Delivering Justice on Heaven's Behalf

This book started off promising enough. But, ugh.

The story takes place in a very cyberpunk sci-fi future. At some point, people developed a form of warp drive... but found out too late that it was causing long-term genetic mutation. Earth decided to cut off the colonies for fear of genetic contamination and give up on space travel.

A few centuries later, the mutant colonies have developed a better warp drive that involves jumping into an alternate dimension, and basically set up a massive plan to re-contact all the colonies. So you have this galactic civilization of "aliens" who are all really human mutations - "Variants"

The story follows Jamisia, a young woman who Is Being Tested On By An Evil Corporation For Mysterious Ends (TM), who escapes, and is being chased around the galaxy for the Mysterious Stuff Locked Inside Her Head.

What turns out to be a bit more interesting, is that she suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder as a side effect of the testing, which is pretty much unheard of at this point - gene modification has gotten to the point where mental disorders are all removed in childhood. Instead of simply painting this as "Augh! You crazy!", the story flips it a bit by showing off how her other personalities are able to work with her, as a team to help her.

I kept reading, thinking, "Ok, she's going to go from running scared to becoming this awesome Avengers-Unite! leader of her MPD and unlock her Awesome Hidden Powers, right?" Instead, she spends the entire book without agency, running for her life and depending on men to make decisions for her.
( How to write a novel about a woman who's really a walking MacGuffin )

My friend loaned me this book which was a fun and intriguing read, though it definitely had some problematic elements. I'm interested enough to keep reading the rest of the trilogy at least.

So, you have this kingdom that has a prophecy that as long as a Queen rules, it shall never fall. Problem is, the last Queen was insane and tyranical - so after she passes, her son takes over in her place.

Which was working well for about 20 years, but things like famine, plague and drought constantly assail the land, and while he's not as much of a tyrant, he's still doing stuff like killing off female nobles who might inherit the land and beginning a pogrom against wizards.

That said, the one relative he won't kill, is his sister. Who ends up giving birth to twins - a boy and a girl. A few wizards, led by prophecy, have arranged to perform forbidden magic to hide the girl - the boy dies but the girl takes the form of a boy until they can establish her rule.

They succeed, mostly. The problem is they were supposed to prevent the boy from having his first breath (so the "spirit doesn't enter" the body) and fucked up. Which means instead of a simply a dead child, they've got a dead-ghost child that's bound to the earth as long as the sister holds his form.

Yeah, he's not happy about that either.

The book follows the girl, Tobin as she grows up, over protected and under informed, slowly teasing out bits of info about her destiny while getting caught up in politics. The relationship between her and her ghost brother is really interesting, and doesn't go in any of the expected directions I thought it would.

The writing about the levels of dysfunction in her family and the issues of being ill equipped to interact normally is something I think is really well done.

The book never does the big exposition thing that a lot of fantasy books do, "Oh, here are all the gods, and how they work" "Here is all the magic, and how it works" "Here is all the nations, and how they work" - instead you catch glimpses based on conversations and it flows very well. All of the fantastic elements never overshadow human nature and the way people act, which makes it really come alive.

The problematic stuff? Well, for a book that's effectively about genderswapping, there's some elements that play up the gender essentialism- for example, Tobin likes to play with dolls, or isn't into girls... which twigs some flags for me in terms of how the author is treating it. On the flip side, there's also a scene where someone explains to Tobin that homosexuality isn't something to be ashamed of and it's not a thing, even though it's not really talked about.

The most problematic thing revolves around one character, Lhel, who is a witch, a woman of color, highly sexualized, and lives in the woods. She speaks a broken version of their language, too.

...

She's very "of the earth" kind of stereotype. On one hand, she's the only one who actually knows what the fuck she's doing and acknowledges that the wizards are arrogant fools who only have half a clue- and that makes her kind of awesome.

On the other hand, she's not really allowed to be a full character. She's sexualized in that she's the character most mentioned that people are noticing as sexy (including Tobin... who isn't into girls...).

And, also, she basically exists as the walking plot device. After performing the genderswap magic, she then decides to live in the woods for 12 years, cut off from all human contact watching over Tobin in secret. Can you say magical negro?

Um.

