MCU15 > prompt tables

Sep. 8th, 2025 11:12 pm
flareonfury: (Darcy/Steve)
[personal profile] flareonfury posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo
MCU15 banner
GOAL: Write 15 fanfics (100 words mim.) for 15 different prompts.
CLAIMING: NO LIMIT! ANYTHING (CHARACTER/PLACE/PAIRING/CROSSOVER/ETC)!!
PLEASE JOIN 
[community profile] mcu15!!!
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
The adventure begins. :)





(Alternately, I have misidentified the bag and it's really mohair?!)

Capclave!

Sep. 8th, 2025 04:41 pm
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 

I have my schedule for Capclave! I'm doing three panels and a reading (should probably figure out what I'm reading...). Here's what we've got:

The Power of Places. Friday, 5:00. Every work of fiction has a setting.  This is especially true of science fiction and fantasy where the settings are imaginary – other planets and fantasy realms. How do writers decide on a setting and communicate it to the reader? What makes some settings seem real while others mere painted backdrops? How does society help to shape the world around it? What writers have effective settings and what techniques do they use?

The Absolute Boss. Friday, 7:00. Much of SF/Fantasy has Galactic Emperors and Kings of fantasy kingdoms. We have Disney Princesses but not Disney Elected Leaders. Many plots feature the Return of the King. Why are there so few democracies in SF/Fantasy?  What does it mean when our entertainments focus on absolute rulers? 

Author Reading, Marissa Lingen. Saturday, 3:00.

Hopeful Fiction for Dark Times. Saturday, 4:00. The world seems to be in a dark place, such that "peddling hope" could appear irresponsible. Panelists will talk about hopepunk, cozy fantasy, and other forms of "lighter" fiction, giving examples, and talking about how hope is particularly important. 

McKenzie River

Sep. 8th, 2025 12:58 pm
yourlibrarian: Small Green Waterfall (NAT-Waterfall-niki_vakita)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature


Some views of the McKenzie River, which we got a great look at since the road we took followed and crossed over it.

Read more... )
rionaleonhart: top gear: the start button on a bugatti veyron. (going down tonight)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
I'm still in the process of losing my mind over a fake videogame, but I can spare a moment to talk about a real game that people have actually played. I recently finished Astro Bot!

This game is ludicrously charming. All the fun references to PlayStation hardware and games! All the cute little robot animals everywhere!

This is not a comparison I would have expected to draw, but it reminds me a little of Horizon Zero Dawn: a world where animals essential to the ecosystem have been replaced by robots with animal behaviours.

Being a little arsehole who punches everyone is both encouraged and surprisingly adorable in this game. You can also do a cute little dance at any time!

I unlocked a new star system and checked its name.

Riona: The Tentacle System?
Ginger: Ooh, Riona's favourite.

This is the reputation I have amongst my friends.

I entered one optional world, saw Teddie of Persona 4 being abducted by a spaceship, went 'ugh, Teddie?? I don't want to rescue you' and immediately left the planet.

I'm cuddling a robot cow!! This is the best game ever made.

I came across Pyramid Head, and, you know, I'm not sure I want to collect this bot.

Oh, God, I'd forgotten that the robots awaiting rescue twerk when you get close. You could have given me five years to prepare, and I still would not have been ready for Pyramid Head twerking in my face.

When I'm looking for something new to play, I often fixate on the idea of playing something I might end up writing fanfiction for; I tend not to pick up games that are light on story and character. Somewhere along the way, I forgot that it's also good to play a game just because it's fun. Not everything has to inspire creativity! Sometimes you just want to sit down and have a good time with a well-crafted videogame.

(And hang out with a bunch of cute little robots. I don't generally consider myself a big robot fan! But I find these ones enchanting.)

(no subject)

Sep. 8th, 2025 04:12 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
(cross-posted with slight adjustments from [personal profile] foxmoth at [profile] communal_creator)

Howdy! I’m Yoon, an MFA student in media composition and orchestration. I am here today to talk to you about sampled orchestral mockups in composing music.... It’s a niche field even in (media) composition due to the cost + tech barriers to entry. I thought folks might be curious (and maybe interested in trying their hand at a lower-cost version of it).

To the extent that I have musical training (mostly Obligatory Asian-American Piano Lessons by volume), it’s classically inflected. Even folks who hate classical music :) probably know it exists. A more “traditional”/conservatory approach to writing for (symphony) orchestra might involve pen-and-paper composing to generate sheet music. This is my background and I still do a lot of sketching on staff paper.

This inherently means you’re reading (Western classical) music notation (of which more anon) and often means you’re wrassling explicitly with music theory and related topics.

However! These day, hiring a session orchestra is semi-doable by a dedicated individual if you have the money lying around. Read more... )

So most mortals who are doing orchesstral or hybrid orchestral scores for film or TV and especially non-AAA video games are using sampled orchestra mockups.

Note: unless otherwise specified, if I say “music notation” or “music theory” I’m referencing more or less common practice Western (European-derived)-style music notation simply in the interests of avoiding unwieldiness in this overview. some further observations )

Hiring a session orchestra may be surprisingly semi-doable by a normal human but most work in orchestral media composition (film, TV, video game scores) is now done in software via sampled orchestral mockup. This includes classical-ish, e.g. John Williams everything or Carlos Rafael Rivera’s score for The Queen’s Gambit, or hybrid orchestra (e.g. Two Steps from Hell) with synth or “modern” instrumentation elements.

A quick and dirty (incomplete) overview of terms you might come across in this space, with simplified explanations. There’s a LOT of jargon, some of which is obscure or confusing even to e.g. classical musicians entering this space! Read more... )

This has all been in the way of preliminaries, apologies! This is an extremely technical field so the jargon alone is A Lot.

These days, composers often write (in that workflow) using engraving software. In this context, this means “music typesetting for sheet music,” and for session work specifically there are strict formatting rules to save time (money). The other workflow for computer-based composition + production (i.e. not tracking live instruments, of which more discussion later) involves taking everything into the DAW and producing realistic-sounding mockups in software. I will (in future posts) run through DAW examples of this (hopefully with video + audio capture so you can see the workflow).

Happy to answer any questions; it’s almost impossible even to gesture at a bunch of the music or tech stuff in a small space, and I have almost certainly missed some useful jargon because it's UNENDING. :p

needle lace WIP

Sep. 7th, 2025 03:33 pm
yhlee: a stylized fox's head and the Roman numeral IX (nine / 9) (hxx ninefox)
[personal profile] yhlee
Perhaps overly ambitious for a project, but I'm doing this as a fun hobby fidget with no expectation it'll turn out "well." (In real-life, this is fiber-based trolling.)



I started this a few years ago but life got busy.

(Technical details posted elsewhere to [community profile] prototypediablerie.)

Done Since 2025-09-01

Sep. 7th, 2025 10:01 pm
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
[personal profile] mdlbear
from MillCon was somewhat grueling. But it was a good con, and we gave a good concert set. Worth it.

We then spent the rest of this week working on scratch tracks.

I'm too sleepy to hunt down good links -- not a whole lot anywaay because see above about working. (I'm too old for this. Nevertheless...)

Notes & links, as usual )

Castoff, by Brandon Crilly

Sep. 7th, 2025 02:14 pm
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a friend, as you will find out if you read to the end and see that I am in the acknowledgments for the honestly light and easy work of being Brandon's pal.

Good news for those of you who wait until a series is complete to read it: this is the second book in a duology! So you can just pick up Catalyst and Castoff and read them together, if you haven't yet. I'm going to try not to spoiler the first book too much, which is going to leave me vague, because this is definitely my favorite kind of sequel: the kind where the consequences follow on hard and fast from the first book. Happily for those with shaky memories, there's a quick summary at the beginning of this one.

