mistressofmuses

For all my earlier enthusiasm for the holidays, today really didn't feel like Christmas. It just felt like a Wednesday, lol.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope it was a good Wednesday!

I did do my usual baking:


Yule log cookies. (A sort of spiced shortbread-ish cookie with a sweet icing and nutmeg on top.)

I made these on Sunday night, and they turned out pretty well.

On Monday, I got up at a fairly reasonable time to get started on baking. Then the day was a bit derailed by errands that were in turn derailed by Alex having more dizziness issues, but eventually I managed to do it!

Unfortunately, it took a lot longer than hoped, so by the time I was done, I completely forgot to take nice pictures. I was in a hurry to get packed and head over to my mom and Taylor's, so I didn't have time to stage nicer ones, ha.


Kolaches! Blackberry and peach this year, again. They turned out quite good.


The cranberry bar things that I'd made. I forgot to grab a picture before I'd packed a few up. They were really labor-intensive, compared to things I usually make. (Just a lot more ingredients than I usually mess with at once. And I had to zest an orange! Lol.)

Unfortunately, they were underdone. :( I'd given them some extra time, and the edges were very much done... but the middle was still very soft. (It seemed okay when I did a knife test in the middle, but after giving it some extra time, I was afraid I'd overdone them, when I actually should have gone for longer.) Because the recipe calls for cooling completely and then frosting them before you cut them, by the time I discovered the underdone middle, it was way too late to do much for them. The edges were quite edible and very tasty, though.

Mom's surgery on Monday went really well! She didn't see the surgical site before they'd bandaged it, but sounds like they took a pretty big chunk out, which is standard for a melanoma excision. They weren't able to fully close the wound. But she's walking around, and all the news from the surgeon and from the genetic testing they did on the biopsy was really good! She's at the lowest end of the lowest risk on basically all the factors that they were looking at. The pain was pretty bad on Tuesday, but by today had improved.

I stayed over at mom and Taylor's Monday night through this afternoon. Taylor and I played quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV, and reached the end of part two of Shadowbringers. (Lots of fun bits. The fantasy ghost DMV. "Our story," said by the up-until-now-silent-protagonist! OF COURSE HE'S HADES. Our catboy boyfriend's most unconvincing, immediately-failed heel turn right after his identity reveal, I love him. Ardbert, my friend Ardbert, canon enemy-to-soulmate [not AU].)

We did not do any of our traditional baking at my mom's, because she really didn't want to be on her feet for that long, and just no one seemed to have the energy. We're hoping to do some New Year's baking for the favorites, instead.

This morning we did our gift exchange - I got pajama pants and books, which was exactly what I wanted, ha.

Alex came by in the early afternoon, we hung out for a while, and then did our gift exchange with each other when we got home.


My favorite stuff from Alex. :) I'd asked for the little mothman plush in the front, but then Alex also got the other mothman plush and the shirt. And a set of pens, and a cool Over the Garden Wall tote bag, plus a notebook.

Then we settled in for our usual tradition: making a pizza and watching...


Christams [sic] Twister!

(but now Alex has fallen asleep, so I don't know if we'll make it through any of the other usual holiday movies.)

It feels very unfair that I have to go to work tomorrow.

Had a few relatively busy days, at least for me.

Turns out I spoke too soon on my last post... I'd mentioned separating the two katydids, Greenbean and Moodring, because they seemed to not really get along/possibly stress each other out. I concluded by saying that that meant we weren't likely to get any baby katydids.

Literally right after making the post, I went to harvest some new branches for them and clean out their cages, and...


Those are katydid eggs!

Typically, they'd be attached to a branch or something, but she affixed them to the top of the cage up by the zipper! These are actually in Greenbean's cage, which Moodring has been out of for a while, but I must not have noticed them the last time I did a cage-clean.

I don't know if they'll hatch - typically they overwinter as eggs and hatch once it starts getting warm in the spring. It's possible they won't hatch without the cooler dormancy period, or it's possible they'll hatch much sooner. We'll keep an eye on them, and see if we ever wind up with katydid nymphs.

Sunday:
I went over to my mom and Taylor's house after work. Taylor was finishing up an on-call weekend, but there weren't any emergencies, and we were able to hang out. We played more Final Fantasy XIV, getting through the Four Lords side quest series, which was fun. We also read some more of Sleep No More.


