Happy (?) New Year, friends! We are not sure what kind of year to say we hope you’re having, because the events of this year so far have been… really shit! But at least there is a new president in office who actually cares about solving the pandemic and getting all our shit back together, and at least there is such things as dogs and cats, both of which continue to be extremely good species.
We Jennys will be coming at you with a joint podcast soon! But first, I had the wonderful Renay of Lady Business on the pod, with the intention of talking about the Hugo Awards. That didn’t end up happening on account of a bunch of nonsense you can read about here (under “It Wouldn’t Be Worldcon Without a Hugo Awards Explosion); but we still had a grand old time chatting about the SFF things we loved in 2020. Then Renay brought some game recommendations for newbie gamers, and I gave a very fast primer on how to get started cross-stitching.
You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below, or download it directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.
1:13 – What we’re reading
9:42 – Our faves in 2020 SF
27:00 – Starter pack for newbie gamers
39:30 – How and why to cross-stitch!
Stuff we talked about:
Escaping Exodus, Nicky Drayden
The Prey of Gods, Nicky Drayden
The Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley
The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones
Harley in the Sky, Akemi Dawn Bowman
Starfish, Akemi Dawn Bowman
Circus Shoes, Noel Streatfeild
The Untamed
Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo
The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo
Animal Crossing
FIYAH Magazine
Among Us
AOC Twitch stream
Deal with the Devil, Kit Rocha
Network Effect, Martha Wells
Raybearer, Jordan Ifueko
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho
Renay’s Video Game Recs
Monument Valley
Matchland
Matchington Mansion
FROST
Kingdom Rush
Haru Slide
Rumu
Townscaper
Gone Home
Cross-stitch kits at Joann Fabrics
Cross-stitch kits at Michael’s
Cross-stitch kits at DMC
Free patterns at DMC
Cross-Stitch Supplies
- embroidery scissors
- tapestry needles – Size 24 or 26 is typically fine. These needles have relatively blunt points so you’re less likely to jab yourself painfully.
- an embroidery hoop – The size you get depends on the size of your project; I tend to use larger hoops so I can see more of the project all at once, but it’s up to you. With smaller hoops you have to adjust them more frequently. I recently started using Q-Snap frames, which give you better tension and I just like them better.
- thread – You’ll nearly always want DMC 6-strand embroidery floss, and the pattern will tell you what numbers of floss to buy. You’ll probably mostly be stitching with two threads at a time.
- bobbins – Wind each color of thread around a bobbin and label it with the number thread that’s on there, so you won’t forget. Or, cut off the part of the thread wrapper that includes the number and slide it onto the bobbin itself.
- floss organizer – If you’re just using a few colors of floss, you can put them on metal rings like this. I like to use a box, which lets me keep all my colors of thread plus all my scissors and needles.
You can find Renay on Twitter or at the two-time Hugo Award-winning blog Lady Business.
You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcript
Gin Jenny 0:36
Welcome to the Reading the End Bookcast with the Demographically Similar Jennys usually. I’m Gin Jenny.
Renay 0:41
And I’m Renay.
Gin Jenny 0:42
And we are here again to talk about books and literary happenings. Renay is here with me today as a very special guest. Thank you so much for joining me, Renay.
Renay 0:49
Thank you for having me on your podcast.
Gin Jenny 0:51
We initially had intended to talk about the Hugo Awards, but we’re mad at them for reasons that I will link in the show notes, and we just didn’t feel like it anymore. We want to talk about things that are good. So we’re going to talk about– Renay is going to tell newbie gamers some games to be interested in, and I, for no reason at all, am going to tell you how to cross stitch. I like cross stitching. And then we’re going to talk about some SF things that we really enjoyed in 2020. But before we get into all that, Renay, what are you reading?
Renay 1:18
I am reading an extremely weird book by Nicky Drayden called Escaping Exodus.
Gin Jenny 1:25
All her books are so weird. Please continue.
Renay 1:27
I read her previous book, Prey of Gods, which was extremely weird, but also really good.
Gin Jenny 1:34
Yeah, no, I mean, I love her imagination. Like all the stuff that comes out of her brain is just crazy amazing.
Renay 1:39
Yeah, so Escaping Exodus is about this culture, who live in space, but what they do is that they take over these giant, city-sized beasts, and then they like hollow them out, live for a couple years. 100 years? Actually, I’m not sure yet because I’m not that far into it. Inside the beast, and that they like, deplete all the resources and they put themselves in a stasis and they do a big exodus to find another beast to take over and live in.
Renay 2:11
The book is about Seska, who is next in line to be a matriarch. And she’s not really rising to the challenge. She’s young, and she’s naive. And she’s a little overconfident. And she’s not really interested in the things that the leadership is into, like learning all the matrilineal lines, and she has a crush on a lower caste person who works with the beast. And that’s causing complications.
Renay 2:40
I’m really early into it. I haven’t gotten that far. But so far, it’s really, really good. Really interesting. There’s a lot of cool family dynamics. They live in rural families, like the–each family has, like 10 people, like six women, three men, and one kid. They’re allowed to have one kid. I don’t know. It’s just really interesting so far.
Renay 3:01
It reminds me a little bit of The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley. I don’t remember a lot about that book, because it was very gory, and this one’s gory in a similar way. So I’m going to wipe my memory of the gory bits after I finish it. I don’t handle gore very well.
Gin Jenny 3:17
Oh, gosh, me neither.
Renay 3:18
But so far, I think I like Escaping Exodus a little bit more than The Stars Are Legion, because it seems like Escaping Exodus is gonna be about healthier relationships, maybe? The Stars Are Legion is definitely a book about people who are not good for each other. It’s definitely a book about like abuse and stuff like that, which is fine, but it’s a little heavier.
Renay 3:40
This one feels… I don’t know if I’d say lighter, but more accessible to me as a person who likes relationships between characters where they like each other.
