qos | Network

Educational meme from

thistleingrey (also seen at a couple of other places under lock). I've answered for both my sister and myself (generally similar answers, sometimes not), as well as for my kids. (Will eventually lock.)
( Cut for length )

kaberett

Reading. A Variety of books with the Child, including One Fish, Two Fish and A Squeeze and a Squash.

For my own purposes I have been continuing with The Rose Field, Philip Pullman, and I do indeed continue unimpressed. Not enough to stop! But.

I also picked up What Is Queer Food? (John Birdsall) from the library when I was having an insomnia; I have made it most of the way through the introduction but I am not yet grabbed.

Writing. Words... increase.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac catch-up! "While doing the laundry" or indeed "weeding" continues to work quite well.

Playing. Puzzle progresses! I am not calculating current %age but Significant Progress.

I think we did a leeeeettle bit more of our current run of Inkulinati? But it is petering out.

Cooking. Pineapple upside-down banana bread! This time with some ground almond in it. Otherwise I think... very little of note.

Eating. I was very excited to get to try a Neuhaus dark chocolate poppy seed praline, which on the one hand was not actually quite as dark as I would like and on the other has given me Ideas.

Growing. I got some broad beans in the ground?

shadaras

I get tomorrow off! I'm looking forward to that, especially since I finally feel pretty human again, no more lingering illness.

1.
The horizon has glimmers of color as I drive to work, these days. It's very nice! It also means I'm cynically like "it's going to be sunrise when I'm driving to work and then daylight saving is gonna happen and it'll be dark again", because that's just how it goes.

2.
Periodically I remember that doing things gives you more energy for doing things, inclusive of how hanging out with people means you have more energy for hanging out with people? Truly the most annoying thing, knowing that sometimes forcing yourself to do the thing will result in feeling better! But also sometimes you need to not because of being out of energy/spoons. Balancing this! The worst!

3.
Star Trek: Discovery s3 continues to be overall good!
(When did I last talk about this. Ep4, apparently! So!)
s3e5 "Die Trying": I adored the set design for the seed ship. This was a good example of moving the plot along while setting up a farewell episode for a crew member who wouldn't be continuing on!
s3s6 "Scavengers": I want the miniseries/full arc of this episode. I am extremely here for the Michael/Phillipa/Book trio! I also think that having more time to dig into the prioritization of "solve the Burn" vs "obey Starfleet structure" vs "save people" would have been excellent.
s3e7 "Unification III": I will indeed cry upon seeing old footage of Leonard Nimoy as Spock. Uh. idk, the Qowat Milat are always cool? This episode progressed arcplot, mostly?
s3e8 "Sanctuary": god I really want more specifics about what Book's empathy powers are. Fun antics around following the letter of the law with Starfleet protocol, and makes it clear that yeah the Emerald Chain is gonna be the arcvillain. Also, Adira comes out to Stamets as nonbinary! in a scene that's very "okay yeah this is meant to be #relatable to teens", which isn't a bad thing but also I fundamentally am like "but it's Star Trek, why would a nonbinary person be worried about if they'd be accepted in Star Trek?"
s3s9-10 "Terra Firma", parts 1 and 2: A two-episode farewell to Mirror Phillipa Georgiou. I loved this as a character study for her! However! It makes the season's pacing really weird, since there are only three episodes left in the season and these two episodes were basically not about the arcplot at all. Phenomenal for the relationship between Michael and Phillipa, though, holy shit.

Truly a lot of my feelings about DSC s3 are that it doesn't seem to quite know if it's an episodic show or an arcplot show, and that leaves me resenting both the cutaways from episodic plots to arcplot scenes and the cutaways from arcplot for episodic plots. xD I still enjoy it because of the character dynamics, and I'm glad Tilly is starting to get what she's owed, but it's kind of messy plotting. Looking forward to the finale anyway, and I also expect that s4 will have an easier time with figuring itself out since it won't be as busy trying to establish the new time/setting as well.

