Lexical Gap No. 48: Hodenkobold
February 2024 summary
February’s roundup arrives a while into March, sorry about that. Not going to lie, it’s been a rough month for me health-wise, both mental and physical. It turns out my bipolar medication was causing me hypertension, so I’ve had to discontinue it. While that’s been a vast help for my blood pressure, it’s been…less beneficial for me emotionally. I’ve been trying to give myself grace through the transition period, but I’d forgotten how, well, miserable things can be without meds. Motivation? Gone. Ability to write? Gone. Even getting this newsletter out to you has been a struggle.
But it hasn’t been all doom and gloom. February is the month of birthdays in Chez JJ—we celebrated Bear’s birthday with his favorite meal of stuffed cabbage (with a tomato-onion-garlic-free/dog-friendly version for the boys), and Castor and Pollux turned two years old on Valentine’s Day, which we celebrated with “pooch cakes.” Thank goodness for dogs, truly, for they’re probably the only things getting me through this transition period with my meds. They need to be fed and walked and loved, and on a regular schedule, and our long walks together have been good for my mental health. Have they started calming down now that they’ve become “adults”? No, not really, but this is why you should never adopt herding breeds, especially herders from the same litter. DO NOT MAKE MY MISTAKE, FRIENDS. Still, they’re good bois…most of the time.
In this issue
1. JJ’s magical world
2. Lexical gap
3. This creative life
4. What you might have missed
5. What I’m reading playing
7. What I’m watching
7. Other things of note
lexical gap: hodenkobold 🧩
And German once again makes an appearance on Lexical Gaps, this time with a hilarious insult: hodenkobold, literally “testicle gremlin.” An (affectionate) insult given to someone who is constantly getting on your nerves and/or has a face like a scrotum.
this creative life ✍🏻
I regret to inform you that having an idea of where you’re going in writing, does, in fact, making writing go easier…providing you don’t get bricked by having to change up your bipolar meds. Still, the first part of February was incredibly productive because in January, I wrote a “long, shitty synopsis" of 10K words where I mapped out the important details and turning points of GUARDIANS 3. So even if I can’t write at the moment, I won’t be expending extra brain cells trying to figure out where I’m going.
what you might have missed 🦭
February was my 7th JJubilee, during which I celebrated seven years of being an author with some gifts and extra content! Today is the last day to redeem a free trial that gives you access to all my newsletter content, so grab it while you can!
what i’m reading 📖 playing 🎮
After a productive reading month in January, I’ve slowed down quite a bit in February due to the fact that I’ve been replaying the Mass Effect trilogy for the *mumbles*th time. Listen, I replay this trilogy the way I reread my favorite books or rewatch my favorite movies and TV shows, okay?
what i’m watching 📺
True Detective: Night Country. Admittedly, after the first (great but flawed) season of True Detective, I completely fell off watching the rest of the show. There was something about the cosmic horror, dread, and philosophical musings of the first season that really struck a note with me that the other seasons never seemed to return to…until Night Country. I LOVE Night Country. I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews of this show that mostly seem to be due to misogyny because heaven forbid something star two complicated women. Anyway, this is also a return to that sense of cosmic dread that I found so compelling about the first and I highly recommend!
Avatar: The Last Airbender live action adaptation. So…I was not looking forward to a live action adaptation of the original animated series, mostly because what I love about animation is the visual creativity and playfulness you can achieve in a medium not limited to physicality. And for the most part, I found this adaptation pretty mid. I think the cast is phenomenal, but the writing is…questionable. The biggest issue with the live action adaptation was the limited number of episodes—it’s hard to compress 24 episodes’ worth of story into 8. If they only had 8 episodes to tell the story, I sort of wish the showrunners had gone their own way and come up with something different to the original while honoring its spirit. It was both too faithful to the source material and not enough, and it was pretty clear the majority of the budget went into the special effects which…was not the part of the story I was looking forward to most. Still, I do think the cast is amazing…I just wish they were in something better.
Dune: Part Two. This was great and makes me wish I had seen this in IMAX. Honestly, it’s so refreshing to watch something with vision instead of just spectacle (even though the film was filled with a lot of spectacle as well). I haven’t read the Dune books,1 but as far as adaptation goes, I think it stands well on its own. I also can’t overstate how incredible this movie is visually; after years of grey-toned, unrealistic and cartoonish superhero films (and there’s nothing wrong with that!), the images Villeneuve creates with location, infrared, lighting, and sets are just *chef’s kiss.* I’ve loved everything of Villeneuve’s since Arrival; this might be my cue to seek out his earlier work.
other things of note 💾
Read, Max. “Are ‘algorithms’ making us boring?“ Read Max, Substack. Feb 2024.
Brinkley, Nicole. “Let’s talk about Goodreads.” misshelved, Substack. Feb 2024.
Summers, Courtney. “There is no next book.” from, courtney, Substack. Feb 2024.
Wynn, Natalie. “Twilight.” Contrapoints, YouTube. Mar 2024.
Until next time.
사랑해,
I did try after the first Dune movie came out, but I tried reading it on audio and I’m sorry to say that the audiobook of Dune is DREADFUL. I might try again in the near future, but on paper.