Murderbot, no spoilers

Jul. 11th, 2025 03:17 pm
mific: (Murderbot)
[personal profile] mific
Extremely good finale for Murderbot! I'm feeling pleasantly melancholic now the series has finished, but at least I get to watch it all again. Also, it's been renewed for a second season!

Writing technique comms on DW?

Jul. 11th, 2025 10:44 am
mific: (A pen and ink)
[personal profile] mific
Does anyone know of any (currently active) comms on DW focussed on writing craft or technique? [personal profile] troyswann was asking and all I can think of are writing challenge comms like https://getyourwordsout.dreamwidth.org which are about producing words, not the craft of writing.

I also have a bunch of links saved, mostly from tumblr, on things like "worldbuilding" and "how to write fight scenes" etc. It's here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cMbhguAkJxfS9eJcacre7RpPutUo8qkx/view?usp=sharing

What other writing technique or info resources or posts do you like?

It's Not a Typical Animal, Chapter 4

Jul. 10th, 2025 02:29 pm
laridian: (Default)
[personal profile] laridian

It's Not a Typical Animal (3270 words) by laridian
Chapters: 4/9
Fandom: Fallout 76
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s), Beckett (Fallout 76)
Additional Tags: Art
Series: Part 4 of The Accidental Raider
Summary: When a thrill ride at Nuka-World On Tour goes awry, it awakes a monster from the depths. It goes on a rampage, and it appears nothing can stop it.
Accidental Raider Rowan Dane has something of a "Disney Princess" way with animals. But will that work on an ultracite titan?

This chapter: Willow was swept into the crater, down into the bowels of the earth by a landslide of mine tailings, while trying to look for survivors. He couldn't have survived that...

Grace Icons

Jul. 10th, 2025 07:40 pm
purplecat: The Eighth Doctor. (Who:Eight)
[personal profile] purplecat
I see I thought yesterday was Thursday and posted a "Throwback Thursday" post. So for today have a post from my "list of things to be posted"


Grace from Doctor Who, smiling Grace from Doctor Who. Grace from Doctor who in blue opera gown, running down corridor. Grace from Doctor Who - close up of face. Grace from Doctor Who chewing pencil next to microscope.


Snagging is free. Credit is appreciated. Comments are loved.

This Is the Hour (Feuchtwanger)

Jul. 9th, 2025 08:49 pm
cahn: (Default)
[personal profile] cahn
Via [personal profile] selenak, of course :) This was a very interesting and somewhat odd historical fiction book about Francisco Goya, the painter, and his life and times in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (the book begins with the Spanish court talking about Marie Antoinette's recent death -- so ~1793 -- and ends around 1800). I must admit that Spain is a big hole in my already-very-spotty knowledge of Europe, although opera fandom and salon helped a lot by filling in at least a couple of gaps about Philip II, the Escorial, and the Duke of Alba (and Philip V who thought he was a frog, but who does not appear in this book at all). Now, of course, Philip II was a couple of centuries too soon for this book (even I knew that!) but he's namechecked a couple of times, as is Fernando Álvarez de Toledo (Third Duke of Alba), again centuries too early but the forerunner of the Duchess of Alba in this book, who is a major character (María Cayetana de Silva; her husband Don José Álvarez de Toledo is a minor character).

Goya I knew absolutely nothing about, except that I knew he was a painter, and I knew (hilariously, from a Snoopy cartoon) he'd painted a kid with a dog (Google tells me this is his famous "Red Boy" painting). One of the really cool things about the book is the way it functions as an art guide (and one with a whole lot more context than usual art guides) to some of Goya's famous paintings. I only started following along with the wikipedia list of his paintings once I hit the middle or so (I read the first half on a plane and during a retreat), but I wish I'd done that the whole time! I know so little about art that it was helpful to have the "interpretation" of it right there (Feuchtwanger often includes the reaction of various people to the art piece, as well as Goya's feelings about it).

Indeed the book is dictated by the art, to a certain extent: if you look at Goya's pictures in chronological order (as I have now done), he does these sort of nice standard pictures until... about 1793, when the pictures start getting more interesting (and indeed the book starts with Goya making a breakthrough in his art). And then around 1800 is when he starts doing these crazy engravings that start looking much more modern -- like, you can totally see them as an artistic bridge between Bosch (namechecked in the book) and Dali (who obviously was yet to come far in the future) -- his book of engravings, Los Caprichos, is what the book ends on (and the title is taken from that of the last Caprichos engraving, Ya es hora).

It is curiously missing in any real sort of character arc -- I mean, Goya keeps talking about how he's progressed in life and thinks about things so differently now, but really he seems to me to be pretty much the same at the end as the beginning, except more battered by life. It's his art that has progressed, though. Instead of a character arc we have an art arc, I guess!

The book also cheerfully uses all the most sensational theories about Goya and the Spanish court possible, with the effect that it is quite compelling but does veer a bit into "wow, this is Very Soap Opera" at times. Basically, everyone is having torrid love affairs with everyone else, and all of that becomes totally relevant to all the politics that's going on. Some of this is attested historically, and some of it is less so. On one hand, Manuel Godoy, the Secretary of State, does appear to have had a close relationship with Queen Maria Luisa (Wikipedia, at least, does not think that there is any direct evidence they were lovers, but at least it's clear there were rumors). But as far as I can tell from Google, Maria Cayetana, Duchess of Alba, did die mysteriously, buuuuut there isn't any evidence at all that she died as a result of a botched abortion of Goya's baby. (Did I mention Very Soap Opera?? Yeah.)

It's sort of shocking to me that the book ends before any of the War of Spanish Independence, which happens just a few years later (which again, since I know zero Spanish history I just found out about while reading various wiki articles after reading this) or Goya's resulting engravings on The Disasters of War (ditto), although I guess all the signs are there as to what's going to happen -- it's not that different from what Feuchtwanger did in Proud Destiny, where even I know that the French Revolution is going to happen, but he doesn't show it in the book.

Requisite Feuchtwanger things: 1) protagonist is irresistable to the ladies and has multiple women who are crazy about him, check 2) small child dies, check.

Ranking in Feuchtwangers: I think the Josephus trilogy is still my favorite, and Jud Süß is still the one I'm most impressed by, but I did like this quite a bit, especially when I had the visuals to go with it.

What I'm Doing Wednesday

Jul. 9th, 2025 02:09 pm
sage: a library with a spiral staircase (books)
[personal profile] sage
books (Forrest, Aaronovitch, Aaronovitch, Hamaker-Zondag) )

dirt
goddamned thrips. Beyond that struggle, the spider plants are putting out babies, the baby thaumatophyllum is up to 3 leaves and needs potting up soon, the money tree is looking better, Grandma's thanksgiving cactus is looking pretty great, the rhaphidophora cutting finally put out some baby leaves, and the terrarium is overrun by red stem peperomia. I need to trim it, srsly.

meditation work
Yesterday I listened to/watched [youtube.com profile] HealingVibrations' sound bath video on cutting old ties with crystal singing bowls and a windsinger instrument. It was surprisingly intense, or maybe it just hit me right at the time.

natural disaster
my heart hurts over the Hill Country floods. So many needless deaths, so many people claiming there were no warnings. Per Robert Reich's Substack: The San Angelo NWS office is missing a meteorologist, staff forecaster, and a senior hydrologist. The San Antonio NWS office is missing a warning coordination meteorologist (who left on April 30, thanks to DOGE-inflicted early retirement), and a science officer. These people are meant to notify local emergency managers to plan for floods. That said, warnings DID go out but weren't accessible or heeded by the people who needed them. (We don't have flood or tornado sirens or anything here, something the state gvt is saying will change. Though how they'll put flood sirens out in the middle of nowhere is kind of a mystery.) Regardless, it's a tragic loss. Hopefully the news blitz will help get weather warning systems put back into the 2026 fiscal budget for everyone. More personally, my parents' area had nearly all its bridges get washed out, so they're basically stranded until they can be fixed/replaced. They've got food and hopefully no need to go anywhere, so they're fine, but it's all just a completely harrowing situation. The morning of July 5, they had 10+ inches of rain in 12 hours, and that was AFTER the floods hit. I'm just glad they live on a ridge instead of down in the valley or in a floodplain, however hard it is to be stranded. There's so much destruction in their area. It's heartbreaking. Addendum: Dad texted last night that there are teams out on horseback searching for the missing/drowned. Thank gods it's ranch country so horses are locally available. Here's one place you can donate if you feel inclined: https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201

#resist
July 17: Good Trouble Lives On Protest/March

I hope all of y'all are safe and doing as well as can be. <333

Wednesday Reading Meme July 9 2025

Jul. 9th, 2025 01:34 pm
kitewithfish: (Default)
[personal profile] kitewithfish
What I’ve Read
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro -
By god, what a book, what a monster of a book! Like many, I picked this up because the lure of a good book club is a siren song – the podcast 99% Invisible decided to do a year long project on this book, one extra episode a month to discuss the book and have a conversation with someone about it. (They got great people, too, including the author!)

I fell behind schedule of the podcast but kept listening and reading on my own, and eventually, to finish this book, I ended up owning it in paperback, ebook, and three audiobooks of 1/3rd of the book each. 1200 pages makes a lot of audiobook!

This book is huge story look at one man’s life in public administration of the parks and roads and buildings of New York City. At every stage, the power of an unscrupulous, brilliant, and determined mind is at play in every project he sets his hand to, and the resulting works show his massive ego and talent and all his bigotries. Robert Moses was a fascinating and complicated man, and his legacy is fascinating and complicated. It’s also a key lesson in how difficult it is to get out of power someone who is entrenched and well supported. It also shows someone who’s unethical in small things will be unethical in big ones.

Key thoughts: If you get started on a project, public figures are more embarrassed by half finished project that wastes moderate amounts of money than by one that goes wildly over budget but gets completed. Public goodwill can be purchased by getting the papers on your side, but only for so long. You can’t just be right, you have to be smart.

As a reading experience, Caro is a skilled guide thru a tangled mess of history, legislation, and construction projects. It really can just be picked up and read chapter by chapter – he’ll give you the context you need to understand. Caro’s got a great sense for a revealing anecdote and occasionally a real admiration for the people he writes about as skilled political actors.

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
– a very decent murder mystery in a fantasy world with some good characters and fun world building. Both the main characters and the world have mysteries built into them, and I found the whole thing very engaging. I don’t want to say more lest I spoil things.

Star Trek Lower Decks Warp Your Own Way by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio – A graphic novel in the Choose Your Own Adventures style that is also a very fun Star Trek legacy piece. I don’t know Lower Decks at all but this was a fun introduction. Clearly made by people who love and appreciate Star Trek’s weirdnesses and with a eye on what makes someone heroic. I will say, it was a kind of confusing read – the Choose Your Own Adventure elements sometimes interact with the text, so you have to go thru several branches before getting enough information to figure out how to pick the right branch. It’s an iterative experience, but well written and charming enough to Trekkie that I did not get tired of it.

What I’m Reading
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo – A reasonably interesting premise but I feel like the story is being weighed down a bit. I am about 25% in and we still haven’t gotten the main character to the Big Meeting.

Someone You Can Build a Nest in by John Wiswell – A weird and gooey book with a monster main character.

What I’ll Read Next


The Deep Dark
Track Changes
Alien Clay
Service Model
Monstress, Vol. 9: The Possessed
Navigational Entanglements
The Butcher of the Forest
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right
The Brides of High Hill
The Tusks of Extinction
“Charting the Cliff: An Investigation into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”
“Signs of Life”
“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars”
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”
“Loneliness Universe”
“The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion”
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea”
“Lake of Souls”

F-FW Challenge 484 - SUV-mersible

Jul. 9th, 2025 08:04 pm
m_findlow: (Date)
[personal profile] m_findlow
Title: SUV-mersible
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,644 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 484 - Science at 
[community profile] fan_flashworks 
Summary: Jack has a surprise for Ianto.

SUV-mersible

Costume Bracket: Round 4, Post 5

Jul. 8th, 2025 06:48 pm
purplecat: The Tardis against a sunset (or possibly sunrise) (Doctor Who)
[personal profile] purplecat
Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.


Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

Fallout New Vegas: Capgras Syndrome

Jul. 8th, 2025 11:56 am
laridian: (Default)
[personal profile] laridian

Capgras Syndrome (924 words) by laridian
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fallout: New Vegas
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Courier (Fallout: New Vegas), Arcade Gannon, Craig Boone, Veronica Santangelo, Rose of Sharon Cassidy
Additional Tags: The Enclave (Fallout), Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters
Summary:

The Courier and companions tell scary stories around the campfire; Arcade is there to point out how they couldn't be real.

Entry for 2025 AU Roulette, prompt "Shapeshifters".

(no subject)

Jul. 8th, 2025 03:41 pm
summerstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] summerstorm
Does anybody need someone to copy-edit/proofread a blog post or article or TTRPG notes or something? I'll do like 1k for, I don't know, 10 bucks? I have a really hard time making shit up for portfolio reasons and setting up a Fiverr gig requires samples of your work. Gross.

I'm probably not even going to use that, because I'm pretty sure I can offer that sort of work on Ko-Fi and I hate the shit out of content mills, but all the same.

Today's D20 list (where I write down twenty things and then roll a d20 to see what I do next) is mostly research; so far I've compiled a few examples of printable item and spell cards for D&D, done the above, and found out the reason Inprnt wouldn't accept my files is that I've been saving JPGs in Apple's Display P3 color profile. I thought they weren't big enough, which is probably ridiculous, I have a fucking Canon DSLR.

I don't think I talked about this here, but back in May my mom stopped receiving her minimal basic income, so we're surviving on kindness and savings, and there's not that much in savings. If anyone wants to help out, my Paypal account is battlesinthemorning@gmail.com. Literally every bit helps. But I am also trying to do actual work without driving myself up the wall. It's hard because every time my mom asks my sister for money*, my mental health takes five steps back, but I'm trying.

* venting )

so hot. so, so hot.

Jul. 8th, 2025 12:35 am
tsuki_no_bara: (Default)
[personal profile] tsuki_no_bara
oh my flist it is so hot out. *ghasp* if i didn't like my sleep so much i would've gone into work today for the a/c. but sleeeep.

so i've been here a week! and have unpacked more of the kitchen (dishes! mixing bowl! pots! misc utensils!) and the bedroom (jeans! t-shirts! the dress i forgot where i packed it!) and realized yesterday there's one more thing i don't miss about living with someone - i don't have to hear anyone rattling around the kitchen on a morning i want to sleep in. which is very exciting. i do have to unpack some more, tho. and, uh, i think i can hear my downstairs neighbor snoring. O.O i really, really hope he lives alone.

a thing i forgot about the tuesday when it was so hot i had to stay over at my sister's - we had a fire alarm at work. >.< i was on a 10a zoom meeting and suddenly alarms started going off everywhere and a recorded voice said basically GO DIRECTLY TO THE STAIRS AND OUTSIDE DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200 and when no one else on the zoom had any reaction i just thought oh, so i'm the only one in today. but i went outside and stood in the shade for like ten minutes and then we all went back in. i can't remember what happened but it was something dumb.

anyway. comcast came on thursday so i now have wifi and tv! and have caught up on resident alien. :D i also had to run into harvard square to get my glasses fixed and coincidentally acquire ice cream. orange chocolate chip. DELISH.

for the fourth my sister and i went to a park sort of near her (we went there last year) for fireworks and, uh, ice cream. soft serve. it wasn't crowded when we got there but eventually it filled up and by the time it was dark enough for fireworks there were A LOT of people. fireworks were as usual quite fun and a little kid sitting behind us kept going "wow!" for a couple minutes and then their dad took over and it was INTENSELY cute. i do love a good local fireworks.

saturday i dicked around and went to home sense and home goods and target with my sister for house stuff (got new kitchen towels, did not get a kitchen timer because my stove does not have one, wtf) and then we went out for dinner and saw jurassic park rebirth which overall i think i enjoyed? the story is stupid but let's be honest, you don't watch jurassic movies for the story. you watch for the dinosaurs. and there were some frankly terrifying huge flying ones.

(there were A LOT of previews and most of them were for sequels or remakes except ick (no), bugonia (perhaps), and one battle after another (yes).)

and yesterday because it was hot i zoomed with the mothership, the sister, and cousin pb for iceland and now we are PREPARED. except i need to get a big suitcase because mine broke last year when i went to italy. i even started giving my faculty a heads-up at work and found some admins to look after them in case they need anything. woot.

after that i sat around, met [livejournal.com profile] tamalinn and the tiny dog for ice cream because did i mention it was hot? came home, unpacked some, had dinner, watched andor. it's so good but at the same time i keep expecting people to die.

fifty years ago an exceptionally large time capsule was buried in nebraska. it included letters, photos, art, cassette tapes, and a chevy vega and it was opened on friday. folks traveled even from other states to find the stuff that they or their parents had buried. how cool is that? so cool.

It's Not a Typical Animal, Chapter 3

Jul. 7th, 2025 02:10 pm
laridian: (Default)
[personal profile] laridian

It's Not a Typical Animal (2302 words) by laridian
Chapters: 3/9
Fandom: Fallout 76
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s), Beckett (Fallout 76)
Additional Tags: Art
Series: Part 4 of The Accidental Raider
Summary: When a thrill ride at Nuka-World On Tour goes awry, it awakes a monster from the depths. It goes on a rampage, and it appears nothing can stop it.
Accidental Raider Rowan Dane has something of a "Disney Princess" way with animals. But will that work on an ultracite titan?

This chapter: Things continue to go wrong.

Polccoyo Mountains

Jul. 7th, 2025 06:24 pm
purplecat: The family on top of Pen Y Fan (General:Walking)
[personal profile] purplecat
Because of all the mix-ups with permits and so on, we were offered an additional "free" activity. We picked a trip to the Polccoyo rainbow mountain area. It turned out that there are two rainbow mountains in Peru of which Vinicunca is the more spectacular, touristy, and better known. Different mineral compositions in the soil - particularly copper - cause the geological layers exposed in rainbow mountains to reveal stripes of bright colours. Our guide for the day, Olmer, was obviously from the Polccoyo area and felt very passionately about it. He explained that it was being opened up to tourists in a bid to stave off a proposed investment from a Canadian mining company who wanted to establish a copper mine in the area.

It was beautiful and remote and while there were two or three parties of tourists, it was easy to feel alone in the landscape. B. and I were a bit dubious that it could both retain its character and generate enough income to hold off the allure of mining company big bucks.

Photos )

The road up to Palccoyo went along multiple switch-backs from tarmac to dirt track, and past alfalfa farmers on the lower slopes (the alfalfa feeds the guinea pigs which are a local speciality - if you are interested they taste a bit like duck) to alpaca farmers on the higher slopes (alpaca is genuinely nice meat, quite lamby but more restrained). On the way back down I tried to photograph alpaca from the taxi resulting in a lot of blurry photos of alpaca of which these are the best.

Photos from the taxi )

Challenge 872 - Putting into words

Jul. 6th, 2025 04:31 pm
m_findlow: (Date)
[personal profile] m_findlow
Title: Putting into words
Character: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 300 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 872 - History at [community profile] torchwood100
Summary: Jack is worried that Ianto is spending too much time down in the archives. A triple drabble.
Read more... )

Challenge 872 - Strict orders

Jul. 6th, 2025 04:29 pm
m_findlow: (Jack mad)
[personal profile] m_findlow
Title: Strict orders
Character: Jack, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 200 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 872 - History at [community profile] torchwood100
Summary: Jack is on the warpath. A double drabble.
Read more... )
m_findlow: (Jack mad)
[personal profile] m_findlow
Title: Poor first impression
Character: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 100 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 872 - History at [community profile] torchwood100
Summary: Ianto is less than impressed by Jack's old partner
Read more... )

Challenge 872 - The personal touch

Jul. 6th, 2025 04:25 pm
m_findlow: (Ianto Jones)
[personal profile] m_findlow
Title: The personal touch
Character: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 200 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 872 - History at [community profile] torchwood100
Summary: Ianto hopes his case files will make for interesting reading in the future. A double drabble.

Read more... )

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