#short reviews

[sealwithfeels]

Spring 2023 Anime Wrap-up

Didn't watch a huge number of anime this season, but enough to have some short reviews, plus some fanart. Some spoilers for Witch From Mercury.

Heavenly Delusion (Tengoku Daimakyou) - the standout of the season, definitely the best of the shows I watched in Spring 2023. Fascinating world thats revealed naturally, characters that feel really and have a great dynamic, slowly unfolding mysteries, excellent animation that even messes with style a bit. Heavy content warnings though, deals with some heavy stuff, in a way I'm not sure I've decided how I feel about it yet. Hoping there will be another season to adapt more. Feels kinda like a combination of The Last Of Us, Made In Abyss and Shinsekai Yori so it was kind of inevitable I'd be into this.

Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) S2: Swordsmith Village arc - great animation, pretty fun, but otherwise standard battle shounen. Still enjoyed it. Though the supporting cast are much more likeable than the Entertainment District arc, the fights felt much more messy, and villains not as cool or interesting. Mitsuri deserved more spotlight though, they did her dirty.

Gundam: Witch From Mercury S2 - such mixed feelings here, as a lot of it is good enjoyable stuff, but then there's also so much blegh. Some interesting characters and conflicts dragged down by a bizarre obsession with focusing on things that don't matter in the end. Really needed to either have a third season do the concepts justice, or to have cut them entirely and focus on what mattered. Guel and Miorine continue to be the best, and Prospera steals the show as a villain. The ending was lackluster, with sudden third faction distracting from the core conflict of the show, sudden asspull power-up to defeat the threat, and generally killing the conflicts and plot threads in a very sudden and rushed way. Suletta and Miorine got married, so there's that, but they didn't kiss and their relationship got shoved to the side in the latter half, so the shipper in me is annoyed.

The Marginal Service - dropped, and the less said about this the better. Just kinda incompetent and boring tbh.

Oshi no Ko- the big hype machine. Absurd but attention-grabbing premise and a memorable first episode, but kinda peters out afterwards. I do think I'd have gotten more out of it if I was into the aspects of the entertainment industry it covered. Aqua was rather boring as a main character, and it was baffling that he had all these girls fawning over him, but it could have been worse. Kinda wish they ditched Aqua and had the whole show about Kana and Akane's acting rivalry instead. Lots ups and downs by episode, never really amazing but far from bad either. Solidly enjoyable, but far from living up to the hype.

[allys-diary]

books i finished: q1 2023

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne – 3.75/5

"You're always beautiful." "I always want you with me

It honestly baffles me the sheer hatred I see toward this book on TikTok. Personally as someone that begins to stew when the slow burn is burning a little too slow I do feel like this could have been shorter and we could have done with one or two scenes less of these two at each other's throats, as well as a little less of Danny. But as soon as they reached the wedding the pace picked up at a rate that I was definitely feeling a lot more.

Now here's the thing…I went into this under the notion that there was going to be some ✨spice✨ and…maybe like 0.5 out of 5 on the spice meter. I've read fanfiction with more spice. I've written fanfiction with more spice. And maybe that's on me because I was holding this up to the expectations of what I'm seeing in the smut section of the fan fiction community, but yeah…the smut wasn't smutting as hard as I thought it was going to.

And the last thing I'm going to say about this: Would have been a solid 4 stars if the epilogue was included in the published version instead of just posted on Tumblr.

Alpha's Mate by Leah Brooke – 2.5/5

I really don't have any strong opinions about this. It was on my TBR from years back, I read it, I didn't see the twist at the end for who was trying to kill Lacey so I gave the 0.5 star bump for that. The smut was like a good 1.5 out of 5. The pacing was fine. But really? Nothing stood out to me.

That's all I have for q1. It's shameful I know, but here's hoping that I can actually read a little bit more throughout q2 and actually chip away at my TBR at a semi-steady pace because boi howdy that list is turning into a behemoth real quick--

[signourneybooks]

Pocket Reviews 2024 | Part 6

Nearing the end of 2023 I discussed the idea of mini reviews with Jenna from Falling Letters. I read so much and don’t always have the time nor enough opinions to write a whole review on them. But it also feels like a shame not to adress them at all. So now this new feature is born in which I will share mini reviews of all the other books that I read throughout the year. These might be…

[loveelizabeths]

love elizabeth s.

