FIC: The Royal Sanctuary: The statue (Tempestuous Tours)
Aug. 25th, 2025 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Much more prominent than the sling is a statue of the Living Dead that stands near the altar. Carved and painted in the northern style, the slave stands naked except for an iron mask in his hand, representing the moment upon which he receives his freedom. His face is scarred from wearing the mask for so long, but in his eyes lie hope.
Although the statue is intended to represent all of the Living Dead, both men and women, it is based on the likeness of one of the last men to be freed from slavery before the Emorian occupation: Kester son of Hoare, who died in the attack upon Council Hill by the Emorians. Although free at the time of his death, he was present at the palace on the day of the attack because he had voluntarily chosen to return to his place of slavery, in order to help other slaves survive their misery. The statue was commissioned and paid for by Kester's son, the present High Lord of Koretia.
[Translator's note: Kester's story forms part of Death Mask.]
Check In: Day 25
Aug. 25th, 2025 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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How did writing go today?
-Awesome!
-Pretty good!
-Chugging along!
-Mostly edited!
-Mostly brainstormed!
-Too busy/rest day!
Today's discussion question: Out of all your stories, which do you think will be best for a Muppet adaption?
Movies: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Honey Don't, Biosphere
Aug. 25th, 2025 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I got to see this in the theater, which IMO is definitely the way to go for this one. It does a great job building tension from the very beginning. For all its raw filmmaking approach, I felt the movie had a surprising amount of ambition in terms of both background themes (city vs country, the way technological progress can disrupt people's lives) and this recurring idea of, like, a sense of cosmic apocalypse brought on by the alignment of the stars and planets. The sun as a malign figure wreaking havoc on humanity. The movie goes way harder than it needs to do to succeed as an exploitation horror film.
I was surprised by how little of the actual story I'd osmosed from hearing about the movie over the years. For example, I had no idea that of the little friend group of victims, the one with by far the most lines and personality is a guy in a wheelchair, which honestly felt pretty progressive. His mobility is a significant element of his character throughout the film without being a plot point, and I appreciated that. The movie also leans more into black comedy than I expected. Leatherface lumbering around chasing people with the chainsaw is some pretty good physical comedy, actually!
I also had not realized just how sympathetic a character Leatherface is. He's clearly upset about these people just walking through his front door and wandering around his house. After the second or third one, he sits in his living room, surrounded by taxidermy and bone furniture, and puts his head in his hands, like why is this happening to me!! He also doesn't seem to have any malice towards his victims. There's a whole backstory of how his family used to kill cows at the slaughterhouse, and he treats the tresspassers like cows. But once he and his family has captured the final girl alive and tied her up at the dinner table, he dresses up for dinner! I feel like these details sound like I'm being sarcastic or making fun, but genuinely I liked him a lot and felt sorry for him, especially in the context of how his family members treat him.
Overall a good time. Would watch again.
--
Honey Don't (2025). In the second in Ethan Coen's "lesbian B-movie trilogy," Margaret Qualley stars as Honey, a neo noir private eye investigating a death that may or may not be connected to a creepy local church pastored by head creep Chris Evans.
I had a great time with this movie until I didn't. It's 2/3 of a very fun movie in which Margaret Qualley is a really hot PI, and then 1/3 of a very annoying movie in which she is those things, so at least you get really hot Margaret Qualley the whole time. The plot barely counts as one; this movie is running entirely on vibes. For most of the movie it's unclear whether a crime has even occurred. Fortunately the vibes are excellent. Yes, I DO want to watch Qualley show off her long legs in dressy casual slacks and heels while kicking ass, taking names, and having lesbian one-night stands. She did the job she needed to do in The Substance, but she is absolutely magnetic in this. On the other hand, the ending is nonsense AND made me mad, the worst combo.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Chris Evans the cult leader was a disappointment. Between this and Bad Times at the El Royale, I'm 0/2 on Avengers-turned-cult-leaders. (Has Ruffalo been one? He seems the likeliest. Does his role in Mickey 17 count?) The pastor's plotline also turns out to be completely irrelevant, and the whole thing where his church is a front for a drug running business funded by "the French" is just signature Coen quirkiness, I guess.
OTOH, I think Charlie Day has finally aged into roles I can enjoy him in. So there's that.
Honestly this movie needed another writing pass or two and probably should have excised the church plot entirely and come up with a new, better mystery for Honey to investigate. But if vibes and Qualley are enough of a draw, this might be worth your time.
--
Biosphere (2022). Sterling K Brown and Mark Duplass are childhood friends who live in a tiny dome they can't leave after the rest of Earth and humanity has been destroyed.
This is the purest two-man show I have seen in movie form in a very long time. It has exactly one set (broken up into various pieces, but still) and exactly two actors, who are clearly what all the tiny budget went toward. It is a science fiction comedy/drama thing about, idk, hope and resiliance and male friendship.
A movie like this lives or dies by the chemistry between its leads, and Brown and Duplass are great together. There are many funny bits, enough honest emotion to keep me hooked, and various plot developments that I enjoyed. (Gotta love when you quote a famous movie line and then five minutes later the character ALSO quotes that line.) I also just respect the hell out of this kind of barebones, microbudget moviemaking. You see it a fair bit in horror (such as Duplass's project Creep), but less in other genres.
Chat corner 199: Relationships
Aug. 25th, 2025 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Hi!
This week, our topic is "relationships". Familial, platonic, romantic, sexual, or maybe something unknowable in-between? Do you have a specific relationship you keep coming back to? A specific type of relationship that you love to read or write - or perhaps one that you never see in SW and would love to?
Or, here, lets have a few silly AU prompts!
- Who is whose long-lost sibling?
- Who ends up being neighbors with whom?
- Who is whose not-so-amicably-divorced ex?
- Who is whose secret booty call?
- Who discovers they're members of the same polycule - and through whom?
Japanese Citizenship/Passport Query
Aug. 25th, 2025 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website is very helpful on the subject of visas and emigration for citizens of other countries so I guess I’m looking for a similar kind of FAQ to this - https://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/ - but for, I guess you’d call it re-emigration? Moving back to the country of your birth as an adult?
Any help, gratefully received!
All-Star Squadron #5
Aug. 25th, 2025 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Writer: Roy Thomas
Pencils: Rich Buckler
Inks: Jerry Ordway
Roy Thomas originally intended to use an obscure Golden Age heroine named Wildfire in this book, but there was already a character by that name in the Legion of Super-heroes. Instead, Thomas created a new character and I’m guessing he named her after his wife as well.
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(no subject)
Aug. 25th, 2025 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Nigh
Aug. 25th, 2025 11:20 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)

Click here to go see the bonus panel!
Hovertext:
The best part is watching them go up to guys yelling on a soapbox to ask what their timelines are.
Today's News:
Humorous illustrated book about Scandinavians, possibly 80s to 90s?
Aug. 25th, 2025 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Late summer in the tomato farm
Aug. 25th, 2025 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Ever since we moved to Ely five years ago, I kept suggesting that we go on a day trip to Kings Lynn (at the far northern end of the train line on which we sit; the southern end is London), and every long weekend when we had a spare day, it would end up pouring with rain and we'd elect to stay home. This time, however, the weather did what we wanted, and we took the train half an hour north, for day of pottering around. We ate a lot of seafood, we discovered a fabulous gin distillery and bar, a fabulous rum bar, and a pretty decent gastropub, we wandered through the historic city centre, and realised far too late that there was also a pretty little walkway along the riverfront, with a foot ferry — something for a future trip, perhaps.
That was Saturday. On Sunday, we caught the train half an hour in the other direction to Bury St Edmund's, which was holding a beer festival in its massive cathedral grounds. (It felt somewhat medieval, especially with all the church officials wandering around in ecclesiastical dress, as if we'd stepped back in time before the Reformation, as guests of a beer-brewing monastery.) We stayed for about five hours, people watching and chatting, before returning to Ely in the early evening. Miraculously, everything worked flawlessly with the trains for both day trips, which is not always a given!
My preference on long weekends is to do the travel on the earlier days, staying progressively closer and closer to home each day, so today we did just that — I haven't gone further than the swimming pool, although we did have lunch at the market, before wandering home, eating gelato. This afternoon will involve the usual weekend wind-down activities: yoga, cooking, a bit of catching up on Dreamwidth.
( Two books )
It still feels like summer here, but if I look closely, there are changes: some of the cherry trees' leaves are yellow, the lavender plants in the front garden are all dried out, the feel of the air is slightly different. My nod to the slide towards autumn is to start bottling some of the summer abundance — fridge pickles, three litres of fermented tomatoes. I picked some of the dahlias and marigolds and put them in the living room. Our front windowsill has a line of pears and giant tomatoes in varying stages (and hues) of ripeness. If nothing else, the colours of summer are alive and vivid in my house, even as time marches on.
Uncanny X-Men #230
Aug. 25th, 2025 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Writer: Chris Claremont
Pencils: Marc Silvestri
Inks: Josef Rubinstein
The X-Men return the Reavers’ loot to their rightful owners.
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spinning, cont'd
Aug. 25th, 2025 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

40/40/20 cotton/tussah silk/hemp (the seller called it an "experimental blend"). Very inconsistent yarn thanks to the learning curve, as I'm still quite new to this. Surprisingly soft once plied, though, despite the hemp content, and one of my favorite fiber blends to spin because there's never a dull moment. This one's going to my graduate advisor.
Cloud oversaw the winding of the center-pull ball using a plying-size Turkish spindle. (I did the actual spinning and plying on the wheel.)

(Still buried under orchestration homework and health stuff, but fortunately I am taking a LONG break from writing so I can recuperate.)
Thor #284
Aug. 25th, 2025 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Writer: Roy Thomas
Pencils: John Buscema
Inks: Chic Stone
The Celestials drop their captives off in Olympia.
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Mending: Sherlock Holmes (ACD): Fanfic: Providing an Income Boost
Aug. 25th, 2025 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD) - retirement era
Rating: G
Length: 351 words
Summary: Mrs Maiden brings a surprising request