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playing games

avowed

Since I end up not posting about gameplay-completed computer games because I rarely approximate "completion," let's try a slice of one while I'm definitely not finished with it.

Avowed (Win/Steam, 2025) is a fantasy RPG evocative of the Elder Scrolls titles. It is surprisingly and rather thoughtfully accessible. Though it's very pretty, one may play it on a sturdy older machine without much framerate stuttering.

(Already we have footnotes! In reverse order: my venerable laptop has 32 GB of RAM. Many reviewers cite Oblivion, ES 4, but then they reveal they're too young to've met ES 3 = Morrowind, which I'd argue has the more meaningful callbacks. Apparently, Avowed shares a setting with Pillars of Eternity, which I haven't played and which the wiki summary links to Planescape: Torment.)

Alongside the planned-out accessibility, Avowed breadcrumbs its worldbuilding thoughtfully, too, as a former Polygon journalist explains in deliberately spoiling an early sidequest for analytical purposes. If you're very picky about spoilers: some quick, unremarked-upon visuals in the 10-min clip are from farther into the game, and they're too short to affect any playthrough realizations. (RIP Polygon, sold and many of its writers laid off since that clip was released.)

Further remarks on Avowed's gameplay have been shelved because of hand pain, the one thing so far that can keep my posts fairly short. Morrowind was a good friend 20+ years ago, and it's mostly pleasant for me to wander around Avowed. I'm so glad it doesn't require the use of a game controller.

For anyone Elder Scrolls-curious, see Walker's quick guide at Kotaku to getting Morrowind running nowadays, and a similar guide for Daggerfall (ES 2). And of all the Oblivion-rememberings I've read lately, I'd suggest The Guardian's as the most readable---just the first chunk of the linked page---although MacDonald and I disagree on playability and enjoyment.

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Two Weilan fics for Unsent Letters Exchange

I picked up a Guardian pinch hit for

unsent_letters_exchange. I had two ideas for it, so when reveals were delayed, I wrote the other one as a treat. The first is set over three successive nights before and during the Hanga arc, and the second one is established relationship, with Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei passing notes during a state meeting in Dixing, in handwavy everyone-lives post-canon.

Title: a pocketful of change (4771 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Set before and during the Hanga arc (episodes 9 to 11), unsent letter, Pre-Relationship, Mutual Pining, SID politics, Epistolatory format: Letter

Summary: Lost in the past, Shen Wei shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. His fingers met small hard balls on smooth sticks and recognised them instantly. Heart clenching, he withdrew the pocket’s entire contents: three lollipops, a little ziplock bag filled with dried fish, and a wad of pages torn from a notebook and roughly folded. The outside of the paper was unmarked, but its surface texture bore evidence of the handwriting within.

He was still wearing Zhao Yunlan’s jacket. Whatever was written on these pages wasn’t meant for his eyes.

Title: A Passing Grade in Diplomacy (4062 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Politics, meetings, Established Relationship, Banter, passing notes, Warning: internalised slut-shaming, just briefly tho

Summary: Next time, bring lollipops! Zhao Yunlan jotted in a spare corner of his page. He underlined it twice and went back to doodling more leaves on his tree, which was bushy and verdant like the new plantings in the streets near the Dragon Gate. He was experimenting with vines and curling tendrils when characters appeared out of nowhere, beneath his reminder.

Check your right-hand jacket pocket.

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Unsent letters fic (more Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan)

I picked up a Guardian pinch hit for

facethestrange in

unsent_letters_exchange. I had two ideas for it, so when reveals were delayed, I wrote the other one as a treat. And then reveals were delayed again, so I ended up doing my compulsive last-minute checks while also trying to finish my 520 Day fics, lol.

Anyway, the first of these is set over three successive nights before and during the Hanga arc, and the second one is established relationship, with Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei passing notes during a state meeting in Dixing, in handwavy everyone-lives post-canon.

Title: a pocketful of change (4771 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Set before and during the Hanga arc (episodes 9 to 11), unsent letter, Pre-Relationship, Mutual Pining, SID politics, Epistolatory format: Letter

Summary: Lost in the past, Shen Wei shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. His fingers met small hard balls on smooth sticks and recognised them instantly. Heart clenching, he withdrew the pocket’s entire contents: three lollipops, a little ziplock bag filled with dried fish, and a wad of pages torn from a notebook and roughly folded. The outside of the paper was unmarked, but its surface texture bore evidence of the handwriting within.

He was still wearing Zhao Yunlan’s jacket. Whatever was written on these pages wasn’t meant for his eyes.

Title: A Passing Grade in Diplomacy (4062 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Politics, meetings, Established Relationship, Banter, passing notes, Warning: internalised slut-shaming, just briefly tho

Summary: Next time, bring lollipops! Zhao Yunlan jotted in a spare corner of his page. He underlined it twice and went back to doodling more leaves on his tree, which was bushy and verdant like the new plantings in the streets near the Dragon Gate. He was experimenting with vines and curling tendrils when characters appeared out of nowhere, beneath his reminder.

Check your right-hand jacket pocket.

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Murderbot TV episode 3

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.

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on pain of pain

today in idle reading about pain

Pain associated with sensory hypersensitivity, e.g. light and sound: is this primarily nociceptive (i.e. nociceptors are firing at a lower threshold) or a feature of central processing (i.e. brain goes "NOPE DON'T LIKE THAT" about stimuli the peripheral nervous system isn't reporting as Harmful)? Or, slightly more comprehensibly to people who are not currently spending lots of time thinking about this particular niche area, when normal light levels cause me pain, is that the nerves that go "YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE SUN AND IT'S A BAD IDEA STOP THAT RIGHT NOW" that are initiating those signals, or a... central... processing... issue... yeah okay maybe I should go to bed instead of trying to words this. BUT a quick shakedown of the internet revealed it's only in the last decade or so that nociceptive signalling relating to Loud Noise Bad has been demonstrated so that's cool.

I'll go to Goodwill for you anytime!!

When I took Dixie's sweater to her this morning, she kept saying 'let me pay you' and I said 'no no no' I told her I'd rather have her in my debt. She did give me a whole pile of adorable buttons - buttons like for kids' stuff - little toys and animals - really cute ones. As I was leaving she was still trying to pay me.

Cut to just now - 4 pm - here comes Dixie with a big bag.

Fridays after lunch there is a knitting group who meets. I went once. It was enough. But, apparently, she took her sweater to the knitting group to unravel and got a bunch of helpers! So smart. She took a bunch for her project and brought me the rest - a bag full - already mostly unraveled!!

Perfect doll hair. I told her that I'll go to Goodwill for her anytime.

New dog at the ranch

This is Teddy:

He was picked up off the road and obviously had been there for a bit. He's got parasites and probably heartworms and who knows what else. He's also not yet nutered yet. But he is sweet and SO happy to be at the Ranch.

He's obviously been in a fight likely with a racoon or something like that. Muzzle and paws scared up by small teeth.

But he's fairly young and got lots of energy so he should be OK. The next most recent dog, Babs, is doing well. She came to the Ranch in about the same condition not too long ago and is getting better every day.

And, just to end on a better thought:

The inscrutible Khaleesi says hello.

I broke my rule

Dixie said she went to Value Village (the local reuse shop) and they only had about 3 sweaters and none were the right color. It's so not the right time of year for sweaters.

But, I had been wanting to check out the Goodwill in Redmond and ... why not now? So I just grabbed my keys and went. Stopped to get Biggie's drugs first. They had them ready this time and charged me more :( but stil l way cheaper than another surgery!

It was morning rush hour so Google took me the back way to Redmond and it was a beautiful drive. I mean really spectacularly, if-I-didn't-live-here-I'd-move-tomorrow beautiful. Lush green tree canopy over the road and nearly no traffic. The Redmond store is easy to get to with good, easy parking. It's big and bright and well organized. Probably about half the size of the Seattle store, maybe less. But lovely and well staffed. I found way too many clothes. I do not need clothes. I bought them anyway. Now I have to go to the storage area and get more hangers. I promised I would not do that. I am such a liar.

The clothes are in the wash now.

But, more importantly, I found Dixie's perfect sweater. Exactly the right color and a good size of yarn for kinky unraveling. I took it to her when I got back. She had left me some buttons in my mail room cubby and I picked those up and they are DARLING. Little toy's and shapes. And there are a bunch of them.

The woman at the title company who calls me from a different phone every time and rarely to tell me anything new, called again today from still another number to tell me exactly what she told me in her reply to my email earlier in the week. I asked her to quit calling. And to please communicate via email. And so she sent me an email saying the notary would be scheduled for Tuesday morning at 10. Then the notary sent me an email saying she's coming Tuesday at 10. Wonder when the signing will be?? I'm thinking maybe Tuesday at 10.

How glad will I be when all this shit is over? Very.

I did not get to the grocery. Maybe tomorrow. I would like some ice cream but I can get some down at the Bistro.

Now I'd better go get those hangers.

Entry tags:

perfect ten

Easy Grease

I think the most hashtag dadcore thing I've done lately is

dig through all the pressured cans of spray we keep under a counter next to the washing machine
to find something lubricating to put on the lawn mower
because I haven't used it since last year so the axle was stuck solid
spraying the stuff on said axle
wondering "is it supposed to look like that?"
and rubbing it in (really just steering it where it's supposed to go)
while trying to read the back of the can to see if I should be touching this stuff with my skin

I'm fine, it's fine. (It did say to use it in a ventilated area and I had that sorted by being outside.)

By the time I came back in from mowing the lawn, I'd recently washed my hands like three times but my fingers still smelled like a synthetic lubricant and freshly-cut grass.

A combination of delightful smells if you ask me.

Current Mood: awake

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Pimp: Rhythm Heaven by torchicwpip (Welkamo)

(Ignore the fact that I only submitted one prompt for this series and then forgot to do more before the deadline whoops)

Rhythm Heaven is a series of rhythm games published by Nintendo. If you know the Warioware series, it’s kind of like that: a bunch of wacky minigames where you hit the buttons (or the stylus, depending on the game) to the rhythm of the music. But what kind of minigames can you expect? Well, we’ve got:

- A monkey and a mandrill (his name is Mandrill) coach you in golf
- You, an astronaut, must translate a Martian’s message to the people of Earth
- You, a Martian, must translate a farmer’s tinder profile to the Martians back on base
- You are a little seal that must step and roll
- Tap dancing with monkeys!
- a watch operated by high-fiving monkeys (this is a great game for people who like monkeys)
- ping pong in space!
- baseball in space!
- a guy who has been stuck in the basement until he masters karate (in French it’s been 55 years)

You can earn little tidbits of lore for doing well in minigames, in the form of Reading Material and Rhythm Items (the latter is a Megamix-exclusive). But the fandom also makes a lot of their own headcanons, lore, and ships!

As of writing this, there are four games in the series: the original game for the Game Boy Advance (known in the fandom as Rhythm Tengoku, as it was never localized outside of Japan, and Rhythm Heaven Silver, named after a popular fan translation), Rhythm Heaven for the DS, Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Wii, and Rhythm Heaven Megamix for the 3DS.

The downside is that the physical copies of the games are notoriously difficult to get nowadays. Luckily, it’s very easy to hack your 3DS (for legal reasons I cannot confirm nor deny that I have homebrewed at least 3 game systems).

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20 + 7 icons for retro_icontest

Ooof, I picked the by far most time-consuming challenge from

somein30 for our current

retro_icontest round: All Things Random! I regret nothing! :D First I had to create all the randomized sets for the 13 people who signed up (7 of them entered sets, that's a great turnout!), and then I had to make my own set, and some of those prompts were *hard*!

This is the fourth time I've done this, the previous times are here and here and here.

Teasers:
Praise: texture in hair | HPI

( Here are all 20 icons without comments )

And then here's the same thing again (in a different order!) with prompts and inspirations and my comments:

( annotated table )

Comments are love - and concrit, too. <3 Take and use as many icons as you like, credit is appreciated. Texture and brush makers: here in my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Birdfeeding

Today is partly sunny and mild. It rained a little yesterday.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a catbird, a blackbird, a blue jay, a young fox squirrel on the hopper feeder, and an adult fox squirrel running through the trees.

I put out water for the birds.

I set out the flats of pots and watered them.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I pulled grass from inside the septic garden.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I pulled more grass from inside the septic garden. I discovered that a few gladioli are still surviving there.

Also there are mosquito larvae in the trough pond on the old picnic table, so I need to get some mosquito dunks for that. :/

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I pulled more grass from inside the septic garden.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I pulled more grass from inside the septic garden.

I've seen two fox squirrels in the forest garden.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I potted up a purple-and-yellow torenia, a yellow portulaca, two yellow snapdragons, and two white lobelias in a big clay pot on the patio.

I've seen a female cardinal.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I potted up crosne knotroots in one of the big taupe pots that I put on the north side of the new picnic table. I have 2 of those pots left to fill.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I filled the last two of the big taupe pots with half composted manure and half potting soil. I sowed one with ground cherry seeds from Pinetree Garden Seeds, which emptied that packet; it didn't come with a lot of seeds in it. I sowed the other pot with goldenberry seeds from John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds, which still has plenty left.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- I potted up a purple-and-white picotee petunia, a purple-and-white striped 'Wave' petunia, a 'Dusty Miller' artemesia, and two white lobelias in a clay pot on the patio. I also added a 'Dusty Miller' artemesia to the pot of yellow flowers from earlier.

I've seen a skunk on the patio.

EDIT 5/23/25 -- We picked up 2 bags of potting soil, 2 bags of composted manure, new grass shears, and a package of mosquito dunks. I put one of the dunks into the trough pond.

I watered the newly planted things.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Entry tags:

Book Review Poll

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

Poll #33152

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 108

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.
10 (9.3%)

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty. The rollicking adventures of a middle-aged mom PIRATE in fantasy medieval Middle East.
56 (51.9%)

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.
16 (14.8%)

Sisters of the Vast Black, by Nina Rather. SPACE NUNS aboard a GIANT SPACE SEA SLUG.
39 (36.1%)

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.
12 (11.1%)

Under One Banner, by Graydon Saunders. Commonweal # 4!
17 (15.7%)

Archangel (etc), by Sharon Shinn. Lost colony romantic SF about genetically engineered angels.
21 (19.4%)

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton. Historical murder mystery with time loops and body switching.
24 (22.2%)

Irontown Blues, by John Varley. Faux-noir SF with an intelligent dog.
7 (6.5%)

Blood Over Bright Haven, by M. L. Wang. Standalone fantasy that kind of looks like romantast but isn't, with anvillicious anti-colonial themes.
13 (12.0%)

An Immense World, by Ed Yong. Outstanding nonfiction about how animals sense the world.
35 (32.4%)

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!
31 (28.7%)

Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman. World's greatest D&D campaign in a truly fucked world.
18 (16.7%)

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

The Octopus's Dilemma

Our clients, the crime-writers' collective Murder Squad, have just celebrated their 25th anniversary - and they celebrated by holding a short story competition.

Th winner, The Octopus's Dilemma by Karen Lynn Haberman, is set in Monterey Aquarium. Part of the prize is publication on the Murder Squad website, so if you are intrigued, you can read it there.

I have good memories of our visit to the Monterey Aquarium: but I did not think I had any photographs of octopus. This is almost the case -

( - almost... )

Current Music: Max Pizzolante: La gente quiere calle

Entry tags:

acorn bread and açaí

acorn bread

The leftover acorn meal I had in my fridge had gone moldy! Ah well. Fortunately I had acorns left over from last time, so I ground those up, leached them, dried them, and yesterday made a loaf of ... well it's mainly white bread--three cups white flour--but also a cup of acorn meal. So I am going to call it acorn bread, the same way you call a thing banana bread even though it's not mainly bananas.

Behold its majesty!

I still have leftover meal from this batch of acorns, but I will not make the same mistake twice by letting it linger. I intend to make acorn pancakes, or perhaps I'll use it to make some kind of meatballs or fish cakes.

Açaí

Or asaí, as they spell in in Colombia. We in America use the Brazilian (i.e., Portuguese) spelling. In Tikuna it's waira.

Açaí juice (wairachiim) is so beloved in the Amazon. And with reason--it's GREAT. Drink it sweetened, and with fariña, and it's a real pick-me-up:

The Açaí palms are very tall and very skinny. Traditionally, harvesting the berries involves a not-very-heavy person shimmying up the palm with a knife and cutting off the bunches of berries, as in the YouTube short below. (I say traditionally because in some parts of Brazil I think there are now large plantations, and they may have a mechanized way of doing this. But still--I gather--many many people do it the unmechanized way.)

The video specifies Brazil, but it'll be true anywhere that açai grows

My tutor's dad does this. Here's a picture not of her dad but of her boyfriend with a bunch of berries--gives a sense of how big they are:

And the process of making the juice is really labor intensive too. Here's my tutor's mom pounding it. You add water as you go along:

This year the river has really risen high, and in talking about it, my tutor said her dad had been able to go out in canoe and collect the asaí really easily. And I was thinking... wait... you mean the river's risen so high that he's up near the top of the trees? Is that what she's telling me?

I wasn't sure, so I did this picture in MS word (b/c I have no digital drawing tools) and sent it to her and asked, You mean like this?

And she said, "Yes, exactly."

Mind = blown.

A memoir

“A tree’s wood is also its memoir.”

— Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl, an award-winning scientific memoir about her work in botany.

Entry tags:

Murderbot 1.03 + links

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

Can we do this everywhere?

I'm watching a French Open qualifier and was watching for 10 or so minutes before I realized that there were no commentators. Everything else is exactly the same but with zero babble. It is so blissful.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Josh Garrels - Bread & Wine

Entry tags:

Bread & Wine

There's some things we can’t live without
A man’s so prone to doubt
Faithful are the wounds of friends
So give it just a little time
Share some bread and wine
Weave your heart into mine
My friend ... come on let’s talk a while...

Current Location: Ташкент, Узбекистан

Entry tags:

поэтическое

Белый город

Утро.
Солнце встаёт, освещая пустые безлюдные улицы.
Город просыпается.
Город зовёт меня выйти наружу из моего маленького комфортного привычного мирка навстречу новому дню.
И я выхожу.

Сегодня у меня нет маршрута, нет плана, нет цели.
Я просто брожу средь его белых стен, находя будто бы случайные подсказки, намёки, ориентиры, оставляемые мне Городом.
Город ведёт меня одному ему ведомым маршрутом, время от времени приводя в странные незнакомые места, раскрывая мне свои тайны.
Иногда он позволяет мне заблудиться в хитросплетениях его переулков, но каждый раз находит способ подсказать верное направление.

Вечер.
По тёмным улицам, освещаемым остатками вечерней зари, я возвращаюсь в свой дом, в свой мир.
Я иду мимо тысяч таких же домов, в каждом из которых притаился свой собственный мир.
Все они составляют душу Города.

Сегодня Город показал мне рыжего кота на широком подоконнике, окунул в аромат цветущей сирени, вывел к маленькому кафе на старой улице, где бариста поведал мне секрет южной ночи. Потом я нашёл странный заросший двор, в котором незнакомец в сером плаще рассказал, как когда-то на этих самых улицах повстречал свою любовь.

Под тёмным южным небом, сотканным из звёзд и черноты, я возвращаюсь домой, чтобы записать всё увиденное и успеть посмотреть сны прежде, чем наступит новый день, и Город вновь пригласит меня в путешествие.

Первоначально опубликовано здесь.