tygrammarrex | Reading

two notes on music (despite talking about spotify, links are for youtube for easier accessibility)

1.
a few weeks ago, at work, I was letting spotify play me some "things the algorithm thinks you'd like" playlist or other, and my brain caught on one in a way that, for once, made me go "oh I should actually hit the like button on this" (I am SO BAD at doing that) (in this case it helped that I was Waiting For The Elevator). so I did. and then, a minute later, I was like. "wait. what was the name of that again." and looked at it properly, because it'd pinged in recognition but it took that minute for me to understand why. and. I am a parody of myself.

2.
in the completely other direction of music spotify will play for me, this (recent) cover of Madonna's 'Frozen' came on today and I was just like "wow okay this sure tosses me back to being a young teenager" about immediately recognising it.

profiterole_reads

The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer (Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality) was excellent. It's part sequel, part prequel to The Darkness Outside Us.

As you definitely need to go into Book 1 knowing as little as possible, I can't talk about the plot of Book 2. Let's just say that it was a pleasure to meet these characters again.

There's major m/m, minor m/nb, as well as an asexual female character.

aurumcalendula

Some songs I've been listening to recently include The Ballad of the 20th of Maine by The Ghost of Paul Revere, Tennessee Ernie Ford's covers of the imho entertainingly snarky Union Dixie and The Fall of Charleston, and Odetta's awesome cover of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

( Read more... )

maggie33

Goddammit GMMTV! I really don’t have time to watch another new drama, and you have to go and bait me with this:

Watch on YouTube

This is the thumbnail image of the last episode’s teaser for Off Jumpol’s currently airing drama Break Up Service. I actually watched the first three episodes of this drama. The first one out of general curiosity, the second because Force guest starred in it, and the third, because Drake guest starred in it as a secret lover of a closeted BL actor, and I was intrigued by the plot synopsis for that episode. I found the drama pretty meh in general, and I didn’t really care for the main het romance, so I never watched more. But now I think I’m going to watch the 11th episode and the finale the next week.

And I know it’s a bait, because it’s not a BL drama, and Off’s character has a female love interest, and because OffGun and TayNew are mega popular and sacred fixed ships. 😊 So I know they're not actually going to give us an OffTay kiss. And yet I can’t help but hope. Please, GMMTV, let guys in fixed ships kiss guys other than their ship partner from time to time. Pretty please...

I also forgot to mention in my previous posts that the wonderful person who made English subs for the 1st season of Tengu no Daidokoro, finally finished making subs for the 2nd season, too. Links for the new season are in this tumblr post. I only managed to watch the first three episodes for now, but everything I loved about the 1st season is still here. It’s lovely and cozy, and it makes my heart all warm. 😊

maggie33

The Bangkok Boy episode 8

That was a great episode. Even though it was a bit oddly paced. Or maybe just a lot has happened in a short amount of time.

More with spoilers here.

That NC scene was great – it was passionate and desperate, and full of longing, and angry and sad at the same time. It’s like Peace and Sun don’t allow themselves to feel love, because of their families and everything that happened. So this desperate, frantic sex is what they can allow themselves to have during this one night of hurried happiness. Before even more heartache and suffering.

Damn, I really think there might not be a happy ending for Peace and Sun.

And oh, Mei and Cherry have an adorable slow burn romance. Cherry is so awkward and shy, poor thing. But clearly so infatuated already. It’s a bit harder to tell what Mei might be feeling, she’s still a bit broken, and angry and depressed. But she liked when Cherry brought her flowers every day, and when Cherry was so sweetly shy around her.

Also Mr. Joe’s two adopted sons seems to have their own agenda. And maybe that will bring Mr. Joe’s downfall after all.

And bye, bye, Aim, you were an entertaining villain, but I’m glad you paid with your life for all those horrible things you’ve done.

Our Movie episode 1

I couldn’t resists the temptation of Nam Goon Min’s new drama after all and already watched the 1st episode.

And it was very good. My beloved is great as always. And for now his character here reminds me a little bit of Baek Seung Soon from Hot Stove League. Similarly closed off, soft spoken, never raises his voice. But you can see a lot of emotions and feelings behind those calm, beautiful eyes.

