A horror fanatic gets caught up in a realistic horror film experience – basically becoming the protagonist of about six different horror films, having to use all his knowledge to survive. This is a deeply unlikeable protagonist, for whom it is difficult to summon symptoathy for his trials and tribulations... and eventual outcome.
I guess if you really liked Ready Player One, and a certain flavour of American horror films (Final Destination, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), then you'd like this. Unfortunately, I didn't.
The first in a whole franchise. Summer camp slasher flick, where the unremarkable main character gets bullied by The Popular Girls. Plenty of setups which show you the payback almost immediately. This is not a good movie, mind you. Worse so given the dramatic reveal, right at the end, of the transfem protagonist?! With absolutely zero buildup!
Cornish folklore turns surreal. A lone volunteer tasked with making wildlife observations of a rare flower starts losing her grip onf realitiy. Remember that 15th Doctor episode 73 Yards? Yeah. Like that, but Cornish instead of Welsh. Bit of claustrophobia/agoraphobia. Body horror features amongst a carousel of disjointed images.
If this was aligned with a Magnus Archives fear entity, it'd be The Lonely.
Call the Midwife (TV series) (sorry cheesy I know but very conscientiously focused around women)
Kamome Diner (2006 film) – does this count? slow-moving film about a Japanese woman who starts a cafe in a Finnish town
Derry Girls (TV series) – I don't think there are any particular boyfriend plots; much more about these girls (and one guy) growing up
The Makanai (TV series) – about a group of girls training to be geisha
Enola Holmes?
Horror
T Blockers (2023 film) – queer trans zombie horror
Camp Damascus, Chuck Tingle – more along the Fox Mulder Nice Boyfriend
Fantasy
Discworld esp Witches arc – Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Sourcery... or Tiffany Aching arc – A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight
Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger – the male main character isn't a fucko boyfriend
Legends and Lattes, Travis Baldree – no particular romance/boyfriend storyline
A Natural History of Dragons, Marie Brennan – again Fox Mulder Nice Boyfriend-type husband character
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.