lifting_heavy_things | Member Posts

Books
Finished Evelyn Araluen's The Rot, which was, as mentioned last week, very good indeed.

Reading KC Davis' How To Keep House While Drowning and Victoria Goddard's Plum Duff.

Tech
Still working the phone side of my tech problems: prolonged backup of All The Things onto a different external drive. But I did also run Slay the Spire on my desktop once, just to confirm whether that would cause it to shut down: it did not. But of course it's less resource-hungry than Hollow Knight.

Garden
Three more ripe tomatoes. I tried to plant some basil, but it didn't survive the heat.

Cats
Ash's nose looking good. Both cats coping with the heat as well as can be expected, i.e. better than I am but still largely horizontal.

Nature
I am a delicate flower and do not like hot weather. This is a problem at this time of year. Slight understatement. But only slight. (My part of the state is not the worst-off. Our highs are low 40s, not high 40s. And I have aircon at home and don't have to go out. It's still bad, and I do have medical conditions that make me more sensitive to heat.)
Also I sustained mosquito bites on my arms while doing my nightly "try to keep the plants alive" water, and am very itchy, which at least has the advantage of being a small problem to grumble about without the undercurrent of constant dread.

Current Events
Australia Day bringing out the racists. Some unmitigated arsehole threw a bomb at an Indigenous elder at one of the Survival Day protests. I didn't protest: couldn't manage the logistics of getting to a protest.
Watching the events in Minnesota and thinking of you all.

rachelmanija

The sequel to The Darkness Outside of Us. I enjoyed it! It's both interestingly different from the first book and is satisfying on the level of "I want more of this," which is exactly what one wants from a sequel.

Literally everything about this book is massively spoilery for the first one, including its premise. I'll do two sets of spoiler cuts, one for the premise and one for the whole book.

( Premise spoilers )

Stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled for the entire book.

( Entire book spoilers )

rydra_wong

Sequel to this post.

( Cut for US politics, violence )

https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

tropicsbear

💀 The self-inflicted psychic damage of reading old journal entries and seeing one where I talked about lending my EHD to a coworker and forgetting that my doujin folder was there. I have no idea what she saw and she never mentioned anything, so. A memory I'd like to lose to the sands of time.

💼 A work meeting went around an hour over the allotted time. It was definitely past my end of shift by the time we wrapped up, but I can at least claim the time as credits for time off in lieu. I ended up having to cancel my gym session, though, because my stomach was screeching at me and I could feel the creeping fingers of an impending headache.

📺 Finished SPY×FAMILY S02! I need to set aside some time and gather my thoughts about the first two seasons, but they can be summed up as, "TWIYOR RAAAAARGH SO CUTE," "Why does Anya have so many weird faces lordt," and "I will stab anyone who attempts to hurt Bond."

👧🏽 While on the way home, my tricycle drove past a family on a motorcycle (little girl squished between her parents). With a complete deadpan face and her mouth slightly open, the little girl waved at me. I decided to wave back. The mom blinked at me in surprise then smiled when she realized her daughter was waving at me and I was returning the gesture.

tropicsbear

🏛️ Was on leave from work today to run some errands related to government paperwork. I'm old enough that there wasn't a way to track your social security payments online when I first got my social security number, so I immediately ran into a wall when I attempted to make an online account last year because I didn't have any of the requirements to even set up an account. Fortunately, I got that all sorted this morning.

🌺 TIL that TWINENGINE (the anime's producer) has been uploading weekly chibi Jigokuraku extras! They're pretty short but they do give additional insight into characters' relationships with one another. Ju Fa and Tao Fa seem to be favor one another more than I thought they did, and it was nice seeing Choubei teasing Touma like the gremlin older brother that he is.

🎨 Ended up spending an inordinate amount of time this afternoon/evening fiddling with my layout. Turned all my entry links into rainbows (1) to represent the zone as it's portrayed in Sk8 since I decided to go TadaAi with the layout images and (2) because why not? Implementing the gradient took me long enough, then I had to fix everything I accidentally broke in the process (entry tag colors, crosspost link colors, etc.).

❄️ I think I'm going to give up on trying to catch up with the rest of the snowflake_challenge days. I wasn't able to keep up with the regular responses because Life Happened and I've lost the drive to go back and answer the prompts for the days I missed.

blueshiftofdeath

You have likely heard of the recent Heated Rivalry craze-- a Canadian live-action 6-episode adaptation of the Game Changers gay hockey romance series. As longtime fujos, me and ebaths decided to finally watch it for ourselves, and I'm sure fujo friends are dying for my report, so here it is...

The TLDR is I basically didn't like it / I thought it was bad. SORRY!!! My lengthy review is under a cut so fans of the show can avoid taking psychic damage from all my criticism. HOWEVER, I still think it's great that the exists. Demonstrating an eager audience for gay media is by itself awesome, and hopefully will inspire future investors and creators to help produce more (and better) stuff in the future. And as always, people have different taste, and I'm glad people (especially gay people and fujos) are out there enjoying themselves.

I also want to say that I saw a lot of talk about how much the adaptation improved upon the source material. I have only read a few sections of the books so I can't confirm this, but honestly I feel like I'd have a higher opinion of the books than the show. The kind of entertainment you expect from what was literally originally published as AO3 fanfiction is clearly different from what you expect from six hour-long episodes of TV on HBO Max. Plus, something like cringe dialogue has less impact in a format where you're expected to essentially skim ahead to the smut, versus when it's spoken aloud and acted in real time. Just to give my angle here as I will continuously default to blaming the TV show creators for something that I'm aware was also in the book.

( onto the criticism... oh also there's going to be spoilers )

Current Mood: cynical

ursamajor

Grateful for every update I see from Minnesota friends right now, affirming that they're ... okay isn't the right word; infuriated and joining with their neighbors and friends to stand up against evil in whatever ways they can is probably more accurate. Marching, recording, feeding people, sharing information. The rest of us, doing what we can from the outside, preparing for ourselves to be next. Sending love to you all.

And once that's done, I ( turn back to cooking. )

( finally succumbing to ebooks )

Speaking of scifi, we dropped Paramount after the latest season of Strange New Worlds, partly because of CBS's actions, partly because too many subscriptions and we're trying to cut back, partly because Amazing Race was yet another season of known-quantity reality stars instead of reasonably-believable normies. But we did get to watch the first episode of Starfleet Academy because they made it available on YouTube. And yeah, while I agree the preview made it look like "Star Trek: Dawson's Creek," as

hyounpark put it, I really needed to see a Starfleet captain stand up for justice; I needed to see people reaching across cultures from different backgrounds. I worry that the current environment is going to shift broadcastable storylines by next season; S1 was filmed mostly before Biden left office, while S2 is filming now, after CBS bent the knee. But I still found it promising enough to want to watch more; I just don't know how to watch it in a way that balances the scales for me.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: let me name you, claim you

labelleizzy

One yay for today:

Today I needed to walk a labyrinth. I knew where one was, I knew I had some things to let go of once I got to the center.

Basic self care to turn off the map app on my way home and go to the local UU.

I do feel lighter. I haven't taken the time and intention to put things in the lap of the gods and ask for help, in far too long.

Meditate. Move. State your intentions, and ask for help. Then leave them there for the gods to do as they see fit.

In this one thing I can follow a Christian saying, "let go, and let God "

Sometimes I just have to surrender the busy brain, the guilt, grief, and anger, and choose a new path.

Spiral in, spiral out again.

solarbird

The ICE fascist agent acknowledges her taking video is legal, doesn’t pretend she’s in the way, takes her photo and license plate information for their “nice little database” and declares her to be a domestic terrorist. Micah’s commentary is good, which is why I’m including it.

Klippenstein’s sources say the database is real, and that the fascist agent wasn’t supposed to talk about it. As some of us said, the “war on terror” was always going to be a war on Americans at home, and here it is.

Micah - @rincewind.runthe incredulous "this is bullshit, are you fucking kidding" tone here is a sign that you have turned someone into a lifelong radical against you and people like youthis is a stupid tactic used by stupid people who don't have any other ideas@ Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein.bsky.social - 3hICE agent asked why he's taking pictures of a legal observer's car, replies: "Cuz we have a nice little database and now you're considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that."[still image of a masked ICE fascist standing in front of a sedan]9:46 AM - Jan 23, 2026 Some people can reply

Micah @rincewind.run - 2hone of the very most deeply wired of human instincts is "this is not fair" and that's why we try to build societies that are either fair or (more likely) lie to us about being fairwhat these people are doing is breaking that contract in favor of "fuck you I'm doing this because | can"shoving someone's face directly in unfairness and telling them the rules they have built their lives around don't matter because you're in charge and they aren't triggers fury on the lizard brain level and it's a huge contributor to how autocracies fail

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

rydra_wong

Mostly to create some space in my head. But holy shit, Minnesotans, you are extraordinary and we see you. Across the fucking ocean, we see you.

( Cut for US politics, violence )

How To Help If You Are Outside Minnesota by Naomi Kritzer

tielan

Usually when someone goes reading through my work, they go through multiple fics in a single fandom, kudosing all the way. (It's a nice feeling.)

I've just had someone who's kudosed a single story each of SG1, Firefly, Merlin, JLU, Harry Potter, and Atlantis, and two stories of The Bourne Identity.

Now I'm wondering how the others just didn't hit their buttons...

Also, the stories in each were "oddball" - not the major or popular pairing in most cases, and often not one of my more popular stories.

For instance, the Merlin fic they kudos'd was Merlin & Gwen, modern AU, which is not even close to common for the fandom!

vass

Books
Nearly finished Evelyn Araluen's 2025 poetry book The Rot. It's very good. I keep thinking of people I know who would appreciate it, and wanting to shove the book at them and say "here, look". (

sovay, you're one of them.) Depression, colonialism, girlhood, death, hauntology, Country, survival.

Listened to Margaret Killjoy's narration of Katherine Mansfield's short story 'A Cup of Tea'. Margaret gave a little context about the story afterwards, including that the main character was thought to be based on Mansfield's cousin, also a writer, whom Margaret herself hadn't heard of. I looked her up afterwards: Elizabeth von Arnim, and went WHUT, Elizabeth and her German Garden? I haven't actually read it, and am not sure how I knew about it, just that it was on my radar. Mansfield's story is simultaneously scalpel-sharp and more merciful than it might have been: the story doesn't attempt to puncture the protagonist's saviour fantasy, or allow it to go as wrong as it could have done, but does make clear in every detail how entirely it is a self-serving saviour fantasy, how entirely she's disregarding the needs, safety, boundaries, and basic consent of the woman she's trying to help. (I thought of the scene in chapter 6 of What Katy Did in which Katy and Clover kidnap an Irish child from her parents and lock her in their attic because they want to "adopt" her.)

Went to the library and borrowed the second Asterix book, having not really given Asterix a chance since I was too young to have any historical context (plus the only one we had in the house was missing several pages, possibly by my own actions at a far younger age.)

Comics
Really feeling for Dina in Dumbing of Age right now. The part about her and Becky is sad and believable, but the part that hit me right where I live was "now even my room is not my own. It's been... ransacked. Strangers have touched... everything." Same fucking autism. I would be out of my fucking mind.

Fandom
Working on my claim for Fanoa'ary, the next Lays server event.

Games
Redactle and Squardle with

kaberett, cryptic crosswords with

shehasathree.

Little puzzle games on my phone: Breakout 71 (breakout with many possible upgrades to unblock, with a lot of flexibility in possible builds) and Tessel, a tile game in which one rotates multicoloured tiles to match the colours, creating enclosed areas of a single colour. I tend to get way too engrossed in this kind of game and spend too long on it, so I like very much that neither of these two are gamified beyond "actually being a game": no ads, no freemium, no nudging to play at a particular time or for a particular length of time. They're very pausible.

Tech
No progress on desktop problems yet: I'm working on paying down some technical debt on my phones before I try more intensive desktop troubleshooting. In the meantime, no Hollow Knight for me.

Crafts
Finished framing/backing a cross-stitched item which I had intended to give

bookgirlwa for her birthday in 2025. Now to wrap it up and send it to her.

No weaving progress yet.

Garden
Two ripe tomatoes (pear-shaped, cherry form factor.)

Cats
Suspicious scab on Ash's nose seems to be healing up okay. *touch wood*

Nature
After a week of more moderate summer weather, we're heading into another heat wave. I hate hot weather, and physically don't deal well with it, but my biggest concern here is fire. Some of the fires from the last heatwave are still burning. The politicians are fighting about the CFA's funding (and yeah, they've been underfunded for a long time and have ageing equipment and an ageing volunteer force, and due to the governments' (plural but including ours) inaction on climate change, the fires they're fighting are getting more numerous and more severe) and there's a distinct scent of manufactured grassroots blame for the Labor state government (and. Like. I don't like Jacinta Allan either! Her authoritarian leanings concern me. But that doesn't mean the opposition would be better, or that a lot of her critics aren't misogynistic or conspiracy-theorists in distinctly Sky News flavours.) Which political digression I find easier to think (grumble) about than the fires themselves. The people and animals harmed already, the likelihood of more and worse in the next week. (And also, personally: the stress of managing my own potential evacuation in a situation where the danger zone is all over the state, my brain's in a constant loop of "but other people have it worse" and it's too hot to think.)

Current Events
It's bad. It's all so bad.

rachelmanija

A teenage boy, Ambrose, wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. OS, the AI programmed with his mother's voice, reminds him that he's on a mission to rescue his sister, who went to Titan two years ago and sent out a distress call. And also, he has a surprise companion on a journey he thought would be solo: Kodiak, a teenage boy from the rival nation, who is ensconced in his own quarters and refuses to come out.

Ambrose, who is a typical teenager in lots of ways apart from being a genius and an astronaut, manages to coax Kodiak out and immediately starts thinking lustful thoughts about him. Kodiak, whose country is much more austere and militarized than Ambrose's, very gradually warms up to him.

And then what I thought was going to be a slow-burn gay YA romance in a science fiction setting takes a huge left turn. To be fair, it does still centrally involve a gay YA romance. But the science fiction aspect isn't just there as a cool background. It's actually a YA science fiction novel that has a romance along with a plot that goes in multiple unexpected directions, and is very moving in a way that's only possible because of the science fiction elements.

If you're a stickler for hard science fiction in which everything is definitely possible/likely, this probably has at least one too many "I don't think that's likely to work that way" moments for you. But if you'd like to read a fun and touching science fiction adventure-romance that will probably surprise you at least once, just read the book without knowing anything more.

( Spoilers! )

tielan

( for later consumption, or now consumption if you prefer )

ursula

glowingfish asked:

The Golden Age of published science-fiction was more or less from 1955 to 1975 (lets say). Why did it end when it did? Do you think that science-fiction (or fantasy) published after 1975 was different, or do you just think it had less ability to become part of the "canon"?

This is really non-standard periodization! Wikipedia has the Golden Age of science fiction starting in the late 1930s, in connection with sci-fi magazine publishing history; the end of your period is solidly New Wave.

The counter-argument is the aphorism that the Golden Age of science fiction is twelve; by that rule, it's interesting to think about who was twelve in 1955-1975, or whatever guidelines you want to pick, and what influence they might have had on defining a canon, once they reached their twenties or thirties. The people who were twelve between 1955 and 1975 were mostly baby boomers, in the standard US generational framework; that was my parents' generation (and

glowingfish's parents', I'm guessing), and it makes sense that the stories they considered formative would seem quasi-canonized to our generation.

rydra_wong

Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders. They live there. It is their country.

They are legally Danish citzens. Greenland is largely self-governing, with the possibility of becoming independent if they choose to.

Denmark can't "sell" them or their country because Denmark does not own them.

And after a number of centuries and some debate, a general consensus was arrived at that selling people is not ethically acceptable, you know?

Even if they wanted to, Denmark can't "sell" Trump Greenland any more than the UK could sell him Scotland.

Also N.B. 85-90% of the Greenlanders are Inuit.

I am very certain that this is absolutely about thinking that Native people don't really count as citizens and they don't really own their land; it is Terra Nullius, and they can be sold off in a deal between the "real" nations of Denmark and the US.

(Or their land can be sold out from under them and they can just be forced elsewhere, which I'm sure Trump would be just fine with.)

If the US wanted to try to ethically acquire Greenland, it could talk to the government of Greenland and offer them a great deal with significant benefits if they wanted to become independent and then have a free association deal with the US.

Or rather, it could have, maybe, because now the Greenlanders are fucking pissed off and scared over the threats and offers to buy them, and if they have to choose between the US and Denmark they are unambiguously choosing Denmark:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgx8w4pgk0o
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/14/us-invasion-threat-greenland-trump-denmark

rydra_wong

A post by Naomi Kritzer:

https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how-to-help-if-you-are-outside-minnesota/

This also has advice on how to start preparing for if and when this shit comes to your home state.

(If you are in Minnesota: https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/19/how-to-help-twin-cities-residents/ )

rydra_wong

Their calendar is here -- creator sign-ups open on the 26th Jan:

https://fandomtrumpshate.dreamwidth.org/53196.html

Their list of non-profits they're supporting is here:

https://fandomtrumpshate.dreamwidth.org/53468.html

Apparently last year they raised $127K!

xenacryst

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

azurelunatic

Two canes can be better than one.

I have a battery of tests aimed at me for the leg weakness, in case it's neurological.

And my primary care is leaving (again) within a few months. They said last time that I would be assigned to someone in the same practice. That was inaccurate. They're saying it again this time, so I will prepare for battle.

Cats are nice and warm, and extraordinarily heavy on the knees.

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Lifting Heavy Things

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