scattered and misc, mostly tv
Jun. 17th, 2020 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishThese days it somehow takes me a minute to summon up my birthplace, and when I do it always feels weird. "Oh, right, I guess I was born in Oklahoma. Huh." (Sill; lived there for the first nine months of my life before we moved to Broussard, Louisiana, which we also left before I was able to form memories.) I can still call up my father's Social Security number, though. At least I no longer get confused as to whether it's his or mine. Weird legacies of a military brat childhood.
Apparently sitting around waiting for work is not entirely unstressful. The VPN went down yesterday morning and didn't come back 'til sometime after two pm, on a day when I was meant to be sorting out the workload for the rest of the team. Couldn't really relax because I felt I had to keep checking every half hour or so to see if the VPN was back; couldn't do much because, well, no access to my machine. (For historical reasons involving the Horrible Awful IT Guy I don't have a work laptop, and instead remote-desktop into my work machine. This is as painfully slow as it sounds, but it does mean I only carry one computer when I travel.)
In general I disapprove strongly of how minor changes and setbacks are intensely disruptive to my ability to function, these days.
I finally finished Counterpart a couple of weeks ago. Counterpart is two seasons' worth of Cold War spy show with a skiffy veneer. The conceit is that in 1987 a physics experiment in Berlin created a permanent crossing between our world and another one that was just like it, but of course they started diverging in tiny ways almost immediately, and then more so when a flu pandemic decimated one world's population in the 1990s. There's an air of paranoia and bureaucracy, low-tech spy stuff and moral grey areas, and some amazing character work by (among plenty of others) JK Simmons and Olivia Williams playing two different versions of themselves. It's very much my thing, despite being a little slow at times. The show ends... acceptably; you can tell they were hoping for a third season but didn't necessarily expect to get one.
I also binged the last season of The Good Place a week and a half ago. This show... this show. It is, I think, the second multi-season show I've seen (after Avatar) that had an entirely satisfactory ending. And yes, I cried quite a bit during the finale, but what do you expect when it's all about needing to leave the people you love. Really just fantastic work, all around.
Last spring Erin bailed on Moffatt Doctor Who midway through S5 (specifically, midway through "Vampires of Venice"). I've picked it back up this week. Matt Smith's Doctor is starting to grow on me, and I'm reminded that it took me about half a season to come round on Tennant as well. Amy Pond may be less aggravating than her original presentation as well. It's hard to say, because the Amy-and-Rory dynamic is so bloody annoying and awful, and the writers really don't have much respect for Rory. I shall grit my teeth and stick with it, and hope that either that improves, or/and the next Companion (Clara?) irritates me less.
UPDATE: Erin hopped back on board for "Vincent" and has continued. Amy-without-Rory was in fact less annoying, and Amy-and-Rory in general are less obnoxious in S6 when the writers start occasionally giving Rory something to do. Steven Moffatt unfortunately still Steven Moffatts the hell out of everything, to include River Song. "Let's Kill Hitler" was mostly hilarious, but the revelation that River's spent her whole life pursuing the Doctor... feh.
And there's a new season of Kipo (yay!), and I have all of Steven Universe which I am watching very slowly because at this point midway through S1 it's still too saccharine for my taste, and there's plenty of other stuff around too.
And hey, it's Wednesday.
What are you reading right now?
Ancestral Night, by eBear. Big giant space opera, set in the same universe as the Jacob's Ladder books but several hundred years later. (Grail is summarized in passing in a couple of paragraphs on page 86.) It is slow going. Langorous, is I think the word. Lots of neat stuff, some high-tension scenes, and the pace just feels slow. I'm enjoying the ride quite a bit so far but it's a bit more effort to stick with than I had expected.
In ebook, The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum, which I picked up because it was on e-sale. YA? Near-future, about a teenage girl who's trying to befriend another girl whose mother vanished on a space mission just after she was born. It feels rough: the prose, the plot, the characters, all aren't quite... believable, maybe. But it's interesting and it's got heart.
What did you just finish reading?
Network Effect by Martha Wells was everything I could possibly have hoped for in a novel-length Murderbot book, and then some. (Except for more Gurathin. I like Gurathin! I liked having someone around who didn't like Murderbot!) I especially loved new SecUnit "Three" and its completely different yet still wholly believable response to freedom. So many good things about this book. These books. So glad I picked up the first one.
What do you think you'll read next?
Well, I've got A Game Of You sitting on my coffee table, I'll read that at some point. Other than that I don't really know. I've got Suzanne Palmer's Finder and Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire remaining from the Great Space Opera Flood of 2019. And more ebooks than a stick can be shaken at, as well.
