Recent Reading: Tales of Earthsea

Sep. 9th, 2025 10:23 am
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] books
We're back at the Earthsea Cycle with book 5: Tales of Earthsea. This book is a collection of short stories set in Earthsea, crafted as a kind of bridge between books 4 and 6.

Friends may recall that the last book, Tehanu, was not my favorite of the series, although I appreciate what Le Guin was doing. In Tales of Earthsea, we get the best of both worlds in a sense--a return to the fantasy adventure themes of the original trilogy combined with Le Guin's updated views on gender and roles. Like TehanuTales of Earthsea is no longer really children's fiction. Sex, substance abuse, child abuse, and various other mature themes are much more present here than in the original trilogy. These later Earthsea books read like they were written for the then-adult fans of the original trilogy, and I think it works well.

In each of the five stories of Tales of Earthsea, Le Guin is introducing us to elements of Earthsea society not seen before in the series: How women ended up being excluded from wizardry, a young man with the ability to become a wizard (the magical aptitude) who decides he wants another sort of life for himself, a wizard of Roke who misuses his power and chooses not to return although he is invited to, a woman who wants to study at Roke but is refused. In this way, Le Guin gives much breadth to the world of Earthsea by introducing these stories outside the "mainstream" Earthsea narratives.

I respect that Le Guin doesn't just try to retcon the sexism written into the earlier Earthsea books--instead, she really tries here to reckon with how the women of Earthsea manage it, how they get around it, and how it hurts them. The resultant picture feels realistic, up to and including how frustrating it is to watch women be excluded from the school of Roke despite having helped found it. 

She continues with her theme of unexpected heroes--protagonists who are average people from little nothing towns on little nothing islands who despite expectations prove themselves capable of great things, which is always fun to watch. 

We get backstory on several things present in the original trilogy, like the founding of the school and some history of Ged's first teacher, Ogion, which was great fun (and once again I am screaming clapping cheering as the specialist boy in all of Earthsea Ged makes a cameo).

A very enjoyable read overall, and I feel properly enthused and excited for the next book. 
rachelmanija: (Books: old)
[personal profile] rachelmanija


This novel appears to be a well-written and enjoyable but conventional haunted house story; it turns out to have a twist on that theme which I've never encountered before. I very much enjoyed discovering that for myself, so if you think you might too, don't read the spoilers.

A young couple, Emily and Freddie, move from London to Larkin Lodge, an old house in Dartmoor, while Emily's recovering from a serious accident. After she fell off a cliff, her heart stopped and one leg was permanently damaged. Doctors warned her and Freddie that she might suffer from post-sepsis mental complications, so when she starts perceiving weird things involving Larkin Lodge, both she and Freddie think it's probably her, not the house. Emily and Freddie's marriage is not the greatest, but is that something that was previously going on, or is it cracking under stress, or is the house having a bad effect on them?

Emily and Freddie are not the best people, but that really works for the story. I thought it was a lot of fun.

Spoilers! Read more... )

Content notes: Not even slightly gory or gross. Mention of a miscarriage (off-page, not described). Some violence, not graphic. No on-page animal harm, but the body of a dead raven is found.
kakkoi: (pic#17975378)
[personal profile] kakkoi posting in [community profile] style_system
hello! i've been working on layout for a bit, and while i've got most things i want done the way i want it, i'm having issues with the way a poster is displayed on the read page



ignore the padding, i'll be fixing that, but is there any way to get the "posting in" to not display on the reading page, and have it just show the entry poster and the community?

using tabula rasa - plain, and this is the current base layout and the code regarding posters and user pics looks like this

Yuletide 2025 Sticky Post

Sep. 8th, 2025 01:39 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Yuletide is an annual fic (1000+ words) exchange for rare and obscure fandoms run through this community and through the Archive of Our Own.

Current phase: Prepare to nominate your fandoms! See what fandoms are eligible here.

2025 Schedule

Monday 15 to Friday 26 September: Nominations (end 9pm UTC 26 September)
Tuesday 14 to Friday 24 October: Sign-ups (end 9pm UTC 24 October)
Sunday 26 October: Assignments out (may be earlier)
Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
yuletidemods: (pic#16706452)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Yuletide is a fanfic exchange for rare and tiny fandoms. When you nominate, please follow these guidelines to help us approve and organise fandoms.

We have not made any changes to eligibility this year. However, we made a few major changes last year, loosening our requirements around the scope of individual nominations for anthologies and RPF. You’re now welcome to nominate anthology canons (where multiple short installments of canon are different stories) by their overarching title, but if one person nominates an anthology canon, and another nominates individual installments of that canon (episodes, or skits, or stories) we will bring this up for discussion when clarifying nominations, and will approve one or the other, not both.

Similarly, you can nominate an RPF tag that covers a large profession or long period of history if you want, provided that the number of qualifying works under that tag on AO3 is under 1,000. However, if two people submit RPF fandoms where one fandom is a subset of the other, we will bring this up for discussion when clarifying nominations, and approve one or the other, not both. We strongly encourage you to coordinate your nominations with fellow RPF fans - a coordination post will be posted here shortly.


Here is what can be nominated for Yuletide 2025! )

The Evidence Post )

Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth

Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

Quadralien (1988)

Sep. 8th, 2025 09:01 am
pauraque: Guybrush writing in his journal adrift on the sea in a bumper car (monkey island adrift)
[personal profile] pauraque
In this Sokoban-like sci-fi puzzle game, aliens have boarded a space station in orbit around Jupiter and sabotaged its nuclear reactor. It's far too dangerous to go in there yourself, so you get a crew of remotely controlled droids that you can use like roombas to clean up the radiation from the different levels of the station and confront the (Quadr)alien menace.

top down tile based game with some green radioactive tiles and three gauges showing temperature, entropy, and energy

This is a new game to me, suggested by [personal profile] zorealis. I've played some hard games from this era but this one is pretty wild. The main challenge is that the core temperature is constantly rising, so in between pushing stuff around trying to collect and dump radioactive waste, you also have to find coolant barrels and push them into various chutes. In later levels the "entropy" gauge also quickly rises if too many objects/aliens are moving at once, so you have to stop that too. If either gauge goes critical, you die. Oh, and you have only a limited pool of energy for your droids that drains whenever you do anything. And sometimes when you do nothing. Good luck!

cut for length )

You can play Quadralien in your browser, though note that it defaults to the CGA version. If you want the one shown here (which you probably do, not least of all because CGA does not have enough colors for the radioactive tiles to be visibly green), use the "game executable" dropdown to select VGA.
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
It's not possible for me to keep track of the hundreds of political prisoners terrorised by dictatorial authoritarian Keir Starmer and his Starmtroopers for terrible crimes such as sitting peacefully in public holding a cardboard sign opposing the nation state of Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Palestine. Of course, Starmer has a long record of abusing his positions of power to persecute his political enemies, such as mildly left of centre Jewish members of the Labour Party whom Starmer disproportionately targeted for removal from the party - no other Labour party leader has intentionally silenced so many Jewish voices (and the Starmtroopers' obsessive misogynoir goes without saying).

Full text of a news article for archiving purposes. The Sky News headline covering the same events is "890 people arrested at Palestine Action protest - including 17 on suspicion of assaulting police officers" although I note the only evidence of violence produced so far demonstrates police violence against members of the public (oddly police almost never arrest themselves for violently assaulting the public with batons). All the usual respected international human rights organisations continue their support for Keir Starmer's political prisoners and also for the millions of victims of the nation state of Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Palestine.

Kerry Moscogiuri of the human rights campaign group Amnesty International UK said: “When the government is arresting people under terrorism laws for sitting peacefully in protest, something is going very wrong here in the UK.”
“Criminalising speech in this context is only permitted when it incites violence or advocates hatred. Expressing support for Palestine Action does not, in itself, meet this threshold.”
Although I note that many of the people arrest were expressing support for "Palestine action" or "palestine action", neither of which is afaik an arrestable offence (unless onerous bail conditions have previously been imposed, probably illegally, by the police or another abusive institution).

Police Fail to Arrest Two-Thirds in Biggest-Ever Protest Against Palestine Action Ban
‘A huge embarrassment.’
by Harriet Williamson
7 September 2025

An estimated 1,500 people in London have taken part in one of the largest acts of mass civil disobedience in British history, to protest the ban on Palestine Action. The Metropolitan Police arrested just over half of them, in what has been described as a “huge embarrassment” for commissioner Sir Mark Rowley. 

At 1pm on Saturday, more than 1,300 protesters, the majority of them over 60 and some visibly disabled, sat down in Parliament Square and wrote “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine action” on cardboard signs. By 9:15pm, the Met said officers had managed to arrest “more than 425” and called its operational plans “effective” – despite having failed to arrest everyone, as it had claimed it would.

Archived news article. )
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
- Word of the season: aftermath, meaning the second growth spurt plants in temperate climates have, after the dry season, when rain and nourishment become more available again.

- Pleasing occurrences and habitat improvements overlap:
me me )

fic: Drowning Lessons

NSFW Sep. 6th, 2025 09:33 pm
bluegansey: closeup of chiaki nanami's face with blood dripping down around her right eye and nose (dr - chiaki - blood)
[personal profile] bluegansey
( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )
mossy_bench: Gold knocked out (lights-out)
[personal profile] mossy_bench
This was my main goal for the weekend, lol, and I achieved it. Still working through how I feel about some of it, but these were my immediate reactions. Spoilers, obviously.

Read more... )

All in all, I was genuinely moved by Y0's and Y2's endings, even though those were also soapy as hell, but Y3 did not quite reach those heights, unfortunately. Still a lot of fun. I liked seeing Kiryu weep.
merrileemakes: Orange cat lying adorably on an open book, with other books in the background (Default)
[personal profile] merrileemakes posting in [community profile] style_system
Hello! I am a new DW member and in the process of transferring my blog over.

I'm playing around with the Buttercup Summer theme and happy with everything I can modify, except one thing. This layout has the navlinks in the sidebar, which is great, but the text overlaps the icons in the profile module slightly.

Screenshot of my empty DW page with slightly wonky sidebar

Looking at the source for my page, I *think* this because the navlinks module doesn't have a H2 header. If I wanted to add a H2 to the navlinks module (like the text highlighted below), how do I do that? I've tried the 'Use embed CSS' box on the Custom CSS page but I don't think that's the right approach (and it doesn't work).

Screenshot of CSS

Wait, I think this is because the S2 base layer has the code:

# Modules without titles: navlinks, time, poweredby

Do I need to made a custom S2 and remove navlinks from the 'Modules without titles' section? Is there an easier way to get my sidebar to look pretty and not have overlapping text?
justmarriedmod: (Default)
[personal profile] justmarriedmod posting in [community profile] justmarriedexchange
Thank you very much to all our post-deadline pinch hitters who have created gifts!

As not all pinch hits have been claimed yet, reveals will be delayed to September 14, 11:59PM UTC.

The new due date for pinch hits is September 12, 11:59PM UTC.

PH 48 - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), 黄金の太陽 | Golden Sun Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga) )


PH 49 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 鸣潮 | Wuthering Waves (Video Game), Limbus Company (Video Game) )



To claim a PH, please comment here or email marriageex@gmail.com with your AO3 name and the number of the PH. We may not be able to immediately respond to pinch hit claims, but will get to them as soon as we’re able.

Comments on this post are screened.

If you might be working on something for one of these recipients but can't claim the PH yet, it would be helpful to let me know.

Today's Adventures

Sep. 5th, 2025 09:34 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] flaneurs
Today we went to the Broomcorn Festival in Arcola, Illinois. This is a big harvest festival, well worth catching, and it runs the whole weekend if you want to check it out. The weather was beautiful, cloudy and mild, couldn't ask for better weather.

Arcola is a nice town with several favorite shops that we like to visit. The old buildings are colorful with beautiful architecture. Most of the streets along the festival are still brick. There are benches along the sidewalks. Several places had picnic tables set up for the event, too.

Read more... )

the matrix, neon genesis evangelion

Sep. 5th, 2025 11:37 am
marycuntrarian: (matrix - neo)
[personal profile] marycuntrarian posting in [community profile] icons
(16) The Matrix + header
(12) Neon Genesis Evangelion + header


(Neo, get in the fucking Matrix.)
[syndicated profile] onethinginaday_feed

Nous sommes rentrés à Paris le 10 août, la rentrée scolaire a eu lieu le 1er septembre. Que s’est-il donc passé entretemps, pendant ces trois semaines ? Plein de choses ! 

www.onethinginafrenchday.com

 

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