bright made-up waves of the brain
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After the last few weeks stuck in a heat dome, in addition to our regular old horrible humidity, that gif pretty much summarizes how it’s felt to just walk through the air. If you’ve never lived in a place where the summer air feels dense and heavy and like it has actual physical mass, then your experiences do not overlap with mine at all, because this is all I know. But the dome seems to have lifted, and there are storms on the horizon, which is really all I ask of summer.
In general I’ve been pretty content, since there’s little I love more than talking about the weather.
Notable Breakfast
Oatmeal with brown sugar, as much fruit as I have access to heaped on top, and drizzled with maple syrup. HIGHLY recommend.
Dog Thing
All of the toys are mine.
Mixed Media
Like much of the tv-watching internet, I got caught up in Stranger Things. Which is actually unusual for me, because when everybody starts talking about a thing, I tend to dig in my heels and refuse to interact with it. I never read a popular best-selling book in all the years I worked in bookstores. I’ve never seen Orange is the New Black, or Mad Men, or Breaking Bad. It took me 2 years to watch a single episode of Game of Thrones, even though I had free access to HBO. I’m a toddler when it comes to the zeitgeist. I like saying no. I said yes to Stranger Things though, and am glad I did.
It’s hard to talk about Stranger Things without giving anything away, and you really ought to go in blind. It takes place in the 80s, and pays homage to a whole host of things. I’d heard people criticize it for being too much of a pastiche before I started it, but found that since I hadn’t watched a lot of the source material it was pulling from–I caught E.T. and Goonies references, but missed anything that was from a horror movie of some kind–that it wasn’t distracting at all. The plot was definitely everything I needed to keep going. And keep going I did, all in a single day because I was worried if I stopped I’d be too scared to start again.
The whole thing is great: the mystery, the scary bits, the whole look, and the characters (especially the characters). Everyone is exceedingly well-cast, Millie Brown as Eleven in particular. But all of the kids are fantastic, and Winona Ryder is incredible. My chief complaint, as always, is I would have liked more women. There was no real reason that the core group of kids all needed to be boys.
All in all, however, I loved it. I would happily protect Eleven with my life, and I’m looking forward to season 2. Though I’ll probably try to watch it all in the daylight, when it comes.
Also: (there is so much)
Aside from Stranger Things, it’s all been anime. I watched Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, about a girl who becomes an inking assistant when she discovers her crush is a popular manga artist. It’s a very sweet, if at times frustrating, show (the object of her affection is extremely dense). I watched Classroom Crisis, about a class of genius engineer kids trying to prevent their school from being shut down. At times uneven, but largely satisfying. I watched Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, about a human who falls to Earth with his mech, only to discover it not the frozen wasteland he thought it was (also on Netflix). But the stand-out series was Erased, which is about a man whose consciousness travels back to when he was 11, where he attempts to prevent a kidnapping which altered the course of his life. I resisted watching this despite multiple recommendations because stress from watching it kept a friend of mind awake one night. And it is stressful, but it’s also crazy good.
My anime spiral has spread to manga, too. I’m making my way through Cross Game by Mitsuru Adachi, which I adore. More on it later. I read Sweetness & Lightning 1, by Gido Amagacure, about a single dad who enlists the help of one of his math students to learn how to cook. The title is apt, it is all sweetness. I read Queen Emeraldas 1 by Leiji Matsumoto, a very old, long out-of-print space opera. Weird, but good. I read Planetes by Makoto Yukimura, and was completely captivated by it. The whole thing is in two volumes. I decided to hit the classics and finally read both Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Akira. Nausicaä is director Hayao Miyazaki’s major manga work, and it’s incredibly good. Much, much larger than the film version. Akira, by Katsuhiro Otomo, is largely considered one of the greatest manga, and I found it very deserving of that title. I also caught up with the Last Man series of books, which is a French comic that is very hard to describe, as every volume tackles a different genre, practically. But it’s very, very good.
I saw Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which is something of an dark adventure comedy by New Zealand writer/director Taika Waititi. It’s about a boy who goes on the run in the wilderness with his dog and his foster father after his foster mother dies. It was very, very good. It’s got the sort of look and humor that would probably appeal to fans of Wes Anderson films. Watching it got me very excited for Thor 3: Ragnarok, which Waititi is currently directing.
Regina Spektor released a new single, and I’ve listened to it 100 times because I’ve missed her so much. I’ve listened to both the Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Star Trek Beyond scores, by Moniker and Michael Giacchino respectively, a whole bunch.
Anxiety Pyjamas
Fics I Shouted About
The Shape of You by Barkour Voltron, Gen. This is an excellent Pidge character study revolving around the idea of Pidge being a trans girl. It’s deftly handled, and the voices are perfect.
Carry It With You by cosmic_llin Star Trek Beyond, Gen, future fic. Jaylah was my favourite thing to come out of Star Trek Beyond, and this has her living with the Sulu family post-movie. It’s mostly a character study, and it’s so good.
A Big Deal in the Resistance by igrockspock Star Wars TFA, Finn/Poe. Finn settles in at the resistance base and is quickly involved in a prank war with his roommates. Will I ever tire of Finn-adjusts-to-base-life fics? Sources say no.
Not Your Boyfriend by emmagrant01 Check Please!, Nursey/Dex. Someone mistakenly assumes Nursey and Dex are on a date, and Nursey finds that Dex’s reaction is not at all what he expected.
Lastly
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