A fangirl's review projects

Ok, so I didn’t do a great job of sticking to a posting schedule when doing Picard, but I think I have a plan for what to do next. As well as my plans work I don’t want to bet on sticking to it, but here’s what it is.

I’m working on starting a new set of reviews, but I want to start posting them in early October (I have my reasons). So until then I’m going to go back into my leftovers from shows I’ve stalled on reviewing. For TVD for example I did get up to Elijah’s first episode before I ran out of steam (the reviews kept getting longer), so I’ve got a couple weeks of reviews I haven’t posted. I have a couple of unposted Buffy reviews, and I think a couple from some of my minor projects over the years that I thought ‘I better finish watching it before I post the rest of these, oops, never finished that review pass’ (those ones I don’t know that I’ll be able to do much editing as I’m sure I’ve lost some points I’ll now realize also weren’t expressed well).

I also may write up some summary thoughts on shows I’ve done recently enough to still be able to, or if I binged a season of something without reviewing it but maybe I have something to say (or if I stopped watching something and why, or maybe some movies…). It’s a good time to put in a request for a short review too. Basically, September is going to be eclectic around here.

But I definitely don’t want to forget the October plans.

So here we are, nearing the end of 2020, the year that...was 2020, I'm not sure any more needs to be said. But as we get ready to turn the calendar, I'm shaking things up with the blog. 2020 hindsight went...okay; I have some year end thoughts on that I should get down, not as good as I hoped, better than I've done a lot of the time before, so fair to middling. Obviously there's still a bit coming, but it's time to talk about what comes next.

I spent a lot of time in about November thinking through what I wanted to do with the blog moving forward, I considered sticking with the 2020 hindsight idea of focusing on short run shows, but that didn't end up appealing to me. So I basically decided that in 2021 I'm just going to start reviewing a show and keep doing it until I'm tired of it. And in some ways (certainly to start off) it will be more akin to the Frasier reviews than the long and rambling ones that I do sometimes. If I was going to do scoring (and I might at some point) I'd probably use something like the scoring system too.

If I'm feeling the urge to do longer reviews I might review the MCU movies (I've been meaning to, especially this year since we had a lull in them); and I do still have a lot of AoS thoughts that I'd like to share, but probably without going into quite as much detail as I did the last time I tried reviewing it.

Would there be interest in me doing the Marvel Disney+ shows? That might fill a gap in something new being reviewed, and fit with part of my 'theme.'

When I decided to back off making a theme for this year, I hadn't been willing to commit to whether I would stick with things I hadn't seen before or if I'd review some older stuff. I'm still not committing to that but I decided to start with Clone Wars, and if I stick with all of it, there's a lot of that show to get through, and other shows in the SW universe if I'm not burned out.

Basically this year is shaping up to be very Disney heavy, but that may not end up being what happens; stay tuned I suppose.

So let's have an update to my plans (I seem to be somewhat addicted to starting posts with 'so,' I haven't quite worked out why and I'm not trying to stop).

I finally settled on what we're doing for the next round of 2020 hindsight; I managed to settle on Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It's stretching the rules a bit for it to fit into this year's theme, but it does fit.

I'm a decent chunk through the first drafts of the OuaTiW reviews, so soon I'll once again be looking for the next subject. I've got a little more inertia now, so we'll see if I can commit to something a bit more quickly this time. Suggestions are definitely still allowed.

I know I really should get back to posting Frasier reviews, they're sitting there not being posted, it just keep slipping my mind. Probably because having more reviewing energy has not translated into reviewing more of this show.

I'm trying to pick the best day to post my Agents of SHIELD episode reviews during the final season. I suppose Tuesday makes some sense as it's the day before the next episode airs; but that throws off the balance of my posting schedule, and I like it to be balanced.

Obviously I’m coming to the end of Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes. I know in the last review I said I figured I had a lot to say after the series ended, but my thoughts never came together. So the rest of this week is going to be about closing out that show (if I’m with it, tomorrow is the finale, Friday the final thoughts, Saturday Q&A should anyone want to prompt something I meant to talk about at the end but didn’t get to.

Monday we’ll start Now and Again, I’m not as far ahead with this one as I was when I started posting TSCC reviews, so I need to buckle down on that, and for the time being I’ll go back to aiming for M/W/F posts instead of the aim being four a week. I haven’t decided what will come next, but I’m leaning toward Legend of the Seeker. It’s about as long as a show can be and qualify for this review series, but after The Witcher it seems fitting.

I am open to another Saturday new show run; something short-run and popular enough that it feels relevant. I’m considering His Dark Materials or Picard or something in that vein. But I do think first I’ll do a short run of my thoughts on the Crisis on Infinite Earths mini series and the last eps of Arrow (this will mean I have to finally watch the last episodes of Arrow), so that’s a couple weeks’ worth of material.

Stay safe everyone.

I know that at a few points I said I would write up some reflections on TXF s4 after it was done but, I really didn't have any. I have a few ideas about persistent flaws with the storytelling on this show, but they're so persistent that I wasn't sure this was the time to get into them. Then by the time I realized I was taking a break from this show for a while so I probably should have done them at at this point, my mind had moved on to other things. So if and when I come back to reviewing TXF I'll see if I find another time (or many) to bring those ideas up.

Right now I'm taking an actual planned break from doing reviews until after into the new year, when I'm going to start a project I'm calling 2020 hindsight. Actually I'd settled on what I was going to watch next and then I decided I'd just keep doing shorter projects instead of trying to keep doing these long ones since that seems to burn me out.

( A bit more detail )

For the first project I'm going to be reviewing: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, starting from the original Terminator movie.

I have a list of other ideas but I'm also open to suggestions. Especially for things I haven't thought of since a lot of what's on my list currently are things I've seen and therefore thought of.

( Some lists )

Hello everybody, welcome back to some more reviewing. This time I made more of an effort to get quite a few reviews built up before I started posting, and not to pick something I want to write thousands of words about every episode (I’m already reviewing new episodes of AoS over on my livejournal, and they’re plenty long).

We’re going back for another season of The X-Files (maybe more than one season, but I’m not making promises up front, though I would really like to get to s4). So dial up your 90s modem and get out your over-bright flashlight because the truth is still out there, and we’ll try and find it.

( Some notes )

( Anasazi (redux) )

Sigh. I think it’s time to actually say this.

I thought reviewing Agents of SHIELD was a sure bet that I would have the drive to keep the reviews coming. When I started, I was very much in the necessary fandom headspace for this show; I’d been writing (at least trying to write) a lot of fic and had plenty of opinions on the show I wanted to express. As you can tell from the reviews I did do, I have a lot to say on the subject.

But it’s not working out. It seems now that I’d been in AoS headspace for too long when I finally started reviewing and my brain was ready to pick up a new focus. I don’t know that I’ve moved on from the fandom exactly, it’s just been long enough since we had new material that I needed to feed the engine something new. The reviews were already proving a bit harder to get through that I thought, and a new focus has basically sidelined my drive to do this.

I’m not talking about my brief She-Ra project being a distraction in case you were wondering. I might even try and keep some reviewing going by doing some other cartoon series that only requires that limited of focus. But for right now it looks like I will be tabling the AoS reviews, call it another Mr. Selfridge style failure.

I’m disappointed in myself, I was about to hit more interesting episodes. But let me know if you have any suggestions for things to do for a bit until either something else grabs me or one of my previous interests comes back.

Taking a few months off from these reviews wasn’t exactly the intention but part of it was to be expected. I still try and do NaNo in November, and December is always pretty busy. I have found time to try and start a couple ideas for new review projects, but you’re not seeing them because it would risk another Mr. Selfridge situation where I didn’t really commit to the project enough to get very far with it.

But what I keep coming back to is wanting to do Agents of SHIELD; the problem is that I keep wanting to write (and never finish) fanfic instead of review it. I think I may be temporarily out of that loop and ready to try reviewing it again. But I do have some opening thoughts I need to try and get through before starting.

( Biases, history, and Coulson )

Hell everyone, Happy New Year and welcome back to Tori Reviews. I have not in fact abandoned this blog, though it’s going to be a bit different for a while.

First thing is, I’m changing focus. We’re doing Mr. Selfridge for now. It was what I ended up exploring for NaNoWriMo this year so when I came back to doing reviews it was where my headspace was and I wanted to talk about it more.

You can continue following my thoughts on the present season of the DCCW shows at my semi-active lj but I wasn’t in the mood to go back to reviewing those shows here yet. I know what followers I have probably came for those shows and they’ll be back one day I’m sure, but not for now.

I did think going in that I would have less to say about Mr. Selfridge episodes, but that has not proved true. I thought I might change up style of reviews, but aside from a couple tweaks it’s still pretty much breaking the review into a series of talking points, and with so many characters to worry about my reviews are still fairly long.

But unless I get into a real groove for a bit, don’t expect more than two reviews a week, if that.

( A few further notes )

This is a two part update I guess. Real life kind of got in the way this week, so we’ll resume some version of regular posting net week. I haven’t decided it is will be three or four posts, but I suspect three.

Because part 2 of this update is that, owing to the finales we got this week (Arrow most relevantly) I am going to let them settle a bit before resuming the speed I was reviewing the episodes at. I have a buildup of episode reviews ahead of where I’m posting (I’m in the process of reviewing 2x06) so I’m not in danger of running out for a bit. But if you remember my introductory post, the whole reason I didn’t start off by reviewing Legends of Tomorrow while these other seasons were still going was because I thought I would focus unduly on my feelings regarding the finale, and that’s true again for my present reviews of Arrow.