Tuesday Update

First things first.

I now like Broadchurch.

The other day I had been thinking to myself, why in the world would I want to be watching a show where everyone is unhappy, because a very bad thing happened to a child.

Okay, but then we were watching the show. I started warming to it a little bit. They had a scene with the townspeople having a meeting with the police at the school. I turned to Tim and told him that it reminded me of Dark.

Because Dark has a scene with the townspeople meeting at the school. And guess what, Dark is about a child who goes missing in a small town. And like Broadchurch, the town is filled with unhappy people. 

Dark is very dark.

Then I soon realized that I love yet another show with a bad thing happening to a child and a bunch of unhappy townspeople. That's Fortitude. In this one, the show begins with a young child getting a horrible case of frost bite.

I noticed another interesting similarity between the three shows, but I think it's too much of a spoiler. So what I'm going to do is put the spoiler way at the bottom of this post.  That way, people can skip if they want. 

It's actually not a huge spoiler. It's just not something you're likely to get from reading or seeing a brief promo of the show. 

Anyway, I AM liking Broadchurch a lot now. I think, though, that I might end up liking it less than Dark and Fortitude, because those two have supernatural elements. I THINK Broadchurch is straight murder mystery. Though there is a psychic. But I'm not sure if they're going to go with the message that psychics are fake and predatory, or they're going to take a more magical realism path.  

Or I could be totally wrong, and young Danny Latimer (Oskar McNamara) was kidnapped by demons. 

Other stuff....

I'm liking Shameless a lot.  Yesterday I watched the Aunt Ginger episode.

As for Coronation Street, I felt some regret for saying that Shona (Julie Goulding and David (Jack P Shepherd) are my favorite couple. I love them. But I also must say that Tim (Joe Duttine) and Sally (Sally Dynevor) are my other favorite couple. I hope they remain a couple for longer than what's average for soap opera couples. 

I finished A Tale for the Time Being and am in the process of selecting my next book. 

I've downloaded The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) and started reading it. I'm not liking it so much, but I'm going to give it another chapter or two.

I read the first book in the series years ago and didn't like it very much. But I thought maybe I was having too many Harry Potter desires at the time. 

I have liked Rowling's other two non-Harry Potter books, though—The Casual Vacancy and The Ickabog. 

The vote tracking website I've been following has been finally updated. I've been so excited about tracking the votes in our Congress. The last one was on Friday at 10:31 when the Senate confirmed Loyd Austin as Secretary of Defense.

I had to then wait through the weekend. I hoped to see some action Monday and kept checking.  Well, I guess I checked during the day and not into the evening. Because something finally did happen at 5:30.  The Senate confirmed Janet Yellen as Secretary of the Treasury.  She got passed 84-15.  Democrats all said Yeah. Republicans were split. I think it's good news for us Democrats if the Republicans are split a lot...just because it means some of them are willing to step outside the party and help us get things passed.  

The same players who heavily pushed the of election fraud narrative and/or fawn over Trump are some of the ones who voted against Yellen: Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Josh Hawley, Rand Paul.....

I'm glad to see that Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell are being more cooperative. 

On Duolingo, I've finished with the French lesson "Emergency" and shall be moving onto "Dream Trip".

I'm still listening to the recording of Trump and Raffensperger; though Washington Post reloaded or something, and started me back at the beginning. I'm trying to find my place. The last time I posted I was at 37 minutes. So I think I'm a few minutes past that.  

I'm still working on revising my The Dead are Online (version A) Screenplay and still reading about the McGinley's 2014 trip to Peru. 

In part of my morning YouTube adventures, I watched this The Daily Show video pointing out the hypocrisy of Fox News—complaints about the mainstream media being too gentle with Biden intercut with Fox News pundits kissing Trump's ass.  

In other YouTube news, yesterday or the day before I watched The Take's video about gaslighting. I liked how they defined gaslighting and how they showed examples in film and television...ESPECIALLY because they actually mentioned Coronation Street! That was very exciting to me. They don't often mention non-American shows.  

The term gaslighting is thrown around so much these days. I think it's become if you don't like someone's opinion or the way they've treated you, you accuse them of gaslighting.

I personally feel it should have a more narrow definition and I go along with what The Take says. It's a type of behavior/abuse that leads the victim to question their reality and/or mental health. Or I should say it ATTEMPTS to lead the victim.....

Gaslighting doesn't always work.  

I was going to say that the more people are aware of gaslighting, the less it will work...the less it will hurt people. I used to think that. But now I think the gaslighters know the term, and they're going to use it against their victims.

So someone might say to their parent, I was traumatized by you cooking my pet rabbit for dinner and then gaslighting me about it when I brought it up later. Then the parent is likely going to say. I never killed your pet rabbit. What the hell are you talking about? You're just making things up! You're gaslighting ME and trying to make me imagine I was a bad parent. How dare you!

I don't want to end on that note, so I'll say a bit about food.

My new thing is eating oatmeal with milk and cinnamon. No added sugar. And I'm into green tea.

It sounds like I'm a healthy person. But trust me. I'm not. I love junk food and sugar. I eat too much of it. But I'm weird. With certain things, I don't like them sweetened. I prefer oatmeal unsweetened. With the cinnamon and sugar in the milk, it's sweet enough. And I also don't like sugar in my tea. 

But see...I will sit there and eat sugar cubes plan...just stick them in my mouth.

Another weird thing is Tim recently bought pumpernickel bread. I love pumpernickel bread. I also love bread with butter. But I've come to realize, I do NOT like butter on pumpernickel bread. I like it completely dry.

  

Read my novel: The Dead are Online 

Spoiler: Okay, so in all three of the shows, Broadchurch, Fortitude, and Dark...the father of the dead, missing, or injured child is having an affair.  In both Broadchurch and Fortitude, the dad is doing adultery things the night the bad things happen to the child. In Dark, I can't remember if that's the case.  From what I can remember, most of the town's adults were at a party. I don't think there was any sex happening with the Dad, but I think there was some secret flirting.  

Worthy

Though I didn't at all enjoy seeing The Exorcist movie when I was seven; as I reached a more appropriate age for that kind of thing, I grew to like the franchise.

Recently we watched season two of The Exorcist TV show. I totally LOVED that.  

I can't say the same for the first season of the show. I thought it started strong, but then after the big twist, it got a bit too silly for me.  I might write a post about all that one day.  But for now....

I just want to list the reasons I loved the second season. I've been trying to decide if I want a spoiler post or a spoiler free one.

I'm going to go with spoiler-free.  I guess I'm kind of hoping to promote the show; though hardly anyone reads my blog, and when they do, I don't think I often succeed in brainwashing them to check out the stuff I want them to check out.

But still.

I'm going to go spoiler free. Later I might write more in a spoiler-rich post.

Until then...here's my list.

1. DIVERSITY- I love that none of the main cast are white straight males with American accents.  There's one white man in the main cast. He's gay, and has a British accent.

In terms of diversity, I'm pretty sure that accent isn't as important an issue as things like skin color, disability, religion, sexuality, etc. But I do think audience members could benefit from being exposed to more characters that are first generation Americans.  

The two main characters (the Exorcist team) are first generation Americans. I think that's very cool.

Then two of the other principal adults are Asian, and they have American accents. So that illustrates the point that it's not always the white people who have been here long enough to language-assimilate.  I think this is an idea that really needs to be driven into our brains. Hell, I'm MARRIED to an Asian-American with a 100% American accent, and I'm still sometimes surprised when an Asian person opens their mouth and an American accent comes out.   

Yikes. I just realized that two of the main characters are white males. But they're children.  So maybe I should say, none of the ADULT main cast are white, straight males with American accents.  And also, the kids probably qualify more as supporting characters than main characters.

2. CREEPY SETTING-The show takes place on an island in the Pacific Northwest. I think it's Washington, but it might have been Oregon. Like many American TV shows, Canada does the portraying. 

The island has a creepy foster home, and that's where most of the creepiness happens.

But there's also a creepy cabin, a creepy well, a creepy ferry station, a creepy forest, etc.

Pretty much everything on the island is creepy and eerie.

I'm wondering if the island is actually creepy.  I mean could you take the setting and turn it into the perfect place for a romantic comedy? Is it only the storyline that makes it seem sinister?

But then I don't think I got a sinister feeling about Washington DC from The Exorcist movie, and nor did I get one about Chicago from the first season of the TV show.  

I think maybe there IS something about the island...especially the house.  Tim and I both noticed that  there was a lack of lighting. The characters seemed to walk around in the almost-dark a lot.  

3. SCARY.  I think the show was definitely scary. What I love is that the jump scares and gruesome scares aren't what got to me.  Actually, I don't remember any jump scares.  But I assume they probably had some, and I just forgot.

The show had the obligatory spider walks and demon make-up effects. That was fairly cool. What really got to me, though, was the psychological horror.

I'm trying to figure out if I can talk about this without spoilers.  

Maybe.

It's the suffocating idea of being plagued by visions and not being able to escape them.  It doesn't matter if they come from ghosts, demons, aliens, or are own brains.   

The show also has the whole scary idea of being trapped by delusions, and losing touch with reality.  I think a mild, harmless (probable) delusion here or there can make life more interesting. But if it completely takes over your life and ruins you, that's scary to me.  

There's also the scary matter of vulnerable people being easily brainwashed.

4. TEAR JERKER- I think horror movies and TV shows usually elicit one or two emotions. Any decent one will hopefully make us afraid. Then, for better or worse, some will make us laugh. 

How many make us cry?  

I got pretty emotional during the last episode of The Exorcist.  I think I was more emotional watching that than I was watching the three recent episodes of This is Us.

5. SURPRISES Tim and I made guesses about what was going to happen. In most cases, we were wrong and quite surprised about what ended up happening.  So, the show wasn't predictable for us. I think stories can go too far in either direction.There are stories that are too predictable.  It's so easy to guess what's going to happen next.  You might as well be doing the writing yourself. Then other stories are full of surprises, but they don't make logical sense. Or it's just ridiculous. OR I can't follow the storyline, so I don't even know what the hell is happening.  The killer is revealed, and I'm thinking, Huh? Who the hell is that? Am I supposed to know who that is?  

The Exorcist surprised me, but once I got an answer, it made total sense to me.  

6. UNRESOLVED MYSTERY-A day or two after we finished watching the show, I realized a certain question was never answered.  I won't give details.  I'll just say it was a question of whether a tragedy was demon-caused or psychological-caused.  At first I felt it was kind of a mistake not to address the issue. But after I thought about it a few moments, I liked that they kept it open-ended. Sometimes it's nice to let the audience make up their own minds. 

Well, that's my list.  For now.  I might write more later.  Or maybe not.  I tend to obsess about a show for a few days, and then my heart attaches itself to a new show.

Our new show right now is Dark—that German show on Netflix. So far, I'm not very attached. But we've only watched two episodes. Hopefully I'll get more into it soon.

I've also been also watching The Originals, that show featuring vampires who used to be Aussie mermaids.  

Read my novel: The Dead are Online