Reading

Current Music: Tom Lehrer - "Selling Out"

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lb makes:story

Marriage of Convenience 1: Dignity Left to Lose

Dignity Left to Lose
Summary: In 1994, during the AIDS epidemic Booster Gold’s superhero career goes down in the flames of scandal, and he loses everything. It's as he's plummeting to rock bottom that he meets an aging trophy widow who’s been there before. Part one of the Houseboy Booster/Gladys fic.
Series: Marriage of Convenience, part 1 (Justice League International/Superbuddies fanfiction)
Word Count: 7000
Notes: This one has enough of a story behind it that I'm putting it in the comments! Houseboy kink dynamics, trophy widows, '90s homophobia, and the fine art of selling out behind the cut!

Booster Gold has just been asked to leave, and he obeys, even though they’re likely not friends anymore, so obedience is no longer a requirement. He doesn’t want to make a scene. He doesn’t want to stay.

Booster knows his career’s out the window the moment the paper comes out tomorrow, but there’s a charity ball tonight, full of people looking to schmooze and spend, and if he can just get something tonight…

He reaches the charity ball late, but fashionably so, and when he arrives, his hair has been combed, his dirty clothes have been changed, cologne covers up the sweat, and his smile is pasted on.

He feels terrible, but he looks good, and that’s when he meets Gladys Thatcher.

( Before you know it, there'll be nothing left to sell. )

Yet Another Year with Decker

Posted by Sortition Social

http://beyondloom.com/blog/unionstate3.html

Entry syndicated from Beyond Loom Blog [feed link]

Malleable Medium Maturation

http://beyondloom.com/blog/unionstate3.html

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Xenogals and more are for sale!

Hey! We have new stuff up for sale! MULTIPLE things for sale, in fact!

See, at cons for years now, we've been selling paper-only zines of some of our essay compilations. They've proved surprisingly popular, so now that my blog is unviewable in Mississippi, I figured what the hell, put them up for sale online as paper books and digital downloads! Mississippi lawmakers cannot stop you (yet)!

First: Xenogals! ($3 Ebook with transcript here; $5 paper comic here).

Rawlin spent 20 years eaten by a parasite god and 4 years coming back from it. But what does it mean to be a person again, to begin again? Who even is Rawlin now?

Mori, the resident godslaying monster dyke, doesn't know any more than Rawlin does... but she looks forward to finding out together. Herein:

Selves (re)discovery!
Smooching
Anatomy lessons!
FEELINGS!

32 pages, 5.5" x 8.5", black and white. Text-only transcript included for ebook.

Second: Quick'N'Dirty Plural History! ($10 ebook and subtitled vid here; $5 paper zine here) In 2020, an organizer for the Plural Positivity World Conference came up and said something along the lines of, “Hey, LB, wanna do something about plural history for our conference?” They said, “Sure, why not, how hard can that be?” and immediately learned the folly of their arrogance.

The paper listing is the zine only; Payhip (and itch.io) have both the hour-and-a-half long video (subtitled) made in 2020 and the 48-page zine. All of the content can be found for free elsewhere; this is just if you want to throw us some bucks for it. It’s intended as a brief, incomplete, inglorious history of just some of the people under the many-selved umbrella in America over the centuries: double/dual consciousness, multiple personality, dissociative identity disorder, soulbonders, empowered multiples, natural multiples, the genic slapfight, etc. It’s also meant to be a decent vaccination against bullshit and lies peddled by jerks!

I suppose if people really want the vid on DVD, I can make that happen? If you want that, let me know, and I can adapt things.

Third: Crisis Planning ($3 ebook here; $5 paper zine here). This is a compilation of all LB's crisis planning essays, intended for psychological crisis but also good for general purpose. You can read some of them free on the web, but this has them all in one place:

How to measure your level of distress (aka: how bad shit is)
How to ask for help (and who to ask)
How to make a pocket crisis plan zine
How to make a plan in case you get hit by a bus, put in a coma, and need your loved ones to manage your life affairs and make healthcare decisions without you
Medical and legal stuff, wills, and body donation stuff
How to pack a go-bag (and get the fuck out of there!)

