Community Thursday

Jul. 10th, 2025 03:49 pm
vriddy: Dreamwidth sheep with a red wing (dreamsheep)
[personal profile] vriddy
Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.



I just would like to give another signal boost and pointer toward [community profile] sunshine_revival, as the comm and event appear very active! You can dip in and out and don't have to start from the beginning, just jump in whenever you like and enjoy, and hopefully make new dreamwidth friends :) I've been enjoying the challenge replies I spot on my reading page!

Not Much of Anything, Alas

Jul. 9th, 2025 02:32 pm
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 The library finally coughed up KD Edward's Tarot Sequence triology (Last Sun, The Hanged Man, and the Hourglass Throne.) I picked these up because Edwards is going to be one of our GoH's at Gaylaxicon. Have I read much of Last Sun yet? No, not really. I'm finding it a little difficult to get into. I'm hoping that will change? I'm giving this book a bit longer than I would normally because I want to give a GoH more than a fair shake, you know? Someone on ConCom loves his work! So, I guess we'll see if I ever warm to it.

Obviously, it's okay if I don't. But, I'm generally bummed that it's not dragged me in because I'm having some reading ennui. Do you ever get this? I have a ton of options of things to read, but nothing is looking appealing and nothing that I'm currently reading is grabbing me. I've also got Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow on audiobook and I can't seem to get past 10%.   And I've heard good things about this book!

So, here's the other stuff I have in my Libby folder right now. Help me pick something?

When the English Fall by David Williams
The Future is Yours by Dan Frey
Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth
The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon
Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Anything look good to you? I noticed that Martha Wells recommended  the worldbuilding in The Archive Undying to the New York Times in their "Let Us Help You Pick Your Next Book: Science Fiction" article. So maybe that's worth a go?

What are you reading?

Me-and-media update

Jul. 9th, 2025 03:06 pm
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the Crowd-sourcing randomness poll, heads got 19.4%, tails got 22.2%, edge got 25%, and zero-g (the coin never falls) got 38.9%. Either a) the laws of probability have ceased to function in a localised manner, b) Dreamwidth is surprisingly popular in space, c) we've stepped into an alternate dimension, or d) these results are not statistically robust.

In ticky-boxes, hugs came first with 75%, followed by surviving AO3 outages (69.4%), and grumbly cats in search of treats (66.7%). Thank you for your votes!

Reading
Two chapters to go in The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. It hasn't hugely grabbed me, maybe because of my stop-start reading habits, but I am very much enjoying mentally casting Grover from Sesame Street as Gurgi. I have an omnibus of the Chronicles, so I may continue on to The Black Cauldron.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, read by Arian Moayed -- ahh, this is so good! It's about a young death-obsessed recovering-alcoholic gay Iranian American who's writing a book about martyrs. It reminds me a bit of Love in the Big City, but it's more experimental and lyrical. I'm halfway through nearly done. Surprising, funny, sad, beautifully written. Warnings for drug use, alcohol addiction, suicidal ideation, and politics.

Also Guardian by priest, and I currently have on loan from the library: No Rules Tonight by Hyun Sook Kim and Freya Marske's Swordcrossed in audio.

Kdramas
My Dearest Nemesis -- I am enjoying this so much. The leading man, as well as being a closet fanboy, is adorably ridiculous and so love-starved. I want to give him a puppy. (In fact, I think he should just have a dog for a couple of years, and one or two more friends, and then he can get a girlfriend.)

Other TV
Ghosted on Apple TV+, a spy/romcom with Chris Evans and Ana de Armas. The reviews are terrible, and it was indeed very very silly, but we watched it on its own terms and enjoyed it tremendously. Some laugh-out-loud moments. A+ popcorn movie! (The trailer is VERY spoilery, ftr.)

Murderbot, Poker Face, Fringe, Étoile (omg, someone please give these people media training!! Also, I'm sad I looked at that one gifset, because I'm very spoiled for the plot thread I'm most invested in, which is undercutting the tension), and Turning Point: The Vietnam War (so disturbing and thoughtful and informative).

