Member Posts

Entry tags:

links,
music

link

I drank too much caffeine so I'm up past midnight adding lyrics to mp3s before loading them on my phone. Found a Depeche Mode fansite still online with a cool retro layout and is straight to the point, the lyrics and album info is all there.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Home

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Archiving Vital Hero DC stuff

Ok I'm doing some archiving for the vital hero stuff cause DC doesn't have its own guide, and someone said the codex in the app will tell you what you need to do and....

May have ended up buying it for King Shark tbh. Dude just appeared in my dream before I went to see Superman and my previous hyperfixation just went into rotation.

and someone said the codex in the app will tell you what you need to do and....

MY KING! KING SHARK IS IN THE LAZY CATEGORY!!!

HOW FUCKING DARE BANDAI!!!

Now I'm gonna have to just be lazy so I can get the character I WANT, this watch basically trained me to be active now I gotta be lazy. THe fuck.

Current Mood: flirty
Current Location: home

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The 3D modeler knew what was up

Concept artist: Yeah I'm not gonna bother with the bulge. I don't want to know if he has one or not.

3D modeler: Oh can't forget the bulge. He definitely has a bulge! A BIG ONE

Current Mood: silly

Copying some of my tumblr posts here

I just got no good original idea just for here so I'm gonna be silly

Current Mood: complacent

Entry tags:

digimon,
videogames

Digimon World 3

Went on starting a new game here. This game is my favorite of past years as I said and also because Renamon appears here. Yeah I will go on being biased but really, it is a fine little cozy game overall, even when it's difficulty its akin to Dark Souls levels of frustration.

Still...

Let's do it Renamon.

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

anime,
castlevania

Finished watching Castlevania: Nocturne

So I finished watching Castlevania Nocturne and while not as good as the first series it had its moments and characters were good for the most part. I'm fine giving it its own universe apart from the games canon since the story works well in all honesty. I have my nitpickings about it but they're very small to even announce on my post.

Overall I had a good time watching and I hope there will be another new series sometime

I will end this post with Richter giving the clothesline from hell meanwhile.

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: HOME
Current Music: Kobe Steak by Martin Landh

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Short Life Update yet again

Sorry I keep forgetting to update this page but life has gotten way busier as I AM PREGNANT! And the ultrasound says it's a girl! I'm so happy, it seems me getting laid off was just part of the plan. I got more plans for this journal now that I'm quite frankly getting tired of the modern web. Also want to get into neocities.

See yall soon, I wanna talk about DC stuff soon. 2025 is an exciting year

Current Mood: tired

Entry tags:

mental health

Mental Health Update

Finding out the medication I've been taking has worked on my nerve pain. My right hand has been numbed down considerably to allow me write or at least use it without much pain, but its still there. Other damaged joints are also feeling better.

Unfortunately this feels like a mask to conceal how messed up my limbs are in retrospect, but at least I can live a bit better. Unfortunately I read online the side effects finding out that it can also retent urination and I have taken notice whenever I go.

My OCD medication seems to have worked a bit as well, in combination with using AI to answer a few questions about dealing with it. I know how risky is to use such, but the results have so far been of great help. Unfortunately as I posted before, it makes me feel neutered, but by now its not of much importance.

So medication here is helping while at the same time messing me up in some ways. Talk about your life balances.

Entry tags:

mundane

odebe

In the 90s, my mother worked as a maid and housekeeper. My favorite anecdote is she cleaned Ross Perot's mansion and ironed his silk undies, but a house I visited with her often was this woman who had several parrots and a dog. One of them was this African Grey parrot named Odebe that would torment her dog by imitating the owner's voice, and he had a unique personality. He was kind of scary but I fed him peanuts, and throughout the day he would repeat weird phrases I don't remember.

That was over 25 years ago (before 2000 at the very latest), now this lady has died from breast cancer. My mother told me that a decade ago, she looked up her now-adult son on Facebook, and in one of his photos she saw a grey parrot. So I looked up how long do African Grey parrots live, and the answer is 22 years in the wild, but longer in captivity if taken care of. The oldest that lived was 55 years old. So that was probably Odebe!!!

Current Mood: accomplished

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FFXI Base Story summary (Bastok missions 1-5)

OKAY FOLKS! So, when the Jeuno raid dropped in FFXIV, I got strong nostalgia goggles for Final Fantasy XI, and returned to the game then. My goal? To replay the game's stories and document them so I wouldn't forget them again.

I am pleased to say that I have finished the first set of my documentation! It is here:

https://altheavalara.neocities.org/ffxi/bastok

And is a fan script of the Bastok city-state's rank 1 missions up to and including the rank 5 missions.

Now, this was originally the end of the base game's story, though they added additionally missions later. And each of the three city-states start out with different missions, but then there's a LOT of overlapping (some missions are exactly the same regardless of which city-state you're from.)

I'm proud of the fan script, but it's LONG, and not everyone wants to read dialogue. So I decided to write a summary. It's... also still long, but shorter than the actual game script. Plus it was a fun exercise to explain the story.

Anyway, it's under the cut. ENJOY!

( Read more... )

Current Mood: contemplative

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R.I.P Hulk Hogan

Just heard he passed away this morning. Despite him being a horrible person in some ways he was still a wrestling icon to many myself included in his prime.

Maybe he rest in peace.

Current Mood: ???????

Entry tags:

WHAT

( shitpost about a dream i had, cw for current events and a rape mention )
(I don't know the etiquette on here, I don't think one word is enough to hide or age restrict a post)

Entry tags:

dreamwidth: community thursdays

Community Thursday

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Commented on booknook.

Commented on getyourwordsout.

Commented on bnha_fans.

Signal boosts:

Via fictional_fans, the fan_writers comm for meta about writing looks like a lot of fun!

Entry tags:

recent reading

Recent Reading: Consent

We're back to the "Women in Translation" rec list, with book #10: Consent: A Memoir by Vanessa Springora, translated from French by Natasha Lehrer. This autobiographical novel is the story of Springora's sexual abuse as a young teenager at the hands of Gabriel Matzneff, a well-regarded and prolific French writer, who was in his late forties when he entered a romantic and sexual relationship with Springora (called "V" in the book).

The most shocking thing about V's ordeal, and this is clearly highlighted in her reflections on the experience, which took place between the ages of 13 and 15, is that it was an open secret. V's own mother was aware of it and condoned the affair as within V's rights to choose. Essentially, V was caught at a terrible intersection of the obsessive sexual liberation of French artistic elites at the time—to the extent of claiming it was a violation of an adolescent's rights to forbid them from sex with adults—parents who were tuned out of her emotional well-being, misogyny, and simply meeting the wrong man at the wrong time.

It wasn't just the relationship itself either. Springora cites how she was repeatedly victimized and unpersoned by Matzneff's frequent publishing of autobiographical works which openly recounted his distorted version of their affair, even referring to her by name. For decades before and after the affair, he waxes lyrical about the "sublime" and "passionate" relationships he's had with teenage girls, and the "warm memories" he leaves them with when they get too old for him (as well as his not infrequent abuse of male child prostitutes in the Philippines). She becomes, to her desperate grief, a mere character in Matzneff's self-aggrandizing and self-absolving mythology.

In 2020, by then in her forties, Springora decided the best way to hit back was on Matzneff's own turf, with her own love of writing which he had stolen from her for so many years: and so she published Consent, finally depriving Matzneff of the freedom of being the first and last voice on his many abuses.

Springora's novel is a tight 5 hours on audiobook. She does not linger, but recounts her story, including the childhood experiences which may have made her particularly vulnerable to Matzneff's seduction, with intimate but clear honesty. She has an ear for elegant turns of phrase and skillfully illustrates how even as she continued her relationship with Matzneff and insisted it was what she wanted, the seed of its wrongness had been growing in her mind. With crushing bluntness she shows how jaded she had grown by a mere 15, already world-weary and exhausted by Matzneff's relentless manipulation. For the most part, Springora's story is delivered with calm, factual clarity, but there are a few moments when her simmering rage boils to the surface, and the power of these moments is palpable. In one scene, a sobbing V insisting that she cannot go on like this is told by an adult friend that she should be "honored" to be "chosen" by someone as great as Matzneff to "support him" on his journey as an artist. Both V the child and Springora the adult relating the episode remain in shocked, disbelieving fury at this response.

A broad indifference to Matzneff's victims persisted for decades. On televised interviews by major networks, Matzneff is playfully ribbed about his penchant for teenagers. A Canadian writer who calls him out as a predator is castigated by Matzneff's supporters and told she needs "a good fucking." V is approached by fans of Matzneff's who recognize her from his work, hoping she'll indulge their sexual fantasies as well. Even the young man who persuades V at last to leave Matzneff—a 22-year-old to V's near-16—also initiates a sexual relationship with her, and eventually grows tired of her depression, unable to see her trauma for what it is. At every turn, the system protects and even celebrates Matzneff. As recently as 2015, he was still receiving prestigious literary awards.

Springora takes this book not only to call out Matzneff's abuse, repeated across countless other children, but also everyone around them who knew of and tolerated it, who believed that his artistry placed him on some other moral plane where he could not be criticized by pedants concerned with restricting sexual impulses; as well as the entire societal system which said that V was not a victim, that she had consented to this, that responds to stories of teenage girls seduced by fifty-year-old men with cheeky grins, that doesn't even concern itself with foreign child prostitutes abused by pedophilic tourists.

Springora admits she wished one of Matzneff's other victims had published an account first, so that she wouldn't have to, but eventually she had to speak out, to take power back, and to point the finger at every person who enable this predator to carry on his grotesque work. And with this incisive, ringing indictment of a novel, she does. (And, at least, there have been consequences to Matzneff since Consent's publication, including apologies from Le Monde and other institutions which published some of his most repulsive essays in the 70s and 80s, as well as France raising the age of consent to 15.)

The translation by Natasha Lehrer is skilled and neat; she captures both Springora's more lyrical phrases and the emotionally charged but sometimes understated descriptions. The prose flows well and the dialogue sounds natural. Anne-Marie Piazza does a wonderful job with the audio narration as well, particularly given the weight of the content. She matches Springora's mostly calm tone, and perfectly channels the barely-leashed rage that surfaces at times.

Overall an excellent work. Not enjoyable, given the story, but important, and well-done.

Crossposted to

books and

booknook

Entry tags:

what are you playing wednesday

What Are You Playing Wednesday

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: angry

Entry tags:

Had a dream about my late uncle today

I met him in a crowded place that looked like a combination of a market and a large parking lot building. He was very thin, and seemed to be holding on his liver side. Was looking for my family, asking him about it and for some reason my biological father was there besides him, back turned.

It was a fact that in reality my uncle disliked my father with very good reason, but when I told him I would keep searching my father suddenly turns and they both greeted each other like nothing was bothering them.

My uncle passed away about 3 years now because of cancer. His last years he was a heavy drinker and smoker. I had a chance to talk to him in the phone one last time before he passed away. It wasn't a coincidence of why he appeared in that way in my dream.

Unlike my biological father, my uncle was the father I never had. May he rest in peace.

Entry tags:

mundane

yay?

So about the Kroger that's closing down outside my neighborhood that's been around for decades, even before we moved here 23 years ago... It's getting replaced by a Chipotle?

Yay? Or? I don't know, I've only had that once. But I won't say no to it.

I just wonder how long it'll last. Outside that Kroger 7 years ago, there was a Carl's Jr. outside of it. I used to eat there often because I was vegan back then, and they had a Beyond Burger option. But then after a year or so they closed down. So I wonder how long the Chipotle will last....

Entry tags:

english,
interwebz

Abbrevs

If you look at old manuscripts and letters, there is a lot of abbreviation going on, and it is not simply cutting out some of the word and replacing it with a period or apostrophe. Some of it happens in ligatures and superscripts. The & is an ancient ligature for "et" in Latin, which means "and". In addition to the ones we probably don't even notice any more like 1^st, 2^nd, N^o -- and this happens in French and Spanish, too -- superior letters to abbreviate names happened, like W^m (William), J^s (James) and Th^os (Thomas).

TILs for this post:

the both small and underlined "superior letter", used specifically for abbreviation, is considered distinct from simple superscript.
"Abbreviations must be clearly distinguished from contractions," according to The University of Sussex, because with contractions, you're pronouncing it as written, but with an abbreviation you're pronouncing the entire thing.

Having to use text messaging with 9 keys on a flip phone relaunched excessv. abbrevs imo, so tyvm, Nokia. I think emoji are the modern versions of ligatures and superscript.

So next time you see someone bitching about all the abbrevs today's kids use, just remind 'em it's gone on 4eva & rn is no diff't.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: REDLINE - Yellow Line

Entry tags:

Redline

All I told

sashagee before we went is that it's about racing.

Watch on YouTube

Redline IS about racing--the entire movie is about a once-every-five-years race called Redline where, in the space future of flying cars, they requires four wheels and powerful engines. The protagonist is named JP ("James Punkhead"), has a foot-long pompadour, and drives a car called "Trans Am" that looks like a sci fi Pontiac Firebird. Some of the other racers include a cyborg named "Machine Head" who has his own themesong where the chorus goes "Machine Heeeeeeeeaaad!🎵🎶", a pair of intergalactic bounty hunters, two Japanese dudes from Earth (animeified versions of the stars of Mole Brothers), or a pair of magical girls in stripperific costumes called "Team Boin" (Team Bouncy). There are planet names like Dorothy and Sweetgrass (a planet of magical girls--though they don't use their magic during the Redline) and Roboworld. Roboworld is the planet that the Redline takes place on, much to Roboworld's annoyance--it's some kind of military dictatorship, with a blasted rocky hellscape surface, and the racers race through a minefield (they're so fast the mines don't blow up until they're out of danger), through a secret testing area where illegal bioweapons are being developed, and all the way to the main Roboworld governmental building. There's a mafia sideplot, there's a love story, at one point there's a kaijū fight in the background, each of the secondary characters has their own short arc and just enough personality to be compelling but not enough to take over the narrative--for Machine Head, he first appears looming over another racer and says “Move.” The other racer says “I’m not moving!” and there’s a moment of tension before Machine Head says, “Fine. I’ll go around you then.”

It's great.

sashagee loved it even though before we went she was incredibly confused why I would invite her to a movie about racing.

Also I did not realize that the voice actor for JP was Asano Tadanobu, who recently won an Emmy for his work on Shōgun! We were talking with

neilworms afterwards and he mentioned that, as well as some of the other cameos that people who had seen other Koike Takeshi works.

The venue really made a difference, I feel like. The last time I watched Redline for

ping816's anime discussion group, I of course watched it on a 1080p computer screen by myself, and I liked it, but it was nothing like watching it in a movie theatre with a full crowd that all laughed when any of the many comedy bits of the movie happened. I did not realize that Facets was such a title in the independent/foreign cinema space. They have a lot of other screenings--they're showing Tampopo this month--and I should really get on a mailing list so I know what's going on.

Unfortunately, I don't have nearly as much praise for the dinner we went to beforehand. We joined some other people from Anime Chicago at Mi Nueva Tierra nearby, which has 4.5 stars on Google but based on our experience there I have no idea why. We got burrito bowls--

sashagee had steak, I had roasted cauliflower--and they were fine but nothing special. She got horchata, I got a blueberry Old Fashioned--again, fine--and the bill came out to $60 for the two of us for a meal we came away from thinking "Eh, I guess." I wish we had all gone with

spacedragon's initial suggestion of going to the nearby Strings ramen, or that we had gone with

jeremy.podczerwinski and

erendira.morales to the vegan Thai place they went to. Well, for next time we'll have to remember that.

Current Mood: refreshed
Current Music: Said the Sky, Parachute & Will Anderson - Emotion Sickness

Entry tags:

Staycation time

It's not actually a staycation because I didn't take any time off from work, but this last week has felt a bit like a staycation because Laila has been at the grandparents the entire time. The original plan was that yesterday we would go out to visit my parents and stay for dinner, drop Laila off, go to see Redline at Facets Theater on Saturday, and then have Laila come back on Sunday or Monday. That all folded when

sashagee called the dentist's office last week, expecting to be scheduling her root canal for some time at the end of the month, and was told that she could come in on Monday. Cue the scramble to ask my parents if they could take Laila early, which they very kindly agreed to do, and Laila went off for a week.

sashagee said that the actual root canal wasn't too bad--it was over in twenty minutes or so--but the preparation for the root canal was lengthy and annoying. She was back there for two hours, with the dentist occasionally poking and her and her saying "No, it's not numb enough yet," before it was finally ready to do the surgery. The actual root canal only took maybe twenty minutes and then she came back and we took the bus back home. I had arranged to work at home for the next couple days based on my experience with

sashagee's wisdom teeth removal, but it turned out to be mostly unnecessary. The first day she borrowed my big scarf to wrap around her head and hold some ice next to her jaw, and thereafter she was basically okay except for avoiding hot foods. Her wisdom teeth took weeks for her to really get better.

Despite not having Laila, we obviously couldn't do that much due to

sashagee's root canal. We didn't go out to eat, we didn't go anywhere, and she wasn't even feeling well enough to walk to the farmer's market on Wednesday so I went myself. She's spent some time fishing in Final Fantasy XIV, I'd spend time doing FATEs with her or working on Cataclysm, and she slowly got her energy back. The main goal was to make sure that she was able to go to the Redline screening, and it looks like that'll happen.