Gin Jenny 3:48
I completely agree. I’m excited about this. I kind of forgot she had a new book out. I read Nicky Drayden’s first book, Prey of Gods. And it was also similarly bananas. I think she is an amazingly inventive author, and it’s really impressive to me, because she’s written these three books pretty quickly, one right after the other. And all of them have these wildly different wildly inventive premises. So I mean, just props to her, man.
Renay 4:11
Yeah! And also, Escaping Exodus is the first in a series because apparently, this book has a sequel that’s already out, or maybe it’s coming out and got pushed, because of all the global pandemic stuff. I don’t know. But I’ve seen it mentioned several times a sequel to this book.
Gin Jenny 4:25
Boy, that’s exciting. Well, great. That sounds amazing.
Renay 4:28
That’s what I’m reading. But like, what are you reading or watching or doing, Jenny?
Gin Jenny 4:32
So I just finished reading The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, who is a Blackfeet author of horror fiction, and this was indeed very horrifying. It was extremely scary. It’s about these four Blackfeet men who are being pursued for reasons you discover by a vengeful spirit, and it is so scary. It’s so scary. It’s also quite gory. So if you’re sensitive to gore, be aware, but it was really really good. He’s a really tense, atmospheric writer. So I like that a lot.
Gin Jenny 5:02
And now for a calm chill change of pace. I’m reading a YA novel by Akemi Dawn Bowman, called Harley in the Sky, which is about a teenage girl whose parents run a circus, and she wants to be a trapeze artist, but they want her to go to college, and I think–I’m not very far in–but I think what’s gonna happen is she’s gonna run away with a rival circus. So I’m pretty excited.
Renay 5:21
Oh, dramatic!
Gin Jenny 5:23
Yeah, I can’t swear to that. I haven’t gotten that far. But that’s what it seems like the plot is gearing up to be. And I had read this author’s first book, Starfish, which I thought was really really amazing. And really, like, emotionally insightful. So I’m excited for this one, because I think it will also be emotionally insightful. But additionally, we’ll have a circus and I love circuses in fiction, not in life.
Renay 5:43
Yeah. In life, circuses are a little troubling.
Gin Jenny 5:46
I don’t really know that much about modern day circuses. But yeah, like historically, I think they’ve had some some issues.
Renay 5:52
I just am aware of the ones that I’ve gone to here, like community circuses here in my city.
Gin Jenny 5:58
Oh my god! You have? Were they really terrible?
Renay 6:01
They were very terrible for the animals.
Gin Jenny 6:03
Oh, dear. That’s what I feared.
Renay 6:05
This is why I like circuses in fiction.
Gin Jenny 6:07
Yeah!
Renay 6:10
I like the idea of a circus, but I’m not sure I like the human rights side of circuses in reality,
Gin Jenny 6:15
I’m constantly chasing the high of Circus Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, which is a really dear circus book that I read as a kid. But most other circus books are kind of depressing. So I’m hoping this one will, you know, strike a balance between happy and sad content.
Renay 6:28
Fingers crossed.
Gin Jenny 6:29
Renay, I did want to just ask you because you talked about this last time you’re on. How goes the Korean learning?
Renay 6:34
Well, I am still in the process of learning. I’m such a southerner that I don’t think that people who make language learning material think beyond like generic English pronunciation. I don’t think when they make the content to be like, here’s how you say this word, and here’s how it should sound. The letter O and the letter P and the letter Q sound like this. And I don’t really think that they took into account that some of us have regional accents.
Gin Jenny 7:04
Oh, that’s really interesting.
Renay 7:05
Some of us don’t pronounce the letters or the like the vowel sounds, especially the vowels. Like I don’t pronounce the vowels the same as somebody in Wisconsin pronounces vowels. And that has been, I’ve noticed, a very tough problem for me to solve. But now I can be like, I don’t know. I wonder if I can remember it. [says Korean letters] I think that are the first part of the Korean alphabet. If you have Korean listeners, they’re going to read it and be like, Jenny, never have that white lady on ever again! I’m sorry if I–
Gin Jenny 7:41
You’re a language learner! You’re learning, you’re in the process.
Renay 7:44
Like I’m learning the alphabet first. I’m trying to learn Hangul, and then Batchim? Batchim is like ending consonants. Because Korean has like Eon I think it’s how you pronounce a consonant name, not the actual consonant. It doesn’t generally have a sound as a little circle. But if it’s at the end of a syllable, that it gets the N-G sound. It makes that sound. And so Batchim is like ending consonants. So I had to learn Hangul, then I had to learn Batchim, then I’ll be able to start moving on to words.
Renay 8:15
But here’s the thing. I had a lot of trouble learning to read when I was a kid. I did Hooked on Phonics. Although I know culturally Hooked on Phonics gets made fun of a lot, and I think it’s been discredited in some circles now, as like not a great way to teach people how to read. However, it really helped me, because through Hooked on Phonics, and later the speech therapy that I did on top of it, I learned a lot a lot about tongue placement.
Renay 8:40
Like there is this consonent in Korean, lil? Lil? I don’t know if I’m doing it correctly, but I couldn’t figure it out. It looks like a little S, kind of. And I basically googled around on YouTube until I found an English speaker who also speaks Korean because his wife is Korean. And he actually walked through the tongue position part for all these different consonants. And that helps me a ton. If I can find Korean people on YouTube showing me like how my tongue is supposed to sit, I can use all the things I’ve learned in Hooked on Phonics and speech therapy to like sort of get the pronunciation down. So that’s how I’m doing.
Gin Jenny 9:17
No, that sounds great. That sounds amazing! Good for you for sticking with it. I have a couple of New Year’s resolutions, and you know, we’re going to kind of see how things go. I’m not really holding myself to anything in these times.
Renay 9:29
My Korean learning program, I’m stretching it out. It shouldn’t take somebody three months to learn the Korean alphabet, but it’s probably gonna take me six months, and that’s okay. Because we’re living through interesting times.
Gin Jenny 9:43
Absolutely fine! Okay, so Renay, like I said, we were going to talk about the Hugos, but instead of that, and slightly repurposing what we had previously planned to discuss, I thought we could chat about some things that we were really excited about in SF in 2020. A very stupid year, I think you’ll agree.
Renay 9:59
Yes.
Gin Jenny 10:01
So do you want to go first?
Renay 10:03
Sure. My first is not going to surprise anybody. It’s because it’s the first thing that I like got into and then mainline dmed into my eyeballs. And it’s The Untamed, the Chinese fantasy drama that was on Netflix. It took over 2020, kind o,f at the beginning. It really makes me happy. Like, I still think back to how I watched it all at once in like this big– You were like, I watched like two episodes a day, or something like that. I don’t remember how you said you handled it.
Gin Jenny 10:34
That was about it. Yeah,
Renay 10:35
I’m gonna put this whole series, all 46 or however many episodes it was, into my face, in a week and a half, and I did it. Number one, don’t do that. It’s not healthy. Number two, I don’t remember some stuff, like people will be talking, and I’ll be like, Wait, what? Because I watched it so fast. I’m thinking about going and watching it again. Because it was so charming and lovely, even though it was also very sad.
Gin Jenny 10:57
Yeah, you absolutely should watch it again. It really repays rewatching. Also, I felt really highly blessed and favored that it caught on right before quarantine, like in a big, big way, so there has been so much fic that people have produced about it. And it’s been just an endless source of joy to me.
Renay 11:12
My friend Ana, who is my cohost on Fangirl Happy Hour. I have been trying for years to get her into fanfic. Years!
Gin Jenny 11:22
You have! You have really poured your heart into it.
Renay 11:25
And it’s never taken, and then I had her watch The Untamed, and bam, that did it, and suddenly she’s reading all sorts– like hundreds of thousands of words of Untamed fanfic. And I was like, Yes.
Gin Jenny 11:38
Oh my god, that makes me so happy. I’m happy for her, and I’m happy for you. I’m happy for you both.
Renay 11:43
Years and years, I finally found a canon source that she wanted extra material for, and I really think that like it only takes one, the right canon source to get you into fanfic, and then you’re HOOKED! For LIFE!
Gin Jenny 11:56
Super true. I’m super, super proud of both of you. It’s a huge step forward.
Renay 12:00
Okay, what about you?
Gin Jenny 12:02
Okay, so one of my very favorite books of 2020, it might have been my favorite book of 2020 had not Harrow the Ninth also come out this year. But one of my favorite books of 2020 was Nghi Vo’s Empress of Salt and Fortune, which is a novella from tor.com. It’s set in this Asian-inspired fantasy world. And it’s about a cleric who starts to hear the story of the most famous empress of their time and kind of how she came to power.
Gin Jenny 12:23
The marketing has described it as a story about women’s anger, which I think is a really great description. I don’t think I’ve ever read a novella that did so much in such a short space. There’s so much plot, there’s so many themes, there’s all this character work, it is just phenomenal. It really, really blew me away. And the author has a new full-length novel coming out this year, called The Chosen and the Beautiful, I think, and it’s a Great Gatsby-inspired story about a Vietnamese American, I think, Jordan Baker, who’s one of the characters in Gatsby, if you haven’t read it, and there’s also magic, so it sounds great. I actually secretly love The Great Gatsby. Many people are over it, which is totally fine. But I love it, and I love this author. So like not only was Empress of Salt and Fortune great, but it also gave me something new and amazing to look forward to in 2021.
Renay 13:11
I’ve seen her work mentioned a few times. And I’ve liked the covers.
Gin Jenny 13:17
Oh, they’re beautiful. They’re so beautiful.
Renay 13:19
And also you’re not alone. I really love The Great Gatsby.
Gin Jenny 13:22
Yay! I mean, The Great Gatsby is fine. You know, it’s not going to suffer because a few people don’t like it. But yeah, I’m really excited.
Renay 13:29
But also, I’m just excited for it being in the public domain now. So now everybody gets to remix it. I’m ready.
Gin Jenny 13:35
I’m so ready!
Renay 13:36
For queer remixes.
Gin Jenny 13:38
So yeah, that’s my first one, Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo. What is your next one?
Renay 13:42
My next one is a video game.
Gin Jenny 13:44
Oh, yay.
Renay 13:45
I got a Switch for Christmas one year, and I played the first Animal Crossing game, back when it was on Gamecube. I think that was the first one anyway. And I loved it, but then I didn’t really continue along with the series. I was busy going to college and suffering under capitalism, etc, etc. So it was perfect that Animal Crossing came out like right as my state was hitting the quarantine stage and we were going into lockdowns and stuff. So I got it. And it’s so cute. It’s so cute.
Renay 14:20
So many hours playing, collecting ,getting ripped off of artwork by that stupid fox. So it’s– For people not familiar with Animal Crossing, although I don’t know how you could have missed it. It took over the internet for a good portion of summer. You go and you move on to this island with a bunch of neighbor animals, and then you get to develop the island. Once you get to a certain point in the game, you quote-unquote win, I guess? It’s not really a game that does that.
Renay 14:49
But they give you access to terraforming tool so you can like move around your hills and your rivers and like super-customize your island, and there’s this whole community built around customization. And it’s super, it’s super cute and fun. You can also visit friends’ islands. If you have a Nintendo account, like which I think is like $5 a month, you can use codes to go visit your friends. I spent a lot of time this summer watering our friend Anna’s flowers on her Island.
Gin Jenny 15:19
That’s really sweet.
Renay 15:20
If you water your friend’s flowers, you have a higher chance of them like growing rare flowers, because you can like breed different kinds of flowers. It’s a very nerdy, nerdy side, like part of the game. And the fashion side of the fandom, because you can make your own clothing designs, is… The creativity in the Animal Crossing fandom is immense. If you haven’t played the game, I highly recommend. You can go on YouTube and like Google Animal Crossing Island tours, and a lot of people will visit other people and tour their island, and it’s so soothing and cute to look at.
Gin Jenny 15:55
Oh, that sounds wonderful. That’s great. I love it.
Renay 15:57
What’s next for you?
Gin Jenny 15:58
So next for me, I wanted to mention FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, because it is consistently excellent as a magazine, but what really impressed me in 2020 is they put together a virtual con this year, with like five minutes notice, it felt like, and they just did an amazing job. The magazine is great. The conference seemed to go really, really well. They really focused on accessibility and making it work for people in as many ways as they could. And it just reminded me that there are some institutions, like this, that I feel really thankful and fortunate that they exist in the SF community. Yeah, I just I think they’re amazing. And I’m gonna link to them in the show notes so y’all can go subscribe to the magazine, because it’s really, really great.
Renay 16:36
It’s really a good magazine, I subscribe as well. I didn’t go to the convention. And now I’m kind of kicking myself that I didn’t go to the convention.
Gin Jenny 16:42
Same. Same! I think it was one of those things where like I had stuff scheduled for that for those dates. And yeah, but I’m hoping they do it again, which I hope they will because it seemed like it went really really well. So if they if they do it again, I definitely want to go, and I would love it if they eventually were able to do an in-person con as well.
Renay 17:00
That would be super cool. Although if they end up doing that, my advice is just pick a place and keep it there.
Gin Jenny 17:06
Pick a place and stick with the place. Yeah. I vote for Chicago because they have my favorite tacos in Chicago. So yeah, that’s my next one: FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. Renay, what about you?
Renay 17:17
So my next one is another video game, which is not new, I guess. It’s not like 2020. But it got popular in 2020. And it’s called Among Us. Among Us is like a collaborative game that you play with other people, or you can play with friends that you know privately, or you can just go online generally and play with a bunch of strangers. You’re on a spaceship with a bunch of other people. Depending on the size of your group, there are one or two imposters trying to sabotage your mission, and you have to find the imposters before they can kill everybody or like sabotage this ship so everybody dies.
Gin Jenny 17:52
One of the players is the sabotager, saboteur?
Renay 17:55
Yep, it’s randomly assigned every round.
Gin Jenny 17:58
Got it.
Renay 17:58
So I played for the first time with a bunch of friends. It sounds really goofy, sort of, and it’s about space murder, so you wouldn’t think that it would be cute and also hilarious and fun. But surprise! It turns out that you have to be very, very sneaky, if you’re the imposter, to get to the end where you have killed enough people or sabotaged enough of the ship that people die.
Renay 18:27
I am really bad at it because I out myself. Or I don’t say anything when I’m not the imposter. Then I become the imposter, and I get really aggressive, so people know that I’m the imposter. And we played for my birthday, which was really fun. I think the first time that I watched the game being played was when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did a livestream with a bunch of like, famous Twitch streamers. They played Among Us, and while they played, they talked about voting, because in Among Us, part of the way that you participate in the game is that you’re running around doing ship tasks, and then somebody finds a body, they report it, and then everybody has a discussion about it. And then they have to vote for who they think the the imposter is. Whoever they vote for, if there’s a majority, that person gets rejected, and you can be wrong! You can vote the wrong person off.
Gin Jenny 19:18
And then they’re just gone?
Renay 19:19
And then they’re just gone. They get ejected. Either ejected into space or dropped into lava or whatever, depending on what planet you’re on.
Gin Jenny 19:26
Oh my God, that sounds great.
Renay 19:28
Yeah, so it was just really–it was really fun to watch her play. And so I immediately wanted to play the game. So that’s how I ended up playing a space murder game at the end of 2020.
Gin Jenny 19:38
Oh, man, that sounds wonderful. That sounds really fun. Also, just like playing a game with friends collectively sounds really great.
Renay 19:43
It was very surprising how much that– because I don’t think I would have enjoyed this game before the pandemic, but I really like like collaborative online stuff now. Like I’m just like, yes, I’m– Yeah, let’s do it.
Gin Jenny 19:58
That’s awesome.
Renay 19:59
Okay, what’s next for you?
Gin Jenny 20:00
Okay, next for me is Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha, which is a romance novel, the first in the series, set in a post– like in an America that’s kind of fallen into sort of dystopian America after some solar flares and various societal collapse. It’s about these three women who set up a library and community center, and they get recruited by a band of super soldiers who are fleeing from government control, and the women believe they’re going to help out with a heist, but actually, the super soldiers are planning to turn them over to like a shadowy interest. But for sympathetic reasons.
Gin Jenny 20:31
I really loved it. It was so much fun. I love seeing more romance novels in the SF world. And this was published by Tor or tor.com, I forget which one. So it’s just really great to see, you know, genre crossover, and it’s the first in a planned series. So I’m really, really looking forward to reading the rest of them. And that’s Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha.
Renay 20:50
This is the author who’s the two romance novelists they write as a team? I am probably biased here because I’ve read a lot of SF, and so so much of the romance in SF is bad. I’m sorry, men. You just need to work on it. I am so nervous whenever I pick up an SF novel and it’s got romance in it, and I’m like, oh, how’s this gonna go? It’s really good to know that there are people out there putting like, actually solid romantic science fiction out into the world.
Gin Jenny 21:23
Yeah, I really liked it. I just had so much fun reading it. And I feel like one of the main themes of 2020 has been that nothing is fun anymore. But I really had fun reading this book. And I was so grateful that I got to enjoy something for a change. I forget whose turn it is… It’s your turn. What’s your next one?
Renay 21:39
My next one is a book. It’s Network Effect by Martha wells, which is the latest entry in the Murderbot series. I actually reread all the novellas, The Murderbot Diaries, and then read Network Effect. And I don’t really know if I went into Network Effect expecting anything, but I came out of it going, Oh my God, friendship is real.
