onedeadplotbunny | Member Posts

lassarina

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flipflop_diva

This entry is a reimagining of

muchtooarrogant's entry from Week 2, Reversion! Thank you for letting me borrow your characters!!

( She watched her parents fighting from the barely cracked door of her bedroom )

This was written for the new season of

therealljidol, Wheel of Chaos! If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me and all of the other amazing contestants. You can find all the entries here. Look for the voting post on Friday night!

peaceful_sands

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donutsweeper

I threw together some Battleship recs for the last two weeks'

recthething community rec posts (mostly art but a little fic) and just remembered I should share it here too (creators will still be anon until Wednesday):

Art recs:
Carmilla
- Art: Your Sleep Demon (delightfully creepy)

DCU
- Art: Just a little more, Superman... A young Jason helps Clark to safety.(gorgeous, particularly the lighting)

Dracula
- Art: Midnight The scene after Dracula leaves Jonathan and Mina's room. (the emotions in this!)

Dredge (Video Game)
- [Art] Sunset Scene Summary: A small atmospheric piece.(absolutely beautiful, no canon knowledge needed digital art piece)

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- [Art] The Ghost Hunter AU Summary: No-dialogue comic imagining if the events of the book were loosely adapted into a found footage horror piece centered on Ahab's quest to prove the existence of the spirit Moby-Dick. (so many details in this comic and so well done!)

Original Works
- [Art] She was a fairy This art was inspired by samiabenchaou_ on Instagram. She’s a hijabi fashion influencer. (beautiful)
- A Regency grape angel enjoying some tea with her pets (so sweet)
- Art: Madame Poire A woman wearing a pear-themed historical dress. (wonderfully detailed)
- The Fruit Heist Glorbo, Barry, and Pearry stealing fruits. (All of the teams' mascots and friends, so cute!)
- [art] Glorby Be (Manuscript art! Amazing)
- Battleship 2025: Paper Dolls (A series of paper dolls of Glorbo and others that can be cut out with clothing and whatnot to add, so neat!)
- [Art] The Tower Sumary: A mermaid is... happy to see the lighthouse keeper she's been watching. (beautiful, if slightly creepy charcoal/chalk/pastels on paper piece)
- [Art] Monster in 8B Summary: The shadows aren't cruel. (amazingly creepy)

fic recs:
Eureka/Stargate SG1 crossover
- Bugs in the System Summary: SG-1's visit to Eureka has some unexpected results. (Jack Carter and Sam Carter are cousins and amazing in this)

Leverage/DCU crossover
- https://archiveofourown.org/works/68406316" target="_blank">They Meet Again Summary: At a charity gala, Bruce Wayne meets a beautiful woman he's run into many, many times before. (great Bruce voice and so many neat little details)

Star Trek Lower Decks
- Battlesheep Potemkin Summary: First officer's log, stardate, uh, computer, add the stardate in. The Cerritos is responding to a distress call from the USS Potemkin, an Excelsior-class starship that was exploring the Gra'pe-2025 system. Upon arrival, we found Potemkin adrift in orbit of the third planet, which is currently surrounded by an ion storm. There is no sign of the crew. However, the ship is filled with hundreds of strange mammalian life-forms. (hilarious)

The last team, Lemon, cleared their final board today and those works will go live tomorrow. I will be very interested in hearing from their team (and everyone else) when the feedback post is put up. I don't usually comment on those posts but I might this year, depending on what the mods say in the first place about how the game might change for next year (there was already mention in the discord that the tag count will drop back down to 400 from the 574 of this year which is such a relief). Without some mod changes (or at least issue acknowledgements) I'll have to think very hard about signing up again next year, which is a shame since I'm one of the very few who've done it every year but the things I love about it are starting to be outweighed but what I find stressful or outright dislike. Sigh.

Now that battleship's winding down hopefully I'll have time to tackle a few things on my to-watch and to-read lists. I would really like to get through the official Guardian translation before the Guardian-read-along finishes up but I am just not sure I'll manage it. (And then there's my poor MDL to-watch list. So long despite efforts earlier this year to work my way through it. Somehow, I keep adding to it. Too many good shows/movies out there I guess.) I also have to start thinking about Yuletide and what I'll want to nominate for it.

