#sf public library

[sweetfirebird]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by San Francisco Public Library (@sfpubliclibrary)

[meat-loving-meat]

Am I making sense.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Christopher Brown’s ‘A Natural History of Empty Lots’

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Christopher Brown is an accomplished post-cyberpunk sf writer, a tech lawyer with a sideline in public interest environmental law, the proud owner of one of the most striking homes I have ever seen, and an urban pastoralist who writes about wildlife in ways I've never seen and can't get enough of:

https://fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/

All of these facets of Brown's identity come together today with the launch of A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and other Wild Places:

https://christopherbrown.com/a-natural-history-of-empty-lots/

This is a frustratingly hard to summarize book, because it requires a lot of backstory and explanation, and one of the things that makes this book so! fucking! great! is how skillfully Brown weaves all that stuff into his telling. Which makes me feel self-conscious as I try to summarize things, because there's no way I'll do this as well as he did, but whatever, here goes.

Brown is a transplant from rural Iowa to Austin, where he set out to start a family, practice tech law during the dotcom boom, and write science fiction, as part of a circle of writers loosely associated with cyberpunk icon @brucesterling. After both the economy and his marriage collapsed, Brown started his restless perambulations around Austin's abandoned places, sacrifice zones, the bones of failed housing starts and abandoned dot-crash office parks.

When he did, something changed in him. Slowly, his eyes learned to see things that they had just skipped over. Plants, animals, and spoor and carapaces and dens of all description, all around him, a secret world. These were not pockets of "wilderness" in the city, but they were pockets of wildness. Birds' nests woven with plastic fibers scavenged from nearby industrial dumpsters; trees taking root in half-submerged tires rolled into a creekbed, foxes and rodents playing out a real-life version of the classic ecosystem simulation exercise on the edge of an elevated highway that fills the same function as the edge of a woodland where predator and prey meet.

As Brown fell in love again – with the artist and architect Agustina Rodriguez – he conceived of a genuinely weird and amazing plan to build a house. A very weird house, in a very weird place. He bought a plot of wasteland that had once housed the head-end of an oil pipeline (connected to a nearby oil-storage facility that poisoned the people who lived near it, in an act of wanton environmental racism) and had been used as a construction-waste dump for years.

After securing an extremely unlikely loan, Brown remediated the plot, excavating the oil pipeline, then building the most striking home you have ever seen in the resulting trench. Brown is a pal of mine, and this is where I stay when I'm in Austin, and I can promise you, the pictures don't do it justice:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/style/christopher-brown-edgeland-house-austin/

Formally, A Natural History of Empty Lots is a memoir that explains all of this. But not really. Like I say, this is just the back story. What Natural History really is, is a series of loosely connected essays that explains how everything fits together: colonial conquest, Brown's failed marriage, his experience as a lawyer learning property law, what he learned by mobilizing that learning to help his neighbors defend the pockets of wildness that refuse to budge.

It's an erudite book, skipping back through millennia of history, sidewise through the ecology of Texas, all while somehow serving as a kind of spotter's guide to the wild things you can see in Austin – and maybe, in your town – if you know how to look. It's a book about how people change the land, and how the land changes people. It is filled with pastoral writing that summons Kim Stanley Robinson by way of Thoreau, and it sometimes frames its philosophical points the way a cyberpunk writer would – like Neal Stephenson writing a cyberpunk trilogy that is also the story of Leibniz and Newton fighting over credit for inventing calculus:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/11/20/neal-stephensons-system-of-the-world-concludes-the-baroque-trilogy/

Brown is a stupendous post-cyberpunk writer, and also a post-cyberpunk person, which I've known for sure since I happened upon him one morning, thoughtfully mowing his roof with a scythe:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/46433979075/

You can get a sense of what that means in this lockdown-era joint presentation that Chris, Bruce Sterling and I did on "cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk":

https://archive.org/details/asl-cyberpunk

Brown is a spectacular novelist. His ecofascist civil war trilogy that opens with Tropic of Kansas got so much right about the politics of American demagoguery and was perfectly timed with the Trump presidency:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/07/11/tropic-of-kansas-making-america-great-again-considered-harmful/

The sequel, Rule of Capture, uses the device of courtroom drama in a way that comes uncomfortably close to the Orwell/Kafka mashup that the authorities have created to deal with environmental protesters:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/08/12/rule-of-capture-inside-the-martial-law-tribunals-that-will-come-when-climate-deniers-become-climate-looters-and-start-rendering-environmentalists-for-offshore-torture/

And the final volume, Failed State, is one of the most complicated complicated utopias you could ask for. This is what people mean by "thrilling conclusion":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/failed-state/#chris-brown

As brilliant as Brown is in fiction mode, his nonfiction is unclassifiably, unforgettably brilliant. A Natural History of Empty Lots is the kind of book that challenges how you feel about the crossroads we're at, the place you live, and the place you want to be.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/17/cyberpunk-pastoralism/#time-to-mow-the-roof

[dduane]

Hi! Possibly a bit of a weird question for you, but I'm trying to collect all of YW in hardbacks before my old omnibus finally gives out, and I was wondering - do you know if books 1-4 ever got published in hardback with the Harcourt black base/white text cover art? So many websites use blank placeholders that I can't tell if what I'm searching for even exists!

It’s not weird at all. I get occasional inquiries (especially from librarians) about how to get their hands on complete hardcover sets of the Young Wizards books.

Let's make this simpler from the start by establishing that in the forty-plus year history of the series, there has never been a unified hardcover edition of all the YW books, from any of their publishers... mostly because there've been too many publishers over that stretch of time.

Let's take the books in order, as far as possible, and you'll see what happened.

The books' first home was at Delacorte Press, an imprint of Dell Publishing. So You Want To Be A Wizard was published in hardcover in 1983, the Deep Wizardry hc in 1985, and the High Wizardry hc in 1990, with these covers. (The art, respectively, by David Wiesner, Darrell Sweet, and Neal McPheeters.)

All of these editions are now difficult to find in good condition, especially SYWTBAW—which as a first book in a series by a new/untried author, perhaps understandably had a very small print run and was mostly sold to libraries. (The run might have been as small as 1500 copies. It's hard to tell now, as this wasn't data that was shared with authors in those days.) As a result, most copies of the Delacorte SYWTBAW hc are either very beat up, or (if signed and/or in good condition) relatively expensive. The Delacorte DW and HW hardcovers are a little easier to find, but not that much.

In the early 1990s there was a change in publishing direction at Dell shortly after HW came out. The publisher's interest had pivoted toward wanting more bestselling authors; so they jettisoned many then-new or midlist authors so as to be able to pay the best-selling authors more. (In this particular micro-bonfire of the vanities, Dell's stupidity in throwing Jane Yolen overboard, FFS, astounds me to this day.) So though the books continued to be published as paperbacks at other Dell imprints (Laurel-Leaf, Yearling) through the mid-1990s, that was the end of the Dell hardcovers.

The next hardcover publication was therefore in 1990, from GuildAmerica / SF Book Club. Support Your Local Wizard contains SYWTBAW, DW and HW, and was a Book Club bestseller: it sold a quarter million copies and set a record as their most popular new-member-requested book that lasted until they went out of business. As a result, there are a lot of these books around.

Also in plentiful supply is The Young Wizards, which SFBC Fantasy published in 2001. (NB that a lot of sources list this as being a 1984 book, which is incorrect. As it also contains, besides the first three, A Wizard Abroad and The Wizard's Dilemma, this makes it impossible to have been published any sooner than 2001.)

Anyway, after that, things get a bit simpler. In the mid 1990s the series was picked up by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / Harcourt Trade Publishers' new YA imprint Magic Carpet Books, which began republishing earlier works. Possibly the oddest of these was a small-format (mmpb-sized) hc of SYWTBAW, which turns up here and there used. (I really need to ask Jane some time what the heck the thinking was on this book...)

...Anyway. A Wizard Abroad had until then been published only in the UK (in a mass-market mmpb from Transworld/Corgi); its first hardcover came out from the SF Book Club/GuildAmerica in 1993, Dell having passed on acquiring it. (The cover on this one was done by the fabulous David Cherry, artist and brother of my old colleague C. J. Cherryh.) Harcourt did another of the unusual small-format hardcovers, this time of AWAb, in 1997—testing the waters, I think. Then, when that sold strongly, they went straight to full-size hardcovers with The Wizard's Dilemma (with art from then until now being done by Cliff Nielsen) and have stayed with that format since.

Harcourt also did a lovely 25th anniversary hardcover edition of So You Want To Be A Wizard in 2003, which is easy to find inexpensively. I strongly suspect this republication trend would have continued with Deep Wizardry and High Wizardry when their respective anniversaries came around. But unfortunately the Magic Carpet program wound down soon afterwards, and the most recent hc volumes have been published simply as HMH, with no apparent interest at the publisher in going back to fill the holes in the hardcover backlist.

...So you can see, you've got kind of a mixed bag to deal with in terms of what you want. Availability has also been something of an issue, as the books are considered pretty deep backlist by Harcourt's current owner (HarperCollins), and warehouse supplies of some books in the series have been iffy.

So. The simplest I can make things for you is to help you avoid dealing with large corporate warehouses (because when some of these hc editions were preparing to go out of print, whenever possible I bought up the remaining stock to spare it from being pulped). Signed Books Direct—by which I mean the Ikea shelves out back in our boot room—has ample mint-condition supplies of many of the Harcourt hardcovers (though not Games Wizards Play, unfortunately: we've run out of those). Ignore the site’s front page inventory, which needs to be updated. Instead, just drop an email to the SBD email address and query me about what you're looking for.

HTH!

[kyriat-sims]

Do your research and debate work the old-fashioned way! More info and download under the cut.

If you have Discover University, this is an indispensable add-on to my Parmenidh library set. Since research and debate is not an modern invention, I wanted my sims to increase their skills without using modern equipment. So I took the tuning from the Electromagnetic Research Archive Machine, made it buyable and put it on the scrolls. The animations are the same, and the scrolls doesn't work off-grid (they must be connected to electricity), so it's not perfect, but at least it doesn't hurt my eyes anymore.

The red band is just to make it differ a a bit from the decor version of the scrolls, but the original swatches are of course available . FYI there is also a bookshelf version with the name Pseftia Papyrus Scrolls.You will find this object in game where you normally find this kind of objects, or by searching for Parmenidh or KyriaT.

Research & Debate scrolls

Mesh: ❗Feuerholz by Mammut

Pack needed:❗ EA Discover University   

Found in Activities - Knowledge, and also

Found in Electronics - Computer/Misc

5 swatches

Price 1500 $

TOU: Don’t upload and claim as your own. You may include in lots if you give credit with a link to this post, but please don’t upload to paysites or behind ad.fly. 

All recolors made with Gimp and The Sims 4 Studio.

📥Download (SFS)

Also available on Patreon and CurseForge.

More of my stuff at my blog: My cc - lots - sims - saves. Always free! 💕

@allhistoricalcc - @anitasims - @emilyccfinds - @itsjessicaccfinds

@mmfinds - @public-ccfinds - @simshistoricalfinds - @sssvitlanz

Thanks for sharing 💕

[simdertalia]

🍎 ACNH School Set ✏️

48 Now 49 items (I added a school bell for the wall) | Sims 4, Base game compatible.

As usual, all original swatches included with lots of extras added by me! ☺️💗 I'm very excited to share the Monarch butterfly Breeding Project, which I made myself. When I was in school we raised some Monarchs and released them when they emerged & matured, it was really cool AND I love to share items that also raise some kind of awareness on important issues when the inspiration strikes me. Saving the Monarch butterflies is definitely one of them! You can read about how to help them here.

Type “ACNH School” into the search query in build mode to find  quickly. You can always find items like this, just begin typing  the title and it will appear.

Always suggested: bb.objects ON, it makes placing items much easier. For further placement tweaking, check out the TOOL mod.

Use the scale up & down feature on your keyboard to make the items larger or smaller to your liking. If you have a non-US keyboard, it may be different keys depending on which alphabet it uses. (I used this to "hang" the backpacks from the hook on the side of the student desk in the preview image above, for instance. To put it at the correct height, raise the backback 2 times.)

I hope you enjoy!

Set contains: -Apple | 1 swatch | 420 poly -Backpack Decor | 6 swatches | 768 poly -Bell | 6 swatches | 880 poly -Blackboard Eraser | 3 swatches | 324 poly -Blackboard - Wall | 7 swatches | 780 poly -Blackboard - Wheels | 7 swatches | 2418 poly -Bonsai Liberated 1-3 | 7,9 ,& 6 swatches | 846, 718, & 844 poly -Bonsai - Moss | 4 swatches | 1277 poly -Bonsai - Pine | 7 swatches | 1198 poly -Bonsai - Sakura | 14 swatches | 1942 poly -Bonsai Shelf - Decluttered | 10 swatches | 238 poly -Bonsai Shelf - Bigger | 10 swatches | 238 poly -Book | 10 swatches | 268 poly -Books - Tied | 5 swatches | 1154 poly -Books - No Strap | 5 swatches | 346 poly -Cafeteria Salad Bar | 9 swatches | 2407 poly -Chair | 6 swatches | 1226 poly -Chair - Plastic (slotted) | 6 swatches | 1212 poly -Chalk | 3 swatches | 98 poly -Computer (functional) | 9 swatches | 742 poly -Cucumber Horse | 1 swatch | 490 poly -Digital Alarm Clock | 11 swatches | 962 poly -Eggplant Cow | 1 swatch | 616 poly -Gradebook | 1 swatch | 236 poly -Lectern (slotted) | 4 swatches | 538 poly -Metal Wall Fan | 8 swatches | 1108 poly -Micro-Library | 6 swatches | 1172 poly -Microscope | 3 swatches | 1226 poly -Monarch Breeding Project | 5 swatches | 10907 poly -Movie Day Cart (functional TV) | 3 swatches | 1024 poly -Nurse's Cot (functions as a loveseat) | 5 swatches | 1150 poly -Pencil | 3 swatches | 34 poly -Planner | 4 swatches | 610 poly -Principal's Bench | 2 swatches | 1980 poly -Rescue Mannequin | 12 swatches | 2310 poly -Science Set | 1 swatch | 2373 poly | Requires Cats & Dogs for animation -Science Set (steam animation) | 1 swatch | 2373 poly -Skeleton Display | 1 swatch | 1354 poly -Smartphone V1 & V2 | 7 swatches each | 458 poly -Student Desk | 6 swatches | 998 poly -Tabletop Microphone | 1 swatch | 940 poly -Teacher Desk | 6 swatches | 656 poly -Teacher Plant | 8 swatches | 1164 poly -Trophy Case | 6 swatches | 2401 poly -Trophy Case - Decluttered & Slotted | 6 swatches | 142 poly -Wall Clock | 10 swatches | 950 poly

