lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2023-09-30 03:55 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2023-09-30 03:55 pm
Entry tags:
Media Catchall Post, Third Quarter
It's that time again! Summer is over, and here's the somewhat scanty list of things that I have been watching and otherwise consuming.
Music
A few new listens this time! For single songs, I've been listening to "Stick Season" by Noah Kahan a lot lately, since it feels very autumnal. For albums, the new Hozier album came out! It's not my favorite side of his style, but I still really enjoyed it, and it's one where I like the album as a whole more than the particular songs on it, largely, so I like it a lot more than I feared I might when the first few singles were getting released. I listened to a concept album called The Worm, by HMLTD. It was very weird, and not at all my style, but at least I didn't feel stagnant while I listened to it!
Movies
Did two this season! Really truly meant to do more, but apparently my brain just does not like visual media right now, and movies least of all. Still, while visiting friends I did a few I'd been excited about for a while! Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was an absolutely delightful romp that made perfect use of the source material and made a whole couch full of people scream a little about Xenk the paladin (though the Dead Wife of it all made me sigh. Must we?). And then Nimona was sweet and fun and pointed, and I really enjoyed the worldbuilding design, I love the vibe of "modern technology but there are knights with swords."
TV Shows
This has been the summer of murder mysteries for me, I've apparently needed some enrichment and puzzles to solve. This means I watched the first seasons of Murder, She Wrote (largely an enjoyable romp with some fun mysteries) and Columbo (which I like rather less than the rest of the internet, because I do not feel like his behavior is ethical a good amount of the time; I'm going to give it one more season, because I picked two seasons up for cheap at my local media store and I hate to leave something I bought unwatched). I also watched both seasons of The Afterparty (I am super fond of the Rashomon conceit, the second season really got specific with that and I enjoyed it a lot) and am awaiting the last episode of s3 of Only Murders in the Building right now, which I'm enjoying a lot. The only two non-murder shows I've done are some Antiques Roadshow, an eternal favorite, and a Korean drama called See You in My 19th Life, which was nicely angsty and very much about grief in ways I appreciated, but the soundtrack of which was, largely, bad. (Kdramas, in my limited experience, seem to have a few pieces of music they reuse over and over, which sometimes works for me and in this case didn't because the pieces of music they reused largely did not make musical sense to me.)
Other
I continue watching a lot of shows on the Dropout service! I finished A Starstruck Odyssey, which I was most of the way through when I last wrote and enjoyed heaps, and I watch their improv comedy things frequently, though I'm behind on Play It By Ear and also never watched the Game Changer Survivor thing that happened in the spring, which I'd like to do at some point. May watch some more Dimension 20 at some point, but man, the length of the episodes makes it really hard to fit them into my day, especially when the Dropout player doesn't really let me use the internet in other ways. Other than that, along with my usual historical costuming channels (few of which are doing projects that interest me these days, alas, I think a lot of people are a. creatively burned out and b. no longer being Covid cautious which means more going out and less sitting at home making things) I have been watching some D&D DMing channels as I continue improving my skills on that.
D&D
Still DMing! Right after my last post, I nearly TPKed my party in the soda ooze factory, and encounter balance in general continues to largely elude me, but I'm doing my best and my players are being very patient with me. Story stuff, however, I am having an absolutely delightful time of! Since I last wrote, the players dealt with a bit of wild magic that had started collecting more of itself until it got big enough that the forest it was in started experiencing wild magic effects (plus I got to play with the paladin's relationship to their god some, which is VERY fun), and then they went to a dinosaur demiplane and discovered the existence of aliens, which partially solves and also deepens some mysteries from the warlock's past and present. I feel as though I ought to feel more confident, 7 levels into this campaign (we're going at a good clip, I do not have the patience to run a super long campaign, I know myself), but I still have constant worries about encounter balance and whether I'm railroading my players or making enough use of their plot hooks and so on and so forth. I'll keep learning!
Creative Projects
Been a bit of a fallow season for that! I have not sewed a stitch since my last entry, I'm ashamed to say. Which means I have a friend with a baby due in December and haven't so much as looked at starting her quilt, whoops. I'm hoping that I'll be able to use it as de-stress during this very stressful season of music directing the local high school musical, but oof, I may find myself grateful that apparently babies sleep in sacks for the first few months these days. No garments, embroidery projects, or weaving, or even the mending I said I wanted to do last time. I want to want to! But summer's rarely the best time to have a lapful of textiles. Writing-wise, I did finish that novel, hurrah! It turned out quite well, and was the completion of the main part of a series I've been working on since ... 2018? Wild. Now there's just ... all the editing. And probably a novella and then probably some short stories, and who even knows what else, because I have no self-control. But anyway, now I am 20k into a Tortall fic that's about 40% Kel/Neal/Yuki propaganda and 60% me poking and prodding at aspects of the Tortall universe that interest me or are inconsistent. Whoops!
Things I'm Looking Forward To
Unfortunately, pretty much everything from the last time I wrote this section! EEAAO, The Witcher s3, The Dragon Prince s4 and s5, plus everything else in my backlog. Probably some more Dimension 20, as I said above, and other Dropout things. Might fall into another Kdrama, maybe, because they tend to be a good balance of fun and angsty when I need it, but we'll see. And then I'm looking forward to crafting! Making the quilt and anything else I want to for my friend, maybe weaving a scarf or two for Christmas, so on and so forth. And writing! I'm still going back and forth on doing Yuletide, but at least I have the Tortall fic to keep me company, and we'll see what inspires me after that.
Someday my ability to consume more media will return to me, and I shall feast!
Music
A few new listens this time! For single songs, I've been listening to "Stick Season" by Noah Kahan a lot lately, since it feels very autumnal. For albums, the new Hozier album came out! It's not my favorite side of his style, but I still really enjoyed it, and it's one where I like the album as a whole more than the particular songs on it, largely, so I like it a lot more than I feared I might when the first few singles were getting released. I listened to a concept album called The Worm, by HMLTD. It was very weird, and not at all my style, but at least I didn't feel stagnant while I listened to it!
Movies
Did two this season! Really truly meant to do more, but apparently my brain just does not like visual media right now, and movies least of all. Still, while visiting friends I did a few I'd been excited about for a while! Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was an absolutely delightful romp that made perfect use of the source material and made a whole couch full of people scream a little about Xenk the paladin (though the Dead Wife of it all made me sigh. Must we?). And then Nimona was sweet and fun and pointed, and I really enjoyed the worldbuilding design, I love the vibe of "modern technology but there are knights with swords."
TV Shows
This has been the summer of murder mysteries for me, I've apparently needed some enrichment and puzzles to solve. This means I watched the first seasons of Murder, She Wrote (largely an enjoyable romp with some fun mysteries) and Columbo (which I like rather less than the rest of the internet, because I do not feel like his behavior is ethical a good amount of the time; I'm going to give it one more season, because I picked two seasons up for cheap at my local media store and I hate to leave something I bought unwatched). I also watched both seasons of The Afterparty (I am super fond of the Rashomon conceit, the second season really got specific with that and I enjoyed it a lot) and am awaiting the last episode of s3 of Only Murders in the Building right now, which I'm enjoying a lot. The only two non-murder shows I've done are some Antiques Roadshow, an eternal favorite, and a Korean drama called See You in My 19th Life, which was nicely angsty and very much about grief in ways I appreciated, but the soundtrack of which was, largely, bad. (Kdramas, in my limited experience, seem to have a few pieces of music they reuse over and over, which sometimes works for me and in this case didn't because the pieces of music they reused largely did not make musical sense to me.)
Other
I continue watching a lot of shows on the Dropout service! I finished A Starstruck Odyssey, which I was most of the way through when I last wrote and enjoyed heaps, and I watch their improv comedy things frequently, though I'm behind on Play It By Ear and also never watched the Game Changer Survivor thing that happened in the spring, which I'd like to do at some point. May watch some more Dimension 20 at some point, but man, the length of the episodes makes it really hard to fit them into my day, especially when the Dropout player doesn't really let me use the internet in other ways. Other than that, along with my usual historical costuming channels (few of which are doing projects that interest me these days, alas, I think a lot of people are a. creatively burned out and b. no longer being Covid cautious which means more going out and less sitting at home making things) I have been watching some D&D DMing channels as I continue improving my skills on that.
D&D
Still DMing! Right after my last post, I nearly TPKed my party in the soda ooze factory, and encounter balance in general continues to largely elude me, but I'm doing my best and my players are being very patient with me. Story stuff, however, I am having an absolutely delightful time of! Since I last wrote, the players dealt with a bit of wild magic that had started collecting more of itself until it got big enough that the forest it was in started experiencing wild magic effects (plus I got to play with the paladin's relationship to their god some, which is VERY fun), and then they went to a dinosaur demiplane and discovered the existence of aliens, which partially solves and also deepens some mysteries from the warlock's past and present. I feel as though I ought to feel more confident, 7 levels into this campaign (we're going at a good clip, I do not have the patience to run a super long campaign, I know myself), but I still have constant worries about encounter balance and whether I'm railroading my players or making enough use of their plot hooks and so on and so forth. I'll keep learning!
Creative Projects
Been a bit of a fallow season for that! I have not sewed a stitch since my last entry, I'm ashamed to say. Which means I have a friend with a baby due in December and haven't so much as looked at starting her quilt, whoops. I'm hoping that I'll be able to use it as de-stress during this very stressful season of music directing the local high school musical, but oof, I may find myself grateful that apparently babies sleep in sacks for the first few months these days. No garments, embroidery projects, or weaving, or even the mending I said I wanted to do last time. I want to want to! But summer's rarely the best time to have a lapful of textiles. Writing-wise, I did finish that novel, hurrah! It turned out quite well, and was the completion of the main part of a series I've been working on since ... 2018? Wild. Now there's just ... all the editing. And probably a novella and then probably some short stories, and who even knows what else, because I have no self-control. But anyway, now I am 20k into a Tortall fic that's about 40% Kel/Neal/Yuki propaganda and 60% me poking and prodding at aspects of the Tortall universe that interest me or are inconsistent. Whoops!
Things I'm Looking Forward To
Unfortunately, pretty much everything from the last time I wrote this section! EEAAO, The Witcher s3, The Dragon Prince s4 and s5, plus everything else in my backlog. Probably some more Dimension 20, as I said above, and other Dropout things. Might fall into another Kdrama, maybe, because they tend to be a good balance of fun and angsty when I need it, but we'll see. And then I'm looking forward to crafting! Making the quilt and anything else I want to for my friend, maybe weaving a scarf or two for Christmas, so on and so forth. And writing! I'm still going back and forth on doing Yuletide, but at least I have the Tortall fic to keep me company, and we'll see what inspires me after that.
Someday my ability to consume more media will return to me, and I shall feast!
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