Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
36/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
An average adventure, mostly focusing on Ro and Worf as they try to manage confrontations between an unusually xenophobic Federation colony being beset by a band of young Klingons who have gone feral after crashing on a planet. Ro is presented pretty well, but Worf’s characterization often felt off – a bit too smiley, and whatever the situation, it’s difficult for me to see him dancing. Arguably there are reasons for this, but it just kept feeling wrong.
Day 97: At yesterday’s Norwescon picnic, I got a couple fun gifts from one of my friends. A full set of Star Trek glassware, with four glasses representing different planets and a shot glass representing a Borg cube, and a very cool but terribly impractical pizza cutter in the shape of the original NCC-1701 USS Enterprise. My friends know me well!
35/2023 – ⭐️⭐️
This one starts with an interesting premise, as the Enterprise is sent to negotiate with aliens only briefly encountered before, the Jarada (the unseen, highly demanding aliens that were the B story in “The Big Goodbye”). But while there are hints of an interesting society, the rest of the book doesn’t hold together well. Actions are taken by the aliens that are never really explained, and Enterprise characters are either reduced to repetitious mannerisms (Dr. Crusher brushes locks of her flaming red hair out of her face nearly every time she’s mentioned) or simply badly portrayed (I know Keiko and O’Brien have difficulties, but in this book they’re both rendered nearly incompetent by their insecurities). Toss on a rather abrupt end to the whole thing, and this is one I wasn’t disappointed to reach the end of.
Invitation to a Murder (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This starts as a very fun homage to Agatha Christie movies, with a very 10 Little Indians basic setup and a lot of other classic Christie tropes wrapped up all together. But somehow by the end it just sort of feels like it fizzles out, with the final resolution depending on some things that felt very out of place and anachronistic. Mostly a lot of fun, but needed a better way to wrap things up at the end.
More spolieriffic details follow…
Almost gets three stars, because it was entertaining, and really, how high were anyone’s actual expectations for this? But though I enjoy the cast, Cage is just as ridiculous as you’d expect him to be, Hoult somehow (very amusingly) channels 90s era Hugh Grant (seriously, Renfield Nicholas Hoult : 90s Hugh Grant :: Heathers Christian Slater : 70s Jack Nicholson), and there are a lot of clever lines that made me laugh, the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts. The editing during the fight scenes is far too quick and choppy, resulting in fights that are sometimes hard to track and often give the impression that the fight choreography just wasn’t there and they had to try to save them through the editing. And the decision to go with 70s-martial-arts/horror-style over-the-top fountains of gushing blood somehow didn’t quite work for me. I don’t regret watching this, but it’s not one I’ll ever have much need to watch again.
Day 93: We have a silly Lego nautical theme above our fireplace. On this side is a Lego pirate ship sailing through shark-infested waters by a small desert island with a castaway in his shack. We’ve decided that he was more interested in protecting his treasure chest than being rescued.
Updating an old meme with this gorgeous high-viz corset!
(An imperfect photo edit, but then, I’m an imperfect photo editor.)
Corset by Wyte Phantom:
Corset first spotted in a screenshot posted by @ned@mstdn.ca.
Original meme (author unknown, linking to the most recent place I saw it).
34/2023 – ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A good second half to the far-future grand-scale space opera of Hyperion, moving away from the Canterbury Tales-inspired pilgrim’s tales to spend more time with the rest of the universe as the story progresses. Definitely best seen as the second half to a singular work than as a sequel.
NOTE: Given Simmons’ descent into right-wing politics, including Islamophobia and publicly attacking Greta Thunburg, he has earned a space on my “milkshake duck” virtual bookshelf, collecting those authors whose work I discovered, enjoyed, and might still enjoy, before later realizing that they are what I consider to be rather horrible people.
This YouTube video shows how impressive of a job the Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover did with reworking the opening credits in the Lower Decks style.
But part of what stands out to me is how well this highlights how woefully under-lit the live-action Enterprise is. There’s a ton of detail in the animated version that I’m sure is drawn directly from the live-action version (especially since, really, they’re both animated versions, just in different styles), and it’s gorgeous!
I understand that it’s a stylistic choice on the new shows (Discovery and Picard also did this a lot) to go for more “natural”/”realistic” lighting on their ships, and a ship traveling through deep space isn’t likely to have a convenient light source nearby to make it all pretty and shiny.
But — spoiler alert — none of this is real! (I know, I know, I struggle with this as well.) I’m entirely okay with adding “we can actually see the ships even when they’re in space” to the same base-level suspension of disbelief necessary for enjoying visual science fiction in general.
Update: Thanks to @kamartino@mastodon.online for pointing me to this video from Douglas Trumbull where he discusses directing the space dock sequence in The Motion Picture. At four minutes in, he specifically notes that they wanted to create a lighting design so that the Enterprise appeared to light itself, so even when the Enterprise was out in deep space, it would still be visible.
If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be excited enough about a Barbie movie to see it on opening day, or that I’d come out of it this impressed, I’d have likely laughed and waited to wake up so I could tell you about the weird dream I’d just had.
However, the marketing has been spot-on, the articles have been intriguing, and the reviews have been excellent (well, most of them — but if every review is positive except those from right-leaning organizations or people, I consider that a good sign), so off we went.
And it absolutely lived up to and surpassed my expectations. It’s an impressive veneer of completely over-the-top ridiculousness laid over a remarkably aware, intelligent, and subversive core. Even after having read several articles with the general theme of “how did this even get made?’, you still walk out of it wondering how they managed to do it. It’s a bubblegum pink, glittery explosion of everything that makes todays political right explode, it’s wonderfully aware of that, and it pokes at them with great glee.
I don’t want to say too much more, because really, the less you know about the overall plot or the specific gags, the more fun it will be. If you’re at all curious, it’s well worth seeing. And if you think you aren’t curious because it’s Barbie, well, get over yourself and give it a go.