We also get a description of her hair that uses both "curly" and "coarse", and later, that she's missing teeth. UM. Which, if we're going to be literally medieval, sure, but then a LOT of folks need to be missing teeth and this wouldn't be unusual. And if we're doing "fantasy medieval" where dentistry is handwaved away, I have the feeling that the woman who can magic up a genderswap operation probably can figure out HOW TO KEEP HER TEETH CLEAN.

Garrrgh.

I'm going to check out the later books, only because the stuff going on with Tobin is pretty awesome and interesting, and the setting is interesting as well. But, obviously Lhel needs more agency and less stereotype plot device.

I just watched 009-1 on Hulu. It's a modern reboot of a 60's manga, which, is basically James Bond style international spy adventure with cyborg women who kick ass.

The series has a fun mix of 60's style to things, retro looking laser guns, sports cars, and yet high tech things like regular flights to the moon colonies. It also has stuff that dates it to that era, such as machine-gun breast weapons, catsuits and mini-skirt outfits. If you can accept the cheese, it's basically women do James Bond awesome shit all day. Including the sexuality- like Bond, the agents are down to seduce their enemies, but in control the whole time.

The lead character, Mylene, often just "Nine-One", plays an interesting role. Aside from kickassery, there is a lot of sketchy missions that bring her more and more into conflict with the government she works for. As the series progresses, she begins finding her own path, which is pretty cool to watch happen.

In classic 60's fashion, the world is divided in the Western and Eastern Block, with a strong Cold War going on. Aside from the expected issues, there's also a growing population of mutants with psychic powers, which the Eastern Block gathers to experiment on, while the Western Block simply exterminates them - making neither side particularly nice people.

It's a pretty fun series, and I wouldn't mind seeing some more of it. The writing quality stays strong throughout the whole series, and it avoids the modern anime issue of holding all the good development for at the end - instead it's steady character growth and entertainment rhoughout.

Finally got to watch the copy a homey hooked me up with (took a few months to get my DVD drive working again... long story).

Was it entertaining? Yes. Was it epic? Yes. Still, I think there were some scenes that could have done with less of (10 minutes of burning ships? I get the point already) and some scenes I wanted to see more of (badass women soldiers? Training scenes? Hell yeah). The fighting was pretty brutal, though, at a point, repetitious (and this is me, I like good fight scenes).

It seems more like it's intended as a "movie experience" than a story. Which is... kinda, eh, given what I've seen John Woo do in normal 90-120 minute movies. Still, it didn't feel bad for a 4 hour movie. I liked how the story didn't actually focus on Liu Bei, which is pretty typical for Romance of the 3 Kingdoms retellings.

The CG and few over-the-top stunts didn't fit too well for me. I feel like they should have gone with less high-tech stunts for a lot of stuff so they could pour more effort into the ones they did use. Stunt-wise, because so much of it appeared gritty, the few uberstunts didn't fit the mood they had. It's like if it got notched a little more realistic OR a little more wuxia I could have accepted it.

Still, a fun watch, and makes me excited to go back and read Ro3K stuff some more.

I picked up Sanjay Patel's Ramayana: Divine Loophole earlier this week.

The art is awesome. There's usually not a lot of middle ground for me and iconic style artwork, but Patel's line work and shapes just really do it. Plus super bright colors. Each page spread has a beautiful scene and a paragraph or two detailing the section of the story covered. He keeps a pretty causal voice through the whole story, which makes it a perfect book for reading to the kids.

I'd write a huge review, but really, it's pretty awesome - go click the link and drool.

Role Playing Girl is a zine (print & PDF) that is written, edited, illustrated, etc. by women who are involved in the roleplaying hobby- as designers, publishers, and gamers.

I've just gotten my copy, and only had a chance to skim it, but two things immediate jumped out at me:

First, that the zine does an incredible job of highlighting and promoting - there's 25 notable women in roleplaying - listing credits of games they've worked on, in what fashion, links to websites, blogs, galleries, etc. There's listings of conventions, games, podcasts, communities, etc. I mean, there's a lot there.

Second, that the articles mostly have pictures of the authors with them. If you're not seeing enough women in gaming (whether because you're isolated or because you're not looking) it puts faces for you to relate to. Not that I think there's any need to "prove with pictures" for legitimacy, but if you're dealing with people's monkey brain of assumptions, images are one way to go straight to the point.

Anyway, something for my roleplaying gamer folks to check out.