Month: January 2021

Star Trek TOS: The Changeling

Okay so I was going to watch this after I watched the last episodes I posted about here but for some reason when I turned it on I couldn’t… understand a single word anyone was saying. It wasn’t an issue with the computer, I had the same processing issue yesterday with Tommy and Tuppence! What the heck, right? I dunno what’s going on with my auditory processing but I do not care for it at all.

So! I gave The Changeling another shot today and I really liked it. Properly creepy (plus added ‘humans are technically responsible for billions of deaths in space’ meta) and the added fun of Kirk logicking a computer to death. I’ve done that, I think. Or was that ‘downloaded a trojan’? One of those!

It did throw me for a loop – when Uhura started speaking Swahili (her birth language, right?) I thought they were going to go ‘ah! Her memories are returning!’ but… they just told her to keep reading in English? So that wasn’t what I was expecting at all from that scene. Or uh, any idea what happened to her memories.

It ending on a joke after the horrific ending of Charlie X (still think that was a good end) was a mood whiplash/delight. Delightlash?

“My son. The doctor!”

Partners In Crime/Tommy and Tuppence: Finesse The King

Had a devil of a time with this episode in that I suddenly could not figure out what anyone was saying. I had to turn on subtitles, which really helped.

So anyway, a good mystery! And not just because someone got murdered. I mean, theft mysteries are good too…

I like the mysteries where they seek it out themselves just to, well, do something because that’s rather novel and when Tuppence gets to shine because she is delightful. I sadly do not have any pictures to share of her outfits which included a marvelous purple cloche and her dressed up as Sherlock Holmes for a masquerade ball.

I have to admit some cultural references were lost on me, I’m not sure what a man dressed up in newspaper has to do with Alice in Wonderland but I really should read that book sometime and not just rely on the Disney cartoon.

There’s a lovely bit in here where Tuppence is trying to dig for info about women who cheat on their husbands and Tommy is just happily saying Tuppence is his best friend (as for why she can’t cheat on him with his best friend). Watch her, Tommy. She’s creative.

Also genuinely upset by murder and death in this episode, which is a change from how mysteries usually go where it’s all a sort of delighted ‘oh a puzzle!’. That said, it was sad seeing Tuppence so sad and shaken.

Among Us: First Session

I got to try Among Us for the first time when someone on a server I’m in invited me! Oh boy, it was fun! I played several rounds and was only the imposter once (and due to walking in as THE OTHER IMPOSTER killed someone and being the one caught with the body was immediately ejected before I could even kill anyone meant I never got to be the true murder alien I knew I could be) and I still got ejected a bunch. I’m pretty suspicious.

My favourite part was when I was failing to explain how the admin panel that let you see where others were in the building worked, it was declared ‘Green is acting pretty sus’

After I died, I declared ‘GREEN NOT SO SUS NOW, HUH’

The best thing was probably when a meeting/body was discovered and there were a lot more dead players than we actually realized.

Star Trek The Original Series: Miri, Court Martial, Charlie X

Miri

While I was interesting in seeing Kirk beaten to death by feral children and I liked them learning about what happened via apocalypse logs, the ongoing subplot of Yeoman Rand being jealous over a child and Spock being ‘logically she’s over the age of consent so get over it, Janice’ while Kirk was trying to act normal and Bones was ignoring everyone to inject himself kind of off-putting and WOW that’s a hell of a sentence you’re welcome.

In conclusion, episode had good points and ‘they made it weird’ points and every Star Trek fan I’ve mentioned watching this episode to told me it needed to be burnt to the ground.

Court Martial

Universal excitement from the Star Trek fans about watching this one, I enjoyed how about midway through it turned into Ace Attorney and then in the climatic scenes scenery was ripped from the floor and eaten whole without chewing. I am not wholly sure about the logic about the chess. I like that there’s a kid named after Kirk and her costume was pretty neat.

Charlie X

I was recommended this one as a better ‘weird feral child’ episode and it certainly was in the sense that I didn’t want to scrub myself clean after watching it. Important detail: Apparently 17 year olds serve on the Enterprise and Thanksgiving (I assume Canadian Thanksgiving) is an actual Enterprise holiday.

I did not care for Charlie, finding him to be an increasingly creepy little man and the final conclusion of the episode was very ‘oh. Well then’ that felt like vindication after I noticed the majority of his victims were simply women he happened to walk by.

Music: Dust Rhinos, Great Big Sea,

Note to future self: Sea shanties were big right now because everyone was bored and locked inside.

And as a Canadian, I felt an urging to listen to the bands of my childhood which were sea shanty adjacent, Great Big Sea and Dust Rhinos!

Up and Great Big Sea by Great Big Sea and Plain Sailing and The Day After The Night Before by Dust Rhinos, specifically.

My two favourite songs from both bands had mary in the title, specifically Mari-Mac as sung by Great Big Sea (and it has been so long since I properly heard that song, I love it) and my first time hearing Step It Out Mary as sung by the Dust Rhinos which I mistook for an old traditional murder ballad instead of the modern song it was. The exact third listen when I heard ‘she pulled a pistol’ and I went ‘oh wait what’ and googled it and found all the various versions where she murders or is drowned and I was like ‘ahh a traditional’ but apparently people singing it have just been very busy.

My only disappointment with this listening jag is that apparently Dust Rhinos’ Helter Celtic is nowhere to be found anymore and I used to listen to that cassette over and over when I was but a wee hamster. I googled it and… there might be something called Prehistoric with the songs on it? But again not anywhere I could find available to me.

The quest continues.

As for sea shanties in general, it’s nice I know what The Wellerman actually consists of now because I never had time to just sit and listen to a tiktok.

World of Warcraft: Teamwork Part 2

So we tried out those ‘do dungeons as a guild for achievements’ and it went great until the verrrry last three seconds we glitched out a boss at the Shado-Pan monastery. And then we were like ‘and next we’ll do raid runs! And show them all!’ but it turns out you need at least eight players for that and we are a small but powerful guild of three.

Oh well. Maybe next life. We’re already maxing out our guild bank every two days on just three players, I can’t imagine a bank situation that’s fair for eight. No matter how much sad mammoth I’m willing to make my dwarf eat to make room in the tabs.

I hope when I am old, I will remember how we would witheringly say ‘mechanics‘ about a game function before doing terribly at it.

World of Warcraft: Ding! ‘I Believe You Can Fly’

I got my mechagnome Krome up to level 30! That means FLIGHT.

For her flying mount, I chose the Wonder Wing because I got it in the process of unlocking her and it felt right. The wings are kind of offputting in flight though. But I’m committed by this point, honestly. I might switch out her Gearhopper ‘Shiny’ for the pet version of the Wonder Wing and name IT ‘Shiny’ to keep the joke going, but I don’t know. Feeling cute.

Also I updated her outfit to celebrate her brand new level 30 and no longer needing to be in costume file ‘noobiewarlock2’

World of Warcraft screencapture of a mechagnome named Krome
I love the little kerchief this robe has so much.

Music: P!nk: Funhouse, Vitamin C: Vitamin C, Savage Garden: Savage Garden, Amy Winehouse: Back to Black, Britney Spears: Circus

P!nk: Funhouse

  • P!nk continues to give me anxiety with her break up songs to the point it’s actually a pretty big distraction from the music, BUT I love ‘Bad Influence‘. It influenced me to actually make my first playlist on the music service (Amazon) I’m using. Finally googled who she goes to sit with in So What and it’s… ‘drum boy’? Well, that’s better than what I was hearing which was ‘I guess I’ll go sit with Trump, boy at least he’ll know how to hit’ which, thanks, ears, thanks.

Vitamin C: Vitamin C

  • Very easy listening. Little confused when Smile ended with a reggae woman talking about dimples until I remembered like, the point of the song. I don’t know much about Vitamin C except a REALLY great Barbie was made of her. Anyway I probably won’t be relistening to this album, but I enjoyed it the whole way through. Since I’ve been starting out trying albums on the music service, I’ve only relistened to a few of the several I’ve gone through already. I guess they’re like me and books.

Savage Garden: Savage Garden

  • This was an album that was one of the background musics of my teenagerhood and it transported me right back. Even my cheek was breaking out. THIS is one of the ones I was relistening to, I think half nostalgia and half ‘oh man I REALLY like this’. The first three tracks, To the Moon & Back, Carry On Dancing, and Tears of Pearls, were especially pleasing to mine ear.

Amy Winehouse: Back to Black

  • Another one I liked well enough but won’t be listening to again, probably. It was sort of weird hearing her voice and then checking her picture and no, that was a white English woman, not a Black American woman. I think the dissonance put me off. Anyway, rest in peace, Amy Winehouse, I do understand why you had fans. Also your wikipedia page is incredibly huge holy crap.

Britney Spears: Circus

  • I really really like Womanizer, Circus, Kill the Lights, and If U Seek Amy to an amazing degree and the moment I heard Blur and Mmm Papi my knowledge of Britney Spears’ living situation made me feel so ill I was unable to finish the album until the next day and will probably never listen past If U Seek Amy ever again. Eurgh.

Partners in Crime: The Clergyman’s Daughter

The premise of this episode was that it was a ‘house seems to be haunted – Tommy and Tuppence prove it’s not!’ except that at no point did anyone think it was haunted and the victim identified who was actually the source of her problems in her interview with the detectives and they immediately pegged the rest. And then the rest of it was solved with a riddle that they just kind of plowed through.

There WAS an adventure part of the episode I liked, where Tommy and Tuppence nearly get shot to death, but alas, I hope the book this episode was based off of is more mystery-ish than this episode. I’m still planning on reading them, after all!

There was also a deeply clever moment where to deter people spying on her, Tuppence gets the man who just pointed where the macguffin was to start pointing where the sun rises, the sun sets, and some other thing and the spyers are like ‘what the hell is going on’. Anyway, I liked that bit. Good bit.