Of Swords and Parasols

I wrote most of this on Tuesday, and now it's Friday, so some unrepaired time dilation might slip through.

Pandemic life
( Protocol slippage. )

Previous poll review
In the Impending doom of the natural variety poll, the most common natural disaster threatening respondents is drought/heat (55.6%), followed by flood (44.4%), then blizzard (40.7%). Twelve of us (including me) are at risk of earthquakes.

In ticky-boxes, hugs won by a landslide with 70.4%, followed by "ticky-box made of Möbius strips and Escher staircases" with 48.1%. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
A little more Neurotribes, but the focus on kids and parenting is not holding my interest. Nothing wrong with it; I'm just not the right audience. A chapter of Guardian. A smidgen more of The Book of Three, and the first few hours of Incandescent by Emily Tesh, read by Zara Ramm (very heavy on introductions and the nitty-gritty of school administration so far, but I like the POV character - no spoilers, please).

TV & movies
Four episodes of The Expanse season 6 with a friend; we're watching the other two tonight. Murderbot (really enjoyed the last episode). Poker Face (haven't seen the latest). Andor S02E06 (maybe we're watching this too slowly? so far this season isn't clicking for me).

Episode 2 of Stick, which... I enjoyed watching Lydio Ko play on TV, one time, but I just don't know how much golf I can engage with, especially in fiction. Swings all look the same to me, so after the first three or four, there's none of the physical competence porn you get in more overtly active sports. And I don't find Owen Wilson inherently charming or interesting. I think the biggest appeal of the show is actually that so much of it is set outside with trees around, and that's still a very manicured, artificial setting. /fussy /tl;dr, We're in the market for a new show.

Our Unwritten Seoul (Kdrama on Netflix). I'm enjoying this so much! Two episodes and several revelations yet to go.

Materialists at the movies. We went to this because a friend and I have a running conversation about the death of the romcom, and this nominally was one. But it turned out to not really be rom or com, and the title should have clued me in that Andrew wouldn't like it (he disliked the main character and wasn't at all invested in the outcome). It's interestingly structured, and the cast is good, but it's mostly about entitled people approaching dating in terms of checkboxes (age, height, income, etc).

Spoilery things about the structure.

The main character, Lucy, is a professional matchmaker in NYC, and the film is in three parts: the first third is a wealth-porn romance between her and Pedro Pascale; he pursues her after they meet at the wedding of his brother, her former client. They go to a lot of expensive restaurants, have sex on satin sheets in his $12m penthouse, and talk a lot of numbers at each other. He wants to take her to Iceland on holiday. The middle third (or possibly third act of four? I wasn't timing it) starts when one of Lucy's clients is sexually assaulted on a date Lucy set up. This all happens off-screen, and I don't think we even see the assaulter. The victim is the nicest, warmest of Lucy's clients, but the film is mostly concerned with Lucy's crisis, as the assault brings home that the checkboxes don't matter. The final third or act is a second-time-around romance with her struggling-actor/cater-waiter ex-boyfriend, Chris Evans. Lucy broke up with him over money, and now at the culmination of her character arc, she decides she loves him enough to make it work after all. Conveniently, he is still extremely hung up on her.

I don't think I've ever seen a relationship movie that starts out focused on one pairing getting together (they feel pretty well-matched, and Pedro Pascale's character is smart, open, attentive and kind), then transitions to another pairing. Huh.

The Wild Robot on Netflix. Okay, this was really cute and funny. I especially enjoyed the possum babies. (I kept missing quips, though -- poor sound mixing, or is my hearing going?) As an aside, I was amused that the corporation was called Universal Dynamics, given Global Dynamics in Eureka (2006) and Massive Dynamics in Fringe (2008). What comes after "universal"?

October Sky on Netflix. Fictionalised biopic about a kid in a coal-mining company town in 1957 who is inspired by Sputnik to create a rocket, learn trigonometry, and get a college scholarship. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, and Laura Linney. It was fine, but wow, I wanted the story to be about overthrowing the company.

Audio entertainment
I spent four or five hours over the weekend listening to Melanie Nelson of Coherent podcast interviewing politicians, academics and a disability activist about the "Let's Make Everything Libertarian" Bill for which submissions closed lunchtime Monday. (Locals, it's not too late to weigh in! Talk to your MP!) Since then, Writing Excuses and a bunch of Midnight Burger. (I bounced off Midnight Burger when I first tried it a year or two ago, but now I'm really enjoying the physics and other science aspects, and the characters are growing on me. Ava is my fav. I'm most of the way through episode 11.)

Online life
Catching up on comments. Still have a billion unread emails, and let's not even talk about my tabs.

Writing/making things
I spent the weekend juggling multiple urgent things. Now I have some breathing space, of course, when I sit down to write (aiming for a combination fan_flashworks entry and Guardian Bingo), I can't make sentences.

Whining.

A contributing factor is that I'm having another "argh, my prose sucks" crisis of confidence. This happens periodically. You can't be on a roll indefinitely without hitting a bump, I guess. For me, usually it means it's time to read a particular type of literary novel, preferably in paper format. The one I remember being most successful is Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible; the very close, very voice-y rotating POVs, the playful intricate language use, and the thoughtful exploration of context help me to sink into whatever POV I'm writing, rather than skating over the surface and Lego-ing together tired phrases. I wrote some really good fic after re-reading it a few years ago. Whereas re-reading Byatt's Possession just meant I produced endless run-on sentences, heh. Anyway, I guess I should get on that soon...

Finished and posted an old outsider POV writing exercise for fan_flashworks's Yield challenge.

Life/health/mental state things
I got my political submission in (thanks to cyphomandra for beta) and wrote an outraged email to the Prime Minister about the Deputy Prime Minister's engaging in stochastic harrassment.

In general, I've been feeling needlessly stressed and vaguely sick, but today my alarm didn't go off and I slept an extra hour and a half. So much better.

Good things
Un-punctured bike tyre. Kdrama. New intermediate glasses making it easier to do crosswords and to read while I exercise. New bathroom sink taps. sid_guardian commentpalooza. I'll probably get back on my writing feet again soon. Andrew and Halle and books and fandom.