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Mar. 10th, 2026 09:48 pm
ursamajor: people on the beach watching the ocean (Default)
[personal profile] ursamajor
Stuck in my head this week: the CHVRCHES cover of Such Great Heights. Lauren Mayberry was the opener for the Northeastern leg of the Postal Service anniversary tour, and I have been enjoyably earwormed with her band's version of this song. It's making me want to do a ukelele cover of it, somehow.

YT video within )

*

I don't usually pay that much attention to celebrity news, nor am I a fan of horror movies (I tend to run screaming the other direction), but it feels right to rewatch Army of Darkness upon hearing the news that whatever cancer Bruce Campbell's just announced that he's got is "treatable, but not curable." But jeez, that's like two major ones of these "fuck cancer" announcements in just a few weeks now. Le sigh.

Of course, this means I'll need to figure out how to get ahold of a copy of said movie, and I'm feeling just cantankerous enough about the state of media preservation that I'm wondering where I can pick up a physical copy on DVD (yes, DVD, we don't have a BluRay player). And it turns out there's apparently fifty bajillion editions, heh.

*

This year's hamantaschen flavors: vanilla dough with cherry preserves, vanilla dough with apricot hot pepper jelly, chocolate dough with raspberry preserves, chocolate dough with peanut butter. I tried out Smitten Kitchen's dough recipe this year to see how a buttery dough behaved compared to the oil-based recipe I usually use from [personal profile] noghri, with mixed success. The chocolate dough options remained intact, probably partly because I didn't roll it out to 1/8" thin, partly because I froze the peanut butter balls before folding them into the dough, and partly because the raspberry preserves were thick enough to not spread. I think it came out a little dry relative to the fillings, probably two minutes too long in the oven. The vanilla dough behaved with the apricot hot pepper jelly because it wasn't really a jelly, definitely more of a preserves texture. But with the cherry "preserves," it was another story, because the texture of that was much closer to an improperly-set jam, which I only realized starting to scoop it into the cookies. If you think all of the blowouts were the cherry ones, you'd be right!

Had friends over for dinner to help eat the hamantaschen, and I also made chicken adobo and rice and a mizuna salad with seaweed dressing. K brought fancy fruity sodas from TJ's, and we didn't remotely realize how late it had gotten until one of us looked at our watches and gasped that it was after midnight, heh. I really ought to do that more often; I like hosting my friends and us gossiping around a table until all hours. Plus, it's good motivation to keep things a bit tidier around here!

And it felt good to show off progress in the library/my office. Still need to figure out the desk situation; still need to frame the art I want to hang up in there; still want this rug to drape over the back of the glider chair. And I need to figure out a good reading lamp. But now that we've been here almost five years, figuring out how to make things the way we want; what we want to change, what we want to keep.

*

I never did post about our Super Bowl menu, but we made:

- Seattle: Teriyaki Wings, because it's a thing; every Seattle local friend I've ever visited there has taken me out for teriyaki there.
- Boston: Miso Clam Chowder. Used the Saveur recipe as a base, then to get it closer to Oga-style, added an assortment of Japanese mushrooms. Subbed out the cream for coconut milk, but that swung the flavor profile significantly more Thai, so I may need to consider other options if I want it to taste like Oga's. And I'll go ahead and pick up some ume next time for a topping, I think it needs just a bit of that fermented sourness to taste right.

I ran out of steam before making it to the Boston Cream Pie (Joanne Chang's, of course), but I did also make a smoked salmon dip: cream cheese, lemon juice, dill, onion powder, green onions, garlic, chili crisp, and smoked salmon on top.

Agatha Christie time!

Mar. 9th, 2026 11:41 am
scaramouche: Kim Cattrall as Gracie Law (gracie law creepy eyes)
[personal profile] scaramouche
I was just thinking that it's been a year since the last BBC Agatha Christie adaptation (Towards Zero) so I looked up if there's going to be a new one and there is! Endless Night is next, and although it's not one of my favourite books I do like the characters and slow dread of the story, so hopefully that'll be fun and not too twisty different from the book. No release date yet, as far as I can tell.

Netflix had their own adaptation recently-ish too, that was The Seven Dials Mystery which I did watch and it had some actors I really liked, and a Bundle I liked, but overall I was mostly meh about it. Didn't care about secret societies when I read the book, and I still don't care about secret societies now, though I do know a little more about their proliferation during that time and during the colonial era, and its use as a social bonding mechanism and creation of a sense of elitism in the same lines as a religion (us vs. them), which clarified quite a few things to me as someone who lives in a part of the world where such societies are so alien as to be scary and malignant, but it's in believing they're scary and malignant that gives them undue power. Anyway the adaptation was fine, it had some changes, I don't have strong feelings either way.

In reading, I have just finished Death Comes at the End, which I knew was set in Ancient Egypt which is why I didn't pick it up for a while. I think the setting allows the story to be simpler, as in Christie puts more effort in describing the world and the way its people think than in creating an elaborate mystery. But I did enjoy it, and I did have fun that I figured it out early based on the actual clues and psychology of the characters, and it does not detract enjoyment of the book at all.

I also read two Poirot mysteries, one being The Murder on the Links, which was fun! A clue-heavy mystery, and Poirot butts heads with another detective who is more clue-focused. There are two layers to the murder, and I figured out the first one based on the clues, and the layer itself is similar to what went on in Body in the Library. The structure is a little different in a good way, in how Poirot breaks down the logic of the mystery halfway through the book (yay!) to Hastings. The second layer was more opaque but I got enough of a vague picture that the final resolution made me nod like, yes, I buy that. Only for the book to throw ONE MORE dramatic left curve our way, dang. Also, although I was vaguely aware in later books that Hastings is married, I was not prepared for this to be the story where he meets the woman who'll be his wife, and all the shenanigans that happen in that subplot.

The other is Dead Man's Folly, and I enjoy so much when characters spell out midway through the book certain fact-connecting revelations that usually come towards the end. That said, the final reveal kind of pissed me off, and after sleeping on it, I think it's because there was no way for us the reader to make the necessary leaps of logic based on the info we were given. Specifically, that there were two murders instead of three, and that two characters have been lying about their identities through the book, and a third character knew about the lying but kept quiet. Basically I think there were too many moving parts to get some sort of handle on what was going on.

Ficlet: An Awful Indroduction

Mar. 7th, 2026 06:14 pm
rivulet027: (Default)
[personal profile] rivulet027
Title: An Awful Introduction
Fandom: Star Wars
Pairing: Stordan/Bodhi
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Star Wars. It's not my toy box and I'm merely playing.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Stordan thinks dying should be less of a surprise.
A/N: Written for the [community profile] fandomweekly prompt near-death experience with the bonus prompt "Please, stay with me".

An Awful Indroduction )

Aryana (60.3% completed)

Mar. 4th, 2026 08:40 pm
scaramouche: a bad pun on shellfish (you make me wanna)
[personal profile] scaramouche
I am 114 episodes into 189, and as a twist in this exercise, I found out that the previous playlist I thought was deleted, is back up! Since all the stats are there I would I guess it was set to private and then un-privated. Whatever the case, it is back, and I have those lovely stats and lovely English summaries and all the comments, but on that last one, it turns out I no longer have the patience to go through the comments, because...

I hate Adrian. As a character, as a love interest. Since I hate him, I feel like I'm tripping balls when I read the comments and they're full of Adrian love, of how Adrian is the best, of how Aryana and Adrian are so sweet together. Fiction is subjective and this is far from the first time I've bounced off a character I've seen so much love for, so what can you do. One consequence of this is that I don't read the comments as I did before, and another consequence is that my interest in Aryana's storyline is dipping. Not all the storylines, mind! Just Aryana's.

Because now Aryana has legs again we're back to mostly-mundane school shenanigans but with a third love interest in the mix, and I think it's a problem when a female character who's the lead of a show, has significantly more male love interests than female friends. It didn't feel as obvious when there were just Marlon and Hubert, but now Adrian is there, Aryana's social interactions are overwhelmingly with boys. And she doesn't even hang out with the one female friend she does have! Bebet is only Aryana's friend at school! And then Aryana's family, i.e. her mother, grandmother and uncle, haven't had much to do with her in this arc beyond listening to her boy woes (I was also startled when I realized hadn't seen Ofelia in any significant way for a few episodes in there).

