Illusion, remember?

It's interesting to read a book that is, topic-wise, so of interest to me, but I have to battle the writing almost every step of the way. Murray Pittock's writing for an audience that already knows Scotland somewhat, and knows various terms related to Scottish life and/or politics without explanation (this is fine, I can look them up), but he has a tendency for putting too much info into sentences that are grammatically correct but perhaps could have been simplified, eg.:

Colonel Andrew Hamilton (d.1703), governor of East and West New Jersey in 1692-97 was (though later reinstated) deposed from office under an English act (c.22) of William III and II (r.1688-1702 in England, from 1689 in Scotland and 1691 in Ireland) which declared that 'no public post of trust or profit in the colonies could be held by any other than a natural born subject of England'.

The information is there, but it's presented in such a way it takes me a moment to have to parse the point of the sentence. And having to pause often through the book instead of letting the words flow over me, makes it a harder read, if only for that.

( Cut for length. )

It's also funny that towards the end Pittock mentions that the younger generation is getting hungrier to learn about their own country (as opposed to overall British history) and that has only recently been gaining traction with the relatively new availability of exclusively Scottish history books. And that's why it was so hard to find Scottish history books when I was looking for them a while back!

We're having a rainy Chinese New Year this time, which is quite unusual, though I vaguely remember we've had that before recently. Maybe the stereotype of a super hot CNY is no longer as typical?

I'm 95 episodes into 189, which means that I'm at the halfway mark! Kambal Sirena and Mutya both finished their entire runs with less than 95 epiosdes, but Aryana is still going. I can see why, because even with the parts that are repetitive and slow, there's more story to go, and the characters are nowhere near the catharsis you'd expect for certain kinds of family and relationship tropes.

I haven't mentioned it before, but while Aryana is still within that particular teleserye weight class, I do like that they make the effort to foreshadow, by introducing characters or plot points multiple episodes before they become relevant, instead of throwing a new soap opera plot turn the main characters' way out of nowhere. Well, the show still does that, but there's also clearly some planning and forward-thinking involved. Eg. We are given teasing glimpses of Adrian and Stella's ex a few episodes before we're told who they are and they enter the main stories.

There's also thoughtfulness in a particular editing trick the show loves, by intercutting between two emotionally or thematically mirroring scenes in order to make a point, eg. they will intercut between a scene of Aryana arguing with with her mother about their family, with a scene of Megan arguing with her father about their family. There's deliberation in the pacing and storylines that they've put together, and that's neat.

Speaking of Stella's ex, I was wrong when I assumed that Stella was cheating on Victor! (Because of the show's teasing of a mysterious man who's been calling Stella.) Instead this guy is Stella's ex who is blackmailing her, and is possibly Megan's biological father. I kinda like this storyline even if it does feel inorganic compared to other storylines, in that it feels like the show had to add ONE telenovela conflict into Megan's family that had nothing to do with Aryana, and perhaps as part of an argument that Stella is a bad partner to Victor.

The tropes say that Ofelia has to be reunited with Victor, but the show hasn't done the work for it yet, and I was actually enjoying that while Aryana and Ofelia were saw-trapped by Aryana's situation on Love Triangle Island, which was happening at the same time when Ofelia had an ulcer that needed immediate surgery, which made Everyone in that storyline go bonkers.... far far away Megan, Stella and Victor were having the most loving family time they've EVER had since the show started. Victor made it up for his Aryana-insane behaviour to Megan in a realistic way, and everyone was legit happy! They're a happy family! Which is fun and makes it genuinely upsetting to think about how this happiness is going to be ruined when Aryana comes back into the picture. (Which is also why I think they added the Stella's ex storyline, so it's not all Aryana's fault.) I think it would be fun if the two families become friends and Ofelia gets a new love interest, but my guess is they're not gonna do that.

Also Aryana's third love interest has shown up, following the Love Triangle Island blowup that had Aryana shutting down both Marlon and Hubert (though it was more Marlon's fault than Hubert's, ugh). Considering the youtube comments mentioning him before, I wasn't expecting the show to take almost half its runtime to bring the new guy in. Adrian is a surly little sadboy, who's traumatized over his mother's drowning death, and so far I don't care for him because a surly boy who is surly to everyone just isn't fun. May that change soon. I think Marlon's reaction to Adrian will be hilarious.