the carnival of you and me

Reading
Read Guardian fanfic, though less this week, and listened to another chapter and a half of Not Forgetting the Whale.

Kdramas
J and I have three half-hour episodes of Thirty But Seventeen left. It is a ridiculously drama-averse show. There have been two terrible characters who appeared in one episode each and were unceremoniously swept off-stage as soon as they'd served their respective narrative purposes, and one recurring, jealous-in-a-professional-not-romantic-way frenemy, who's since been redeemed. The real antagonist is trauma, and they deal with that pretty gently too. I love it.

At the other extreme end of the scale, there's Black, which is now dead to me (ironically(?), given it's about a Grim Reaper). We got as far as episode 8, but the clunky storytelling and super-dark themes came to a head last week when ( ALL THE WARNINGS ) So we're done. Now we need to figure out what to watch instead.

One possibility was One Spring Night, which has just started on Netflix and stars my darling Han Woo-tak from While You Were Sleeping, aka Seo Joon-hee from Pretty Noona Who Buys Me Food, aka Jung Hae-in (*points to icon*) AND Na Yeo-kyung, the bookshop owner from Capital Scandal aka Han Ji-min. I really want to love it, but: it's filmed in a weirdly disaffected way, with lots of long wideshots; even the OST is devoid of joy; and I'm a hard sell on romances that start with one party in a longterm "perfectly fine but uninspiring" other relationship. Like, I tend to think they'll get bored with this new person eventually, too. (It always makes me think of Sleepless in Seattle, where Meg Ryan dumped Bill Pullman because... he had allergies?)

I've also watched a few episodes of The Greatest Hit (aka Hit the Top aka the show with zombie-girl-from-Hwayugi and the totally gratuitous time travel), but we might try that after Thirty But Seventeen, so I should press pause for now.

Other TV
Killing Eve is, wow, so messed up! Sandra Oh continues to be amaaaazing. Started season 2 of Santa Clarita Diet; how is this zombie show so awwwww-inducing?

Guardian/Fandom
I finished episode 15, but I think I need to watch it again; there's a lot to process. My writing appears to be trapped in the intense slash vortex that is episode 14 (I have two ficlets at various stages of beta/rewrites). Everything is shiny and sparkly, and I'm only about a third of the way through the 520 Day collection. ♥___♥

Audio entertainment
John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme season 8 has started, and the first episode is available on BBC iPlayer.

Writing/making things
See above. I feel like I haven't quite hit my stride again, after the exchange, but I'm getting there. I either need to get through rewrites on my Shelter ficlet before the fan_flashworks deadline or come up with something else short and less thematically tangled.

Korean study
Haha, no.

Life/health/mental state things
The roofers have finished, including the awning over the verandah! They came on Sunday to get it squared away before the WEATHER arrived, and today the scaffolders are taking down the edging. I am, ot1h, massively relieved it's over (except for taking away the old roof), and otoh, wishing I had a drone or a periscope or could shapeshift into a cat so I could see it! It's very weird to spend so much money on something so important that I can't actually look at!

Every so often I open my to-do list in the hope that I've magically/incidentally achieved something and can cross it off. Last time I did that, the only thing I could cross off was "Write 520 Day Fic". Non-fandom things are falling through the cracks into an ice crevasse and singing Canadian folk songs into a Hallows-powered energy seal...

I went to Zumba for the first time in years on Monday. The instructor's style wasn't quite to my nitpicky taste, but man, it made me realise how much I miss it as a form of exercise.

Good things
Sunshine, the internets, Shen Wei's sense of humour, Zhao Yunlan's sprawling, fandom! 147 subscribers to sid_guardian!!! The boy and cats and friends!