April 2025 recap
Decided to watch some TV shows this month, there was a couple of seasons I wanted to go through for a little while!
I'm following Versus Wolves, a great podcast between two youtubers I like a lot (SuperEyepatchWolf and WoolieVersus), and their homework for this month were things I really wanted to watch (Invincible, I hadn't seen S2/3 yet) and read (Terrible and Sacred Air) before hearing them talk about it, so on the to do list of this month they went.
Show reviews are going to be a bit short because I don't really want to spoil anything. I'm wondering if there is a way to easily create some kind of folding paragraphs on this platform, it could be an interesting feature to have to put spoilers in mmmh
Series
Invincible S2 / 3
I liked them alright, but despite how fun and raw that show is, those two seasons somehow felt a tiny bit like a slog to go through? Could be my own fault though, I might have binged two seasons in a couple of days. I'm still really enjoying how wrong stuff can get in this show tho!
Loved the different characters from the Viltrum empire, Thula and her hair accessory, Anissa and Conquest were pretty awesome (and completely unhinged). The story line with Nolan and Allen is pretty great too. Also, Donald might be my favorite characters of the show ahah
Severance S2
Even if I like basically the whole cast, Ms Casey is one of my favorite characters and this second season made me very happy on that aspect. The scenes with Lorne were great, loved seeing the goats, ahah
I really don't want to say much but they managed to keep the pace and not over exaggerate the story/beats after the first season, and it has been great to watch. Did roll my eyes a tiny bit at the end with Mark but oh well.
Reacher S1
Not gonna lie, I just wanted to watch a big dude doing whatever the fuck he wants while cops are panicking because dead bodies are popping left and right, but somehow his killings never are that much of a worry. This first season is pretty cool, and I'm definitely gonna watch the next ones.
Book (/ Youtube)
WoolieVersus - Let's Read a Disco Elysium Story: Sacred and Terrible Air
(Hey look, I'm speaking about something related to Disco Elysium once again!
I also want to make a note about the game itself: considering the whole mess that is ZA/UM nowadays, I don't feel alright to say go buy it on steam, so if you would like to play it... I'd suggest learning first about the controversy of this firm before choosing to get the game through legitimate means or not.)
Sacred and Terrible Air is a novel by Robert Kurvitz, set in the same world as DE. It came out in 2013 in Estonia and would have been the first book of the series if it didn't end up being a commercial failure. It also sadly never got an official translation, until fans made some after the success of the game.
As said earlier, I decided to follow the recommendations of Versus Wolves and listen to WoolieVersus' read along, which was a great way to discover this book with the PDF reader application they used!
As for the writing of the novel itself, it is... a bit of a mess, to be honest. I had some difficulties following the story at some points because of its (beautiful but) long winded prose, though maybe this was due to the translation itself, and the fact that I don't usually listen to audiobooks.
Overall, most characters were interesting, and I liked both the nihilistic side of the story, especially as a huge fan of the concept of the Pale, and the obsession the three main characters have about the case. Both of these aspects echo really well together. But it wouldn't have been a book I would have "read" if I didn't played DE beforehand, definitely.
This being said, I don't want to feel too dishonest for criticising an earlier piece to that monument, so I don't really want to compare the both of them. But at the same time, as I said, it would have been difficult to enjoy that book without the whole world building done in the game. It definitely feels like the "first draft" of a bigger piece, where you can see the author's burgeoning ideas. It sucks that there won't be more about this world, be it novels or games... But I still enjoyed this story for what it was, and Woolie and Reggie's commentary about it was nice to hear, too.
As an aside, one of the many inspirations for Disco Elysium was China Mieville's The City and The City ; it's a great detective/weird fiction novel! And you can definitely see where the concept for the Shivers took form. (I love, love the shivers skill in DE)
Definitely recommend that book!
ZLAN
This is a french yearly video game tournament made by Zerator and it's always fun to watch! Participants have to play through 10 different games multiple times, which make it a pretty diverse mix for entertainment, and hilarity often follows when some people launch a game for the first time during the event.
I just wish to highlight the last game of the final, it was the very last game of a best of seven, it was Party Animals and it was fucking hype.
Music
I got some huge artists this month from the 1001 albums thing! The one that was an actual discovery for me was A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, an absolutely delightful jazz album! Bullet list for the others that I liked this month:
- Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, which is one of the best rated albums on that site, without any surprise
- Songs From The Big Chair by Tears For Fears
- Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music by Ray Charles
- Me Against The World by 2Pac
- Bone Machine by Tom Waits (I love his voice, it has an old muddy shoe quality to it that is just chef's kiss)