And, wow, Jeon Yeo Been... I’m in awe. She is fantastic. I knew she was a good actress, but wow, she impressed me so much here.

But I don’t know if I have enough mental powers for watching this drama now. That first episode was so sad. There was underlying sadness in almost every scene, and my throat was tight when the episode ended. Even though nothing overtly sad or tragic happened yet.

umadoshi

Eating: This weekend is

scruloose's and my anniversary (year 22 is a go!), so last night we ordered Chinese roast duck and crispy pork belly and had half of it, with the rest set for supper tonight. Sous vide reheating works so well. This future is a complete nightmare in so many ways, but we sure do have cool kitchen technology. (Kitchen technology that spies on you, talks to the internet, and/or demands proof of your humanity is excluded from this praise.)

Reading: Two novels last week: Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus and Alix E. Harrow's Starling House. I parasocially adore Chuck Tingle as a person, but this was my first time reading any of his work, and it's very possible it'll be my only time, as I just plain didn't click with this one. I had a better time with Starling House (and it too was my first book by its author), but also didn't really bond.

I'm currently about halfway through Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model, and can definitely see why it gets compared to Murderbot from some angles, although the vibe is wildly different and I can't say I would've made the comparison myself. (Ginny noted approvingly that anything people dare compare to her beloved Murderbot has a high bar to reach, and she feels it's fair in this case.) But then, whatever the things are that make a book really click/resonate for me, they don't seem to have any connection to the things that make people draw comparisons. Too nebulous, I guess. Anyway, this is an interesting read so far.

Watching: Murderbot, of course. I liked last week's episode a lot. Besides that,

scruloose and I saw ep. 2x02 of Kingdom [disambiguation: the historical Korean zombie show] and, for a change of pace, got back to watching the original Leverage.

Some of you may dimly recall that in the days before covid, there were a few years there where we and Ginny and Kas would go to

wildpear -and-family's place and watch TV on Sunday nights. We got through a couple of shows that way, and started in on Leverage, which I'd seen up to about halfway (?) through season 4 and then somehow wandered off from despite loving it, and otherwise only saw a couple of later episodes, including the series finale; Ginny had seen and adored the entire thing, and I think Kas was in the same camp as

scruloose and

wildpear and her then-partner and hadn't seen it.

We made it to...well, roughly halfway through season 4.

wildpear's kidling, Pumpkin, was old enough by then to want in on what we were watching, so they sat in for TV night, just in time for "The Grave Danger Job", which freaked them out really, really badly (fair! That episode is brutal!). My mental timeline here is very fuzzy on how long that was before covid arrived, but it wasn't too big a gap, and all in all, that was the end of our group watch. And I still basically hadn't seen past somewhere in season 4 (plus the finale). I watched the first few episodes of season 1 of Leverage: Redemption when that came out, and with that, too, I wandered off and kept meaning to get back to it.

But last week,

scruloose and I took the DVDs off the shelf and got back to it. We have now seen "The Boiler Room Job" (which I'm confident I'd seen before, but I wonder if I'll know for sure when I hit new-to-me episodes?). Hopefully this time I'll actually see it all through properly. In theory, at some point we'll get to have cognitive dissonance over Noah Wyle, which will be funny since Leverage: Redemption was where we first saw him but now my association with him is 95% The Pitt.

rogueslayer452

++ Eliza Dushku has graduated with a Masters Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling! I'm so proud of her, and I wish her the best with her newfound career path and journey. She deserves the best in the world.

++ A trailer for Zhu Yilong's new movie, Dongji Rescue, dropped the other day. I wasn't even aware that he had something new coming out, so I was caught be surprise, and just seeing the images before watching the trailer I was like, whoa, and then after watching the trailer I got further intrigued. It looks action-packed and intense. Zhu Yilong has been quite busy, and I'm happy for him.

++ It's been officially announced that, after thirty-eight years, Spaceballs is getting a sequel.