So there are airships! There are strange vast somewhat personified forces! There are people working out their relationships in the face of personal and social change! It's that lovely kind of fantasy novel that almost might be a science fiction novel in its concern with human interactions with truly alien intelligences. I love that kind. I want more of that basically always. And if it can come with airship adventures alongside the ponderings of the nature of intelligence and caring about others, even better. Very glad this is about to make it out into the world so I can talk to more people about these books.

help I fell in

Sep. 7th, 2025 01:45 pm
anne: (awesomesox)
[personal profile] anne
I've been fandoms-in-law with kpop for decades, but KPop Demon Hunters pushed me over the edge into the rabbit hole. So far my kpop buds have told me about EXO, Stray Kids, Ateez, and Mamamoo. Other suggestions very welcome--Athénaïs, I'm looking at you, obviously!

My current favorite subgenre is "Youtube vocal coaches losing their everlovin minds about Ejae belting an A5 and ad-libbing a D6."

technical singing wonk alert: those are notes that opera singers hit, except for the belted A5, which is...I'm not sure even Mariah Carey ever did that. D6 is one step higher than you hear in Allegri's Miserere. tl;dr Ejae should have been a household name a long time ago and I hope she gets a recording contract if she wants one.
rionaleonhart: the coffin of andy and leyley: andrew glances back over his shoulder, expressionless. (this is who you are now)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Horrible selfcest time! My favourite time!! Please enjoy this gratuitous and unpleasant Danganronpa: Despair Time selfcest.


Title: Self-Discovery
Fandom: Danganronpa: Despair Time
Rating: 16
Pairing: David/David, one-sided David/Xander
Wordcount: 1,500
Summary: “It’s almost like the whole universe is telling you to go fuck yourself.”
Warnings: dubious consent, generally kind of fucked up, spoilers up to the end of chapter two


Self-Discovery )

latest spinning WIP

Sep. 7th, 2025 09:51 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


I figure if I'm spinning anyway, I may as well entertain myself by spinning my own silk thread (largely the white on the left, mulberry/bombyx, with a random foray into the darker yellow on the left, eri silk) for needle lace.

(Ignore the red/yellow nonsense on the bobbin, which is sari silk; I was too lazy to reel it off because my bobbin situation is hilariously dire.)

Ladies Bingo 2025-2026

Sep. 7th, 2025 02:42 pm
purplecat: Barbie and Ruth Handler (ladiesbingo)
[personal profile] purplecat posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo

An Image of Yoko Tsuno and Khani hugging from the Yoko Tsuno albums.  It has the words Ladiesbingo, for Any Kind of Relationship between Women and the url ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org superimposed over it


Ladies' Bingo Round 2025-2026 (Round 13) Sign-ups

Event Description: [community profile] ladiesbingo is a bingo challenge for creative works about the relationships between women. It runs for seven months (from September until March).

The motivation behind the community is to encourage people to make creative works focused on female characters and their relationships.

Round 13 (2025-2026) is now open.

ah, yes, this again

Sep. 6th, 2025 05:10 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
At this point, because life is too short, I block on sight people I see recommending anything by/to do with the serial racist TERF harasser Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Zen Cho's summary), who now writes as "Maria Ying" (with someone else)? (WinterFox, Requires Hate, whatever the hell other pseudonyms and/or monikers). There's a chance current readers/recommenders/etc. have no idea and just haven't heard, but like I said, life is too short, so why give any more time of day than "nope, blocking" to someone running around reccing a harasser?

(I was in her targeting crosshairs but fortunately only in a glancing fashion, unlike people I know whom she harassed in pretty awful ways, in an ongoing pattern of behavior.)

(no subject)

Sep. 6th, 2025 12:18 am
skygiants: Himari, from Mawaru Penguin Drum, with stars in her hair and a faintly startled expression (gonna be a star)
[personal profile] skygiants
[personal profile] genarti and I have been working our very slow but delighted way through We Are Lady Parts, the British sitcom about an all-Muslim punk rock band composed of opinionated women with beautiful and compelling faces. I'd been seeing a lot of gifsets of these faces before we watched the show and I am pleased to report that they are even more beautiful and compelling at full length. For those of you who have missed the gifsets, please enjoy Lady Parts performing "Villain Era":



The two most protagonist-y protagonists are Saira, the band's lead singer/guitarist, who is at all times extremely punk rock, and Amina, a stressed-out trad-Muslim scientist with terrible stage fright, who really has to work to access her inner punk rock. The cast is rounded out with Ayesha, the angry lesbian drummer; Bisma, who plays the role of maternal peacemaker until she starts to chafe at it; and Momtaz, the band's go-getter manager. The first season focuses mostly on the question of whether Amina can conquer her own inhibitions enough to contribute her excellent guitar skills and huge Disney eyes to the band after Saira press-gangs her into joining them. The second season brings the whole band up against the music industry more generally, and the various ways that the public pressure of moderate fame starts to push each of them into re-examining their self-image and relationships to their music and identity. It's a good show! I liked it very much!