Fourth: Headspace Essays ($3 ebook here; $5 paper zine here). Have you ever been enchanted by stories that focused on psychological or imaginative geography, such as American McGee’s Alice, Ib, Inception, Mentopolis, or Psychonauts? Have you ever wanted such a place for yourself, or just a bullet-proof means of entertaining yourself while waiting for the bus? Well, in this handy dandy zine, you can learn! Contains all our posted headspace essays... and Anatomy of a Dance, the final essay which has yet to be posted online! Ooh-la-la! 32 pages, 5.5" x 8.5", black and white.

Whew! Doing all this has made me realize that having to cover itch.io AND Payhip is really annoying, guys! Adding another store page really increases the work load. I may end up closing down the BigCartel page because Payhip has opened up to physical goods, but that is a problem for Future LB!

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The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft

The Hexologists and A tangle in Time

3.5/5. A pair of fantasy mysteries set in an industrializing city and featuring a married couple detective duo.

These are fun, a little briskly funny, and correctly not pretending to have any real there there. The mysteries are twisty, the world building is interesting, the jokes are decent, and the protagonists have an entertaining dynamic (she does the magic and most of the mystery solving, he does the cooking and carries her bag and occasionally punches someone).

I did get annoyed with the metronomically predictable action scenes, which arrive every few chapters whether they are needed or not. It has that vibe where the author doesn’t trust the reader to stay interested without some running about and shouting and getting into plot-irrelevant peril. I think he would be better served by putting just the tiniest scrap of there in here, problem solved.

Also, I think the villain in the second book is ( spoiler I guess ) but YMMV on that.

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adventures of genius cats

"Mother, this lap is defective. Fix it!"

So, the cats apparently adopt various roommates and their rooms so as to maintain somewhat separate territories. We (and our room) have been adopted by Tiptoe, a sixteen-year-old lady who meows like she smoked a pack every day of her nine lives.

( a picture of said cat, and a story of her terrible catstomer service experience )

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The Head of Empire (XV)

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

Current Mood: busy

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Birdfeeding

Today is mostly sunny, breezy, and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- We rolled up the hose.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I planted 10 'Spectrum Sweet Aroma' daffodils in the daffodil bed. I have at least 15 more to spread around.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I finished planting the rest of the daffodils under trees in the house yard.

EDIT 10/20/25 -- I planted 10 Pink Snow Crocus in the goddess garden.

As it is almost suppertime, I am done for the night.

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

shitposting: personal scariness rating of genius fictional characters

Look, my country is messed up so have some salutary shitposting while I attempt to cope with health/life/everything.

No particular order, define "best" as you please - I mean "somewhat plausible-sounding-ish and fun to read about."

Rated from VERY SCARY, Scary, unconcerned in terms of, hrm, threat level.

Baru Cormorant from Seth Dickinson's books: Scary.
High INT, low WIS. Scary, but doesn't achieve VERY SCARY due to too many emotional vulnerabilities.

Hanse Davion and Ulric Kerensky from BattleTech. I just don't want to be in the same universe they're scary. I'm MORE scared of Hanse Davion than Thrawn because I get the possibly illusory sense that Thrawn is civilized as a default and the vibe I get from Hanse Davion is that civilization, cruelty, courtesy are all just tools, he will do whatever it fucking takes to burn you to the ground if that's the way to win.

Hanse Davion: VERY SCARY
Ulric Kerensky: Scary, but also, clanner honor.

Ari I and II from CJ Cherryh's Cyteen: SCARIEST.
Justin: unconcerned, honestly, give him research funding and pizza and Grant and he's happy, he'll leave you be.

Conrad Mazian from Downbelow Station: Scary and they lucked out he was undone.

Flamme from Frieren: SCARIEST. I almost rate her

Scary not because she's not a terrifying genius but because she has ironclad ethics. Probably the single person on this list I'm MOST afraid of except she's also UNAMBIGUOUSLY GOOD. So she's a rarity: a female chessmaster (or anyway, they're incredibly rare in English-language USAn sf/f) and unambiguously a "good guy."

Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass: Scary. Possibly shading into SCARIEST if you add the mind control, but make Nunally cry and he segfaults.

Vladilena Milizé from 86, and how. Scary.

Thrawn: ???
Thrawn from Star Wars Extended Universe is frequently cited but I bought the Timothy Zahn book where he first? appears? extendedly? as a military? genius? for Kindle and I refuse to use Kindle anymore so I'm going to have to suck it up and buy a print copy if I can even remember the title. Anyway, I haven't read books with Thrawn doing stuff so I can't comment further.