Did viewers not like Marlon because he's too whiny and not like Hubert because he's a pushover? And so they created an assertive third love interest who physically grabs Aryana's arm when she tries to get away from him, and doesn't listen when Aryana begs him to stop, and doesn't believe Aryana when she says she's not interested, because we're apparently doing the thing where no means yes and Aryana is into it actually and all her yelling at Adrian is flirting actually? Shut up!! I do not like this!! I can acknowledge romantic comedy tropes and telenovela tropes and still not like it!!!!

I thought I understood the reason for Adrian, in that Hubert and Marlon both know Aryana's secret, so adding a boy who is NOT in the know shakes things up. BUT THEN Adrian learns Aryana's secret like five episodes after he first meets her, and what are we doing, show. Why are you suddenly going breakneck speed when you teased Marlon finding out and Hubert revealing HIS secret for dozens of episodes, but it takes two episodes for Adrian to find out Aryana saved him and another three to find out she's a mermaid. What the heck. The intensity of the show's interest in Adrian, and giving him top billing of the three love interests despite being a new addition, it feels like they shoved in a hail mary character to revitalize the show, which may indeed be the case and I simply do not know the dynamics of the viewing audience at the time to understand.

Anyway I'm more invested in Megan's storyline now.
kaiyote: (Default)
[personal profile] kaiyote
title. god loves you, but not enough to save you
fandom. iwtv/tvl
character. lestat de lioncourt
song. "sun bleached flies" by ethel cain

what i wouldn't give to be in church this sunday; listening to the choir, so heartfelt, all singing: "god loves you, but not enough to save you." lestat character study vidlet. (spoilers for s3 trailers/promos.)

- )
kaiyote: (MISC ▪ 💋)
[personal profile] kaiyote
title. venus, planet of love
fandom. iwtv/tvl
character. lestat de lioncourt
song. "nobody" by mitski

"venus, planet of love, was destroyed by global warming." s3 lestat vidlet.

- )

BOOOOO (D+ is sloppy)

Mar. 1st, 2026 03:14 pm
scaramouche: Bruce Boxleitner as Alan from Tron (tron: alan is a nerd)
[personal profile] scaramouche
I got the chance to muck around with a D+ account for a bit and although I struggled with the UI, I can't tell if it's because I'm so used to Netflix and youtube, or if it really is as finnicky as it seems to be. That aside, some actual disappointments about the service for me:

I put on the 1989 The Little Mermaid movie because I wanted to see which version they had up, because there's been multiple restorations over the years. Good news: the picture is clean, with none of those uneven lines and truncated transitions, so I assume it's from the latest Blu-Ray release about... six years ago? Definitely not the one before that. Bad news: the audio mix is terrible!

This is a movie I know SO well, so I could tell pretty quick there's something very strange going on with the audio balance between dialogue, music and sounds effects (eg. water sounds, background noises). Some noises are too loud, some are too soft, and the worst is when the music is not on the same level as the singing. It's almost a Christopher Nolan movie here! I wanted to double-check that it's not my device or speakers, so I put on my personal DVD of the movie, and that sounds perfectly fine on my PC speakers. I poked around a bit online and it's not really clear what the problem is. One possibility is that the version on D+ is optimized for TV with surround sound, so it sounds weird on a PC. I can't double-check this, though.

Then I checked out the Little Mermaid TV series and, oh boy. Some episodes are in the wrong order, despite the platform listing each episode's original release date right there. The video has been cropped from the original 4:3 to 16:9, losing that extra detail (and making it feel squished, as this is also media I know very well). Best yet, the pilot episode is missing entirely, and the only thing I could find about it is some speculation that it's too scary for children, as it does open with a group of whalers attacking an orca pod. (Which is totally something they would do, considering the edits that D+ has done to other movies like A Parent Trap and Splash.)

I guess all of this just serves to remind that streaming is not owning, and to keep your own copies before they become lost media. :/

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