Guardian/Fandom
Partying on. <3 <3 <3

Audio entertainment
Not much; my listening time is being eaten by Martyr!

Writing/making things
I'm currently working on a handful of different shortish things in a desultory "what shall I pick up today?" fashion. This is not how I finish things or even get a satisfying sense of progress! (Yesterday's was another CSZ/SW/ZYL fic -- many deliciously difficult feelings; today's was a gen drabble sequence for FFW.) Just pick a WIP and finish it, china!

I now have 238 Guardian fanworks on AO3. Ten more will make it my most-created-for fandom. # writing goals

Online life
I keep getting as far as checkout on shop websites and then drifting off. The fear of buyer's remorse is very real. Yet another reason I have so many tabs open.

Link dump
Screenwriter's Secret to Mindblowing Plot Twists by [youtube.com profile] heyjameshurst | [personal profile] mergatrude's e/R playlist (Youtube) | Music: Mon Rovîa - Rust. (Live) (Youtube, via [personal profile] teaotter) | US politics: 5 calls | Newsblur RSS reader | ‘I wanted to be a teacher not a cop’: the reality of teaching in the world of AI (The Spinoff, local indie newsite) | Hieronymus Bosch butt music (tumblr link, via [personal profile] mific) | Underrated Apple TV+ show recs? ([community profile] tv_talk post) | Thai Coconut Chicken Soup recipe (via [personal profile] autodach) | Poetic fic meme (via [personal profile] extrapenguin). There, I've closed a dozen or so tabs. # progress

Good things
New shampoo making my hair soft. Guardian. Warm buttery toast. My sister coming over this evening. Kdramas and books. Yesterday's sunshine, and walking through the trees along a shared mountain-bike trail. Sushi on the waterfront. Writing. Clean sheets.

Poll #33341 Companions
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51


What talking animal would you take on an adventure?

View Answers

emotionally unavailable alley cat
22 (43.1%)

naive gecko
9 (17.6%)

sad wolf
11 (21.6%)

stoic capybara
19 (37.3%)

trivia-obsessed fennec fox
21 (41.2%)

upbeat skunk
9 (17.6%)

coffee-addicted giant panda
11 (21.6%)

other
7 (13.7%)

ticky-box of frittered-away time
21 (41.2%)

ticky-box full of infinite monkeys and... wait, who's providing all the typewriters?
21 (41.2%)

ticky-box full of liquid birdsong that tastes like vengeance
20 (39.2%)

ticky-box full of dancing, light as thistledown, to an orchestra of metronomes
19 (37.3%)

ticky-box full of hugs
34 (66.7%)

lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 I'm already having one of those weeks. 

The only good news is that my family and I are getting a lot done around the house. Mason, at 21, has been aggitating for a new bed. To be fair to him, he was still sleeping on the bed we bought him as a toddler. His feet literally hung off the edges as he's grown. Shawn, my incredibly thrifty and clever wife, saw that someone on our local Buy Nothing group was offering up a mattress and box spring. My parents have been trying to get me to come down to LaCrosse for over a month now to pick up an old bed frame. So, clearly the stars had begun aligning. 

Step one, was getting Keven to help us get the mattress and box spring to our house. We don't have a truck or a minivan or anything with any real cargo space, so we have to rely on what my brother-in-law likes to call Big Brother's Roadside Assistance. Mason and Keven went to the Buy Nothing address with the truck on Sunday and hauled it back to ours. Shawn, Mason and I struggled it into the living room because Keven needed to tap out. He says he feels fine since his diagnosis, but it's clear that his strength isn't what it used to be. I mean, he's also 70? So, there's a little bit of all of that going on.

At any rate, we sent Keven home as we always do these days with food. Shawn had made him a nice lasagna from their mother's recipe, but also froze it knowing that Keven's chemotherapy is coming up this week (tomorrow, I think.) And he might want something easy the day of or, even more likely, the day after.

