Reading spurt before 2020 ends

I've been falling behind on my reading challenge on Goodreads this year so figured I'd do a spurt consisting mostly of comics to finish the year on top. Here's what I've read:

1. The DC Universe by Neil Gaiman. This is a compilation of the DC comics written by Gaiman. I am a Marvel girl at heart, but I've always had a soft spot for Batman simply because his universe is so damned detailed. I love it. So out of the stories in this compilation my favourite has to be the final one Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, but I also really enjoyed the Penguin origin story and the little tidbit called A Black and White World where they pretend that the Batman and the Joker are just characters played by people and they're complaining about the daily grind while acting out their scenes. That was a pretty neat spin that I really liked.

2. Cinnamon, by Neil Gaiman. One of his most recent teeny tiny children's books. I rarely read children's books for small children, save for when Gaiman writes them, because I love his ability to fit lots of story into small spaces. My favourite is still The Wolves in the Walls, but Cinnamon was very sweet. I just wish there was more to her story so I'm hoping we'll get more Cinnamon at some point. Like we got more Chu. Pretty pictures, sweet story. Definitely a thumbs up. 

3. Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman. I've been putting off reading this for so long and I don't know why. Guess the cover didn't really call to me or something. But I finally did and I loved it. I loved the spin on the Norse mythology and I loved how Chris Riddell almost certainly was inspired by John Bauer's trolls for the Frost Giants. It's also very fitting reading this now when I only recently finished playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla and my head is stuffed full of Viking stuff. This story was just really my speed at the moment. It's a classic fairytale of talking animals and gods and magic and happy endings, but it also has all the adult hints that children's stories usually do about love and alcohol and wanting things you can't have even though you're old enough. I could definitely read this over and over again.

4. A Study in Emerald, by Neil Gaiman. Sherlock Holmes meets Lovecraftian horror and it's brilliantly done. It starts out as the first Sherlock Holmes story; A Study in Red, but soon turns Lovecraftian as it becomes obvious that it's common knowledge that all the royals of the world have green blood. A few pages more and it's obvious that the ones they call the royals are in fact the Old Ones who returned from the deep 700 years earlier. This is absolutely brilliant and incredibly well done. And that twist at the end? Wonderful.

And I still didn't manage to complete my reading challenge for 2020. I fell short on three books. 

2020 recap

This whole year has been so strange. I remember we welcomed 2020 with Year Zero as the first song played after midnight. It seemed fitting. And in January this year seemed to be like any other year. I got my only international trip done in January and it was a success! In February I went to visit my parents and to celebrate my grandmother's birthday as I usually do. 

Then corona came. At first it seemed like it would be something happening all the way over there. In Asia. Far away from here. Then it broke out in Italy, and when all the Swedes came back from their Alpine skiing trips it broke out here in early March. It was so strange. March is usually a very busy month at the hotel where I work and this year was no exception. We literally watched the hotel go from fully booked to almost empty in less than a week, and for the following weeks all we did were cancellations. Getting a reservation, any reservation, was a cause for celebration. My two following trips to visit my parents were cancelled, the music festival we go to every year was cancelled, and any planes of going abroad again this summer were cancelled. Along with everything that happened came the fear of losing our jobs, and there were a lot of people being let go (with the promise to be reinstated should things return to normal) and most of the people that weren't let go were put on furlough. But even with all the restrictions and all the things happening there was a hope that this would just be a quick thing and by September we would be up and running as normal again. We were basically at war with a virus. An enemy that seemed to have all the advantages no matter what we did. But I dreamed of the day I'd be able to proclaim that we did it! And happily go to work facing a fully booked hotel and 120 arrival rooms on a Monday. Raise Your Horns became my soundtrack for the entire spring of 2020.

The summer came and the amount of new cases went down. People relaxed and with the summer holidays came the summer guests and things almost seemed normal again. July to October was incredibly busy for the amount of staff we had left. The whole summer disappeared in a daze and somewhere around September it started to feel like five years had passed since March. With numbers slowly starting to climb back up to normal and still with the diminished staff caused by corona we all had to work so very hard to keep the place running as smoothly as possible. Head Above Water became my soundtrack for this period. It was the perfect song to make me feel strong enough to face more. 

