Diving with Octos and Sixgill Shark

Jul. 23rd, 2025 05:44 pm
tiggymalvern: (diver)
[personal profile] tiggymalvern
I went diving at Redondo on Tuesday, with the plan to look for sixgill sharks. I had no real expectation of seeing them - they're around there, but you have to be lucky. They mostly stay way too deep, but in summer they sometimes come up into water shallow enough for recreational divers. But at those depths, you don't get a lot of time to hang out and look for them.

The visibility was terrible with so much plankton after all the sun we've had, but once we got below the plankton at around 30 or 40 feet, the very first thing we saw was a giant pacific octopus sitting out in the open - always a good start to a dive! Then when we got down to 90-100 feet where we looking for sixgills, there was a delightful little red octopus to entertain us. It touched a rockfish and scared itself!

And then after ten minutes, a sixgill shark came to check us out. It's dark down at those depths in summer, because all the plankton in the shallow water eats the light. It's one of the reasons you have to be lucky to see them - if it's more than 20 feet away, or you're not shining your light in the right direction, you'll never know it's there. So the shark has to want to interact - we're down there blowing bubbles and shining lights, and if they were shy, they'd never come near us. It's a very different shark experience than all my tropical shark dives, where you can see them a long way away and watch them come closer. With these guys, you know nothing, until you suddenly have all the shark right there in your face.

We only had a couple of minutes with the shark before we had to head back up into shallower water, but it was great to see one. Some people have looked a lot more often than I have and still never found one.

https://youtu.be/k-xJLkSildI
tiggymalvern: (wtf is with this shit?)
[personal profile] tiggymalvern
Being the binge watchers that we are, we never watch a series as it airs. It goes on the list, and then at some point, it reaches the top of the list and we watch an episode a day.

Earlier this year, Mythic Quest aired season four. We downloaded it right after the last ep aired, and then this month it reached the top of the list. We watched it, we thoroughly enjoyed it, and then we watched the finale that ended with Poppy and Ian snogging, before going OMG and leaping apart like they'd been burned, and it was perfect.

It followed through from everything that had been set up the whole season. Poppy and Ian had established work boundaries that they stuck to (mostly) so they didn't drive each other nuts. Ian had for the first time in his life spent the season trying to do the right thing for Poppy - screwing it up half the time, because he's Ian, but he was making an effort to be selfless for her, even when it cost him. He was working so hard to be supportive, and he succeeded often enough that it was genuinely noticeable. The arc worked. It made sense that they'd end up there.

I thought I remembered seeing somewhere that Mythic Quest had been cancelled and there wouldn't be a season five, so I ran a search to check and discovered that yeah, no more Mythic Quest. That was it.

I also fell over a massive fucking controversy.

Apparently there was a dual backlash to that Mythic Quest finale. Part of it was fans who were angry at having a cliffhanger ending that would never be resolved. Part of it was fans who thought that Poppy and Ian snogging came out of nowhere and made no sense. (What show were you watching? Seriously? But okay, you do you, I guess.)

Problem - Apple TV didn't like the backlash. So the ending to the show was re-edited. If you watch that ep on streaming now, Poppy and Ian hug and then go right back to working as normal.

That episode ending that we watched and loved? It doesn't exist any more outside illegal downloads. It's been scrubbed from existence. The episode ending that the whole season was building up to and leading the audience towards - it's just gone. What's out there now instead of a dramatic closer and an emotionally satisfying cliffhanger is... boring. Meh.

WTF people? This is the new world we live in now? It's bad enough that writers are scripting shows to circumvent fan expectations instead of completing the character arcs they've been building for years (GoT ::cough::) But to re-edit it after the fact? Catering to the loudest and most obnoxious subset of people, so that three weeks after an episode airs, it's altered to fit the mood of the day?

I do not want to live in this shitty new world. I want stories to be told the way they need to be told, the way the creators want them. Fuck this shit.

Profile

mazephoenix: (Default)
mazephoenix

March 2023

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
1920 2122232425
262728293031 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 26th, 2025 09:49 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios