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Another stressful work day... I really feel like we're due for a break.

Still not anything interesting, just... instructors out, too many things happening at once, so it took forever to get any of it *done*, because we kept getting pulled away to do something else...

One of our remote employees helped a TON today with the voicemail project, and I'm extremely grateful, yet feel bad because I did so few. But my day was a nightmare, and I don't know that I COULD have done them on top of my regular stuff.

I'm hoping tomorrow is better. We'll see, ha.

-

Frustrating attempt at writing yesterday. Perhaps I will have better luck tonight. While it's not weird for me to struggle to get words onto the page, it was a slightly different struggle with it last night. Like, I'd think of sentences I wanted, but then just... couldn't get them written. That sounds stupid, because lol, "think words, write words down" is pretty basic, but it just wasn't working.

-

I'm really enjoying Sleep No More, and appreciate the handful of emotionally devastating moments we've had so far.
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I planned to do another photo post tonight, and while I know it's not really *difficult* by any stretch... I'm tiiiiiired.

Today was very stupid at work. I have the frustrating task of being one of three people in the entire company tasked with returning voicemails.
Much bitching and moaning: )

My overly ambitious plan to finish the other thirteen AUgust prompts this month has me needing to finish and post a fic tonight.
Three issues:
- The aforementioned tired. It was a stupid day, and my brain feels fried.
- If I write the fic I want, it'll be the first posted E-rated fic I'll have. (I've written smut. I don't share it.) This has me extremely in my own head about it, and desperately seeking every excuse not to write it that I can.
- I got my copy of Sleep No More (the new October Daye book) and ALL I WANT TO DO is read it. :(
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A good couple of days with Taylor. :)

We finished reading A Desolation Called Peace. The duology was very good! I really liked just how many ways it explored some of the central themes, particularly around self vs. collective. A lot of that was very sci-fi exploration of different concepts of a hivemind or collective consciousness, or more direct transfers of knowledge, and how different people look at certain types being utterly normal and others as being inhuman... but tying it into themes of conquest and colonization, forced assimilation, the coexistence of your own culture and one that you've been forced to adopt... it was very good and I liked it.

We also got through one more major ending ("Explosion route") in AI: The Somnium Files/Nirvana Initiative. Ryuchi is just fine and very well-adjusted and is just super normal and mentally stable. :)) So are the rest of the characters.
Haha, it's cute that Amame (the merMAID from the maid cafe in the first game) got a promotion to main cast. Her somnium definitely wasn't horrifying or anything.
A+ to the game for the bonkers tonal whiplash (that manages to work, honestly).
Also, I really like Gen, which may largely be that he's voiced by SungWon Cho (mostly known for his various comedy videos as ProZD.)
Spoilers for AI:TSF/NI )

We also watched one more episode of Shadow and Bone. While I'm enjoying it, I definitely don't disagree with a lot of criticism I'd seen, in that I wish the series had been given more breathing room. There is so very much happening so very quickly, without any time to really sit and let things have the right impacts or consideration. This is partially the fault of the show adapting (and trying to intertwine) two full stories (that of the original Grisha trilogy and that of the Six of Crows duology, so FIVE books at least). I think it's also very much the fault of "we want to cram in as much of the story in this season as possible, because we might not get renewed for any more, and don't want to leave anything out" which is far sadder imo.

(Full disclosure, I read and loved the Six of Crows duology, but did not read the original trilogy, and that could be part of the following:)

There's also the slight problem that even with the fate-of-the-world plot going on with Alina... I *still* feel more invested in what's going on with the Crows. That's part of what I *liked* about the duology - while it brushes up against some very big world-level events (wars between nations and ideologies; the plot that hasn't appeared in the series about the drug that impacts grisha; Alina and co. do show up in the second book, later on the timeline after their own plotline has resolved...) the core of the story is a very personal one of revenge, and I really vibed with that. I don't *dislike* stories that focus on good vs. evil, or main characters that are at their core heroic. It's not that I don't LIKE Alina or care about her plot. But the grey morality "doing good in spite of my nature, not because of it" nature of Kaz and the other Crows was far more compelling imo. I also just plain love long-con revenge.

Also, ep 3 semi-adapted one of my favorite parts of the second Crows book, but without the same reveal/emotional payout. And it's fine, because it wouldn't have had the needed impact right now, and I don't know that they don't still utilize it later, and the scene was still quite good, so I'm not *mad* per se. Just sort of an observation.

Misc:

May. 14th, 2023 10:01 pm
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Today was painfully slow at work, but I'm okay with that! I'll take a hundred painfully slow days over the fucktangle that was Friday.

Went over to mom's after work to give her some plants. Two snapdragons, two petunias, one dianthus. Of course, failed to fully remember that she gave US her bag of potting soil so that we could replant our houseplants... so I need to do that tomorrow and then get the soil returned to her!
We also shared photos from hikes and such, and drank root beer floats, ha.

I know Mother's Day is a very complicated (or downright terrible) day for a lot of people (Alex included), but I'm lucky that I have a pretty good relationship with my mom.

Alex is feeling mildly better. He said he slept almost all day, and is still very tired, but hopefully he's fighting off whatever the crud was.

My acrylic rainbow ring broke. :( It cracked last week and I superglued it, but it broke again tonight. Time for superglue round two.

