abnormal, as expected

Yes I have a cold, it is not covid, it is deeply miserable, and I recommend not getting one if you can avoid it. I'm a bit annoyed as I've been as careful as I can be, I've masked everywhere I've been indoors with other people except at my parents' house (and they don't have the cold) and now I'm coughing my lungs up. Ho hum.

Quick media catch up: We finished watching the most recent season of Umbrella Academy (which was... interesting). We'll probably watch the final season when it comes out but I'm pretty annoyed with Netflix in general at the moment for their habit of cancelling shows just as things are getting interesting.

Next season of Legend Of Vox Machina comes out on Prime in 9 days and I'm looking forward to that a great deal. I'm still slowly rewatching campaign one of Critical Role and I'm nearly sure I'm past the point where LOVM #2 will end, but gosh I'm excited about a lot of the casting. The Fonz as Pike's grandfather? Yes please.

I've moved over to Storygraph to track my reading instead of Goodreads, so if you do Storygraph let me know? I want to approach that tracking in a different way this year and I really don't want to be driven by just numbers. No, Goodreads, I would not like to read more this year, I would like to read as much as makes me happy.

On which note, this week I've read Not Your Sidekick by CB Lee which was immense fun - YA set in a future where an apocalyptic event unleashes superpowers in a small percentage of the human population and superheroes are part of society, but are the villains truly villainous? I think that personally I prefer the Velveteen approach to this worldbuilding (Seanan McGuire, the books are hard to get hold of but the stories are all on her website), but Velveteen is definitely not YA, and Jess is still a delight.

I've also just finished reading The Unbroken by CL Clark, which has been on my to-be-read pile for quite some time (and I'm so grateful to the person who sent the paperback to me as a midwinter gift!) which is high fantasy, very into the politics of what it takes to run an occupied settlement as part of an empire, and what it's like to be part of the population that existed there before occupation. It's epic, it's queer, its unflinching, and I've added the sequel to the tbr already.

Sone years I do Snowflake challenge, some years I do not. It looks like this is a year I do not, which may be due to low energy because of the dratted cold. I'm also not very connected to fandom at the moment and still haven't watched last week's Critical Role (I miss Taliesin at the table and hope he gets well soon).

Three things make a post...

Things we've finished watching recently and yes we're very behind the curve on some of them:

The English, available on iPlayer for the next 10 months. Bit of a different look at the early days of English colonisation of the country that would become the USA, definitely a tragedy, violent but not gratuitous. Brutal, heartwrenching, and Emily Blunt gives an absolutely storming performance. CN: sexual assault, misogyny, racism, imperialism, cruelty to animals, reference to torture, murder, guns

Stranger Things, Netflix. Yes okay it took them casting Jamie Campbell Bower to get me to watch this, I'm still a wuss about horror. If there's anyone left who doesn't know what it's about, it's D&D-style horror in 1980s small town USA except it's so much more than that in the relationships between the characters that it builds and builds. CN: violence, gore, horror, cruelty to animals, child abuse

Enola Holmes 2, Netflix. Just as much fun as the first one, an absolute romp though for some reason I can't remember many details beyond that I enjoyed it a lot.

Next up, Our Flag Means Death finally makes it to the UK this week! Also I have the Christmas specials of Ghosts and Call The Midwife waiting for me.

Had a bit of a tidy-up around here - my profile is updated, I've added linked accounts, I've removed subscriptions from anywhere that hasn't updated in over two years (apart from a few friends I know and a few communities that will always be dear to my heart) and removed any icons that either I don't use or where I don't have a fannish connection any more.

This has absolutely led to the realisation that I need new icons and that I no longer have Photoshop Elements. Does anyone have recommendations for where to find icons? Both fannish and more general, I think. I know Hollow Art has a few Will icons and I've seen a few sets of Untamed icons pass through my feed recently, but I still need knitting icons and KJ Charles icons. And Critical Role icons. If necessary, I will make them, but if not necessary, even better.

(I'm not going to reiterate what's going on in the news, you all know where to find that. But I will state that Black lives matter, trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people exist and are valid and valued. If you disagree with any of that, you're in the wrong place.)