I have been reading the news
but
I keep on finding myself kind of staring into space
(white ceiling, occasional glow stars)
computer screen gone dark from timing out
and very much not, in fact, reading the news.
which makes it difficult to read the news.
but
I keep on finding myself kind of staring into space
(white ceiling, occasional glow stars)
computer screen gone dark from timing out
and very much not, in fact, reading the news.
which makes it difficult to read the news.
Via
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophia_sol most recently! And this reminded me that I haven't done the April hits meme yet, oops.1. How many works do you have on ao3?
1,158
2. What's your total ao3 word count?
3,109,186. Caveat that this includes a lot of co-written fics, including a very long one where I didn't write much on it overall. Knocking out the stuff I didn't write myself probably removes about a million words.
3. What are your top five fics by kudos?
1. Scenes From An Inconvenient Espionage Love Story. - Les Mis/James Bond - 2,581 kudos as of this writing
2. Earthlings Gonna Earth. -- The Martian -- 2,450 kudos
3. Things To Do In New York City When You're No Longer Brainwashed. - Avengers - 1,478 kudos
4. The Family Dursley. - Harry Potter - 1,310 kudos
5. Interstitial. - The Martian - 1,104
4. What fandoms do you write for?
Complicated question, but my actively working on WIPs are Vorkosigan fandom and Harry Potter at present. Other fandoms on WIPs started in the last 3 years's folders in scrivener (2023-2025): Discworld, Westing Game, The Parent Trap, Pride & Prejudice, Hero Elementary (a spitefic sequel to the spitefic Hero Elementary fic I've already posted), and Glass Onion.
5. Do you respond to comments? why or why not?
Sometimes. I used to try to reply to all comments and I do not do that anymore.
6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
I've done some stuff to characters but possibly the one that qualifies most here is not actually angst but one that someone asked me about the ending specifically for reccing for a specific person reason and I had to say "do not rec this to that person dealing with this stuff": Not Like I Faint Every Time We Touch. (Star Wars), which is Jyn Erso having a crush on Leia Organa, who is straight.
So it is not angsty! But also I tagged it "The Most Accurate Thing I Have Ever Written" and I am not one to overuse freeform tagging in that manner.
7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
So this is cheating but the Petyaverse has the happiest best ending in the world because it all built up to that (with diversions) and once I got to the end, it was all definitely over, so that was nice. Happiest for me, happiest for the characters, happiest for the ability to do a character and story arc!
8. Do you get hate on fics?
Yep.
9. Do you write smut?
Yep.
10. Do you write crossovers?
Yep.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Yep! There was, apparently, a college newsletter in Alberta (?) -- somewhere in Canada, I think it was Alberta -- that had a segment called Tim (as opposed to Time) and they ripped off one of my LOTR fics. Just reproduced it entirely without attribution (but with the same title). To this day I have no idea why. Like, certainly it was to mock fanfiction, that goes without saying, but it also didn't seem to have any mocking? Did someone just submit it as a gag? As an original story?
Someone in fandom gave me some lawyerly things to say to them and I sent it to them and they took it down.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Yep!
13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?
Yep!
14. What's your all time favourite ship?
I mean. I haven't read it in at least a decade, but Aragorn/Boromir really was something, wasn't it. Many fond memories.
15. What's the wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
Teenage Single Dad Gregor Vorbarra, earliest notes date in the file is December 2016.
16. What are your writing strengths?
Dialogue.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
Action and description.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
I used to do this and then it was like, why. Why do this. When I could just write "X said in Y language" right after it. Also then you have to deal with translations. Plus getting someone to give you the phrase in the other language in the first place, or rely on Babelfish (but I date myself). Not worth it!
When I read a fic, by the way, I am never looking into the end notes for translations, and since I read a lot on my phone, I also can't hover for them. Either I can work it out by context or it's not actually important to the story or it's so incessant that I give up and close the fic. Those are the options. Me keeping the end notes open in another tab and going back and forth is not happening.
How does this mesh in with the glossaries I usually remember to add to fics in Yinglish? Absolutely it doesn’t but also Yinglish is English, right? Right? :P
(Also those fics are short and the Yinglish is the point, the glossary is just there to be helpful, but it's not like oh hey, this character is French, let's have a discussion in French.)
19. First fandom you wrote for?
Star Wars.
20. Favourite fic you've ever written?
IDK. There's fics I like and fics I'm meh on and fics I dislike, but I can't really come up with an all-time favorite.
I keep wanting to turn this into "what's the most experimental" or "what was the hardest" but anyway, actually, here are the most personal ones -- because that's quantifiable and easy enough to answer: And Enoch Still Walks With God. (Highlander) (if I were posting that today I'd be brave enough to use Chanoch not Enoch but anyway), the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse (Vorkoisgan), and Waiting For Methuselah. (Highlander).
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Since a number of staff at Unnamed Nonprofit are either Christian or Jewish, they've announced that they're closing the office at lunchtime today. Which, you know, as someone who isn't celebrating a holiday at the moment? That's still a nice little treat for me.
I finished my fourth Dragon Age: The Veilguard playthrough last night, so I think that I'm going to pick back up with my fifth one (which is in Act 2 right now) for a bit and then maybe switch to Baldur's Gate 3. D&D is cancelled again tonight because it's the DM's spouse's birthday, so I can properly settle in to play for hours which is something I haven't had the time to do in ages.
I finished my fourth Dragon Age: The Veilguard playthrough last night, so I think that I'm going to pick back up with my fifth one (which is in Act 2 right now) for a bit and then maybe switch to Baldur's Gate 3. D&D is cancelled again tonight because it's the DM's spouse's birthday, so I can properly settle in to play for hours which is something I haven't had the time to do in ages.
For some weeks now I've been attending Invisible's "What's The Plan?" Weekly discussion/organizing meetings with co-founders Ezra & Leah.
I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.
I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.
Please give me feedback on format, style, level of detail. I'm posting here first because I trust you guys most, I may post elsewhere or turn it into a bluesky thread, dunno.
( cut for length, US politics )
I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.
I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.
Please give me feedback on format, style, level of detail. I'm posting here first because I trust you guys most, I may post elsewhere or turn it into a bluesky thread, dunno.
( cut for length, US politics )
Tags:
I forgot shopping doesn't happen on Easter Sunday, and indeed forgot it was Easter this Sunday, so I had to grab the last delivery timeslot available on Saturday night, because fridge empty so waiting until Tuesday for the next workable one is... not ideal.
So now I'm feeling persistently like I've Forgotten Something, which is not in fact fun.
But! Reminds me of Wrath of the Righteous.
... spoilers for the whole thing go under the cut: ( Read more... )
You get all these choices for background at the start, you can change everything about the Knight Commander, you get so many options for answering the Who Are You questions... and yet by the end I feel like I know which ones are honest.
KC knows what you choose, first time you see the opening scene.
... and all the options for Remind Me Who You Are just get darkly funnier...
So now I'm feeling persistently like I've Forgotten Something, which is not in fact fun.
But! Reminds me of Wrath of the Righteous.
... spoilers for the whole thing go under the cut: ( Read more... )
You get all these choices for background at the start, you can change everything about the Knight Commander, you get so many options for answering the Who Are You questions... and yet by the end I feel like I know which ones are honest.
KC knows what you choose, first time you see the opening scene.
... and all the options for Remind Me Who You Are just get darkly funnier...
Tags:
Started playing Wrath of the Righteous on Core with a tiefling witch. ( Read more... )
I am once again doing the thing where I play a really long time in a row and do not do much else at all at all. Not ideal.
Also, I tried making one (1) different choice in the Shield Maze and it turns out it has Consequences, in an ongoing way, so now I feel... not great. About that.
But I did it for roleplay reasons and achievements reasons both, so I'm not redoing two days of play to go back and do different.
Wenduag ( Read more... )
I like this game until it gets just the teensiest bit too hard and then I do not. I could drop the difficulty. I could drop it all the eay to story if I wanted. But I already won it at a custom difficulty only a tiny bit below this one, so here I am, being stubborn and replaying lost bits a lot.
Still, it's something to do, and I have a narratively satisfying plan, so now I've just got to see how it works out. Should be fun. If I win it.
I am once again doing the thing where I play a really long time in a row and do not do much else at all at all. Not ideal.
Also, I tried making one (1) different choice in the Shield Maze and it turns out it has Consequences, in an ongoing way, so now I feel... not great. About that.
But I did it for roleplay reasons and achievements reasons both, so I'm not redoing two days of play to go back and do different.
Wenduag ( Read more... )
I like this game until it gets just the teensiest bit too hard and then I do not. I could drop the difficulty. I could drop it all the eay to story if I wanted. But I already won it at a custom difficulty only a tiny bit below this one, so here I am, being stubborn and replaying lost bits a lot.
Still, it's something to do, and I have a narratively satisfying plan, so now I've just got to see how it works out. Should be fun. If I win it.
Tags:
We're flying home today after a pretty great week of theatre and friends and birthdays (I am very tired but also very happy), so I'm posting this one from the airport. Too on the nose, or just on theme? Either way, Ada Limón never misses.
( Every time I'm in an airport )
( Every time I'm in an airport )
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( books (Krishnamurti x3, Lhanang Rinpoche, Zopa Rinpoche) )
food
Thanks to getting a bag of trail mix (yes, they do now make mixes I'm not allergic to!), I upped my weekly fruit and veggie type count by 6! I've got a lot more variety in this week's grocery pickup, too.
