owlmoose: (star trek - sisko baseball)

This is, of course, not everything I watched in July, but it is everything I wrote a little about and never got around to posting. Other media from July I could talk about, and possibly will later (especially if anyone is interested): Severance, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Better Call Saul S6.5, Stray, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Upload: I don't think I ever posted here about the first season of Upload, an Amazon Prime series about the digital afterlife, so even though I watched it over a year ago, the occasion of finishing Season 2 is a fine time to talk about the series as a whole. I feel like I haven't heard a lot of buzz in fandom circles about Upload, and it's a shame, because it's a solid sci-fi comedy drama with clever writing and excellent chemistry between the leads. The premise: it's the near future, and we've figured out how to upload full human consciousnesses to the cloud at the time of death. But because we live in a capitalist society, the digital divide carries over into the Great Beyond, with those who can afford it living in posh resorts, while lower-cost solutions feature bare-bones accommodations and strict data limits. Our two protagonists are Nora, who works as a sort of digital assistant in Lakeview, one of the higher end residences, and Nathan, a programmer who was working on a more egalitarian solution when he died unexpectedly in a car accident... or maybe it was murder. Lots of clever skewering of corporate greed, a charming romance, and excellent character interactions. Both the first and second seasons have ended on extreme cliffhangers, and I can't wait to see where it all goes.

Ms. Marvel: I wanted to post about this as we were watching it, and I kind of wish I had, because I probably would have been more enthusiastic. This is a show that started off amazingly strong, then devolved into Marvel's usual third act problem of raising the stakes too high and forcing a CGI-heavy mega-battle to round things off. That said, when it hit, it hit. Iman Vellani was born to play Kamala Khan -- most spot-on casting since Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, and I am not exaggerating, and I loved everything about her interactions with family and friends (even parts of the CGI mega-battle). So excited to see how they work her into the movie universe.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: I mentioned earlier that I watched the first episode of this show; I enjoyed it, but it took a little motivation to continue. Upon reflection, I think my reluctance was caused by Star Trek saturation (watching two seasons of Discovery in a little over a week plus a season of Lower Decks and a few episodes of Picard S2), nothing to do with the show itself. So T and I decided to give up on Picard for now and watch this instead, and it was an excellent decision. While I generally prefer my TV serialized, it's nice to get a break from it, too, with a show that carries character development and motivation across episodes but also tells a self-contained story in each show. I could quibble with some of its decisions, but overall I thought it was great and look forward to the next season.

owlmoose: A bright blue butterfly (butterfly)

Hadestown: I've long been curious about this musical, and after a couple of postponements, it's finally come to San Francisco. I don't usually listen to album versions of musicals I don't know (Hamilton being the big exception), so I wasn't familiar with the music at all, and knew very little else beyond it being a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. It's a brilliant show -- strong cast, both acting and musically, excellent music, beautiful production values. It's interesting watching this so close on the heels of playing Hades, which isn't really an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling, but it does focus strongly on the romance between Hades and Persephone, which is the main secondary plot of Hadestown. To be honest, I think I prefer how the game set up their story and resolved it. Spoilers for both the show and the game )

I should do some reading on Hadestown and what the storytellers were intending their message to be, as well as other takes on how people read it.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: I've watched the first episode. It was good, and yet somehow I'm not compelled to pick up the next one. Am I done with purely episodic Trek? But I liked Lower Decks. I've heard so much positive buzz about this one that I'm sure I should just keep going. Anyone have thoughts (no spoilers please)? Not sure why I'm so uninspired by it. (I do know why I'm not super inspired by the first two episodes of Picard Season 2, but that's a different topic, and I'll get back to it later.)

owlmoose: (star trek - bones and sulu)

Star Trek: Discovery, Season 3: And now we get to my true priority for getting back on Paramount+: catching up with Discovery. There's really no good reason for me to have missed the last two seasons -- I wanted to watch it, enjoyed S2, was eager to see what the show would make of its new premise -- and yet here we are. In theory I suppose I don't need to cut for spoilers, but I'm going to do it anyway. )

owlmoose: (star trek - bones and sulu)

We're in the habit of bouncing around between streaming services -- turning them off when we aren't using them, turning them back on for something specific, forgetting to turn them off again... One of our on-and-offers is Paramount+, since the only shows I care about on there all have Star Trek in the name. I'd seen the first two seasons of Discovery and kept meaning to get back to it, but somehow I never did and suddenly I was two seasons behind. Finally, the release of Picard S2 inspired us to resubscribe, but for long story reasons we haven't actually watched that yet; instead, we watched Lower Decks Season 1 (and so far the first episode of S2) and I got back to Discovery - I've now watched the first 7 or 8 eps of Season 3.

I'm enjoying it, but something about the lore has been nagging at me, something I don't dare look up because I'm sure any site that might be helpful would also be full of spoilers, not just for Disco S3 and S4 but for Strange New Worlds. So I come to you, my faithful DW friends, for answers. It's about the Andorrians and the Orions and their relationship to the Federation. A bit of context first: my Trek fandom has always been centered around the TNG era -- mainly TNG and especially DS9, but I've also seen all of Voyager and the first two or three seasons of Enterprise. However, my knowledge of the TOS era is reeeeeally shaky -- I've seen some of the movies, and a very few episodes, but I don't have the lore at my fingertips at all.

As mentioned above, I'm hoping to get this answer with no spoilers for Discovery S3 or S4, or Strange New Worlds (or Lower Decks S2, if that happens to be relevant). But feel free to spoil anything and everything about TOS -- I recognize the statute of limitations is long up there.

Behind the cut for Discovery S3 spoilers )

Many thanks!

owlmoose: (star trek - sisko baseball)

Gilmore Girls rewatch: Yes, even including A Year in the Life. The YouTube algorithm has been showing me a lot of fun Gilmore clips recently, and I kept realizing that I didn't remember the context for most of them. So I decided to watch a few episodes, and before I knew it I was almost finished. In some ways it holds up; in others it doesn't -- I had forgotten the blatant fatphobia and homophobia (the latter is better in the reboot, but the former is much worse thanks to that awful poolside scene in "Summer"), and just how frustrating I find Rory and her sense of entitlement. But I'm glad I revisited it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 1: I've been meaning to catch up on Star Trek content for awhile now, and the release of Picard S2 gave us a reason to resubscribe to Paramount+, but we were in the mood for something lighter, so we decided to give Lower Decks a try instead. It's pretty fun, if a little overly silly and dependent on gross-out humor at times. Mariner is pretty great, Boimler is appropriately annoying, and I like the chemistry between Tendi and Rutherford. The callbacks to TNG-era Trek are really great -- gives you the sense of a big interconnected universe, without overwhelming the original characters and plots. Looking forward to watching Season 2.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: We finished this yesterday, and found it an enjoyable wrap-up, although the character development feels like it only got halfway there and needs another game to finish the full story of Ratchet, Rivet, and especially Kit. Fun gameplay, relatively light story, great voice performances (par for the course when Jennifer Hale and Armin Shimerman are in the house)

owlmoose: (bunny)

Arrowverse update: Am behind again. Legends, Flash )

Star Trek: The Next Generation rewatch: In preparation for Star Trek: Picard (which I still haven't started so no spoilers please!!), I refreshed my memory by watching a handful of episodes again, mostly to do with Picard, Data, and/or the Borg. In particular, it had been a long time since I'd seen either "Datalore" or the Hugh arc, and I suspect the details of that will be useful to remember. I've heard nothing but postive buzz about Picard and I'm looking forward to jumping in soon.

Be Kind, Rewind: I spent a good chunk of these last two weeks watching every video on this YouTube channel. Most of the episodes go in-depth on the Best Actress Academy Award winner in a particular year, which provides a jumping-off point to explore all kinds of issues around women and representation in Hollywood. I've also learned a lot of entertainment history. Definitely recommended.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix: Not great, but not as bad I was expecting based on buzz and reviews. It started off with a nice slow burn, as Jean Grey discovers both her new powers and the truth about her past. But the pacing got real rushed, real fast. I wish that we'd gotten more time with Sophie Turner as Jean, to build up her relationships with Scott Summers and Charles Xavier more naturally. And everything with the aliens was pretty weak. In the end, I don't know if it's even possible for one movie do to the beloved Dark Phoenix arc justice -- 20th Century Fox has now tried twice, and failed both times. Maybe Disney can do it up right as a mini-series someday.

owlmoose: (star trek - bones and sulu)
Given my interest in copyright and fair use in fandom, it was probably inevitable that I would write something about the new guidelines for Star Trek fan filmmakers that CBS and Paramount published recently. My post about it is up on [community profile] ladybusiness, here.
owlmoose: (Default)
Just a cold, but a bad enough one that I missed three days of work and didn't have energy for much beyond lounging around the house. So what did I do? Consumed a bunch of media!

1. Read comics: Nimona, the latest Captain Marvel collection (Chewie!), and the first three volumes of Matt Fraction's Hawkeye. I've had the Hawkeye books for awhile, and I actually bought and read the first one when it first came out. But then I put off getting the second, and then when I did get it I wanted to re-read the first one before reading it, and then I didn't get around to doing that either. So I read them all in one fell swoop yesterday. And they were great, although predictably I liked the Kate Bishop volume the best. Is the next one out yet? I know it's ending soon, or maybe already has, but there must be at least one more (that was quite a cliffhanger). Nimona was delightful. I don't know whether its initial publication as a web comic messes up its Hugo eligibility, but if not, it's definitely in my first round of nomination picks for next year.

2. Caught up on the last few months of PBS Idea Channel, which I hadn't watched since March or so. Or almost caught up, anyway -- I decided to take a break after the video that discussed Lewis's Law. One of the things I've always appreciated about the host, Mike Rugnetta, is how unapologetically feminist he is, and how he refuses to debate the validity of feminism as a philosophy. So when he spent his entire comment response to that episode pandering to "egalitarians" whose poor feelings were hurt when he compared them to MRAs, I was pretty disappointed. (I don't think egalitarianism, in and of itself, is necessarily a bad philosophy, but those egalitarians who set themselves up in direct opposition to feminism are 1. missing the point of feminism, especially intersectional feminism, and 2. not taking privilege into account.) I get wanting to keep your community open to a wide range of viewpoints, and I concede he may have worded his comparison clumsily, but there's nothing wrong with setting the terms of the debate. I hope this doesn't mean that he either avoids feminist topics in the future, or starts treating them all with kid gloves in order not to offend. Honestly, I'm not sure which would be worse.

3. Picked up my Dragon Age: Inquisition replay. I left my Trevalyen warrior stranded in Halamshiral for months, so I started by finishing up there, and then I played through the remaining Grey Warden quests (as well as a bunch of sidequests in the Western Approach, a few in the Hinterlands, and Varric's companion quest). Some spoilers. )

4. Watched a good chunk of Season 2 of Star Trek: Voyager. I never watched all of Voyager, and not long ago I was struck with the idea of revisiting it. I had remembered watching it for a few years, then getting bored when it became The Seven of Nine show, and most of the first season episodes were familiar, but the second season has been almost entirely new to me. I vaguely remember the business with Seska, and a couple of other things, but either I actually didn't watch it regularly or have blocked the whole thing out. It's been enjoyable to rediscover how much I loved Captain Janeway and B'lanna and Harry and the Doctor, and there's no one I dislike (although I prefer Neelix in small doses). It'll be interesting to see when it starts getting familiar again -- I know I was watching when Seven joined the cast, but I don't remember exactly what season that was, and not much about what was happening before that.

5. With T, watched Jupiter Ascending (which was bananas, but a fun kind of bananas, but I didn't fall in love with it as deeply as many of you did -- probably my expectations were dialed way too high), the Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself (which was lovely, and if you have any interest in Ebert -- and can handle watching a man in slow decline, since it was filmed over the last few weeks of his life -- I recommend it), and the first episode of Sense8 (promising, although I don't think I'll be able to binge on it).

Back to work today -- I don't usually work my part-time gig on Mondays, but I fell far enough behind this week that I want to at least start catching up. Fortunately I think I'm up for it, although I am a bit sad to end my mini media feast.
owlmoose: (star trek - bones and sulu)
I saw it. I liked it. Fun, with lots of appropriately whiz-bang fights and explosions and some great character moments as well. I'd say it was about on par with the first movie -- a fun sci-fi films, some good nods to classic Trek while remaining clearly rooted in the J.J. Abrams 'verse. Good acting. Let's not talk about the plot.

About the Benedict Cumberbatch thing...

Cut for spoilers. )

Other spoilery thoughts. )

So, in conclusion: fun, just don't think too hard about the plot holes. I would watch it again. Two thumbs tentatively up.
owlmoose: (star trek - sisko baseball)
I just spent the evening engrossed in an excellent series of essays on Deep Space Nine, written by a fan of the series who went back to rewatch with a critical eye.

Asking the Wrong Questions: Back through the Wormhole

Recommended, especially the Ode to Kira. It's a fairly unflinching look at the series, and I don't agree with all of it (I liked Season 5 much better than the author did, for one), but it's an excellent overview of what DS9 did right and where it could have been better. Note: full of spoilers.
owlmoose: (stonehenge)
A little song and dance from Captain Picard...

owlmoose: (Default)
Ganked from [livejournal.com profile] oswulf.

Pick 12 characters without looking at the questions below the cut. Then post your answers.

Be warned: there are 50 questions, so this is not a quick meme, and some of the topics covered are borderline NSFW. I found it entertaining, though.

1. Paine (FFX-2)
2. Nooj (FFX-2)
3. Yuna (FFX/X-2)
4. Auron (FFX)
5. Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Lost)
6. Juliet Burke (Lost)
7. Susan Ivanova (Babylon 5)
8. Hermione Grainger (HP)
9. Ashe (FFXII)
10. Lightning (FFXIII)
11. Jadzia Dax (Star Trek: DS9)
12. Worf (Star Trek: TNG/DS9)

So most of these questions would result in some fairly crazy cross-over crack, which suggests that the answers are going to be a little out there. I'm going to assume that I have a giant world-crossing machine which makes the various pairings feasible from a technical standpoint and go from there. Also, writing summaries is probably my least favorite thing to do, ficwise, so I'm going to skip that part of most of those questions.

Questions and answers. )
owlmoose: (Default)
Days written: 21/28 (ick)
Words written: 7,128 (22,959 for the year)
Words of fic written: 6,126
Stories worked on: 10
Stories posted: 7 (includes 3 for [livejournal.com profile] ff_kissbattle)
Star Trek stories written this month out of total Star Trek stories written to date: 2/2

Graph behind the cut )

Not as good as last month in terms of days written, and I really slipped on wordcount; I'm a good 10k words behind the [livejournal.com profile] getyourwordsout pace. On the other hand, I probably set my expectations too high for February, given that it contains a concert week. Add in some work crazyness and the fact that "Aftermath" is in beta, and I probably didn't do so badly, overall. But I'm still a bit disappointed in myself.

Progress on specific goals:

1. Write at least six days per week. Yeah, not so much. I barely made five per week. The concert week brought my average down, but I can't blame it all on that.

2. Finish and post at least two stories from the Alphabet Fic Meme. Definitely hit this one, with two stories completed (the two Trek-related stories, as mentioned above).

3. Make substantial progress on Chapter 5 of "Aftermath". A couple thousand words, give or take, although some of those are notes. And I added a chunk to Chapter 4 as well. I'll call this one borderline.

4. Write at least one story for either [livejournal.com profile] ff_fortnightly or [livejournal.com profile] halfamoon. Done! I wrote a YRP double-drabble for [livejournal.com profile] ff_fortnightly, only the second time I've ever written for that comm.

I also posted a Balthier-centric story inspired by a FFEX Chocobo Down prompt as well as three stories for the 2010 Kiss Battle: Isaaru/Yuna, Jecht/Jecht's wife, and Larsa/Penelo.

Two hits, one semi-hit, and a miss. I guess not so bad, although I really wish I hadn't missed the regular writing one, since the daily writing habit is the most important one to form. I do like those posting counts, though. Therefore, March goals:

1. Write an average of six days per week.

2. Finish and post at least one more story (ideally two) from the Alphabet Fic Meme.

3. Finish and post "Aftermath" Chapter 4 (depending on beta) and/or complete an outline for Chapter 5. (This isn't idle talk, either; I want to get this story to a good stopping place before FFEX starts.)

For a month as busy as March is shaping up to be (almost every weekend is already booked, and we're coming up on the end of the quarter at school), I think three goals ought to be enough. We'll see if they're not too much.
owlmoose: (Default)
Title: Not a Veterinarian
Fandom: Star Trek: DS9
Rating: G
Wordcount: ~630
Characters: Dr. Bashir, Commander Sisko
Spoilers: None
Notes: Written for the Alphabet Fic Meme, for [livejournal.com profile] oswulf's request of "Dr. Bashir, Xenophobia", which ended up mostly being a jumping off point. Set early in Season 1, although not tied to any particular events therein.

So, two Star Trek fics in less than a week. Will more be forthcoming? Only time will tell. But I think it's safe to say that I'm starting to feel a teeny bit more comfortable treading out of the comfort zone of the Final Fantasy universes.

'Frontier medicine.' )
owlmoose: (Default)
Title: To Get To The Other Side
Fandom: FFX-2/Star Trek (2009)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1396
Characters: Rikku, Paine, James T. Kirk, Dr. McCoy
Pairings: n/a
Spoilers: None
Notes: Written for the Alphabet Fic Meme for [livejournal.com profile] muggy_mountain's prompt, which was "Rikku/Captain Kirk (reboot), Adventure", and heavily inspired by the Shatner of the Mount remix video by Fall On Your Sword. If that makes this an unholy crossover, so be it. This is my first attempt to venture into the Trek universe, so crit is very, very welcome.

I had a total blast writing this. Many thanks to Mugs for giving me the opportunity. Props also to [personal profile] renay, who encouraged me to pursue the idea.

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain? )
owlmoose: (Default)
I think it's safe to say that I liked it.

I first saw it with T on Sunday, who isn't really a Star Trek person but was sucked in by the trailers, and today I was with [livejournal.com profile] amybang, who is a bigger Trek fan than I am, and all three of us enjoyed it. As I said to both of them, if nothing else, it's so nice to have actually *good* new Star Trek content again, for the first time since DS9 ended (or since "Star Trek: First Contact", depending on what you mean by new). More action-oriented than most recent Trek, but since all the action advanced the characterization, the plot, or both (although it was more plot than character driven), that worked for me.

Bear in mind that I am definitely a Next Gen/DS9 Trekker -- I've maybe seen a dozen episodes of TOS, so most of my knowledge of those characters is from the movies (2-4 and 6). So I recognize that a die-hard fan of the original cast might have different impressions. But for me, it was pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

More thoughts, with some spoilers. )

Long story short: two thumbs up, way up. And one of those is T's, and he's picky, so there you go.

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