"dust in the wind" my entire ass

Jun. 13th, 2025 09:49 pm
the_siobhan: (psychochicken)
[personal profile] the_siobhan
Got my orthotics today. My foot still hurts. This is taking too long to sort itself out and I wish to register a complaint.

***

Lord Brock has figured out what time steroid dosing happens and has started reminding me about it because he knows he'll get treats immediately after. He still hates getting medicated, but he hates it so much less than the gabapentin (I think it tasted worse) that he will almost barely tolerate it and then happily snarffle up the treats once the dosing part is done with.

***

Roof repairs unlocked. Dude also does the kind of work needed for the stairs so he's going to give me a quote for that as well. AND he thinks he can work with his plumber to drop the sump pump into the floor properly so it takes up less space and won't leave an open water feature in the room. He send me some links with examples of what he wants to do, and honestly it would be a huge improvement.

***

Project raccoon did NOT go as originally planned. Original contractor had said that the stairs would just flip up so I could clean underneath them. No, not so much.

The problem is that the wooden stairs are basically a triangle set in a sunken concrete hole. The back/top of the stairs is supported by a piece of wood in the shape of a T. To get under them you have to pull the whole thing towards the interior door to make room behind the triangle to flip it up on it's back. Only the T isn't solid enough, when I tried it the bottom of the wood stayed in the same spot while the top cracked and splintered. I was able to climb to the top and kind of kick the T forward but not far enough to make room to flip it. So I could stand there and hold the stairs up, because they're not heavy, but I couldn't get under it at the same time.

Yesterday and today daughter came over to work on the yard, and this afternoon the ex-housemate & their wife dropped by to pick up some government forms that had been delivered to the house. So the four of us picked up the stairs bodily and moved them out of the staircase. The ex-housemate has anosmia, so they volunteered to shovel up the very very decayed raccoon. Garbage day isn't for another two weeks so we just dumped him out by the railroad tracks and covered him with dirt. And then shovelled up the accumulated mud and vermin that had collected under the stairs and dropped it in the same spot.

It was so gross, y'all. So gross. But it's out of my basement doorway now and it's in a spot where it will be unlikely to bother anybody except the occasional passing coyote.

The daughter and I spent the next three hours digging the drainage pit. I found the sand layer I was hoping for, and then underneath that (about four feet down) is a layer of a broken shist which I think will work even better. We have probably about 80% of the trench dug out - one more day should be enough to finish if off. Then I'll line it with cinderblocks and start filling it in with rocks. The trench is probably four times as big as I'll need to be in any normal year, but since 100-year storms are coming every 10 years now (and probably every 2 by the time I ever leave this house) it seems like a good investment of labour.

Entertainment was provided by a juvenile robin that realized all that turned earth was a worm goldmine and got increasingly braver about getting close enough to us to grab them as the day progressed.

Then we ate our own weight in pizza.

Needless to say, every part of me hurts after two days of digging, so I'm taking tomorrow off doing any more building/fixing things. Chores only. And I might check with the local massage clinic to see if they have a free spot because I know I'm going to feel like somebody worked me over with my own shovel.

rionaleonhart: revolutionary girl utena: utena has fallen asleep on her schoolwork. (sort of exhausted really)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Time for a dream roundup!


Dreams from April, May and June. )


I haven't really been remembering my dreams lately; I didn't note any dreams down at all for a period of over a month from early May. I wonder what makes my recollection fluctuate. Maybe I remember my dreams less if I'm sleeping at a comfortable temperature?
vriddy: Sakura from Wind Breaker pointing at himself (me?)
[personal profile] vriddy
Murder, I say!! Lol. A few panels under the cut, so spoilers for a few scenes but not really plot stuff.

MURDER! A.k.a., fatal doses of polyshipper catnip XD )

Community Thursday

Jun. 12th, 2025 06:34 am
vriddy: Hawks waving and leaving (bye bye)
[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...

