The Mighty Nein 1x02
Nov. 19th, 2025 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
settiaiContinuing on my previously posted thoughts about episode 1x01, I just finished watching episode 1x02.
( Spoilers under the cut. )
( Spoilers under the cut. )
settiai
Stargate
Nov. 19th, 2025 12:30 pmsettiaiOkay, this is definitely not news that I was expecting to see today. Amazon has apparently greenlit a new Stargate series set in the same continuity as the past ones, so it's not a reboot.
A lot of familiar names from both the original movie and the shows have signed on as producers. Martin Gero, Brad Wright, Joseph Mallozzi, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich...
A lot of familiar names from both the original movie and the shows have signed on as producers. Martin Gero, Brad Wright, Joseph Mallozzi, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich...
The Hunter, by Tana French
Nov. 19th, 2025 08:55 amrunpunkrunThis follows The Seeker, and I enjoyed it even more than the first book. That one was all Cal, who is still solving a lot of his problems with his fists, but here Lena and Trey provide an interesting balance to Cal's blunt force approach. French builds on the events of the first book, drawing out the tension between the characters, where even the most innocuous of conversations between the villagers are filled with hidden meaning and layered with unspoken threats as they seek out peace, safety, and revenge.
The third book in this series is expected next March, and I look forward to reading it.
Contains: Child harm; dog harm; violence (both interpersonal and mob); fire.
The third book in this series is expected next March, and I look forward to reading it.
Contains: Child harm; dog harm; violence (both interpersonal and mob); fire.
Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 19th, 2025 08:02 amosprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I picked up Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s William S. and the Great Escape intending to read a chapter or two, and then accidentally gulped down the whole thing. William S. Bagget (he add the S after playing Ariel in a production of The Tempest last spring) and his siblings run away from their horrible family to live with their Aunt Fiona. As always, Snyder writes great little kids (even children’s authors often stumble on four-year-olds), and I loved the way that Shakespeare-obsessed William found ways to compare his everyday life to Shakespeare scenarios.
I also read Daphne du Maurier’s The Winding Stair: Sir Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall, which mostly about Sir Francis Bacon’s political and literary career, but features a few forays into not-quite-full-blown Baconian theories. Now du Maurier is not saying that Bacon wrote ALL of Shakespeare’s plays, but what if he talked the plays over with Shakespeare while he was writing them? What if he contributed some of the witty quotes during tavern arguments? What if maybe he actually DID write the plays that were never printed during Shakespeare’s lifetime…
Du Maurier doesn’t so much provide an argument for this as just say “Hey guys what if?”, but I find it delightful on the same level of “What if Audubon was secretly the escaped dauphin of France?” What if indeed! Don’t believe it for a second actually! But you shine on, you crazy diamond of an author.
What I’m Reading Now
Sachiko Kashiwaba’s The Village Beyond the Mist, the book on which Spirited Away is very (very) loosely based. Really enjoying this! Rationing it out a bit because I don’t want it to end… However the library does have Temple Alley Summer so I might move on to that.
What I Plan to Read Next
Going absolutely ham on the Christmas books this year. Besides the picture book Advent calendar, I’m planning Ruth Sawyer’s The Long Christmas (a collection of Christmas short stories), Tasha Tudor’s Forever Christmas (a book about Christmas at Tasha Tudor’s place), Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal, Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, and Ally Carter’s The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, although as I am 25th on the hold list for that last book it may have to wait for next year.
I picked up Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s William S. and the Great Escape intending to read a chapter or two, and then accidentally gulped down the whole thing. William S. Bagget (he add the S after playing Ariel in a production of The Tempest last spring) and his siblings run away from their horrible family to live with their Aunt Fiona. As always, Snyder writes great little kids (even children’s authors often stumble on four-year-olds), and I loved the way that Shakespeare-obsessed William found ways to compare his everyday life to Shakespeare scenarios.
I also read Daphne du Maurier’s The Winding Stair: Sir Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall, which mostly about Sir Francis Bacon’s political and literary career, but features a few forays into not-quite-full-blown Baconian theories. Now du Maurier is not saying that Bacon wrote ALL of Shakespeare’s plays, but what if he talked the plays over with Shakespeare while he was writing them? What if he contributed some of the witty quotes during tavern arguments? What if maybe he actually DID write the plays that were never printed during Shakespeare’s lifetime…
Du Maurier doesn’t so much provide an argument for this as just say “Hey guys what if?”, but I find it delightful on the same level of “What if Audubon was secretly the escaped dauphin of France?” What if indeed! Don’t believe it for a second actually! But you shine on, you crazy diamond of an author.
