Month in Review: January 2022

[elenothar]

As part of my attempt to post a little more on here, I've decided I'm going to keep track of my media consumption and fandom activitied in monthly posts. If it's just once a month, maybe I'll a) have things to say and b) not procrastinate too much...

TV & Movies

I watched Blade Runner and Gattaca for teaching reasons - both films were quite well done, but I have zero intention to rewatch either, nor did I much enjoy watching them. Dystopias aren't my thing, and Blade Runner was quite gory (by my whimpy standards) on top of that.

TV-wise, I'm watching two Lost Tomb shows in watchalongs: Lost Tomb Reboot as a rewatch and Lost Tomb 2 for the first time with eirenical. Also the occasional episode of Nirvana in Fire with trickytricky (also a rewatch).

On my own, I spent most of the month bouncing off of various cdramas - I got about four eps into Luoyang before giving up and watched one ep of Rainless Love in a Godless Land. Both good shows, by several people's accounts, but neither gripped me enough to keep watching.

Books

I'm reading much fewer published books than I used to these days, courtesy of fanfic, but I did finish a couple in January. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr (also for teaching), Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (very good - might do a rec post for it separately), and I'm most of the way through Nghi Vo's novella Empress of Salt and Fortune, which I'm also enjoying so far.

Fandom activities

I signed up for this year's Guardian Bingo, which netted me a fun card full of prompts that I may or may not ever get to.

I only posted one fic in January:

Intelligible (Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, 11k)

Tags: Character Study, Languages and Linguistics, trying to make sense of 10k years of language development, Friendship, Worldbuilding, an important tree, language teaching, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon

Summary: Shen Wei's relationship to language has always been complicated, and grows all the more so ten thousand years in the future.

...Basically, it continues my unofficial 'love letters to Shen Wei' series with added 'love letter to linguistics'. Topics quite dear to my heart, what can I say.

Comments

[presumenothing]

Yay for posting! And double yay for NIF rewatch, though I've only engaged in it secondhand by laughing and/or having general emotions at hunxi-after-hours's rewatch posts of it.

Also "trying to make sense of 10k years of language development" is a tag that should be on more fics (I say, while writing absolutely none of them).

[elenothar]

NIF rewatches come in all kinds of guises XD

It really should! I tried a bit but not super hard because if I tried super hard then none of the canon would make sense because the languages have changed entirely. I mean, ten thousand years. That's so much time, it boggles the mind.

[presumenothing]

I remember when our Taiwan-trained teachers would slip up and write traditional characters/use Taiwanese pronunciations and it already boggled our minds, so that times approximately three thousand point five million levels of ??????, one imagines. Though that also goes to show that sometimes it's the smaller differences that can really trip you up too…

[clevermanka]

Blade Runner is a favorite of mine (despite its many problems) but I'm a GenX/Cold War kid and I think that had a significant effect on my ability to be entertained by grim futures. I've seen a few Shen Wei as android stories but I can't believe we don't (yet?) have a straight-up Blade Runner AU yet. Hm.

Best wishes on the posting-more goal!

[elenothar]

I certainly haven't seen one! Honestly, my tolerance for grimness is much higher in reading than in watching things. The visual 'argh no, can't cope with this' threshold is much lower.

Thanks! We'll see how it goes...

[velithya]

I've seen both Blade Runner and Gattaca once each and they were... fine? They were fine, their messages are important, but they aren't the kind of films I would seek out for a re-watch at any point either.

& I'm so glad you finally posted your language fic!!

[elenothar]

Exactly! A lot of films are fine, or even objectively pretty good, but that absolutely doesn't translate into me wanting to watch them again. Taste, I guess.

