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ღ - I watched The Umbrella Academy and I really enjoyed it a lot, enough to marathon it pretty quickly. It's a fascinating look at a group of really fucked up people who don't realize just how much they're hurting each other, because they're so wrapped up in their own pain, how their childhood abuse and the deliberate ways they were harmed continues to affect them, but now they have to stop blaming their dad and start owning their own behavior, it was wrenching, but also really rewarding an experience.

I've talked about this a bit on tumblr, where I think the show both succeeds and doesn't quite succeed, is in that the plot itself is pretty routine, it takes a backseat to the Hargreeves' family drama. I think this is absolutely what the story should be about! But, at the same time, it does make things terribly predictable, in a way that would be difficult to get around, because the apocalypse mystery never really gets much attention beyond being set dressing. I had no problem with any particular scene and I thought the number of episodes was just right to give everyone's reactions time to breathe/for me to really feel them, yet something still feels not quite clicked into place.

That said, it has charm and charisma in absolute spades, I couldn't put the show down, the performances are all fantastic, I had intense affection for the entire cast, and I really, really want a second season, because I think they could go some really fascinating places. I can see why it's gotten all the buzz it's been getting!

ღ - In contrast, I don't think I've seen much buzz for Russian Doll, but maybe I'm just out of the loop on these things. I checked it out after seeing a brief comment cross my dash + I like Natasha Lyonne + the premise sounded interesting! In contrast to TUA, if this one doesn't get a second season (though, there is a lot of room for it), I would be satisfied because the structure of the story absolutely nailed what it needed to do.

I started the show wanting answers about the time loop mystery, why and how it was happening, but the end of the show had me caring very little about that, because it wasn't really a story about the metaphysics of it all, but instead a story about people and connections to each other. It was a story about what these people needed for themselves and in their connections to someone else and where the characters ended up was incredibly satisfying for that.

I liken it to TUA a lot, because they both have stories with central figures about damaged people who have to own up to how much they're hurting people around them, that whatever damage their parents inflicted on them was real, but now they have to deal with their own shit, especially complicated and messy female characters (THERE ARE NEVER ENOUGH), and tell stories that really scratch that itch of exploring how difficult a path that is, but it's ultimately very rewarding.

BUT ALSO it's just really fun, there's some great aesthetics and great dialogue (pretty much everything that comes out of Nadia's mouth is G O L D) and is great for when you're hungry for something with some punch, but you won't lose your will to live over.

ღ - More podcasts! I've been bad and I'm listening to Sword and Scale again, because it's like a trainwreck and I can't look away! It's the same thing with why I still listen to Hollywood Babble-On, which is really pretty terrible with the sexism and crassness, but ease of familiarity and the occasional genuine IRL LOL they wring out of me, is a hard momentum to overcome.

I have one episode left of Gone Fishing, which is a 8 part (and they're only about half hour length) podcast about a woman jailed for killing someone that there's a strong suspicion she very clearly did not and the complicated web of why they can't really just let her go. I'm not usually into Australian podcasts--much as I love the accent, it distracts during true crime podcasts for me--but this one hooked me hard and it's a great look into the case, totally recommended.

ღ - I watched Fyre (the Netflix one, I've only just started Fyre Fraud, the Hulu one) and I knew the basic outline, of course, but watching the trainwreck happen over the course of a couple of hours was fascinating. I do think that they kind of went soft on the whole thing, especially considering the HUGE REVEALS that happen in the last 20-30 minutes that basically just get brushed over (I understand why, they're trying to build a sense of betrayal, like you think this guy is just incompetent, then WHAM you find out what's really going on, but I don't think they hammered it home enough at the end and should have had a better balance for it), but they certainly captured the feeling of being unable to look away from the whole thing and you get why so many people got sucked into this thing. Very much recommended!

ღ - Most of what time I spend on-line lately has been making Battlefront II gifs because Anakin finally came to the game and he's sooooo beautiful. I'm only sad that you can't mod this game like Skyrim, where I could grab adult mods and make my characters bang. (You have no idea how tempted I am to make Star Wars lookalikes, but that's a lot of work and the world doesn't really lend itself that well to a Star Wars crossover. OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE.)

Other than that, I've been catching up on comics and trying to clear a little backlog before Queen's Shadow comes out. SO CURIOUS ABOUT IT. I wonder why we didn't get an excerpt from it, though?

I've been kind of spinning for the last week or so, in a mostly good way, because there's so many things I want to do! I think between SW fic slowing down all across the board lately and my creeping up on overexposure to all things Star Wars (which is great when everything is super good and Relevant To My Interests, less so when it's quality stuff but doesn't quite scratch the itch I have), I've needed to consume other things for awhile, just give myself some decompression room.

I still have a little ways to go before going back to SW full bore, but I'm getting there! In the meantime, let me yell about other stuff! :D

ღ - The big thing that's consumed me is FarmVille which, yes, I know is the most uncool game ever, but I love it. I love decorating and I love collecting things and I've gotten in with some other players who are really helpful and I have been just SAILING THROUGH ALL OF IT, SO MANY CUTE DECORATIONS, SO MANY CUTE ANIMALS, NEW FARM NEW FARM NEW FARM, I'M HALFWAY TO FINISHING THE MAIN QUEST AND IT HASN'T EVEN BEEN A WEEK!!! (For reference, these days FV puts out a new farm probably every 2-3 months, but the main quest usually lasts about 5 weeks, then you have a bit of a breather before it all starts again.)

