brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

I'm currently reading Friend of the Devil: My Wild Ride with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead by Len Dell'amico. In the first chapter, Dell'amico tells about meeting Jerry Garcia for the first time in September 1980. They're talking backstage in Garcia's dressing room before a concert. One of the other people in the room is a Hells Angel named Tiny. Garcia pauses his conversation with Dell'amico for a moment to talk to Tiny. As it turns out, Tiny had been sent to deliver an official message to Garcia, which begins " I come tonight with a message for you from Mr. Sonny Barger, the president of the Oakland Chapter of the Hells Angels. . ."

As a historian, this is interesting/amusing to be because by 1980, Barger had already been worldwide head of the Hells Angels for 22 years, yet here Tiny is introducing him as "president of the Oakland Chapter." Apparently the Hells Angels use the same leadership structure as the Catholic Church (where the pope's official tile is "Bishop of Rome)! ^^

Calycanthus ATC

Sep. 1st, 2025 06:24 pm
eller: iron ball (Default)
[personal profile] eller
Another botanical ATC (6,4 x 8,9 cm), and the first attempt to actually use my new selfmade watercolors. Turns out they work as expected, with textures and everything, which is a relief, because otherwise I'd be stuck with a year's supply or so of green paint I hate. XD Of course, I had to use some other (store-bought) greens on this as well, but that's okay. (It's perfectly clear that only two greens are not nearly enough.) I'm just glad I didn't botch things.



Used watercolors:
Michael Harding: Titanium White, Pyrrole Red, Bright Green Lake, Phthalocyanine Green Lake, Dark Morellone Earth
Schmincke Horadam: Dunkelrot
Isaro: Magenta
Nila Colori: Ocra Violetta Armena
My own paints: Living Tree, Living Forest

farben-mini

I didn't need the blue and the brown for this picture (come to think of it, I almost never need blue), but test paintings with those (and, ugh, they really look nicer than in this photo; sorry, bad lighting here) will follow soon.

brightknightie: Girl running into the wind with a kite in summer (Enthusiasms)
[personal profile] brightknightie

Here are some recent fannish things I've happened to see and would like to share!

Spotlight: I don't subscribe to Netflix, so I assumed I was going to miss out on K-Pop Demon Hunters. But then they released widely in cinemas for one weekend only and I happily got tipped off in time. I liked it even more than I thought I would! K-Pop isn't my genre, but thoughtful magical-girl adventures? Well, yeah. Imagine that the original Sailor Moon manga and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show had a daughter and appointed High School Musical her fairy godmother. K-Pop Demon Hunters is joyful, hopeful, and deeper than it looks. It's a packed 90 minutes, with nothing missing and nothing to spare. (And I really enjoy "What it Sounds Like.")

Ficathons, fests & communities

  • Create & engage
    • [community profile] trickortreatex, where every gift is a "trick" or a "treat," has nominations through 9/08, sign-ups through 9/18, due 10/24.
    • [community profile] yuletide_admin '25 is underway. Nominations through 9/26; sign-ups through 10/24; due 12/17.
    • [community profile] fandomgiftbasket, a gifting fest a la Fandom Stocking/Trees, has sign-ups through 9/05 and reveals 10/12.
    • [community profile] fandommixtapeex uses songs as exchange prompts. Nominations through 9/09, sign-ups through 9/21, due 11/16.
    • [community profile] fffx, the "Five Figure Fanwork Exchange" (10K+ words), has sign-ups through 9/07; due 1/24.
    • [community profile] aspecex is a fic exchange themed on asexuality/aromanticism. Nominations through 9/17; sign-ups through 9/20; due 10/07.
    • [community profile] no_true_pair's 8-Character Challenge somewhat resembles Into A Bar, but everyone gets matched with everyone via distinct prompts.
    • [community profile] 10itemsorless is for ships with >10 works on the AO3. Sign-up through 9/06; due 10/25.
    • [community profile] 1character is a challenge community in which you claim a character and a prompt set and write 50 one-sentence micro-fics.
    • [tumblr.com profile] fandomwithbenefits is a low-commitment, no deadlines, monthly challenge/interaction community.
    • [community profile] drabbleonficathon is a prompt-meme challenge. Prompts close 10/01; fills open now and indefinitely.
    • [community profile] dreamwars is a community for all Star Wars.
    • [community profile] vampiremedia is a community for all vampire media.
    • [community profile] seasonsofdrabbles has released its summer event and will de-anonymize the works today.
    • [community profile] pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in exchanges. For example, [community profile] wipbigbang is seeking pinch hitters.
    • [community profile] whenisitdue tracks many more events than I note here!
  • Enjoy & share

Sidelight: Those who enjoy the ongoing Aurora webcomic by Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions (online | hardcopy) might like to know that Red is currently selling a pack of 4 character pins (Kendall, Alinua, Erin, and Falst). Shop the OSP store. Red's custom pins are always limited time, limited stock (though occasionally some do come back for deals around US Thanksgiving time, I wouldn't depend on that). I plan to put Kendall and Alinua on my work backpack.


August Language Roundup

Sep. 1st, 2025 11:43 am
lebateleur: A picture of the herb sweet woodruff (Default)
[personal profile] lebateleur
It sure is frustrating when the owl's periodic language path updates wipe the results of all your hard work off the board. I know the real goal is to maximize user's time-on-app vice the user's experience, but I don't see how resetting someone's progress from Unit 26 to Unit 6 would encourage them to spend more time engaging.

Chinese — Finished 1/10 of Rookie Unit 8; legendary through Rookie Unit 6
Dutch — Finished 1/5 of Explorer Unit 2; legendary through Rookie Unit 3
Gaelic — Finished 1/5 of Explorer Unit 13; legendary through the Explorer Unit 10
Hindi — Finished 4/5 of Unit 1; backburnered to focus on the letters with the GC
Indonesian — Finished 2/5 of Explorer Unit 12; legendary through 2/5 of Explorer Unit 11
Japanese — Finished Traveler Unit 24; legendary through Traveler Unit 21
Korean — Finished 1/5 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through Rookie Unit 5
Latin — Finished 1/5 of Rookie Unit 6
Manx — Finished lesson 3 of the Loayr Gaelg 3 textbook
Welsh — Finished 1/5 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through 1/5 of Rookie Unit 4

And, because, why not? Here's where things stood last month. )

これで以上です。

(no subject)

Sep. 1st, 2025 04:43 pm
cesy: "Cesy" - An old-fashioned quill and ink (Default)
[personal profile] cesy
Happy news of the day: Whoopi Goldberg wants people to watch more women's sports. So if you sign up for a free account on Pluto.TV and search for AWSN (All Women's Sports Network) you can watch a selection of women's sports matches and news and documentaries for free. Huzzah!

Thanks to The Happy Newspaper for the tip.
larryhammer: a symbol used in a traditional Iceland magic spell of protection (icon of awe)
[personal profile] larryhammer
For Poetry Monday:

Prayer (I), George Herbert

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.


Sonnet the verbless vivid. Published in 1633 in The Temple, Herbert’s only collection, as just “Prayer,” the first of a couple poems with that title, thus the commonly added (I). That last semicolon (which in modern practice would probably be a colon) is pulling an amazing amount of weight.

---L.

Subject quote from Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel, which is just as much a hymn.
umadoshi: (peaches (girlboheme))
[personal profile] umadoshi
I don't usually have too much trouble falling asleep these years (thanks mainly to a low dose of amitriptyline), although it's never as easy as it seems like it should be, going by frequent evening sleepiness. (No, I still have not sent feelers out about restarting attempts at trying CPAP. >.< I think I'm a bit resistant because as long as I don't try it, there's the hope that it'll help when I do, but what if I do and it doesn't? *sighs*) But last night involved lying awake for well over two hours because my brain would not stop. Ugh.

Firm reminder to self: that used to be the norm. And at least there's no Dayjob today.

We didn't go to the wee local market this weekend, because when we were out with a car on Friday we were able to stop by the stall for a produce place ("place") I love, even though this was only our second time there. It's produce from a variety of farms down in the Valley, and they usually have a lot of different things, but for us it's not super feasible to get to without driving, even though it's not that far.

We came home with a pint of blueberries and three quarts of peaches, encompassing four peach varieties! cut in case you DGAF about peaches )

Back when we lived in Toronto (over twenty years ago now--what even?), of course, we had access to Ontario peaches, which are a glory upon the earth. And because my exposure to popular music (or, y'know, an awful lot of music generally) was even worse then than it is now, a couple decades later, I didn't actually know the "millions of peaches" song other than the "millions of peaches, peaches for me; millions of peaches, peaches for free" bit. Like. At all. But I would go around singing that bit in sheer joy over peaches, and sometimes about other things that I loved. No context.

(The classic example of that last bit is the time or three I was singing about "millions of Quake-chans", because a] the original Quake is one of my lifetime favorite games {am I still ridiculously annoyed both that the name/"franchise" has had absolutely nothing to do with the original game beyond the fucking game engine AND how bad Quake II was? Yes} and b] I had mostly left behind my early-anime-fangirl habit of using fragments of Japanese, but was still blithely appending "-chan" now and then for fun.)

Anyway, the point of this ramble is that (if I'm remembering correctly at this distance) one time Em was visiting and I merrily sang out "millions of kittens" etc. (this was before [personal profile] scruloose and I were married, but we were already in it for the long haul, and at this point I had zero reason to think I would ever be able to have cats again because of their allergies), and when I finished the scrap of the song I knew and stopped, she quite reasonably belted out "KITTENS COME! IN A CAN!", which I had no way of predicting, and I probably didn't literally hit the floor in horror, but it came close.

Then she and [personal profile] scruloose had to explain WTF had just happened and talk me down a bit, I think. ^^;
melime: (Default)
[personal profile] melime
Title: Best thief
Fandom: The Librarians (TV)
Relationship: Ezekiel Jones
Rating: T/Gen
Word count: 361
Tags: Humor
Summary: Someone tries to bribe Ezekiel, and even worse, calls him one of the top 100 best thieves in the world.
For [community profile] seasons_of_fandom's round 1, challenge #1: Royal Rumble

Best thief“I know who you are, and whatever they offered you for the statue, I can pay you more,” the rich douchebag said.

Alright, maybe he had a name that wasn't rich douchebag, but Ezekiel couldn't be bothered to call him anything else, because he had already been a dick to Eve at the party, and to nearly all of his staff, which included Jake and Cassandra, since that was how they had gotten in, and would have included Ezekiel if he had seen with a serving tray and not leaving his vault.

It was very tempting to just take everything in there and not just the dangerous cursed statue that he came for. It was also very tempting to leave the cursed statue there, where it might cause the most harm.

“You don't know what you're talking about, mate,” Ezekiel said, pulling at the strap to make sure that the bag was secure, since he had a feeling he would be running out of there.

“But I do, you're Ezekiel Jones, probably in the top hundred of the world's best art thieves. Work for me instead and I promise you the best finder's fee in the market,” he said, with the smug assurance of someone who would always buy what they want.

It didn't happen too often, but Ezekiel still hated every time this happened. Some people seemed to think that because he was a thief, he was the weakest link, and that he would be willing to betray his friends for money. But this time that wasn't even what offended him.

“Top hundred? I'm the best thief in the world! And believe me, you can't afford me,” Ezekiel said, adding the last bit just because he knew it would sting, since rich douchebags were all the same.

The indignation was just the sort of distraction that he needed to escape the room, and he had to find the others so they could get out of there. The nerve on some people, the attempted bribe he could tolerate, but if someone knew enough to know his name, then they had to know that he was the absolute best in the field.

Small Web September, perhaps

Aug. 31st, 2025 09:59 pm
finch: (Garrick)
[personal profile] finch

Over in [community profile] smallweb it's smallweb September and so I've been trying to list out the stuff I've been meaning to do on my website and haven't gotten around to.

So far my list is:

  • probably find a webhost that's not just uploading shit to my email provider?
  • put my original universe stuff together literally at all
  • reformat the character reference pages and get them up
  • putting the art up would also be nice
  • fanfic archive could use updating/incorporating
  • so could some random other pages like my Flight Rising lore

Not sure how far I'll actually get in the list but it's nice to kind of lay out what I'm thinking, at least.

The end of September I'm going to be hosting Fourth Wing Femslash Week over on Tumblr again, which people seem to be excited about. It's not a fandom that sees a lot of femslash, so it's fun to drum up some interest.

This week I've been focused on writing for a different event week over there, but after that my plate's mostly clear between now and then so we'll see what happens, eh?

Also at the end of the month I start classes again. Ughhhhhh. Not terribly excited about that, but I guess I'll worry about it when we get there.

Icon — 12 Kingdoms

Aug. 31st, 2025 11:59 pm
sheliak: A young woman who has fallen asleep by her spinning wheel, mounds of fiber in the background. (tired)
[personal profile] sheliak
No cut, since I just did the one.
duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

Latest installments:


EARLY ACCESS

A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands: Novel and Side Stories (Crossing Worlds), which includes an expanded version of Deadly Introductions, is now available to my Patreon and Ream readers. The omnibus will go into general release next month.


NEWS

Early access previews at Patreon and Ream

I'm now providing one-month-early previews of my new e-book fiction through Patreon and Ream. I want to give a treat to readers who financially support me, while still making those stories quickly available to the rest of my readers. The early access model seems to be the best way to handle that.


General news and upcoming fiction )

Ways to offer me a tip, financial or nonfinancial )

(no subject)

Aug. 31st, 2025 11:43 pm
skygiants: clone helmet lit by the vastness of space (clone feelings)
[personal profile] skygiants
Sometimes you hit the end of a book and immediately think 'I'd like to read that over again' because there's some sort of big twist that you know will make you experience the whole thing differently, and sometimes you hit the end of a book and think 'I'd like to read that over again' not because of any Major Plot Reveals, but because the book is woven together in an interesting enough way that you want the chance to fully appreciate how all the pieces fit now that you've seen the full puzzle.

This second case was my experience with The Fortunate Fall, a cyberpunk novel from 1995 that came back into print last year and that I did not quite manage to read in time for the Readercon book club (so I extremely appreciate [personal profile] kate_nepveu's extensive notes on it including the intertextuality with Moby Dick.)

The book is narrated by Maya Andreyeva, a 'camera' -- a cyborg news-reporter modified to provide not just full sensory experience but also associated memories, context, etc. to the viewing public. When the book begins -- well, when the book begins, it has already ended, as Maya tells us; her whole audience has already experienced all the relevant events through her eyes, and now she's telling it to us again, in a narrative that she can control and that's on her own terms, contextualizing only what she wants to contextualize and hiding what she wants to hide. Which is a very fun way to begin a book, by consciously keying you into its distortions and elisions, and for the most part I think the text lives up to it.

Anyway, when not the book but the story begins, Maya has decided to put together a series commemorating the anniversary of a major [future]-historical tragedy, and has just gotten assigned a new screener for the project -- a sort of editorial figure who sits in between the camera and the audience, filtering out bodily functions and bad words and anything else that could be trouble for the network. Because of the amount of time they spend immersed in the heads of their cameras, screeners tend to become rapidly very enthusiastic and romantic about them! Maya's new screener Keishi is a beautiful and mysterious young woman who is, indeed, very enthusiastic and romantic about her! And definitely not keeping any secrets about her skills, her identity, or her reasons for being there working with Maya, no sir.

In true noir mode, Maya's initially normal-seeming historical research into a tragedy that's as long-ago and terrible and world-shaping for her as the Holocaust is for us ends up leading her increasingly out of the bounds of conventional society down a dangerous rabbithole, at the end of which lies forbidden knowledge about the world, forbidden knowledge about her own past, and forbidden knowledge about a really sad whale. And, following along with her, we as readers gradually start to piece together not only the particular dystopian shape of the world -- the parts that Maya already knows and the parts that Maya doesn't -- but also the shape of the story, the themes that it cares about and that have actually been driving the plot this entire time: embodiment, censorship, the atrocities we commit to end atrocities, and the power and beauty and absolute hard limits of queer love, just to name a few.

I don't know that everything about the book has fully aged well. I understand the well-meaning failure mode in cyberpunk that leads an author to posit a Monolithic Utopian Isolationist Africa when the rest of the world has gone to dystopian shit, but I think it is a failure mode. I also admit that I thought the entire grayspace digital-world sequence was a little bit boring. But for the most part the book is not at all boring, it's interesting in the way that only a book that actually trusts its readers to be doing an equal amount of work as they go is interesting. I did not in fact actually then read the book over again, upon hitting the end, because it was extremely overdue at the library [and I had five more equally overdue books on the pile] but I expect I will do so sometime in the nearer rather than the further future. Maybe I'll have the chance to hit another book club.

another five things make a post

Aug. 31st, 2025 11:11 pm
littledust: Girl with rainbow-colored thoughts. ([s2c] she dreams through the noise)
[personal profile] littledust
1. I find it funny-sad that I still compose my thoughts like a LiveJournal Dreamwidth entry, but I never get around to actually posting them. My mind goes super blank at the sight of a blinking cursor and it's a bummer.

2. Like the rest of the Internet, I have seen K-Pop Demon Hunters and the soundtrack has been on repeat ever since.

3. I do need to booklog a recent reading experience, which went from "hmm, this YA book could explore its themes better if it were written for adults" to "if this YA book had been id-tastic, balls to the wall, OT3 incest-y space fantasy for adults, I could have ignored the numerous plot holes in favor of Vibes."

4. Keeping up with a mature fruit tree is a part-time job! Thank goodness everyone in my family likes peaches. Fun fact: applesauce muffins made with peach sauce = delicious.

5. I have been doing a bad job at going to bed at actual teacher bedtime, so I should... do that.
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

“Great art is somehow already in the future, showing us a place we haven’t arrived at yet. Not just to entertain us but to make us grow.” — Jan Younghusband, in Loaded: The Life (and Afterlife) of the Velvet Underground (Dylan Jones), p. 173.

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