Author: silentfuzzle

My Mom’s Murder (Seasons 1-2)

My Mom’s Murder and My Mom’s Murder: Season 2 follow Lauren Malloy in her investigation into her mother’s unsolved murder after she was contacted by a stranger 30 years later. The audiobook is composed of Lauren’s narration and recordings of interviews she’s conducted in the years since her investigation began in 2020. Many of the recordings are of low-quality phone conversations, but Lauren does a good job of repeating what the interviewee has said when it isn’t clear.

At first, Lauren struck me as a journalist who happened to discover this bizarre event in her past. She is contacted by Louise, supposedly her mother’s best friend in childhood, who tells Lauren that her mother didn’t die of natural causes as she had been told her whole life but had been murdered. Lauren’s inclination to begin recording her calls with Louise almost immediately seemed like someone hunting for a story, and she so happened to strike gold in her own life. She also seemed adept at interviewing.

I also had theories that perhaps Lauren was a TikToker trained to find and record content to gain attention. This theory came from her mentioning that she shared her investigation and frustrations on TikTok. Occasionally, she has discussions with her best friend, who seems to be in the audiobooks only for Lauren to talk to (because a podcast is often more entertaining with two people than one). Lauren has also attracted the attention of the news in the past when she found and reunited with her long lost siblings or step-siblings several years before the events in this audiobook series. Perhaps she’s an attention seeker… but if she is, it’s for the purpose of tracking down her family’s mysteries.

It turns out she wasn’t a journalist or a social media influencer; she worked somewhere in the tech sector, and may still. What she does as a non-journalist, however, is impressive. She doesn’t trust Louise, often suspecting her of lying and even of being her mother’s murderer. Despite this, she talks to Louise as if they are friends for more than a year, all to coerce as much information out of her as she can. She treats other suspects and interviewees similarly, acting as their friend but secretly acting as a journalist, undercover cop, or detective. She built a large social media following for the purpose of forcing the police to take her seriously and reopen her mother’s cold case. Along the way, she built an organization to help others seek justice for deceased family members. She seems like she genuinely took all these roles out of a need to understand her family history, which is a common trait that’s impressed me about the narrators or interviewees of other audiobooks I’ve listened to recently like The Secret Daughter and The Madman’s Hotel.

At times, the audiobooks, particularly Season 2, feel more like a family gossip fest. Before the latest DNA results are revealed, let’s hear more gossip from Louise and everyone else who has an opinion on the latest turn of events! But perhaps this is because the murder is officially unsolved and the listener is invited to form their own theory from the conflicting evidence presented.

While Lauren judges all these people–who’s lying and who’s telling the truth?–as a listener, I’m also judging her, and like Lauren’s, my judgments changed quite a bit throughout the two audiobooks. Very meta. 😛

Spring Baking Championship (Season 8)

Season 8 of Spring Baking Championship introduced two gimmicks, and both of them failed.

The first was the elimination of two bakers in episode one and the introduction of two new bakers in episode two. Typically, a season begins with twelve bakers and one is eliminated each episode until the season finale with the final 3-4 bakers. In this season, two bakers were eliminated in the first episode to make way for the addition of two more bakers in episode two. The new bakers, however, first had to compete against each other alongside the other bakers. Out of the two bakers, the one with the better dessert would continue competing. At the end of the episode, one of the new bakers and one of the original contestants were eliminated, bringing the contestant count down to the regularly scheduled ten. The second new baker, however, was eliminated in episode three, making the whole gimmick pointless.

The second gimmick was the unexpected introduction of a pre-final bake off. Until Season 11, season finales included two rounds. The first round eliminated one of the four finalists. In the second, the final three competed for winner of the season. In Season 11, the four finalists still competed in round one, but then, the bottom two were required to compete against each other in a bake off to join the top two in the final round. Unprepared for the sudden development and overwhelmed by the emotional toll of the previous round, however, one of the contestants simply quit, making the other the winner by default and the whole gimmick pointless.

The first gimmick never made another appearance. Despite its similar failure, however, the second would become the new finale format for all following seasons of Spring Baking Championship. No one has quit since, so it seems the contestants get a warning about it now.

UnagiLogic Shout Out

UnagiLogic gave this blog and other things I’ve written a shout out on Patreon, so I’m returning a shout out. UnagiLogic is building a VRChat game called Tap-ioca Tavern and sharing game development learnings and other aspects of the journey along the way. They will also be hosting regular Micro Jams and are open to collaboration for those wanting to build their programming skills or widen their community.

If you’re interested in game design or game development, you can find UnagiLogic’s Patreon here.

Solo Leveling (Seasons 1-2)

Both of the anime I watched recently, Kaiju No. 8 and Solo Leveling, felt rushed in some way. While watching Kaiju No. 8, my theory was that this was the new format of anime in an era of increasingly shortening attention spans. Or perhaps it was an anime for people who have watched so much anime that they can fill in the gaping holes in its character development with their favorite aspects of the common anime tropes each character represents. My latest theory is that these anime exist more as fan service for people who read the manga than as anime that can stand on their own. Considering I haven’t read these manga, this is speculation, but Kaiju No. 8 may have felt rushed because it was composed only of highlights from the manga.

Solo Leveling stands a bit better on its own and, overall, the pacing feels more natural. The protagonist Jinwoo Sung has a nice character arc across the two seasons. Where Solo Leveling falls short is its side characters. A classic anime like Naruto might spend multiple episodes on a side character’s or an enemy’s backstory (to the point where I just want the show to get on with killing them off). Solo Leveling, however, introduces side characters with just enough detail to make me want to know more but not so much that I can say I like or even know them. Side characters frequently appear in one or a small number of episodes for a few minutes, hinting that they might become important, only to never have any further importance. Even if they do become important later, some are forgettable enough that I wouldn’t recognize them. For example, I’m still not sure if the blond lady Sung saved in the final episode was the same lady who’s only trait was that she thought he smelled nice several episodes earlier.

From what I’ve heard of the manga, the side characters received more development, perhaps even chapters dedicated to explaining their backstories or showcasing their personalities. The anime might have cut even this relatively large amount of development out because it recognized they don’t matter. In the final episode, Sung states he would like to start a guild, perhaps one composed of all the side characters we’ve met throughout the series, and then the story ends.

This might be by design. Jinwoo Sung begins the series by lamenting how unfair life is and condemning everyone as heartless, selfish traitors. He spends the rest of the series focusing on his own development and the two people, his sister and his mom, that are important to him. He saves other characters not because he cares or has any emotional attachment to them but because he can and it’s the right/fair thing to do. In the video game-like world he inhabits, the side characters are NPCs that exist only to increase his sense of justice in a brutal world. As an anime, it’s dissatisfying to viewers for not developing the potential its side characters have, but this lack of focus reflects Sung’s disinterest in everyone well.

Cake Wars: Christmas

For a season of Cake Wars contestants came in teams to compete against each other in creating the best Christmas-themed cakes across multiple rounds/episodes with the final round being a life-size gingerbread house.

This season of Christmas-themed challenges took out the best part of food-related shows (delicious-looking food) and left in the worst part of Cake Wars (cake decorating). I was mildly entertained by Cake Wars for the cake, man! The characters and things made with the food were often related to properties I didn’t care about and didn’t even look good. They may be edible, but they also aren’t appetizing: usually fondant, food coloring, and rice crispy treats and modeling chocolate that someone has rubbed their hands all over. That vanilla bean, buttercream frosting cake, however, tell me more about that.

Most of the cakes in Cake Wars: Christmas weren’t presented to the judges as food for tasting. The cakes themselves were judged purely on looks, but the judges also required and judged a separate tasting element (e.g. “Here’s cookies that we also baked.”). These tasting elements don’t even get that much emphasis. Most of the episode is dedicated to how impressive that firetruck-shaped, questionable-food on a platform screwed to a wall smeared in food coloring is.

I’m glad I skipped Cake Wars: Halloween because it would probably be the same but Halloween themed.

AKA Charlie Sheen

I was listening to this podcast “The Toxic Fuel That’s Destroying Your Motivation” when host Chris Williamson recommended AKA Charlie Sheen to Healthy Gamer’s Dr. K. The discussion had veered onto the topic of how some people get stuck in bad habits because they don’t experience the consequences. Chris said Charlie Sheen was a prime example of this and recommended the documentary as evidence.