What I’m Reading Now
Sachiko Kashiwaba’s The Village Beyond the Mist, the book on which Spirited Away is very (very) loosely based. Really enjoying this! Rationing it out a bit because I don’t want it to end… However the library does have Temple Alley Summer so I might move on to that.
What I Plan to Read Next
Going absolutely ham on the Christmas books this year. Besides the picture book Advent calendar, I’m planning Ruth Sawyer’s The Long Christmas (a collection of Christmas short stories), Tasha Tudor’s Forever Christmas (a book about Christmas at Tasha Tudor’s place), Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal, Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, and Ally Carter’s The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, although as I am 25th on the hold list for that last book it may have to wait for next year.
Surely you invoke the negative energy that's effecting the vibes???
Nov. 19th, 2025 11:19 amoursin in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
agonyauntThe yoga studio where I teach hasn’t been paying me on time (AAM: 4th one down):
I’ve been teaching yoga for about four years now and was hired for my first job at this small group training facility. I teach once a week and often sub for one of the two other instructors. I previously got paid monthly. I have a full-time job and this is my side gig. So, it’s money I use for things like gifts, or save up for vacations.
Over the last two years, my monthly payment stretched to being paid every two months. This past year, it’s stretched out to being paid every four or five months. I’ve asked the owners several times to leave a check for me for next week. I’ve also asked if there is an easier way for them to pay me, such as Venmo or direct deposit.
I’m at the point now where I’m owed for over 21 classes ($40 per class). Enrollment in the small training groups seems to have dropped as I’m seeing new members less. People do join for the yoga-only package to come to the yoga classes. What’s the best way to ask to be paid and let them know I can’t/shouldn’t have to wait longer than two months for payment? I’m at the point now where I want to say that I won’t teach until I get paid, but that isn’t really my vibe.
Alison responds: ( saying that you won’t teach until you get paid should be your vibe )
A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, ed. Ellen Oh & Elsie Chapman (2018) [part 3]
Nov. 18th, 2025 04:53 pmpauraqueThis is part three of my book club notes on A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. [Part one, part two.]
Something I learned in this meeting that I did not previously realize is that a number of the authors in the collection are best known for YA. This does explain why it was shelved under YA in the library, which I have to admit I did not see as significant given that I also had to visit the YA section to find Dracula (because their copy is part of a series of "classic canon" repubs marketed to teens). I had noticed that some of the entries certainly are YA, which I don't consider a bad thing in itself, but in this batch of stories we did experience a disconnect between the marketed-to audience and ourselves.
"Nothing Into All" by Renée Ahdieh
( An embittered brother and a doormat sister run across goblins that can turn anything into gold. )
"Spear Carrier" by Naomi Kanakia
[Note: This book was published before Kanakia came out as trans, so it lists this story under her former name Rahul Kanakia.]
( A look at the Mahabharata from the POV of one of the five million soldiers in the climactic battle. )
"Code of Honor" by Melissa de la Cruz
( A Filipina vampire seeks belonging in New York City. )
"Bullet, Butterfly" by Elsie Chapman
( In a war-torn country, a boy disguises himself as a girl to infiltrate a munitions factory. )
Something I learned in this meeting that I did not previously realize is that a number of the authors in the collection are best known for YA. This does explain why it was shelved under YA in the library, which I have to admit I did not see as significant given that I also had to visit the YA section to find Dracula (because their copy is part of a series of "classic canon" repubs marketed to teens). I had noticed that some of the entries certainly are YA, which I don't consider a bad thing in itself, but in this batch of stories we did experience a disconnect between the marketed-to audience and ourselves.
"Nothing Into All" by Renée Ahdieh
( An embittered brother and a doormat sister run across goblins that can turn anything into gold. )
"Spear Carrier" by Naomi Kanakia
[Note: This book was published before Kanakia came out as trans, so it lists this story under her former name Rahul Kanakia.]
( A look at the Mahabharata from the POV of one of the five million soldiers in the climactic battle. )
"Code of Honor" by Melissa de la Cruz
( A Filipina vampire seeks belonging in New York City. )
"Bullet, Butterfly" by Elsie Chapman
( In a war-torn country, a boy disguises himself as a girl to infiltrate a munitions factory. )
Meme: describe yourself in 3 fictional characters
Nov. 18th, 2025 06:45 pmfalenaThis is another old meme that I find particularly interesting because it's a lot harder than it can seem at first. I mean, I could rattle off dozens of characters I love off the top of my head, but listing 3 that are similar to me in some ways is not so straightforward. At least to me.
Anyway, here's my current choice (and it's interesting to see how different they are from the ones I chose the first time around, 10 years ago - Hermione Granger, Elinor Dash wood from Sense&Sensibility and Jaye from Wonderfalls):
Margaret Hale from North&South. A strong-willed woman who's really not a good judge of character. Generous but proud, her family is very important to her. She's also generous and compassionate and I think I am too.
Tami Taylor from Friday Night Lights. Isn't it a bit sad that I could come up only with her as an example of a grown woman who is a wife and mother but is not only defined by these two roles? She also had a career in education (she was a guidance counselor and then a vice principal or something along those lines). Of course, I wish I was half as cool as her.
Mirabel from Encanto. This is because quite a few of my students said I remind them of her. Lol. I think they meant physically what with my short curly hair and the glasses, buy I must say the bubbly personality, the tendency to people-pleasing and her love for her family are something else we have in common.
Which characters do you think are similar to you in some ways and why?
Dear Britcom RPF Ex creator
Nov. 18th, 2025 12:37 pmcarmillaHi! Thank you for making something for me. That automatically means you're awesome :) I promise I am super easy to please. If you want to ignore the contents of this letter and just write whatever first sprang into your head, please do! This also applies to the prompts in my sign up- they're there for if you find it helpful to have a jumping off point, but if you'd rather write a plot that has nothing to do with them I'll be equally delighted to read it. The following is a ramble on me and my tastes for if you like that kind of thing, but it's totally skippable.
I am open to treats.
AO3 name: Carmilla
( General likes )
( Smut likes )
( General dislikes/DNW clarifications )
I am open to treats.
AO3 name: Carmilla
( General likes )
( Smut likes )
( General dislikes/DNW clarifications )
US Politics: John Oliver made me happy cry
Nov. 17th, 2025 10:24 pmpetraHis latest episode's main piece was on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cause dear to my heart.
It made me furious even as it made me laugh, because it's John Oliver. And the last bits made me weep like my PBS junkie inner child was in charge, because, in the best Oliverian tradition, he made me hope.
I love his work so much.
It made me furious even as it made me laugh, because it's John Oliver. And the last bits made me weep like my PBS junkie inner child was in charge, because, in the best Oliverian tradition, he made me hope.
I love his work so much.
(no subject)
Nov. 17th, 2025 05:40 pmconuly in agonyauntDEAR HARRIETTE: My boyfriend recently moved in with me, and ever since then, my cat’s behavior has completely changed. She’s been acting out: scratching furniture, hiding for hours and even refusing to eat sometimes. She used to be calm and affectionate, but now she seems anxious and territorial. My partner is trying to be patient, but I can tell he’s getting frustrated, especially since the cat hisses at him whenever he walks by or tries to sit near me. It’s creating tension between us, and I feel stuck in the middle trying to keep everyone happy. I’ve tried introducing them slowly, giving the cat space and even buying new toys to distract her, but nothing seems to help. My boyfriend thinks I’m overreacting and that the cat will “get over it,” but I know she’s genuinely stressed.
I feel guilty because I was so excited for us to finally live together, and now it feels like we’re both walking on eggshells around my pet. I love them both, but I’m starting to wonder if this living situation is sustainable. How can I help my cat adjust to this big change without it putting more strain on my relationship? -- Standoff
( Read more... )
I feel guilty because I was so excited for us to finally live together, and now it feels like we’re both walking on eggshells around my pet. I love them both, but I’m starting to wonder if this living situation is sustainable. How can I help my cat adjust to this big change without it putting more strain on my relationship? -- Standoff
( Read more... )
Progression Ahoy!
Nov. 17th, 2025 08:23 pmglinda7971 / 10000 (79.71%)
I held off on making this post until today, as it’s my last day of annual leave, so the last day of my dedicated writing time. Writing has been going well, I’ve now written as many words as I had by the end of the year last year so I’m officially caught up. As I started November 6000 words ahead of where I was last year, I’m hoping to maintain that, ideally I’d like to be able to say I wrote 10,000 more words this year than last but we’ll call that a stretch goal! (The return of my fic writing ability/motivation means that I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to spend December writing a bunch of treats and pinch hits, thereby getting a decent word count for the final month.) An interesting thing about this year’s writing is that it hasn’t consumed everything else. For a start, I’ve finished the non-fiction book I was reading this month, and I’ve started another.