Then came the second wave in the beginning of November and any hope of us beating this thing within the year dimmed and died. Around the same time I grew sick of all the stupid platitudes people in charge kept feeding us. All the "stay strong"s and "hold on"s made me sigh and roll my eyes. I don't need platitudes anymore, or reassurances. I don't think any of us do. We've been holding on the entire year. We know we have to just bite down and keep on going. What else can we do? Telling us to do so is just a pat on the head, as if we didn't already know. I'm sick of hearing about it, I'm sick of thinking about it, I'm sick of wondering whether I'll get it again. I'm just sick of it all. 

This recap somehow became a fuck 2020 post. But I'll go with it.

There's nothing anyone can do. There's nothing anyone can say. There's little can be done right now to make this go away. Clichéd simple platitudes do naught to quell the dread and the breadth of gravity just send me crawling back to bed. It's useless in this moment to say we'll get through this somehow. There's time enough for action but that time isn't now. Soon we can stop planning for what may come to be, but what I could really use right now is a bacon roll and a cup of tea. I don't need positive affirmations, I need to scream and bawl. The unrealistic expectations won't help with this at all. This is shit. Well, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. You're trying to be helpful and that is always nice. But right now your logic only grates so don't try to give advice. I need someone to rant at who'll not judge or take offense of my incessant fucking swearing and my unfiltered sentiment. So stop the pragmatic intervention just nod and say you'll understand. Pretend I'm not being an unreasonable arsehole and hold on to my hand. This is shit. Oh, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. So let's just sit and quietly get pissed and drunkenly attempt to overanalyze all of this. We may now be bidding the old times goodbye so let's not feel too embarrassed to have a bloody good cry. This is shit. Well, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. 

Game completed: Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I loved this game. It took me 132 hours to complete. I wasn't planning on getting this game. I was going to keep working on my backlog until Cybperunk dropped and then dive straight into that. But then I figured why not and bought Valhalla and started playing. And it was amazing.

The game starts right away and I thought I had been an idiot and missed the point where I could change whether Eivor was male or female. But I figured I could try to play as a man since that's where the game starts; with a boy. But after just a few minutes I realised it would be way too jarring for me to have a man with a grandmother's name. But just as I was about to restart and try to figure out where to decide on Eivor's gender the cutscenes ended and I was able to choose. Phew!

Female Eivor has recieved a lot of criticism for being too manly, too try-hard, too butch, but I loved her. She was rough, sure, but she had to grow up rough. She played with the boys and she grew up a warrior, which wasn't all that unusual for the time. 

The story intrigued me from the start and I wanted to keep it going, but I can't move on to a new zone until I have completely covered the zone I'm in and getting every single collectable, every single side quest, and explored every inch of the map. So it was over 10 hours before I actually completed the prologue and left Norway for England.

Once we got to England the story really kicked off. The whole Order layout reminded me of Shadow of Mordor and I really enjoyed working my way through it. I did not expect that part of the game to end as it did.

The first time I travelled to Asgard I thought it was so cool! And it was after that first trip that I started to suspect where the story was headed. Except I absolutely did not figure out Basim's role in the whole thing and so was pleasantly surprised at how the story unfurled. In hindsight I really should've seen that coming smh. 

The side things to be done in each zone consisted of wealth (ingots for equipment improvement, skill books, equipment and materials for upgrading your settlement), mysteries (cairns, flyting, offering altars, legendary animals, treasures of britain, daughters of lerion, lost drengr, fly agarics, world events, standing stones and animus anomalies), and artifacts (flying papers, rigosogur fragments, treasure hoard maps, roman artifacts and cursed symbols). The wealth and artifacts were mostly just go here and figure out how to pick up the thing. Mysteries were usually either battles or tiny side quests. I ended up hating cairns, offering altars, animus anomalies and flying papers. Still, I did them all. Cairns is always at a place with a great view requiring you to stack stones into cairns the way RL Vikings did, and I hated it because it always took too much damn time and they always fell over :@ Offering altars weren't that many, but some of them asked for fish and I despise fishing in any game. Flying papers required you to chase after a flying paper over the rooftops of towns and I suck at jumping puzzles, which is also why I hated the animus anomalies because they were jumping puzzles deluxe. 

The game broke my heart so many times as so many characters grew close to you just to be taken away, and it always made me so sad. But I also got to sleep with a bunch of people and that always made me giggle :3 Eivor's conquests in my game became Randvi, Broder, Petra, Vili and Tarben. I really wanted a relationship with either Vili or Ubba, but I had to make do with Tarben. 

Towards the end I made sure to pick up both Excalibur and Mjölnir (Thor's Hammer) so I ended the game wielding Excalibur in one hand and Mjölnir in the other. So badass! :3

I finished pretty much everything, but Uplay says my completion is at 91%. The only things I haven't done are the fishing deliveries (because I hate fishing), the hunting deliveries (because I couldn't be bothered), the dice games and the drinking games (because again I couldn't be bothered). Maybe when the DLCs drop and I have a reason to play it again I'll work on completing those as well. 

When the game ended I both felt like I was happy that it was done and like I needed way more. Can't wait for the DLCs!!!

I haven't played all of the previous AC, but I've read up on them enough to know the protag's names and their general roles in the grand scheme of things. I really appreciated all of the nods to Altaïr, Edward Kenway, Desmond, Bayek and Kassandra :3

The Final Table

I love cooking shows. But not the Jamie Oliver or Kitchen Nightmares kind. I love the skilled chefs are competing against each other shows and I used to watch multiple reruns of all the different MasterChef shows when we still had a TV box and channels. 

One day I really wanted to watch something like MasterChef and so I turned to Netflix to see what was there that could be similar. I found The Final Table. A cooking show where experienced chefs pair up to cook national dishes from around the world in a competition to earn a seat at the final table alongside legendary chefs from all over the world. One team has to leave at the end of every episode until the finale where the remaining two teams are split up and the four contestants compete against each other.

I had a lot of fun watching this show and I wish they'd do more seasons of this.

I absolutely did not agree with the winner, but what do I know :P Charles was my favourite, but I also really liked the Australian guys. 

The Rain

I've been curious about this show for a while. It's something as rare as a Danish post-apoc show and it's really good. Especially in 2020.

It starts as a post-apoc story which turns into an origin story which in turn transforms into a redemption story. It's really something. 

So the plot for season one is that a deadly virus is transmitted in the rain and any and all water is deadly unless boiled first. The story follows siblings Simone and Rasmus as they're thrust into a bunker by their dad and Simone is quietly (and in confidence) told that Rasmus is the key and she needs to protect him and not let anybody know. She diligently follows her dad's orders for six years, but then they run out of food and they have to venture outside. And from there the secret comes out. 

How do you combat a virus that is almost sentient?

Being a Danish show of course there are both Danish and Swedish actors in it and they both speak their native languages and mostly understand each other. I had no issue understanding any of the Danish except when they talked really fast or mumbled or used slang that I don't know. But usually I could keep up. Toni didn't understand anything :P And they did poke fun of that in the show. Like mostly they understand each other, but some of them were constantly "what's she/he saying?"

The show takes place on both sides of the border, and interestingly 99% of all the Swedes they meet are bad guys. It makes me wonder if that's a trope or stereotype in Denmark? Because the trope/stereotype here is usually that the Danes are the drunken/fun/stupid people xD 

Anyway, I enjoyed the show overall, but in the last season they seemed to have forgotten about the rain and the water, and there's no explanation as to why the rain suddenly isn't lethal anymore. Or why Rasmus suddenly starts getting sick in the last season when he's been impervious to sickness before. Those are probably the only complaints I have about an otherwise excellent show.

The Crown season 4

I was wary for this season, because with the introduction of Diana we're heading into modern territory and although it's now more than 20 years since she passed what happened is still embedded in people's memories and it still seems so fresh. I was six years old when she passed and, as a child living in a different country not yet old enough to pay attention to news, I didn't even notice. I learned about what had happened many years later and I didn't think anything of it other than that it was sad. My interest in royals came several years later.

But I found that they had handled it perfectly. They didn't skim the fact that Diana was way too young and thrust into a situation way out of her comfort zone. The royals behaved as they were brought up to believe they were supposed to, but nobody bothered to tell Diana why. The whole situation was a mess. 

A lot of things that maybe should've been in the season got pushed out for the whole Diana and Charles thing. Like the IRA bombing in the first episode... Shouldn't there have been more Ireland stuff in the season if they start out like that? And the whole thing with the wounded stag seemed extremely exaggerated. 

I only noticed in this season that they completely skipped anything Anne related in the previous seasons. In this season she's suddenly married with kids and the marriage isn't going well, but nowhere in the previous seasons did they mention marriage or even dating or her having kids. I knew it had happened, but even so it seemed pulled out of the blue when Anne briefly discussed her marriage with the Queen. I really enjoyed the episode where the Queen had invidvidual lunches with all four of her children. 

I loved everything related to Thatcher. She tried so hard and fought for what she believed in and really thought she could improve the country. And the country went against her every move. I was teary-eyed when the Queen awarded her the medal at the end of the season. 

This is still one of my favourite shows.