Nobilis, Chuubo's, and Other Jenna Moran Works

Watched Paprika on the big screen at the Somerville Theater. A favorite of mine, definitely benefited from the big screen format. Really highlighted how background music and lack of background music was used, which I hadn't focused on so much before.

I do have some nebulous thoughts about how motifs and locations are revisited to anchor the dream logic. I'd probably try to do something with that for a Dreampunk 2e (not that I'm likely to do a Dreampunk 2e).

In other news, I just read Becky Chambers' A Closed and Common Orbit, which I really liked, probably even more than The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Feels like a strong entry in second-wave robots-with-feelings media, with Murderbot and Ancillary Justice. It had some weaker spots (the heist at the end could really have been strengthened in line with the themes) but I feel like the interwoven narratives and the space it gave the viewpoint characters was very effective.

It makes me think about genre on two different axes:

1. I feel like there are two pretty distinct types of media that often get lumped under "cozy": works where nothing bad happens and character-driven works where trauma and other difficult emotions are given space, care, and value. A Closed and Common Orbit is firmly in the second category, but I do wish I had better terminology for distinguishing the two types of work. "Character-driven" is part of it but probably broader than I'm really looking for.

(Sometimes the former can be nice as well but I do feel like the conflation of the two is often used to dismiss/undermine things like Ghibli movies, Wanderhome, etc.)

2. It sorta feels like sci fi and fantasy have gotten pushed into this corner of needing world-saving violent adventurous stakes as the focus of their main plot, and this can really flatten characters' motivations and make everything feel really rushed and forced. I feel like there's a lot of room for strong stories that are character driven and have personal stakes, even if they're not going in a cozy direction. I used to associate this with long-running series, how e.g. Buffy and Dresden Files felt the need to keep raising the stakes to a point where they lost emotional aspects that were stronger initially for me, but I think it's more pervasive than that.

Meanwhile, we're taking a chill week in Western Mass with Auntie Grandma. Kiddo's at an age where we take him to cool places and all he wants to do is play in the mulch and such, but he did take some interest in cows and continues to be into ceiling fans, so gotta call that a win.