I decided to post something simple, & also to use the lights I set up for the comic strip yesterday.

What I Just Finished Reading

Still nothing. I mean, okay, I read The Superia Stratagem for the 616 server book club but I'm not counting that because I have dignity.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( 1776 #5, Doctor Strange #4, Imperial Guardians #1 )

What I'm Reading Next

Don't know. Still trying to figure out how to medicate my migraines. I clearly shouldn't try to write these posts while in the middle of migraine prodrome.

Well, okay, I've been back for almost a week, but God forbid I post anything in a timely manner, right?

Anyhow, Scotland was awesome. I didn't get to fully appreciate Glasgow, due to conferencing, but The Boy and I did explore a couple of very lovely parks and one cool art museum (the Burrell Collection), and ate a lot of great food. The restaurant scene in Glasgow is seriously amazing.

I also got to visit a cute little yarn shop and bought some really lovely UK-produced yarn that I really look forward to knitting up.

Orkney is gorgeous! We lucked out with the weather, and had sunshine pretty much the entire 5 days we were there, which I'm told is not typical for this time of years. (It was also insanely windy, which is normal.. We hiked 5-7 miles every day, in beautiful coastal scenery, and saw a number of fascinating Neolithic sites, some WWII monuments, and a beautiful little chapel built during the war by Italian POWs, who managed to turn tin, plaster and concrete into a genuine work of art.

We stayed in Kirkwall, which has a really impressive cathedral and some nice shops. The yarn shop I wanted to visit was closed, but a local artsy-craftsy shop also had a small selection for sale, and I got one skein of very beautiful hand-dyed wool from a local breed.

We got back to London last Wednesday, which happened to be my birthday. We spent the day being touristy (Westminster Abbey! Tate Britain!) and finished up with a birthday dinner at Rules.

All in all, a great trip.

It's the one post I remember to make every year!

They have called this day The Eleventh of March! And whom-so-ever of you gets through this day, unless you are shot in the head or somehow slain, you will stand at tiptoe when e'er you hear the name again, and you will get excited!...At the name March The Eleventh!

We happy few, we few, we band of brothers...our names will be as like...household names. And those who are not here, be they sleeping or... doing something else...They will feel themselves...sort of crappy. Because they are not here to, to join the fight. On this day, the Eleventh of March!

(Okay, I remember it because it's also my LiveJournal's birthday and I still haven't deleted it and so they send me an email every year. My LJ is now 25.)

Oh. I have three different pieces form the last few days that I have only published on my trashy nsfw bluesky alt. Sorry.

( not safe for work )

( cut for loose boobage )

I actually posed this & put it together Saturday, then did that "variant" with the angel man Sunday, and worked on some other stuff earlier today. Not exactly taking the weekend off!

I slept??? until 11 this morning??? Blame DST, but I also walked more than eight miles yesterday, much of that inside the Art Institute with Shibrogane, who was in town for a conference, hurrah! I am also on newsletter fill-in duty at work; last Monday, I wrote our afternoon newsletter, which I usually edit, and from Friday to this coming Friday, I wake up at ugly o'clock and put together the morning newsletter, which is horrific. It actively makes me ill to not get enough sleep and throw myself right into work as I wake ("wake") up. Like, thank goodness I found some melatonin so maybe I can get enough sleep early enough tonight, but that's a gamble.

GOSH. It has been a month! We've got elections stuff at work (the Illinois primary elections are March 17th and it requires so much prep work), and then Jesse Jackson died and that became our ENTIRE output (not literally, but it's felt like it) for two or three weeks. I am TIRED.

The biggest thing is: condo got! Closing is this coming Friday! I am — scrambling to get packed and organized in addition to All of This Above, because my original shipment of moving boxes was delayed and then stolen. I'm also constantly laughing at myself because I was like, oh yeah, I'll have two weeks for contractors to fix stuff and for painting and gradual move-in and they can obviously just let themselves in to get things done! And then I remembered, with horror, that no, I am the one who will have to constantly ferry back and forth between the apartments in order to let them in etc etc etc. It's awkward on public transit and too long for a morning walk, but it's a straightforward bike ride, so I'm hoping my ex-dislocated elbow will let me travel that way for now. But yes, I do not know when I will actually be moving, aside from "before the end of the month." We'll see!

Gingko, of course, continues to be herself, by which I mean around Valentine's Day, she ate about a cup's worth of therapy putty for my hand. It was nontoxic, luckily, and she got two and a half slices of white bread with every meal to "bulk her diet" until it came out (which — ultimately, it sure did!). One of her favorite things to do to get my attention while I'm trying to relax or focus is to chew on cardboard boxes while making eye contact with me, so the arrival of so many boxes for packing up the apartment has me a little worried for the next little bit. We'll make it work, I guess! I keep trying to use my weekends efficiently or productively or whatever, and then Gingko has other plans, through no fault of her own — she does need those long walks and equally long cuddles, but I cannot afford to put her in doggy day camp for two weeks straight. We'll see!!!

Zhang Linghe's new drama Pursuit of Jade is on Netflix and it's freaking fantastic so far. Slow, patient, character-focused, beautiful to look at, excellent-af women — it's by the same director as Blossom and A Familiar Stranger, which explains a lot. I am excited to see where it goes! It is not the kind of show I can watch while doing other things, though, that is what podcasts are for.

Chaos, chaos, chaos. I keep saying I can't wait to be at the phase of moving where you have to buy out an IKEA. Today, at least, I've been able to sort through and prune a bunch of books. Maybe going one room at a time will keep me from going absolutely batshit? I've never been good at this part, but I'm very grateful that I've got some buffer time so it's not all in a rush. We haven't even talked about the storage unit I need to source and rent indefinitely... oof. Hi! ✶

   @ xmen100  @ mcu100 
Submissions for the Bi-Weekly Prompt will be accepted until March 21, 11:59PM EST. 

   @ xmen100
   @ mcu100
Submissions for the Monthly Challenges will be accepted until March 31, 11:59PM EST. 

Honestly the "Drink" prompt did not come to me because of St. Patrick's day but in the fact that I really wanted a female character as the prompt image in honor of Women's month/day, but then it kinda just felt right using the prompt with both communities especially when I saw that image of Emma. I didn't think through the Monthly Character prompts, otherwise I'd have done female characters there as well.

In other news, galorechallenge Round 14 is now open! Officially finished uploading all the old prompts. I still need to add new prompts/crossovers since nothing new has appeared, feel free to suggest prompts/crossovers HERE. Still need to make a new promo banner & header but meh, I haven't felt like it honestly.


So it's been awhile since I posted anything directly to here, I apologize for that, but February has oddly been busy? Mostly with work but I also wrote a lot more last month (8 fics/drabbles) which I'm so proud of. I also did something to my right foot (not quite sure if it's my ankle, it feels more like the top of my foot) so I've been dealing with that pain off and on since mid-February. Most of the time I forget about it because my full-time job is mostly a sit down job (and it only vaguely hurt while sitting), and I haven't had a lot of scheduled retail shifts last couple weeks (thankfully for my mental health, horrible for my bank account), but I do have to get up and move around at my full-time job - sometimes a lot so that's when it mostly hits me. I did rest it a lot when I got home from work as well and I rested a lot this weekend (although I did get some cleaning done), so I didn't spend a lot of time online thus my oblivious to the world becoming on fire (I listen to audiobooks at work, and usually on the way to & from work, rarely do I put on the radio and when I did nothing mentioned anything at all - all I noticed was the gas prices shot the fuck up and I'm like why? Found out last night. Yeah. Fuck. The world is on fire. Again/Still depending on your viewpoint.)

ANYWAY due to my offline time, my newest obsession:

the Monsterverse (aka Godzilla 2014 & Kong: Skull Island shared universe along with the TV series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters). Caught the trailer for Monarch on Prime and I was like sign me the fuck up. I enjoyed every second of it.

Look I've loved Godzilla since I watched Godzilla (1998) and the animated series based on the film - I know most people shit on that movie but I enjoy it. And it satisfied the need for more dinosaur-type stuff I wanted back when I was a kid and in love with the Jurassic Park trilogy (haha, still am). I think the animated series of Godzilla also kind of synched it for me (I have the DVD set for it) and it's still pretty good - I want to rewatch again thanks to Monarch (they share some similarities that probably only I can see and enjoy but I'll take it). I also really enjoyed Godzilla (2014) film, which people also kinda dislike? I think or at least have mixed feelings about? I enjoyed all the sequels as well, and I appreciated what they were as monster movies, but I think Monarch show really kinda synched my love for the universe. I kinda wish I could have showed the show and the other newer movies to my Nana, she loved the original Godzilla stuff and would watch those, I'd love to know what she'd think of the show. I haven't seen those since I was a little kid and I don't remember actually enjoying them? Maybe it was the graphics, maybe it just didn't hold my attention - not quite sure (might try again). Anyway, as much as I loved Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Elizabeth Olsen in Godzilla (2014), I didn't really go looking for fanfiction or other fanworks (maybe gifs on Tumblr) until Monarch. The cast is just so good, and the characters! Ugh, I love all of them and I ship like everyone (as you can see what I've iconed so far). And the fact that they have Kurt & Wyatt Russell playing the same characters but at different points of time - BRILLIANT. I think my favorite characters are probably the "core" main characters: Cate Randa, Corah "May Olowe-Hewitt" Mateo, Kentaro Randa, Keiko Miura, Bill Randa (did not expect to like that character after Kong: Skull Island!) and obviously Lee Shaw. 

