#The writing never ends on my page

[grungost]

Hiiiiiiiii :3 (again)

Haha, I would *never* stop posting for almost three quarters of a year... Anyway, Senior years almost over, whatever, more importantly Dragon's Dogma 2 was released and is absolutely incredible. Once again breaking out the superlatives: one of my favorite overall games. Ok, I don't think I even want to go into that, so what am I writing about here? This is basically public journaling, or would be if anyone really read these. I'm not complaining, though, it's pretty much fine. I started watching House MD, another absolute banger show, scratches a similar itch to SVU, but instead of being about cops its about doctors and occasionally disparages cops (edit: obviously a positive, just to make that clear). I read Roadside Picnic, the book that Stalker is originally based on, that was super good. I don't read as much as I used to when I was in grade school or whatever. I started reading Gardens of the Moon, first book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series; haven't gotten far, but its cool. Uhhh, I don't think there's much else really. Still like magic; I didn't even read everything I wrote in my last post, but I saw it was about some magic stuff and I still think that stuff's neat. Oh, there have been a bunch of really good original songs from some of the Hololive JP members (I don't think I ever mentioned that particular interest of mine, I'm pretty into both JP and EN vtubers), Suisei's "Bibidiba," Kobo's "Help," and Marine's song that I don't remember the name of. Whatever the latest one was. All of them bangers.

I don't think I ever mentioned that I got really into Fear and Hunger in the past year. Oh wait, that happened after my last post! Man, that was back in October and my last post was in August. Anyway, Fear and Hunger; what a difference between when I first found out about it. When I first played it, it had such an oppressive atmosphere, genuinely upsetting at times, if only on account of the fact I'd never played a game so visceral, bodily, and sexual; pretty unique experience. Once you get into the swing of things though its just a bunch of fun. Oh, it was incredible though, making it to Mahabre for the first time; I was sick for a significant portion of the summer, had a hacking cough and a persistent headache or something (wasn't Covid, thankfully), and when I first went there, the music, the bizarre underground sunlight, the feeling of digging into the secret and divine realm that undergirded everything I'd been through to that point, all of it was heightened by my dizziness. It was pretty worrying at the time when I was so tired and had a coughing fit long enough that I passed out for a minute or so, but in retrospect it totally enhanced the experience and I can't help but appreciate how the experience as a whole positively affected my perception of the game. I won't talk as much about F&H 2, it wasn't as good. I appreciated that it was going for something else, but I much prefer the straight up fantasy setting of the first one. don't get me wrong, still a great game, just not my favorite.

I think that about wraps it up. I'm not gonna promise consistency again, but maybe I'll keep my page up in a tab and it'll remind me to write sometimes. Maybe if I had a topic... Maybe I could write about Fox Junction, a PS1 JP-only roguelike that isn't especially fun but has such an incredible atmosphere I can't help but love it. Maybe I could write about Tunic, my favorite game of all time (I still don't remember, but there's a good chance I already did in my previous post on account of how similar the subject matter is re: synchronicity and a spiritual world). Or maybe, just maybe, I could write another long, rambling post about nothing in particular. Who's to say what I'll end up writing about, there's simply no way to be certain. Alright, later!

[pendraegon]

thesis updates: sent the draft to my advisor -> she said it was "incoherent" and that she was "shocked" at my work and instead of telling me anything in detail as to what's wrong directs me to the writing center then proceeds to cc my committee members saying that she's at a loss with what to do with me -> was confused because... did i send her the wrong draft?? it seemed pretty solid to me?? like i was genuinely proud of it??? -> next day she sends me another email saying that actually my draft isn't bad at all and it just needs some reworking ???????

[kyouka-supremacy]

So no sskk?

[naneki-maid]

just finished reading the Age of Innocence and the last line that Archer speaks to himself, sitting on the bench outside Madame Olenska’s Paris balcony after not seeing her in almost 30 years has left me unwell.

“It’s more real to me here than if I went up.”

Cancel all my calls. I will be bedridden for several days. thanks.

[leviiackrman]

Might as well have the salt before the sweet; so here is Rin's Finished Timeline!

Tag list (ask to be added or removed): @carrionsflower @statichvm @risingsh0t @simonxriley @tommyarashikage @kanos @confidentandgood @unholymilf @florbelles @thedeadthree @shellibisshe @roofgeese @aezyrraeshh @faerune @tekehu @jackiesarch @minaharkers @sergeiravenov @carlosoliveiraa @rosenfey @greenecreek @queennymeria @heroofpenamstan @tethrras @jamessunderlandgf @d-esmond @solasan @bigbywlf @delzinrowe @fenharel @imogenkol

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: June Wrap-Up.

Okay, y'all have Convinced Me--I'm going to start doing little wrap up posts! Behold: a shelf of what I read in June (not pictured: the bookmark at page 466 of ORDINARY MONSTERS, because despite having read two (2) books worth of book so far, I'm still not quite done with that one).

June was kind of a slow reading month for me (I did a LOT of writing, looking back--nice). I wanted to take OTHER TERRORS and THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE a bite at a time so the horrors and figures of rhetoric (respectively) didn't all run together. Both of those, much like A SHINING, turned out to be pleasantly leisurely wanders, whereas MONSTERS is kind of a plod.

I already did bigger write-ups for TERRORS and SHINING, linked in the bullets below.

OTHER TERRORS - ★★★★ Great bite-sized horror anthology with a really inclusive mix, as promised! I enjoyed most of these (always nice in an anthology!)

A SHINING - ★★★★ Weird fucked up heavy little book in translation, lit-fic flavored, but very approachable, I thought. Tiny enough to swallow in a sitting, but also kind of exhausting to do it that way? I'll definitely reread this one in the future.

THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE - ★★★ Fun romp through rhetoric! The examples were fun, and I appreciated the humor, but I also find myself still uncertain what a bunch of the figures actually ARE, definitions-wise, despite having read a book full of so many of them (I did just buy his recommended A HANDLIST OF RHETORICAL TERMS to help with that, at least, which is. almost entirely. definitions by volume). Neat thing to have on my references shelf, but it wasn't as excellent as I was hoping it'd be.

ORDINARY MONSTERS - 466/658 pages read; will report back later (but it's not looking good, folks).

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Fallen Thorns

dark urban fantasy coming-of-age

follows a boy settling into university, when after a date (that he didn’t even want to go on) turns bad he’s made into a vampire

as he settles into his new existence and the local vampire community - while they try to find who’s been leaving bodies across the city - he discovers that there’s something different and darker within him

aroace neurodivergent MC

[chi-the-idiot]

Started reading Waverider.

Dropped it immediately because its bad.

My disappointment is unmeasurable and my day is ruined.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

~ inseparable opposing images ~

[eyrieofsynapses]

good evening, all. it is May the 25th. our lilacs are blooming, just as the ones at the Watch House did. and I am thinking about remembrance of the fallen, and GNU, and the love in commemoration.

y'know, I read Night Watch… oh, maybe a year ago and some months ago. and the lilac symbolism, the remembrance of the Watch, has always struck me with the depth of the emotion of it, the tangibility of it in the flowers. but I wasn't aware that today was the day until I saw commemorative posts, all that gorgeous artwork and more, on my dash.

I was also not aware, until now, that fans commemorated the day not only because of the book reference, but in support of Terry Pratchett and of those with Alzheimer's. which knocked me over a bit because of course, of course the group that would use GNU to honor him would do that. and… I've been thinking about GNU a lot, lately, and this caught me again.

I read Going Postal a bit ago, and reread it recently. both times, the parts about GNU made me tear up. this idea of the names, the memories, the lives of the clacks workers who dedicated themselves to ensuring that people heard each other's voices—all those names spoken again and again and again by that which they poured their souls into, winging along in the air as they could not, an eternal reminder that they were loved—how could that not touch a person's heart?

when I found out that fans online used it to memorialize him, I damn well cried. hell, I still tear up just thinking about it. do you know, there's a code for an HTTP header "X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett" written by Reddit users to put in webpages, where it goes unseen by the average user? and in 2015, when Netcraft took a survey, there were eighty-four thousand websites using it? it's eight years later—how many thousands upon thousands of websites have this now, do you think? how many little cables of light has his name flown along, now? how many times?

that alone is absurdly and unimaginably lovely in its own right, but… there's something else to it. there's something about remembering with the lilac sprigs every year, just as Vimes and those who were there remembered their dead. something about how, when we take up our lilac sprigs, we carry a little piece of the characters in our hearts, too. I kept trying to put my finger on why that makes me tear up the way it does. the conclusion I came to is this:

what greater way to honor a writer is there, but to honor them the way they did the characters they poured their heart and soul into? what better way to say we know you and you are not forgotten and your work and words and gifts to the world are held in our hearts forever than to remember them by their own words, their own vision? how else could we say you embodied all the good you believed in and wished to see in the world, but to memorialize them after the little pieces of their soul they wrapped in ink and put upon the page?

it is a knowing of the writer, to remember them in their way. it is not a worn-out faceless platitude, but a reminder that their work has been read and will continue to be, that the characters and world they loved enough to bring to life last just as their name does. such remembrance is warm and loving and delights in their memory even as it grieves.

and now Pratchett's name has been written in his tradition, over and over and over, across the vast plane of the Internet, where it will—with any luck—continue to fly for generations to come.

there is no way to truly express the beauty of that… but perhaps we can catch a glimpse of it in the lilacs, both ours and the Watch's.

[johnslittlespoon]

it's almost time. when? idk, when i stop being a coward LOL

[griseldabanks]

Comfyvember 1

Story: superhero siblings (original) Prompts: Breaking bad habits — New day — Train ride

“I'm hungry,” Grace announced.

“Just a minute,” Sophie sighed, plopping down into the seat next to her. “Let's wait until the train gets underway.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, sitting down across from her. Unlike his sisters, he hadn't taken off his backpack. He sat staring tensely out the window at the train station, eyes flicking over the early-morning passengers milling about, poised to run at a moment's notice. “In case we have to get out of here in a hurry.”

Sophie glanced around the drab compartment at her siblings, whose faces looked pale and wan in the sickly lights overhead. Grace's big grey eyes seemed to take up half her face as she clutched her stuffed cat and looked up plaintively at her older siblings. Rebecca slumped in the window seat opposite Grace, long brown hair disheveled from their recent escape. Her jaw was set, as if to keep her teeth from chattering, and she hugged herself tightly.

And Jack...he looked so old. Bags under his eyes, creases in his brow, worry radiating off him like heat. He shouldn't look like that, like Dad did before everything went wrong, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Sophie wondered what she looked like.

With a jolt, the train began to move, sliding away from the platform. As one, all four let out a breath of relief.

And immediately tensed as they heard a voice steadily approaching, calling down the corridor, “Tickets! Tickets, please!”

Sophie's eyes locked with Jack's across the compartment. Suddenly their plan of getting on the train and hopping off at the next city before anyone realized they didn't have tickets seemed as flimsy as Jack's initial suggestion that they hitchhike all the way to Missouri.

They listened to the ticket man opening the compartment behind Sophie, the rumble of his voice as he exchanged pleasantries with the passengers, the thump of his feet on the carpet outside...a pause, and then a brisk knock at the next compartment behind Jack, and more rumbling voices as he took the tickets from the people on the other side.

Sophie sat frozen, still staring into her brother's eyes as their mirrored expressions of tension faded into confusion. It was like the ticket man had...forgotten them. Or that he got confused and thought he'd already checked their tickets.

Narrowing her eyes with suspicion, Sophie looked at Rebecca, whose expression was oddly smug for someone who'd been terrified a moment before. “Rebecca!” she said sharply.

Rebecca held up her hands defensively, as if to say don't look at me! Tellingly, though, she didn't speak a word.

But Jack grinned, all the tension seeping out of his shoulders instantly. “That was you? Atta girl!”

They high-fived, but Sophie crossed her arms and snapped, “Don't encourage her! Or she'll never break her bad habit!”

“Bad habit?” Jack snorted. “Of what, saving our hides?”

Sophie glanced at the window to the corridor, even though she knew no one could hear, and lowered her voice to a hiss. “Of using telepathy when we know Dr. Clementine has machines that can sense it!”

Rebecca, still unable to talk in the wake of using her powers, waved her hands to get their attention and then pointed out the window meaningfully. The train had already picked up speed, and tall buildings and streetlights flitted past, growing more and more spaced out by the minute. Soon, they would be out of the city limits—and hopefully out of Dr. Clementine's grasp.

“I'm hungry,” Grace reminded them.

“Right. Sorry.” Sophie glanced at Rebecca, including her in the apology.

Bending down, she opened her backpack and looked at the rather paltry supplies she'd managed to grab from the kitchen on their way out. “Well, I've got crackers and peanut butter...no knife, though.”

“That's fine,” Jack said, holding out his hand to accept the jar of peanut butter so he could open it. “We don't really have an easy way to wash one anyway.”

Sophie carefully divided up one sleeve of crackers into four portions and handed them out. Jack passed the jar over to Grace first, and she scooped out a generous portion of peanut butter onto her cracker before passing it on to Rebecca. She looked up imploringly at Sophie again. “Read to us?”

Setting aside the cracker sleeve with her meager portion, Sophie reached over to dig around in Grace's backpack for the one book she'd allowed her to bring (well, seven books in one, but who was counting?). The only book from their old home that they'd hung onto despite Dr. Clementine's assurances he could buy them as many books as they wanted, and all in first editions. And Sophie was glad of that now, since he never had taken them to the fancy bookstore like he'd promised.

Pulling the bookmark out and tucking it behind her ear, Sophie began to read as she'd been doing every night. “At first Shasta could see nothing in the valley below him but a sea of mist with a few domes and pinnacles rising from it....”

And so, as the sun slowly rose in the sky and the buildings of the city gradually faded away into rolling hills, the four siblings passed around the peanut butter jar and listened to a tale of far-off lands and talking animals, a world far away from the dangers looming ahead of them. At least for a few minutes, they could believe they were also headed for a home that would welcome them.

[coquelicoq]

i'm now looking at my list of least favorite french words to pronounce and going "too many r's" for about 40% of them and "skill issue" for most of the rest. some of these are actually very fun to pronounce i just couldn't wrap my tongue around them a year or so ago, but now i can i guess??? so that's very exciting. makes me hope that someday i'll be able to pronounce the rest of them. this is a bit pie in the sky because i really don't see myself ever getting there with procureur du roi but you never know. and luckily the french abolished the monarchy so it's not like i'll ever have to use that phrase in modern conversation.

anyway here are the words i actually love pronouncing now: décaféiné diététicien filleul pneumonie

i now feel normal/neutral about these words that used to be hard for me: automne, condamner douloureux électricité, énergie inférieur, supérieur, etc. itinéraire lourdeur salmonellose sclérose subodorer succincte

words that are definitely within the realm of my current capability but i haven't practiced them enough: bugle hiérarchisation méditerranéen phtisie

words that are still the bane of my existence but i live in hope: [yʁ] plus at least one other r or [y] sound: chirurgie, fourrure, marbrure, moirure, nourriture, ordures, peinturlurer, procureur du roi, prurit, purpurin, sculpture, serrurerie, structure, sulfureux, tournure all words beginning with ur-, hur-, or sur- other difficult sequence of r's and vowels: construire and other -truire verbs; lueur and sueur; utérus too many r's: marbre, martre, meurtre, opprobre, proroger, réfrigérateur, rétrograde, rorqual difficult sequence of vowels and/or semivowels: coopérant, extraordinaire, hémorroïdal, kyrie eleison, météorologique, micro-ordinateur, micro-organisme, mouillure, quatuor, vanillier not pronounced the way i would expect from the spelling: indemne, penta-, punk just hard for some reason: humour

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[citrlet]

last night i actually got back into writing after probably a year? of not having any motivation to and it's so exciting but god i'm so rusty akfjdks

[sskk-manifesto]

ಥ‿ಥ