The Checkout Counter #13
November 2023
Scavengers Reign
THE DEVIL'S IMAGO
The Secret Commonwealth
Film
- PlayTime, 1967
Comedy. A man attempting to meet with a business contact gets lost in the modern and gadget-filled Paris.
Series
- Scavengers Reign, 2023–the visual style of moebius meets miyazaki's nausicaa and vandermeer's annihilation. what an incredibly lush world that lets the story pause to sit in quiet moments of beauty and horror.
though i'd look forward to a potential season two, the final episode left me with a neat conclusion. a wonderful experience.
Animation, scifi, drama. Five survivors of a damaged cargo ship find themselves stranded on a verdant planet teeming with alien flora and fauna.
Games
- MY BROTHER; THE PARASITE, qrowscant
Interactive fiction, horror. A corpse is reanimated by a parasite. - THE DEVIL'S IMAGO, Domino Club
Interactive fiction, horror. Death envelops a medieval hamlet as strange, humanoid statues are unearthed from tilled ground. - the mountain is as it always was, Christine Mi
Bitsy, narrative. A mountain holds fragments of spirit.
Books
- Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
Short fiction and essay collection - The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullmanthere are so many things in this book that baffle me—or i outright hated—but it still keeps in the back of my mind. it's dense with magisterial politics and philosophical debate, all the while following the thread of fairytales and the world of the half-seen. i was less impressed by the spy thriller segments (particularly since the main spy figure we follow has the personality of a beige wall), and i'm unconvinced that the orientalism in the latter half is subverted in any meaningful way. i'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time—at least, until i can get my hands on the sequel.
Fantasy, second book in The Book of Dust trilogy. Lyra Silvertongue journeys east amid great political shifts within the domineering church.
Short fiction
- Dorchester, Steven Duong
- The Collectors, Philip Pullman
Comics
- The Bird Daughters, Madeline McGrane
- Ethernet Cable Girlfriend, Cam Marshall
- The Anti Parking-Lot Committee, Grendel Menz
Articles & essays
- A Situation: A Tree in Palestine, Liat Berdugo
- Cathedrals of Erotic Misery, Alberto Toscano
- Bad Memory, Jewish Currents
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