Apparently sitting around waiting for work is not entirely unstressful. The VPN went down yesterday morning and didn't come back 'til sometime after two pm, on a day when I was meant to be sorting out the workload for the rest of the team. Couldn't really relax because I felt I had to keep checking every half hour or so to see if the VPN was back; couldn't do much because, well, no access to my machine. (For historical reasons involving the Horrible Awful IT Guy I don't have a work laptop, and instead remote-desktop into my work machine. This is as painfully slow as it sounds, but it does mean I only carry one computer when I travel.)
In general I disapprove strongly of how minor changes and setbacks are intensely disruptive to my ability to function, these days.
I finally finished Counterpart a couple of weeks ago. Counterpart is two seasons' worth of Cold War spy show with a skiffy veneer. The conceit is that in 1987 a physics experiment in Berlin created a permanent crossing between our world and another one that was just like it, but of course they started diverging in tiny ways almost immediately, and then more so when a flu pandemic decimated one world's population in the 1990s. There's an air of paranoia and bureaucracy, low-tech spy stuff and moral grey areas, and some amazing character work by (among plenty of others) JK Simmons and Olivia Williams playing two different versions of themselves. It's very much my thing, despite being a little slow at times. The show ends... acceptably; you can tell they were hoping for a third season but didn't necessarily expect to get one.
I also binged the last season of The Good Place a week and a half ago. This show... this show. It is, I think, the second multi-season show I've seen (after Avatar) that had an entirely satisfactory ending. And yes, I cried quite a bit during the finale, but what do you expect when it's all about needing to leave the people you love. Really just fantastic work, all around.
Last spring Erin bailed on Moffatt Doctor Who midway through S5 (specifically, midway through "Vampires of Venice"). I've picked it back up this week. Matt Smith's Doctor is starting to grow on me, and I'm reminded that it took me about half a season to come round on Tennant as well. Amy Pond may be less aggravating than her original presentation as well. It's hard to say, because the Amy-and-Rory dynamic is so bloody annoying and awful, and the writers really don't have much respect for Rory. I shall grit my teeth and stick with it, and hope that either that improves, or/and the next Companion (Clara?) irritates me less.
UPDATE: Erin hopped back on board for "Vincent" and has continued. Amy-without-Rory was in fact less annoying, and Amy-and-Rory in general are less obnoxious in S6 when the writers start occasionally giving Rory something to do. Steven Moffatt unfortunately still Steven Moffatts the hell out of everything, to include River Song. "Let's Kill Hitler" was mostly hilarious, but the revelation that River's spent her whole life pursuing the Doctor... feh.
And there's a new season of Kipo (yay!), and I have all of Steven Universe which I am watching very slowly because at this point midway through S1 it's still too saccharine for my taste, and there's plenty of other stuff around too.
And hey, it's Wednesday.
What are you reading right now?
Ancestral Night, by eBear. Big giant space opera, set in the same universe as the Jacob's Ladder books but several hundred years later. (Grail is summarized in passing in a couple of paragraphs on page 86.) It is slow going. Langorous, is I think the word. Lots of neat stuff, some high-tension scenes, and the pace just feels slow. I'm enjoying the ride quite a bit so far but it's a bit more effort to stick with than I had expected.
In ebook, The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum, which I picked up because it was on e-sale. YA? Near-future, about a teenage girl who's trying to befriend another girl whose mother vanished on a space mission just after she was born. It feels rough: the prose, the plot, the characters, all aren't quite... believable, maybe. But it's interesting and it's got heart.
What did you just finish reading?
Network Effect by Martha Wells was everything I could possibly have hoped for in a novel-length Murderbot book, and then some. (Except for more Gurathin. I like Gurathin! I liked having someone around who didn't like Murderbot!) I especially loved new SecUnit "Three" and its completely different yet still wholly believable response to freedom. So many good things about this book. These books. So glad I picked up the first one.
What do you think you'll read next?
Well, I've got A Game Of You sitting on my coffee table, I'll read that at some point. Other than that I don't really know. I've got Suzanne Palmer's Finder and Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire remaining from the Great Space Opera Flood of 2019. And more ebooks than a stick can be shaken at, as well.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-18 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-19 09:06 pm (UTC)And I really appreciated that 2.0's death didn't get played for sympathy at all. "But you'll die!" "This is what I was born to do."
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Date: 2020-06-20 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-18 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-19 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-20 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-18 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-20 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 02:32 pm (UTC)"I don't like you."
"I know."
still my favorite three lines in the entire series.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-18 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-20 02:54 am (UTC)Ancestral Night is fun so far, though I've just gotten to the part where it's stopped being quite as much fun. (Haimey doesn't have anyone to talk to anymore :( .)