My other personal target for this month was that I wanted to finish the little crochet crab that I’m making. It’s the first proper amigurumi that I’ve tackled so getting it successfully finished will tick a bunch of boxes. It goes in fits and starts because I keep having to take it to my knitting group to get help. (Being a very beginner crocheter and working between UK and US instructions can be complicated - I was taught by someone who uses US terms, one of the ladies at knitting uses UK terms and the other is Dutch!) So I have finished the body and a leg, and I’ve made half a claw but now I’m stuck until I can get to knitting and have someone show me what’s meant by ‘turn’ in this context. I have, however, found a good video for doing magic circle so hopefully by the time I finish the legs - there’s eight - I’ll have that down pat. I’m travelling for work this week, so I’m hoping to get the rest of the legs and both eyes done while I’m away. That way I can ask about both the claw and the eyestalks while I’m there and get both sorted out. It’s fun looking at the progress that I’ve made on it, I’m quite pleased with the stitch texture I’m getting now, and I’m pleased to have mastered decreasing but already I can see where I’ve improved and got better. Like, I’m having moments of realising ‘oh that’s why keeping the stitch count right was so hard’ and ‘oh that was silly, of course I should do it this way instead’. (I did, as predicted end up breaking the flismy little plastic hook that came with the kit - my tension is tight! - but actually now that I’ve dug out a metal hook of the correct size I feel that I’m getting on better, I don’t know if it’s just that I was worrying about snapping the old one, or if it’s actually easier with a hook of a different material.) I’ve been zooming through my podcast backlog while I’ve been working on the crab, which has also been quite satisfying.
At the start of last week I kind of felt that I wasn’t making much progress on many things I wanted to have done this week, but looking back on it, I think I’ve done everything I needed to do. There's definitely more things I wanted/intended to do but the time critical stuff - things that needed ordered and bought by deadline, stuff that was expiring both food and digital stuff have been dealt with - has been done, I've added a bunch of lights to places in the unending fight against the lack of light. I got some more cute decorative lights, fairy lights and a snow globe style one. Also while i was tidying out other things, I found some stick on press lights that my dad gave me ages ago and had no idea what I'd do with them, and it dawn on me they'd be ideal for the meter cupboard so now the cupboard with the fuse box and the electric meter and the cupboard where the gas meter lives have little press lights so I don't have to juggle my phone's flashlight when I'm trying to send my meter readings.
I didn’t get my curtains dry cleaned in the end because when I took them in to the dry cleaners, they were like ‘oh no’ because they’re both thermal lined and from Dunelm and apparently they’ve had a run of those where there’s something wrong with the thermal lining, so they stick together in the machine and the lining shreds when you try to separate them again. (Sometimes they’re fine, but they’re not often that they’ve got a special report and letter they give people to get their money back/replacement curtains from Dunelm.) The dry cleaning lady recommended - as mine were dusty rather than actually grubby, I vacuumed them when I took them down - hanging the outside on a nice dry breezy day and giving them a febreeze! I even got my good sewing shears sharpened - now if I could just find my chalk I could get to work on shortening those curtains. Though I do now have...concerns about ironing the new seams...
Newbery Books with Jewish Themes
Nov. 17th, 2025 11:07 amosprey_archerI figured some of you would be interested in Newbery books with Jewish themes, so I’ve made a list. (As usual, it’s entirely possible I’ve forgotten some, since I’ve been reading this books for nigh on thirty years.)
1931: Agnes Hewes’ Spice and the Devil’s Cave. A kindly older Jewish couple help matchmake our hero and heroine and also lend money to the king of Portugal for voyages of exploration. (The modern reader may have a low opinion of voyages of exploration, but in Hewes’ eyes these are very much a Good Thing.) The entire Jewish community gets kicked unjustly out of Portugal.
1941. Kate Seredy’s The Singing Tree features not only a kindly Jewish shopkeeper but an extended musing on how Hungary was formed when everyone - Hungarian landowners, Jewish shopkeepers, some third group that I’m forgetting right now - came together as one. This is a building block toward the book’s central theme: not only are all the people of Hungary one, but in fact all human beings on this earth are one, and therefore can’t we stop tormenting each other with the horrors of war? (A cri de coeur in 1941.)
Then a trifecta of short story collections, written in Yiddish by Isaac Bashevis Singer and then translated into English: Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1967), The Fearsome Inn (1968) (actually a short story made into a picture book), and When Schlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories (1969). Stories of eastern European Jewish life, often very funny or with a supernatural twist.
Then in 1970, the Newbery committee followed this up with Sulamith Ish-kashor’s Our Eddie (Jewish life in the Lower East Side in the 1900s) AND Johanna Reiss’s hiding-from-the-Nazis memoir The Upstairs Room. Another Holocaust memoir followed in 1982: Aranka Siegal’s Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-1944.
2008: Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village is a series of poetic monologues told by different members of a medieval village, including a Jewish child.
2017: In Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog, the narration rotates between the three magical children, one of whom is Jewish. (I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to plug Gidwitz’s Max in the House of Spies and Max in the Land of Lies, even though they’re not Newbery books. Yet. Max in the Land of Lies is eligible for 2026! Just putting that out there, Newbery committee!
Most recently, Ruth Behar’s 2025 Across So Many Seas is a generational saga of a Sephardic Jewish family, based loosely on Behar’s own family history. The story begins in the 1400s when the family is forced to leave Spain, then continues in the 1900s when a daughter of the family emigrates to Cuba for an arranged marriage. (Behar based this section on her own grandmother’s story, which she recounts in the afterword. The real story seems much more romantic than the tale Behar told to tell instead, which is such a strange choice.) Her daughter becomes a brigadista teaching peasants how to read until she emigrates to the US, and then her daughter vacations in Spain which the family was forced to flee so many generations before.
Edited to add:landofnowhere pointed out that I forgot Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, which is both embarrassing and inexplicable because I read that approximately 500 times as a child, and have reread it at least twice as an adult.
And also E. L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday, but that one is much less embarrassing, as I read that book once and remember nothing except the fact that I didn't understand any of it. (And also during the quiz bowl at the end, the judges would allow posh to count as an acronym, but not tip. Why did this stick with me? The human mind is a mystery.)
1931: Agnes Hewes’ Spice and the Devil’s Cave. A kindly older Jewish couple help matchmake our hero and heroine and also lend money to the king of Portugal for voyages of exploration. (The modern reader may have a low opinion of voyages of exploration, but in Hewes’ eyes these are very much a Good Thing.) The entire Jewish community gets kicked unjustly out of Portugal.
1941. Kate Seredy’s The Singing Tree features not only a kindly Jewish shopkeeper but an extended musing on how Hungary was formed when everyone - Hungarian landowners, Jewish shopkeepers, some third group that I’m forgetting right now - came together as one. This is a building block toward the book’s central theme: not only are all the people of Hungary one, but in fact all human beings on this earth are one, and therefore can’t we stop tormenting each other with the horrors of war? (A cri de coeur in 1941.)
Then a trifecta of short story collections, written in Yiddish by Isaac Bashevis Singer and then translated into English: Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1967), The Fearsome Inn (1968) (actually a short story made into a picture book), and When Schlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories (1969). Stories of eastern European Jewish life, often very funny or with a supernatural twist.
Then in 1970, the Newbery committee followed this up with Sulamith Ish-kashor’s Our Eddie (Jewish life in the Lower East Side in the 1900s) AND Johanna Reiss’s hiding-from-the-Nazis memoir The Upstairs Room. Another Holocaust memoir followed in 1982: Aranka Siegal’s Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-1944.
2008: Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village is a series of poetic monologues told by different members of a medieval village, including a Jewish child.
2017: In Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog, the narration rotates between the three magical children, one of whom is Jewish. (I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to plug Gidwitz’s Max in the House of Spies and Max in the Land of Lies, even though they’re not Newbery books. Yet. Max in the Land of Lies is eligible for 2026! Just putting that out there, Newbery committee!
Most recently, Ruth Behar’s 2025 Across So Many Seas is a generational saga of a Sephardic Jewish family, based loosely on Behar’s own family history. The story begins in the 1400s when the family is forced to leave Spain, then continues in the 1900s when a daughter of the family emigrates to Cuba for an arranged marriage. (Behar based this section on her own grandmother’s story, which she recounts in the afterword. The real story seems much more romantic than the tale Behar told to tell instead, which is such a strange choice.) Her daughter becomes a brigadista teaching peasants how to read until she emigrates to the US, and then her daughter vacations in Spain which the family was forced to flee so many generations before.
Edited to add:
landofnowhere pointed out that I forgot Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, which is both embarrassing and inexplicable because I read that approximately 500 times as a child, and have reread it at least twice as an adult. And also E. L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday, but that one is much less embarrassing, as I read that book once and remember nothing except the fact that I didn't understand any of it. (And also during the quiz bowl at the end, the judges would allow posh to count as an acronym, but not tip. Why did this stick with me? The human mind is a mystery.)