[expendablemudge]

The Pearl-Rule Report for September 2023

It's the last Sunday of the month...time for a few short #BookReviews! Each month I do a few @Nancy_Pearl-inspired explanations of unenjoyed books; a few @NathanBurgoine-inspired quick takes on enjoyed ones. This month's crop: https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/2023/09/september-2023s-burgoine-reviews-pearl.html…

[mylifeincinema]

My Week in Reviews: April 30, 2023

Only two this week...

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan, 2018)

A visually arresting, excruciatingly overlong, insufferable bore of a film. I'm not even interested enough in my dreams to spend 138-minutes with them. - 3/10

God’s Country (Julian Higgins, 2022)

Almost completely lost me because of the exceedingly stupid decisions Thandiwe Newton's character makes throughout. And then there's the fact that every single other character in the film is tissue thin. But, the former of those at least makes sense thematically, Thandiwe Newton is quite good and the ending was satisfying, so I'm not entirely unhappy that I watched it. - 4.5/10

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Brave Little Toaster

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The AI bubble is the new crypto bubble: you can tell because the same people are behind it, and they're doing the same thing with AI as they did with crypto – trying desperately to find a use case to cram it into, despite the yawning indifference and outright hostility of the users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This week on the excellent Trashfuture podcast, the regulars – joined by 404 Media's Jason Koebler – have a hilarious – as in, I was wheezing with laughter! – riff on this year's CES, where companies are demoing home appliances with LLMs built in:

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-hgi6c-179b908

Why would you need a chatbot in your dishwasher? As it turns out, there's a credulous, Poe's-law-grade Forbes article that lays out the (incredibly stupid) case for this (incredibly stupid) idea:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/29/generative-ai-is-coming-to-your-home-appliances/

As the Trashfuturians mapped out this new apex of the AI hype cycle, I found myself thinking of a short story I wrote 15 years ago, satirizing the "Internet of Things" hype we were mired in. It's called "The Brave Little Toaster", and it was published in MIT Tech Review's TRSF anthology in 2011:

http://bestsf.net/trsf-the-best-new-science-fiction-technology-review-2011/

The story was meant to poke fun at the preposterous IoT hype of the day, and I recall thinking that creating a world of talking appliance was the height of Philip K Dickist absurdism. Little did I dream that a decade and a half later, the story would be even more relevant, thanks to AI pump-and-dumpers who sweatily jammed chatbots into kitchen appliances.

So I figured I'd republish The Brave Little Toaster; it's been reprinted here and there since (there's a high school English textbook that included it, along with a bunch of pretty fun exercises for students), and I podcasted it back in the day:

https://ia803103.us.archive.org/35/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212_Brave_Little_Toaster.mp3

A word about the title of this story. It should sound familiar – I nicked it from a brilliant story by Tom Disch that was made into a very weird cartoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8C_JaT8Lvg

My story is one of several I wrote by stealing the titles of other stories and riffing on them; they were very successful, winning several awards, getting widely translated and reprinted, and so on:

https://locusmag.com/2012/05/cory-doctorow-a-prose-by-any-other-name/

All right, on to the story!

One day, Mister Toussaint came home to find an extra 300 euros' worth of groceries on his doorstep. So he called up Miz Rousseau, the grocer, and said, "Why have you sent me all this food? My fridge is already full of delicious things. I don't need this stuff and besides, I can't pay for it."

But Miz Rousseau told him that he had ordered the food. His refrigerator had sent in the list, and she had the signed order to prove it.

Furious, Mister Toussaint confronted his refrigerator. It was mysteriously empty, even though it had been full that morning. Or rather, it was almost empty: there was a single pouch of energy drink sitting on a shelf in the back. He'd gotten it from an enthusiastically smiling young woman on the metro platform the day before. She'd been giving them to everyone.

"Why did you throw away all my food?" he demanded. The refrigerator hummed smugly at him.

"It was spoiled," it said.

#

But the food hadn't been spoiled. Mister Toussaint pored over his refrigerator's diagnostics and logfiles, and soon enough, he had the answer. It was the energy beverage, of course.

"Row, row, row your boat," it sang. "Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'm offgassing ethelyne." Mister Toussaint sniffed the pouch suspiciously.

"No you're not," he said. The label said that the drink was called LOONY GOONY and it promised ONE TRILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN ESPRESSO!!!!!ONE11! Mister Toussaint began to suspect that the pouch was some kind of stupid Internet of Things prank. He hated those.

He chucked the pouch in the rubbish can and put his new groceries away.

#

The next day, Mister Toussaint came home and discovered that the overflowing rubbish was still sitting in its little bag under the sink. The can had not cycled it through the trapdoor to the chute that ran to the big collection-point at ground level, 104 storeys below.

"Why haven't you emptied yourself?" he demanded. The trashcan told him that toxic substances had to be manually sorted. "What toxic substances?"

So he took out everything in the bin, one piece at a time. You've probably guessed what the trouble was.

"Excuse me if I'm chattery, I do not mean to nattery, but I'm a mercury battery!" LOONY GOONY's singing voice really got on Mister Toussaint's nerves.

"No you're not," Mister Toussaint said.

#

Mister Toussaint tried the microwave. Even the cleverest squeezy-pouch couldn't survive a good nuking. But the microwave wouldn't switch on. "I'm no drink and I'm no meal," LOONY GOONY sang. "I'm a ferrous lump of steel!"

The dishwasher wouldn't wash it ("I don't mean to annoy or chafe, but I'm simply not dishwasher safe!"). The toilet wouldn't flush it ("I don't belong in the bog, because down there I'm sure to clog!"). The windows wouldn't retract their safety screen to let it drop, but that wasn't much of a surprise.

"I hate you," Mister Toussaint said to LOONY GOONY, and he stuck it in his coat pocket. He'd throw it out in a trash-can on the way to work.

#

They arrested Mister Toussaint at the 678th Street station. They were waiting for him on the platform, and they cuffed him just as soon as he stepped off the train. The entire station had been evacuated and the police wore full biohazard containment gear. They'd even shrinkwrapped their machine-guns.

"You'd better wear a breather and you'd better wear a hat, I'm a vial of terrible deadly hazmat," LOONY GOONY sang.

When they released Mister Toussaint the next day, they made him take LOONY GOONY home with him. There were lots more people with LOONY GOONYs to process.

#

Mister Toussaint paid the rush-rush fee that the storage depot charged to send over his container. They forklifted it out of the giant warehouse under the desert and zipped it straight to the cargo-bay in Mister Toussaint's building. He put on old, stupid clothes and clipped some lights to his glasses and started sorting.

Most of the things in container were stupid. He'd been throwing away stupid stuff all his life, because the smart stuff was just so much easier. But then his grandpa had died and they'd cleaned out his little room at the pensioner's ward and he'd just shoved it all in the container and sent it out the desert.

From time to time, he'd thought of the eight cubic meters of stupidity he'd inherited and sighed a put-upon sigh. He'd loved Grandpa, but he wished the old man had used some of the ample spare time from the tail end of his life to replace his junk with stuff that could more gracefully reintegrate with the materials stream.

How inconsiderate!

#

The house chattered enthusiastically at the toaster when he plugged it in, but the toaster said nothing back. It couldn't. It was stupid. Its bread-slots were crusted over with carbon residue and it dribbled crumbs from the ill-fitting tray beneath it. It had been designed and built by cavemen who hadn't ever considered the advantages of networked environments.

It was stupid, but it was brave. It would do anything Mister Toussaint asked it to do.

"It's getting hot and sticky and I'm not playing any games, you'd better get me out before I burst into flames!" LOONY GOONY sang loudly, but the toaster ignored it.

"I don't mean to endanger your abode, but if you don't let me out, I'm going to explode!" The smart appliances chattered nervously at one another, but the brave little toaster said nothing as Mister Toussaint depressed its lever again.

"You'd better get out and save your ass, before I start leaking poison gas!" LOONY GOONY's voice was panicky. Mister Toussaint smiled and depressed the lever.

Just as he did, he thought to check in with the flat's diagnostics. Just in time, too! Its quorum-sensors were redlining as it listened in on the appliances' consternation. Mister Toussaint unplugged the fridge and the microwave and the dishwasher.

The cooker and trash-can were hard-wired, but they didn't represent a quorum.

#

The fire department took away the melted toaster and used their axes to knock huge, vindictive holes in Mister Toussaint's walls. "Just looking for embers," they claimed. But he knew that they were pissed off because there was simply no good excuse for sticking a pouch of independently powered computation and sensors and transmitters into an antique toaster and pushing down the lever until oily, toxic smoke filled the whole 104th floor.

Mister Toussaint's neighbors weren't happy about it either.

But Mister Toussaint didn't mind. It had all been worth it, just to hear LOONY GOONY beg and weep for its life as its edges curled up and blackened.

He argued mightily, but the firefighters refused to let him keep the toaster.

#

If you enjoyed that and would like to read more of my fiction, may I suggest that you pre-order my next novel as a print book, ebook or audiobook, via the Kickstarter I launched yesterday?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification?ref=created_projects

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[kael-writ]

All you Brennan Lee Mulligan fans should check out this strange and haunting short film he did in 2018, it's very good and impactful, definitely very emotionally riveting, disturbing, thought provoking. It's different from his other work because he is appearing as an actor with a different team (writer, director). The writing and directing is fantastic, holy shit, and the performances range from good to what the fuck (complimentary). It's a dark comedy, so there's lots of comedic moments and there's a glimmer of potential hope that can be read in it but it is also a gut wrenching exploration of trauma, survivor's guilt, and guilt by association... It's a lot, I could write a whole essay on it, it's fascinating.

(some content warnings may apply, it's a bit of a spoiler but there is a backstory involving violence against women committed by an offscreen character that isnt seen in any way but is a major visceral theme. It's something I like about it, but it definitely could be triggering and feel free to ask for clarification).

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[sealwithfeels]

July 2023 Book Wrap-Up

Belated, but been on holiday.

'They Both Die At The End' by Adam Silvera - 4/5 - the big cry book, and while I did not bawl my eyes out, it was still very emotional and I loved the worldbuilding details to make it feel more real, how this version of Earth would react to Death-Cast. The characters and their relationship were sweet and sad and ultimately very human.

'Heart Of The Sun Warrior' by Sue Lynn Tan - 3/5 - Sadly I liked this one a lot less than the first, and it's hard to say why. Maybe the charm of the first wore off, or maybe I just really did not mesh with the final love interest at all. Still, I enjoyed a lot of it, especially the family stuff.

'The Ballad Of Never After' by Stephanie Garber - 4/5 - This series is kind of insane with how Evangeline is as dumb as a sack of bricks and there's nonstop plot twists, but damn if it isn't weirdly fun to read, and Jacks is genuinely quite entertaining. Definitely file this one under 'guilty pleasure'.

'Shadows For Silence In The Forests Of Hell' by Brandon Sanderson - 4/5 - short and sweet, cool spooky setting and an interesting protagonist who's a nice change from Sanderson's usual upstanding heroic types.

'Something Wicked This Way Comes' by Ray Bradbury - 4.5/5 - read this one as an audiobook, and the narrator combined with the prose makes an immensely evocative experience, capturing so much autumnal wistfulness, eerie horror and the experience of growing up.

'Painted Devils' by Margaret Owen - 5/5 - Absolutely adored this, this is 100% the book that if I had a time machine to send something back to my preteen/teen self it would be this one, and I can only hope it's doing as much for modern teenagers reading it. Loveable and complex characters, great sense of humour, and excellently plotted, I have no idea how the author manages to juggle it all but somehow it works so well!

[kirstysdreams]

[notgilderoylockhart]

A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke is definitely one of my favorite books this year and one of my all time favorite audiobooks.

It took me a while to decide on a design for the rebind though. I think I made 8 designs in total until I finally settled on this one. I wanted to incorporate the burnt match, as well as the smoke from the original cover but filling the empty space around that alone proved difficult.

To fill that empty space, I added the title and finally, as I was trying to figure out a design for the back cover and watching this production of Henry IV on YouTube, another idea came to me.

A central plot point is a production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, so I designed a little playbill for the back. And to tie both the front and the back design together I put some of Hotspur’s (our protagonist’s role in the play) dialogue on some scrap book cloth with a hot foil quill and added a "burnt edge" in gold vinyl.

I’m totally in love with it, not just because I love shiny things.

[signourneybooks]

Pocket Reviews 2024 | Part 4

Nearing the end of 2023 I discussed the idea of mini reviews with Jenna from Falling Letters I believe . I read so much and don’t always have the time nor enough opinions to write a whole review on them. But it also feels like a shame not to adress them at all. So now this new feature is born in which I will share mini reviews of all the other books that I read throughout the year. These might…

[loveelizabeths]

love elizabeth s.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

❗❗Official Class Swap Sorcerer!Kristen Post Alert❗❗ you can: look at her

[ellsieee]

Just when I said I was disappointed there were no updates about Meet You At the Blossom, I see that they wrapped filming. The cast posted wrap videos and the production company posted this:

Oh my. 😳 This is super gay by mainland bl standards. Stay With Me pushed the boundaries with their dialogue and innuendo, but even they didn't go this far with physical contact. Will I have to eat my words about there being no kissing? I certainly hope so, but I'm still going to be pessimistic so I don't end up disappointed.

I'm not mad about the 2nd cp either. 🤭 Source: Big SuperStar's tw