Reading

Entry tags:

write every day

Write every day: Day 19

We had an early Christmassy meal together before my housemates leave to spend Christmas with their respective families. The meal ran late, and I suppose I could have written after that, but instead I browsed Smitten Kitchen before writing an alibi sentence. Ah well, so it goes. Found some recipes to try, at least.

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 18:

sanguinity,

badly_knitted,

trobadora,

sylvanwitch,

chestnut_pod,

goddess47,

brithistorian,

cornerofmadness,

carenejeans

Bonus farm news: Today we ate, among other things, British mince pies and Swedish ris à la Malta (which they probably do not make in Malta). The latter is a Christmas dessert made from rice porridge and whipped cream, mixed with pieces of chopped orange. To go with it, I make a sauce with red wine, lingonberry jam, ginger, cardamom, and cinnamon.

Current Mood: restless
Current Music: Annie Lennox - The First Noel

Entry tags:

Belated cake note | First morning of vacation

Since I'm vaguely tracking things we've been making: a few days ago we made Smitten Kitchen's gingerbread apple upside-down cake. It's tasty, although I didn't like it nearly as much as the SK Mom's Apple Cake that we made not that long ago. (

scruloose likes it more than I do, for the record.) Now I mostly just want to make an actual gingerbread. ^^;

(My brain keeps starting to compose a post or posts about my currently-annoyingly-complication feelings about holiday baked goods etc., between our intensely-covid-cautious life and my still-newish need to stay aware of my blood glucose, but will I actually manage to write about it? Who knows. It's exhausting.)

I started my first day of vacation waking ahead of my alarm from a weird, teeth-clenchingly stressful dream, possibly one of a sequence, and it takes me a while to shake off dreams like that. >.< I've gotten a couple of household things done/underway, though, and am sitting down to do some manga work once I've posted this.

We still haven't decorated Bucky; he comes with lights, which are the most important part of a Christmas tree, especially without the smell of a real tree, and at least one year we bought our tree and put lights on it and never did anything more, and that was fine. I guess it's possible this'll be another such year. (Although we're due for strong winds and heavy rain tonight and into tomorrow, and if we lose power, I guess that's something we could do tomorrow afternoon.)

But we got most of our other fragments of decor up last night, and this morning I put out my Nativity set for the first time in a few years. It's wooden, but a couple of the pieces have taken damage over the years nonetheless (before my time, or when I was young enough that I don't remember what happened), and having it out around the cats has made me nervous since my mother gave it to me* several years ago. But a few months ago I bought a piece of display wall shelving for my office (and my office mostly stays shut when I'm not in it for long), and the set fits in it fairly well, so now it's there and I've got my fingers crossed.

(Also, this year I bought an old-fashioned ceramic tree from a local artist, and it's on a speaker under the wall display, so realistically, if a cat gets up on my desk where they shouldn't be, I'll know about it from the tree going down. [Which I really hope it doesn't, because it's breakable and the lights aren't actually attached, so that's all kinds of cat hazard in a package. And thus, it's in my office; if the cats were actually prone to getting on my desk and messing with things, I wouldn't have bought the tree at all, but even Sinha is really pretty good about it.])

*I think I mentioned at the time that this is the Nativity set of my childhood, carved of olive wood. My mother's parents once--in the '50s, I think? When she was a kid--were in Jerusalem over Christmastime, and brought it home. Mum deciding to pass it on to me is genuinely one of the best gifts she's ever given me.

Entry tags:

Friday open thread: concrete political actions, birthday edition

Tomorrow is my birthday, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to use this week's open thread as a chance for all of us to do some good. Behind the cut, I'm going to recommend some concrete political actions for causes that matter to me — charities, campaigns, resources — and if you feel so moved, please do take the suggested actions.

Alternatively, use this prompt as a way to highlight in the comments causes and actions that matter to you. Two requests if you do take this latter option:

Be specific when describing your causes. If they are focused on a particular country or region within that country, name it, rather than expecting people to intuit that your cause is US-specific, limited to rural Australia, or whatever.

If you are asking people to part with their money, only recommend initiatives to which you have personally donated or would be comfortable donating. Organisations rather than individual fundraisers are generally safer in this regard.

( Charities, campaigns, resources )

Please do recommend your own actions in the comments.

