masqthephlsphr | Entries tagged with grimm

If anyone's wondering what Alexis Denisof is up to these days, he is a semi-regular on Grimm now. He plays an stuffy, obnoxious prat. But who knows? Maybe he'll betray his boss, abduct an infant, grow manly facial hair, and start sleeping with a sexy lawyer.

…Actually, all of that is entirely possible.

Current Mood: amused
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/990702.html

Grimm Season 4 has started out pretty well. I enjoyed seasons 2-3 as well, but my enthusiasm for the show was cemented at the end of season 3 with ( season 3 spoilers/season 4 speculation )

Current Mood: hopeful
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/989140.html

(1) Had my first PT session for my neck/shoulders this AM. I was at the therapist for about an hour and a half between early arrival, paperwork, interview with the therapist, and actual therapy. Therapist did heat therapy and a massage, which was great, but also pressure point testing to find tender spots ("Ouch, there's one!") and of course taught me some "exercises to do at home" which while good for the shoulders/neck, did not make my back happy.

(2) New Grimm season starts tonight! There is something not to be grim about.

(3) I wrote another short story, 2,974 words. Class busy-ness makes me insane, but... story!

Current Mood: hungry
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/988548.html

OAUT: Still watching, still commenting on friend's reviews. But I am not particularly invested in the Frozen storyline. And Emma/Hook: DO NOT WANT. Hook was way more interesting before he was ret-conned to be Emma's love interest. Curious to see where they will go with Regina's dilemma, Regina/Henry, Emma/Henry, Regina/Emma.

Also watching: Gotham, CSI, Criminal Minds, Vampire Diaries, Grimm, Stalker, Manhattan, Forever, The 100.

Word to the wise about Forever. This show will doubtless be canceled. Too many people will go into it thinking "Highlander," and compared to Duncan McLeod, the main character Henry comes across like a Poncy!Wanker!Sherlock Holmes.

Gave up on: Sleepy Hollow. I like crack as much as the next person, but it's not my brand of crack. I'm more a season-2-of-Lost cracker.

Might give up on: Gotham. I just have a visceral distaste for corruption, even if the point is to play it up so they can then show Jim Gordon fighting it. Might give up on The 100 if it's just more Lord-of-the-Flies teenaged moral ambiguity. And Vampire Diaries remains that show I watch and then ask myself, "Why oh why am I wading through this thigh-high histrionic crap again?" Yet like an automobile accident, I keep staring at it.

Manhattan is my favorite currently-airing show. I mean, dude, Scientists! Even if their end game is horrific, the narrative acknowledges this. We see the divide between the nerdy puzzle-solving and angst-ridden rumination. And the metaphors! The "toxic" atmosphere created by putting security above scientific collaboration, the fact that implosion will only work when disparate elements of the scientific teams "come together" against the dysfunctional compartmentalization.

The one thing I wish they'd do more of is feature actual historical scientists, not just their fictionalized ones. Oppenheimer is a ghost on this show, rarely seen, obliquely referred to, rather than depicted as a hands-on scientist. And I am hoping that at some point, Edward O. Teller shows up. He was kind of a hawkish nut-ball (allegedly the inspiration for Doctor Strangelove?), but with this show featuring the families so heavily, he'll doubtless roll into town with his wife and infant son, Paul, who was my dissertation advisor in graduate school fifty years later. Yes, I am two degrees of separation from the bomb.

Looking forward to the return of Grimm. This show has one of the crackiest arcs (and, well, basic premise) ever, but the characters are great. Okay, Nick and Juliet are a little dull, individually and together, but everyone else is fun.

And some day to return: Orphan Black, Orange is the New Black, The Americans...

Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/986652.html

I realized May is half over and I have not updated my LJ. I'm around, I read my flist every day and respond to stuff that catches my eye. Work is still busy, and my novel second draft is progressing, and there's not a lot of variation in that schedule that's post-worthy. Plus, I'm just plain exhausted.

I am glad the regular television season is wrapping up, I was watching about a dozen shows and keeping pace with that is a source of aforementioned exhaustion. More or less liked OUAT's third season (season two is my favorite so far, I think), and enjoyed Grimm as well, especially the new recurring character, Trubel, who is many kinds of awesome. She could have walked off the pages of one of my own stories. I always have a screwed-up brunette tough-girl.

Things to look forward to for the summer: fresh cherries, Orange is the New Black s. 2, the new Dresden Files, and my trip to Seattle/Vancouver, BC at the end of June/beginning of July. Beyond that, I plan on hibernating with my writing. Summers have always, generally speaking, been just a stretch of time for me to endure.

Current Mood: sluggish
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/973878.html

I have not posted a real post in like, the longest time. I read my flist daily and hang around other people's LJs/DWs, but posting, not so much. Things have been kind of insane-busy of late.

(1) Work. Multiple projects. Colleagues on vacations at the exact wrong time.

(2) On a marathon draft of my novel. This will take a while. I have sort of accepted that. It's a complicated ~~little~~ bugger.

(3) Also attempting to write a few short stories. Totally different mindset than a novel. Trying to get into that mindset by reading other people's short stories. Science fiction, mostly. Got recs?

(4) Cooking. I have been doing some cooking. Gets me out of my writer's chair on Sundays. I have made some actually pretty yummy, healthy foods. And lost, like, five pounds in the process. Then stressed out big time (see 1 above), went on a sugar rampage, and gained it all back.

Hi, I'm Masq, and I am a sugar addict. No, really. Despite the OMG-yummy (healthy fats! healthy carbs! Vegetables with actual flavor!), my body Freaked Out against the healthy, and now I have to do that withdrawal thing all over again. But at least now I know what to expect when I go back to my new healthy way of eating. My sugar addiction weathered previous periods of weight loss because I was eating processed diet foods with all those hidden, processed sugars. Take those away, and you're left dangling above a very deep pit you never knew was there.

But back to the cooking part. Here's the things my momma never told me about cooking:

(a) when you cook something, it's never one serving. So all that effort actually goes into multiple meals.
(b) when you cook, you can eat anything you want. This may sound like a trivial truth. I'm a grownup, of course I can eat anything I want. But as a processed-food eating grownup, I was pretty much restricted to what someone else had decided to make and package. When you make it yourself, you are still at the mercy of stores to stock basic ingredients, but so far I've been able to find everything.

(5) Anyway. It's Spring. I don't breath. I don't sleep. I just watch the city roll up the sidewalks for the coming months of hibernation.

(6) There's ten gazillion good things on TeeVee right now. OUAT, of course (*sob*lastweek*sob*), Continuum, Grimm, Cosmos, The Americans, and SOON more Orange is the New Black and Orphan Black. Yipee. Okay, The Vampire Diaries is tedious, OUAT: Wonderland was dull as a stump, and Criminal Minds is being written by a million monkeys with a million typewriters (would someone please put it out of my misery please)?

That's about the it.

Current Mood: working
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/972758.html

January talking meme, Jan 21. From

cornerofmadness: what draws you to the urban fantasy type of story lines?

I am drawn to urban fantasy stories because I like stories that show a secret supernatural world existing in what is ostensibly the mundane, scientifically skeptical world we all live in, and characters who lives are recognizable to the average reader, who are nevertheless part of that supernatural world.

Stories like BtVS, Harry Potter, or Dresden Files, make it easy to imagine that the supernatural exists around me in the world I see everyday. Stories like this allow me to think, "Underneath all this drab, dreary mundanity is a fantastic world full of excitement and magic." All I need is the right book/movie/TV show to reveal what's hidden all around me.

And that makes the mundane world I see outside my window seem just a little bit more magical.

Take Buffy, for example. As I understand it, the BtVS/Angel world is supposed to be our world. Not an alternate universe or anything like that. It's our world, but what most of us don't realize is that magic is real if you know how to tap into it. Demons exist, just hope you don't run into one.

Why do I have this need? I guess because I'm an agnostic, and an empiricist, but what I feel compelled to believe is not the same thing as what I wish were true. "Urban" fantasy lets me step away from that for an hour or two.

This is the reason I am not drawn much to High Fantasy (e.g., Lord of the Rings). High fantasy stories are set in completely imaginary places that aren't Earth, nor even historical Earth. They often contain humans, dogs, oak trees, and other earthlike things to make them more accessible, but the resemblance to our world is usually a pseudo-resemblance to some historical era I have little connection to. I don't mind fantasy or science fiction set in a historical period on Earth, as long as the historical period is genuinely drawn outside of its supernatural elements.

So the "on Earth" is important to me. As is the "secret." I want a story world where the supernatural is considered debunked and its delights and dangers lurk in the shadows, only known to a select few. For this reason, I also don't care much for urban fantasy where the supernatural elements of the story are out in the open (e.g., Charlaine Harris, Laurell K. Hamilton). Partly because the supernatural being "secret" makes it easier to pretend all this really is going on all around me. But also, I have always had a kink for "the big secret" that only select characters know and the rest of the world is oblivious to.

Current Mood: enthralled
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/968517.html

Grimm returns this evening. Looking forward to that. But OMG, my source, Google Play, posted ONE promotional video for the new season. Was it a recap of the complicated, ne convoluted plot arc developing behind the Monster of the Week episodes? Not even. It was a 'shipper feature of "Monroe/Rosalee" moments, and the official description actually used the portmanteau "Monrosalee."

Now, I enjoy that 'ship as much as anyone, because it's super geeky and intelligent, but *headdesk*

Current Mood: boggled
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/956704.html

So after a three+ month hiatus, Grimm returns tonight. I was sort of watching it perfunctorily before the hiatus, but during the hiatus, I purchased season 1 and season 2 (thus far) on Google Play.

One of the critics who has reviewed the show noted that it improved markedly on rewatch. I have to agree with that. ( A Grimm primer )

Current Mood: geeky
Crossposts: http://masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com/925888.html

I have been bamblasted lately with work and finishing the first draft of my novel. I can squeeze a few hours of TV into my week, but my posting has gotten a bit sketchy (looking at my LJ, it's all birthday greetings lately). I do have a post-of-actual-content in the works, but in the meantime, here are some TV impressions of the season so far (space dividers under each cut tag for spoilers).

( OUAT )

( Revolution )

( Grimm )

( Merlin S 5 )