📁 Download all or pick & choose (SFS, No Ads): HERE

📁 Alt Mega Download (still no ads): HERE

📁 DL on Patreon

Will be public on September 29th, 2023

As always, please let me know if you have any issues! Happy Simming! 💗

✨ If you like my work, please consider supporting me

★ Patreon  🎉 ❤️ |★ Ko-Fi  ☕️  ❤️ ★ Instagram📷

Thank you for reblogging ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

@sssvitlanz  @maxismatchccworld @mmoutfitters  @coffee-cc-finds  @itsjessicaccfinds  @gamommypeach  @stargazer-sims-finds  @khelga68  @suricringe  @vaporwavesims  @mystictrance15 @public-ccfinds

[td1sims]

Patch 1.100 Mod Updates

Well its been 1 month, but a new patch is out. This mod update affects the following mods:

Developer Access Panel [Dev Version 29]

Teleport Memory System [Version 2.19.6]

Occult Hybrid Unlocker & Stablizer [Version 1.9]

Sage of Mastery Magic [Version 2.18]

This set of mod updates fixes the script changes introduced in the recent version of the game.

Introduction of Script Library

The Script Library is a Framework Injection Library to support my minor mods for easier update and lesser script files with duplicated files.

This mod support the following mods that have been updated to support it (please remove the old script files):

Choose Your Own [Version 1.46]

Celebrity Disguise Modifier [Version 1.1]

Download:

Developer Access Panel [Dev Version 29] [Patreon: Public]

Teleport Memory System [Version 2.19.6] [Patreon: Public] [MTS]

Occult Hybrid Unlocker & Stablizer [Version 1.9] [MTS]

Sage of Mastery Magic [Version 2.18] [MTS]

TD1 Script Library [Version 1.1] [Patreon: Public]

Choose Your Own [Version 1.46] [MTS]

Celebrity Disguise Modifier [Version 1.1] [SFS]

[lifewithcraig]

That MLM or WLW ship you're obsessed with? It's never going to be canon if Trump and Vance ban all the gay books. Here is a list of MAGA attacks on queer literature:

Why this Florida school literally threw LGBTQ-friendly books into a dumpster

DoJ and 16 states back lawsuit targeting LGBTQ+ book ban in Georgia schools

NC school district removed books featuring gay parents. It now faces federal complaint

Right-wing groups, including Moms for Liberty, are trying to ban books that mention LGBTQ+ people from Pennsylvania schools

Only library in Michigan town to close after voters defund it for refusing to ban LGBTQ books

ACLU report reveals surge in LGBTQ+ book ban attempts in Michigan

Two Wisconsin school districts remove library books on LGBTQ+ topics

Arizona Book Ban Targeting Authors Of Color and LGBTQ+ Topics Now in Effect

More than half of 2023's most challenged books have LGBTQ themes

Alabama library flagged a children's book because the author’s last name is 'Gay'

Tennessee law expands book bans in schools, targeting LGBTQ+ content and more

Judge orders books removed from Texas public libraries due to LGBTQ and racial content must be returned within 24 hours

Appeals court lets SF 496, Iowa’s infamous book ban and ‘don’t say gay’ law, go into effect

‘Freedom to read:’ Books on LGBTQ+, racism banned in 32 states

When you are the constant target of bullying, discrimination, and violence for the entirety of your childhood, LGBT representation through books, movies, and social content is one of the only things that make you feel normal, like there is a world outside of your home where you can belong. Please vote tomorrow if you haven't already.

[definitely-not-an-alb]

This isn't exaggeration btw I know someone who works there and her colleagues are calling me the SF Woman. This is very awkward because like. We might end up working together. Anyway, I have achieved Local Cryptid.

My one great joy in life is screwing the reading metrics of my local library

[duckbunny]

conceptually I love the library but in practice its sf&f collection is patchy, dated and thin, and the ebooks are mainly doctor who and also you can only browse the ebook collection in accession order, and no they do not buy any book you request. "libraries have everything you could want' is just a weird take! libraries have budgets. the budgets have been cut. if I want to read this year's Hugo nominees, I cannot do that at the library. like I'm not being contrarian here. libraries are a public resource and they are as wrecked as every other public resource. stop voting Tory so I can read books again.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Nalo Hopkinson’s “Blackheart Man”

I'm OFFLINE UNTIL MID-SEPTEMBER, but you can catch me in person at BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

In Blackheart Man, the new Nalo Hopkinson novel out today from Simon & Schuster, we get a tour-de-force from an author in full control of her prodigious powers: a story that will make you drunk on language, on worldbuilding, and on its roaring, relentless plot:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blackheart-Man/Nalo-Hopkinson/9781668005101

The action is set on Chynchin, a fantastic Caribbean island(or maybe Caribbeanesque – it's never clear whether this is some magical, imaginary world, or some distant future of our own). Chynchin is a multiracial, creole land with a richly realized gift economy that Hopkinson deftly rounds out with a cuisine, languages, and familial arrangements. Blackheart Man boasts some of the finest "in-cluing" (Jo Walton's marvelous term for the way that sf/f writers can assemble a world in their readers' minds with subtle clues that act as a made-to-be-solved puzzle the reader delights in assembling) you could ask for, and before you know it, you've completely internalized this world, with its racial politics, its cultural institutions (like the colloquium, where every scholar is also a musician and getting your doctorate requires scoring a book to be sung – and thus memorized and preserved by a choir of your fellow students), and its relationships (the stable configuration is a thruple, with most women married to two co-husbands).

Chynchin was founded through a slave rebellion, in which the press-ganged soldiers of the iron-fisted Ymisen empire were defeated by three witches who caused them to be engulfed in tar that they magicked into a liquid state just long enough to entomb them, then magicked back into solidity. For generations, the Ymisen have tolerated Chynchin's self-rule, but as the story opens, a Ymisen armada sails into Chynchin's port and a "trade envoy" announces that it's time for the Chynchin to "voluntarily" re-establish trade with the Ymisen.

The story that unfolds is a staple of sf and fantasy: the scrappy resistance mounted against the evil empire, and this familiar backdrop is a sturdy scaffold to support Hopkinson's dizzying, phantasmagoric tale of psychedelic magic, possessed children, military intrigue, musicianship and sexual entanglements.

Hopkinson's protagonist Veycosi is the kind of flawed hero whom you want to give a hug to half the time, and whose neck you want to wring. An aspiring scholar, Veycosi has the brash certainty of youth, convinced that he's the smartest (and sexiest) man in any room, and he's right just often enough to encourage him in a series of self-inflicted catastrophes that build to a terrible crescendo that sets up one of the most satisfying endings you could ask for.

Hopkinson – a SFWA Grand Master and Macarthur Genius Grant awardee – is justly famed as one of the field's great afrofuturist pioneers. Her prodigious talent has been obvious since her debut novel, Brown Girl In the Ring, and her career is an unbroken string of literary feats that went from strength to strength. I've known her since we were both teenagers working at the same library in suburban Toronto, and I never cease to be dazzled by her talent, her wit, and her warmth. But even by those high standards, Blackheart Man is a triumph.

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/20/piche/#cynchin

[starsreminisce]

Gwyn and Azriel are perfect for each other. They embody the classic grumpy x sunshine, which is a recipe for a great friends-to-lovers story.

If Elain represented Azriel's dawn breaking him free from unrequited love for Mor, Gwyn is his sun – a self-sustained source of light that his shadows doesn't fear.

Since SJM doesn't read theories, the likelihood of Azris becoming canon is low (but not impossible). Nonetheless, it won't deter me and other devout members of the Azris church from analyzing every Azris encounter as sexual tension.

One of the most endearing aspects of Gwynriel is their ability to provide a safe space for each other, making it an ideal foundation for their romance. They help each other heal, with Gwyn having seen Azriel at his absolute worst without any discomfort in his presence.

Interestingly, Cassian, known for his easygoing nature, initially made Gwyn apprehensive during her training. If Azriel truly bothered her, she would have avoided him or quit the Valkyries. However, their interactions, carefully crafted by the author, suggest otherwise.

Through Gwyn, Azriel begins to accept the parts of himself he dislikes. Gwyn appreciates his scarred hands, learns to master his lethal gaze, and handles his usual cold demeanor without issue.

Conversely, when Azriel is with Gwyn, he becomes more expressive, talks more, smiles more, and seems to forget about his insecurities. Their comfort with each other is evident, contrasting with his interactions with Elain. Gwyn also takes a genuine interest in his activities, including her initiative to start the Valkyries and learning to handle daggers.

Azriel, in turn, acknowledges and admires Gwyn's strength. He has the potential to help her grow further, potentially taking on a protective role as she ventures beyond the library, given her recent participation in a blood rite.

Gwyn's reluctance to engage in intimacy stems from her need to feel safe, and Azriel's patience and understanding make him the right person for her. He knows when to push and when to pull back.

Gwyn possesses qualities that combine Mor's positivity and Elain's perceived introversion, aligning well with Azriel's personality. He could protect her during challenging moments and offer guidance, knowing she can also defend herself thanks to his teaching.

Their competitive streak adds a playful dynamic to their relationship, evident even in the events of SF. This playfulness could help Azriel become more relaxed.

Indeed, the contrast between their public personas and their private interactions adds depth to their relationship. It's fascinating to see how they each reveal different facets of themselves when they are together.

This dynamic promises to provide a fresh perspective on emotional healing, as it involves a female character playing a pivotal role in helping the male character confront and overcome his trauma. It underscores the idea that healing is not limited by gender roles and that support and understanding can come from unexpected sources. Gwyn's ability to aid Azriel in accepting and moving on from his past traumas is a compelling aspect of their relationship that adds depth to their story.

[cora626]

Belladonna: Belladonna Public Library Rebuild

Good evening. Tonight, I bring to you the Belladonna Public Library. The architecture of a library is really important. I wanted to bring that through on this build while keeping it simple and classic looking. This lot features comfortable seating whether your sim is doing research on one of the city's best organization hand me down computers or just want to sit down on the couch and read. There are vending machines for snacking and great magazines for sale.

As always make a backup of your game before installing this or any DLC into your game to prevent permanent loss of all your hard work in your game.

I used TS2 UC to makeover this lot. This lot is CC free. If there are any issues, please let me know so I can fix and re-upload. Enjoy.

Download [SFS]

More photos under the cut:

[highladyluck]

so uh Vorkosigan, would you recommend it, and if so where do I start, I hear there are reading order issues?

I’m a big fan and I think it would appeal to people who like ‘doing your absolute best to improve and thrive within the unfair constraints you’re given’ as a theme and political milieu. The internal structural storytelling work is particularly fine & makes them very satisfying; structurally they remind me of Diane Diane’s work and that is high praise, she really knows how to build ‘em.

Beyond the obv comparison of Mat Cauthon in his accidentally recruiting the Band of the Red Hand era, it reminds me of a couple series that you might be familiar with or at least have heard of?

Megan Whalen Turner’s King’s Thief series because Miles is essentially a noble rogue fighter & there’s a big focus on culture and politics including the politics of disability, and also because of the enemies to lovers arc.

Arkady Martinez’s Teixcalaanli series in terms of like… coping with an empire you love that doesn’t love you back, and other issues of identity.

Period romances like Pride and Prejudice, and some Georgette Heyer novels (she’s famous for excellent regency romance).

There are a lot of genres including coming of age, adventure, period piece & romance mixed in with the SF, which means you can kind of jump around to suit your mood. It’s a bit like Discworld in that there are multiple potential starting places, but also clear internal arcs that work best if read in chronological order.

I used this guide: https://bookriot.com/vorkosigan-saga-reading-order/ which is mostly chronological with a few exceptions for maximum emotional impact. The guide also explains the omnibus editions (which is part of why it can be confusing to figure out the reading order). Just don’t read in publication order, it makes no sense that way.

I recommend starting with Shards of Honor and then Barrayar if you want to start at the beginning, you want a female POV character, and you are in the mood for some great enemies to lovers romance. (This is the story of Miles’s parents.)

If you’re more in the mood for ‘coming of age adventure where a young man with many problems accidentally recruits a mercenary army’, you can start with The Warrior’s Apprentice and then The Vor Game. (The series is mostly about Miles so this is the ‘straight to the main character please’ version.)

There are some content warnings for sexual assault in Shards of Honor (I’d put it at around the Robert Jordan balance of explicit description vs implication) and sooooo many content warnings for Mirror Dance (physical and psychological torture including sexual assault & exacerbation of a character’s binging and purging eating disorder- it’s handled well but it is more explicit & goes farther than what happens in Shards of Honor.) Komarr has domestic abuse (emotional). Lots of heavy stuff but it is dealt with in a thoughtful and nuanced way, and characters have chances to heal afterwards.

Your library probably has them in physical and ebook form, and you can also find them for around 6-8 per novel as ebooks (the omnibus editions are a better deal as ebooks). A used bookstore with an SF section probably has one or two as well, they’ve been around for 35 years.

[allthingsfern]

You wanna take my picture I; The Castro. San Francisco, 02-10-24.

So, I drove down to SF to take some pictures. On my way down, I wanted to stop at the Marin Civic Center, the classic building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to walk around the indoors and take photos like I did almost 10 years ago. Unfortunately, it was closed. The Marin Public Library was open when I was there back then, but it was also at least two hours earlier when I went the first time.

Oh well.

I drove to the Castro, since it was almost 4:00 p.m. (I left my place late, around 1:00 p.m. and traffic getting to SF was gnarly and traffic in SF is unbearable. Finding parking is close to impossible.) I was hoping to get a couple of interesting people and/or street photos. Well, while I was taking a photo of a pretty pattern on a wall, this young man walked up to me and said, since I was taking pictures, would I take one of him.

Of course, I said yes.

When I looked though my viewfinder, I saw attitude, in a very humorous way. So, I said, "OK, give me more. Gimme something else."

He did.

There are 3 more photos of two more poses, but I am only sharing two of the three photos. My photo of his third pose made us both laugh; it was so naughty. While he was giving me that last pose, I heard laughter behind me and I also saw him looking in the direction of the laughter and laugh. I turned around and realized he was with a group of friends who were enjoying his clowning around for the camera.

I put my camera down and thanked him, and we exchanged wise cracks and he walked away with his friends, all of them talking and laughing about the whole thing. They walked away happy.

That was a good thing.

[onbearfeet]

As requested, here are a few Monster Mash asks based on the "oc asks: not-so-nice edition" list. You decide which characters they're for.

What is a surprising thing your character hides?

What does your character do when they should be sleeping but can't?

What's the worst wound your character has experienced? It can be physical or emotional.

Mwahahahahahaaaaaaa. I think I'll do multiple characters. WARNING: There's mature content in this one, and it's not just canon-typical violence. See the tags if you're worried.

What is a surprising thing your character hides?

Ted has a really beautiful singing voice, even in Man-Thing form. He no longer has the physical equipment to form words in any human language, though, so he's sensitive about it and doesn't let on that he still enjoys singing. But he's sung more than a few lullabies to Jack when he's been asleep or in a coma or whatever. And Alpine gets funny little children's melodies or goofy love songs when it's just the two of them. She accepts this as no less than the worship she deserves, of course.

Elsa is shockingly generous and tells no one but her accountant about it. She inherited an absolutely stupid amount of money from her father's estate, and she IMMEDIATELY stopped using his fortune to fund his "crusade", so she's essentially sitting on a dragon's hoard. She took almost nothing with her when she ran away, so she's lived poor for most of her adult life and is deeply sympathetic to other people in that situation, not that she'll admit it. She had her finance pro shut down the murder-cult fund and set up a clean new fund to support whatever charity she damn well pleases. She's still trying to think of ideas and will probably ask the boys eventually, but just for a start, every public library in the state got a healthy donation, and every shelter she stayed in that treated its inhabitants halfway decently got a bigger one. She's also looking into funding--founding, if she has to--an organization defending the rights and interests of homeschooled children, especially those in high-control environments. Elsa was homeschooled for much of her education according to Ulysses' rather eccentric tastes, and she had to teach herself an awful lot of actual education out of the library. And that's before all the trouble she had as a non-emancipated minor who didn't have her own copies of her identity documents.

God, what DOESN'T Jack hide? He's been alive long enough that there's a huge gray zone of stuff he might have failed to mention because he doesn't want people to know OR because it just never came up. He obviously hasn't discussed his family of origin in detail, at least not with Elsa or Bucky, but I don't consider that surprising. I'm tempted to say his hidden side is something sweet and wholesome, but that's not surprising either. If I said he was hiding something terrible he or the wolf had done, that probably wouldn't surprise most people at all. If I had to guess ... the only SURPRISING thing I can think of is his spirituality, which is complex and deeply personal to him. His family might have been Orthodox, but he's got a lot of Catholic guilt written all over him, and the curse only complicates that more. I don't think he's talked to anyone about what he does or doesn't believe in a hundred years or more. He certainly hasn't talked to me.

Bucky was a sex worker in a time-displaced brothel. Okay, that's both a joke AND an oversimplification, but the first thing I thought of when I saw this question was that Bucky had the same problem as Jack: old, complicated, obviously full of both good traits and horrible trauma so nothing is SURPRISING. Then I remembered that around 2016, I handwrote a story establishing that Bucky had worked for a while as an artist at Lady Sally's. If you've never read Spider Robinson's Callahan books, they're a series of short SF stories and novels centered on a bar run by (spoiler alert) a time traveler who's trying to save the world retroactively by preventing the Cold War from going hot. They are brilliant and hilarious and they formed me as a person. There is also a spin-off series focusing on Callahan's wife, Lady Sally McGee, who does the same thing but with a brothel. The reasoning is complex, but the stories are delightful and some of the first positive, sympathetic, relatively clear-eyed depictions of sex workers (or artists, as they're called here and who am I to disagree?) I ever encountered. So it is my headcanon that young Bucky Barnes started washing dishes at Lady Sally's as a teenager, and she kept an eye on the kid because he had a lot of history ahead of him. He worked as an artist for at least a year before the war, not least because it was the only job in the late 30s that paid well enough to let him afford Steve's medicines. (Sally was keeping an eye on Buck's "roommate", too.) Bucky never told Steve, but he was actually quite a talented and popular artist, and he liked working there. He gave notice when he and Steve finally admitted their feelings for each other, wanting to be monogamous with the man he loved, but Sally insisted he come to her if he or Steve ever needed anything in the future, and she slipped him money from time to time via his former coworkers--who, as far as Steve knew, were just girls Bucky dated to keep up appearances. The connection came in handy, too, when the Winter Soldier was sent to kill a man at Lady Sally's and the staff were able to send him away again thanks to his half-remembered connection to the place. Lady Sally's is closed in our time, but you never know when Bucky might get a phone call from the Lady.

What does your character do when they should be sleeping but can't? I'll leave Ted out of this one on the grounds that his biology is different enough that "should be sleeping" may not apply.

So, on a sleepless night at Bloodstone Manor? Jack bakes. He's got access to a well-stocked kitchen now, anything he makes WILL get eaten, and baking is less likely to wake anyone else than playing his guitar or running endless zoomie laps. He also feels a little better when he can do something kind (and profoundly human) out of his emotional turmoil. Helping people helps Jack, and if there are no monsters to rescue or curses to break, he can at least make sure his people have something delicious for breakfast. (Or a midnight snack. Let's face it, somebody else will wake up from a nightmare in an hour.)

Elsa is currently the queen of maladaptive coping mechanisms. She's cut down on drinking since the boys moved in, much to everyone's relief, but she's still in rough shape emotionally. Although she sleeps better than the others thanks to her sleep-anywhere hunter training, she does occasionally have nights when her brain won't shut up, and her solution to that is to run herself into the ground. She'll hit the dojo for as many hours as it takes, usually. Bucky is trying to coax her into something less destructive in his unique sergeant-y way. The sentence "Your magic rock is not an excuse to bust your knuckles again, so wear some damn gloves!" has been uttered.

Bucky is actually the best adjusted on this front, mostly because his sleep disturbances are the worst. (Jack has more traumatic memories overall. Bucky’s are more concentrated, and he's had to heal brain damage on top of it.) Thanks to his time in Wakanda, he's learned some basic meditation techniques and some therapy exercises to help himself calm down a little. Alpine has some kind of extra sense for when Bucky is in distress, so on the rare occasion she's not already in bed with him when he wakes up screaming, she'll come running in immediately. He usually ends up either curled around her, doing breathing exercises, or settling down in bed with a book while she purrs on his chest until the tension finally melts out of him. Bucky isn't healed by any stretch of the imagination, but by God he's trying.

What's the worst wound your character has experienced? It can be physical or emotional.

Ted Sallis died of his injuries from a horrific accident, drowning in a swamp while his super-soldier serum burned him from the inside out after the so-called love of his life betrayed him. That's the worst for him. Only Jack knows about it, and even he doesn't know it all. Nothing else comes close.

Jack is pretty good at toughing out physical pain by now, so his worst wounds are definitely emotional. I think the worst one was finding out that his sister, Lissa, had died. It was a natural death, but he didn't find out until years later, and she was his last connection to who he was before the wolf. The wound has never fully healed.

Elsa's worst wound is what she told Bucky about in "Bucky Meets the Legion of Monsters": realizing that the monsters she'd been hunting, even without her father's input, had mostly been people. That's an identity-shattering experience that has fundamentally changed her.

Bucky’s worst physical wound was losing his arm. His worst emotional wound was either when he realized Steve wasn't coming to save him from Hydra a second time or when he realized Steve wasn't coming back from his time jaunt. Bucky is profoundly loyal and loving, and he is constantly disappointed by other people's failure to meet him where he is. Thus, he doesn't trust easily, but Steve has always had Bucky’s entire heart, and Steve's broken it twice now. It wasn't intentional the first time and we don't yet know what happened the second, but like Jack, Bucky is walking around with an unhealed wound in his soul. If Steve ever reappears in Bucky’s life, there will be Consequences. Even if Bucky will always forgive Steve and would take him back without hesitation, the rest of the squad will have serious concerns about a fella who'd abandon Bucky Barnes two whole times.