Fandom's foibles

Jul. 6th, 2025 01:43 pm
petra: Cartoon of an overexcited airline steward with the text: You're always playing Yellow Car. (Cabin Pressure - Yellow Car)
[personal profile] petra
Today's jumpscare: the second most common relationship for Arthur Dent is Khan Noonien Singh, because of bad casting and Sherlock obsession on the part of fandom.

I still haven't seen the real Khan movie, but its Robot Chicken opera version made more of an impression on me than the AOS version where they cast B--- C---, which I have never watched and never intend to see.

TV Talk: Countdown (eps 1.01-1.04)

Jul. 6th, 2025 12:42 pm
spikedluv: created by tarlan (misc: tv talk by tarlan)
[personal profile] spikedluv
Countdown: I decided to give this show a try mainly because of Jensen Ackles. It's pretty good, though I don't think I'll get fannish about it. And so far I don't have any deep comments about it, but watching the first four eps was a good way to spend some time. spoilers )

Oh, I like this word!

Jul. 8th, 2025 07:54 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Eirenicon: A proposal to resolve disputes and reconcile differences in order to advance peace, strengthen or establish unity, or foster solidarity.

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


Read more... )

Lui by CM Deiana

Jul. 6th, 2025 05:33 pm
profiterole_reads: (Kuroko no Basuke - Kagami and Kuroko)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
Lui by CM Deiana (who used to write for the Yaoi France fanzine) was a lot of fun! During the Covid lockdown, Alexandre, a sociology student, meets Samuel, a delivery man.

I bought this novel through crowdfunding, so I got:
- 3 bonus chapters about various secondary characters
- 1 fanfic written by Auriane Velten (Ainsi soient-illes) and printed like a fanzine: it's an AU where Alex and Sam meet 25 years later, in a fascist France (we're sadly heading there, but I sure hope that it's not going to last that long)
- a few goodies

I love that the book is a little mixed-media, with illustrations of notebook pages between chapters.

There's major m/m, with Alex being demisexual and on the autism spectrum. The secondary characters mostly include gay men, but also two sapphics and an enby. There are a few POC, and Covid-related anti-Asian racism is tackled.

AKICIDW: Ear training

Jul. 6th, 2025 10:19 am
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

I do not have perfect pitch. Not only do I not have good absolute pitch (i.e. "That's a C#."), I don't really have good relative pitch (i.e. "This note is higher than that note."). Which makes it kind of funny, how much I enjoy music, both listening and playing. So that's why I've come here to borrow your ears. In "Stupid in Love" by Max and Huh Yunjin, at around 2:19 when they sing "Book a flight to Paris only one way," am I correct in thinking that he's singing a higher note than her? It sounded that way to me when I was listening to it in the car yesterday, then I started second-guessing myself, thinking it might be an illusion because he was singing in the upper part of his range while she was singing in the lower part of hers. Then I tried listening to it under headphone this morning and I started thinking that maybe they were singing the same note, and now I can't even hear it properly. And so I've come here to borrow your ears. Any thoughts?

Backing Up Is Hard To Do

Jul. 6th, 2025 07:57 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
Google has had the same backup situation for years and years. You request what files you want and then they zip them all up and send you a link to all the zip files that you then must download. They do not understand the concept of incremental backup so to keep current, this process must be repeated often. I have a shithoad of files in Google Drive alone and that's not even touching Keep, email, photos, and a variety of other miscellaneous bits.

I am now nearly halfway through downloading the backup to the drive files. Once I get it onto my external drive, I'm done. I may or may not go back and copy over recent files/changes. I could be done. Their scheme just sucks eggs. And while, two days ago, I was all over the whole idea, today I'm rapidly losing interest. Who the fuck cares, I'll be dead anyway and if I'm not, the one vital piece of data I need will be in the haystack that is this mess. So...

My foot, now, only hurts once in a while. It's 100% manageable. And I'm enjoying wearing shoes that feel good knowing they are not exacerbating the issue. (Contrary to what the original podiatrist I went to two years ago told me.)

Today is laundry and baseball. The house is kind of organized. The kitchen is tidy. Nothing else really needs doing. I have good food in the fridge and the freezer. I have no pending Amazon returns. Things seem under control. It's warm here, not hot but the sun is blazing and I love my poorly hung shades and my very chill air conditioning.

I think I'll click a few more downloads (it seems to work best if I download about 4 of these 2 GB files at a time) and go get dressed.

Sunshine Revival Challenge #2

Jul. 6th, 2025 10:44 am
seleneheart: a watermelon showing a bite out of it (Bite into summer)
[personal profile] seleneheart


Challenge #2

Tunnel of Love
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.
Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like


I was born in the summer. Summer, to me, is always about freedom. I'm sure this sense is a result of being a student for the normal amount of years, and then being a public school teacher for 18 years. Summer means no alarm clock, no schedule, eating weird foods on a whim, watching thunderstorms roll in. Summer is the deep breath before the plunge into the energetic whirlwind of autumn. Even though I'm no longer teaching, I've turned my alarm off this summer because the sun comes up early enough here in the north that I wake up in plenty of time to get my day going.

When my parents lived in the Low Country, summer meant piling the kids in the car for a two-day road trip to their little island. Laying on the dock and watching the Milky Way wheel overhead. Sitting on my parents' screen porch having late, leisurely dinners, talking for hours, killing at least a bottle of wine, while the kids lazed around on the couches, post-dinner, exhausted from hours at the beach.

Before that, my parents lived in the mountains -the old hills crowned in glory, the Appalachians. Summers then, my childhood summers, meant wading in the creeks, catching crawdads, hiking to forgotten graveyards, scaring each other around campfires. Hours at the public pool, eating ourselves sick on candy and lounging on towels, before jumping in the cold water every so often to play Marco Polo or Red Rover. Or chicken fights when we were older, getting the boys we liked to pick us up. My parents sent us to summer camp - two weeks out of the summer that felt like ultimate freedom, doing things and experiencing things that no one who wasn't there could possibly understand.

I hated summer in Texas, but moving north has reminded me how much I love this season.

Courses - June/July 2025

Jul. 6th, 2025 03:06 pm
smallhobbit: (Default)
[personal profile] smallhobbit
FutureLearn

Italian for Beginners - Part 4 (Open University)
Much to my surprise I'm finding I'm able to complete the quizzes with fewer mistakes and understanding more, which is encouraging.

What do Popular Songs Mean? (University of Leeds)
Like the previous music course I've done with Leeds Uni, this was aimed at potential music students, which I imagine is only a very limited proportion of those taking FutureLearn courses.  Some things were interesting, some were a reminder of things I learnt on an OpenLearn course; at other times they would teach about analysis, but then when I came to work through an example for myself the answer would come up 'you may think xxx, but in this case yyy applies'.  And in at least one occasion there seemed to be a contradiction between something stated earlier and than later in the course.


OpenLearn

Egyptian Mathematics
I read through the course, but it lacks the presentation of later courses.  It was interesting to see a little about Egyptian mathematics, although very little has survived, probably because most of their maths had to do with practical problems they encountered rather than matters they deemed sufficiently important to save for posterity.

Babylonian Mathematics
Similarly with this course, although there was a small amount that was presumably kept for teaching purposes.  Unlike our modern maths, with a decimal system of counting, the Babylonians worked in 60s, so comparing then and now isn't always easy.

The Science of Nutrition & Healthy Eating
My latest badged course.  Definitely interesting and made me consider what I do eat.  Not sure it will change my diet - but I'm more aware of food labels and what I should be considering.



