Bestie, did you end up going on that trip to Charleston?? If so, did you manage to see any filming? And most importantly, did you have fun? Charleston seems so pretty, definitely a bucket list item for me

haha yes I did!! i had the marvelous idea of spending three weeks in charleston at the height of the summer and tbh I regret absolutely nothing.

I did get to see some filming! when I tell you i was SEARCHING, I mean that. I would tell you how many miles I walked while I was there but it’s an embarrassing number so we’re gonna move on. I got to see them filming at Kiara’s house, Tanneyhill, and Limbrey’s house. I also got to see them filming the reshoots for the Carrera anniversary party scene at the Wreck, which was probably the most exciting!! 

And I had a ridiculous amount of fun!!! I didn't think I'd love the city of Charleston as much as I did. the food was amazing, the city was so pretty, I absolutely adored Shem Creek and Mount Pleasant, and I only got absolutely drenched by summer rain twice!! I got to meet some pretty cool people & make some friends & I nearly got adopted into a family while I was out set stalking so I think that’s a win (or maybe a red flag, i don’t know)

It's all going to melt tomorrow, but WOW what a big first snow we got today!

One thing I’m surprised not many people have talked about, is the concept of Shadow being culture shocked with nature.

I can imagine Shadow being distracted by the jungle when he first arrived back to Prison Island (I say back because we didn’t see him in the forest after he was set free). That was the first time we’ve seen Shadow in nature.

And another shocking thing is nobody mentions Shadow experiencing rain for the first time during White Jungle (when he had to run back to save Rouge).

This is something I really hope the 3rd movie touches on. I do appreciate them acknowledging Sonic, Tails and Knuckles culture shock about Earth. But the difference is the Wachowski boys’s culture shock is about Earth’s customs (like handshakes, fist bumps, bucket lists) while Shadow’s is about nature.

been thinking about the rabies condition in writing lately, which is a GREAT post about stakes and characterization. basically exploring how if there's a 100% chance a character is doomed, then they can and will do extremely dangerous/damaging/contraindicated things for the slimmest hope of survival. which is one of my Favorite narrative devices

but while we're using health metaphors, i've been thinking about another somewhat complicated means of introducing character stakes, which i'm tentatively calling 'the autoimmune condition' for reasons that are. obvious

the premise itself is simple: the character has Something that they need to survive. they either can't live without this thing or they will lose something vital about themselves if they lose this thing. there is no replacement or alternative for the thing. what's most important are that the consequences for losing it are Extreme, rabies-condition-style

in the real life allegory, this is the immune system. which is great for being alive!

then the problem is introduced when this thing starts killing the character.

the character still needs it to live.

so: there is a 100% chance that you will die if you destroy the thing killing you. if you impair it through other means, there is a 100% chance of consequences, though the severity of those consequences is up to the author. (these are medication side effects in the real life allegory.)

if you do everything you're supposed to then you'll PROBABLY survive, but you're gonna have to play lifelong tug-of-war to balance everything, and you are often going to have to choose between two shitty options. bc there is no alternative.

this is a counterpart to the rabies condition in terms of stakes; with this condition, your character has to make complicated and difficult decisions about what they're sacrificing for their future. it's not the immediate life-and-death stakes of rabies, it's a slow decay instead.

what side effect consequences are they willing to take on?? and what are they NOT willing to take on?? where do their priorities lie in terms of symptom management?? what other solutions are they looking for?? what are they willing to sacrifice??

and perhaps most importantly: what exactly do they need to lose before they'll Accept the side effects / sacrifices that used to terrify them?? how high do the stakes need to be??

at what point is this character going to look back at the choices they've made up to this point, and realize that they no longer recognize themselves??

done with whole cake island!!!

man

ok it's on me for not checking the premise or anything before watching it but uhhhh y'all's gifs did NOT prepare me for whatever the hell those two guys have going on in My Personal Weatherman

recent lounging babey images

Another question for y'all, this one clothes terminology related: If I want to find like sweatpants/joggers that are not soft and fuzzy inside, what is that called? For some reason I keep thinking the word terrycloth, but that's towels, right? Fuzzy sweatpants are very soft but way too hot for me

animal women of the world, unite! oh lord they are fighting

(you can read a little about 'em here!)

costumizing my braces part 2: vinyl boogaloo

(part 1 here)

look at me having the spoons and time to keep working on operation "make the braces not suck", in todays episode; adding the htv (heat transfer vinyl) designs

first up, the designs, theese were designed and cut out while i was at home for autumn break (before i was planning on making process posts about this project), so i dont have any pictures of my cricut or the weeding etc., but i do have pics of the designs i cut out

