Pepperjack04

Earthlings - Sayaka Murata

This is the type of book you can't read in public. After finishing this book, I am scared, disturbed, sad, and disgusted. This is the third Sayaka Murata book I've read. The cute covers draw you in and then the stories rip out your guts. There were multiple times, especially toward the beginning, where I physically had to stop reading, which is not a reaction I had ever had with a book before this one. Underneath the distrubing imagry is an extended metaphor about what society expects from people and what happens when you fail to meet those expectations. Murata's books tend to hint at aromantic asexual tendencies, which I enjoy reading about like this. The only other book I have read about aromantisism was Loveless by Alice Oseman - very good book. I like reading about aromantic characters in a casual, unnamed way (though this might be slightly controversial), like Murata tends to write.

I partially liked and partially disliked the message being portrayed in this novel. I think likening society's expectations of people - especially women - to working in a factory is a clever way to put it. I, personally, am not a fan of the defeatist thinking the main character comes to as a result, however. Personally, I prefer the adaptation of the main character in Convenience Store Woman, which probably says more about me than the novel. I think it's because CSW offered a realistic solution to the presented problem. The solution at the end of Earthlings is not realistically obtainable.

I would not recommend this book to anyone, purely because if it was recommended to me by someone I would be very concerned about that person. If you want to read it, definitely check out a content warning list first. Or go in blind like I did. I am definitely going to need a cleanse after reading this.

Woodo Demo

Woodo is a puzzle game where the player has a list of objects that they need to place in the world, meanwhile there is a story linking everything together. That is not the best description, so maybe check out the developers' website linked above. I am going to break my review into sections to tackle each element of the game. Keep in mind, that this is a review of the demo, and not of the full game.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game. It is definitely what you might consider a "cozy game" - a genre that I have been interested in for a while, but only just got into. I am definitely going to buy the full game when it releases.

The Story

Woodo follows a fox named Foxy as she moves into a cottage for the summer. Foxy is set up as a character who spends a lot of time on her phone, and the story (I predict) will follow her realizing that there is more to the real world that she can explore. She will make a friend to learn this lesson with, but the demo stops before we can meet him. The narrator tells the story with a calm voice that reminded me of the cartoons I watched as a kid such as Little Bear. [Which, actually, I just watched a few minutes of an episode on youtube, and it looks like this particular show doesn't have narration like I thought it did. Oops.]
The story is cute and fun to listen to. Worth mentioning- This is the type of game where when you trigger the next bit of narration, you can still play in the meanwhile. Too many times, I have tried to play further in a game that has narration, only to accidentally trigger the next section of narration and ruin the experience for myself. Admittedly, I was a little hesitant to fully test out this aspect of the game, but it seems to allow for it. I don't know if this is something other people care about or if it's just me.

The Artstyle

The art in this game is so cute! One of my favorite details is that when you move an item, it jiggles and bounces around. I love the "wooden toy" feel that everything has. And the animal characters are just so cute!

The Gameplay

But none of that matters if the game isn't fun to play. But good news. It is. For some reason, clicking and dragging these little items puzzle-style just works for me. The only complaint is that the navigation was a little bit off at some points. The artstyle is framed in a cinematic viewpoint, meaning that there is a shallow depth of focus. This is very visually interesting, but ultimately made it inconvenient to look around each scene. However, in the survey I filled out after playing the demo, they asked questions about the navigation which makes me think the developers know it's a little off too. Hopefully these issues get fleshed out in the final game.

As I said in the beginning, this game was incredibly enjoyable to play. I am so excited for it to release this year.

Despicable Me

Before I review this movie, I want to give background on why I would want to rewatch this movie. I was six years old when Despicable Me came out. When the second movie came out, the song Happy by Pharrell Williams was the theme song of my school's standardized testing week, year after year. So this movie franchise has kind of grown up with me. But I only watched the first two, and I don't really remember either of them so I decided to give them another look.

Based on what I know about the movies, I am hoping to watch a film about an adoptive father figuring out how to care for his daughters, meanwhile he steals the moon or something. I recently listened to the song from the fourth movie and besides it being very good, it is hinting toward an arc about Gru needing to give up his evil ways for his family's benefit.

With all of this in mind, I just wanted to give the movie another chance to enter my brain. I hope the fact that I am not a minion-obsessed five year old won't hinder my enjoyment of it.

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I really enjoyed watching this movie. At first I was kind of on the fence about watching the sequels (on the one hand, the song from the fourth movie kind of convinced me to rewatch the movie, but on the other hand if it was really hard to watch, I was okay stopping after this one). But I will probably continue watching.

Overall, this movie touched on topics such as getting older in a society that focuses to younger people and the pressure from yourself and others to live your life a certain way. The movie showcased the former using comparative imagry - one example being the difference in the two main villians' ships. Gru's ship looks old and rugged, which is contrasted by younger villian Vector's ship which looks sleek and modern... Read more

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