Crafting-wise I've been working on a blanket my daughter 'commissioned' from me (aka she bought the yarn). I'm about 3 skeins into the 7 I think it'll need for the length she wants. It's turning out nice, but will still take a while to finish. After that (or maybe during a break from that) I need to do another bread/bagel bag rug because my stack of bags is starting to get unwieldly. Not sure what I'll do with it/where I'll put it once I make it, but that's a future me problem. I also have a string bag I was designing that I ran out of crochet thread for that I need to get back to now that I've bought more. (Here's hoping my notes still make sense)

Anyway, hope all of you are doing well and August is being nice to you! :)

3rdragon

I haven't been here in ages, but

kadharonon inspired me, and I have a lot of random scribble fragments sitting around on my hard drive, so I figured I could post some of them.

Let's see... I found this the other day:

Lonely Chemist Finds Solace Among the Octopi

Simone Beauville and her husband just celebrated their union in an aquarium wedding. “My colors were baby blue and teal,” she said, grinning, when asked about the decor. “It goes so nicely with white.”

The couple met a few months ago at that very same aquarium. “It has been something of a whirlwind romance,” Simone admits, “but from the first, we felt a very deep connection. A deep-sea connection, you might say.”

The 32-year-old works at a high-powered pharmaceutical company in the Boston area, and says that she values the opportunity to relax in the evenings after a long day developing drugs to treat cancer and auto-immune disorders.

“I’d been looking for someone for a long time,” she says, when asked about how the two met. “You go through online dating, and it’s very grueling. A real meat market, and let me tell you, a lot of the guys you meet are definitely past their sell-by date, so to speak. It’s just exhausting.

“I was with a girlfriend at the aquarium, talking about my most recent date and how awful it was. It got to the point where I said to her, ‘You know, I’d rather date one of the fellows here than any of the guys I’ve met online. And, like, I kind of noticed that he looked interested, so after she had to go, I came back, and just started talking to him. He was so easy to talk to, didn’t talk over me, or get bored, or change the subject to something else.”

( Read more... )

mistressofmuses

Last night, as we were watching a really atrociously bad movie, I heard it! The first katydid of the season!

(It was very loud... while I couldn't see it, it must have been on the side of the building somewhere.)

Alex did hear one back in June while I was out of town, but neither of us heard another one since.

Jokingly I told him, as he took Bella out a couple hours later, to "let me know if you see any katydids!"

He came rushing back in about ten minutes later with something closed in his hand, saying "Come quick!"

I'm impressed that on the very first night we heard a katydid, he also found one, haha. He said he nearly stepped on the poor thing, which was sitting on the sidewalk.

So we got one of the katydid habitats set back up real quick. We even had some frozen green beans in the freezer, so heated those up and stuck those on a stick for him, ha.

Greenbean 2!

I believe this is another male, though we haven't heard him click yet. He did chow down on some green beans, though!

None of our katydid eggs from last year ever hatched. It's quite possible that they weren't fertile, as we didn't have the male and female housed together for very long (unless she'd had some relations before we caught her.) I don't know enough about their lifecycle to know if perhaps the eggs require a cold period over the winter, in which case the steady room temperature of the apartment may not have worked for them. Alas.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment
Current Music: Revelations - Poets of the Fall

beatrice_otter

hermionesviolin posted: Massachusetts Universal Voting Restoration

For anyone registered to vote in Massachusetts -- you can sign up to get reminded when it's time to officially sign papers to put on the Massachusetts ballot a measure to repeal the Massachusetts constitutional amendment that took the right to vote away from people serving felony sentences.

From an email from Progressive Mass:
Unlock Democracy in Massachusetts

In 2000, Massachusetts passed a constitutional amendment that took away voting rights from people incarcerated for a felony conviction. This stripping of rights was in response to political organizing happening in prison. The Empowering Descendant Communities to Unlock Democracy project and allies aim to get voting rights restoration on the statewide ballot. If you are a registered voter in Massachusetts, please take a minute to fill out our pledge form now: https://tinyurl.com/uvrpledge. Once the Attorney General approves the language, organizers will reach out to those who filled out the pledge with dates/locations for nearby signature collection efforts.

The EDC to Unlock Democracy is is committed to ensuring that democracy does not stop at prisons and jails in Massachusetts. It is a collaborative project between the Democracy Behind Bars Coalition, the African American Coalition Committee at MCI-Norfolk, Healing our Land, Inc., and more. To get in touch email EDCtoUnlockDemocracyMA@gmail.com.

frogfarm

Updates and posts in general have been getting more infrequent. And while probably very few of my AO3 readers actually read this journal, I'll just put it here for general consumption that all my fanfic progress has been going slower this year. Luckily for me, it's for good reasons and other things I enjoy. Unfortunately for my small number of readers, that doesn't show any sign of changing soon. Right now my hope and plan is to finish one other project in the next couple of months, which should free me up to put some focus back on the Portal/Terminator crossover, which is still my main interest -- not to mention the post-Predator story from Anna's perspective, the epic Xena wank short sequel that focuses on side characters instead of the main ones, the Knight Rider reboot pilot episode screenplay, and maybe even the semi-original City of Heroes story.

Fingers crossed. Thanks for your interest in my humble creations.

lassarina

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mistressofmuses

I mentioned it briefly in my roundup of last week, but never actually posted about it, but...

Bella got two more AKC titles!

She got the first level of the CGC, the "Canine Good Citizen" test, which tests a mix of temperament and training, seeing if the dog behaves politely and obediently, even around unfamiliar people and dogs.

And then, because the CGC counts for a full half of the other test, she also got the first level of "Trick Dog," which really is just... stupid pet tricks, lol.

There are higher levels of both tests, but she now has the lowest levels of both. With a little work, I think she'll be able to get the higher CGC tests completed. Not sure if we'll have her go any farther with trick dog. She absolutely knows plenty of stupid pet tricks, but I don't think she knows *all* the ones they ask for, and we don't really have a reason to teach her those *except* to possibly do those tests.

Some of the upper level CGC tasks are more challenging, but those skills are actually useful to have even outside the test, unlike training to do silly tricks, haha.

The tests were last... Thursday, I think, so I was at work and didn't get to go, but Alex said she did pretty much perfectly on both! I didn't doubt she *could*, but was a little afraid she'd be too excited and flub some of her leash manners or something. She did great!

I was hoping to have ribbons to show off her new titles, but she didn't get any. ;_; Alex isn't sure if the evaluator just forgot, or if she didn't have any. (Though Bella has a FastCAT next week with the same organization that the evaluator is with, so he will ask then. We're hoping to put together a display for all her ribbons, even though I know it's silly, so I'd like to have them if we can!)

The beaft.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: my apartment

yuuago

Just the other day I was wondering when Mariel Buckley will come out with something new. Looks like she has an album, titled Strange Trip Ahead, that'll be released in October!

Two tracks are up on Bandcamp already, and if this is the vibe for the whole album, then I'm really looking forward to it. It's consistent with her usual style, but new material.

Her sound is unpolished rough-at-the-edges country; it reminds me of the stuff from the '90s and earlier that I grew up with, except also with a vaguely gay vibe. Very nostalgic without actually being from the period.

lebateleur

I don't really notice the wildfire smoke unless looking down from the top of a hill, but egads, are my eyeballs aware that it's here. Despite the prevailing conditions I did manage to get some solid reading in.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo
I came to this series pretty late, in part because there's a lot of overlap between Grishaverse fans and fans of other YA series phenoms (think Twilight) that rank high among my hatereads. ( I did not hateread this book; I actually enjoyed it. ) So, yeah. There was a lot here that should not have worked for me, but it did. This is not a convention-defying read, but it does genre very well, and I enjoyed the ride.

What I Am Currently Reading

Siege and Storm – Leigh Bardugo
It says something about my enjoyment of this book's predecessor that upon finishing it, I jumped directly into this one.

The Third Revolution – Elizabeth Economy
I've got about two more chapters to go before I finish this one.

[.....] – [.....]
Being the second draft of a friend's novel. So far, I'm really enjoying it.

The Hacker's Playbook – Peter Kim
I've started poking at this one again as a possible follow-on book once I've finished the Economy

What I'm Reading Next

This week I picked up Feminisims by Lucy Delap.

これで以上です。

white_aster

Terrible Writing Advice - Military Science Fiction (Youtube, 11minish)

Ok, I found this in looking for something else, and have to share. I love the satire here. My fave, "Let's see how close we can get to accidentally advocating fascism!" and (when discussing whether to flesh out the political situation around your military's actions) "...but when has war ever had anything to do with politics?"

white_aster

I know I'm Getting Political every now and then, here. I don't feel like I can help it. I'm a science person. All of this has been PERSONALLY affecting me and my livelihood, and is likely to for a very long time. And I just...I don't want people to forget about what's happening here. I feel like once the shock value wears off and NIH is out of the headlines, people forget. And this whole thing seems like such madness if you give it half a thought...so that's why I liked this link about why this Administration is targeting NIH and academic funding. Why cut funding for cancer research and education? it doesn't make sense, right?

“WHY is this happening? Why would anyone want to blow up cancer research in the U.S.? When is cancer political?”

That’s probably the most common question asked about the recent devastation at NIH. Yes, Project 2025 talked about some of this, and Chris Rufo vowed to take over federal grantmaking. But before January 20th, there was no major public discussion of this level of attack on NIH, medical research, and cures for disease.

So why is this happening?

Sadly, it’s a natural evolution of the agenda of the American right.

I wish that this was not true. But this is where we are, now, and honestly, no one should be surprised. As this article points out, Karl Rove talked about this a long time ago, and it's been brewing for decades. This isn't conspiracy theory here, or hyperbole. Karl Rove, one of the most influential Republican strategists of the 20th century, flat out SAID that this was the plan.

Rove goes on:

”Bigger government strengthens the Democratic Party. It generates federal employees who will mostly vote Democratic, and government programs whose beneficiaries will have reason to feel grateful and protective toward a large central government.”

“Conversely, smaller government helps the Republicans. The more taxes are cut, the more programs are privatized, the fewer strictures put on economic activity, the more people feel that their security and well-being depend on markets and not government or unions, the more the fundamental rationale of the Democratic Party erodes.”

And here we are. This thinking does not care about actually caring for people, or making their lives better, or curing diseases. It cares about gathering votes. And the more precarious you make peoples' lives, the less they feel they can trust the government or that the government is looking out for them and their health, the more they go "well, why should I pay for that? Stop taking my taxes, if you're not going to help me!" The more they don't want to prepay for anything "just in case" (which is how the federal safety net and investment in scientific research works), because they're afraid of getting screwed. Thus, there is HUGE POLITICAL INCENTIVE to convince people that government agencies are inept, corrupt, and/or a waste of tax dollars.

I repeat, there is huge political incentive to convince people that government agencies are useless or broken or corrupt. Even if it's not true. Break confidence in those institutions to gain political capital (to sow doubt that the NIH is useful and helpful), then break the institutions (cut NIH funding and staff to the bone, now that the public is now doubtful of the NIH and won't immediately scream bloody murder), then point to the broken institutions and say, "look, they're broken, you shouldn't be paying for them!"

This is the plan. This has, sadly, always been the plan.

mistressofmuses

This week I used my Malayan tapir sticker in the hopes of summoning the tapir at the zoo. It worked!

This week was pretty good. I did get a lot of my intended goals done. We had a good time on my days off, and while work felt extremely busy, it was fine. I did get some writing done, though on reviews and goal-setting, not on fiction. I was glad that I finished a couple books, even if I did so at the very end of the month! Bella had a good week, in that she got two new AKC titles: the first level of Canine Good Citizen and the first level for Trick Dog. The week felt quite productive overall, though there are a few things I should try harder to do next week.

Goals for the week:

I did finish reading Night's Edge
I wrote up my reviews of the books I read in July
I did my getyourwordsout check in: 5260 words written in July, bringing my ytd to 76077, which means I've hit my goal of 75k written (just very little has been on fiction writing)
We visited the zoo
We signed our lease for the next year (even if the rent increase makes me want to cry)
I put my laundry away
I made some necessary phone calls
I sort of started updating my reading page, but didn't get very far
I did look at the OTW election candidates, reading their platforms and their Q&As
I did not work on my idea inventory
I put together my August tracking grids
I stopped by my mom's house
I started reading Uprooted
I set my writing goals for August
I cleaned up Berry Mad's pond and plant

Tracked habits:

Work - 5/7
Household Maintenance - 4/7
Physical Activity - 2/7
Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 2/7 - one day of over 1000, one day of over 500
Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
Meta Work - 7/7
Personal Writing - 6/7
Other Creative Things - 3/7
Reading - 7/7 - mostly I read Nights Edge, but I also finished my ebook side read, Alex and I read some Duma Key, I started Uprooted, and my new ebook side read A Queen Rises
Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday had some youtube video essays in the background, then later storm chase and exploration videos, and I caught up on Re: Dracula; Monday was more storm chase and exploration videos in the background and a very short Re: Dracula; Tuesday another short Re: Dracula, and the watching news coverage of the huge earthquake near Russia and the potential for tsunami afterwards; Wednesday we watched Drop, which was fine but a bit silly, Last Night in Soho, which I really like, and Coherence, which I'd seen before, and is a decent low-budget thing; Thursday we watched 1BR which was an okay horror, and Triangle which I think is better than people give it credit for, but I do love fucked up timeloops; Friday listened to Re: Dracula and had storm and exploration videos in the background; Saturday some youtube in the background, a short Re: Dracula, more storm and paranormal videos, and listened to music.
Video Games - 0/7
Social Interaction - 6/7

Total words written: 4441 words written on reviews and intended plans for August

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

starwatcher

How, you ask? It’s a long, meandering tale, with pictures, so it all goes behind the cut.