( healthcrap )
( dirt )
family
I went to my parents' for my brother's early birthday party over the weekend. (I didn't take any yarn, which was weird.) I mulched flower beds and counted bluebonnets and helped rip out a giant dead elaeagnus, and I spent *several* hours working on their new laptop and ancient desktop, both of which had a number of viruses. I installed Brave on the laptop, so hopefully that will minimize any new infections. And when I got home I binged on the gf peanut butter cookies mom made me, because I cannot control myself. Which messed up my blood sugar in my labs for today's doc appt, oops. Oh well.
#resist
April 18: Economic Blackout 2
April 19: #50501 Nationwide Protest #2: FREE KILMAR!
April 21 to 28: General Mills Boycott
May 6 to 12: Amazon Boycott 2
May 20 to 26: Walmart Boycott 2
June 3 to 9: Target Boycott
June 24 to 30: McDonald’s Boycott
July 4: Independence Day Boycott
I hope all of you are doing well! <333
food
Thanks to getting a bag of trail mix (yes, they do now make mixes I'm not allergic to!), I upped my weekly fruit and veggie type count by 6! I've got a lot more variety in this week's grocery pickup, too.
( healthcrap )
( dirt )
family
I went to my parents' for my brother's early birthday party over the weekend. (I didn't take any yarn, which was weird.) I mulched flower beds and counted bluebonnets and helped rip out a giant dead elaeagnus, and I spent *several* hours working on their new laptop and ancient desktop, both of which had a number of viruses. I installed Brave on the laptop, so hopefully that will minimize any new infections. And when I got home I binged on the gf peanut butter cookies mom made me, because I cannot control myself. Which messed up my blood sugar in my labs for today's doc appt, oops. Oh well.
#resist
April 18: Economic Blackout 2
April 19: #50501 Nationwide Protest #2: FREE KILMAR!
April 21 to 28: General Mills Boycott
May 6 to 12: Amazon Boycott 2
May 20 to 26: Walmart Boycott 2
June 3 to 9: Target Boycott
June 24 to 30: McDonald’s Boycott
July 4: Independence Day Boycott
I hope all of you are doing well! <333
Tags:
And I'm inviting you all. :) The focus is on movies, but discussion of horror lit/games/etc also welcome. 18+.
Tags:
Strange Darling (2024). A story "in six chapters" that begins with chapter 3, this is the story of a woman (Willa Fitzgerald from The Fall of the House of Usher, Reacher) being chased by a man with a gun from a hookup gone wrong. Or maybe it's a totally different story, since "nothing is as it seems."
This is very stylish, with its beautiful warm colors ("Made on 35mm film," it announces during the opening credits, which feels a bit desperate tbh) and interesting lighting and title cards. Unfortunately, both the stylistic pretensions and the story mostly run out of steam at about the halfway point. I enjoyed the nonlinearity, but most of the big reveals felt obvious anyway. The movie also does NOT know when to stop. There's a natural stopping point and the movie bulldozes right past it for another 10 or 15 completely unnecessary minutes that release all the prior tension, which was one of the movie's greatest strengths. I've seen some strong criticisms of its politics, but I can't get too worked up about them because the worst of them are all after the movie should have ended anyway.
I also, personally, found the initial negotiation around the hookup and then the hookup itself excruciatingly, almost unwatchably awkward. To be fair, it was supposed to be awkward! But it took my almost an hour to watch about 10 minutes of movie because I struggled so much.
( spoilers )
Everything else aside, I watched this because it's nominated for best film for the Dead Meat Horror Awards, and this did not feel like a horror movie to me; it felt like a thriller. On the plus side, it's nice to see little indie thrillers getting made, too.
--
Heretic (2024). Two young Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) are trapped in a cat and mouse game by a man they visit, Mr Reed (Hugh Grant).
This has fantastic atmosphere throughout. Even the weather is great, and Mr. Reed and his house have enjoyably bad vibes from the very beginning. I especially appreciate how menacing Mr. Reed feels without explicitly or implicitly threatening any kind of physical violence until quite late in the story. The movie understands that the situations he's putting the young women in are already terrifying; overt threats are not needed.
All three actors do a fantastic job, and in particular Hugh Grant's turn to straight-up villain is really fun. Things get very talky in the middle as he harasses the sisters about their faith, how it's all fake, etc, and Grant sells all of it as one of those skeptics who's just fucking obnoxious about it. I knew the basic premise of the movie going in, but was not prepared for just how MUCH the story is about Christianity. I imagine it was a very different viewing experience for someone with no Christian background.