I am actually extremely close to finishing my fic outline. I could *maybe* even finish it tonight, though I might wait and do it tomorrow. (Which could certainly be a fatal impulse, but I'm having a hard time stringing thoughts together tonight.)

I am not likely to have Finch finished by tomorrow. I've mentioned before, but my opportunities for reading are pretty limited by circumstance. I can't focus when the TV is on, and the TV is on literally every minute we're home, because Alex needs the background noise. About the only time I can read is when I take a bath, and I can't live in the bathtub, lol. Alex used to have appointments every Monday or Tuesday (riding when he was doing that, physical therapy for a few months...) and going and waiting in the car was a couple good hours each week, but now he doesn't have those!
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Meant to have this done last week, but here we are. I also kept finding more to say. I need to find a way to trim these things down if I'm going to keep writing them, lol.

Things I've Watched:

Glass Onion
Not a ton to say that other people haven't said! But I enjoyed it! I have fun with twisty murder mystery stuff, and I love revenge. I especially love long-con revenge, and while this was more of a medium-con revenge, it was satisfying to me. The casting was excellent. The characters never quite felt all the way caricature-ish, while at the same time feeling *exactly* like That Person you totally know/know of. Lots of genuinely funny bits.
"Are you calling me dangerous?" killed me.

You
Been out for a while, and I think we watched a couple episodes of the first season before it was on Netflix. Alex had watched a bit more of it, but we started it over. (Good timing: didn't know the fourth season was starting up imminently.)
Cut for length (a losing battle): )

More thoughts than I wanted to have on Season 3, including minor spoilers: )

Thoughts on the first half of Season 4, minor spoilers: ) 
Bigger spoilers up through the mid-season finale: )

I feel like the first season was pretty good and well-contained. I know that after season two, the story has veered away from the books it was based on. Three and four have felt the weakest, or at the very least less cohesive. Some of the subplots have been stronger than others, but they haven't gelled as well as seasons one and two.
It feels like post-season-one, they may have also been reacting to the million thinkpieces about how terrible it was that people liked Joe so much because he was an objectively bad person. They didn't make him less likeable, just more self-aware. Idk, it's not terrible, but I enjoyed it when he was more fucked up, tbh.

Nope
This was a re-watch, and I still like it! I enjoy how many things in the first half get visually called back to for the second half. A popping balloon, the puff of powder... I still can't believe how many complaints I saw (to be fair, probably only three or four separate ones) saying that they didn't think the Gordy plotline made sense or had any bearing on the rest of the movie.
Lucky is the best.

Things I've Played:

Nier: Replicant
We finished it! For real! I had a lot more thoughts about it!

AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative
We barely started it - we got through what's functionally the prologue - it's pretty extended, but plays out before the opening credits, and that's where we ended.I had fun with AI: The Somnium Files, so I'm looking forward to this one. Aiba, my favorite little shrimp hamster eyeball! I love her! Apparently Taylor really ended up liking new character Ryuki (judging by his character utterly taking over their tumblr for a while), so looking forward to learning more about him, too. So far, we've got a similarly outlandish string of impossible serial murders (bodies sliced in half lengthwise on an atomic level! The second half of a body showing up years later than the first, but seeming to still be a recent death!) to investigate, so excited for more.

Things I've Read:

City of Saints and Madmen
I have not had as much time as I would like to read, which has been frustrating, though I'm very close to the end of this book!

Thoughts on the component parts:

The Strange Case of X: )

"The AppendiX":
This is the part that was mostly left out of my first copy! A set of shorter stories, set within an additional frame story that all of these were found as documents that had been in Patient "X"'s possession before he mysteriously vanished.

Feelings on the individual short stories:

A Letter from Dr. V. to Dr. Simpkin: )

"X's Notes":
Notes left by X and transcribed by Dr. V. (who still inserts some additional requests for funding.) Speculating about the nature of the stories he's writing and reading.

The Release of Belaqua: )

King Squid: )

The Hoegbotton Family History: )

The Cage: )

In the Hours After Death: )

The Man Who Had No Eyes: )

The Exchange: )

Learning to Leave the Flesh: )

The Ambergris Glossary: )

What Manner of Man
When Dracula Daily was a prominent thing, one of the other subscriptions that someone had been advertising was for an original (queer) vampire story that they wanted to serialize in a similar way, and that has started. It's so far shared a prologue and the first two chapters. It's not a lot to go on yet, but I'm liking it! It's epistolary, shared as letters and journal entries, set in 1950 about a priest who is sent to a remote island, theoretically to perform an exorcism. He has yet to meet his supposed host who for *some mysterious reason* failed to meet him when his boat docked.
You can subscribe here if you're interested!

A Desolation Called Peace
Only a few more chapters (and I think I want to try and reread them before Taylor and I get together again. Through no fault of theirs or of the book, I started to doze off.)
These books are so damn heavy on THEMES. THEMES, I TELL YOU.
Lots about identity and individuality vs collective thought. (Through varying sci-fi premises, there are multiple ways in which an individual may not be the ONLY set of thoughts a person has.) In a broader sense, the idea of being the heir to something, and how the expectations placed on the previous holder of a position or title reflect on those farther down the line. The use of language. The multiple types of colonization that goes on - the taking over of other cultures and identities, and either destroying them or assimilating them. There's a monstrous, unknown species that is literally devouring the ships and people it encounters... which is positioned with the way the empire metaphorically and culturally devours the other societies it encounters. There's also a LOT of political shit going down, like damn.
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A day that went so *ordinarily* at work that it seemed like there has to be SOME disaster I failed to engage with.

