worse things happen at sea, you know

Previous poll review
In the Fourth walls poll, 68.2% of respondents said "the one-way glass that stops TPTB seeing fannish activity" is important to them; 65.9% said "the one that shields fandom from public/media attention", and 61.4% said "the wibbly-wobby physics-defying thing that means celebs and fans exist in separate universes that just happen to occupy the same space-time". About one in five respondents love ALL the walls.

In ticky-boxes, ballooooooooons and golden sparkles won 54.5% of the vote, coming second to hugs (77.3%), but the other tickies made pretty good showings too. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
I finished Courtney Milan's The Marquis Who Mustn't and enjoyed it very much. Such a kind, good-hearted series with a lovely sense of community and a spark of mischief. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Then I ploughed through one of my randomly selected library books, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman. I found this a delightful read and very moreish. It's voicey, with a distractable, occasionally omniscient 3rd POV scattered with pop culture references. I appreciated it's acceptance of introversion and valuing of alone time. Also, the main character has anxiety, and it didn't really try to fix her.

Andrew and I are still slowly listening to Barrayar by Bujold, read by Grover Gardner.

Kdramas
Juuust enough has happened in One Spring Night that I'm into it. I mean, it's still going around in circles, but I'm most of the way through episode 14, and I'm definitely going to finish. The story relies heavily on respectability, parental authority, and conservative attitudes for its conflict (the leading man is a single dad, OH NO!!), which took me a while to get my head around.

Other TV
Our journey through Middle Earth continues. We're on the second disc of extras for The Two Towers, and the actors seem a bit punchy in their interviews, lol. Other than that, just The Pitt. ♥ (My brother watched a few episodes of The Pitt and said it doesn't have a plot, and I... don't know how to answer that. There are mini-storylines with the patients. The capital-P plot, maybe? such as it is? has kicked in at episode whatever-we're-up-to. I feel like it totally works without a driving plot arc, because there are character/relationship arcs, and rising tension/pacing, and theme. Maybe that's all you need?)

I'm amused that I have three streaming service subscriptions and we're spending so much time watching DVDs.

Audio entertainment
More Better Offline, Tech Won't Save Us (the one about humanoid robots), Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Pod Save America, Cross Party Lines, Fansplaining.

Online life
From you I have been absent in the spring February, quite a lot. My reading page seems pretty quiet, and I'm still having trouble keeping up; open tabs proliferate (that's the middle line of a haiku).

Writing/making things
I'm subsisting on alibi sentences. My creativity is sitting on a bench somewhere, staring blankly into the sky.

I keep failing to post the meta about adverbs in speech tags because it's so prescriptive, and who am I to say anything?

Life/health/mental state things
I don't know what I'm doing with my life. The world (mostly as presented by the above podcasts) is freaking me out. Yesterday I made fifty chicken dumplings and talked to my brother in NY.

Good things
Dumplings. Creativity is a tide. Sunshine. Grapes. Library books. Black cat lying on the very edge of a sunbeam. Independent media and reporting.

Pandemic Life
Just had my Covid booster.

Previous poll review
In the Oxford comma poll, 44.4% of respondents have firm opinions, 34.9% have moderate preferences, and 6.3% are officially neutral. (I worded the poll badly, because actually what I have is a firm preference, which is to weed out unnecessary commas for cleaner prose. Yes, I realise I used an Oxford comma above. ;-p) The "always use it!" contingent makes up 39.7% of respondents, while 15.9% said "only use it when necessary!"

In ticky-boxes, 39.7% of respondents selected "buying a random bargain bin product, imprinting on it, and spending the rest of your life trying to track down replacements", and I'm very glad it's not just me. I recently bought 18 toothbrushes online, which should theoretically keep me going until I'm 60. Naturally, hugs won the ticky-boxes, with 69.8%. Thank you for your votes!! ♥

Reading
I can't remember what prompted me to, but I listened to the audiobook of The Duke Who Didn't by Courtney Milan, read by Mary Jane Wells, and loved it all over again. (Last time I read it in ebook.) It's a British historical het romance with leads of Chinese descent, and they and their supporting cast are delightful.

I've now started the next in the series, The Marquis Who Mustn't, in ebook. (It's the first ebook I've bought in ages. I'm proud to say that, after some technical hitches, I managed to load a Kobo book onto my Kindle, so that'll be my plan from now on.)