( Right this way. )

kay_brooke

Nine books read this month, including one DNF.

Previous books posts:
Books 1-9 (January)
Books 10-15 (February)
Books 16-24 (March)
Books 25-33 (April)
Books 34-41 (May)
Books 42-49 (June)

( 50. The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman - 4.5 stars )

( 51. The Regulators by Richard Bachman - 3.5 stars )

( 52. Number One Fan by Meg Elison - 4 stars )

( 53. Morgan Is My Name by Sophie Keetch - 4 stars )

( 54. Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley - DNF )

( 55. The Longest Autumn by Amy Avery - 3 stars. SPOILERS )

( 56. The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan - 3.5 stars )

( 57. F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton - 3 stars )

( 58. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt - 4 stars )

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

yuuago

Air quality this weekend was, to quote The Weather Channel, "Atrocious and unsafe". Wow. (It's smoke blowing in from Saskatchewan.) Anyway, I stayed inside for my stat holiday today, which is not how I wanted things to go.

Stuff that I did this past weekend:
+ Went to a coworker's birthday party
+ Went for a coffee meetup organized by the local pride group
+ Did some reading (but not as much as I'd have liked)
+ Hauled out my watercolours and did some paintings
+ Brainstormed some fic concepts (that I don't have time for at the moment but maybe at some future point), specifically some NL/DK/NO and also some NL/NO, the latter will probably require research but we'll see.
+ Had planned to do some writing for IIBB but found myself exhausted. So. That will have to be... later. (I'm in the "I hate this fic" editing stage.)

( Watercolour stuff )

mistressofmuses

Last Tuesday, we decided to pick a park we hadn't been to before to check out. Alex read the pages for a few different county open space parks, and we picked Centennial Cone. It's a bit of a ways up one of the canyons, and definitely a pretty high elevation to start at!

It's a lovely view from up there!

Glanced over at the side of the trail and this little guy was just sitting right there! Super vibrant markings, much more so than the similar lizards I'm more used to seeing.

17 more pictures:

Clouds dipping below the top of the mountain.

Unfortunately, literally about five minutes into the hike we heard thunder. Checking the radar, we were right in the path of the *one* tiny little thunderstorm that popped up over the mountains. *Sigh.*

I think Alex may have been mildly annoyed that I kept stopping anyway (despite the thunder) to take pictures of things, but I can't help myself, lol.

Neat beetle! And some cute little succulent-type plants growing in the rocks.

Lovely mariposa lily!

I just wanted a picture of the paintbrush and didn't even notice the little insect! Probably a katydid or tree cricket nymph of some type? And looks like a second bug of some kind up around the right side, but can't see it well enough to know what kind.

I really wish this had actually been clear, but a cute little bumblebee and a cute little cactus!

I do really like the little barrel cacti.

More paintbrush!

It did start to rain a bit more as we headed into a treed area. It was a bit of a relief, as it cooled it down a bit. This day was *extremely* humid for Colorado. I think I saw that we tied a record dewpoint in Denver.

Though then of course because it was so humid, after the rain dampened everything, we were just wet and sticky the whole time, haha.

Ant lion burrows! :D

Little baby prickly pears!

A robber fly.

I wish I'd had a chance to really get this shot how I wanted it, but the thunder was getting a bit insistent for a while. But I liked the cactus at the edge of the rocks, with the mountains in the background.

From up here you could see the river and the road down below.

The rain mostly lightened up after a while, and the thunder got a bit less threatening. Luckily! For a while it just kept strengthening and it looked like it was headed right for us, ha.

So perfectly spherical!

Looks like someone was marking territory on the tree! (Scrape, scrape.)

One (1) distant deer.

A different neat beetle.

And a big velvet ant.

The rain started up again just a couple minutes after we made it back to the car, so our timing was pretty good!

We ended up taking a pretty long scenic detour in order to avoid some pretty extensive roadwork along the highway we came up.

It was a nice day out! The park is a bit distant for us to likely come to often, but I'd enjoy coming back on a day that had less threat from the weather, just so I could take my time looking at stuff a bit more.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment