kate_nepveu | Network

"The Gate of the Feral Gods" and "The Butcher's Masquerade." I'd say this series is pretty solidly scifi now, so I'm tagging it that way.

( Random spoilers )

Moving on soon to book 6, "The Eye of the Bedlam Bride"! No future spoilers, please!

conuly

( Cut for being perhaps a bit insensitive or factually wrong )

Also, two links where you can donate.

conuly

is the constant whiplash between panic and popcorn.

Right now I'm hovering over "popcorn" - new political parties? With added drama and infighting? LOL, okay, let's see how that works out for you!

(Look, I need a break from panic now and again, and I will take my fun where it appears.)

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( Read more... )

echan

I switched my morning soda for tea, starting last month. I'd been intending to do this for many years, but I didn't actually like tea much, until recently. I want to say its because I made a concerted effort to acclimate to tea and gain an appreciation for it. And maybe those efforts helped a little bit, but mostly it just... happened.

Lately I've been feeling older, as if I didn't age for many years and now suddenly things are going a lot faster, and part of that is apparently existential crises about what preferences are personal choices vs quirks of biology or something else.

princessofgeeks

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mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: Genfic. John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Elizabeth Weir, Rodney McKay, Aiden Ford, Steven Caldwell, Jack O'Neill, Cowen
Rating: G
Length: 27,574
Content Notes: Major character death. John has no special relationship with Atlantis and dislikes the city's voice in his head. Dossier's original Notes are here.
Creator Links: dossier on AO3
Themes: Working together, Character development, Teamwork, Action/adventure, Genfic

Summary: I had set the galaxy afire because she had given me her loyalty and trust.

Reccer's Notes: Yes, it's MCD, but hear me out. Dossier creates an AU story of Sheppard as Laurence of Arabia, eventually saving Pegasus from the Wraith. Like Laurence, he dies in a motor vehicle accident, which happens right at the start so you know what you're in for. The structure works well - a 3rd person account of his death, then the story itself from the expedition's arrival in Atlantis, told in John's first person POV like T. E. Laurence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", then a last 3rd person section about his death and the birth of his legend. Sheppard doesn't mercy-kill Sumner in this - he remains ostracised and mistrusted by the mainstream military and carves out a role for himself by "going native" and working together with Teyla and the Athosians, and eventually other Pegasus peoples, finally masterminding an alliance that destroys the Wraith, but being wounded himself and losing 20 or so years from a Wraith feeding. As with Laurence, he's ultimately tormented by the deaths he feels responsible for along the way, especially the massive genocide of the Wraith, and he dies on Earth, alone and largely unrecognised. But in Pegasus, it's a very different story. Not a comfort read, but a powerful and well-told story that fits Sheppard's character.

Fanwork Links: Nils Nisi Bonum

yuerstruly posting in

baihe_media

The link to the novel on JJWXC can be found here.

You can also follow the novel through the audiobook on Himalaya, though there may be slight changes and ommissions from the original.

Discussion for Chapters 1-10 here.

Discussion for Chapters 11-20 here.

troisoiseaux

Currently reading Days of the Dead by Barbara Hambly, one of her Benjamin January historical mysteries, usually set in 1830s New Orleans, although this one sees newlyweds January and Rose take a busman's honeymoon to Mexico to rescue their friend Hannibal Sefton, who has been accused of murder. Enjoying this! It's very Gothic: the mad patriarch ruling over his isolated hacienda with an iron fist, where pretty much everyone else is on their way to madness if not already there; the picturesque ruins in the form of Aztec pyramids; and of course, People Getting Real Weird With Religion. So far, this book's historical cameo has been General Santa Anna, who I did not connect with the sea shanty "Santiana" until a reference to his nickname as "Napoleon of the West"; I've also noticed that Hambly has an apparent running joke with herself of slipping in the names of minor characters from Les Mis (e.g., Combeferre's Livery in Die Upon A Kiss) and assumed the French chef named Guillenormand was one of those, although the spelling differs slightly— and as this Guillenormand is a "heretic Revolutionist" who fled France upon the Bourbons' return to power, I doubt Hugo's Gillenormand would acknowledge any relation.

I'm approximately three-quarters through Dune and things have gotten really weird. (Jessica + the Water of Life ritual????) Also, oddly, this audiobook keeps slipping back and forth between using a full cast of different voice actors for the different characters and having a single narrator Doing Voices for all the characters, which has a very odd effect when it changes from scene to scene and the main narrator has a completely different way of reading, e.g., Count Fenring's verbal tic than the other, specific voice actor does. It has also introduced more of a soundscape, including (in a move so cliche it was accidentally funny) ambiguously exotic flute music when Paul's Fremen love interest ~~Zendaya~~ Chani was introduced. So far my favorite chapter/scene has been when Frank Herbert used one character's death to be like "AND IN THIS ESSAY I WILL—" about ecology, via that guy's dying hallucinations of his dead father.

shipperslist

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chazzbanner

Watch on YouTube

Go for a ride on the catbus!

