* Jaiyah stops taking HRT temporarily in preparation for a big match, and dysphoria gives her a crisis of confidence. She is... successfully hyped up by the coach, and it's never mentioned after that.
* some ambiguous talk about “still qualifying for the men's team” which I think is referring to surgical transition as “the last step”?
* of course the story is more focused on the “white man with issues” storyline
I would definitely refer to the linked interview with Jaiyah for more – it's well worth reading/watching.
My first real audiobook experience (not quite counting Good Omens, because at that point I'd read the book several times, watched the TV adaptation and circled round to the audiobook to listen more to David Tennant and Michael Sheen's narration).
Cosmic horror in Jim Crow-era America.
Horror-level stakes (fate of the universe, and so on) mixed with the real-life stakes of racist institutions and police.
Cutting commentary.
Also, good fantasy. Enjoyed it.