potofsoup

So it turns out that working constantly really tanks one's creativity, who'd have thought? Looking back, I think I've really struggled to find time to draw and make stuff this past year and a half partially because Miss Rutabaga started school.

I genuinely thought, back in August of 2021, that Miss Rutabaga starting school would mean more time -- "whew, she's a thinking, talking, independent human who can pee on her own, we're onto the easier part now," I thought, and also "hey, it's awesome that she's now going to the school where I teach, which offers free aftercare and morning busing for teachers' kids."

Turns out what's happened is that Miss Rutabaga and I leave the house at 7:15am and get back home at 6:15pm, which includes a 90 minute round-trip commute and 10-ish hours spent at work, working. By the time I get home, I am so peopled out that I just want to hide and decompress for an hour, and after that, I'm just completely out of creative energy. (not to mention the 5 hours I spend on Chinese School stuff on weekends, plus the little bits of grading that make its way home.) I think the tl;dr of this is that I should really work less than 60 hours a week, and ideally less than 50 hours a week. But ... I can't figure out how to do that. So: not a lot of energy left for creative stuff.

:/

I did draw a comic over the summer about an anglerfish, which, once I put the anthology together, I'll be able to share.

I've also done the requisite research for my Tape vs. Hurley comic, so what's next is finding a nice chunk of empty time to do the layout for the comic.

I also have about 5 different wips that are all ~80% done, so instead of signing up for any holiday events, I'm going to see if I can carry any of these wips to the finish line by January.

In the meantime, twitter is imploding in hilarious ways, and I am giving tumblr money for moving in the right direction, so that's pretty awesome. (And the midterms are turning out much better than expected, which has helped with J's mental health, which then helps with everything around the house.) :D

Due to migraines I wasn't able to look at the screen much the past few days, which led to me rereading some old Jinyong books I had around, which then lead to me getting an e-reader and reading Word of Honor. I was pretty excited to read it, since I absolutely *loved* reading Guardian (镇魂) and was very impressed with Priest's worldbuilding and social commentary. Word of Honor ... is decent, but nothing amazing, alas.

It has the standard wuxia tropes, and it's still a little light on both the fighting logistics and the sociopolitical grounding to my liking, but it seems like most modern wuxia is like that. I guess I'm a traditionalist who grew up on Jinyong, and it frustrated me that I don't know which dynasty this is taking place, and the story didn't show at all the impact of all these wuxia people on the local population. (Seriously, modern wuxia authors -- the jianghu doesn't exist in isolation from the government and the commoners, it exists *between* the two, which is why *you need to show both*)

That said, I did like how the main characters are both older (in their early 30s), and clearly jaded about power, morality, love, etc. People being competent is my fave, and the main characters are definitely very competent. It was also nice that one of the characters was unrepentantly gay and everyone's just like "okay, you do you." I also liked the message about choosing to live a life of your choosing rather than going with the safety of the status quo -- the two main characters are both people who are at the top of their respective social hierarchies, who choose to leave that in order to find a different, simpler, more humdrum life. Similarly, there's the usual mcguffin of "the magic book of ultimate power" that comes with the usual caveat of "if you do it wrong and are overly greedy for power then you will go mad and die", but it's a nice twist that there *is* a person who actually achieves this ultimate power, and the result is that he lives forever but can only eat cold food, and after about a century of this he's like "fuck this" and decides to travel the world EATING ALL THE FOOD, while getting old and weak, because he's like life without living is not worth it. The epilogue is literally him being old and having ZERO REGRETS about getting to EAT YUMMY FOOD, and like, that's pretty rad.

(I vaguely poked at the TV show and it may have ended with the two main characters being trapped in the land of ice and snow eating only cold food??? To which I'm like .... that's actually explicitly against the point of the story??? Anyway, the main characters in the book basically end with getting to hang out and wrestle to see who's on top, and the main character who was gonna die gets cured by a friend who cares. It's a little less thematically satisfying, but hey they get to eat real food. Honestly, I would have been fine with the main character dying at the end, or choosing to live without martial arts, or maybe having to re-build his chi from zero. But anyway, friends are nice. I think Priest could have strengthened the idea about friendship and choosing to reach out.)

Another epilogue features the reincarnation of a pair of lovers from the story, which I also really liked -- after reading so much Western stuff it's nice to read something that, like, does reincarnation properly.

Overall, the writing seemed very sloppy and unedited, which, I guess, is the nature of serially written online fiction. (The chapters are really uneven in length, the pacing fluctuates a lot, and tThere were numerous author notes about having to take finals, or being sick.) It's also one of her earlier works (2010), and I'm wondering if some of her later works gives her more time to edit.

I recently caught up on the British politics drama via tumblr, a very enjoyable read. Here's the posts in order, in case anyone missed them:

Mid-Jan: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/post/673901375516753920/hoo-boy-the-circus-is-in-town-this-week-lads-i

Late-Jan: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/post/674633181543235584/the-adventures-of-big-dog-the-clown-24th-jan-22

Mid-Feb: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/post/675937133833453569/the-adventures-of-big-dog-the-clown-11th-february

Early Jun: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/post/686343437588529152/becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys-sawing4teens

Early Jun: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/post/686342437826854912/what-do-you-think-the-chances-are-of-the-greased

Jul 5: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/post/688948206022836224/so-it-turns-out-boris-johnson-has-learned-nothing

Jul 6: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/post/689332224407027712/the-adventures-of-big-dog-the-clown-vol-5722

A few smaller posts at the tag: https://becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys.tumblr.com/tagged/the%20adventures%20of%20big%20dog%20the%20clown

Today Spouse and I watched Everything Everywhere All at Once! It was super fun and definitely worth a watch! I cried, like, 3 times, over the complexities of generational pain and lost opportunities and hope and humans reaching out in search of connection. There were also a couple moments where I hid my eyes -- two martial arts fight scenes that involved dildos, one grotesquely romantic scene involving sausage fingers, and 3 blood splashes. Each of the cringe moments was less than 30 seconds, and was mostly me being squeamish, but GUYZ IT WAS SO GOOD.

