marvelouscity

Pandemic life
I would like to go for a swim today, but the outdoor pool doesn't open till October, boo.

Previous poll review
I really enjoyed everyone's answers to the Youtube poll, thank you! I'd been thinking that I mostly use it for a) tv and movie trailers, b) specific music I'm looking for or that people have linked to, and c) how-tos (especially technical things, now that the search engines are useless, but also random stuff like how to fold dumplings). But the discussion reminded me I also watch essays, usually about story, writing, or film, in particular: HelloFutureMe, heyjameshurst, everyframeapainting, EllenBrock, and so on. And occasionally talk shows, exercise things (yoga, zumba), and other random things. I have my history disabled so I won't spend my whole life algorithm surfing.

In the poll, 48% of respondents said music, 44% said other, and 24% said "instructional videos - practical" and "dramas and tv". Ten percent of respondents don't use Youtube. In ticky-boxes, squishable fur-creatures (46%) came second to hugs (70%). Thank you for your votes and comments!

Reading
Audio: System Collapse (Murderbot) by Martha Wells, read by Kevin R. Free. I enjoyed this, not quite as much as Network Effect but well enough (and it might hit better on a re-read, like Network Effect did for me). I really appreciate that the series is grappling with wider existential issues, rather than opting for "Murderbot is super special" exceptionalism. And the middle section of Saving The World Through [Spoiler] was very fun.

Audio: Waiting for the Flood by Alexis Hall, read by Will Watt. This is a gorgeously written (and brilliantly narrated) m/m & m/m romance -- very close POVs, lovely similes. The perfect-partner wish fulfillment is almost at magic realism levels, and I found the transition from POV1 to POV2 a bit jarring, but I had been wondering how there could still be six hours left at that point, so something had to happen. My fannish brain wanted it to all come together more at the end -- poly, or friend group -- but how it actually played out was more realistic. The gestalt felt kind of genre-breaking: some very romance-novel elements, elevated by the observational detail and dreamy pacing, and complicated by the unorthodox structure. In minor characters, I loved Marius' mother so much.

Continuing on with Meditations for Mortals (thought-provoking and compassionate; the one-short-chapter-a-day really does feel meditative, and I suspect I'll go right back to the beginning once I've finished) and Guardian (just a few weeks to go in the readalong).

I found Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh in a neighbourhood tiny library yesterday, so probably that sometime soon. I haven't read it since I was a kid, and somehow I own the sequel but not the original. Talking cats ftw!

Kdramas/Cdramas
Continuing Nothing But Love and enjoying it tremendously. Both the leads have such a huge amount of heart, and the theme song's chorus ("you will be loved, you will be loved") really is the theme of the whole show. The found-family vibe is slowly coming together.

Other TV
The Secret Genius of Modern Life hosted by Hannah Fry s02e02 -- about the history of the vacuum cleaner; very close to being a puff piece (suck piece?) about Dyson.

The first episode of Tribe hosted by Bruce Parry (UK documentary series), where he goes to stay with remote tribes and lives with them for a few weeks, taking part in their daily life. It has what I'm assuming are the usual implicit tensions of this kind of anthropology (risks veering into voyeurism), especially when there's a camera crew involved. Parry can't actually sink into the experience fully because he has to keep breaking scene to narrate to camera. But was still really interesting.

Dead Ahead -- an Aotearoa NZ answer to the Ghosts franchise. A Māori family return from living in London to inherit the family home and find themselves haunted by dead relatives (kēhua). It's pretty great and also bilingual, with a fair amount of subtitled reo Māori. (Note to self: rewatch if/when you finally get around to starting to learn te reo.) One short season, which argh, does not resolve the central question. More of a drama than a sitcom.

North of North -- more indigenous TV, this time in the Canadian arctic. We've seen three episodes now, and it's delightful. The main character is lovely and charismatic, and it's made us laugh really hard a few times. Fresh and surprising.

More Bluey -- how is this show so adorable? How am I so intractibly earwormed with Bingo's "poor little bug on the wall, ding jing" song?

Tetris (2023 movie) -- this was unexpectedly excellent! It's a biographical thriller about trying to secure the distribution rights to Tetris. Set during the cold war, with a Ted Lasso-like main character. (I may only think that because of the moustache, lol.) A flawed but likeable main character, anyway. It contains corporate intrigue, corrupt and backstabbing magnates (Robert Maxwell played by Roger Allam of Cabin Pressure fame), and naive Westerners heading to the USSR and landing themselves in hot water in multiple hapless ways. Playful, funny, energetic, tense, and based on a true story. (On Apple+.)

Fandom
Multiple modding things happening at once. I can do this!

And ooh, fan_writers already has 150+ subscribers. \o/

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses (the last couple of episodes haven't really landed for me; I like the technical ones), Letters from an American (US politics), Gone By Lunchtime (local political pundits; their discussion of the RSB made me want a lawyer or two to butt in).

Writing/making things
Lots of false starts. Apparently I'm still restocking the well or whatever.

Life/health/mental state things
My arms are such a mess, gah. Other than that, things are okay!

Food
I made Crispy Sesame Tofu last night, and it was amazing. Like the lemon chicken recipe, it contains 4 tablespoons of sugar; totally worth it. The tofu crisped really well, too. Last week I made nuoc cham (the dipping sauce that often comes with Vietnamese summer rolls; fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, water, garlic, chillis) for the first time, and it was delicious. Conclusion: sugar is the answer to everything.

Today I'm going to make chicken dumplings to re-stock my freezer.

Link dump
Korean practice post | Current earworm (from Bluey) | Cow Cuddling & Highland cow experience (UK) | The Four Types of Novel Writers by EllenBrock (Youtube, revisiting) | 9 Mistakes You're Probably Making in the First 10 Pages by alyssamatesic (Youtube) | Louis Baker - R A I N B O W (Youtube, music). (So much youtube, hi.)

Good things
Guardian. Local TV shows. Cat! Cooking new things. An inbox full of fannishness. Audiobooks.

I'm listening to Meditations for Mortals: Four weeks to enhance your limitations and make time for what counts, written and narrated by Oliver Burkeman, which espouses imperfectionism, a philosophy of life where you acknowledge that you'll never manage to do everything, and you stop beating yourself up about that fact. (I'm only seven short chapters in, hence this massive oversimplification.) I was thinking about how this relates to my WIP folder.

I'm serially monofannish. When I move fandoms, my old WIPs generally acquire Permanently Discontinued status. Sometimes I post them to AO3 marked incomplete, and other times they lurk in a subfolder of my WIP folder, where I occasionally mourn their lost potential. But mostly they're easy to ignore.

Over the months and years in a new fandom, I naturally accumulate more WIPs. So how do I choose what to work on next? How do I blow the dust off and get the engine turning over?

( Below the cut: multiple lists! )