See them run now you're gone, dream on
Oct. 24th, 2021 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Number of cats in our garden: 2
Number of cats we own: 0
Amount of time said cats spent in a tense stand-off on the outdoor furniture: at least 20 minutes.
They then started wandering in circles around the cherry tree, glaring at each other.
It's been a mixed bag of a weekend. I spent most of last night and this morning panicking about the aphid-infested chilli plants I inherited from
notasapleasure, which had begun infecting all the other indoor plants. I'm still a bit dubious about what to do with them, since spraying them with soapy water doesn't seem to have solved the problem (I think they were just too far gone for anything to work, to be honest). I'll consider it a win if the other indoor plants survive.
Far more enjoyable has been the gymnastics world championships. This normally wouldn't happen in the same year as the Olympics, but the pandemic meant that it's followed the Olympics in quick succession. This has then meant that most of the big names in women's gymnastics have elected to sit out the Worlds, meaning more chances at medals were available to up-and-comers, with a lot of upsets and surprises. There was a greater spread of countries winning medals (particularly in the apparatus finals), and — most pleasing for me — the medalists on floor went back to being more old school, winning on a mixture of difficulty and execution, rather (as has become more common with the dominance of US women in the sport) due to overloading the routines with difficulty but being a bit graceless in the execution, particularly the dance and interpretation of the music.
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Yesterday, Matthias and I watched Dune, and I was surprised by the intensity of my reaction to it. I loved it, and the last time I can remember loving a film that much, it was Mad Max: Fury Road, which is actually my very favourite movie. I've read Dune, but it's not a particular favourite of mine (I don't watch film/TV adaptations of books that I dearly love, not even if every other fan of the book has told me it's a good adaptation), so perhaps big fans of the book would feel differently, but for me it felt like basically a perfect film. I find it hard to explain why I loved it so much — certainly I loved the score, and I always love Denis Villeneuve's whole aesthetic, which is very suited to the kinds of intergalactic political space opera which calls for sweeping shots of vast brutalist architecture dwarfing tiny, tiny human characters — but the best I can really manage is that the heart (and id) wants what it wants, and apparantly what my heart wanted was this specific film. I would quite happily watch it three more times in the next week if I could.
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Other than that, I've been impatiently waiting for my Yuletide assignment, and reading a great post-canon Raven Cycle fic by
likeadeuce, which has a great sense of place and found family — exactly what I want for fic in this fandom.
Recognize the World that You Call Home (24888 words) by likeadeuce
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Characters: Richard Gansey III, Blue Sargent, Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey II, Mrs. Gansey (Raven Cycle), Helen Gansey, Original Characters, Orphan Girl | Opal
Additional Tags: Future Fic, domestic pynch, Hiking, appalachian trail, Parenthood, Adoptive Parents Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish, Childhood, Backstory, Gansey family problems, Floating Timeline, Kid Fic, ley lines, Iceland, Roadside Attractions, Richard Gansey International Runaway, Dreams (Gansey's this time), Dogs, Adam and Gansey are friends
Summary:
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I hope you've all been having lovely weekends!
Number of cats we own: 0
Amount of time said cats spent in a tense stand-off on the outdoor furniture: at least 20 minutes.
They then started wandering in circles around the cherry tree, glaring at each other.
It's been a mixed bag of a weekend. I spent most of last night and this morning panicking about the aphid-infested chilli plants I inherited from
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Far more enjoyable has been the gymnastics world championships. This normally wouldn't happen in the same year as the Olympics, but the pandemic meant that it's followed the Olympics in quick succession. This has then meant that most of the big names in women's gymnastics have elected to sit out the Worlds, meaning more chances at medals were available to up-and-comers, with a lot of upsets and surprises. There was a greater spread of countries winning medals (particularly in the apparatus finals), and — most pleasing for me — the medalists on floor went back to being more old school, winning on a mixture of difficulty and execution, rather (as has become more common with the dominance of US women in the sport) due to overloading the routines with difficulty but being a bit graceless in the execution, particularly the dance and interpretation of the music.
Yesterday, Matthias and I watched Dune, and I was surprised by the intensity of my reaction to it. I loved it, and the last time I can remember loving a film that much, it was Mad Max: Fury Road, which is actually my very favourite movie. I've read Dune, but it's not a particular favourite of mine (I don't watch film/TV adaptations of books that I dearly love, not even if every other fan of the book has told me it's a good adaptation), so perhaps big fans of the book would feel differently, but for me it felt like basically a perfect film. I find it hard to explain why I loved it so much — certainly I loved the score, and I always love Denis Villeneuve's whole aesthetic, which is very suited to the kinds of intergalactic political space opera which calls for sweeping shots of vast brutalist architecture dwarfing tiny, tiny human characters — but the best I can really manage is that the heart (and id) wants what it wants, and apparantly what my heart wanted was this specific film. I would quite happily watch it three more times in the next week if I could.
Other than that, I've been impatiently waiting for my Yuletide assignment, and reading a great post-canon Raven Cycle fic by
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Recognize the World that You Call Home (24888 words) by likeadeuce
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Characters: Richard Gansey III, Blue Sargent, Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey II, Mrs. Gansey (Raven Cycle), Helen Gansey, Original Characters, Orphan Girl | Opal
Additional Tags: Future Fic, domestic pynch, Hiking, appalachian trail, Parenthood, Adoptive Parents Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish, Childhood, Backstory, Gansey family problems, Floating Timeline, Kid Fic, ley lines, Iceland, Roadside Attractions, Richard Gansey International Runaway, Dreams (Gansey's this time), Dogs, Adam and Gansey are friends
Summary:
Since leaving Henrietta after high school, Gansey and Blue have been bouncing around the world looking for a place that fits. After more than ten years, they are almost ready to make some decisions, but first they decide to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail together. Along the way, Gansey revisits memories of the childhood that turned him into a lover of forests, mysteries, and traveling the world. Meanwhile, Ronan and Adam are creating their own family back at the Barns.
Written for Raven Cycle Big Bang 2021
I hope you've all been having lovely weekends!
no subject
Date: 2021-10-24 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-24 11:46 pm (UTC)Very interested to hear your thoughts on the World Championships -- I've been too busy to give over my usually recreation time to them, but I like hearing about them secondhand!
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 03:08 pm (UTC)The World Championships was really interesting to watch, precisely because it was nice to see such a variety of gymnasts and countries on the medal podium, and almost all of them were fresh new winners, rather than the usual suspects. The next three years are certainly going to be interesting!
no subject
Date: 2021-10-25 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-25 09:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-25 10:44 am (UTC)May your indoor plants survive.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 03:12 pm (UTC)The plants are limping along so far — fingers crossed!
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Date: 2021-10-25 06:36 pm (UTC)The gymnastics competition sounds lovely too--I'm more of a rhythmic gymnastics fan than an artistic one, but yes, it's so frustrating when the same people win over and over and only a few countries are ever really in competition for medaling. And RG has its own problems with overloading routines and then being sloppy and still winning. (So does figure skating, for that matter.)
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Date: 2021-10-26 03:21 pm (UTC)I agree with you entirely. It's just easier for me to get to a place where I can forgive the film for being a bad adaptation if I don't love the source material much to begin with. (Liking it or enjoying the source material is fine, but if I love it, I just don't feel I can be fair to any adaptation, so I avoid it entirely. I made this decision as a bitterly disappointed nine-year-old having watched Alfonso Cuarón butcher my then-favourite book, and it's served me well ever since!)
I wouldn't say it's so much as 'sloppiness' (no one could call Simone Bile's tumbling passes on floor and beam 'sloppy'), it's just a lack of attention paid to the other elements because they don't really count towards the final score, so all they're treated as is a process to get from massively high-scoring tumbling pass A to massively high-scoring triple pirouette B, and so on. It's interesting to know that similar problems persist in rhythmic gymnastics and figure skating too, though.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 03:59 pm (UTC)A Little Princess? I mean, I love that movie to the depths of my soul, but it is nothing like the original book (which I also love).
In RG, it's particularly egregious with sloppiness--sometimes a gymnast will drop the apparatus, etc. and yet still win over someone with a flawlessly performed routine. But yes, the lack of attention to other elements is also a big issue.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-27 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-27 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-27 09:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-27 03:13 pm (UTC)I hope you enjoy Dune if you go and see it!