Lord Vetinari from Terry Pratchett's Discworld: SCARIEST.
Doesn't generally come up in these discussions because bureaucracy is "boring" and Vetinari wasn't a main character in any of the Discworld books I read. (I binged them for a couple months twenty years ago, then never went back, sorry.) He's a fucking EFFECTIVE BUREAUCRAT. I don't mess with those.

Maomao from Apothecary Diaries. Unconcerned ONLY because she's easily bribed with bezoars. :3

Miles Vorkosigan: Scary.
Honestly one of the most plausible military geniuses BUT ALSO a disaster for all his subordinates. I don't want to be within a galaxy radius of him.

Hiruma from Eyeshield 21. Unconcerned mainly because I don't have ANY involvement in Japanese high school instantiations of American football and FORTUNATELY his domain of interest is VERY SPECIALIZED. :)

Both Seondeok and Misil from The Great Queen Seondeok: Scary to Unconcerned.

Laurent from C. S. Pacat's Captive Prince books. Unconcerned mainly because Good But Not Nice.

Red from The Blacklist: Scary by way of UNHINGED.

Lady Char from Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury: Scary. Sorry, I can't focus my eyes enough to dig her name out of the walls of text on various wikis. :]

Beth Harmon from The Queen's Gambit. So very unconcerned. I'm not a chess player. I don't have anything to worry about.

Ikari Gendou from Neon Genesis Evangelion: SCARIEST and also worst dad of the millennium.

Ted Lasso and Keely (sp?) from Ted Lasso: unconcerned, but could well become Scary in an AU. Somewhat uncommon double example of people who are brilliant socially AS WELL AS being good people; Ted Lasso or Keely with that skillset using their powers for EVIL would become horror rapidly.

Asshole Protagonists from K. J. Parker's books are generally Scary. Asshole Genius is pretty much the shtick.

That Guy from The Usual Suspects. Probably SCARIEST but I haven't watched that movie in two decades.

There are going to be comicverse examples that I'm just not familiar enough with to comment further. /o\ Or multiple characters from Re: Zero but thinking about details is too traumatic (complimentary).

Various ways to create drafts on Dreamwidth

Some suggestions for creating drafts on Dreamwidth from these two posts:

Creating a private community with all posts set to private — Essentially compartmentalizing drafts to one community that can be further organised with tags unique to the community. It also allows convenient full-text search of the whole community and for multiple users to create posts with limited access by changing the community's access filters.
Saving drafts as private posts in main journal — Centralises all posts, public and private to one space.
Creating one private post in main journal and store drafts in the post's comments — A way to further centralising draft posts to one link and great for conveniently drafting short posts.

📸: lunar eclipse :o

Posted by Sortition Social

https://mei.puppycat.house/visual#1c261f28

Entry syndicated from Puppycat House [feed link]

🗓️ 2025-09-07

✍️ lunar eclipse :o

📸 null undefined

See the rest of my pictures

https://mei.puppycat.house/visual#1c261f28

Entry tags:

weekly roundup

the 10-14 tuesdaypost: birth week post

listening:

fallow

reading:

re-read it's about the bones

more Blindsight! I'm about halfway through. it whips ass. I was expecting it to be kind of adventure/thriller-ish but it's definitely veering into horror in a way that's really fun.

watching:

for a little pre-birthday shindig I had some friends over and we watched Beetlejuice (planned) and The Dead Don't Die (unplanned)! former remains the cult classic it ever was, I haven't rewatched it since I was a kid so some of the jokes that didn't land then sure do land now. I have zero interest in watching the reboot, especially since according to wikipedia they are planning a Third One. jesus christ. anyways. latter movie was...fine......definitely not one I will ever really rewatch. the fourth wall breakage at the end made me roll my eyes back into my skull. it was fine. Tilda Swinton is really sexy

some mtg videos: Rhystic Studies The Molting House, There Are Skeletons Within Us, ; Vagabond Gallery The BODY HORROR of Phyrexia: All Will Be One
( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Birdfeeding

Today is mostly sunny, chilly, and breezy. It rained copiously yesterday, which should help restore water and make fall planting easier. Also while we were out at events, I saw a bald eagle. :D 3q3q3q!!! I hadn't seen any since spring, so that was exciting.

I fed the birds. I haven't seen any activity today.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I planted 7 'White Emperor" tulips in the purple-and-white garden.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I cleaned seeds from the butternut squash and set them to dry. I got a lot of seed from that one tiny squash, probably 2-3 packets worth.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I planted 6 'Decoy' daffodils in the daffodil bed. These are supposed to be white with red cups, and there was an extra in the bag.

EDIT 10/19/25 -- I planted 5 'Kiwi Sunset' daffodils in the daffodil bed. These are double daffodils with yellow petals and double orange-and-yellow pompom cups.

As it is almost suppertime, I am done for the night.

Entry tags:

The Head of Empire (XIV)

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Understanding Without Believing

(inspired by chatting with

frameacloud)

Rogan: So, those cursed tapes. I'm positive some of you are like, "Rogan, why are you doing this to yourself?" Well, for years, I've wanted to do a big thing on the whole ritual abuse/RAMCOA/OEA culture/identity and multi, because it's still relevant and important (and frankly scary). There were at least two plurals I considered friends once who went down that rabbit hole, with awful consequences, so it's personal. I want to understand what happened to them and why... and because I'd prefer to do it without rabbitholing myself, I turn to older records from the past.

( The importance of understanding without believing )

Current Mood: D:

Entry tags:

plural:memory wars

Tape Notes: "Treatment of Adult RA Survivors," with Een, Ray, and Dettling

Back from the con! It went well! We are very tired but want to upload the notes of Tape #2: "Treatment of Adult RA Survivors," from the 3rd Annual Orange County Conference on Multiple Personality and Dissociation, Hypnosis, and other Strategies, 1990. Hope y'all got your shit-wading boots!

( And the train leapt the track and charged off into the sunset, never to choo-choo again. Warnings for discussions of Satan, messed up therapy, conspiracy stuff. )

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: palace of heart's desire ~ martymcglovin

Entry tags:

faerie: behaviour

faerie funnies ~ jokes and lies

some fae can indeed lie , of course , and aversion is moreso ... well , take skill to play with words , and many fae appreciate that skill . to say blatantly false things , and not even have fun , that can really annoy . so if not life or death situation , much more fun to twist and turn until truths and secrets lead down completely wrong paths , not just point to wrong signpost , if that make sense .

anyway , kossai always kind of have tendency to point out when joke is joke , but recently realise that will often actively point out when joke specifically based on something that is not entirely true . can still lie and hold tongue to not reveal lie when necessary , not like total compulsion , just can not help but point out in jokes .

just think that is funny . possibly another pressure vent situation , really - if lie just for fun , have freedom to highlight and rattle on about why that was lie , so that able to hold together when lie is actually necessary . :P

example that bring this to mind , NSFW :

( Read more... )

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hxx: comics

a comic exists

Proof copies.

Candle Arc #1 comic proof copies

Meanwhile, I've obtained a secondhand wide-format color printer locally so we'll see how setup goes.

ETA: Wide-format printer (up to 13"x19") is go! (See comments for test printouts.) I'm currently (still) setting up via Ka-Blam + Indyplanet for print on demand because I refuse to deal with fulfillment because my health is f*cked, but for DIY home zines + comics for friends & family or or prototypes or for selling locally, this should be more than sufficient.

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Birdfeeding

Today is cloudy, mild, and damp. We got a cocktease drizzle of rain for about 2 minutes. :/

I fed the birds. I haven't seen any today though.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/18/25 -- It rained! :D It's been raining off and on for much of the day, so I won't need to water and will have an easier time planting the box of bulbs that arrived yesterday.

.

Metroid: Other M (Wii, 2010)

Posted by CHz

https://cohost.quiteajolt.com/2025/10/18/metroid-other-m-wii-2010/

https://cohost.quiteajolt.com/?p=2239

Entry syndicated from Alterna Citizen Program M-00: Init (System Noise) [feed link]

By Kuniaki Haishima, Sachiko Miyano

Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: YouTube, extracted audio

Credits

Audio Director: Ryo Koike
Sound Design: Takumi Saito, Michihiro Sato, Hiroyuki Akiyama, Makoto Hosoi, Shunichi Shigematsu

-Cinematic Team-
Music: Kuniaki Haishima
Sound Effects: Yukimura Yazawa (ALIVE Co.,Ltd.)
Sound Mixing: Kazumi Inamura

-Music-
Musical Performance: ARIGAT-ORCHESTRA (Tokyo Session), Asian Philharmonic Orchestra (Beijing Session)
Music Programming & Manipulation: Tadashi Yatabe
Orchestration & Arrangement: Sachiko Miyano
Recording & Mixing: Toru Okitsu
Music Preparation: Yoshiko Uchida
Sound Coordinator: Tsutomu Satomi
Recording Studio: AVACO CREATIVE STUDIO (Tokyo)
Mixing Studio: e-mixing (Tokyo)
Beijing Session Coordinator: Yuesong Li (Hear Heart Studio)
Translation: Yan Fung

-Sound Effects-
Sound Mixing: Hirokazu Kawamoto (ALIVE CO.,Ltd.)
Sound Design: Takashi Kaneko, Shunpei Arai, Kota Matsubara

Info

Other M is one of the three Metroid games I haven’t actually played, along with Pinball and Federation Force; the instant terrible reputation it got somewhat deprioritized it for me and I never got around to picking it up, and Wii emulation is somewhat problematic for my computer so I’ve never played it in that way. And since the composer was Kuniaki Haishima, a non-Nintendo composer I was unfamiliar with until right now, I never bothered to listen to its soundtrack either.

The Metroid series has had a bit of a space horror cinematic bent in it from the start—the original game was pretty heavily inspired by the movie Alien—and Other M is the game that tries the hardest to be a space horror flick in its plot, characters, and cinematics, so of all the games in the series, it makes a lot of sense that this is the one they got movie dude Haishima to score. This is a much more orchestral score than Forbidden Siren 2, featuring live performances in a lot of the tracks, and the orchestrations and some amount of arrangement therein were done by his primary orchestrator over the years, Sachiko Miyano.

You can divide the soundtrack up into four major parts by in-game usage, which also ends up grouping the tracks stylistically:

The area themes are generally synthy dark ambient with some incorporation of orchestra, similar to Forbidden Siren 2 but a little less unhinged (… more hinged?) in their composition and sound design.
The boss themes are generally in a more stock action horror orchestral style with plenty of odd time and scary stabs and wailing, often mixed with clanking metallic percussion and electronics.
The prerendered cutscene music, which unfortunately is mixed with sound effects and voices in the movie files and so can’t really be listened to cleanly, is understandably the most “film score” section of the soundtrack with a lot of cinema-style underscoring, though there’s electronic and action music mixed in too.
The realtime cutscene music, which tends to be synthy dark ambient like the area themes but sometimes more driving or otherwise narrative-feeling (well duh), though there are some boss theme segments and variations mixed in there too for cutscenes around boss battles.

So the end result is that this a little more normal-sounding soundtrack than Forbidden Siren 2’s, a little less strange and hostile, but I think there’s still a good amount of interesting music here; Haishima definitely had room to flex with sound design in the area themes and weird tonal shit in the boss themes and so on. This is honestly probably a top 5 Metroid soundtrack for me now, it’s pretty nice!

A really interesting and surprising thing about this soundtrack is that a lot of the composition and electronic sound production is a bit reminiscent of Dread’s soundtrack, which was done 11 years later by actual Nintendo staff. It makes me really curious about to what extent this kind of stuff was already formalized by Nintendo internally and provided to Haishima as part of a reference package… and also to what extent Sayako Doi and especially Soshi Abe might just be directly influenced by Haishima.

Recommended tracks:

“Title” is one of a small number of series remixes in the game and I felt like I should include one, this is a more sound design-y version of the original Metroid title theme without ever getting to the main melody (good)
“New Mission” is one of a few area themes that sound like they’re intentionally trying to use some Prime-style instrumentation, though there are still Haishima-style random noises occurring throughout
“Bio Sphere Experimental Floor” compositionally reminds me of “Waterfall” from Super Castlevania IV with its repeated figures and chime melodic fragment that comes in at 0:50
“Looking for Madeline Bergman” is one of the more driving cutscene tracks, feels a bit like tense VN music at times
“Vs. Space Pirates” was the battle track that reminded me most of Metroid Dread’s boss themes
“Sector 2 (North)” has a really nice crunchy sound in it at 0:26
“The Burning Lava Fish” is a bit Rite of Spring-ish and I’ll always be a sucker for boss themes that crib off that
“Vs. Desbrachian” is one of the more electronic boss themes, it feels like Drakengard but EDM
“Staff Roll” is the one movie track that exists cleanly, it’s not a bad orchestral piece honestly

(track titles are unofficial except for “The Burning Lava Fish”)

https://cohost.quiteajolt.com/2025/10/18/metroid-other-m-wii-2010/

https://cohost.quiteajolt.com/?p=2239