While waiting to see if my Covid jab would importune me, I was allowed to go hang out in the library for the 15 minutes. I not only picked up my reserve, but also two random contemporary romance novels and a Japanese coffee shop book with cats. Given my recent rate of (not) reading hard-copy books, I should clearly not be allowed to browse.

Kdramas
Still going on One Spring Night. It's finally picking up. The cast is amazing, and they have excellent chemistry, which is what's been keeping me watching. The plot is, in essence, woman dumps her long-term high-status boyfriend for someone nicer of lower status; everyone has a hard time accepting this, especially the long-term boyfriend. Personally, I'm like, "The new guy is Jung Hae-in! Look at his smile!! How could you not??" Anyway, it felt like they were all having the same conversations over and over for seven episodes, which got a bit wearying, but hopefully the latest developments will stay developed. (FTR, this drama feels like an obvious descendant of Something in the Rain, with many of the same cast but (thankfully) no subplot about workplace sexual harassment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one will stick the landing better!)

Other TV
Watching our way through the extended edition of Lord of the Rings, plus many of the extras. What a blast from the past! Frodo actually made me tear up at the end of Fellowship. We're on the second disk of Fellowship extras.

Also, still, The Pitt and SurrealEstate, and my sister and I started season 4 of Fringe. (I would totally watch this show if it were always Olivia and Lincoln as partners. Who even needs Peter? ;-p)

Audio entertainment
Letters from an American, The Shit They Don't Tell You About Writing, Runaway Country with Alex Wagner (part of Crooked Media), and a whole bunch of episodes of Better Offline, including "Openclaw with David Gerard" (as recced by sabotabby), four short, angry episodes titled "AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble", and a fantastic rant with Cal Newport about AI reporting (spoiler: the vast majority of it is hype), which also, towards the end, explained (in words small enough for me to understand) how AIs are made/trained. Highly rec. I'm now working my way through Better Offline's series "The Enshittifinancial Crisis" and greatly appreciating his invective.

Online life
The Guardian slo-mo rewatch is still my happy place.

Writing/making things
I've been working on the same Yuletide New Year's Resolutions treat for, like, forever. It's only a couple of thousand words, it's just taking a while to come together. That's okay. I've also been noodling at a post about adverbs in speech tags for fan_writers, but there's too much to say; I need to rein it in.

Still intermittently practising drawing. Telling myself that one day I'll be able to do expressions and poses. That would be nice.

Life/health/mental state things
( Grumbling, feat. local politics )

Cats
Halle keeps bringing cicadas into the house and crunching them, nom nom nom.

Goals
I wrote a list of goals for the year and have not looked at it since. La la la.

Good things
Podcasts, kdramas, DVDs, audiobooks, media generally. Fandom and Guardian specifically. Sunshine again, yay! My roof did not blow off. Andrew and Halle and friends and biking out to meet someone for lunch.

1. My second finished & posted fic of the year, another late fandomtrees gift, is Guardian:

   Title: Emergency Contact (6050 words) by china_shop [Teen and Up]
   Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
   Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
   Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, (For one of them), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Zhao Xinci's A+ parenting, Inexperienced Zhao Yunlan, Internalized Homophobia, Feelings about being closeted, Non-Linear Narrative
   Summary:
   
   Zhao Yunlan lists Shen Wei as his emergency contact. The fact they've never met is but a minor detail.



2. Having a lot of fun with the smudgers. Here is my not-quite-convincing sketch of Amina from We Are Lady Parts. I did one of Zhao Yunlan, too, but while it came out okay in terms of shading, it doesn't look enough like him that I can bring myself to upload it, and my Saira and Bisma... well, it's good to practice. Baby steps.


3. out_there posted Noah Kahan's The Great Divide a while ago, and it's really stuck with me.
   
   
   Watch on YouTube
   
   
   I also keep listening to Amina's cover of The Reason:
   
   
   Watch on YouTube


4. In Kdramas, I'm watching One Spring Night for its wonderful cast, but I'm in the market for something more fun (preferably light/swoony romance), if anyone has any recs.


5. Milestone: as of yesterday, Andrew is self-propelling (driving again). No more driving him home in the evenings! Of course, this meant I stayed up past midnight making (slightly disappointing; needs scallions and/or garlic chives, neither of which I had) salsa. But anyway, now Andrew has independence (and I have the possibility of earlier nights). Woot!


6. We're rewatching LotR after many many years. Halfway through Fellowship. Oh, this soundtrack!

For future reference: I replaced my downstairs smoke alarms yesterday.