memewidth

It all began with a stone, or so the legend says.

In ages past, a sentient jewel, enormous and beautiful, banished the darkness. Its many-colored light filled the world with life and brought forth mighty gods.

Bathed in that light, the world entered an age of bliss until, after a time, the gods fell into slumber. That world was called Vana'diel.

The legend goes on to say...

From the darkest depths of the earth the Warriors of the Crystal rose...

The Rise of the Zilart expansion tells the story of the Warriors of the Crystal, and of the ancient clash between two races, one of which was the Zilart - who have plans to bring about Vana'diel's destruction. Read on to find out just what the Zilart have planned.

(As before, the actual game script is located at my Neocities site, here: https://altheavalara.neocities.org/ffxi/rotz - what lies under the cut is my summary for those who don't want to read the long script.)

( spoilers galore! )

isis

What I've recently finished reading:

1984 by George Orwell (reread, but first read nearly 40 years ago, so.) This book requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief; it's more of an allegory of fascism, an exaggerated cartoon version, than it is actual fascism. But that's the point, I think. It's the authoritarian nightmare writ very very large, and I hope that enough people are reading it now to be scared into fighting the authoritarian nightmare which is slowly establishing its tentacles across the US. (And that they don't get so chilled by the downer ending that they believe that it's impossible to fight...)

A few things stood out to me about this book written in 1949. First, it's interesting that ideology isn't actually important here; the object is to amass and retain power, and I think that's true of our current regime. Second is the importance of stamping out every bit of creativity and independent thought, even getting rid of words describing creativity and independence, such that even the books and songs produced by the government are created by computers (cough AI cough) and lightly edited by humans. Very prescient and chilling! And of course the thing that brings this book to mind and has put it on so many contemporary reading lists is the idea of editing information about the past to bring it in line with what the government wants people to believe - which is what the regime is attempting now.

I mostly enjoyed it (if "enjoyed" is the correct word) though the protagonist's view of women was a bit madonna/whoreish, kind of weird, and I wondered how much it reflected the author's feelings. (However, it's obvious to me that the in-universe view of Jews is very clearly intended to be part of the throughline connecting to Nazism, so I am not sure why I feel more uncomfortable about the portrayal of women.) Also there's a whole section in the middle which is a lengthy quote from a purported book by Goldstein, the leader of the Resistance, and that's just ugh boring clunky exposition in the middle of what is for the most part powerful prose. But otherwise, I'm glad I read it again, in these times, where we are led by small men who want to amass power for power's sake, and be cruel for cruelty's sake, and put their boots on everybody's faces.

What I'm reading now:

My hold on the third Emily Wilde book by Heather Fawcett came in at the library, so I'm reading Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales. The beginning was terribly confusing but I'm starting to get into it.

What I recently finished watching:

We finished Arcane, which - I have mixed feelings about. Actually, it kind of reminds me of Andor - no, not the downtrodden rising up against the elite (though okay, there are some elements of that) but the plot veering off sideways and jumping around and things that seem like they're important getting dropped and things coming suddenly out of nowhere. (So maybe it was supposed to be a longer series that got canceled so they had to cram everything into the second season?) I am still not sure what Viktor's whole deal was, or what exactly the "arcane" is, or the invasion at the end, or...and then I looked up the game it's based on and it's a battle arena game, so I am not sure where this plot came from! Anyway, I loved the art, liked a lot of the characters and their relationships, didn't really care for the way the story evolved in S2.

What I'm watching now:

Untamed, which is the Netflix murder mystery miniseries set in Yosemite, not the Chinese drama - that one has a The in front of it. Eric Bana and Sam Neill are in it but we're really watching for the lavish scenery porn, which is definitely amazing. (Also some of it takes place in Mariposa, so it makes me think of

rachelmanija, though I don't know if it's actually filmed there or if it even makes sense to be taking place there.)

steepholm

My friend Rei sent me a photo of herself taking part in an academic panel on international defence at the Osaka Expo. My eye was drawn (as how could it not be?) to that fact that the panelists were sitting beside a large cut-out cartoon hedgehog - which seemed incongruous in a such a serious setting.

Rei tells me that this is in fact a mascot used by NATO for mass communication purposes. In which case, how come I've never seen it?

On looking into the matter, however, I find that the hedgehog was indeed in use during the Cold War, as a formidable beast whose spines were, nevertheless, defensive in nature. (The other picture dates from 1959, and shows 15 hedgehogs, representing the 15 then-members, seeing off a Russian bear. I wonder which is the USA?)

This article from the NATO website suggests that the symbol was dropped in the 1980s, but it has clearly made a comeback - at least in Japan, where no organisation is complete without its mascot character, any more than Lyra without her daemon.

azurelunatic

I have:

* 3 appointments tomorrow, all remote (for later today versions of "tomorrow", because I rarely get to sleep before midnight)
* 2 appointments Wednesday
* Only one appointment Thursday, but it looks like a doozy
* The morning primary care adjacent appointment on Wednesday got scheduled today (Monday) by using the magic combination of phrases "my oncologist said" and "new lump"
* (it's probably a ganglion cyst, since I have a history of those going back to the 1980s)

And then I managed to drive myself to Pained Noises & a complete lack of energy today by:
* ( Read more... )

halfshellvenus

Another weekend is ending (and it was a 100^o+ one here). I spent some of it reading Idol entries (mine is here, and Idol could really use more readers and voters right now). Some of it involved forcing myself to go outside and bike in the hot garage (ugh). And there was also a Naked Gun viewing, about which I will say that nobody could ever reproduce Leslie Nielsen's comic genius, but the new movie is funny and Liam Neeson is better as the straight man than I would have expected.

Other viewings (since I'm about to stop streaming Acorn and Apple TV, but will keep Brit Box for now):
Apple TV
Silo - I enjoyed this a LOT, because you know I love a good dystopian setting! My one complaint is that too much of it takes place in the dark, and now that people are no longer using blue light to indicate "dark," it is almost impossible to see parts of the action.
Dark Matter - Multiverses with a side of romance, and I was sorry when it was over.
Constellation - OMG, let me fangirl for a bit over this. An astronaut survives a fatal incident on the International Space Station, but parts of her life don't seem quite right afterwards. Mismatched multiverses play a part in this one, and not just for that one character. Jonathan Banks (better known as Mike Ermentraut) plays a JPL scientist who also experiences similar effects. Loved it, and the space sequences were fantastic.
Mr. Corman - The characters aren't exactly endearing in this series about a 5th grade teacher with regrets, but the show grew on me, and some of the fantasy-sequences are bizarrely entertaining.
Previously recommended: Severance and Slow Horses.

Acorn TV
Keeping Faith - A lawyer's husband goes missing, and disturbing secrets surface. It's kind of a hot mess, and the main character makes a lot of impulsive and rash decisions, but I watched it to the end.
Bariau (Inside) - Only 1 season available. Takes place inside a Welsh men's prison, and I liked it for the quantity of Welsh language in it. About 2/3rds of the show are in Welsh, with random detours into English--sometimes within the same sentence.
The Accident - Four-part miniseries about the collapse of a factory caused by teenagers who sneaked in to vandalize the place. Really well done.
The Gone - WHERE is the second season of this Tasmanian show with the visiting Irish detective?
Previously recommended: Hidden, Agatha Raisin, My Life Is Murder, Deadwater Fell, Cuffs, The Man Who Died.

And in other TV news, I dived into Wednesday, S2 on Netflix and quickly ran out of episodes. Only half of S2 is up, with the other half set to drop in early September. Which means scrambling for entertainment tomorrow, as it's another 100-degree day and I will be stuck biking in the garage AGAIN.

azurelunatic

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/homestuck-animated-series-hazbin-hotel-creators/

From the little I've absorbed about Hazbin Hotel, the creators might just be the correct kind of disturbed to do justice to Homestuck.

turps

I called into the pharmacy on Friday to see if my new compressions had finally been delivered. Now, I've called in and asked twice since my initial appointment, and each time they'd said, not yet. Yesterday they admitted that while the script had been sent off, it had been done so without any measurements attached, and the right form had only been sent that morning.

Which is all kinds of frustrating, especially so as I had asked those two times. So, as they are made to measure, I'm looking at another fortnight at least to wait.

Yesterday I was Bodhisitting. She turns four next Sunday, so I was asking what she wanted for her birthday, and it's all superhero stuff as she's really into Spider-Man and the Hulk right now. Which okay, I can work with that. Kayleigh has actually bought a Spider-Man costume and intends to deliver Bode's birthday presents while dressed up. Which, way to go the extra mile.

Then last night we went to the theatre to see Chicago, and I enjoyed it lots. Roxie Hart was played by the ex Strictly pro Janette Manrara, and I wasn't sure what to expect as she's not the best as a presenter, but while she's obviously not a stage trained singer, I thought she did a good job. The whole cast did, in fact.

But in a what are the odds moment, two rows behind us was the woman who was thrown out of the Hamilton showing. She has a very distinctive voice and way of speaking, and I turned around and yep, there she was. This time much quieter, but she still chattered away throughout to her friends.

Today it was more Bodhisitting, and yet again I spent hours looking for criminals and getting arrested. Not sure what I ever did to require being arrested so often, but obviously I must be some kind of bad guy that needs locking away from the world.

ruric

Work was busy Wednesday through Friday so not a huge amount of progress on #project65days.

It's now the weekend and day 12 of #project65days.

I'd planned to do half days on the allotment and half days cleaning the flat but due to weird sleep patterns (or lack of sleep) I'm going to do a full day on the flat today and tidy the tiny front garden. Then I plan to have an early night so I can do a full-ish day on the allotment tomorrow.

I've got a tip run around 9:30am today and at 10:30am tomorrow so I can get 2 hours of decluttering and sorting done before this morning's run.

Plan of action for Saturday:

* continue decluttering and load car
* tip run and garden centre
* pot up/sort out houseplants in bathroom
* wash and store empty plastic plant pots for use next year
* quick surface clean everywhere
* tidy & weed front garden
* prune roses
* empty and clean pots in front garden
* empty and clean pots on porch roof
* start tackling the chaos that is my bedroom (there's a whole 30 point bullet list for this)!

That will do for today. Onwards!

azurelunatic

Suspension of disbelief = I will not start verbally poking holes in the physics of this action movie until we are out of the movie theater

Suspension in disbelief = a frozen state of constant WTF

frogfarm

Updates and posts in general have been getting more infrequent. And while probably very few of my AO3 readers actually read this journal, I'll just put it here for general consumption that all my fanfic progress has been going slower this year. Luckily for me, it's for good reasons and other things I enjoy. Unfortunately for my small number of readers, that doesn't show any sign of changing soon. Right now my hope and plan is to finish one other project in the next couple of months, which should free me up to put some focus back on the Portal/Terminator crossover, which is still my main interest -- not to mention the post-Predator story from Anna's perspective, the epic Xena wank short sequel that focuses on side characters instead of the main ones, the Knight Rider reboot pilot episode screenplay, and maybe even the semi-original City of Heroes story.

Fingers crossed. Thanks for your interest in my humble creations.

turps

I picked up my fruit and veggie box this afternoon, and look ( at the goodies )

I usually pick up from the Re-F-Use café, but this time, with it being a different day, it was a pickup from an address from Durham. It was a quick drive there, but then I stood knocking for ages. Finally messaged the person who runs the collections, and they said to just go down the drive and the boxes were under the car port and I could pick which one I liked the look of. Did that and yeah, there were four boxes to pick from, sheltered nicely out of the sun.

Once I knew what to do, it was so much easier than a café pick up. Now I have an excess of carrots to deal with, and yes, more lemons *g*

queenlua

I will be at* Worldcon!

* as in, "I live here so it is trivially easy for me to be around Worldcon" haha. I do have a membership & may drop into the con itself but that's not guaranteed yet, something something PTO days

If you're following me on here there's a pretty good chance I'd get a charge out of meeting up irl; feel free to reply here (all comments screened) or shoot me a DM or send me a messenger pigeon or whatever

isis

What I've recently finished reading:

Tombland by C. J. Sansom, the last of the Shardlake books. It's massive, I think the longest of these books, with a very long historical essay at the end which I'm slowly reading through. It's very firmly set within a historical event, namely Kett's Rebellion of 1549. Which is probably why it's so long. While some of the other books in the series include actual events such as the execution of Anne Boleyn or King Henry VIII's Progress to York, those are all mostly backdrop to the mystery plot. Here the plot is interwoven with the rebellion - actually kind of oddly, because it's really plot plot plot plot REBELLION REBELLION plot REBELLION, where suddenly the ostensible activity Shardlake's undertaking is put on the back-burner because of REBELLION, and it's mostly dropped until very near the end where the villain does a somewhat clunky exposition explaining everything. Not the smoothest of these books for sure, but still quite interesting, with great characters as usual.

What I'm reading now:

While I'm waiting for some holds to come in at the library, I started reading George Orwell's 1984, partly because one of the people I subscribe to on Substack (Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance) is hosting a group read of it. I haven't read it since I read it in college, for a class on "Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature", so it's pretty interesting to revisit. (And terrifying. Also, terrifying.)

Still watching:

We're getting close to the end of S2 of Arcane. I amused myself by abruptly recognizing Maddie's voice as Suvi in Mass Effect: Andromeda (Katy Townsend, typecast as a lesbian, I guess!). Then I checked the cast list and realized there are really so many actors I have heard in other things! But the only other one I recognized was Shohreh Aghdashloo, because of course I did, how can you not? (And hee, she was in Mass Effect (3) as well!)

Still playing:

Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which is finally getting a little less linear. I set the difficulty one step down (I was on normal=3/5, set it to 2) and it's much kinder - I still get killed a few times by the toughest enemies at the end of each quest before I kill them and prevail, but that's okay.

turps

I went swimming this morning, the first time for years.

It was at another Everyone Active gym the next town over, and it was so good to get in the water again. James used one of the two free monthly day passes I get as part of my membership so it cost us nothing, and we were swimming by 8:30am. Which was nice timing as it wasn't busy then.

We swam about an hour, then checked out the spa part, where I got roasted in the sauna for a while, before we headed off.

The pool had impressive disability access, including an excellent, and huge dedicated changing room, complete with a hoist and table to change adults if needed, a sink that could be moved up and down, as well as a sturdy bench, shower and toilet. Plus, a wheelchair that could be pushed and left at poolside. Where there was a lift thing to help people into the water. So, James used that, because the way he's been going lately he probably would have fallen down the steps.

As usual when doing something new, I was a little nervous before going, but no one gave me a second look, and it was a nice and positive experience.

I was at my own gym yesterday and my aim to be invisible remains a no-go. As shown by the fact one of the chatty gym bros decided to show me a photo of what he'd thought was a stomach hernia he had, but was actually a cyst. Not what I expected to see going in.

My Fitbit has given up the ghost, which is sad. I mean, have you even moved unless your steps are tracked? But seriously, I am missing it already and am charging up an old one, which will have to do for now. That's if it works, which I really hope it does.

Two of my favourite shows are back, Masterchef Australia and Celeb SAS, Who Dares Wins. I enjoy both of them so much, but am surprised at how many have dropped out of SAS after just two episodes. I'm rooting for Bimini Bon Boulash who was my favourite back in season 2 UK Drag Race.

Thankfully, the storm didn't hit us too hard here. I lost two containers from the flower shelf, both blown down and broken. While the poor raspberry canes were almost horizontal. But, they're already starting to spring back.

Tomorrow I pick up a mystery fruit and veg box from Re-F-USe. I got one a fortnight ago and they're such good value, £15 for a crate of fresh products that would otherwise be thrown away. I managed to use mostly everything from the last one, even the pak choi. Just the lemons are left, mainly because I got an excess of the things. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what I get tomorrow. Hopefully, not more lemons.

ruric

More progress!

Yesterday I did a tip run with a full car - 10 bags of rubbish, a load of paper and cardboard, a bag of tins and some sadly deceased houseplants and soil.

I've booked 2 more tip runs on Saturday and Sunday morning - to keep the momentum going!

I've scanned a whole load of old toiletries - 39 items - to the Boots (a local pharmacy for non-UK folks) Scan to Recycle scheme. When you recycle 5 items and spend £10 you get a bunch of loyalty points which can be used for future purchases - you can only do 1 drop of 5 items per day to get points. So I have 8 days (plus £80) of spending to get those points. The small bag of recycling will live in my car and over the next couple of months I should work through it without having to do 'extra' spending to qualify. Which means by Xmas I should have a bunch of loyalty points to put towards buying some nice scent or just covering spending next year.

EARLY MORNING WINS

* Cat food order (Republic of Cats) placed for mid August delivery
* Cat food order (Untamed) delayed until mid Sept
* Oddbox order tweaked (fortnightly fruit and veg delivery)
* Remembered to put plastic/aluminium recycling out for collection (first time in about 8 weeks)!
* Assembled a salad for lunch to take to work
* Packed work bag including all items which need actioning today

I should have just enough cat food left from the stockpile to last until the mid-August delivery and clearing the recycling means the last bit of current clutter from the hall, landing and stairs is gone.

This evening I'm hoping to have enough energy to do a bit of cleaning and continue my digital decluttering.

So far I've managed to get on top my primary and secondary incoming email (after a purge last week) though there are still a few items to delete or file in my inboxes. The big issue is I've had my primary Gmail account for 20 or so years and there's a whole load of archived email in sub-folders that I need to check, save to Dropbox if critical or delete. I think I need to dedicate 15-30 mins a day to start working through these - they might then be sorted by Xmas.

And then there's the rest of the digital cluttering- downloads and pictures but that's a problem for future me.

Work goals for today/tomorrow

* get both inboxes up to date
* complete outstanding tasks from incoming email
* make a plan to finish issuing inspection notices this week
* book September inspections in diary
* cemetery rep to schedule meeting/cemetery site emails

Time to hop in the shower and head out!

halfshellvenus

Diabolical Deeds
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 6 | 1900 words
Reimagine another contestant's entry (I chose

rayaso's marvelous The Man Of the People)

x-x-x-x-x

Nebuloso Sinistro leafed through a dozen newspapers as he rode the Hellevator up from his residential level to the Administrative Floor. There was always so much research required to prepare for the day ahead, and it was already nine o'clock in Rome.

The doors opened, and Nebuloso got off, walking toward the office entrance. As he clocked in for the morning, he spotted a familiar figure who was just leaving: Nicolaus Abaddon, otherwise known as Demon 7.

"Nicolaus," he growled, his voice like the gnashing of gears. "Good hunting today?"

"Oh, yes. Another malignant moron with political ambitions."

"That must be the third one this month," Nebuloso said.

"The well never runs dry. They refuse to learn."

Nebuloso nodded. For himself, he was happy not to be in the position of worrying about making the Soul Quota every month, but Nicolaus always made it look easy.

( Read more... )

pensnest

Exciting times here this morning.

I had decanted my brew of cold-tea plus plum juice into a plastic bottle after its first ferment (the scobie was raspberry-coloured! I hope it is all right) a few days ago, but there was no room for it in the fridge.

I found myself worrying about whether it would taste good, or vinegary, or outright yucky, so decided to have a little taste. As I loosened the screw top, there was a loud bang, a shriek of outrage from me, and the bottle produced a substantial bright pink fountain of bubbles. Kombucha in its excited state flowed all over the worktop and floor. And my hand hurt from the impact of lid against my palm.

It took a while to clean up. I used the entire teacloth, plus a goodly quantity of kitchen paper, and finished off with the washing-up cloth.

About three quarters of the bottle has gone.... though I am happy to report that the remainder does taste rather nice.

At least I know 'second ferment' is true!

steepholm

I love me a ghost story coda. Their general purpose of course is to disrupt the border between the story world and our own by suggesting, explicitly or not (not being the classier option), that we can't simply shut the book and pack our fears safely away - that some may leak out.

Often codas take the form of reversion to a frame story, in which the main narrative has been related as a diverting fiction or country tale, only to have some unexpected evidence of its truth appear once all seems safely concluded. That device has probably been overused, though.

My favourite coda will probably always be the final paragraph (or really, sentence) of M.R. James's 'Casting the Runes', which has an austere minimalism that would have made John Cage proud:

Only one detail shall be added. At Karswell's sale a set of Bewick, sold with all faults, was acquired by Harrington. The page with the woodcut of the traveller and the demon was, as he had expected, mutilated. Also, after a judicious interval, Harrington repeated to Dunning something of what he had heard his brother say in his sleep: but it was not long before Dunning stopped him.

That said, I also like the far more garrulous use of the frame story in Lafcadio Hearn's retelling of 'The Romance of the Peony Lantern', under the title 'A Passional Karma'. It ought not to work, because unlike the slightly trite device of discovering some evidence that the story was true after all, it does quite the opposite - seemingly mocking the narrator for having been drawn in by the fiction. And yet, this still manages to give a creepy effect, at least to me, for reasons I can't quite formulate. Perhaps you can?

Anyway, I recommend the story, coda and all.

althea_valara

My pivot table tells me I crafted 16 hours 13 minutes in July, on seven different projects.

Two of those projects were tablet pillows. Like this phone pillow I previously made but a bit bigger:

[Image Description: A crocheted phone stand, made in nautical-colored yarn.]

I am keeping the first tablet pillow for myself, and the second one is for my older sister, who requested one.

I did 2 hours on my crocheted cardigan. Not much, but I got frustrated with it because... well, I left the ends rather long, so long they tangled with one another AND the working yarn, and it's a pain to try to feed the working yarn through the knot. I need to deal with that this month.

I did 4 hours 38 minutes on a secret project. It's coming along! But I had rather expected to be done with it by now. I lost my momentum with it, and just lost my crafting mojo in general.

I started a gnome as a present for the kidlets, but dropped a stitch and got fed up so put that aside. I am probably going to give up on this plan, and make them snowflakes (if I make anything) instead.

I spent 1 hour 19 minutes making ICONS! It's rare I do image manipulation, so this definitely deserves to be counted. The icon on this post is one of them.

Finally, I spent 20 minutes working on a knit top. I don't recall why I dropped it (literally - the yarn is on the floor under my desk, sigh). Probably got frustrated for one reason or another.

I'm... a bit sad my output is slowing down. I mean, I still did craft quite a bit! But I definitely notice a difference in my oomph. Guess this is my new normal.

Current Mood: blah

pensnest

Yesterday was Fruit Day. Beast and I picked

—small plums from the tree next to the patio
—tiny plums from the tree next to that
—large golden plums, possibly greengages, from one of the trees FIL planted. The big purple plums, while a fabulous colour, are not at all soft, and the medium-sized turning-red plums are still rock-like, so they stayed on their respective trees.
—blackberries from the front. I had picked another bowlful from the back garden on Saturday, and frozen them. It's good to have blackberries.

I then cut up the golden plums, stewed them briefly, froze them, and cut up the small plums, ditto. For such a lot of plums they did not take up much space—I have put them in bags inside small boxes, to freeze into blocks, at which point I will reclaim the boxes.

I have used the leftover juice to try and make kombucha, mixed with green tea. We shall see.

Then I made a blackberry and apple crumble. We had some of it for tea.

*

We finished watching Sense8 last night. I am so pleased that the creators had enough notice and were given the space/time to produce a film-length final episode to wrap up a bunch of plot, and indeed to provide an unexpected and very generous dollop of fanservice. I've enjoyed watching this show. The premise is unusual and very well done, and all eight of the core group are interesting in different ways. I like their besties, too. In fact, I cannot point to any one character as my favourite, nor as someone I don't care for. But I do think the prolonged sex scenes were a bit much—not that I object to sex, but when precious little *happens* in a scene apart from writhing nakedness, lingering on it lovingly for long enough to make a proper cup of tea feels like a glitch in the story telling process.

Still. I've reached to point of looking for fic. Does anyone have any recommendations? Has anybody written any plot-without-porn, perchance?

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30

Crunching that data

FFXI: Rise of the Zilart summary!

wednesday reads and things

Hedgehog vs. Bear

Appointment Week

All Things Video

....!!!

(no subject)

Weekend ahoy!

Disbelief, suspension thereof / therein

Letting the days go by

(no subject)

Notice of Worldcon Attendance

wednesday reads and things

(no subject)

Project 65 days - day 9

LJ Idol: Wheel of Chaos: "Diabolical Deeds"

let it go

Coda Read

Crafting Update, July 2025

life is more than sexual combustibility

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April 2011

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