I have to admit, when I first heard about this my immediate response was to go, "ugh, why?", because I think we can all agree we're tired of the constant sequels/prequel/franchising of IPs, and sequels from something after so long, while a good idea in theory, doesn't always deliver what was promised. But then I watched the announcement trailer, done in the only way Spaceballs should do announcements, and I could feel that apprehension draining away. It's still there of course, but I am curious to see what they do with it. Besides, we need more smart and clever parody movies that are genuinely funny. Spaceballs was always in on the joke and being quite meta and breaking that fourth wall (ex: Spaceballs 2: The Search For More Money already a joke made in the first movie, now becoming a reality), so I want to see what they'll bring this time. And seeing as how Mel Brooks is getting as much of the original cast as they can to be onboard with this, it's going to be very interesting.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Dreamcatcher - Breaking Out

umadoshi

After making calls on Monday,

scruloose found a heat pump-servicing company that would do the repair etc. under our warranty from the manufacturer. A service tech turned up on Wednesday (!) at the time he said he'd be here (!) and assessed the situation, sourced the required parts locally (all three units needed their coils replaced, which the manufacturer apparently says was a known issue with models from that year that has now been fixed, so this theoretically shouldn't recur), and came back first thing yesterday morning to actually do the repair (and replace a noisy fan in the exterior unit). Labor and parts=all covered. Things seem to be working fine now. *knocks wood* It was a bizarrely good experience.

The cats were unsurprisingly unimpressed about being corralled in the bedroom repeatedly (both to keep them underfoot and to minimize their covid exposure as much as possible, in addition to all the purifiers running and

scruloose rigging the airflow so that the bedroom was pressurized and the tech wearing an N95 mask the entire time), but were mostly polite about it and appreciated the treats they got afterwards.

I just went poking around in the Kobo listings for Adrian Tchaikovsky ebooks, and stumbled over the fact that there's an ebook (Terrible Worlds: Revolutions) collecting his three Terrible Worlds novellas, none of which I've read and one of which is on my wishlist. The collected volume is going for $7.99 Canadian. The individual novellas go for $10.99 each. [EDIT: Regular prices, in all cases.] I don't have a specific way in mind that I think this should be handled, but surely there are better ways to price/label/offer ebooks.

The poking around came after the ebook for Tchaikovsky's Service Model, which Ginny just read and liked, turned up on the on-sale list this morning, so this is also a PSA about that. (At least for the Canadian Kobo site.)

maggie33

The Ex-Morning

I’m not dropping it after all. I really enjoyed the 4th episode. Even Padtaphi didn’t annoy me this week. And I’m already in love with the secondary GL pairing.

The Bangkok Boy

Ok, the drama gets its own tag, because I love it and I’m so invested. Episode 7 was great. But wow, that show is dark. Very dark. And it makes me anxious. Because I can’t say to myself that it’s just a Thai BL drama and no one I love will die. Because someone for sure will.

But yes, this is definitely a brutal gangster drama first. BL part is a distant second. I like it that way, but I saw quite a few fans disappointed about the BL part being in the background like that, and the main plot being all about gangsters fighting each other. Truly speaking I am a bit surprised that TPTB even marketed it as a BL drama.

Content warning.

When Sun was in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Sun’s younger sister Mei was sold out to Sun’s enemies. She was forced to take drugs, and raped repeatedly for three years before Sun rescued her after coming out of prison. It wasn’t shown explicitly, but we see the aftermath, and what it did to Mei.

More with spoilers here.

I was hoping that they wouldn't go there with Mei. But they did, in a really dark way. But she is getting help now, and it seems she is slowly getting better. And she has her burgeoning friendship with Peace. And maybe a future GL romance with a kind and cute paramedic.

And I enjoy Aim as an unhinged villain, and the actor gives great crazy eyes. And I kinda ship him with Madam Yao. Yes, I have a het ship in a BL drama, it happens sometimes. 😊 But look at this gifset I found on tumblr. And he’s like a brutal, crazy dog only she has a leash for. It does things for me. But Aim needs to pay for what he did to Mei, so I fully expect him to die before the end. And I will cheer when he does.

