lunabee34

1. Card from misbegotten and a box of masks from executrix! <3

2. We watched Ad Astra this past week, and I really liked it. ( spoilers )

3. We're watching 3Below on Netflix, the companion animated series to Trollhunters. I don't think it's as good as Trollhunters, and you definitely have to watch Trollhunters first, but I am really enjoying it. I would highly recommend both shows to everyone of all ages. They're just fun (and totally tug at the heartstrings). Fiona got the book on which Trollhunters is based for her birthday, so we're having fun reading that, too; we're only a few chapters in.

4. Avatar fic recs:

In the Hakoda is a good dad to Zuko subgenre, The Family Matters series by WinterSky101

In both the Hakoda is a good dad and someone finds out about Zuko's scar subgenres, The Crown Hangs Heavy by monpetitpois

5.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really enjoy this novel for the nuanced portrayal of industrial life in a northern mill town. Gaskell definitely has her middle-class prejudices, and her thesis that the problems of industrialization can be overcome by good people of the working class and the good people who employ them coming to understand each other better is deeply flawed; however, her genuine sympathy for the working classes is deeply felt and she makes many good points that seem obvious now (like, of course, your workers get upset when you make decisions without explaining them).

I think most of us have a good idea of the terrible working conditions of the Industrial Revolution--dangerous equipment, people getting lung disease from breathing in fibers, children working in mines. But what I don't think we ponder too often is that many of the aspects of working that we take for granted--that our employers will dialogue with us about pay or policy or whatever--were not automatic and took a lot of fighting to become standard.

The book ends abruptly, but I absolutely adore the last two lines; John and Margaret are definitely in for a rocky reception from both their families.



View all my reviews

1. Emma, Josh and I watched Suicide Squad on HBO. It was alright.

( SPOILERS )

2. Josh and I went to see Alien Covenant today. We both really liked it, but we both also really liked Prometheus so take that as your fair warning. LOL

( SPOILERS )

1. We watched Solaris on tamoline's recommendation that it was very reminiscent of Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy. I also suspect that whoever wrote Event Horizon was familiar with one of the first two versions of the film that precede the Clooney version we watched. ( SPOILERS )

2. We also watched Lucy a couple of days ago. Man, Scarlett Johansson is a good actor. I have loved her in every single thing I've seen her in, and she was exceptionally good in this movie, too. I must admit, though, that I enjoyed the first and second acts of the movie far more than the third. ( SPOILERS )

3. I finished How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman, a fascinating book that is structured around what Victorians from different classes and parts of the country would be doing throughout the day from getting up in the morning and washing and dressing to work and school and meals all the way to bedtime. What makes this a truly engaging read is that the author isn't just a historian; she's someone who tries out most of the activities she discusses in the book. So for instance, many Victorians did not bathe with water. They bathed using a combination of dry brushing the body and applying ammonia or vinegar to armpits and other potentially malodorous areas. Goodman went for four months without bathing with water and was happy to report that she didn't stink even once. She made many of the recipes for household goods like toothpaste or lotion or shampoo and tried them out herself. She frequently wears Victorian clothes and sews them herself in the Victorian manner using Victorian patterns, etc. I also found an answer to my previous question about exercise; Victorian men were being heavily encouraged throughout the entire period to exercise in a variety of ways. Women were discouraged from exercising at the beginning of the period because of the whole wandering uterus theory; scientists and doctors were genuinely concerned that vigorous exercise would damage a woman's ability to have children. However, as the period progressed, the benefits of exercise for women became more apparent and walking (which women had always been doing a lot of), some sports like archery, and calisthenics became popular for all classes of women.

4. Penny Dreadful, OMG, what are you doing? I love it! ( SPOILERS )

I've started rewatching Stargate Atlantis with Emma, and I am struck all over again by how much I love this show. Probably because it's a spin-off of an already established series, SGA starts really strong and just continues to get better. I've only seen most of the early season episodes one time, and so watching them a second time is revealing all over again all sorts of little nuances. For instance, I made my SGA fic debut with a series of fics featuring Bates/Kavanagh; I know the show portrays both characters pretty negatively. We're supposed to think Bates is a hard liner, that he's more interested in military goals than the civilian pursuit of peace, that he dislikes John merely because Sumner had done so, that he's racist and xenophobic because he suspects the Athosians of selling them out to the Wraith. And yet, his objections aren't unreasonable. Somehow the Wraith are being alerted to their presence when they go through the Gate, and as much as the Atlantis expedition might want to trust the Athosians, like any group of people, the Athosians must contain some some examples of moral turpitude. Regarding Kavanagh, as much as I love Elizabeth (and lord do I love that woman, hard hard hard hard, the love it knows no bounds), she's totally out of line in the way she treats him in "Thirty-Eight Minutes," his debut episode. Kavanagh suggests that in trying to save the stuck jumper, they risk blowing up the gate and killing everyone on Atlantis. To me, this is a reasonable objection to make. Possibly they could begin evacuating personnel to the mainland or to space in the jumpers or even to the outer extremities of the city to try to minimize casualties. But Elizabeth treats him as if he's making the suggestion only in the interests of self-preservation. Also, her threat to just chuck him through the gate to an uninhabited world, while clearly one she would never follow through with, is extremely inappropriate.

I also caught a little bit of the SPN episode "Playthings" earlier today and was reminded of how good the early seasons of SPN were. The show used to be legitimately scary. I miss those days. :( I forgot to watch the last two episodes of this season's SPN, and I don't have a pressing desire to catch up.

Josh and I watched Super 8 last night. Very enjoyable movie with a great cast of kids. I like that the movie is situated in time very clearly but very subtly. There's no heavy reliance on period specific music or an over-abundance of powder blue eye shadow; in fact, the main clue that we're in the 80s comes from the fact that all the kids are allowed to roam around unsupervised for hours. The girl in this movie is a doppelganger for a young Ginny Weasley. I kept waiting for a British accent to slip out. LOL I would definitely recommend this movie.

Speaking of JJ Abrams' movies, I'm pretty stoked that he's going to direct the next Star Wars movie. I know that many fans question having him at the helm, but at the very least, there's no way he can screw up the franchise any worse than Lucas himself did with the prequels.

angstslashhope posted this Resource for Firefly Fanfic Writing. It's got everything from the known worlds of the Alliance to a diagram of Serenity to places to look for Mandarin translations.

I saw Serenity today. My thoughts:

( BIG DAMN SPOILERS )