Captain America: Civil War

I saw it last night. (No spoilers ahead.)

Trailers: Jesse Eisenberg is in a new "Now You See It" movie - whenever I see Eisenberg in a role I think "Mark Zuckerberg is so busy!" Also, that and "Central Intelligence" both use a super important encryption key as a MacGuffin.

I do not agree with the characterization of Steve Rogers in about the first half of this movie. My spouse wonders whether fandom has caused me to interpret Steve Rogers in a way that is narrower than MCU canon. I believe so. Also I think some fight/chase sequences are too long and a few conversations dragged. But overall, fun, interesting, and certainly, if a failure, a better failure than Age of Ultron -- it's like how thingswithwings described Winter Soldier, where the movie sort of wants to be saying really interesting subversive things but the structure the movie's in can't let it. And there's some good banter.

Now I have opened up SO many tabs to read other fannish thoughts....

Too Like The Lightning

I read an advance reader's copy of Ada Palmer's debut novel Too Like the Lightning, which comes out today. It's good in a lot of ways. But it also deserves tons of content notes and trigger warnings, for, among other things, graphic depictions of sexual assault and murder and incest. And, specifically, you as the reader will be asked to sympathize with and share ( spoiler )

I wish more of the reviews of this book specifically and clearly said this.

Good things: In some ways it feels like Stephenson's The Diamond Age in a good way (world-spanning and engaging with the futures of Asian civilizations, rethinking of nation-states, an important child, touches of Enlightenment retro discourse), and it also reminds me of how I enjoyed Locke's Up Against It (mystery investigation driving the plot along urgently, musings on vocation, the alienness of a sub-society that innovates with bodymods, easy transport across long distances, lots of characters in their 70s or older, high-stakes intrigue among kings and their viziers). More about Palmer's interaction with history in her blog posts about the book.

This is the kind of scifi-of-ideas that award-nominatey people will be talking about, I predict. And I may well write more about it sometime.

on comedy

I stepped out of a local improv show after realizing it was a subpar version of Slideshow Karaoke (link is to a best practices blog post I wrote more than eight years ago) and am now in the venue's cafe/lobby area working. I would rather fight git than watch a bad version of something I can do better, evidently.