This Is Beautiful: asses.masses

 Last weekend I had one of the most incredible collective experiences with a video game. It's called asses.masses and it's a video game that a crowd plays together. You can play or you can backseat drive and voice act for the characters. I was absolutely blown away by the entire thing.

The game itself is about donkeys staging a revolution to get humans to appreciate them, and I figured it would be fairly straightforward, but it's got a lot going on. There's donkey afterlife and reincarnation and donkey gods, and how the gods aren't going to save you. The play style for the afterlife is completely different in that it's in 3 dimensions and the rest of the game is in 2. Plus there's questions at the beginning that I don't think change much, but they foreshadow some jokes. 

I was also really fascinated by how this is a one person game, sometimes it's 2 people or more, but really there's only one controller. And yet a whole crowd is participating. It does feel like a huge experiment to see if it's possible to have a collective experience that way, but honestly I was so engaged and I never touched the controller.

I suspect I'll be thinking about that for a while longer, it was a great way to show how engaging video games are and how to get a group focused on a single goal. I hope that there's more projects like this.

“Assistant to the Villain” by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

I picked this book up in a bookstore recently because it looked like a fun time. I think I initially picked up the sequel Apprentice to the Villain before realizing that this was the first in the series. It is a fun time! But a little more of a romance than what I expected.

The book starts with Evie being newly unemployed and wandering through the woods dejected. The runs into an injured man, she tries to help him but ends up getting hired by him as his assistant. And of course this is the notorious Villain who has been terrorizing the kingdom, but she is desperate for a job and he is attractive. Evie ends up really liking the position, the Villain treats his employees well and doesn’t look down on the women in his employ. Which isn’t much, but it’s better than her previous employer who stabbed her after she refused his advances.

Anyways as Evie and the Villain make moon eyes at each other a plot unfurls where the Villain wants to foil the plans of the King to get a pair of magical creatures. The Villain captures the creatures’ mate and wrecks that, but then Evie returns home to find out that her supposedly sick father is not sick at all and in fact has been working for the King. He bought Evie magical ink that can copy itself and has been looking at her notes this whole time. After incapacitating him and moving herself and her sister out, they are attacked by the King’s guards and the Villain is captured. Evie as part of the bargain is given back to her previous employer, who she kills, and hangs his head up in the manor before making plans to rescue the Villain.

So the narrative swaps back and forth between Evie and the Villain throughout the story, and makes it pretty clear very early on that they both like each other but can’t do anything about it. And honestly I was pretty bored by the Villain chapters, I like Evie much more as a character. If the whole point of the Villain is that he’s mysterious and whatever, having a direct passage to his thoughts doesn’t make a whole ton of sense. And clearly, a lot of the idea of being a villain in the book has to do with standing up for yourself and challenging the status quo, which makes a lot more sense for a woman to be in that position than a man. All that said, the Villain did grow on me as you learn more of his backstory, but at first it was a slog.

The politics of the situation does take a bit of suspension of disbelief. The Villain does murder and behead people and hang their heads in the manor, but it gets revealed later on that he only does that to the King’s men. The townspeople can’t actually name any crimes he’s committed, it’s all a PR stunt. Which again, I have to suspend some disbelief with. They can’t name ANYTHING he’s done? At least have a murder or a robbery or something. Which again is why the villainy thing makes a lot more sense for a woman, she’s getting revenge against the men in her life who have abused and taken advantage of her. The actual Villain himself is just laying a path for her to follow.

All of that said, it is a fun book. The characters are really quirky (there’s a frog that communicates in little signs) and it’s a great blend of medieval aesthetic with modern sensibilities. I will try to find the sequel, but we will also see. If it’s a lot more longing than I’m definitely ehhhh on that.

This Is Beautiful: Teaching Heavy Week

 I lucked out and somehow this week I ended up giving a guest lecture and proctoring an exam, but at least it was a relatively light research week! So I was able to focus a little more on teaching than I have been lately and that has been nice. I'll have to get back on the research grind next week though.

“Crucible of Gold” by Naomi Novik

This is the seventh book in the Temeraire series (check out books one, two, three, four, five, and six) and we are getting close to the end of this nine book series folks! This book involves the squad heading to a new part of the globe again, but it also brings back beloved characters towards the end so it makes for a nice mix.

The book starts with Hammond, the ambassador to China from a few books ago, traveling to Australia. He finds Laurence there and reinstates him to help fight in South America, Laurence agrees reluctantly, and they sail with Riley towards their destination. Tragedy strikes and the ship sinks, taking Riley with it. This death is felt very keenly, which contrasts with my earlier criticism of how minor characters get slaughtered constantly. They make it to a French ship and are then marooned somewhere on land. The sailors are largely criminals from Australia and they try to capture Demane when drunk once, leading to Kulingile slaughtering them. Eventually the party makes it to civilization and learn about the customs here.

Turns out that in South America each dragon has their own village that they consider the men in it to be their property. Due to the diseases that have killed off a lot of the indigenous populations, men are now one of the most highly valued materials. The group consists of a lot of sailors, meaning that the Sapa Inca will see them, and Iskerika tries to convince Granby to marry her. Granby reveals to Laurence that he’s actually gay so cannot marry her which was a fascinating reveal to me! The French show up with Napoleon and drive the English out where they run into the Tswana rescuing slaves in Brazil. Mrs. Erasmus makes an appearance as a leader of the group, and Laurence seeks an alliance with them. This doesn’t go over well with the Portuguese or Hammond, but aviator reinforcements from England (as in Maximus and Lily) agree with Laurence. They end up capturing several large ships from the French and load up the Tswana to return to Africa. The book ends though with Gong Su (the cook) revealing that he has been working for the Chinese government the whole time, and Laurence must return there. Laurence mourns the loss of Riley as getting there will be much harder now.

A lot of things are going on in this book, but I loved the balance of new and old characters. The return of Hammond was well placed as his pompousness is very entertaining throughout the travels. And seeing Maximus and Lily towards the end was wonderful as I missed their presence for the previous book. We didn’t get much of them, but I hope that it serves as a good omen for the next installment.

There are new characters that are also fun, a South American dragon tries to adopt Hammond and basically joins them on the journey, and a French dragon gets flirtatious with Iskerika. This ticks Temeraire off, and it is interesting to see his view on Iskerika change from annoyance to seeing her good qualities.

Now the queer representation, I was shocked by this reveal because I was not expecting it at all in this book. It had not mentioned queerness at all, if anything it was very deeply set in heteronormativity. Of course though, that was probably just Laurence’s biases coming through. At first I thought it might be asexuality, but a liaison is mentioned with another officer so Granby appears to be homosexual. What is interesting is that it isn’t the majority of Granby’s personality or choices at all, but he mentions how he keeps it a secret. Laurence refers to it as a “vice” and speculates on how the looser environment of the aviators might have been ore welcoming. I hope we get to hear more about this side of Granby, even if it isn’t a major part of the story, just because it seems very brief right now.

Finally I thought the culture in South America was really interesting in comparison to everywhere else. In England men own dragons, in China the dragons are equal to men, and now we have dragons owning men. This resonates a lot with the European dragons, especially Temeraire as he tries to take care of his crew more. It is an interesting progression in his thought process as we deal with liberation of both dragons and also people from slavery.

I’m excited to see what choices get made as the series comes to a close! Only two books left!

This Is Beautiful: Jazz at Lincoln Center

 Last weekend there was the (basically) annual Jazz at Lincoln Center performance on campus! It was so fun! There was a high school jazz ensemble that opened, and then the group came on. They played a cool variety of music, including a bari sax and cornet duet. There was only one woman in the group, 2nd alto sax player, but she ripped on her solo, I loved her! So it was a fun performance, I'm so glad I was finally able to go. They usually come around Thanksgiving when I'm out of town, so I'm so happy I caught them!

The Dragon Prince Season 7

Alright I need to air a few things about the most recent TDP season, so spoilers below for suuuure. 

Now overall I thought it was really strong. I definitely liked it more than seasons 4 and 5 which entered one ear and left through the other. But they super didn't stick the landing on this one y'all.

Not to gloss over the things I liked in favor of complaining, but I'm about to do that. I loved seeing Callum and Rayla interact with Runaan and Ethari. I loved seeing Ezran come apart at the seams and not be a perfect king a little bit. Terry finally left Claudia and I cheered. I really really liked seeing Callum struggle with his inner demons and his impulse to use dark magic.

Anyways, to skip to the end, the writers then proceeded to undercut it all. The archdragons sacrifice themselves to destroy Aaravos, even though he will regenerate in seven years, and there's a big happy ending.

Issue number 1 I have is that there are zero emotional stakes for the viewer. We haven't seen the archdragons all season, they hop in at the end for an episode or two and to take out the big bad. Callum tries to do dark magic but gets interrupted, Ezran finds the Novablade but doesn't get to use it. So it makes no sense to go with the dragon sacrifice option because the Novablade is literally right there! Instead of him regenerating we could just be done with it but that plot point goes nowhere. It just sets it up for the next arc without wrapping things up because that's how Netflix works now I guess.

Other issue is the happy-go-lucky ending with them founding a town where people will be nice to each other or something. Now this could be fine, but also the thing that was interesting about season 4 was seeing the conflicts between elves and humans as they try to coexist. If there's just a time jump and we see people living happy lives without any conflict or lingering trauma, that is so uninteresting to me. I want to see the hard conversations that have to arise and the fact that rebuilding trust and community takes work!

And I didn't expect this to break me, but then Zym spoke and Dante Bosco (of Zuko voice fame) came out and I LOST IT. Started screaming on the spot. Not because I hated it, but it just so doesn't fit Zym's small, chirping body. I hope that he gets a little bigger and grows into that deep voice but OH MY GOD it doesn't really fit at the moment.

And then the thing that baffles me is that the show might not continue, so what I was seeing leading up to the show was that the writers would give us an ending. And uh, no not really. There's the fact that Aaravos is returning, and they finally confirmed that Harrow is a bird now. And where has he been for the past seven seasons? Don't leave me on this note please...

All that to say is that I sure hope that the third arc gets greenlit and we get the rest of it because I sure CANNOT leave on this note. We need a more satisfying ending (and also I need Soren and Corvus to kiss) alright that's all.

This Is Beautiful: Lyra

 So I've been taking lyra classes for a little over 2 months, I took trapeze classes this summer too, and I finally hit the point where I feel really good on the apparatus. I got through all the poses that we did this month multiple times, versus last week I could do them once, maybe twice. And it's just incredible how much progress that represents! 

It's got me covered in bruises, but it's shaping up into a fun hobby. I unfortunately have to take February off for scheduling reasons but hoping to get back up there soon!