Books, TV, Hair

[rhysiana]

Books

I just finished Zen Cho's Black Water Sister, and it was excellent. It reminds me of what urban fantasy was before it became "mysteries with magic" (which isn't something I object to, I just enjoyed the genre back when it was wider), and I think it really nailed the whole character falling into the supernatural world while still being very rooted in the mundanities of the real world thing. Malaysia was a real presence in the book. Cho is so good at palpable physical details.

Finishing that reminded me to go back to working my way through Liz William's Detective Inspector Chen series, which has such a fascinating blend of nearish future sci-fi and urban fantasy set against the Southeast Asian cultural mix of Singapore. (Or Singapore Three, in this case.)

Audiobook-wise, I started listening to Hench, but the narrator does some really weird things with where they choose to put emphasis in sentences, so I've only been managing about 20 minutes at a time while walking. I think audio mysteries work better for me than SFF, for whatever reason.

TV

I forgot what day it was on Monday due to being so focused on knitting, so I missed the group watch of Joy of Life, but I managed to catch up last night. This show sure does take some interesting tonal and genre swerves! (And I definitely don't mean that in a bad way.) We're *so close* to the episode where Xiao Zhan's character shows up! Which also means we're very close to the end, and I've heard it ends on kind of a cliffhanger because there's supposed to be another season, so I'm kind of bracing myself for that.

I've also watched up to current on the non-VIP episodes of The Imperial Coroner (actually, I think two more have been unlocked now, I should watch those today), and it's great. A female-led show! With good mysteries! And extremely nerdy romance! As I was telling another friend, my read on the main four characters' romantic vibes are thus:

• Main leads: ace-spectrum nerds in love
• 2nd female lead: wlw-inclined martial princess (she's like Mu Nihuang without the crushing responsibility)
• 2nd male lead: bi ADHD playboy who would really like the martial princess to push him up against a wall

I'm not feeling personally fanworks-driven for this show, but I do appreciate how much f/f potential there is. Also, I just love how competent they all are.

Non-cdrama-wise, I've been rewatching White Collar as knitting background when I don't want to have to deal with subtitles, and I'm pretty sure it gets gayer every time I watch it. In the evenings, we've been jointly working our way through all the Miss Marple adaptations, and I had forgotten/not realized how often tragic lesbians show up in her victim pool.

Hair

I got my hair evened out from the asymmetrical cut I entered the pandemic with about two weeks ago, when my vaccine truly kicked in, and on Wednesday this week went back to get it dyed, since the new stylist I saw said she used the brand of dye that actually sticks pretty permanently in my hair. (Elumen, which apparently some stylists don't like because it's runnier.) Before this, I'd always kept the purple parts in the underlayer and left my natural color on top so I wouldn't have to worry about my roots growing out, but I wasn't very clear about wanting that this time and she ended up doing my whole head, and by the time I realized that was going to happen, I decided I didn't mind. The new stylist did a great job of working in the magenta, red-violet, and violet colors so they don't just look like stripes, and I'm hopeful that since we didn't do any pre-lightening it will all blend with my natural color well enough at the roots that it won't look too weird upon grow-out, because I'm never going to manage to be a person who goes in regularly to get my roots touched up, nor am I ever going to bother to do it myself at home.

Comments

[umadoshi]

I'm never going to manage to be a person who goes in regularly to get my roots touched up, nor am I ever going to bother to do it myself at home.

SAME. Ah, the joys of managing glorious color in one's hair.

[rhysiana]

So much easier to just take root growth into account from the beginning! Fingers crossed it works out this time, because I'm definitely in a benign neglect growing out phase rather than a cutting and maintenance phase. (For reference, my hair used to be down to my knees, so this just past shoulder length thing still feels absurdly short. Curse past me for cutting it all off due to being too heavy just before I got into cdramas and had all this time at home to play with braids!)

[dragonyphoenix]

Never heard of Detective Inspector Chen series but am always looking for something good to read so I've up the first one on-hold at the library.

[rhysiana]

I honestly can't remember how I initially heard about them, but I had the first one on my ereader for a long time, and then I saw an alert that the rest of the series was on sale, so I picked them all up and once I started reading them, I definitely didn't regret it!