Recent reads

May. 31st, 2025 11:50 am
theladyscribe: (miss piggy)
[personal profile] theladyscribe
A books update!

Recently finished:
Sonnets to Orpheus, Rainer Maria Rilke. Continuing my foray into Rilke's entire bibliography! I think this is my favorite of his works so far, with a clearer narrative arc than his other works that I've read.

The Siege of Burning Grass, Premee Mohamed. This started off strong, but the second half got messy and felt a bit rushed. I can see what Mohamed was going for - the complete devastation of war, how even peace movements fall to violence when a situation is desperate enough, how looking at your enemy can be looking at a mirror - but it didn't stick the landing for me.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo. The first of two murder mysteries I read recently (I'll get to the second in a moment)! Loved the take on fox spirits in this and how they sit uneasily between the world of humans and the world of gods. I also really liked the elderly gentleman detective and his long-lost first love. There are a couple plot points I wanted more development of (I thought the people without shadows were underutilized), but on the whole I really liked this.

Catching the Big Fish, David Lynch. A series of essays on film-making, life, and meditation (a passion of Lynch's). I really liked the film-making essays - they put me in mind of Ray Bradbury's more autobiographical writing - but the meditation proselytizing got to be a bit too much woo for me.

A Song to Drown Rivers, Ann Liang. A retelling of the story of Xi Shi, one of the four great beauties of China. I wanted to like this more than I did, but I felt like it did a lot more telling than showing. I think it would make a great movie, but it was emotionally distant as a book, and I had a hard time connecting with the POV character.

Most Ardently, Gabe Cole Novoa. A YA trans retelling of Pride and Prejudice. This was recommended to me by my sister (a huge Jane Austen fan) and my nephew (he read it twice in a week lol), and it was very cute. I like some of the tweaks Novoa made, and Oliver's family's acceptance of his gender felt earned and cathartic when it very easily could have been treacly. I recommend it if you like P&P but want it queer!

Hyo the Hellmaker, Mina Ikemoto Ghosh. My favorite read of May! A kind of steampunk fantasy murder mystery set in a place that is not exactly Japan, but not not Japan, too. I mentioned on bluesky that it hits some really interesting notes on colonialism/colonization with its worldbuilding, though that isn't the focus of the story. It also has really cool takes on gods and patronage thereof, and you can definitely see the influence of both Japanese mythology and British mythology/fairy stories in the writing (the author is British-Japanese). And it's illustrated by the author!

Current Reads:
Unromance, Erin Connor
Think Little, Wendell Berry

whoopsie, media update

May. 29th, 2025 12:40 pm
omens: sun shining through leaves (Default)
[personal profile] omens
Forgot to post my media update yesterday! Unrelatedly, saw this chipmunk today :D



A lucky catch!


TV/movies:

Miss Night and Day we are 2 eps from the end and this one has stuck the landing, imo. I have quibbles, the whole murder plot is kinda - well, we kinda thought it would make more sense, lol. But this is, at its core, the cat magic shenanigans show.

Amphibia L really likes this show & we are doing a cultural exchange (he is watching Owl House). And I usually am so annoyed by all the "but it's so ugly" complaints that people have about cartoons when they just don't appreciate style & especially don't appreciate animation, but god, it's so ugly. And screamy. Perhaps it will grow on me. The nagging to get more episodes in is not growing on me, lol. I've only seen the first episode so far.


Games: Stardew Valley brought my wilderness farm to year 3, been needing a no brain media option lately.


Books/Comics: I think I'm quitting all of my books, ngl. Because Internet will come back around bc I had to return it but renewed the hold. Hammajang Luck seemed like it would be fun if I could look past one of my most loathed tropes (falling for the ice queen/king who betrayed you in the past) and might even go beyond that and give her A Real Good Reason She Had To. No thanks :D


Writing and other wips: I actually wrote a bit!! Brainstorming on a new wip, LOLOL. ;_; but you know what, I'll take it! Going to host next week at [community profile] writethisfanfic, don't expect good convo prompts!! *cough* or possibly any, lol

BONUS PARK PICS :D pretty )

scaramouche: a hand touching a girl's chin, scene from MirrorMask (close to you)
[personal profile] scaramouche
Onward to The King of Attolia, my fav in the series! This is the high point for me, though it requires everything before it to have the impact it does, and it needs everything afterward to bring the greater story to its conclusion. It's still so good, so well-paced, so satisfying, and this time I greatly appreciated how they have the assassination attempt just a little before halfway into the book (instead of the near end), so Costis becomes privy to the deception that Eugenides has been pulling on everyone and is given the rest of the book to process this information, and thus share in our frustration as the reader by knowing that Eugenides isn't what he appears to be.

cut for length )

Brilliant Minds

May. 28th, 2025 12:52 pm
garryowen: (trek spock laughing)
[personal profile] garryowen
I went ahead and bought Brilliant Minds S1 and binged. It doesn't have the central tensions I'm used to because the characters are canonically gay, and they're all human, hahahaha. In fact, pretty much everyone on the show is gay. Which is awesome. And it is really nice to see two hot 47-year-old dudes making out in an elevator.

The worst thing I can say about the show is that it is cheesy AF. Like, to an incredible degree. But it has heart, and it tackles neurodivergence and aging.

Zachary Quinto is absolutely HOT.

Sadly, the fandom action seems to all be on tumblr, the platform I hate most in this life, but if you search for Brilliant Minds, you can see ZQ's adorkable outfits and enthusiastic kissing. AO3 only has 212 fics so far, and for the most part they have tags I hate: h/c, whump, angst. This fandom needs some wacky humor fic. I am here to write it.
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun

Karina Ahmed's parents have gone to Bangladesh for a month to visit family, leaving her with her grandmother, her younger brother, and the class "bad boy" (he wears a leather jacket) she's supposed to be tutoring in English, if he ever shows up.

In this, I think Bhuiyan wrote the book she needed—a dutiful brown girl finds a rich white Tumblr-therapy speaking boyfriend and the courage to defy her parents—and I hope it finds the readers who need it. The story is moving and the romance is sweet, though the prose often reads as unpracticed and the romance eventually devolves into saccharine cliches with Ace (his name is Ace) saying things like "you've stolen my heart" and "you're the brightest star here" which dulls its originality and makes Ace the most supportive, considerate, loving, patient, woke, rich white teenage boy in all of New York City, which was a bit hard to swallow. It's 100% wish fulfillment and I'm 100% cool with that, but it made Ace and the actual dating the least satisfying part of this for me. Instead, I was most interested in Karina's struggle to figure out what she wanted from her life and whether or not she could stand up to her parents and ask for it. The family dynamics are well drawn and I was invested in Karina and her relationship with her parents, her brother, her grandma, and her many, many cousins.

Features:

  • a Muslim Bangladeshi-American teenager
  • teenage poetry
  • fake dating
  • a kick-ass Dadu (grandma)
  • the unconditional love of two OTT best friends
  • depictions of anxiety
  • controlling parents

Not really Star Wars

May. 28th, 2025 08:19 pm
scaramouche: (the nutcracker)
[personal profile] scaramouche
I saw a poll on tumblr not too long ago, asking if people read their own fics. My guess is that one of the assumptions underlying the poll is that it's narcissistic to enjoy something you created yourself, which in my opinion is a crying shame of a stance to have because the author knows exactly the kind of characterisation and level of drama you like! And will avoid the squicks you do not!

I make this post because Andor brought interest back to some of the Rogue One fics I posted way back when, despite them being Baze/Chirrut and not Cassian-focused. I've gotten some lovely new comments and kudoses, and decided to check said fic out because I hadn't looked at them in years and... gosh, I wrote this? (This fic in particular, which is set just before the Battle of Scarif.)

I wasn't intimidated by canon lore and tried to fill the logistical issues of the movie and choreographed all these jokes??? How did I do that! (The implication being, I WISH I could turn this kind of ability on like a switch instead of staring sadly at a blinking cursor in a Word doc.) Past!me knows exactly what I like! Plus nothing that happened in Andor contradicts this fic as far as I can tell, which is magic.

tv rec: El Eternauta

May. 27th, 2025 10:40 pm
teaotter: (Default)
[personal profile] teaotter
We just got done watching the first season of El Eternauta, and I am completely blown away. This is one of the best tv series I think I've ever seen in my life. The acting, the cinematography, the soundscape... utterly gripping.

Trying not to spoil anything past the first ten minutes: On a seemingly ordinary summer day, snow starts to fall, the power goes out, electronics go haywire -- and anyone outside dies. The people left alive have to figure out what to do next, and how to survive.

This show is so well done. I looked up the most thorough spoilers I possibly could and still ended up on the edge of my seat constantly, because it's less about *what* they do and more about *how* it's done.

I'm so glad they've already announced that there'll be a second season; I really want to see where they go from here.

bird post!

May. 27th, 2025 01:44 pm
omens: Tiny Titans Robin, with robins (dcu - tiny titans robinses)
[personal profile] omens
Mowed the front lawn! Had trouble with the mower even though it was SO EASY last time, lol. Sixth time's the charm!! I imagine the old-timers who may have witnessed my mowing process were probably like "what the fuck is she doing" but I have a system!! I get there in the end! Tomorrow I'll do the back yard but it's still wet. We had so much rain in the last week and now we'll have a day and a half of sun before we are rained out again, looks like.

Some May birds! birb )

We went down to the water to see if any of the geese or swans had babbies yet (they had not) but we saw MANY turtles park )

scaramouche: Hudson Leick as Callisto, winking (callisto wink)
[personal profile] scaramouche
I finally got my own copy of Thick as Thieves so it's time to start my series reread. (Mild tangent: there are so many YA books now and turnover is so rapid, I had to go to multiple huge bookstores to find one that had what I wanted.)

