#for feels and family dysfunction and weird/terrible magic shit and a Vulture and terrifying roses!

[faejilly]

jilly's week in review?

I guess or something. Idek y'all, I was gonna try and do reviews but then I just rambled about what I did instead, so this is clearly gonna need a format revamp next week

anyway

READING

Finished Daughter of Witches

and also St. Peter's Fair, which I had started AGES ago and sort of lost track of, but I'm doing the January Challenge on TheStoryGraph and couldn't decide what to read next but needed to get my pages in, so I went digging for random shit and I have read it before and watched all the Cadfael mysteries so it's not like it was hard to get into to finish it so I could save my streak.😅

Read A House with Good Bones (on purpose from start to finish in one day!) because T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is absofuckinglutely one of my favorites. (There's a thought here about my occasional forays into the horror genre, and how some horror is almost kind of cozy because it's about protecting what we love from what we fear, and that is very much a Kingfisher kind of thing, but that might need a new post and a more functional brain to figure out where I'm going with that.)

Listened to a little bit more of IT while doing housework; I'm not great at audio books except when I'm driving, but sometimes I can manage a little (and I didn't want to distract myself from dishes by picking up a new book instead). Stephen Weber is an excellent narrator btw, for anyone who's curious.

WATCHING

The husband was sick last week, and I was only sort of doing shit either, so he kind of just put the TV on and let it go and I definitely will not manage a nice list with links like I did with books. There was some M*A*S*H, (oh, I did finally watch the special that recently came out on Hulu), and RoboCop (largely because Thing 1 gave the husband the new game for Christmas) and several different Predator movies of various quality, and a bunch of other stuff I am not thinking of at the moment. I know I picked a couple and watched them myself but with everything else I can't remember what?

Also some Mythbusters when Thing 2 picked something to watch for awhile, which is pretty much always entertaining even when we're like: your sample size is nonexistent and just because you can't do it doesn't mean someone who knows what they're doing couldn't have done it so are you SURE you should have busted that? 😅

PLAYING

I got Garden Story for Christmas and got through the quest-lines and realized I was quite far away from all the upgrades, so I've been periodically poking at it and trying to get my villages/tools better before trying the Final Boss. I have had a good time with Concord though, it's fun, I'm just not sure the leveling functions, such as they are, are paced/balanced quite right? 😅 (Or perhaps I'm just Bad At Fighting In Cozy Games? This does seem to be a bit of a trend tbqh, probably why I liked Wylde Flowers' lack of combat so much.) I also have found VERY FEW of the memories/weird achievements so that's a thing I'm probably going to have to look up hints for soon-ish...

(I did finish Potion Permit last year, which is great, I recommend it whole-heartedly: the potion building mechanic is usually pretty solid, it has good characters, a nice aesthetic, I did actually mostly have fun rolling around and fighting things/gathering stuff, but I did reach the end of the main quest and then go... huh, is that it? just because it, yk, kept going after the finale but there didn't seem to be anything there beyond like, a couple personal quests that needed materials I couldn't unlock until the end.)

MORE ENTERTAININGLY I THINK, we did also play some board games

Paint The Roses is QUITE HARD with only two people even if you stick to the medium level whims; or maybe I'm just not that smart?!? We did in fact survive without getting our heads' chopped off by the Queen of Hearts, but we legit guessed the last two puzzles so. Dumb Luck™️ is not nearly as reliable as actually figuring out how to plot your plants better.

We did Escape the Dark Sector (with more people this time, tbf) on our first try though! That was pretty delightful. It is atmospheric and potentially almost deadly without feeling too awful at any point! Also I got to punch a tentacle monster!

Mice & Mystics can go dramatically bad if your dice aren't on your side and you do like, one stupid thing to compound that, and then if you're invested enough to start over you can suddenly realize you've been moving tiny plastic mice and bugs around the table for like four hours and still only got through the first chapter... but not regret it at all because you like your mice and are very proud of them for finally making it!

Can you tell we like co-op games? 🤣🤣🤣

(I did also do some rearranging so the game room was comfier, so like, win/win I adulted and played!)

THERE WAS NO WRITING OR CROSS-STITCHING OR PAINTING OR ANYTHING ELSE THIS WEEK, so uh. Clearly my balance of activities is bonkers and I should maybe get off the couch/game chair(s) a bit more often.

#jilly spam #jilly reads #jilly has a gaming problem #favorite shows #I guess for the brief MASH mention? #I can definitely recommend #a house with good bones #for feels and family dysfunction and weird/terrible magic shit and a Vulture and terrifying roses! #plus some interesting tangents on how batshit people can get #including historical examples! #(not that historical) #that makes no sense sorry I'll stop now #tag spam #week in review #will probably need a better tag for that too #but that is a problem #for tomorrow!jilly