#SEVENTH TIME POSTING

[horseshoemybeloved]

WI-FI CRASHING IPAD NOT WORKING WHAT DO YOU MEAN TRAVIE AT THE FOB SHOW???

[claraoswalds]

THE DOCTOR + first words

[gncgang]

are we gonna have a problem?

[pieflavoredartz]

CLIK FOR THAT SWEEET QUAILTY WOOO (￣▽￣)ノ

toji n sukuna TOJIKUNA if u will oooo 😳😳😳

[mariocki]

RIP Timothy West (20.10.1934 - 12.11.2024)

"We met when we were cast with small parts in that really boring play, so had both brought the crossword to stop us going mad. We saw each other across the rehearsal room doing it, so decided to sit together. Then we couldn’t record because of the strike one day so we went to the cinema, Pru and I, to see The Grass is Greener with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. The show was cancelled, but a bit later Pru sent me a card saying ‘they’re reviving that terrible play, are you in it?’ I wasn’t but we started writing to each other then."

"Humour is vital, and respect for what people do and what people think. Kindness is important, and we’ve always had the same humour, laughed at the same things, been interested in the same things, got cross about the same things. And been in the same business. We have often been away from each other work-wise and therefore we’re always very glad to see each other again."

[wildstar25]

MiqoMarch Day 30 - Of The Seventh Dawn

"When I was very young, my aunt would often put me to bed with stories of her adventures with my late parents. They explored nearly all of Aldenard together, just the three of them; getting through every obstacle as a team, and caring for one another like family along the way. As I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep, the same question echoed in my mind: "Would tomorrow's dawn bring someone with whom I can do the same?" After so many lonely years I had but nearly given up on finding such things for myself. How lucky am I, that at the very last moment I was finally given an answer."

[synthshenanigans]

yall ready for the secret sixth night of five ships of theseus?

[silverfoxstole]

Bears, bears, bears! Bears everywhere! And Doctor Who bears at that, made specially for and presented by me to Paul McGann, Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy at Portsmouth Comic Con.

As most of you probably know, I document my bear-making activities on here and I made an Eighth Doctor bear a couple of years ago, followed by a Seventh Doctor last summer. Ace was a new one, and because of that I ended up making two, the first as a prototype that I kept for myself, working out the details of the costume, particularly the jacket, and the second for Sophie.

Back in February when I decided to make Anne Bearleyn I found that my usual type of fur was unavailable so I had to go looking for another, ending up with something that while it looked lovely was fairly hellish to sew as it shed everywhere. It was all I had when it came to making the first Ace bear, however, and so I went with that. Afterwards, having got covered in fluff again, I tried to find something similar to the fur I’d used for most of my previous bears, but when it arrived and I started putting one together decided that when compared to the bear I’d just made it looked cheap and nasty, which was definitely not what I wanted for this particular project. Consequently that fabric went on a one way trip to the bin and I ordered more of the other stuff, resulting in what I’ve termed a ‘furpocalypse’ when I decided to cut and sew three more bears in one day:

I had to vacuum both the room and myself four times, and clean out the sewing machine twice! That fluff gets everywhere, even up your nose! It was worth it in the end, though, as the result looks so nice. As the pile is quite thick I had to glue on the noses and use felt for eyebrows as thread just vanishes, but I think that actually looks better and allows for more expression.

I made a second set of Ace clothes while I was waiting for the fur to arrive; the first jacket had been a bit too small and I’d only had satin to use for the lining which disintegrates as it’s sewn, not something I wanted to give someone as a gift. It was a painstaking job to replicate the badges and decoration on the jacket with felt and embroidery thread, but I was pleased with how it turned out:

The costume is based on one from Remembrance of the Daleks, the skirt and t-shirt made from jersey and the decorations on the latter also of felt. She has a plait, rucksack and baseball bat, as well as a nitro 9 canister in her hand/paw (which I actually swapped out for a better one on Friday but didn’t take any pictures of it). The nitro is attached with velcro and can be exchanged for the bat. My only tiny niggle is that I made the jacket lining the wrong colour, only realising it should be orange when I started rewatching Sophie’s episodes last week, but that’s just my perfectionist side at work and her new owner didn’t mind.

“Aaaaaace!” You can see my original Seventh Doctor bear here; I changed a few things working on the new one, this time using blue eyes and making the jacket in cream rather than brown, mainly as a contrast with the darker fur but also so he would match season 25 Ace. I decided to use red paisley for scarf, tie, hatband and handkerchief, adding a red trim to the last two. The jumper once again took a couple of hours’ work, and as this was a present for Sylvester this time I did embroider question marks and chevrons all the way round!

For the umbrella I cut out several long triangles and stitched them together in imitation of a real brolly, using a bit of a skewer covered in felt for the pole (that’s not the word but I can’t think what to call the middle of a umbrella for the life of me!), to which I attached some jewellery wire pinched from my sister (shh!) twisted into the shape of a question mark. That was then covered in yet more felt. I’ve made a lot of things from felt lately!

