Wild Horses

Thursday morning last day in the office for the week blog, and I am feeling kind of okay this morning. I slept really well last night (yay!) which is a relief because I was so tired and groggy last night I kept falling asleep in my chair. I also didn’t make the quota yesterday, which means a big push tonight to catch up. Paul was exhausted, too, from all his late nights working lately, so he was in and out of sleep all evening as well. Needless to say, Scooter was in heaven, as he could sleep in my lap, go upstairs and sleep with Paul, and then come downstairs and sleep in my lap again. But I feel very relaxed and rested this morning, and my brain isn’t groggy and goofy, which bodes well for the rest of my day. I have to do fasting labs tomorrow (joy), which means rolling out of bed, washing my face and brushing my teeth before venturing down to the lab to get the blood drawn–I’ll have my go cup of coffee waiting in the car for me, though. And of course, Saturday I have that event at the convention center in the morning.

So, naturally now that I am in the deep weeds with the book, I saw two calls for submissions for anthologies that I may have something on hand for; I am also trying to finish a story for another anthology that I should have finished already. It truly never ends around here, you know?

Last night as I was struggling to stay awake with a purring kitty asleep in my lap, I decided to check out Velma on HBO MAX. There was a lot of talk about this show when it first aired–the usual oh you’ve ruined my childhood nonsense–but I intended to check it out anyway because of course they decided to make Velma officially a lesbian (which we’ve always suspected anyway), and I do feel a kind of obligation to watch anything that may have some queer representation in it. There was a lot of outrage, but I tried to watch with an open mind as a long time fan of Scooby Doo Where Are You? and yes, my pretties, I watched it when it originally aired on Saturday mornings when I was a kid who loved mysteries. (Although I always preferred Jonny Quest.) The outrage about “ruining my childhood” always makes me tired–your childhood isn’t ruined, and your memories of something you loved as a child haven’t been affected; if anything you’re just disappointed because they changed something you loved rather than just feeding you the same old bullshit you’ve been eating all along. I thought an origin story for Mystery Inc. was a clever enough idea, and seeing how the gang all came to be what they were in the show we all loved as kids was interesting enough to make me curious to watch. I also am not someone who gets up in arms about adaptations changing things from the original book–it’s a different medium, hello, of course it’s never going to be the same, plus watching a film or television show is an entirely different thing from actually, you know, reading a book? As for the complaints, well, I don’t care that they made Velma south Asian. I don’t care that they made Daphne vapid and Freddy stupid. What I do mind is they did such a terrible job with such great raw material. The show isn’t funny, engaging, or entertaining in the least, which was very disappointing to me. There were a couple of clever moments of winking at the audience that I enjoyed, but overall? When I finished the first episode I had absolutely little to no desire to watch another. It was a great idea the producers simply didn’t deliver on.

And yes, that’s disappointing. I can live with changes to story and characters, and am more than happy to embrace new interpretations of the canon…but I do expect the characters and story to be engaging. I think they were maybe a little too focused on the subversion of the traditional Mystery Inc. characters and stories that they forgot the most important part of story-telling: the story. I don’t even need my characters to be likable–but I do have to be able to identify with them in some way.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a great Thursday, Constant Reader, and Ill chat at you again later.