And our main romance is slow paced. Very slow paced. But, based on the trailer for the next ep, the boys will finally consummate their love this Saturday. 😊

And Our Movie, Nam Goon Min’s new drama, starts airing today. Now I have to decide if I want to have my heart stomped upon on weekly basis, or if I should wait for a guaranteed heartbreak until all of it airs. 😊

rogueslayer452

( ...If we come into proof of extraterrestrial life, everything we thought we knew is called into question. )

As stated previously, V/H/S has quickly become a favorite horror movie franchise. I'm also curious about some other horror franchises that I haven't seen yet and have been interested in for some time, one of them being Paranormal Activity, which oddly enough can actually fit into the V/H/S universe.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Poppy - the cost of giving up

aurumcalendula

Current events continue to be a lot, to say the least (I left voicemails for my congresspeople about some of it).

On a happier note, I saw chickadees multiple times today (apparently they're smaller than sparrows) as well as hummingbirds (one a few minutes after I refilled the feeder)!

shadaras

1.
The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar, is very beautifully written and really is a love letter to fairy tales and sisterhood, all of which I knew it would be going into it. It is also a novella I am turning over in my head because I am trying to figure out if my "I think it should've been longer" is a genuine structural thing or just the side-effect of the print volume being ~130 pages long, only 99 of which are the titular story. (the other 30 pages are a short story teasing her upcoming short story collection.)

This is not a long story! Reading a doorstopper novel, something like Priory of the Orange Tree or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell (neither of which I ever finished, hah), being off in your estimations of length by 30 pages is unlikely to matter to the overall pacing of the book or what you expect from it.

It is almost a quarter of these printed pages.

That is a very significant amount of difference! I think about structure and pacing as I read. It's not always conscious, but I know that the number of pages remaining matters to me and my expectations. Sure, there's often some number of pages that aren't narrative at the end of a novel, but: scale, again, and also the sort of book that has extensive end notes/an appendix/etc is visible from the start, where it probably has a map and/or dramatis personae as well.

All of this is to say: I liked this story quite a lot! Which is why I'm spending so many words squinting at the way it was presented and poking at it like "you could've done better to prepare me for how this story was going to pace so that I wasn't surprised when it ended". (Because it is a gorgeous volume, with beautiful illustrations and clear care given to how it appears as an object, so why—)

2.
I taught kids class for aikido last night, because my friend who usually lead teaches wasn't feeling well, and used this as an excuse to teach the kids a very basic forward roll technique. They're all good enough at forward rolls to take one, and this throw done at their level just guides them into the position to take a forward roll; there's no force behind it, just form. (If done with the right timing and angle, it is very effective at forcing a roll! But that's much more advanced and very hard to do unintentionally.)

They did great with it, as I knew they would, and idk why this is the first time they've been taught a forward roll technique other than "my friend didn't want to teach it yet".

Next on my agenda: making them do the ikkyo pin. We'll see how long it takes to get there. (This is more likely to be something I can be like "hey what if we taught this" about and get "oh, yeah, sure" in response.)

3.
I talked to my mom on the phone this weekend. [insert 1k of deleted words about family stuff here, which tbh boil down to: I really should figure out finding and seeing a therapist. (this is not a new thought.)]

4.
I've started watching The Apothecary Diaries, an anime that I have been "yeah I'd probably like this" about since I first heard of it, and: surprise! I do like it quite a lot, as I like most stories about women and their politics and also weird girls with specialized knowledge using that knowledge to solve mysteries and help people. Maomao, the protag, is a 17yo apothecary who loves poison, does not notice people flirting with her, and thinks about how pretty the women surrounding her are all the time. (Also there's a dude who's in love with her in part because she's the only woman who goes "ew, leave me alone" instead of mooning over him, because heterosexuality must be gestured at and dudes need representation too.) (There are other men in the show; that guy, who also has interesting plot reasons for existing and doesn't actually exist solely to moon over Maomao, is just the only one other than Maomao's dad/teacher who really matters.)

I'm 10eps in and having fun. Truly just one of those things where sometimes everyone going OMG IT'S SO GOOD makes it hard to give stuff a shot, and going "y'know what I want to try something new and this has always sounded fun" is a lot easier to make happen.

