January 2021 Update

 A quick update on what I watched this month while in lockdown:

Movies:

Terminator: Dark Fate - A surprisingly fun, intense, thoughtful and well-directed action sequel. Finally, a worthy successor in the Terminator franchise after 1991 - and a worthy sequel to one of my favourite movies. After hating the previous three films it is such a breath of fresh air to see effort and care put into a Terminator film after nearly thirty years. The strong female presence definitely helps it. Feminism helps it, diverse casting helps it; and so Sarah Connor is back and as badass as ever (fuck the haters who say she's too old, seriously, fuck you whiny misogynistic babies and your double standards), and a woman of colour (an Hispanic woman crossing the Mexican border, at that) takes the lead and saves the world. Mackenzie Davis is an awesome gift to the world, too.

Happiest Season - A gay update on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and what a sweet and special holiday movie it is. Mackenzie Davis and Kristen Stewart are absolutely brilliant, and the rest of the cast perform just as well. It's not perfect, and it can get uncomfortable around the middle part. But the atmosphere overall, and the ending, are fantastic. Its themes fit right into the spirit of Christmas. Happiest Season is now one of my favourite Christmas movies. If only it was out on DVD (yet...?)

Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs - Eh, this body-positive retelling of Snow White got some things right, but other things not so much. The romance is crap, practically all of the characters, besides Snow White herself, are one-dimensional and annoying, and speaking of, Snow White ends up being a useless damsel in distress in her own movie. AND the film gives her an opportunity to use Excalibur - as in, she's the only character who's good and pure of heart enough to pull the sword from the stone... but she never actually uses it. It's drawn by one of the dwarfs through cheating. Snow White/Red Shoes is not given agency in the climax. The whole film feels rushed, and it has pacing issues. I think the UK title, Snow White and the Red Shoes, is better than the official, US one, because it focuses on Snow White, instead of Red Shoes, which is what she calls herself when she turns into a thin girl by magic. Sadly, the conventionally pretty Red Shoes receives more attention both in-universe and out. She has more screen time and is front and center on the film's marketing; and the annoying, creepy, shallow, male entitlement complex dwarfs take up too much of both. And I was looking forward to seeing another animated subversive princess fairy tale movie - one that isn't by Disney, and is willing to go where Disney would not dare. Oh well.

Earth Girls Are Easy - It exists. It was a good enough product of its time. It was a funny enough product of its time. Let's just leave it at that.

The Long Kiss Goodnight - I'd never even heard of this movie until very recently. I'm bewildered by this, since I gravitate towards female-led media, and I'm a Geena Davis fan. The Long Kiss Goodnight starts out rough and a little awkward (and what's with all the jokes about genitalia and rape?), but once it gets going, it shows what a true masterclass in action filmmaking it is. It's on the level of Die Hard, even, starring a white woman and a black man saving America from white male supremacy. It came out in 1996: it is politically relevant nowadays, since the start of the twenty-first century, in fact. Scarily so. Action heroines and antiheroines are not ludicrously rare in the movie industry legacy, and they are complex and three-dimensional. And never, EVER underestimate them. (Furthermore, I have a soft spot for anything with ice skating in it.)

TV:

Dash & Lily - A cute, cosy and charming miniseries to watch at Christmas. Very diverse to boot. It's almost eerie how much I related to the female lead. I now have the book Dash & Lily on my TBR shelf.

Julie and the Phantoms - An unexpectedly touching family show, similar to a Nickelodeon sitcom but much deeper than it's perceived to be on the surface level. Keep watching and it may be worth it. I even very nearly cried at one point. The biggest highlight is the music - the soundtrack is genuinely brilliant, and it's a shame it's not out on a CD yet, because I'd totally buy it (I don't steam records). Julie and the Phantoms is like the real live-action Jem and the Holograms - it's probably the best we're ever going to get on that front. Enjoyable and emotional; pure entertainment. Plus, there is queer rep!

Disenchantment - Matt Groening's newest cartoon series may be funny and entertaining overall (though of course humour is subjective), but it all depends on where it's going. Where is it going? I don't know, and its cliffhanger part/season endings (they're barely finales) and other cheap devices can be frustrating. Is there even a planned ending? Was there ever a plan? Are Groening's shows better off as episodic romps rather than being plot-heavy? And multiplot-heavy? This series and its mysteries are slow and confusing, with barely any answers given, for no in-universe reason. This is especially true of Part 3. However, since I still like the characters and some of the humour, I may give Disenchantment one last chance. I may watch the next season, and if it still strings the audience along and reveals virtually nothing about any aspects of its story, then I'm done. My patience will have run its course. I'm also curious about where it'll go with its LBGTQ content.