Mocha, stretched out across the back of the loveseat. (I cruelly had to move her so that I could use the folded up blanket. Unconscionable!)

Monday:
We continued hanging out, since Taylor got a comp day for having been on-call over the weekend. We played more FFXIV, getting through the Stormblood part of the Dark Knight quest, which made Taylor flail in their seat and screenshot large bits of dialogue for spoiler reasons that I've already had spoiled. We also started on part 3 of the main Stormblood quest line.

Spoilers for the plot of Dawntrail, from my second-hand spoiled perspective

As far as I can tell, at least one significant part of Dawntrail involves a society that has decided to do away with grief and sorrow by creating simulacrums of their deceased. I think I gather that it's sort of a two-fold thing, where they more or less remove any memories of the actual people, in favor of creating artificial, undying, but also "perfect" versions of them, so that no one has to ever be sad about losing someone important to them, but at the cost of remembering the real versions of them. I could be wrong about some of that! Taylor had not played the third segment of the Dark Knight class quest in a long while, and HEY, TURNS OUT A LOT OF THAT WAS ABOUT THE SAME THING. This little class quest is from YEARS ago, but seems to have inspired the new expansion pretty heavily.

We also finished reading Sleep No More, so next time we will probably start on The Innocent Sleep.


Mocha, all lit up and glowing in the windowsill.

She is the most *talkative* cat I think I've ever known. She also sounds extremely grumpy, like she's unhappy meowing, but that does not seem to ever be the case. She is VERY insistent for food, which I'm glad of. She's eating quite a bit, which is a good thing, because she's so skinny! She is definitely a *little* cat, but she should probably weigh closer to 8.5 or 9 pounds or so, would be my guess. She was 6.66 lbs when picked up by the shelter, maxed out at a bit over 7, then dropped back down to 6.-something after her dental surgery. She's not skin and bones or anything, but you can feel a lot of spine and hips. So I'm glad she's eating well.

I also rescued/relocated a black widow spider from my mom's sink, but she'll get her own post.

Tuesday:
Mocha's talkative nature presents itself the instant someone is awake. Taylor was on the early shift at work, so got up around 5:45, meaning Mocha was up and loud at 5:45, which meant *I* was up by 5:45 at the first yell, too. I'd gone to bed as early as I could, but for me turbo-early is still midnight, ha.

Alex wasn't feeling well in the morning, but eventually he was able to come pick me up, and we went to Hudson Gardens. They are doing a jack-o-lantern festival of sorts, so there are lots of carved (foam) pumpkins around the gardens, which are quite neat. (They'd be cooler lit up, but the nighttime event is a paid, ticketed event.) Walking around during the day is free, ha. Unfortunately, it means that there are a few areas that are closed off (even more so than already, since they'd doing a lot of re-growth of areas that have been eroded.) So less in the way of wildlife to be seen, but still a fun walk. This will also get its own post.

And when I got home, I'd gotten a gift in the mail!


spikedluv told me she'd seen something that made her think of me.
I love her! She is adorable and so soft! <3

Today:
Back to the dentist for a filling. Luckily that was the *only* problem they found at my checkup, and it was one I already knew about.

Back in June, I bit down on a chunk of gravel in some green beans. ("Steam in bag" type green beans.) A couple days after that, I noticed that a small filling had fallen out, so I'm fairly sure that was what caused it. Glad for nothing worse than that! Also glad there wasn't a problem that I waited a few months to deal with it... I thought my appointment was sooner than it was, and even when I realized it wasn't, it didn't hurt so it never felt like an emergency.

(But this healthy eating stuff is crap: I eat green beans, I bite a rock! I eat a salad and a couple weeks later we get a recall notice on our receipt that that salad from a couple weeks ago was recalled for listeria contamination! Dammit.)

I took the day off for the filling, since sometimes when I'm numbed for that it takes a very long time to wear off. It wasn't SO bad today, and I probably could have made a half-day work, but instead I took a nap and I'm really glad of it. Much as I hate that I burned another PTO day, I think catching up on some sleep was a good thing for me.

This is what I got done last night:





I got the pencil lines painted over. The color I chose is about a 50-50ish mix of "pewter" and "carbon black", to mimic the color of the lead between stained glass pieces. It's a lot of tiny lines! I'll likely go over these a second time at the end, once the colored sections are done.

Verdict on the longer fine-tipped brush that I was using? Mixed. It did hold more paint, but even quite thinned, the paint didn't "flow" well through the brush? The paint higher up the brush would just stay there in a droplet about halfway up, not coming down into the tip, unless I used so much pressure it lost the fine line (at which point it would blob out, and I'd have to stop to clean it off.) Not sure why that was as much of an issue as it was. It's not one of the ultra-nice (expensive! so expensive!) sable brushes or whatnot, but is a mid-quality brand. It's a brand new brush, so not at all worn, and I made sure it was clean, so not getting caught on anything coating the bristles or anything. Possibly it's just because I am using cheap craft paints, which can have uneven pigmentation, but I did thin them, and the paint that was going onto the model didn't have any gritty or goopy bits. Ah well. I may go back to a shorter brush.

Going to hopefully work on colors for an hour or so tonight!

-

Spent my weekend with Taylor. We finally finished all of the "A Realm Reborn" base game for Final Fantasy XIV. We'd finished the main quest line a while ago, but there are two additional "parts" after that serving as a sort of epilogue/segue into the later expansions, plus they wanted to do some of the "optional" side material, either because it's fun or because it's only technically optional, but leaves gaps in the lore if you skip it.

The writing quality definitely started to climb as the game went on, and I appreciate that it did sort of... explore some consequences of things that were initially played straight. (Hey, maybe building your own extrajudicial militia force that answers to no one is... not a great idea, even if it's dressed up as "putting together a force to support your good intentions to help the kingdom!")

We also got through the first part of the "Heavensward" expansion, which is quite good so far. (I definitely appreciate that monsterfucking is a canon plot point. Get it, Shiva!)

(Lots of Realm Reborn feels fairly generic fantasy RPG, but I will say that watching the documentary on how they did this full reboot of the game from the ground up really makes me appreciate it more, haha. The original incarnation of the game was *rough* from all accounts, and having to support it while also rapidly trying to just build a new game from scratch [but good this time!] in secret was quite a thing to have to do, haha.)

We also finished watching Bodies, which I quite enjoyed, and I think Taylor did too. We did our usual insufferable mutual bit about comparing it to comp titles in a snotty film snob voice. "We *get* it, you watched The Prestige, Predestination, and Cloud Atlas, and you played AI: The Somnium Files. Wow, how original. *eyeroll*"

My work day on Christmas Eve was just as slow as expected. I finished up with my actual work within about an hour and a half, and then spent the rest of the day just watching through training videos. Those aren't due until the end of next month, but now I've only got one more to do.

After the half day, my mom came to pick me up. We headed back to her house to hang out.

We made some of our family's traditional holiday cookies: molasses cookies and butter cookies.

( Pics of both: )

We did get a bit of a white Christmas - it snowed a fairly good amount on Christmas Eve. Not as badly around us as it did out on the plains to the east, but still enough to stick. Fortunately the roads around us didn't get too bad.

Taylor and I finished up the Final Fantasy XIV raid we'd started last time ("The Binding Coils of Bahamut.") I definitely see what they meant about this being kind of a weird one to have be optional... because it really does feel extremely plot-relevant, despite a sort of "and now we must never speak of this to anyone" conclusion.

Then we watched the last three episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite a typical holiday vibe, but I guess it falls under the "stories of ghosts terrorizing rich people" heading, lol.

Christmas Day was also nice. I was gifted a ton of books (as I'd asked for, haha.) My TBR list is definitely crying, and I have GOT to figure out how to make more time and space for reading. They also got a bunch of books from me. I'm pretty sure that's about 90% of what all our gift-giving is: just... swapping books around, lol.

Alex slept in, but came over to join us around 1:00 or so.


Cy was criminally cozy on my mom's loveseat. (He wrapped himself in the blanket, by nosing under where it was draped over the back of the seat.) The cushion cover is on there solely to protect my mom's furniture from our dogs' stomping on it.


And here's Bella standing on the loveseat. (The books on the table there are all the ones Taylor got, ha.) Ignore Bella's butt glowing in the sun.

We hung around for a couple hours, and then headed home. There Alex and I exchanged our gifts. I got a couple more books, a very large set of lots of colors of gel pen, and like... a thousand cute animal stickers, haha. Also a very cute "fruit bat" squish plush (it's a bat... that looks like an orange. I love it!) Also some candy and very cozy looking socks. I got him model stuff, some brushes for pastelling, a kitchen gadget with some various blades for chopping and slicing, and a new wallet. Also candy and some silly tiny plastic crabs.

After that, he was ambushed by a nap, so we delayed our Christmas movie watching. After he woke up, we made a pizza and then watched Christmas Vacation and our always holiday classic: Christams [sic] Twister.


Amazing as always.

I was dozing off after that one, so we put our other holiday movies on hold. (I'm mildly surprised - Alex doesn't usually want to stretch it into more than one day, ha.)

Today we watched A Christmas Story and Muppet Christmas Carol. Tomorrow will be It's a Wonderful Life. That covers most of our personal holiday classics, ha.

Very glad today was a normal day off for me, but then that I also took tomorrow off. I feel like I *should* have the week between Christmas and New Years off to just do... nothing. Or nothing beyond recovering from a big holiday and doing whatever I want to in order to prep for the new year. But alas, it's hard to take that string of time off from work, since there are a LOT of people who want it off, and a lot that's hard to get coverage for. Oh well - a three and a half day weekend is still nice.

A good couple of days with Taylor. :)

We finished reading A Desolation Called Peace. The duology was very good! I really liked just how many ways it explored some of the central themes, particularly around self vs. collective. A lot of that was very sci-fi exploration of different concepts of a hivemind or collective consciousness, or more direct transfers of knowledge, and how different people look at certain types being utterly normal and others as being inhuman... but tying it into themes of conquest and colonization, forced assimilation, the coexistence of your own culture and one that you've been forced to adopt... it was very good and I liked it.

We also got through one more major ending ("Explosion route") in AI: The Somnium Files/Nirvana Initiative. Ryuchi is just fine and very well-adjusted and is just super normal and mentally stable. :)) So are the rest of the characters.
Haha, it's cute that Amame (the merMAID from the maid cafe in the first game) got a promotion to main cast. Her somnium definitely wasn't horrifying or anything.
A+ to the game for the bonkers tonal whiplash (that manages to work, honestly).
Also, I really like Gen, which may largely be that he's voiced by SungWon Cho (mostly known for his various comedy videos as ProZD.)
( Spoilers for AI:TSF/NI )

We also watched one more episode of Shadow and Bone. While I'm enjoying it, I definitely don't disagree with a lot of criticism I'd seen, in that I wish the series had been given more breathing room. There is so very much happening so very quickly, without any time to really sit and let things have the right impacts or consideration. This is partially the fault of the show adapting (and trying to intertwine) two full stories (that of the original Grisha trilogy and that of the Six of Crows duology, so FIVE books at least). I think it's also very much the fault of "we want to cram in as much of the story in this season as possible, because we might not get renewed for any more, and don't want to leave anything out" which is far sadder imo.

(Full disclosure, I read and loved the Six of Crows duology, but did not read the original trilogy, and that could be part of the following:)

There's also the slight problem that even with the fate-of-the-world plot going on with Alina... I *still* feel more invested in what's going on with the Crows. That's part of what I *liked* about the duology - while it brushes up against some very big world-level events (wars between nations and ideologies; the plot that hasn't appeared in the series about the drug that impacts grisha; Alina and co. do show up in the second book, later on the timeline after their own plotline has resolved...) the core of the story is a very personal one of revenge, and I really vibed with that. I don't *dislike* stories that focus on good vs. evil, or main characters that are at their core heroic. It's not that I don't LIKE Alina or care about her plot. But the grey morality "doing good in spite of my nature, not because of it" nature of Kaz and the other Crows was far more compelling imo. I also just plain love long-con revenge.

Also, ep 3 semi-adapted one of my favorite parts of the second Crows book, but without the same reveal/emotional payout. And it's fine, because it wouldn't have had the needed impact right now, and I don't know that they don't still utilize it later, and the scene was still quite good, so I'm not *mad* per se. Just sort of an observation.

