elenothar | Entries tagged with month in review

I have once again failed to post at all regularly and am stuck with a long catch-up post - I blame getting infernally busy in late September, which has only just levelled off. I'll try to do a couple of year-end posts too, those are always fun.

TV and movies

I keep thinking I should write these down while I'm doing them so I don't have to wrack my brain every time I do this post, but alas...

As far as I can remember, the films I've watched were: Knives Out (New Year's Eve watch, very enjoyable and clever), Lost Tomb Reboot: Mystery of the Abyss aka the Heihua movie (the best kind of DMBJ nonsense, with two very convincing and delightful takes on Xiao Hua and Hei Xiazi imo), the annual Muppets Christmas Carol rewatch (always a delight), the annual Love Actually rewatch (it's a tradition, ok), and It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (not my favourite Muppet movie, lets just say)

On the TV front:

- very excitingly, I've finally watched the last 15 episode of The Rebel (I have feelings)
- Ultimate Note watch still ongoing; other things I'm watching with people include Who Rules the World (rewatch for me, still enjoyable), Love and Redemption (much whumpy goodness), and Fairyland Lovers (which I'm surprisingly enjoying quite a lot); I dropped Ancient Detective, partly because the time slot is a bit awkward and partly because the show just didn't grab me for reasons I haven't yet teased out; it feels quite low-stakes atm)
- on my own I watched S.C.I. Mystery (only several years late; it's a trashfire of a show, but sometimes a trasfhire is just what you need and the main pairing convinced me), attempted Love Between Fairy and Devil but got stuck somewhere around ep 6, and watched one ep of Are You Safe (may take that up again).

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Not much to report for this one - September is always busy, what with the start of the new academic year, and we also had guests for long stretches of time (by my standards), which ate up what little free time I had.

TV and movies

I watched Zhu Yilong's most recent movie Lighting up the Stars - not entirely my thing (mostly due to the type of characters involved), but the acting was good and so were the family feels, and I liked seeing the way Wuhan was portrayed.

Started a rewatch of Who Rules the World with folks on Discord, which remains fun and fairly undemanding. Other group watches still going on include Ultimate Note (not really capturing my attention, alas), The Rebel, Love and Redemption, very occasional Nirvana in Fire. I've given up on Romance of Tiger and Rose, which I know a lot of people like, but it's just too much secondhand embarrassment a la romantic comedy and the whole thing is a bit too, idk, stylised? for me.

I haven't been watching any fiction on my own because no time, and also I often find it hard to settle on something to watch when I'm not mid-series with something, so I just end up doing something else. Quite a bit of British comedy panel shows though...

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In my defense, things have very much been Happening over the summer, but I should also just stop pretending I'm ever going to post regularly on here *wince*

The good news is that I've moved successfully and survived my first brush with Covid successfully, for all its terrible timing. The bad news is that I'll be getting busy with work as of next week. Ah well.

Frankly, I think I've forgotten half the things I did in the last three months already, but giving it my best shot:

TV and movies

I watched Contact, the movie based on the Carl Sagan novel, for the first time. Nothing earth-shaking, but enjoyable enough.

On the TV show front, the watchalong finished The Long Night, which was amazing but also very depressing - I'm very glad I did it as a group watch, because I'm pretty sure I would've got stuck otherwise. The same group has now started Ancient Detective, which is good fun so far. The Tomb watchers group has moved on to Ultimate Note, which hasn't grabbed me thirteen episodes in, but we'll see how it goes.

I watched Heartstopper with

tinny (cute, but suffers from my lack of interest in teenage protagonists) after finishing Detective L (very pretty, let's not talk about the plot). We've now moved on to The Romance of Tiger and Rose (too early for an opinion).

(Finally) finished watching The Lost Tomb 2 with

eirenical (bit of a pacing slog in parts, but I got quite fond of this version of the Iron Triangle). We've moved on to Love and Redemption, which I expect will take a while.

On my own, I've pretty much continued the Yang Yang bender. I've watched most of The King's Avatar, which I didn't expect to get as invested in as I did (see under Books for more), and binged You are My Glory while I was sick (perfect show for that frame of mind; lots of fluff and pretty people and barely any tension). I also watched an utterly bizarre 30-minute mini series called I Am Your Bleating Phone. Am currently hemming and hawing over what to watch next, aka the usual.

The one bit of English media I've been consuming is the newest Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, which is very Star Trek: not very subtle about its messages but with some flashes of brilliance, fun worldbuilding, and characters I could get invested in.