Spending tonight and tomorrow at my mom and Taylor's house.

Tonight we watched Glass Onion (which I really did enjoy), and read a very little bit of A Desolation Called Peace. My mom made lasagna, and it was delicious.

I think the only thing of any consequence that I forgot was my phone charger, minor miracle.

And this is not that early, but just slightly early for me... yet I am absolutely going to bed.
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My manager rearranged the whole office. My desk is about 18 inches shorter due to help from an instructor who is also a contractor, but while that's a mild bummer, our office area feels more open with the desks rearranged. (Instead of facing toward the door, the manager and I both face into the lobby, and instead of his desk being directly behind me, they're now next to each other.)

Still dead-ending on writing, and I know that I'm the only thing in my way at this point. (I mean... I have other reasons, but I'm afraid they're tipping more toward the excuse side than the reason side.) My back has been extra bad, which means I'm sleeping poorly, so I'm struggling to stay awake or focused. I've been annoyed by things like persistent typos and forgetting where a sentence is going, which makes it hard to want to try and write. I know that I've got to push through, because times will never be perfectly ideal, and I did a GREAT job of pushing through quite a bit last year... I'm just having a harder time doing that now.

Still working on reading City of Saints and Madmen, which I am still very much enjoying, but the whole pain and poor sleep thing has kept me from having much reading time, too.

Alex has had a few more PT appointments, but they don't seem to be helping much. The disks have been bad enough that the therapists haven't wanted to do much for fear of aggravating them, and he still winds up in more pain rather than less after almost all of the appointments. :/ They've been trying to help at least relax the seized muscles in his back, but it doesn't seem to do much, and then he just has knotted muscles that also feel bruised.

I had a mango start to ferment on the counter, and it makes me sad because they were really good mangoes. :(

I did *not* post to Dreamwidth yesterday for the first time in a couple years. I'm trying to prove a point to myself that breaking the streak does not mean that I will go on hiatus for years at a time again, lol. :p

Today was the first nice day we've had in *weeks.* I had to spend the entire nice part of the day inside at work, but we did get to open the door for a while, and that was very nice.

Next month is shaping up to be busier than I generally prefer... mainly because there are three concerts happening in a two-week span. Combichrist, Solar Fake, and Covenant. Alex of course very much wants to go to all three, which is already pre-exhausting me, lol.

I need to finish prepping my model for NaMoPaiMo. (National Model Painting Month. Which this year is not actually as formal event, as the friend who has run it for the last six years is deeply burned out from how big the event got. So this year it's actually "International Model Horse Painting Party" which is just a low-pressure "do a thing if you want to do a thing" month.) Still, I want to do it... but it's one more thing that takes time and focus and the ability to sit upright without crying!
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Haven't done any type of media roundup thing in a while. *Definitely* not going back to whenever I last did this many months ago, but here are some thoughts on some stuff I've watched and read recently!

Some things I've watched:

Girl on the Third Floor - rewatch - a pretty good "moved into a haunted house" horror film. 
Don, our Man With A Past, has moved into a new home in a small town. He plans to renovate the home for him and his pregnant wife for their Fresh New Start. But of course weird stuff starts happening, and all the locals warn him that the house has a terrible effect on the people who move in... particularly on straight men. He continues his renovations, but discovers more and more weirdness - black sludge pouring from fixtures, and eventually a ceiling collapses, revealing a viewing space in the top floor that appears set up to watch the bedroom. Don allows himself to be seduced by a woman who comes to the house, though he later regrets having cheated on his wife. Don disappears, and his wife, Liz, comes looking for him.

My thoughts on the movie: )

Incident in a Ghostland - rewatch - fairly standard home-invasion horror. I didn't enjoy this one as much. 
Two teenage girls, Beth and Vera, go with their mother to stay in an old house that belonged to a family member. There's some general family tension - Beth wants very badly to be a horror writer, but Vera is dismissive of her attempts. After they settle into the house, a pair of deranged serial killers break in and attack the family, holding and torturing the girls. The killers - a woman and a mentally impaired man - claim they just want to "play with dolls."
Years later, Beth has a successful writing career, her latest book talking about her experiences when she was attacked and her mother ultimately killed the intruders. Her sister Vera has not handled the trauma so well; she still lives with their mother in the house, completely unable to let go of her paranoia that their attackers will come back, often calling Beth in a panic, begging for her to come back and help her.
Big plot spoilers + my thoughts on the movie: )

Countdown - another horror movie. This one had just terrible reviews, but I didn't think it was bad! 
A group of teens download an app that purports to tell you exactly how long you have to live. Most have long lives ahead of them, except for one girl who has mere hours. She turns down a ride from her drunk boyfriend, only to arrive home and be killed by a mysterious figure at the time she was predicted to die. It's later revealed her drunk boyfriend did get into a car accident that would also have killed her at exactly that time. Now in the hospital, his version of the app tells him that he now has only hours to live... which means he'll die in surgery. He tries to flee the hospital, and is similarly killed. 
Our actual main character, Quinn, is a nurse at the hospital. She's dismissive of the app, but when she downloads it she's given only days to live. She tries to track down what the app means, and how and why people are dying on schedule.

