Hello!
Instead of putting a list of everything I watched, I thought I’d use this category for a more general periodic updates kind of post inc. highlights.
So far in the past 2-3 months, I’ve been streamlining my subscriptions to be better at managing my monthly finances. Mostly because I don’t have the time to watch all of the things and I’m two years away from fifty, which means I need to save more for my retirement!
I regretfully unsubscribed from medici.tv, MUBI and Astro because that DVR set is not working properly (everything I recorded disappeared) and mostly I was keeping it for my HBO and Disney. I already get Disney Hotstar free with my internet provider account (Unifi), plus I added the HBOGo subscription (a fraction of the Astro cost, really). This may not work for everyone but for me I’m not really much for terrestrial channels, get my news from the internet portals of news agencies and eschew most social media apart from the fediverse.
I was going to unsubscribe from Apple.tv but since I also have a monthly icloud subscription, it turned out the Apple One bundle was a better value for money situation for me — especially because s2 of Foundation was dropping. So, that happened and it gave me a pleasant surprise; an Apple Arcade subscription was part of the bundle. This worked well because I’d dropped my WoW subscription as well. Seemed wasteful to keep that when I was just fishing every few nights (I say this but I’m really jonesing for my Wow fishing sessions which used to happen when I was in my prayer clothes, in-between prayer times and waiting — mostly between Maghrib and Isyak).
So now, I’m playing Star Trek Legends (which is on Apple Arcade)– which led to an intense resurgence of my trekkie phase (although, I’ve arguably been a trekkie most of my life — one of my first tv crushes was Spock, after all!). I’m watching it all. Not all at once, but on certain days of the week, and mostly with my dinners. The wonderful side effect of this are nights and nights of Star Trek dreams, of being on the Enterprise, dancing in Ten Forward with Klingons (idek what is going on with my brain), and…writing down new sfnal ideas. Live long and prosper indeed! I’m excited to turn these into stories — if I can only find the time and energy.
The nice thing about Star Trek Legends is I can set entire teams on shuttles for eight hour intervals which means they’re levelling and earning stuff while I’m working or sleeping. So it’s a good game for people too busy to be more than casual gamers. I read that it’s supposed to be a gacha game, but the team selection and gameplay reminds me a lot of FFVII which I will forever miss. But what do I know, I’m only a casual gamer and do not have an in-depth knowledge of the different genres. I’m really missing being in WoW but I’ll likely resubscribe in December as that’s almost a tradition. I don’t really have much time for other games but if and when I do, I’ll have a whole range of them over on Steam (Inc. Witcher 3 — I have an entire library of unplayed/partially played games there). Also, I might finally give LOTRO a whirl especially since I teach my Tolkien course again in the second half of the year. Provided I actually have time to play games.
As for classical music viewing — I really loved having medici.tv to watch with my workweek lunches but there’s also a wealth of operas, ballets and classical concerts uploaded on YouTube so I’ve been watching those.
Highlights of the year for me so far : Catching up on Outlander and Riverdale (though I’m meh about Riverdale‘s final season, honestly), Shadow and Bone, Foundation, Witcher and The Gilded Age. And of course, everything Star Trek. 😉