Also, like everyone else in the world, we have recently watched KPop Demon Hunters. Also a very good time featuring banger music tracks -- I'd seen it described as 'a series of really good music videos' and broadly I agree with this assessment -- plus twenty pounds of fun kdrama tropes stuffed into a five-pound bag. Probably would not have felt compelled to write anything about it except for the fact that by an accident of timing, we ended up watching the season finale of Lady Parts the day after we watched KPop Demon Hunters which made for a very funny accidental wine pairing. Both funny and telling to go from high-level spoilers for both KPop Demon Hunters and Lady Parts )

I made a Community community

Sep. 5th, 2025 03:14 pm
marycuntrarian: (comm - rebel)
[personal profile] marycuntrarian posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo

Come join and post discussions, fanworks, reviews, etc! I'm starting the comm with our own Friday Five, so reply now and meet some fellow fans!
Community TV

New Worlds: Supply Lines

Sep. 5th, 2025 05:10 pm
swan_tower: (Default)
[personal profile] swan_tower
My New Worlds patrons having voted for a set of military topics this month, we're taking a look at the logistical side of warfare! Not to the depth that an officer or military historian would study it, of course, but we can at least manage a top-level overview of how worldbuilding factors shape the way armies get fed. Comment over there!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/aUYkJO)

HALLOWEEN CARDS

Sep. 5th, 2025 11:55 am
minoanmiss: Minoan lady scribe holding up a recursive scroll (Scribe)
[personal profile] minoanmiss
Want one? Want someone to get one? Comments as screened: let me know!

Follow Friday 9-5-25

Sep. 5th, 2025 02:52 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] followfriday
Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

Thursday Recs

Sep. 4th, 2025 08:21 pm
soc_puppet: Dreamsheep, its wool patterned after the Polysexual Pride flag, in horizontal stripes of purple, white, and green; the Dreamwidth logo echos the colors. (Genderqueer)
[personal profile] soc_puppet posting in [community profile] queerly_beloved
Ah, here we go; my usual time slot!


Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

wheel wheel

Sep. 4th, 2025 06:34 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Taking a break from MUD coding.

Latest singles preparing for a 3-ply "leaf" yarn!



This one is also slated for Local Astronomer Knitter Friend. :)



This book has genuinely been my favorite read all YEAR. It's so engagingly written (I love technical/craft instructional books), wry moments of humor, but incredibly clear explanations of the engineering of a spinning wheel along with the MATH.
rionaleonhart: death note: light contemplates picking up this mysterious notebook. i'm sure it'll be fine. (here at the crossroads)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Watching Danganronpa: Despair Time was a mistake. I cannot stop thinking about my brand new blorbo. My terrible young man. My perfect angel. Here are assorted ramblings about the latest character I have latched on to entirely because he is the absolute goddamn worst.

Is anyone who follows me into Danganronpa: Despair Time? No. Am I going to keep talking about it regardless? I'd like to see you stop me.

The reason you're suffering through this is that I've already written my sole Despair Time fic idea, and this was not enough to exorcise my feelings. I've got all this writing energy and nowhere to put it! So apparently it ends up in rambling blog posts. I can only apologise.


Talking about my favourite character in Danganronpa: Despair Time. )


I haven't lost my mind this hard over a fictional character in a couple of years; I think the last time was 2023, when I met Jack Shephard and experienced the Great Light Yagami Rediscovery. I'd forgotten how much fun it could be! And also how deeply unfortunate. Sometimes a character just gets my throat in their teeth, and all I can do is wait for them to stop shaking.

