Below are posts associated with the “media” type.
📚 bookblog: Reminding Myself That Despite What that Sign on the Highway Says, Hell Isn't Real (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I’m still struggling a bit more with these story arcs than I did with earlier ones, but I can’t put my finger on why, and I don’t think it’s because they’re any less good.
It is also very interesting to be reading these books at a time where I’m digitizing journals from my college years, worrying a lot about grades and relationships.
🍿 movieblog: Project Hail Mary (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Excellent adaptation of a book I remember enjoying. My “book is better” brain wanted to quibble with some choices, but I think those choices made sense when considering the change of medium. I also really, really appreciated the almost-throwaway joke about the Phantom Zone.
📚 bookblog: My Peer Group's Smoochy Chart is Basically Now an Ouroboros (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Still good, but I’m still ready to wrap up this reread and turn my attention to some other things.
📚 bookblog: Her Hugs Are Traps (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This review is slightly more negative, and I don’t know if that’s because I’m ready to move on to something else to read, because I don’t like all of the subplots in this part of the story, or something else. It’s still good, though!
🎙️ radioblog: Prisoners of the Lake (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
It’s recognizable as a Doctor Who story, and there are some parts that are fun and interesting, but it just didn’t land with me.
📚 bookblog: I Excised All My Anxieties into Cartoon Characters Who Definitely Don't Have Feelings for Each Other (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Post-timeskip Dumbing of Age is good; some parts feel rockier, some parts feel even better.
📚 bookblog: Renounce Magical Thinking and Embrace Empirical Evidence (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Part of me thinks that I shouldn’t enjoy this particularly dramatic, action-packed sequence, but Willis does an excellent job of it—and of making it fit within the broader world and story he’s built.
🎙️ radioblog: In Memory Alone (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This last story in the series wasn’t quite as good as the others, but I’m just happy that they made interesting use of the Silents.
🎙️ radioblog: Silent Majority (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
This series continues to be fun. It’s making use of a scary villain in compelling ways, and even the “let’s treat UK parliamentary elections like a US presidential race” doesn’t bug me too much.
📚 bookblog: Now Let's Go Commit Something Mildly Subversive (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Still enjoying this! I really appreciate Willis’s charitable, nuanced take on non-fundamentalist religion that comes out here while Joyce is wrestling with her faith.
📚 bookblog: Up Here We Can Be Garbage (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I really ought to scan back through each volume as I read it so that I can give it a more thorough review, but these go fast, blend together, and just make a generally good impression. I’d like to wrap up the reread so that I can turn my attention to other stuff, but sometimes you also just need a quick, easy rebinge of a high quality webcomic.
📺 tvblog: The Night Manager Season 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Took me a while to watch this. It’s not bad, and I liked it more than my spouse did, but I really want to read the source material now to see how it holds up.
🎙️ radioblog: Square One (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
It came as something of a surprise that this next part of the story felt even better. It takes some liberties with the British political system, but since it came out in November 2016, it is clearly doing so to criticize Donald Trump, and I can live with that. The story continues to play with the basic concept of the Silents as a supernatural villain, and I’m enjoying seeing where it goes.
🎙️ radioblog: House of Silents (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I’ve made a few comments alluding to how interesting it is to explore expanded universe material in another franchise after a near-lifetime of exploring Star Wars auxiliary fiction. This is a good demonstration of how EUs can be good: The Silents are an interesting villain, and this story makes good use of them while fitting it nicely into the broader Doctor Who canon. I enjoyed the listen.
📚 bookblog: Just Put Down the Ukelele Only Then Can the Healing Begin (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
DoA is funny because its plot takes place over a few months, but the story has been told over years and years. That makes it hard to remember what happened when. I feel like this volume has some of the changes that most lead to contemporary characters and storylines, and yet that all happens earlier than I expected.
📚 bookblog: The Machinations of My Revenge Will Be Cold, Swift, and Utterly Ridiculous (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Still blurring together in my head, still enjoying the read.
📚 bookblog: Hey, Guess What, I'm a Lesbian! (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I wrote about this on my first read through (I think), but it’s very interesting to read this take on the college experience when mine was so very different. It’s interesting to see Joyce, for example, grow in ways I didn’t until a decade or so later in life.
📚 bookblog: Amazi-Girl is Always Prepared for Anything (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
These are such fast reads (and I’m waiting so long to review them) that I can’t say I remember the specifics of this volume, but I’m continuing to enjoy this reread, and that’s what counts, I guess.
🎙️ radioblog: Expiry Dating (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
My favorite thing in these audioplays is getting the tv actors to come back for their parts, and this is especially fun when it brings back Peter Davison and Colin Baker, too. It’s a good story that makes the most of these characters, and I enjoyed it.
📚 bookblog: Your Stupid Overconfidence is Nostalgic (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I’ve noticed this throughout the reread, but this collection really got me thinking about the connections between Willis’s previous work and this reboot/remix. It’s also amazing to me just how long this series has been going on! I’m reading material that came out when I was just starting grad school.
📚 bookblog: I Beg You, Don't Cast Your Body Into the Cragged Shame Pits of the Lustwolves (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
Still enjoying this reread!
🎙️ radioblog: The Black Hole (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t very engaged and kept waiting for it to be over.
📚 bookblog: This Campus is a Friggin' Escher Print (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I had been trying to read some of Willis’s other work, making it through the whole Shortpacked! archive and trying to go through Roomies!, etc., but ultimately I realized that what I really wanted was a Dumbing of Age reread, and so here I am. I enjoy this series much more in collected form than I do one strip at a time, and it was fun to start again at the beginning.
🍿 movieblog: Zootopia 2 (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
I like what this movie is trying to be, but it’s so committed to gags, a breakneck pace, and a certain amount of self-defeating essentialism that I don’t think it ever gets there.
📚 bookblog: La boutique des émotions (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Ce n’est pas souvent qu’on tombe sur un livre en français en visitant la bibliothèque ici au Kentucky, et j’ai donc du emprunter celui-ci. On l’a lu ensemble en famille. C’est une jolie idée avec du joli art.