Brief thoughts on the movie: )

What I'm reading:

City of Saints and Madmen - my frustration with the shitty abridged version I had to replace aside...I'm really liking it! 

Dradin, In Love: )

The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris: )

The Cage: )
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I had some good intentions about writing out a sort of media roundup of stuff I watched in the last week or two, and even got started on that, but... I need to shower and sleep and stuff like that, so gotta punt THAT forward a ways.

-

I did get my new copy of City of Saints and Madmen - a day early! - and this one does include all the correct stories, ha. I'm glad of that, because I didn't want to have to try and hunt down a more obscure edition, lol. (Or, more likely, just borrow Taylor's copy. And maybe photocopy the missing bits.)

I'm part-way into "The Transformation of Martin Lake", which Taylor said was their very favorite story out of the book, and I'm liking so far.

-

Work had some critical payroll failure last night, so no one's direct deposits went through. Apparently there was a mad crush early this morning to get physical checks printed and then distributed to all of our offices.

I got to use my bank's mobile check deposit for the first time, so that's fun.

-

Mods for the zine I've been writing a fic for want me to change the end just slightly, so I've been trying to mentally figure how to rework it. I feel like I can just change a few pieces around... They said the ending seems abrupt, and want something to happen after the dialogue I closed on. I'm fine with that, but I really don't have any further parts I want to cut, so instead I just want to rework the scene. Seems like a matter of getting the bits to jigsaw back together, but I haven't had an Ah ha! moment just yet.

After sorting THAT out, I'll try to turn my energy toward some new writing project. I've been slacking on that (but enjoying reading, so not too sad that I've been spending my free time on that.)
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...because I found out the copy of the book I'm reading - City of Saints and Madmen - is an ABRIDGED version. I bought the Ambergris trilogy in an omnibus format... and there's no indication anywhere that the first book has been cut nearly in half. >:(

The book is a collection of novellas/shorter stories all focused on the same horror-tinged fictional city.
The original printing, which my sibling has and read a couple years ago, consists of five sections:
"Dradin, In Love"
"The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris"
"The Transformation of Martin Lake"
"The Strange Case of X"
and "The AppendiX", which consists of 9 or 10 additional short stories.

My version also has five sections:
"Dradin, In Love"
"The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of the City of Ambergris"
"The Cage"
"The Transformation of Martin Lake"
"The Strange Case of X"

So... mine adds the story "The Cage" - which was one of the short stories from The AppendiX - in the middle, but entirely leaves out the rest of The AppendiX short stories. >:(

According to Taylor, "The Cage" was one of their favorites out of the whole book, so if they were going to pick one, at least they picked that one? But I'm genuinely quite annoyed that there's no indication in the omnibus that the first book has been shortened, and the order slightly changed on top of it. Even reading the copyright page, it just says the book was originally published in 2002, and doesn't say anything about it being abridged. I wouldn't have even known if it weren't for the fact Taylor had read it a couple years ago, and I had a super vague recollection of their review, which I then went to look up.

(From the wiki page, which I looked at when I started to suspect my version was different than the one Taylor had read, there was a more recent edition that ADDED a couple additional stories in a UK version. Then when they published that version in paperback they removed one of the new stories because it included a cypher based on the layout in the hardback version, and the paperback layout broke it.)

I was able to order a standalone copy of the book (whether it has the newer bonus stories or not I don't know, since I couldn't find a table of contents for this edition, though presumably it DOES include the AppendiX section, rather than the cut-down version I have), which should arrive by Saturday. If it doesn't include the whole section I will be so mad.

At least, per a review of the omnibus version on Amazon that remarked on the shortened first book, the second and third books ARE complete. Still, I wouldn't have purchased the omnibus if I'd known that it was abridged; I would have just bought the books individually, since they're no longer out of print/hard to find. :/
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This frog is helping celebrate my "make coffee at home" goal, lol.

This week was fairly good, minus the several days "lost" to my back being worse than usual. (It basically never doesn't hurt anymore, but this was far worse than its normal baseline.) It *was* nice in its way that I was able to take those few days quite easy and not really worry about anything "needing" to get done outside of work, even if it's frustrating to have several of those days in a row. Also, the week itself still managed to feel rather productive, because I did quite a bit of writing and reading, so the downtime didn't make the whole week feel wasted.

Goals for the week:
- I turned in my final (pending requested edits) version of my Set Sail zine fic
- I posted Chapter 8 of Outbreak
- I finished reading A Taste of Gold and Iron (which I quite enjoyed)
- I finally put that damn laundry away
- I put dates and already-known events on my monthly calendar
- I also did a drawing for January - a lighthouse
- Still haven't had a chance to sit down with Steffi's book

Tracked habits:
- Work - 5/7
- Household Maintenance - 5/7
- Physical Activity - 2/7
- Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
- Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 1/7, over 1000 words
- Meta Work - 4/7
- Personal Writing - 6/7
- Other Creative Things - 1/7, drawing my lighthouse
- Reading - 6/7; finished reading A Taste of Gold and Iron and started City of Saints and Madmen
- Attention to Media - 4/7 - On Tuesday Alex and I went to see M3GAN which was a pretty entertaining what-it-says-on-the-tin evil doll/AI movie; Wednesday I caught up on listening to some music I'd been intending to; Thursday we watched an ep of Abbott Elementary; on Saturday we watched Jurassic World: Dominion which was pretty much as mediocre as I'd been led to believe.
- Video Games - 0/7
- Social Interaction - 7/7

Total words written: 2232 words on my Set Sail piece
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Back slightly less borked today. Still pretty sore, but not making me want to cry every time I have to move. It could easily change its mind at any point.

