thisbluespirit | Network

Yesterday we ordered two different kinds of willow cuttings. I couldn't find a new contorta willow at a reasonable price, so I'm trying these instead. It will take time for them to grow roots, but willows are the easiest plant to root -- they make their own rooting hormone, which can be used to stimulate other plant cuttings to root.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

lucymonster

My movie-watching roll has slowed a little, but I've still watched a few things over the last couple of weeks. One I hated so much that I'm not even going to mention it here because I want to let the memory fade (probably nothing anyone else will have deep feelings about, just this Scandinavian horror flick my library streaming app happened to be promoting that hit some squicks I didn't know I had). The other three are below!

The Craft (1996): Well, we can add this to the list of things I'm glad I didn't get into back in high school. It would have been my whole personality for, like, a semester at least. I would have been even more insufferable than I was during my Buffy phase. New girl Sarah falls in with a clique of three witchy misfits who, empowered by her natural gift for the occult, start using magic to solve their problems in increasingly dangerous ways. This film is an utter delight. Extremely nineties, extremely teen angst (but in a fond, earnest way), too campy to be truly scary but with a really fun and satisfying horror aesthetic. I have so many feelings about those poor downtrodden, miserable girls who tasted power for the first time and went mad with it. There was also some very tempting hateshippy tension between Sarah and Nancy, the coven's leader. I had a feeling if I looked this up on AO3 it would prove to be one of those comparatively rare fandoms where F/F dominates, and I was right; there is nearly as much F/F as all other categories combined. (On the other hand, there are only 125 fics total, which feels very unfair. Filing it away in my mind as a Yuletide option for later this year.)

Ringu (1998): Ring fan mutuals, I'm so sorry, I have failed you. :( I think probably this one was just too similar to its remake for me to enjoy watching them this close together. There were parts I liked better in this older version - especially the close-ups on the dead faces instead of those annoying barely-visible flashes the 2002 version does, and the fact that the little boy seems happier and better-adjusted in this one - but the suspense wasn't there and the production was less glossy, and I ended up getting interrupted in the middle of the well-digging-out scene and haven't bothered to go back. I might try again in a few years once my memories have faded?

Wake Up Dead Man (2025): When cultish Catholic priest/culture warrior Monsignor Wicks is murdered, suspicion naturally falls on Father Jud, the recently assigned assistant priest who has made no secret of his opposition to Wicks' vicious preaching style. The brainwashed congregation all turn on him, but Detective Benoit Blanc is convinced of Father Jud's innocence and enlists his help to expose the true murderer.

I think this might be my favourite Benoit Blanc movie to date. It's not as clever as Knives Out or as funny as Glass Onion, but it has so much heart and soul and kindness to it, even and especially when its tongue is planted firmly in its cheek. It is neither pro- nor anti-Catholicism; Wicks is a vile character who embodies the bigoted, exploitative, self-aggrandising side of the Church, while Jud embodies the earnest love, faith and self-forgetfulness of the Church as it should be. Not to be weird about an imaginary Catholic priest but Jud is also kind of hot, in a vaguely Adam Driver-ish way that's mostly ears and angles. I enjoyed his screen presence a lot.

sholio

I watched this over the last couple of days. (8 30-minute episodes on D+.) It's really unusual - not like anything else in Marvel's backlist. Somehow it felt like it belonged to a different era, like the type of superhero show that might've been made in the 70s or 80s. It's a comedy-drama-satire about two out of work actors trying to get a role on the superhero movie Wonder Man, which (in universe) is a remake of a cult hit show from a few decades ago. And that's about 90% of the plot. There is SOME other stuff going on which provides a superhero-related throughline for the movie, namely

spoilers for things revealed in the first couple of episodes

one of the actors (the protagonist) actually does have superpowers and is hiding it because in the MCU, super-powered individuals have to carry insane amounts of liability insurance to work in Hollywood and no production would hire him; and the other is spying for the government. So obviously both of these things provide the show's main sources of will they? won't they? who'll find out? tension.

But mostly it's just an indie-ish show about being an actor. It's unglamorous, it's full of slow-paced scenes of people doing ordinary things, trying out for parts, dealing with petty professional jealousy and eccentric directors, having long conversations in cars. The staging and lighting and the very ordinary-looking supporting characters are all more art-film than Marvel movie. It's about people who love movies both personally and professionally, and know them inside and out. It's at least partly framed around Midnight Cowboy, at a showing of which the two protagonists meet, and it's also framed around beats from the script for the Wonder Man movie that the two are memorizing and acting out scenes from. At least some of the actors on the show are simply doing cameos as themselves, in the form of people that the protagonists might have plausibly run into in their careers.

I wasn't on board with every creative choice the show made, and in fact I sort of went back and forth between episodes on whether I actually liked it all that much (though I was sold by the end), but it's fascinating and thoughtful and interesting and a bit unpolished-feeling in a way that Marvel productions never feel anymore. In fact, the naturalistic dialogue and slightly clumsy/awkward way the characters relate to each other felt real enough that I would sometimes stumble a bit when it would hit a more typical Marvel beat, as it sometimes does, because it felt a little out of place.

I'm legitimately unsure who the target audience for this show is, and maybe so were Marvel's TPTB. I'm honestly surprised it got made at all.

( Some actual spoilers )

It made me remember how, in the early days of the MCU, it felt like the movies were all doing something different and being something different, and then they just all kinda came to feel like the same thing. This one is doing something different and being something different - in this case: 1970s arthouse film - and even if I wasn't on board with everything, I liked what it was doing and being.

tielan

Finished Draft 2 of The Nullifae: And If I Rise. Had to rewrite a whole section in the middle, then cram in a sequence where they meet the Oracle, who's a Fae.

There's still some stuff to be done - I need to rewrite the opening scene so it's more happening, less infodumping. And I think I want to write a snapshot at the end where Jenna is getting more or less fired from her job. Do I write her getting fired from her work, or do I just show her in the doghouse before she calls the Director of Crossover who gave her his number if she decided she wanted a change of scenery?

Choices choices.

It's about 60K finished, which isn't huge but isn't small potatoes either.

poliphilo

Suppose the world doesn't make sense.

And that's really the point of it.

Pointlessness is the point.

Pointlessness is the point is pointless.....

And so on.....

One could develop this in two ways. Either go, "Oh, what a bloody waste of time...."

Or take a deep breath and go, "Phew, well that's a relief....."

ysabetwordsmith

This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...

* Posted "Garden Tips" in

everykindofcraft.

* Commented in

fanfics.

* Commented in

fanifesto.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith posting in

everykindofcraft

I've been doing some garden crafts lately, so I thought it would be fun to gather project links that might inspire other folks...

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

cielsosinfel posting in

onesongaday

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Posted and commented on

bnha_fans.

Commented on

common_nature.

Posted on

getyourwordsout.

Current Mood: sleepy

mxcatmoon

First part was written and posted for the prompts, Futile, stoic, at

vocab_drabbles
Title: The Heart Makes its Own Choices
Fandom: Miami Vice
Author: Cat Moon
Rating: PG
Words: 2314
Characters/Pairings: Rico, Trudy, Rico/Trudy friendship, and Rico/Sonny
Summary: As Sonny fights for his life after being shot, Rico tries to deal with his emotions on his own. Trudy isn’t having it.
Notes: 1. It struck me that Trudy stayed close to Rico during “A Bullet for Crockett,” and they had that lovely mutual comfort scene. I’ve been wanting to do something with Rico and Trudy for a while now, so this was born. I can’t lie; it didn’t turn out the way I’d planned. It turned out the way it wanted to.
2. I probably took some liberties with the timeline of the episode, for story purposes.
3. Wicked Game came on Spotify while I was writing this, the words were perfect, and it’s almost the right year, 1989.

( The Heart Makes its Own Choices )

Current Mood: relieved

blotthis

Here we go, again on my bloooooog~~

Much higher highs and lower lows in the reading this month. As before, write-ups as requested.

( 10 books, 3 volumes of manga, 4 movies, 2 TV eps, and 4 albums )

landofnowhere

The Man Who Came to Dinner, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Play readaloud. 1939 farce about the worst houseguest ever. Should not be taken too seriously but was fun to read out loud!

Chroniques du Pays des Mères, Élisabeth Vonarburg. I am behind schedule on reading this, have only gotten through a bit since last time. But we're seeing more of the world!

geraineon posting in

cnovels

This is your weekly read-in-progress post~

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

xinger posting in

beagoldfish

Title: 姑苏和云梦的小学生们，elementary school writing study
Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Modern AU)
Summary: Colorful writing practice in zine form.

Link to picture: dreamwidth

dialecticdreamer

Late Arrival
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 2 of 2, complete
Word count (story only): 1310
[Friday, May 15, 2020, 9:15 am]

:: On Friday morning, Garegin and Leto arrive late. Part of the Edison’s Mirror (Teague Family) story arc. ::

Back to Late Arrival (part 1)
To the Edison's Mirror Landing Page
On to

Rory had barely gotten her seat belt buckled before she was accosting Aidan with questions. “Why are you taking Vic’s side? Is it because he’s male? Because you’ve known him longer? What’s the big deal with opening the stupid door, anyway? Are you always going to be like this?”

Aidan took a deep breath and held it as he buckled himself into the seat behind hers. “I am not taking Vic’s side. Vic and Ed and I have routines and signals that help Ed to feel safe. You opened the door to strangers and did not know those signals,” he explained slowly.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: blah

bluapapilio

Watch on YouTube

@ Spotify

I live in a weird world
Yeah, it's sad but it's true
Maybe you can't see it
But you live in one too
I used to be a dream girl
But the world interfered
At least now I know why
Now I know why
Now I know I'm weird🎤
Allie X - Weird World

Current Mood: distressed

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3212/

After a lot of analysis, I've determined that they're actually big red dots; they're just very far away.

https://xkcd.com/3212/

conuly

Watch on YouTube

mxcatmoon

Education meme via

greenfinch

Adults responsible for your care actively helped facilitate your early learning. (Reading at bedtime, playing educational games, going to child-friendly museums...)

( Read more... )

Current Mood: cold

otw_news_feed

Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-447-0-9-452-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=279879

We released several batches of bug fixes and code updates in December, focusing on error handling, improvements to the posting and browsing of works, and largely invisible code optimization. Many thanks to our coders, code reviewers, and testers!

Credits

Coders: anna; Bilka; Brian Austin; Danaël / Rever; Edgar San Martin, Jr.; marcus8448; warlockmel; WelpThatWorked; Zooms; ömer faruk
Code reviewers: Bilka, Brian Austin, ceithir, lydia-theda, marcus8448, Sarken
Testers: Brian Austin, calamario, Deniz, Dre, Lute, megidola, slavalamp, Teyris, Bilka, therealmorticia, marcus8448, Yuca, pk2317

Details

0.9.447

On December 3, we made some improvements to how we index information for admin user search.

[AO3-7216] – Updates to the admin-facing user search feature were getting stuck due to their size, so we’ve reduced the amount of data we index.
[AO3-7217] – We originally put updates for our admin-facing user search feature in the same queue as updates to user-facing search features (like work search). This meant that slowdowns in updating user search would also slow down updates to work search, so we’ve moved the admin search updates to a separate queue to prevent that.

0.9.449

On December 11, we deployed a batch of miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements. (We skipped version 0.9.448.)

[AO3-7151] – Some buttons would become unreadable on hover and focus in the Low Vision Default skin, so we made sure all buttons have the correct border and text color to make them readable again.
[AO3-7186] – In rare cases, trying to create a skin with the same title as an existing skin would throw an error 500 instead of telling you what’s wrong. Now you should always get the proper error message.
[AO3-6851] – We removed a column from the challenge assignments table that is no longer used after some code changes.
[AO3-7218] – We updated one of the utilities we use to deploy AO3 to its testing environment.
[AO3-5871] – Renamed an ambiguously named method in the Works model code.
[AO3-6738] – We improved the performance of the page that lists pseuds for a creator.
[AO3-7084] – In several places, we disallow embedded images and will instead turn the <img> HTML into a plain link. We have now updated our help text to reflect this practice where it applies.
[AO3-7152] – In work downloads (such as epub or HTML files), links would use the http protocol instead of https. We now make sure that all links start with https.
[AO3-7209] – We optimized our code to prepare the help text pop-ups for translated versions once language options become available on the Archive.

0.9.450

We deployed another batch of improvements on December 15, including some small fixes to the work form in particular.

[AO3-6797] – Trying to post a work with invalid comment permissions (which can sometimes happen due to browser translation tools affecting parts of the Archive code) would throw an error 500. Now a proper error message is displayed in that case.
[AO3-7177] – Trying to add a new first chapter before the part that was already posted, without previewing first, would result in two second chapters. Now, when you add a new chapter and assign the first position to it, the database will actually respect your artistic process.
[AO3-7228] – Optimized the code used to put together work headers.
[AO3-7044] – Migrated the tagging table (not to be confused with the tags table) to the BIGINT format, to allow for a BIG integer number of records to be added in the future.
[AO3-7049] – Restricted the ability to manage users invite requests to Policy and Abuse volunteers (and superadmins).

0.9.451

December 18 saw another release of a few fixes and updates. The Open Challenges page will now show all challenges that currently accept sign-ups, even if they aren’t allowing new works to be added yet.

[AO3-4666] – The Open Challenges page wasn’t including closed collections, even if the gift exchange or prompt meme in question was open to sign-ups. This has been fixed!
[AO3-7224] – Some places in the AO3 code relied on an old feature in Ruby, our programming language of choice. They were not made better by doing that, so we stopped in order to make ourselves ready for new Ruby versions.
[AO3-7203] – The mailer preview for a deleted work notification now allows for a work ID to be specified for the preview.
[AO3-7232] – Some elements of our Terms of Service were missing the proper CSS list styles. Now everything that should be a lowercase alphabetical list, is.
[AO3-7230] – Before upgrading Ruby on Rails, the framework that powers AO3, we took a snapshot of the current database structure for historical purposes.
[AO3-7233], [AO3-7234] – Updated a couple of dependencies.

0.9.452

On December 29, another small batch of fixes went out to ring in the new year!

[AO3-6944] – There’s no option to sort a list of prompts by prompter if the list includes anonymous prompts. However, if you tried to do it manually by editing the URL, or refreshed a tab you had open from before anonymous prompts were added, it would cause an error 500. Now it just reverts to the default sort order.
[AO3-7184] – If someone tried to access the related works page of a non-existent user (due to a misspelled link, for example), they would be redirected to the user search. Since the desired page does not exist, we now properly serve an error 404, like others for pages that don’t exist.
[AO3-7245] – We made the help text explaining the locale preference translatable, matching the code changes included in release 0.9.449.
[AO3-7225], [AO3-7235] – Updated a couple of dependencies.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-releases-0-9-447-0-9-452-change-log/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=279879

hannah

Odd nausea, fading in and out, has marked the day. I don't know where it's coming from, but I feel like I should write it down somewhere. I drank a pot of ginger tea and I'm hoping it kicks in soon.

In other news, because I didn't want it to be the last Michael Mann movie I haven't seen, I started watching Public Enemies, and it's quite something how the last few years make it easy to see John Dillinger as a duplicitous, murdering criminal no matter the face he puts on for the public.

Current Mood: nauseated
Current Music: nothing now

annavere

I finished Sidelined. Kind of. Still need to send it to my beta. ♥

But since yesterday was a day off, I sat down and did almost nothing other than hammer out words toward the finish line. Now it's all put together, the last chapter, the glorified epilogue that was just supposed to tie up a couple loose threads...

And it's 16,200+ words. I think it's the longest chapter of the bunch.

Current Mood: fried

marcicat posting in

beagoldfish

Title:WIP Perihelion blanket collage

Fandom: The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)

Summary: Six pictures of an in-progress crochet blanket in Perihelion's colors.

on dreamwidth

kitewithfish

What I’ve Read
The Last Graduate – Naomi Novik – Book 2 of the Scholomance – This series rules. In some ways, total wish fulfillment (of the Superman, “What if you had the power to save everyone*?” variety) and yet the execution really works for me. And, as all good series do, it delivers on promises made in the first book that you didn’t even know were being set up. I have only read this series once, each book as it was published, and I am happily reporting that they are even better read in quick succession. I love El Higgins and would go to war for her.

What I’m Reading
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die – Static.

The Golden Enclaves – Naomi Novik – Scholomance 3 – Stuff gets objectively better and also subjectively so much worse. Fascinating expansion from the microcosm of the Scholomance itself and its limited borders to the actual whole world of magical people all fucking about and being human. Great stuff.

What I’ll Read Next
My Real Children Jo Walton
Sunshine Robin McKinley

Work in Progress Wednesday
Sock Madness 20 ! Nearly done with Sock 1, have worked out enough of the difficulties that I think sock 2 will be a great improvement! The rough part of Sock Madness is that I don’t usually have time to fit the sock to my own foot very well, so I’m probably going to have to play Cinderella with someone else’s feet.

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thisbluespirit

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