sprocket: Red and yellow leaf image (Default)
[personal profile] sprocket
I lost a long post about recent media, here's the reconstructed version.

- Finished Arcane S2. Arcane is much better when you are stupid with illness, when I can admire how pretty it is, but do not have the mental capacity to question why the Jinx-and-Vi relationship is getting revisited, or why Caitlin is so Caitlin, or what game mechanism is driving the Vander stuff. Kudos to the show for making Viktor and Jayce the most important relationship in each other's lives in a way that will drive the fandom crazy.

- Finished WoT S3. All of S3 was firing on all cylinders, A+ will rewatch. Since we're not getting S4 and the *finn were introduced in 3x10, clearly the *finn will be involved in correcting anything I want fixed in the state of the world at the end of the season.

- Marathoned The Pitt. It's probably better if you don't do that, because by midway through ep 11 (5 - 6 pm) I had maxed out on the choice to compress untold ER freak incidents and personnel drama into one day. Note there were 4 eps to go.

- Marathoned Andor S2 all in one Saturday. As a prequel to a prequel, Andor had two paths it could go: be terrible or be amazing. S2, like S1 and Rogue One, went with "amazing," other than one plot / story decision which I found incredibly stupid, but it was stupid in the tradition of Star Wars. spoilers. )

Meanwhile in Romances of Andor (tm)... )

- Murderbot 1x01 - 1x08. I have exactly one requirement for the Murderbot show: money must flow to Martha Wells. If viewers find the show resonates with them, that's gravy.

With that in mind, I think the writers or showrunners (or both) are more invested in PresAux naivete and flaws than I am. They're also more interested in Gurathin. It's not hard for me to find stories about emotionally stunted emo male-identifing types. It would be more interesting to me if the show brought that interest in creating deeper background and character arcs to some of my book favorites (Mensah, Pin-Lee, Bharadwaj). My mild annoyance that we're doing this again runs parallel to appreciating that David Dastmalchian seems to be leaning into Gurathin's awkwardness and anti-charisma as hard as he can. Which is why I want every other character to get that sort of writer's room investment.

Ratthi is perfect. No notes.

Murderbot the character is an A+ rendition. Exactly the one in my head? Nope. Based on Alexander Skarsgård's rendition of Murderbot's internal monologue, do I want to learn if he has any interest in recording audiobooks? Heck yes, I bet he'd do good voices.

I am also torn between the cameos in Sanctuary Moon clips, which are awesome, and how cool it would be to see the primary / secondary actors in roles cast against type in Murderbot's media clips. We need more seasons, so I can have both (and money can keep making its way to Martha Wells) and we can start stunt-casting actors who previously appeared on The Expanse for kicks.

Sunshine Challenge - Day 2

Jul. 5th, 2025 08:56 pm
evandar: (Default)
[personal profile] evandar
Sunshine-Revival-Carnival-4.png

Challenge #2

Tunnel of Love
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.


Read more... )

Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like

Please forgive me for writing this at speed. It's about one of my closest friends <3

Read more... )

Friday Flora: Tuber Time

Jul. 4th, 2025 09:45 pm
lebateleur: A picture of the herb sweet woodruff (Default)
[personal profile] lebateleur
I'm a big fan of the "string of" plants: string of pearls, string of turtles, string of frogs, you name it. I have a string of hearts and a string of arrows among the various plants on one of my narrower windowsills.



They generally seemed pretty happy there. However, a series of calamities have befallen my houseplants over the last 11 months. Think scale, powdery mildew, mealybugs, and wildly fluctuating temperatures and humidity levels...sometimes in the course of a single day. So I was not pleased to find that some as-yet-unknown-to-me pest had started nesting in my string of hearts.

For some reason, I kept not doing anything about it. And for some reason, the string of hearts carried on living and growing quite happily in the face of my neglect. I started to wonder...



Turns out, those little globes aren't insect nests at all, but tubers. How cool--and cool looking--are these things? Better yet, I can clip some of them off, pop them in medium, and have a bunch of new baby string of hearts after they take root.

It's a constant battle between houseplants and books in this residence, and for the time being at least, it looks like the houseplants are in the ascendant.


これで以上です。

Wimsey Quote Database

Jul. 2nd, 2025 08:22 pm
beatrice_otter: Me in red--face not shown (Default)
[personal profile] beatrice_otter
The hardest thing about writing Peter Wimsey fanfic is the quotes. Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane have an encyclopedic knowledge of the literature of their era (and the literature that was considered classic/important in that era), and quote it often.

Today I posted on the Gaud Squad Discord that it would be awesome if we had a searchable database of the literature and poetry that they knew or could reasonably be expected to know, searchable by keyword and theme, so that one could look things up easily. And that I would be willing to do the data entry, but had not the technical skills to set it up.
supertailz responded by setting up a Notion instance and is noodling around with the technical aspects of it, so it looks like this is happening!

The easy part is getting the literature that Peter and Harriet quote added--all I have to do is read through the books (no hardship there!) and source the quotations. Although I know there are some annotated versions floating around, and if anyone has a copy of the annotations, that would be lovely.

The hard part is getting the right mix of things that Peter and Harriet would have known. Because what is considered "classic literature" changes over time. Some things rise in acclaim, some things fall out of favor. What would be really handy is a curriculum for Eton ca. 1900 and for Oxford ca. 1910, but so far I haven't found anything. Does anybody know how to search "what literary works were considered classics in 1920"? Or have a good list of where to start?

LEP 2.7.

Jul. 2nd, 2025 03:23 pm
yvannairie: :3 (Default)
[personal profile] yvannairie

I should remember, that every time I feel like my blorbo is being sidelined by the fandom in favour of a more photogenic ship, I am not alone. After all, Rostand wrote Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897.

Sunshine Challenge - Day 1

Jul. 2nd, 2025 12:31 pm
evandar: (Itachi)
[personal profile] evandar
Sunshine-Revival-Carnival-1.png

Challenge #1

Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.


Read more... )
chomiji: An image of a classic spiral galaxy (galaxy)
[personal profile] chomiji

The Earth is ruled by the authoritarian Mandate, which like all such governments is constantly alert for threats to its stability. This extends to its scientific research: although the Mandate has explored space and discovered a number of exoplanets (a few of which have some form of life), it still insists that scientific discoveries must support the philosophy of the Mandate, which holds that human beings are the pinnacle of creation and that other life forms must all be in the process of striving to achieve that same state of being.

Ecologist and xeno-ecologist Arton Daghdev chafes against both these mental manacles and the Mandate in general. Some time before the story opens, he becomes part of a cell of would-be revolutionaries. After discovery of his improper views and rebellious actions, he is sentenced to what is meant to be a short life assisting research on the planet Imno 27g, casually known as Kiln for the strange clusters of pottery buildings scattered over its surface.

Life as a prisoner on Kiln within the research enclave is brutal in all the ways any such prison can be, when the prisoners are nothing but human-shaped machinery to accomplish the goals of their jailers. The Mandate's leadership has absolute control over who among their prisoners lives or dies, and if anyone should harbor the intent to escape, the environment outside the base is all too lively. The death rate among the workers is appalling, but new shipments of convicted crooks and malcontents arrive all the time, so it hardly matters.

None of the weird aliens seem to be builders of the sort needed to create the clusters of mysterious structures or indeed intelligent in any way beyond, perhaps, the level of social insects on Earth. Yet somehow the small, dysfunctional cadre of scientists on Kiln must serve up the desired tidbits of discovery to keep their commandant happy with them: evidence that there once were intelligent humanoids on Kiln.

Cut for more, including some spoilers )

I am an emotional person, and I want to like at least some of the characters about whom I'm reading. Daghdev is prickly, snarky, and fatalistic — but then, he has cause. He's also an unreliable narrator who only reveals to the reader what he wants, when he wants. The situation is really excruciating: people with a deep dislike of body horror might want to avoid this book. And there is not, in fact, a happy ending (at least not IMO).

On the other hand, this is very well written. For me, it moved along at a fantastic clip, and when I went back to check some particulars for this write-up, I found myself reading far more than I had intended because the story caught me up again. Some of the scientific ideas reminded me of other works (Sue Burke's Semiosis surfaced in my thoughts a couple of time), and sometimes I was reminded of something more elusive, a source that I can't recall. Does anyone else who has already read this have thoughts on the book's likely ancestors?

From my viewpoint, this was one of the most "science fictional" of this year's finalists. I think it might be my first choice in the vote.

lebateleur: Ukiyo-e image of Japanese woman reading (TWIB)
[personal profile] lebateleur
...with June's falling on this weekend. It was grand. There were four of us at final count; we sat down to read at 11:30 and didn't stop until 6:15 pm. The only time anyone spoke was when one of us got up to get more tea and asked if anyone else wanted any, too. I love that I can do this, and that I know multiple people who are also happy to spend their weekends doing this. (And it's even better now because having those other people with me means that when I sit down to read a book, I actually read the book, instead of pushing through a page or two and then picking up my phone "for just a minute" and doomscrolling updates about things I have no ability to affect for hours on end.)

I finished Kara Cooney's When Women Ruled the World, which was an incredibly frustrating book and Maggie O'Farrel's Hamnet, which was an incredibly good one (but which left me as melancholy as if I had doomscrolled the news for hours on end).

Afterwards we popped over to Near BBQ and introduced one of the SSRers to one of the employees, a Geek BBQ alum whom we hadn't seen in ages and with whom it was great to catch up. Then we walked SSRer A to the metro, with a short interlude to kill 30+ lanternfly nymphs on the way.Read more... )

All in all, a pretty good weekend.

これで以上です。

(no subject)

Jun. 29th, 2025 07:05 pm
teaotter: (Default)
[personal profile] teaotter
I got TWO utterly lovely stories for [community profile] femgiftboxes! Both of them were for my original fiction prompt: Woman who reads in public/the monster who keeps men from interrupting her reading

Shared Time, by [personal profile] anagrrl

She waits, and she keeps herself to herself, tightly contained, as the time draws nearer.

And then she arrives. The Reader.


*flails* This was SO GOOD. A really very alien point of view character and just so much of what I love about books, all wrapped up together.


Ends and Beginnings, by [personal profile] kalloway

There was a wisp of shadow and a pressure around Allie's ankles as she stood at the tiny counter of her tiny kitchen, having just chopped vegetables to go with the rice in the little cooker she'd only just remembered to turn on.

*flails more* This one is cozy and mysterious and warm and still has that utter love of books and reading that draws me right in. SO GOOD.

I'm so glad my prompt resonated and got me such good stories!
beatrice_otter: WWII soldier holding a mug with the caption "How about a nice cup of RESEARCH?" (Research)
[personal profile] beatrice_otter

I read a lot of MASH fic recently, and while most of it was very good, there were also a ton of inaccuracies about what mid-century America was like. I'm not an expert, but at the same time, I did listen to my parents and grandparents when they talked about what life was like when they were younger. And also, I know what's changed within my lifetime (born in 1982), and quite a lot of things people today take for granted are actually new within my lifetime, and thus not around prior to the 1980s. Now, this is fanfic, and if you don't care about historical accuracy in your fic, that is a fine and valid choice and I salute you. If, however, you do want to at least try to avoid major gaffes, here are things I've noticed that people get wrong a lot: 

 

Women's rights: Ms. )

 

Travel )

 

 

Money and Credit )Alcohol )

 

 

Childcare )

 

Phone Calls )

 

Progressive Ideas )

 

The Ad Council )

 

Entertainment )

 

Police )

These are just a few of the things that have changed in the last fifty years. And, of course, I'm only one person and might have got things wrong. Let me know if you see things I missed
 

Rebloggable on tumblr
extrapenguin: Woman in pre-Tang Dynasty official's garb reads officially. (xia dong reads)
[personal profile] extrapenguin
I recently got Pertti Nieminen's compilation of translations Veden hohde, vuorten värit, with a bunch of translations from the Book of Poetry (詩經 Shi Jing) onwards, and have been slowly making my way through it. (Out of print, so I got it via antikvaari.fi and ended up paying more for postage than the actual book lol. Joys of living abroad.) This was for the most part an exercise in seeing whether Chinese poetry works better translated into Finnish than into English, given that all three poetic traditions have different defaults of what is considered poetic. Anyway, the short answer is "yes". I picked a few poems I liked from the Shi Jing to illustrate the differences. The text itself is available on ctext, along with out of copyright 1800s translations by James Legge, to which I shall compare.

(My largest annoyance with the book so far: the transliteration chosen is, uh, not pinyin, so I'm here like "who tf is Su T'ung-po" whenever a name comes up. My copy already has a random inscription on the front so I might add a pinyin gloss to the authors' names with pencil at some point.)

intenseish poetry discussion )

I might do some similar comparisons of the Tang poets and then, later on, other sections – I think there must be enough famous Ming poets that one of them has also been translated into English, and at the very least I can talk about Mao Zedong's stuff for the Republic/People's Republic section.

LEP 29.6.

Jun. 29th, 2025 04:07 pm
yvannairie: :3 (Default)
[personal profile] yvannairie

Tbh something I think about a lot the more I casually watch streamers (my problem is that I am always either asleep or at work when all the Big Name Yankees/Canadians are online) is that we all know that a lot of Youtubers and streamers functionally owe their career to the pandemic. A lot of streamers started because they lost their jobs or were transitioned into WFH, and there was nowhere to go and be during the quarantine, and a lot of people who previously hadn't cared about streaming started watching more of it for the hangout aspect of it, because the chats and communities of these streamers provided a third space and a social hangout, also because the audience had nowhere to be during quarantine.

But what I'm really curious about is how the streamer boom changed the general media consumption habits of the people who got deep into streamers. I know that after 2022 the streamer/Youtube market had a bit of a bubble burst, and now in 2025 we're seeing the long-term fallout from online video no longer being as lucrative and selling adspace no longer having the big payouts it did before. Like, regardless of the pie getting smaller, streaming is definitely way more popular in 2024-25 than it was in 2018-19. A lot of people who used to watch tv and streaming services casually have simply stopped, the blame being laid in the feet of streaming services for becoming worse products, but I'm curious what percentage of those people get their entertainment from the kind of live performances streamers provide instead.

LEP 26.6.

Jun. 26th, 2025 10:41 pm
yvannairie: :3 (Default)
[personal profile] yvannairie

I have a scratch in the coating of my glasses right in the middle of my vision

:(

cahn: (Default)
[personal profile] cahn
E is at church camp and A just got the latest Percy Jackson: Senior Year Adventures from the library and has been reading it all evening, so I finally had time to write this up!

This is what I've actually been reading over the last six months/year and why I've been even slower than usual about reading everything else (although I did tell A. I had to take turns with the Hugo novels). For E this was mostly stuff she read for school that she wanted me to read so I could help her with her papers, while for A. this has been books he really likes and wants to... well, he doesn't want to talk to me about them really, he more wants to ask me questions about what parts I liked and whether I thought X was funny and so on.
American Born Chinese, All American Boys, Frankly in Love, Raisin in the Sun, Keeper of the Lost Cities: 2-9.5, all of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson/Olympus/etc. series )

I am still working on Magnus Chase, and as I mentioned we just got the latest Percy Jackson: Senior Year Adventures (a much more low-key series) from the library, so I do have a few more to go...

Hugo Novels Write-Up Poll

Jun. 24th, 2025 10:33 pm
chomiji: Doa from Blade of the Immortal can read! Who knew? (Doa - books)
[personal profile] chomiji

I've now read all the finalist novels for the 2025 Hugo Awards. The trouble is, I read some of these books when they first came out last year. Still. I'm happy to share my impressions if people are interested.

Poll #33287 cho's Hugo Novels 2025 Write-Up
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15


Which of the 2025 finalists are you most interested in having me write up?

View Answers

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
9 (60.0%)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
4 (26.7%)

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
4 (26.7%)

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
6 (40.0%)

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
5 (33.3%)

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
5 (33.3%)

Sometimes life is wonderful.

Jun. 24th, 2025 06:32 pm
lebateleur: A picture of a leaping arhat. (Arhat)
[personal profile] lebateleur
Life has been A Lot this year due to work things, home things, health things, and ::gestures vaguely at the world:: things.

But sometimes it can also be absolutely lovely. A few days ago I ordered some CDs--including one from one of my all time favorite groups--from the website of a trad musician and left a quick comment in the delivery instructions box to the effect of Hey, if you ever have you guys's fourth CD back in stock, please let me know.

I hit "purchase", watched the transaction go through, and went about my evening.

A day later, an email with the musician's name in the "sender" field popped up in my inbox during an extremely trying afternoon. Surely not, I thought.

But guys. Guys. It was. It was a real, an-actual-human-sat-down-and-wrote-this email from the actual musician expressing surprise and pleasure that someone had bought these CDs, giving some updates about the group (including that one of the members had passed away two years ago--a fact I'd already known, but hearing it directly from this person who was his bandmate and friend...😭😭), and musing about the music the group had made together. The email contained both proper punctuation and grammar and proper emoji usage. The email also contained a proof of shipping photo of the packaged CDs in which the slightly messy interior of this person's car is visible. The whole thing is about as far away from social media influencer presentation as you can get and I cannot express how delightful I find this.

I replied saying that I'd been really sad to hear of the group member's passing and how much I absolutely loved their albums. He sent a second email thanking me again, adding that the group had never felt successful (PS: 😱) and that it really meant something whenever someone said they enjoyed their music.

And, just. It would be hard to overstate how 🤩🤩🤩 I am over this entire situation. I have been listening to this group for 27 years and this individual's other projects for almost as long. This group has had a HUGE influence on my own playing, stylistically and in terms of repertoire. Two of their CDs are in my in my top 25 most-played albums of all time. On top of that, this person is widely regarded as one of the best players of his instrument, in this genre, in the world. And it turns he is also a genuine and down-to-earth human being. I would never in a million years have imagined I would have any kind of interaction with him, let alone that he would act like I'm the one doing him a favor by appreciating the art he has helped put out into the world.

Seriously. This has made my week and will quite possibly be one of the high points of this entire year. So yeah. Sometimes life is wonderful.

これで以上です。

A post from the rain

Jun. 22nd, 2025 09:29 pm
bunn: (Default)
[personal profile] bunn
Goodness, it's been almost two months! I have been reading here and I've even started the odd post, then a cat landed on my keyboard or something and...

Anyway, here I am. What shall I put in a post?

The Shop continues reasonably busy, though less so than last year: it's the first year since it started that turnover is distinctly down on the previous year. Unsurprising given everything that's happening in the world, but a bit concerning on the micro-personal level. 

Here are some things I've done:
Read more... )

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