epershand

In movie news, Cineplex has a listing for Zhu Yilong's new movie, Scare Out, which is apparently opening in Canada on Feb. 17. I refuse to let myself be excited about this, after having so much hope about Dongji Rescue last summer. But maybe it'll open here and I'll be able to see it! At least the 17th is before the crunch at work starts.

Reading: To shake things up a bit from Kurosagi, this week I reread the first two volumes of Hikaru no Go. In both of these cases, I'm pretty much relying on Goodreads to tell me when I get to volumes I haven't previously read. Awkwardly for my sense of "what even is time?", this means that I now know that I first read vol. 1 of Hikaru no Go in 2006 and vol. 1 of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service in 2008.

My sense of how far I got into Hikaru no Go is completely nonexistent, since I know I read some number of volumes at some point, and I saw some of the anime (long enough ago that I know we were still living in the co-op we moved out of over fifteen years ago), and

scruloose and I (much later) saw the c-drama in its entirety. It's all rather a jumble. But seeing the c-drama did inspire me to finish buying the manga, and I guess its time has come!

I did wind up reading all of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and the upshot, given my uncertainty about finishing it to begin with, is unsurprisingly that I doubt I'll pick up the second book. I think it's very safe to say that LitRPG is not my thing. I did wind up liking the book more overall than I would've thought back around the 40% mark or so, though.

Watching: We're caught up on The Pitt and one episode behind on Frieren. We've also seen the second episode of Midnight Mass, which has a lot of animal harm; I don't have any triggers that I'm aware of, but it was enough to be upsetting.

Playing: I think I've finished Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven, which is to say that I've finished the main plot and done a few wrapping-up things, leaving me free to idly manage the cult and do dungeon runs, but that's usually when I wander off.

Weathering: We're having some of what I would call Normal Snow for the second time this week. The first time, a few days ago, I realized I've started to basically think in terms of "winter days that are cold but not much is happening outside" and "snowstorms", without much in between, but that's probably a result of leaving the house so rarely as much as it's a byproduct of climate change.

chestnut_pod

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mtbc

I mention a few recurring topics, probably because I still haven't properly addressed them. For instance, ( I remain overweight and unfit. )

I also need to get back to writing code in Haskell and in Rust. Quite how and when this happens, I am not sure. I do need ( to sort out my personal computing. )

R. is thinking about when and how we move to live somewhere else. For a couple more years yet, high school catchment area remains quite a constraint, though I can look around ( for where we might move to someday. )

marthawells

Some good news:

Both Queen Demon and the Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute anthology, made it on the Locus Recommended Reading List:

https://locusmag.com/2026/02/2025-recommended-reading/

with a lot of other excellent books and stories, including a new section for translated works.

You can also vote on the list for the Locus Awards. Anybody can vote here with an email address: https://poll.voting.locusmag.com/ though they have you fill out a demographic survey first with how many books you read per year, etc.

Of course a lot of great work did not end up on the list, like I was surprised not to see The Witch Roads and The Nameless Land duology by Kate Elliott, which I thought was excellent.

mtbc

The weather forecast for this weekend wasn't great but we got to walk our dog L. a little around the neighbourhood today, which is something. We avoided the parks, they will be muddy. He's still too reactive when seeing other dogs at a distance.

Now we're back home, the Winter Olympics makes for pleasant background on the television. R. heated a roast chicken we found discounted in the local Tesco Express. I should sort and file some accumulated routine mail, and perhaps we'll be able to give L. a decent walk again tomorrow.

mtbc

I always seem to be living outside the US at times when being present could perhaps allow me to do the most good as a white English-speaking not-MAGA US citizen. It has been tremendously encouraging to learn what good people are doing there and disappointing how little coverage it gets in the news here. The history generator's settings keep tending alarmingly toward interesting times as the administration finds new ways to harm people.

Here's hoping that the Democrats retain something of a spine over reforming ICE. It was interesting to read some suggestion that, even before all this, the Federal law enforcement community had often seen ICE more as cosplayers than competent.

pauraque

The splash screen of this game credits California Dreams, a familiar publishing label used by Logical Design Works for many of their home computer releases in the '80s and early '90s. As a kid I assumed these games were made in my home state of California, but nope. Almost all of them were developed in Poland by P.Z. Karen Co., a studio that primarily produced games for the Western market. (Another interesting title they developed was 1991's Solidarność ["Solidarity"], "a political simulation of the Polish underground freedom movement that culminated in the Solidarity trade union in 1980", which I have never played, though I am a little tempted.)

rectangular well with a wireframe grid has begun to fill with colorful tetris pieces as a wireframe piece waits to be dropped from the top

rectangular well with a wireframe grid has begun to fill with colorful tetris pieces as a wireframe piece waits to be dropped from the top

But today we're talking about Blockout. It's 3D Tetris. Instead of a side view, you're looking down into a well into which you must drop the wireframe pieces. In addition to using the arrow keys to move the pieces, you also get six rotation keys (clockwise and counterclockwise around three different axes of rotation). The rest of the gameplay is just as you'd expect; if you manage to fill a layer of the well, that layer disappears like a Tetris row, etc.

( I did have the DOS version of this game as a kid, but what I mainly remember is watching my mom play it. )

Blockout is free to download or play in your browser if you want to find out if your spatial reasoning abilities are more like mine or more like my mom's.

nialla posting in

gamechangerhr

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profiterole_reads

Blue Lock the Movie: Episode Nagi was a lot of fun!

Of course I was excited that they dedicated a whole movie to my OTP, Reo/Nagi! <3 There were also some nice Isagi/Bachira scenes.

It's available on Crunchyroll (new to me, but it's been available to the high-tier subscribers for a long time).

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: hung over

littlefics posting in

seasonsofdrabbles

(Apologies for the 40-minute delay; something unexpectedly came up but all is good now!)

Works are now revealed! Please take a moment to leave a comment on your gifts, and enjoy the haul of drabbles this round! Thank you to all who participated, especially our pinch hitters!

Author reveals will take place 72 hours from now on Tuesday, February 10 @ 1:00pm Eastern Standard time (Countdown).

Please get in touch if you have any questions. Should you receive a gift that is not for a fandom, character, and drabble type you requested, or that contains a DNW, reach out to us ASAP.

Is a fic you posted stuck as unrevealed? There's a couple potential reasons for why this could be. Please get in touch with us via Dreamwidth or email for help.

calimac

One of my oldest friends died a couple days ago. He was in his early 80s. You can read the factual details about him on the File 770 website, in entry 4 in the miscellaneous post for February 6. I am away from home and posting on my pokey little tablet, so I can’t provide links or even write much, so I shall just say that Lee and I became friends about 50 years ago when we were both single and were regularly cast together as roommates at Mythcons.

Our friendship was not much about serious mythopoeic literature, but centered on politics in which we were both interested, him professionally as an elections supervisor. Lee also enticed me, and later B., to attend the Oz conventions which were a regular part of his schedule. For many years they were held annually at Asilomar near here. Lee and Dolores, whom he had delightfully married, would fly from LA to San Jose or Monterey and I would pick them up. We’d have dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey and then proceed to the conference center. I also visited them regularly whenever I ventured south. Neither of them drove, not as much of a rarity in Angelinos as you might think, but having a driver at his disposal didn’t alter Lee’s invariable preference for eating at the same burger/pasta/salad place a block from their apartment, where he was an esteemed regular.

As he was also in the Mythopoeic Society, where he handled back issue orders for many years and spent Mythcons mostly sitting behind the Society sales table. I shall miss his acute intelligence and occasional wicked sense of humor.

nyctanthes

A weekly February challenge via

dreamersdare, who was inspired by

corvidology! Here’s an explanation of the overall challenge.

Week 1: Make a Top Ten list for your favourite standalone media and tell people exactly why you love it. This can be in any format - movies, one shot dramas, novels, short stories, plays, something else not mentioned here. Whatever you like!

I picked: Ten Favorite Neo-Noir Films.

Neo-noir is a rather amorphous term, but I'm not sweating it. My research consisted of googling that my picks are generally considered neo-noir. I removed one (Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dogs, with a baby-faced Toshiro Mifune) as it was made in 1949, putting it firmly in the noir camp.

Also! There are so many fantastic neo-noir films on my to-watch list, including Ash is Purest White, Deep Crimson, Pigs and Battleships, Dog Day Afternoon and Mulholland Drive. (Hangs head in shame. I also can’t believe I haven’t watched those last two. In my defense, I only returned to movie fandom a few years ago, after decades away. I've got a lot of catching up to do.)

Anyway, as

dreamersdare notes in their original post, these are not meant to be rec lists. This and the following lists, fingers crossed, are celebrations of things I love.

( In Chronological Order, Earliest to Latest, the Winners Are... )

Now it's your turn. Tell me about your favorite neo-noir!

lsanderson

ICE

Small cities consider their options as they respond to ICE’s prolonged presence
Uncertainty over how to react to federal agents operating in Greater Minnesota towns has given way to a push for policy solutions.
by Brian Arola
https://www.minnpost.com/greater-minnesota/2026/02/small-cities-consider-their-options-as-they-respond-to-ices-prolonged-presence/

More News

Alarm bells sound over Trump’s ‘take over the voting’ call
Democracy experts say there is little doubt about president’s desire to interfere in elections this November
Sam Levine in New York
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/07/trump-interference-voting-midterms

Trump news at a glance: Trump creates distance, but no apology, after promoting racist video of Obamas
Democrats outraged and Republicans mostly silent after president shared racist video of former president and first lady – key US politics stories from Friday 6 February
Guardian staff
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/06/trump-news-at-a-glance-briefing-today-latest

The Epstein files reveal that a vast global conspiracy actually exists – sort of
J Oliver Conroy
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/07/epstein-files-global-conspiracy ( Read more... )

senmut

AO3 Link | Hunting Gone Wrong (1144 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars [2008] - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Suicide/Suicidal Ideation
Characters: CC-1119 | Appo, Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Suicidal Thoughts, Child Murder
Summary:

Appo is on a death world, hunting, but maybe he was the prey... and the wrong one at that.

Hunting Gone Wrong

They were being hunted, picked off one by one on this death world. Appo wasn't certain what he'd done to anger his Lord, but being sent to hunt a Force User had seemed easy enough on the data pad.

The reality was proving brutally different, and he was down to just two members of the original six that had followed him here to capture the rogue Force User for Lord Vader. Nor could he just comm for back up; the Exactor was pursuing the rag tag Rebels that had been in the system when they dropped.

Appo pulled up a map of the world, narrowing in on the fissure-laden landscape of this island. The Force User had taken out the other drop ship while they were in atmo before ditching from the ship and letting it crash. A small part of him decided it was rather fitting that they were all marooned, and Appo's chances of a pick up were a lot better than the Force User's.

TK-1138 let the world kill him, spooking at a noise and falling into one of the hissing fissures. Appo looked at the last surviving man of his squadron and ground his teeth inside his helmet. They might only be fleshborn, but he'd spent time fine-tuning the training that CC-2224 sent them out with.

They had to be the best to be 501st, after all. That had never stopped being true, from the before-times to now.

"Stay here, get the communication unit pieced together. Fleet should be back any time now."

"Yes sir."

Was the trooper relieved? Hoping Appo was the next victim? It didn't matter. Appo had to catch this karking —

The pain in his head came back, as that slip into his first language usually sparked it.

It was bad enough he held tight to his name.

He'd forgotten what it was like to hunt by himself. Even in his plastoid, it was easier to move and hide and track than when he was half-focused on keeping a squad alive.

He thought he was closing in on the Force User. He was fairly certain they were even injured. All he had to do was clear this climb, and he'd be close enough to be sure. Just a little more to climb —

— and a noise drew his eyes up, to see a face with white marks on bronze skin, blue and white marks on the horns and headtails alike, but eyes like his own staring holes into his soul.

The Jedi were traitors, manipulating the whole war, killing his brothers to cling to their power. The Chancellor said so, and he was their Supreme Commander. The General believed it. Appo followed orders, led the men up the stairs, and they started quartering the Temple, clearing out the traitors of all shapes and sizes.

It didn't matter that this one looked like the Commander. She'd been a traitor too. He brought his blaster up for a clean shot, waiting until she deflected two others to take his own.

He ignored the voice screaming in the back of his head that she had been just a kid.

Appo blinked at the bright light all around him, his concealing helmet (bucket, a piece of him remembered) gone, and him trussed him up as firmly as he'd meant to do to her once he caught the Force User.

She was tossing an EMP grenade in a hand, pacing in front of him.

Just as suddenly as she'd overcome him on the climb, she was there, kneeling in front of him.

"It would be more merciful to kill you," she said. "To you and to my father."

Clone dark eyes staring out of a face like hers.

"I don't feel like being merciful today." She clicked the detonator, and Appo's world disappeared for the second time in less than an hour, this time consumed by searing pain in his skull, the kind that came when he remembered the before times.

Vader's Fist.

Torrent Company.

Memories, like those of two different men, warred within him.

Torrent won.

He found himself retching up the nutripaste he'd been rationing himself since landfall. She at least tilted him with the Force so he didn't get it on himself.

Appo looked at her again, recognizing the hard jawline and set of the eyes as The Captain's trademark resolve. The lines of her marks might scream of the Commander, but he didn't think this one was going to try and make it all better like Commander Vod'ika had tried time and again, after the bad campaigns.

"So, when I take your binders off, I'm not going to stop you if you choose the easy way out," she said in a hard voice. "Didn't even know that kriffing monster still had any of you. Was supposed to be him I was facing down here."

"You… tried… to bait VADER?!" he asked, but of course a child of those two would be that brazen.

She didn't answer, just staring at him with unblinking anger at him for not being the right prey.

The easy way — he knew just what she meant, and as her features blurred with the earlier, rounder face of that child in the Temple, he thought he just might.

"You said your father," he managed to get out instead. "The Captain lives?"

"Somewhere out there. It's not like he and I could work together once I was old enough to go out on my own."

The binders fell away from him, and his gear was right there. A tiny piece of him suggested he go for his blaster, not to take the easy road, but to try and take her down, like he'd been told to.

Just like he'd been told to murder children. And atrocities that made that pale in comparison, ever since the day he followed his General into haran.

"What's the hard way?" he asked, and that got a blink, then a flex of the too-small lekku.

"I take you to a rehab specialist, away from the fighting, and you figure out if you can make peace with the man that chip made of you."

"Will he come there? Or her — kriff." The face and lekku had gone hard all over again on the pronoun. "She's gone?"

"It's why I joined up. He lived, when she didn't come back to us. And I'm not going to stop until he goes down."

"Small part of getting off this rock?"

"Got that covered." She turned to start walking down the easy side of the rise.

A few minutes later, he was following, with just the weapons and rations, hard as it was to leave the armor's protection behind.

She didn't say a word, and he kept following. Maybe, in her, in what she offered as the hard way, he'd find a way to his honor again.

james_davis_nicoll

With two books new to me, this just barely qualifies as books received. One SF, one fantasy and the SF novel is from a series.

Books Received, January 31 — February 6

Poll #34194 Books Received, January 31 — February 6

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 19

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus (June 2026)
7 (36.8%)

Lord of the Heights by Scarlett J. Thorne (July 2026
4 (21.1%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
16 (84.2%)

conuly

What witchcraft is this?

****************

( Read more... )

elainegrey

HOME! I am home home home home.

This business of feeling feelings: so glad to be home. I think i loathe air travel. Thank goodness for e-books, enabling me to dissociate from the experience. There was a period when i was flying cross country and crocheting when audio books and crochet were my flight go tos, but between there being more of me and less room i can't imagine doing much than holding the phone. Between NC and Ohio with stops at a hub were just tiny hops in the air and back down and long stretches of sitting or lugging.

Work went well. We had an all staff meeting where our president cheer-led us in this year's theme of courage under pressure, and i think i needed to hear it. This project will take much courage. It will also be very engaging between now and retirement, and i wonder if it will exhaust me or engage me.

And there was some speaking of retirement. Our product person DH is retiring... soon? I thought it was next year but some chatter made me suddenly wonder if it's this year. I discussed that question with the engineering manager BC as he drove me to the airport. (We both thought it was further off.) BC said he was planning to retire at 60 as our employer has a health care benefit that continues then until Medicare. (He said it as if it was a long way off. Rummages in LinkedIn: hmm, he graduated from college 9 years after i did.) He thinks our employer will pay the same into our health care as they do now after retirement. I just thought we could buy into the same negotiated plan. I can take the benefit on Friday, 2028-03-31.

