hamiltunes | Member Posts

I've had great luck in the past with the sort of kdrama in which an angry immortal supernatural woman has to hang out in contemporary Seoul with a nice mortal boy. We were hoping The Judge From Hell would be that sort of kdrama, and, technically, it is; I think in its heart it would love to be Hotel del Luna. Unfortunately, it has also decided that what it wants to be is a violent revenge fantasy with incoherent and punitive ethics. Interspersed with wacky shenanigans! and a healthy dose of Catholicism?

Okay, so the premise: our heroine is Justitia, the DEMON JUDGE of the UNDERWORLD, THIRD IN LINE to the THRONE OF HELL, whose job is to sentence unrepentant murderers to unending torments. However, when a nice young judge gets murdered and accidentally ends up in her domain instead of the lesser hell where she belongs, Justitia refuses to listen to her pleas of innocence, gets ready to sentence her anyway, and promptly gets her wrist slapped by her superiors: she's gotten complacent! Time to go to Earth, wearing the body of the dead judge, and learn! about JUSTICE!!!

Given that Justitia's initial mistake involved accidentally sentencing an innocent person, you might be forgiven for thinking that Justitia's job on Earth might involve perhaps getting justice for the wrongly accused, or learning to temper justice with mercy and a little bit of nuance, or even uncovering faults and corruption within the justice system as it exists. haha! no. Justitia's job is to hit a quota of Unrepentent, Unforgiven Murderers On Earth and sentence them to unending torment, just like in her day job. She does this by chasing them around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimic the things they have done to their victims and beating them up, then stamping them on the forehead with a little stamp that says GEHENNA while then the doors of hell open and an ominous voice roars GEHENNA!!!! and they get sucked into hell. We did not enjoy the excruciating sequences of murderers being chased around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimicked the things they had done to their victims, which the show obviously wants us to find cathartic and satisfying. We did enjoy the ominous voice that roared GEHENNA!!!! It made us laugh every time.

( this got long but tbh not as long as it could have been. this show was so incoherent )

petra

Vid: One Night Fandoms: A Tribute to Yuletide (1596 words) by eruthros, thingswithwings
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Multi-Fandom, Yuletide - Fandom
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage Sex
Additional Tags: Yuletide, One Night Stands, Bondage, Weddings, Vampires, Musicians, Dancing, Impact Play, Gags, we watched so many things for this vid, basically no fandom gets more than twenty frames, Fanvid
Summary:

Just call me angel of the morning, angel.

*

I revisited this masterpiece today because I accidentally wrote cheek-touching in last night's story, and a friend asked, "Not what you were going for? Or...more like the equivalent of waking up, rolling over, seeing a story in the cold, revealing light of day, and scrambling to get dressed before it wakes up?"

And what better way to get Angel of the Morning stuck in my head than this gorgeous vid?

Current Mood: charmed all over again
Current Music: I won't beg you to stay

petra

( Slow Horses s4 )

Current Mood: oh no
Current Music: And they have a plan (unlike Ron Moore et al.)

beatrice_otter

I just read a fic where a character in the Regency period is reflecting on how she'd never imagined she'd be able to have a full-time nursemaid.

Me: Girl, you are and have always been wealthy and you live in an age where labor is CHEAP.

And by "cheap" I mean "so cheap that servants had servants." (Upper level servants in large houses would often have lower-level servants assigned to them as a perk of the job.) So cheap that the gap between "people who were servants" and "people who had servants" was very narrow, and often crossed over the course of a person's lifetime. It was fairly common for working class/poor girls to work as maids for a few years saving up money before they got married, and if they married a reasonably prosperous farmer they would probably be able to afford to hire a maid themselves in good years. (Not "maid" as in "a personal servant to wait on you hand and food," this is "maid" as in "someone to do the nastier/harder bits of cooking and cleaning.")

By 1795, the price of wages for a day laborer was pegged to the price of bread. A gallon loaf weighed 8lbs 11oz, and was theoretically enough to feed a person for a week. Laborers were supposed to make at least three times the cost of a gallon loaf per week, so that if a gallon loaf cost 1 shilling they should be paid at least 3 shillings per week. That is peanuts. For comparison: A pair of wool stockings in the Regency era cost about 2 shillings 6 pence. In other words, a day laborer was paid only a little more per week than the cost of a good pair of socks. Silk stockings--the kind you would wear to a ball--were 12 shillings, or four times the weekly wages of a day laborer.

Combine this with how labor-intensive even the most basic tasks were, and it meant that anybody who could afford servants had them, and anybody above the poverty line could afford them.

Over the course of the 19th Century, the cost of wages relative to the cost of other things rose dramatically, so people had fewer servants and fewer people could afford to have servants. And still, Agatha Christie remembered that when she was young "I couldn’t imagine being too poor to afford servants, nor so rich as to be able to afford a car." She did not grow up wealthy, she grew up middle class. Even in 1900, your average middle-class person in England could not imagine being too poor to afford servants.

This changed radically over the course of the 20th Century; now a middle class person might have a cleaner who comes in once a week, but they definitely will not be able to afford a full-time servant. You have to be wealthy to afford that. So we assume that servants are a mark of huge wealth even in historical periods, when they just ... weren't. This is not helped by the fact that novels set in period times (whether written then or later) rarely mention the servants, so you can read, say, an Austen novel and not have any clue what sort of servants they have. But unless you have researched the issue, it's best to assume they have more servants than you think they had.

isis

Mostly I'm just putting it here so I can find it again. But also, I rec this whether or not you have played the game, it's not really spoilery, and it's very cool:

Words by Phineas (at YouTube)

jesse_the_k

The Secret History of Font Piracy

Today LinusBoman talks about font theft. Back in the 1990s I worked in a desktop publishing service bureau. Font foundries were still using a pricing model based on industrial customers with several blocks worth of printing presses and thousands of books. Font piracy was so widespread as to be fundamental. Good times—Linus brings it all back with an excellent news hook: how the unavoidable you wouldn’t steal a car message that scolded at the start of every VHS or DVD used a pirated font. Pro captions, silent title cards subdivide the video into eight sections.

Watch on YouTube
( or stream 21 minutes here )

Linus Boman is so my type of design nerd. More about him at TimesNewBoman.com

Kevin B Parry animates himself doing impossible things

Watch on YouTube

( stream six minutes of amazing here )

Audio is instrumental music. I invite you to write image descriptions; here are the first three:

Kevin in red hoodie stands in corner, falls slowly to ground — at moment of impact human becomes eight red balloons, bouncing lazily
Big cardboard boxes in empty room. Kevin stands behind one of them, jumps into the air and then into the box. His body sinks in and he’s suspended by his armpits — at the same time as his legs push up from inside another box
Leaning on a counter, Kevin slides his right hand along the corner towards the camera, and then his hand detaches and begins to slide all the way to the end of the counter, where he drums his fingers. Then the fingers slide back to his arm.

Watch Kevin on all the platforms: https://lnk.bio/kevinbparry/

Visual ASMR

Anthony Howe of HoweARTdotNET sculpts stainless steel into "kinetic sculpture," installed outside and set in motion by the wind. Most comprise a circular metal structure atop a 10 to 20 feet curved column. The circle supports four to eight rings that rotate perpendicular to the circle. Each of these rings is decorated with assorted shapes, including discs, commas, sticks, flaps, and blades. The rings are staggered so that the motion seems infinitely various; the shiny stainless steel creates cascading light and sparkles as it moves, along with the illusion of interlocking gears moving forward and backward at the same time.

If you’re at all photosensitive, scroll on by — do not open this "details" arrow

Many static pictures to admire at https://www.howeart.net

55 seconds of very flashy kinetic sculpture video, no audio

schneefink

I've never read "The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System," but the fandom is very into canon divergence and (time travel) fix-it and so am I. At this point I've read so much fic for it that I keep thinking that I probably should read canon – but I have a strong suspicion that I wouldn't like it as much as the fic.

airplane view of the self by

Nonymos
114k, Airplane-centric time travel fix-it
Summary: Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky gets a do-over.
Aha, that first go was pretty traumatic, but surely everything will be much easier this time! Surely the System won't mess it up for him! Right? Right?
Why I love it: I love a good time travel fix-it and I really enjoyed this one, featuring identity crises, mysteries, romance, but most importantly character and relationship development.

pride is not the word I'm looking for by

Tossawary
408k, Airplane-centric canon divergence fix-it
Summary: Shang Qinghua goes to take a self-indulgent peek at his baby protagonist son and gets a kick to the shrivelled heart for his troubles. He gave up on changing the story years ago! Yet he finds himself helping his protagonist son's adoptive mother anyway. Just this one change won't matter too much, right?
One little change leads to more. Shang Qinghua never meant to care, but he becomes invested in making sure that his new family survives the looming plot. With the changes to the world cascading around him, with his position as a traitor pulling him between his sect and a certain ice demon, and with the protagonist growing up so quickly, how is one displaced author meant to ensure that everything turns out all right?
A Pre-Canon to Canon Divergence story.
Why I love it: I love canon divergence stories where you can really follow how small changes snowball and then suddenly everything is different. This one does that very well, and I really enjoyed the ~OC and plot changes.
The author has many other SVSSS stories that I also enjoyed.

I Wish You Were My Husband by

Feynite
110k, SY/LBH harem AU
Summary: AU based on The Dreamer in the Spring Boudoir (familiarity with that story's not required).
Wherein Shen Yuan transmigrates into a harem intrigues romance novel (gay edition), Yue Qingyuan really fucks up, Liu Qingge is not suitable for his job, and no one even remotely sees Luo Binghe coming.
Why I like it: A very tropey harem fic, perfect for when one is in the mood for something like that (and can tolerate a very oblivious protagonist.) Comes with over 500k of extras, sequels/AU/crossovers/etc., that I also enjoyed a lot.

petra

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg!

My Tumblr dash runneth over with Terry Pratchett memes, as is only right and proper.

I know where my towel is, and I am thinking of the friends I have lost along the way, as is traditional on this day.

Current Mood: elegiac
Current Music: They rise knees up

neekabe

I was craving my mother's muffins, but I did some googling and found that flax meal is a gluten free swap for wheat bran, and I had that, so I tried the old recipe with gluten free flour blend and flax and it was delicious. I've also eaten like 24 of them in the past 2 weeks. So I'm going to take a bit of a pause on baking them XD

So ( Recipe Here )

I got rid of the old TV today (13 years old, the very first and only TV I bought myself) I was somewhat loathe to let it go because it was a perfectly functional dumb TV, but we don't need two TVs in the little apartment we have. And Freecycle got it gone in under 24 hours.

I also got rid of a bunch of partially used hair products that didn't really work for my hair. I felt guilty throwing them out, but someone picked them up on Freecycle. Hopefully some of them work for them!

Relatedly I ordered 4 new products to try and got a full size of a sample I had bought earlier that I really liked. And was one of the reasons I got rid of one of the other products - I thought it worked as a leave-in until I tried the new one, which worked so much better!

My parents are visiting at the end of the week, so yesterday was getting my sewing projects into a place where they could more easily be put away and out of the dining room (which worked out to pieces all cut out) and so the rest of today is going to be making almost final steps on the office reorg so they have a tidy place to sleep.

meteordust

Yay for unions in space!

( Spoilery reactions )

Current Mood: geeky

azurelunatic

Got steroids to the left wrist on Tuesday, and sulked for the rest of the day because it was tender ( Read more... ).

Friday I put together the Cronch Tower, to replace the Cronch Pile. It's a 5 foot construction of wire shelf panels, with two two-foot high baskets and a final open topped container. This is to manage the chip needs of 3+1 people.

After shopping Friday, Belovedest pulled the Holiday Morass in front of me, for me to sort out into Yuletide, Halloween, and ~~It's Fall, Y'All~~ Decorative Gourd Season. Plus None of the Above. And Thorn came up for company while working and sociability. Since they had hung the work privacy shade on the window.

Today before I woke up, Belovedest had herded the Cronch Tower further. And unboxed my printer. And while I took advantage of the 80+F weather to lounge, they ran a test print.

The print came out fine! Belovedest now knows where I keep the spare filament (in The Heir and the Spare, naturally). We are discussing next steps!

petra

I have finished Slow Horses s1-3, as a result of paying for Apple TV to encourage them to Murderbot.

I want to inflict the Slow Horses, AU-ized, on various fandoms. Some of their mistakes are universal; others can be readily translated between universes.

I mean, really, what do the Jedi do with their terminal fuckups, once they've been accepted as padawans ~~-- other than promote them to Council seats~~?

Not me wanting Roderick Ho the Jedi slicer who thinks he's hot bantha poodoo, nosiree bob.

In other universe-smashing paradigms, I still want to introduce Lamb to Peter Grant. They would loathe each other uncordially. It would be splendid.

Sorry, this is as close as my icon collection gets without going all Gene Hunt -- who would also be deeply entertaining to inflict on Lamb and his merry band, while I'm proposing crossovers.

Current Mood: playing dolls
Current Music: Gimme danger, little stranger

duskpeterson

All of the fiction below is free.

E-BOOKS (html, epub, mobi, pdf, and xhtml)

Law Links: Novel and Side Stories (The Three Lands). Few events are more thrilling in a young man's life than a blood feud between two villages. Or so Adrian thought. ¶ Torn between affection toward his traditional-minded father and worship of his peace-loving, heretical priest, Adrian finds himself caught between two incompatible visions of his duty to the gods. Then the Jackal God sends Adrian a message that will disrupt his world and send him fleeing to a new and perilous life. ¶ Mythic historical fantasy (secondary world, late antiquity). Reissued omnibus, with new front matter and back matter; no changes to the story texts.

Death Mask: Novel and Side Stories (The Three Lands). For eighteen years, he has survived in an army unit where few soldiers live more than two or three years. Now he finds himself in circumstances where his life is a living hell. Will the soldier who defied death find that life is too great a challenge? ¶ Soldiers, spies, slaves, rebels, assassins, gods, and men who set out to break him . . . The Lieutenant of the Border Mountain Patrol will learn that his greatest test is himself. ¶ Mythic historical fantasy (secondary world, late antiquity). New omnibus, with typos corrected and a new novelette:

Light and Love (Death Mask side story): In a world where two people who love each other must enter into the role of antagonists, what will preserve their love? ¶ Tryphena is a maiden. To her brother falls the responsibility of choosing her husband. ¶ Then war comes, and with it arrive a wise goddess of death and destruction, an enemy soldier of uncertain character, and a masked god who can turn evil into good. ¶ Who will rule Tryphena's heart and conscience? And how can she and her brother prevent war from breaking out between them?

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket. ¶ Mythic historical fantasy (secondary world, late antiquity). Latest installments:

( News )

( Ways to offer me a tip, financial or nonfinancial )

duskpeterson

The lower floor of the royal residence is guarded at its entrances, for obvious reasons. It houses only servants these days, but in past years, it was fully as active as the upper floors.

Left to right, you will see the former bedchamber of the High Lord, the former receiving chamber of the council, a former service chamber, the former and current royal receiving chamber and dining chamber, and the royal sanctuary. The last requires extended commentary.

chanter1944

It's fully online this year, but it's still on. I've already been on one panel, dealing with acespec identities and representation, and I've got another Sunday. I'll be attending at least a couple more between now and then. But seriously, I *need* this four-day weekend. I took today off deliberately, given it's WisCon weekend, and con or not, that was absolutely the right call. Good gosh.

I intend to be up and out early tomorrow, the better to get to the farmers market and back again before the 10 AM panels happen. Wish me luck? :P

jesse_the_k, are you in on WisCon this year?

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Brewers vs Pirates baseball game

lannamichaels

Unsure how I feel about having 22 minute episodes (sorry, "30 minute episodes"). On the one hand, short and quick enough to watch. On the other hand, this entire episode is essentially half an episode: In Which Our Heroes Travel To DeltFall And MurderBot Looks Around.

Enjoyable, but this kind of episode feels like it is meant for watching entire seasons all at once, where it would just blend in to the before and after. They spent too much time arguing in the shuttle for it to feel like it stands alone at all.

The security footage of what the Gurathin and Bharadwaj are doing back home was pointless, but I guess Character Building or something.

petra

Rudest tag I have seen in a month of Sundays:
( Life on Mars (UK) spoiler for the finale )

Compare with ( The Untamed spoiler for the first episode )

Which is kinda like ( Shakespeare spoiler )

When it could've been ( Bigger Shakespeare spoiler )

( Greek myth spoiler )

Current Mood: silly
Current Music: Every language easy, easy as the recipe for making Jell-O

rachelmanija

I have been reading much more than I've been reviewing. So...

Poll #33152

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 135

View Respondents

Which of these books would you MOST like me to review?

View Answers

When the Wolf Comes Home, by Nat Cassidy. Horror novel about an out of work actress on the run with a little boy.
13 (9.6%)

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty. The rollicking adventures of a middle-aged mom PIRATE in fantasy medieval Middle East.
71 (52.6%)

Diary of a Witchcraft Shop, by Trevor Jones and Liz Williams. What it says on the can: a diary of owning a witchcraft shop in Glastonbury.
22 (16.3%)

Sisters of the Vast Black, by Nina Rather. SPACE NUNS aboard a GIANT SPACE SEA SLUG.
50 (37.0%)

Making Bombs for Hitler, by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. Children's historical fiction about Ukrainian children kidnapped and enslaved in WWII, by a Ukrainian-Canadian author.
18 (13.3%)

Under One Banner, by Graydon Saunders. Commonweal # 4!
18 (13.3%)

