labingi | Reading

The first three episodes of The Testaments have been dropped in my part of the world on Disney +. It's an adapatation of Margaret Atwood's novel of the same name, which is a decades later written sequel to her famous dystopian classic The Handmaid's Tale; when it was published, I reviewed it here. Just to make their lives more complicated, though, the show is also a sequel to the tv series The Handmaid's Tale. The first (very good) season of which I watched, but not the later ones, as word of mouth about diminishing quality and lack of time have detained me, but I did osmose this presents a problem because not only is the backstory the showin its later seasons developed for one of the central characters (Aunt Lydia) very different from her backstory in the novel, but the timeline of another central character is different as well. With this in mind, my spoilery reaction to the first three episodes is beneath the cut. Above cut: those first three episodes are well acted and produced and make some interesting choices re: adapting the source material - and I don't mean "interesting" as a euphemism for bad -, but haven't revealed yet how they'll solve the Lydia problem.

( The perils of being a female teenager in Gilead )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Munich

sovay

Entirely apart from it now apparently being business as usual for my killing joke of a government to start wars in whatever sovereign nations it feels like and threaten the annihilation of entire civilizations on capricious deadline, I have had a weird and fairly scrambled week in which I was not able to avoid talking to doctors after all. I can feel suitably noir-poisoned for recognizing some location shooting in The Rockford Files (1974–80) from Desert Fury (1947). The sky this afternoon suggested that it was trying to be autumn.

rushthatspeaks sent me an improbable mammal.

Current Music: Lake Street Dive, "Bad Self Portraits"

skygiants

Made a extremely silly decision this past weekend, which was to break up our long drive to and from Philly by Exactly long enough to see one (one) show in NYC on the way down, and another on the way back. Literally put the car in a garage by the theater, went into the show, got the car out of the garage, and kept driving. And to make matters even sillier the show that we saw on the way down was Bad -- and we knew it was going to be! Or at least we had a reasonable suspicion! But were we not going to go out of our way to see Norm Lewis play Villefort in a Count of Monte Cristo musical? Of course we were. The path before us had simply been prepared.

Q: When you say it was bad, do you mean it was a bad musical as a musical, or a bad adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo?
A: Oh, both! Absolutely both.

Q: What made it a bad musical?
A: Well, the music. And the lyrics. They hit exactly every beat on the Musical Sheet while constantly feeling like less subtle knockoff versions of other songs you might know slightly better. The song you might know slightly better is not a subtle one, you say? Well, I guarantee you that songs such as "Dangerous Times," in which the full cast explain that they are living in dangerous times, and "How Did I Get So Far Away [From Me]," in which Mercedes sadly wonders how she has gotten so far away from herself, are less so. When the best you can say of a song is that it felt like pallid diet Frank Wildhorn -- as in, lacking the noted power and vibrancy of real Frank Wildhorn, composer of such deathless works as Death Note: The Musical -- then you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And that's not even mentioning the frenetic stream of mediocre jokes.

Q: And what made it a bad adaptation?
A: I mean I know there are probably people in the past who have said that Edmond Dantès literally did nothing wrong but I want you to understand: in this show, Edmond Dantès literally does nothing wrong. His backstory takes up the entire first act, and by the time we hit intermission I was already like "huh, there's not going to be a lot of time in here for revenge schemes," but I didn't actually understand how dire the situation was going to be until ( this part of the Q&A gets into quite detailed plot spoilers )

Q: So do you regret your objectively silly decision to go out of your way to see this musical?
A: No I do not, not in the least, and I would have regretted missing it. There is something very nutritious in bad theater, I think. It forces you to consider what good theater might look like. Also, the surprise appearance of Lucrezia Borgia was one of the funniest things I experienced all weekend.

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

bluapapilio

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: tired

linky posting in

anime_manga

I posted a small batch of Witch Hat Atelier icons at my icon journal! Hoping to make some more in the future.

Find them here at

chemyxstory

musesfool

Today's poem, for which I had to turn on the rich text editor and still couldn't get the spacing quite right sigh:

Seaside Improvisation
by Richard Siken

I take off my hands and I give them to you but you don't
want them, so I take them back
and put them on the wrong way, the wrong wrists. The yard is dark,
the tomatoes are next to the whitewashed wall,
the book on the table is about Spain,
the windows are painted shut.
Tonight you're thinking of cities under crowns
of snow and I stare at you like I'm looking through a window,
counting birds.
You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you're not miserable.
You do the math, you expect the trouble.
The seaside town. The electric fence.
Draw a circle with a piece of chalk. Imagine standing in a constant cone
of light. Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless.
A stone on the path means the tea's not ready,
a stone in the hand means somebody's angry, the stone inside you still
hasn't hit bottom.

