LEGO Party!

6/6/25 19:18
settiai: (Beer -- __alt_icons)
[personal profile] settiai


One of my friends helped design this game! Elliot, who I've been playing D&D with since 2017, has been working on a top secret project for several years now, and he finally got to admit that this was it because the trailer dropped this afternoon.

Honestly, it looks like a lot of fun. And unlike Mario Party, it's not system locked so you and anyone you're playing with can be on different devices. Considering the huge number of game assets that he designed? I'm so very proud of him.
seleneheart: (Little Prince and Fox)
[personal profile] seleneheart
1. Have you ever been to summer camp?
Every summer from the time I was seven until sixteen. The best two weeks of the whole summer. The camp was on land owned by the company my father worked for, and since it was one of the biggest employers in town, lots of kids I knew from school were there too and kids from some of the other schools in the area. It was in the middle of nowhere, had to take a bus most of the way there, and then walk the rest. One time, one of the girls in my cabin decided she was going to wear her swim suit the whole two weeks and not take it off. Not for horse back riding, not for archery, not for overnight camping in the woods. She did shower though. She was one of the cool girls, so she got away with it without much shame or harassment. Site of my first kiss. Where my counselor read us The Little Prince and I had to go find that book when I got home. Where we did crafts with substances that I think are illegal in this country now - I googled them a few years ago - wire dipping. And clacker balls. And so so many lanyards. But, yeah, I loved that place. You had to earn the right to come back as a counselor, which I did for one summer, but then I got involved in other stuff in high school that took up my summers, so I stopped. It closed down, and the company sold all the land. It's been clear cut and the cabins bulldozed. But there's a Facebook group keeping the memories alive.

2. Have you ever made a s'more?
Yes, many times.

3. Have you ever slept under the stars (no tent/tarp)? Yes, several times. Both at camp above and later in college.

4. Have you ever had a member of the opposite sex sleep over at your house?
What are we, twelve? Yes, yes I have.

5. What type of bed do you have (queen, twin, bunk, etc.)?
A queen bed. My cozy place.
opalsong: (podfic)
[personal profile] opalsong
Hey all,
This is my annual Pod_Together Podfic Penceive Project post! You are all invited! This is a project that is pretty specific and also really experimental. We've done it for several years running and every time I have been stunned at the amount of awesome that we've come up with!! The focus is on memory and creation (I've included the basic instructions below). I've run this before and the collection of finished works is up on AO3 if you want to check out the kind of finished products this makes. Let me know if you are interested!

Please sit back and relax. This is one of a number of transmissions you will receive. You may read this as fast or as slow as you wish but please read it only once. Please do not take notes or talk about it on social media or record it while you read. This piece is about your memory as much as it is about my writing. However, it is not a memory test. Don't memorize it word for word (unless you want to). What you choose to focus on and what you pass over and what your brain makes up to fill the gaps is as much a part of the story as the text itself. After reading you can choose when to record it. It can be immediately after, or you could wait several days, or you could wait until after the final transmission, or some combination, or something I have not thought of.

The transmission you are about to read is one of a number and may not be in chronological order (with the others or within itself). It may shift tense and point of view. The piece will build and reveal itself as the transmissions go on. Feel free to edit the final product as much (sound effects or music or whatever else you can imagine) or as little (raw recordings) as you want. Now please, sit back and enjoy:


I want this to be a low stress project; you can put as much or as little effort into this as you want. "Transmissions" will go out once a week (there will be 4-5) as soon as I finish writing the whole thing. You can do major editing or you can leave the audio completely raw.

This runs as part of the Pod_Together podfic challenge but I take care of that side of things. (Unless you want to check in, you don't have to.) Pencieve podfic is also meant to be as low pressure as possible. As long as I have one (1) person finish, the project is a go - which means that if you want to sign up and check it out but find it too much, you can drop out without worrying. Or you could keep reading each transmission as it comes out but not think about it much until after all your other projects are done...for extra chaos.

Participants PLEASE get me your emails. I need them for the sign up. We have a discord server for planning and general communication during the project so I'd love your contact info for there too.
seleneheart: a brightly colored bird on a old paper background (Fairy tale bird)
[personal profile] seleneheart
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher



Blurb:
Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.


I've had this on my 'Want to read' list for a while. I've previously read T. Kingfisher's The Halcyon Fairy Book, which is her annotations of various fairy tales, plus some bonus original fairy tales/retellings, so I was intrigued to read a full novel based on a fairy tale, in this case The Goose Girl.

A really great read - interesting to see all the elements of the original fairy tale woven into a full length book, including the geese. The horror elements in most Grimm fairy tales are fully fleshed out here, so be ready for that. It's hard to know when/where this is set. In the author's notes, she references the Regency Period, but it isn't really set in Britain. Some fantasy version of it, perhaps.
settiai: (Siân -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

bacterial girl

2/6/25 00:35
aethel: (holmes bemused)
[personal profile] aethel
1. Since my last post, I've been offline a lot, but did hear about a Worldcon volunteer's use of ChatGPT to vet panelists: muccamukk's roundup, Jason Sanford. I also watched a bunch of Youtube videos, including a target data story by Angela Collier.

2. TV: I watched season 1 of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and thought about subscribing to Apple TV to get Murderbot.

3. Books: I reread some Narnia books (still good, but The Silver Chair has weirder politics than I noticed as a child) and read some new sff that was ok, but not exceptional (The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis, Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan). I looked for Marius/Cobra fic on AO3 and found 9 whole fics. Meanwhile, Life on a Young Planet provided many fun facts about how Earth was terraformed.
Tags:
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
[personal profile] luzula
One of our ducks vanished during the day, in all probability taken by a fox. I can't imagine she would stay away from feeding time of her own free will, so something must have happened to her. Obviously we lock them up at night, but they don't wander far from the house and garden during the day, so we thought there wasn't much danger in broad daylight. But no.

When we asked in the village group chat, it turns out several neighbors had had chickens taken during the day by foxes! Would have been nice if they had warned the neighbors about this, instead of using the group chat for useless and annoying suspicion of strangers walking down the road (a completely unremarkable thing for people to do).

I don't blame the fox for doing its foxy thing, obviously. But I am more sad than I expected to be about the duck. They are such funny and endearing creatures--I had grown quite fond of them all, and this one was one of my favorites. She was the younger female, often the first to come running at feeding time, and had been amusing and annoying us with her desultory brooding habits. Runner ducks apparently don't reliably brood, but she was often doing it, so we left her some eggs to let her try. So she would do it for half the day, but then go out with the others and ignore the eggs. We joked that maybe she was holding out for an eight-hour working day if she was going to brood.

Farewell, Ester. You were a lovely duck, and I shed tears for you.
Tags:

2 More Bingos

1/6/25 13:28
seleneheart: a book plate with the words 'ex libris' (Ex Libris)
[personal profile] seleneheart
The last couple of books I read gave me two more bingos. I'm currently reading books that will satisfy the two remaining squares with a theme, and then I'll just put whatever I read after that on the free space.

Arlathan eXchange

1/6/25 12:25
settiai: (Dragon Age -- offensive)
[personal profile] settiai
The Arlathan eXchange, a Dragon Age exchange focusing on elves, went live today. This year, I got not one but two lovely fics! 💕

First up is 152.41 is the Dewey Decimal for Love, a DA:TV fic featuring Bellara Lurate/Nonbinary Elf Aldwir. It's a Modern AU set in a university.

Then there's Mended Scars & Mended Hearts, which features Alistair/F!Surana/Leliana.
seleneheart: (Default)
[personal profile] seleneheart
The Body in the Garden by Katharine Schellman



Blurb:
London 1815. Newly widowed Lily Adler returns to a society that frowns on independent women, but she's no stranger to the glittering world of London's upper crust. She's back in town and eager to have a renaissance with friends, particularly with Lady Serena Walter--from their school days--determined to create a meaningful life for herself even without a husband. She expects scandal, gossip, and secrets. What she doesn't expect, as she's visiting Lady Walter is a dead man laying in her garden.

Lily happened to overhear the man just minutes before he was shot: young, desperate, and attempting blackmail. When she finds out Lord Walter bribes the investigating magistrate to drop the case, Lily is worried, and becomes the only one with the key to catching the killer.

Aided by Navy Captain Jack Hartley and heiress from the West Indies Miss Ofelia Oswald, Lily sets out to discover whether her friend's husband is mixed up in blackmail and murder. The unlikely team sets out to conceal their investigation behind the whirl of London's social season, but the deceased knew secrets about people with power. Secrets that the powerful have desire and influence to keep hidden. Now, Lily will have to uncover the truth, before she becomes the killer's next target.


This is the first mystery in the series - setting the place an time more than the following books. We get more of Lily's backstory and grief over the loss of her husband, and her initial friendship with Ofelia as well as her working relationship with Simon Page. Very enjoyable.
settiai: (Kes -- settiai (TriaElf9))
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

RIP, Loretta Swit

30/5/25 19:58
settiai: (Hawkeye -- bailunrui)
[personal profile] settiai
We've lost another one. Goodbye, Hot Lips. 🙁

I really need to add a M*A*S*H rewatch to my ever-growing list. I started one last year, but then work exploded and I just... never got back to it. Maybe I can do that when and if I finish the Babylon 5 rewatch.
settiai: (Siân -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

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