Archangel (etc), by Sharon Shinn. Lost colony romantic SF about genetically engineered angels.
29 (21.5%)

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton. Historical murder mystery with time loops and body switching.
29 (21.5%)

Irontown Blues, by John Varley. Faux-noir SF with an intelligent dog.
11 (8.1%)

Blood Over Bright Haven, by M. L. Wang. Standalone fantasy that kind of looks like romantast but isn't, with anvillicious anti-colonial themes.
18 (13.3%)

An Immense World, by Ed Yong. Outstanding nonfiction about how animals sense the world.
44 (32.6%)

Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling, by Henry Lien ("Peasprout Chen"). Nonfiction, what it says on the can. Not all stories are in three acts!
39 (28.9%)

Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman. World's greatest D&D campaign in a truly fucked world.
20 (14.8%)

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

sasha_feather

I've been living at my childhood home, a hobby farm in Minnesota, taking care of my dad. Soon my dad will be moving to assisted living, along with my mom who is moving there from the nursing home.

I'll be staying at the farm and looking after the animals. I'd rather live here with other people, as it's safer and more fun. I have multiple disabilities which make managing a whole farm rather difficult on my own. I've had a couple of seizures which make it safer for me to have people around me. Minnesota is one of the better places to live right now in the US and this could be a good opportunity for someone to live here.

So, if you know of anyone that would like a nice place to live, please direct them my way, especially queer and trans people looking for a relatively safe place. There is a lot of space in the house (3 full bathrooms, 4 bedrooms), and plenty of outdoor space.

I have one cat and one dog in the house, and outside there are a few sheep, one aging horse that is strictly a pasture pet, and some guinea fowl. Amenities include a dishwasher, laundry, wifi, some streaming services, 2 gas fireplaces. This is a wonderful place for hobbies such as gardening, woodworking, fiber arts, baking, etc. In addition to the house there are some outbuildings and a nice garden shed. Opportunities for fishing, golf, biking abound in the region.

Couples (+) are welcome as are kids. There is a good elementary school just a few miles away.

The house needs a bit of work, but overall it's very nice and peaceful. One thing I do contend with here is bugs. There is no central AC but we can do window AC units when needed. Sometimes the dog barks in an annoying manner (we are working on it). I could use help with mowing, weeding, cutting brush.

You could live here for cheap as I mostly am looking for company and help. I can't live with smokers due to my disabilities. I have lived with roommates for most of my life and can provide references.

The house is rural but only a few miles from the nearest shopping area, and close to a small city. You would probably need to have a car, though we can get grocery delivery here.

My interests include watching TV shows and movies, gardening, science fiction, jigsaw puzzles, thrifting. I'm a queer woman in my 40s. I'm a rather extreme night owl.

If interested you can comment here or email me, sandphin at gmail dot com. Share this link with people you think might be interested!

cofax7

Y'all, things are shitty and going to get worse. I'm so sorry for, well, everyone.

But I heard a story today that was just fucking amazing, and I cannot repeat it, but! ( Read more... )

And that's all I can say about that.

Anyway I watched the finale of Andor and the first two eps of Murderbot, and lo! they are enjoyable. I have my issues with how Gilroy handled one specific character, but in general, he landed the show really well.

Murderbot is fun and it's nice to see they are hinting at the backstory already. And the casting is excellent.

Profile

Hamilton an American Musical

September 2024

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Page Summary

skygiants - (no subject)
petra - Recommendation: One-Night Fandoms, the 2008 Yuletide Vid
petra - Ow, my embarrassment squick
beatrice_otter - Historical Fiction Pet Peeves: Servants
isis - Chants of Sennaar animatic
jesse_the_k - Three More Amazing Videos
schneefink - May recs: 3 long SVSSS fics
petra - The Glorious 25th of May & Towel Day
neekabe - (no subject)
meteordust - Babylon 5 - S1E12 - By Any Means Necessary
azurelunatic - Recent shenanigans: wrist, Cronch, and 3D printer
petra - Slow Horses s1-s3
duskpeterson - UPDATE: Light and Love (Death Mask side story) + Three Lands omnibuses + news
duskpeterson - FIC: The lower floor of the royal residence (Tempestuous Tours)
chanter1944 - WisCon 2025 is here!
lannamichaels - Murderbot TV episode 3
petra - Rudest tag possible
rachelmanija - Book Review Poll
sasha_feather - Looking for housemates in Minnesota
cofax7 - (no subject)

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