unpopular opinions

Oct. 30th, 2025 06:02 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Saying that the creative process of creation/conception for a story/novel MUST START with character/goal/motivation is complete fucking nonsense. You will usually need it in the END PRODUCT (modulo weird edge cases like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men), but that doesn't have to be the inception.

cf. composing music, where this would be like saying to a composer: you MUST ALWAYS start FIRST with a melody or you MUST ALWAYS start FIRST with a harmonic progression or you MUST ALWAYS start FIRST with instrumentation etc. No??? You can start in any of a number of places and still wind up with music???

There are times you need to start with $XYZ because of the use case (if writing for a string quartet, that constrains your instrumentation, ranges, techniques).

But when writing music, I can START in ANY of these places (not a complete list) (and have done so at various points):

- instrumentation
- tempo
- time signature
- harmonic progression
- a rhythm
- a vibe
- key/mode/etc
- melody or leitmotif
- structure/form (e.g. theme and variations, ternary form)
- a transformation (e.g. diminution, retrograde)
- articulation(s) to feature
- trolling ("What if I rewrote Swan Lake's theme in 5/4?")
etc

You're not going to be able to tell which one from the RESULTING MUSIC as an end product.

For that matter, watching web/comic creators talk about story ideation is fascinating. A bunch of them start with "I drew this cool character, but who are they? what is their story?", which is absolutely not my process since I don't visualize, but it's a perfectly cromulent process!

Write Every Day: Day 30

Oct. 30th, 2025 06:10 pm
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
[personal profile] china_shop
There will always be constraints—time, budget, materials and equipment. If you’re waiting for all of the roadblocks to be cleared before you begin, you might be waiting all your life. So stop waiting. Just do your best to put something into the world that wasn't there yesterday. We can do that. I hope you begin something today, maybe something you’ve been putting off or waiting on the just-right conditions for. Forget just right and try right now instead. You don’t have to know what you’re doing or how it will turn out. Just start.

– Maggie Smith, via Substack

My day 30: I added another 530 words to my WIP (and did a couple more Youtube art tutorials: a dragon and a black cat). Depending on how my arms are in a couple of hours, I might go to UK Writers' Hour and keep working on my WIP. It would be good to get it done.

One more day in October! Reminder that [personal profile] alightbuthappypen has offered to host for November.

The tally
Tally )

Day 28: [personal profile] alightbuthappypen, [personal profile] badly_knitted, [personal profile] brithistorian, [personal profile] china_shop, [personal profile] cmk418, [personal profile] cornerofmadness, [personal profile] sanguinity, [personal profile] sylvanwitch, [personal profile] the_siobhan, [personal profile] trobadora

Day 29: [personal profile] china_shop, [personal profile] badly_knitted, [personal profile] cmk418, [personal profile] sanguinity, [personal profile] sylvanwitch, [personal profile] trobadora

When you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.

[music] Trailures and Other Fiascoes

Oct. 29th, 2025 10:18 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
I committed a mini-album on Bandcamp of Trailures and Other Fiascoes (= "failure trailers"). Hybrid orchestra instrumental music because mopey foxmoth can't sing.

(I know voice lessons exist but for medical reasons, sore throat for over a year; singing is contraindicated.)



(This is accumulated composition/production from the past few months; I'm bowing out of a bunch of things currently due to ongoing health stuff. I don't want to discuss health details further, thanks!)

Daily Happiness

Oct. 29th, 2025 07:16 pm
torachan: ewan mcgregor pulling his glasses down to look over the top (ewan glasses)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had a dentist appointment today (just a cleaning) and didn't want to go to work afterwards, so I just worked from home. Today is the hottest day of our heatwave, but it wasn't too hot in the house and I even took a walk in the afternoon, which I definitely wouldn't have been able to do at work because it's hotter down there plus there's hardly any shade in the neighborhood whereas the streets right around our house have a lot of tree coverage even midday.

2. Carla made pot roast for dinner. It was in the slow cooker, so it didn't heat up the house too much. It turned out really tasty! Haven't had pot roast in ages. It would have been nicer if the weather was still cool, but it still tasted good.

3. When Carla was moving stuff around to put books in her new bookcase, she moved some stuff out of this other bookcase and as soon as her back was turned, Chloe came to settle on the middle shelf lol.