*

Current Mood: coughing, still

marycatelli posting in

books

The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy by Ronald Hutton

A long topic

( Read more... )

bluapapilio

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: busy

bluapapilio

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: awake

sovay

We just had a blackout! For what looked like blocks around! It lasted exactly as long as it took

spatch to light a candle in a yahrzeit glass and me to find a utility bill to call and report the outage. Briefly, stars were visible.

(Today was concerned primarily with taking Hestia to the vet, falling over afterward, and thinking unavoidably about geopolitics.)

Current Music: Metric, "Victim of Luck"

annavere

I signed up for Write Every Day earlier this week, which I'm enjoying as a challenge and focus point. The purpose of it for me was to circumvent what normally happens right after I post something - which is instantly disappearing into the ether for two weeks before I summon the energy to try writing again.

It worked, today at least. I dug out a functionally finished short fic I unfortunately wrote around this time last year while I was still reeling and in deep shock. So I let it lapse without doing the final read-through, because I just wasn't up to it, at all. I feel bad about this, because the fic was beta read, and then I never posted it.

So this evening, I sat down with the fic, altered a few sentences to be more smooth or substantial, added a few others to make the story clearer, and think it's where I want it to be. So that's getting posted in the next day or two.

This challenge is getting good results. Thank you to

dswdiane for pointing it out.

bluapapilio

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: working

isis

What I've recently finished reading:

In eyeball, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow. Time-loop novel about a medieval historian and the lady knight he's obsessed with, in an alternate world that is not quite our England; one of you called it "sort of Arthuriana" and I guess it is, though that sort of is important. In a way it reminded me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August as much of the novel is the characters gradually figuring out that these same things are happening again, and then trying to take advantage of this knowledge to make the next loop better. Unfortunately, in this case the source of the time loop has very clear, firm aims, and does not want to be thwarted by the mere pawns acting out the story that is destined to be enshrined in the country's lore. I liked it a lot, especially as the layers unfolded, though actually I was most interested in the villain of the piece and would like to have had more of that story!

In audio, All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor, the third Bobiverse book. I'm really liking these, although they could use some closer editing to avoid repetition of things we already know. It's an interesting inversion of Adrian Tchaikovsky's "How can we see the other as a person?" in that the viewpoint characters, the Bobs, are cloned brain patterns from a now-dead engineer which run on computers installed in spaceships; though within the narrative they are unquestionably people, other humans don't necessarily see them that way. And yet as they are enabling and directing the expansion of humanity into space, they're the segment of humanity making first contact with the other sentient species of the galaxy, and they're the ones who have to handle the related decisions. The structure of these books, with the multiplicity of Bobs and their storylines, means that all the different cases can be handled: the Stone Age civilization, the early-industrial civilization, the possibly advanced civilization that no longer exists, the advanced civilization that presents a terrifying threat. And as some humans fight against the idea that the Bobs are human, some Bobs work to reclaim as much of their humanity as possible. There are some deep philosophical questions one can tease out of these books - but I don't think that's the author's intent, and they are enjoyable reads just as fun science fiction.

What I've recently finished watching:

We enjoyed the Netflix "nature documentary" miniseries The Dinosaurs; quotes are because I think it's basically all CGI. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it's a dramatic tour of prehistory, from the first proto-dinos to the asteroid that ended it all. It does a good job of telling individual "stories" of the various dinosaurs looking for mates, protecting their young, and doing their best to eat and not be eaten.

musesfool

I was taken with the need to do an Orphan Black rewatch and there's so much I forgot! Tatiana Maslany is so good, which you all knew, and the supporting cast is *chef's kiss*. It makes very few missteps, and watching in marathon fashion means even storylines I disliked originally (CASTOR) work much better. It's on Netflix, so if you are in the mood and don't mind the grossout body horror, it's a good watch.

And this poem seemed fitting:

This Poem Will Get Me On Some Kind of Watchlist
by Jessie Lochrie

I'm dancing at a nightclub
when someone behind me
places a hand on my shoulder.
I assume it's a friend until
the hand slides down my chest.

Boiling with gin and rage
I grab his wrist, whip around,
and punch him in the jaw.
It doesn't land well—
I've never hit anyone before—
so I punch him in the gut,
just for good measure.

I look at him doubled over and spit
Never do that to a woman again,
and then I run. My friends laugh in the cab:
You punched a guy!
but I sit silent and burning.

In Crown Heights, in Union Square,
in South Williamsburg: men leer and
whistle and smack their lips.
I ignore them, or flip them off,
or tell them I'm married.

When they purr que guapa
I yell callate and they all laugh.
I can't tell if they're laughing at me
for being a white girl speaking bad
Spanish, or at the idea that anything
I say might actually shut them up.

In my impotent rage I dream of a world
where I am not public property. I would
start wars for my right to walk down a street
unafraid, a thousand wars for a single day
in which my body belongs to me alone.
An army raised against each cat call. A bullet
for every man who ever told me to smile.

***

Current Mood: still coughing
Current Music: Mets losing to the Dbacks

bluapapilio

Summary: In a world where everyone takes wonders like magic spells and dragons for granted, Coco is a girl with a simple dream: She wants to be a witch. But everybody knows magicians are born, not made, and Coco was not born with a gift for magic. Resigned to her un-magical life, Coco is about to give up on her dream to become a witch until the day she meets Qifrey, a mysterious, traveling magician. After secretly seeing Qifrey perform magic in a way she’s never seen before, Coco soon learns what everybody “knows” might not be the truth, and discovers that her magical dream may not be as far away as it may seem.

I made the decision to start over from the beginning, I remember quite a bit but I don't want to miss a thing out of confusion, plus it's not a hardship at all. It will make a little weird when the anime comes out but ehh I can always watch that later.

Chapter 1: The beautiful art, the humor and silliness, the hints of more going on, ahhh this manga! I can't wait to see it animated!!! Gosh darn why is Qifrey so good-looking.

Qifrey thought of a certain group when he pondered the notebook and went back, but it was too late. :'(

If Coco can see the book again she'll be able to tell Qifrey which one she used to reverse the spell that froze her mom. According to the rules, Qifrey should've erased Coco's memories, but he's after the group who gave her the notebook.

Coco got what she wanted but sadly at a cost.

Chapter 2: Coco meets her fellow apprentices!

Tetia - Likes being thanked, spirited
Riche - Quiet
Agete - Stand-offish

Qifrey tells Coco the history of magic. It's the usual 'people misused it' thing, people's memory of magic was erased and only a select few could use and teach it. I wonder if the group who Coco got her journal from are part of the ones who misused magic and managed to escape?

Using magic on human's bodies is forbidden except for erasing memories.

Coco's magic book was replicated in the book tower but she can't get past the guardians until she gets stronger.

Qifrey imparting the message that there are kinder, gentler spells to make people happy and he wants her to know them. :')

Chapter 3: Coco learns the basic of spell-writing.

Quifrey: "Things you have memorized may soon fade, but words you've understood and spoken soak into your very body."

So true!

Shirahama is soo good at drawing character actions!

When Qifrey goes away for a few days, Agete makes her move - she makes Coco do the test before she's even made her first real spell.

We meet anther witch, Alaira. The people who gave Coco her notebook are called the 'Brimmed Hat Group'.

Chapter 4: Coco is too cute, imagining Qifrey's words of encouragement.

Speaking of cute, brushbug!!!

I'm so happy she figured out how to combine her own tailoring knowledge with magic. <3

Coco didn't tell on Agete and got her own set of witch robes, yippeee. :>

Chapter 5: Coco repaired Agete's shoes but can't get the glyph on the bottom right. Qifrey takes her to a magic art supply shop to get her own pen to see if that helps! Qifrey flying with the girls is so cute. And the brushbug hanging out with Riche.

Coco spots a Brimmed Hat in an alley. She meets the shop's owner Mr. Nornoa and sees his grandson, Tartar.

Ink is made of dead leaves from a silver tree.

The girls get teleported elsewhere when Coco runs after the Brimmed Hat. I wonder how long it took Shirahama to draw that dragon?? It's clear the Brimmed Hat is testing Coco, They call her 'their hope'.

Current Mood: working

bluapapilio

Jee-Han Han is a normal high school student until he suddenly develops a skill that turns his world into a role-playing game. He can see the levels of people, effects and status values of items, even level up is possible!

But while Jee-Han is still wondering what that means, the difficulty level of his world increases and he has no choice but to level, learn new skills and slowly learn what his ability The Gamer is all about.

I remember a good amount of this but I've decided to go ahead and reread, not like it'll be a hardship! It looks like I read two seasons? I'm just gonna use what I can find as covers.

Episode 1: Han Jee-Han is suddenly able to see player levels above people's heads. His childhood friend Shin Sun-Il is level 25, whereas his other classmates are only 2-3.

Jee-Han has a special ability called 'The Gamer' that lets him see the world around him in game-like ways - levels, skills, quests etc. His mother's level shows ??.

Episode 2: Kwon Shi-Yun makes her appearance, she's a badass red-head who joins Jee-han's class. She's level 32.

Jee-Han accidentally entered an illusion barrier where a level 46 guy named Hwan Sung-Gon was attacking Shi-Yun.

Chapter 3-4: Jee-Han kills his first monster, a slime.

"He only gets mad and hits us if we do bad things." Yeah that's called abuse. If he can't use his words what good is he as a teacher?

Jee-Han realized Sun-Il must not be a normal human either and feels bummed he kept it secret from him.

Chapter 5-7: Jee-Han got good with a bat and is using it at as a weapon, on the way home he gets caught up in another illusion barrier this time with zombies!

Sung-Gon is there absorbing zombies into a red ball.

Jee-Han has been best friends with Sun-Il since primary school. "He's the only one I can trust right now."

Except Sun-Il thinks someone did something with his friends and attacks him;;

Jee-Han uses a "I am your father" joke to get Sun-Il to stop choking him lol

Jee-Han: 'But giving off such killing intent for me...makes me a bit happy. I was mad that he'd been hiding it 'til now, but he must've had his reasons.'

Chapter 8: Jee-Han is a natural ability user and their gifts are given directly from Gaia.

They can't use their powers to affect real people/the world badly or they get struck down. Illusion barriers let them use their powers without limitation.

Seeing how strong Sun-Il is, Jee-Han gets worried that Sun-Il doesn't need a guy like him. The look Sun-Il sends him screams "are you scared of me now? can you accept this new world/me? I'll try not to cry if the answer is no"

Jee-Han realizes he's the only friend Sun-Il has and how important that is.

bluapapilio

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: blank

bluapapilio

Used my manga TBR boardgame.

I finished 10/11 on my last board and had a decent time.

I wonder if I should try to aim for at least one from each genre? 🤔 GL gets left out too much.

Avatar:

Gon
Skill: Choose your own prompt once

Roll #1:

A 5, using skill because I really don't want to read more From Eroica with Love right now. Prompt: published '10-'20 - 45 Seconds.

Roll #2:

A 4, prompt: has only 1 volume - Ace no Kyuujitsu.

Roll #3:

A 2, prompt: witch/sorcerer/etc - Witch Hat Atelier!

Roll #4:

A 6, trap tile, went back and rerolled a 3, prompt: transmigrated into another world - the only option is The Secret Life of Empress Isana .

Roll #5:

A 5, prompt: childhood friends to lovers - 18.44-.

Roll #6:

A 1, prompt: publishing industry - Junjou Romantica.

Roll #7:

A 6, prompt: human/non-human relationship - jimetai hodo Aishiteru .

Roll #8:

A 4, prompt: taboo - Aiteru Door kara Shitsurei Shimasu yo.

Roll #9:

A 4, prompt: contemporary - The Gamer.

Roll #10:

A 6, prompt: sci-fi element - Dr. Stone.

Roll #11

A 4 and the end - reward is Men of the Harem.

~Manga TBR List~

[GL/Romance] 45 Seconds ✔️
[BL/Romance] Ace no Kyuujitsu ✔️
[Fantasy] Witch Hat Atelier ✔️
[Fantasy/Romance] The Secret Life of Empress Isana ❌
[BL/Romance] 18.44-
[BL/Romance] Junjou Romantica
[BL/Romance] Ijimetai hodo Aishiteru ✔️
[BL/Romance] Aiteru Door kara Shitsurei Shimasu yo ✔️
[Action/Adventure] The Gamer ✔️
[Sci-Fi/Adventure] Dr. Stone ✔️
[Politics/Harem] Men of the Harem

x2 shoujoi/josei, x3 shounen/seinen, x5 BL, x1 GL