Usually, when I start my monthly update for April, it’s with a comment about how bad the month has been – as usual. This time, all I can say about April is that it disappeared on me completely. I have no idea where this month went, but as I have an April 2024 wrap-up, I was clearly here for it!

Content Warning: I’m talking about the loss of a relative in the second section (beneath the first images) of the ‘Feeling’ section.

Unlike last month, April 2024 was a relatively quiet health month. I’ve been fighting off a sinus infection for a while now, and towards the end of the month, it started to come back again. I was down in London looking after my mum (more later) so I was avoiding getting antibiotics before I went away and just about managed it.

What I didn’t manage to avoid was my period, which of course decided to turn up for the first time since I stopped my depo injections in January while I was away /facepalm Thankfully it was super light and manageable, and I prepared for it because sod’s law. I knew it would happen while I was away! It was also very short. The only warning I had was back pain, which is unusual for me as I can only remember one time in the past that I had back pain with it and considering my health conditions back pain isn’t unusual.

The only other thing to mention is that I lost someone at Easter. My great aunt Betty passed away from dementia, and while I knew it was coming (she was my last living relative of that age) it still hit me hard. She was a watercolour artist, painting under the name Bonny Davies. She was an artist and as I studied art we bonded over that. When I was at university, she and my great-uncle would send me cards with “pennies for tins”.

I was obsessed with horses when I was younger and went horse riding. She painted the two paintings above for me, and they’ve been hung in my childhood bedroom ever since. She was a character and one of the few people in my family who made me feel seen and cared about me and my interests.

I wasn’t able to attend the funeral due to already being sick. The last thing I needed on top of an infection was to pick something like COVID up from a large gathering. Even a common cold can make me seriously ill so it’s just not worth it.

April was a quiet month, which was completely expected due to being away for two weeks. The only blog update for this month was the Disabled and Neurodivergent Books out in April 2024 list.

In April 2024 I continued post-Endwalker quests until I got to the point where I needed to do a bunch of raids for them. Otherwise, the month was filled with slowly levelling characters through beast tribe quests until we got back from London. A new event started just before we got back, the Yo-Kai Watch event, which I was really excited to see as it was one that we missed. It was last up in 2020 before we started playing.

It is a large event that involves a lot of work. There are seventeen pets to collect, seventeen weapons to collect, and then you get three mounts when you have collected all of those. The pets are easy to get as the items needed to buy them have a 100% drop rate, but the item for the weapons has only a 30% drop rate. At least you don’t need to do it on the class/job specific for each weapon, so I was able to get some experience on my low-level tanks.

To make it doable and not too repetitive, we’ve been doing two a day, so we’ve got a few done in April and will finish off next month.

By the end of April, I had levelled up:

• Paladin from 64 to 67.
• Astrologian from 71 to 76.
• Sage from 88 to 90.
• Machinist from 80 to 82.

I continued watching Law and Order throughout April 2024, starting with season 10 and working my way through to season 15.

Other shows I’m currently watching are Beyond Paradise season 2, and Murdoch Mysteries season 17. I’ve been enjoying Beyond Paradise a lot, and have been a fan of Kris Marshall since his My Family days, but in this season his performance as Humphrey was amazing. While the writers have never specifically stated that Humphrey is neurodivergent, it’s pretty obvious that he is, and when I tweeted about it, they liked my tweet so going to take that as a hint. In one episode he is talking to a social worker about adoption and completely breaks down about how useless he is, about how he can never get anything right, how he is so clumsy and all over the place… and wow it was so authentic and on the nose. I was in tears as I watched.

For some reason, Now TV jumped episodes and gave us the Murdoch Mysteries musical episode several episodes early. I had no idea there even was one, and was thrilled to find that this show had done one, as I love musical episodes. The cast and writers are brilliant, and I adore their Halloween specials each year, and once again they put their absolute all into this special episode. Usually, in a musical episode, it’s very obvious that at least one main cast member can’t sing. All of them had taken time to learn enough to be able to sing a few lines and be good at it, even if they were never going to be amazing singers.

A bunch of my usual shows started up again in March, and I saved them for going down to London. I started new seasons of:

• FBI – Season 6 – Towards the end of last season I started to dislike the way this show was going, and I’m still feeling that in this season so far. It’s the least favourite of the FBI shows at the moment.
• FBI: Most Wanted – Season 5 – I love this show, but I was so sad to find out that Alexa Davalos had been written out, and was essentially told at the end of filming season 4 by the director that was what was happening without any explanation. I feel so sorry for her, that must have been horrible. I am glad that Nina played by Shantel VanSanten is her replacement, as I liked the character from FBI and I like the actor from The Flash. Hopefully, she doesn’t get a load of hate from fans for a decision that probably had nothing to do with her.
• FBI: International – Season 3 – Likewise, I love this one and the cast. I was super sad to see a main cast member leave, but it was the right move for the character. It is great to see Christina Wolfe join the team; she was fab in Batwoman!
• S.W.A.T – Season 7 – I didn’t realise when I started this season that it was supposed to be the last season of the show.

I finished the following seasons in April 2024:

• Professor T – Season 3 – I love this show about a psychology Professor with OCD who consults with the police. It’s very authentic because Ben Miller who plays the main character has OCD himself, and he’s been open about it in interviews, which is great for mental health representation. This season felt a little off as it was finishing a plot off from the last season and saw a main cast character leave, but I love Sunetra Sarker as an actor who is taking over the role. Her character is shaking things up, and she’s a breath of fresh air. The writers also did a great job of showing how mental illness can be such a roller coaster, and someone can go from making great progress to suddenly going backwards.
• Traces – Season 1 and 2 – This showed up on BBC iPlayer, and it looked interesting. It’s set in Dundee, Scotland, and I’d have liked to have seen more of it. Unfortunately, it’s a show that was caught up in the pandemic. The plot between seasons 1 and 2 was split up weirdly, with the first two episodes of season 2 completing the season 1 plot and then two of the main characters leaving the show abruptly.
• Superman & Lois – Season 3 – It has taken over two years for the third season of Superman & Lois to come onto a UK streaming service. I’m not even joking. I binged watched the season, loved it and screamed in frustration at the ending because now I’m probably going to need to wait another two years for the BBC to get its ass in gear and holy crap, what a cliffhanger!
• The Loch – Season 1 – This miniseries is set in a village by Loch Ness, Scotland and holy cow it was good. I did not see the ending coming at all.

Dead Boy Detectives was one of my most anticipated shows this year, as I loved the comic series. It’s set in the Dreaming Universe, the same universe as The Sandman. So I have some very strong opinions about this adaptation:
View Spoiler »While there are some differences, the general vibe of the show follows the comics, and it is a good adaptation that I thoroughly enjoyed. They’ve aged the main characters up, and honestly, that makes sense for a TV show. In the comics, they are about thirteen and that just doesn’t work for a TV show. The two actors playing Edwin and Charles have done a fantastic job of portraying them.

I enjoyed the new characters introduced, especially Niko and Jenny. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but right from the onset, Jenny reminded me of someone in the Dreaming Universe or perhaps DC Universe (which is connected to the Dreaming Universe). She works so well in the show.

I was extremely disappointed to see the writers create a villain who uses a cane for the show. There is plenty of source material they could have used, most of which they chose to disregard which was a shame, and instead of using any of it, they decided to create a villain based on an ableist stereotype. The cane is made of iron which she uses as a weapon against the ghost detectives, but there are plenty of other ways to incorporate an iron weapon into her character design without making it a cane.

It was also disappointing as a British fan to see them place the show in America, but of course, Americans gotta Americanise everything. I know that there is one manga with a storyline based in the US, but it had a very different storyline, so it seems unlikely that they chose that as a basis for this season. The end episode suggests that the next season (if we get one) will be set in London, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Unfortunately, this also means some of the British humour that made the comics great was lost in translation. For example, Crystal’s name, ‘Crystal Palace’ is a place in South East London with a rich history and also the name of the local football team. While the team is now in the premiership, it has had a spotty history at best (I should know, it’s my local team which my whole family supports – I don’t). All this plus that the character is American just makes the name even more funny.

In the show, her name doesn’t even get a reaction from the two British boys, whereas it would from most Brits especially ones from London (Charles’ accent is pure London). Then American writers have added to it in typical overexaggerated American humour and made it just sound ridiculous.

Overall I did enjoy the show, but if, like me, you’re a fan of the comics and were looking for a close adaptation like The Sandman then be prepared to be disappointed. They did such a great job with The Sandman as well and got a great response to it. I just don’t get why they couldn’t do the same here.

« Hide Spoiler

I actually watched two movies this month!

Pacific Rim: Uprising – I enjoyed the first Pacific Rim movie, but it’s taken me this long to check out the second. It was ok but not as good as the first. I think this is one of those franchises that had the wow factor in the first film, and I’m not sure that can be recreated again. I’d still love to see another movie though.

Uncharted – I’ve been interested in this one for a while since I can’t play the Uncharted games due to my disabilities, and I’m a fan of Tom Holland. But oh gosh, this was bad. It had such a good cast and that was the only thing that saved such a bad plot. The chemistry between Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg was great and I’d love to see them do something else together!

In April 2024 I read:

• Rise of the Darkness by F. C. Gomez
• Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew
• The Last Phi Hunter by Salinee Goldenberg (DNF)
• The Hemlock Queen (The Nightshade Crown #2) by Hannah Whitten
• House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City #3) by Sarah J. Maas
• Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin
• Grave Cold by Shannon Knight

I only posted three reviews this month, and that wasn’t a surprise since it was a busy month. The three reviews I posted in April 2024 were:

[rcno-book-listing ids=”34421, 34600, 34715″ wc=250 readmore=”Read my review”]

We were in London for a few weeks to look after my mum while my dad was in Japan. We didn’t do much while we were there, just took it easy. I don’t particularly like being in London so that suited me just fine. I had planned to catch up with work and reading, and I got some reading done but not much work due to my sinuses.

Thanks for reading my April 2024 wrap-up! How was your April?

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