-

Had a really productive day at work - answered a lot of calls and made a few pretty good sales.

New guy is still coming along in training. He picks some things up REALLY well and quickly, and other things he keeps struggling with, and I don't know how to make it make better sense for him!

-

I finished the first section (short story? novella?) in City of Saints and Madmen. The section is called "Dradin: In Love." While it's very clear pretty much from the start that the whole thing is *definitely* going to go wrong for the main character, it took a much harder left turn to disaster than I was anticipating, lol.

Looking forward to reading more, though.

-

I slept like a rock last night (which was a nice change - I slept very poorly the two nights before.) But this is one of the most difficult days I've ever had in terms of waking up. It was genuinely hard to keep my eyes open! Makes it that much more surprising that I had a pretty solidly decent workday.

-

Super ready for my weekend after tomorrow. Not sure yet if we'll go out like we were considering tomorrow. I still want to, but if my back is still iffy or if Alex's neck is bugging him too much it might be better to wait.
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Starting off the year with a spooky black witch moth (with extra creepy details like human eyes and hands in the pattern, ha). The "melanistic"/darker colors variant.

New year, and a new tracking notebook:

This is the notebook Alex got me for Xmas - so I can make all the gay agenda jokes I want. :)

This was a pretty good week, though it felt a bit unsettled. I still felt "behind" or like I hadn't really gotten "ready" for the new year. Which is silly, of course, because it's an arbitrary line, and not a lot actually *changed*. But I did feel pretty positive through most of the week, feeling good about goals set and the aspects of my routine that have changed: eating lunch at work, making coffee at home, etc. lol. While I didn't do much in terms of my big goals set for the year, I did well on several smaller ones.

Goals for the week:
- Alex and I continued housesitting for my mom/Taylor through Tuesday
- I did get the habit tracker set up!
- I posted Chapter 14 of All Strange Wonders
- We did a load of laundry
- I got one of the two loads put away
- I did start my new work schedule (half an hour earlier, enforced half-hour break)
- I forgot to update my insurance with my pharmacy, but nothing significant had changed so it didn't matter
- I made some edits to my Set Sail zine fic
- I made three Snowflake posts: [#1 - fandom info] [#3 - VOID SCREAM] [#4 - addition to canon]
- Had a work meeting on Saturday
- I haven't gotten back to editing Steffi's book
- I did read more of A Taste of Gold and Iron

Tracked habits:
- Work - 4/7 (New Years Day off)
- Household Maintenance - 4/7
- Physical Activity - 3/7
- Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
- Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 1/7, over 500 words
- Meta Work - 7/7
- Personal Writing - 6/7
- Other Creative Things - 1/7
- Reading - 5/7, almost entirely on A Taste of Gold and Iron and a little fic
- Attention to Media - 6/7 - while housesitting we watched several video essays; On Sunday, watched a video about the deeply weird Mystery of the Druids adventure game; on Monday watched hbomberguy's video essays on Bloodborne and Dark Souls II, plus his one about Lovecraft adaptations and being a queer fan of Lovecraft; Tuesday we watched the 90s thriller Wicked which feels like a 90s thriller; I've forgotten what we watched on Thursday; Friday we watched the very bad horror movie Apartment 1303, and the much better silly sci-fi Santa Jaws.
- Video Games - 0/7
- Social Interaction - 7/7

Total words written: 622 words on my Set Sail piece
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While I'm *still* not a huge fan of big New Year's Resolution type things, and I know that like all measures of time the changing of the year is an arbitrary measure... it's always still nice to hope for a sort of clean slate. Reassessing things or reflecting and deciding on the things that you want to focus on going forward is never a BAD thing, imo, and New Years is an easy time for it.

So... here's a tentative list of things I'd like to try and do in the upcoming year.

I definitely intend to continue with my habit tracking. It's been helpful in all the same ways I talked about a year ago. It helps me keep track of some things that could otherwise fall "out of sight, out of mind." It helps me remember past events, major and minor, which I often struggle to recall later on because I have SUCH a terrible conception of time, lol. It helps when I have low points where I'm struggling, because it's a way to look back and see that I haven't *always* felt that way, or that I haven't *always* been unproductive. I can also see the things that keep getting pushed aside, and can try to give them more attention on a future week.

I also want to try and expand the tracking somewhat - I want to start doing monthly calendar pages as well, so that I can see a whole month of stuff (I found myself getting annoyed a couple times this year when I had upcoming things I didn't have somewhere to include yet.)

I may also try setting a few pages aside for long-term goals - mainly I'm thinking of having a page devoted to books I read.

The categories I've been using will stay the same - 12 is a good number, and I haven't found any categories that I wish I had, or any that seem horribly superfluous.

So... here are the broad categories, and any bigger goals I have that fit in with them!

Work: )

Household Maintenance: )

Physical Activity: )

Writing
(Which has several sub-categories that I track.)

Wrote 500/1000 Words: )

Wrote on 2nd+ Draft: )

Meta Work: )

Personal Writing: )

Other Creative Things: )

Reading: )

Attention to Media: )

Video Games: )

Social Interaction: )

So... there's my post for heading into 2023. I don't know that I'll manage to do all the things I hope, but it's nice taking stock of things, and deciding what I want to aim for.
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
I feel like the end of this year really got away from me! I know the week between Xmas and New Year's is always quick, but it seemed to go very fast. But Xmas also seems like it was already forever ago, so go figure.

But anyway... seems to be the time to reflect on the year and all of that. I had set a few goals for myself last year, so taking a look at how those went...

- Habit tracking is still a positive! I stuck with it for another year, and it has continued to help me keep track of things, and see that I do make progress on things sometimes.

Writing:
- I'd joined a couple of writing challenges: Get Your Words Out (goal of 150k) + Inking It Out (goal of 100k) - These were a success! My actual wordcount for the year was 231508 words, which was higher than I'd been aiming, and definitely higher than I expected!
- In 2021 I'd written quite a bit, but completed and shared very little. Even more than any of the word totals, my biggest writing goal for 2022 was to complete some of my WIPs that had been lingering uncompleted. I succeeded in completing both Connections of the Heart and Island Territory. I also completed and started posting both All Strange Wonders and Outbreak.
- I'd also hoped to work on some new things. That... was less of a success. I did poke at a couple new things, but really never had anything bite me with much enthusiasm, and I haven't gotten anything else worked on much, much less near any level of completion.

- I'd hoped to find some kind of enjoyable exercise - not a success. We still go on walks/hikes, and I've been to a couple concerts that involve more dancing and such, which I still like! But anything more regular... I still didn't really try anything new, so of course I didn't find anything I love doing!

- Keep up with DW - success! I did post every day again, for the second year in a row. Mixed success in terms of whether much of that was "meatier" posting like I'd talked about wanting to do. There were a few posts like that, but I do think that I was still mostly sharing daily stuff.

- Find more fandom connection - mixed! I've got multiple fannish friends on DW, and while we don't for the most part share actual fandoms, it does make me feel at least somewhat connected to fandom as a whole. This "goal" has felt in some ways less... immediate than it did at the start of last year, because I am sort of drifting away from my primary fandom. And that's bittersweet, but also makes sense... Particularly as nothing has really replaced that fandom at this point, fannISH connections fill that need more than fanDOM-specific friends would, I think.

- Read more - mixed! I actually thought I'd done pretty badly on this measure, but tallying things up, I read more than I thought. (I did crap out for quite a while on one book in the middle of the year, though it went fast once I got back into it.) I'm encouraged that I did better than I thought I had. (Though to be fair, a few are currently in-progress, so they aren't COMPLETE books, but I'm still willing to count them.)
This year I read: )

So 17 books, plus +/- 3 or so for the short story collections. Not nearly as bad as I thought!

- Pay attention to more movies/TV shows - I think this one was more of a success than not. I still have a lot of stuff that just plays in the background, but I tried to pay attention to a few more things more fully, and that was nice.
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
So glad it's my weekend again. I kinda hate being That Person, (who drags through the whole week waiting for the weekend, where I do very little of interest) but ugh.

I did start a book last night, one on my too long TBR list.

This one is A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland.

Queer m/m fantasy, promising a bodyguard/prince romance and political intrigue. I've seen lots of good reviews of it, a lot of which are praising the complex relationships, and it seems like the sort of thing that's very up my alley. I've followed the author on tumblr, from before I knew they WERE an author, and I tend to like their posts as well. (They also wrote A Conspiracy of Truths, which is ALSO on my TBR list, and I've heard many great things about.)

I'm only a chapter in, and... I'm not completely sold. :/
I'm not UNsold, either - it's not going into the DNF pile at this point or anything.

Very mild spoilers for chapter 1, discussing two deeply petty things I didn't care for: )

Otherwise, I'm enjoying the worldbuilding - while the first chapter does provide a lot of background info, it doesn't feel overly expositiony to me. I like that there's a very matter-of-fact inclusion of at least a third gender marker (the author is nonbinary, as well.) It launches right in with the conflict, while teasing some additional unknowns that I do want to find out more about. (What was in the shipbuilder's guild that's so secret!?)

The only introduction of the world's magic system so far is that Kadou can "touch-taste" metal, and the way that works is pretty cool. I like the sensory and memory descriptions of what the different metals "feel" like to him.

I like the main character well enough, though some of his mingled anxiety and naivete are already getting to be a bit much... but to be fair, it's not like it's unrealistic. It's almost a bit #too real in the sense of anxiety making you anticipate people thinking the worst of you, but trying desperately to excuse other people's actions.

A silly side-note: I realize that I made a comment in one of the writing comms on here a week or two ago that COULD have sounded like I was vagueing about this book, BUT I WASN'T. I was talking about bad worldbuilding advice, and used an example from a frustrating worksheet I'd seen that insisted on knowing EVERY. SINGLE. POSSIBLE. DETAIL. about your fictional world before even beginning to write a story.
I commented about how getting bogged down in figuring out every single detail of a currency system, from the date of its implementation, to who regulates it, to exact weights and measures, to the penalties for counterfeiting, to the location of the mines the metals came from, etc. could be unnecessary depending on the story you were telling... and then this book launches in with quite a bit of that. Except in this case it is relevant! And that's great! I wasn't throwing shade at this book with that comment, dammit!

I probably won't pseudo-liveblog the whole book or anything, but those are my feelings a chapter in. I HOPE that the issues of this chapter don't persist through the whole thing, because that will make for a disappointing read.

[I was SUPPOSED to be reading A Memory Called Empire next, and was very hype to do so... except Taylor REALLY wanted to read it together, which means I'm stuck getting that one a chapter or few at a time whenever we get together, lol.]
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
A media roundup, for this week... ish!

Things I've read:

- Hmmm... Dracula Daily hit a couple long days, lol.

- Taylor and I read the novella that accompanied Spelunking Through Hell, "Sweep Up the Wood". I very much enjoyed it - the story is placed along the Buckley timeline, and covers the time in which [redacted] dies, and Alice and Thomas (finally!) get together for the first time. (This is sort of the "conclusion", I think, to the timeline that the previous novellas and short stories cover, even if there's currently still something of a gap.)
I enjoy Alice and Thomas at that point in their personal timelines, and it is satisfying to see them finally get on the same page(ish) with each other, after knowing they've spent years having their relationship thwarted.
Thomas 100% going all-in on the idea that Alice was actually a werewolf trying to hide her lycanthropy from him was A+ and quite cute actually.
As a side note, I really did enjoy reading all the short stories tracing the family prior to the main-series generation.

- I also read Be the Serpent's accompanying novella, "Such Dangerous Seas".
The Luidaeg is always my fave, so I enjoy getting to find out more of her history through the novellas, and this was definitely a big one. Hard not to get spoilery, but I still love The Luidaeg, and I still very much hate Evening by every name she goes by. Her mom ain't great, either.

- Since then I've started (if barely) a re-read of Sparrow Hill Road. Typically I try to not read THAT much by the same author in a row, unless it's a series, but this one is research on the canon!

Things I've played:

- I played Bioshock for a few hours one night, because Alex said he wanted to watch me play it, ha.
Though this time I convinced him it wouldn't really be too much for him to play if he wanted to, and while I'm glad for him to give it a go, it feels like just a slight bummer that he doesn't "need" me to play it now, haha.
Oddly, both the night I played it, and the following day when Alex did, Broccoli Cheddar Bomb got VERY talkative. Apparently he'd like to play, haha.

Things I've watched:

- Alex and I went to see Smile in the theater. I thought it was fairly decent, though I've got a few thoughts about it, and can see some of the reasons some people didn't care for it.
It was well-acted, and the production values are good. The cinematography is noticeable - there are a lot of either very long (as in duration) shots, and a few that play with perspective with shots that go upside-down or spin in some way. I liked it well enough, though I don't know that those choices accentuated anything in particular with the story, beyond a general disorientation.
Cut for thoughts about the major theme/horror element, in case it's too spoilery: )
One additional warning: I didn't notice any real strobe-y effects throughout, but for SOME reason the fucking title has a really dramatic blinking strobe effect that was obnoxious to ME, and I'm not typically sensitive to that sort of thing. I genuinely do not understand why they went for that, because it was annoying and had no relevance to the themes or style of the film otherwise.

- Alex and I watched Absentia, which I enjoyed! I hadn't heard of it before, and didn't realize until after Alex picked it that it was Mike Flanagan as director, again. Apparently I do mostly enjoy his stuff. This one was a kickstarter film, I believe, so done on a pretty low budget, but even so, managed to be better than a lot of things with more money behind them.
The main plot is that one of the main characters has just reached the point where she has declared her husband, missing for years, dead in absentia. The other main character, her younger sister, is visiting her for the first time in a long while, after having done a stint in rehab. The younger sister meets a strange man (PLAYED BY DOUG JONES. FUCK YEAH, YOU WEIRD CONTORTIONIST MAN.) in a tunnel near the house, though he vanishes when she goes back to see him again. Then the day after the missing husband is declared dead... he (the husband, not Doug Jones) returns, claiming to have been held captive for years "underneath." The younger sister begins to suspect the tunnel is responsible for many disappearances over the course of decades, if not centuries.

- We watched the first few episodes of the new season of The Handmaid's Tale. I hadn't heard great things from critics who pre-screened the first several episodes, and it seems more damning that *I didn't realize any episodes had come out yet.* (Alex really likes the show, and has been excited for the next season, and we didn't realize it had started!)
I... was not terribly impressed. I haven't much loved the last couple of seasons, even as I did really think the first two were very good. This one... I guess it's been better-received than last season, but I didn't care for it much. My complaints were similar-ish to some of the critical ones I'd seen - like... can something happen, please? Stop posturing and DO SOMETHING.
But I think my issue was more... Gilead doesn't feel like Gilead? Suddenly they're taking Serena (relatively) seriously, there are handmaids-in-training talking back, wives are thanking the handmaids who gave birth to their children (if semi-reluctantly and covertly).
Cut for a bit of length: )

- We also watched the first seven episodes of The Patient, a show about a serial killer who kidnaps his therapist in the hopes of having constant access to therapy so as to prevent himself from giving in to his homicidal urges.
This one I enjoyed reasonably well so far. Alex was binging it, so my attention was wavering (I really can't watch one thing for that long, ha.) But it's well-acted (Steve Carell in serious roles is still surprisingly good.)

