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- c-dramas like The Untamed and Nirvana in Fire
- the books i’m reading right now, mostly sci-fi or fantasy
- cooking and baking sometimes
- maybe some life stuff, who knows?
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Sticky: hi i’m cool, be my friend
Apr. 1st, 2021 07:37 pmHello, visitor! Welcome to my DW! I like friends! Please feel free to follow/comment/whatever. I post about:
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hugseverycat0.
30 days of books meme day 2
May. 16th, 2022 05:08 pmDay 2: Best bargain
Hm, I don’t know if I have a good answer for this because I am not a bargain shopper, especially for books. If I want a book I’ll buy it.
I guess I’ll say books by Benjanun Sriduangkaew are, in my opinion, an excellent bargain. They are usually pretty cheap in ebook format and they are always fun, sexy, and overall enjoyable. An excellent, reliable purveyor of good sff with lesbians of all gender identities. She’s one of my auto-buy authors, even though I ended up unfollowing her on Twitter because she’s not the world’s most pleasant person. If you like sci-fi, her Machine Mandate series is great. If you’re more into fantasy, you’ll want the snow queen retelling that starts with Winter Glass.
( list )
Hm, I don’t know if I have a good answer for this because I am not a bargain shopper, especially for books. If I want a book I’ll buy it.
I guess I’ll say books by Benjanun Sriduangkaew are, in my opinion, an excellent bargain. They are usually pretty cheap in ebook format and they are always fun, sexy, and overall enjoyable. An excellent, reliable purveyor of good sff with lesbians of all gender identities. She’s one of my auto-buy authors, even though I ended up unfollowing her on Twitter because she’s not the world’s most pleasant person. If you like sci-fi, her Machine Mandate series is great. If you’re more into fantasy, you’ll want the snow queen retelling that starts with Winter Glass.
( list )
30 days of books meme day 1
May. 15th, 2022 08:34 pmI borrowed this from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shipperslist
Day 1: Favorite book from childhood
I have always been a reader. Some standouts I remember from my middle school days are The Giver and Ender’s Game, plus all the bazillions of Babysitter’s Club books I took out from the library. But what I’m going to land on here is the Green Sky trilogy by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
These books totally captured my imagination. I would force my brother to play kendar and we would try to “pense” with each other. I wanted to make a gliding suit as a halloween present. I loved those books. I wanted to live in these books. I wanted to live in giant trees in a peaceful world and eat tree berries that got me high and sleep on hammocks every night and go gliding through the sky. As a kid who never had any particular ambition, the idea of being assigned a job was also always appealing to me (I liked this part of The Giver too — I wonder if this was meant to sound a little dystopian? It never did to me.) And of course, telepathic powers!! Well, assuming I was around after the end of the trilogy when certain problems are solved.
Anyway, I reread this series fairly recently as an adult and was pleasantly surprised that they were still enjoyable and fun. My little heart still yells out to Raamo when he -redacted-. Now that I have more life experience I can see all the 60’s utopian idealism that clearly underpins the book, which comes across as a little naive and more than a little exclusionary. As far as I can tell there are no people of color, LGBTQ people, etc in this world.
But yeah. These books were probably my most read through elementary and middle school and certainly my most loved.
( All )
shipperslistDay 1: Favorite book from childhood
I have always been a reader. Some standouts I remember from my middle school days are The Giver and Ender’s Game, plus all the bazillions of Babysitter’s Club books I took out from the library. But what I’m going to land on here is the Green Sky trilogy by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
These books totally captured my imagination. I would force my brother to play kendar and we would try to “pense” with each other. I wanted to make a gliding suit as a halloween present. I loved those books. I wanted to live in these books. I wanted to live in giant trees in a peaceful world and eat tree berries that got me high and sleep on hammocks every night and go gliding through the sky. As a kid who never had any particular ambition, the idea of being assigned a job was also always appealing to me (I liked this part of The Giver too — I wonder if this was meant to sound a little dystopian? It never did to me.) And of course, telepathic powers!! Well, assuming I was around after the end of the trilogy when certain problems are solved.
