Weekly Chat
Nov. 22nd, 2025 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
c_entWhatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
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Just One Thing (22 November 2025)
Nov. 22nd, 2025 12:22 pmnanila posting in awesomeersComment 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!
beansideWork wasn't too bad yesterday. The phones weren't horrible, and I was able to get people in for appointments relatively quickly. I did make 1 fuckup, but I think I fixed it. Nothing huge, just misread an entry in our grid, and misscheduled something. I was annoyed with myself, but I'm human, and things happen.
The rest of the day was fine overall. I finished work, and Jess and I watched Hazbin Hotel's Broadway Special. I haven't watched the show, but Jess has shown me some of the music from it, and it's pretty much a banger.
Maybe one of these days, I'll watch an episode. Jess really loves it, so I might give it a try.
Today, we have a few errands. We did need to be back by 3 so the sister could go to an inlaw birthday even, but now BIL is sick, so she's just going to stay home and be plague free, so we have the full day. I need a little bit of time to get ready for game, but I think I know what I'm doing. We're going to start off the campaign with individual vignettes, where everyone will tell me how they died, and then get on the train to the afterlife, transforming into a nightmare version of themselves. I'm looking forward to it. There should be some good RP, and the party can meet and start to form a party, and we'll go from there. Not expecting much actual play tonight, probably mostly meeting the characters and doing a wee session Zero. I've done a lot of it online, but I will read out the list of triggers and see if anyone has any hard nopes for what they want "onscreen."
But first, errands!
Okay, time to go forth and get a shower. Everyone have a perfect Saturday!!
The Day in Spikedluv (Friday, Nov 21)
Nov. 22nd, 2025 07:14 amspikedluvI did a load of laundry, hand-washed dishes, went for a couple walks with Pip and the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and scooped kitty litter. We went out for supper so I didn’t have to cook! \o/
(The plan was to try the buffet at a new-ish local place, and we both ended up ordering off the menu. Though Pip is determined we’ll do the buffet next time. We both got the cheeseburger, and by the time I got home the roof of my mouth felt like I had sores on it, a sure sign I’ve ingested garlic. I didn’t taste it, but I figured the burger must’ve been seasoned with garlic, and later Pip confirmed because he’d had a ‘side-effect’, too. Which means I’ll be rinsing my mouth with salt water for a couple of days.)
But I did make a pumpkin pie! (My s-i-l asked me to make a GF dessert for Thanksgiving, and pumpkin pie is the first thing I thought of, but Pip’s other sister is making a pumpkin pie. I have to think of something else, but since I was still in the mood for a pumpkin pie, I made one just for us.)
I read more fanfic and watched some HGTV programs. Zoo North Carolina was my background show.
Temps started out at 32.4(F) and reached 49.7. It was overcast all day.
Mom Update:
Mom sounded good when I talked to her. Treatment was same old-same old, food settled fine, and she was watching Mama’s family when I called. *g*
crossposted meta n/∞ - dick and catalina
Nov. 22nd, 2025 11:25 amqueenslayerbeeThis is something I've talked about before (mainly in DMs), and it's probably something that'd only have crossover appeal to a handful of people (and at least one that might hate it to pieces xD). But I often think about writing the equivalent to Steferine's plot in season 5 of The Vampire Diaries for Dick and Catalina Flores. Some tags left on a recent post of mine prompted me to want to talk a bit about it here.
The explanation: Katherine and Stefan met over a century ago; Stefan was initially attracted and drawn to her, but she used compulsion (mind control) during their "relationship", to keep him docile and accepting of the fact that she was... well, a murderous monster. She fed on him, violated him, raped him.
The important part: season 5, over 150+ years later. Katherine has been stripped of her powers, turned human, and had what amounted to a terminal illness (her 500+ years were catching up to her). Stefan, who at the time had been feeling vulnerable and sought to grasp for control, ended up choosing to have a one night stand with Katherine. She took this as ~reconnecting, as another step in their grandiose love story. To him, this was closure.
Later, she's on her (supposed) deathbed and Stefan extends her some grace, using his own vampiric powers in order to offer her some closure in (what he thinks are) her last moments, conjuring images of a happier version of her human youth: with the newborn daughter that was taken from her for having a baby out of wedlock and the family that was brutally slaughtered when Katherine refused to be a sacrificial pawn in someone else's schemes.
This is not really the end of Katherine this season, because instead of going quietly in that good night (as if), she hijacks the body of her doppelganger (a younger vampire with her own romantic past with Stefan) and tries to ~seduce him back. She's found out, and Stefan gets to be the one to deliver the killing blow.
(She returns as the final boss in the very last season, and he stabs her + sacrifices himself in the process in order to save the world. They die together in a literal fiery embrace -one of his past victims summons hellfire, it's a long story-; this is not relevant to the point of this post, I just like it, for Reasons).
I don't know yet what the equivalent of this story would be for Dick and Catalina. The killing is (most likely) out, for obvious reasons; Dick wouldn't find closure in that, or in Catalina dying in an unrelated or different manner (and I don't want to kill her). Neither of them have vampiric power nor do I want to give it to them LOL (here we could draw some parallels between vampirism/vigilantism, though each of their relationships with it is basically inverted from Steferine's).
But I would want that same feeling of... Catalina being in a vulnerable, "lower" place than she once was [1], and this allowing Dick to approach her from a moral high ground, where he can... idk how to explain this. Afford? Being ~heroic and generous towards her in a way that makes him feel soooo good about himself, as opposed to how miserable he felt when he was actually with her in Devin Grayson's run, when he felt "stuck" with her and tried to find something sympathetic in her and clearly loathed every second together and used it as self-punishment. And then yeah, the part where Catalina manages to turn the tables on him, and he now must be proactive to stop her. We'll see.
[1] As I typed that I just had a great idea of how to do this 😈. This is why I love blabbing on tumblr dot com, thank you everyone.
Phoebe and Her Unicorn - 2025-11-22
Nov. 22nd, 2025 12:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
phoebeandherunicorn_feedComic strip for 2025/11/22
Philosophical Questions: Morals
Nov. 22nd, 2025 01:25 amysabetwordsmithWhat are the biggest moral dilemmas your country is facing now?
Privacy, body autonomy, democracy, and climate change.
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Nov. 21st, 2025 09:48 pmsovayAs a reworking of Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) is trashtacular even beyond the whipsawing of its trans reading when it mixes the novella's Gothic horrors with historical ones—scrunching about six decades in the penny-dreadful process of folding in not only the Whitechapel murders but Burke and Hare, even without throwing in an allusion to Sweeney Todd or a street singer straight out of Val Lewton—but it dovetailed unexpectedly well with an article sent me by
selkie about the obtrusiveness of AI-generation in art because it contains an in-camera effect so good that I stopped the film to gush about it to spatch. It's the emergence of the so-called Mrs. Hyde. One-shot, Jekyll wrenched with the effects of his absinthe-green potion buries his face in his hands, slowly straightens to perceive, in the cheval glass where a moment ago he was convulsing, a woman as severely dark-haired, night-pale and shocked as himself, who she is. It's not a trick of double exposures or duplicate sets or dissolves. While the camera tightly pivots behind the hunched protagonist, it looks as though a slight adjustment to the angle of the mirror allows an otherwise offscreen Martine Beswick to reflect beyond the identically dressed shoulder of Ralph Bates, their breath heaving in time, their hands slowly unmasking their shared face. It's very simple and uncannily effective. In some ways I find it more impressive than the red-filter transformation of Fredric March in the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because it's all sightlines. He's never out of shot and she's suddenly in it. Especially to an eye distracted from consideration of the sets or the cinematography by the switch of actors in the glass, it looks impossible. And someone had to think of it, or at least translate it from a stage illusion. It has never broken a film for me to see how a practical effect is done, which feels different from the suspicion of how much of an image is AI-slopped.The almost talking blues whose first two lines I missed tonight on WERS turned out to be Lucinda Williams' "The World's Gone Wrong" (2025).
P.S. And a random thirty seconds of Clive Francis mixed in with the bleak London ultraviolence of Villain (1971), why not?
Holiday cards
Nov. 22nd, 2025 06:50 amruricI plan to start writing ALL my cards this week and post by next weekend which means I'm 3 weeks ahead of final posting dates so they should arrive on time even for folks overseas!
If I already have your address you'll be on the list but please feel free to drop contact deets below to make sure - post is screened.
Today (Saturday) I am attempting to deal with the utter chaos in my bedroom, repot some houseplants and batch cook for next week - so being able to sit down and have some time to write cards would be most welcome!
Game Check-in: Duet Night Abyss
Nov. 22nd, 2025 12:25 ambluapapilio
Spoilers, of course.
The Empire took someone else before and tried to use them but they resisted, so they were killed?
WTF, the story about Miss Hilin and Hamel was so tragic! And what exactly turned him into a monster? Oh shit I just realized that's why it was going for stones so single-mindedly ahhhh.
Yep, so when Charons 'deteroriate' after Awakening they turn into super strong Filthoids. I'm still confused about the connection between Forsakens and Deterioration. How was Hal a Forsaken?
For the Elsa and Annie case, why didn't we have the option to give Elsa the letter from Annie???
'CRAP' WAS CENSORED WTF even IF this was a children's game that would not be?!
Also I find it really sad that they want to take Psyche away to die with them, like at least they didn't kidnap her, they gave her a choice to meet them and yeah Henrik hasn't given them the best impression but her own parents left her with him and it's clear he's trying to help these people, did they ever consider she might want to stay with her guardian in her last moments?
I cannot believe they just assume Henrik was some evil villain killing and controlling Deteriorators based on that tiny shred of info Vita learned. This is so stupid. *smh* Hope they don't do something irreversible.
Me in the middle of feeling bad for Psyche as walks through her visions of the past: "...Wait, why do her parents look like the most generic NPCs ever, did they adopt her??"
I hate the Empire SO MUCH. They think they're the good guys but they're actually the lowest scum. :|
Is the crystal as a cure a loose end? I don't know how I feel about Psyche's ending, I thought she'd die, then I thought she'd live but then she died by killing herself right when she came back to herself. With practice or done sooner, could Vita's Resonance hold Deterioration back or take it away completely?
Outsider mentioned someone else who could use 'this kind of power' who brought blood and chaos and was hanged, was that the person Sybille mentioned earlier?
Am I ever going to understand how catching Geniemons works?? Edit: I missed how to switch to a higher food, I kept using the same one. 😅
After a little while of playing the game, it suddenly doesn't want to let me turn fast, it's almost like slow moon, same when I use my mouse and move it around the screen. Sometimes I have to restart the game because it's hard to fight when you can't turn fast.
I feel really bad for all the stags, every time I'm out exploring with a team they go off and kill them all. 😭