[ID in ALT]

to explain the text i used:

"are the gods truly this petty?": a phrase said by shadowheart in act 3 of baldurs gate 3 whenever her incurable sharran wound hurts. since her wound is on her right hand, and my right wrist is the one most likely to act up (and since bg3 has me in a chokehold like no other), i figured it would be a fitting choice

"d va da som svarte": written more or less phonetically according to my dialect, its hard to translate but as a phrase its simmilar (but not as "severe" on the swearing scale) to "for fucks sake" or "fucking hell". it goes on the left brace since i really fucked up if i need to use it

[ID in ALT]

for the transfer i needed to make sure i did not mess up the communal equipment, lest i be excommunicated from the workshop. so i put a paper towel under each brace to protect the ironing board from any possible glue, and i used some scrap muslin on top of the braces to protect the iron from the plastic and the dye (as yall can see from the second picture it was a good thing i did)

i ironed the designs from both the front and back of the braces for 30 seconds each, then another 30 seconds from the front, this vinyl is cold peel so i let one cool down while i did the other, i then removed the transfer tape and (because i dont trust the glue on this brand) ironed for Another 30 seconds with just the muslin between the iron and the design

thats it for part 2, part 3 (link found here once its up, or check the "operation make the braces not suck" tag on my blog) will more than likely be the stitching to re-attach the bits that fell off during the dying

man I just kinda sometimes think about how they wrote canon gerudo Like That and then I'm like "whew, glad I have fanfiction so that I can pretend the gerudo are Not Like That"

[Image ID: A MOGAI flag with nine equal horizontal stripes. From top to bottom, the colors in order are: dark forest green, dusty forest green, dusty green, light dusty green, dark almost black green-gray, light dusty green, dusty green, dusty forest green, dark forest green. /End ID]

Navarrogender -

[PT: Navarrogender -]

A gender related to misty forests, mountains, hilly terrain, 80s and R&B music, the colors green and gray, fur lined green coats, fishnet shirts, silver jewelry, and laid back behavior! This may also be related to the word “goober”, Kali Uchis, the planet Saturn, he/they and irba/irbas pronouns, and enjoying typically feminine activities while being masculine! Made for our alter Navarro!

Tagging: @radiomogai @obscurian @the-mogai-archives

[Banner ID: A pastel yellow banner with a sunflower on either side. In brown text with a white outline, it says "- Please let me know if this has been coined before! -" /End ID.]

[DNI transcript: "-DNI- Basic criteria, anti-mogai, proshippers, ableists, aphobes, racists, zoophiles, rpf shippers, fandom discourse, under 13, transid/transx". /End transcript.]

alright folks how are we feeling about lanino and elnina

it's interesting, a few people on my post yesterday about the dandelion dynasty told me they were taking it as a rec for the series, but i didn't actually recommend the series in that post. it's making me think about whether i would rec it to people, a question i hadn't fully considered yet (as it is a very different question from "do i like this book?"). so this is me figuring out the answer to that question. i'll keep it spoiler-free (though i make no promises on brevity).

i just finished book 3 (of 4) and each installment has left me more invested than i was before, but the series started out very slow, and i didn't really get into it until halfway through book 2. i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people bounce off the first book; i didn't, but only because 1) i almost never give up on a book that i've started (it's a character flaw of mine 😕) and 2) my trust in ken liu is ridiculously high because the other stuff i've read by him is so beloved to me. so my reaction to feeling kind of meh about book 1 was "okay, let's see where he's going with this" rather than "i guess this just isn't my cup of tea."

i should say that the problem might just be my own ignorance/lack of familiarity with the form. i don't read a lot of epic fantasy - in fact, lord of the rings is the one series that i have given up on reading a couple of times because it just left me totally indifferent. so if you like epics, you are starting out way ahead of me and can maybe just ignore the rest of this post lol, but i think i had to adjust to what the form is asking of me and what it's best suited to accomplish before i could get fully on board.

the main thing i struggled with is the writing, like the actual sentence-level mechanics of voice and style. this surprised me, because i usually find his writing very beautiful, or, when not beautiful, i can get a sense of the effect he means to achieve by employing a certain style. but in this series, the writing came across as kind of awkward and one-note to me at first, and i couldn't see a reason for it to be that way.* the dialogue especially - different characters don't really have different ways of speaking, they all feel pretty much the same. this was one of the main things i had to adjust to, but i do get it now. i don't just mean that i got used to the style and it doesn't bother me anymore, though that is true; i mean that i now understand the effect he means to achieve by employing this style, which gives it purpose and inextricably ties it to the story he's telling (this becomes especially clear in book 3, as it's directly related to a major theme of that book). if the style were different, he would be telling a different story; that's the sign of a successful execution, i think.

i said in the tags on yesterday's post that one reason the series doesn't have much of a fandom on here might be that the characters aren't natural blorbos. of course every character is probably the blorbo of somebody somewhere, but i don't know that these characters were designed to be blorbos, if that makes sense. not that they're plot devices either! every single one of them is conflicted and complicated and compelling, and most of them are followed over a period of many years, so we see them develop as people over time. but there is no protagonist, for example. you could also say that every character is a protagonist. the "list of major characters" at the beginning of book 3 is six pages long, and there are stories to be told about each of these characters, and none of them are told in isolation. but in a way, the characters themselves are not the point, or if they are, it's in aggregate - it's in the ways they're all complex, the ways they all have motivations that make sense to them (and that make sense to us, once we get to know them). and it's about power and the roles that the characters play in their society, rather than the roles the characters play in the story. or maybe those are the same thing! because ultimately, the main character of this story is the society. and the plot is the history of this society, rather than the journey or life of a single person or handful of people.**

(sidenote, there will be a period during book 1 when you will think to yourself, "wow, all the women characters are super one-dimensional and the narrative doesn't seem to respect them." this is on purpose. just keep going.)

the plotting is intricate while also feeling very organic. he's got dozens of plates in the air at once, he's maintaining them over a long period (these books are MASSIVE), and he's somehow making it seem like a real history, not like an author pulling strings. i haven't finished it yet, but my guess is that he's going to pull off a very satisfying conclusion that's at the same time very open-ended. definitely looking forward to it.

and the worldbuilding. oh, the worldbuilding. this is some of the most detailed, complex, realistic*** worldbuilding i've ever encountered, and he covers SO much ground. you want linguistic worldbuilding? you got it. philosophy? it's here. psychology of empire? coming right up. the nitty-gritty of everyday governance? buddy, pull up a chair. mechanical engineering? how much time you got?? (it better be enough time to read 3504 physical pages, because that's how long this series is.) and he's drawing on chinese history and cultural narratives rather than slapping lipstick on a tolkien clone (see his comments here, but stop reading at "In this continuation of the series" if you want to avoid spoilers). he WILL go on for a hundred pages about a single invention, but it's SO interesting that he is allowed. this is a story about how technology (including language, and schools of thought, and agriculture, and...) shapes, and is a product of, its time and place and people, so again, this is all to purpose. but it's also just. really cool.

the last thing i'll say, and this is mainly for other ken liu fans, is that one of the things i most love about his short stories is how they tap into emotions i didn't even know i had, as though they're reaching inside of me and drawing to the surface ways of experiencing consciousness and love and mortal life that i had no idea were in there. this series is not causing emotional revelation for me in the way his other stories do, which isn't a bad thing - i don't mean to say the series is not engaging or that it inspires no emotions! i just mean, iykyk. if you've read the paper menagerie and are expecting that experience, you will have a better time here if you leave those expectations at the door. i am invested in this book because it's engaging my intellect, curiosity, sense of wanting to find out what else the characters will learn and what's going to happen next...less because it's turning my heart inside out inside my chest. and like thank goodness, because i don't think i could survive four entire 900-page books' worth of that! but anyway. word to the wise.

tl;dr: yes, i recommend it, especially if you like epic fantasy. if you're a fan of ken liu's other work, this is quite different, so just know that going in!

*this opinion is of course subjective and not universally shared. for instance, see this review of book 3 (full of spoilers, so don't actually read it lol) which says "There's Liu's voice to hold onto, though — beautifully deployed here and fully in command of the language of his imaginary universe." so ymmv. maybe it's an epic fantasy thing.

**this is making me realize that the story is commenting on this very thing through a tension between bureaucracy (founded on interchangeability) and monarchy (informed by a specific personality). dude. that's so meta!

***though sometimes i'm like, "really? you scaled up that invention to use untested on the battlefield in the span of like two weeks? sure, jan." so sometimes he falls down a little on translation of ideas into logistics, but it makes for such a great story that i'll allow it.