dianeduane | Reading

In compensation for a day-consuming stat appointment, I got to spend some more time with the Salem Street Burying Ground and found one of those iron-puddled sunsets on the way home. I hadn't brought my camera, but I had my phone.

( So I break every mirror to see myself clearer. )

I seem to have missed Candlemas this year, so have a belated invocation to Brigid: Emma Christian, "Vreeshey, Vreeshey." The temperature rose to just freezing this afternoon and a whole shelf of snow-crust calved off the roof onto the front steps.

Current Music: Rose Betts, "Save Me a Seat"

tielan

Pick a female character you know I'll write, and one of the prompts below. Preferably one nobody else has yet chosen.

Day 1 - The Innocent
Day 2 - Guilty Pleasures
Day 3 - The Caregiver
Day 4 - Needs
Day 5 - The Outlaw
Day 6 - Her Own Personal Code
Day 7 - The Lover
Day 8 - Pet Peeves
Day 9 - The Scholar
Day 10 - Acting the Fool
Day 11 - The Explorer
Day 12 - Her Sanctuary
Day 13 - The Ruler
Day 14 - Letting Go

I never manage to write for halfamoon because my stories end up seriously epic. Maybe this off-the-cuff thing will work instead. (Or maybe those will just turn seriously epic.)

hrrunka

This year's UK Filk Con is now over and done. The run-up was a little more stressful than usual for unrelated reasons, so I was a little less well rested (and prepared) than I like to be.

I woke early on Friday to find a note on Discord concerning Con tech arrangements that had me out of bed before 6am. Let's just say it got the day started, and flipped my internal switches to (what passes for) Active/Responsive mode. They (mostly) stayed that way 'til after I got home on Monday...

We got to the Con hotel about 2:30pm, and I dropped straight into the main room set-up. That pretty much set my pattern for the weekend.

Despite the difficulties, the Con seems to have worked out well. There were many wonderful performances, among them;
Agamemnon, Betelgeuse, Leave a Chair, Laika, Mills & Boon, Mindstar, My Homework Ate the Dog, Oak & Ash & Thorn, Where I Belong, Will Ye Come Back Home...

I didn't catch quite as much circle or chat time as usual, but that's OK. Sometimes it's better to get enough sleep.

I'd like to thank all the folks who helped with the Con tech this year:

Deborah for being there, and without whom things would have been much much more difficult
Rae for their amazing wrangling that kept everything running
Rayner and Liz for much wrangling and transporting of kit
Jamie and Mike for sorting out streaming so that folks who couldn't get to the Con could at least catch some of it
John and Barbara for schlepping the speakers from Sevenoaks
Cal, GK, Bill and others for taking turns (however brief) at the desk
Jackie and Amy for volunteering to learn about front-of-house stuff
and all the folks who helped with set-up and tear-down.

Home is the Hunter, home from the hill,
And the Sailor home from the Sea.

On Monday morning we headed out East to the coast, because there's a place on the coast where a large colony of grey seals spend the winter. It was cold and windy, but not raining, and we saw many more seals than people. Whilst it made our drive home almost an hour longer than it might have been, it was a good post-con activity, and somewhere I have way too many photos.

beccaelizabeth

I bought the Book of Many Things and as with many rpg books I haven't so much read it as flicked through and got distracted by specific sections repeatedly.

Harrowhall, the castle setting you get if you draw the Throne card, actually really annoys me.

For one, they say Keep to mean a whole castle with an outer wall and a courtyard. The Keep is the bit in the middle, not the whole thing. That's what the word means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep

For another, the art work, the map, and the description, are not a good match for each other. ( Read more... )

It's sloppy, is all, just a lack of joined up thinking, and I don't know if it is keywording correctly for a DnD 5e product but in Pathfinder it is implying game mechanical features the map does not provide.

The map annoys me too. The shape of the castle is not one that you would design for a defensive structure.
( Read more... )

I do like the size of the library. Even using Stronghold Builder Guide units there's room for 12 stronghold spaces in there, at least. That's room for 24 to 36 book lots, which is at least 8 comprehensive book lots for +4s in those rules, maybe 12. Which is all the knowledges covered. Only six master lots at 6 book lots space for +6 each in SBG terms. But the description says it covers all sorts, so a +4 may be implied by space constraints. Though you can also argue 15 stronghold spaces for even more Knowledges covered.
1, 3, 6 book lots for +2 +4 +6.
The description does mention speculative fiction though. Personal experience says you can fill a lot of shelves with spec fic.

