Uff da, it’s been a while. I meant to write some more posts in between this and the last check-in, but work has been so busy lately.
I’m trying to wrap up this project that I’ve been pecking away at for over two years now, and there’s just so many little things that still need to be fixed up. Most of the time it’s fine, but whenever there’s some big meeting or deadline I tend to get stressed about it. Thinking too much about work outside of work… like I’m doing right now! Let’s get into it.
The Betel Nut Tree Mystery, The Paper Bark Tree Mystery, and The Mimosa Tree Mystery
Suffice it to say: my Mystery Novel Mood continues apace. I’m burning through these Su Lin novels like nobody’s business, just finished the Mimosa Tree one yesterday.
I’m really enjoying the adventures of this intrepid young sleuth, who really can’t help herself when it comes to solving murders, even when she really, really shouldn’t. It’s fascinating reading about Singaporean culture and history, I’ve never really learned much about the place before.
The first two of these are still set during the British colonization period, and the last is when it was under Japanese occupation, in the early ’40s. As mysteries, I think the Paper Bark Tree is my favorite so far. The others are a bit weaker, especially the Mimosa Tree, which is mostly about how awful things were and all the various characters from earlier books managed to survive.
There is one thing that bugs me about these books, and it’s been happening more and more. Sometimes, things happen all in a rush and there’s no time for anyone to react appropriately, not even Su Lin herself. I don’t think it’s bad writing, per se, because it does feel very realistic. In real life, things happen fast! There isn’t always time to reflect and make the right choices. But it almost feels… anti-novelistic, y’know. We skip over important bits of Su Lin’s internal life in these moments, even though they’re being written retrospectively, in fiction.
I’m at about the midway point now, nearing the middle of book 5 out of 9, with one more coming out later this year. I think I’ll be caught up by then, haha. Nice to have a series to read through like this, been ages since I got into a new one.
There’s a really nice sense of a core cast of characters that keep popping up, but in ways that make complete sense. There are some introduced in early books that only really become important later on, especially during the Japanese occupation. Gives you a feel for how the various communities in Singapore are reacting to the movements of history.
Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II
I’ve been a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series for ages. The first one I played was actually the very first one released overseas, Revelations: The Demon Slayer for the Gameboy. But I didn’t get far into it, didn’t play much until I played Persona 4 and then the inexplicable Soul Hackers port for the 3DS.
I’ve been wanting to try out the older games in the series for a long time. Especially the pre-Shin games, Megami Tensei 1 and 2, released for the Famicom, based on the original novel!
This desire was born from how much I enjoyed Shin Megami Tensei IV for the 3DS, which was the kind of anniversary throwback game, hearkening back to the original premise and a lot of the old ideas. It made me wonder, well… what were those old games actually like? They were never released in English!
Thankfully, there was a fan translation of them a few years back, so now I can finally play them. I’m doing so on a little Anbernic handheld I got, the one that looks like a GBA SP. This one is a lot nicer than the other emulation handheld I got, that was shaped like a DS and had analog sticks and ran Android and whatnot. This is just a simple linux platform that runs Retroarch, nothin’ fancy. It’s perfect.
Now, as for the game itself… it sure is an old fashioned RPG, haha. A true dungeon crawler, not much of a plot to speak of, just lots of 3D mazes to wander around in, full of tough encounters. Very impressive on a technical level, and actually not too hard as long as you’re willing to grind a bit, like all old JRPGs.
Modern RPGs usually integrate some sort of anti-grinding mechanic, to keep you from eliminating all the challenge, but there’s something nice about playing an old game that just expects you to spend a couple hours leveling every now and then. You get into a nice rhythm and the time just flies by. Makes it perfect to play on a handheld, honestly. Though I have to be careful I don’t lose my place in the dungeon maps, it would be very easy to get lost.
It’s interesting because this is like the game that establishes the SMT formula that the series runs on all the way to the present day, with the most recent SMT V: Vengeance. You’re in post-apocalyptic Tokyo, caught in a battle between God and the demons that have taken over, trying to survive. You convince demons to join you, fuse them together, buy new equipment, only the female party member learns magic, all the pieces are there.
The very first game in the series is more of a proof of concept, and hews far closer to the novel it’s based on. It’s a much shorter game, with even less plot, I tried it a bit but it wasn’t very interesting.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think this series ripped off its demon-collecting mechanics from pokemon, but it is in fact the complete opposite! They were doing it almost a decade before. And even tried to cash in, with the kid-friendly Demi Kids games on the GBC. I may try those out too.
Midnight Robber
Last year, as part of Shelved by Genre’s unit of post-apocalyptic literature, I read The Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson. I absolutely loved it, it’s a true classic of the genre that I’d never heard of before.
So, this year I decided to read another one of her novels, the next one she wrote, titled Midnight Robber. Rather than being set in a near-future Toronto, this is a classic scifi story, set on a distant planet.
When I started reading, I was immediately enchanted and drawn in. It’s full of Carribean patois, like Brown Girl, but it’s not hard to parse at all. Brings me back to being a little kid, having to decode all kinds of weird terms I’d never encountered just from lack of experience. That can be really fun, if you approach with the right frame of mind.
But it’s just soooooo rich and fascinating. It’s set on a world that was colonized by Carribean people, who are all connected to an all-seeing computer network called Granny Nanny, invoking both a loving maternal figure and the spider god/folk hero Anansi. The way this plays out is eerily remniscent of our modern world, being connected to this perfect panopticon. Naturally, one of the first things introduced is a group who is capable of avoiding this surveillance.
The way it’s written reminds me a lot of the Asimov robot novel I read last year, it feels a lot like classic scifi. Not too concerned about the exact details of technology, but rather the effects on people and how they live their lives.
The whole thing is just thick with deep thematic and multi-layered meaning, I’m really savoring it, just reading a few chapters in between other books. I’m only about halfway through it now, but it’s already a new favorite. I cannot recommend it enough, more people need to read Nalo Hopkinson.
The Devil Wears Prada 2
I’ve been going out to the theater more often lately. The local indie movie house is actually really close, I can walk home after. So, I decided to go take in the latest legasequel. Well, it’s not really that, it’s just a regular sequel, 20 years later.
I’m not like a huge fan of the original, though I did enjoy it. This one was a great time, the theater was packed, that always helps a lot, no matter the movie. It’s fun to laugh along with everyone else. Going to the movies: it’s good, actually.
Anyway, I decided to write about this one specifically because even in this, the nostalgia-bait sequel to an extremely mainstream movie about fashion, the specter of anticapitalism is being raised. The plot concerns old media institutions being hollowed out and becoming the playthings of billionaires. Hell, the start of the movie is our protagonist (and all her coworkers) being fired by text from her journalism job right before accepting an award!
Of course, because this is such a mainstream movie, it does come down to the day being saved by a good billionaire, but we gotta get through two bad ones before we get to that. And it’s just wild that this is so… in the zeitgeist right now, the idea that billionaires are ruining beloved institutions with their whims and it is up to our heroes to be clever enough to work around them.
It’s also interesting because it’s about like… nostalgia and attachment to a job more than any other sort of romance. There is a kind of tacked-on romance with an apartment renovator dude, but that’s barely important. Getting back into something, having it re-energize you, realizing that it does have meaning for you and for others… and also feels like a nod to the real journalism Teen Vogue was doing before it got gutted by whatever evil billionaire owns that magazine.
So yeah, pretty fun time at the movies, but also surprisingly trenchant.
Vampire Crawlers
The new game from the creator of Vampire Survivors! Now it’s a roguelike deckbuilder!
No, wait! Come back! It’s good, I swear!
No but for real, this game is really fun. Feels like less of a time sink than the original, and I doubt it’s going to spawn a new genre, but it’s very solid. This time it’s built as a sort of dungeon crawler, a genre I love, but with the same bones as the old game. You still fight giant groups of enemies, mowing them down with the same old weapons… but now it’s turn-based battles with cards.
Things are still very frenetic, and it’s still a one-way trip to the Machine Zone. Building combos by picking the proper cards to play in the proper order is very satisfying, and the way enemies pop into crystals and chests open with a huge fanfar is as mesmerizing as ever.
It’s almost too much though, I can only really do one run in a session. It gets overwhelming, almost exhausting after a while.
Still, it’s very surprising how well the mechanics translate. And there are lots of fun new wrinkles as well, little synergies to figure out and exploit. A good mix of planning and responding on the fly to what the RNG gives you.
It’s not gonna be a forever game, I’m close to the end after about 20 hours and I’m not sure if I’ll feel compelled to keep playing. But that’s fine, it’s nice to just have a game with a beginning and end.
I decided to start throwing games in there, otherwise I’d just be talking about the latest Blank Check movies and whatever Su Lin mystery I’m on, haha. Technically I do read and watch them, so it fits.
Ahh, just one more week of work and then I have a week off… just taking some PTO, right after my birthday. It’s actually kind of bad timing for some things going on, but oops! I asked for this months ago, too late to change now. Besides, I’m going on a trip to Portland, already booked the train and hotel, that’s gonna be really nice.
Haven’t really traveled at all since before COVID… heck, I haven’t slept two nights in a row outside my apartment since I moved out of my parents place, haha. I need a change of setting. I’ll probably write something about it, but no promises.
Until next time, shipmates!
The Beige Moth 