Anyway, I reread this series fairly recently as an adult and was pleasantly surprised that they were still enjoyable and fun. My little heart still yells out to Raamo when he -redacted-. Now that I have more life experience I can see all the 60’s utopian idealism that clearly underpins the book, which comes across as a little naive and more than a little exclusionary. As far as I can tell there are no people of color, LGBTQ people, etc in this world.
But yeah. These books were probably my most read through elementary and middle school and certainly my most loved.
( All )
(no subject)
Apr. 28th, 2022 10:08 pmD&D campaign idea that popped into my head this evening after watching a bunch of DMing videos on YouTube
- There is a high-magic, walled city on a mountain that is ruled by a totalitarian wizard king
- It is a place of great wealth and learning, but entry and exit is strictly controlled (see “totalitarian wizard king”)
- crime and public dissent are rare, as criminals and dissidents are quickly disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again, and their very existence is no longer recognized publicly
- the players start the game in prison, they have been arrested for something. each player can choose what they did, or they can even decide they’ve been falsely accused for political reasons or no reason at all
- the players are brought before the wizard king and are sentenced: they will be banished!
- they and any other “criminals” in their group are then magically shifted to THE SHADOWFELL (or something like it)
- this is the dark reflection of the city, where the sun never rises and despair prevails
- it has a similar layout to the “real” city but everything is taller, sharper, twisted
- it is populated by evil things, the undead, other creatures of darkness. and of course, other banished “criminals” from the city
- the players will have to survive, find what allies there are to be had, uncover why people are sent here instead of executed or whatever
- i haven’t decided why yet. maybe the wizard king has a deal with a power in the Shadowfell to gain something in exchange for sending living creatures?
- anyway i’m thinking that this realm can’t be exited by typical planar magic, so even if they were to find someone who could cast plane shift or whatever, it doesn’t work
- i’m also thinking that whatever method they do discover to exit, it is highly destructive to the shadowfell, so maybe they will have to choose to either leave and destroy the local shadowfell area, killing everyone they left behind (so including whatever allies they made), or they can merge the shadowfell with the normal plane, which would mean all the creatures that populate the shadowfell version (friendly and otherwise) would appear in the real city
- so the players would have to make a TERRIBLE CHOICE
- anyway they’ll have to deal with the consequences of that and idk defeat the wizard tyrant or whatever, i haven’t thought this through
What I really want to do though is DM a game in-person with 3-4 players. I really hate DMing online, it sucks. And I want to try with a smaller group of players as I have a theory that it will be easier for me to practice making the game more immersive. Previously I have DMed for a group of 5 players while using a pre-written campaign in person, and for 7 players in a home brew campaign online. The pre-written adventure I bought didn’t feel good to run because I didn’t feel like I knew it inside and out. So that was stressful. The home brew campaign I knew better, but doing it online with so many players was just bad. Not being in the same room as the players made me feel really anxious, like I couldn’t read the room. And having so many players made everything go so slowly and it was hard to try to make everyone feel a part of the story. Anyway, it sucked.
But DMing is really fun when it is going well, and the most fun I had in the pre-written adventure was when we did a side encounter that wasn’t from the book at all, I wrote all of it myself and I feel like the players were really engaged. It was a courtroom scene where they had to be their own defense lawyers and come up with possible witnesses for their side, and question prosecution witnesses, and otherwise be creative in figuring out how to get away with a crime they definitely committed.
Anyway, now I’m trying to figure out how to actually put this together into a game. Which is the hard part. Ideas are easy.
And I’m trying not to think about which players to invite, as I have wayyy more D&D friends than the 3-4 player maximum I want to have.
It’s always fun when your Chinese teacher is like, “Well this 了 (le) means something already happened, but the second 了 means it hasn’t finished yet. I don’t know why, that’s just what it means. Eventually it will start to make sense”
Our writing text keeps having us write stuff like 中文不太難 (zhōngwén bú tài nán — “Chinese isn’t too hard”) and I’m like 🙃
Yeah I mean, I am enjoying learning Chinese and I think it is fun but yeah, wow, it is pretty hard actually! 很難！ It’s more than just the tonality and the writing system (although that is also hard), it’s just like… this language has basically nothing in common with English so it’s hard to even make guesses about what words mean.
Of course, not that English is particularly easy. For some reason YouTube started recommending these English language learning videos to me? And I watched a few? They are in English and clearly meant for an advanced learner who wants to sound more natural, but the nuances she points out are really interesting. Like she has this whole series about how American English speakers basically smoosh together half the words in our sentences until they are pretty much incomprehensible on their own, but native speakers understand the sentence as a whole perfectly well. This is because there are a few important words that are pronounced relatively clearly and they give us the context to understand the rest of the sentence so well we don’t even notice the slurred words. All that to say, it’s been nice to remind myself how irritating English is so that I don’t get too annoyed at Chinese!
Our writing text keeps having us write stuff like 中文不太難 (zhōngwén bú tài nán — “Chinese isn’t too hard”) and I’m like 🙃
Yeah I mean, I am enjoying learning Chinese and I think it is fun but yeah, wow, it is pretty hard actually! 很難！ It’s more than just the tonality and the writing system (although that is also hard), it’s just like… this language has basically nothing in common with English so it’s hard to even make guesses about what words mean.
Of course, not that English is particularly easy. For some reason YouTube started recommending these English language learning videos to me? And I watched a few? They are in English and clearly meant for an advanced learner who wants to sound more natural, but the nuances she points out are really interesting. Like she has this whole series about how American English speakers basically smoosh together half the words in our sentences until they are pretty much incomprehensible on their own, but native speakers understand the sentence as a whole perfectly well. This is because there are a few important words that are pronounced relatively clearly and they give us the context to understand the rest of the sentence so well we don’t even notice the slurred words. All that to say, it’s been nice to remind myself how irritating English is so that I don’t get too annoyed at Chinese!
all the things
Apr. 19th, 2022 02:55 pmI’m having a hard week.
Work feels relentless, even though I am objectively not that busy. It’s just there every day, you know? Every day. Every day! Every single day I have to wake up, work, eat, bathe, sleep. Even on weekends when I don’t have work I still have to get out of bed and take care of myself, take care of the pets.
Not to mention the world! World, what is happening? Why does everything feel so dire and hopeless. I had a conversation with my family over the weekend where I took everything to a depressing place by talking about how tempting it is to turn away and stop caring about the world, as it is obviously going to shit and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Sometimes being a person feels like too much, you know?
I mean, I’m okay. This isn’t a cry for help. I’m just having a hard week.
Work feels relentless, even though I am objectively not that busy. It’s just there every day, you know? Every day. Every day! Every single day I have to wake up, work, eat, bathe, sleep. Even on weekends when I don’t have work I still have to get out of bed and take care of myself, take care of the pets.
Not to mention the world! World, what is happening? Why does everything feel so dire and hopeless. I had a conversation with my family over the weekend where I took everything to a depressing place by talking about how tempting it is to turn away and stop caring about the world, as it is obviously going to shit and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Sometimes being a person feels like too much, you know?
I mean, I’m okay. This isn’t a cry for help. I’m just having a hard week.
PRINCE YU IS MY BOYFRIEND
Apr. 7th, 2021 10:49 pmOK in the past week my brother and I have watched, uhh, I forget the exact episode numbers. From the start of Prince Yu being despondent and being given a letter by Qin Banruo, to the episode where we find out why Mei Changsu doesn't look like Lin Shu anymore
Spoilers behind the cut - ( Read more... )
Spoilers behind the cut - ( Read more... )
go big or go home
Mar. 29th, 2021 10:35 pmI think I need a heart-protection pill after watching episodes 35-39 of Nirvana in Fire.
( Read more... )
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books books books
Mar. 26th, 2021 10:57 pmNO, WHY?? I just wrote the longest entry but it only posted like 1 sentence! Everything I put behind the cut was just disappeared. Wow, posting on Dreamwidth really is like a time machine to the aughts!
Anyway, I attempted to write a bunch of thoughts about the books I am reading or have recently finished.
Winter’s Orbit ( Read more... )
Ninefox Gambit ( Read more... )
The Echo Wife( Read more... )
Anyway, I attempted to write a bunch of thoughts about the books I am reading or have recently finished.
Winter’s Orbit ( Read more... )
Ninefox Gambit ( Read more... )
The Echo Wife( Read more... )
I’m trying pathetically to learn Mandarin via the Hello Chinese app but I didn’t go on it for a few days and now I’ve forgotten everything. Not that I actually know how to say much in the first place. 我喜欢我的猫。今天是星期三。我没有狗。我想去饭馆。Brilliant, scintillating conversation skills. Of course, cdramas have taught me 是吗 (shi ma, or “what”/“really”?) and 闭嘴 (bizui, or “shut up”) so I can also be rude if I want, and let’s not forget 不知道 (bu zhidao, or “i don’t know”).
I just wish it didn’t exit my brain as soon as it entered :( I guess this is what happens when you get old, you can’t remember shit
I just wish it didn’t exit my brain as soon as it entered :( I guess this is what happens when you get old, you can’t remember shit
sorting emails: the fuck-it method
Mar. 23rd, 2021 02:39 pmFor a long time I had been sorting work emails into a series of folders based on their topic or sender. And then every few days I would spend like 30 minutes painstakingly sorting them.
Today I was clicking through and wondered why the fuck I was spending brain energy trying to figure out what folder to put this email that I didn't even read and will never look at again
But also I'm allergic to deleting emails, and I use my inbox as a sort of to-do list so I can't just leave them there. So I decided to set up a new folder scheme:
I think it will work pretty well.
(Kudos is a folder I've had for a long time that includes all the nice things people have said about me, for when I feel shitty or need to write a resume or whatever)
Today I was clicking through and wondered why the fuck I was spending brain energy trying to figure out what folder to put this email that I didn't even read and will never look at again
But also I'm allergic to deleting emails, and I use my inbox as a sort of to-do list so I can't just leave them there. So I decided to set up a new folder scheme:
- Useless
- Useful
- Kudos
I think it will work pretty well.
(Kudos is a folder I've had for a long time that includes all the nice things people have said about me, for when I feel shitty or need to write a resume or whatever)
will you assholes just talk to each other
Mar. 22nd, 2021 10:13 pmTonight my brother and I made orange chicken (recipe) and watched episodes 32-34 of Nirvana in Fire, the episodes also known as "could you just tell him what you're mad about already, for fucks sake???"
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Prince Yu finally drops the idiot ball
Mar. 19th, 2021 11:38 pmMy brother and I watched episodes 27-31 of Nirvana in Fire tonight. Spoilers below the cut.
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( Read more... )
:thinking emoji:
Mar. 17th, 2021 10:42 pmMe reading a fanfic: Hrm, I feel like in that position, spreading your legs would make your asshole less accessible, not more
why do i have to have a job
Mar. 17th, 2021 11:48 amI'm having a tough week. I have been sleeping like shit, and feeling tired and cold all the time, and I'm unmotivated and resentful at my job. Today I resent my boss for having invited me to a meeting scheduled during my lunch break without telling me the subject. I had to track him down and it turns out that some people in some random department want to ask me about the long-running project I work on.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL
But no I have to move my lunch break around so I can sit in a fucking video chat to tell them really basic shit.
I am extremely resentful of the very IDEA of meetings right now. Our company presumably pays lots of money for this chat program that has all kinds of features like assigning tasks but every time someone wants to do something they set up 1-3 recurring weekly meetings with 10-30 people, don't give anyone an agenda, and the entire purpose of the project seems to be "have at least 1 hour of meetings a week and then maybe someone in the meeting will agree to do some work at some point in the future".
