I finished Homestead and Hotel Mariposa last night. I really enjoyed both of these. I loved the horror aspect of Homestead. I think Dawson really handled it well, and infused some fantastic tension into it. It was very much like a fevor dream, where not everything had to be dealt with overtly. It worked so damn well to say
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the actual Aliens and Predators weren't in it that much. The presence of the horse-hybrid was cool, without it being highlighted as such. The only thing I was never sure on was the eggbarfing stuff. But the anthology was supposed to be leaning more into the AvP movie side of things so it was there. But again, it wasn't particularly a focus. It was just the one line alluding to it.
I was glad to see I thoroughly enjoyed Hotel Mariposa. Like I said before, the whole crux of that working was something I was in love with when I first heard of it. It's not your typical AvP - and I think Homestead isn't either - and I love to see places like the anthologies experiment with doing different things with the franchise and it worked so well in here IMHO.
Only thing I wasn't too keen on was the whole
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his mother seemingly being outcast for being drunk = cowardly.
Or at least, that was my takeaway from that.
Edit: So it was
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depression really, not drunk.
I read Planting and Harvest yesterday. Another solid one, and was glad to see Seanan McGuire back. Really enjoyed the "f**k-the-world" feel to the early parts of the short. I thought the actual world-building, for both the humans and Predators, was pretty interesting. Love the idea of
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this ship just on the prowl doing all the shitty job because they're not quite good enough
. The actual action was a little thin on the ground, but I found all the other elements too entertaining to really complain about that.