After Keven left, my family and I started to negotiate what came next. Should we try to take apart Mason's bed the same day? Should we wait? What did we need to accomplish the next step? It was determined that Mason--who was up early to do the hauling--nap on the mattress on the living room floor while Shawn and I went to Target and JC Penny's in order to get fitted sheets, etc., for a full size bed. We actually had a full-size bed at some point, so we had SOME of these items, but we didn't have a mattress topper.  So, Mason face planted and we shopped. 

When we came back we still didn't really want to tackle the job of dismantling and hauling everything up our stairs, but Mason wisely pointed out that there was no good reason to wait. Shawn and Mason took apart the bed. I helped haul things to the garage--where we decided to store the old bed in the meantime, with the hopes of also passing it off on Buy Nothing (Shawn had already taken a picture of the stripped bed to show it off.)  I also started dinner while all this was happening because my family gets notoriously cranky when we are hangry. Then, it came time to haul the box spring and mattress up the stairs and I do not know how we managed it, but the three of us did it. Mason is currently sleeping on the box spring and mattress on the floor, but we have an appointment to pick up a U-Haul truck on Friday for a trip to LaCrosse to collect the last item in this scavenger hunt!

Last night, Shawn got a ping on Buy Nothing. A young family was ready to move their toddler into a "big boy bed," and ours looked perfect. We made arrangements (I hauled everything back OUT of the garage and set it up near the alley so it would be easy for them to throw things into their truck.)  We got a reply after delivery from the mom that read, "Thanks again! He just kept saying 'my bed is so huge!' Over and over as he was getting ready for bed tonight." Which makes everything worth it.

As part of all this, of course, we discovered a bunch of boxes we had stored under Mason's bed which we now have to figure out what to do with--but honestly, they'll probably end up in the attic with all the other things we'll need to sort "someday." 

All and all a very productive set of days.

Today I recorded the next podcast with Ka1lban today, in which we talk about American Flagg. As often happens, I wonder what of substance we'll have to say and then suddenly we're having a deep discussion about corporate greed or whatever. Good times!

But, man, all I want to do is nap now!

How was your weekend?
mount_oregano: Cover art of the novel USURPATION (Usurpation)
[personal profile] mount_oregano

 Barnes & Noble is holding a promotion for pre-ordered print books from Tuesday, July 8, to Friday, July 11. Prices are 25% off Premium and Rewards members. Use the code PREORDER25

The trade paperback of Usurpation will be released on October 21, 2025. If you haven’t read it yet, this is your chance to get a good price — and to buy more books from your other favorite authors!


vriddy: Sakura from Wind Breaker pointing at himself (me?)
[personal profile] vriddy
I have a couple of pinch hits that revealed that I must still post here on Dreamwidth. Writing's been agony again. I taunted myself by saying "well why do you NOT WRITE AT ALL ON PURPOSE for ALL OF JULY then, since you ain't writing anyway? Save yourself the anguish? See if you actually care?" then huh saw the sign-ups for [community profile] littleblackdressex were open and my favs had already been nominated, thus immediately played myself by signing up. First exchange sign-up of the year though! \o/

Otherwise I'm down to a writing goal of 100 words a day, which I wouldn't have been able to accept before getting blocked again (*pokes pokes* what's going on with ye) because I just know how much better I can do. However, after a long string of 0 days, actually 100 words a day is fantastic, yes. And something I can make myself sit down for. I'm fully prepared to reduce the goal to 50 words next if that's what it takes to make progress.

I still enjoy my stories! I get inspired reading other books!! What is going on!!!!

It is somewhat painful that this fic is the first thing I actually finish since my hurt/comfort + PHs exploits, but it is what it is. I guess crack just gotta crack, sometimes. There must be something deeply meaningful to ponder here.


Silent Killers | Wind Breaker | Hiiragi, Suou | 1.8k words | rated T | Crack treated seriously

Summary:
There's more than one way to commit murder in Furin.

