Review: Centaurworld

I finished watching Centaurworld (on Netflix) the other week -- a quick review, before I forget. I'm going to talk a bit about the plot, but try to avoid major spoilers.

tl;dr: fun, mostly silly, musical, animated, with a bit more depth and darkness than you might expect.

Centaurworld opens on a Rider on a Horse (both are central characters to the story, but neither is ever named beyond that): she is riding though a blasted landscape, on a mission to deliver an ancient artifact. They are attacked by the vicious Minotaurs who have been conquering and destroying everything in the human realm, and fight them off -- while singing, because this show is not only animated but very much a musical.

But things go wrong: our heroine falls off a cliff, and wakes up in the strange land of Centaurworld, a weird, gumdrop-colored fantasy land of magic, populated by a wild variety of talking plants and animals, but mostly half-animal, half-human species of centaurs. She falls in with the herd of Wammawink, a bunch of misfits and outcasts who mostly just want to stay safely on their own and eat bubblecakes, but who somewhat reluctantly agree to help her find her way back home.

Yes, this is clearly aimed at six-year-olds from that initial premise. Suffice it to say, it's not: it's wittier, darker and more satirical than it looks like at first glance, but it takes a few episodes to start hitting its stride. It does lean a bit light -- I'd say that it's got a generally young-adult vibe, which may or may not be to your taste. Overall, I liked it.

The story is complete in two short seasons; episodes are roughly half-hour except for the more-than-double-length conclusion. The genre is, very broadly speaking, high fantasy, with most of the tropes you would expect.

Season one is mainly focused on our heroine trying to get back to the human realm and rejoin the war that she was in the middle of fighting, and ends with the inevitable revelation of the high-fantasy villain who is behind everything. Season two is a bit darker, as the war approaches Centaurworld itself, and the struggle of trying to raise an army in this chaotic and strange land.

Through all of that, though, this is primarily social satire, and the many species and lands of Centaurworld represent a wide variety of satirical targets. For example, the Coldtaurs, living in their extremely cold land, who couldn't be bothered to move somewhere warmer but are willing to consider supporting the enemy on the theory that maybe he'll give them some warmth somehow? Or the Birdtaurs -- up in the clouds, seeing everything, rooting for our heroes (and building rival fandoms around each of them), sending Tweets to each other, but unwilling to actually get involved in the fight. Subtle it ain't, but it's well-observed, timely, sometimes rather biting satire.

The core characters are, similarly, very broad, including the smotheringly-motherly Wammawink; Glendale, the kleptomaniac with an infinitely large bag of holding in her tummy; self-absorbed and preening Zulius; Ched, source of all negativity; and sweet, dim-witted, infinitely optimistic Durpleton. Everyone has somewhat more depth than they look like at first glance (Glendale, in particular, has a glorious twist in Season 2), but our heroine is the only member of the herd who is a fully-realized character.

The music is fine, and entertainingly diagetic: our heroine is frequently exasperated by everyone's tendency to break out in song, and often a little horrified when she winds up having to do so herself. There's nothing anywhere near as toe-tappingly brilliant as the music of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (IMO the all-time best musical TV series), but it's well-executed and sets the tone nicely.

Summary: solidly good YA fantasy. Not on my "You must all go watch this!" list, but a fun palate cleanser with some things to say. Worth giving a few episodes to see if you like the style -- beyond that, just keep in mind that there is a more coherent, somewhat more serious story here than it appears at first glance, and it gets steadily less episodic and more arc-based as it goes.

Pinewoods ESCape

An actual diary entry!

I appear to have failed to talk about Pinewoods last year: let's not make the same mistake. So...

One of the few bright spots of the pandemic for me was that I fell in with a new circle of folks on Discord (a few of whom are here). It's a somewhat younger group than myself, full of energy, and a lot of them are into dance. This was entirely a coincidence, not why I gravitated towards them, but it's always nice to discover some kindred spirits.

In particular, a lot of them are into Scottish Country Dance (SCD), and last June many of them were buzzing with excitement about "Pinewoods", so I eventually started asking questions about what the heck that is.

I was slightly chagrined to realize that this was clearly My Kind of Thing, and I'd never heard of it before. Pinewoods is a camp down in Plymouth, not terribly far from here, focused on dance and music. It's been around for about a century, running various sessions every summer.

There's a lot of interesting stuff on their schedule (including, note, an Early Music Week), but what drew me in was ESCape, an annual week co-produced by the local English Country, Scottish Country, and Contra communities. Classes every day; dances every evening, switching off sets of the three dance styles.

So I went to last year's session, and it was the highlight of my year. The timing was perfect, during the lull when the pandemic seemed to be dying down, just before Delta ruined everyone's day. I deepened the friendships I had made online, had a blast dancing for a week, and just generally it was a literal breath of fresh air.

So this year, returning to ESCape was my highest vacation priority. I'm planning on Pennsic, but I was not going to miss ESCape, which ran July 4th week.

Things were more challenging this year, with Omicron raging in Massachusetts, so the COVID protocols were ferociously strict. (All the moreso because an earlier Pinewoods session had to be cancelled due to an outbreak among the staff.) You not only had to be fully vaccinated: you were also strongly requested to get a PCR test the weekend before, and had to show a fresh antigen test to get in the door; additional antigen tests were required each evening before dinner. Campers were assigned dinner tables for the first couple of days (where possible with your housemates, cabinmates, or travel companions), to reduce possible spread. Masks were required indoors (which fortunately there isn't a lot of at Pinewoods), and strongly encouraged while dancing.

All of that was a bit of a pain in the ass, but seems to have mostly worked: only one or two new cases were reported during ESCape. (I'm not sure whether more cases arose afterwards -- it's tricky to tease this stuff out.)

That put a bit of a damper on things, but the event was still great. I've been attending Scottish Country practices semi-regularly for the past few months, but still availed myself of the opportunity to learn more and do more of the dances. There was lots of fun hanging out, playing games (cross-country bocce is always a hoot), and generally socializing and partying in the evenings. (I finally got to try Malort, and am now starting to puzzle out how to use it in cocktails.)

In the new-and-different category, I got my first lesson in change ringing! Kat (one of my close friends from Discord) has been teaching that informally in recent years; this time, they did sessions each morning. The high concept here is specifically "ringing on bodies" -- using hand bells instead of big church bells, one bell per person. The real innovation is that Kat and their friends are experimenting with the relationship between change ringing and dance. It turns out that the major "figures" in change ringing correspond rather well to heys and do-si-dos, so the ringing patterns can be transliterated as dances. So we learned how to do that, and a bunch of us did a performance at Thursday's Chocolate Party.

The Chocolate Party is an ESCape tradition. Folks bring chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Sooooo much chocolate, pretty much whatever you find interesting. A bunch of us got together, broke the bars down into pieces, put everything on plates, separated it into "with nuts" and "without nuts" tables, and let the hordes descend. It's a delightful social, and this year was circus-themed, with Kat providing a monumentally enormous parachute that we tied to trees as a quasi-big-top, and getting to be the tallest person in the crowd with their stilts.

There are also after-parties each evening, with different themes. Wednesday's Pub Night is my personal favorite: an evening of booze (for those who want to partake) and song, focused on stuff with choruses that everyone can join in on. It's basically a folk-ish bardic circle, with lots of songs I know and some I'm still learning. (High priority next year: print out a fresh copy of my own songbook, and bring it along.)

The only downside was that I seem to have slightly injured my foot on Wednesday, which prevented me from doing any dancing on Thursday, and I'm still limping a bit. Nothing too serious -- I did get an x-ray, and nothing's broken, just some sort of strain. The upshot seems to be that my days of dancing with no padding whatsoever probably need to be over: I need to learn how to use shoes with some cushioning and arch support.

So -- not as fabulous as I might have wished, but still a delightful time, and some much-needed social. I definitely plan on going again next year.