(no subject)

Oct. 29th, 2025 09:15 pm
skygiants: Utena huddled up in the elevator next to a white dress; text 'they made you a dress of fire' (pretty pretty prince(ss))
[personal profile] skygiants
The other Polly Barton-translated book I read recently was Asako Yuzuki's Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, which I ended up suggesting for my book club on account of intriguing DW posts from several of you.

Butter focuses Rika Machida, a magazine journalist, on the cusp of becoming the first woman in her company to break the glass ceiling and join Big Editorial, who decides that her next big feature is going to be an insider interview with the infamous prisoner Manako Kajii. Kajii is accused of murdering several men that she met on dating sites after seducing them with a fatal combination of sex, personal attention, and French cooking; in the eyes of the public, however, her greatest crime is that she somehow managed all this femme fatale-ing while being Kind Of Fat.

After a tip from her best friend Reiko -- a housewife who quit her own promising career in hopes of starting a family -- Rika, despite having no previous interest in cooking or domesticity, writes to Kajii about getting her recipe for beef stew. This opens the door for a connection that gets very psychologically weird very fast; Kajii, behind bars, tests Rika with various little living-by-proxy challenges -- eat some good butter! go to the best French restaurant in town! eat late night ramen! after having sex! and tell me all about it -- and Rika, fascinated despite herself, allows herself to be manipulated. For the interview, of course. And also because it turns out good butter is really good, and that eating and making rich food for herself instead of working to keep herself boyishly thin (the prince of her all-girl's school! One of the Boys at work!) is changing her relationship to her body, and her gender, and to the way that people perceive her in the world and she perceives them.

This is more or less what I'd understood to be the plot of the book -- a sort of Silence of the Lambs situation, if the crime that Clarice was trying to solve by talking with Hannibal was societal misogyny -- but in fact it's only about half of the story, and societal misogyny is only one of the big crimes under consideration. The other one is loneliness, and so the rest of the book has to do with Rika's other relationships, and the domino-effect changes that Rika's Kajiimania has on the other people in her life. The most significant is with Reiko, which is extremely fraught with lesbian tension spoilers I suppose ) But there's also Rika's mother, and her boyfriend, and the older mentor that she has secret intermittent just-lads-together meet-ups with in bars to get hot journalistic tips; all of these relationships are important, and usually ended up in places I didn't expect and that were more interesting than I would have guessed.

Not everything landed for me about this book, but this was one thing it did pretty consistently that I appreciated -- Rika would think about something, and I would go, 'well, that was didactic, you just said your theme out loud,' and then the book and Rika as protagonist would revisit it and have a more complicated and potentially contradictory thought about it, and then we'd go back to it again, and it usually ended up being more interesting than I would have thought the first time around. It's a long book, possibly too long, but it's equally possible I think that it does need that space to hold contradictions in.

It was however quite funny to read this shortly after Taiwan Travelogue -- another book I have not written up and should probably do so soon -- and also shortly after What Did You Eat Yesterday and also seeing a lot of gifsets for She Loves To Cook and She Loves To Eat ... fellas, is it gay to be really into food? signs point to yes!

it takes an ocean not to break

Oct. 29th, 2025 07:47 pm
musesfool: head!Six (and they have a plan)
[personal profile] musesfool
I really enjoyed this season of Slow Horses, though 6 episodes is too short. I don't need a full 22-episode season, but like 8 or 10 would be better. spoilers for all of this season )

I keep thinking about reading the books, but I haven't worked up the energy to do that yet.

There's still so much other TV I need to catch up on, but probably not until the World Series is done. I've been enjoying it a lot, though I went to bed on Monday night in the 12th inning, not really thinking they'd play 6 more! And when I woke up, I was like, as I expected Freddie Fucking Freeman walked it off, because that is what that guy does. Ugh.

Tangentially, I thought this was a really good read: Matt Berninger traded his notebook for a baseball. And the words kept coming. I'm not a huge fan of The National but I do like some of their songs and this was interesting.

*
jesse_the_k: Metal disk nailed in sidewalk reads "survey marker do not remove" (Survey marker)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k posting in [community profile] access_fandom

When I started working on WisCon access in 2007, some kind soul (name lost) gave me a black teeshirt printed in tactile gold--with both Latin letters and braille. It sang the praises of ELECTRICAL EGGS, who advocated for handicap accessibility in the 1970s and 1980s. I loved the shirt but didn't know their history.

