i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

despite not having posted in a month haha whoops

new obsession A: Dino Mutant mobile game. Cute little dinos, rawr!

[Referral link: https://mondayoff.sng.link/Cgzz6/tkwo/r_3da8acb483 ]

new obsession B: Empyrean series ("new adult" fantasy with dragons ... and a main character with basically EDS) ...ok I'm only on the first book (Fourth Wing) but is fun.

old obsession: Phantom of the Opera, largely listening to the German version on repeat. It's interesting how incel-ish the Phantom is. I gave you my music therefore you are betraying me by not being my forever wife?

(back in the late 90s I was active on a POTO fan group, and there were several people who basically insisted *they* would be loyal to him, murder and all. o.O )

...I feel like I should say more but meh, tired. so.

A week or so ago I saw an indie author on Twitter wanting ARC readers for a sapphic murder mystery book, set in 1913 Yorkshire, with ace and bi rep. Naturally I couldn't resist.

It's the second book in the series, so first I read the first one, The Murder Next Door (by Sarah Bell), where the aforementioned sapphic couple get drawn into the murder of a next door neighbor. It deals with conflicts between legality and morality, as well as sexuality and relationships. The second novel, Words And Deeds, is about family and love and also the suffragist movement.

In both cases the mysteries unroll in a satisfying manner, and the historical atmosphere is delightful. But I especially love the representation: there are (obviously) lesbians, and gay men, but also one of the main characters is explicitly asexual, and the second book includes bisexuals, including a bi aromantic, and a poly arrangement. Of course they don't use that terminology precisely, but it's nice.

(It's also relevant, to the characters and to the world being built.)

There are several inner ruminations that feel extremely familiar to me, particularly

Was that something ‘normal’ people did? Trying to make each other jealous? Maybe they were not so normal after all – perhaps they were the ones who should be studied, for that seemed like much queerer behaviour.

and

Sometimes, Louisa wished she understood other people better. That she could peel back their skin, crack open their skulls, and peer into their minds. Compile notes and analyse them until she could rationalise why people’s actions were often so alien to her. What she would not have given to read [redacted]’s mind at that point, to understand what exactly compelled her to act that way.

Plus the second novel digs into various forms of love: partners, lovers, family, friends.

The writing is overall quite good, though the first book has a lie/lay issue, the second has "word of censor" which should be "censure", and both books demonstrate dropped-h accent explicitly ('ere and 'ave and 'orrible and 'is and 'im and 'appen, plus t' instead of to) which is rather distracting. I get some of why it's in there, showing the differences in accents ("posh" versus working), but ... it is a bit too much. A few wouldn't bother me, especially in "Yorkshire-bred character has learned a more-socially-approved way of speaking but reverts in times of high emotion", but this much... well, does.

Nevertheless -- quite delightful books (albeit with murder and social injustices) and I suggest reading them.

Both books contain a content warning at the start.

Oh, and the second book contains cat! ᓚᘏᗢ

I have found a new mobile game addiction. It's called Best Fiends. No, that's not a typo. Fiends, not Friends.

It's a ... er, i don't know if there's a name for it; one of the types of match-3 games where you draw a winding path through at least three consecutive items of the same color. The plot, such as it is, is a bunch of insects killing evil slugs. It's a bit cutesy at times, and I'm not sure if that's a feature or a bug (pun intended).

It's free, with optional paid upgrades, and while there are ads they only occur when requested (you get extra stuff for watching ads, but it never interrupts you, and you don't have to do it). And most importantly, it's *not timed*. The closest to "timed" is that each day has a sort of daily quest (collecting carrots within the levels to feed baby slugs that are being raised on the side of good; catching escaped bandit slugs by completing levels, etc) where you only get the rewards if you complete the tasks within that day, but there is no penalty for "failing" the daily. Levels are completely untimed. There are only a limited number of moves, but you can take as long as you want to consider each move.

Oh, and there are cute little animated shorts available on YouTube. And one of the voices is Mark Hamill.

(Because I do watch the ads sometimes, I also have a new pet peeve: ads that have absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay. There's this trend of showing this ... like, there will be a scene with several things wrong (cat clawing up couch, fish tank leaking, dirt on floor, curtains on fire) and tools that make things better (vacuum, tape) or worse (gasoline, sledgehammer) ... and it's not interactive at all, you just watch the hand in the ad make various choices, and it has *nothing st all* connecting it to the gameplay for that game. One of the games that has ads like this, Homescapes, is one I used to play, and it's mostly bejeweled-style match-3. I stopped playing it because a) something about the main character drives me crazy and I want to punch his face, b) they had weird frustrating limitations, c) it talked about designing your own unique garden but there were always only three choices and they all sucked, and d) I forget what else but I filed it in my brain as "never touch again". The use of this advertising strategy just cements that in my mind. The best ads are ones that show how the game is played -- merge dragons does this, empires and puzzles does this, a few others -- but somehow they'd rather go with stupid annoying unrelated shit.)

Unrelatedly, the worst part of Ravelry being down is I can't commiserate with my rav peeps about the "horror" of rav being down. Kind of like when your internet goes out so you try to send an email saying you have no internet...

Anyway. I haven't done more writing up the apps I like best, but one of my newer ones did a "we will give you 50 gems for leaving a review in the App Store", and I figured the information may as well go here too. I've added a bit of detail so it more matches the previous rec post, but it's only one app this time. (Not necessarily my favorite though... but high on the list. I may eventually get to reviewing the more meh apps/games, but I'm doing the ones I like first.)

Diggy's Adventure

Indiana Jones meets The Mummy meets "smash all the pots" video game rpg logic, with a charming retro feel and a sense of humor.

( Read more... )

If you ever find yourself needing a text to speech app on your phone -- like, for example, if you are on the fourth day of a sore throat that feels like you're swallowing razor blades but is not strep and is probably viral and can't be treated but you really shouldn't be speaking -- there is a free, ad-free text to speech app called Speak that is actually pretty decent. Pacing/cadence is off sometimes, and I have to use ungrammatical commas in places to make it more understandable, but it's a lot better than trying to whisper.

Also, if you find yourself having a sore throat etc, numbing lozenges are your best friend. Sadly the effect doesn't last, and you can only do one every two hours, but it's lovely for dulling the razor blades. Ginger candies are good too.