The Thief is still so great! A small, self-contained story compared to everything that will happen after and IMO stronger for that. I love Gen so much, what an obnoxious little trickster. He's so smug of his own cleverness and is constantly DYING to tell the others how clever he is but cannot. I love everyone in the road trip (oh, Pol), even Ambiades whom I believe could've redeemed himself if given the chance, though chances are in short supply.

The book does make me miss that we don't get this deep into Gen's headspace ever again (unless Return of the Thief does, I haven't read it) and elements of it are so cinematic I wish we could get a live-action TV show or movie out of it, just for those scenes. Specifically, the water mechanism of the temple under the Aracthus, and Gen's entering Hephastia's court and realising that what he thought were just statues were the actual gods themselves.

Cut for length, plus other spoiilers. )

The Twilight Zone (2019-2020)

May. 25th, 2025 08:56 am
runpunkrun: fox mulder and dana scully in black and white, text: American Gothic (american gothic)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
Finally, also from my drafts, and the last in my irregular series from 2020-2024 of watching stuff, The Twilight Zone, on DVD from the library:

Jordan Peele and Simon Kinberg (IMDb says: A British film producer, director, and screenwriter known for producing the X-Men films, Fant4stic, Logan, the Deadpool films, Cinderella, and The Martian) reboot the Twilight Zone. The stories are twisty, thought provoking, and intense, reproducing the original show's vibe and big name guest stars, while also adding diversity and confronting modern social issues like racism, sexism, and colonialism. I could only comfortably watch one episode at a time, and sometimes only uncomfortably. "Replay" was particularly effective in the way it portrayed the threat that police pose for Black people in America and I found it to be very tense. Other favorites from season one: "The Comedian," "A Traveler" (written by Glen Morgan of The X-Files's Morgan & Wong), and "Not All Men." But, as with any anthology, the stories are of varying quality and sometimes I spent the whole hour trying to divine the twist or decipher the in-universe rules because the show failed to make me interested in the characters or their problems. The season one finale, "Blurryman," was especially boring despite featuring my beloved Zazie Beetz.

I ended up I watching both seasons for completism rather than pleasure, with the second season a huge let down after the first. I briefly perked up for "8" about a remote science station doing deep sea research in Antarctica, all of that deeply my jam, starring Joel McHale's face, of which I am a big fan, but the rest of him is not so great at dramatic acting, and the episode itself was so flat I couldn't even care about what the twist meant for the fate of humanity. The standout in that season was easily "Try, Try" and its (correct) reading of Groundhog Day as romantic horror, as a woman is stalked and manipulated by Topher Grace in ways she couldn't possibly anticipate or defend against.
alethia: (GK Doc)
[personal profile] alethia
Crap, I really need an icon. This is where I'm at; haven't stopped writing long enough to make myself a damn icon. oy.

The Nature of Enough (8728 words) by Alethia
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jack Abbot/Michael "Robby" Robinavitch
Characters: Jack Abbot (The Pitt), Michael "Robby" Robinavitch
Additional Tags: Post-Season/Series 01, Idiots in Love, Secret Crush, Pining, Arguing, First Kiss, First Time, Porn, putting a dollar figure on love, Or not, abbot blows robby's mind, In several ways
Summary:

The job offer came out of nowhere. Centennial Hospital, a tier 1 trauma center in Colorado, wanted him to take over for their retiring chief attending. They'd heard the same rumors as everyone about PTMC—how it'd be taken over, transformed, the ED shut down. Didn't Jack want to get ahead of it and find himself a new gig, head of the department, master of his own fate? And the money, of course. Lots and lots of money.

Jack promptly told them to fuck off.

Gigi and the Fountain of Youth

May. 24th, 2025 09:19 am
scaramouche: Aja from Jem and the Holograms (aja)
[personal profile] scaramouche
Completely by accident, I ended up rewatching Gigi and the Fountain of Youth, the English-dubbed version of the Minky Momo OVA, which I used to watch on VHS as a kid.

Thanks to the near-manic dubbed dialogue that I now, as an adult, fully understand instead of having wash over me as a child, it's so absurdist! There's so many characters and so many things happen! All those accents and OTT delivery! There's barely any pauses between gags! Though I can totally see how I glommed onto Gigi so hard, her ability to easily transform into glamorous adult versions of herself was SUCH a dream to a kid.

new fandoms?

May. 23rd, 2025 03:21 pm
garryowen: made by signe (Default)
[personal profile] garryowen
Hey, is anyone watching Brilliant Minds? Just wondering about it. Seems up my alley, and not just because ZQ is in it. I haven't watched any yet.

Please tell me what shows you are excited about right now. I want to know.

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scribblinlenore

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