So I was thrilled when the September 2025 Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, volume 14 number 2, starts off with Eric Vero's article:

Oral History of The Electrical Eggs: Science Fiction, Disability Activism, and Fan Conventions

https://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/article/view/1262

The journal offers PDF, HTML, and "simplified HTML" versions of each article; all are open access, peer-reviewed, and Creative Commons licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

ABSTRACT

Before the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990, American science fiction fans in southern states organized, collaborated, and practiced accessibility at conventions. This grassroots movement began with the work of Samanda B. Jeude and a coalition of other science fiction fans who fought for visibility and access to convention spaces. In this oral history of their organization, “The Electrical Eggs,” I interview two key members decades after their participation in making conventions accessible. I complement these oral sources with brief histories of the role of eugenics and ableism in science fiction and the rise of disability activism in America. Although, the science fiction fandom still faces historical forces like ableism that have been present since its beginnings, the work of the Eggs is a testament to the power of collective action to provide accessibility in fan communities.

Whumptober: Last One Standing

Oct. 29th, 2025 10:03 pm
philomytha: Biggles, Algy, Ginger and Bertie (biggles team)
[personal profile] philomytha
This one's not particularly whumpy, but inspired by today's prompt anyway, a little ficlet, with thanks to [personal profile] tweague for pointing out that I could just skip the tricky bit!

No. 29: “I hope you see the sun someday in the darkness.”
Fainting | Broken Dishes | Last one Standing

Biggles team adventure )
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
The latest book I loved and wanted to enthuse about was The Possibility of Tenderness (5/5) by Jason Allen-Paisant which is local history of a hill-farming community where he grew up in Jamaica, told through the lens of memoir and family history but also intersecting with global history and economics, but I'm too tired to enthuse properly and maybe it's better to think of Jamaica in the present for the time being.

Instead here's the very latest fashion in book memes, brought to you by the letter T (for thistleingrey) and with an educational song from the letter M (for magid).

1. Lust, books I want to read for their cover.

None, but I did recently buy a relatively expensive book when it was first published, in hardback, so I could revel in the illustrations. And I'm especially glad I did because apparently my local independent bookshop were one of the few who managed to acquire stock from the publisher Unbound / Boundless before it failed and took authors' royalties and readers' pre-payments into oblivion with it. At least my local indie made some money. Oh, and I got one of the apparently rare copies complete with dust jacket (and postcard and bookmark and creators' signatures). So, Wild Folk, by Jackie Morris and Tamsin Abbot.

2. Pride, challenging books I've finished.

"challenging"? I mean, I congratulate myself every time I manage to key out the species of any biological organism I've never seen before. I've always read imaginative, creative, experimental, literary, academic, &c books so I don't consider the good ones a "challenge" to read. Bad books are always a challenge: they challenge me to dnf because life is too short. :-)

3. Gluttony, books I've read more than once.

I did this very often as a child, especially books I was still getting something new out of each time (and because I had limited access to books although I was lucky to be able to visit a good town library regularly). I re-read favourite books as a teen too, but more for familiarity ("comfort-reading" doesn't have to be cozy). As an adult I have less time for re-reading, and more access to new books. Also, since my mid-forties I've also been in a race with death to read as many new books as possible before my time runs out.

4. Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest.

I either read or divest regularly so the only long-term inmates of my To Read shelves are secondhand girls' own annuals I've bought as and when I've spotted them and not yet read because they're a limited resource and I'm in no hurry (if I die with precisely one remaining unread then I've won, lol).

Greed, wrath, and envy have been remaindered )

Wednesday Reading Meme

Oct. 29th, 2025 04:18 pm
sineala: Detail of Harry Wilson Watrous, "Just a Couple of Girls" (Reading)
[personal profile] sineala
What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing. Such a surprise.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

Imperial #4, X-Vengers #1 )

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. So many books, so many migraines. Books are not happening.

Seven Deadly Sins of reading

Oct. 29th, 2025 08:53 am
wychwood: a room completely full of books (gen - stacks of books)
[personal profile] wychwood
I like the book meme that is going around - I saw it first on [personal profile] naraht's journal, but it seems to be spreading vigorously!