Review stats for first half of 2025

Jul. 6th, 2025 03:11 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
Here are the accumulated stats for all the reviews I've written so far in 2025:

Film & TV:
Positive – 2 (67%)
Negative – 1 (33%)

Books:
Positive – 48 (70%)
Negative – 12 (17%)
DNF - 9 (13%)

Live Entertainment:
Positive – 4 (80%)
Negative – 1 (20%)

Audiobooks:
Positive – 21 (95%)
Negative – 0 (0%)
DNF - 1 (5%)

Games (video and board):
Positive – 14 (88%)
Negative – 2 (12%)

Comics:
Positive - 10 (100%)
Negative - 0 (0%)
DNF - 0 (0%)

Reviews total for first half of 2025:
Positive – 99 (79%)
Negative – 26 (21%)

I'm counting the DNFs as negative for the overall stats.

Fairies

Jul. 6th, 2025 03:09 pm
poliphilo: (Default)
[personal profile] poliphilo
 Cecily Mary Barker produced the first of her Flower Fairy books in 1923. As a small boy I thought them frightfully soppy, Now I find them charming.

I looked her up. And found, to my surprise, that she lived in Croydon, the famously ugly Surrey town where I spent most of my childhood. 

A bit back I made a produced a picture of a mischievous little imp who I decided, after asessing him, had to be the Stinging Nettle Fairy.

My friend Deborahlka liked him and asked for more. Specifically the Poison Oak Fairy and the Poison Ivy Family. I wasn't intending to go any further down this road but I can't say "No" to a lady.

So here, with apologies and an affectionate thank you to Cecily Barker are...

The Poison Oak Fairy

ZrKXCj5fGSxx7ev4d9H9--0--ah5eu.jpeg

and

The Poison Ivy Fairy

Awc2h4cERXK0Ghv3yhsA-Pt9j3-adjusted.jpeg
umadoshi: (berries in bowls (roxicons))
[personal profile] umadoshi
[personal profile] scruloose and I did make it to the little farmers' market down the road for its opening day of the season, and even managed to get there earlier than later! (I think it's open from 8 to 1, and we probably were there...a bit after 10?)

We made it home with two quarts of strawberries and one of cherries, new potatoes, a dozen eggs, and boneless chicken thighs, plus a bee balm for the garden, which we quickly tucked into a fairly open space in our little garden bed yesterday evening. (What was there before? UNKNOWN. Will I manage to reconstruct it from old posts or something? Also unknown. But hey, a plant!)

Reading: I finished Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi), which was fantastic. On the fiction front, I followed it up with Tamsyn Muir's novella Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (not really my thing--I continue to rarely bond with novellas, I guess--but interestingly done), Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country (marvelous), and Sofia Samatar's The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (again, didn't really bond emotionally, but it executed what it was doing beautifully).

Non-fiction: David Chang and Priya Krishna's Cooking at Home: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Recipes (And Love My Microwave), which is, like...primarily actually a David Chang book that Priya Krishna did a ton of heavy-lifting assisting on (which may be very normal for co-written cookbooks, but in this case she was interjecting and clarifying in her own voice as well as doing a fair bit of the actual writing in his voice, and it was all very transparent that it was being done that way, but also a little odd to read). I think I bought this as a sale ebook before hearing that Chang (the Momofuku guy) is something of an asshole, but then when I was reading it, it felt really promising as a book that might be genuinely useful for me (and even by cookbook standards, its ebook is terribly formatted), so I was pleasantly surprised to readily find a used half-price hard copy available on line, which is winging its way to me now. I've also made sure that Krishna's own Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family is now on the wishlist where I keep an eye out for ebook sales.

And now I'm reading An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler, which is a cookbook mostly in the form of essays on cooking as a thoughtful/mindful practice.

Watching: One more Murderbot episode to go in this season, and oh, I hope we get a second one. I'm going to miss this little show.

We finished watching the second season of Kingdom (the historical zombies k-drama), which I found very satisfying. The ending very much sets up a subsequent season, and there's a movie out that fills in the backstory of the person/people we glimpse at the end of season 2 who would presumably be extremely central in any further season, but I don't think we feel inspired to watch said backstory movie unless a third season of the show is ever announced and it becomes relevant in that way.

Rare Male Slash Exchange letter 2025

Jul. 6th, 2025 02:20 pm
regshoe: Redwing, a brown bird with a red wing patch, perched in a tree (Default)
[personal profile] regshoe
Thank you for writing me a fic in one of these lovely rare slash ships! I'm [archiveofourown.org profile] regshoe on AO3. I've said a bit below about what I like about my requested ships and given some prompts, but if you have a completely different idea you want to write, please go for it—I'll look forward to seeing whatever you come up with!

Fandoms are Étoile (TV), Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped - McArthur & McCarthy & Stevenson and The Longest Journey - E. M. Forster )
wychwood: Kosh is an angel (B5 - Kosh angel)
[personal profile] wychwood posting in [community profile] girlmeetstrouble
Chapter 19 )

Chapter 20 )

The end!

Next book: [personal profile] coughingbear will be leading Death of a Dormouse by Reginald Hill aka Patrick Ruell; let us know your planned start date, [personal profile] coughingbear!

Miss Indigo Bike wears me out, etc.

Jul. 6th, 2025 06:09 am
sistawendy: me in C18-inspired makeup looking amused (amused eighteenthcent)
[personal profile] sistawendy
I got around to something that I'd been meaning to for years: I finally rode Miss Indigo Bike across the SR 520 floating bridge*. The current bridge there opened in 2017, complete with a lane for peds & bikes, which the previous bridge there lacked. It took me eight years, but I did it.

How'd it go? Well, getting onto the trail involved a few wrong turns and backtracking. There isn't any signage on the Burke-Gilman Trail** telling you how to even go south, much less get on SR-520. The pedestrian-and-bike overpass that gets you safely across the 6-lane arterial has been there for ten years***, but neau, there's no sign telling you how to find it. This looks like a job for a guerrilla.

How's the actual ride? It's a fantastic way to zen all the way out. Bike traffic was light, with a high proportion of serious cyclists, and the weather and the view were right on. And the high rises at the east & west ends aren't that bad, at least if you're used to Phinney Ridge. I stopped at the east end and took a picture, natch. How long did I take? About two hours, including all the doubling back and the break at the far end.

Thence to brunch on the Hill at Lost Lake with Comfy Lady! Her job, in public health, is under direct threat from Trump's gangsters, which... urgh! But otherwise, it was lovely. Happiness is eating outdoors this time of year.

Went home, read, got groceries too delicate for a messenger bag, made dinner, and crashed hard. Seriously, I lay down at about 1930 thinking I'd nap for a couple of hours. I ended up sleeping over nine hours in my clothes & makeup with the blinds & bedroom door still open. I guess the ride caught up with me. Welp, now I know how to cure my own insomnia. Luckily, I didn't have any firm evening plans.



*That's right, kids, a concrete pontoon bridge. We have three of them here in Washington state: two across Lake Washington, which borders Seattle to the east, and one at Hood Canal on the other side of Puget Sound.
**The Burke-Gilman used to be a railroad right of way that got turned into a paved trail not quite fifty years ago. It hugs the waterfront in Seattle's north end, including the University of Washington, for which it's a commuter artery. It runs up the west side of Lake Washington all the way to its northern end.
***The overpass over Montlake Blvd. was built as part of the project for the University of Washington light rail station, and it was an excellent idea. The station is right next to the sportsball stadia. Across from the station is the bulk of the UW campus, of course, and kitty corner is the enormous UW Medical Center. Just south of there is a drawbridge. So yeah, there's a high density and volume of irritated drivers at that intersection, just what you don't want as a bicyclist.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Can the American King's uncanny military genius best an enemy so cunning the enemy loses every battle?

The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun by Christopher Anvil

Profile

motodraconis: (Default)
motodraconis

February 2025

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819 202122
232425262728 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 6th, 2025 10:43 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios