In a shocking twist, being an adult sucks
Jan. 1st, 2023 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timegoddessroseLife very much sucks right now. I'm recovering from working the holidays, which has taken a considerable toll on my body and mental health, plus the deep freeze over said holidays, PLUS the cat was sick over the damn holidays.
[TW: gross and scary cat health details]
Grey had stopped eating or using the litter box, so we were rightly Very Concerned. On the second(!!!!) trip to the vet, they finally x-rayed her and found that she had compacted stool backed up to her small intestine. So, they gave her an enema and kept her under observation for several hours. Afterwards, they did a second set of x-rays which were clear. However, upon releasing her back to us, the office gave us essentially no instruction for how to care for a post-enema cat or any kind of idea of what to expect, and what treatment plans we were given were contradictory. So, basically, thank god for Google, and also that first night was Very Scary.
Things have seemed to be on the up, but Grey is once again showing some early warning signs. So, we're going to step up treatment and monitor, because lo, it is once more a holiday weekend. D:
[/TW]
Oh! Also, we're getting ready to move. We put in an application at an apartment complex yesterday, so we're waiting for background checks to clear etc. I'm going to have to figure out how to wrangle paystubs out of my employer in this, the digital age. (Minor rant goes here about how nowhere gives you paystubs anymore, but housing still requires them)
Anyway. Media consumption!
Mom gave me the House of the Dragon bluray boxset for Christmas, so I just finished rewatching S1 last night. Some general notes on the bluray release: HBO has clearly tried to color-correct some episodes to make them more watchable, but unfortunately "Driftmark" is still unsalvageable due to already having been color-corrected to turn midday into night (side note: love watching all the actors squinting in what was originally direct sunlight, meanwhile the screen is so dark I can barely see). So, that episode remains damn near unwatchable, which is a crying shame 'cause it's one of the best ones.
S1 episodes listed from my favorite to least favorite:
1. 1x10 "The Black Queen"
2. 1x04 "King of the Narrow Sea"
3. 1x07 "Driftmark"
4. 1x08 "Lord of the Tides"
5. 1x01 "The Heirs of the Dragon"
6. 1x03 "Second of His Name"
7. 1x02 "The Rogue Prince"
8. 1x06 "The Princess and the Queen"
9. 1x05 "We Light the Way"
10. 1x09 "The Green Council"
The top five are, frankly, all so good that their positions are interchangeable, except for "The Black Queen" which is undeniably the best. However, from about seventh position downwards is a pretty steep, and ever-increasing, drop off in quality. That said, the only episode that is truly bad is "The Green Council," and even that episode has some (few) saving graces (mostly in the forms of Aemond, Aegon II, and Helaena, who should have been the focal points of this episode, but alas. We got totally 100% necessary things, like Larys wanking to Alicent's feet, instead. Sigh).
I also watched The Handmaiden (2016) over Christmas, which was fantastic. I've been a fan of Park Chan-wook's work for a while, but this might be my favorite that I've seen so far. It's messy but extremely productive in its explorations of racial imbalance, imperial colonialism, cultural appropriation vs. assimilation, female sexuality and rage amidst patriarchy, and in particular I think this might be my favorite interrogation of the "evil lesbian" trope. There's something very Rebecca-esque in the first half of the film especially, and just. I felt profoundly seen by this film, which is both deeply unsettling and soothing at once.
On the books front, I've been consuming some BL manga titles, while still crawling through Snape (not for reasons of quality, but rather lack of spoons), and somehow I also read Ocean's Echo and reread Chain of Gold in there.
For the BL titles: I've read volume one of Love Nest by Yuu Minaduki which is a standard forced-proximity gay guy/"straight" guy romance, and the first two volumes of Black or White by Sachimo which has been an unexpected delight. It features an established relationship between two men who already know they're queer, which is rare enough, but it also includes them working through sexual dysfunction, a nearly nonexistent theme in romance, all amidst needing to remain closeted for their acting careers. So far, it's been a much more layered and productive approach to the genre than I'm typically used to.
I'm hoping to get to the second and last volume of Love Nest and volume three of Black or White today, which might be overly ambitious but whatever.
Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell was somewhat disappointing. I loved Winter's Orbit, but this second book in the universe just wasn't it for me. There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just not really "for me." The trope of mind-sharing was so tiptoed around that it felt very much scifi lite, and like the narrative was trying not to scare the reader. Which for someone else might be fine, but for me I don't need the training wheels. I also didn't love the ending, and felt it was somewhat cowardly. This wasn't bad enough, or indeed even objectively bad at all, for me to lose interest in future work from Maxwell, but this particular book just wasn't to my taste.