- Grizzly Rage, a SyFy original about a very un-sci-fi bear taking revenge on a car full of college kids who hit and killed her cub, was very bad. Even from the "I love revenge, go fuck 'em up!" perspective it was bad. Bad effects, bad acting (and worse writing.) Felt like a first draft.
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)

Some autumnal birds, as the leaves start to change here. (I'm not a big fan of the color scheme this week - the orange and red are, turns out, way too close to each other, and it visually drowns out the poor birbs.)

This was not a great week. I spent quite a lot of it tired and cranky, between getting only a few hours of sleep several nights in order to take Cy out, and a pretty frustrating time at work. I was glad to have a small bit of creative output, even if it wasn't much.

Goals for the week:
- I did post Chapter 7 of All Strange Wonders
- I made a cover for Outbreak
- I read more of (and finished!) Be the Serpent
- I finally put the damn laundry away...
- ...just in time for there to be new laundry that I haven't dealt with
- I did write a bit more of my Set Sail fic
- We bought crickets for Broccoli Cheddar Bomb
- I didn't do my GYWO check-in yet
- I didn't fill out my artist matching form yet
- I did coordinate staying at my mom's for Friday and Saturday
- And did pack for that stay
- And I finally remembered to pay the car insurance

Tracked habits:
- Work - 5/7
- Household Maintenance - 4/7
- Physical Activity - 6/7, mostly heading outside to take the dog out multiple times a night
- Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 1/7, over 1000 words
- Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
- Meta Work - 4/7
- Personal Writing - 7/7
- Other Creative Things - 1/7, making the moodboard
- Reading - 7/7, mostly reading Be the Serpent, but also Spelunking through Hell, and their accompanying novellas
- Attention to Media - 5/7 - Sunday, half-watched Magic Magic, which was a so-so horrorish drama; Monday, watched Dark Skies and Diabolique; Tuesday, went to see Don't Worry Darling; Wednesday, watched the season finale of Reservation Dogs; Thursday, half-watched Vivarium, a so-so sci-fi horror. (I went into more detail about some of these movies here.
- Video Games - 0/7
- Social Interaction - 7/7

Total words written: 1889 words (426 words on Set Sail and 1463 on a media roundup.)
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)

A horse sticker that I got from the show the previous week, ha.


And the wristbands from the Solar Fake show were cute, lol. (I don't mostly use my tracker as a "scrapbook" thing, but every once in a while.)

This was... an okay week. It was long, and it started better than it finished - the long weekend with Taylor, plus the show we went to, and just in general getting to do things and spend time with people was nice. Still not great on creativity, but I did do a lot of reading, which is something I'd felt like I'd been not doing enough of. Ended more stressful than I might have wanted, ha.

Goals for the week:
- Celebrated Taylor's birthday!
- I submitted my pitch for the Set Sail zine
- I read (quite a bit) more of Be the Serpent
- I did get my new computer (mostly) set up
- We went to the Solar Fake show
- Okay, look, the laundry didn't get put away...
- I did catch up on DW after having gotten a good week behind

Tracked habits:
- Work - 4/7, having taken a long weekend
- Household Maintenance - 4/7
- Physical Activity - 4/7
- Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
- Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
- Meta Work - 3/7
- Personal Writing - 7/7
- Other Creative Things - 1/7
- Reading - 7/7 - read almost all of Spelunking Through Hell and a lot of Be the Serpent
- Attention to Media - 3/7 - Wednesday, half-watched Reservation Dogs; Thursday, finished the Storm of the Century miniseries; Friday, watched the season finale of Alone.
- Video Games - 2/7 - playing Nier: Replicant with Taylor
- Social Interaction - 7/7

Total words written: 0
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)

While few of my houseplants are cacti, I feel like I have been needing to pay a lot of attention to my various houseplants lately.

This was... a very nice week. It was a super short workweek for me, which was extremely nice. My weekend was good, having finally gotten to go outside for a walk. I didn't write much, but did write SOMETHING, which feels like an improvement. And then the week ended with the model show in Wyoming, which was tiring, but fun.

Goals for the week:
- I did post Chapter 6 of All Strange Wonders
- I started on my hopeful fic for the Set Sail zine
- You'll never guess, but I did not put my laundry away
- I finished reading Seasonal Fears, which picked up in the second half
- We went to the model show (for which we had to book the hotel and pack for, ha.)
- And I did birthday shopping for Taylor. They got books from me, lol

Tracked habits:
- Work - 3.5/7, short week
- Household Maintenance - 4/7
- Physical Activity - 4/7
- Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 1/7, over 500 words
- Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7, but did write about 25ish words when editing ASW for posting
- Meta Work - 1/7
- Personal Writing - 7/7
- Other Creative Things - 1/7
- Reading - 7/7, mostly Seasonal Fears, which I finished, but then I started Be the Serpent, and I read some of Kindred while we were driving.
- Attention to Media - 4/7 - Sunday, started the miniseries Storm of the Century; Tuesday, went to see Orphan: First Kill; Wednesday, watched an episode of Reservation Dogs; and Saturday, watched an episode of Alone.
- Video Games - 0/7
- Social Interaction - 7/7

Total words written: 558; 533 on the Set Sail rough draft, and 25 on All Strange Wonders

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