Lust, books I want to read for their cover:
I don't think there's anything at the moment, but I first read Flying Dutch by Tom Holt because of the Josh Kirby cover! Does that count?

Pride, challenging books I've finished:
Speaking purely personally, finishing Arcadia by Iain Pears was a real achievement, although I've no idea why I found it so impossible a read. I've read some books that would probably fall under the popular definition, but I feel like it doesn't count if I was reading them for fun! Maybe St Augustine's City of God; that did feel like a real achievement to get through, it's so enormous.

Gluttony, books I've read more than once:
I mean. Even these days roughly 40% of my reading is re-reading, and growing up it was a lot higher than that! I don't understand people who never re-read. Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons can stand for the vast number.

Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
lol where to start. I acquired Consilience by Edward O Wilson in 2009, I think that may be the oldest physically sitting on my to-read shelves.

Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan - I have a Penguin Classics copy, a giant hardback edition with illustrations that looks rather William-Blake-esque, and a tiny pocket hardback that used to live permanently in my rucksack pocket. Oh, and an ebook from Project Gutenberg.

I also have a few dozen audiobooks that duplicate paper or ebooks I already had, and an increasing number of ebooks duplicating paper I already had. Mostly I get one format or the other, but I've picked up quite a few cheap ebooks of favourites where I don't want to get rid of the original, or where I have the whole series in paper and don't want to give away the one or two I have in ebook, etc... I suspect I will gradually prune things down over time.

Notably I'm up to nearly 50 Chalet School ebooks now! But I have spent nearly forty years accumulating my paper set, and it's going to take a while before I'm ready to give them up. Greed indeed.

Oh, and five? six? Bibles? One in German. Plus a couple of New Testaments including one in Greek (I don't even read Greek, it was just so beautiful!).

Wrath, books I despised:
I'm sure there are a ton of better choices that will come to me after I post this, but such is life. I looked through my "Product of its Time" booklog awards and found some promising candidates, but then I remembered Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning, which left me with the sort of loathing that feels appropriate for this category. It's not that it was rubbish, because those mostly aren't worth despising really, it's that it was just persistently unpleasant in a gloating kind of way that left me wanting a shower. Ugh.

Envy, books I want to live in:
Relatively few, without a guarantee of being one of the lucky ones! Graydon Saunders' Commonweal books are pretty invested in everyone getting an equal chance, more or less, so that might not be too bad as long as I could be sure of being in the Commonweal and not one of Reems' slaves or something.

Otherwise mostly looking at positive high-tech futures, to be sure of having access to medication and/or medical treatment for my numerous chronic health conditions! Maybe Bujold's Vorkosigan saga? I'd like Beta, I think. But again, I could end up on Jackson's Whole, and that would not end well for me. Maybe a Star Trek novel, that universe is probably as safe as anywhere I can find.

emotional support dyeing?

Oct. 29th, 2025 10:43 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
hand-dyed handspun yarn

A test batch to see how the colors come out. Next I start measuring out and doing this more systematically.

Three-ply handspun wool yarn.

Write Every Day: Day 29

Oct. 29th, 2025 05:28 pm
china_shop: New Zealand painting of flax (NZ flax)
[personal profile] china_shop
"…if you have a fear of failure, you’re never going to learn how to cook. Cooking is one failure after another. That’s how you learn. You’ve got to have what the French call ‘Je m’en foutisme’, or ‘I don’t care what happens.’ The sky can fall, and omelettes can go all over the stove… If you’re not going to be ready to fail, you’re not going to learn."

– Julia Child

My day 29: I added 558 words to a WIP. And then the sun was out, so I went for a walk along a shared pedestrian/mountain biking trail through the trees. (Posting this a bit earlier because my sister's coming over for Fringe tonight. :-)

The tally
Tally )

Day 27: [personal profile] alightbuthappypen, [personal profile] badly_knitted, [personal profile] brithistorian, [personal profile] china_shop, [personal profile] cmk418, [personal profile] cornerofmadness, [personal profile] goddess47, [personal profile] sanguinity, [personal profile] sylvanwitch, [personal profile] trobadora

Day 28: [personal profile] alightbuthappypen, [personal profile] badly_knitted, [personal profile] china_shop, [personal profile] sanguinity, [personal profile] sylvanwitch, [personal profile] trobadora

When you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.

The Spire has been slain!

Oct. 28th, 2025 11:11 pm
sineala: Mac laptop whose Apple logo has no bite (Young Wizards reference); text reads "my other Mac is a manual" (Young Wizards: My Other Mac)
[personal profile] sineala
Yeah, yeah, I finally get my brain together and it's a video game post. I'm doing the best I can, okay?

I slew the Spire! )

Daily Happiness

Oct. 28th, 2025 07:41 pm
torachan: arale from dr slump with a huge grin on her face (arale)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Back to work today was fine. Morning was mainly catching up on email/messages and I had a meeting in the afternoon, but otherwise just had time to myself to get stuff done.

2. I brought home sushi from work for dinner and it was very tasty. There's a seared salmon sushi that all our stores carry and Carla often gets from the location nearest us, but that location doesn't have an in-store kitchen and gets all their packaged food delivered. But the Gardena location makes it in-house and theirs tastes so much better (at least in my opinion; Carla didn't notice that much of a difference). They go heavy with the blowtorch to sear them and you can really taste the grill flavor.

3. So far this week's heatwave has not been as bad as predicted. Hopefully that holds true for the rest of the week! (It's supposed to be back to cool weather this weekend.)

4. Gemma has perfected the disapproving look.

soc_puppet: Dreamsheep, its wool colored black and shot through with five diagonal colored lines (red, yellow, white, blue, and green, from left to right), the design from Dreamwidth user capri0mni's Disability Pride flag. The Dreamwidth logo is in red, yellow, white, blue, and green, echoing the stripes. (Disability Pride)
[personal profile] soc_puppet posting in [community profile] access_fandom
Between a friend contacting me a couple of weeks ago for help setting up Accessibility at the new con he joined, and just tonight hearing about the absolute bullshit that's been going on at TwitchCon (no ramp for their Guest of Honor wheelchair user to get up to the raised stage to receive an award, third year in a row with no ramps for him as a GoH), I figure I may as well share this here.

It's far from perfect, since I'm still almost entirely self-taught, and I built it on the convention I used to run Accessibility for, so there's some stuff that's not exactly universal, but hopefully it'll help someone out there!

Convention Accessibility Timeline and Jobs )

This is far from perfect and from comprehensive both, but if you work on Accessibility for a convention, or are looking to get started doing so, hopefully you can use this as a sort of template to build around or tweak to your needs. Suggestions in the comments are very welcome, though I don't know if I'll be up to incorporating them into the post. Questions are also very welcome; I'll do my best to answer how I dealt with things, but anyone who wants to is free to chime in!

I've got more info to share as well, but I'm going to hold off on that for another post or two, as this one wore me out a bit already 😂

Edit: For clarity, since I was just overthinking it: This isn't a comprehensive list of services that were provided at the convention I worked; it's just a behind-the-scenes look at how I was involved in setting up some of the services we provided. (Plus some that I never got around to, like the ASL interpreters and Braille documents 🤦‍♀️) If you want inspiration for that, I suggest looking around for convention Accessibility Policies. Those should list out the various accessibility measures that a given convention has in place.

2025 Knott's Trip #2 (10/27/25)

Oct. 28th, 2025 07:17 pm
torachan: my glitch character (glitch)
[personal profile] torachan
We keep thinking about how we should go to Knott's, but never going. We've only been once this year, during the Boysenberry Festival, and we really did want to check it out during Halloween, but their hours are so limited (even on nights when they don't have Scary Farm (which is not only a separate ticketed event, but one we have zero interest in), they close at like 6pm, which makes a dinner trip difficult to plan. But I had the day off yesterday, so we went down for lunch.

Read more... )

One more possible birthday gift

Oct. 28th, 2025 04:40 pm
rachelmanija: (Books: old)
[personal profile] rachelmanija
If by any chance you read my book Traitor, the final book in The Change series, a review anywhere would be fantastic. It doesn't have to be positive or appear literally on my birthday.

Sherwood and I managed to release it on possibly the second-worst date we could have, which was October 2024. (The worst would have been November 2024). So a little belated publicity would be nice. I'd be happy to provide a review copy if you'd like.

Profile

eruthros: Delenn from Babylon 5 with a startled expression and the text "omg!" (Default)
eruthros

October 2025

S M T W T F S
   12 34
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Oct. 30th, 2025 02:55 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios