One last gorgeous day of summer! It reached 74F/23C yesterday, and I headed up into the high mountains to see the autumn colours, a final outing in shorts and T-shirt. It's supposed to snow up there in the next couple of days, while in the lowlands we get cloud, intermittent rain and highs from the high 50s to low 60s (14-17C) over the next 2 weeks...

( The Pacific Crest Trail north from Chinook Pass )

Current Mood: calm

kaberett

In My Ridiculous Pen Collection, I have a Lamy 2000 (largely inspired by Ant Newman of UKFountainPens waxing lyrical). I got it second hand, as with all but one of my pens; the one that showed up cheap came with an F nib.

( Read more... )

erinptah

Fell down a rabbit hole of watching “people recreate the iconic Bad Apple music video on the wildest, most improbable devices” videos. (“Can it run Doom?” is so passe.)

Frame of Bad Apple on a vintage oscilloscope

Got any favorites of your own to rec? Here are mine:

dannye_chase

Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Superstitions About Death: Mirrors, Bees, and Open Windows

Welcome on this Weird Wednesday! Death is a natural part of life, and humans are naturally superstitious. A deathbed is a highly emotional and sometimes fearful place, so it’s not surprising we’ve developed a slew of superstitions about this inevitable event. So let’s take a look into a room with all the doors open and mirrors covered…

Superstitions about death fall into two main categories: actions meant to ease the passage of a dying person, and actions taken after the death to ensure the soul rests easy (and that death doesn’t visit others in the household).

At a Deathbed

Some superstitions about death work on the belief that physical things can hinder a metaphysical passage. For example, if the deathbed itself is lying perpendicular to floor boards or ceiling beams, it’s thought to keep the dying person from making an easy exit. Deathbeds may thus be moved so the bed is lying parallel to the boards and beams. (In fact, the floorboard thing is said to be so powerful that lying crossways can cause nightmares or even the death of a healthy person.)

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

Stay a while. The idea that you can prolong the dying process by placing the bed across the boards or closing doors is also creepy. What if you had a character who wanted to do that…on purpose? Maybe they hate the dying person. Maybe they want them to answer a question. Or maybe they just can’t bear to let them go.

Image credit

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

gothikmaus

Oops, I completely forgot to post my latest fanart here. September was crazy as usual at work, so I ended up drawing only a quick sketch towards the end of the month, but it's still better than nothing. One of my New Year's goals for 2025 was to draw at least one thing each month and I didn't want to skip September, so I just sat down and did it.

( Sailor Mars )

As for writing, I've been working on the ficlets for the Nick/Greg advent calendar for a while, but I'm also writing an original short story for a literary contest, and that should be the priority right now. "Should" being the key word here. It's almost done, I just need to write a couple more scenes and do some editing. The deadline is the end of October, so I still have some time, but not a lot, so I better focus on that...

Current Mood: busy

kitewithfish

What I’ve Read
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance – Lois McMaster Bujold – You can really feel the Penric and Desdemona style books coming around in Bujold’s later work. Bujold built a great character in Ivan Vorpatril – he’s too close to the throne of an empire to avoid knowing about politics, so instead he has developed a perfectly tuned sense of political ramifications for every move he could potential make – and manages to build a life where he’s known for being a lady’s man and a bit vapid, instead of a good figurehead for a coup! He’s adorable and he’s got a good match in Tej. In some ways, this felt like Bujold having a good time with her own books and not being too serious about it.

What I’m Reading
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers – 25% - An elderly man is found dead at his gentleman’s club, and establishing the time of his death becomes crucial for executing his will when it’s revealed he died the same day as his sister. Did he die just before her, so that all her wealth passes to her lady companion? Or just after, so that her wealth joins his estate and passes nearly entirely to his eldest son? It’s also got lovely worldbuilding around the WWI veterans in the background of Peter Wimsey’s world – their comfort with death and soldiering draws a line between the young men and the older crowd of the club.

The Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould – Feisty and interesting! I’m re-reading this after reading it as a teenager – it definitely informed my skepticism towards science that “proves” an existing social bias is grounded in hard scientific fact. Really good and clear writing, it does feel like it’s from 1981 at times. (Remember when we were just fighting fundamentalists about teaching evolution in public schools? And not about the continued existence of public schools??)

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed

kaberett

This morning I had Physio at The Hospital Up The Road, which is a really good way to get me to actually go to the allotment (which is round the back of the hospital site, so the way this usually goes is I cycle to the allotment, drop my bike off, and then cut through to the opposite side of the site where Physio Happens, thereby not needing to faff about with bike locks).

Upon my return from physio (which was not... great; I got probably-a-cold two and a half weeks ago and my cardiovascular-respiratory situation is still Distinctly Not Happy) I actually paid slightly closer attention to my saffron bed -- the last couple of trips I've been all "ugh, nothing doing, I should really weed but UGH clearly the saffron has all DIED yes I KNOW that this is the traditional time of year for me to be convinced that The Saffron Has Died only to discover--" and indeed not only were there multiple clumps of saffron, most of them have flowers that are clearly going to happen Any Moment Now.

So today I have come home with six saffron strands, and am expecting A Bunch More, and have reinspected the saffron containers on the patio and established that one of those has them starting to come up as well -- and so now, obviously, I need to work out what to do with the RIDICULOUS RICHES represented by... maybe like two dozen strands of saffron. (Yes I also have a stash of shop-bought.)

Saffron & bay custard tarts with sticky blackberries? More saffron and cardamom panettone pudding (which we know we like)? Saffron rice pudding? All the saffron recipes from Sweet, which is possibly going to be my next cook-(almost)-all-the-way-through project? Lebovitz's saffron ice cream, to go with the planned quince sorbet? Saffron buns? Literally any of the obvious savoury options??? SO MUCH CHOICE.

erinptah

The promised recs for “videos about the reality of LLMs attempting to play chess” from the GothamChess channel.

ChatGPT versus Stockfish (an actual, functional chess-playing program)
ChatGPT versus GothamChess himself
ChatGPT versus Google Bard (they both make absurd moves at each other)
ChatGPT versus DeepSeek (it starts with valid moves, then deteriorates, and both boths keep giving nonsense explanations of their moves)
The most recent ChatGPT versus Stockfish (this one has a twist at the end, I won’t even spoil it)
He also did his own Chatbot Chess Championship (playlist is in reverse order, so I linked the last video in the list, which is the first game).

The host plays the games out on-screen for you, with explanations and commentary. These ones aren’t for serious chatbot-testing purposes, they’re for entertainment — so when the bots make up illegal moves, he usually just runs with them. Sometimes with narration like “and here ChatGPT summons an extra rook from another dimension” or “You might think this is just a pawn, but Grok knows it’s secretly a horse pawn!”

Once in a while, he’ll tell the bot its move is illegal. Some of them go into “yes, of course, you’re right, my mistake” sycophancy mode. Others just get weirder.

The bots teleport pieces through each other. Manifest already-taken pieces back from the Shadow Realm. Spawns more pieces than it had to start with. Move pieces in directions they don’t go. And just because it’s making up moves, doesn’t mean it’s making up good moves! Sometimes it takes its own pieces. Sometimes it puts itself in check!

Sometimes they also generate their opponent’s moves. Because “black moves 1” is typically followed by “white moves 2, black moves 3, white moves 4” — and the bots don’t actually have a meaningful sense of “stop auto-generating text at the end of move 1.”

I was curious if the LLM’s idea of moves included “making up whole new categories of pieces” or “moving to squares that aren’t on the 8×8 chess grid.” Haven’t seen either of those so far.

One thing I didn’t anticipate is, sometimes a bot tells the other player their move is illegal. Even when it’s not! Saying “there’s a piece in your way” (when there isn’t), or “the king can’t move to E7” (not for any rules-based reason, the bot was just gatekeeping E7).

The newer bots also give general paragraphs on “here’s the explanation for my move,” which are absolutely just LLM Word Salad(TM) made of chess words. As a person who knows Basic Chess Rules but doesn’t actively play the game, sometimes I need GothamChess’s breakdown to see why they’re nonsense. Other times it’s just the bot saying “I have put you in check!” when the other player is blatantly not in check.

The whole thing was very informative, and also really entertaining. (…And it doesn’t involve the chatbots doing anything consequential, so it’s a nice break from all the stories about LLMs putting someone’s life in danger.) Give it a look.

dannye_chase

How to Organize Your Story Submissions

With Free Downloadable Spreadsheet

I’m a huge fan of spreadsheets! So I’m sharing the 8 tables I use to answer 3 important questions:

1. Where the heck did I send my story?

2. Do I have a story to fill this call?

3. What is my history with this story/publication?

Happy writing!

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

Image credit

mundungus42

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that after a long and busy Friday, Mr. 42 brought home bougie pizza after work, I slept like the dead, and had a pretty decadient lie-in on Saturday.

I did very little, apart from organize and learn my Evensong music, snug with Hildy and give her nice-but-still-limited walkies, figure out a time to bring Pop's watch in to be serviced, and indulge in comfort reading. I did have a truly lovely conversation with my uni bestie ED, who was at our alma mater for Homecoming. She sent photos of many beloved faces, inlcuding hers, and we chatted about everything. ED worked for a government agency that was recently decimated by the current administration, so the reason she was able to go was because she and her family were recalled from overseas. We have tentative plans to take over the world, just FYI.

When Mr. 42 got home from work, we hot-footed it down to Liberty Station to take in Sondheim's Follies at the Cygnet's brand-new theatre, The Joan. This is very exciting to me, because this is the first time since the pandemic that we've had a subscription at Cygnet, so thank you, Mr. 42 for the excellent birthday pressie! Broadway World loved the production, and so did I!

( Read more... )It was such a pleasure to see several of Sondheim's most famous and frequently misunderstood tunes in their original context, as well as some new-to-me songs that were absolute scorchers, like Could I Leave You. The sheer quantity and variety of musical numbers was nearly overwhelming, but utterly perfect for a show that switches gears freqeuently between oppressive nostalgia and determined, not-entirely-sane freneticism. The Cygnet's is a dynamite production of one of the better, if bonkers shows in Sondheim's oeuvre.

In other news, Sunday marked the observance of St. Francis of Assisi's feast day, so all the Episcopal churches did a blessing of the animals, so there were lots of adorable doggos in residence. After the service, wherein all four of the sopranos had a brain fart and failed to come in on a phrase in support of the alto melody. We came in on our next entrance and were totally fine, but AW apologized for messing up, as did I, but then I pointed out that we'd showed remarkable sectional unity. *giggle* We sang "All Things Bright and Beautiful" at the blessing ceremony after the service and oohed and aahed at all the good pets.

After a lovely chat with Mom, I gave Hildy a short walk and skedaddled down to Evensong, which I figured from the repertoire would be with the Cathedral choristers. I missed the first chorister service of the season because it was that horrible weekend after I'd been sick and when Clara had to be hospitalized. But the new crop of choristers is roughly double the size of last year's, which is wonderful to see. They also have ruffs for their vestments, which is eight kinds of adorable. However, it did make things a bit wild voice-distribution-wise, so MG ended up switching me to alto, which went well because I got to sing with the wonderful B instead of flailing around on my own on the Noble canticles in B-minor. Thankfully, most of the music was familiar to me, and I usually sing A1 on the Smith responses, so nothing was wholly out of left field. I also ended up singing sop on the psalm because most of the child trebles weren't singing that, so we had a more even distribution of S/A. This was a relief because it's hard to sight-read Anglican chant if you don't know your part of the tone.

Also notable was our new organ scholar, SP, who played the anthem and closing voluntary beautifully and also conducted the canticles with great aplomb. She is a wonderful and welcome asset to the music program, and also has a lovely soprano singing voice to boot!
Everything went well, I'm pleased to report. And we also had one of the current Schola members who started as a child chorister give a brief statement about what the music program has meant to him personally and professionally, and it was absolutely lovely. So well done, JY! There was also a reception after the service, so yay for treats!

I was pretty pooped when I got home, and Mr. 42 had a very long stretch of teaching, so we did little other than order Persian food for dinner and watched the first episode of the newest season of Great Pottery Throw-Down before heading to bed.

Today in renovation news, J is removing our drop ceiling/soffits, framing the water heater opening, and scoping the ventilation, which will hopefully enable us to get the final-final estimate for the renovation this week. Mr. 42 and I are ready to hit LendingTree as soon as we have a total for the renovation and figure out how much financing to seek. We're scheduled to start electrical on Wedensday, which is good, because our driveway is being tarred and sealed today, so parking near our place will be limited until everything re-opens on Tuesaday morning. Also on Tuesday, I have scheduled my very first laundry service, which feels like an enormous indulgence. But despite neighbors kindly offering to let us do laundry at their places, it's an enormous inconvenience for them and our schedules are bonkers, so I hate to ask it of folks if we don't need to.

Oh! And over the weekend the universe's reason for the comedy of errors that resulted in me being excluded from ProChoir's upcoming concert, about which I have been butthurt for months now, finally became clear. It wasn't just because the 42 household is going through it at present, though heaven knows we have been. It's because the J family just announced the date for the celebration of life for CJ, their much loved and deeply mourned patriarch, and it's the same day as ProChoir's concert. If I'd been on the roster, I wouldn't have been able to go to Ventura County with Mr. 42 for it. So our plan is to drive up the Friday night before, go to CJ's send-off and see people we love and haven't seen in too long on Saturday, and then drive home Saturday night, since both of us have busy Sundays.

A relatively quiet week ahead:

Mon: work onsite, Magical Monday (band practice)
Tue: vacation day at home, drop off watch with watch wizard, prepare laundry pickup, free night
Wed: work from home, electrical work on the house, free night
Thu: work from home, Heavenly Choir rehearsal
Fri: work onsite, free night
Sat: FREEEEEEE EVERYTHING
Sun: Heavenly Choir morning service, Cathedral Evensong

Here's hoping I can spend some quality time with my Hearts & Cauldrons GiftFest piece. I have decided where it's going next, but I haven't figured out the work-problem we're solving. I have a metaphor but not a physical manifestation thereof. And it has to be under 6K words so it has to be relatively simple problem to solve once the two of them are on the case. At least they have different areas of expertise, so it's just a matter of finding common ground within the metaphor. *ponders*

Right. Lots to do and think about. And hopefully a hair appointment to book!

Smooches to All!

Lib
Mun42

kaberett

Reading. So many things. Or at least it feels that way. Unsure if actually So Many.

( Melzack & Wall, McRobbie, McGuire, Duncan, Stock )

( Cookbooks )

And I am now TWO months behind on Dreamwidth. TWO. Ahahahaha.

Playing. Several more rounds of Fluxx.

Tukoni: Prologue, "a point-and-click puzzle adventure" featuring beautiful botanical art. Very very much enjoyed this tiny snippet (a mushroom! that makes it rain! when you pat it!) and am mildly dismayed at the five-year gap between the release of this prologue and the subsequent demo of what will theoretically be a full game...

Cooking. ALSO SO MANY THINGS.

another recipe from East: chilli tofu
green beans in tomato sauce with fennel seeds, feta, and toast, loosely inspired by a thing out of the latest Ottolenghi cookbook (in the sense that I went looking for confirmation of my sense that the thing I was thinking of doing would work, found it, and promptly carried on with my intentions rather than the recipe I was distinctly less into)
smitten kitchen's vegetarian cassoulet, with the addition of Dubious Protein Chunks
a quince cake, which I made a lot of modifications to, and of which I am dubious, probably because of those modifications (but A seems to like it, so that's a win)
hazelnut and treacle Welsh cakes, leaving us with two remaining recipes of any interest in the tourist-tat Welsh cakes cookbook (cranberry + white chocolate is a no, as are the two recipes containing bacon; double choc chip is a maybe, and I'm willing to consider that Caerphilly + leek might have merits but A is distinctly more dubious)
soda bread! notable because (i) not sourdough, (ii) using the buttermilk culture I have successfully kept alive this time around (and have now refreshed), and (iii) I ignored all of the instructions about Handling It As Little As Possible and as a result it achieved Structural Integrity, which I usually do... not manage

Eating. I have successfully worked out how to make Wagamama's current menu provide me with food I will actually look forward to, which is A Great Victory. Located the last of last year's seasonal Dark Chocolate With Raspberry and have been gently nibbling it. QUINCE. And another variety of apple from an abandoned neighbouring plot at the allotment; this one is Very Crunchy and Very Red but not particularly flavours.

(The tree that got planted so as to encroach on my plot is some kind of cooker, unsure which, because my usual approach to cooking apples is James Grieve from my mother's garden...)

Making & mending. I think that, inspired by some helpful answers on reddit, I have got my clicky fountain pen clicking reliably again? It was doing a thing where it wouldn't lock, and it was pointed out to me that probably the issue was going to be located in the knock not at the trap door, so I... wrote the pen dry, rinsed out the ACCUMULATED DUST OF THE YEARS (THANKS DADFORD ROAD), and since then it's been behaving beautifully. Long may it continue.

Growing. There are still tomatoes? Also kohlrabi. I only managed a single flying visit to the plot this week; at some point soonish I'm going to need to get A to take me over with the car so I can retrieve from the greenhouse the various peppers I'm hoping to overwinter. I do not appear to have been issued with a Non-Cultivation Order in this round of inspections, which is a very welcome surprise!

Observing. A has seen the bat! I have not seen the bat because I have been Preoccupied with Other Things (misc). But the bat has not yet put itself to bed for the winter. <3

erinptah

Remember how last year, I watched (and wrote about watching) Mawaru Penguindrum, and paired it with the episode reactions from the Imagine Me & Utena podcast? And how the IMAU reactions had only gotten through episode 17, but they had been on hiatus for long enough that I figured they weren’t going to come back to it, so I went ahead and watched the rest of the show?

The IMAU folks came back! After a year-and-a-half gap, they started up again, and got through the rest of the series!

(It’s in my folder of “podcasts that stopped updating a long time ago, but didn’t officially finish, so I check in once or twice a year, just to see if anything’s changed.” And sure enough, something had.)

Overall, I didn’t like the Penguindrum anime. There were some good parts, even a few great ones, and I still listen to the music — but that wasn’t enough to outweigh all the parts that were bad/rushed/nonsensical/poorly thought-out/generally-unpleasant.

Still looking forward to finally finishing the IMAU recaps. If you’re a fan of the series, or even if you also didn’t care for it but ended up watching the whole thing, check them out. (Direct link to the RSS feed.)

Penguindrum screencap of the idol duo Double H

kaberett

Bookshop.org is now doing ebooks in the UK. Unlike Hive, they do not apply DRM to everything. V excited about this!
I think -- think -- I have worked out an Acceptable Wagamama order, at least for the time being. I'm mildly annoyed about needing to order extra vegetables in order to have enough vegetables in my vegetable noodle dish, though. (The yasai pad thai + wok-fried greens is not My Favourite Thing They've Ever Done, but it is better than anything else I have managed to make the current menu disgorge. Which is useful, because we have A Routine, and it involves Wagamama.)
I have POACHED SOME QUINCE (I am turning windfalls I located round the corner into cake, and the Gift Quince are probably going to turn into a Ruby Violet sorbet recipe). I am going to make a cake, probably with added bay leaves, as I think I mentioned, probably tomorrow but the quince won't hurt for spending a bit longer sat in syrup. I am contemplating the merits of showing up on the doorstep of the folk with the quince tree, with some cake, and being all "hello yes I made this with windfalls onto the public path, I will very happily make you more things :) out of quince :) if you don't know what to do with them :))) which I am KIND OF ASSUMING YOU DON'T given that the branches overhanging your garden are still COVERED IN THE THINGS, unlike the branches overhanging the public byway..." (The social anxiety almost certainly means I won't actually do this, but I am, you know, considering.)
Meanwhile today's poking around at recipe books introduced me to the concept of medlar sticky toffee pudding, which is now extremely high up my list of things to do with this year's medlar as and when we get any. (Recipe is in a book I'm not actually going to get from Oxfam, or at the Torygraph.)
I continue to really enjoy looking at the Pelikan Art Collection pens (further links from within that one). It is possible I tripped and fell and spent more time reading about them this morning.

kitewithfish

I am v tired so my descriptions are a bit thin tonight.

What I’ve Read
Strong Poison – Dorothy Sayers – Our heroine is finally introduced! It’s so good, but it’s also meaningfully unfinished in terms of their relationship.
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin – This book moved me – I had read it last in high school and what stayed with me was etched deep. But, there was a lot that I honestly forgot and the ending hit me like a truck.

What I’m Reading

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers
The Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould
Mimesis – Erich Auerbach

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison

erinptah

Hazbin Hotel:

Charlie Morningstar, Princess of Hell, opens the titular hotel with the goal of “helping demons workshop their way to earning a spot in Heaven.” Most demons aren’t even interested, the handful that show up all have ulterior motives, and the other plot threads happening around it involve murder, genocide, hard drugs, and sex slavery. Watch Charlie flail her way through the hopelessly-doomed prospect of coaching this crowd to “do trust falls with each other” and “sing songs about how to apologize”!

Accurately described as “what if somebody got to make a professionally-animated TV series with all her 2000s-era DeviantArt OCs?” That’s not a complaint — they are good designs, aesthetically pleasing, fun to watch — it’s just a description of this very specific energy they bring.

Based on fandom osmosis, I was expecting a good amount of darkness and irreverence, with a generous serving of sexy iddiness. (Of the two characters whose names I knew before I started watching, one of them is the gay porn star who presents himself as sassy and slutty but is hiding a deep vulnerability in his soul. Obviously fandom loves him.)

I didn’t realize it was going to do all that and try to have fully, unironically earnest messages about love and redemption. Charlie’s quest is not hopelessly doomed! And the show does actually want you to get on board with that! One minute you’re getting a totally-serious song about the power of fighting for love (did I mention this is also a musical?), the next you’re getting a comically-bloody scene about the demon whose gimmick is indiscriminate stabbing!

It mostly works, too. You would really expect this to fall apart, and there are points where it teeters, but overall it holds together as it soars through the first season and sticks the landing.

Weird and enjoyable. Looking forward to season 2.

Marvel Zombies:

A very short (4 half-hour episodes) expansion of that one What If…? episode. I never like zombie stuff, but I do like post-apocalyptic survival stuff…and, listen, it had some new tidbits of Moon Knight stuff. So I had to catch it at some point.

I liked all the scenes that focused on “here’s a handful of disparate MCU characters who got thrown together by the weird circumstances, let’s watch them wrangle the apocalypse as a team.” In general, it felt like the character interactions were written by people who liked them, and put some thought into them. (After that disappointing s3 episode with Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop, it’s extra-refreshing to see an AU where Shang-Chi and Katy’s friendship gets to shine, and Kate gets a subplot with a trick arrow.)

But then the show tried to have an over-arching plot. And it felt like the plot was written by people who thought “Wanda makes a cool and terrifying villain, so our priority is to make her a cool villain, and we don’t really care how she got to that point or whether her motives make any sense.”

The MK content was “in this AU, Marc and company got zombie’d early in the outbreak, and their buddy Blade was recruited as next Moon Knight.” This is the MCU version of Blade, who suffers from a bad case of His Main-Timeline Debut Hasn’t Actually Happened Yet. So I don’t blame these writers at all for not knowing what to do with him. (The guy is half-vampire, there should be all kinds of questions to explore about how that interacts with a mostly-zombified world — and this show has no interest in any of them.)

At least we got a cool new MK suit design out of it. And a fun scene of Khonshu having an argument with Valkyrie.

Knights of Guinevere:

Sci-fi psychological horror, which is also a scathing commentary on the creator’s career as a Disney animator. Follows a couple of friends who live and work in the garbage-strewn shadow of a planet-sized theme park, and a broken android (?) mascot who could really use their help.

Only the first episode is finished right now, so there’s a lot we can’t know, but it’s so rich and dense with worldbuilding info that there’s a ton of possibilities to speculate about. At this point I’ve seen multiple “breakdown of all the little things you missed in the Knights of Guinevere pilot!” videos, and haven’t stopped picking up new details yet.

Very excited to see where the rest of the series goes.

You can watch the episode on YouTube. And you should. It’s amazing. (IMDB has specific content warnings.)

kaberett

Clean, hot, on-demand running water.
I do not thus far feel particularly inspired by any of the recipes in Mary Woodin's The Painted Garden Cookbook, but I am very much enjoying leafing through the watercolours.
Bread came out of the oven not terribly long ago and will be breakfast tomorrow; I'm looking forward to it (probably with spiced medlar jelly, yes yes).
Continuity Gripes notwithstanding, I have this evening been extremely glad to have several October Daye short stories I'd not yet got to.
The pen I was using to take notes on The Challenge of Pain was running out of ink juuust enough that I was having to have repeated attempts at the odd letter, but not enough that it stopped writing before I was done making said notes. Great Satisfaction Achieved (and I'm hopeful that the thorough bath it has just had will mean it starts behaving better...)
Various greenhouse peppers continue to pep. The purple jalapeños are thus far mysteriously very much green, the thing that I think is a poblano (there was a mishap with labels) is setting fruit, and I've got no idea what exactly the short very bushy thing is but that too is now covered in flowers so with a little bit of luck I might even find out soon.
The second sowing of kohlrabi I'd entirely given up on... appears to be coming up after all???
A is a Very Good A Indeed and has finished unpacking the car following the event back in the first half of September. Before we wind up driving it across London again. And has cleared a bunch of the pile of Misc to take out to store in the garage.
Fancy moisturiser.
Warm Bed. yes. good. off I go.

kaberett

And then today's cookbook browsing introduced me to the concept of allorino! But the internet can't agree on whether it should be made with bay leaves, bay flowers, or bay berries. So clearly the correct solution here is Some Of Each, right.

(I am also contemplating whether I want to add finely chopped fresh bay to the quince buckwheat upside-down cake that is high on my priority list for things to cook over the next few days, given how much I love the Ottolenghi lemon & bay cake...)

Meanwhile, my other recreational reading today introduced me to the concept of the "Brompton Cocktail".

( End-of-life care circa the 1980s, with specific reference to terminal cancer. )

dannye_chase

The cover of "It Begins" by Eule Grey. Art by Felix Sadler. A purple background with a frame made of white spiderwebs. A black man in a shirt and waistcoat is embraced by a white man in a hoodie. A shadowy form looms behind them.

ALT

New book review!

It Begins by Eule Grey (Queer romance/horror)

Cover art by Felix Sadler

“Maybe I’m dangerous.”

It Begins hooked me immediately into its mystery, which manages to be both sexy and creepy. Unreliable narrators Sid and Byron do their best to cling to the men they love in order to escape loneliness, confusion, and the horror behind it all: the ghost of an unloved man, trapped in a room deep in Oxford University. The sex is visceral and so are the scares, and the tension in the book never lets up. The author answers all questions at the end, which I found very satisfying.

Check out It Begins for an exploration of some very unhealthy relationships contrasted with some remarkably good ones: romantic, platonic, and familial. Obsession and possession in the book are both a damning influence and the escape from it, depending on who’s pulling the strings. It’s a murky, frightening, at times disturbing story where anybody who wants a happily ever after is going to have to fight like hell for it.

See all my book reviews

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

erinptah

Roughly in the reverse order they were finished, most-recent first.

Technically the round ends on the 30th, but I'm not jumping on any new tags at this point! So this is the final version of the list.

I thought about emoji-coding these based on how much work I did ("just one of the final syn checks", "some of the synning", "basically all the synning", etc)...then decided, no, that's too much effort. The point is, over the last 3 months, I did Some Amount Of Wrangling on every single one of these:

Humans Are Space Orcs
Cottagecore
Clit Play
Roommates to Lovers
Pussy Spanking
Fangs
Strangers to Friends
Reader-Insert Has Scars
No Use of Y/N for Reader-Insert
Sexual Free Use
Soulmate Goose of Enforcement
Paranoid Reader-Insert
Gamer Reader-Insert
Enemy to Caretaker
Biting Kink
Purring
Cis Male Reader-Insert
Cis Female Reader-Insert
Masochist Reader-Insert
Phone Sex Operators
Breeding Kink
Mercenary Reader-Insert
Fighting as Foreplay
Past Trans Mpreg | Trans Male Pregnancy
Reader-Insert is Bad at Feelings
Wholesome
Kabeshiri | Stuck in a Wall
Underage Reader-Insert
Forced Proximity
Incontinence
Reader-Insert Wears a Dress
Shapeshifter Reader-Insert
Siren Reader-Insert
Reader-Insert Needs Therapy
POV Reader-Insert
Reader-Insert Wears Glasses
Innocent Reader-Insert
Conlangs | Constructed Languages
TTS | Text-to-Speech Podfic
Micropodfic
Character Has Had Bottom Surgery
Character Has Not Had Bottom Surgery
Bottom Surgery
Rivals to Lovers
Teenage Reader-Insert
Character Has Had Top Surgery
Top Surgery Scars
Mpreg | Male Pregnancy
Transmasculine Reader-Insert
Transfeminine Reader-Insert
English Is Not The Author's First Language
Autistic Characters
Reader-Insert Needs a Hug
Desi Reader-Insert
Asian Reader-Insert
Mind Break
Gender-Neutral Reader-Insert
Genderless Reader-Insert

...so, AMA, I guess?

tiggymalvern

Pantheon (currently on Netflix) Animated sci-fi series in which people learn to upload the brains of the dead to computer servers. I only just heard about this, though it’s a couple of years old now. There are two seasons and it’s genuinely good stuff.

I personally preferred the first season, which is smaller scale, about what this kind of technology would mean for people, and how it might be used and abused. The second season is more full scale, world-changing political events. They’re both interesting aspects to the issue, but the first season was more about the characters themselves, and I got more emotional investment from that.

Doom Patrol season one (HBO) – I know this is years old, but mostly what I heard about it at the time was, ‘It’s fine, but whatever,’ so we never got around to it. A friend recently urged me to watch with considerably more enthusiasm, so we hit up the first season. It starts out very silly (poison gas farting donkey level humour), but we stuck with it, and by about half way through the first season I was much more invested. The characters never become what you’d call nice, but I very much liked the way they developed. Every one of them has their sob story that makes them inclined to want to do nothing but sit and sulk about how their lives went to hell, and they have to be bullied into doing, well, pretty much anything. But as more of their backstories are revealed to one another, they’re learning about themselves too. It developed some very interesting threads beneath the silliness.

The choice to cast one of the most gorgeous gay actors on the planet (Matt Bomer) as a gay man who spends most of the time with his head wrapped in bandages was in some ways a shame🤪 But he does get to be so much more than a pretty face, and really shows his range acting when his expressions can’t be seen. I’m left wondering though, as an American TV series, how many viewers would have got the joke about Danny the Street? I don’t think Danny LaRue ever made much of an impact outside the UK and Ireland.

I enjoyed it and I’ll watch more of it, but I’ll be doing it without spouse – he declared at the end of the season that it was still to silly and not his thing.

Person of Interest – Another one of the ‘sometimes mentioned alongside Burn Notice’ series that was on my list. I’m two seasons in now and definitely enjoying it. I really like the way it ekes out the backstories of its characters as it goes along – always enough to keep you interested, and in a way that makes it clear the stories were there all along. This isn’t a case of inventing bullshit as they go, there’s an actual Plan. And it refuses to make its characters dumb either. Carter spends a while chasing John, and then she has to find him, because she’s smart. FBI agent Donnelly has to figure it out, because he’s an areshole cop, but he’s definitely not stupid, and so the series can’t stagnate and get stuck in a rut. There are some good twists in the writing here and there – the reveal of Elias was a fantastic move.

Person of Interest definitely starts out darker than Burn Notice. BN takes multiple seasons to get to the point where it says, yeah, the US government and the CIA in particular are absolute bastards, because its main character doesn’t want to believe that. Person Of Interest begins at that point, with both main characters having faked their own deaths to get the hell away from their own government.

The first season started out genuinely interesting, flagged somewhat in the middle, then really picked up again at the end. I do feel this is a series that would have been better with slightly shorter seasons. Some of the current TV shows that only get 8 or 10 eps in a season need more. At the other end of the scale, Person of Interest did not need 22 per season. I genuinely think Burn Notice hit the sweet spot with around 16 eps per season. Anyway, it’s great entertainment and I’ll be heading on through the rest!

Castlevania (Netflix). Aaaand yet another oldie we dived into. We will start watching some more recent stuff soon, I swear! We’ve just been waiting for a bunch of current series to end so that we can binge watch once they’re done. Castlevania’s a lot darker than I expected from the impressions I’d got online, and it being based on a video game, which for us is definitely a plus! The quality of the voice actors they got for the roles was impressive too.

I love the character development of Hector and Isaac. They both have awful backstories and histories of betrayal that make them bitter and vengeance-driven, but as events move on around them, and they interact with a range of people, they gain more perspective on themselves and each other. When they met up again in season four, with their differing expectations, it was an absolute delight.

But the ending of season two – OMG, WTF BBQ! Trevor and Sypha, what the hell were you thinking??? Alucard just had to kill his father, because he went mad after the murder of his wife, Alucard’s mother, and you two just say, ‘Here, we’re assigning you a job, you get to be alone forever guarding an empty castle,’ and you two trip off into the sunset. Do you not understand how awful that was? Not to mention dangerous??? Dracula went crazy and became a threat to the entire world because he was lonely and sad, and you go and dump his son in the exact same situation???

And maybe Sypha gets something of a pass because she just didn’t understand what that means for Alucard? She’s early twenties maybe? She’s literally never been alone in her life, and never had a home she had any attachment to. She lived a nomadic life with a group of family and friends and everything was shiny. But Trevor Belmont should know! He's been in the exact same situation. The last survivor of his family, despised for his name, his family home left in ruins. He’s been desperately lonely for years and it made him bitter and antagonistic. Why would he do that to Alucard? He needed to be slapped so hard! They don’t even drop back in from time to time and say, ‘Hi, how are you doing, how about we catch up?’ They just bugger off and never think about Alucard again. Damn. Harsh, guys.

Anyway, my rage at certain characters’ choices aside, it’s a good show 😁

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tiggymalvern - Sheep Lake and Sourdough Gap
kaberett - [stationery] contemplating a self-indulgence
erinptah - Erin watches: “Bad Apple but it’s…”
dannye_chase - Superstitions About Death: Mirrors, Bees, and Open Windows
gothikmaus - More Sailor Mars fanart and writing updates
kitewithfish - Wednesday Reading Meme for Oct 8 2025
kaberett - [growth] SAFFRON
erinptah - LLM Word Salad but it’s specifically chess words
dannye_chase - How to Organize Your Story Submissions: With Free Downloadable Spreadsheet
mundungus42 - A nice and noisy weekend
kaberett - vital functions
erinptah - Imagine Finishing Mawaru Penguindrum
kaberett - some things!
kitewithfish - Wednesday Reading Meme for Oct 1 2025
erinptah - Erin Watches: Hazbin Hotel, Marvel Zombies, Knights of Guinevere
kaberett - some. good. things.
kaberett - ... oh no I was previously unaware of bay liqueur
dannye_chase - Book review: It Begins by Eule Grey
erinptah - New AO3 canonicals I worked on during this round of NF Syn Hunters
tiggymalvern - TV Round-Up Time!

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Good Omens Holiday Exchange

Member Posts

Sheep Lake and Sourdough Gap

[stationery] contemplating a self-indulgence

Erin watches: “Bad Apple but it’s…”

Superstitions About Death: Mirrors, Bees, and Open Windows

Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Superstitions About Death: Mirrors, Bees, and Open Windows

At a Deathbed

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

More Sailor Mars fanart and writing updates

Wednesday Reading Meme for Oct 8 2025

[growth] SAFFRON

LLM Word Salad but it’s specifically chess words

How to Organize Your Story Submissions: With Free Downloadable Spreadsheet

How to Organize Your Story Submissions

With Free Downloadable Spreadsheet

A nice and noisy weekend

vital functions

Imagine Finishing Mawaru Penguindrum

some things!

Wednesday Reading Meme for Oct 1 2025

Erin Watches: Hazbin Hotel, Marvel Zombies, Knights of Guinevere

some. good. things.

... oh no I was previously unaware of bay liqueur

Book review: It Begins by Eule Grey

It Begins by Eule Grey (Queer romance/horror)

Cover art by Felix Sadler

“Maybe I’m dangerous.”

New AO3 canonicals I worked on during this round of NF Syn Hunters

TV Round-Up Time!

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