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The anniversary 40th round at icons10in20 was a Monopoly game! That was so much fun! I decided - no surprise there - to make it an HPI set. Okay, two of them are actor pics of the HPI actors, but who's counting?

Teasers:



( 20 HPI icons )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

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Movies

I saw Flow at the theater, the Latvian Oscar winner for animated movie. It was brilliant. I'm not sure I would have voted it higher than Wild Robot, but they're both extremely good, definitely deserving of the Oscar. The plot is a bit hard to describe, since there is no dialogue at all, and some things (both what's happening in nature and character motivations) are unclear. From what I gather, the pov cat character lives in a world that regularly sees floods, and we follow the cat through the current flood period. It meets other animals, and together they scavenge a boat to ride out the worst. There are no humans visible anywhere, but lots of artifacts, houses, and cities. The animals are shown as very individual, each with their own characteristics, but the main theme of the movie is how they bond and help each other. The music score is very important, since there is no dialogue, and except for one annoyingly tense section, I thought the music was excellent. The movie leaves a lot of room for interpretation - it makes you think, and that's always a good thing.

TV ongoing

Finally, there were new episodes of Doctor Odyssey! \o/ The first two were unusually gory, but also nicely suspenseful, which (though slightly illogical) totally worked for me. The next eps were a little more fluffy again, I just wasn't all that happy with the main themes: who's the baby daddy and surprise!alcoholism, and ep 11 (the crossover ep with one of the 911 offshoots) was the worst ep of the whole season for me. Still loving the throuple in general, and it keeps me watching. No decisions about a season 2 have been made yet.

I picked up some things again that I'd dropped in the middle, like We are Lady Parts (now on 2x04), especially loved Bisma's Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. Awesome. I'll probably watch the rest of season 2 soon.

And Somebody Somewhere, of which I finished season 2. I thought they glossed over the conflict between Joel and Sam a bit too quickly, but I'm really loving Tricia this season.

I'm still doing the rewatch of HPI, now almost done with season 2, and my co-watcher has hopped onto the ship! \o/ In the last week of March, there was an event in Lille, SeriesMania 2025, where they showed the season five premiere, and people loved it. I'm very much looking forward to get to see it, too (airdate is May 15). I would love to find a fannish place to discuss the show, but only found a twitter community. :( I'm reading my way through the French fic on ao3 in the meantime.

TV new

In a very weird coincidence, I happened upon North of North, a very female comedy series, most of the characters and all producers are women. It's a series made by Inuk people about Inuk people, filmed on location *very far North*. It's a resounding rec. Siaja is a great character. In fact, the whole town of Ice Cove is a wonderful mix of characters, some loving, some eccentric, some traumatized. The show's humor is always on point, and even the embarrassing foot-in-mouth moments are played with so much love and charm that they don't feel squicky. It came out on Netflix on April 10, I'm planning on writing up a quick rec post for it soon.

Since I saw a lot of people talk about Severance's new season, I started the show, too. From the beginning - I'd never seen it before. The first ep was a little too slow for my liking in places - especially the dinner party omg. But apart from that, this looks very much up my alley. I like psycho horror (without jump scares) and bureaucratic dystopia in general. I stopped again when it got scary around ep 4. I'm not sure I'm up to that at the moment. It's very good, just a bit too heavy for me right now.

I started Love Scout (because I hated Filter, but needed something fluffy and Asian, or, idk why), and hated the first episode, but liked the second. I'll keep going if I need more fluff. I am once more reminded how much I don't like the directorial decision to go into slomo as soon as the leads have anything resembling a romantic moment, underscored by significant music intended to make the viewers look up from their knitting/phone/conversation with grandma so they don't miss the hug. *sigh* Apart from that, I do like the genderswapped setup with her being the workaholic boss and him being the doting father and secretary. That was almost four weeks ago already, though, and I haven't gone back to it... we'll see.

The best new thing I tried is The Pitt. Unfortunately, the camerawork makes me nauseous. That's a pity, because I really like it a lot. I went through it in 20-minute chunks, which kept the nausea at bay so far. I got about halfway through (7 of 15 episodes) in two weeks. I can see how the plot could be good (I have one guess at what's going to happen later in the day so far), although I don't like the setup of it only covering one day. There can perforce not be much character development in such a short time, at most "from flashbacks to now". And I'm usually always invested in shows for the characters and don't care as much about the plot. Despite all the gore and stress and death, it's comfort viewing for me, weirdly. :D Being Noah Wyle's age, it feels like we both started out on ER and have now come full circle, and that's just so beautiful. (I didn't dare look up interviews with him yet on why he picked the role, because everyone keeps saying that there are huge spoilers everywhere, so I'm being cautious. I did notice that he co-produced the show and wrote some of the episodes.) But it feels like coming home. <3

Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier
Miss Merkel #2

The second installment of the German Politician RPF series centered around a retired Angela Merkel solving murder cases. This time the murder takes place in a cemetery.

Lets make this quick and painless: I did not like this book.

Sadly, a lot of the wordcount is spent on Angela falling in love with someone, and agonizing over what to do about it, since she's (more or less happily) married. I wasn't interested in reading about that at all. If you know me, that might surprise you - I also don't understand, really. :D I just *like* her and her husband, I think, and while I'm happy to imagine Angela Merkel as a private detective, I wasn't happy thinking about her love life.

That said, the murder case was complicated enough, I just couldn't concentrate on it at all because the romance aspect of the book kept throwing me off. I couldn't even tell you who did it in the end, because I've already put the whole book out of my mind again.

a few comments, spoiler for the romance stuff

* I thought that Angela treated her husband badly in book 1. Here it's worse. If it had only been a small part of the book, I might have been able to cope, but it takes up so much space, ugh.

* The side characters are also embarking on a romance, which I probably would have liked if I hadn't been spoiled for it and hadn't already been fed up with the main romance.

* Spoiler: she does not leave her husband. And to add insult to injury, he rescues her from a cow attack, which is completely unlikely, it being her clumsy husband, and I don't like to imagine Angela Merkel as a damsel in distress, either. It was twisted kinda well, so she's not *much* of a damsel and he's not *much* of a hero, but still. Did not like.

* I can't remember much from the book, but I do remember liking her husband's faible for singing Drei Chinesen mit dem Kontrabass (he does mention the problematic/racist content), and her Latin proficiency.

* Despite really not liking this book, I am looking forward to the next installment - provided there's no romance plot.

2 stars - Not worth your time. I think it's possible to skip it, unless you're very interested in the recurring characters' storylines.



1 - 5 stars - Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky The Final Architecture #1 [DW link]
2 - 2 stars - Miss Merkel: Mord auf dem Friedhof by David Safier Miss Merkel #2 [DW link]