watching watching watching.

A Discovery of Witches (aka the only non-animated thing I've watched in a while)
There are a couple of things about this show:
One, it proves to me that Instagram ads are way more effective on me than Twitter ads.  The trailer for this show kept popping up in my Instagram feed and I actually watched the trailer and then I actually watched the show.  Twitter ads, on the other hand, I just scroll right past.  Anyway.
Two, if this had been about a vampire and a human, I would have snatched any interest right back.  Been there, done that, regretted it.  But the rivalry and politics of vampires vs demons vs witches that's established here was infinitely more interesting.  And it's cool to watch!  Although one of my few gripes was that from the show I couldn't actually tell what demons could do or what set them apart from the other creatures.  More work could have been done on them.
Three, the sets and locations in this show are beyond gorgeous.  It is a deeply beautiful program to watch.
Four, I like Matthew Goode as the vampire.  He's good!  I did not like Teresa Palmer as the witch and/or his love interest.  Something about them felt off for me, and I think it was her, not him.  Nothing against her or her performance exactly, but I felt like she was miscast.
Five, it ends on a cliffhanger, so at the end I was like, I can just read the books and find out what happens!  Reader, I couldn't.  Book one so far is a DNF for me, and maybe one day I will give it another shot, but for now I'm content with consuming this story via television.
Six, it was definitely not as sexy as I thought it was going to be.  I'm not sure if this disappoints me or not, I think this is because Diana's casting was weird for me.
Lastly!  I believe this show is currently airing week-by-week on AMC.  I watched the entire series via a free one-week trial to Sundance Now, so if you want to binge you can take that route. (Psst, when I went to cancel my membership at the end of the first week, they gave me an additional month for free.)


The Dragon Prince
Probably my favorite show right now!  We watched Season One back in September or so, and honestly, I wasn't sure if I liked it after we finished.  But then in December, I did a distracted rewatch while working on some stitching projects, and I liked it way better!  And then Season Two came out in February and I am fully obsessed.
I think my initial problem was two-fold:  First, that I kept comparing the show to Avatar: The Last Airbender (a few of the execs on TDP also worked on ATLA).  This was a mistake.  A huge one!  Second, I really needed an adjustment period when it came to Rayla's accent.  It was jarring enough at first that it took me out of the story, but then it became more familiar, and now it doesn't even stand out anymore.
There are so many great things to this show.  The characters are so great!  The character development is *chef's kiss*!!  It's so fun to analyze and theorize about!  Great for the whole family!  (Theo requests his favorite parts regularly).  The only bad thing is waiting for the next installment, which is the best problem for any show to have, I think.


The Legend of Korra
Some of this show was a rewatch for me, but most of it was completely new.  I remember trying it when it first came out and I didn't really take to it (again, comparing it to ATLA affected me negatively).  This time around I was totally down, and I loved it!  It's more grown up than the first show and there are world changes with the Industrial Revolution turn, but it the universe is still the same somehow.  It's nice to be back in that world, and any and all references back the original show are great to see, too.  I watched most of it while Jon was out of town for a few days and it was just the kids and me.  Theo's "let's watch 'koh-ya'" is now a pretty common phrase and frankly, I'm not mad about it.


Sailor Moon Crystal
So a few years ago, I saw that the OG Sailor Moon show was up on Hulu.  I excitedly went to re-watch what was one of my favorite shows as a kid.  I knew that the version I watched was heavily edited and censored from the original and here was my chance to see the real thing, but I COULD NOT DO IT.  It was so hard to watch something that I loved so much but so different, so I gave up.
Recently I decided to take a crack at it again, and once again failed.  But, I discovered Sailor Moon Crystal, a recent reboot, and it was so much better and so much easier to take in.
And dare I say: better??  It eliminates all of the filler episodes that were pointless to the plot, and also doesn't make you scream HOW CAN YOU NOT TELL WHO THAT PERSON IS at your television for fifty million episodes.
My favorite arc has always been the first, and SMC does it good.  I eventually made my way through the second, but I've never really liked Chibi-Usa so it took me a while.  The third still awaits, but I imagine I'll end up rewatching the first before getting around to that.


Cardcaptor Sakura: The Clear Card
Thanks to Hulu's "You might also like" feature I found this show, which I never even knew existed!  I'd forgotten about the OG show (also crazily edited and censored in the US when I was a kid), of which I was a huge closeted fan of, so this brought back a lot of memories.  It's nice to revisit this world and do the geeking out as an adult when I give absolutely zero effs about other people thinking I'm a dork.  The dork flag has flown high and bright the last few weeks.
Anyway, this show was a little disappointing.  Not a lot of headway was made as far as the story went.  Like, I have pretty much all the same questions on the last episode as I did on the first.  It's kind of a bummer.
But!  The food animation is AMAZING.  I loved watching the characters prepare the food and the panning shots of everyone's lunches, and those were basically my favorite parts about the entire program.
I also found the OG show on Crunchyroll (which I finally know what that is now, after seeing its app on the Apple TV many times before and wondering what it was), and skim-rewatched it (so many filler episodes!) and it was a fun blast from the past.