Or, three times Suou is interrupted trying to talk to Hiiragi, and one time it's too late.
Read it on Dreamwidth or on AO3.
china_shop: Two Chinese men (the Envoy and Kunlun) in historical dress sit facing each other. Blue background with a pink heart sketched in it. (Guardian - bb!Envoy/Kunlun heart)
[personal profile] china_shop
I wrote a self-indulgent Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan treat for [community profile] idproquo and a post-canon Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan domestic-fluff flashfic for the [community profile] fan_flashworks Amnesty round. Thanks to [personal profile] trobadora for beta on both of them! <3

Title: Sunshine and Honey (4126 words) [Mature]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Ye Olde Haixing Era, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Outdoor Sex, Feeding, Finger Sucking, Oral Fixation, First Kiss (for one of them), First time (for one of them), Treat
Summary:

They were halfway to the Allied Forces’ southern boundary when the sun came out. Shen Wei pulled back his hood and looked around, conscious of the breeze on his bare face. The heavy clouds were finally breaking up.

Meanwhile, Kunlun had dropped his bag and flopped onto his back on the grassy slope. “Let’s rest here a while.”


Title: Pages for You (1762 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Fade to Black, Community: fan_flashworks
Summary:

Over the course of the evening, an impulse had taken root, and now Shen Wei submitted to it. He switched on his desk lamp, laid out several large sheets of paper and quietly ground some ink. If Zhao Yunlan wanted to read of their time together through the eyes of a Dixingren soldier, who better than Shen Wei to write an account—to show Zhao Yunlan exactly how much his arrival had meant to the war effort and to Shen Wei himself.

Me-and-media update

Jul. 5th, 2025 03:06 pm
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the Routine poll, 84.2% of respondents voted for tooth-brushing, 50.9% for locking up and switching things off around the house, and 33.3% for tending to pets. Night-time routines taking more than half an hour got 24.6%, and "sometimes it takes me an hour or more" got 7%. *high fives*

In ticky-boxes, hugs won with 75.4%, followed by "how stressful it is to ask tradespeople to change things they've done" with 57.9% and "sitting on a mountain ledge in the moonlight, listening to owls" with 56.1%. Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
Incandescent by Emily Tesh, read by Zara Ramm, who sounds exactly like Emma Thompson. I spent the middle third of this being unsure what the plot was (or if there even was a plot; "is this a cosy magic-school story?" I asked nobody in particular). Things stirred ominously under the surface, but the tension relied on the reader being more worried about them than the mostly oblivious POV character -- which was interesting. Overall, I enjoyed it very much.

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander (Chronicles of Prydain). A few more chapters. I'm past halfway and it still feels like setup, which I guess is a function of it being the first book of five.

A tiny bit more of Neurotribes. I'm bored with the case studies/anecdotes and ready for some theory.

Two more chapters of Guardian by priest.

My Whimsy binge stalled after bouncing off three different narrators for The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. None of them hit the humour right. I suppose I'm going to have to read in text, but Prydain first (and I still haven't finished my reread of Werecockroach, note to self).

Kdramas
I finished Our Unwritten Seoul and enjoyed it very much. It's about 30yo identical twins, one who works in a corporate office in Seoul, and one who lives in their hometown and does a series of temporary and part-time jobs. The office worker is miserable from being bullied at work, so they decide to swap lives. Contains some pretty good (in my inexpert opinion) disability rep, and
I approved of both the morals (spoilers) 1) if you bottle things up and don't let people see your vulnerability, you can't feel their love; and 2) love isn't about winning or losing, or whether you're a burden; it's about being on the same team, staying together, and supporting each other as you win or lose. <3 <3 <3 (I was so happy when Ho-su stopped pushing Mi-ji away, and with the ending when they used sign language sometimes. <3 <3 <3)


I cancelled my VIKI subscription earlier this week because I wasn't using it, so of course I immediately started watching My Dearest Nemesis, as recced by [personal profile] adore. It has a bit of a "based on a webtoon" feel, but I'm fine with that, and it's a neat twist on the Obnoxious Repressed Chaebol Exec trope. (The leading man is leading a double life: he's a closet fanboy, but his family and position require him to present as a 100% bland, respectable businessman.) I'm obsessed!

Note to self: check out First Night with the Duke next. And maybe renew your VIKI subscription.

Other TV
Poker Face and Murderbot continue to be enjoyable (we're an episode behind on each of them). I found the second half of Andor season 2 a lot more engaging than the first half (and might like the first half more on the rewatch; yet to be determined). Another episode each of Étoile and Krapopolis. The Old Guard 2 on Netflix.
Tiny spoiler for the very end. Andrew was disgusted that, at the end, as [redacted] leave the secret archive full of ancient texts, they turn out the light but leave candles burning. "What about the ancient books?!" LOL!


A rewatch of French film Rosalie Blum, which I love.

Guardian/Fandom
The continuing delights of read-alongs and polls.

Audio entertainment
A little bit of Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American (US constitutional-law context for current developments), a little bit of Midnight Burger (audiodrama), most of the first season of Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones (which I'm enjoying despite not being familiar with DWJ's earlier books).

Writing/making things
I wrote a flashfic for the [community profile] fan_flashworks amnesty round and am poking at a couple of WIPs. My brain seems to be in recovery mode. My only current deadline is the [community profile] fan_flashworks Science round.

Life/health/mental state things
My thumbs/hands/wrists are not in great shape. My body is working hard to metabolise ambient stress. (*hugs to everyone*) I'm feeling a little under siege by winter and ~the state of things~, but I saw my sister for the first time in weeks (she's had a cold), a friend came over for lunch on Thursday, and last night our tv-watching friend joined us for Rosalie Blum.

Good things
Chocolate. Andrew and Halle. Fandom and all of you. Polls. Kdramas. Books. Podcasts. Eminem. Writing when it happens. AO3 (*clutches*). Love, kindness, and diversity.

Poll #33324 Crowd-sourcing randomness
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36


Crowd-sourcing randomness

View Answers

heads
7 (19.4%)

tails
8 (22.2%)

edge
9 (25.0%)

zero-g (the coin never falls)
14 (38.9%)

ticky-box full of grumbly cats in search of treats
24 (66.7%)

ticky-box full of being protective of your blorbos
18 (50.0%)

ticky-box full of surviving AO3 outages
25 (69.4%)

ticky-box full of soft, bright-green moss nestled at the base of a tree, glittering with beads of dew
22 (61.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
27 (75.0%)

Community Thursday

Jul. 3rd, 2025 07:20 am
vriddy: Link from Legend of Zelda taking aim with a bow (taking aim)
[personal profile] vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.


Over the last week...

Final (;v;) vigilantes chit-chat on [community profile] bnha_fans, for this season at least!

Commented on [community profile] common_nature.

Book chit-chat on [community profile] booknook.

Commented on [community profile] littleblackdressex about a duplicate nom..... My first exchange sign-up this year! Excited :D :D

Signal boost:

  • [community profile] sunshine_revival started! Each (chill) challenge will have journalling prompts, and so on. A good way to be active and meet other active people around Dreamwidth! There's a friending meme, too! As happens way too often (and I'm going to need to address that at some point...), I'm too overwhelmed with other things to take part in social challenges at the moment, but wishing everyone a super fun time with it! And who knows, maybe I will manage to squeeze in one or two challenges, too... It could happen!!
ride_4ever: (Make America Kind Again)
[personal profile] ride_4ever
The economic boycotts led by The People's Union USA for the month of July: Amazon, Home Depot, Starbucks.

For more details, see this Newsweek article.

What? Wednesday?

Jul. 2nd, 2025 08:59 am
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 Once again, I have not been keeping up.

Sadly, I am still slogging my way through Cultish. As a dyslexic reader, I get into these weirdly stubborn things. I am SO freaking close to being done with this book that, even though I'm no longer enjoying it, I refuse to give up. Admittedly, this is incredibly stupid. Life it too short for books you aren't enjoying!  But, here I am, anyway. To be fair to me, I did take a break to read the first several issues of a 1980s American comic book called American Flagg. I talked my co-host into reading this for our podcast and, I'm going to be honest. I kind of regret that. I had a VERY DIFFERENT memory of these comic books than what is apparently the reality. Oof, they do not stand the test of time! I have literally never seen the n-word (spelled out!) so many times in a mere 12 issues, holy shit. 

It should be an interesting podcast, though!

Also, when I was volunteering out at Pride, Jason Tucker who is a comic book affectionado turned to me when I told him what I'd been reading, "Huh. Is American Flagg cyberpunk, though?" Not to spoil the upcoming episode because this is a question we regularly ask of whatever we're reviewing or discussing, but I do think I now know why I thought so having re-read them, at least. I mean, this is hardly a spoiler to the episode or the comics since it is revealed in the literal first panel, but Rueben Flagg did lose his acting job to AI, actually, so I mean, that's kind of prescient, in a way, cyberpunkly-speaking. 

But, wow, also a hard read, albeit in a completely different way than Cultish.

Part of my absence here is due, in part, to the fact that we've gotten some really bad news from my brother-in-law, Keven. Keven's test results have come back and the cancer has spread to his bones. The doctors informed him that its incurable and have given him about a year, year and a half to live. I don't even know how to cope with this? I was telling Shawn that you always hear people asking the hypothetical, "What would you do if you found out you only had a year left to live?" But, like that's supposed to be a fun thought-experiment, not Real Life. And, as I have reported previously, Keven is the sibling of Shawn's that my family interacts with the most. He lives within striking distance of our house--just on the other side of the Mississippi in Minneapolis. So, we see him often. Mason has been Keven's odd job man for hire now and most of his in-between college summers. And, like, our relationship with Keven is, like with a lot of family, somewhat fraught? We've had some terrible fights in the past. However, for better or for worse, Keven has been a constant in our lives.

Yesterday, when we found out, Shawn was already at work. She decided that she was just not functional after talking to Keven and so I picked her up and brought her home. We spent much of the day yesterday just trying to wrap our heads arounds this--alternating between crying/staring into the middle distance and doing distracting things like, for her working on her quilt and watching mindless British detective shows, and me randomly coming up with panel ideas for Gaylaxicon (I wrote about ten yesterday! It was kind of soothing in a weird way?)  

So, yeah, that's kind of been us.

I hope things are better wherever you are!
ride_4ever: made for me by hiswasburgundy (Fangirl for Canada - Mountie)
[personal profile] ride_4ever
From this U.S. fangirl for Canada on today's Canada Day and every day: declaring my love and respect for the Great Sovereign Land of Canada.




Ten Inspiring Quotations About Canada.

(And furthermore: Fox Delta Tango!)

My Life, et. al

Jun. 27th, 2025 09:23 am
lydamorehouse: (crazy eyed Renji)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 I'm currently reading a book called CULTISH: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell.  It's a book that Mason brought home from college and had in his discard (as in to go out to the Little Free Library) pile. I picked it up because a friend of mine just shared a story about a friend of hers from college who was in a cult in the 1990s.  I'm not normally a person who is super into all this sort of thing, but I mean, I did watch all of  the 2015 movie, Going Clear about Scientology.  The book is a little frustrating because it was written in 2021 and the author skirts around taking seriously Trump's language as fantaticism (even while mentioning it) and that doesn't play well post Insurrection and current administration. Like, girl. You could have punched up HARDER. You were, in fact, on to something.

Ironically, I've been spending my free time doing something that feels cult adjactent.

I'm on the programming committee for this year's Gaylaxicon which I have mentioned a dozen times in other contexts. But, my current work has involved trying to recruit local professionals to attend. I feel a little bit like I'm standing on a soap box evangalizing, hoping to get some curious people to sign up! (Seriously, have you thought about attending?? It's a fun con! You don't have to be queer to go!  Membership is currently the low, low price of $80!!) 

 It's also been kind of time (and energy) consuming.  

Very cultish. 

Anyway, I am currently waiting for my brother-in-law to text or call to let me know that he's done with his MRIs. This whole week has been a series of tests for him (and, as it happens, the rest of my family.) So, I've been the Rounds Lyft driver, only without the pay. Ah well. That's what family is for. 

Me-and-media update

Jun. 27th, 2025 03:50 pm
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
I wrote most of this on Tuesday, and now it's Friday, so some unrepaired time dilation might slip through.

Pandemic life
Protocol slippage. )

Previous poll review
In the Impending doom of the natural variety poll, the most common natural disaster threatening respondents is drought/heat (55.6%), followed by flood (44.4%), then blizzard (40.7%). Twelve of us (including me) are at risk of earthquakes.

In ticky-boxes, hugs won by a landslide with 70.4%, followed by "ticky-box made of Möbius strips and Escher staircases" with 48.1%. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
A little more Neurotribes, but the focus on kids and parenting is not holding my interest. Nothing wrong with it; I'm just not the right audience. A chapter of Guardian. A smidgen more of The Book of Three, and the first few hours of Incandescent by Emily Tesh, read by Zara Ramm (very heavy on introductions and the nitty-gritty of school administration so far, but I like the POV character - no spoilers, please).

TV & movies
Four episodes of The Expanse season 6 with a friend; we're watching the other two tonight. Murderbot (really enjoyed the last episode). Poker Face (haven't seen the latest). Andor S02E06 (maybe we're watching this too slowly? so far this season isn't clicking for me).

Episode 2 of Stick, which... I enjoyed watching Lydio Ko play on TV, one time, but I just don't know how much golf I can engage with, especially in fiction. Swings all look the same to me, so after the first three or four, there's none of the physical competence porn you get in more overtly active sports. And I don't find Owen Wilson inherently charming or interesting. I think the biggest appeal of the show is actually that so much of it is set outside with trees around, and that's still a very manicured, artificial setting. /fussy /tl;dr, We're in the market for a new show.

Our Unwritten Seoul (Kdrama on Netflix). I'm enjoying this so much! Two episodes and several revelations yet to go.

Materialists at the movies. We went to this because a friend and I have a running conversation about the death of the romcom, and this nominally was one. But it turned out to not really be rom or com, and the title should have clued me in that Andrew wouldn't like it (he disliked the main character and wasn't at all invested in the outcome). It's interestingly structured, and the cast is good, but it's mostly about entitled people approaching dating in terms of checkboxes (age, height, income, etc).
Spoilery things about the structure.The main character, Lucy, is a professional matchmaker in NYC, and the film is in three parts: the first third is a wealth-porn romance between her and Pedro Pascale; he pursues her after they meet at the wedding of his brother, her former client. They go to a lot of expensive restaurants, have sex on satin sheets in his $12m penthouse, and talk a lot of numbers at each other. He wants to take her to Iceland on holiday. The middle third (or possibly third act of four? I wasn't timing it) starts when one of Lucy's clients is sexually assaulted on a date Lucy set up. This all happens off-screen, and I don't think we even see the assaulter. The victim is the nicest, warmest of Lucy's clients, but the film is mostly concerned with Lucy's crisis, as the assault brings home that the checkboxes don't matter. The final third or act is a second-time-around romance with her struggling-actor/cater-waiter ex-boyfriend, Chris Evans. Lucy broke up with him over money, and now at the culmination of her character arc, she decides she loves him enough to make it work after all. Conveniently, he is still extremely hung up on her.

I don't think I've ever seen a relationship movie that starts out focused on one pairing getting together (they feel pretty well-matched, and Pedro Pascale's character is smart, open, attentive and kind), then transitions to another pairing. Huh.


The Wild Robot on Netflix. Okay, this was really cute and funny. I especially enjoyed the possum babies. (I kept missing quips, though -- poor sound mixing, or is my hearing going?) As an aside, I was amused that the corporation was called Universal Dynamics, given Global Dynamics in Eureka (2006) and Massive Dynamics in Fringe (2008). What comes after "universal"?

October Sky on Netflix. Fictionalised biopic about a kid in a coal-mining company town in 1957 who is inspired by Sputnik to create a rocket, learn trigonometry, and get a college scholarship. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, and Laura Linney. It was fine, but wow, I wanted the story to be about overthrowing the company.