Meant to have this done last week, but here we are. I also kept finding more to say. I need to find a way to trim these things down if I'm going to keep writing them, lol.

Things I've Watched:

Glass Onion
Not a ton to say that other people haven't said! But I enjoyed it! I have fun with twisty murder mystery stuff, and I love revenge. I especially love long-con revenge, and while this was more of a medium-con revenge, it was satisfying to me. The casting was excellent. The characters never quite felt all the way caricature-ish, while at the same time feeling *exactly* like That Person you totally know/know of. Lots of genuinely funny bits.
"Are you calling me dangerous?" killed me.

You
Been out for a while, and I think we watched a couple episodes of the first season before it was on Netflix. Alex had watched a bit more of it, but we started it over. (Good timing: didn't know the fourth season was starting up imminently.)
( Cut for length (a losing battle): )

( More thoughts than I wanted to have on Season 3, including minor spoilers: )

( Thoughts on the first half of Season 4, minor spoilers: ) 
( Bigger spoilers up through the mid-season finale: )

I feel like the first season was pretty good and well-contained. I know that after season two, the story has veered away from the books it was based on. Three and four have felt the weakest, or at the very least less cohesive. Some of the subplots have been stronger than others, but they haven't gelled as well as seasons one and two.
It feels like post-season-one, they may have also been reacting to the million thinkpieces about how terrible it was that people liked Joe so much because he was an objectively bad person. They didn't make him less likeable, just more self-aware. Idk, it's not terrible, but I enjoyed it when he was more fucked up, tbh.

Nope
This was a re-watch, and I still like it! I enjoy how many things in the first half get visually called back to for the second half. A popping balloon, the puff of powder... I still can't believe how many complaints I saw (to be fair, probably only three or four separate ones) saying that they didn't think the Gordy plotline made sense or had any bearing on the rest of the movie.
Lucky is the best.

Things I've Played:

Nier: Replicant
We finished it! For real! I had a lot more thoughts about it!

AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative
We barely started it - we got through what's functionally the prologue - it's pretty extended, but plays out before the opening credits, and that's where we ended.I had fun with AI: The Somnium Files, so I'm looking forward to this one. Aiba, my favorite little shrimp hamster eyeball! I love her! Apparently Taylor really ended up liking new character Ryuki (judging by his character utterly taking over their tumblr for a while), so looking forward to learning more about him, too. So far, we've got a similarly outlandish string of impossible serial murders (bodies sliced in half lengthwise on an atomic level! The second half of a body showing up years later than the first, but seeming to still be a recent death!) to investigate, so excited for more.

Things I've Read:

City of Saints and Madmen
I have not had as much time as I would like to read, which has been frustrating, though I'm very close to the end of this book!

Thoughts on the component parts:

( The Strange Case of X: )

"The AppendiX":
This is the part that was mostly left out of my first copy! A set of shorter stories, set within an additional frame story that all of these were found as documents that had been in Patient "X"'s possession before he mysteriously vanished.

Feelings on the individual short stories:

( A Letter from Dr. V. to Dr. Simpkin: )

"X's Notes":
Notes left by X and transcribed by Dr. V. (who still inserts some additional requests for funding.) Speculating about the nature of the stories he's writing and reading.

( The Release of Belaqua: )

( King Squid: )

( The Hoegbotton Family History: )

( The Cage: )

( In the Hours After Death: )

( The Man Who Had No Eyes: )

( The Exchange: )

( Learning to Leave the Flesh: )

( The Ambergris Glossary: )

What Manner of Man
When Dracula Daily was a prominent thing, one of the other subscriptions that someone had been advertising was for an original (queer) vampire story that they wanted to serialize in a similar way, and that has started. It's so far shared a prologue and the first two chapters. It's not a lot to go on yet, but I'm liking it! It's epistolary, shared as letters and journal entries, set in 1950 about a priest who is sent to a remote island, theoretically to perform an exorcism. He has yet to meet his supposed host who for *some mysterious reason* failed to meet him when his boat docked.
You can subscribe here if you're interested!

