Recent reading
Jul. 14th, 2025 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Point of Hearts by Melissa Scott:
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Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones:
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Superman 2025 thoughts, no spoilers
Jul. 14th, 2025 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This Ma and Pa Kent were my favorite iterations of themselves outside of comics, and I fully believed that this Clark would say, "Dang."
If you like your superheroes a little too clean-cut and a lot too earnest, you, too, may enjoy this flick.
(no subject)
Jul. 14th, 2025 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It was very exciting to see Seven Seas'July survey gauging interest in The Beauty's Blade and asking what other baihe novels they should license!
On the other hand, I'm a bit irritated about the changes to Seven Seas' danmei page (it's no longer a separate webpage with detailed info about the series. I'm most irritated because the books' section on the main site have lower resolution cover art for the volumes and doesn't include planned volume counts for in progress releases).
I finished the two most recent Astreiant volumes the other day and am a bit sad I've run out of books in the series (Melissa Scott does have a Patreon with a bunch of short stories, so I'm going to check that out next).
Weird Al and "Oh hey, it's that guy!", Murderbot-style
Jul. 12th, 2025 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Also, the audience was full of people wearing extremely cheerful shirts, and made great viewing.
I have not seen the most recent Murderbot yet, but I did spot David Dastmalchian as John Deacon in a clip of Weird-the-biopic which was played at the concert, so that's almost the same thing, right? I was very proud of my facial recognition software for picking up on that. I would like to belatedly award points to the casting department for finding a way to get another MENA-descended person into Queen, which is a great joke I didn't get at the time.
I loved the new Murderbot short story, which I read aloud to my SO.
A bunch of books I've read lately
Jul. 9th, 2025 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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A Treachery of Swans by A.B. Poranek:
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I'd heard of Melissa Scott's Astreiant novels, but hadn't gotten to them until recently. I like the combination of plotty mysteries and slowburn romance. It reminded me of Swordspoint at times, although with more magic and a matriarchal-ish society (it was interesting to notice 'she' being used as default pronoun for an unknown person the way 'he' sometimes used to be, iirc). I'm very fond of the main characters, but I would really like to read something like this with a f/f main couple. More on specific books (I have two more left in the series to read) below.
Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett:
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Point of Knives by Melissa Scott:
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Point of Dreams by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett:
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Fairs' Point by Melissa Scott:
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Finished Refunct over the weekend and genuinely cannot rec too highly
Jul. 8th, 2025 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/406150/Refunct/
For anyone who might want to sample some easy platforming with a very very low entry threshold.
Chill and rather lovely environment (okay, probably depends on you liking brutalist architecture, but still -- there's a day-night cycle! there's sunshine! the water is gorgeous! the music is gentle!) with no time pressure and no penalties for failing a jump hundreds of times (except that, at worst, you fall in the water and have to swim about and haul yourself out again).
N.B. Most reviews describe this as a half-hour game, and there are achievements for speedrunning it in under 8 minutes or under 4 minutes.
It took me over five hours of playtime to beat it, which should be indicative of the co-ordination and skill levels I'm working with here. And yet it did not at any point feel stressful or humiliating for me. It felt like a pleasant, relaxing environment in which to fail repeatedly and experiment.
It started at a level low enough that I could manage it, and then had a really satisfying difficulty curve. If I was stalling on the next objective, I could still run and parkour round the environment purely for fun (and sometimes ended up working out how to pick off the optional achievements in the process).
Towards the very end, I started to think that the last jumps might just flat-out exceed the limits of what I am currently capable of, and it felt like if that did happen, I would still be able to walk away pretty happily having already got way more than 62p's worth of enjoyment out of it.
Will absolutely be playing it again.
Purrcy; kdrama
Jul. 6th, 2025 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I've been watching Moon Embracing the Sun with
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Ghost Quartet (Green-Wood Cemetery, 7/28/25)
Jul. 6th, 2025 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Ghost Quartet is a band: Dave Malloy on keyboard, Brent Arnold on cello, Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford on various instruments, and everyone providing vocals. Ghost Quartet is a song cycle, a concert album performed semi-staged, a mash-up of "Snow White, Rose Red," The One Thousand and One Nights, the Noh play Matsukaze, "Cruel Sister", "The Fall of the House of Usher", the front page photo of a fatal train accident, and a grab bag of Twilight Zone episodes. The ghost of Thelonious Monk is sometimes invoked, but does not appear; whisky is often invoked, and, if you see the show live, will most certainly appear. "I'm confused/And more than a little frightened," says (one incarnation of) the (more-or-less) protagonist. "It's okay, my dear," her sister/lover/mother/daughter/deuteragonist reassures her, "this is a circular story."
Once upon a time two sisters fell in love with an astronomer who lived in a tree. He seduced Rose, the younger, then stole her work ("for a prestigious astronomy journal"), and then abandoned her for her sister, Pearl. Rose asked a bear to maul the astronomer in revenge, but the bear first demanded a pot of honey, a piece of stardust, a secret baptism, and a photograph of a ghost. (The music is a direct quote of the list of spell ingredients from Into the Woods.) Rose searches for all these ingredients through multiple lifetimes; and that's the plot.
Except it is much less comprehensible than that. The songs are nested in each other like Scheherazade's stories; you can follow from one song to the next, but retracing the connections in memory is impossible; this is less a narrative than a maze. Surreal timelines crash together in atonal cacophany; one moment Dave Malloy, or a nameless astronomer played by Dave Malloy, or Dave Malloy playing Dave Malloy is trying to solve epistemology and another moment the entire house of Usher, or all the actors, are telling you about their favorite whiskies. The climax is a subway accident we have glimpsed before, in aftermath, in full, circling around it, a trauma and a terror that cannot be faced directly; the crash is the fall of a house is the failure to act is the failure to look is the failure to look away.
There are two recordings available. Ghost Quartet, recorded in a studio, has cleaner audio, but Live at the McKitterick includes more of the interstitial scenes and feels more like the performance.
In Greenwood Cemetery, there were three slightly raised stages separated by batches of folding chairs, one for Dave Malloy, one for Brent Arnold, and one for Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford, with a flat patch of grass in the center across which they sang to each other, and into which they sometimes moved; you could sit in the chairs, or on cushions in front of the first row, or with cheaper tickets you could sit in the grass on the very low hills above the staging area, among the monuments and gravestones, and, presumably, among more ghosts. The show started a little before sunset; I saw a hawk fly over, and I could hear birds singing along when the humans sang a capella. It was in the middle of Brooklyn, so even after dark I couldn't see stars; but fireflies sparked everywhere.
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Here's what I've made so far:
Strike a pose (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: DCU (Comics)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Tim Drake/Dick Grayson, Tim Drake/Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson
Characters: Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson
Additional Tags: Drabble, Video Cameras, Voyeurism
Summary:
Tim chooses his moment to best advantage.
*External hearts are a disabling condition (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: DCU (Comics)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Clark Kent & Bruce Wayne
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent
Additional Tags: Psychic Wolves, Drabble
Summary:
Bruce's wolfsister and his duty to the League.
*The movement of (astronomical) bodies (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Carrot Ironfoundersson/Angua von Uberwald
Characters: Carrot Ironfoundersson, Angua von Uberwald
Additional Tags: Drabble, lycanthropy
Summary:
Carrot's favorite time of the month.
*Interstellar Deliveroo (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Arthur Dent/Ford Prefect
Characters: Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect
Additional Tags: Drabble, Gig Economy
Summary:
Arthur gets a new job, and does as well at it as he does at everything else.
*It's possible to be too beautiful (187 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Anakin Skywalker
Additional Tags: Bad Poetry, Sonnets, Adolescent Poetry, Shakespearean Sonnets
Summary:
Prompt: young Anakin's Very Bad But Heartfelt poetry (directed at your choice).
*If wishes were horses (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Strangers in Paradise (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Casey Bullocks-Femur/Katina Choovanski/Francine Peters/David Qin
Characters: Katina Choovanski
Additional Tags: Drabble, Masturbation
Summary:
Katchoo fantasizes.
*Exploring the collection (200 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan/Alys Vorpatril
Characters: Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Alys Vorpatril
Additional Tags: Sex Toys, Double Drabble
Summary:
Alys shares her collection of specialized implements with Cordelia.