Faint-Hearted Need Not Watch

Netflix now has two seasons of The Victim's Game available, and since I've watched both I thought I'd do a write-up on the good, the bad and the unnecessary of this Taiwanese forensic homicide mystery series.

Both seasons revolve around forensic investigator Fang Yi-Jen (Jospeh Chang), a high-functioning autistic man who has turned his disability into (mostly) an asset as he solves some very gruesome murders. He's estranged from his daughter, Chiang Hsiao-Meng (Moon Lee) who went with his ex-wife after they divorced. The mother and daughter's story after the divorce is really pitiful and quite depressing, but Yi-Jen seems entirely unaware of what happens to them. Yi-Jen is pretty much oblivious to everything but his job, or so you assume. The brilliance of this characterization of the lead and how the others around him come to realize why he's the way he is has no comparison; it's just that good -- and that's the good.

The bad: there's a lot, unfortunately. Both seasons deal with murder mysteries that are overly-complicated and very unlikely. The first season's mystery seemed extremely out there; I doubt anyone would have actually done what the characters did, especially what's involved with the first death. I solved the second season's mystery halfway through the episodes so despite all the shinanigans the puzzle was fairly straight forward and easy to solve. Some of the acting from the secondary crew was on the cardboard side, or over-the-top, and as such proved distracting.

The unnecessary: lots of homicide victim porn, unfortunately; they were particularly detailed about showing a lot of things that the story didn't need. One depiction was rather inaccurate as I saw a victim of the same kind of death when I worked in the medical field. Still, if you like seeing people die in horrible ways, and what their corpses look like after, there's plenty of that. Much of the unnecessary is trigger material for people suffering from depression and other kinds of mental illness.

I think The Victim's Game was interesting, if heavily flawed. I also think Joseph Chang deserves every award in the industry for his acting skills. Both seasons are available on Netflix.

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Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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