Hi, guys! I know I know. BBC Merlin in 2026? I was missing this show and felt like a little themed battle may be nice. Head over to iconbattles to check out the details here.
Finished Victoria's Secret - still slightly meh about it - could possibly have engaged a bit with a longer history of 'Monarch has favourite/s who are not Quite Our Sort', even if historically the gender issues in play here were different??? Also had a bit of feeling that QV was not entirely NOT treating John Brown in the light of A Very Large Faithful Dog devoted to her to which she was also devoted and which she insisted on imposing upon people who hated dogs.... Thought it was good on her awful childhood, though.
Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies (2024) - telling stories about women telling stories, i.e. the precieuses at the time of Louis XIV, the stories they were telling and their stories and how those reflected one another.
Susan Ertz, Woman Alive (1935), my attention having been drawn towards it by a mention of its having been republished. I have a copy of the first edition, Ertz being one of the early C20th middlebrow women novelists in whom I have had an interest going back decades, but not sure whether I ever actually read this. It is sf Of The Period, in which someone is cast forward into The Future by sciento-psychic means, this is his account. And okay, is not (unlike a cluster from around the same time) about the dystopic crushing iron heel of fascistic misogyny, is about the dysoptic outcome of a war in which germ warfare has killed all the women. Except one who has survived courtesy of mad scientist neighbour's experimental process.
Points for her being a young women of education, character, and something of a backstory conveying a certain cynicism, but she still concedes to the agenda of marrying and going forth and having babbyz, though I think everyone is a bit optimistic that she will pop out multiple daughters and even so, we do not think this will Save Humanity. (Also, no-one seems to suggest she should have Plurality of Mates, surely that would be advisable?) But then it just stops with our narrator pinging back to his present day.
Most recent Literary Review
Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington (1988), which I really enjoyed and am now looking out for more of hers - think I have copies of some somewhere?
Robert Barnard, Death of a Literary Widow (1979)- everybody in it is a bit of a caricature, not just the American academic.
Emily Tesh, The Incandescent (2025), because I have been hearing well of it. Pretty good, but is it just having Read A Lot that made one character look like a honking parade of red flags?
On the go
I think I am actually giving up on I Am A Woman, I don't think Being A Sad Lesbian is enough to provide a rounded character? Maybe it gets better?
Nibbling at various things. Realise that it is 2 weeks to next Pilgrimage discussion and I do not want to read Honeycomb too far in advance.
Hello, all! For round 62:Hearts & Flowers in fandom10in30 I went with multiple fandoms and a set of flowers & one set of hearts. All icons are free to take and use. Fandom & celeb names are under the icons.
This Flash game by Argentine developer Daniel Benmergui presents a scene with a woman in a rowboat looking up at a man sitting on the moon. As the player you can snap photos of different portions of the scene and move them around, leading to different resolutions of the scenario. Is this some sort of romantic game that I'm too aro to understand? I do remember this game making the rounds in the late 2000s and being held up as evidence on the pro side of the burgeoning "can video games be art?" debate. Personally I have always found this debate tedious and misguided, proving nothing except that "art" is a poorly defined term which is used to arbitrarily judge elements of culture as worthy or unworthy. So that's probably why I never clicked any of the links to I Wish I Were the Moon.
Coming to it now, my strongest impression is that it doesn't demonstrate anything about art, but it does demonstrate (yet again) that I am extremely aromantic. The game is supposed to be a representation of a love triangle; I do know that. But it makes my brain do the thing that it's been doing my entire life, which is to interpret romantic scenarios that I don't understand as anything other than what they are intended to be. (My brain does this especially with songs, which tend to be worded vaguely enough that it's easy to do. This breakup song could be about a friendship turning sour! This passionate love ballad could be about any kind of love and it doesn't even have to be about a person! It could be about a city or a fandom or a celestial body!!)
So what is the moon in this game? It's something the man loves which is separating him from the woman in the rowboat. Who says it has to be a person? It could be his career or his faith or his family or just about anything! I guess you could argue that one of the essential qualities of art is that it's open to interpretation, but let's not and say we did.
The 2008 version of I Wish I Were the Moon is playable in a Flash emulator here. In 2022 the developer also offered a free remaster on his itch.io page here, but I have to say I think it lacks some of the charm of the original.
Used my game/drama/etc boardgame. Last challenge here. I did good though I couldn't beat Katayama in P5X. >> First time I'll be doing more than one game/etc challenge in one month.
Avatar:
Superhero/Ride Kamens Skill: Beat trap tile once
Roll #1:
A 5, romance element. I'll do the next route of Brother's Conflict, hope the guide is accurate this time...
Roll #2:
A 6, favorite genre. Fantasy so Mahoutsuki no Yakusoku.
Roll #3:
A 7, prompt: kemonomimi. Hmm I'll go with kemonomimi side character with NU: Carnival.
Roll #4:
A 10, trap tile - used skill. New roll: another 10. Reward: Paradox Live.
Chapter 6.4: Oh right, Bradley wanted to go out and attack the minister's people surrounding the castle, but suddenly disappeared after sneezing.
Drummond: “How DARE they turn me into a mouse like that…! This is my chance to avenge myself for that squeaky humiliation! …I mean, SNEAKY humiliation!”
🤣
Now Shylock's chest is on fire!
Chapter 6.5:
Snow: “It appears as though we’re finally starting to feel the effects of the Great Calamity.”
White: “We ventured too close in our last battle and each were injured in ways we could not see.”
Oh no...can't Akira heal the damage?
The minister's people are infuriating, so scared of magic that they turn to murder. :|
Chapter 6.5:
White: “This will only grow more out of control should we harm them. You must bear it.”
Faust: “I have been. For a long time now.”
Faust: “You know exactly how THAT ended the first time around. It’s always the same with humans…”
What...what happened last time?
The new wizards show up and it's funny to think the minister wanted to wrap this up before Arthur heard of it...and here Arthur is, having been summoned.
Chapter 6.7: Guess Lennox and Faust know each other?
I’m a 21-year-old college student living in a house with five other students. There are three women and three men. We’re having an issue keeping our kitchen clean, and I am the only one who consistently cleans. I keep the floors and counters clean, wash the piles of dishes in the sink, wash dish towels, etc. Anytime I’ve asked people to chip in, they never follow through. I’ve tried not doing the cleaning, but then the kitchen gets disgusting and I end up caving.
I’m not completely innocent when it comes to not always washing my dishes immediately and being messy, but I feel like I clean more often than anyone else. A general chore chart doesn’t work, and I am tired of feeling like my roommate’s mother. How can I get them to take some initiative and do more of the heavy lifting that always falls on me?
Nothing. Still have not attempted books. Currently getting over a migraine. I have to say, if I am now down to one migraine a week (which would be great, actually) I don't see why it has to be on Comics Wednesday two weeks in a row so that all my comics reviews are ass because I am clearly having difficulty comprehending comics.
Perhaps I could wait until Thursday to read them? No. It must be Wednesday. Otherwise the internet will spoil me.
Title:Shane's Tattoo on AO3 Artist:mific Rating: Gen Fandom: Heated Rivalry Characters/Pairings: Ilya Rozanov Notes: Made in Procreate for the tattoo-style challenge. The second in this pair.
A medical drama that takes the medicine part very seriously and is very careful in its messages about bias and prejudice within the medical system. A story that takes all its characters seriously, and presents all of them as three-dimensional people with their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes, who aren't always in top form, who fail some things and excel at others ... characters that aren't uniquely good or bad, and I mean that in the way that I don't feel like the story/the writers tell us who to like. A story in which the bad guy is budget cutting and the structural bigotry in the medical system (half joking). A story in which the patients are treated with respect.
It's intense, so after having watched the first season I needed a little break and haven't started the currently ongoing season 2 yet, but I definitely will.
I've seen some of the discourse on tumblr and it's mostly about how some characters are good(TM) or bad(TM) because of how they handle some situations, or interact with other characters. I'm curious to see how I'll think about that when I watch season 2, but my guess is that at the basis of it all will be this: People are complex. (And also fandom racism, misogyny and antisemitism. Gah.)
The format of the show is very interesting too: each episode (which is almost 1h long) tells us about 1 in-story hour of a shift in the ER. It makes you feel the intensity of these days, how much happens at the same or in a short time, how long such a day can get. I feel that it also gives you the impression of almost being a part of it.
Like Takashima Yurina, Kawamoto Saya was a draft member who was moved into Team 4, however, it must have been like the two were ships passing in the night as Sayaya was one of AKB48's first generation draft members, alongside Goto Moe, Arai Yuki, and others, and she did not join Team 4 until 2015 when Takahashi Juri was appointed captain. Before all that, however, there were auditions, and Team B!
Being selected for the draft pool in September 2013, it only took a couple of months before Sayaya was placed in Team B, then under the leadership of Umeda Ayaka, joining Katayama Haruka, who had returned to the team a year prior. Another handful of months and Sayaya was promoted to being an official member of the team, after which point she was amongst of the ranks of Team B until that shuffle the year after when she was finally moved over to the new new Team 4, where she started racking up the hits, joining the senbatsu for the celebratory Kibouteki Refrain, and appearing roughly every other single, with her most noticeable absence being between Halloween Night and Kimi wa Melody, and her best streak being between High Tension and the hauntingly French sounding Negaigoto no Mochigusare.
During this time, Sayaya was of note enough to earn herself a temporary exchange student position with JKT48 in 2018. As she took up duties in Jakarta as a member of Team T, Stephanie Pricilla Indarto Putri, then a member of Team J, joined AKB—but what kills me about this moment is that there's nothing concrete to really preserve it! Stephanie did not participate in the AKB general election, which, fair, I can understand a reluctance to do this as she may have seen it as setting herself up for disappointment, but the fact that neither girl was snuck into the senbatsu for a single for their temporary groups frustrates me so much. This would have been cool! Everyone loves a guest appearance! AKS, do I have to do everything for you?! Ahem. Perhaps I'm asking too much. In truth, the exchange was in place for only just over a month so there probably wasn't time to do anything really significant, but that just frustrates me even more.
From 2018 up until 2020, when we were in and out of lockdown in the fever dream of the pandemic and events were limited, Sayaya continued to work away as a member of Team 4 until, at the last, in August, she announced her graduation during a livestream, her final performance being a stream filmed live at the theatre, a last farewell with her friends where the only audience was watching from their homes.
I'm sure no questioned this arrangement at the time, but now, looking back, it strikes me as terribly sad. With a whimper, not a bang, Sayaya left AKB, but the significance of her role was undeniable. Sayaya and many members around her were not given the attention of the departing Kami 7 or the Sakura/Jurina/Nana axis, but they were the members who carried the group during moments of change and for that, I feel that Sayaya and others like her definitely deserved better than graduating in an empty theatre.
Fandom: Pride and Prejudice Pairings/Characters: Darcy/Elizabeth, Georgiana, Jane/Bingley Rating: Teen Length: 75k Creator Links: anghraine Theme: siblings, old fandoms, book fandoms, novel length, AU, family,
Summary: Without Lady Catherine's interference, a family catastrophe throws Darcy and Elizabeth down wildly different paths.
Reccer's Notes: This series is very much Darcy/Elizabeth, but they spend a lot of it going down separate paths. And on those separate paths, their closest relationships are with their siblings--Darcy and Georgiana, Jane and Elizabeth. I love the care that is taken with all of the different relationships in this story.
Fandom: Marvel Pairings/Characters: Steve/Bucky Rating: Gen Length: 4k Creator Links:what_alchemy Theme: siblings, AU, family
Summary: Bucky was the eldest of four.
Reccer's Notes: Bucky has four younger siblings, and in 2015 they are elderly, crotchety, and determined to go see Steve Rogers. Getting there is an ordeal, and what they find there is a surprise. I love the way the characters are so well-drawn and realistic, and I love the humor.
I have slightly more brain now and maybe enough energy to post more? Let's find out. I'm sure you've missed me posting about random video games.
Anyway, Slay the Spire 2, the sequel to my most favorite roguelike deckbuilder Slay the Spire came out in Early Access two weeks ago, and is apparently stunningly popular -- it had 500,000 concurrent players its first weekend, beating basically everything else on Steam at the time, which no one was really expecting from, you know, an indie card game.
I haven't played it enough to give a full review, because even in EA there is a lot more content -- there are five characters, two of which are brand new, all of which have new cards, and there are all sorts of new mechanics and events I haven't discovered yet. So far I have now beaten what exists of the game with four of the five characters and I know I haven't seen anywhere near everything yet. I think it's currently balanced harder than the original game, but the subreddit is full of people saying it is way too easy, so I guess we will see what happens when the balance patches start coming out.
But the really cool thing about this game is the multiplayer, which we only found out existed in a trailer that they released, like, two weeks before the actual game. It has co-op with up to four players! I only have one friend who plays this game, as far as I know -- gelishan, who actually introduced me to the original game -- and we played a game of it the other night, and I have to say that co-op is absolutely the most fun way to experience the game. It helps to be on voice chat, so you can coordinate things like 'who are we targeting first" or "if you have anything inflicting Vulnerable, please play that first" or "do you need this Strength Potion" or "do you want me to play Piercing Wail this turn so you don't take 35 damage straight to the face" or whatever, but I guess theoretically you could play it in silence and just deal with the fact that everyone is playing their turns simultaneously.
Anyway, that is clearly the way this game has always been meant to be played and I need to do this again at some point. The co-op multiplayer is absolutely amazing! I don't know that I would recommend the game in its current single-player state to people who haven't played the original, just because it is already a hard game and it helps to have some idea of how three of the five characters play, if you're going to play it by yourself. But if you are playing multiplayer, I think you can just go for it and you and your friends can take turns carrying each other through the game.
So, yeah, that's what I've been up to, as I slowly regain some brain. Slaying the Spire anew!
(Also it's really weird to actually talk to someone you have known on the internet for, like, 25 years, but you've never heard their voice before.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abyss_valkyrie
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fandom10in30 I went with multiple fandoms and a set of flowers & one set of hearts. All icons are free to take and use. Fandom & celeb names are under the icons.
![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
anghraine 