And voila: one finished Seventh Doc bear:

I do hope Sylvester spots that he even has spoons in his pocket. 😁

Last but not least, we have Eighth Doctor bear, which I actually started first but I didn’t have enough fabric for his coat so he had to sit and wait while I worked on the others. My original is here; he’s gone through a few costume tweaks as I’ve tried to improve on things and this time I mainly used scraps left over from my own cosplay and made them up in the same way: shirt, scarf, waistcoat, belt and gailters are all the same as mine, and the coat is identical material but from a different source.

His shirt and waistcoat both fasten with buttons, and I made the watch chain and belt buckle from embroidery thread. It took several attempts to get the boots and gaiters right, and I went from having quite a large piece of faux leather to something about a quarter of the size, most of it ending up in the bin! Unlike my Eight bear he has a sonic screwdriver, made from - yes, you guessed it! - felt. Fortunately the TVM sonic is quite a simple design, unlike the other one I made which can be swapped with this one to go with the Dark Eyes outfit I ran up on an impulse because I had scraps left from my own jacket and put in the bag with him; hopefully Paul will find it as that DE sonic took me two attempts to get (somewhat) right!

I changed the shape of the lapels on this new coat so that they were more like the real one, and I also took some pics of him in his Dark Eyes gear:

I confess that he was the one I found it hardest to give up. Look at him:

And he matches me!

I had to keep telling myself that I couldn’t keep him, I’d made him for Paul, but it wasn’t easy!

Finally, a few pics of them together:

I was so, so pleased with the way these turned out. Along with Bush (about whom I’ll post separately), these are the best bears I’ve made so far, and I’m glad that Paul, Sophie and Sylvester were just as happy with them!

[my-beautiful-wickedness]

Day Four [Oct. 29.]

Prompt: Witch(es) + Element(s)

Fire

[bouquetexquis]

I feel truly sorry for Furina.

The quest shows just how much of a lost and terrified child she is. Yes, she is an archon. But one that was born* merely five hundred years ago.

She is clueless as to how to navigate the situation. Nevertheless she is the 'all-knowing, ever righteous' hydro archon and is expected to behave as such.

I won't expand here on the mirror-like existence of the archons (Venti/Zhongli & Nahida/Furina, Ei being somewhat of a transition), but she is basically the exact opposite of Nahida : a child who has been put in a position of absolute power, regarded as the savior of her nation, glorified to the point of ridicule. She is lost. Would it not be for Neuvillette, I do believe she might not have been able to maintain such a façade.

Not so much because she is incompetent (that much has yet to be addressed in the storyline) but because she has no clue nor key on how to even begin to comprehend how to tackle all of that.

She is catastrophicaly ridiculous, but she is also just a child put in a position she is not fit for.

*I know that, much like Venti, she was an elemental spirit before that but I think that such a change in position can be seen as (re)birth

[spockandawe]

I'm going to have full cohesive pitches for these books as individual experiences sometime soon, i swear, but since I 1) just finished rereading thousand autumns (first time where it wasn't a third mtl), 2) am rereading peerless for the first time in years, and 3) am reading sleuth of the ming dynasty for the first time ever, I've been thinking a LOT about meng xi shi as an author and trying to scrape together my thoughts. Because I think she's really stunningly good! She's one of those authors whose skill just SHINES through, even when a translation is weak, and that's always something so fascinating to me.

But at the same time, i have a harder time raving about her books than most of my other faves. Trying to pitch thousand autumns to friends was something I really struggled with! The other two are easier, by nature of their central dynamics, while yan wushi cranks this one up to nightmare difficulty mode. But I think that it also provides an example of what I might be having to recalibrate for.

Like, I'm an easy binch. If Hua Cheng is leaving a necklace for Xie Lian early on, or Luo Binghe is noticing Shen Qingqiu's leaves right at the beginning of their books, I'm hootin and hollerin, I'm drumming my heels on the floor. And Meng Xi Shi is NOT about that instant gratification lifestyle. We're not having dessert before dinner, and there is some INTRICATE plot shit happening in all these books that is not getting muscled aside for indulgent ship time.

I'm absolutely certain it's a conscious choice, and one i respect the hell out of, especially since all of these books have the characters woven in with actual historical figures, which always manages yo take me by surprise. I assume details like keeping a wholeass imperial prince secret until he's five are fictional embellishment, but... nope! Actual history! The SCOPE of these plots and the politics they all muck around with means that there are limits to how much an author could spend time on ship bait without trivializing the central conflict. As much as i enjoyed golden stage, i never cared about the politics. And not caring about the politics in meng xi shi's work would be jettisoning SO much nutritional content.

And, that's not to say that there's NOTHING indulgent for me in the earlier parts! Yan Wushi starts delightedly letting people assume he's plowing Shen Qiao as soon as they start traveling together, Feng Xiao spends the second mystery of Peerless totally disguised as Cui Buqu's wife and fighting with him as "this wife", and Sui Zhou and Tang Fan start straight-up cohabiting POSTHASTE. And then. Meng xi shi makes you wait for it.

This isn't bad! The delayed gratification is very GOOD! The tension is delectable. The feeling of 'oh come on now you're just dragging this out on purpose' is mitigated by having characters drag things out in character. Shen Qiao's sense of responsibility pulls him towards Yan Wushi, and then away from Yan Wushi (and yan wushi is also Helping sfhfgdf). Feng Xiao doesn't move THAT fast, but Cui Buqu will Literally Die before he'll admit he has tender feelings. And Tang Fan is textually scared to lose what he has platonically with Sui Zhou by stepping into unknown territory. I'm still howling OH COME ON, but it transmutes into something directed at the characters, not the author.

And the plots we're making space for like this are hefty bois. All of them have heavy political themes, where in my usual diet, i would reluctantly accept a little politics on the side in my ancient chinese fantasy meal. And each of these books has baited me further into caring about mundane politics 😂 In Thousand Autumns, it's very much a balance between lavishly described fantasy martial arts extravaganza and big politics enhanced by the martial arts extravaganza. Peerless, we're down one martial artist in the lead characters, so there's more non-fighting politics happening (and both characters are secret police commanders), but at least one of my boys floats around playing magic music on his guqin. Fourteenth Year Of Chenghua? Goddamn, I'm reading this thing and I'm in the THROES over ancient chinese imperial office politics, like oh noooo oh my god HOW COULD THEY DEMOTE HIM AT A TIME LIKE THIS, fffff, who can possibly intercede with the emepror now-- And i have NO idea how i reached this point, this is so funny to me.

I do think it says a lot for all three of these that they won me over so hard despite not being as tailored to my personal tastes as something like mxtx! I do love all them to pieces. But it's something like... Digging in at the earlier, slower stages of these books was a hell of a struggle. One that paid off, but i worry about people bouncing off them! Something I've said about thousand autumns (and will say again) is that it's a book that asks for a lot of trust from readers. Some of that is PURELY down to yan wushi, but the structure and pace doesn't make that easy. I do think that the trust is repaid by the end, at least in terms of my reading experience, but it makes me worry! I do want people to read these!

Actually that brings me to the last big strong point I want to mention before i get back to reading: the character writing. Because GODDAMN, the character writing. It both contributes to the slow start in these books, I think, but also MASSIVELY enriches the emotional payout as they progress.

Yan Wushi is one of the funniest, most obnoxious characters of all time! He's also cruel, demanding, and overbearing, and a strong, vivid personality like that takes real time and effort to develop. The beginning of the book looks like it could slip into misery porn + stockholm syndrome healing cock = i guess this is a healthy relationship now. And it doesn't! But it's hard to tell how it WILL go, and that makes it hard to commit to a tome like this. Feng Xiao is comparably obnoxious and hilarious, but Cui Buqu is closed up tight as a clam, and both of them deal in secrets professionally, it is HARD to start accessing any hints of emotional sincerity in either of them. And Tang Fan and Sui Zhou are both junior government officials, early in their careers in a volatile work environment, and they present in a pretty reserved, professional way at first, and the subtler/goofier character notes take time and intimacy to properly manifest. wang zhi on the other hand--

I recommend these books! I really recommend them! I don't want to be underwhelming people with 'oh, you won't like it at first, but JUST YOU WAIT.' Because I did like them at first. They didnt elevete me to the same flailing emotional THROES as some novels, but the quiet rich flavor of the relationships in these are FABULOUS. And the sheer scope of the plots she pulls off, I mean, holy shit. I'm not underwhelmed by these books at all, I'm more likely to get overwhelmed, there's a reason I've been savoring the latest reading experience. I like them a lot! I like meng xi shi as a lot! In the sliver of cnovels that I've sampled, her books are doing some really cool things i haven't seen anyone else pull off, especially with such aplomb. I didn't start out LOOKING for books like that, but I'm still really, really glad i found them, and I do highly recommend them, just in general. I'll figure out how to pitch them individually soon.

*holds probably over 1.5M words of meng xi shi tomes* I Just Think She's Neat

[wejustvibing]

baby goat's first day at merc 11 years ago today

[hauwunted]

Speed running every bad thing that can happen to a body during the time of year I have the worst time coping with childhood trauma/cptsd really makes you cry 3 times in a day

[gravyhoney]

Lord help me…..

Nobody tell Raine.

[james-spooky]

this is a test

[rad-roche]

i'm truckin away on The Thing i've been plugging away at for months, and i'm nearing the end, and unfortunately clip studio paint crashed and i'd forgot to save. don't worry, it said. i've restored the document. fantastic i replied. surely you mean the canvas with 70 layers. and it said no i saved the scrap file. the one with the 3D model of a hand and a font test. you are so welcome