( Books and Fandom under the cut )

I spent the first half of the month with a miserable cold after all the travelling, but things have been calming down since then, fortunately.

TV and movies

One consequence of being mostly stuck at home for two weeks, was that I got hooked on a drama for the first time in a while. I watched all of Who Rules the World (且试天下) in May, which for me is pretty fast. It was easy, pretty fare and I quite enjoyed it (I will also admit that Yang Yang is something of a draw...).

I also started watching The Long Night with folks on Discord, which so far is very tense and quite dark but also very well done.

I didn't watch any movies I can recall right now. 40 eps of a drama are more than enough watching for me in a month!
( Books and Fandom under the cut )

Still a busy month, work and life-wise, so most of the sections will be pretty bare.

TV and movies

Unusually many things to say here, since I did two long-haul flights and watched 4.5 movies during those.

The flight out was an overnight one (ish), so I was tired and just wanted easy fare, which resulted in Encanto (enjoyable) and The Etenerals (typical Marvel fantasy nonsense - I wouldn't say it was a good film, per say, but it was pretty diverting).

I had some more braincells to spare on the flight back, so I watched The Wandering Earth, which is a Chinese scifi film based on a Liu Cixin novel that surprised me with actual budget and a lot of interesting language use, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which now has the honour of being the Taika Waititi film I've enjoyed the most - it was both serious and funny, and not so much of the parody/over the top humour that usually doesn't gel for me in his stuff. The .5 movie was a Donnie Yen one called Iceman: The Time Traveller - the bit I saw was entertaining enough (and I am always a sucker for time travel stories), but I was starting to feel and the Cantonese was doing my head in, so I didn't watch the entire thing.

I barely watched any TV, just continued the watchalongs I'm already doing (Nirvana in Fire, Detective L, Guardian, Lost Tomb Reboot, most only sporadically) and bounced off my attempt to join the Joy of Life watchalong, though that was partly due to the timing on Sunday evenings.

( Books etc under the cut )

Says a lot that I managed to do one monthly review post at an appropriate time before crashing and burning. Figured it'd make more sense to just shove the two months together, particularly since March was... not a great month (read: busy at work, health issues, and a death in the family), so I didn't do a lot.

First off, thanks to the kind soul who paid for an account upgrade! <3 I'm having a lot of fun with the increased icon count and am eyeing that Guardian mood theme...

TV and movies

Three movies this time (I think? The problem with doing these review posts too late is that my memory is already going again): the new Dune film (pretty and some good acting from mostly side-characters, but otherwise un-engaging), Embrace Again (surprisingly good, and to no one's surprise I liked Zhu Yilong in it), and Drum Youth, which is Zhu Yilong's first movie (? possibly? He's very baby-faced anyway) and pretty decent, though I don't much care for high school settings.

On the TV front, I'm still bouncing off of things, but I did watch Wheel of Time, which was largely enjoyable, kept up with all my watchalongs and re-watched Our Song, the Chinese music competition show of Qingshenshen fame (a comfort watch, basically).

Books

Most of Seven Years in Tibet until I got distracted, a good chunk of the Chinese classic Journey to the West (translated by Anthony C. Yu, the unabridged version), Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, which was a very interesting read, and Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies, which was very vivid and well-written, but generally reminded me of why I don't often read 'literary' novels, i.e. why do they always have to be so grim. I also re-read one of my favourites, Tanya Huff's Sing the Four Quarters

Fandom activities

I signed up for the Guardian 520 exchange, which I'm very excited for. Assignments will go out next week, so hopefully I'll jive with mine and get writing on that. Guardian Bingo is proceeding apace - I have strong doubts I'll be able to fill all the squares, even in a year, but I'm giving it a good go.

I posted four fics in February and March, two in each month (which seems a fairly standard rate for me these days - Guardian continues to be very good to my writing muse).

Variable (Guardian, 7.5k, my take on tiny dragon Shen Wei)

Gilded (Lost Tomb Reboot, 5.5k, part of a series of us stabbing poor Wu Xie)

Delusions of Universality (Guardian, 1.5k, Dixingren & gender & Shen Wei)

what the weave tells you (Guardian, 4k, intimate Weilan featuring non-sexual dark energy bondage (no, I don't know what I was doing there either...))

Here's to hoping April is a better month overall. Hope everyone is keeping well!

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.