Laundry room

Sep. 4th, 2025 03:32 pm
telophase: (Default)
[personal profile] telophase
One of the things I have been doing with myself in the last three months is watching videos in an online interior design course, mostly because various things about the house bother me in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It's not mean to be a pro-level course, and there's various things I already know, but it's helped me figure out one room so far, by forcing me to slow down and first think about who uses the room, what for and how it's used.

It's the laundry room. One would think, "Laundry, duh." But it's also circulation space, because it connects the house to the garage which is the door we use 99% of the time, and it's also storage space. And I would like it to be hang-dry space as well, because the other options for hanging clothes to dry are untenable for various reasons:

1) the first and foremost is my ADHD. The more steps I have to do, the less likely it is to get done. Get out the drying rack, take it somewhere in the house or back porch, set it up, hang clothes, check if they're dry, collect them, bring them in, break down the drying rack, and put it back where it's stored? OH HELL NO.

2) drying outside also makes the clothes smell like the outside and I've never had problems with this before, but both [personal profile] myrialux and I concur that the outdoors smell we get on clothes here is not appealing. Plus, we live in POLLEN CENTRAL and would like to not be allergic to our clothes.

3) the best place to dry inside is the spare room/gym and if clothes are hanging there that I need to move before working out, I won't work out (ADHD again). The spare bath is taken up by the litterbox, and the main bath is back to issue #1, with the added problem of fitting the drying rack in the tub. Any other room gets HUMID and GROSS.

So! I have a PLAN for the laundry room, once we get the $$$ saved up. Steps:

1) hire our neighborhood appliance handyman company to stack the washer and dryer on one side of the TINY room and swap the dryer door to open on the same side as the washer.

2) measure the back wall, to allow for power and water outlets and the dryer vent in the next step, which is...

3) install simple shelving of the rails-screwed-into-studs with shelves on them type, adroitly avoiding the outlets and vents above, as well as pegboard on part of it, to allow for...

4) the wall-mounted drying racks that will require a bit of space to extend/fold out. And then finally...

5) a closet rod installed across the room for clothing that can be put on hangers and hung.

SIMPLY RENDERED PEECTURES BELOW THE CUT...
you know you want to know more about my laundry room )

Thankful Thursday

Sep. 4th, 2025 10:07 pm
mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

  • N, and her expert knowledge of advanced massage therapy. NO thanks to my back, especially the QL muscles.
  • m's amazing vocals, especially the descants that have become sort of a kaleidofolk signature.
  • Scratch tracks.
  • Finally finding out about the hidden playback volume control in Audacity. NO thanks to whoever decided that it should be initialized to zero. WTF?
  • NO thanks to cataracts, which are destroying my night vision among other things. Along with a growing collection of Conditions, many of which also start with the letter "C".

*snore*

Sep. 4th, 2025 02:56 pm
telophase: (Default)
[personal profile] telophase
It's been a mildly eventful few weeks, mostly because I ended up with a cold for a week and a half. Other than that, nothing too hairy happening.

I did get baby's first AO3 scam comment! It enthused over my story, especially the way I brought the world and the characters to life, making it real and immersive, pulling the reader in. And, of course, sparked creative ideas of their own and they wanted me to talk to them on Telegram or whatnot, presumably to try to scam me out of money for fanart that'll never arrive. Blocked, deleted, reported.

This, uh, is the work that they loved so much. You can see the GLARING PROBLEM with the bot's comment about my...story. XD

Fandom Empire presents: Bingo

Sep. 4th, 2025 07:30 pm
prisca: (empire mod)
[personal profile] prisca posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo
Fandom Empire's last challenge of this year is:



August 27 - September 10: Sign-up
September 7 - December 7: Challenge open
December 8 - December 14: Final scores

At the end of the challenge, there will be banner/badges for everyone and 50 DW points for three randomly chosen regular (2 missed weeks maximum) participants.

Check out the information post here.

I would be glad to have you around. If you are interested, don't hesitate to sign up here.

Chicken jockey, video from [personal profile] isis

Sep. 5th, 2025 04:21 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
(And who knew there was a whole event for skating in inflatables!?)



*******************************


Read more... )

reel WIP

Sep. 4th, 2025 02:11 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Music reel. :3 Thoughts/feedback welcome (although I'm still learning industry norms for composition/orchestration); I graduate in 2028 but figure I'd hit the learning curve accreting a reel starting now.

Note: it's the norm for people in composition/orchestration to have audio-only reels (unless, I suppose, you have some gigantic AAA-videogame or Star Wars-level movie credit you have permission to show off as a video clip!).
chanter1944: Uhura in the foreground, Chekov looking quizically at something off to the right in the background (TOS - Chekov and Uhura: nerdy joy)
[personal profile] chanter1944
Whoever it was who suggested Second Copy as a backup for one's personal files (I've got a short list of people I *think* it might've been, but don't want to namecheck the wrong friend), drinks are on me if we ever meet in corporeal space. Alcohol not required, but not prohibited either. This gratitude brought to you by the gal who had her files backed up securely, thank God, and could copy them over from said backup once the errors on her current flash drive were repaired (I probably jostled the thing, and it glitched). W-H-E-W!

Seeeeeriously, whew!

Almost done with Area 88

Sep. 3rd, 2025 06:58 pm
fennectik: Anime (Anime)
[personal profile] fennectik posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Only two more episodes of this thrilling anime. I remember watching the OVA from the 80s after my first experience with it from the Capcom arcade U.N. Squadron which was later ported to the SNES.

I like the mix of dogfights and drama the anime incorporates. Not sure how it will end but I at least be happy that I've finished the 2000s version when I do.

I also dig its opening them Mission(Fugga), I feel that it sets the tone highly well.

Below a screencap of my favorite character who's also my favorite to choose in the videogame adaptation, Mickey Simon, who flies the ever awesome F-14 Tomcat.

Two poems!

Sep. 3rd, 2025 04:07 pm
swan_tower: (*writing)
[personal profile] swan_tower
I have not one but two new poems out this week! Putting me up to double digits in the number of poems I've had published so far, whee.

The first is in Merganser Magazine: "Hallucination," about AI, linguistics, and the wish for a better world.

The second, "Cutting the Cord" in Small Wonders, is probably the closest to straight-up science fiction I've ever written? It's got aliens and a space elevator in it, anyway.

Both are free to read online, so enjoy!
yhlee: a stylized fox's head and the Roman numeral IX (nine / 9) (hxx ninefox)
[personal profile] yhlee
a.k.a. I haven't had time to code anything yet lol.



cf. [personal profile] telophase's once-upon-a-time of sketch featuring BUSTY BLONDE CHERIS with her SPACE FERRET. (I still have the pic, [personal profile] telophase, not sure if I have permission to reshare or where there's a link? XD)

Agate Beach Sunsets

Sep. 3rd, 2025 01:36 pm
yourlibrarian: Sunse Dolphins (NAT-SunsetDolphins-niki_vakita)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature


One real plus of our hotel room was that it faced west, so lots of sunset views!

Read more... )
rionaleonhart: twewy: joshua kiryu is being fabulously obnoxious and he knows it. (is that so?)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Sometimes I finish a canon and have to write fanfiction IMMEDIATELY to deal with the fact that there is no more canon left. I finished watching Danganronpa: Despair Time approximately twenty-four hours ago; here's a fic.


Title: Bad Company
Fandom: Danganronpa: Despair Time
Rating: 15
Pairing: Arei/David
Wordcount: 1,200
Summary: Arei grins. “Hiiiii, David. That’s the real you, isn’t it?”


Bad Company )

Wien

Sep. 3rd, 2025 05:26 am
travelswithkuma: (Default)
[personal profile] travelswithkuma
Bears ands girls has beens doing stuffs heres in wiens, wes hopes to dos evens mores. Wes hopes tos spends ans extras days heres. wills knows soons. Best fishes tos alls

latest spinning WIP

Sep. 3rd, 2025 07:47 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Sorry about the laundry in the background. Meanwhile, it's not even 8 a.m. and it's too hot already to stay outside. Nice sunny day means at least the laundry will dry quickly?!
stepnix: Nanoko from Wish Upon the Pleiades (magical girl)
[personal profile] stepnix posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Re-sharing an old Cohost post here while I get ready to rehost it on my Neocities. Hope you enjoy!
Read more... )

