bironic

DOING

Better. Taking a three-day weekend helped, and I'm trying to learn how not to be upset by work-related things that I don't think I should care about so much. That said, even during what felt like a good weekend, my brain delivered five stress dreams in two nights.

A few friends came over for the first night of Passover; we had good conversation and lots of food and drink. It would be nice to figure out a better furniture arrangement in this small space to accommodate more than four diners for occasions such as these; some people were left out, and that's not a good feeling. Recipe-wise, would rec these almond flour jam thumbprint cookies and a chremsele/pancake batter made of matzo meal (1/4 c), eggs (4) and cottage cheese (1 cup).

The monthly local fangirl Bad Movie Night had more attendees than usual, which made for a lively viewing experience of The Fate of the Furious. It struck me as the Batman vs. Superman of the Fast & Furious franchise, in that the basis of the conflict made no sense, a lot of it dragged on and there was gratuitous urban destruction. But a few of the action sequences made up for the rest. And as others pointed out, it had more colors than the DCU, which is to say, it had colors.

Last weekend a clutch of us saw a burlesque performance of Dracula by a group called The Slaughterhouse Society that had the highest production values, most consistent talent, and most coherent storyline of any burlesque I've seen, the runner-up being the Slutcracker, the annual local burlesque Nutcracker that as a result of its source material suffers from a comparative lack of sexy biting. The other geek burlesques I've been to—Star Trek, BtVS, Archer, etc.—tend toward a series of unconnected sketches in which some performers don't seem to know what to do with the time before the stripping begins, and skill levels vary, although I appreciate the community's enthusiastic inclusion of beginners as well as more experienced performers. The Dracula show swung toward the other end of the spectrum, in that it hardly had any stripping, instead a mostly mimed and danced three-act story with video interludes. Lots of gender- and race-bent casting, and unabashedly queer, with relationships including Mina/Lucy and Quincy/Arthur and Draculas/everybody. IMO Jolie LaVie/Cassandre Charles stole the show as the young version of Dracula; just incredible stage presence and, *cough*, an amazing body. I also particularly enjoyed a sketch in the "you may have heard of these other Victorian-era monsters" sequence where Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde danced each other to death in creepy masks while a VAST song played. Overall thoroughly enjoyable evening. stultiloquentia hit some highlights.

READING

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. TBD whether this falls on the side of Ancillary Justice, which you ~may recall~ I adored, or Provenance, which I thought was fine with occasional delights. So far, about 150 pages in, it's like the premise of American Gods got tossed in a blender with the "I" and "you" structure of The Broken Earth trilogy, which I'm not sure is a winning combination for me, although it's spiked with Leckie's talent for humorous linguistic play and her interests in intercultural politics and the power of language, which may explain why a couple of people who blurbed it compared it to Ursula Le Guin. Recent chapters did introduce themes about the meaning of life and the tug of war between wanting to be connected to others versus wanting to be, literally, a rock, i.e. an eerie echo of stuff my therapist kept bringing up before we ended our sessions, so there's that.

(We had our last appointment last week. Here's hoping for improvement through other avenues.)

VIDDING

I woke up Saturday, fixed a couple of things that had been bothering me about my equinox_exchange assignment, and then… made a second vid? In about three hours, juuuust squeaking in under the deadline? (I backdated it on the AO3, so this isn't giving anything away.) So that happened. I'm not saying it's a great work of art, but a [redacted] vid now exists where none existed before, and that is pleasing.

Anyway, the exchange went live, and someone cosmic_llin made me a Julian Bashir character study vid, yay: I Won't Back Down (DS9). Llin covered the spectrum of ways Bashir learned to be brave, plus she featured lots of clips of him looking sexily mussed, dirty, or roughed up, so either we like similar things or she knows my heart. :)

Other than that, my favorite in the collection is Stars (Romeo+Juliet), a haunting Mercutio vid by sweetestdrain for absternr.

Other favorites:
- Sound of Her Wings (The Sandman comics) by absternr for mithborien
- Like, Wannabe (Clueless) by cherryice for bessyboo
- Ice ice baby (Demolition Man) by condnsdmlk for theletterelle
- Juke Joint Jezebel (The Matrix) by theletterelle for AudreyV
- Take Over (The Craft) by winterevanesce for GhostTownExit

And more. Overall a pretty solid collection. As with Festivids, I like the inclusion of more YouTube-style vids and still-source vids. It'll do the community good to continue evolving.