lunabee34 | Entries tagged with episode reviews: cartoons

1. Dylan has been diagnosed with lupus and given medication. When we got done with the appointment, I sat in the car and cried. It's been so long with no one helping us that I had started to despair that it would ever happen. I'm scared, of course; I don't want my child to have lupus. But this means they can now take medicine to make them feel better, and they can get accommodations at school if they need to because they have a formal diagnosis.

I am also incandescently angry at the first rheumatologist we saw. Dylan's labs are essentially THE SAME as when we saw that doc; she just didn't think Dylan was SICK ENOUGH to do anything about. They could have been getting help all this time.

In the same vein, I've got a routine appointment with my PCP later this summer; I'm going to have her run the same labs she did on Dylan that led to the referral, and if my labs are at similar levels, I'm going to get a referral to the same rheumatologist. I have always firmly believed that Dylan and I have the same issue, just that they started on the path much earlier and much more severely. I couldn't get that awful rheumatologist to take me seriously, but clearly this one will.

I haven't said anything to my parents yet. I guess I will next time we talk, but I don't want to initiate contact with them. I know mom's going to be hurt and sad that I didn't immediately tell her, but I don't want to talk to them.

2. ( spoilers for all of Dragon Prince )

All in all, deeply enjoyable and highly recommended.

1. I got a package of clothes from

executrix! And I had very successful shopping trip (even shoes!) so I am all set for back to school! <3 <3

2. Fiona's hair is so cute. Her little blue ombre at the bottom of her bob is just adorable. Hair-dorable, even.

3. I have purchased a pedometer. It does nothing but pedominate,no phone or internet connection required. I always lusted after fitness watches only to discover they weren't compatible with my phone. As the salesperson said to me derisively, "You want this one? This is a phone for a child." My child's phone came with the Samsung Health app which was fine except of course it only counted the steps taken while holding the phone. About a year ago, it started asking me to connect my phone number or something like that, and I just refused, so it wouldn't let me open the app, but I could still see my step count in the notification bar. Which, fine. That's all I ever really used it for anyway. This app would ask me like three times a day to agree to the new terms, and I would refuse every single time. Well, on my clothes shopping trip, I went to check how many steps we'd walked, and there was no step count in the notification bar. The app had deleted itself! I had actually tried to delete the app when I first got the phone, and it was one of those I couldn't delete. I have been rejected by a proprietary app! So, I got this pedometer for 25 bucks and it is awesome and doing its job in motivating me to be more physically active.

4. The girls just watched Centaurworld on Netflix which is an extremely silly cartoon with lots of singing that also turns out to have one of the best twists I've ever seen in any show. Wow. Highly recommend.

5. ( poetry )

1. ( reading Le Guin and West )

2. I got a Barenaked Ladies CD from

misbegotten! Now we have tunes for the trip to Emma's MRI today. This is the last stop on her magical mystery medical tour and then we get the results on Wednesday.

3. I was just remarking to

kass that cartoons today are such a far cry from the cartoons I had to watch as a kid. I mean, I loved the Smurfs, but that show never gut punched me in the feels or dazzled me with its narrative construction, you know? LOL

Case in point: the Trollhunters franchise just came out with a movie set immediately following its latest series, and it is so damn good. I cried like five times, and then the ending! OMG, the ending! I don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that the end does one of my absolute favorite tropey things and does it super well. Also, there's canon mpreg. So hurray!

4. It's August. Boo. Back to school for Fi and work for me and off to Atlanta for Ems. Slow down, time. Just a little bit longer, please. :)

1. Emma made a 1340 on her first time taking the SAT! Yay! She's taking it once more to see if she can improve her score, but if she doesn't, she's doing just fine.

2. I got my first Christmas card of the year from

leesa_perrie!

3. We watched the first Psych movie, and it was utterly delightful. The whole cast looked like they were having a blast.

4. We finished Wizards of Arcadia, and I liked it. I am very intrigued with the ending; ( spoilers )

5. We finished Lucifer ages ago, and I forgot to post about it.

( spoilers )

On tenterhooks for the conclusion of the season.

First the recap of the remaining episodes: ( spoilers )

And now for some meta. ( spoilers )

1. My friends M&M came over yesterday and brought some of their extensive pen collection for me to play with. It was very, very illuminating in ways that I hadn't expected.

( so much pen talk )

2. We watched the first episode of Lucifer, finally!, and it was good, but also it was weird? ( spoilers )

3. She-Ra watch continues! Almost done. ( spoilers for final season beginning with episode one )

4.

Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. Pepperberg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is interesting. I didn't realize that recognition of animal cognition was such a hard fought battle. I think we just take it for granted in the 21st century that animals have intelligence.

Alex was clearly a remarkable animal, and so is Dr. Pepperberg.

The memoir elements of this book make me really sad. Pepperberg was neglected and unloved by her parents and intensely lonely as a child. She was subject to a great deal of sexism throughout her career. She was not treated well by her colleagues at various institutions. She divorced a husband who did not see her work as being as valuable as his and demanded she stop to support his work. And then at the end of the book her bird dies. :(

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gloss wrote me the most wonderful ficlet for Ouida's Moths, and it literally brought me to tears because every day I am so thankful I ended up in the mix with all you amazing people. I know that most of you haven't read the novel and probably won't read it, but I just want you to know that what

gloss has done in such a short space is masterful and really clever and makes me deeply, deeply happy.

2. I got a Halloween postcard from

misbegotten (and on a day when I really needed the pick-me-up).

3. I love every single person in this bar. 53 of you answered my poll yesterday, and not a single one of you suggested I keep reading that horrid book. LOL I am taking your advice. I am marking it as read on Goodreads and then saying in my review that I DNF.

4. My most and least comfortable panties are indistinguishable at a glance. After accidentally wearing the least to work on Wednesday, I have thrown them in the trash. Much as life is too short to waste on 800 pages of Ginsberg, it is also too short to waste time digging one's panties out of one's crotch surreptitiously between classes.

5. My Harriet Jacobs article is done and away! My promotion application is done and away! Now the waiting begins for them both.

6. Emma is now scheduled to take the SAT twice this fall, and we have had a come to Jesus about how she has to take more responsibility and step up and not let her anxiety about going away to college put her in a real bind of missing deadlines and etc. I think we both feel better about it now.

7. Holy shit, She-Ra!!! ( spoilers )

8. Lovecraft Country blew me away again. ( spoilers )

1. Rest in peace, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You were a voice for true justice, and your light will be missed in this time of darkness. So few of us get to have the kind of legacy you will have; most of us will only be remembered by a handful of people for a handful of things--small kindnesses and minor cruelties alike. Thank you for giving us an example to look up to of a life lived large in the service of others.

When the breaking news of her death interrupted Jeopardy, Josh and I reached out and clutched hands silently because this is the world we live in; I have to admit that I was relieved that the news was the death of an important person rather than the announcement of a declaration of war or massive loss of life or something similar.

2. She-Ra! Y'all, I am enjoying this kids' cartoon just as much or more than anything else I have watched in the last ten years. LOL

( spoilers )

3. Lovecraft County was amazing last week. ( spoilers )

4. It has been fall temperatures, and I have been sitting on my back porch and reading and writing in my journal and watching the birds; it has been so peaceful and wonderful and everything I ever wanted from being a grownup and living in my own house.

5. I got a postcard from

oracne and a Halloween card from

misbegotten. Both have pride of place on the bulletin board.

6. For the past few weeks, my wind down before bedtime reading has been stationery blogs, and so I have gotten super hyped up about my paper/pen stash. ( so much paper and pen talk under here )

1. OMG, She-Ra. Why you do this to me? ( spoilers )

2. Lovecraft Country was good. ( spoilers )

Looking forward to the next episodes.

3.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun read. It's so interesting to see how much of vampire lore is a recent addition (like vampires not being able to be in the sun). In this text, Carmilla is not bothered by the sun. The explanation for her becoming a vampire is also one that I hadn't heard before (that suicides sometimes become vampires after death and then become spirits that turn other dead into vampires).

I really appreciated how femslashy this is. It is not even subtextual. It is pretty much textual. LOL

It's also a nice, quick read.

I'm really curious about who the woman masquerading as her mother really is. Is she a vampire, too? Is she a human in Carmilla's employ?

