The Queue – August ’19

Welcome back to another installment of The Queue! In these monthly blogs, I look back over the activities I’ve done in the past month, listing the books, films, music, and podcasts that I’ve been enjoying, and look forward to the things I want to do next. The purpose is to remind me that even when I feel like I’ve done nothing productive, I’m actually getting things done all the time, and I hope that through my brief reviews, you’ll find something new to enjoy as well! 🙂

---

Reading

Our house is finally on the market, meaning the realtor can call at any moment and inform us that a family wants to come to view it sometime that day or the next, which throws the entire family into a frenzy of cleaning, straightening, and stuffing (all the stay toys, clothes, and schoolbooks that have to be hidden away). Plus we’ve officially started school back now, too, so I’m still in that middle ground between the carefree, sleep-in-late summer days and the existential angst of “if a = 9 and b = 6, what is the LCM when 43 is traveling at the speed of the color orange?”

All that to say, my reading this month has been rather pathetic. I’ve tried to get going in few different books, but have yet to actually, you know, finish any of them.

I know, I know, Master Yoda. You don’t have to rub it in.

The ones I’ve started and am committed to are:

• The Green Ember – S. D. Smith
• A Murder Is Announced – Agatha Christie

“AgAthA ChRiStiE!!”
(ok I’m sorry I just couldn’t help adding this GIF, I’ll try to restrain myself a bit more now :P)

I ALSO read this month’s issue of The Thirteenth Doctor’s comic the day it dropped…

deep breaths, deep breaths… I promised myself I wouldn’t scream about the covers this time…

And now I’m really really REALLY ready for the next one!! As I’ve mentioned before, the art in these comics is really pretty, and they’re the first comics I’ve found myself truly following, engaging in the story and characters and eagerly anticipating from month to month.

This next bit is a spoiler of what’s currently happening in the story right now, so if you want to read it, highlight the area below to reveal the text (as I’m going to type it in white) (and if you don’t want spoilers, don’t look too hard at it, because it’s still somewhat visible if you tilt your screen):

I’m really enjoying getting to see the Corsair (previously mentioned as a Time Lord friend of the Doctor in the Eleventh Doctor TV episode “The Doctor’s Wife,” and revealed to be dead in that same episode), as well as the conflict that the Doctor is experiencing as a result of encountering her. (Oh yeah, the version of the Corsair we see in these comics is one of the female incarnations she was mentioned to have gone through!) That whole thing hasn’t been dwelt on too heavily so far, but it has been acknowledged, and it’s nice to finally see Thirteen experiencing the same angst her previous selves had to face when it comes to running into friends in the wrong order. Also, A BABY STAR WHALE!!! *heart eyes*

This next thing isn’t really reading, not in the same way the previous things have been, but it’s just too good and gave me too many laughs not to mention it at all:

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor Backup Comics

I don’t have a link for this one, because it’s actually not a thing in and of itself – they’re actually one- (and occasionally two-) pages comic stories included at the end of all the regular comic issues from the first two years of the Eleventh Doctor comic series. They’re illustrated a different, far more cartoonish style than the rest of the comic, and contain short, self-contained stories about the Doctor and the Ponds and their various adventures (and more often than not, misadventures).

They’re hilarious and adorable. I highly recommend them if you’re in need of a good dose of laughter.

Examples of the things you’ll find in these include the Doctor attempting to have a “normal” Christmas with the Pond family, Rory having an awkward conversation with his neighbor about the apparent age of his son-in-law, Amy and the Doctor trying to work the self-service machine at the grocery store, and River Song knitting.

If you want to have a look at these for yourself, it seems like the only way to do so is to get your hands on the comic issues they were originally published in. HOWEVER, there’s a pretty simple way to do that if your library offers access to the digital loan service, Hoopla. Hoopla has a TON of Doctor Who comics available, including all the issues these backups are in. 🙂

---

Listening

The main podcast I listened to this month was, again, the Redeemed Imagination Podcast.

I really enjoyed the hosts’ discussion about the necessity of Beauty to the world and the art we create (series 1, episode 4), and how it often seems to be separated from Truth and Goodness, as though it’s simply an “extra” – and how it’s sometimes even pushed away, as part of a misunderstanding that all beauty is vain and leads to sin. I also loved the brief mention of how the deep beauty of Scripture is often missed – not just the beauty of the Gospel message, but the beauty of the writing itself.

In the Audio Drama field, here’s something I’m extremely excited about. I’ve finally gotten to buy and listen to:

The Diary of River Song Series One!!!

I won’t ramble about this too much, because I want to write a full review of the boxset soon, and I want to save most of my reactions and thoughts about it until then. But suffice it to say that I’m very happy to finally own this set, and I think it’s a fantastic extension to River’s story as it exists on-screen. Also, THE EIGHTH DOCTOR!!! *clutches heart and fights back tears*

As for Music, the one stand-out song of this month absolutely has to be The Piano Guys’ new cover of “Someone You Loved”.

I have listened to this song SO MANY TIMES since it released just the other day, I’ll probably be sick of it in two weeks, but I’m obsessed with it now so who cares!! (yes, yes, I know, I have an absolutely horrible sense of priorities, not to mention my nonexistent quality of self-restraint… *sigh*)

---

Watching

I’m going to start with the most recent thing I’ve watched: the film adaptation of The Hiding Place (1975).

My mom had been reading the Corrie Ten Boom’s book about her family’s efforts to resist the Nazi regime during World War II aloud to my sisters for the past several weeks, and they finally finished Friday night. The plan was to all watch the film together once they finished with the book, as none of us kids had ever seen it, and the last time my mom had watched it was years ago.

The Hiding Place is an amazing story of one family’s struggle to honor God and serve the Jewish people, even in the face of a government that wanted nothing more than to do the exact opposite. I highly recommend the book. The film adaptation on the other hand… I won’t say it was *bad,* but I think all of us had expectations for it that proved rather too high. I for one would love to see a new adaptation, faithful to the book and cast with actors who can do justice to these amazing individuals who showed such amazing faith in one of the darkest periods of modern history. (Actually, my sister and I have already discussed who we would cast for certain roles if we were in charge of making such an adaptation ourselves – though we’re quite sold on the idea of making it as a miniseries, as opposed to a film, as it would give us far more time to flesh out the characters and include the numerous flashbacks that prove so illuminating in the book.)

During the last week, I’ve also been catching up on the TV series connected to one of my absolute favorite Disney movies.

Although the animation style is very different from the film it spins off of, Big Hero 6 The Series has so far proven to be extremely faithful to the feel and message of the film (though most of its episodes are significantly lighter in tone). It continues the adventures of the teenage-prodigy superhero team that first banded together in the film, while still managing not to give any of Hiro Hamada’s teammates (aside from Fred) “real names”. All in all, it’s a sweet, fun, low-key superhero show, with a storyline running throughout that’s pretty interesting and keeps my attention while I’m jogging. (I’ve limited myself to only watching this while I’m on the treadmill as a means to create some incentive for myself and keep me from once again backsliding into the land of the coach-potato.)

Jo, honey, you may not have passed Science, but you have an A+ in Adorableness (yes that’s a word – I’ve used it now and that makes it a word)

And of course, I’m continuing my watch through all of Classic Doctor Who, although I’ve not been going quite as speedily lately as I have been the previous few months. I’m currently on season 10, the last season for the Third Doctor’s companion Jo Grant (who I love with all my heart because she’s absolutely adorable and sweet and excellent with Three), and while it’ll be sad to see her go after getting to know her for the past several seasons, I do have to admit a certain level of anxiety to start season 11 and see the first appearance of Sarah Jane.

---

That’s all for my official Queue things, but I do have one more thing I want to add.

I found this YouTube video just the other night while trying to find a helpful tutorial for how to draw faces in profile. I’ve tried tons of different methods and tutorials before to draw profiles like this, including just looking at reference pictures and making up my own method, but this video was the very first one to actually work for me.

It’s a bit long, and just a guy talking to his camera and showing the step-by-step on a sheet of paper, so I almost didn’t stick with it. But, turns out, this was the first time profiles actually made sense to me, and I was even able to use his instructions and guidelines to draw a profile in my sketchbook that I must admit to being rather proud of.

Obviously, I need to practice this a lot before I’m “fluent” in it, and I’ve already begun adjusting a few of his guidelines to fit my personal art style (and to better capture the look of a female face), but just watching this helped me so much that I wanted to share it with my readers here, and perhaps it’ll help one of you as well. 🙂

---

Ta-DA!! I managed to wrap this whole thing up in less than 2,000 words!! That’s quite an improvement over last month’s Queue (and yeah, we’re just gonna ignore that it’s mostly due to me not doing nearly as much interesting stuff this month, m’kay?)

And I managed to sit my behind down and write this whole thing in one day! (*cough* thoughnotwithoutmultiplecoffeeandsnackbreaks *cough cough*)

But now it’s almost midnight, and my fam has church bright and early in the morning, so I’m signing off for the night.

Have a lovely week! 😀

• Shay

This is my new signing-off GIF. No I will not change my mind. *bats you away with flyswatter*