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juushikaWhat a weird [vaguely mumbled unit of time], just like everyone else's, but still.
I did a good job making October an All Spooks, All the Time month, which I've been carrying through November with mixed success. I pulled out a bunch of the spoopy films from our shelves, the stupider the better, and even managed to watch a few. Devon and I rewatched season 1 & 2 of Hemlock Grove, and then wisely decided against rewatching the third season, which was such a flop that there aren't even wiki summaries. I've been trying to read fanfic to scratch the itch instead, but I find myself stymied by the "shit on the female character that gets in the way of my favorite gay ship" approach of most fans. Season 2 is often a mess, season 3 sure does said female character dirty, and the technique of using a woman as go-between to explore homoerotic tension without making it actually gay is gross—but the end of season 2 leans to a bisexual polyam triad which isn't bad rep and isn't "in the way of" the gay ship and actually could be fascinating???? more of that, please, and less misogyny, thank you.
The highlight of the season was that by some luck I managed to line my library hold of Luigi's Mansion 3 up with November, so I played the first and second game in October. I still begrudge Nintendo their reliance on nostalgia as they marginally update the same handful of franchises, but, as with my experiences with Kirby and Zelda, I'll admit the format works and that watching those old, janky, limited-by-their era franchises expand with better gameplay, quality of life improvements, and particularly the bigger and better-rendered graphics in Nintendo's delightful plastic/squishy silicone playmobile aesthetic is actually fun. This series is the purest, greatest spoop, silly and cute and aesthetic and charmingly detailed.
My personal highlights: 1) Luigi humming the theme/bg music when idling in the second game, just like me. 2) That the singular annoyance of boo-catching in the first game pays off in the third game, when you cathartically whip the boo back and forth.
⁂
But the months themselves have been a blur. We lost early autumn to, you know, terrifying Oregon wildfires. We lost a week of mid-autumn when our upstairs neighbor's washing machine exploded and flooded our bathroom & ceiling, leaving us with three industrial fans and a dehumidifier in the central hallway where there was no escape from the sensory hell of heat, noise, and teeth-achingly dry air. Autumn came stop-motion: the smoke cleared and suddenly the leaves had changed; the fans were removed, and suddenly it was cold.
And then the election, which by singular blessing/curse I now almost entirely through a Destiel lens, which is not how I wanted or expected to remember those fever-dream days but here we are! And now Oregon goes back into lockdown that everyone will violate for the holidays, as I wish I could violate it too because being denied the chance to visit family, and the particular loneliness and fear of quarantine, makes me want to despite that I usually avoid it.
Two days ago I made a quick call to my uncle, who asked about the wildfires since that was the last thing we had talked about. Were they contained? had we stayed safe? And time slowed and I took a brief trip out of my body as I tried to recall the crisis before the election but after that COVID and before this COVID which took place in that distant time called ... two months ago—just two months. Strange, long months in a strange, long year.
I did a good job making October an All Spooks, All the Time month, which I've been carrying through November with mixed success. I pulled out a bunch of the spoopy films from our shelves, the stupider the better, and even managed to watch a few. Devon and I rewatched season 1 & 2 of Hemlock Grove, and then wisely decided against rewatching the third season, which was such a flop that there aren't even wiki summaries. I've been trying to read fanfic to scratch the itch instead, but I find myself stymied by the "shit on the female character that gets in the way of my favorite gay ship" approach of most fans. Season 2 is often a mess, season 3 sure does said female character dirty, and the technique of using a woman as go-between to explore homoerotic tension without making it actually gay is gross—but the end of season 2 leans to a bisexual polyam triad which isn't bad rep and isn't "in the way of" the gay ship and actually could be fascinating???? more of that, please, and less misogyny, thank you.
The highlight of the season was that by some luck I managed to line my library hold of Luigi's Mansion 3 up with November, so I played the first and second game in October. I still begrudge Nintendo their reliance on nostalgia as they marginally update the same handful of franchises, but, as with my experiences with Kirby and Zelda, I'll admit the format works and that watching those old, janky, limited-by-their era franchises expand with better gameplay, quality of life improvements, and particularly the bigger and better-rendered graphics in Nintendo's delightful plastic/squishy silicone playmobile aesthetic is actually fun. This series is the purest, greatest spoop, silly and cute and aesthetic and charmingly detailed.
My personal highlights: 1) Luigi humming the theme/bg music when idling in the second game, just like me. 2) That the singular annoyance of boo-catching in the first game pays off in the third game, when you cathartically whip the boo back and forth.
⁂
But the months themselves have been a blur. We lost early autumn to, you know, terrifying Oregon wildfires. We lost a week of mid-autumn when our upstairs neighbor's washing machine exploded and flooded our bathroom & ceiling, leaving us with three industrial fans and a dehumidifier in the central hallway where there was no escape from the sensory hell of heat, noise, and teeth-achingly dry air. Autumn came stop-motion: the smoke cleared and suddenly the leaves had changed; the fans were removed, and suddenly it was cold.
And then the election, which by singular blessing/curse I now almost entirely through a Destiel lens, which is not how I wanted or expected to remember those fever-dream days but here we are! And now Oregon goes back into lockdown that everyone will violate for the holidays, as I wish I could violate it too because being denied the chance to visit family, and the particular loneliness and fear of quarantine, makes me want to despite that I usually avoid it.
Two days ago I made a quick call to my uncle, who asked about the wildfires since that was the last thing we had talked about. Were they contained? had we stayed safe? And time slowed and I took a brief trip out of my body as I tried to recall the crisis before the election but after that COVID and before this COVID which took place in that distant time called ... two months ago—just two months. Strange, long months in a strange, long year.