I attended a meeting on Monday that was an hour long, and the only agenda item I gave a shit about was "how can we make it so that we can collaborate on this project in ways other than waiting for the weekly meeting" but that agenda item got pushed because 3 people (of the 20 attendees) would rather spend the last 25 minutes of the meeting arguing about a topic that I literally knew nothing about.
Anyway when I'm not in meetings I just dither around and feel like a bad, lazy person because I can't bring myself to do any of my actual work.
It sucks.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL
But no I have to move my lunch break around so I can sit in a fucking video chat to tell them really basic shit.
I am extremely resentful of the very IDEA of meetings right now. Our company presumably pays lots of money for this chat program that has all kinds of features like assigning tasks but every time someone wants to do something they set up 1-3 recurring weekly meetings with 10-30 people, don't give anyone an agenda, and the entire purpose of the project seems to be "have at least 1 hour of meetings a week and then maybe someone in the meeting will agree to do some work at some point in the future".
I attended a meeting on Monday that was an hour long, and the only agenda item I gave a shit about was "how can we make it so that we can collaborate on this project in ways other than waiting for the weekly meeting" but that agenda item got pushed because 3 people (of the 20 attendees) would rather spend the last 25 minutes of the meeting arguing about a topic that I literally knew nothing about.
Anyway when I'm not in meetings I just dither around and feel like a bad, lazy person because I can't bring myself to do any of my actual work.
It sucks.
Nirvana in Fire & homemade General Tso's
Mar. 15th, 2021 11:10 pmMy brother came over tonight and we cooked dinner and watched some Nirvana in Fire, as is becoming our custom on Mondays. We made General Tso's chicken from scratch using this recipe on Serious Eats. The recipe was extremely messy and much, much more time consuming than I had imagined, but it was really really good! The sauce was spicy and vinegary and a little bit sweet. If I made it again, I'd probably double the sauce. My brother is also starting to learn to cook a little more seriously so I try to teach him some things. Tonight he learned how to separate an egg and he learned the joys of using long cooking chopsticks.
I am not a particularly good cook, but I am a pretty good baker and I think some of the skills are transferring over slowly but surely. Honestly, I find cooking kind of exhausting, a lot of effort just to do something you do 3 times a day: eat. Baking is more satisfying because baking is almost always something I do for someone else. It's an event, a treat. A gift. So cooking dinner with my brother kind of feels more like we're doing something special together rather than the drudgery of keeping our bodies alive.
Anyway, NIRVANA IN FIRE!! Spoilers thru episode 26.
( Read more... )
I am not a particularly good cook, but I am a pretty good baker and I think some of the skills are transferring over slowly but surely. Honestly, I find cooking kind of exhausting, a lot of effort just to do something you do 3 times a day: eat. Baking is more satisfying because baking is almost always something I do for someone else. It's an event, a treat. A gift. So cooking dinner with my brother kind of feels more like we're doing something special together rather than the drudgery of keeping our bodies alive.
Anyway, NIRVANA IN FIRE!! Spoilers thru episode 26.
( Read more... )
oh no, a fandom milestone
Mar. 14th, 2021 03:37 pmOK so I'm pretty new to this whole "fandom" thing to be honest. I've always liked stuff and have occasionally read fanfiction but I've never really participated in the fandom stuff until I got into The Untamed/CQL/MDZS. And if I'm being honest with myself I really only got into fandom because the pandemic was starting and I felt a mighty need for something fun and divorced from the reality of 2020
Anyway.
So I'm reading this book right now called Winter's Orbit and it is giving me SUCH wangxian vibes! If someone told me it started life as a sci-fi arranged marriage wangxian AU I would be nodding along like "yes, this totally makes sense".
To be fair, literally nothing in the plot so far is like MZDS at all, but here are our main characters: Kiem, who is outgoing, loves to party and drink, has responsibilities but approaches them with an irreverent air. Jainan, who hella smart and accomplished, quiet, cerebral, reticent, and serious. They're put into an arranged marriage. They are both super into each other, but are convinced for various reasons that the other person isn't interested and/or resents them. They both tiptoe around each other's feelings and they each interpret this as dislike.
So yeah, the fandom milestone is that I'm starting to read character dynamics from the show I like into other media ;^^
(PS I googled the book just now and it turns out this book did start out on AO3 but I didn't read further to see if it was fanfic or an original story but yeah, I wasn't totally off-base in clocking it as fanficy)
Anyway.
So I'm reading this book right now called Winter's Orbit and it is giving me SUCH wangxian vibes! If someone told me it started life as a sci-fi arranged marriage wangxian AU I would be nodding along like "yes, this totally makes sense".
To be fair, literally nothing in the plot so far is like MZDS at all, but here are our main characters: Kiem, who is outgoing, loves to party and drink, has responsibilities but approaches them with an irreverent air. Jainan, who hella smart and accomplished, quiet, cerebral, reticent, and serious. They're put into an arranged marriage. They are both super into each other, but are convinced for various reasons that the other person isn't interested and/or resents them. They both tiptoe around each other's feelings and they each interpret this as dislike.
So yeah, the fandom milestone is that I'm starting to read character dynamics from the show I like into other media ;^^
(PS I googled the book just now and it turns out this book did start out on AO3 but I didn't read further to see if it was fanfic or an original story but yeah, I wasn't totally off-base in clocking it as fanficy)
(no subject)
Mar. 14th, 2021 12:17 amSo this may be odd but...
I really like Daylight Savings Time. By which I mean, I like us changing the clocks. I like going back and forth between DST and standard time. In the fall, I like how it's suddenly darker at night, it feels like we're settling in for winter. It's cozy. And in the spring I like how it's the opposite, it's so sunny and it feels like everything is waking up.
And I think it's neat that we can just... change the time. Although our perception of time marches relentlessly forward, we don't actually have to be tied to a clock because that is a thing we made up. It's useful but we can change it if we felt like it.
It reminds me of that quotation from one of the very best books ever, The Last Unicorn:
I really like Daylight Savings Time. By which I mean, I like us changing the clocks. I like going back and forth between DST and standard time. In the fall, I like how it's suddenly darker at night, it feels like we're settling in for winter. It's cozy. And in the spring I like how it's the opposite, it's so sunny and it feels like everything is waking up.
And I think it's neat that we can just... change the time. Although our perception of time marches relentlessly forward, we don't actually have to be tied to a clock because that is a thing we made up. It's useful but we can change it if we felt like it.
It reminds me of that quotation from one of the very best books ever, The Last Unicorn:
When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls.Anyway now I'm going to go change all the non-internet-connected clocks in my home and go to sleep, because I am that responsible asshole.
UPDATE THE NEXT MORNING: omg i’m so fucking tired, i take it all back, DST is the worst. ahhhhhhhhh do not want
memory lane
Mar. 13th, 2021 10:50 amCreating this account the other day was so weird. I used to be on LiveJournal and I was for many years. I had bought a permanent account. I still sometimes get messages about bots following me over there. Anyway, I used to be good at this shit. I made my own themes and wrote my own HTML. I was in all these groups and communities. I can't even remember what the communities were about because I was never in any particular fandom, I was just around, talking about my life, with everyone else.
Now after all these years on Tumblr and Twitter, making something myself is a long-neglected muscle. Even looking at changing the color scheme on a theme was overwhelming.
Also, the text is SO SMALL. When did I get so blind??
Anyway, hi to anyone who comes by.
Now after all these years on Tumblr and Twitter, making something myself is a long-neglected muscle. Even looking at changing the color scheme on a theme was overwhelming.
Also, the text is SO SMALL. When did I get so blind??
Anyway, hi to anyone who comes by.
