schneefink

My mom reminding me that we have a family Disney+ account and a resurgence of Doctor Who posts in my fandom circles and the discovery that the latest season is available on Disney+ led to me watching Doctor Who again for the first time since 2018. (Wow, didn't think it'd been that long.) I'd started watching series 11 with a friend but then she was very busy and then that petered out and I never really got back into it. Until now, apparently! I'm enjoying this new season, it's a lot of fun. I'd forgotten just how well Doctor Who can do the combination of fun whimsy and horror when it's good. I'm glad I got caught up right before the season finale.

( Spoilers )

I didn't think I was doing too badly at semi-regularly posting on DW, but looking at my notes document there's so much I wanted to post but didn't; for example I'm so behind on reviews. These are from months ago, so for the books I partially just copied my Goodreads reviews that I always try to write soon after finishing.

Children of Memory – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time #3): The first of my summer vacation books – it was so great to have plenty of time to read books while relaxing on the beach!
Every new book in this series is looking at a new kind of different intelligence/sentience/sapience and it's fascinating. ( barely any spoilers )A book I enjoyed more with my head than my gut if that makes sense.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - Shannon Chakraborty: This was the kind of book that I enjoyed a lot while I was reading it and looked forward to finding out what would happen next, but (until the last 10% or so) when I put it down I felt no immediate need to pick it up again, so it took me a while to finish. I liked the characters, and I enjoyed the plot: I especially liked that it kept surprising me, not with major plot twists but with more frequent developments that I did not expect (I also didn't try to guess but still) and that kept things interesting.

Witch King – Martha Wells: I really loved the beginning of this, I was especially impressed with just how quickly the book drew me in. I really liked the characters and the worldbuilding, and I also enjoyed the main plot. ( other things worked less well for me ) Overall I still enjoyed the book a lot though.

A Day of Fallen Night – Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos #0): I enjoyed this, but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had read or reread "The Priory of the Orange Tree" more recently. Multiple times things were set up or mentioned that I'm fairly certain got their pay-off in the previous book, but since I didn't remember that very well it just felt like the pay-off was missing, or at least not completely satisfying probably because the author didn't want to retread the same ground. (And I didn't like the book enough to go reread "Priory of the Orange Tree" right after.) I liked the characters and I enjoyed the queer relationships in particular.

Lords of Uncreation – Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Final Architecture #3): I enjoyed the first two books of the trilogy but I loved this one, pretty much the whole way through. From early on there were many interesting turns I was not expecting and yet that made perfect sense, and that also goes for the epic ending. My favorite was ( maybe a vague spoiler idk ) I was so excited when I figured out what was happening.
I really appreciated how the "superpower" of so many characters was basically stubbornness paired with "that's my secret, assholes, I'm always scared."
I enjoyed this book so much I requested it for Yuletide and got a great gift for it.
(That said, as often happens with books I remember loving a lot, a few months later I become suspicious if it was really that good or if I was just in the perfect mood for it. If I reread it at one point if usually turns out to be a mix of both.)

Encanto (2021): I was hesitant to watch this because of the "high expectations" problem. And We Don't Talk About Bruno indeed did not meet these expectations, but I liked the colors and I really liked Surface Pressure (I have listened to that many times by now and really want to try singing it at karaoke even though I think it's really hard to do well but I think it'd be fun) and I enjoyed the story – at least as long as I didn't think about it very much. ( Spoilers are talking about Bruno )

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime: Flying a space ship and rescuing bunnies! I don't even remember why we started playing this – I think we were doing a board game evening but one person was late and we were at A&D's place who happen to have a large screen and four controllers. I've never played a four player in-person co-op before, it was so much fun. In hindsight this game might be best to play with three players, I heard it's very stressful with two but it was much easier than expected with four of us.
I really want to play co-op like that again, maybe even try out some classics like Mario Party? Maybe!

One Piece (live-action): I had heard good things and saw promising screenshots but I was still not quite sure what to expect. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it! The casting was great. ( some spoilers )

DD wanted to rewatch Young Royals and asked if I wanted to watch it with her, and I was skeptical but thought that I would watch it while fishing in Minecraft maybe. Iirc it took me only three episodes to stop doing other things while watching it.

It's a show about a Swedish prince at a boarding school who develops a crush on a boy – and not just any boy, but *gasp* a commoner. And one with socialist tendencies, even! Yes DD writing the complete crack fic Seduced by the Socialist is my "fault" xD
It's remarkable how much less frustrating it is to watch teenagers make dumb decisions when they actually look like teenagers. We're calling it "the dumb teenagers show" now. I'm only lightly paraphrasing when I say that when I first saw Wille DD pointed at the screen and said "that's babygirl," and it didn't take long for me to understand the impulse. We also agree that his security team should be fired.

I was thoroughly spoiled for the plot of season 1, but I have no idea what's going to happen in season 2 (apart from that DD said Felice is likely to stay a favorite character, and some minor details) and I look forward to finding out.

I finished two TV shows today, Taskmaster series 13 and Severance. Weird combination, now that I think about it.

( Taskmaster series 13 )


( Severance )

D and I watched the first four episodes of Our Flag Means Death. There were some entertaining elements, but overall I didn't enjoy it very much. For me it's a combination of my embarrassment squick, the premise not working for me, and (most of) the humor being not quite my thing.

( OFMD )

I had a headache and was so exhausted all day yesterday I took an hour-long nap and then still had to lie in bed with my eyes closed a couple of times. Ugh. At least I'm a little better this morning. Clearly I should work less overtime, though looking at what needs to be finished next week…

DD and I started watching the Chinese live-action version of Hikaru no Go a little while ago, and currently we watch one episode a day as a ~bedtime story, which works very well. We've watched 12 episodes so far and there hasn't been one that didn't make me laugh out loud at least once. (There has also been plenty of facepalming.)

( Spoilers )

I was happy with a fic I had written for fandomtrees, and then I read the letter again just in case and saw that I had managed to focus exactly on one of the DNWs *headdesk* I are smart. No-one I can re-gift it to, unfortunately... hopefully I can at least still write a drabble or something. I had plans to write more but that didn't happen.

DD convinced me to use her hair routine to see if it would make my hair more curly, and it kinda worked! I'm not used to it though and it looks funny. I don't think I'll do it again, definitely not regularly, but it was fun to try out.

DD yesterday: "We need to work on your hair. And on your character."
Me: ???
DD: "What does an undead butler dress like?"
Me: ... Oooh, you mean my character for the TTRPG we were talking about a few minutes ago xD
We're planning to play "The Wizard's Staff" from the microsetting collection "Odd Jobs" and I very much look forward to it. I'm playing an undead butler and MSZ is playing an enchanted soup tureen and we have to pretend our wizard is still alive, it'll be great.

We also watched most of season 2 of The Witcher. DD watched season 1, I didn't, but I have been reading quite a bit of Witcher fic recently (mostly by inexplicifics.) I've decided I much prefer their version to TV canon. The reason why I wanted to check it out was because I saw gifs on Tumblr from scenes with Jaskier and Yennefer, and those scenes were indeed great, but a lot of the rest of it I didn't enjoy, and the last two episodes we fast-forwarded through. I think Jaskier is the only character I actually like, especially because ( spoiler ). The ongoing genocide makes many people/factions very hard to root for.

I finished playing Katana ZERO. It took me about twice as long as is apparently average, but the combat was good enough and the story intriguing enough that I didn't mind having to try certain levels a few dozen times. I'm not going to play it again but I enjoyed it, overcoming the challenges was very satisfying. It was darker than I thought it would be, but that was my fault, I knew from the beginning that it was about a serial killer, though I didn't know about the war or had forgotten about it. Afterwards, thinking the story through, there are certain elements that are, hm, a bit thin... but the concept of Chronos is very interesting. I still think the last boss battle - not the secret one I later read about, which I didn't fight - makes no sense but whatever, it was fun.

I got my third vaccine shot yesterday so today I have a terrible headache (and some other more minor side effects), which sucks. It did make me realize just how long it's been since I've been sick, I almost forgot how much I hate knowing that I should keep my eyes closed and not do much while being so bored. I might be able to do some writing but playing games is definitely a bad idea and I'm grumpy.

Unsorted notes from Wheel of Time episode 6: ( Spoilers )

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, MCU: The first MCU movie I watched in a while. It was fun. I especially liked the first two fight scenes (while during the big climactic battle I was too exasperated with what people were not doing to fully enjoy it.) Having recently watched Castlevania I also could not help but compare Xu Wenwu to Dracula.

Critical Role campaign 3: I do enjoy CR, the new characters are very promising (especially Taliesin's and Marisha's, and Sam's is fun), but 4 hours a week is a lot. I'm glad they'll take one week a month off, I'm already behind (I've watched the first three episodes so far.) I'm not sure yet if I'll continue watching, or if I'll do what I did for the second half of campaign 2, namely read the summaries each week and then decide to watch the episode if something particularly cool or interesting happened.

Taskmaster series 12: DD and I really enjoyed series 1 to 10, and then for reasons we forgot didn't watch series 11. We recently caught up with series 12 and it's so much fun. Victoria might be one of my favorite contestants ever. Only one more episode to go.

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: People in magical giant robots fight monsters! And the heroine wants to burn down the sexist system that leads to female pilots being sacrificed. ( Some imo minor spoilers )

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim: inspired by the fairy tale "The Six Swans" in an Asian fantasy setting. Unfortunately the main character left a bad first impression because coddled youngest child or not, a 16-year-old Imperial princess should know more about responsibilities and consequences than Shiori (and that reflects badly on her family too.) Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for YA? None of the plot twists were surprising, and I could only connect to the characters rarely. Overall, I don't regret reading it and it did have some enjoyable elements, but I'm not going to bother with any sequels.

So I'm a Spider, So What?, anime, up to episode 13: I thought this would be mostly silly fun, but, uh, the recent episodes took a much darker tun than I anticipated. Very cool plot twists, ( spoilers ) Without spoilers, I'd appreciate some vague info about how dark this gets.
The first dozen episodes also had surprisingly catchy songs and I'm disappointed those changed.

I watched Ted Lasso this weekend, the first 15 episodes on Saturday and then four more on Sunday. (I couldn't walk very well so it was good timing.) Thanks for helping me manage expectations! It was fun. I liked it a lot better on Saturday than on Sunday, but I'm not sure if I actually like the latest four episodes less or if I was just less in the mood for the show on Sunday. Probably a mix of both.

( Spoilers for more recent episodes )

I'll definitely keep watching and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

Unrelated – because I didn't enjoy it that much that I would request fic for it – Yuletide nominations are already open, how did that happen, what is time.