through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered . . .

Week of December 2:

Television:

Brooklyn Nine-Nine 1x11 (And then I discovered an amazing show just in time for it to go on a month's hiatus. Yay?)
Elementary 2x10 (I didn't realize exactly how much I'd come to love Marcus Bell until this episode.
Meganebu 1x10 (This was one of the episodes where I was so into it that I was genuinely startled when the end credits started. [Yeah, I know that doesn't say much for the show's plot structure.] I am going to miss having Meganebu to brighten up my Sundays after it ends.)
Free! Iwatobi Swim Club 1x03 (You know how you get into a thing and then you wander off into fandom and you think you remember all the reasons you loved the thing, but then you revisit and discovered you'd actually forgotten most of the awesome stuff? Yeah.)

Books:

Torn, Cat Clarke (Look, I am totally up for a story about a prank gone wrong ending in murder and the protag's subsequent struggle. Just don't offer me a supernatural angle when there really isn't one, and for the love of god don't choose the least satisfying ending possible.)

Week of December 9:

Television:

Sleepy Hollow 1x10
Agents of SHIELD 1x10
Elementary 2x11 (And then all of my shows went on hiatus at the same time. Is it January yet?)
Meganebu 1x11 (next week is the finale what am I gonna doooooo)
Mystery Science Theater 3000 10x09, "Hamlet" (My all-time favorite episode for ten years running. I mean, in retrospect, a lot of the humor is problematic and some of the jokes are a little on the pandering side, but the production is mesmerizingly awful, and when our boys nail a joke, they nail it but good. There are lines I can't not say regardless of the production I'm watching. "That is not wormwood would you shut up.")

Books/Short Stories:

"Darkling," Alexandre Stone (Also known as our own Flynn from Milliways! And I would have liked this story even if I didn't know her. You can get the Kindle edition at Amazon, go check it out.)
Ultraviolet, RJ Anderson (In which a girl who believes she has killed someone with the power of her mind ends up in a mental hospital NO COME BACK. You know all those tropes you associate with stories set in mental hospitals? You won't find 'em here. I've gushed about Anderson before, here and on tumblr, and I'll do it again. She does her research and writes about delicate subjects with care and sensitivity, taking great pains to present her characters as people. It makes all the difference in the world between a problematic novel and a refreshingly sincere one.)

Podcasts:

Welcome to Night Vale episode 37, "Auction"

Week of November 4:

Television:

Sleepy Hollow 1x06
Agents of SHIELD 1x06 (Ugh, so much crying. Even I know science doesn't work that way and I don't care, because so much crying.)
Elementary 2x07
Meganebu 1x06

Books:

Bossypants, Tina Fey

Movies:

The Purge: (If you've heard that this movie threw away all the potential of its premise - a night where any and all crime is not only legal but encouraged - in order to focus on a rich white family you won't care very much about, you have heard correctly. I really wanted this to be interesting and thought-provoking and ask hard questions with no real answers, and instead I got a carelessly written POS that tries to have its racist cake and eat too. AND I embarrassed myself by not recognizing Ethan Hawke. Fail all around.)
+1 (Yes, that's a title. This I watched because there was one actor in The Purge whose performance caught my eye, Rhys Wakefield. I hope Mr Wakefield continues to make a career of playing guys whose creepiness comes to light under the right circumstances, because he is excellent at it.)

Week of October 14:

Podcasts:

Welcome to Night Vale episode 33, "Cassette"

Television:

Sleepy Hollow 1x05
Agents of SHIELD 1x04 (This episode felt a little off in terms of the timing of Skye's development. Is ABC airing episodes out of order?)
Elementary 2x04
Meganebu 1x03 (THIS FUCKING SHOW, I SWEAR. Why aren't you all watching it yet?)



Week of October 21:

Books:

Killing Mr Griffin, Lois Duncan
The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell (Contrary to one might expect of the title, this is not a cashgrab in the form of petty gossip and cheap jokes at Tommy Wiseau's expense. It's actually a really fascinating, brutally honest [and often compassionate] character study/biography of Wiseau by possibly the only person who came close to knowing him in the years of The Room's conception and creation.)
Allegiant, Veronica Roth (Wow, am I ever glad my interest in this trilogy is casual rather than fannish.)

Movies:

Haunter (You know those stories about girls meeting girl ghosts, a la Stoneword? Kind of like that, but from the ghost's perspective. Saying any more would spoil it, but I highly recommend it.)
The Stuff
Mac and Me (Another movie night double feature. So much fun.)

Television:

Agents of SHIELD 1x05
Meganebu 1x04 (Fuck, I love this show so much. I would never have guessed a month ago that I would love it, but a month ago I was ignorant and silly. Now I have seen the light. NO MEGANE, NO LIFE.)

Week of September 30:

Welcome to Night Vale episode 32, "Yellow Helicopters" (fuuuuuuck)

Television:

Sleepy Hollow, 1x03
Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, 1x09-1x12
Agents of SHIELD 1x02 (vast improvement over last week, just as I expected. Looking forward to watching this show grow.)
Elementary 2x02 (Tell me that wasn't a subtle thumbing of the nose at Sherlock. Go ahead and try.)
Meganebu 1x01 (I have no idea what I just watched.)

Movies:

eXistenZ
The Room (These two make for a very interesting double feature. Also, watching The Room with people who actually make movies is HILARIOUS.)

And then I fell behind on my media consumption posts for three weeks.



Week of August 19:

NOTHING OOPS well not nothing just nothing I'm willing to admit to so much bad yaoi manga heeeeelp

Week of August 26:

Television:

Chobits, full series (except for the recap episodes. So, okay, turns out Corpse Party was a gateway drug and now I'm dragged back into anime for the first time since my foray into the medium like twelve years ago. What's awesome now, though, is that stuff is so much more available. No more the days of enduring dubs of random quality because finding subtitled shows was like pulling fucking teeth [and when they did turn up, they were more expensive to buy as we still didn't have a DVD player at that point], or buying sketchy third-generation fansubs on VHS from a dude at the comic shop [yes, really], or hearing of a title that sounded amazing but I could only get hold of three episodes or like volume six of the manga. Now, not only can I find anime and manga sources on the internet, many of them are actually legal! And subtitled anime? Fucking swimming in it! Digimon 02 is available subbed now on Netflix. NETFLIX. So anyway, Chobits was one of those titles I wanted so badly back then but could only get bits and pieces of; when I discovered that Netflix had it subbed, I devoured the whole run in two sittings. Was it worth the decade wait? Nnnnnot really. It's fun and all but I was hoping for a little more exploration of the whole "are computers programmed to be people in fact people?" premise. But I did finally, finally get to watch it and that is fucking awesome.)

Podcasts:

Welcome to Night Vale episode thirty, "Dana" (DANAAAAAAAAAAA that is all.)

Week of September 2:

Television:

Kinmoza!, 1x01 (Anime in which a Japanese girl goes to England on a sort of mini-exchange program, befriends the daughter her age despite the language barrier, and leaves; years later, Alice shows up at Shinobu's high school, having learnt to speak Japanese and excited about getting to live in Japan with Shinobu and her family. The scenes set in London are epic Engrish and the view of British culture through a Japanese lens is intriguing and makes me want to watch more to see where it goes. On the other hand, Shinobu is annoying as fuck and I'm not sure I want to put up with any more of her, which is why I haven't tried the second episode yet.)
Free! Iwatobi Swim Club 1x01-1x09 (The other exclamation pointed anime on offer this summer, however, is awesome. It has OTT drama and enjoyable characters and is funny as hell AND AND AND it is specifically designed to cater to women!! It is about a high school swim club, thus making the presence of wet, half-naked, toned, muscular boys extremely important to the plot, and it is all about the female gaze. All about. The female gaze. When was the last time you saw anything dedicated to the female gaze, let alone an entire show? Doesn't do much for me personally, but oh my god it is so so so nice to watch something without having women's bodies and body parts constantly shoved into my face as a blithe reminder that many many many people do not consider me a real human being because I'm a woman. The boys will survive some objectification. It's good for 'em. By which I mean: the misogynistic portion of the anime fanboy fanbase is squealing with rage and it is HILARIOUS. I would love this show even if it weren't good. Which it is! I recommend it with all my heart. You can even watch it legally here! Ad-Block will take care of the ads.)