Entry tags:

books

Recent reading

Read A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews, a slim, unconventional memoir. Framed as her repeated failure to respond to the prompt why do you write? to the satisfaction of a literary conference in Mexico City (she was eventually uninvited), it reads like a commonplace book: a mix of anecdotes, and copies of letters Toews exchanged with her sister over the years (the answer to why do you write? being, originally, because she asked me to), and musings on the concept of a "wind museum", and random quotes and poetry and historical figures who died by suicide. It helped to know a bit about Toews' background - mostly that she was raised Mennonite and that both her father and sister died by suicide - because eventually both of those things are clearly stated, but I did get a sense that she presumed someone picking up Toews' personal non-fiction on why she writes has already read at least some of her novels, many of which have drawn-from-life elements.

In other writing about writing, I received This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days by John Darnielle as an early birthday/Christmas gift - an illustrated, annotated collection of the Mountain Goats' lyrics - and, of course, immediately just skimmed it for my favorite songs, which quickly turned into reading random chunks because each "annotation" is a short paragraph, max - sometimes about the context for writing the song, or commentary on the characters/story, or what inspired it, or how people respond to it, or some observation/quote/etc. that is not obviously related to the song in any way - so once you've opened it to a specific page it's easy to just keep going for a while, and anyway, now I have to figure out to actually read this book. Just read it cover to cover? Listen to each song in the order they appear, and read the accompanying passage? (Which is a cool idea, but would take forever. Theoretically, I could do one song per day, devotional-style, but I know my attention span well enough to know that's not happening.)

Entry tags:

[FFXIV Fic] Gentle Dark, Chapter 3: To Divide Truth from Deception

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV
Rating: Mature
Archive Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Urianger Augurelt/Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Urianger Augurelt & Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Ardbert & Urianger Augurelt, Unrealized Ardbert/Urianger Augurelt, Pre-Urianger Augurelt/Warrior of Light
Characters: Urianger Augurelt, Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Ardbert Hylfyst, Elidibus, Unukalhai, Tataru Taru, Minfilia Warde, Warrior of Light, Dewlala Dewla, Y'shtola Rhul, Yugiri Mistwalker, Thancred Waters, J'Rhoomale, Blanhaerz, Lamimi, Naillebert, Haneko Burneko
Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Angst, Religion, Isolation, Loneliness, Patch 3.4: Soul Surrender Spoilers (Final Fantasy XIV), Elezen Warrior of Light, Female Warrior of Light, Canon-Typical Violence, Guilt, Emotional Repression, Child Neglect, Childhood Memories, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Series: With Lilies and With Laurel
Length: 17,331 / 92,000
Chapter: 3/15

Summary:

Heartbroken after the loss of his dearest companion, Urianger labors to save two worlds in which he has never felt more alone.

Notes:

If you're new here, please start with Chapter 1!

Final Fantasy XIV is owned by Square Enix. This is a non-commercial work of fanfiction.

( Read on AO3 )

( ...or below! )

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: The Mighty Nein

Driving by Instinct

Because seriously how damn bright do we need to make headlights these days? Coming into Steubenville on 7's tight and narrow lanes (in the rain) with my stretched retinas and astigmatism, my god, I was literally blinded to the point I wasn't sure where on the road I was.

But after a late start, I made it here. The neighbors are watching Rocket. The little shit bit me last night after grooming my arm, broke skin, left bruises. I'm going to really have to keep that clean.

I wish that I could have concentrated on one story as I drove. It was more like 12 hamsters going in different directions. Ah well

At least the rain held off for most of the trip.

Tired now and I want to write a little before bed. Finally getting time to sit down with the Mighty Nein and the season of Vox Machina I haven't seen yet.

Entry tags:

fan art,
guardian

(no subject)

Da Qing and young!Zhao Yunlan wrapped in blankets, with the title "Teaching the way of the Cat".

Image: colour pencil sketch of a black cat wrapped neatly in a blue blanket, and a young man (Zhao Yunlan) sprawled/face-planeted under a red blanket, with his feet sticking out the bottom and one sock fallen off. He is holding a lollipop.

notes

* Perspective is really hard. ;-p
* Still avoiding drawing faces.
* I think my attempt at Da Qing is on a par with Guo Changcheng's notebook sketch, but in my defence, that is one weird-looking cat. ;-)

Entry tags:

write every day

Write every day: Day 18

Had a writing session with

garonne, which shook some stuff loose. Wrote 300 words. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 17:

china_shop,

garonne,

badly_knitted,

sylvanwitch,

chestnut_pod,

trobadora,

goddess47,

cornerofmadness,

sanguinity,

Bonus farm news: Today I learned the basics of how to use the chain saw from housemate. No more am I dependent on a man when I want to cut down a small tree or sever a piece of wood! \o/

Entry tags:

Aha!