Books read, late August

Sep. 2nd, 2025 04:46 pm
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains. This is the most like Oliver Sacks of anything I've read since Oliver Sacks died, and one of the ways in which that's the case is that Anand is writing from her own experience as a neurologist but also as someone who has gone through relevant symptoms and has a particular perspective, so: in the tradition of Sacks rather than attempting to clone him. If you like "weird things brains do oh goodness" stories, this will be your jam, and it sure was mine. Also Anand is meticulous about gender: if there are relevant studies that talk about the occurrence of a particular condition among trans women as compared to cis women, cis men, or trans men (or etc. with other groups in the spotlight), she will note them as clearly and calmly as she would something about cis women, treating it all as part of our composite picture of how the brain works and what affects it. Highly recommended.

Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster. This book completely wrecked me. It's in some ways a gentle story about subtle and small-scale magic and about human relationships in our own structurally substantially unequal society. It's also about long-term grief where most stories that touch on grief are fairly short-term (months or 1-2 years) or muted somehow, and it's the only recent book I recall really delving into helping your parent with their grief while you, an adult, deal with your own differently-shaped grief for the same person. It's really beautifully done, I wanted to be doing nothing else but reading it once I started reading it, and also it was emotionally devastating in parts.

Scott Anderson, King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation. Sometimes I feel like the most confusing parts of history are not the really distant ones--who doesn't like a good Ea-Nasir joke--but the things that happened just before you arrived or as you're arriving. They're simultaneously foundational to a bunch of the world around you and happened while you weren't looking, in ways no one thinks to teach you formally. For me, born in 1978, the Iranian Revolution is one of those things, so when I spotted this on the library's new books table I picked it up immediately. This is a detailed history from someone who got to interview many of the Americans involved, and who is committed to not oversimplifying the benefits or detriments of the shah's reign. I could have wished for somewhat deeper Iranian history, though there was some, and stronger regional grounding, but also those things can be found elsewhere, it's all part of the process. The fact that there's an American flag on the cover of this book as well as an Iranian flag is not an accident. A book that was focusing on Iranian relations with for example France in this period would have a very different take.

Stephani Burgis, A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence. Discussed elsewhere.

Robert Darnton, A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution. This is a microhistory of booksellers and their job routes and wares in the pre-Revolutionary era. Of all of Darnton's books, I'd say this should be low on the list for people who are not deeply interested in the period, least of general interest. Luckily I am deeply interested in the period. So.

John M. Ford, From the End of the Twentieth Century. Reread. Satisfying in its own inimitable way. Those poor skazlorls.

Karen Joy Fowler, Black Glass. Reread. And the threads Karen was pulling out of the genre/literary conversation at the time were so different from the ones Mike did, I hadn't intended to read them in close proximity to compare and contrast but it was kind of fun when I landed there.

Gigi Griffis, And the Trees Stare Back. This is not my usual sort of thing--creepy YA with eventual explanation--except for one major factor: it's set in the lead-up to the Singing Revolution in Estonia. Really great integration of historical setting and speculative concept, bonded hard with the characters, loved it. Most of the historical fiction I read has me reading through the cracks of my fingers, wincing at what I know is coming but the characters do not. This was the opposite, I spent the entire book super-excited for them.

Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of the American Prairie. I am always disappointed to find out that I am already pretty expert in something, because I learn less that way. The American Prairie! Soil restoration, water conservation, habitats, farming...it turns out I already know quite a lot about this. Darn. If you don't, here's a good place to start.

John Lisle, Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA. Ooooof. This is another "I saw it on the library's new books shelf" read for this fortnight, and its portrayal of CIA misbehavior was...not a surprise, but having this amount of detail on one project was...not cheering.

Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age. If you internalized the idea that historians should be effaced as completely as possible from the writing of history, in the pretense that the history wrote itself really, this will not be the book for you. Ada Palmer is as major a factor in this book as Machiavelli or any of the Medicis. If, on the other hand, you enjoy Ada's classroom lecture voice, it comes through really clearly here. There are some places where I was clearly not her target audience--I honestly don't have a personal investment in what Machiavelli's personal religious stance was, so the chapter about why we want him to be an atheist was speaking to a "we" I am not in. Still, lots of interesting stuff here. Including, surprisingly, cantaloupes.

Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You. This is a thriller about social media influencers in the group that would have been called "Mommy bloggers" a generation ago, set in the Mountain West. It's very readable, and if you know anything about tradwife influencers you'll see lots of places where it's spot on. I think people who read a lot may find the twists less twisty, but it doesn't rely solely on twists for its appeal.

Joe Mungo Reed, Terrestrial History. I haven't had a satisfying generational epic in a long time. This one spans Earth and Mars, with point of view characters in four generations and multiple points on their partially shared timeline. My preferences would have been for more of everything, more all around--for a generational epic this is comparatively slim--but still very readable.

Sophy Roberts, A Training School for Elephants: Retracing a Curious Episode in the European Grab for Africa. The subtitle calls this a curious episode. It is instead a staggeringly depressing demonstration of how colonialism was fractally horrible. Zoom in a little closer! more horrors! hooray! No. Not hooray. And Roberts is clearly not claiming it is a cause for celebration, but...well. For me this microhistory was more upsetting than illuminating. Maybe I should stop looking at the new books shelf at the library for a minute.

Jessie L. Weston, The Three Days' Tournament: A Study in Romance and Folk-Lore. Kindle. Comparison and contrast of different appearances of a particular legend throughout western/northwestern Europe and England. Nostalgic for me because I used to read a lot more of this sort of thing.

Darcie Wilde, A Purely Private Matter, And Dangerous to Know, A Lady Compromised, A Counterfeit Suitor, and The Secret of the Lady's Maid. This is not all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries there are, but it's all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries my library had. If you like the first one, they are consistent, and I think you could probably start anywhere and find the situation and characters adequately explained. Regency mysteries! Do you want some of those? here they are.

September check-in poll

Sep. 2nd, 2025 04:26 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird posting in [community profile] thisfinecrew
There were five posts in the community in August:

On August 6, [profile] hermionesvioln posted about a ballot measure to restore voting rights for people in prison: Massachusetts Universal Voting Restoration: https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/314335.html

August 7, I posted about calling RFK Jr about covid vaccine access:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/314506.html

August 13, [personal profile] fabrisse asked people to contact our senators and congressmembers about the presence of the National Guard in Washington, DC:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/314678.html

August 27, [personal profile] watersword posted about a bill to make wage theft a federal felony:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/315039.html

On August 30th, I posted about covid vaccine access at pharmacies, which is partly a state-level issue:
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/315293.html

Thanks to everyone who posted.

Here's a poll to tell us what you've been doing:

Poll #33566 August check-in
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17


In the past month, I

View Answers

called one or both of my senators
6 (35.3%)

called my member of Congress
8 (47.1%)

called my governor
4 (23.5%)

called my mayor, state representative, or other local official
4 (23.5%)

did get-out-the-vote-work, such as text banking or post carding
1 (5.9%)

voted
0 (0.0%)

sent a postcard/email/letter/fax to a government official or agency
8 (47.1%)

went to a protest
2 (11.8%)

attended an in-person activist group
1 (5.9%)

went to a town hall
1 (5.9%)

participated in phone or online training
2 (11.8%)

participated in community mutual aid
2 (11.8%)

donated money to a cause
11 (64.7%)

worked for a campaign
1 (5.9%)

did textbanking or phonebanking
0 (0.0%)

took care pf myself
9 (52.9%)

not a US citizen, but worked in solidarity in my community
1 (5.9%)

committed to action in the coming month
3 (17.6%)

did something else (tell us about it in comments)
1 (5.9%)



As always, everyone is free to make posts about any issues and actions they think the comm should know about. You can also drop some information into a comment to our sticky post if you'd like the mods to do it.

If you're looking for information on anything else, you can use our tags to check for any ongoing actions or resources relevant to the issues you care about. I (#redbird) try to keep the tag list up-to-date. If you need a tag added, you can DM me.

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