It sounded interesting, and I have Netflix, so I figured, why not? Indeed it was a documentary about how Charlie was repeatedly rewarded handsomely for bad behavior. When he arrived to the set of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off late, the director didn’t mind, and he was later praised by audiences for the two scenes he was in and began his ascension into fame. He attempted to leave Two and a Half Men to get off drugs but was paid a ridiculous salary to stay. When he became such a crack head that he was fired, he became even more famous.

I’ve heard the name Charlie Sheen throughout my life, but it occurred to me as I was watching this documentary that I couldn’t think of anything I’d watched that had Charlie Sheen in it. Upon looking through IMDB, the two movies of his that I remember watching are Foodfight! and Scary Movie 3. Truly the height of cinema.

Is he just famous for being a drug addict? Even my favorite moment from Scary Movie 3 is more funny as I remember it (“Bring me that railroad tie… my balls… Jesus. Not that!”) than it actually is.

Also, that guy from Grace and Frankie is his dad? I guess that shows how much I pay attention to celebrities.

The Art of War

I was expecting The Art of War by Sun Tzu to be a multi-hour long audio book. When I saw it was only about an hour on Audible, I thought it must be a cliff notes or abridged version. No. Ancient Chinese military experts simply don’t waste words.

I probably knew this at some point and forgot, but the lyrics for “Art of Conflict” by VNV Nation are all The Art of War quotes.

The Demon Next Door

The Demon Next Door by Bryan Burrough tells the story of serial killer and rapist Danny Corwin. Perhaps it was the audiobook narrator’s somewhat goofy voice, but at a couple points, I laughed at how absurd the descriptions of the murders were. And I don’t know if it was intentional.

Danny failed to kill the first woman he attempted to murder, so a long recollection exists in this book of all the things Danny did to her. They are ridiculous. He waited outside her car in the school parking lot. When she arrived, he pulled a knife and demanded she let him drive her car. She laughed at him and refused but eventually allowed him to drive. He took her to a remote location where he demanded she take off her clothes. She refused until he got out of the car, which he did. Later, when he told her to get out of the car, she refused until he gave her her clothes back. After getting kicked in the crotch, he did. She got out of the car, went where he directed, and hoped he’d leave her alone. Instead, they ended up on the ground where he stabbed her experimentally.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked.

The book/narrator described it like two teenagers, which they were at the time, doing something extremely stupid and regrettable while fooling around. Granted, this first victim knew Danny and probably genuinely believed he was harmless and then couldn’t believe what he was doing. A couple other points in the book, however, give the same impression: Danny has no idea what he’s doing and the victim thinks he’s ridiculous.

In a different type of comedic moment, another victim Debra Ewing sees the shadowy figure of Corwin with a knife in the parking lot at her place of work. Panicking, she runs to a bathroom and pounds on the door. Her coworker inside answers the door.

Debra dropped her purse. “I just peed all over myself!”

“Well, what’s wrong?” her coworker asked.

It’s an appropriate response for the victim to have under the circumstances but delivered as if it were a punchline. Why include this detail in the description of events leading to a murder?

Or perhaps it’s just me, and I’m a sadist. O.O

In other news, I found this audiobook more engaging than We Own This City, and I wonder if it’s related to my theory about the lack of mystery in most of We Own This City. In The Demon Next Door, I’m always sure that Danny is the murderer, but for a few of the murders, the writer doesn’t name Danny as the murderer right away. Instead, they are presented from the perspective of the detectives, suspecting Danny but struggling to find the evidence or motive to prove it.

The Secret Daughter

The Secret Daughter by Forest Sounds is the audiobook version of a documentary with a narrator describing the stories events and occasional interview snippets of the story’s subjects.

I spent most of the audiobook thinking how stupid it was that the producers hired actors to pretend they were being interviewed. Only at the end of the book did I consider the possibility that the interviewees were actually the people in the story, which they probably were. Whoops. I blame it on Crimes Scenes! The Secret Daughter was more sensationalism but not true crime and, in retrospect, probably not told through dramatic reenactments.