Non-Actionable Puffery

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh was a delightful read. snickfic described it as "aggressively pleasant" but not life-altering, which I think is very accurate, but it won extra points with me because I am pretty much exactly the target demographic: bookish, bisexual younger Millenial women who formed a key part of their identity around Harry Potter but have since become conscious of flaws in the worldbuilding and grown to identify more with the adult characters than the kids. The Incandescent is about a teacher at a modern day magical boarding school who must battle the demonic forces threatening to devour her students while balancing her ordinary administrative obligations and her rather stunted personal/romantic life. It is drily witty, relatable to anyone who regularly deals with kids, and extremely fun if you're the kind of person who finds fantasy-flavoured bureaucratic tedium fun.

Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: an examination of which animals we consider to be pests, how different animals have gained and lost the label in various times or places, and how rooted the very concept of a "pest" is in our own species' urge to exert control over our natural environment. Essentially, a pest is any creature with the temerity to exist where we don't want it, and our disdain for pests - not just a pragmatic need to preserve our grain stores, but a vicious, morally tinged desire for their total eradication - is tied to the Western imperialist mindset, to industrialisation, urbanisation, and an internalised sense of righteous dominion over nature itself. This was an enjoyable and informative read, though as someone who already keeps rats as beloved pets, I was disappointed by the author's choice to focus on more "palatable" pests and exclude invertebrates entirely. I was rather hoping she'd challenge me on my personal yearning for a worldwide cockroach extinction event. It deserves to be challenged, but I don't know how to do it myself - the kneejerk is too strong.

Thunderbolts* is the "just one more, for old time's sake" MCU movie I thought I was never actually going to watch. But I enjoyed it! Yelena, still mourning her sister's death, reluctantly partners with a squad of mediocre not-really-heroes to defeat a threat that even in-universe is very clearly more about mental health than superpowers. I appreciated that this one wasn't trying to escalate the stakes from prior films or convince us that it was an important part of some massive unfolding multiverse apocalypse; it was humans dealing with regular, relatable human shit, with the capes and telekinesis mostly just there for the aesthetic. It wasn't enough to resurrect my dead interest in the MCU as a fandom but I don't regret watching it.

Hunter x Hunter is more my husband's thing than mine, but it's so rare for him to get consumingly obsessed with a piece of media that I'm happy to be along for the ride! He's rewatching episodes. Listening to podcasts. That never happens.

Anyway, if you don't already know what this anime is about, I'm not sure I'm in a position to help yet - it's shonen fighting with your typical ill-defined superhuman powers? A plucky kid is on a quest to become a hunter and track down his absentee father? He's winning hearts and minds along the way? It's silly and fun and reminds me of the old days binge-watching Bleach, I guess mostly because it's from around the same era and aimed at the same demographic. I like the main characters but so far I'm finding the antagonists pretty much all uniformly repulsive, which is disappointing. There's a very horny serial killer dressed up like a deck of cards, and a nasty little middle-aged man with pungent feet whose evil schemes mostly seem to involve diarrhoea, and a creepy robot full of pins who shape-shifts into one of the heroes' even creepier abusive brother. Give me a proper, sexy villain who I can stan and THEN I suspect I'll suddenly find the plot much easier to follow.