The Queen's Gambit - Very good. A remarkable piece of television drama. But despite how well written it is, how well researched it is, and how heavy its adult themes are, it isn't realistic. It is pure wish-fulfilment, set in a world where sexism was never a giant obstacle, in any sport, in any area, really, even in the sixties. The Queen's Gambit will get people into playing chess. Hopefully it'll also get more women to play chess, and to persevere in other male-dominated fields. It will require more than genius to march through and achieve your dreams, however; you'd need gargantuan bravery, determination, and a thick skin. Like with Dash & Lily, The Queen's Gambit book is on my TBR shelf.

Batwoman, Season 1 - A very dark superheroine series, and it satiated me. I admire Batwoman a lot more now (though admittedly she isn't always an effectual hero). She is more than a successor to Batman - a successor to a very powerful man - she is a gay icon. Ruby Rose is great as the lead, and it'll be a darn shame to see her leave the show in the second season (as well as personal issues, lord knows what kind of abuse she's received by angry, misogynistic and homophobic incel fanboys, online or otherwise. Seriously, why so much hate towards another human being who has done nothing wrong? It's pathetic. This is why I stay as far away from toxic fandom drama as possible; it's not worth it). Anyway, in my opinion Batwoman is enjoyable for what it is. I adore the strong, diverse female presence in the whole thing. Keep in mind: nothing and no one is perfect - that's impossible - and making a TV show (and a movie, any movie) is sickeningly hard and beyond stressful. Stop putting women on a pedestal; of course she's going to stumble and fall in your eyes from way up there. Stop the preposterously high standards. Stop the vitriol. It's an amazing feat that a lesbian hero from the Bat family managed to get her own TV series in the first place. It is not to be dismissed.

Stargirl, Season 1 - On watching another female-led DC TV series, Stargirl, I find that it doesn't focus enough on its own superheroine, and it is sloppily executed, in my opinion. At least Batwoman is about Batwoman/Kate Kane - in Stargirl there are too many characters, some of whom are not given as fair and equal screen time as they should. It might as well be called The New Justice Society of America. The supposed premise is that a teen girl moves into a new small town and she's sulky and doesn't fit in at school, and then she is given superpowers. But what makes it original and refreshing is what the series really focuses on: the girl's relationship with her stepfather, a former superhero sidekick who was treated unfairly and with little importance by his long-deceased team. It is one of the few well done things in Stargirl, plot wise. Though it is more the stepfather's story and development than Stargirl/Courtney Whitmore's. I think I can tell who the mostly middle-aged male show makers wanted to relate to the most. Not enough is done with Stargirl's social commentary and issues, too; but I am glad the woke material is included, regardless. Stargirl is like Heroes (not a positive comparison), The Runaways and other new vs old generations stories, as well as many other superhero plots. It is fun and cool some of the time, but by the end, I was left feeling cold and disappointed.

Carmen Sandiego, Season 4 - Fun and thrilling in the beginning and the middle, but in the very end, I was very underwhelmed and disappointed. Way to turn the beloved, smart, capable and literally worldly action heroine Carmen Sandiego into a virtually useless and ineffectual patsy! I can't believe how rushed the final episode is. For this is meant to be the final season of Carmen. I have no problem with how everything turned out, and with how everything played out, even - it's the briskness of the execution that bothers me; leaving many plot and character points underdeveloped, ignored or forgotten about. There's no LBGTQ content, either, after all that.

Fate: The Winx Saga - I couldn't believe it either when I heard that there was going to be a "dark and edgy" (ugh) live action remake of Winx Club, of all things. The glitteriest, most girly kids' cartoon about Magical Girl fairies from the 2000s (that's forever refusing to quit while it's ahead) is receiving The Vampire Diaries and True Blood treatment. What's next, a live action Polly Pocket revolving around cannibalism? But surprisingly, I liked Fate: A Winx Saga. The only legitimate criticism I can give it is that, at six episodes, it is rushed. The Winx girls' friendship needed more time to develop, to make their close-knit girl group at the end feel earned. The ending is quite satisfying, otherwise. It avoids some annoying fantasy TV clichés. I find that it is weirdly cool and rebellious to watch something related to Winx Club that has lots of swearing and blood and gore. College students may get a kick out of it (either for the nostalgia or the copious amount of drug use in the series). It isn't a faithful adaptation, anyhow; for example a few character names are changed, new characters are added, and there's a different mystery plot at Hogwarts--I mean Alfea, that has something to do with Bloom's origin. Bloom's character angle in Fate is as far away from the good girl lead as you can get, whilst managing to keep her sympathetic, which I appreciate. I like nearly all the characters, actually. BUT WHERE'S TECHNA!? Poor Techna is always the Winx girl that gets shafted and left on the wayside; and that's barely including the godawful British accent she got in the 4Kids dub (which, ironically, wouldn't be out of place in Fate). I only hope she will be in the second season.