5.
In other thoughts about tv shows and structure/pacing. So. Okay. I have a terrible fondness for Hearing About Sports while also often having zero interest in watching sports. (Sometimes

tavina liveblogs sports at me and I adore this, it's very fun, please tell me about your investment in an event and explain to me why you have feelings about it; I love to go !!! over things I only just heard about and learn about underdogs I will promptly root for on principle. or about Your Team doing well at things when I have no investment about rooting for anyone in particular but like it when my friends' investment is rewarded!)

So there's the netflix sports shows, which I'm pretty sure started with Drive to Survive, which is about F1. There are a number of seasons. My twin got me to start watching them like. Three years ago...? Something like that. It's a good series, and that's in large part because in its first season it understood a very important fact about sports tv:

You need to give the audience enough context about the sport that they know why they should be invested in it.

It's not enough to present a charismatic and/or attractive person who wants to win (and probably won't) and say "look! root for this person!". You gotta know what the sport is, and what makes it dramatic, and what it takes for someone to be good at it, and then you need to show the people you're following being good at that sport! It's okay if they fail, or fuck up, or whatever not being perfect looks like; you just also gotta show when they do things right, when they get close to victory, when they have the stuff that makes it interesting to root for them. And that means the audience needs to know what that is, and what it looks like, and see that happening.

A startling number of mediocre Netflix sports reality shows do not understand that the first thing I want from a sports reality show is: the sport

perhaps I am unusual for this, but, like

if you want to get people into your sport... I think they need to be given the tools to understand the basics of how your sport works... and see that sport being performed/played in competition...

also your show can't just be "look! women can do this too!" and generally spend more times on the lives of the women than on the women actually doing the thing. like, yes, I know people find that inspiring, but wow it's more inspiring to see people doing thing than to see them crying with their families about having fucked up, couldn't you have used that time to show some people doing cool stuff instead. show me their training. their actions. not their failures to the point where I'm like... where even was the cool victory stuff... you were too focused on humanizing them and forgot that being visibly good at shit is part of the story of "I want to be one of the best in the world at this activity" too...

maggie33

There are too many dramas I want to watch. I mean, this is a good problem to have. But I gave up trying to catch up with dramas I already started. And there are so many I haven’t even started, and I do want to. Gone are the days when I could watch 8-10 episodes of a show in one day. And it’s not even because I don’t live alone now. But these days I can manage maybe 3-4 episodes in one day, if I’m really invested in something. When I try to watch more I feel like I stop absorbing anything after a certain point. One of the reasons is probably that blasted menopause, because my concentration has been shit for like the last three-four years. But well, what can you do, life is brutal and full of zasadzkas, as we say in Poland sometimes. 😊

But my fannish life is good, fortunately. I almost finished my next Klao/Warich fic. I’m rewatching The Matchmakers at the pace of one episode a day, and it’s as fantastic as I remembered, and it makes me squee a lot again.

I’m also expanding my BL horizons, and after watching Taiwanese, Thai, Korean, Japanese and Chinese BL dramas, now I started Vietnamese BL call My Sweet Brother in Law. It’s a short drama with only 5 episodes, and three aired for now. And well, this is ‘infidelity, the drama’ basically. One guy has a fiancée, another guy has a wife. Although not everything is as clear-cut as this sentence suggests.

But I guess I’m in the mood for some infidelity, which is strange, because usually it’s a DNW for me. Maybe it’s because the drama does not vilify the women involved? Anyway, I for sure will watch the last two episodes, too. Because it is entertaining and the lead actors are good and pretty, and have great chemistry. 😊

More with detailed spoilers here.

Guy with a fiancée is called Bao. And his future marriage is a marriage of convenience. He’s gay and his fiancée Huyen is a lesbian and has a girlfriend, who is Bao’s former roommate. That’s how Bao got involved with them.

The other lead is called Khanh. And it seems he only got married because this what was expected of him. And because his family is rather conservative. Which is coincidentally Huyen’s family, since Khanh is Huyen’s older brother. It also seems that Khanh’s wife is sincerely in love with him. And it absolutely is shitty of him to cheat on her, and IMO the drama doesn’t try to justify his behavior.

But I wonder how can they resolve this in only two remaining episodes if they want to have a happy ending for our main couple? I’m assuming there will be a happy ending, since both guys already caught feelings even though neither of them would admit it for now, and they both pretend it’s just sex between them. But there is really not that much time to make a plausible happy ending happen.