A Desolation Called Peace
Only a few more chapters (and I think I want to try and reread them before Taylor and I get together again. Through no fault of theirs or of the book, I started to doze off.)
These books are so damn heavy on THEMES. THEMES, I TELL YOU.
Lots about identity and individuality vs collective thought. (Through varying sci-fi premises, there are multiple ways in which an individual may not be the ONLY set of thoughts a person has.) In a broader sense, the idea of being the heir to something, and how the expectations placed on the previous holder of a position or title reflect on those farther down the line. The use of language. The multiple types of colonization that goes on - the taking over of other cultures and identities, and either destroying them or assimilating them. There's a monstrous, unknown species that is literally devouring the ships and people it encounters... which is positioned with the way the empire metaphorically and culturally devours the other societies it encounters. There's also a LOT of political shit going down, like damn.

Day two of hanging out:

- finished Nier: Replicant! For real this time. I'm left wondering just how many people genuinely discovered the secret ending by mistake/surprise.

- read a bit more of A Desolation Called Peace

- started (but did not get very far) in AI: The Somnium Files/NirvanA Initiative

- watched Nope with Taylor and my mom. Still like it!

So many new (actual! probably real and not getting cancelled we hope!) Silent Hill projects announced!

I'll just sit here and vibrate quietly.

Okay, I'm cautiously optimistic about pretty much all of them. Which is, I know, very "not a real fan" of me, lmao.

Silent Hill 2 Remake

I guess whether remaking the widely-considered best game of the franchise is a good idea or not will come down to whether the remake is good or not, lmao.
(Silent Hill 2 is mostly considered the best, but 3 is my favorite, personally.)

Not to be shallow, but ooooh, it is pretty. I can mostly get over the old graphics and sometimes-awkward voiceacting of 2 (2001, baby!), but it undercuts some of the solemnity of a few of the scenes, and seeing them with a modern upgrade I think will be very cool.
BUT. Only if the team can make it look good. Good graphics don't replace a sense of style and lighting and cinematography, and SH2 had very excellent use of the above, and losing that in favor of a graphics upgrade is not worth it.

The trailer is pretty good, and really does make me excited for it. (Though again, I know it's always possible they'll fuck it up.) I am excited that Masahiro Ito and Akira Yamaoka are both coming back for it, because at the very least that means the design and the music are going to be good, ha.

Silent Hill: Townfall

The teaser for this is pretty minimal, as was any additional info, but honestly, I'm pretty hype? I like the little bit of it from the teaser, and while it feels different than a mainline game, it does sound like it could be very good.

Return to Silent Hill film

Christophe Gans coming back! I actually absolutely love the first Silent Hill film. (I know, back into Not A ~Real~ Fan territory.) We don't talk about the second film. A shame about all those promising production photos and casting and everything, since the movie wound up never ever happening.

The first Silent Hill movie was obviously very much inspired by the first game, while still being a different take on that story. I thought it utilized new backstory elements and pieces from the game really well together to create a coherent whole that I do really, really like. The ethos of the monster creation - "disturbing, not disgusting" - is exactly the right tone. There are also several scenes that very obviously took design and cinematography cues directly from the game, and it was clearly made by someone who did enjoy Silent Hill and wanted to encapsulate the right tone.

So bringing back the same director and producer to do a similar take on/adaptation of Silent Hill 2 sounds very promising, and is something I want to see. I will be very sad if the film gets shelved, as additional Silent Hill projects with this director have.

Silent Hill: Ascension

Definitely the one that I am least excited for. It COULD turn out really great and prove me wrong, but I just see this going very poorly, ha.

The whole deal is that it's interactive and live/in real-time, so the fandom as a whole participates in what happens with the story. It's also a "no takesies-backsies/no re-dos" scenario, so whatever decisions get made are permanently part of the story canon.

That COULD be really cool, I guess, and I enjoy the idea of participatory and interactive horror, but it seems wildly prone to people trying to be dicks and wrecking it for people who are actually into it. Maybe there are safeguards against that in some fashion? Idk, even if so, story-by-crowd-consensus seems... meh? Not like a thing I'm likely to be interested in?

Silent Hill ƒ

Pretty! This makes it seem like maybe one of those leaks from several months ago (the cherry blossom monster concept art) may have actually been a legit leak! Or it's one hell of a coincidence.

I really like the creepy design, the growing vines/veins, the beautiful flowers blooming horrifically from a body. Very much body-horror, which is a staple of Silent Hill, but it's extremely different. Body horror that has an aspect of corruption but also beauty, rather than the much more grotesque horror that's typical for the franchise... I like it. It feels similarly psychological; different horrors for different minds? Idk, I'm not saying any of that terribly well, but I'm excited.

This has nothing beyond a non-gameplay-footage trailer, which is lovely and creepy, but even that little bit makes me really hopeful for something interesting and new in the series!

-

So basically I'm pretty hype! I know the dangers - we were all burned by P.T. - and it's possible that pretty much any of these (except probably the remake) could still wind up cancelled or with a major direction change or the like.

But all the creators they interviewed (er, with the exception of Ascension, I'm afraid) sounded really excited and engaged and like they want to make games that do new things (a necessity, for a franchise with glory days on the PS2) while not screwing up the things that made/make those games great. Not that anyone ever says "yeah, I definitely hope to make the worst game ever, and am doing this purely to cash in on franchise branding while making a just frankly terrible product that spits on the name" or anything, lol.

I'm going to have to get a PS5. :/ Somehow.

A bit of a miscellaneous one, rather than for a set time period or anything, since I do these... sporadically, at best. Just kind of a vague sense of Some Stuff I've Experienced Lately.

Things I've played lately:

Nier: Replicant
Not a lot to say that I didn't already talk about before. I'm still curious about what way we get to have an impact on the ending, or if it will be much of one. Going through with new knowledge (though admittedly, not all of that knowledge is something the protagonist is privy to) very much makes me wish that I could alter the story - have the protag make different choices, choose not to fight certain enemies, prevent NPC deaths that I know are coming...
But at the same time, it is effective tragedy to know that you're doing something terrible, yet be unable to stop or alter it.

Things I've read lately:

Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire
Summary: Alice Price-Healy has spent decades searching for her husband, after he was taken away by the Crossroads as payment for a deal he made saving her life. Finally, she receives a clue to where he may have been hidden... though she still has little idea how to rescue him.

I enjoyed it! I do, however, think it very much needed the buildup of the rest of the Incryptid series behind it to grant it the necessary weight. That is generally what the author has said: the entirety of the series was built just so that people would care about these characters and their story - as a standalone, without the way in which these characters have hovered in the distant background of the rest of the series, I don't know that there's enough connection to them to really feel invested in their story. (Mainly to say: I think she had the right idea by saving this story for the 11th entry into the series.)
There's also a LOT that references the short stories about the characters. Those short stories have been released via Patreon. Taylor and I read them all (all the ones written so far, anyway), and did so specifically to be "ready" for this book, and I'm glad we did. But I'm not completely sure how the book would come off without that context? I think there's certainly enough for it to be understandable, but I think the mentions of those events and characters felt a lot richer for having read the stories, rather than having them just be disconnected references.

Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire
Summary: October is forced to fight against one of her oldest friends, as one of the long-lost Queens of Faerie is found... no matter how much destruction her return leads to.

I got to have the Real Fandom Feel with this one, because Taylor and I have our pet theory that we went into the book with, so we've been flailing at each other over it.
( Cut for very minor spoilers: )

Things I've watched lately:

Don't Worry Darling
Summary: Alice lives a completely idyllic 50s life with her loving husband, Jack. While the work he does is mysterious, it provides a completely perfect, comfortable suburban life for the two of them, much like all the rest of the members of the community. Strange things begin happening around Alice, causing her to question whether everything is possibly as perfect as it seems to be.

Alex and I went to see this one on Tuesday. I've mostly ignored the ~drama~ that's been alleged about the whole thing, and don't really care about that. The movie itself seems to be kind of love it or hate it - I've seen a couple people saying it was literally one of the worst movies they've ever watched, and that I really don't get.
I wouldn't say it's my new favorite or anything, but I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was well-acted, the costume design was great, and I thought it captured a sort of fridge-horror aspect that I really liked.
( Cut for spoilers: )

Diabolique
Summary: The wife and the mistress of an abusive man team up to murder him. After his body disappears, the two of them seem to be stalked by someone who knows what they've done.

A movie from the 90s, remaking a French film from the 50s. I hadn't seen it before.
One of my first thoughts was "ah, I see where The One Lifetime Movie I Genuinely Enjoyed got much of its plot from."
I liked the cast: Sharon Stone was very hot in the 90s, and Isabelle Adjani does "fragile waif" extremely well. Also Kathy Bates is in it, and she's pretty much always delightful to watch.
And "Wife and mistress team up to murder abusive husband/lover" really is an A+ plot (even if there is more to it.)
Apparently this was ROUNDLY hated when it came out, and to be fair I haven't seen the movie it's remaking, so maybe that one is miles better. I don't know, I thought it was fine? It wasn't SUPER suspenseful, but I was entertained, and ultimately enjoyed the ending.

Dark Skies
No, not the newer, better-known one, and also not the TV series. This was a low-ish budget made-for-TV disaster movie from 2009! (Also apparently known as "Black Rain.")
Summary: A group of three college friends come across a fourth man who has been living as a recluse in the woods. They recognize him as a brilliant scientist who graduated a few years before them. The four wind up trapped in a storm that rains deadly acid - the result of an industrial "accident" caused by unscrupulous business decisions.

We picked it, assuming it would be an extremely formulaic SyFy-style disaster movie... and I won't say it *wasn't* that, but I *was* surprisingly charmed by it, for two main reasons:
- 1: it had a much stronger thesis than most of these movies have. It's typical enough to have an Evil Corporation [represented in this movie by an Evil Businesswoman, played by Leslie Hope as our "kinda slight name recognition" actress for the film], but this movie was a lot more critical of it than I'm used to seeing. Instead of "oh, this one company was bad and led by one bad person", this one actually stated "as long as businesses are motivated solely by profit, they can never be trusted to make good decisions regarding health and safety."
- 2: after the main guy has a random shirtless, bare-ass scene toward the beginning, Alex and I were both waiting for Obvious Pretty Girl!Scientist Love Interest to show up. While one of the other characters is a Pretty Girl!Scientist... she is not the love interest!
The shoehorned-in romantic subplot was between the main guy and one of the other men in the group. #equality #lovewins To be honest, it surprised me that they actually went for it, and I like it. I want to watch bad genre movies with queer characters, and I got to do that!

Final partial hang-out day.

Taylor and I read "Far From Home", which is the (currently) last of the Alice & Thomas short stories (though I expect there will be more.) Now I feel like I can read Spelunking Through Hell, haha.

My TBR pile is filling me with concern again, ha. I also reminded myself that I'd hoped to read 25 books this year, and I am nowhere NEAR on pace for that. I just keep stalling out and not having much time to read... But I need to pick up the pace to even sort of get close to finishing books I've been wanting and intending to read!

We also played a bit more Nier: Replicant. This second playthrough adds a lot of good context, in general, and specifically for Kaine's (and Emil's) characters. It's good!

I had a dentist appointment at 12:30 to check out the spot that felt weird.

I was right; it was a filling that fell out. (The DAY AFTER having gotten a new filling? Rude.)

My dentist said she could make the time to just replace the filling today. I'd actually been hoping they couldn't, just because I knew I'd be worthless the rest of the day while the numbness wore off, ha. But the appeal of being done and not having to make ANOTHER appointment, and sacrifice ANOTHER weekend to it won out. It really was very quick!

And it worked out okay - despite our record heat (97 today, supposed to be that way for another couple days), we'd hoped to go on some kind of short walk. It's been WEEKS since we got to go do anything outside; every weekend has been taken up with other things. So I was mostly worried that it would sink those plans... but they were sunk anyway, because Alex wasn't feeling well. He's been feeling iffy for a few weeks now; dizzy spells, general weakness and fatigue, trouble breathing. It might be some of the nerve damage in his neck - it's the sort of thing that used to only happen while he was riding, and kept him from doing so sometimes. But now it's happening almost all the time. :/ The need for some really intense, scary, and difficult-to-recover-from surgery looms more and more.

So we came home, I took a mediocre nap for several hours, and he rewatched old episodes of Alone, which is the one reality-ish show that he is very into, haha.
The nap was probably a good thing - I got only about 5ish hours each night while at Taylor's, and it meant I slept off most of the numbness from the filling. But now I have a headache (probably from the dental stuff - the numbing, but also the sound of the drill, even when I don't feel anything.)