In Pathfinder terms though a Book Repository is 4 to 12 squares, and there are... four times as many four square sections as there are stronghold spaces. Even 12 squares is smaller than the 16 squares in a Space. +3 to all Knowledges and a Magical Repository made of the previous owner's specialist collection is therefore supported by the text. With shelves a plenty to spare. Four squares does only mean shelves down the outside of a 10 foot corridor, the drawings only make it look like the shelves are five foot deep. All these ten foot gaps are so Large beings can browse without squeezing. Which is polite and accessible.
A +3 bonus is between the +2 one lot and +4 3 lots so I guess it has to be 2 book lots. Meaning you'd need 3 of it to be +6 sized. Meaning it would fit in the 12 squares not the 4.
... I am getting deja vu and probably wrote this down earlier.

All these bonuses are for one hour of study though. The number of books has to be pretty limited to get exactly the relevant stuff in one hour. And/Or theres an excellent card catalogue.

... or there's not much to know so it's easy to be brilliant...

Also Harrowhall states the whole group and bonus help together can find a specific book in 10 minutes.
I think maybe this is incompatible with the one hour knowledge, or maybe the book was mis shelved or deliberately concealed.

The Harrowhall also has an Observatory ( Read more... )

Also, there are big windows in the chapel and the throne room.
Or, bonus doors with bonus expensive vandalism.

Wait the Throne Room is on the ground floor and states its ceilings are 20 feet tall.
How? There's no gap above it, and the intro says rooms in Harrowhall have ten foot ceilings.
There's no steps down into the Throne Room, there's no steps up in the area above it.
This is a geometrically impossible feature that redesigns the whole ground floor of Harrowhall in contradiction to the written description.

I mean it helps for the illustration but it's explicitly said two contradictory things here.

I've been writing this for over an hour now and it's just me grouching about things no one else is reading.

But it is Sloppy. Three components of one physical description and the writing can't agree with the writing let alone the map and illustrations.

In a hardback fully illustrated in color Book I would hope for better.

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Hi all!

I'm doing some minor operational work tonight. It should be transparent, but there's always a chance that something goes wrong. The main thing I'm touching is testing a replacement for Apache2 (our web server software) in one area of the site.

Thank you!

austin_dern

Yeah, nothing much going on with me today, sorry bunnyhugger, so after I tell you all about What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? Since when does Gasoline Alley have EV chargers? November 2025 – January 2026 let's enjoy a bunch of Kennywood pictures. How's that sound?

The Turtle ride, here at the far end of its short and debatably powered-roller-coaster track. Thunderbolt is the wooden roller coaster on the right, The Phantom's Revenge the steel purple coaster on the left.

And here we're in line for the Noah's Ark, which of course starts by walking into a whale's mouth.

Inside the whale's mouth are, of course, boxes of supplies needed for the voyage of forty days and forty nights, such as chickens and skunks.

Also wine and carrots, so you know the cruise will go well. Anyway we somehow walked through the ark wrong and came out way too early, and had to go around again, which I didn't photograph worth showing.

And hey, what do you know but we ran into Kenny Kangaroo! Again! This was starting to get suspicious.

Over here's an arch of Steel Curtain, their new and occasionally running Steelers-themed roller coaster. It wasn't running.

But I got back to the statue of George Washington leading a charge against the Kangaroo.

Phantom's Revenge turns out to have added a lane-cutting side queue and so we all get held up way at the back, in what used to be hilariously needless overflow queues a couple miles away from the station.

You see all that space? That's just empty and the only reason we're not there is so line-cutters can jump ahead of us; off to the left of this picture is the last spot where they could jump in.

Walking up to the queue, which winds a hilariously long and spindly path, like you get in Roller Coaster Tycoon when you forgot to provide space for the queue, does give this nice view looking down on the entrance to Lost Kennywood.

And here's the spot to shoot your hair scrunchie out on the roof of no particular building.

For the sake of art, though, here's a picture of the silhouette of us walking up to the track, like a scene from Metropolis Only Happy. I know which shadow is me; can you spot it?

Trivia: Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover declined the United States's invitation to showcase something at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (the show that would spawn the name Art Deco), saying the country did not have anything modern to showcase. He did send a commission to Paris to review it and in the Herbert Hoover report urged ``a parallel effort of our own [ to the styles on display ] upon lines calculated to appeal to the American consumer''. Source: Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, Daniel Okrent.

Currently Reading: Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, Elliott ``Ttwo Tt's'' Kalan.

beccaelizabeth

Two more episodes of Constantine, before and after midnight, and I know I am going to be watching these again for details, but not in a plot way. John remains fascinating, everything else remains mostly okay with a side of horror only mentions the evil bits and is therefore bad with race.

I do like the recurring bit where John hands out his business cards and they're like deeply skeptical of the 'master of the dark arts' bit. Like okay, exorcism and demons, but they look at him and are not going to believe he has a BA, or possibly even a high school diploma.

I quite liked 'Jackass of all trades' as a description. Because how he does magic is going to piss off literally every tradition and they're right to call him on it, but also, he's right to say it works. Appropriation vs asking what it's all actually for.

John is fascinating and sympathetic and clearly not always right, and I like that in a story. Enough of a bastard to make more work for himself, arrogant and bad at listening but he tries when prompted, and so sure it has to be him that does the work, because who else is there? Only he keeps asking.

Legends is one answer, ish.

I want to see how this story plays out and the episode count isn't giving me optimism on that, but I'm not even reading the episode descriptions so I shall find out as I watch.

Tumblr has provided me many stills of John's tattoos but delightfully there are even more opportunities to see them.

Is good to watch so far.

sovay

My poem "Reap the Rules" has been accepted by Reckoning. It is my first sale to the journal; it is a particular honor that it was selected for the conflict-themed special issue It Was Paradise. I wrote it last summer after the U.S. strikes on Iran. It is a prayer dedicated in cuneiform to the oldest goddess I know in that region. The title is a mondegreen from Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane's "Coins for the Eyes" (2022) which was about all I listened to while writing. Curse tablets do not seem to be going out of fashion any time soon.

I feel as though I remember to check out Festivids even less reliably than Yuletide, but this year has been a bonanza of which my socks-blown-off favorites look like "There Is No Ship" (Steerswoman), "ASSHOLE" (Looney Tunes), "Queen Bitch Cartagia" (Babylon 5), and "So It Goes" (Foundation). Honorable mentions to "It's a Sin" (Murderbot) even though I can't separate that song from Derek Jarman and "Hard Knock Life" (The Canopener Bridge) for introducing me to its fandom and perfectly illustrating the concept of storrowing.

My sleep has gone extraordinarily off the rails, but the snow in our back yard is criss-crossed with rabbit tracks. Hestia has broken three of the slats in my blinds in order to provide herself with a better view on Bird Theater.

Current Music: Rose Betts, "There Is No Ship"

austin_dern

Meanwhile some happy news, on the mouse front. Crystal, our mouse coming up on an estimated two years old, whom we feared was in her last days a couple weeks ago? She seems fine. She's wobbly, and fat, but she's becoming more tolerant of being yoinked out of her cage to be sat down in a travel carrier with a bit of meloxicam-infused sugar cookie, and some days she doesn't even try to bury it to never be bothered with the thing again.

Question that bunnyhugger has raised, and that we can't answer, is: is she happier now that she has three other mice sharing the space with her? On the one hand, female mice are social creatures and it probably feels good to have something you understand to interact with. And we do see that, like, they all nest together. On the other hand, she is old and the three sisters are young and energetic and you can almost see her closing her eyes hoping this nonsense quiets down. And we had to start taking her out of the bin to give her medicine because when we give her anything, anything, another mouse comes along and grabs it. It looks like bullying --- occasionally she even peeps in protest --- but she also doesn't try getting it back, maybe because she's aware that another treat will come along while other mouse is busy eating the first.

On the whole my guess is she's probably happier having the constant stimulation of creatures whose activity she understands, as opposed to waiting around to see whether whatever the heck we are have come to drop off food or hay or are just grabbing her for no obvious reason. As mentioned, we do see they nest together and they don't fight worth mentioning except for the pistachio incident. Just hope she's enjoying things.

Something anyone can enjoy? Kennywood, and even more specifically than that ...

Kenny Kangaroo running --- running, like kangaroos can't do --- over to position for some photographing.

And there's the photograph being taken, by Kenny's handler of hanging out in front of everything.

Wouldn't be a Kennywood visit without going to the century-old Jack Rabbit! We believe the neon has been replaced with LEDs simulating neon, but, well, that's better than losing even the styling of neon.

Also wouldn't be much of a Kennywood visit without getting to Thunderbolt! Here I remember that I can zoom in to make a more dramatic picture than the very reasonable safety barriers would allow me to do.

A twenty-minute wait for Thunderbolt is reasonable and yet by specifying it's 21 minutes I'm forced to wonder about the algorithm that's giving dubiously sensible precision.

Spare train on Thunderbolt which has got riding in it a large husky plush and, looks like in front of them, a carton of doughnuts set on the train's floor.

Trivia: A year after the end of the US Civil War some 2,778 of the roughly nine thousand post offices in the Confederate states had been reopened, but 60,000 of the seventy thousand miles of post roads were re-established. Source: The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life, Wayne E Fuller.

Currently Reading: Archaeology, November/December 2025. Editor Jarrett A Lobell.

beccaelizabeth

Today I relistened to
Torchwood The Conspiracy and
Torchwood Forgotten Lives

The Conspiracy starts the Comittee of Erebus, which is honestly a bit boring even if you throw in the possible crossover opportunities with Pathfinder's name for a layer of Hell. I don't think we really need aliens in our conspiracy theories, people trying to get rich seems like sufficient motivation of itself. The misinformation bit where they tell patchwork truth in amongst the mess so nobody will believe it later? *sigh* little bit depressing.

Forgotten Lives I relistened to because I'd started wondering if Jack in this one was actually Jack. I think he's meant to be but it's also possible Gwen got tricksed, the story Jack started as such a simplified version and then Gwen and Rhys kept adding details. So there's one spin where it wasn't actually him but snogging everyone was a good enough impression he could get Gwen to unlock classified Torchwood stashes. And there's the other one, more interesting I think, where a Jack who says he lost track of his age after the first couple of thousand is stuck in the body of an ill old man and suffering his mental decline. Nightmare time. And then at the end it is implied he's going to get swapped around between bodies being all sorts of people for an unknown length of time. But still trying to act like Jack. And the new bodies are not immortal but he got reloaded into one after the old body died, so does he reset to his own body when he gets killed and then get sent out again? He says it'll be torture but it's a story mine and a half.

I'm not sure how they think it'll work though, the redistributing society thing. I mean sure that body was in charge yesterday but why would hierarchy depend on body? I can see it being incentive to make every body live in reasonable conditions, like environmental laws and free healthcare stuff, but I don't see how it would be much different from remote working in the end.

... which is another weird comment now I think about it and a Story again.

I miss when Jack could be in the stories and I would be Deeply Displeased if they cast another actor, but they have left themselves a story loophole with this and other body swap stories.

I want the Torchwood range to keep going for as close to forever as possible, but we are not getting that kind of luck. Last few coming out. I liked how it could be stories from any time Torchwood existed, a hundred years and change of the past and thousands of years of future so far. And without the Doctor there the range of endings got really broad. It's interesting.

But to be fair it does not give the range a strong through line or specific characters to get emotionally attached to, and the characters going away was the fandom's basic problem with Miracle Day, so, I can see why it doesn't have the same draw as the Doctor Who ranges.

... if I win the lottery i shall clearly have to do something about that...

But relistening now is good.

... especially as I am avoiding listening to the last few ones on account of then they are over. Boo...

tielan

Yes, I'm back with the Georgian trip!

Day 1: Overview | Day 2: Vashlovani Nature Reserve | Day 3: Jvari Monastery and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral

-----

The night of the Jvari Monastery and the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (still Wednesday) we stayed in a little vineyard tucked away in the back of beyond, which required a hike along rough tracks and up and down roads. Our luggage was (thankfully) taken by a very old jeep - Soviet era, we were told. It surely looked it!

A B&B up in the mountains

The vineyard had been owned by a former church minister, and they were still doing it up. The road there was a little rough, and a few of the women struggled somewhat with the path.

There was also almost no signal.

But there were kittens!

This night was a particularly bad case of "we can't eat anything, we're too stuffed full of food". I didn't even take photos of the food, I was so full!

And the next morning was no better.

Ruins and vineyards and buildings on the walk back down to where the bus awaited us in the morning:

Thursday: Uplistsikhe

Yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful...

Uplistsikhe Rock Village dates back to the 2nd Century BC, and translates to 'God's Fortress'.

The carvings and design of it indicate both pagan and Christian residency (a pagan temple's fire altars were filled in when the community converted to Christianity and the space used as a chapel/cathedral), and multiple cultural influences from outside Georgia are indicated by its architecture and decoration before it was sacked in the 12th Century by the Mongols.

There was so much of it to see, but we only had an hour, so it was a very truncated tour of a really interesting historical site.

And I spent long enough in the chapel that I and my roomie (only other non-American on the tour, apart from the 'host' who was local, and the 'organiser' who was ) lost the rest of the group on the way out of the site. I found the chapel particularly fascinating to me for the black Madonna-and-Child portrait, the layout of the space, and the "drooping arms" cross symbol, which is representative of St Nino's grapevine cross she carried to Georgia when she brought Christianity to that part of the world.

Oh yes, and the black Madonna and child!

No, not me! (I just realised the juxtaposition of the photos. XD XD)

More seriously, there was a woman in the chapel who was praying or observing her pilgrimage. I had to be quiet while she was there and even after she left, I had to be quiet because there was a woman manning the shop right outside the door. *sigh*

I find it a bit restricting, actually, that the chapels and cathedrals all demand silence of you. There are times for silence, of course. But there's also time to sing and be joyful - to shout to the Lord! To everything a time and a season, as Ecclesiastes declares. I did manage to sing a hymn in a chapel in Positano, Italy and that was fun!

Anyway, there was a tunnel we missed out on seeing because we didn't work out where the rest of the group went, and then we got stuck at the top and ended up having to go back down the way we came, whereupon we met the rest of the group and went along to the bus.

On the way to lunch, we passed through the city of Gori, which is Stalin's birthplace. Many of the older Americans wanted to hop out and have a look at it, and I hopped out because the architecture looked really interesting!

C'mon, tell me this isn't fascinating to the daughter of an architect!

Gori: birthplace of Stalin

The location is the house in which he was born. The neighbourhood was "bought out" (*cough cough* we know how that goes in the west, now imagine it in Soviet Georgia!) and everything else razed to bring you...this edifice of stone and magnificence...

The Americans exclaimed over the details of Stalin's life. Me? I looked around at the architecture (very interesting, oddly beautiful for what I think of as 'communist brutalism') and then out at the public gardens surrounding it, and the Georgian national flag flapping in the wind. And I turned to our Georgia guide, grinned, and said "Stalin would have hated it." And she grinned back.

It was pretty much a fifteen minute stop because we were already kind of late to lunch. But then, we were still kind of full from the previous night and breakfast, so it's not like we were rushing to get to eat!

--

Lunch at Sisters-in-Law winery. The owner used to be in the diplomatic service, but married a guy whose family owned land out in the countryside and now runs a restaurant that they built out of reclaimed everything. All the bricks, all the wood, all the furnishings found and repaired and now reused. It's very permaculture.

books and food and activism against an oppressive government: what it can look like

They're also very socially active (also very permaculture) to the point where they decided to close the restaurant this summer, because they wanted to participate in local protests against pro-Russia government and they were worried about retaliation. That's a dedication to the cause. There were assorted signs and stickers around the place that showed the sentiment of the younger generation about Russia, but the older generations often recall the good times of the Soviet Union and want that back.

Sounds a bit familiar, really.

They definitely had some permaculture books...

Also, there was a wine there that was absolutely amazing, and honestly I'd have shipped an entire crate of it back home except they didn't have any left over from that batch! *sigh*

A beautiful place with a beautiful couple doing good, solid things in the world.

--

Kutaisi
At this point, my memories are growing a little fuzzy. I shouldn't have put off typing this up for so long, and since I've been back, a lot has happened!

But I do remember that the dinner in Kutaisi was a bit ordinary, all things considered...

A walking bridge, quite close to where we were staying, and the last light of day.

twistedchick

This is a poem, but it was posted as an image, so please click to read it..

ETA: Since the original link didn't work, I am linking to my FB page.

austin_dern

I never gave you closure on our Christmas tree this year, did I? I mean the lone real one that we got this season, and that because of various presses of events, particularly the state pinball championship, we weren't able to get un-decorated and set out for pickup within the normal range of tree pickups? Well, we were finally able to set the time to take all the ornaments off and feel confident we'd got everything, and to take it to the last tree-collection area we could find in the area.

There's something weird going on where every year we find the place that collected trees after the week of Twelfth Night is no longer collecting them. This year we had to go way out to Holt, one of those imaginary communities on the outskirts of Lansing. Technically they were only accepting from Holt residents, but the dropoff point was a small lot with a sign on the road into the recycling center. Wasn't anyone doing ID checks.

Shame of it is our tree was in great shape, despite having been cut down over a month before. It was even showing buds of new growth, emerging from the trimmed cone shape that the tree farm had imposed on it, with faint green leaves (tree wasn't getting enough light) pushing through. We had to thank the tree before tossing it onto the pile, because it was a really good one, keeping its needles until we actually dragged it out of the water and gave it a good hard shake. And, as mentioned, growing way past any sensible time.

Fortunately for upstairs we set up an artificial tree so we didn't have to worry about that, this time.

Let me take you back now to Kennywood, where we'd already seen the incredible thing of Kenny Kangaroo out and about. What could be grander than that?

Kennywood's big Grand Carousel, too big to fit in its old building. There's not much special about this moment except I like that I got the moment of someone getting on, which is more activity than most of my shots of carousels.

And here's the control panel, bell, and a warning for people looking over at the control panel and bell.

We were waiting in line for the Kangaroo when what did we see but --- that's right! Kenny Kangaroo!

Back to where he'd been greeting folks before, except it was even more brutally hot. We don't know how he wasn't passing out, especially when Kenny was doing hops to draw attention.

bunnyhugger has a new friend!

We did mention we'd met briefly at KennyCon the previous year, but he didn't say anything about remembering us.

Trivia: An 1804 model by George Cayley shows the first airplane design like that which would be successful, with foreward wings and aft tail; by 1809 he envisioned the use of propellers rather than the flapping of wings. Source: Mastering the Sky: A History of Aviation from Ancient Times to the Present, James P Harrison.

Currently Reading: Archaeology, November/December 2025. Editor Jarrett A Lobell.

beccaelizabeth

I am looking at the prices in the Stronghold Builder's Guide again
and I don't know what they were thinking
but it's hilarious to try and imagine
just how much Basic Bedroom Suite I could afford
for 800gp.

I think 1gp may have made it to £1,000gbp the other day, with the gold price gone so up.

I am trying to imagine how to spend £800,000 in a bedroom.

That room comes with spectacular amenities, and probably specialist staff...

Actually useful: all these bedrooms and bedroom suites specify the existence of a privy even if they don't draw one on any map anywhere. Seriously, there isn't a symbol for it that I could see. What is it with game map makers pretending the loo doesn't exist.
But it means other DnD products that specify 'bedroom' can be read to also mean 'and privy' because this book defines it so.

... I am once again trying to translate DnD suggested Throne card keeps into Pathfinder useful maps and costs and definitions. Pathfinder lets you buy toilets, so if they're not listed they don't exist, but DnD is giving bundled definitions.

Pathfinder also has the possibility of running water plumbing through the whole town (if you install some Decanters of Endless Water) and has magic item baths (clean water you can specify the temperature of) and toilets (also self cleaning).

Both settings have routine adventures set in sewers *but map nothing that connects to a sewer*.

It's ridiculous.

Pathfinder at least has sewer connection as a buyable option. It just doesn't draw it.

And yet I find forum jokes about The Obligatory Dungeon Toilet
as if that is commonly drawn at all
and like
yes?
if you are mapping every five foot square
one at least will explain the waste disposal situation
or lack thereof.

But these are maps that commonly imply a bed is a minimum of five feet wide and ten feet long.

twistedchick

This is a prayer for Imbolc.

This is a prayer for when roads flood.

This is a prayer for the lingering dark.

This is a prayer for resistance.

We spark the fires to beg the light to return, but we never really know if it will work. The road may flood; this could be the year it all falls apart. The February rains may be too much. We fire up the forge to bend hard metal to our will, but we never really know if it will work. The road may flood; this could be the year that it all falls apart. The February rains may be too much. We write the poem to express what’s inside, but we never really know if it will work. The road may flood; this could be the year it all falls apart. The February rains may be too much.

Imbolc is a chance we take, a chance we take in the dark.

This is a prayer for when things fall apart. This is a prayer for when roads flood. This is a prayer for Imbolc. This is a prayer for the lingering dark and this is a prayer for resistance.

Brigid, the Goddess of poetry, invented keening for those times when no words were enough. Shall we now keen? Brigid, the Goddess of smith craft, invented forges for those times when small flames were not enough. What shall we now forge? Brigid, the Goddess of healing, invented beer for those times when water couldn’t cure the deep thirst. What shall we now toast? Brigid stands in the February rain, a warm flame in her hand, watching the roads flood. She will neither look away from the flood nor extinguish the flame.

Imbolc is a chance we take, a chance we take in the dark.

This is a prayer for when things fall apart. This is a prayer for when roads flood. This is a prayer for Imbolc. This is a prayer for the lingering dark and this is a prayer for resistance.

The shepherd goes out despite the rain. The shepherd is the resistance. Without the shepherd, the ewe will miscarry, die in the mud, bleed to death, deliver the lambkin still. The shepherd sees the rain, throws on her cloak, and cuts through the meadow. But she never really knows for sure if it will work. The road may flood; this could be the year that it all falls apart. The February rains may be too much. But she still wades towards the ewe. Brigid sees and holds her flame.

Imbolc is a chance we take, a chance we take in the dark.

This is a prayer for when things fall apart. This is a prayer for when roads flood. This is a prayer for Imbolc. This is a prayer for the lingering dark and this is a prayer for resistance.

It’s Imbolc! It’s pouring rain in the lingering dark. The roads have washed away. The ewes are miscarrying, the forge fires going out. The poets are throwing down their pens, the yeast has failed the hops. Who are you in these times? What’s Imbolc to you or you to Her? Resistance thrives in the lingering dark and flash floods bring forth new paths. Put on your cloak and wade through the mud. The Goddess Brigid is holding her flame. The Goddess watches and weighs.

Imbolc is a chance we take, a chance we take in the dark.

This is a prayer for when things fall apart. This is a prayer for when roads flood. This is a prayer for Imbolc. This is a prayer for the lingering dark and this is a prayer for resistance.

-- by Hecate Demeter.

beccaelizabeth

Have watched first disc of Constantine.
Want to watch them all in a row but unfortunately then I will have watched them.

The theology of the horror story is still deeply screwed
but
I can entirely believe the character John Constantine believes the things that lead him to choose as he does.

Also if anyone turned up preaching happy shiny forgiveness better way to him he would be *angry* angry.
Where were the alternatives when he was looking?
... in Legends of Tomorrow, sometimes, maybe, but not here on his own show.

The way horror tragedy constructs the story to lock the ever so sympathetic main character into
Hard Choices
is a great big Thing.

Of course there should be a better way, but then we wouldn't be in this genre, so you get a story that believes in the Fall but is at best equivocal about redemption.

Interesting enough stories, compelling as ever character.

tielan

pipe bombs in perth

Finally on the 26th of January ("Australia Day"), there was an Indigenous protest march in Perth.

During the march, someone threw a pipe bomb into the crowd. It was packed with metal shards and nails and suchlike. He failed to light it correctly so it didn't explode.

He was white. He was a he. That's all we know about it. And even that was mostly reported by the people who bring online news commentary, rather than mainstream media. (I saw it first with Cheek Media, myself.) You know why? Because "we aren't putting out his name because he is accused of..."

FUCK THAT SIDEWAYS WITH A RUSTY SPORK.

They had ZERO compulsion about publishing the names of the Bondi terrorists.

But a terrorist action done by a white guy? (It wasn't even billed as 'a terrorist action'. Well, excuse me for bloody well thinking that a FUCKING HOMEMADE PIPE BOMB tossed into a group of people who are supporting a particular racial identity isn't 'a terrorist action'.)

Oh no, can't publish his name!

conservatives, right wing, and please let our electoral system hold

In other political news in Australia, our 'right wing' is going down. Hard. Not only is their current leader (she's technically a "conservative moderate" and has lasted since the election) on the way out, but the Racists And Arseholes Party (known more conventionally as 'Pauline Hanson's One Nation') is on the rise - at least in sentiment. Whether that sentiment can gather the centre-to-right-wing conservatives in Australia is another question.

Our holding institutions right now are pretty much the Australian Electoral Commission and common decency, but how long those will hold is another matter. Watching what is happening in the US, being told what is happening by billionaires who own all the media properties, having a point of view RAILROADED through thanks to a lack of media discernment, and general outrage headlines...

I can't see my conservative friends here in my electorate (strongly conservative - one of the very few suburban electorates that hasn't gone "Teal") voting PHON. And they have to vote, and they can vote for the "least worst" option - ie. preferences. Plus, we have a very large percentage of "not born here" Aussies in this electorate, possibly one of the reasons that Old Guy down the road (and a bit further in) has his house decorated with PHON and Trump flags. Yes, Trump flags. In Australia.

Great moogly googly.

Anyway, we know the guy - he stumped up on Election Day 2025, put his little sandwich board up, stuck a plastic sleeve with the "Trumpet Of Patriots" party 'how to vote' card on, and went away.

That sleeve was touched pretty much twice. Once by one of us volunteers for the other parties gingerly looking to see what they'd recommended (even the conservative volunteers were eyeing it like it was fresh dogshit), and then once by a woman from the AEC whose job it was to go around collecting the 'how to vote' cards for each party in each electorate, so that the AEC could archive them.

We left the sandwich board after we packed everything away, and it was gone the next night.

In the end, hard right-wing support isn't non-existent, and probably never will be, but the current state of world politics, where right wing conservative parties get hollowed out by hard right wing racist fucks is sincerely worrying. I've never thought Australia is immune, but it's a worrying trend to finally witness happening, even if nothing comes of it. Grievance politics is hell on the system.

Maybe it mitigates with mandatory enrolment and preferential voting - we can hope - but if it does, that's on the system and the institution, not on anything else. Heaven knows the parties and the politicians are NOT HELPING.

NOT. HAPPY. JAN.

tielan

Some thoughts I put down at the time, and which I'm going to store here.

( Bondi Massacre: shortly after - the aftermath )

--

( a few weeks later/now a few weeks ago )

tuftears

Whew, it's been a month into the mew year already, time sure flies! Into the teeth of all the terrible things happening (in general, not in specific) I managed to get my first book out, and I have been pleased by the handful of reviews I've garnered so far--it is actually readable. Excellent!

( So what have I been doing this month? )

What's next? Probably edits on the Rose's Crime Spree, the cover for the same, and working on the outline/breaking ground on the Timecrossed Engineer sequel, Shakedown Cruise.

dewline

🐰🐰🐰

Current Mood: busy

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dianeduane

DianeDuane.com

May 2017

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Page Summary

sovay - Let the lights run like rivers all over my skin
tielan - halfamoon challenge
hrrunka - Three Days Away...
beccaelizabeth - Harrowhall is poorly designed as a fortification
mark in dw_maintenance - Minor operations; testing new serving path
austin_dern - And Suddenly I'm Flying, Flying Like a Bird, Like Electricity
beccaelizabeth - Constantine tv
sovay - I am bound to these shores, I'll be bound till the end
austin_dern - Hide Me in the Back Room, Tell Me When It's Over
beccaelizabeth - Torchwood Big Finish Monthly range early ones revisited
tielan - travel: Georgia - Uplistsikhe and Kutaisi
twistedchick - If they call me a domestic terrorist, by Michael Robey
austin_dern - Someone Came and They Found Me and Took Me Home With Them
beccaelizabeth - I know this isn't the point of the game but the building of castles is fun
twistedchick - This is a prayer for Imbolc; this is a prayer for resistance
beccaelizabeth - (no subject)
tielan - thoughts on news thingies from the last week
tielan - a couple of weeks old now
tuftears - Status Report for January, 2026
dewline - Adopting a Ritual

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Page generated Feb. 5th, 2026 02:06 am

Word Salad II

A mirror blog of Diane Duane's "Out of Ambit"

Reading

Let the lights run like rivers all over my skin

halfamoon challenge

Three Days Away...

Harrowhall is poorly designed as a fortification

Minor operations; testing new serving path

And Suddenly I'm Flying, Flying Like a Bird, Like Electricity

Constantine tv

I am bound to these shores, I'll be bound till the end

Hide Me in the Back Room, Tell Me When It's Over

Torchwood Big Finish Monthly range early ones revisited

travel: Georgia - Uplistsikhe and Kutaisi

If they call me a domestic terrorist, by Michael Robey

Someone Came and They Found Me and Took Me Home With Them

I know this isn't the point of the game but the building of castles is fun

This is a prayer for Imbolc; this is a prayer for resistance

(no subject)

thoughts on news thingies from the last week

a couple of weeks old now

Status Report for January, 2026

Adopting a Ritual

Profile

May 2017

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