face the strange

Argh, I need to get back into regular posting, because otherwise these things get monstrously long! I might start breaking the sections up into separate posts. After this one.

Previous poll review
In the Om poll, 7.8% of respondents meditate regularly, 23.5% meditate from time to time, and 41.2% said no. In ticky-boxes, "skipping across treetops and dancing through the clouds" came second to hugs, 45.1% to 74.5%. "Feeling kind of zonky" came third with 41.2%. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
More Bujold -- Andrew and I finished Shards of Honor (incl the scene with my DNWs; thankfully there's just the one) and have just started Barrayar. Really enjoying her sense of humour.

In the Penric novellas (also Bujold), I'm listening in the order they're served up to me, so I've read Penric's Demon, Penric and the Shaman, Penric's Fox, and I've now stalled out in the middle of Masquerade in Lodi. Idk why, it just hasn't grabbed me.

I have the next Wimsy book open on my Kindle, but have not given any time to reading lately.

Kdramas
Some more Family by Choice with Pru. I love this show so much.

I finished Can This Love Be Translated? which was quirky and slightly disconcerting all the way up to the last episode. And then the last episode made me go, loudly and repeatedly, "What? WHAAAT?!" Hong sisters, I love you, but I question those last-minute narrative choices.

Long ramble; spoilers for the whole show

The setup is that an up-and-coming actress stars in a low-budget horror movie where she plays a killer zombie. On the last day of shooting, she has an accident and winds up in a coma for six months (no post-coma PT required). During that time, she becomes an international sensation, so she wakes up a star. For most of the drama, while shooting a reality travel show, she's haunted by her character from the horror movie, or possibly she has multiple personality? It becomes more MP-ish as it progresses, and ends up kind of creepy-sweet. But there's a whole childhood backstory about her mother poisoning her father, trying to poison the main character as well, and then taking the poison herself. After that, the main character had to stay with emotionally distant relatives, so many resultant issues. Given the horror elements and backstory, I wondered if the reveal was going to be that the kid had accidentally killed her parents instead, or something like that? (And how would you even handle that in a romance?) Instead, the reveal was... her parents both survived the murder-suicide incident due to paramedic intervention, but left the country separately, neither wanting to see their daughter again, and NO ONE HAD EVER TOLD HER. And the haunting/MP alter was actually her mother (or based on her mother)???? So in the final episode, the main character leaves the country to find her parents, off-screen, and then the main couple reunite for the romantic ending. It was just... what a weird way to resolve the backstory?? Surely the fact that both of her (messed-up) parents chose to abandon her opens up more cans of worms, rather than resolving anything? But that's not even touched on! And to suddenly tell us that the person she's been for half the show (who flirts with her love interest and goes around randomly kissing people) is ?based on? her murderous mother??? Whaaaat??

Anyway, I enjoyed the translation side of things a lot and the leads and romance generally.

Am now watching Beyond the Bar on my brother's rec (not that brother; the other one), though he then emailed to say he didn't like the ending. It's pretty brutal in places, and

spoiler

the male lead's trauma is that he wants to be a dad, and his ex-wife had an abortion while they were together.

Plus, if they're trying for an office romance, that seems wildly ill-advised. But I'm enjoying it so far, so I'll see.

Other TV
Watched two and a half seasons of Barry before all the murder/moral complicity got to me.
We tried Bones and noped out halfway through episode 1. Also, half of Better Man, the Robbie Williams biopic where he's an ape.

We're currently watching:
- The Pitt -- waiting impatiently for the next episode. (No spoilers, please!!)
- SurrealEstate -- Canadian, seems fun and not quite as episodic as I expected.
- Wonder Man -- MCU, fantastic cast, nicely paced, fun, very curious to see how they're going to wrap it up, because we only have two short episodes to go and they have a LOT of balls in the air.
- Hacks -- about female stand-up comics; we've only watched the pilot, but I plan to continue a bit longer before we decide one way or the other.
- We Are Lady Parts season 2 -- a timeline cleanse/refresh. (I love them all so much!! Why are they so hard to draw? ;-p)

My sister and I just finished season 3 of Fringe. I was having trouble staying away for the last two episodes, but that might not have been the show's fault.

Also Andrew and I saw Avatar: Fire and Ash at the movies. (A bit too action-y for me; I preferred #2.)

Audio entertainment
- Writing Excuses
- The Shit No One Tells You About Writing (episode: The Job of a Disruption -- paraphase/jotted down quote: The job [of the disruption] isn't just to catch the protagonist off-guard. The job of the disruption is to then reveal layers of power dynamics. That could be a further deepening of existing power dynamics in a way that reveals complications, or it could be a power shift (lose or gain power). Looking for threat, temptation, tension, curiosity.)

- multiple listens of the Good Manager podfic celli made me for fandomtrees (listed here because I loaded it into Pocket Casts)
- Keep It Steady (in-progress m/m high-school fake-dating audiodrama; relisten, some eps multiple times)

( US politics. )

- Cross Party Lines (NZ Politics)
- The Tongue Unbroken (episode: The Ocean That Unites Us)

Writing/making things
I have one fandomtrees fic at beta (my beta for that fandom is super busy with off-line stuff). I've been working through the other one, and I'm a bit worried it's got all clogged up with feelings exposition, which is something that's been bugging me about my writing lately -- but I may just be hypervigilant about that, idk. I have a post for fan_writers in the works. Art practice has ground to a halt for now. Everything is fine.

Life/health/mental state things
( Cut for length. )

Food
My parents accidentally bought a mini air fryer. The basket is 15.5cm in diameter, about big enough for a single cupcake. I offered it a home and have been using it for various things. A new favourite, courtesy of Youtube "air fryer hacks" videos, is leftover pizza, sandwiched together with more cheese in the middle, and reheated till it's crispy. A+

Link dump
Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon (The Verge, a couple of years ago) | The Mayor of Ottawa declared Shane Hollander Day (what is happening?? Heated Rivalry has also shown up in our local newspaper's trivia quiz and in the NYT's Connections puzzle, lol) | Bruce Springsteen - Streets of Minneapolis (Youtube.)
(The rest are literally just tabs I'm closing that I want to be able to find again) How to break up with Google | Head South (NZ film I intend to try sometime) | Sacha Judd's website, What you love matters (articles page) | Spacious Acting (old skool acting blog) | NZ Respiratory illness dashboard.

Good things
Andrew. Modern medicine. Treats from the bakery. Having two houses. The cat. Thoughts about writing. Greeting cards. You all. Hugs!!