The Double-Timer by Thomas M. Disch
Apr. 10th, 2026 10:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
The Young People discuss Disch's debut.
Young People Read Old Science Fiction Stories Edited By Cele Goldsmith: The Double-Timer by Thomas M. Disch
james_davis_nicollThe Young People discuss Disch's debut.
Young People Read Old Science Fiction Stories Edited By Cele Goldsmith: The Double-Timer by Thomas M. Disch
Possibly I read too much crime fiction....
Apr. 10th, 2026 02:27 pmoursinBecause when I read this, I had Further Questions.
London pub thief sold £2.2m Fabergé egg and watch set to buy drugs
I am going, hello?
Enzo Conticello, 29, took the Givenchy bag belonging to Rosie Dawson as she stood in the smoking area of the Dog and Duck pub in Soho, London, on 7 November 2024.
Inside the £1,600 bag was an emerald-encrusted Fabergé egg and watch set belonging to Dawson’s employers, the Craft Irish Whiskey Company.
So, she had these items in her HANDBAG (going full Flora Robson as Lady Bracknell) and
went to the Dog and Duck pub in Soho. She was outside the premises in the designated smoking area, she put her handbag on the ground in between her legs, and a few minutes later she noticed her handbag was no longer there.
We observe that this was a £1,600 Givenchy bag, and while I do not think London is quite the crime-ridden hellhole some social media depicts, I might hang on to this a bit more carefully in Soho even did it not contain my employer's Fabergé.
Dawson had the Fabergé items because she had taken them for display at a work event earlier that evening.
Surely there ought to have been some kind of security procedure involved, like, 'take a taxi and put them back in the safe'?
(Am trying to think of any circumstances in which, in former days, would have been taking precious unique archival and manuscript items out of the building in the first place. When we had them out on display for visiting groups, they got put away pronto.)
I probably read too much crime fiction, but this reads like 'set-up for heist/insurance scam that went pearshaped'.
Light of the Song (Sword Goddess Acolyte Chronicles, volume 2) by Joyce Ch'ng
Apr. 10th, 2026 08:20 amjames_davis_nicoll
Probationary priestess Jesherah searches for the answer to a medical mystery.
Light of the Song (Sword Goddess Acolyte Chronicles, volume 2) by Joyce Ch'ng
Quickly jotting down a few proofreading-related notes
Apr. 10th, 2026 07:34 amvriddy1. Tracking writing-related stuff daily so doesn't work for me and my brain. I track wordcounts only monthly for a reason!! Because I was planning to finish this proofreading within two weeks or so, I thought I would therefore update my little chart thing to track by day rather than by week so the chart looks more interesting. It does look cool! But tracking daily means I read high numbers as "This is what I am capable of" and any day in which I could only manage 15 minutes or so as a failure. May have to weeklify this chart after all.
2. Especially because, while finishing within two weeks would be convenient for a variety of reasons, I'm not sure the proofreading will go as fast as I hoped. My thought were: okay, the story is a third longer than it was last time I proofread it, but only the new stuff might sound janky! Well. It's been over a year since the last time I proofread, so sentences give me different feelings now. The first chapter hadn't changed a ton, maybe 600 new words, but I spent 3h on it anyway. Just like the average last round: proofread 10 chapters in a little under 3 weeks, average time per chapter 2h54. I have 14 chapters now. Grumbles, grumbles.
3. Thinking a lot about what I want to learn next. The last couple of years have been about "process" especially around editing, what works well for me in general, how to actually edit a big project, how to manage my stamina through it. Over the last couple of months, I've been learning about structure, and loving it. Like, there will be more to learn there for sure, but for the time being I need to put into practice my new learning until it comes more naturally. While this is happening, I really want to improve how I write sentences. Line editing, I guess? My writing feels very weak there right now, or not where I'd like it to be. It won't be something I apply on the witch (would require a complete rewrite), but it's something I hope to pay more attention to for the Soul Thief. Reflecting too on how I want to learn and how I could organise myself for it. For example, I got a copy of Le Guin's "Steering the Craft" a while back that sounds like it should fit the bill? But I found it very intimidating, and I'm not good at just doing exercises either. It's easier when learning happens as part of a real story. Anyway, whatever I end up doing next, it seems like I'm moving from a "learning process" to a "learning craft" kinda mood, for the next while!
2. Especially because, while finishing within two weeks would be convenient for a variety of reasons, I'm not sure the proofreading will go as fast as I hoped. My thought were: okay, the story is a third longer than it was last time I proofread it, but only the new stuff might sound janky! Well. It's been over a year since the last time I proofread, so sentences give me different feelings now. The first chapter hadn't changed a ton, maybe 600 new words, but I spent 3h on it anyway. Just like the average last round: proofread 10 chapters in a little under 3 weeks, average time per chapter 2h54. I have 14 chapters now. Grumbles, grumbles.
3. Thinking a lot about what I want to learn next. The last couple of years have been about "process" especially around editing, what works well for me in general, how to actually edit a big project, how to manage my stamina through it. Over the last couple of months, I've been learning about structure, and loving it. Like, there will be more to learn there for sure, but for the time being I need to put into practice my new learning until it comes more naturally. While this is happening, I really want to improve how I write sentences. Line editing, I guess? My writing feels very weak there right now, or not where I'd like it to be. It won't be something I apply on the witch (would require a complete rewrite), but it's something I hope to pay more attention to for the Soul Thief. Reflecting too on how I want to learn and how I could organise myself for it. For example, I got a copy of Le Guin's "Steering the Craft" a while back that sounds like it should fit the bill? But I found it very intimidating, and I'm not good at just doing exercises either. It's easier when learning happens as part of a real story. Anyway, whatever I end up doing next, it seems like I'm moving from a "learning process" to a "learning craft" kinda mood, for the next while!
A lonesome highway is a pretty good subject
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:01 pmsovayEntirely apart from it now apparently being business as usual for my killing joke of a government to start wars in whatever sovereign nations it feels like and threaten the annihilation of entire civilizations on capricious deadline, I have had a weird and fairly scrambled week in which I was not able to avoid talking to doctors after all. I can feel suitably noir-poisoned for recognizing some location shooting in The Rockford Files (1974–80) from Desert Fury (1947). The sky this afternoon suggested that it was trying to be autumn.
rushthatspeaks sent me an improbable mammal.
rushthatspeaks sent me an improbable mammal.A few fandom things
Apr. 9th, 2026 07:11 pmsholio1. New Dungeon Crawler Carl book comes out in just a month! I'm wondering if I should reread the previous book before it drops, because these books have about a zillion characters and I'm confident that I have forgotten most of what happened in it.
2. The thing which happened to me on Tumblr today was so weird that I'm going to describe it under the cut even though I already complained privately to friends. (Murderbot fandom is so freakin' weird. Seriously.)
( Awkward! )
3. Speaking of Space Swap, they are still looking for some pinch hitters!
2. The thing which happened to me on Tumblr today was so weird that I'm going to describe it under the cut even though I already complained privately to friends. (Murderbot fandom is so freakin' weird. Seriously.)
( Awkward! )
3. Speaking of Space Swap, they are still looking for some pinch hitters!
(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2026 10:07 pmskygiantsMade a extremely silly decision this past weekend, which was to break up our long drive to and from Philly by Exactly long enough to see one (one) show in NYC on the way down, and another on the way back. Literally put the car in a garage by the theater, went into the show, got the car out of the garage, and kept driving. And to make matters even sillier the show that we saw on the way down was Bad -- and we knew it was going to be! Or at least we had a reasonable suspicion! But were we not going to go out of our way to see Norm Lewis play Villefort in a Count of Monte Cristo musical? Of course we were. The path before us had simply been prepared.
Q: When you say it was bad, do you mean it was a bad musical as a musical, or a bad adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo?
A: Oh, both! Absolutely both.
Q: What made it a bad musical?
A: Well, the music. And the lyrics. They hit exactly every beat on the Musical Sheet while constantly feeling like less subtle knockoff versions of other songs you might know slightly better. The song you might know slightly better is not a subtle one, you say? Well, I guarantee you that songs such as "Dangerous Times," in which the full cast explain that they are living in dangerous times, and "How Did I Get So Far Away [From Me]," in which Mercedes sadly wonders how she has gotten so far away from herself, are less so. When the best you can say of a song is that it felt like pallid diet Frank Wildhorn -- as in, lacking the noted power and vibrancy of real Frank Wildhorn, composer of such deathless works as Death Note: The Musical -- then you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And that's not even mentioning the frenetic stream of mediocre jokes.
Q: And what made it a bad adaptation?
A: I mean I know there are probably people in the past who have said that Edmond Dantès literally did nothing wrong but I want you to understand: in this show, Edmond Dantès literally does nothing wrong. His backstory takes up the entire first act, and by the time we hit intermission I was already like "huh, there's not going to be a lot of time in here for revenge schemes," but I didn't actually understand how dire the situation was going to be until ( this part of the Q&A gets into quite detailed plot spoilers )
Q: So do you regret your objectively silly decision to go out of your way to see this musical?
A: No I do not, not in the least, and I would have regretted missing it. There is something very nutritious in bad theater, I think. It forces you to consider what good theater might look like. Also, the surprise appearance of Lucrezia Borgia was one of the funniest things I experienced all weekend.
Q: When you say it was bad, do you mean it was a bad musical as a musical, or a bad adaptation of Count of Monte Cristo?
A: Oh, both! Absolutely both.
Q: What made it a bad musical?
A: Well, the music. And the lyrics. They hit exactly every beat on the Musical Sheet while constantly feeling like less subtle knockoff versions of other songs you might know slightly better. The song you might know slightly better is not a subtle one, you say? Well, I guarantee you that songs such as "Dangerous Times," in which the full cast explain that they are living in dangerous times, and "How Did I Get So Far Away [From Me]," in which Mercedes sadly wonders how she has gotten so far away from herself, are less so. When the best you can say of a song is that it felt like pallid diet Frank Wildhorn -- as in, lacking the noted power and vibrancy of real Frank Wildhorn, composer of such deathless works as Death Note: The Musical -- then you know we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. And that's not even mentioning the frenetic stream of mediocre jokes.
Q: And what made it a bad adaptation?
A: I mean I know there are probably people in the past who have said that Edmond Dantès literally did nothing wrong but I want you to understand: in this show, Edmond Dantès literally does nothing wrong. His backstory takes up the entire first act, and by the time we hit intermission I was already like "huh, there's not going to be a lot of time in here for revenge schemes," but I didn't actually understand how dire the situation was going to be until ( this part of the Q&A gets into quite detailed plot spoilers )
Q: So do you regret your objectively silly decision to go out of your way to see this musical?
A: No I do not, not in the least, and I would have regretted missing it. There is something very nutritious in bad theater, I think. It forces you to consider what good theater might look like. Also, the surprise appearance of Lucrezia Borgia was one of the funniest things I experienced all weekend.
Recent Bookmarks Rec Post
Apr. 9th, 2026 05:56 pmravensilversea posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
recthethingJust made my monthly rec list of my recent fanfiction bookmarks over on my journal! 6 Katekyou Hitman Reborn recs, 2 Honkai: Star Rail, 2 My Hero Academia, and 1 rec each for Leverage, October Daye, and Kpop Demon Hunters
you do the math, you expect the trouble
Apr. 9th, 2026 05:50 pmmusesfoolToday's poem, for which I had to turn on the rich text editor and still couldn't get the spacing quite right sigh:
Seaside Improvisation
by Richard Siken
I take off my hands and I give them to you but you don't
want them, so I take them back
and put them on the wrong way, the wrong wrists. The yard is dark,
the tomatoes are next to the whitewashed wall,
the book on the table is about Spain,
the windows are painted shut.
Tonight you're thinking of cities under crowns
of snow and I stare at you like I'm looking through a window,
counting birds.
You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you're not miserable.
You do the math, you expect the trouble.
The seaside town. The electric fence.
Draw a circle with a piece of chalk. Imagine standing in a constant cone
of light. Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless.
A stone on the path means the tea's not ready,
a stone in the hand means somebody's angry, the stone inside you still
hasn't hit bottom.
*
Seaside Improvisation
by Richard Siken
I take off my hands and I give them to you but you don't
want them, so I take them back
and put them on the wrong way, the wrong wrists. The yard is dark,
the tomatoes are next to the whitewashed wall,
the book on the table is about Spain,
the windows are painted shut.
Tonight you're thinking of cities under crowns
of snow and I stare at you like I'm looking through a window,
counting birds.
You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you're not miserable.
You do the math, you expect the trouble.
The seaside town. The electric fence.
Draw a circle with a piece of chalk. Imagine standing in a constant cone
of light. Imagine surrender. Imagine being useless.
A stone on the path means the tea's not ready,
a stone in the hand means somebody's angry, the stone inside you still
hasn't hit bottom.
*
(no subject)
Apr. 9th, 2026 05:41 pmaurumcalendulaNo dice on my most recent attempt re: the StudioWorks Wiseguy season 1 DVDs :( Disc 3 is not recognized by any player I have.
Seconds to Spare, by Rachel Reiss
Apr. 9th, 2026 12:51 pmrachelmanija
18-year-old Evelyn is on a plane, transporting her father's ashes, when there's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive, and everything goes white. Then Evelyn is back on the plane, which is no longer nosediving. There's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive...
Evelyn quickly realizes that she's in a 29-minute time loop. She tries to figure out why the plane is crashing and how to stop it, but gets absolutely nowhere. She talks to other passengers. She steals their food and eats it. She watches every movie on the plane. She learns everything about everyone, except the handsome sleeping teenage boy who never wakes up during the loop. She goes through 400 loops and almost loses her mind. And then, on one loop, the boy wakes up. And on the next loop, he also realizes that he's in a loop...
Like the last novel I read by Reiss (Out of Air, the one with the teenage scuba divers), this book has a great premise. I enjoyed how Evelyn makes herself free with everything on the plane while trapped, and I also enjoyed how she and Rion, the sleeping boy, work together once he wakes up to figure out what's going on. However, it had an issue that more-or-less ruined the book for me. Rion suggests something that somehow Evelyn failed to try in 400 loops, which is to follow one person on the plane at a time, and observe everything they do. It never occurred to Evelyn to watch the flight attendants, and watching one of them reveals exactly what's causing the crash. They try to prevent it in several ways that don't work. Then Rion figures out a clever plan that saves the plane and fixes the loop.
The author clearly wanted to have Evelyn be alone in the loop for a long time. I can see why she wanted that - we get a vivid sense of her frustration and despair - but it makes Evelyn seem useless when she spends ages watching movies and so forth, and then Rion figures everything out almost immediately. This is exacerbated when Rion also comes up with the plan to fix things. This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd been in the loop together much earlier - then they could have bonded while investigating, taken breaks and done the fun stuff that she did alone, and mutually figured stuff out. It would have been more fun to read and felt less sexist, which I'm sure was unintentional but is inevitable when the girl fails at everything for ages, then a boy shows up and both solves the mystery and fixes the problem.
I'll be interested to see if Reiss's third book also has a three word title that rhymes with "care."
Graphic Novel Favorites From My Recent Reading
Apr. 9th, 2026 09:14 amforestofglory posting in ladybusinessAfter years of struggling to read new-to-me fiction, I’ve recently entered a phase of reading graphic novels and comics and I’ve been reading so much! (It helps that I accidentally got into a comics-based fandom via stress-reading fic late last year.) It’s only April yet I have already read more books this year than I have in any year since 2020, it's truly wild. I haven’t had this much fun reading in ages!
I wanted to share some of the things I’ve been enjoying, so I thought I’d write a rec list. I find graphic novels easier to focus on when I’m stressed than prose novels, and I also love getting to see so much art. I’ve been mostly reading MG and YA works – it feels like there is a lot going on in that space right now! Plus it’s a space where there tend to be many stories focused on friendship, which I really enjoy. I’ve also been choosing more lighthearted things to read. The world is stressful and I can’t deal with stressful reading at the moment.
( Read more... )
I wanted to share some of the things I’ve been enjoying, so I thought I’d write a rec list. I find graphic novels easier to focus on when I’m stressed than prose novels, and I also love getting to see so much art. I’ve been mostly reading MG and YA works – it feels like there is a lot going on in that space right now! Plus it’s a space where there tend to be many stories focused on friendship, which I really enjoy. I’ve also been choosing more lighthearted things to read. The world is stressful and I can’t deal with stressful reading at the moment.
( Read more... )
Hedjog versus THE MACHINE
Apr. 9th, 2026 04:36 pmoursinSo dr rdrz will be aware of my recent problems with printer, so I finally bit the bullet and after consulting Which Best Buys and so forth, went for an Epson Eco-Tank from John Lewis.
Which arrived at lunchtime today.
And I had anticipated spending hours if not days whining and stressing and beating my head on the ground and wrestling like until Jacob with the Angel to get the thing talking to my system and actually printing/scanning/copying.
Behold me sat sitting here having achieved getting it connected to the Wifi (the Wizard, though, is crap because it assumes that your password is a word rather than numeric, fortunately there was an alternative route), appearing under printers/scanners in my desktop computer settings, and copying, scanning, and printing.
There was a little hassle with printing which turned out to be due to Advanced Printer Settings turning out to have weird Paper Size as default rather than A4, which given that A4 is supposed to be their standard size, was bizarre.
This is positively uncanny, do admit.
early spring birds
Apr. 9th, 2026 09:50 ampauraqueEarly spring in Vermont is a lot like winter, but with less snow. We can see the ground, but the trees are still completely bare, grass hasn't grown, and the only flowers yet are the occasional bloodroot and optimistic crocuses. On one hike I got excited to see some green on a hill, but it turned out to be last year's ferns, all squashed flat. There are still many days that hover around freezing, alternating between rain and snow. Earlier this week I had to drive in a sudden aggressive windy snowstorm that didn't stick but made visibility near zero.
But the important question: How are the birds doing? Migratory species keep showing up one by one. We saw our first Double-crested Cormorant of the year flying over Lake Champlain while we were visiting the waterfront. Eastern Phoebes are also back, including the one who makes its summer home in our yard. Several mornings I've seen it in the tree out my bedroom window, doing its characteristic tail-bob. And I heard my year's first Wood Duck before I saw it on the river—they don't quack, but let out a distinctive squeal.
We're on the edge of the year-round range for White-throated Sparrow and I have seen them here in winter before, but they're much more common in the spring and I've been hearing their ohhh sweeet caaaaanada song. Red Crossbill can supposedly be here in the winter too, but I saw my first of the year this week.
It's also getting easier to see waterfowl now that some of the smaller lakes and ponds aren't completely frozen over. Hooded Mergansers can be seen on the non-frozen parts of Lake Champlain in the winter, but now they're back on our local pond too.
We also get species briefly passing through while headed elsewhere on their migration routes. I was excited to spot a pair of Northern Shovelers on the pond in late March, which was a little early for them to show up here—the eBird app prompted for evidence when I reported them, so I attached this very non-aesthetic but at least diagnostic photo. They're both in this picture, but the brown female is much harder to see!
I think I was the first to see them, or at least my eBird report was first. I felt kinda special scrolling through all the subsequent reports as birders flocked to take a look. I also saw a pair in the same spot last year in the first week of April; I wonder if they're the same birds.
And the year-rounders who have been here all winter are shifting into breeding mode. Every day the American Goldfinches at our feeder are a little yellower, their breeding plumage showing up in scruffy patches. Black-capped Chickadees are a constant as always, but I'm hearing more territorial yooo-hooo calls as well as the eponymous chick-a-dee-dee-dee. The little Brown Creepers are singing instead of just buzzing, and I spotted one darting in and out from behind the peeling park of a tree, immediately after I saw a video explaining that that's where they nest!
So that's 53 species for me in 2026 so far. Countdown to warbler season in a couple of weeks!
But the important question: How are the birds doing? Migratory species keep showing up one by one. We saw our first Double-crested Cormorant of the year flying over Lake Champlain while we were visiting the waterfront. Eastern Phoebes are also back, including the one who makes its summer home in our yard. Several mornings I've seen it in the tree out my bedroom window, doing its characteristic tail-bob. And I heard my year's first Wood Duck before I saw it on the river—they don't quack, but let out a distinctive squeal.
We're on the edge of the year-round range for White-throated Sparrow and I have seen them here in winter before, but they're much more common in the spring and I've been hearing their ohhh sweeet caaaaanada song. Red Crossbill can supposedly be here in the winter too, but I saw my first of the year this week.
It's also getting easier to see waterfowl now that some of the smaller lakes and ponds aren't completely frozen over. Hooded Mergansers can be seen on the non-frozen parts of Lake Champlain in the winter, but now they're back on our local pond too.
We also get species briefly passing through while headed elsewhere on their migration routes. I was excited to spot a pair of Northern Shovelers on the pond in late March, which was a little early for them to show up here—the eBird app prompted for evidence when I reported them, so I attached this very non-aesthetic but at least diagnostic photo. They're both in this picture, but the brown female is much harder to see!
I think I was the first to see them, or at least my eBird report was first. I felt kinda special scrolling through all the subsequent reports as birders flocked to take a look. I also saw a pair in the same spot last year in the first week of April; I wonder if they're the same birds.
And the year-rounders who have been here all winter are shifting into breeding mode. Every day the American Goldfinches at our feeder are a little yellower, their breeding plumage showing up in scruffy patches. Black-capped Chickadees are a constant as always, but I'm hearing more territorial yooo-hooo calls as well as the eponymous chick-a-dee-dee-dee. The little Brown Creepers are singing instead of just buzzing, and I spotted one darting in and out from behind the peeling park of a tree, immediately after I saw a video explaining that that's where they nest!
So that's 53 species for me in 2026 so far. Countdown to warbler season in a couple of weeks!
1 movie with stars, 1 game with magical animals, and 2x2 books
Apr. 9th, 2026 02:27 pmschneefinkSome reviews of recent media before I hopefully disappear into a metaphorical cave for a week to study before my next exam; I say hopefully because I already made dumb decisions like staying up late to read fic the last two nights. Ah well. I do need breaks at some points, and I plan to get regular fresh air too.
I watched Project Hail Mary in a theater with friends on Tuesday: two of us had read the book and the other three knew nothing at all about it, which made it extra fun to hear their reactions afterwards. I read the book a few months ago, and unlike the book the movie did live up to all the good things I'd heard about it. That was great. I really like how they adapted it (yes they cut some fun stuff/good additional info but overall I thought they did a great job), I liked the designs and the visuals, it was at times very exciting and dramatic and emotional and funny, and I had a fantastic time.
I've already seen some great fanart on Tumblr and look forward to more of it, fingers crossed.
Only four people of my TTRPG group had time two weeks ago so for a few hours we tried out Sunderfolk (Steam link), a multiplayer turn-based tactical RPG where you play as animals.
I had a lot of fun! I played an arcanist raven with teleportation powers, I loved that. I could do damage as well but my most effective moves were teleporting my allies (a rogue (weasel), a pyromancer (salamander), and a vanguard (kangaroo rat)) into better positions. The story so far is rather simple, you defend the settlement against the ogres, do side-quests and help gather resources for the rebuild; I'm not sure how much I'm meant to think about the implications (like that the animals came from above and with their bright lights took away living spaces from the ogres that are now starving) but I look forward to seeing where it goes.
We're only halfway through act 1 chapter 2, but we already have a date set for next time. This time we had three of us on the couch and one joining online, next time all four will be able to attend in person, even better.
About a week later, same scenario, only four people from my TTRPG group had time – different people this time so we started a new campaign. This time I played the bat bard, and they're absolutely adorable. Gameplay-wise unfortunately I enjoyed the bard much less; we only got to level 3 so maybe it gets better later? The other player who played for the second time also enjoyed his second choice (antelope ranger) much less than his first (pyromancer). There are currently no active plans to continue, but we might if we happen to have that group again.
Dragonoak by Sam Farren #1 + #2, The Complete History of Castelir and The Sky Beneath The Sun:
Rowan, exiled from her village since they discovered she is a necromancer, runs away with a dragon knight and becomes entangled in conflicts spanning multiple kingdoms and races.
My (now ex-)gf recommended this trilogy to me, so I wanted to like it; and maybe that puts it into the category of "would have liked it more if not for my high hopes/expectations," idk. There were parts I liked, prominent among them the amount of queer characters; unfortunately it was neither the pacing nor most of the characters.
( Spoilers )
The Dementia Cascade by L. Lynn Gray (tassosss) #1 + #2, The Dementia: A Space Adventure and Surviving Peace:
Four generation ships fly in formation, still several generations from their target planet; when there are suddenly massive technical issues, solving them requires cooperation, which is made difficult by social and political conflicts.
Like many books with multiple PoVs book 1 had some I enjoyed a lot, some I was neutral about, and some I liked less (I'm currently quickly frustrated by characters with ideological blinkers.) I liked book 2 even better: fortunately for me it focuses on my favorite characters from book 1, and also the most difficult political situation. Namely, Jacks and Antony on Peace, that had a violent uprising deposing a corrupt authoritarian leader in book 1 and the consequences of that in book 2. ( Spoilers )
I watched Project Hail Mary in a theater with friends on Tuesday: two of us had read the book and the other three knew nothing at all about it, which made it extra fun to hear their reactions afterwards. I read the book a few months ago, and unlike the book the movie did live up to all the good things I'd heard about it. That was great. I really like how they adapted it (yes they cut some fun stuff/good additional info but overall I thought they did a great job), I liked the designs and the visuals, it was at times very exciting and dramatic and emotional and funny, and I had a fantastic time.
I've already seen some great fanart on Tumblr and look forward to more of it, fingers crossed.
Only four people of my TTRPG group had time two weeks ago so for a few hours we tried out Sunderfolk (Steam link), a multiplayer turn-based tactical RPG where you play as animals.
I had a lot of fun! I played an arcanist raven with teleportation powers, I loved that. I could do damage as well but my most effective moves were teleporting my allies (a rogue (weasel), a pyromancer (salamander), and a vanguard (kangaroo rat)) into better positions. The story so far is rather simple, you defend the settlement against the ogres, do side-quests and help gather resources for the rebuild; I'm not sure how much I'm meant to think about the implications (like that the animals came from above and with their bright lights took away living spaces from the ogres that are now starving) but I look forward to seeing where it goes.
We're only halfway through act 1 chapter 2, but we already have a date set for next time. This time we had three of us on the couch and one joining online, next time all four will be able to attend in person, even better.
About a week later, same scenario, only four people from my TTRPG group had time – different people this time so we started a new campaign. This time I played the bat bard, and they're absolutely adorable. Gameplay-wise unfortunately I enjoyed the bard much less; we only got to level 3 so maybe it gets better later? The other player who played for the second time also enjoyed his second choice (antelope ranger) much less than his first (pyromancer). There are currently no active plans to continue, but we might if we happen to have that group again.
Dragonoak by Sam Farren #1 + #2, The Complete History of Castelir and The Sky Beneath The Sun:
Rowan, exiled from her village since they discovered she is a necromancer, runs away with a dragon knight and becomes entangled in conflicts spanning multiple kingdoms and races.
My (now ex-)gf recommended this trilogy to me, so I wanted to like it; and maybe that puts it into the category of "would have liked it more if not for my high hopes/expectations," idk. There were parts I liked, prominent among them the amount of queer characters; unfortunately it was neither the pacing nor most of the characters.
( Spoilers )
The Dementia Cascade by L. Lynn Gray (
tassosss) #1 + #2, The Dementia: A Space Adventure and Surviving Peace: Four generation ships fly in formation, still several generations from their target planet; when there are suddenly massive technical issues, solving them requires cooperation, which is made difficult by social and political conflicts.
Like many books with multiple PoVs book 1 had some I enjoyed a lot, some I was neutral about, and some I liked less (I'm currently quickly frustrated by characters with ideological blinkers.) I liked book 2 even better: fortunately for me it focuses on my favorite characters from book 1, and also the most difficult political situation. Namely, Jacks and Antony on Peace, that had a violent uprising deposing a corrupt authoritarian leader in book 1 and the consequences of that in book 2. ( Spoilers )