Gin Jenny 22:07
Oh, it’s such a beautiful– I mean, all the Murderbot books are such beautiful stories of friendship. But yeah, Network Effect was really, really the most friendship. It was great.
Renay 22:15
Yeah. And I think the reason that the friendship in Network Effect hit me a little harder is because like it was both human but not human. It felt like the friendship part was like very, like rote and data driven, and that would make it feel not great, right. But because it’s Murderbot and Asshole Research Transport, it made it perfect. And I just loved the way she built out the universe. And also, we got to see like some fun space shenanigans, and alien shenanigans, which we haven’t got to see much of from The Murderbot Diaries.
Renay 22:58
I think that the next book goes back to being like a novella. I don’t think it’s a novel like this one was, but she wrote so much cool stuff into this novel! I’ve seen some complaints that it was too long or whatever. Whatever! I could have read like 300 more pages.
Gin Jenny 23:15
I know. I loved it. I just love Murderbot so much, If anyone hasn’t read The Murderbot Diaries, really, really take this opportunity. The first one is All Systems Red. It’s such a good idea. You’re gonna thank me later.
Renay 23:25
Because she wrote so much into this novel, there was so much going on, all the stuff she created, she can like pull novellas out of her hat for like, years, based on this one novel. And I’m here for it. I hope like that she does, maybe she does like four novellas, a novel, four more novellas, a novel. Like I would– Listen, sign me up for the rest of my career for that.
Gin Jenny 23:50
Yeah, I absolutely love those books. That’s a great, great choice.
Renay 23:53
Yeah. What about you? What’s next?
Gin Jenny 23:55
Okay, so my last one, I think, is Jordan Ifueko’s debut YA novel Raybearer. I do have to say, it didn’t feel a lot like a YA novel. It felt like this thing where a coming of age story about a woman, especially women of color, gets put in YA because it feels like the place for that type of story. And I do hope we’re moving away from that as a culture. But nevertheless, Raybearer felt more like an adult fantasy to me.
Gin Jenny 24:16
However, I loved it. I thought it was really, really good. It’s a secondary world fantasy novel, which I sometimes struggle with. It’s about a girl who grows up knowing that she’s been created by her mother to settle a political score by killing the Emperor’s son. So what she’s supposed to do is go join the Emperor’s son’s court, gain his trust, and then kill him. But when she gets there, the Emperor’s son is like a really good egg, a really sweet little bean. So Tarasai, who is the main character, doesn’t want to kill him, and many conflicts ensue.
Gin Jenny 24:44
I just loved this book’s worldbuilding, which, like I say, is not usually something that really thrills me. But the world just feels so beautifully drawn. Like I just got the sense that the edges of the map we hadn’t visited yet are totally filled out and ready to go. And yeah, I loved it. I thought it was tremendous. I can’t wait for the sequel. It’s a really, really good book.
Renay 25:02
I think I saw the cover for this one and added it to my to-read list based on the cover alone.
Gin Jenny 25:07
You would, wouldn’t you? It’s very eye catching.
Renay 25:09
Yeah, yes. It’s like purple and gold, kind of? I can’t seem to recall the colors.
Gin Jenny 25:14
Yeah, it’s like brightly colored. It’s got like, it looks like there’s kind of like a sun but a multicolored sun coming out of the back of the woman’s head. It’s great. So yeah, Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko. All right, what about you, Renay, what’s next for you?
Renay 25:27
Well, my last one is another novella, and it’s called The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho.
Gin Jenny 25:34
I love this choice. Great. Continue.
Renay 25:36
Yes. So it is a novel about this group of bandits who happen to steal a bunch of like religious artifacts, and they’re trying to sell them, but they accidentally run into somebody from the order that the religious artifacts are from, and it becomes a whole piece of drama. It’s set against this backdrop of this ongoing war, and I told Ana when we talked about it, on Fangirl Happy Hour, that it felt like fanfic to me. It felt like there was a bigger world out there, and that somebody was writing, like a story about some side characters that they really liked getting to know each other and having a complicated relationship, and Ana was like, Exactly! And she was right, because like I went and looked up, and literally Zen Cho said that.
Gin Jenny 26:22
Yeah, she said it was like–I saw this! She said it was like a fanfic for a show that doesn’t exist, which I thought was so great.
Renay 26:27
Yeah. And it’s accurate. It’s super, super good. I really, really loved it. I was charmed by it. Literally. My only complaint was there wasn’t more of it.
Gin Jenny 26:35
Yeah, it was terrific. I really liked it, too. I thought it was so like, funny and charming. And I just I really have enjoyed Zen Cho. Like she’s another author who like reading her books makes me feel nice. And I like feeling nice. And I appreciate that. Thanks, Zen Cho!
Renay 26:48
Thank you so much for all your excellent work that makes me feel happy.
Gin Jenny 26:51
All right, well, that is some of the SF we have consumed in 2020. And then Renay, what are you going to tell us about today, cuz I’m really excited about it?
Renay 27:00
So I’ve been trying my hardest, so hard to get you into games.
Gin Jenny 27:08
It’s true.
Renay 27:08
A lot like Ana with fanfic.
Gin Jenny 27:10
I was just gonna say! This is the year it’s all come true for you.
Renay 27:14
Yeah, I can’t believe that this happened. And I was supposed to bring you some games to like recommend, but also to give to other people who are thinking about, “Hm, games? I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about that.” However, most people have like a smartphone, or like an iPad of some kind. So the first game that I’m bringing to you as like an offering going, do you want to try this? Please try a bite! It’s called Monument Valley. And it’s kind of like quote unquote, RPG, I think. You control a character going through these Escher-like environments, and you have to manipulate the environment to complete the puzzle. And Monument Valley, they also have the sequel, Monument Valley Two, which is, I think they’re both out now. And they’re not very long, they’re really easy to play. The art is super beautiful, and this narrative is short enough that if you’re not into eighty-hour RPGs, like I am, accessible, right? And they come in stages, so you don’t have to do all the stages at once. You can pick it up and put it down. I really, really think that Monument Valley is one of like, the most artistic iPhone games that I’ve played.
Gin Jenny 28:26
Awww, that’s awesome.
Renay 28:27
Next up is a game that you’ll recognize. The match-three genre is huge. There’s so many. The first one that I got hooked on was one called Matchland. And it was kind of like an RPG, too, where you go into battles with enemies, and you match things up to attack. And it’s very cute, if you like, cute graphics and endless gameplay. But the second one, which Jenny introduced to me, plot twist!, that I’ve been hooked on since then. I think this was– It’s been like several years now.
Gin Jenny 29:03
Yeah, I apologize for this. Please continue.
Renay 29:06
It’s called Matchington Mansion. It’s another match-three game. But here. The thing is that you play the game, and you match your little pillows to earn points where you can revitalize this mansion that you’ve inherited with your friend Tiffany.
Gin Jenny 29:24
It’s so great. The mansion is so dilapidated. So every time you fix something, it’s like a little dopamine hit.
Renay 29:30
It’s great. And you are totally in a relationship with Tiffany, because that’s the only reason that she would be there.
Gin Jenny 29:36
Absolutely. Tiffany and you share closets. You share bookshelves, your books are all mixed together. Every time you do anything, Tiffany is right there by your side being really supportive, being like, great job! You have amazing taste. So yeah, you’re definitely in a relationship with Tiffany.
Renay 29:51
Yes. And so as a match-three game, I didn’t think that I would get so hooked on the story and where it’s going, but I’m super hooked on the story and where it’s going! I get stuck on levels, so I’m just like, I can’t progress! I want to know what happens next! It’s how they suck you in.
Gin Jenny 30:06
It is how they suck you in. It is really, really addictive. It’s hard to kick the habit once you’ve got it.
Gin Jenny 30:11
So if you like match-three games, those are the two that I would recommend: Matchland and Matchington Mansion.
Gin Jenny 30:18
And just to because it took me a second to understand what match-three games were, it’s like candy crush, where you match three similar color items. And then they go, Poof!
Renay 30:25
Right, sorry, I assumed that everybody would know what that meant. And that was wrong of me! I apologize.
Gin Jenny 30:30
I eventually deduced it from context clues which I should have done in the first place.
Renay 30:35
So the next is another mobile game that you can play on your personal smart devices, but I’m not sure how to describe it very well. So it’s called Frost. And basically, it’s a physics game, where you have to figure out how to move particles of light into different areas, while handling obstacles that are also pieces of light. It’s very pretty, and the music is really nice. It’s actually more difficult than you would think. And I don’t think that it has a ton of levels. I think it was like 20 or something. I got through all the levels and finished. So I think they said they were working on more maybe? But I’m not positive. And it took me about a month to get through all the levels, but also I’m slow with physics games like that. But look, if you like really like artistic pretty puzzles that you had to like solve, that is another one that I would highly recommend. It’s called Frost.
Gin Jenny 31:32
Nice! I do like games with puzzles I have to solve.
Renay 31:35
Yeah, the benefit is that it’s very beautiful.
Gin Jenny 31:37
Oh, man, that sounds great.
Renay 31:39
The next, also mobile, so accessible for people who don’t have like a console, are Tower Defender Games. I don’t know how much you know about tower defender games. It’s like when you have to defend like your home base against invaders?
Gin Jenny 31:53
Oh, wow. Okay, makes sense.
Renay 31:54
The one that I like the best is called Kingdom Rush. because number one, it’s super cute. Like the graphics are adorable. And it’s got different difficulty levels. So you can start out on like a very easy level, and then work your way up, and it has super–like it has a ton of replay value. Because you can go back and replay levels at a higher difficulty as you get better at the game.
Gin Jenny 32:17
Oh, that’s amazing. I love it!
Renay 32:19
It’s very, it’s like you have to strategize like what kind of defenses do you need? And where do you need to put them? Like you have different options, like you can set up sentries, like little warriors, you could set up magician towers, archers, there’s a bomb option that launches projectiles. And it’s very, very cute. And there’s like it’s a whole series now. Kingdom Rush is just the first one, but there are more in the series. So if you’ve finished Kingdom Rush and you win all the levels at every difficulty, you can go and play the sequels.
Gin Jenny 32:50
That’s great. That’s amazing.
Renay 32:52
Yeah. Next is yet another kind of matching game. But it’s a it’s more like a Tetris type situation here.
Gin Jenny 33:01
Oh, I love Tetris.
Renay 33:02
Yeah, there’s just like where you move blocks to like a race line. So this one is called Haru Slide. And it’s various links of cats laying down, and you have to slide them to get little lines for all the cat, the cat thing rises to the top. And it’s very cute. There’s a lot of meowing sounds. And you get to like, as you win levels, you can earn like little coins in order to purchase different like outfits for your cat.
Gin Jenny 33:32
Awww!
Renay 33:33
Highly recommend if you’re like a Tetris player who likes like sorting puzzles, like that. I’m also a Tetris fan, although my favorite is a Tetris that like hardly anybody remembers, and if they do, they kind of look at me like I’m strange. Tetris Attacks, which was a Super Nintendo game that was Mario-themed.
Gin Jenny 33:53
That sounds great.
Renay 33:54
Yeah, I’m not really sure how to explain Tetris Attacks, but highly recommend that you go to YouTube and look it up.
Gin Jenny 34:01
The one thing I want to add, because I just learned this, and it really made a difference to me, I installed Steam on my computer, which is a game platform slash store. And what I learned that I didn’t previously know– Well, two things. Number one, if you have an account, you can create a wish list, and then that will notify you when your games on your wish list go on sale, so you can get them for cheaper. And two, I learned that you can return any game within, I think, two hours of play time in the first two weeks. And they’ll just refund it for you. So if you just don’t enjoy it, they’ll just refund it for you. Which is great, because one of my concerns about getting into gaming was that I would buy all these games that I didn’t end up wanting or playing. So it’s really exciting news. And I know other people might be interested to know that also.
Renay 34:41
You’re on Steam now. Well, I’m really glad that I also brought some Steam recommendations to this moment as well. So I have three of them, three recommendations on Steam. The first one is it’s called Rumu. It’s about a little vacuum. And Rumu goes around the house cleaning but also discovering secrets about the family while the house AI has an emotional breakdown.
Gin Jenny 35:07
Oh my God, that sounds amazing.
Renay 35:08
And it’s a discovery game and sort of a puzzle game because you have to figure out how to get Rumu around the house when they’re on wheels, and they can’t jump like levels or whatever. So you have to be like creative. It’s also a little dark. I think of it as a little kind of dystopia game. But Rumu is super cute, and you get to talk to the house AI and make different choices. So highly recommend that. And it’s also not super expensive. I think I think I paid like $5 for it.
Gin Jenny 35:37
Yeah, it looks like the base price is $10. So yeah, if you put it on your wish list, it will surely go on sale for much less than that.
Renay 35:44
And then another game on Steam that I like for people who like to just have open-ended games where you just build something, and there’s not like checkpoints, or whatever else. There is a game called Townscaper. And it’s basically this big ocean, and you start building houses. And you basically can like build out an entire village. With this, this little game, you can make a big sprawling village, you can make a little tightly packed village with lots of levels. And I actually saw somebody on my Twitter feed, I don’t know who it was now, using Townscaper as like a worldbuilding tool for their books, because they were building their little city in their books, so they could have a visual of what their city looked like in their book.
Gin Jenny 36:25
Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
Renay 36:26
And it’s very colorful, and the controls are super easy. And there’s no like penalties. So you can just go in there and like toss houses down and delete. And it’s just very nice.
Gin Jenny 36:36
It sounds great. I’m like looking at these on Steam as you’re talking about them. And all the graphics are so– There’s like a flying little bird. They’re building a little bridge, it’s great.
Renay 36:44
And the third game, and the final one that I have, is called Gone Home. This game is a little bit older, I played this finally last year. And it is another game kind of like Rumu where you’re going around a house discovering things. You get home to like your parents’ home in the Pacific Northwest, and you don’t know what’s happened, the house is abandoned. And so you have to like go to the house looking for clues. Some doors are locked. So you have to like figure out how to get through them, find keys, you’re discovering stuff about the family as you’re going through the house. Like the deeper into the house you get, the more access you get, the more you discover the truth about what’s happened to this family. For some reason, I thought it was a horror game, but it’s not a horror game. So you don’t necessarily have to worry about jumpscares
Gin Jenny 37:30
Okay, great to know, I did kind of worry it was a horror game based on the like graphics.
Renay 37:34
No, it’s not a horrow game. It is definitely not a fantasy game at all. It’s a very, it’s very rooted in, you know, reality. It’s super fascinating how they built it out and how they leave you to slowly uncover what happened to this family and why the certain things happened to the family. So highly recommend that one too. There’s no like combat or anything. You’re literally just walking around the house clicking on stuff.
Gin Jenny 37:59
That’s exactly my kind of game. I have played a few games this year, and the main thing I’ve learned is I can’t deal with any kind of stress. So.
Renay 38:07
One day, Jenny, I’m going to be able to visit you and I’m bringing my PlayStation, and I’m bringing Horizon Zero Dawn with me, and we’re gonna play it and it’s gonna be fine.
Gin Jenny 38:17
I think it’s gonna be great because you can play it and I’ll cheer you out. I’ll be your cheerleading section.
Renay 38:21
Those are what I think like, as far as games go, those are a great place to start to see what you like in different categories.
Gin Jenny 38:28
I think it’s really great to just have like a few suggestions to start out. Because I think with gaming for me, and with a lot of stuff honestly, I just don’t know where to start with new things. So I just never try new things.
Renay 38:38
Well, be careful with some mobile games! There are some that are super addicting like not a good way. Like for example, I’m currently playing this game called Egg Inc, which is literally just about building a giant farm and discovering more and more complicated eggs. And it’s just neverending and it’s super addicting. But it’s also neverending. It never ends! Like it’s really hard to find a stopping place, if that makes sense. When you’re playing like match-three games, like even the addictive ones, like candy crush, like you won a level. It’s hard to put it down but you won a level, you’re like Okay, I’m gonna take a break now that I’ve won this level. But with games like Egg Inc, it’s hard to find a stopping place. So you’re just like, oh, I’ve just been sitting here hatching chickens for three and a half hours. Not good. So be careful.
Gin Jenny 39:25
I completely understand. Well, I didn’t want to let Renay be– I didn’t want to force Renay to be the only one giving advice on this podcast. So I wanted to bring a little thing of my own. So I’m going to quickly explain how to cross-stitch for people who are not sure if they want to start cross-stitching.
Gin Jenny 39:40
Here are the benefits of cross stitch. Number one, it is a repetitive thing that you can do that is calming but it makes you feel productive. Number two, when I was a kid, cross-stitch was really falling out of favor. But now the fiber arts are back, so you can legitimately make some things that people in your life will genuinely want. Hooray! Number three, it’s so easy! You don’t have to have any artistic talent, and that’s great because I don’t have any artistic talent. You just have to follow directions. And number four, if you mess it up, you can unpick it, it’s easy.
Gin Jenny 40:08
Here’s how it works basically. The pattern is like a little paint by numbers picture, it’s laid out in a graph, and each square of the graph corresponds to a square on your fabric. And each square on the graph has a symbol inside it that corresponds to a color. So you just put that color of thread on your needle, and stick the little X’s every place that that symbol appears. That’s it. It’s so easy.
Renay 40:26
Here’s my question.
Gin Jenny 40:27
Hit me. Hit me with your question. Yes.
Renay 40:28
So back in the dinosaur days of the internet, I used to do pixel art in Paintshop. Pro.
Gin Jenny 40:36
I vaguely– Now that you said that, like this is, I’m digging through the grim recesses of my mind. And this does sound familiar. Like, I think I might have also done this. Yes, it’s similar.
Renay 40:46
So yeah, so pixel art, I used to just make pixel art up from scratch, like, I still have some of my pixel art that I did, like over on DeviantArt, and also on my hard drives. So technically, I could just go and pull my pixel art and put it into a cross-stitch pattern is what you’re saying.
Gin Jenny 41:02
You absolutely could do that. Yes, a hundred percent.
Renay 41:05
That’s fascinating. So okay, second question. With cross-stitch, do you just buy patterns from places?
Gin Jenny 41:13
So what I was gonna say, if folks are like, not sure, and feeling unconfident, a good way to start out and see if you enjoy it is to buy a little kit. Because even if you buy something really, really simple that you’re not planning to do anything with at the end, it’s a good way to see if it’s like any fun for you. And it’s not very expensive, and it’s pretty easy to do and pretty easy to get.
Gin Jenny 41:32
So you can pick up a sample cross stitch kit for under $10 at places like Joanne’s or Michaels or at mc.com, which is the website of the people who make the embroidery thread, the embroidery floss. They have a ton of beginner level kits, which I’ll link to in the show notes. So that provides the fabric, usually a hoop, the needle, all the thread colors you need, and the pattern. So it’s super, super easy.
Gin Jenny 41:54
I’m also going to, in the show notes, I’m going to make a little very brief list of supplies you need to buy if you don’t want to start with a kit. There’s a million patterns on Etsy, for example. So if there’s something, like I don’t know, some nerdy thing that you’re interested in, there’s probably a cross-stitch pattern about it on Etsy. You can also get patterns, there’s a number of free patterns on DMC.com. Yeah, there’s a lot of places to get patterns. There’s like magazines at Joanne’s and Michael’s. If you are not sure what you want to cross-stitch, hit me up and I will work with you to find a good pattern.
Renay 42:24
I wonder if there’s BTS themed patterns?
Gin Jenny 42:26
Oh, my God, that’s such a great question. I have to find out the answer.
Renay 42:32
There has to be
Gin Jenny 42:33
I mean, I don’t really know how to interpret these. So I can’t tell you if they’re any good. But yeah, there are definitely results for this.
Renay 42:38
Okay, great. Good to know.
Gin Jenny 42:41
Yeah, I mean, it’s just really fun. And it makes me feel very peaceful. And if anyone maybe wants to start cross-stitch, but like has some questions about it, please feel free to hit me up on Twitter because, I don’t know, I would like to share my very small amount of knowledge. Like I started doing this when I was eight. It’s really easy to do.
Renay 42:57
You’d been cross-stitching a long time.
Gin Jenny 42:59
Well, yeah, I haven’t been doing it super consistently. Like this is definitely me getting back into cross-stitch. But yeah, when I was eight, my godmother had a baby. And I made a little, I cross-stitched a little pattern on a bib for him that said his name.
Renay 43:12
So you talked about like beginner kits. Be real, how difficult is like advanced level cross stitch?
Gin Jenny 43:20
Okay, so it’s not so much difficult as it is– Well, there’s a higher barrier to entry in a couple of ways. Number one, you need more stuff, because a higher difficulty cross-stitch pattern will just have a lot more colors and will be a lot more complex, Two, it’ll typically have more backstitching. Backstitching functions like, instead of doing Xes, you’re stitching a straight line. So you usually use it to like make the outlines of things sharper in the picture. So more complicated patterns will have more backstitching. But honestly, like the difference in difficulty is not that big. I would start with something small because I want you to get that like dopamine hit of finishing something. And also, like get a sense of what cross stitching is like. But yeah, it’s it’s not that much harder to do complicated things than simple things.
Renay 44:04
I’m gonna go buy a cross stitch kit and do it and then send you the photos of the completed project. Everybody else should join me. Let’s all do a little kit and all send the results to Jenny.
Gin Jenny 44:18
I would be so excited. Like I said, I’m gonna link in the show notes and stuff that you can buy if you want to, like you know, start completely independently without a kit. I’ll link the basic supplies that you’ll need. It’s really not that much. You need like fabric, thread, needles, and a hoop and that’s it.
Renay 44:31
That sounds amazing. I love dopamine.
Gin Jenny 44:33
Me too! I started cross-stitching a little thing for our friend E. It looks like a little tourist poster for Naboo, says Welcome to Naboo, and has little picture. I know. It’s really cute, but I wasn’t paying attention, and I started doing– I had it rotated 90 degrees wrong. So I was stitching down lower and lower into the pattern. I was like man, I am running out of space and there’s still so much left of this, and it was because I had oriented it wrong and I had to unpick everything
Renay 45:00
I hate when I do that. I do that with knitting sometimes.
Gin Jenny 45:02
Yeah. But it’s like a very classic cross stitch experience. Like do not allow yourself to become discouraged. It just happens. So that’s it. That’s my pitch for cross stitching. Renay, where can people find you online?
Renay 45:14
People can find me on Twitter at Renay, R E N A Y. They can also find me at the Hugo Award-winning Lady Business, LadyBusiness.dreamwidth.org
Gin Jenny 45:24
Awesome. And thank you so much for coming on and talking to me about games and all sorts of things. You’re the best!
Renay 45:28
Thank you for having me!
Gin Jenny 45:30
Yay, this is so lovely. And I forgot to do a toast! I forgot to look up a toast or a quote to close out the show. So until next time, listeners, be safe out there. No more coups 2021!
Renay 45:42
Wear a mask!
Gin Jenny 45:43
Wear a mask!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai