Since I had my sewing machine out after making the handwoven tops I decided to do a bit more sewing with handwoven fabric. But then, catastrophe.


( Read more... )

This week, I've managed to stay offline for the most part. Even when posting here, I've mainly wrote on Obsidian first and copy pasted, so my time on the website have been minimal. I've responded to most people's comments, but I haven't been as present to read and comment on their own posts. Which I'm learning isn't such a bad thing either. Sometimes, being in a community means knowing others exist in the same neighbourhood even when we don't actively seek out each other. It's something I have to remind myself often. Community takes time to build, and that's okay. Community won't disappear if I don't read and comment on every single posts for a week or so. I will not develop fomo over missing some people's posts. Missing posts is not the end of the world. If I'm okay with other people not reading and commenting on every one of my posts, then they are most likely okay with me doing the same. Because when they do, I am just happy to say hello back and exchange with them then, so surely they feel the same way. And if they don't, maybe we are just not a good fit for each other, and that is okay too.

Community takes time. I do not have to be chronically online to maintain it. I can be present just once in a while, write and respond when I can, and it's okay. It's easy to fall back into familiar patterns, familiar pressure to exist in online spaces daily or else. An "or else" that implies erasure, disappearance of the self, a fallen tree no one can hear. But the tree is still there. The tree still stands. The tree exists even if no one perceives it.

(I will not disappoint the tree for not seeing it. The tree still exists. The tree does not need me. The tree is okay. Why is my brain like that?)

So, we've already started playing Kingdom Hearts 3 XD

( Spoilers galore )

Street Fighter Series | Yoroi Shin Den Samurai Troopers | Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection

( Characters & Icon URLs under the cut... )

i used to be super active on livejournal, mainly in the icon community. i made a dreamwidth account as livejournal was fading, but i didn't really connect to the site and with irl changes i ended up leaving this part of the internet altogether. i've been reminiscing and have wanted to get back into "journaling", so i'm giving dreamwidth a proper go this time around.

name: laura

age: 30

i mostly post about: life updates and the occasional book review. i dealt with a lot of changes last year and a major loss at the end of january, so i'm navigating this new chapter (that sounds so corny) and just want to document the ups & downs as i experience them.

my posting schedule tends to be: for now, i'd say sporadic, maybe a few times a week.

my interests: reading, bookish content (new/upcoming releases, challenges, etc), horror, thanatology (see: Caitlin Doughty), arts/crafts, trying new recipes/cooking, hockey (nhl & pwhl), the sims 4, historical facts, theatre, concerts, cleaning/weekend reset videos (specific fandoms) lord of the rings, the boys, sailor moon, three days grace, prison break, jujutsu kaisen, tokyo revengers, schitts creek, supernatural, gundam seed, mcu

my dealbreakers are: aggressive or continuous political content; i'm well aware of what's happening in the world and i have no problem with people who want to discuss or vent, but i have no desire in befriending anyone who is consumed by politics (especially whatever trump is up to). anti-lgbt, conservatives/traditionalists, ableists.

before adding me, you should know: i have social anxiety; i have good days and bad days. i might come off as standoffish, but i promise i'm not. i love reading/hearing about other people's experiences and getting a glimpse into their lives. i'm just too nervous to approach them lol

Spring cleaning? No. Quarterly rearranging of a room! Now that I live in a house with my spouse (and we both get the neurospicy genes that makes the brain go brr seeing rooms in a new layout), I got more than just my bedroom to play with! This time around? The living room. It's easily the least manageable of all the rooms we have (because of weird wall placements + how small it is). On top of that, we got those two, massive rococo style couches that makes for a more difficult arrangement (I say rococo because that's more the style we're intending this room to be, but it can fit any kind of opulent vintage style really. It's rococo going on baroque, it's whimsygoth meets studio ghibli, it's cottagecore meets dark academia. It's Alphonse Mucha. It's Bridgerton. You see the vision?).

One thing that this whole moving around does help with is that, since I'm doing all this, might as well do all the cleaning at the same time, you know? So it does become a bit of a spring cleaning regardless. It's just spring cleaning with a goal that is not just getting the cleaning done, and I think that makes up for the hours of sweeping and vacuuming and dusting and moping and throwing away the trash. All that not fun stuff to make way for the actual fun stuff afterwards.

I might draw a before and after of the layout when I'm done (and when I bother to get my drawing tablet from upstairs). But here's a picture of what the two sofas look like (it's the sofa and the loveseat in the middle and on the right, we don't have the single person chair and the table):

March is National Crafting Month over on allbingo. I'm going to play along with the given 5x5 grid. Here it is:

Happy Wednesday! It's already March, time sure go by fast. What are you reading now?

One thing I find interesting about people in general (and myself in particular) is the ability to show different facets of who we are in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes, when I post something, I go XD and ^^ and leave a small mess of emojis, and sometimes I'm super serious and use bigger words than I normally would. I see that in all of my communications with others as well. It's been drilled into my head that, when writing, especially when writing in any way public, the audience must be at the forefront of my mind. That is, when someone takes writing seriously. Which I used to do, so much so that it kinda killed my love for writing for a while. (Yes, this is a post on writing.)

I still enjoy feeling serious about writing. I still do care about using the right words at the right time, about the effect certain words stringed together can create. I can tell from the very first sentence whether or not I will like the writing of a book. A lot of people tell me I'm too harsh, that I should give the book more of a chance to introduce itself, and to that I say maybe. Great writing doesn't always mean great story. But what is a great story anyway?

( This is a long post and its also neurospicy )

     
 Wolf Pack , The Substance , Castlevania : Nocturne

 ( URLs )

I used to be the person who tried to solve everything for everyone. The bigger someone's problems, the better. When meeting someone new, I would value their potential friendship by how much struggles they had that I could help them find solutions to. At that time, I had to feel needed to feel worthy of anybody's attention. I couldn't just be me, be a person who just happens to like the things somebody else likes too, I had to be useful. Friendships, romantic entanglements, it was all the same: if I couldn't be useful, I couldn't be worthy, and being someone's savior was the peak of usefulness. It meant I was indispensable, irreplaceable. And for those that didn't need saving? I would give gifts, sweets, pay for food, show how better their lives would be if I remain there. I remember so acutely the time when, during a therapy session, the full realization of what I was doing hit me: "I am love bombing my friends." Saying it out loud like that, both horrified and somewhat relieved that I could put words to how wrong it was, is what kickstarted the road to healing.

( Read more... )

Because sometimes, other people's words reach you through your screen and you want to share them with others.

Title: Earthlings
Author: Sayaka Murata
Translator: Ginny Takemori
Genre: Fiction

The second book I finished this weekend was Earthlings by Sakyaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Takemori. This book is about Natsuki, a girl who's always felt she doesn't quite belong with humans. This has been book #16 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.

I've struggled a lot with what to say about this book, or whether to say anything at all. First, as many other reviews note, the book description does not in any way prepare you for the trigger warnings that may apply, so if you have no-gos for reading, do have a look around for a list before you crack this one open. 

There are a lot of things you could take away from this book. The lifelong impact of childhood sexual abuse. The damage of a child having no safe adult to confide in. The pain of feeling alienated from society. The pain caused by strict social expectations that leave no room for individuals to pursue other modes of living. The danger that refusing to allow deviations from the "norm" will lead individuals incapable of conforming to that norm to reject society altogether. The idea that rejecting smaller social rules eventually leads to complete anarchy and amorality. The suffocating impact of the absence of privacy and the extremes to which it may drive people.

It is an exploration of the harm done, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who don't "fit" into the mold of society. How much of it is reality and how much of it is Natsuki's imagination is also up to the reader.

It's also a book about interrogating taboos, which leads to the trigger warning above. Natsuki's choice not to marry or have children is in and of itself, violating a taboo of her culture. Her feeling that violating this taboo does no harm to her or anyone else naturally leads to questioning other taboos, and you can't write a book about questioning taboos and then say "but not that taboo, that's too taboo!" so the book does go some dark places as Natsuki and her companions ask themselves if there's anything rational in refraining from theft, murder, and assault. 

The translation is well done, particularly in dealing with a number of sensitive subjects.

I'm not sure what I ultimately take away from Earthlings. Perhaps how much damage societal rejection has on a person's psyche and the harms that can spawn from that. We are, in the end, social creatures. Feeling from a young age that you don't belong is bound to have detrimental developmental impacts.

Title: The Seep
Author: Chana Porter
Genre: Sci-fi/fantasy, grief processing

This weekend I finished two books, the first of which was The Seep by Chana Porter, which has been on my TBR for years. In this book, Earth has been peacefully invaded by a parasitic alien which goes about solving all of Earth's problems in exchange for insight on what being human is like. 

If you're looking for a SFF book with heavy world-building, this is not it. Very little explanation is ever given about the Seep (the alien, not the book), how it works, how it got here, what its initial invasion was like. The practicalities of the Seep are not what this book is about; this book is about its protagonist, Trina, learning to live in a world where the Seep dominates everything, for better or worse.

The Seep itself could be an allegory for any number of things, but to me, it correlated strongly with modern technology, especially since the advent of AI, although the book was published in 2020, before AI hit the public market. The way Trina's misgivings about the Seep are brushed off as a sort of Ludditism, an old fogey being old (Trina is 50 for the better part of the book), the way even Trina acknowledges a lot of the good the Seep does but no one is willing to seriously discuss what's being lost, the way it has so quickly and totally seeped into every aspect of life on Earth so that those who choose to live without it are relegated to an isolated, ostracized community roundly mocked by everyone else. 

However, while the book starts off with something to say about Trina feeling lost, about being unwilling to give everything up to the Seep, it peters out at the end without anything really to say about Trina's society (and by extension, our own). It floats around the idea that friction in our lives is good--various characters admit, under pressure, that they miss some of the more difficult aspects of life before the Seep, perhaps the sense that accomplishments meant more when you really had to work for them. Now everyone does whatever they want and it's easy, everything's easy. It hints that Trina, who is trans, has some resentment about how easily people are able to modify their bodies now with the Seep--friends walk around with angel wings, cat ears, change gender by day of the week--while Trina had to fight so hard to become who she is and feels that struggle is part of what made her who she is. It makes salient points that part of freedom is the freedom to chose wrong (the Seep is fixated on keeping humans from any unhealthy behaviors, and Trina longs for the days when she could have a drink without the overwhelming sense of alien disapproval, or the chance to grieve as she wishes to without someone trying to fix it for her). It implies that immortality takes some of the meaning out of life, because part of what makes our experiences meaningful is knowing that we only have so much time for them.

Yet the climax lacks a follow-through to these premises, in my view. When a book starts off with such strong opinions, I expect it to conclude with a solution, a criticism, a proposal...something. But here, Trina makes her speech to the Seep about why each person's individual experience shapes them and why we're all unique, but she also returns to the fold of the same community she left before, which, I think, substantially failed her in her grief for her lost wife, and partakes in the social rituals they had been demanding of her. Her end feelings on the Seep aren't even clear. She just sort of...goes on with life as she was doing before her wife's departure. Which would be perfectly fine if the story was only about grief, but this one felt like it was about a lot more than that. 

I still think The Seep raises interesting, and very relevant in today's world, points, but I wish it did more with them in the end. However, the book is quite short, so I do still think it's worth the read.

Star Trek (x2) | Star Trek: TNG

( URLs here )

Color by COLOURlovers

palette colors

#024ca1

#362a8b

#ebaa5a

#c0235a

#942a75

examples:

magicrubbish dasakuryo lain_lain magical_sid breyzyyin


This palette was suggested by luminousdaze. Remember, you can (and are encouraged to!) always suggest color palettes for us to use HERE in the suggestion post!

-create 1-3 icons using the colors in the palettes.
-at least one of the colors must be clearly visible in the finished icon.
-you do not have to use the exact colors, you can use similar colors, but using the exact shades makes it more fun/challenging.
-any and all fandoms are allowed (this includes stock).
-icons should be 100x100, 60kb or less.
-post your icons to the community as a new post. tag with round: ##, maker: username. an example post can be found here in the rules post.
-have fun!

Your icons are due by 11:59 p.m. EDT/EST on Sunday March 15! (countdown)

 I actually didn't read all that much in February, but here are the books I *did* finish.

Setterfield, Diane: The Thirteenth Tale. Atria Books. 2006.
I loved "A River's Tale" a few years back, so I assumed this novel would be a safe bet. On the surface it circles around the same topics as "A River's Tale": What is fiction? And what is reality in relation to fiction? Does reality even exist or will everything that filters into our consciousness per default turn into fiction? So, on the surface level interesting, especially since it's a book about books / a book about reading and don't we all love those? But I found the plot to be absolutely outlandish and the whole novel rather heavy-handed. I can't say that I was bored, but I had high hopes for this one and Setterfield didn't quite deliver.

Edelbauer, Raphaela: Die Inkommensurablen. Klett-Cotta. 2023. (German)
This is a novel set in Vienna on the literal eve of WWI. It follows three friends as they spend they night and witness how the war breaks out. The vibes of this book are amazing. The Viennese slang is spot-on. (I wouldn't expect this to be translated into English anytime soon and if it is I can't see how a translation could hope to emulate the sound of this book.) Edelbauer more than delivers on the Austrian vibe and on the topics and ideas that were discussed at that point in time. I didn't connect with her characters all the much and all the esoteric talk about shared dreams went right over my head. But the rest was fantastic.

Kay, Adam: This is going to hurt. Picador. 2017.
Read for research and on that front it delivered. Other than that I think it's very specific to its time and place. If you don't live in GB you will have to live with the fact that this book clearly was not written for you. You'll still find some "funny" medical anecdotes in this. So if that's what you're looking for, go ahead and read this. (I'd advise to stay clear if you're pregnant or ever plan on being pregnant.)

Babb, Sanora: Whose Names Are Unknown. University of Oklahoma Press. 2006.
This novel tackles the same topics Steinbeck talks about in "The Grapes of Wrath" (and maybe you remember that I didn't like that book at all). The plot points are very similar - you have a family in the Oklahoma Panhandle that has to deal with continuous crop failure and that then goes to California and lives in a refugee camp. "Whose Names are Unknown" isn't a stellar novel either, but I like numerous things a lot better than in "The Grapes of Wrath": Babb clearly knows what she tallks about. Her descriptions of farm life and a farmer's relationship with his animals is spot-on and rings very true. Also, in contrast to Steinbeck she tells us things and then allows us to come to our own conclusions. You re actually invited to think for yourself in this one. Steinbeck was constantly trying to drive home his own political views via his storytelling. Even if you don't end up reading this novel, have a look at the publication history. It's highly fascinating!