Books:

"How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea," Mira Grant (for all my whining, I can't stop reading the damn Newsflesh stories when I come across them. This one is easily the most lighthearted of them all, lacking a lot of the shit that pissed me off in all the other ones, and doing crazy things like including queer characters who not responsible for bringing the plague onto mankind! There's even a casual mention of a legal polyamorous marriage with three partners. Plus, zombie kangaroos! I also like the discussion of Australia's response to the zombie apocalypse, which basically boiled down to: "Oh look, something that wants to kill us. That's new and different.")

First, thanks to everyone for your kind replies to my last post. People are being so wonderful and supportive and it's helping a lot.

Second, have a belated reaction to one of my favorite actors being cast as the next Doctor: HOLY FUCK YES. That was the first weekend after Grandma died, so Capaldi's reign will, I think, always be overshadowed for me, but I'll still enjoy it no matter how hard Moffat tries to fuck it up.

Third, catching up on media consumption. To the surprise of no one, the last two weeks have been very light, and most of what happened the week of the 22nd happened before Grandma's stroke.

(This is life right now. Before and after.)



Week of July 22

Podcasts

Welcome to Night Vale, 13-27

Television:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica, 1-12 (full series)
Corpse Party: Tortured Souls OVA, 1-4 (full series) (Came out the day of Grandma's stroke and improved my mood to no end, lack of subtitles and all.)
Danganronpa: the Animation, 1x03 (I am seriously starting to wonder how they're going to cram the entire story into thirteen episodes. And, considering how rushed it's already been, I am less than excited about finding out.)
Danganronpa: the Animation, 1x04 (A few days later. Apparently the answer to that is that now they've established everything, they are going to barrel right the fuck through the story at top speed. The opening of this episode has like two solid minutes of establishing shots while thirteen offscreen voices make various remarks. What do you mean, you didn't have each character's voice memorized? Too bad, sucks to be you! Here, have a random shot of Sakura spilling her coffee while someone else entirely voiceovers some other event! Bet that won't be important later! If I hadn't read a Let's Play of the game this is based on, I wouldn't have the faintest fucking clue what was going on. I'm gonna keep watching it because it is cool to hear the voice acting, but wow this not how you do an adaptation.)

Week of July 29:

Television:

Corpse Party: Tortured Souls OVA, 1x01 (Now with subtitles!) (And yes, this is a much better adaptation of a game called Corpse Party. It is so not without its flaws, having similar issues with a rushed story, but it's easier to follow for a newbie and has some awesome twists on the game's storyline that make it that much more fun. Fandom, of course, hates it.)

Podcasts:

Welcome to Night Vale, episode 28 (Came out the day Grandma died. Helped me to relax and fall asleep on a night I was sure I wouldn't sleep. Thanks, Night Vale.)

Week of August 5:

Television:

Danganronpa: the Animation 1x05, "Weekly Shonen Despair Magazine" (Sometimes the subs I find translate the episode title, sometimes they don't, and I don't really care enough to go looking. This is definitely the best episode so far, which is a little frustrating, because it's also the one in which the fucked-up gender bullshit with Chihiro comes into play. Whatever, I'm just gonna go with "Monobear is an unreliable narrator" because MONOBEAR. His reactions to Chihiro really do come off as intense transphobia, plus with the whole "making everyone despair!!" thing. It's not even a stretch.)

So then I had to move because the landlord is remodelling and then I was, technically, homeless for a few days even though I was just staying in the place that I officially live in now for the next couple of months, so what with one thing and another, I didn't do a lot of media consumption and I definitely missed a week posting. You totally forgive me, right?



Week of June 24:

Linked, Imogen Howson (Look, you can't tell me that your story's civilization is humanity thousands of years in the future and then talk about people eating chicken dinners and wearing jeans. You just - you can't. That is not how worldbuilding works. The story is still good enough to hold my attention, but those details kept throwing me off.)
The Line, Teri Hall
Once a Witch, Carolyn MacCullough
Always a Witch, Carolyn MacCullough (I really enjoyed these two books! Except I don't think they needed to be two books. They're each less than two hundred pages and would have worked just as well as one novel in two parts. The titling scheme is clever, plus of course two books make more money, but from a narrative perspective, splitting them up is unnecessary. That's my biggest complaint, though. Well, that and the boyfriend who insists on being in charge of everything because he hasn't noticed that he's in a story that's mostly about women helping and saving each other. Why must there always be a romance?)
Monument 14, Emmy Laybourne

Week of July 1

Television:

Another, 1-12 (full series) (Because Corpse Party gave me a taste for horror anime, apparently. This series got a touch too symbolic for my taste every now and then, and I found myself yelling at the characters a LOT in the last couple of eps ["So we're just going to stand around discussing the screaming in calm voices, then? Is this a Japanese thing?"], but overall I really enjoyed it. The story was absorbing and I liked the characters. Even the one who inexplicably looked exactly like Morishige from CP, wtf.)

Today, as I was walking to campus to use the internet, I came across a duck placidly emerging from the grass. I stopped so as not to startle it, then waited for it to notice me and flee anyway. This did not happen. Just as I was starting to wonder why, she came out far enough into the clearing for me to see the line of ducklings tumbling after her. A mother duck and her ducklings, right in the middle of the city. (A grassier part, but also not far from some very busy streets.) And yes, the ducklings really do walk in a line. I stood there and watched them until I couldn't see them anymore and thought about the miracle of timing: a minute sooner or later and I never would have known they were there.

And now for stuff wot I have consumed.



Week of June 10 :

Books:

* Afternoon of the Elves, Janet Taylor Lisle
* The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths, Pat Brown and Bob Andelman (I never realized how many books have subtitles until I started keeping track of my reading. This particular book is interesting but obscurely annoying; I find Pat Brown to be an intelligent woman and an irritating human being whom I would probably not like very much, even if she is good at what she does. I could use a lot less of the word "psychopath" being thrown around, for starters. That is not an accurate technical term! The people she's applying it to sound generally like they have Antisocial Personality Disorder, which is better described by the word "sociopath," which is also not a valid technical term, but it is more accurate than "psychopath." I would have liked to see an explanation for her choice of words here, because otherwise it comes off to me as choosing a word guaranteed to evoke the emotional response Brown is obviously going for here, which I find inherently sketchy. It definitely doesn't encourage me to trust in her professionalism! Also, I'm sure there is a word other than "effeminate" that could have been used to describe the potential pedophile. ALSO also, you're not gonna get a medal for homeschooling your kids, lady, okay, so stfu about how awesome you are for doing it already.)
* Quiet, Susan Cain (Hey, guess what? Introverts are awesome! And if extroverts don't get that, they are missing out on our awesome and that is totally their problem and not ours. . . . is probably not exactly what Cain is going for here, but I'm tired of feeling like being an introvert is something I need to make up for, so that's part of what I decided to get out of it.)

Television:

* Hannibal 1x11, "Roti" (SPEAKING of sociopaths. Helping, Hannibal: you're doing it wrong.)
* Warehouse 13 4x15 (Basically a perfect forty-five minutes of television. The A plot was great, the B plot was great, the pacing was perfect, the character development for HG and Claudia was beautiful, Abigail is a worthy replacement for Leena, and the appearance of Tuc Watkins brought back fond memories of when he played my very favorite soap opera serial killer on General Hospital like fifteen years ago. This might actually be my favorite episode of this show.)
* Warehouse 13 4x16 (And this might be my second favorite, alarmingly hallucinogenic appearance of Garrett Jacob Hobbs notwithstanding. Steve got his turn in the Romantic Storyline spotlight! Artie and Claudia! And I'm really glad I got around to watching The Runaways a couple of months ago, because otherwise I would have had no idea of how awesome the ending was. If the show stays this strong, it's going to have a really fantastic send-off.)
* Hannibal 1x12, "Relevés" (WORST. AT. HELPING.)

I have been doing this for five months solid as of last week. I kind of can't believe I've stuck with it this long. I'm rather pleased with myself about that.



Week of May 20:

Books:

Between the Lives, Jessica Shirvington (Good story, excellent premise, overly facile and romantic ending. Also, the author is Australian, and she set the book in the United States. Which is not a problem, but Jesus fuck she should have had an American look over her manuscript. AMERIPICKING. IT IS A THING. We call them diapers, not nappies. We call them trash cans or garbage cans, not bins. And for the love of god, we never say "cheers." Seriously, I assumed the book was set in the UK until the narrator explicitly said otherwise, and then I was like, "Massachusetts? Are you kidding me?" It kept throwing me out of a book I otherwise really enjoyed, right up until the last few pages.)

Parallel, Lauren Miller (Basically the same ending. These are fascinating cosmic mysteries, goddammit, why do they have to end up being about boys? YA is such a frustrating genre sometimes.)

Television:

Doctor Who 7xsomething, "The Name of the Doctor" (Was this easily the best episode of this half of the series, or is it just that I'm back on my ADD meds? Moffat pulled all the shit I expected and then some more shit that hadn't occurred to me, and of course nothing made any sense, but at least I wasn't bored. Yay?)
Scott and Bailey 3x01
Warehouse 13 4x4 (The best episode so far this season. I love W13 dearly and for that reason I hope it wraps up soon, while it's still good. It's starting to show signs of aging and I hate watching a show I love hit that slow decline.)


Internet Media:

Corpse Party Let's Play (I don't generally list the internet stuff I consume, just to avoid spiralling into an anal-retentive mess about what counts and what doesn't and should I link everything and blah blah, but I spent over twelve solid hours absolutely enthralled by this thing, so it goes on the list, dammit. ( And I had a whole bunch to say about it, what a surprise. )

Week of May 6:

Television:

Doctor Who 7x11, "The Crimson Horror" (Yay Vastra and Jenny! Yay Clara feeling like an actual character to me for about thirty seconds! Yay ( spoiler ) And yet . . . somehow I still didn't care that much. idk, folks. idk.)
Elementary 1x21, "A Landmark Story"
Hannibal 1x06, "Entreé"
Scott and Bailey, series one (This SHOW. It is a show about women with men in supporting roles, and it's REALLY GOOD. And from what I've seen on the flist circle, IT GETS BETTER. And I don't care if it turns to crap, as long as it keeps being about women getting shit done.)
Warehouse 13 4x12, "Parks and Recreation" (W13, I usually love you for your inclusiveness, but if you don't stop making ( spoiler ) about Artie's pain, we are going to have words. Even if I totally cried anyway. Also, what was up with Steve's buying-a-vowel joke about written Chinese? AWKWARD. DON'T DO THAT.)
Hannibal 1x07, "Sorbet"
Elementary 1x23, "Risk Management"
Scott and Bailey series two (Still awesome. Series three just happened/is possibly still happening, so I'll be watching that as soon as I can get hold of it.)

Books:

Deadline, Mira Grant (the sequel to Feed and the second part of the i>Newflesh trilogy. Not as compellingly readable as the first book, which is a problem because it makes it a lot harder to overlook the author's flaws. ( This got kinda long, and also has a spoiler for the third book that is only obvious if you've actually read the second. ) And that's without going into the problematic stuff in the story itself, like the past tense, offscreen, heretofore unmentioned queer romance wherein one woman is safely dead and the other already safely in love with a man, and stuff about India that seems logical but doesn't sit with me very well. Still, the middle part of a trilogy is the trickiest part, and I wouldn't be sitting here complaining about it if I hadn't liked it well enough to read it - more than once, even - and look forward to the final installment. Plus, hey, Dr Shannon Abbey, who is awesome enough all on her own to make Deadline worth reading.)