Ignore that comment that says it's just a drone :-)

-

shipperslist

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settiai

Welp. The last few days were certainly exhausting.

Don't get me wrong, the long weekend of D&D was a ton of fun, and I'm very glad that we managed to pull it off. That said, it was extremely draining on me even after I spent as much time as possible prior to it trying to charge my internal batteries. By the time we ended yesterday afternoon, my spoons were long gone.

Since I had to get up early to catch the bus to E&Z's place (which was on the weekend schedule the entire time since Friday was a holiday) and then it was usually 1am or so before I made home at night, I didn't get nearly enough sleep pretty much the entire time. Especially since I record summary videos for this game, so I had to get that done at night before I could go to bed.

I ended up taking a nap after I made it home yesterday, and the only thing preventing me from doing so tonight is that I know it will be better to push through and go to bed early instead. If I nap now, I'll be up half the night.

And then work today made things even more fun, but that's a story for another post. 🙃

ETA: Or, you know, I could decide take a nap after all because it hit 7:30pm, and my brain had completely stopped functioning. I'm still tired, so hopefully I'll be able to fall asleep at a decent hour despite the nap.

Current Mood: drained

brithistorian

7 July
- Wolf Hall: A Novel (Hilary Mantel)

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3112/

After determining that his body was full of pipes carrying iron-rich fluid, our current theory is that the dagger-shaped object precipitated within the wound.

https://xkcd.com/3112/

minoanmiss posting in

agonyaunt

CW" sexual harassment, soft bans, conflict avoidance, and religion. ( Read more... )

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: curious

ffutures

Two offers for Steve Jackson Games' GURPS RPG system - The first is a new bundle of the first sixty issues of Volume 3 of Pyramid Magazine (2008-2013), the other is a repeat bundle of GURPS 4E Essentials - the rules and the most useful supplements etc.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Pyramid1

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/July2025GURPS

Pyramid magazine has always been a useful resource for GURPS, and a lot of it is readily adapted to other systems. This offer feels a little on the expensive side, but you're paying less than a dollar an issue, compared to $6 and up if you buy them individually, which is a very good deal if you don't already own a lot of them. A follow-on bundle which launches on Wednesday has a lot more issues, the remainder of Volume 3.

When the GURPS 4E bundle was last on offer I said "GURPS is probably the most popular generic RPG rules set, designed to be readily adapted to any setting. It's reasonably easy to pick up, though there are other games out there that easier to learn, and has a vast range of support material available. This Essentials offer is aimed at people who don't already own the game at all - I own most of it already in dead tree format, the exceptions are things that simply don't interest me much such as the Mass Combat supplement. If you don't already own it, and want a very adaptable rules set, it's well worth a look." I don't see any reason to change any of that

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: grateful

oursin

Reading this, I'm very much reminded of certain sff stories I read - late 60s/early 70s - that were either directly influenced by this research or via the population panic works that riffed off it: review of Lee Alan Dugatkin. Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity. Does this ping reminiscence in anyone else? (I was reading a lot of v misc anthologies etc in early 70s before I found my real niche tastes).

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What Is a 'Lavender Marriage,' Exactly? Feel that there is a longer and (guess what) Moar Complicated history around using conventional marriage to protect less conventional unions, but maybe it's a start towards interrogating the complexities of 'conventional marriages'.

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Sardonic larffter at this: 'I'm being paid to fix issues caused by AI'

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Not quite what one anticipates from a clergyman's wife? The undercover vagrant who exposed workhouse life - a bit beyond vicarage/manse teaparties, Mothers' Meetings or running the Sunday School!

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Changes in wedding practice: The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure: Wedding Days:

After the Reformation, Anglican canon law required that marriages took place in the morning, during divine service, in the parish of either the bride or groom – three features which typically elude modern weddings, which usually take place in the afternoon, in a special ceremony, and are far less likely (even if a religious wedding) to take place within a couple’s home parish. The centrality of divine service is the starkest difference, as it ensured that, unlike in modern weddings, marriages were public events at which the whole congregation ought to be present. They might even have occurred alongside other weddings or church ceremonies such as baptisms. A study of London weddings in the late 1570s found that, unsurprisingly given the canonical requirements, Sunday was the most popular days for weddings, accounting for c.44 percent of marriages taking place in Southwark and Bishopsgate. (By contrast, Sunday accounted for just 5.9 percent of marriages in 2022).

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Dorothy Allison Authored a New Kind of Queer Lit (or brought new perspectives into the literature of class?) I should dig out my copies of her works.