23.11.16

Hello all!

This is the first post I'm writing from my laptop. Finally managed to defrag, clean and poke at it enough to get it to some semblance of working order. As such, I am very happy to announce that I no longer have to contend with the dreadful autocorrect on my tablet which likes to capitalise random words, correct short words such as 'it' to things like '85th', and change longer words to peoples' personal details! Makes blogging very stressful when mid-sentence there's every chance you could tell everyone your gran's phone number!

[CN: medication]

It's been a bit of a difficult week in terms of medication side effects. The first few weeks were pure nausea and grogginess, now I have a very keen, sharp sense of FUCKING PAIIIIIIIN. A symptom I had on a different SSRI has resurfaced, giving my nightmares that extra nudge into 'truly horrific'. It was bad enough seeing terrible images and being unable to wake from them, now, when I eventually do manage to crawl out of bed, any pain I experienced in the dream I will also have irl. I mean, obviously it's the other way around and the pain is incorporating itself into my subconscious but it's super creepy dreaming about being bitten by a snake (a lot of the dreams involve needles/bites/pointy poison things) and waking up to find a strange little mark accompanied by burning agony.

The non-spikey pain is centred mostly in my stomach, kind of like period cramps but higher up. It's funny that I didn't really notice it until the last few days. My stomach got very loud immediately - lots of gurgling and sexy noises like that, then it started to hurt a bit occasionally but I never really linked them together and suddenly I'm curled up on the couch in sheer anguish every day. The worst part is there's nothing I can do other than suck it up or go cold turkey because the next meeting with my psychiatrist isn't until just before Christmas. 

[/CN]

I did, however, successfully do an exercise this week! I was working out at least 3 times a week and then I had a few days off due to illness and then I was too busy and then I just started to forget and fell out of the habit really quickly. It's a shame because I discovered I quite enjoy exercising when there isn't a homophobic PE teacher screeching at me. I managed to do a little again this week so hopefully I'll be back to some kind of routine before long. I'm not doing it to lose weight; I'm a feeble little creature and I really want to try and look a little more androg/boi-ish when I'm not deliberately dressing femme and I think a little muscle will help. Also, crushing a man's head with my thighs is my desired aesthetic.

In other news, I stuck a couple of things on eBay after my big clear out so if you'd like to send me money please do have a look in case there's anything you want. I will probably be adding more items in the next few weeks. I mean, send me money even if there isn't anything you want tbh.

[CN: food]

Managed to have a shuffle around Morrisons with mum on Sunday despite the pain. We went to a store a little further afield than usual and, honestly, it was like going to a different country. There was so much more choice! We filled the trolley and ended up spending almost double what we normally do on a weekly shop because we were so excited. The fridge has never looked so good. We had a nice little Sunday lunch there too, I got a couple of slices of beef with mine and mum got an entire bloody chicken!

[/CN]

After eating, I dragged mum over to the pet shop across the road to look at the little fluffballs. Bit disappointed that in the entire store they only had one rabbit but I managed to catch many Pokémon so it could have been worse! I'm curious if any other players have noticed any difficulty with Pokéstops since the second to last update? I ran all the way down to 10 Pokéballs (from almost 200) because there was a full week of 'try again later' messages whenever I tried to check in anywhere. I still get the message a lot but I've managed a few successful attempts since then. On a positive note, I'm almost up to 100 Pokédex pages completed and today I seemed to be getting double exp! There was probably something explaining that on the latest update but my phone doesn't show the info it just updates... well, after I force restart 400 times, anyway. Ah, technology! I nearly threw it down a drain today after it crashed and restarted itself about ten times while I was trying to restock on Pokéballs. I cannot win with phones, they're always dreadful! I think I may have to give in and spend some actual money on the next one I get.

Had a nice day out in Newcastle today, anyway. Aside from the Pokémon hunting, mum and I went to the Hancock Museum to check out the planetarium. I've been going there since I was a weeny dinosaur-obsessed enby (a weenby?), there's always something new to see and there's something comforting about going back again. Today, I made friends with a snake... always the Slytherin!

There are a few different shows at the planetarium and it's gone all Starbucks - you can get a loyalty card and go see one for free after a few stamps. We saw Infinity Express which was a bit bizarre. It started off like a bad radio drama and then took us on a pretty vague journey which talked more about 'endless curiosity' and 'life's big questions' than any actual information which was a little disappointing. Still, there were a couple things I didn't know which I enjoyed learning about, even if most of what we could see was a knock off Doctor Who opening theme! It was only 25 minutes long though, so I suppose there's only so much they could put in. It was narrated by Laurence Fishburne which was both a blessing and a curse - it sounded great but I spent the whole time going 'who is that?'

[CN: food]

Before heading home, we popped round in to say hi to my mate Lee who I abandoned whilst in London because I'm a terrible friend! We also had a mooch about the Christmas market around Grey's Monument and eyeballed all of the food. I tried my first (and sixth!) churro, got a gorgeous salted pretzel and mum 'convinced me' to buy some chocolate kisses - gingerbread for me, Baileys for her. At which point I nearly had a heart attack when some random woman got a little over excited behind me and groaned 'Baileys...' right in my ear! Funny old day.

I haven't been sleeping too well this week due to massive amounts of agony so I managed to watch a lot of Netflix. I started off on Elfen Lied which, as far as I can tell, is basically Mewtwo Strikes Back with tits. Psychic girl is plugged into a headset thing in a ~secret lab~ until she escapes and blows stuff up with her brain. Naked. She does, however, have some kind of MPD/amnesia so when she's not playing 'who has the biggest spleen?' she's an innocent little girl who needs to be fed and cared for. Naked.

It was pretty sweet in places, once you got past the usual anime trope 'oh no I fell over and now you can see my sexy panties' etc etc and I would have liked to see where they went with the story but I found myself six or seven episodes in and not really invested in any of it. Again an anime favourite, I get very tired of the 'you touched another girl therefore we'll never get married I should just kill myself' girls and the main dude (I've forgotten his name already) was just meh. I may go back to it eventually but I'm in no real hurry.

I exchanged Elfen Lied for Spartacus - I'd seen enough of it before to know that there was absolutely no concentration required, you can simply sit and absorb it. Don't get me wrong, there is some intense plotting and story line but 80% is just slow-mo CG blood spatter á la The Matrix so if you're not in the mood to focus on anything it's pretty perfect. Though before you take this as advice and stick it on as background, I should point out that there are a lot of triggers too so be wary!

The show is completely ridiculous and over the top; the only thing that breaks up the ultra violence is the gratuitous sex and while neither of those things hold a particular interest to me, I do find Spartacus strangely entertaining. It seems that for every plus point, there is something utterly nonsensical to counteract it. I really enjoy the way they use language in the script, the words that they don't use and the way they phrase things really gives an impression of another time, however the accents are atrocious! I was very happy to first watch the show because I've always been a big fan of Lucy Lawless and John Hannah but some of the other actors are as expressionless as their loincloths. Some of the twists and battle sequences are really elegant and well thought out, unfortunately the terrible CG kind of ruins the effect. And on it goes.

*Spoilers* My main contention though, is Naevia. Naevia starts off as a sweet little slave girl who is punished for falling in love with Crixus and sent off to the mines to die. While busy in the mines, she undergoes a complete transformation due to being recast, and ends up having a full personality transplant to go with it. Obviously, I don't mind a character changing over time because... well, that's how people work, my issue is more how it all happens. First of all, I am utterly sick and tired of shows raping female characters because they can't think of another way for them to develop. Believe it or not, women have the capacity to learn and grow without being sexually assaulted. They can... want to change. I know, I know... it's a bit of a surprise. Take a moment to let that sink in.

On top of this, they actually had an episode or two where Crixus thought she was dead and so wrote a whole subplot for him as he changed and reacted to it. My question is simple: why didn't she stay dead? If you have a different actor and a different character, what on earth is the point of squeezing that entirely new person into the old mould? Crixus had already accepted her death, why couldn't he simply move on and fall in love with a new warrior woman over time? I see absolutely no benefit to stapling the name Naevia onto the new person's forehead, in fact I genuinely think it would have been easier to just write her as a new character. It made about as much sense as Dexter's Deb having a random week as a junkie, never to be referenced again.

I also found it super weird that, upon becoming a slave, Laeta immediately falls in love with the guy who stabbed her husband in the face two days earlier. And Gannicus dumps the girls who totally gets him, whom he shares a healthy and loving relationship with, for some random girl who hardly even speaks to him. Anyhoo, that's enough of that, I think. Onto better things!

Before going to bed last night, I accidentally watched an entire show called River. I've been rather off the pulse with film and tv of late so I'd never even heard of it but upon seeing a photo of Stellan Skarsgård and Nicola Walker I decided to give it a go. I'm so glad I did. As well as two fantastic leads, the show also features my faves Lesley Manville and Eddie Marsan (and also possibly my mate Alex??). The star of the show, however, is the script. Such beautiful, real dialogue for the actors to sink their teeth into. I love it when I watch a show and there's a thousand little moments where characterisation and being human take precedent over pushing the plot forward. The direction and acting was absolutely beautiful - all the ups and downs of real human speech, pauses and sighs and every nuance you find in actual conversation.

One of my favourite aspects of the series was the very refreshing take on mental illness; real and honest reactions to someone different without the story demonising River for suffering from it. It was almost worth sitting through a million 'he's schizophrenic therefore he's a murderer' movies to finally land on this little gem.

River is a lonely and withdrawn man who finds interactions with real people next to impossible. There's real joy in the conversations with dead people (aha Buffy reference) and there's never any sense of him being a danger to anyone because of it. Walker plays his partner and bff Stevie who is everything he's not; easygoing, silly and full of life. They're polar opposites but never antagonise each other. Like a zip they fit together and create something incredibly strong.

Unfortunately, Stevie is dead. And that's where you find the strongest emotional theme of the show. There is such a deep sense of sorrow within River, it didn't really help with my own mood because it was so believable that I fell into the funk of depression and loneliness right alongside him but there was something so tender about the way it was portrayed that it was completely worth taking that journey with him. For every ounce of pain and sadness, there was love. I cannot compliment River enough on it's sheer humanness. That's what made it so easy for me to sit through every episode in one sitting. In short, I absolutely adored it. Everyone needs a Stevie.

I also watched Secret Life of Pets with mum but I think most of you have probably reached your limit on listening to me spout about films/tv so suffice to say that it's enjoyable in a Toy Story butnotasgood + youtube cat videos butnotasgood sort of way. I'm also technically watching the latest Die Hard right now but I haven't paid one jot of attention to it. Didn't watch anything with Mel or Lily this week due to The Pains.

And that's all for now, see you next week!

Xx