Chit-chat on [community profile] bnha_fans.

Signal boosts:

  • [community profile] worderlands' next event at the end of the month will be a daily 3-sentence flash fiction challenge. I know a few people in my circles enjoy that kind of event!

more science more love

Jun. 10th, 2025 03:41 pm
queenlua: (Default)
[personal profile] queenlua
Last migration season, I subscribed to this nifty newsletter by a PhD student at UCLA—an "Early Bird Arrival Forecast" that sends personalized emails based on your location, and tells you which birds are early/peaking/late migrants in your area. It's data that I probably could figure out via other sources, but I suspect the data backing his emails is superior, and his simple summary & targeted recommendations were very handy for me to get a sense of what I might see in the field—"ooh, warbling vireos are peaking this week; let's go find one!"

Anyway. I enjoyed his recommendations again this migration season, and also, ngl his final email of the season this year weirdly made me tear up a bit:
There are no birds forecast for this week or last week, so it's time to close down the Early Bird Forecast for your region. Very sad :(

Thank you so much for participating in the second season of the Early Bird Forecast! A few asks from me before you go:

[. . .]

2. Last year, I provided a link for people to donate to me personally (AKA to "buy me a coffee"). In light of recent realized and proposed cuts to government-funded science programs, this year I would like to steer people towards donating to nonprofits that do efficient and important conservation work at home and abroad. A few good charities in this mold are Birdlife International, The American Bird Conservancy, and The Nature Conservancy. If you would like to look for something more local, check out your city or region's Audubon chapter.

3. If donating is out of the question for you, consider contacting your representatives and let them know that you believe federally-funded science is worth supporting. The Early Bird Forecast is actually a by-product of a NASA-funded research fellowship I received in graduate school. If the current administration's proposed budget becomes law, funding for NASA-funded research like mine will decrease by over 50%. This science funding is cheap in the grand scheme of things – If you are the average taxpayer, you paid $0.0006 for my research (thank you!). Plus you get Early Bird Forecast for free, what a steal!

Happy Summer!
god knows a phd student could always use some spare change; incredibly classy of him to point towards Science As A Whole rn instead.

something something "he's not giving up & i'm not either" etc
rionaleonhart: kingdom hearts: riku, blindfolded and smiling slightly. (we'll be the darkness)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Here's a short Hundred Line fic in which Takumi asks Yugamu to stab him with the Infuser, because I feel Yugamu should be allowed to stab everyone with their Infusers when it's time to fight. I think he'd have a great time.


Title: Piercing the Heart
Fandom: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Rating: 14
Pairing: Yugamu/Takumi
Wordcount: 2,300
Summary: Yugamu’s face cracks open in a slow, unsettling smile. Takumi already regrets this.


Piercing the Heart )
althea_valara: An icon of the Wind-up Alphinaud minion from Final Fantasy XIV. (wind-up alphinaud)
[personal profile] althea_valara
First y'all: I am disturbed that the original post I grabbed this from called this the "Favorite Characters Colors Addition". It is like nails on a chalkboard, the way I cringed. The correct word in this case is "Edition", and I half-assed a correction using Paint.

I gave a thought of branching out to other Final Fantasy games but no, I could fill the grid only with folks from Final Fantasy XIV, so I did so.

cut to spare your reading pages, but also: some light character spoilers through Endwalker patches )

Beta edit preps: COMPLETE

Jun. 10th, 2025 09:31 am
vriddy: Studious, smiling Eri (studious)
[personal profile] vriddy

...Just the preps, I haven't started on the actual edits yet XD But I have a roadmap and an extensive list of actionable steps, and I'm glad I do. Working offline using Pomodoro, like I mentioned the other day was super effective.

A disadvantage, I suppose, is that I can't have conversations back-and-forth in GoogleDoc comments, which is something I dearly enjoy doing with fanfic (either as beta-reader or beta-readee!). I think maybe it's just too much, on a turnaround of 40k words at once. Also because I needed to let it rest, folks might not be so interested in a reply 6 months later on a reaction they don't remember having about a story they fuzzily recall 😅 Having said that, I did write to folks after chopping their feedback into the roadmap, to thank them again and share a general reaction to their reactions :D

Stuff to ponder )

It took me 17h41 to go through all 7 beta-readers' feedback. (Thanks again everyone for offering, I am so grateful :D). I'm going to have a brief interlude now (well, brief is the plan XD). Ideally, I'd like to use that time to write something original but SHORTER so I can bask in the self-indulgence of inventing fun worldbuilding, which I loooove doing. But on the other hand, Wind Breaker Volume 22 just came out and drove me insane with the OT5 vibes so I may have to write something for that instead XD

I 100% intend to break down the work and take regular breaks when I start actually following the roadmap, if only to make the structural changes then giving it a bit of space so I can make sure the major changes didn't break something else important. I expect overall it'll likely take longer than the 17h41 prep time, so I better pace myself! I think I should learn very interesting things throughout the process. I'm already thinking about what to be careful about in the Soul Thief story, when I get back to it.

Thank You Very Macho.

Jun. 8th, 2025 01:05 pm
rionaleonhart: kingdom hearts: riku, blindfolded and smiling slightly. (we'll be the darkness)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Back to The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy! I played as far as the game would let me on the Mystery route, and now... well, I'm not sure what route I'm on now, but I can tell you that it contains the line 'I'll just have to make some counterfeit panties!'


Notes on The Hundred Line. )


I'd seen it said that this game's script was long enough to fill sixty novels, which seemed implausible, so I investigated.

Riona: Yeah, I think that's an exaggeration, or at least they'd have to be short novels. Six million Japanese characters is apparently... maybe two point five or three million English words? It's probably more like thirty novels, if we're looking at average novel length. Five or six times the length of The Lord of the Rings.
Tem: Oh, God, we'll be here forever. We're stuck in a time loop.
Riona: I always knew this would happen.
Tem, simultaneously: We were always going to end up here.

I can't believe The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy exists. The scale of it just does not feel like anything that would be created with commercial intent. It's a passion project; it's an Umineko, it's a Homestuck. Any sane studio would have stopped at the first route or two. But somehow here this game is, in all its sprawling, ridiculous glory.

As if the game weren't vast enough already, Kodaka has said he wants to add more routes, possibly consulting the fans on what they want to see.

I think we should all petition him to make my orgy fic canon. I think that would be right up his street.
vriddy: Dabi looking up (dabi looking up)
[personal profile] vriddy

Starting to process my backlog of links. Originally, I started collecting this particular list when the allegations about Neil Gaiman surfaced last year (if you've been lucky enough to miss that, but want to learn more, [personal profile] muccamukk's round-up post is still an excellent overview).

It's always hard when stories, songs, shows, etc that made a difference to you turn out to be created by someone who's done or is doing horrible things. I always find it hard when it's followed by a demand to just stop liking whatever it was, as if that's as easy as snapping your fingers to remove the impact of sometimes formative stories from one's life.

Here are a few links that helped me navigate this, whenever it happens, since it happens often. If you only have energy for one link, I'd recommend making that the first one. It's nuanced and practical.

Dealing with Authors Who are Jerks, Bastards, or Downright Evil in Real Life by [blogspot.com profile] writinginthedarktw. "But how should we react when a writer we admire, or who we have a personal relationship with, turns out to be a not-so-good person? The short answer, of course, is you can react any damn way you wish. There’s no right way. But I can share with you how I attempt to navigate these rough waters."

4 more links: 1 for library workers, 2 on how putting people on a pedestal does no one any good, 1 on a specific fandom )

the_siobhan: (Professor Fly)
[personal profile] the_siobhan
Steroids are fucking magic, yo. They have returned my cat to his normal bitchy emotionally needy self. They have also taken most of the stabbing out of my foot so I can walk without limping, at least while I'm moving around the house. I cheated a bit and put some of the foot cream on my arm because I officially overdid it with the shovelling, and as a result I can now lift a water glass without wincing.

What a country.

Upper third of my yard is now graded and seeded. My daughter came over and helped. She's not getting a lot of hours at work so she has an open invitation to come over and help me move dirt from one place to another whenever she wants to make a few bucks and be given beer and dinner. It works out well for both of us.

Basement guys came back today - they said they figured they had about three hours of work to finish. More swearing in Polish ensued. In the end they were in my basement for eight hours, but they got it all done. They had to build entirely new frames to hang the doors from and there was at least one hardware store trip to replace borked parts in the storm door and BOY HOWDY did they have something to say about that, but everything is now perfect and the basement apartment has functional doors that work and close and lock and everything.

Next step: I got somebody to come over and have a look at finishing the wood work. This consists of:
1. The stairs from the kitchen door to the backyard. Currently about a three foot drop, which I have been climbing up and down but that's not a perfect long term solution. (Especially in winter.)
2. The stairs from the basement apartment into the yard, are flimsy, wobbly, and don't have any hand rails so they are definitely not code. They are also resting on a base of wooden slats that just randomly shift if you put your weight in the wrong spot. I have no fucking idea what Original Contractor was even thinking. They need to be replaced with something that will pass a city inspection and that also will not kill you when you try to use them.
3. I want to put some kind of a sound-proof bench over the sump pump, because that fucker is loud. Also I figure an exposed ginormous battery is possibly a safety hazard of some kind. So the guy who looked at it said they can build something that acts as a solid bench but you can flip the top up if it needs maintenance, which sounds perfect.
4. My original blueprints include a deck on the kitchen roof. That would be really nice if I can swing it, but we'll see how much this all costs. Mainly it would be an additional place for me to grow herbs and stuff so it's in the "nice to have" pile.



CUT FOR GROSS, SERIOUSLY YOU WERE WARNED )

Every time I see my doctor she asks me how the Not Drinking is going and every single time I'm all, FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK.

Catch-Up Book Post

Jun. 5th, 2025 12:52 pm
queenlua: (Default)
[personal profile] queenlua
Been a while since I bookblogged here, huh? This isn't EVERYTHING, but this post already took me fucking hours to type up, so, let's get into it—

Jhereg by Steven Brust
Mickey7 by Ashton Edward


Both of these books were romps, though the former is the more compelling overall package.

Jhereg )

Mickey7 )

That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart (DNF, 48%)
Honest to God by John A.T. Robinson (DNF, 54%)
Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thích Nhất Hạnh (DNF, 24%)
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright


Look, to tip my hand, I'm in the (very!) early phase of writing a weird fantasy/historical/pastiche-y novel that dares to ask questions like "damn what was it like to be The Greatest Haterliest Poaster Of All Time" and also "what if Martin Luther was a chick" and "what if Martin Luther was two people instead of one" and "what if those people kissed failed to kiss" and "what if Martin Luther were a radical pacifist on top of all the other crazy shit he was doing" and "what if sacred music was actually efficacious and had geopolitical implications" and so on. I blame Lyndal Roper specifically for presenting a portrait of Martin Luther so vivid and intriguing that I could not help but go patently insane over him thereafter.

The logical next step for researching such a novel would be to read up on the theology and history of that period, because even if I'm VERY heavy on the pastiche aspects, it's nice to understand the historical context and some contemporaneous sources/writings for the period of history I'm interested in, if only for riffing purposes, yaknow.

Alas, however, I'm a magpie with no self-control, and thus easily beguiled by Every Other Book I Trip Over On The Way To The Stuff I Should Actually Be Reading, which is how I wound up with this grab-bag of rather more contemporary theology.

All of which I am entirely unqualified to properly evaluate, to be clear, as someone who's variously identified as "Southern Baptist," "Christian agnostic," "deist," "Quaker," "neopagan," "animist," and "some weird woo bullshit syncretic thing ig, sorry it's cringe I know" at various points in my life. But that sure won't stop me from prattling about 'em on my blog.

That All Shall Be Saved )

Honest to God )

Living Buddha, Living Christ )

Surprised By Hope )

Aside: all of these books felt pretty repetitive. Something to do with the genre, I guess? No way to theology-y people to feel like they've gotten your point across without restating it three different ways? IDK.

ANYWAY. I should probably quit dicking around with these books for a bit, since, y'know, novel. I gotta read more Martin Luther himself and also probably some John Calvin. (Alas this means my copy of Kosuke Koyama's Five Mile an Hour God will likely remain mostly-unread on my shelf. Did I mention I'm a magpie. Books pile up in my home whenever I get on a weird pseudo-reasearch-y kick, and I am blessed with an indulgent partner who just keeps buying me more bookshelves instead of telling me to cut it the hell out, which is very sweet of him, but also I could really use someone to stop me before I commit more Irresponsible Spending Crimes... though I saw someone the other day comparing book-buying to wine-buying, e.g. hey it's valid and normal to let some of them age in the cellar & have more than you'll be able to drink; you want to have good wine when the time is right! and UNFORTUNATELY this is very effective for allowing me to continue in my profligate ways. RIP me.)

...okay yeah I couldn't find any way to fit Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik into all of this. Spinning Silver was very good, but I don't have much to say! The primary romance was a total nothingburger, but that's fine because mostly the book is about Miryem girlbossing her way through Rumpelstiltskin and that shit totally rules. I would like to read several more books about moneylenders Being Incredibly Good At Their Job. The book gets a bit bloated and flabbier as it goes along (though the parts with secondary-girlboss Irina and horrible little man Mirnatius can stay; those bits were great) but never enough to knock it down from the "very good" tier. Fairytale retellings aren't normally my thing but this one was solid.

september.

Jun. 5th, 2025 08:15 am
necrophilia: (pic#15775101)
[personal profile] necrophilia
I finished Life is Strange: Double Exposure!

tl;dr — I really enjoyed it. It might be my favourite LiS game. (Someone ask me my ranking. I dare you.)

Full spoilers below the cut.

Welcome to the temporal mosh pit )

We Continue.

Jun. 5th, 2025 12:25 pm
rionaleonhart: final fantasy x-2: the sun is rising, yuna looks to the future. (hope is all we have)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
My gaming partner Tem has been away for a few days, so I've been taking an enforced break from ludicrous child soldier simulator The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy.

I was itching for something else to play in the meantime, so I've picked up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I'm having a really good time with it!

The central concept of Clair Obscur is so interesting. This is the main reason I took an interest in this game; I looked up the central premise and went, 'Huh, that's really unusual and fascinating.' The fact that a lot of people I follow on Dreamwidth are playing and enjoying it definitely helped to recommend it! But just learning the premise was the first thing that tempted me to play this game.

I'll pop the premise behind a short cut, just in case anyone wants to go into this game knowing nothing at all. This cut only contains the basic concept of the game; there's a more spoilery cut further down the post.


The premise of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. )


I was a little nervous about the battle system, but I'm enjoying it! It's challenging - more than once I've had my party wiped out during a regular enemy encounter - but I'm having fun. I tend not to like games that really expect you to be able to parry with precise timing, but it turns out that's a demand I'm a lot more comfortable with in a turn-based battle system; I only have to focus on parrying during the enemy's turn, rather than having to worry about it all the time.

The scenery is gorgeous. I love how weird and dreamlike the landscapes are. Incredible soundtrack, too.

Major spoilers below the cut! I've just reached the Forgotten Battlefield.


Spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. )


As a final note: Clair Obscur is perhaps the Frenchest game I've ever played, which is saying something, given that I've played Assassin's Creed: Unity.

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