The other day I went ahead and ordered issue 1 (the only one that exists) of PRINCE-S STARthief. And I’m afraid it’s really not good.
It’s sort of a Star Wars parody that’s got maybe two small chuckles in the whole thing, and a whole lot of attempted humor that falls flat. The villains are the PEP-C Corporation. There’s a scene where a minion designated TK-421 disappoints the boss and is “carbonated,” a fate which later befalls LV-426. If get the references it’s mildly funny, and if you don’t it’s probably slightly less funny.
The protagonist is basically the only character, but is barely a character… smoking, drinking, wisecracking (or trying to) and “look at all this attitude I’m pretending to have” without any of the personality of Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan or any of the Rat Queens. She’s really just a fanservice delivery vehicle, and unsurprisingly, also completely fails to be sexy. There’s a thin sketch of a plot, but she doesn’t really care about it any more than the writer appeared to.
So I’m pretty disappointed by that particular namesake. The bacon in space painting is much more to my liking.
I may do this or something like it in 2020:
I don’t want to be absolutely strict about it, though.
I find my current music setup very satisfying, and would like to sit with it a while, and concentrate more on improving my skills. If it comes to something like a more precise pair of headphones, or a piece of mastering software or something, then fine. But 2019 was a year of partially reinventing my setup multiple times over, and I don’t want to do that now.
“No new books allowed” makes me reflexively rebel, but doing some re-reading does sound very nice, particularly series re-reading. I could also see getting into something like the Expanse novels though.
And while I’m not about to stop listening to new music, I do want to take some time to listen to some music with full attention. Not necessarily critically, just mindfully. Obviously I listen to my own recordings closely as part of the process, but that’s different. Before the internet changed everything, and especially before I had the disposable income to buy several CDs a month, I would listen to an album several times, while not doing anything else. Today most of my music listening is at work or in the car, and I miss the full experience.
I’ve already got some valuable feedback from Obsidian Sound — a couple of technical issues that went under my radar, to keep a closer watch on in future recordings. I feel pretty confident that I understand the outline of what will happen in the mastering process, and I’m eager for the details and results.