Road Not Taken

Apr. 22nd, 2025 10:12 pm
settiai: (Road Not Taken -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
I was feeling nostalgic, so I pulled up Road Not Taken and played it for a little while earlier. It took a bit to get back into the swing of things, but I started to remember some of the hidden details and combinations after a while.

It's been ages since the last time I played, and I'd forgotten just how much I love it. It's so helpful if I want to turn off my brain for a little while. I can't believe it's been over a decade since it was first released.

Me-and-media update

Apr. 22nd, 2025 06:20 pm
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the vegetables poll, 90.4% of respondents clicked fresh vegetables (bought), 46.2% clicked frozen vegetables, and 44.2% clicked fresh vegetables (homegrown). I was surprised; I thought more people would go frozen for the convenience. (I wonder what that says, if anything, about Dreamwidth demographics.)

In ticky-boxes, hugs came first with 78.8%, followed by a tie between "hanging in there until things settle down and I can sort my life out" and "sunbeams playing in a tree, daring each other to peek around the shadowed side" with 63.5% each. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
Still going on The Horse and His Boy (I am slow and distractable) and the Guardian novel read-along (it's on a schedule). Nothing in audio.

Kdramas
We started Tale of the Nine Tailed, a sweeping epic about a powerful immortal, the reincarnated love of his life, and his bratty younger brother. (Nothing at all like Guardian the novel, why do you ask?) I'm hoping it has enough plot and worldbuilding to hold Andrew's interest; he gets bored during extended romance scenes.

More of Sell Your Haunted House with Pru. And in solo-watching, I started Heesu in Class 2; it's pretty adorable, but also Heesu is the living embodiment of Idiots In Love, and sometimes I have to watch through my fingers.

Other TV
This week's Doctor Who
was very silly and meta, set against a background of ominous racism. Hm. But I did enjoy the jokes, and Belinda is great.


Episode 1 of Sherlock & Daughter. We were just going to try out the first ten minutes to get a sense of it, but we ended up watching the whole episode. I can forgive Holmes for being a grumpy old man when he has a reason for it.

Our Deadloch rewatch-with-a-friend continues, plus Jentry Chau vs the Underworld, about which I still have no opinion.

My sister and I watched Into the Night (1985 film; Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeff Goldblum, and a vast number of film directors as extras, the only one of whom I knew on sight was Jim Henson). The caper was silly, and the romance plotline was very thin, but Goldblum and Pfeiffer are so watchable that it hung together despite the weird pacing when it lingered on random extras we were supposed to recognise. Lovely to see David Bowie in a small (albeit violently psychotic) role.

Guardian/Fandom
I archived my Murderbot flashficlet, and wow, Murderbot fans are generous with their kudosing. *hearts so much* (In my experience, some fandoms are just more kudosy than others.)

Audio entertainment
I listened my way through all of The Setup, a romance audiodrama about Juan, an anxious art museum curator in NYC, and Fernando, the con artist who's trying to steal a painting. It's great! I'm really into it. And then I got to the end of the available episodes and realised it's not finished yet, ahhhhh! I need to check these things before I start!

(Is it just me or are depictions of anxiety becoming more common in romances? I feel like there's some wish fulfilment going on: people longing to meet The One who is hot, super into them, and will also be incredibly kind and patient and give them effective tips for handling their panic attacks. Not that romances aren't all about wish fulfilment, so why not? Add dimensions to your dream partner!)

Writing/making things
My little 4k exchange fic is becoming somewhat tortured by all the writing advice I'm trying to enact on it. Hopefully I'm not engineering the spark out of the thing. Also, hopefully I emerge from this process wiser and more capable. (It could happen!) Note to self: this story still doesn't have an ending, oops.

Other than that, I'm spending a lot of my life rolling around in meta discussions, yay!

Life/health/mental state things
Oh, look, let's not even talk about it. /o\

Note to self: I had a flu jab on Saturday.

Online life
I'm switching ISPs on Friday. Wish me luck! If I disappear off the face of the internet, that will be why.

Food
Today marks my first attempt at baked potatoes in the slow cooker. *fingers crossed* I forgot to prickle them with a fork before I wrapped them in foil, so who knows.

Good things
Fandom. Writing. Lunchtime dumplings on the back deck. Cephalopod plushies. Queer audiodramas. Friends coming over to watch stuff. Guardian. Home-made salsa. Trivia quizzes. Music and kindness and laughter and love.

Poll #33020 face blindness extrapolation
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41


Do you have face-blindness?

View Answers

yes
2 (4.9%)

technically no, but it's not unusual for me to get people confused
23 (56.1%)

especially when they're dressed the same
13 (31.7%)

no
11 (26.8%)

I mix up similar usernames
13 (31.7%)

honestly, they don't have to be that similar
11 (26.8%)

other
1 (2.4%)

ticky-box full of black cats slinking mysteriously in the shadows
27 (65.9%)

ticky-box full of starting a howl
14 (34.1%)

ticky-box of overthinking
20 (48.8%)

ticky-box full of squirrel-dragons with floofy tails, guarding their golden acorns
21 (51.2%)

ticky-box full of hugs
32 (78.0%)

Come speak to me of Second Person POV

Apr. 21st, 2025 05:44 pm
china_shop: You can't wait for inspiration to strike. You have to go after it with a club. (writing - inspiration)
[personal profile] china_shop
The Writing Excuses podcast is doing a series on voice (first, third limited, third omniscient), and mostly their discussions have been great. I've enjoyed them a lot. But I found today's episode on second person (2ndPOV) unsatisfying. They got distracted talking about video games, TTRPG, online recipe essays, and Youtube influencers, and when they did discuss fictional prose, they seemed to think the "you" character had to be a reader stand-in. (Or maybe I misunderstood? Quite possible!) Anyway, now I'm itching to procrastinate on my story talk with like-minded souls about the joys of second person.

Note: If you not into 2ndPOV, that's totally cool. Each to their own! But please don't chime in to tell me or explain why; I'm not interested in defending it today.

Rambling, so much rambling. )

ION, Andrew sent me a link to Secrets of Writing Snappy Dialogue (Banter) (Youtube video). At first I was resistant, but then I watched it and now I'm overhauling my 4k fic AGAIN. This is killing me, lol.

Titansfall D&D: Summary for 4/20 Game

Apr. 20th, 2025 11:22 pm
settiai: (Sim -- settiai (TriaElf9))
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai

Apr. 20th, 2025 01:27 pm
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
Bitter Medicine

3.5/5. Urban romantasy about two fae-blooded people (well, technically she’s descended from a Chinese medicine god and he’s a half-elf), one a talented artist and magician, the other a sort of enforcer cursed with a terrible reputation and an actual curse.

I liked this even though it’s het. The emotional beats are complex and thoughtful, and the writing is pleasant. Also, it’s so nice to have a romantasy about goddamn adults, you know? I mean, in this case they are both over a hundred, so they’d better be by now, but you know how it is.

Marking down for that thing where, if I poke the worldbuilding, it doesn’t so much poke back as jiggle alarmingly. There are fundamental facts about how this fantastical modern world works that I do not understand at all. So just go in with those senses turned down and you’ll have a good time, kay?

Content notes: Violence, magically-enforced obedience, shitty parents

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Apr. 19th, 2025 01:47 pm
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
Shroud

4/5. Our narrator, vassal of a future space exploring hell corporate, tells the story of how she survived many days on the surface of a mysterious and deeply hostile moon, populated by inexplicable and frightening life forms. Then things get weirder.

Good standalone scifi with a long section of survival horror. This makes an interesting companion to Alien Clay, another recent book of his. Both are about humans who are powerless within an oppressive and unfair human system, and how they encounter terrifying alien life, and how those aliens embody another way of being sentient in a radical departure from the human way, and what that illuminates. The two books come at that story from very different angles, but to interesting effect alone and together.

Content notes: Death, corporate dehumanization, the existential horror of alien consciousness

Long(ish) Weekend

Apr. 18th, 2025 11:54 am
settiai: (Chel -- fan_of_miggie)
[personal profile] settiai
Since a number of staff at Unnamed Nonprofit are either Christian or Jewish, they've announced that they're closing the office at lunchtime today. Which, you know, as someone who isn't celebrating a holiday at the moment? That's still a nice little treat for me.

I finished my fourth Dragon Age: The Veilguard playthrough last night, so I think that I'm going to pick back up with my fifth one (which is in Act 2 right now) for a bit and then maybe switch to Baldur's Gate 3. D&D is cancelled again tonight because it's the DM's spouse's birthday, so I can properly settle in to play for hours which is something I haven't had the time to do in ages.

Two Korean films with serial killers

Apr. 18th, 2025 08:07 pm
caramarie: Jongwoo from Strangers from Hell. (jongwoo)
[personal profile] caramarie

Midnight (2021)

Thriller about a young Deaf woman who becomes the target of a serial killer.

The film plays a lot with perceptions – Kyung-mi who seems sweet and obliging, but happily insults her company’s clients in sign language knowing they can’t understand her. Do-shik the serial killer being a presentable young man and thus assumed to be a reliable witness – more so than Kyung-mi and her mother, in dealing with the cops.

Read more... )

I Saw the Devil (2010)

I guess this technically is also a thriller! I feel like it’s more honest to just call it torture porn, though. Well made torture porn, sure, but it is what it is.

Here we also have a serial killer targeting young women, but our protagonist is not one of the targets, but the fiancé of one of the murdered women. He does in fact cry a single tear when her body is discovered. And them decides to get revenge.

Read more... )

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 4/16 Game

Apr. 17th, 2025 12:04 am
settiai: (Siân -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Banter

Apr. 16th, 2025 10:50 am
settiai: (Veilguard -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
I found a perfect place to do some banter farming in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, so I settled in to max out all of the possible conversations between various pairs of characters off-and-on over the past almost-a-week before starting endgame in my most recent playthrough.

There was so much dialogue that I've never encountered before. Even with characters who I've frequently had together in my party in previous playthroughs, I was getting to conversations that I never heard in previous ones. There's just so much potential banter that's never played for me because I didn't have two specific characters in the party together for long enough, and it was lovely to hear it all. And I'm sure there's still more banter that I've missed that's only available earlier in the game.

Nothing really spoilery, but under the cut to be safe. )

It definitely makes some of the potential choices in the game even more bittersweet, hearing just how close some of the team members are to each other based on their conversations and teasing of each other.

Me-and-media update

Apr. 16th, 2025 08:34 am
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the Lists poll, 59.3% of respondents make to-do lists on their phone/computer/device, 40.7% use scraps of paper, and 18.5% have a planner or other organisational system. (These options are obviously not mutually exclusive.) "I park items on my to-do list so I don't have to worry about forgetting them" was the most popular purpose of to-do lists, with 61.1%, followed by 44.4% who refer to their to-do lists and try to complete the items thereon, and 24.1% who agree with me that "putting an item on the list is sort of the same as doing the thing."

In ticky-boxes, hugs came first with 75.9%, followed by a near-four-way tie. Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
Am I reading anything except Guardian? Doesn't seem like it. ETA: Just started A Horse and his Boy by C.S. Lewis.

Kdramas Asian dramas
I'm watching my first Japanese drama, Aoshima-kun is a Bully!, on VIKI. It's a sweet m/f office romance with a 9-year age gap. The production values aren't super-shiny, but it hangs together fine. I like older woman/younger man stories for a number of reasons; it might be the first drama I've seen where the woman is like, yes, I do like you, and it's nice when you stay over, but also I really miss having tons of alone time. And I like that the male lead keeps turning to his two step-mothers for relationship advice, aw. Non-standard family relationships for the win!

More of the Sell Your Haunted House rewatch.

Other TV
Finished The Pitt, which was as excellent as everyone's been saying. The ending felt earned, and I'm glad they gave it space to breathe. Now Andrew and I are floundering a bit, unsure what to watch next. (We've spent the last couple of evenings listening to Youtube writing lectures, see below.) We're up to episode 3 of Doc, which is fine but by-the-numbers, and suffers greatly in comparison to The Pitt.

Still watching Krapopolis. Losing interest in Ghosts (UK), though it's interesting discussing why it isn't working for us. Started The Dope Thief, but I was finding the bad decisions and impending disaster too stressful and couldn't finish episode 1. The new Doctor Who, which, the main characters were great, and everything else feels messy to me.

A friend came over, and we watched the first episodes of Deadloch (a rewatch for me) and Jentry Chau vs the Underworld which I was too tired to judge.

Also: Frankie and Johnny (1985) starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino, a romance in which the female lead should have taken out a restraining order (interesting comparing it to Aoshima-kun, in which "mature woman stays single" is presented as a viable choice, not a death sentence), and Dead Again (1991) a "neo-noir romantic thriller" starring Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh as reincarnated lovers who look identical to their past-life selves (so I couldn't help connecting the dots to Guardian in that regard). Neither film has aged well.

Guardian/Fandom
Working on my 520 Day Guardian fic. Having some lovely discussions on [community profile] sid_guardian. Didn't sign up for [community profile] bitesizedfandomsex in the end, because the sign-up summary didn't look promising. That's okay.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses this week was about 3rd person omniscient, and it made me go back and start to re-read this week's Guardian chapters with voice in mind. Wow, priest is so good at this. It feels very natural, even to me who mostly reads 3rd limited. The example that came to mind most when I was listening to the podcast was actually The Spear Cuts Through Water, where a lot of the omniscient/non-main-character voices are there to support the worldbuilding and theme; that works so well. But in Guardian, it's not a theme thing; priest is just telling the story.

The Daily Stoic on Virtue Ethics, which wasn't as explanatory as I was hoping.

And a bunch of Brandon Sanderson's Youtube lectures on plotting which, as I've mentioned previously, I'm trying to apply to a 4k fic. (I broke it into segments and reassembled them, theoretically with more build/progression; now let's see if this thing will fly.)

Writing/making things
My writing energy is pretty good. I'm getting things done and having a good time doing so. I have two things I want to finish this week (one is most of the way there; the other, I'd be happy if I could get a complete draft), and if I have time after that, I'll write another flashfic for the Pink round on [community profile] fan_flashworks. I'm thinking of doing something with P!nk song titles or lyrics.

Life/health/mental state things
I seem to be permanently not on top of things, ahhhhh! How is it mid-April already?? Every so often I look at my consolidated to-do list and go, "Okay, okay, I did a couple of these by accident, I can cross them off." I don't think that's how to-do lists are supposed to work.

I did manage to get my four-year term submission in yesterday, so that's something. (It was very cranky.)

Cats
Halle's on 3x daily medication for the next 5-7 days. She is so good about it. I can't get over how chill and compliant she is, especially compared to our previous demon siblings.

Korean
I got a bilingual children's picture book out of the library, and yeah, it's above my (very low) reading level. But I've also printed out the Korean subs for episode 8 of Guardian, and that's a bit more successful, since I know pretty well how it goes. I just need to make some more time.

Good things
Biking weather. Library books. Writing. Guardian. Guardian fanart. Cooking experiments. Podcasts and Youtube. Polls. Movie night with my sister. Figuring out I can play file types that aren't supported by my TV through my Blueray player. Flowering hibiscus and fruiting lemon tree. Boy and cat.

Poll #32985 vegetables
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 52


In general

View Answers

fresh vegetables, bought
47 (90.4%)

fresh vegetables, homegrown
23 (44.2%)

frozen vegetables
24 (46.2%)

no vegetables
2 (3.8%)

other
4 (7.7%)

ticky-box of hanging in there until things settle down and I can sort my life out
33 (63.5%)

ticky-box of a lion librarian strangely obsessed with books/DVDs/resources on penguins
24 (46.2%)

ticky-box full of polls
25 (48.1%)

ticky-box full of sunbeams playing in a tree, daring each other to peek around the shadowed side
33 (63.5%)

ticky-box full of hugs
41 (78.8%)

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