4.
I also watched the first 9 episodes of Duet of Shadows a republican-era cdrama with ~19min episodes about very butch4butch investigator protags. Definitely having a good time! The first case/arc is basically "a trans man opera singer got outed and died", for reasons that turn out to not be a gender-related hate crime (his gender is very respected by those who know him! there's a scene in which someone who knew him hands one of the protags a binder and is like "pls use this instead of bandages"!). I think this is fun. Not everyone will. xD Curious what the next case/arc will be, and shall see how long it takes for me to finish it!

5.
Watching Yanxi Palace slowly continues! We're seven episodes in now, and Yingluo has attracted the Empress's attention (positive). The brief cut back to the eunuch tasked with figuring out who the quick-witted maid (Yingluo) is for the Emperor in the midst of that was very funny. But mostly these episodes have been about how clever and ruthless Yingluo is, and how those are necessary traits in the inner courtyards of the imperial palace.

6.
Six Sentence Sunday is always a fun meme. This is more than six sentences, but it is Sunday!

“Ms. Warram,” Ames said icily, his patience worn thin, “you have not even given me details about your offer. Your letter said nothing about compensation, support, or even a timeline for prototyping. It merely told me what you wanted from me, and nothing about this conversation leads me to believe I will enjoy the environment of your trading company. Treat me with the respect the title of Chief Engineer implies and I might consider visiting your workshop to make an informed decision. Otherwise, I do not see any reason to continue this conversation."

Emeline sat up straight, hands folded in front of her, that ring catching the light. He still couldn’t quite make out the design on it. “Amaranth dev Citronel,” she said, “I will show you the workshop. You will come with me?”

Ames opened his mouth to say “No”, but the light kept gleaming from Emeline’s eyes and ring, and he couldn’t concentrate through them. His tongue felt thick and heavy, as did the rest of his body.

It occurred to Ames, as the light stole over him, that he had been so busy worrying about the mundane side of predatory business contracts that he hadn’t even thought about a mage dead-set on taking him.

His lips said Yes, and Ames’ last conscious thought was that, if nothing else, Rhei would know something was wrong as soon as they arrived back in Jogan’s Rest.

rydra_wong

https://www.scenemag.co.uk/lancaster-university-launches-national-consultation-to-shape-future-of-adult-gender-healthcare/

https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/transadultspsp/

The focus is identifying priorities for future research, specifically related to "non-surgical, transition-related healthcare for people aged 18 and over", and they're starting with a survey.

Funded by Gendered Intelligence, led by a steering group which is half people with lived experience (in fact more than half, as some of the healthcare professional members also ID as trans), one of the two co-leads is a trans woman, and they're partnered with TransActual and GIRES, so this looks like real genuine co-production.

cahn

I am super not promising to always have this on Saturday, but yay long weekend!

Last week: I know some of you reading this study Talmud -- Josephus asserts at the very beginning that the "sufferings of the Jews" (presumably, in context of Josephus' writing, Titus destroying the temple, etc. though we won't get there for a while) are their own fault: "no foreign power is to blame." It was pointed out that the Talmud may (?) have its own opinion(s) as to whether the destruction of the Temple and the resulting diaspora was divine punishment? And regardless of the former, may also blame Titus? (I also don't know yet, because we haven't gotten there yet and won't for a while, whether Josephus himself thinks it's divine punishment or just plain old temporal consequences. My vague recollection of Feuchtwanger's Josephus is that he was thinking more of the latter, which is also very much borne out by this week's reading.)

This week: First half of Book 1 (Ch 22 / Par 444):

Okay, I must say the first part of this was a slog for me -- flitting between a lot of people I didn't know. Good thing we have this reading group or I might not have got through it. As it was, I had to take copious notes to even make a stab at writing up a summary (I won't promise I'll do this every week, but I had a little extra time and quite frankly I knew I wouldn't remember who any of these people were next week if I didn't), and I'm going to put them in comments so this post doesn't get super long. At least Josephus felt it was "inappropriate to go into the early history of the Jews," which would have made it really long. Anyway, it got substantially more interesting once Herod showed up!

Next week: Finish book 1.

kaberett

One (1) duplicate letter from the DWP, which I had actually requested, because the council is apparently incapable of giving me the concessionary rate on the basis of disability without me providing one letter per year from the DWP telling them I'm still disabled, despite the fact that for anything that is not the allotment rent they can work this out from all the other information available to them without needing me to have Special Executive function;

three (3) rolls of washi tape from Sweden, one of which I have been Tempted By for probably actual years at this point and the other two of which are relevant for this year's notebook set-up and I was sad and wanted a treat;

and one (1) book, Citrus: A History, because it was £4.56, on a topic I have previously been interested in, and Interest Has Been Expressed in me yelling about it. (When will I get to it? Unclear, because once I've finished reading The Rose Field I should probably do some more pain reading, but. Eventually.)

(And why have I been sad? I genuinely do not know; my brain has just been having a Sustained Patch of Uncooperative. I would like it to stop. In addition to post, today's efforts in that direction have included a batch of pineapple upside-down banana bread, this time with some of the flour replaced with almond meal.)

rydra_wong

We have terrible platforming, shortcut porn, hostile shrubbery, BOXRATS!!!, extremely smashable vases, “amazing chest ahead” (male), “amazing chest ahead” (female), “amazing chest ahead” (mimic), weirdly sexualized moaning (male only), repeatedly falling down inside a giant hollow tree to your death, Moss Lady, a magic medieval snakeskin-covered gramophone, hidden areas hidden behind other hidden areas hidden behind illusory walls, combat skirts (unisex), giant snakes with horse teeth, pretending to be an egg, quite a lot of jank, a very angry elderly cat who scolds you in bad faux-Shakespearian and is also a faction leader, the secret lake underneath the bottom of the world, “jolly co-operation,” chibi mindflayers, clams full of skulls, a trident that lets you do a silly little dance, ridiculous ragdoll corpse physics, a really cool double helix staircase probably based on the Château de Chambord, ball/crab things that turn up unexpectedly in your game and try to magic missile you because somebody in another game lost some stuff, getting punched to death by mushrooms, and Gender.

This is such a weird game (complimentary).

sholio

But before I get to that, I started posting another fixit WIP over on AO3. This one will probably be about 4 chapters long, most of which is written, but it's kind of a mess so I'm posting it as I finish cleaning them up and filling in the missing parts.

The Living and the Damned - goes AU from the beginning of 5x18, rated mature because there will be tentacles, though things are a bit too dire for that yet.

And speaking of tentacles.

( More from the behind the scenes books (tentacle related) )

kaberett

Before getting myself onto the mat: all is woe, everything is too much and takes too long, I Cannot Face Cooking, we shall be forced to Resort to Sad Pasta

Ten minutes after getting myself onto the mat and starting moving: ... actually, you know what, stir-frying the purple sprouting broccoli with Stuff sounds both achievable and Vastly More Appealing, scratch the Sad Supermarket plan

It was just warm-up! I hadn't even got the endorphins going yet!

sockshuppet posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

firecat

I guess Discord is going to start requiring users to prove they are over a certain age if they want to access certain content.

I mainly use Discord to keep connected to fanfic fandom, most of which has certain content. And I definitely am not going to upload my ID.

Does this affect you? If so, what are you going to do when it goes into effect?

kiya

Regalia

It used to be
People
Put on names
And a suit of clothes,
And were known.

The unknown god
Takes up his staff,
Puts on his beard,
His signs of power,
And when so garbed can say,
"And now you know me."

What raiment is mine,
What tools,
What adornments,
That will make me known?

I know not.

Footnotes on this one are: conversations about names on bsky, the lecture I went to tonight on queer/trans experience in the American colonies, a passage quoted in Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, and

graydon's comments about how gender is the means of signaling what sort of improv one is doing....

