roadrunnertwice | Bookpost: The Witch Boy, Prime Meridian, Beglitched, some re-reads

I’m posting this from mobile just to revel in the entry page not being blown-out and zoomy anymore, yayyyyy. Maybe more about that later. For now:

Molly Knox Ostertag — The Witch Boy (comics)

Feb 19

Whoa, this was superb! Excellent and very expressive art, tight plotting, solid dialogue, A+.

It also had a keenly observant eye for a certain distinctive type of Thing one gets as an AMAB kid who just finds Girl Stuff better and more interesting than the masculine nonsense people keep demanding. Particularly the variants that crop up in otherwise benign and supportive environments, and particularly the sub-variants that crop up in otherwise feminist spaces.

Anyway, this impressed me on a bunch of levels.

Molly Knox Ostertag — The Hidden Witch (comics)

Mar 24

But this one was uneven.

Stuff I loved:

Aster and Charlie’s friendship. What a good set of buds.
The way Ariel didn’t see any conflict between sending A SPECTRAL MANIFESTATION OF MISCHIEF after someone and honestly courting them as a friend. That was so 100% real. Kids are the worst!
Even though they’ve collectively agreed to teach him, the teachers don’t all suddenly fully accept Aster now, and a couple of them still kind of act like shitty kids to him. Also super real!!
Sedge being fuckin traumatized about getting mutated and not wanting to shapeshift, and not feeling comfortable about going to anyone except Aster about it. That was... maybe let’s call it “faster than real,” but it worked.

Stuff I was not ok with:

MIKASI.

Conveniently disposing of Mikasi via heroic self-sacrifice was lazy and dishonest, and it undermined so much of what was good about this book and the first one. The established mechanics of how magic works in this setting didn’t demand it. And it dropped what could have been a nuanced consideration of how to move forward from a history of loneliness, and from a justified rage that’s permanently entangled with the unjustifiable wrongs you’ve committed, in favor of a kinda shitty can’t-fix-what’s-broken purity/contamination frame!

And that resolution was also wicked unfair to Ariel! It reduced her shadow to something foreign to be destroyed instead of actions she had to own up to and surpass, and like... ugh, imagine if A Wizard of Earthsea had ended with one of Ged’s friends sacrificing himself to kill the shadow Ged summoned. LIKE THAT.

Mikasi should have stayed a problem indefinitely, trying to be a person instead of a monster and succeeding more and more of the time but not all the time. He should have gotten to teach Aster something that would challenge his self-image and force him to grow beyond himself. The other witches should have had to find their own ways to co-exist with him on the compound. Hell, it even would have been better if he’d sacrificed himself and it didn’t work and they had to try something else. Without Mikasi, Aster’s story is a coin with only one side.

Obviously I wouldn’t be this disappointed in the book if it wasn’t already good enough to get me really invested, but I kind of wish I’d had to return this to the library only 2/3 read, it whiffed the landing that hard.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia — Prime Meridian

March 17

I can’t decide whether this was good or not. I do know I didn’t like it.

I found Amelia pretty repellent. Some of that was the good kind of repellent, that “oops, guess that’s a familiar impulse” feel — the passivity and self-loathing and resentment in the face of just being completely economically screwed and socially disrespected, that all felt super real and relatable. But man, she doesn’t enjoy anything! (Like I don’t think she ever even gets entertained during this story, and entertainment is the most minimal possible form of pleasure.) Even if a character spends their whole story miserable, their likes and dislikes are part of who they are, and if half of that is just completely absent, there's not enough person left for me to identify with. Even Amelia's moment of triumph where she gets to go fulfill her lifelong ambition feels like a grim forced march.

I don't think her characterization was unrealistic. Like, I've met people whose humanity has been shaved down like that, and a lot of what the story is about is how the gig economy and accelerating inequality seem to be optimizing the process of alienation and grinding people down to resentful nubs. But I can't love a book that spends its whole length just staring at the result and not blinking.

Bonus Level: Beglitched

Jan ??

This was by the same developer who did Fortune 499 (and the same pixel artist, too), and I really appreciate their approach to looking askew at some familiar mechanic and then really going deep on all the implications and variations that follow from that initial minor change. I've enjoyed both of their games I’ve played, and I’ll have an eye out for new ones.

The combat in this gonzo (and very pink) hacking game was a satisfyingly cracked take on the ol match-3 routine — you’re sort of playing Bejeweled, but only as a means to get objects into position to whomp someone who’s physically hiding behind the game board. The interface was a little cramped on an iPhone SE, but still totally playable. The difficulty curve is a little uneven at times; there was even a joking aside in Fortune 499 about the difficulty spike at Catnet, but on later consideration I felt like Catnet’s toughness was good characterization for Chewie. (Frustrating if it’s a brick wall for you, tho.)

The story was pretty spare, but I kept mulling it over for longer than I thought I would. That core thing about mistaking a superficial shared interest for a deeper personal connection... I haven't been burned as hard by that as the Glitch Witch was, but that sensation is relatable.

Stay dry, Fish Sticker.

William Gibson — Zero History (re-read)

Mar 4

I was in the mood for a soothing re-read. Hold the corprophagia.

Grayson Saunders — The March North and A Succession of Bad Days (re-reads)

Mar 17

I was in the mood for some soothing re-reads.

Graydon Saunders — Safely You Deliver (re-read)

Apr 17

Eventually decided I couldn’t just re-read half of the homeschool kids duology.

Martha Wells — The Murderbot Diaries, vols. 1-4 (re-reads)

May 1-5, read in the wrong order (2,3,1,4)

These are still great! I don't remember why I was initially only going to re-read the second one, but I got sucked in again and just rolled with it.

Bookpost: The Witch Boy, Prime Meridian, Beglitched, some re-reads