What I've been doing is, because the new farm (a Moroccan themed farm) has such limited space, I decided to decorate on an older farm, the Desert Oasis one, since they're similar enough in theme that stuff looks good together and am I going to take screencaps and share my in progress work on this farm? WHY YES I AM.

( Lumi yelling about Farmville again )

ღ - I watched The Terror over a couple of nights and it was quite the experience! For at least half of the series, I couldn't say I really precisely cared about any of the characters, yet there was this magnetic pull to the story, it was impossible to stop watching one after the next! But, by the end, yeah, okay, I had definitely developed feelings for pretty much everyone and I can see why ffa is so obsessed with it, it's really well-done and incredibly engaging and there are some stellar performances.

I read a bit from the creators afterwards and one of the things I really liked about it was that they said they deliberately decided ahead of time that there weren't going to be any jump scares, which then freed them up to go in all these other directions to establish the tension and frightening elements of the show. I can't say it was a particularly scary show, despite that I watched in the middle of the night, the thing that haunted me more than anything else was an entirely human moment of violence. But that doesn't mean it was less engaging for that, instead I think it forced them to tell an interesting story and they did a really fantastic job at creating this terrible situation that just keeps going downhill, but without feeling like a slog. You know how this all has to end, there's always another problem, and yet the journey to that end is the focus, it's not trying to fool you, it's not trying to take a cheap shot at scaring you, but instead it's telling the story of what these people went through and that so, so much of it was about themselves, not actually about the monster chasing them.

It helps, too, that there's no rape/rape threats (other violence and some gore, but this isn't The Walking Dead, either) and it was just so refreshingly dark without being edgelord grimdark. That and combined with a cast of characters that get stripped down and stripped down until you see who they really are, as portrayed by excellent actors? It was SUCH an experience.

I may be downloading some fic onto my reader as we speak. (I didn't think I'd have any ships by the end, but, boy, did I. I like the friendships, but also there were 2-3 pairings that I feel the siren song of needing more for.)

ღ - Aw, shit. I wasn't going to watch s2 of The Punisher because that trailer was the most lackluster thing just about ever (Netflix MCU really feels phoned in the last year or so, which kind of makes it easier that they're probably going to cancel all of it any day now) but then I saw a mention of [SPOILERS] on ffa and, shit, now I gotta watch it!

ღ - GRACE AND FRANKIE SEASON 5. I AM EXCITED. :D

ღ - I got sucked into reading all about Sarah Rees Brennan wank (here and here and here) and it's just, jeez, the Cassie Claire wank is the wank that never ends. It's pretty boggling to read through all of that, but I couldn't stop watching the trainwreck. (I have no opinions on SRB, she wasn't my area of fandom, I haven't read her books, the only opinion I have is, "Never forgive, never forget, CC." at least until she showed a sincere apology and owned up to it, but I don't think that's ever happening.)

I have done largely nothing but sleep, sleep, sleep, and sleep in my free time, so I haven't felt very social and have barely made anything for tumblr (most of what I've posted was either scheduled ahead of time or made previously for easy posting), so I'm going to make an effort to get my head out of that space and be a little more social on this journal.

- I'm a little >:/ about tumblr pulling all these shenanigans this week, because on Wednesday the last issue of Dark Lord of the Sith comes out and I'm pretty sure I'm going to WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT A LOT. glompcat showed me Soule posted the first page of the issue on twitter and WHOA SO INTERESTING. ( Mild potential spoilers for Dark Lord of the Sith 25 )

- January isn't that far away now, so the next Age of Republic comic will be the Obi-Wan one, which is one of the few (I think??) pre-AOTC stories we'll have and then a week after that, we're getting Pirate's Price (Hondo counts as a prequels character!), then the Jango Fett comic, then the Star Wars Adventures comic about Padme and Jar Jar, then the Age of Republic special with the three stories about Mace, Ventress, and Rex, then the Age of Republic Anakin comic, then the Age of Republic Dooku comic, then Star Wars Adventures has an Obi-Wan and Rex comic, then Queen's Shadow, then Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan and Anakin Adventure, then the Padme and Grievous Age of Republic comics somewhere in there, and then Master and Apprentice. That's a really steady stream of prequels content over the next three and a half months, a lot of which focuses on Obi-Wan and it makes me wonder how much stock there was to that rumor that the Obi-Wan movie was supposed to have happened, the theory that we might have been getting it around the time all of this would be leading up to, or if it's just that the prequels are finally coming back into fashion.

All of this stuff takes years to plan out, so a lot of this would have been in the works for awhile, which means I can believe it's just that it took this long for the prequels stuff to come out, even though the tide has been shifting back in their favor for awhile OR I can believe it was supposed to be a build-up to an Obi-Wan movie that got put on the back burner because of Solo.

Either way, lots of prequels content! I'm SO NERVOUS about that Master and Apprentice book, but I guess I'm gonna have to read it anyway.

- I never watched much of Voltron: Legendary Defender beyond the first season, so I can't really weigh in on any of the discourse, I only reblogged pretty Allura fanart, but I think it's safe to say BULLET DODGED THERE.

To the point that, knowing a lot of the people who were involved in that fandom are going to head over to She-Ra fandom (along with some thorny personal experiences around the show), makes me sort of want to dodge that bullet, too.

Oh, well, Steven Universe comes back today AND I AM EXCITED. I hope to gif it when it drops, but also it might be nice to write up a reaction post where I'm not afraid tumblr will reblog it and scream at me for daring to just casually like something instead of hating it with the fire of a thousand suns.