Birdwings

It's coming up on the end of 2025, so let's do a couple review posts.

Cameron Reed — The Fortunate Fall

Apr. 10

Holy shit what a ride.

Newly back in print after a long period of unavailability, this landmark work by the author of a favorite short story was brought to my attention with a link to an old Jo Walton review of it. Walton is a superior book reviewer, so maybe I should just tell you to close my tab and read her; certainly she made a watertight case that I needed to read this book immediately.

This is a 30-year-old science fiction book that feels new. It’s intense and paranoid and smart and scary. I bought a copy after reading it because I predicted needing to both re-read it and loan it out.

The author has another novel coming out in I think April, and I’m in, sight unseen.

Bonus Level: Persona 3 Reload

May 3

Persona 3 seems to have been the game where Atlus really nailed down their winning formula for the series, which they've been refining ever since. It's also the only one of the three modern main-line games that I hadn't played. And how convenient, they just released a remake of it last year!

With regard to remakes: This era sometimes seems like it would prefer to give us nothing but, and in general I would say I have negative feelings about that. But in this specific case, the brief seems to have been “the dramatic presentation ain’t broken, but let’s match P5’s battle system and visuals,” and frankly I’m on board. P5’s contributions to the state of the turn-based art were not small, and I was happy to pay a bit of a premium to experience a classic story I missed out on with like a solid 50% less slog. (That said, if you already DID play P3 a couple times on the PS2, I would expect that this is completely inessential. Having played P4 Golden a few years back, I have no plans to fuck with the upcoming P4 remake.)

Wow, I’m committing some circumvegetal battery today, aren’t I. Anyway, I enjoyed this a LOT. The characters were superb, the plot was twisty and satisfying, and it had that classic Persona balance of engrossing life-sim loop and risk-hungry dungeon crawling.

All three of these games have some strong point that raises them above the others. P5’s hand-crafted story dungeons and rotating cast of menacing-yet-pathetic villains are SO motivating, and feel decades more advanced than the abstract threats and surprise big-bads of 3 and 4. In P4, the narrative/mechanical harmony of your party members literally confronting their shadow to unlock their powers is the best version of the “Persona” conceit around, and binds your party together in purpose just as well as P5’s superior villainy does; possibly better. In P3, I think the rifts and tensions within the party might be the star of the show. The setting of the game is dark and paranoid, and that paranoia seeps into your own people in insidious ways. The struggle to trust and protect each other despite that is the thematic core of this one, and it remains solid and resonant.

I played this with the Japanese voice cast (the English cast are very good, but sometimes it’s nice to get a bit of listening practice anyway), and there were a couple of standout performances. Well, mostly I mean Yukari. She’s my fave in general, but there are a couple of scenes where she has some emotionally raw material and just kills with it. (She’s the one I had my protagonist ask out, because obviously, and the climactic scene of that path really sticks with me.) Also, honorable mention to your homeroom teacher; most of the game she’s just wry and funny and above it all, but there is ONE scene with her after the final battle that only appears if you complete a particular social link, and it is just about the funniest shit I have EVER heard in a video game. We’re talking severe stomach pain.

Bonus Level: Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis

Nov 21

This is a ~$30 optional DLC. I enjoyed some things about it, but it’s flawed and inessential, and I don’t know that I’d recommend it, even if you loved the main game.

First off: it’s a continuation of the main game’s story, but that story didn’t need continuation; it already ends at the correct moment. This also relies on some pretty random contrivances to provoke its conflicts. I see it more as an ok what-if fanfic than as a properly canonical coda. (I had been hoping for a bit more backstory on the original shadow research from before we all got here, but no dice; it’s all looking back at more recent trauma.)

Secondly, and more frustratingly: it lacks all of P3’s life sim elements. It’s just the dungeon-crawling and shopping. So you’ve effectively got half the gameplay of a main-line Persona game, and the dungeoning gets tedious without the social calendar to space it out and contextualize it.

Ryoko Kui — Delicious in Dungeon vols. 1-14 (completed) (comics)

Jul. 31

What a tremendous comic! There’s so much there there, thematically and dramatically. I think I already told you this was an all-timer when I was 2/3 through it, and it very much stuck the landing. And it’s so, so funny, between all the world-at-stake drama. You should read this. (I actually bought the whole run, which I won’t normally do with a manga these days.)

Here is something load-bearing in the story that I don’t think I’ve seen talked about much: the way the Winged Lion is so beautiful. My boi is the prettiest kitty. He just like, glows, with a pure inner light of kindness, such that even when you’re starting to get onto his tricks you still kinda want to believe him.

I think the parallel with Aslan must be intentional, and feels like part of a comprehensive Buddhist critique of Christian conceptions of divinity, permanence, and the possibility of satisfying desire. (I may have mentioned the thematic density??)