I don't know if it will be fiscally wise to retire then, but right now i hold that out as conceivable retirement to myself when my sense of energy flags. Working until 62 or 63 would have some financial benefits. I just don't know if i can i develop practices to take care of my physical body.

--== ∞ ==--

I did take double doses of my morning meds yesterday, unintentionally. Last day, i thought, and downed all the remaining pills, forgetting that the trip was a day shorter than planned. I found a pub med review of 400+ overdoses for the med and decided i did not need to call poison control. There's a one percent chance on paper of a bad reaction, and i am a larger person, so the impact would be diluted. I reduced caffeine, crossed my fingers, and all was ok. I have lots of other physical complaints and whining, but nothing worrisome.

Christine says she's feeling stronger and can tell she's healing.

I should move my body today, something in the yarden. Unpack. I probably have a long list of todos.

conuly

The wave yearns at the cliff foot: its pale arms
Reach upward and relapse, like down-dropped hands;
The baffled tides slip backward evermore,
And a long sighing murmurs round the sands . . .

My heart is as the wave that lifts and falls:
Tall is the cliff—oh! tall as that dim star
That crowns its summit hidden in a cloud—
Tall as the dark and holy heavens are.

The sad strange wreckage of full many ships
Burdens the bitter waters’ ebb and flow:
Gold diadems, like slowly falling flames,
Lighten the restless emerald gulfs below;

And withered blossoms float, and silken webs,
And pallid faces framed in wide-spread hair,
And bubble-globes that seethe with peacock hues,
And jewelled hands, half-open, cold and fair.

Sea creatures move beneath: their swift sleek touch
Begets sweet madness and unworthy fire—
Scaled women—triton-things, whose dark seal eyes
Are hot and bloodshot with a man’s desire.

Their strange arms clasp: the sea-pulse in their veins
Beats like the surf of the immortal sea—
Strong, glad and soulless: elemental joys
Bathe with green flame the sinking soul of me.

Downward and down—to passionate purple looms,
Athrill with thought-free, blurred, insatiate life,
Where the slow-throbbing sea-flow sways like weed
Dim figures blended in an amorous strife—

I am enclasped, I sink; but the wave lifts,
With all its freight of treasure and of death,
In sullen foamless yearning towards the height
Where the star burns above the vapour-wreath;

And a deep sob goes up, and all the caves
Are filled with mourning and a sorrow-sound.
The green fire fades: I rise: I see the star—
Gone are the triton arms that clipped me round.

Hope beats like some lost bird against the cliff—
The granite cliff above the burdened wave,
Whose fleeting riches are more desolate
Than gems dust-mingled in a nameless grave . . .

When all the wordless thirsts of Time are slaked,
And all Earth’s yearning hungers sweetly fed,
And the Sea’s grief is stilled, and the Wind’s cry,
And Day and Night clasp on one glowing bed—

Oh! in that hour shall clay and flame be blent—
Love find its perfect lover, breast on breast—
When dream and dreamer at the last are one,
And joy is folded in the arms of jest.

****

luthien

There was the story I was planning to write, and then there was the much more out there (and potentially much longer) story idea that came up in conversation with a friend last night - when I foolishly said: "I could write that."

Guess which one I've now got 1500 words of?

*sigh*

The word "fuck" has been coming up in my online conversations quite a bit today, mostly coupled with "you". She's an utter menace.

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Page generated Feb. 7th, 2026 07:51 pm

Knowledge, sir! Useful for its own sake, sir!

Network

Weekly proof of life: mainly media

How to Like Ballet, Part 2

Broken record of recurrent thoughts

Locus List

A simple day

Vive la Résistance

Blockout (1989)

Link roundup

Blue Lock the Movie: Episode Nagi

Heated Rivalry meta

Winter round works revealed!

Lee Speth

Stuff I Love: Ten Standalones

2026.02.07

GenPrompt Bingo: A Moment of Clarity/Understanding

Books Received, January 31 — February 6

How is the effective temperature going to be even LOWER at noon than it is now!?

(morning writing)

The Dreamer by Dulcie Deamer

Writing, writing, writing

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