The Bureau of Magical Things - A generic and harmless female-led Nickelodeon fantasy series. It's okay, somewhat cheap, and Australian. I never see any Australian TV, so that's new.

Book Rereads:

Now onto the books I reread this month:

Beatrix Potter's Complete Tales - Read review here.

Welcome to Orphancorp - Read review here.

The Deep End of the Sea - Read review here.

The Stepford Wives - Read review here.

Ever After High: The Storybook of Legends - Read review here.

Finding the Fox (The Shapeshifter, Book 1) - Read review here.

H.I.V.E.: Higher Institute of Villainous Education - Read review here.

A Blade So Black - Read review here.

The Shining - Read review here.

Bad Girls - Read review here.

Lizzie Zipmouth - Read review here.

How to Survive Summer Camp - Read review here.

The Worry Website - Read review here.

The Cat Mummy - Read review here.

The Dare Game - Read review here.

Secrets - Read review here.

Midnight - Read review here.

That is all for now.

Stay safe, everybody.

Book Review - 'Ruinsong' by Julia Ember

The Good:


• The writing is ok.

• The LBGTQ relationship between the two female leads being a slow-burner (a bit too much, mind you, since the reader knows they'll get together eventually in this 360 page book) makes it stand out somewhat from other YA romances with their instalove.

• The cover is gorgeous. The purple, mauve, grey and white colours make it instantly striking (though the white-haired girl, supposedly Cadence, looks more bored than traumatised and made complicit).

• 'Ruinsong' is a standalone. Keep this trend up, YA publishing.


The Bad:


• The villain is a murderous queen who is motivated by revenge because her heart was broken by a man. Yep, we're still applying that millennia-old sexist "woman scorned" cliché. In this version of that ancient chestnut, the queen hates nobles and wants to kill and punish them all (why she doesn't commit genocide on them, or banish them from her kingdom, at the beginning of her reign is anyone's guess), including their children who weren't even alive when she suffered at the hands of the nobles... because her lover was a noble who betrayed her. Surely, even if she hates nobles that much, she should have some self-awareness left to know that what she's doing, what she's putting the kingdom through, makes her far, far worse than her own bigoted enemies. She's mad. That's all we get. I'm not even sure if the author intended for the reader to sympathise with the queen (I can't be bothered to remember her name). I hope not. She is absolutely irredeemable, and must have been psychotic before her imprisonment at the hands of a man.

• If you need more proof of how cartoonishly evil the queen is, she brags about killing the previous queen and starting her reign of terror. It's common knowledge. Why would anyone in this fantasy kingdom, where magic and mages exist, put up with this?

• The book is inconsistent on just how powerful the queen is, and why hundreds of people, whether or not they also have magical "songspell" powers, haven't revolted against her yet. She's been in power for years and is allowed to get away with her tyranny with very little resistance.

• The female leads, Cadence and Remi, were childhood friends before the evil queen's takeover. Less than a decade later, they are within eyesight of each other again, and Remi, a victimised noble, instantly believes that Cadence is willingly working for the queen as her professional songspell torturer on the nobles. Or, in Remi's own words, Cadence is wilfully "the queen's monster" or "the queen's creature". Granted, Cadence never does much to try to defy the queen and break for freedom, one chip at the armour at a time, no matter how monstrous the tasks that the queen forces her to do. But Remi has no proof of her accusation - she still believes that Cadence is like their tyrant even when she sees how horrified Cadence looks and acts after singing to bring unspeakable pain on the nobles at annual faux concerts, called Performings. And even after Cadence then sings a healing spell - which apparently no other principal mage has done before, to show some semblance of mercy. This is done just to add conflict to the couple's relationship, or their lack of one, since, again, their development, their acting on their true feelings for each other, is slow and boring as hell throughout 360 pages.

• The addition of the different goddesses worshipped in this fantasy world seems like a last-minute worldbuilding detail, to make the characters read as being cultured and therefore "real", since it doesn't really factor into the plot in a meaningful way.