It's original and refreshing.

It rejects the standard action movie formula (while still showing you some good fight choreography)

It is an amazingly intimate portrayal of a Chinese American family -- Chinglish abounds and they just roll with it, subtitling sentence fragments and just letting the chaos of the family show through. When the mom and dad of the movie want to talk without their daughter understanding, they speak in Chinese, and when they don't want their dad to understand, they speak in English. The daughter is trying to get the family to acknowledge her girlfriend and her independence, while also craving their love and support. The father is trying to rekindle his marriage. The mom (Michelle Yeoh) is trying to figure out an IRS tax audit, keep the business running, and put on a good show in front of her father, all while grappling with the sense that maybe her life would have been better if she didn't run away to America with her husband. All of these family feelings that feel genuine, and approached with a nuanced touch.

It is also a completely bonkers adventure movie involving universe hopping, an existential threat to the multiverse, dramatic use of googly eyes, and chekhov's buttplug.

And yet somehow it all works together to tell a cohesive story that provides resolution across multiple timelines. After expanding to include everything, it manages to actually shrink back down and talk about just one thing. So. Impressed.


I also watched Turning Red recently, which was also Great Fun, mother-daughter shenanigans. It feels good to see 2nd and 3rd gen Asian American storytellers being given the platform to create films!

This past week I was in COVID quarantine and also wrapping up my evals and getting lessons planned, so didn't do much. Pecked away at writing fic a little, and wrote that Witcher blog post.

Here's a little fic snippet:
From outside the room, he hears Sam calling in their standard pizza order from where he’s sprawled out on the couch. With Stark out of town, Sam had to hold down the aerial containment on his own. He’d managed, but Redwing got fried and there was that scary moment with the laser. Bucky can hear the thread of exhaustion in Sam’s voice as he made his usual jokes with the guy running the pizza place. He should really go and help — Sam’s usually too busy looking after him and Steve to really look after himself.

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to try to post these "What I'm Working On Wednesdays", so... here's 2 shots of what I'm working on:


I'm crocheting a bag for Miss Rutabaga's Chinese homework -- she's going to class in person on Sunday!

And I just dashed out a quick pic for an exchange. Here's a little snip:

This one is from: https://abeautifulblog.tumblr.com/post/668963484451717120/fun-meta-asks-for-writers

As usual, I did a first pass at it in answering the ones that are easy to answer. Feel free to comment if you want more about something, for some reason.


1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

I feel like my problem is that I have too many things that I want to work on. I have, like 10 fanfic wips, a couple of fan comics that I have drafted in my head, but also I want to do the Tape v. Hurley comic? But also, work, other work, etc etc.

( more questions behind the cut )

As per usual, I just went through and answered questions that I felt like answering.

( bloop )

Hoosband and I have not been big fans of Chibnall Doctor Who -- he generally has an interesting premise, and characters that look great on paper (diverse historical characters!), but then... the character beats feel off (like that Ada Lovelace episode, or when the Master is in WWII, or the fact that there's all these Yas-centric episodes but I still don't feel like I know her at all), and the story resolution is messy, sometimes even undercutting the very themes that were set up in the premise (like the Amazon episode -- is technology supposed to be good or bad in that one?)

Anyway, we didn't go into Chibnall's last season with high hopes -- it's a 6 episode story arc, and we were like "oh no, he's going to set up an interesting premise, then the characters aren't going to be developed, and then he's going to botch Act 3." But so far, 4 episodes in, it's been... not bad? Like, sure, the whole Time is fighting Space thing is kinda bollocks, and the Ravagers look really dumb and don't really have any motivation or characterization besides "evil", and the Division is the most boring Top Secret Agency ever, but! Vinder and Bel have a character arc! The episodes are tense and generally cohesive! The Weeping Angels episode didn't seem to come out of nowhere, and, excepting the last 30 seconds or so, made a lot of plot sense. Sure, Dan is pretty boring, but Yas seems to be getting some character development! Peggy and the Professor were pretty decently fleshed out! I'd been wondering how people gets absorbed into Passenger, and they showed us! There are a lot of balls in the air, but it feels resolvable in the next 2 episodes.

Of course, Chibnall might drop said balls in the third act, but for once, I'm actually holding out hope!

It was a super rare date with Spouse :)

I've never read Dune before, and I didn't read spoilers, so this was also a rare event where I didn't know where the movie was going! :D

- They did a really good job on laying out the various competing factions and not info-dumping. A lot of great showing of the world instead!
- It was good to have visuals of an expansive sci-fi world that *isn't* Star Wars. :chefkiss:

- Definitely enjoyed the framing of "lol these guys might be the nicer oppressors but they're still oppressors." Good job. (Oscar Isaacs being like "I'm the nice one who's willing to work with you, but also your planet was given to me by the emperor, and actually I want to work with you mostly to integrate you into our hyper-militaristic society as a force that fights for me")
- ::gestures:: look at all that over-militarization. Where are the women in this society? (Besides the BeneGs, ofc)
- oh man, not a fan of the White Savior trope. Paul Atreides, I see you, being better at fighting and being oh so magically knowledgeable. I'm so glad that it's not all in Paul's PoV because that would have been *insufferable* (I came out of this with strong Lawrence of Arabia vibes, and then learned on wikipedia that in fact this story was heavily inspired by that, lol)


( a few more character notes, which are vague, but also spoilery )