I was very glad to post it - it'd been ghosting at the back of my mind for So Long, and also it was just high time for me to heap some linguistics feelings into this fandom XD

[velithya]

I often find the "heavier" the message the less I want to watch the film again :shrug: Now something like The Fifth Element, on the other hand... <.<

yesss we need more linguistics feels!! There's so much potential and possibility with all of it :D :D :D

(now I kind of want to write a fic where SW wakes up late and ZYL finds him and SW doesn't speak modern Haixingwen so ZYL has to teach him and SW doesn't know why Kunlun a)doesn't remember him b)doesn't speak Dixingwen because Kunlun had spoken it okay?? and SW doesn't set out to teach ZYL Dixingwen but ZYL is intelligent and picks stuff up so when he gets wormholed he does his best and bbSW doesn't know any different <.<)

[elenothar]

Un-cross that out this instance! You should absolutely write that, nodnod. I'm willing and available to do all the cheering on you could want 👀

[velithya]

ahahahaha okay okay ^^;;; I'll add it to my list! :D

*saves a document called "SW wakes up late"*

[elenothar]

\o/

*doesn't look at all despairingly at my WIP folder*

[velithya]

hahaha low five!! My WIP folder hasn't moved at all since I posted the last tiny dragon fic weeks ago... when will my words return from the war ^^;;;;;

[elenothar]

I've been bouncing between three different WIPs without significantly adding to any of them for the last week and it's very -_-

[velithya]

ah, that's rough. I've been working (or trying to work) during the days and then in the evenings I'm just very tired and my brain has felt quite scattered so them I'm just... not able to focus on anything? :|

I hope for words for both of us sooner rather than later!!! *crosses fingers*

[elenothar]

To focus and words *crosses fingers*

[tinny]

Blade Runner is one of my faves, but on rewatch all the needless violence - and particularly the sexual violence - is just... um, well, needless. I still love the atmosphere and the soundtrack. Give me movie in which it rains *all the time* ... any time. (I see my grammar is not the best today.)

I still think of Gattacca a lot, too. I didn't really like the movie much when I saw it ages ago, and have never rewatched. I don't believe it is even remotely possible to keep your environment dna-free the way he did it in the movie, and unfortunately I am reminded of that every time I look at a computer keyboard (i.e. every day). So... um, that certainly left a life-long impression. /o\


Topics quite dear to my heart, what can I say.

And for good reason. <3

[elenothar]

Honestly, much as the rain helped the atmosphere, I found it somewhat annoying to watch because the whole films is so dark and my eyes didn't appreciate it. But I can absolutely see why it's such a classic, it's just not for me.

Hmm, yes, there was rather a lot of suspension of disbelief. That's not necessarily a problem for me if I like the rest of the film/the setup, but as I said, dystopias just aren't it for me. Though, in this case, it also didn't help that the entire plot is predicated on the main character lying, and that gives me so much secondhand tension.

[nnozomi]

I'm watching two Lost Tomb shows in watchalongs: Lost Tomb Reboot as a rewatch and Lost Tomb 2 for the first time with [personal profile] eirenical.
ha, it's not as if even one Lost Tomb show at a time is hard enough to keep track of!

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (very good - might do a rec post for it separately)
Really curious to hear about this one.

Basically, it continues my unofficial 'love letters to Shen Wei' series with added 'love letter to linguistics'. Topics quite dear to my heart, what can I say.
and mine, and it's such a lovely fic <3

[elenothar]

The key to watching the Tomb shows (in general and definitely when you're stacking them) is to not even try to keep track of things. I'm only variably good at this though XD

Really curious to hear about this one.

On the (depressingly fair) assumption that I'm not going to get around to doing that rec post, here's what I have to say about it: a beautiful, beautiful take on music with a dash of fantasy re: the music but fundamentally staying within what music can and does do in real life, a very cute love story, the scifi elements were there but not the main focus (actually, this books manages to cram in a lot of genres without feeling crammed? Hat off); the main character is trans and that is dealt with both compassionately and realistically (this book definitely comes with depictions of transphobia (never condoned but shockingly present in bits of it), dubious consent, and body dysphoria warnings); generally the joy of it for me was in the characters, who are all excellent, and the love of music winding throughout. Not that the plot was bad, but it didn't feel like the central thesis of the book for me.