• Cadence and Remi appear rather passive and ineffectual for "heroines". Remi isn't involved in the resistance plot until she finds out that her father is part of it - which comes too late for me to be invested in it - and, spoiler, her would-be fiancé is a rebel, too. It is men who motivate her, not her love interest Cadence, whom she views as useless and cowardly for the majority of the book (which, to be fair, she's not wrong, but it's still wrongheaded on the book's part). As for Cadence: when she's not the queen's favourite torture instrument (quite literally), she occasionally helps heal people in a hospital (I have a feeling that this feature is added to make Cadence look more proactive and likeable, and it's used as a contrived sudden meeting spot for her and Remi). This isn't done in secret or as part of a resistance. The queen knows about these hospital visits and grants them for her pet because... I don't know. There's something about making Cadence witness the horrors and suffering of the lower privileged class people who might dare to defy her. Then why let Cadence go and heal them, then? The queen wants all nobles dead. I think. Or is the crazy queen that twisted and loves torturing people - for annual events and public pleasure at that? This would only make her subordinates want to overthrow her even more than if she'd been committing horrendous crimes against humanity subtly. The queen's motivations are inconsistent and make no sense to me.

• On the note of the queen letting Cadence heal hospital patients: why does she, when she treasures Cadence's voice and wants it to remain powerful enough for the Performings? The young mage's voice gets tired and sick from overuse - to the queen, healing would be considered overuse.

• And how would she know whether or not the patients that Cadence heals are rebels? For all she knows, they are. She's had plenty of her people tortured for funzies! Enough to spark rebels who will end up in agony or killed in her regime! She can't trust everything the girl says, who isn't that good an actor.

• Remi being "chubby", which isn't even mentioned until 110 pages in. It might read as positive inclusion and a breath of fresh air at first, especially for a female lead - a lesbian female lead - in a YA novel. But later it is said that, in the world of 'Ruinsong', it is considered an ideal for women to be fat, or of a plus-size variety, because they tend to be the most robust and powerful. Powerful mages, for example. Except that A) Remi isn't a mage nor is she magical in any way, so Cadence being the chubby one would have made more sense (the queen is determined to keep her satiated and healthy because of her voice, too), B) The oh-so powerful queen isn't described as being chubby or fat, so what the heck?, and C) When it is first revealed that Remi is, in fact, fat, it is in the form of an insult said by a hospital nun, who shows resentment towards Remi because she thinks Remi's pregnant and came for an abortion. So fat women are not so common, then, if there are not enough of them that they can be mistaken for being pregnant by hospital staff. Is it good or bad to be a fat female in this world? The body positivity seems forced in during the editing process for inclusion's sake. But the circumstances surrounding the revelation that Remi is "fat" may have been forgotten about, resulting in contradictions. Whoops.

• The queen's partner-in-crime, a mage named Ren (easy to get confused with Remi, in making characters' names so similar). Ren is just as sadistic a murderer as the queen is, if not more so. I swear he exists in order to refute the book's accusation of depicting a woman in power as OTT, unconscionably evil - "But here's a man who is worse than she is! See, it's not misogynistic!" Except that Ren likely wouldn't be in the position of power that he is if not for the queen's influence. He's hardly a memorable presence in the story otherwise. He's generically evil, with no depth to him.

• 'Ruinsong' is marketed as being like 'The Phantom of the Opera'. However, it barely has anything to do with that. There are hardly any allusions to the classic novel. They're both gothic stories that revolve around powerful singing, dangerous concerts, and the aristocracy. But that's it.

• It's not limited to 'The Phantom of the Opera', either. 'Ruinsong' tries hard to be like 'Game of Thrones', 'Poison Study', Sarah J. Maas's books, and Victoria Aveyard's 'Red Queen' series. It gets derivative and boring quickly.


The Ugly:


• This book contains bloody, gruesome animal death. And bloody, gruesome child death. Be warned.

• In the prologue/prelude (I'm really tired of seeing those in YA; it looks amateurish at this point), eight-year-old orphan Cadence is forced to brutally murder a poverty-stricken boy around her own age, using her voice. Such a tragic, traumatic event, which should give her severe PTSD and haunt her for the rest of her life, is only mentioned once more afterwards. In the entire book. And even then there's no gravitas, nor is it a clear indication that this is the specific moment of murder-by-the-queen's-orders that Cadence refers to. It's nothing more than a shock opening for the novel. Barely anyone cares, including the author. Yikes.

• On the subject of the poor being treated appallingly, in the queen's kingdom they are made to live in the slums, called the settlement of the Expelled, and their voices are magically cut out of them. They are literally voiceless. The queen sometimes makes Cadence watch them in order to intimidate her further; like, "This is what happens to those who turn against me," (why not just kill them? again, I have no idea). There are no important characters, none of the Expelled, that we follow from this settlement, minor or otherwise. Both Cadence and Remi are in the upper-to-middle class caste system in their kingdom. Yeah, for a marginalised and oppressed noble, Remi lives in relative luxury otherwise (she has two horses!). She can opt out of the torture chambers of the Performings by marrying outside of nobility, so at least she has a prospect of freedom ahead of her; it's something she can choose. Cadence was a poor orphan child practically living in the streets before the queen took her in, but that part of her past is rarely touched on. The Expelled are treated as a cautionary tale both in the story's context and in the framing of it. I'm not even sure if the Expelled are saved and given equal human rights at the end of the book (it's not really a spoiler to say that the evil queen is overthrown at the end, because what else would anyone expect?). Ignoring the poverty-stricken masses, who in this content have had their voices literally taken from them, in favour of focusing on the more privileged "heroes" - I repeat: yikes.

• In the same chapter we are introduced to the Expelled, Cadence's carriage driver, who is described as being just as scared and as oppressed by the queen, suddenly destroys and steals away a ball belonging to the Expelled children, for no reason, leaving them with even less than they had before to feel human. This is never brought up again. Just.. why? This is egregious and unnecessary. It makes it look like those working under the queen's authoritarian rule are just as cruel and corrupt as she is, making it hard to sympathise with anyone, except for the voiceless poor who are given barely any page time.

• Is this kingdom accepting of the LBGTQ community or not? It's confusing. The book tries to normalise queer folk in 'Ruinsong'... as in, it's accepted as normal by the queen and her class. She takes part in multigender orgies, it appears in one moment in the book (so she's a female depraved bisexual as well as a genocidal dictator - keep those retro sexist stereotypes coming!). But the abused nobles aren't so tolerant. Part of Remi's backstory is that a girl she had a crush on rejected her because, in the crush's words, "Our kind of people [...] don't engage in that sort of depravity." Then there's this: 'Here in Bordea, the mages and commoners love and marry as they please--not caught up in ideas of bloodlines and inheritance. They don't force their children to learn outdated, Sapphire Age ideas about sexuality and gender or arrange marriages for political gain and dowries. But for generations, all the noble families we know have resisted change.' Well, what a great way to garner sympathy for a group of people who are persecuted horrifically on a regular basis for existing - by presenting them as hypocrites who learn nothing and refuse to progress and change their views in the worst of times! It's an unintentional way to make the cartoon of a monstrous queen look better than the nobles she targets - "Hey, at least she's not homophobic!" WHOOPS!

• Now onto the diversity in terms of race in 'Ruinsong'. A lot of characters are introduced as 'white'. So it's not the default? It's unusual enough for it to be remarked upon? No, that's not the case here. Nearly everyone is white in 'Ruinsong'. Cadence and Remi are white. The only people of colour are Remi's fiancé Nolan, and a few minor players, who don't appear to have any real importance until the very end. They're doing much of the work behind the scenes, but the book still focuses on the white heroes who are comparatively less effective and less motivated in the rebellion.

• The chapter where Cadence and Remi meet properly, in the hospital. After Remi expresses hostility towards her former friend whom she had missed, Cadence uses her magic singing to subdue Remi and render her immobile in order to heal her properly, after Cadence had healed her before, when she'd used her torment songspell on Remi in a Performing . This is done without Remi's consent. On the same page Cadence mentions that using magic on people, like taking away their consciousness, without their consent, is a violation. She then immediately uses magic on her love interest without her consent, and creepily brushes her hair back!!! WHAT WAS THAT!? WHY DOES THIS NEVER COME UP AGAIN? WTF!?


The Incomprehensible:


• It's established in 'Ruinsong' that songspells can only work through people hearing them. Including healing songspells, apparently, for ails that include broken bones and cancer, which doesn't make much sense (is singing a medicine that travels by ear?), but whatever, it's fantasy. So are there no deaf people in this kingdom? They wouldn't be affected by the powers of the queen and her mage underlings, if hearing is required for the victim's pain and suffering. And are you telling me that in all the years that the queen has been in power, and during the methods that the rebels have very slowly worked to infiltrate and overthrow their deadly singing tyrant, none of them thought to utilize earplugs!? Are you serious!?


The Horrifying:


• Did I mention the animal and child torture and deaths in this YA book?



Overall, not a terrible book. You can do far worse. This is merely a list of things that I liked in 'Ruinsong', and what bothered me about it; that kept me from enjoying it. I'm not criticising the author of this #OwnVoices book, whom I'm sure is a lovely person.

Final Score: 2/5