It’s available on Youtube with English subs. The playlist is here.

In other fannish news word on the street is that Memoir of Rati has a sad ending. Aww, no, I don’t wanna... I’m still going to watch it though. And maybe it’s just a rumor. GMMTV’s dramas usually have a happy ending. So maybe this one will, too.

And now trailers. So many trailers. Really, when am I going to watch all this? 😉 Behind the cut there are embedded teasers and trailers for:

Bon Appetit, Your Majesty – a kdrama about a talented chef from 2025 who travels in time to Joseon era, and there she meets a tyrant king who is also a gourmet.

Three BL dramas – Korean drama Ball Boy Tactics (university BL with basketball and antagonists-to-lovers plot), Thai drama Suntiny (MaxNat in a continuation of Sun and Nuea’s story from Y Destiny), and Chinese drama Revenged Love (about a seduction that starts as revenge but becomes a real love).

Two Thai GL dramas – Be My Angel (about a romance between a girl with worst luck and a rather inept angel), and Whale Store xoxo (MilkLove in a love story about a girl, who inherits her father’s unprofitable grocery store and a flirtatious store regular, who hides a truth about her family’s business).

Watch them here.

Watch on YouTube

aurumcalendula

I've seen a bunch of wildlife around lately (fawns, a downy woodpecker, red shouldered hawks, cottontail rabbits, hummingbirds), which has brighten my day over the last week or so.

profiterole_reads

The Dark Touch by Beth Ross was excellent! In the United Republic of Britain, Nova finds out that witches are not extinct and that she is one of them.

This contemporary novel mixes an alternate history, urban fantasy and some elements of activism (women's rights, including abortion, and queer rights). A large tapestry of characters are introduced little by little, making it relatively easy to learn who's who. There's no cliffhanger, but I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Nova has a bi awakening at 23 (same!), there are sapphic characters of various orientations and there's major f/f. Abigail is on the autism spectrum.

umadoshi

Cat Herding: Our beloved Jinksy!bear turned twelve on Saturday. Twelve! He's (by a margin of a good few years) the second-oldest cat I've ever had, and continues to be just the sweetest, softest boy. May he be with us in good health for years to come.

It was also Claudia's birthday, of course, and I always think of her on their birthday. Oh, my darling baby cat.

*The oldest was Jenny, the cat of my childhood who was still with my parents for years after I moved out. She made it to nineteen, most of that time in rock-solid health, and never really forgave me for moving to Toronto and thus straight-up vanishing from her life for months at a time.

Reading: I finished reading Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, which remained an interesting read right through, and read Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances, which I think is only the second thing of his I've read? (Elder Race is the other one I'm sure of.) Having finished it, I'm in a position that's annoyingly familiar, where I liked the book quite a bit and am curious about what happens next, but am not sure I cared enough that I'll ever actually get around to picking up the sequel.

(The thing where I've almost entirely been reading books I own for years now doesn't really help, where I've often picked up the first book of a trilogy of series or whatever on sale in ebook because I've heard it's good, and then am not sure I'm invested enough to pay full price on the next one when I own literally hundreds of yet-unread books. Feh.)

Watching:

scruloose and I are up to date on Murderbot and have seen the first episode of Kingdom season 2.

In the case of the former, I'm skeptical about the nqqvgvba bs n punenpgre jub qbrfa'g nccrne va gur obbxf ng nyy--juvpu V'z abg vaureragyl ntnvafg, tvira gung gur fubj vf pyrneyl vgf bja guvat, naq V'z thrffvat fur'f gurer gb pbairl fbzrguvat gung jbhyq'ir orra gevpxl gb qb gur fnzr jnl va guvf sbezng nf va gur abiryyn. Ohg fur'f naablvat, naq V'yy cebonoyl xrrc svaqvat ure naablvat jurgure fur vf va snpg freivat jung V pheeragyl guvax vf ure cebonoyr shapgvba (rarzl ntrag znfdhrenqvat nf nyyl) be fbzrguvat zber vagrerfgvat. [ROT13] Guess we'll find out soon!

Working: Thank goodness the manga I'm working right now is (as usual) a fairly easy rewrite and not a tight deadline, because scrounging the mental energy for freelance work has been frustratingly hard recently. I'm almost halfway through my draft and have about a week and a half left with it, so it's fine, but. :/

Weathering/Householding: We've had a lot of gray days and some high-ish temperatures combined with humidity (which I hate), and the air quality, while not remotely as bad as it is in a lot of places, has been fluctuating significantly...and the AC function of the heat pumps is essentially nonfunctional. >.< This is crappy timing, given how much of the time over the last several days has required having the windows closed (and the air purifiers running for good measure, although they don't address some of the nastiness from wildfire smoke). And for bonus fun, while the heat pumps are still under warranty, the company we bought them from went under a few months ago, which complicates things. (I think possibly the main person died. :/)

That said,

scruloose made a bunch of calls today and we have reason to hope that someone can come in and take a look at them soon, if that particular company has the parts in stock. And while it's been uncomfortably warm inside some of the time because of this, at least it's not full summer yet. Hopefully we can get things dealt with by the time summer heat arrives in earnest.

And on a purely pleasant note, a couple nights ago we were in a phase of "somehow the air quality is fine outside right now, so we can just open the windows and run fans" while it was pleasantly cool and raining atmospherically and the wind was doing a wonderful job of wafting the smell of the lilacs into the living room.

Current Mood: contemplative

forestofglory

Here's some thoughts on media I read and watched recently

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen— This YA fantasy novel was really fun! There are lots of heists and disguises. All the moms are terrible but they aren't dead (being Death doesn't count). I really hated all italicized German words (it is not a problem that they were German I just hate it when “foreign” words are italicized, it's both othering and distracting to me as a reader) However this really sucked me in! It’s fast paced and twisty and the worldbuilding feels grounded.

Coffee Prince ep 5-20— I finished this classic of crossdressing girl media. It was cute and fun! I got a great comment on my post about crossdressing girl media about how crossdressing allows women to form friendships with men on more equal footing. This drama really leans into that and the pleasure of being ‘one of the boys” without having to justify oneself.

This did the best job of “The MC thinks he’s gay because he likes the crossdressing FL” that I’ve seen (Though I haven’t seen many) it could be even better but I was pleased with it nonetheless.

(Content note: Blink and you'll miss it miscarriage and fertility issues)

The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy— Somehow no one told me that it is a crossdressing story but trans. That is, the main character is a trans girl who starts the book thinking she’s a boy in disguise. Interestingly she "disguises" herself as a girl so that she can go out into the world and become a witch (mostly crossdressing men in media are trying to access "inner" spaces). The author even thanks Tamora Pierce in her acknowledgments, so it's very clearly part of that tradition.

What people did tell me about this book is that there are a bunch of meetings, in fact I was expecting more meetings based on how much people talked about them.There are some meetings, but they don’t drag out and are often summarized. But I was not expecting it to be quite as brutal as it was, there was a lot of fighting and some killing, and also quite a bit of phillosy about power and making choices. Definitely a book that gave me a lot to think about.

I don’t often go seek out reviews after I read a book, but this one I really wanted to see what other people said about it. I really liked Roseanna’s review.

The Truth Season 3 cases 4-5— I continue to really enjoy this show! I especially liked the set of costumes that looked part of a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Also they have been playing with the format in fun ways with these two cases.

aurumcalendula

I've belatedly found a way to view timecodes with milliseconds, which should make it much easier (and faster) for me to time subtitles (I'd been using VLC and guessing on the millisends and rewatching and adjusting stuff a bunch of times).

shadaras

To nobody's surprise, I once again had the best grades in my apprentice cohort. (More entertaining: first/second/third for my year was the exact same people in the exact same order, and the other two were fighting over second place because they figured I'd get first again.) Apparently this means I'll get to go to the regional competition again next year, since the way that's structured is "the people who do best each year get to go and we figure out what category each of you is in along the way (and also the one TAB guy goes)". We'll see! (This means two of us will need to do something we don't do for work. Curious to see if the guy who did architectural last year will do it again this year. Very curious who gets asked to do welding.) It'll be in Boston next year, so that's an easy drive, something to look forward to.

The last day of school, where they announce this, is also a potluck provided by the instructional staff. There was. Functionally nothing I could eat, between "cannot eat cheese/dairy" and "does not eat pork/beef". I know why I expect better in general even if my reaction is weary disappointment and "yeah, of course". (I have explained these food restrictions multiple times and nobody thinks about them anyway.) (they are not hard to avoid)

Work is work. It continues. It's very funny any day that everyone's just sort of like... "we are doing obnoxious things that are not hard but are time-consuming and make us wonder what the people who told us to do this were thinking, and also it is hot, how much time can we spend talking instead".

Obligate Diurnalism continues to rear its head as we approach the solstice. Probably I am not getting as much sleep as I should most nights! Oh well. I am getting enough sleep, overall, and my body will force me to bed earlier if I actually need it.

in non-irl things:

Murderbot show continues to be good! Very fun to watch! Has some divergences from the book, in large part because of being a different medium I suspect, but that's not making it any less fun to watch. Everyone's facial expressions are fantastic. The in-universe media is a joy. They made a theme song for Sanctuary Moon and it's so cheesy and good.

I have been spending a truly impressive amount of time talking to

hafnia about a specific AU for our D&D blorbos (which started out as iddy kink nonsense but then GREW PLOT), which is so canon-divergent we're just like "this is basically original work with D&D filling in the worldbuilding that's not important". It is such a joy to wake up in the morning to see more of it turned into prose and be like "oooh YES :eyes:" and have feelings about things that I already knew were going to happen because we've talked out like the vast majority of what's going to happen. xD But it's DIFFERENT when it's in narrative prose instead of flowing between rp and brainstorming, y'know?

However also I need to write more things that are not about the D&D campaign that is my primary fandom brain thing right now, due to having exchanges etc that uh I did agree to do and do care a lot about but also I did most of those sign ups before (*checks*) the beginning of the month (50k later and we are at "gotta clear up the curse before we can get to the really iddy kink nonsense, but that shouldn't take too much longer!"). So. Can't plan for "I have been CONSUMED"?

...it's fine I can write enough words in the time available, I just need to drag myself away from going "HEY SO WHAT IF" or "OH NO: A THOUGHT" all the time. xD

(I am having SUCH a good time with this though <3)

rogueslayer452

++ The murder of indigenous actor Jonathan Joss (King of the Hill, Parks and Recreation) is absolutely tragic and devastating, but even more so is the aftermath of the police outright denying that it was a hate crime despite eyewitnesses and his own husband saying so from the homophobic threats and attacks sent to them. Fortunately, in a surprising turn of events they have recently backtracked on this statement have apologized for making such a rushed conclusion without a proper formal investigation, which accountability by the police is very rare to come by. However, to be honest the pessimistic side of me knows that if this had just been a random person they wouldn't have bothered to care, but since this was someone in the entertainment industry and has been gaining a lot of public attention and outrage so quickly they had to admit fault to prevent further backlash. Regardless though, it's still horrible and I hope the murderer (who admitted to the crime, though released on bail) get severely punished and his husband and family get justice.

++ While I haven't been watching Doctor Who, hearing what happened in the latest season finale really confirmed by concerns about RTD returning as showrunner. Overall, I just feel sad for Ncuti Gatwa.

++ Blumhouse Productions acquires rights to the Saw franchise from Twisted Pictures.

Earlier it was reported that the production into Saw XI, which was supposed to have been released later in the year, was halted due to inter-conflict between creators about the future of the franchise, leaving an indefinite question mark. It seems that this was the reason and result of whatever behind-the-scenes disagreements and negotiations were happening. The series is now back under James Wan, as well. Whether or not he'll be directing is unknown, but he'll no doubt be part of the creative process. Although reports claim that there's no movie in production yet, I highly suspect that whatever was planned for Saw XI will resume shortly. I do want it to be a continuation from Saw X since while it did conclude nicely, there were a few loose ends that can be explored, but if nothing else having Tobin Bell continue to reprise his role will always be a treat. Plus, I would love for there to be movies similar to that of Spiral, where John Kramer isn't directly involved but is still a huge influence to other characters and events.

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