November 2022 Dispatch

The plague came for us finally! After one of the three of us got COVID earlier this year, the other two (including me) got it a couple weeks ago. As a purely physical illness, it felt like a head cold: I sniffled, blew my nose a lot, and coughed as it progressed. I’m still coughing and have some congestion, but I feel pretty much over it. Now we’re just waiting for the negative test.

Recovery has been annoying; the way I usually shake a cold once the symptoms pass is to exercise through it. But because COVID also attacks the heart and can cause inflammation around it—which will usually go away on its own—exercise isn’t recommended as it can exacerbate that complication. So I’m sitting around, which I feel doesn’t help the congestion.

At the same time, it’s fatiguing. The first day I had really bad symptoms was also the day I had to finish up Return From Divalia and get it to the publisher, so that was a fun experience: a lot of “ugh, I’m sure this is fine” “no, you just caught another mistake, keep going.” In the end it made it off in time with fewer errors than it had a couple weeks before, so that’s a good thing.

I’m giving myself a little bit of recovery time here, so I’ve been working mostly on the Patreon stories and watching old movies this week. As the month goes along, my goal is to get an outline ready for the next Unfinished Business book and to help make food for Thanksgiving.

Books: Nothing new on the audiobook front. Hoping Return From Divalia will be at MFF, where I will also be! I’m also doing a couple panels there, on Story Structure and Historical Writing. The schedule isn’t finalized yet, or it hasn’t been communicated to me if it is, but look for those panels if you’re going to MFF. You’ll also be able to find me in the dealer’s den there skulking about with the kind FurPlanet folks.

Other upcoming releases:

The Price of Thorns: Scheduled for spring 2023 (TFF or AC). In a fantasy world where stories are woven into the fabric of magic and life, Nivvy the thief is hired by a mysterious woman, and this job will change his life in ways he could never have anticipated.

Squeak Thief: Complete but not scheduled yet, maybe late 2023. A rich mouse hires a fox thief to steal from his own family, but the job quickly spirals out of control.

In progress: Robin Hood fanfic and Ty Game sequel (on Patreon), Unfinished Business sequel, untitled fantasy world project.

Streaming:

I watched through “I May Destroy You” (HBO Max) with a bunch of friends (my second time, their first). It’s one of the best-written shows of the last decade, not only in the way it captures the voice of Black, queer, children of immigrants in London, not only in the way it talks about sexual assault and consent from a number of different angles, but in the way that Michaela Coel does not overexplain anything to the audience. So much of the writing is left to the actors to play in reaction shots that give better backstory than a paragraph of exposition would. In one of the later episodes, when the heroine makes a realization about a person she thinks she knows, her expression changes and she says, simply, “Really?” No “oh, so you’re the person who did X!” Just a reaction, but it tells us everything. The story is great, the characters are great, and it talks about subjects we should be discussing more freely anyway. Cannot recommend enough.

We are 8 episodes into “The Midnight Club” (Netflix) and Mike Flanagan continues to be a pretty good reason to keep your Netflix subscription, or at least sign up for a month every October. Love the cinematography and the story he’s built here (I read the book this is based on, and it feels much more like an “inspired by” scenario), and the young actors are all good in it (even if they all act remarkably healthy for a bunch of terminally ill teens).

“She-Hulk” (Disney+) gets a lot of credit for trying something new. Ish. Without being too spoilery about it, I’ll just say that taking risks often comes with making mistakes, and while this was about as light a risk as Disney/Marvel is willing to take, the fact that it didn’t quite come off perfectly shouldn’t be held against it unless you want Marvel to go back to cookie-cutter formulas. With varying degrees of success, “Wandavision,” “Loki,” “What If?” and “She-Hulk” all tried different strategies of storytelling, and I appreciate that. Tatiana Maslany is great, as is most of the rest of the cast.

“Halloween Ends” (Peacock)—Well, theoretically, I guess. Where the last movie tried to make a statement about mob mentality that didn’t really land, this one tries to make a statement about psychological trauma that also doesn’t really land. There’s a weird seesawing between “Michael Myers is pure evil” and “the town’s prejudices are what created people like him” and “his evil traumatized the town and made them feel that way,” and somewhere in there people blame Laurie for not killing Michael and somehow also for killing him, and by the time Michael finally emerges to kill what I imagine is a record few people for a “Halloween” movie, my main emotion was “let’s get this over with already.” Which they do, to their maybe credit, in an overwrought farewell. Jamie Lee Curtis is great when she’s given opportunities to be, which is not often, and everyone else feels like they’re going through the motions. The one thing you can count as an unqualified success about this movie is that it left me very definitely not wanting more.

“Upload” (Amazon)— This is a new show from “The Office (US)” showrunner Greg Daniels. I’ve been listening to an Office Rewatch podcast and they keep talking about how great he is (and his resume includes The Simpsons and King of the Hill), plus a friend of mine finished the first season and liked it, so even though I bailed on it after three episodes last year, I thought I’d give it another shot. The premise, if you’re not familiar with it, is a future in which we have created a virtual afterlife. The catch is that in order to get scanned and uploaded into it, your physical body is destroyed. The other catch is that these afterlives are owned by corporations, so the quality of your afterlife is directly related to how much you can pay for. Oh, and the other other catch is that once you’re uploaded, you’re not legally considered a person. Nathan is a guy who is injured in a suspicious car crash and then uploaded even though he doesn’t seem to be near death. While investigating the circumstances of his death from the afterlife paid for by his rich girlfriend, he falls in love with the “angel” assigned to take care of him. For me, “Upload” fell short of living up to that premise. Nora, the “angel,” is a fun enough character to follow, but Nathan didn’t interest me at all, the pacing feels glacially slow in a post-“The Good Place” world, and a lot of the worldbuilding seems as shoddy as parts of the virtual afterlife. For example, in an episode that hinges around “uploads” being not considered people, one of Nathan’s rich neighbors downloads himself to a robot with an iPad for a head so he can go vote in his company’s board meeting. Why is there an exception for him? He’s rich, sure, but the show acts as though it hasn’t even noticed that this is a discrepancy. There are cute situations and some genuinely interesting questions posed (for instance, anyone can come into the afterlife using Nora’s avatar and looking like her; how can anyone tell?), but on the whole the show feels like it’s chasing gags and situations. It does have a larger point that it’s striving to make, but it takes until well into the second season before anyone feels invested in that point. Including me.

“What We Do In The Shadows” (Hulu)—Season 4 wobbles a little bit here and there, but overall remains very strong thanks to the sharp writing and the fantastic actors. Guillermo, the heart of the show, continues to go on his journey of discovery, but all the other characters have satisfying arcs as well, and we even get to revisit some friends from earlier seasons. This season ends with a rather heartbreaking change and an exciting promise for season 5. Highly recommend.

“Only Murders In The Building” (Hulu)—This season leans into the meta nature of the show, as the discussions about the podcast’s second season often mirror what’s going on in the show itself. Our trio is back on the case of another murder, this time one in which they are suspects as well, and where last season leaned heavily on themes of friendship, this season leans on themes of family. Very strong writing throughout the series, and as a bonus, it makes me want to buy The Arconium and live there with all our friends. It leaves us with a promising setup for season 3. Highly recommend.

I hope to see some of you at MFF! If not, have a fantastic Thanksgiving or run-up to the holiday season, whichever this month means to you.