[TW: gross and scary cat health details]
Grey had stopped eating or using the litter box, so we were rightly Very Concerned. On the second(!!!!) trip to the vet, they finally x-rayed her and found that she had compacted stool backed up to her small intestine. So, they gave her an enema and kept her under observation for several hours. Afterwards, they did a second set of x-rays which were clear. However, upon releasing her back to us, the office gave us essentially no instruction for how to care for a post-enema cat or any kind of idea of what to expect, and what treatment plans we were given were contradictory. So, basically, thank god for Google, and also that first night was Very Scary.
Things have seemed to be on the up, but Grey is once again showing some early warning signs. So, we're going to step up treatment and monitor, because lo, it is once more a holiday weekend. D:
[/TW]
Oh! Also, we're getting ready to move. We put in an application at an apartment complex yesterday, so we're waiting for background checks to clear etc. I'm going to have to figure out how to wrangle paystubs out of my employer in this, the digital age. (Minor rant goes here about how nowhere gives you paystubs anymore, but housing still requires them)
Anyway. Media consumption!
Mom gave me the House of the Dragon bluray boxset for Christmas, so I just finished rewatching S1 last night. Some general notes on the bluray release: HBO has clearly tried to color-correct some episodes to make them more watchable, but unfortunately "Driftmark" is still unsalvageable due to already having been color-corrected to turn midday into night (side note: love watching all the actors squinting in what was originally direct sunlight, meanwhile the screen is so dark I can barely see). So, that episode remains damn near unwatchable, which is a crying shame 'cause it's one of the best ones.
S1 episodes listed from my favorite to least favorite:
1. 1x10 "The Black Queen"
2. 1x04 "King of the Narrow Sea"
3. 1x07 "Driftmark"
4. 1x08 "Lord of the Tides"
5. 1x01 "The Heirs of the Dragon"
6. 1x03 "Second of His Name"
7. 1x02 "The Rogue Prince"
8. 1x06 "The Princess and the Queen"
9. 1x05 "We Light the Way"
10. 1x09 "The Green Council"
The top five are, frankly, all so good that their positions are interchangeable, except for "The Black Queen" which is undeniably the best. However, from about seventh position downwards is a pretty steep, and ever-increasing, drop off in quality. That said, the only episode that is truly bad is "The Green Council," and even that episode has some (few) saving graces (mostly in the forms of Aemond, Aegon II, and Helaena, who should have been the focal points of this episode, but alas. We got totally 100% necessary things, like Larys wanking to Alicent's feet, instead. Sigh).
I also watched The Handmaiden (2016) over Christmas, which was fantastic. I've been a fan of Park Chan-wook's work for a while, but this might be my favorite that I've seen so far. It's messy but extremely productive in its explorations of racial imbalance, imperial colonialism, cultural appropriation vs. assimilation, female sexuality and rage amidst patriarchy, and in particular I think this might be my favorite interrogation of the "evil lesbian" trope. There's something very Rebecca-esque in the first half of the film especially, and just. I felt profoundly seen by this film, which is both deeply unsettling and soothing at once.
On the books front, I've been consuming some BL manga titles, while still crawling through Snape (not for reasons of quality, but rather lack of spoons), and somehow I also read Ocean's Echo and reread Chain of Gold in there.
For the BL titles: I've read volume one of Love Nest by Yuu Minaduki which is a standard forced-proximity gay guy/"straight" guy romance, and the first two volumes of Black or White by Sachimo which has been an unexpected delight. It features an established relationship between two men who already know they're queer, which is rare enough, but it also includes them working through sexual dysfunction, a nearly nonexistent theme in romance, all amidst needing to remain closeted for their acting careers. So far, it's been a much more layered and productive approach to the genre than I'm typically used to.
I'm hoping to get to the second and last volume of Love Nest and volume three of Black or White today, which might be overly ambitious but whatever.
Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell was somewhat disappointing. I loved Winter's Orbit, but this second book in the universe just wasn't it for me. There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just not really "for me." The trope of mind-sharing was so tiptoed around that it felt very much scifi lite, and like the narrative was trying not to scare the reader. Which for someone else might be fine, but for me I don't need the training wheels. I also didn't love the ending, and felt it was somewhat cowardly. This wasn't bad enough, or indeed even objectively bad at all, for me to lose interest in future work from Maxwell, but this particular book just wasn't to my taste.