Audio entertainment
I spent four or five hours over the weekend listening to Melanie Nelson of Coherent podcast interviewing politicians, academics and a disability activist about the "Let's Make Everything Libertarian" Bill for which submissions closed lunchtime Monday. (Locals, it's not too late to weigh in! Talk to your MP!) Since then, Writing Excuses and a bunch of Midnight Burger. (I bounced off Midnight Burger when I first tried it a year or two ago, but now I'm really enjoying the physics and other science aspects, and the characters are growing on me. Ava is my fav. I'm most of the way through episode 11.)

Online life
Catching up on comments. Still have a billion unread emails, and let's not even talk about my tabs.

Writing/making things
I spent the weekend juggling multiple urgent things. Now I have some breathing space, of course, when I sit down to write (aiming for a combination [community profile] fan_flashworks entry and Guardian Bingo), I can't make sentences.
Whining.A contributing factor is that I'm having another "argh, my prose sucks" crisis of confidence. This happens periodically. You can't be on a roll indefinitely without hitting a bump, I guess. For me, usually it means it's time to read a particular type of literary novel, preferably in paper format. The one I remember being most successful is Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible; the very close, very voice-y rotating POVs, the playful intricate language use, and the thoughtful exploration of context help me to sink into whatever POV I'm writing, rather than skating over the surface and Lego-ing together tired phrases. I wrote some really good fic after re-reading it a few years ago. Whereas re-reading Byatt's Possession just meant I produced endless run-on sentences, heh. Anyway, I guess I should get on that soon...


Finished and posted an old outsider POV writing exercise for [community profile] fan_flashworks's Yield challenge.

Life/health/mental state things
I got my political submission in (thanks to [personal profile] cyphomandra for beta) and wrote an outraged email to the Prime Minister about the Deputy Prime Minister's engaging in stochastic harrassment.

In general, I've been feeling needlessly stressed and vaguely sick, but today my alarm didn't go off and I slept an extra hour and a half. So much better.

Good things
Un-punctured bike tyre. Kdrama. New intermediate glasses making it easier to do crosswords and to read while I exercise. New bathroom sink taps. [community profile] sid_guardian commentpalooza. I'll probably get back on my writing feet again soon. Andrew and Halle and books and fandom.

Poll #33295 Routine
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 59


Night-time getting-ready-for-bed routine

View Answers

I brush my teeth
49 (83.1%)

I lock up and switch things off around the house
29 (49.2%)

I tend to pets
20 (33.9%)

there are a few skincare- and/or haircare-type steps
19 (32.2%)

kind of a lot of steps, of various kinds
10 (16.9%)

it takes me more than half an hour
14 (23.7%)

sometimes it takes me an hour or more
4 (6.8%)

what routine? I'm always ready for bed
9 (15.3%)

other
9 (15.3%)

ticky-box of it's normal to have strong opinions about taps (AKA faucets)
25 (42.4%)

ticky-box of how stressful it is to ask tradespeople to change things they've done
34 (57.6%)

ticky-box of wondering if today is the day you'll unexpectedly step through a portal into another time or world
23 (39.0%)

ticky-box full of sitting on a mountain ledge in the moonlight, listening to owls
33 (55.9%)

ticky-box full of hugs
44 (74.6%)

ride_4ever: (FK oh noes)
[personal profile] ride_4ever
If you are in due South fandom you know about the "infamous due South troll," she of many names and one obsession: for decades she has been seeking out due South fic and vids that don't jibe with her personal opinion about which ships and which storylines are "true or not". She was flaming me even before I posted my first fic...back in 2011 she flamed my comment that I made on YouTube about a due South vid that I liked, telling me what was "wrong" with the perspective of the vid and how I was "wrong" for liking it. She actively seeks out for reading and for watching stuff that she knows she won't like and then she reads it or watches it and then she spews out her hatred. The last most recent time that she flamed me -- before TODAY -- was in 2023 when she pounced on a fic that I had written eleven years earlier and said hateful things about it -- I did not respond to her hate and TODAY she returned to that same fic and in even greater detail than previously FLAMED THE SAME FIC A SECOND TIME. Hells, that is some tenacity -- REREADING a fic to which she had already "objected" (she told me that she "disagreed" with my fic) and then commenting further in the face of my previous non-response. /o\

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