The movie gets pretty silly in the second half, and the big final conclusion about Mr. Reed's basically philosophy ("The one true religion is [spoiler]"), felt both too pat and not set up well enough. However, the character work is fantastic to the very end. I really enjoyed the sisters and the dynamic between them. They're distinct characters who are both earnest about their faith, in distinct but complementary ways, and I liked that. I particularly liked how from the first scene we see that Sister Paxton is someone who's thinking all the time to the point that she probably annoys a lot of the people around her AND is probably straying well beyond the bounds of what the church would prefer her to think about, and how this inquisitiveness and attention to detail plays out in the movie's plot without ever explicitly calling out that aspect of her character.
On a trivial note, ( mild spoilers )
Overall, a well-made movie that kind of overreaches its premise, but still a very worthwhile watch. Probably one I will rewatch at some point.
This is very stylish, with its beautiful warm colors ("Made on 35mm film," it announces during the opening credits, which feels a bit desperate tbh) and interesting lighting and title cards. Unfortunately, both the stylistic pretensions and the story mostly run out of steam at about the halfway point. I enjoyed the nonlinearity, but most of the big reveals felt obvious anyway. The movie also does NOT know when to stop. There's a natural stopping point and the movie bulldozes right past it for another 10 or 15 completely unnecessary minutes that release all the prior tension, which was one of the movie's greatest strengths. I've seen some strong criticisms of its politics, but I can't get too worked up about them because the worst of them are all after the movie should have ended anyway.
I also, personally, found the initial negotiation around the hookup and then the hookup itself excruciatingly, almost unwatchably awkward. To be fair, it was supposed to be awkward! But it took my almost an hour to watch about 10 minutes of movie because I struggled so much.
( spoilers )
Everything else aside, I watched this because it's nominated for best film for the Dead Meat Horror Awards, and this did not feel like a horror movie to me; it felt like a thriller. On the plus side, it's nice to see little indie thrillers getting made, too.
--
Heretic (2024). Two young Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) are trapped in a cat and mouse game by a man they visit, Mr Reed (Hugh Grant).
This has fantastic atmosphere throughout. Even the weather is great, and Mr. Reed and his house have enjoyably bad vibes from the very beginning. I especially appreciate how menacing Mr. Reed feels without explicitly or implicitly threatening any kind of physical violence until quite late in the story. The movie understands that the situations he's putting the young women in are already terrifying; overt threats are not needed.
All three actors do a fantastic job, and in particular Hugh Grant's turn to straight-up villain is really fun. Things get very talky in the middle as he harasses the sisters about their faith, how it's all fake, etc, and Grant sells all of it as one of those skeptics who's just fucking obnoxious about it. I knew the basic premise of the movie going in, but was not prepared for just how MUCH the story is about Christianity. I imagine it was a very different viewing experience for someone with no Christian background.
The movie gets pretty silly in the second half, and the big final conclusion about Mr. Reed's basically philosophy ("The one true religion is [spoiler]"), felt both too pat and not set up well enough. However, the character work is fantastic to the very end. I really enjoyed the sisters and the dynamic between them. They're distinct characters who are both earnest about their faith, in distinct but complementary ways, and I liked that. I particularly liked how from the first scene we see that Sister Paxton is someone who's thinking all the time to the point that she probably annoys a lot of the people around her AND is probably straying well beyond the bounds of what the church would prefer her to think about, and how this inquisitiveness and attention to detail plays out in the movie's plot without ever explicitly calling out that aspect of her character.
On a trivial note, ( mild spoilers )
Overall, a well-made movie that kind of overreaches its premise, but still a very worthwhile watch. Probably one I will rewatch at some point.
Tags:
I found a perfect place to do some banter farming in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, so I settled in to max out all of the possible conversations between various pairs of characters off-and-on over the past almost-a-week before starting endgame in my most recent playthrough.
There was so much dialogue that I've never encountered before. Even with characters who I've frequently had together in my party in previous playthroughs, I was getting to conversations that I never heard in previous ones. There's just so much potential banter that's never played for me because I didn't have two specific characters in the party together for long enough, and it was lovely to hear it all. And I'm sure there's still more banter that I've missed that's only available earlier in the game.
( Nothing really spoilery, but under the cut to be safe. )
It definitely makes some of the potential choices in the game even more bittersweet, hearing just how close some of the team members are to each other based on their conversations and teasing of each other.
There was so much dialogue that I've never encountered before. Even with characters who I've frequently had together in my party in previous playthroughs, I was getting to conversations that I never heard in previous ones. There's just so much potential banter that's never played for me because I didn't have two specific characters in the party together for long enough, and it was lovely to hear it all. And I'm sure there's still more banter that I've missed that's only available earlier in the game.
( Nothing really spoilery, but under the cut to be safe. )
It definitely makes some of the potential choices in the game even more bittersweet, hearing just how close some of the team members are to each other based on their conversations and teasing of each other.
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.