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4. I finally got a chance to work on my Harriet Jacob's article, and I feel so relieved. I meant to finish it the week I got sick, and that was totally derailed for what feels like forever. So I have felt like it's hanging over me. I worked on it this morning and am almost finished. I have to write a concluding paragraph and expand/tweak two other paragraphs, and then I'm done. I always get so anxious and paralyzed before writing, and then I do it, and it's totally fine. I wish I could hang on to the totally fine instead of getting tripped up by the paralyzed every time. LOL

The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is so good.

It is so beautifully written. It's a mystery, and the mystery remains compelling right up to the final pages.

It is full of really interesting and sympathetic characters that I root for and terrible evil that I root against.

The gothic elements are fantastically done.

Barcelona is another character in the book, and I very much enjoy getting to know the city through the characters' eyes.

This is a sad book, a tragic book in many ways, but it is also a hopeful book, and I needed to read something hopeful right now.

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2. ( She-Ra )

3. We finished Iron Fist season 2. OMG, y'all, how could they tease us with that glorious season that was to come and not follow through? I am so sad for what could have been.

( spoilers )

1. Well, my results from the health department came back (in an impressive just over 24 hours), and it was negative. I am surprised as I have had a fever at some point each day since Thursday, and I still don't feel great. But whatever! Two tests have said I don't have COVID, so the girls are going back to school, and Josh is going back to work tomorrow. I am staying out this week (tomorrow would be my final day on campus for the week anyway) and going back next week. Whatever I've got, it's still giving me a fever which means I could spread it around, and nobody wants whatever this is.

2. ( children's book round up for August )

3. She-Ra continues to be an utter delight. ( spoilers )

4. Damn is Lovecraft Country good. I just got the previous owner's issue of Entertainment Weekly (I have tried to refuse it so that it will get to where it needs to go, but the post office told me they'd just chuck it in the trash, so now I read it and don't worry about it), and they gave the show a terrible review. I was honestly shocked. I am 100% watching a different show.

( spoilers for episode 3 )

1. Y'all. I am not digging the second season of Iron Fist as much as I want to and definitely not as much as the first. *pouts* I'm hoping it will start picking up for me.

( spoilers for episodes 1-2 )

2. But I absolutely adored the end of what we have so far of Dragon Prince. If the show had ended there, I'd be satisfied, but I'm really glad we have more seasons to look forward to.

( spoilers for whole show )

1. I finished Michelle Obama's Becoming, and it was phenomenal. I have so much respect for her and for President Obama. I can't imagine how hard it would be to create a meaningful life for yourself and for your children and for your relationship with your husband while weathering the kind of insults and bullying that was directed at the entire family. I am astonished and grateful at all President Obama managed to accomplish while being thwarted by people across the aisle whose sole, publicly stated mission was simply to oppose him rather than to do anything positive for their constituents. I was unaware of much of the very important work Ms. Obama was doing behind the scenes until I read this book. I like that this book talks frankly about the ways she and President Obama are different and the struggles that she had with their relationship and with being First Lady. She isn't afraid to admit when she made a mistake or could have done something differently for a better outcome. Mostly, reading this book made me sad because I worry that we will not soon get back to that standard of excellence in our highest leadership, and I am afraid for the future.

2. Emma got a 3 on her AP exam, so she gets to skip ENGL 1101. That's three hours of college credit for $100. Whooo!

3. Y'all, Dragon Prince is amazing. I absolutely love this show.

( spoilers )

Last night, Emma and I got curious about My Little Pony fanfic, so I went to AO3 and pulled up the Friendship is Magic fandom. As of last night there were just a little over 2000 fics which was a lot more than I was expecting.

When sorted by kudos, the first few pages are a mixture of gen that seems pretty true to the show from the summaries, fusions where the characters of another show are ponies (SPN, Star Trek: AO3, Sherlock, etc), and Fluttershy/Discord. We haven't reached the season where Discord is introduced, but I looked the character up and he's voiced by John De Lancie (which explains the fic I saw where Q ends up in Ponyville). I was kinda surprised that in a show that (so far at least) is almost entirely about girl ponies, that a het pairing is so popular, but I cannot fault anyone for being swept away by John De Lancie's voice.

But the best part is that Josh did a dramatic reading of the least kudosed MLP fanfic for us, complete with voices for the characters and a faithful rendering of each lovingly misspelled word.

[In the interest of full disclosure, let me reassure you that I have no interest in reading or writing MLP fanfic; I was just curious about what's out there.]