With the help of multiple people, I finally got the ancient $15 scanner to talk to my computer via shareware. Woohoo!

(Meanwhile, I can't write a story to save my life. Argh!)

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Sting - A Winter's Night Live From Durham Cathedral2009

Entry tags:

manga/anime: yona of the dawn

The hoped-for silver lining of the Yona manga ending!

"Yona of the Dawn Gets Sequel Anime". [Anime News Network]

I'm delighted both that this is happening and that it was announced so promptly on the heels of the manga ending. (;_;) As we learned from the second Fruits Basket anime arriving thirteen years after that manga ended, anything is possible, but it's sure nicer to have this sort of thing happen with a speed that makes more sense.

ANN says "sequel anime", which I'd imagine means it'll pick up where the first one left off, but how OAVs factor into that, I'm not even going to try to guess.

Entry tags:

Stuff goes wild on the peripheries

We're back for another December talking meme post. This prompt is from

nerakrose: quintessentially Australian books.

This is not really a week in which I feel much like talking about quintessentially Australian anything, but I'll do my best.

I need to start out with a caveat, though. I haven't lived in Australia for more than seventeen years, and I often feel a bit out of touch from the country's contemporary politics, culture, and so on. So my answer reflects, in some ways, an Australia frozen in the 2000s, and many Australians who do actually live there now, and who have lived there in the intervening twenty-ish years may feel that my answer doesn't reflect their current reality.

( With that disclaimer out of the way, here's my answer )

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Tv

Entry tags:

Monthly roundup: November

November

Fics wrote: -
Books read: -
Games done: -
Podcast: Sheeple Chase - Coke-Conspirators, [Unreleased] Magnus Opus, Welcome To Night Vale - Locked Library Mystery, [Redacted] - False Start (part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3), post-mortem: false start, Skin, Welcome To Night Vale - How To Solve A Murder, [Redacted] - post-mortem: Skin, Shoeless Man
Who audios: -
Other Big Finish stuff: -
Comics read: Fantastic 4 5
Graphic novels read: -

Things watched
Amazon Prime: Perfect
Blu Ray: Doctor Who - Planet Of Evil, IT, Doctor Who - Pyramids Of Mars, The Android Invasion, Thanksgiving, Sonic The Hedgehog 3
DVD: -
Disney+: High Potential - The One That Got Away, The Simpsons - Treehouse Of Horror X, Futurama - Murderoni, Hocus Pocus, Futurama - Crab Splatter, The Trouble With Truffles, The White Hole, The Simpsons - Treehouse Of Horror XI, Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Simpsons - Treehouse Of Horror XII, Treehouse Of Horror XIII, Treehouse Of Horror XIV, Treehouse Of Horror XV, Treehouse Of Horror XVI
Netflix: Wednesday - Woe Thyself, Stranger Things - The Piggyback, Wednesday - Woe Me The Money, This Means Woe, Glass Onion, Stranger Things - The Crawl, The Vanishing Of Holly Wheeler, The Turnbow Trap, Sorcerer
Now tv: IT Welcome To Derry - Now You See It, The Great Swirling Apparatus Of Our Planet’s Function, 29 Neibolt Street
Shudder: Horror’s Greatest - Animal Attacks
YouTube: Nintendo - The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Direct, Pokopia extended trailer, Spy films - Eyedrop
Cinema: Frankenstein, Shelby Oaks, Keeper, Predator Badlands

So this is a late one, oops. I blame things being stressful/distracting. Which is also why there’s some things here that aren’t done.

But yeah November ended up being stressful so I lacked focus to read or fic which was irritating. (And this month is similar).

But having said that I did manage to finish some shows! The new Futurama season, season 2 of Wednesday and vol 1 of Stranger Things season 5. The last two have given me so many thoughts and Futurama is always fun to watch.

I need to get back to the Doctor Who run of season 13, I still have Brain Of Morbius and Seeds Of Doom to watch, both of which I’m looking forward to. And I’m glad to finally watch the Sonic 3 blu ray and finally seeing It (and Thanksgiving too).

And, of course, Frankenstein was a cinema highlight (if you haven’t go see it! It son Netflix now) and I also loved Predator Badlands so many.

With Shudder I started the second season of Horror’s Greatest, though honestly I’m not a fan of animal attack stuff. I guess it’s cause I’m an animal love I just don’t vibe with it. Having said that I think the wildest one was something about worms attacking people that looked so wild cause ??

And speaking of roundups…

Month 5: November 20th - December 20th
3: Wake Up Dead Man, Zootropolis 2
10: Five Nights At Freddie’s 2, Pillion

Month 5 of the cinema pass has just been two trips, but back to doubling up with them. I think my order of them is Zootropolis 2, Five Nights At Freddie’s 2, Wake Up Dead Man and Pillion. Though they are pretty close. (And Wake Up is technically the better film, but I’m more likely to rewatch Freddie’s)

***

Last night I had hoped to do stuff, but after watching some things with mum and doing a little on ControlI ended up just getting absurdly tired. I think having mulled wine didn’t help, as it made my head a little hazy.

But right now I’m sat getting Midna cuddles which is good, then I can hopefully fic and do stuff later. (And it’s winterfest on Fortnite so hopefully the freebies this year are nice)

Current Mood: bitchy
Current Music: NCIS

Entry tags:

Things I did not need

1. To find out my insurance changed coverage and I owed money on a script (not much, just enough to be annoying AF)

2. That CVS doesn't have my insulin. Again. I know why. They have a fucking dorm fridge to store all insulins, GPL1s and vaccine (plus other meds surely that I don't know but need refrigerated)

3. taking a half hour to get thru the CVS line and the line to the car wash was even longer so I had to skip it (I had a thing I had to get to) which sucks because I was on the ground floor of the parking garage yesterday and the level above me is outside and they salted it and it dripped everywhere.

4. There was an 18 wheeler on its side and I was thinking that is going to take me forever to get home but they did something I've never seen before. About 5 miles north of the accident they put up 'accident head' signs and moved everyone over there and there was no back up.

5. My olive oil brined garlic leaked in the pantry bin. I was digging through to find the food part of my parents' holiday gift and it didn't just leak, it coated everything in at least an inch of oil. It took over an hour to clean off every can and bottle and toss out things in boxes. Ugh. Ruined my clothes in the process.

6. My vascular surgeon never called in my meds.

At least I got the car partially packed. I still have to clean the kitchen in the morning since the damn pantry issue took up too much time.

Still half ready to cry. But I had my writers zoom thingie and I'm 4K into a story.

What I Just Finished Reading:

Death at the Door - paranormal mystery wanted to bitch slap the protagonist

What I am Currently Reading:

To Die Once - a Maisie Dobbs mystery which I haven't read one of these in a while and this is...slow. It's way more about the effect of war on the English people (who were still recovering from WWI) than it's a mystery

Tell Tale Treat - another paranormal mystery with another protagonist ripe for being bitch slapped

What I Plan to Read Next: Poorly Made and Other Things

Entry tags:

write every day

Write every day: Day 17

No writing, alas, but tomorrow I have a writing session with my beta reader, so hopefully that'll get me going again. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 16:

china_shop,

brithistorian,

sanguinity,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

garonne,

goddess47,

garonne

Day 17:

china_shop,

garonne

Bonus farm news: Housemate made parmesan cheese (well, it will be after a year's storage) which gave us 20 liters of whey as a byproduct, which I am now boiling down to Scandinavian whey "cheese". It's brown and sweet from the caramelized sugar of the whey, and not actually cheese. (Note: we do not have cows. We bought the milk from a farmer's market.)

Entry tags:

books,
star trek

Kat Consumes Media

***

Kat Watches Things

The Dune: Part One - Rewatch. Hopefully I'll get to the second part one day. Anyway. Still extremely watchable. Still fills me with yearning for a Paul Atreides/Duncan Idaho fic with a very specific dynamic that I haven't really found yet in the existing fics.

The Art Detectives, Series 1 - DI Palmer works for Heritage Crime, tries to woo a museum curator and has an art forger for a father. He recruits a DC Malik to help him crack all manner of heritage related crimes. Which, because this is fiction, includes not a single case of metal theft from church roofs which is what keeps the real heritage crime unit busy. Also, they would never investigate murders no matter how many old paintings were involved in the plot. Anyway, reality aside, this was perfect comfort watching, not particularly emotionally taxing. I liked the episode in Belfast best, about Titanic memorabilia, probably because I've been there to the Titanic museum and it was nice to see the vibes.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Series 1-3 - ITV only had the first series but I abused H's Amazon account to get the next two. And enjoyed this a whole lot! And also, now I need to see Disco again. Anyway, post the events of that shit storm, Captain Pike, Spock and Number One carry on seeking new life and new civilisations. ( this got spoilery )

Kat Reads Books

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer - One of the reviews for the book called it 'brilliant and deeply strange' and I would sign that whole heartedly. It's difficult to describe the story. Is it a novel about dystopian future where environmental disaster, rampant biotechnology and unchecked capitalism have resulted in a collapse of all world order? Yes. Is it a tale of urban sci-fantasy with monsters and maybe-alien, maybe-other dimensional being. Also yes. Is this a deeply human story about what it actually means to be a person even if you're not human, and the fluidity of memory and identity and finding meaning in making connections despite it all? Definitely that. Is it body-horror about the unspeakable, visceral cost of survival in an environment where everything and everyone can and will hurt you, consume you, kill you for food, for salvage, for territory, for mindless aggression, or because that's what they were designed to do? Fuck yes. But also, it's a story about a woman who finds a strange creature and brings them home, raises them up, or tries to; a woman who remembers a different world but fights for her current one, her home, her lover, her survival. If you like strange, world building that does very little explaining and expects the reader to cope with that, dystopian struggle for survival and, somehow, a hopeful ending despite everything, this is a book for you.

Skein Island by Aliya Whiteley - Marianne receives an invite to Skein Island, a women-only retreat where her mother went many years ago and then never returned home afterwards. Once there, it's quickly apparent that the island guards a deadly secret, kept placid with the stories the women share. The book winds Greek mythology and archetypes, gender roles and relationships, and the power of stories, especially the small, mundane ones. This is an interesting story but also pretty caught up in gender essentialism given its core premise. There's a later short-story at the end that has a blink and you miss it hint about the protagonist being trans, so I got the impression the author themselves started thinking about the premise beyond the binary.

***

Entry tags:

deadlines

2025 Deadline Has Passed - What Next

The deadline has passed, and the main collection is temporarily closed. ETA - now open again!

Congratulations to everyone who has posted! Pat yourself on the back, take a breath, and then please check wordcount, formatting, html; check that you've uploaded the correct version, and that all your text is actually there. You can get to what you've submitted from your Statistics page, or from your Works in Collections. Your story should be marked as "complete" rather than one or more of multiple chapters yet to come.

To all who didn't make it this year: it happens, and we hope you enjoy the collection reveals.

To all who are still working on beta jobs, treats, or pinch hits: thank you and good luck!

Pinch hits coming!!
Post-deadline pinch hits will be available soon at

yuletide_pinch_hits. This next round will be due at 9 AM UTC, 22 December.

See what time that is in YOUR timezone
See countdown

Beta requests
We have outstanding beta requests on the Yuletide Discord (please see the #hippo-want-ads channel), and more betas are always welcome at the Dreamwidth beta post.

There is also an Away from Keyboard post up on the participant community, for you to (optionally) let your author know if it'll be a while before you can read your gift.

If there seems to be an issue with your posted work, we'll contact you via the email address associated with your AO3 account. Please check you can access that!

Entry tags:

admin: theme suggestion post

Only two days left to suggest themes!

Hello everyone! You have two more days to slip your theme suggestions into the suggestion box for our rounds in 2026. I went ahead and added some more themes to the pool, taking popular suggestions from past years but also filling in a few more gaps in our coverage (vampires! aliens!), so take a look at the list and see if it doesn't shake something loose.

I'll close that post the morning of the 19th and put up the big theme poll on the 20th. If you're going to be out and about around that time, you can track the admin: poll: theme tag. Just click on the little bell icon or "track" link on any post with that tag, select "Someone posts an entry tagged admin: poll: theme," hit save, and you'll get an email when the big poll goes up. You'll also get an email every time I post a theme poll thereafter, which is monthly. If you don't want that, you can cancel the notification later; it's the same process, just uncheck the box and hit save.

Entry tags:

DecRecs 2025 days 11-17

I intended to wait less time before cross posting these. Oh well, it's here now

Day 11
So I'm not sure how big the overlap of people who know about Mo Willems Pigeon books and Nirvana in Fire is -- but if you are in that group you owe it to yourself to read "Don't Let the Strategist Plan the Party" by

aegtx
200 words of pure delight!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/67708406

Day 12
I'm enjoying how this year #DecRecs has been turning into a mini low stakes year in review project for me as I focus on reccing things I loved this year.
And this year I have watched a lot of chinese reality show so today I want to talk about The Truth season 3!
The Truth is show where participants play and game that's like a very elaborate cross between a murder mystery dinner party and an escape room. There's puzzles and mysteries and tunnels to crawl through
This year they really leaned into my two favorite things about the show -- the costumes and the group dynamics!
The costumes are so much fun! Wildly over the to, colorful and with fun themes! And this season featured even more of them than last season with at least one set per case!
Here's the cast in one of my favorite sets

And the teamwork! In season three they manged to have the same six people in all but one case: Bai Yu, Jin Jing,
Dilraba, Liu Yuning, Zhang Linghe and Zhou Keyu. So several people I like by themselves -- but the whole group together is great! loved watching them tease each other and think through problems together!
Quick content note: many of the offscreen backstories involve upsetting things like child death or queerphobic violence. They also at one point discover a (fake) skeleton of a child in a suitcase.
I had so much fun watching this show! I don't usually watch things as they air but I eagerly awaited each new episode of The Truth Season 3 and watched all the behind the scenes extras!

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

books

Recent Reading: Illustrated Books

Frederik Sonck (illus. Jenny Lucander, trans. B.J. Woodstein), Freya and the Snake (2023 / 2025)

Finnish children's book about the snake that lives in the rockpile, a father's earnest but unsuccessful attempt to avert a fatal conflict between the snake and his children, and his children turning on him after he finally resorts to killing the snake.

"Snake murderer," they say. They will not eat ice cream with a snake murderer. Also, murderers do not get to attend the funeral.

I loved this book. I loved how judgemental the kids are, how exasperated and slitherer-outer the mother is, and how harried the father is. I of course would have preferred textual confirmation that the snake was venomous, but it's reasonably clear there was no great solution here -- just as it's clear that level of nuance is not gonna fly with these kids.

Dee Snyder (illus. Margaret McCartney), We're Not Gonna Take It (1984 / 2020)

Illustrated version of the famous Twisted Sister song, in which the rebellious anti-authoritarian teenagers of the music video have grown up to become authoritarian parents of toddlers -- toddlers who do not consent to such brutalities as baths and bedtimes.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. I associate the original version with freedom of gender expression and rebellion against abusive parents, and there's still a thing going on here about the tyranny of parents, but now that's a joke. The parents know what's best and eventually the babies go to sleep and dream happily, and... hrm. The whole thing is very defanged and cute and I'm not sure I'm quite on board for it.

Octavia E. Butler (illus. Manzel Bowman), A Few Rules for Predicting the Future (2000 / 2024)

Illustrated edition of Butler's 2000 Essence essay on the art of science fiction predicting the future, originally written in the context of the then-recently published Parable of the Talents, the sequel to Parable of the Sower, both of which forecast a United States that never addressed the developing problems of fascism and climate change. This volume was published in 2024, the once-future year that Sower is set. While Butler's vision for 2024 doesn't match what I see out my window, we are very much reaping the harvest of our runaway fascism problem. (If you can use "reaping the harvest" for an ongoing and advancing situation.)

Which is to say. This essay has aged very well. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to give it another think, and in fact I have re-read it twice since checking out this volume. I like her stress on there being no silver bullet but a multiplicity of checkerboarded solutions -- one for each of us who chooses to apply ourselves to it! -- and likewise her observations on the generational effect of what looks reasonable and preposterous, both looking ahead and in hindsight.

I'm a little mixed-feelings about the volume itself. It's very pretty and the paintings are gorgeous, but there's only four of them, so as a stand-alone edition it feels a bit... thin. Then again, it got me to read her essay again, so in that sense, it's a success.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: Tv

Entry tags:

‘Why are you all insane?’

Once again this time of year has proven to be stressful and/or annoying.

We were due to go to the co-op on Saturday morning, because we had got a leaflet through the door with money off (£5 off £20, £6 off £30) though annoyingly it was only at the one that was by the station not up the road. Alas we had to go later than planned, cause we’d ordered a new tree stand and it came in the morning.

That does mean the tree is up, though it is bare currently (bar a Bulbasaur bauble I got from town) but at least it’s up.

We did go down to the co-op, closer to lunch than I hoped, and used one of the vouchers (we had to get cat food and stuff anyway so I figured may as well use it). We did get some party food to try but there wasn’t the selection I’d hoped for (and the seluction box wasn’t as tasty as I hoped) but at least they had the hash brown stars they had last year, hopefully they’re nice as I rememebr, and jalapeño things too.

Monday was a trip to pick up the last of mum’s present (a clothes order from sainsburys) but that was tiring as mum wanted some other things (and on the way back I ran into her and Naryu and knew she’d not walk with her unless I stayed with them). On the plus side I did get the new Stranger Things sticker album! If anyone sees the boxes for it (or multipack stickers) please let me know which store you see them in. The site that does the stickers sold out before the release which is crazy

Tuesday I was at the library cause mums friend had issues so had to leave early. It meant I did read but not as much as I hope (reviews in the new sfx, which finally arrived a few days ago and one chapter of Halloween Party).

Then in the night we had a call from her and, ugh more stress. She does a Christmas food order at M and S and we tack a few things onto her order, but apparently there’s been some issue and a lot of the stuff (including our stuff) is not coming. That means that stuff for we’d planned to have next week isn’t gonna be there which… it’s annoying but some of the stuff does feel pricey. On the plus side it means not being up at 6am on Christmas Eve to pick it up, but she’s offered to take us down Monday to try and get alternative stuff which… ugh. At least that’s in the afternoon.

But yeah that’s a stress we didn’t need and it got to mum (which this’ll got to me) and it didn’t help the call came through as we were sorting food.

And all of that has led to me being drained again.

But good things.

Aside from the aforementioned SFX magazine there was also a delivery of a silly Coelacanth plush I got preordered ages ago, which is both big and soft and ahh he has a cute silly face (if anyone has seen ditto faces stuff it’s like that). There was also the stranger things qwertee that I ordered and I’d also done a random tee, which was also Stranger things. Random tees are usually older ones but this was one of the others from the same day so it was an Eddie tee!

I got sent a Funko code with 20% and I spent the weekend debating back and forth on if I should use it. It is a big discount to have but the timing for it is so bad. I did cave though and I used it on some of the new stranger things stuff (including two exclusives that probably won’t come down). Alas they had no Will but no one seems to.

Saturday night was strictly and I’m so glad that George got through to the final! And Karen too, I hope one of them win.

I saw on the tv listings that The Batman was on so I finally decided to watch it. I’d heard good things about it and damn. Robert Pattinson was sold to me as Batman in the first few minutes. It was really good, I loved the detective vibes and making the riddler into a more serious threat actually worked really well. If it hard a flaw it was around the end, which felt a bit rushed and long at the same time (but maybe that could’ve been just tiredness).

Sunday night was the next War Between episodes. The first was the best of the two managing to nail tension in the descent down into the depths. But ughhhh. Mum caught that the globe could be a bomb before I did and I’d really hoped that it wouldn’t be. Alas it was and it just… ugh. It pissed me off seeing the aquakind and diplomatic delegation (who we’d got to know on the trip) get blown up.

It did lean to a good thing in the next ep with Tide appearing and calling humans insane for it, which is true. It is insane for us to blow up our own people, just like it’s insane for us to pollute the oceans and screw things up just for rich people to make profits.

Other than that the second ep did feel off, I think mostly due to Salt acting so different. Like yeah she is her own person and would be different when not playing the role of diplomat, but even so it did feel strange for her to suddenly abandon her people/cause to go on the run.

I also dunno how they can resolve everything in just one ep to go. It’s called ‘the end of the war’ so it must resolve things but the whole series has felt a misnomer (but in a good way I like that there’s actually been diplomacy as a solution rather than shooting first). I guess we’ll see. (The end credits did have a thing name checking The Underwater Menace which makes me wonder if we’ll see the remains of atlantis)

I also watched the recut Sea Devils too which was really good, unlike other recuts it didn’t feel like it lost anything (it still had the Clangers scene, the master and the doctor’s sword fight, the politicians being idiots) so it was a good choice.

Lastly, and less of a good thing I’m not seeing The Shining at the cinema. I wasn’t 100% on going in the first place but for some reason the afternoon showing for it got taken off (leaving only ones at night) so that, combined with money took off my will to go. So it looks like I won’t be going to the cinema again until the new year (for Anaconda, and maybe The Housemaid or something else).

Now though I’m gonna sort food, then hopefully poke my fic brain into writing (I had a burst the other night before sleeping) and maybe watch something.