sholio: murderbot group from episode 10 (Murderbot-famiily1)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-07-26 01:48 pm
Entry tags:

A few Murderbot things

I really enjoyed this David Dastmalchian interview and also this adorable associated piece of fanart from the part of the interview in which he basically starts channeling Gurathin.

And some of my stuff on Tumblr:

Something I noticed rewatching the first episode

Random thought on bookverse!Gurathin

Oh, and I posted another fic a few days ago, Old Familiar Sting, which is pretty much all about characters working through the aftermath of Corporation Rim medical trauma.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-07-26 04:07 pm

Reforming the WSFS committee elections

The quoted material below is quoted material.

I wrote in 2022 that the election system used by WSFS should be changed. At present, the rules for electing the Mark Protection Committee, the body charged with ensuring that the intellectual property of WSFS is protected, are set out in Standing Rule 6.2:

Voting shall be by written preferential ballot with write-in votes allowed. Votes for write-in candidates who do not submit written consent to nomination to the Presiding Officer before the close of balloting shall be ignored. The ballot shall list each nominee’s name. The first seat filled shall be by normal preferential ballot procedures as defined in Section 6.4 of the WSFS Constitution. There shall be no run-off candidate. After a seat is filled, votes for the elected member shall be eliminated before conducting the next ballot. This procedure shall continue until all seats are filled. In the event of a first-place tie for any seat, the tie shall be broken unless all tied candidates can be elected simultaneously. Should there be any partial-term vacancies on the committee, the partial-term seat(s) shall be filled after the full-term seats have been filled.

I warned that this carries the risk that a single faction with roughly half of the total votes could win every single seat and squeeze out other viewpoints.

My warning has come dramatically true.
brithistorian: (Default)
brithistorian ([personal profile] brithistorian) wrote2025-07-26 02:36 pm
Entry tags:

Not so anonymous as they might have thought

I read a news article today "K-pop trainee ordered to pay damages after tattoo and dorm exit led to canceled debut". In the article, the trainee was referred to as A, in an effort to protect their privacy — they even used "they/them" pronouns throughout, thinking that concealing their gender might have further helped in concealing their identity. However, they referenced the company involved by name and gave the debut date of the group that A didn't debut with, which meant that 30 seconds at the Kpop Wiki was enough for me to find A's identity. Definitely sub-optimal anonymization.

I'm also not too keen on the headline. To me "canceled debut" sounds like the group that A was to have been in didn't debut, but instead it was just that A didn't get to debut with the group.

Also, if you're curious, according to the contract, the damages in question should have been 60 million won (approx. US$43K) for 2 violations for contract terms (once for leaving the dorm without permission, once for getting a tattoo without permission). For some reason, though, the company sued A for 80 million won (approx. US$58K). The judge ruled that this amount was excessive and ordered A to pay 5 million won (approx. $US3600). The agency is appealing the ruling, though, which just has me eye-rolling. (It seems significant to me, though I don't know if a court would feel this way, that the group that A was prevented from debuting with has already disbanded.)

fennectik: Anime (Anime)
fennectik ([personal profile] fennectik) wrote in [community profile] anime_manga2025-07-26 02:27 pm

Watched 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.

mxcatmoon: seagull in sky with moon (Default)
My Fannish Corner ([personal profile] mxcatmoon) wrote2025-07-26 03:10 pm
Entry tags:

Trying to hold onto a shred of hope

Short update: I'm even more depressed and anxious. I have reason to be. 

ExpandDepressing politics under the cut )
case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2025-07-26 02:53 pm

[ SECRET POST #6777 ]


⌈ Secret Post #6777 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.


ExpandMore! )


Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 37 secrets from Secret Submission Post #970.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2025-07-26 02:45 pm

[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #971 ]

[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #971 ]




The first secret from this batch will be posted on August 2nd.



RULES:
1. One secret link per comment.
2. 750x750 px or smaller.
3. Link directly to the image.

More details on how to send a secret in!

Optional: If you would like your secret's fandom to be noted in the main post along with the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. If your secret makes the fandom obvious, there's no need to do this. If your fandom is obscure, you should probably tell me what it is.

Optional #2: If you would like WARNINGS (such as spoilers or common triggers -- list of some common ones here) to be noted in the main post before the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret.

Optional #3: If you would like a transcript to be posted along with your secret, put it along with the link in the comment!

ldybastet: Renji from Bleach with hair fanned out around head (Renji - hair spread)
ldybastet ([personal profile] ldybastet) wrote in [community profile] anime_manga2025-07-26 08:13 pm

'Tis But A Flesh Wound [Renji+Shuuhei, implied Renji/Byakuya; G]

Title: 'Tis But A Flesh Wound
Fandom/Pairing: Bleach - implied Renji/Byakuya
Summary: Even when he's injured, Renji wants to be by Byakuya's side...
Rating: G
Content: Unrequited crush, hurt/comfort
Disclaimer: The world and characters of Bleach are not mine, they all belong to Kubo Tite. I just play with them, using them as paper dolls.
Notes: 300+ words. Written for the prompt denial. Just a little something I wrote to try to break through a spot of writer's block. It somehow turned out to be a sequel to "Hero Complex". Many thanks to [personal profile] zabimitsuki for beta-reading this for me! :)

Read it here: DW | AO3
iamrman: (Nightbutt)
iamrman ([personal profile] iamrman) wrote in [community profile] scans_daily2025-07-26 06:37 pm

Teen Titans #3

Writer and pencils: Dan Jurgens

Inks: George Perez


Cor blimey, m'ducks. The Mad Mod is back!


ExpandRead more... )

jazzyjj ([personal profile] jazzyjj) wrote in [community profile] awesomeers2025-07-26 12:35 pm
Entry tags:

Just one thing: 27 July 2025

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!
selenak: (Livia by Pixelbee)
selenak ([personal profile] selenak) wrote2025-07-26 06:48 pm
Entry tags:

A birthday, and: Caligula

The awesome Helen Mirren turns 80 today. Long may she continue to rule and remain with us! I think the first thing I remember watching with her that made me sit up and pay attention was her as D.I. Jane Tennison, but since then she's never disappointed in any role I've seen her in, both before and after Tennison. I have a particular soft spot for her Elizabeth II and Alma Reville, I must confess. Most recently I took up someone's dare and watched "Caligula - The Ultimate Cut". Caligula, if you don't know: Became (in)famous as basically a late 1970s porn movie with famous actors (among others Peter O'Toole as Tiberius, John Guilgud as Nerva, Malcolm McDowell in the title role, Helen Mirren as Caesonia, Caligula's last wife) due to the fact that even for a 1970s movie, it had a crazy production history: first the scriptwriter - none other than Gore Vidal - and the director, Tito Brassi, fell out and Vidal withdrew his name from the script, then the director and the producer fell out, and since the producer was the then owner of Penthouse, he went back to the set with some Penthouse girls, shot some hardcore porn and inserted into the already shot footage. The example most quoted for how this worked was that where the scene had a non-explicit threesome between Caligula, his sister Drusilla and Caesonia, the released version added two other women spying on them and having very explicit hardcore f/f sex while doing so. This caused the director to withdraw his name as well and the actors making somewhat embarrassed quips for the next few decades (other than MacDowell, who was seriously pissed off about the then result, and Mirren, who was debonair about it and called it "an irresistable mixture of art and genitals"). Then in 2024, a dedicated film fan named Thomas Negovan released the result of some serious work - he'd gotten access to all the shot footage, and recut the entire movie, going back to Vidal's script and using exclusively takes not used for the late 1970s release (and none at all from the porn additions, not that the actual movie is without sex scenes, au contraire), with the result that a pleased McDowell praised him for rescueing "one of my best performances" from cinematic oblivion. Reviews I had read did concede that now there is an actual storyline and (some) character development. (A scene in question singled out and compared/contrasted: apparantly, the original cinematic release version had Caligula simply shouting crazily "crawl, crawl!" at the senators, who did it. The Ultimate Cut version, by contrast, has this scene near the end, with some overtones of Camus as Caligula has long gone from delight to disgust at how no matter what he does, people will obey and abase themselves, and the longer version of this scene has him asking for increasingly outrageous things, cultimating in the "crawl, crawl" and the declaration he hates them for being like that. (Mind you, earlier in the movie when one brave young man did stand up for himself, this resulted in Caligula interrupting the guy's wedding night to rape him and his bride both.)

In case you're wondering whether the result is worth watching: depends. Certainly as opposed to, say, I, Claudius' Caligula (and his avatar in Babylon 5, Cartagia), who are evil from the get go - in the case of Graves' Caligula literally from birth, he's already a creepy kid when his parents are stil alive - the Ultimate Cut's Caligula has some humanity in him and the introduction sequence makes a point of providing the audience with the backstory of his father Germanicus dying (in this version definitely courtesy of Tiberius), then Agrippina the Elder and Caligula's older brothers all at Tiberius' orders (unlike the death of Germanicus, this is not disputed), with Caligula and his sister Drusilla as the sole survivors (because in this movie, Caligula's other sisters don't exist, though I'm told the porn version actually identifies one of the women having the hardcore f/f as Agrippina, but as the on screen dialogue makes much of Drusilla and Caligula being the sole survivors, I assume in the porn version's Agrippina the Younger would not have been Caligula's and Drusilla's sister), and their incestuous relationship actually one of the very few human, non-abusive and tender relationships happening in the entire movie, with Caligula having the not unreasonable under the circumstances belief that he needs to be Emperor or he's toast as well, only for absolute power to bring out increasingly the absolute worst in him. Buuuuuuuut this existing personal development does not correspond with a general development, by which I mean that since the movie after the introduction with its tragic backstory for young Caligula and the introduction in which he and Drusilla are in a "we two against the world" mode as each other's sole sources of human affection goes on to present Tiberius' life in Capri as a non-stop orgy already, there's no sense that Rome itself pre Caligula is much different than Rome ruled by Caligula. (Incidentally, about the orgy there and the later orgies, which I assume were shot by the original director, since they're certainly rating M or 18, so to speak, but don't have the actors with dialogue do something more explicit than touch someone's nipples, they're the opposite of tiltillating in that no one gives the impression of actually enjoying themselves as opposed to acting on first Tiberius' and later Caligula's orders. The sole exceptions being the scenes involving Caligula, Drusilla and Caesonia.) The Capri sequence does have a moment that gets across human emotion, which is the Nerva scene they hired Guilgud for: this Nerva isn't the later Emperor; he's an old friend of Tiberius who tells his former pal he can't bear the degredation his once friend has sunk to anymore and commits suicide, and Tiberius' reaction to this is when O'Toole actually gets to do some non-hamming-it-up acting. But mostly it numbs you down in its viciousness and it pretty much sets the tone for the film.

Some of the violence is outré and camp, such as the machine decapitating people in the arena who are buried up to their necks in sand, and thus hard to take seriously; otoh the whole Caligula first menaces and then rapes the young couple sequence is violence of a very different type, and genuinely frightening. Drusilla and Caesonia are the two outstanding female roles (and the sole women with personalities); it's another interesting contrast to the I, Claudius versions, in that Drusilla there was a none-too-bright but not personally malicious ditz, whereas here she's depicted as not without her own ruthlessness (she talks Caligula into getting rid of Macro, for example), but also smart and (within this movieverse) sensible, and later the sole person with the courage to argue with Caligula; it's her death (by illness) that removes whatever restraint he has left. Caesonia, too, is depicted as a smart woman (described in dialogue as profligate, but we don't see her having sex with anyone other than Caligula, and in the one threesome scene with Drusilla); Mirren gets hardly any lines in the first half of the movie when Drusilla is still alive but conveys a lot with facial acting, and then in the second half (when she is the character he has most dialogues with) basically becomes the sole person a) aware why Caligula is actually doing all of this ("Do you have to show them your contempt so openly?" "I don't know how else to provoke them"), and b) who among the various sycophants around them still has it in them to be dangerous. As opposed to Drusilla, she doesn't argue with Caligula directly, but she is great at keeping the balance between presenting her critique in a playfull manner and challenging him but withdrawing the moment she senses it could go against her and distracting any ire to another target while returning to her subject in a different way. It's a good role for a young Helen Mirren; this Caesonia is neither a good person nor an evil overlady but a cunning survivor (right until she gets murdered directly after Caligula, that is).

Around these interesting character depictions, however, is, as mentioned above, non-stop viciousness (some sexual, some not) to a degree that it just numbs you down emotionally. In a word: Grimdark. I've said elsewhere that the reason why I, Claudius works in a way many of its imitations didn't is that I, Claudius doesn't just consist of its spectacular villains (be they Livia or Caligula, the two main antagonists, or Sejanus), but offers a sympathetic main character and some other non-evil supporting characters you actually care about, so that when bad things happen to them, you feel for them. None of the various victims and/or targets in Caligula gets enough personality to make it to memorable human being, with the arguable exceptions of Nerva (in the Tiberius sequence) and of the young couple whom Caligula rapes for no other reason that the bridegroom pissed him off by standing up for himself. Drusilla and Caesonia, as mentioned, are interesting and Caligula himself certainly is a charismatic performance by McDowell, who manages to get across Caligula's inner scared child who never grew up along with the increasingly destructive and self destructive nihilism as he figures out that "I can do whatever I want" is neither safe nor as satisfying as he'd assumed but essentially empty. It's now discernable why so many good actors actually signed on to this project (beyond the cash they got). But I wouldn't say their (good) performances are enough reason to put yourself through nearly three numbing hours of grimdark. (Sorry, Thomas Negovan.)
oursin: The Delphic Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel (Delphic sibyl)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-07-26 04:56 pm

Well, questions/all more complicated here....

This is all a bit Dept Groucho Marx here - would anyone who is not of these awful people's leanings want to live within 100 miles of them anyway, and in fact are they not a creepy cult in the making? The settlement sprawls over 160 acres and it's called Return to the Land. Its founders say it is an "intentional community based around shared ancestry". (And I think we can predict what the position of women within it is before even getting to that part of the write-up, no?)

(You can get brucellosis from 'warm fresh goats' milk', you know.)

***

Dept, have none of these issues manifested before travelling together??? You be the judge: Should my partner stop obsessively cutting costs when we travel? We discover that although they've been partners for seven years they don't live together, so possibly they really haven't come up against this sort of clash of styles:

I don’t want to share Persephone’s suitcase because she doesn’t pack properly and I find that stressful. I may put all my stuff in one backpack, but it is very well organised. Persephone’s packing style is hectic and she doesn’t have a separate laundry bag for her unclean clothes, she just throws them all in together. I don’t want dirty laundry touching my stuff, thanks very much.

And one is a foodie and one is not, and there's a real clash of priorities going on there that you'd think might have come up in 7 years....

At least last week's YBTJ contestants seem to have discovered the flashpoint of difference fairly early on: should my flatmate start using the spice rack I made: and honestly, what is the point of a poncey hand-carved spice-rack with matching jars that he hasn't got round to labelling? I am team shop-bought packaging that can actually be identified without opening it up and sticking one's nose in.

***

Dept, the Fifties were actually quite anomalous: In the longer–term context, then, it is the mid-20th century which looks unusual, and it is worth considering why:

There is no doubt that the percentage of families which are headed by a lone parent has increased since the mid-20th century, and this has often been equated with the breakdown of the nuclear family system. However, it is not clear that the nuclear family is actually in decline. Most children are still living in two parent homes, and the percentage of lone parent families in the 19th century was not very different to the percentage today – although as explained below, such families were very differently formed.

***

Dept, the annual PSC deviation into sense: This may seem radical to you, but a woman does not need a penis in order to be satisfied. Okay, it's depressing that the couple come 'from a conservative background; we believe that sex before marriage is a sin and saved ourselves until we got married in our early 30s' but don't seem to have done any due diligence on how to do ye conjugalz - there have been books on how to have a happy fulfilled Christian marriage since the 1920s at least. Sigh.

tropicsbear: One stick figure hip-thrusting in front of another (Hip thrust)
Bear ([personal profile] tropicsbear) wrote in [community profile] anime_manga2025-07-26 11:12 pm

Sk8 the Infinity: Malleable [MatchaBlossom]

Malleable (1,930 words) by tropicsbear
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sk8 the Infinity (Anime)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nanjo Kojirou | Joe/Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom, Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom & Shindo Ainosuke | Adam, Background Kikuchi Tadashi/Shindo Ainosuke | Adam
Additional Tags: Pectorals, Groping, Humor, Read Author's Notes
Summary: Kaoru’s figured out a very efficient way to manage his stress. Kojirou will just have to deal with it.

Why can’t he knead Kojirou’s pecs until all the stress is gone from his system? They’re right there!"

iamrman: (Franky)
iamrman ([personal profile] iamrman) wrote in [community profile] scans_daily2025-07-26 03:48 pm

Superman #32

Writer: Roger Stern

Pencils: Kerry Gammill

Inks: Dennis Janke


Superman: Exile.

Mongul decides to do what his champion could not and steps up to finish Superman.


ExpandRead more... )

facethestrange: (guardian: envoy: eyelashes)
facethestrange ([personal profile] facethestrange) wrote in [community profile] sid_guardian2025-07-26 04:36 pm
Entry tags:

Guardian Readalong: Vol. 3, Chapters 23 & 24



Hi, and welcome to this week's installment of the Guardian novel readalong! ♡

Here are last week's chapters, and you can find all previous discussions in the schedule posts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5), or via the !readalong tag.

This week's chapters:

  • Chapter 23: The branch of the Great Divine Tree protects Zhu Hong who stayed behind at the Yanluo Courts. While she's talking about the branch with Fourth Uncle, it grows a third bud. The "youth" who turned out to be a gui throws Chu Shuzhi off the bridge. Guo Changcheng jumps after him, leaving the soul bottles behind.


  • Chapter 24: During the ritual, lao-Li remembers and confesses that three hundred years ago he stole Daqing's bell to cure his bone cancer. Shen Wei uses the Hallows to reseal the Four Pillars. During the last step (the Soul-Guarding Lamp) Shen Wei erases all of Zhao Yunlan's memories of their relationship, and sacrifices himself.


The corresponding part in the Chinese version on JJWXC/the fan translation starts a little less than halfway through chapter 105 and goes up to the end of that chapter.


Excerpts:

Expand1) The branch of the Great Divine Tree grows a third bud )

Expand2) Chu Shuzhi and Guo Changcheng fall off the bridge )

Expand3) Lao-Li's story )

Expand4) Shen Wei mocks Ghost Face )


Questions:

How impressive is Guo Changcheng's courage now? Should Daqing forgive lao-Li? Do you prefer the novel version or the drama version of their backstory? How about the story of Zhu Hong's branch so far? Did Shen Wei's change of heart and self-sacrifice surprise you? How do you feel about what he did?

You can answer as many or as few questions as you like, or just comment without answering any of them at all! And if you see this post and you're not actually reading the novel, I would love to know what you think about any of this with limited context. :D

And here is the schedule, where you can sign up to host a post!
skygiants: a figure in white and a figure in red stand in a courtyard in front of a looming cathedral (cour des miracles)
skygiants ([personal profile] skygiants) wrote2025-07-26 08:00 am

(no subject)

There are some books that I can't read until I've achieved a pleasing balance of people whose taste I trust who think the book is good, and people whose taste I trust who think the book is bad. This allows me to cleanse my heart and form my own opinion in perfect neutrality.

As it happened I hit this balance for The Ministry of Time some time ago, but then I still needed to take a while longer to read it because, unfortunately, I was cursed with the knowledge that a.) it was Terror fanfiction and b.) it was on Obama's 2024 summer reading list and c.) I had chanced across the phrase "Obama says RPF is fine" on Tumblr and could not look at the front cover of Ministry of Time without bursting into laughter. And I wanted to come to this book with a clear heart! an open mind! so I waited!

.... and then all of that waiting was in fact completely fruitless, I was never going to be able to come to this book with a clear heart and an open mind, because, Terror fanfiction aside, I'm like 99% sure that it's either a direct response to Kage Baker's Company series or Kaliane Bradley is possessed by Kage Baker's ghost. Welcome back, Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax! The mere fact that you're so much less annoying this time around means I'm grading on a huge curve!

Okay, so the central two figures of The Ministry of Time are our narrator -- a second-gen Cambodian-English government translator whose mother fled the Khmer Rouge, and who has gotten shuffled into a top-secret government project working with 'unusual refugees' -- and Polar Explorer Graham Gore Of The Doomed Franklin Expedition, who has been rescued from his miserable death on the ice and brought forward into the future by the aforementioned top-secret government project.

The project also includes a small handful of other time rescuees -- Graham Gore is the only actual factual historical figure, and frankly I think the book would be better if he wasn't, but that's a sidenote. Each time refugee gets a 'bridge' to live with them and help them acclimate; in Gore's case, that's our narrator. The first seventy to eighty percent of the book consists mostly of loving, detailed, funny descriptions of the narrator hanging out with the time refugees as they adapt to The Near Future, interspersed with a.) dark hints about the sinister nature of the project and the narrator's increasing isolation within it that she repeatedly apologizes to us for ignoring, b.) dark hints about the oncoming climate apocalypse, c.) reflections the narrator's relationship to her family history, and d.) intermittent bits of Terror fanfiction about Gore's Time On the Ice.

I do not think this part of the book is necessarily well-structured or paced, but I did have a great time with it. Does it feel fanfictional? Oh, yes. The infrastructure that surrounds this hypothetical government project is almost entirely nonexistent in order to conveniently allow the narrator long, uninterrupted stretches to attempt to introduce Graham Gore to various forms of pop music; [personal profile] genarti described it cruelly but perhaps accurately as "Avengers tower fanfic". But I like the thematic link between time travelers and refugees, and I like the jokes, and I like the thing Bradley is doing -- the thing Kage Baker does, that I am extremely weak to -- where just when you're lulled into enjoying the humor of anachronism and the sense of humanity's universal connection you run smack into an unexpected, uncrossable cultural gap and bruise your nose.

Now, this only ever happens with Gore, because Gore is the only one of the refugees who is a real person in several ways. Margaret (the seventeenth-century lesbian) and Arthur (the gay WWI officer) are likeable gay sidekicks, and then there's a seventeenth-century asshole whose name I've forgotten. At one point Arthur tosses off a mention to his commanding officer 'Owen who wrote poetry' and I nearly threw the book across the room. Have the courage of your convictions, Kaliane Bradley! None of these coy little hints, either do the work to kidnap Wilfred Owen and Margery Kempe from history or don't! But Gore is obsessively drawn and theorized and researched, because, of course, the whole book is largely about Being Obsessed With Gore, about interrogating why the narrator, a not-quite-white-passing brown woman from an immigrant family, has built her whole life around this sexy British naval officer turned time refugee, symbolic of the crimes and failures of empire in six or seven different directions. A bit navel-gazey, perhaps, but as a person who spent five books begging Kage Baker to think at all critically about the horrible British naval officer turned time refugee she'd built, I'm just like, 'well, thank God!'

And, again, for the five people who care, I cannot emphasize enough just how similar Gore is to Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax and yet miraculously how much less annoying. They both have a code of ethics formed by the loyal and genuine belief in the good work done by the British Imperial project (thematically and historically reasonable); a shocking level of natural charisma combined with various secret agent skills at weaponry, deception, strategy and theft (extremely funny, extra funny with Gore because as far as I can tell what we know about him From History is 'normal officer! popular guy!'); and -- such a specific detail to have in common! -- Big Sexy Nose That The Man In Question Is Really Self-Conscious About.

And both of them, of course, end up struggling to navigate their positionality in the Imperial machine, between government operative-with-agency and experimental-subject-with-none.

So that's the first seventy to eighty percent of the book, and then, in the last twenty to thirty percent of the book, the dark hints finally resolve into the actual plot, Expandwhich is IMO successful in theme but completely goofy in actual detail )
garryowen: (Brilliant Mind Josh Oliver 2)
garryowen ([personal profile] garryowen) wrote2025-07-26 10:02 am

Brilliant Minds tarot cards

I started a new project because I'm depressed, and I need something silly to cheer me up. I present...Brilliant Minds tarot cards, inspired by Episode 6: The Girl Who Cried Pregnant, which features a tarot reading.

There are like 70 fucking cards in a tarot deck, so this is gonna take me a while. I made backings, but it was really hard to line them up, so I think I'll do a full sheet backing that spreads across all four cards on a sheet.

ExpandThe first four cards )