Also I obviously noticed back when they did Kong: Skull Island, but a lot of Marvel/MCU actors/actresses appeared in the Monsterverse and all it does is making me want them to do a Godzilla/Marvel crossover movie. They won't do it, but there is at least I think a Godzilla/Marvel comics series I think.

It's a small fandom, so there's that... but at least it exists. Anyway, let me know if you like any of the movies or like Monarch! I'd love to hear what you think or who you ship :)

The Avengers (1998) dir. Jeremiah S. Chechik

The Prospero Program, a method of manipulating weather patterns to create an atmospheric shield over the United Kingdom, has been compromised. It is now completely non-functional. The chief suspect is Dr. Emma Peel (Uma Thurman), one of the project scientists. While she was caught on camera at the time of the malfunction, she was also somewhere else at the time. Odd. The Ministry, led by bickering commanders Mother (Jim Broadbent) and Father (Fiona Shaw), assign top agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) to investigate Mrs. Peel, or whoever was impersonating her.

It quickly becomes apparent that the most likely perpetrator is Sir August de Wynter (Sean Connery), eccentric Scots laird, weather-obsessed climatologist and furry. His top goon Bailey (Eddie Izzard) and other minions create a series of challenges that complicate the investigation. And is there a second Emma Peel, or is she leading a double life?

This movie was a homage to the much-loved Diana Rigg seasons of the British television series The Avengers which blended spy action with science fiction and a bit of humor. (I've reviewed a later season of the show on this blog before.) As such, it falls prey to many of the problems associated with "modern" movie remakes of classic television shows.

The first of which is that much of the charm of those seasons was the specific chemistry of the main characters as played by Patrick McNee (who gets a fun cameo) and Diana Rigg (who declined the offer.) Mr. Fiennes and Ms. Thurman are fine actors who do adequate work here, but simply remind us of how much better the originals were in this particular combination. A poor editing job by studio management makes hash of the plot, and wastes "Evil Emma".

I do have to admit there's a lot of style here, starting with some innovative but hard to read opening credits. We get quite a bit of British quaintness, including multiple sessions of tea. The special effects are good for the time period. And Sir August gets to chew scenery magnificently, even if some of his character traits seem based on the seedier side of Mr. Connery's personal life. I do wish they'd leaned more into the furry thing.

Content notes: Quite a bit of violence, sometimes lethal. Male nudity, played for laughs (no genitals). Mrs. Peel barrels through a bit of gender exclusion. Interestingly, Father's blindness is never actually mentioned aloud, so the audience has to infer it. (Points for that.)

This is one of those movies that isn't quite as bad as its reputation at the time, but was entirely unnecessary. It's an okay watch if you're a fan of one or more of the stars.

I'm writing a Brindlewood Bay adventure based on MDZS/The Untamed.

Or rather, based on one small detail of MDZS/The Untamed, using a modern-AU setting: Investigating the death of Lan Furen. (Adventure title: Lost in the Clouds. Complexity 7. Would be 6, but the death is 30-ish years old, so they're working with some difficulty.)

Brindlewood Bay has a different approach: Instead of "GM decides on the details of the murder and sets a bunch of clues that the players have to find and figure out," the GM sets the location, a list of suspects, a list of clues - and the players then come up with their own idea of who did what. Then they roll. If they roll high enough, they were correct and have solved the murder. (If they roll almost high enough, they were correct but now there is a complication - the murderer is getting away, or attacks them, or someone is in danger because of what they've revealed, etc.)

I don't have to decide what happened to Lan Furen to have it as the base of a murder mystery here. I just have to figure out who might've been involved, invent some clues, and throw them at the players.

( It's been more difficult than I thought. )

Link nabbed from goodbyebird!

Botswana shows how smarter cattle herding can save lions, reopen ancient wildlife pathways

More than a decade later, the situation is radically different. The lion population has rebounded. Cub survival rate is up. And cattle losses are dramatically down. It’s the result of years of hard work: restoring traditional herding practices, collaring and tracking lions, and, most recently, establishing a market for ‘wildlife-friendly beef.’ This serves as a model, wildlife advocates say, for other parts of southern Africa where modern grazing practices have collided with big cats’ appetites.

This bit about naming the lions also got a laugh from me which I know I shouldn't have 😅 but it's very in line with my spiteful tendencies: As conflict persisted, some people gave them rough names like Kufakuduze, which means, ‘If you come for my cattle, I will find you.’ I hope Kufakuduze is alive and well.