#looks like my friendship with sp*tify has ended

[bronanlynch]

“““weekly”““ media consumption roundup

listening: so I don’t listen to much Christmas music, however there’s this one piece that’s like. variations Come O Come Emmanuel that absolutely fucking slaps. we played it in concert band freshman year of high school and it kind of blew my mind (and also was the first time 6/8 time made sense to me lol). there’s not really any especially great recordings of it on youtube but there are a couple of better ones on sp*tify (the one I linked is fine in terms of the playing but it’s so quiet even on full volume)

for the record: my official Christmas playlist is that, Sleigh Ride but only the instrumental arrangement for similar high school band nostalgia reasons and also because it slaps, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos because before they had kids my parents used to go to a Bach festival that happened right around Christmas so that’s what we listened to when we decorated the tree and baked cookies (no link because there are like. a million recordings out there and I can’t find the one online that matches the CD that my parents have), Vienna Teng’s The Atheist Christmas Carol (which absolutely knocked me the fuck out this year, as it does every year, but something about hearing the line “it’s the season of possible miracle cures” on xmas eve 2020 when you’re waiting for the results of your covid test is. a lot), Froggy Fresh’s Christmas song (it’s a bit, I’m sorry, sometimes you just can’t let your college friend group memes go), and Straight No Chaser’s 12 Days of Christmas

reading: so that delightful piece of writing about the snake fight portion of your thesis defense (FAQ: The Snake Fight Portion of Your Thesis Defense by Luke Burns) was a yuletide fandom on Ao3 this year apparently which led to this fic (link contains pictures of snakes), which is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. it’s formatted like academic emails and it’s just. extremely real. love to lovingly make fun of academia

watching: finally something different to go here. spent part of christmas day and then most of new year’s day marathoning Hilda with my roommates and it’s very cute and very fun and very good. it is very much a children’s cartoon abt the power of friendship, but also there are lots of fun magical creatures and surprisingly strong political themes abt like, environmentalism and treating people with respect and not listening to cops. also there are ghost pirates, and witches, and a goth librarian lady, and an amoral lady scientist. also the main character has a pet that’s like. a combination of a deer and a fox and it’s incredibly cute

playing: Knife of Dunwall finally. this time around I didn’t get stuck and give up before even getting to the main part of the first mission, which happened last time because I got so frustrated by how shitty Daud’s version of darkvision is. have lots of Thoughts and Feelings and Opinions about the labor politics of this mission, since the premise is that the slaughterhouse workers are striking, and there’s a bunch of ambient announcements about how any sort of organizing for essential workers, sorry, “industries deemed vital to state interests,” is punishable by death. love to see it.

kinda don’t love how the main agitator is actually a plant for a rival factory, but she does talk abt how the workers are treated better where she works so there is that. I do think it’s funny how I’ve been playing this mission low chaos, deliberately not killing anyone, and then she gives me the option to blow up the factory in exchange for the information I need, instead of torturing it out of the factory owner, and I immediately went. oh hell yeah let’s do that

I might not end up actually going through with it because it’s real hard to get to all of the valves I have to sabotage without being spotted so. maybe I’ll torture the factory owner anyway. I just think it’s interesting how the priorities of like, the city itself as represented by the chaos meter favor torture over property destruction (yes I know probably people would die in the explosion but still. Abigale does make a point of saying that all of the workers are outside because they’re striking, so it’s just the guards and the scabs I mean butchers)

making: this is not the best or most photogenic mince pie and I didn’t even really make most of it if we’re being technical since I used a pre-made crust and a jar of mincemeat and I do not know why the powdered sugar on top looks so weird but. whatever. it was tasty. merry christmas to me personally, since I’m sad that you can’t just like, buy mince pies in the grocery stores here. also none of my roommates like it apparently which means I got to eat most of it myself, which is a rare treat since the leftovers of things I made that I like hardly ever stick around long enough for me to get any but that’s a whole other tangent

writing: has been a struggle recently. however I did finish and post this fic that I started a few months ago for a Persona rarepair event. it has very little to do with any of the events of the game and much more to do with the inherent homoeroticism of tending someone’s wounds, and also trying to survive under capitalism and wanting to do something to make the world better when you’re just so tired. please look at this testimonial, one of the best comments I’ve ever gotten on anything, I do love both themes and women

#dreaming.txt #images of food below the readmore