Current Mood: thoughtful

kaberett

a shelf fungus at the base of a tree, shading from brown in the centre via rich orange to pale yellow at the edge

a clump of purple crocuses, nestled between tree roots

a clump of snowdrops, with the green tips of the inner petals clearly visible

(Which last I took in part because A only discovered last week that many snowdrops have decorative green bits on their frilly inner noses, courtesy of a waist-high planter outside one of our local pubs!)

notfreyja posting in

fandomcalendar

event banner showing the title in 70s style font

A month long writing challenge focused on tropes, tags, and formats that have (for better or worse) fallen out of style.

From May 1st to 31st, creators will post their takes on each of the days' prompts, in any medium. Fan fiction, original stories, poetry, meta-analysis, and (even though writing is in our name!) yes, visual art as well! Currently all event documentation is on Tumblr, so the links below will redirect to the appropriate Tumblr posts.

Quick Links:

azurelunatic

Yellface (spayed, *16) decided to sit on me last night. Thorn came in and snuggled me. Yellface sniffed their hand politely as we held hands. The first time she'd ever encountered Thorn's hand without some cranky meowing. (Right now Yellface will sniff and rub her face on an extended finger, but will say things about it.)

Many minutes of stillness later, Thorn said something.

Yellface suddenly took notice of an alien hand near her territory, stood up, and gave a snake-strike grazing bite to the nearest hand, followed by a swat.

My hand, naturally.

I uninvited her from the bed and found an alcohol wipe. She broke skin but didn't draw blood. Today only the deepest scrape is visible, if you're looking for it.

Oh, cat.

kaberett

I actually made this as a protein to go with Meera Sodha's winter pilau, after An End Of Breakfast Dal went really well and for the purposes of using up the chaat masala I made for The Ongoing Cook All The Book Project, freely adapted from a number of recipes (which were The First Few Search Results when I prodded the internet). A is sufficiently convinced that I provide notes herewith in service of being able to repeat it in future.

( Read more... )

ursula

I'm writing a story for What Elegant Stars, an anthology of stories about space opera and fashion (or textiles!) that's Kickstarting right now.

firecat

This article boils down to “we told you so.” But I like how it explains why the mainstream media dismissed and downplayed what we told you (because their “how to do journalism” rules demand it, e.g.: “Insist on a both-sides structure even when one side is lying“).

“The Media Malpractice That Sent America Tumbling Into Trumpism” by Parker Molloy
https://newrepublic.com/article/205913/media-malpractice-trumpism-project-2025

sholio

So I read the fourth book in this series (by accident, not realizing it was the fourth) a couple of years ago, and stalled out on book 1. After reading the SCP Foundation book last week, I decided there would never be a better time for a cosmic horror-comedy book I already owned - and I was so right, I marathoned the entire series this past week and absolutely loved it. There's a new book coming out in 2026 and I cannot WAIT.

These books, and especially the first half of book 1 (by far the weakest part of the series), are dudebro-ish and sometimes very early-2000s deliberately transgressive humor (i.e. South Park - this gets MUCH less as it goes on, but never really goes away), and they are sometimes lovely and insightful, and sometimes just incredibly stupid, and I can see why someone would bounce off them, especially considering how I struggled to get through the early parts of book 1. But after four books, I love these characters so much that I will follow them anywhere. Even through the stupid parts!

These books, especially the first one, are primarily narrated by Dave, a slacker dudebro in the general style of early 2000s movies etc (this is very clearly in the style of the Kevin Smith movies, South Park, and other things of that era). Dave is a depressed loner working at a video store whose best and only friend is John, a Bad Idea Friend who takes every drug he gets his hands on, belongs to a shitty band, and drags Dave into a never-ending series of terrible, terrible life choices.

The plot-relevant one of these is taking a new drug sweeping their depressed Midwestern town of [Undisclosed], a drug which looks like mobile and intelligent used motor oil. It turns out that it kills most of the people who take it, but they are among the few survivors, and are suddenly able to step outside time and space, and see everything going on their small depressed Midwestern town -- all the ghosts, all the cosmic entities. They can uncontrollably travel in time, they can freeze time, and they're swept up in an attempt to fix a series of goddawful cosmic horror rifts in time and space that are wrecking their whole dimension.

The third member of the group is drawn in during the first book when she becomes a victim and later a friend: Amy, who was shattered physically and emotionally in a car accident, and then comes to the attention of cosmic horrors; starts off as one of the people they're trying to help, and gets sucked into weird spacetime shenanigans with things that she (unlike John and Dave) can't actually see. It's with Amy's introduction that the first book feels like it really kicks off and gets good.

The body count is high and gory, there are tons of gore and grossout humor and some incredibly soft, emotional and deeply affecting moments as well. This is a series where

some spoilers for one of the books

the big dilemma can be how do we kill some giant extradimensional maggots that pretend to be adorable human children, who everyone else sees as adorable human children, while they munch gorily on their caregivers and no one else can see it ... or maybe it's the realization that the hideous maggots are also children, deserving of care and consideration as any other children, and maybe the people you need to stop are the government agents coming to kill them.

If whether the dog dies is an important factor in your reading or viewing, please click

this spoiler

there is a dog, and the dog dies.

These books are so hard to rec, because you have to slog through the worst part of the series (the first half of book 1) to get to the almost transcendentally good late middle of book one; it can be lovely enough to make me cry or just spectacularly stupid within a chapter or two. A lot of stuff is brought up and then never explained. But sometimes the explanations made me put the book down and have feelings for a while. It made me laugh a lot. There are so many bodily fluids and terrible bodily function jokes. Some of its best moments involve the characters being forced to contend with the fact that life is complicated and stupid and cruel, and the best thing you can do, maybe the only thing you can do, is to simply be kind, and make the kind choice, if that's the only choice you have to make.

Sometimes defeating the apocalypse cultists means sitting down with them and understanding their heartbreaking loneliness and convincing them to walk away because you can be the person who turns them around and becomes the only person in their lives to ever believe in them and tell them that they can be something better than this.

... And sometimes it involves a triple-barreled shotgun and a plan involving a room full of fake silicon butts. That's what this series is like.

( A spoiler from book 4 )

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Page Summary

cahn - Education meme
kaberett - vital functions
shadaras - the snow is slowly melting in the just-above-freezing warmth
rydra_wong - For UK trans/nb/gender-diverse people (or anyone who might want to signal-boost)
cahn - The Jewish War: First half of Book 1
kaberett - today the post brought Many Things
rydra_wong - Come to Dark Souls
sholio - A little more B5 script book stuff
kaberett - [movement] amusement
sockshuppet in fandomcalendar - Pokémon: Perished Pidove Exchange 2026
firecat - Discord age verification
kiya - Been a minute
kaberett - [picspam] from yesterday's trudge in the rain
notfreyja in fandomcalendar - Announcing: Retro Writing May!
azurelunatic - Grouchy, territorial kitten*
kaberett - [food] chickpea chaat
ursula - what elegant stars
extrapenguin in fandomcalendar - Space Swap: A Multimedium Multifandom Fanworks Exchange
firecat - Duck, politics incoming
sholio - John Dies at the End - Jason Pargin (series)

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Queen of Swords

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Network

Education meme

vital functions

the snow is slowly melting in the just-above-freezing warmth

For UK trans/nb/gender-diverse people (or anyone who might want to signal-boost)

The Jewish War: First half of Book 1

today the post brought Many Things

Come to Dark Souls

A little more B5 script book stuff

[movement] amusement

Pokémon: Perished Pidove Exchange 2026

Discord age verification

Been a minute

Regalia

[picspam] from yesterday's trudge in the rain

Announcing: Retro Writing May!

Grouchy, territorial kitten*

[food] chickpea chaat

what elegant stars

Space Swap: A Multimedium Multifandom Fanworks Exchange

Duck, politics incoming

John Dies at the End - Jason Pargin (series)

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March 2025

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