In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

I've finally started my rewatch of the early episodes of CR4 so that I can properly get caught up on Critical Role. Actually starting it has been the hardest part, so I'm hoping that now that I've begun I can stick to at least one episode a day and more if possible.

It's definitely easier to keep track of things in the early episodes now that I actually know who everyone is and what's going on. Having advance knowledge of just what groups everyone will be splitting up into shortly seems to be helping as well, as I have a better idea of what's really important to focus on and what's not. I'm also picking up on some smaller details that I completely missed the first time around just because I was already struggling to keep track of who was who and such.

I'm hoping that this rewatch will help it keep my attention better than it was the first time around. 🤞🏻

There's nothing like getting a comment on a fic of yours that's talking about how said fic is older than the person leaving said comment. 🙃

Oh, don't get me wrong. It was a very positive comment overall. But, still. Oof. I'm used to getting comments like that on some of my really early fics, but I was already out of college when I posted this one.

I don’t know how I keep timing these so that I finish my audiobook and my paper book one right after the other. This weekend I also wrapped up The Black Fantastic, an anthology compiled by Andre M. Carrington. Thank you to pauraque for bringing this one to my attention! This is a collection of “Afrofuturist” stories by Black authors. If you want more detail, Pauraque has done individual reviews of each story which you can read here; I won’t get that specific.

With the usual caveat that all anthologies vary in quality, I enjoyed this one. There were a lot of very different stories, from some really fantastical stuff to ones that are just a little bit to the left of the world as it stands. On the high end of things, pieces like A Guide to the Native Fruits of Hawai’i by Alayna Dawn Johnson, where the protagonist grapples with her decision to collaborate with a group of vampire invaders to prey on the locals (and the metaphor of vampirism for the way Hawaii is treated by wealthy Americans is not lost in the shuffle); or The Orb by Tara Campbell, which was both strange and unexplained, choosing to focus not on the “why” or “how” of the situation but again on the moral quandary of its main character.

On the lower end, ones like The Ones Who Stay and Fight by NK Jemisin, which felt…narratively unclear, to say the least. It is either a satire of the kind of utopia writers create where its status as utopia is essentially dependent on eliminating any disagreement or contact with the outside world…or it’s a whole-hearted endorsement of that view. And if I can’t tell which, I tend to think the author’s failed at their purpose; or Ruler of the Rear Guard by Maurice Broaddus, which seemed to end just as it was getting to the plot.

Overall, I had fun with this anthology. SFF short story collections, done well, are such a scintillating showcase of creativity and I felt that here.

On Sunday I finished The Tainted Cup, the first book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett. This is a fantasy murder mystery with an element of political thriller.

The main character is Ana Dolabra, an eccentric but brilliant investigator, and I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen a woman fill this role. The wacky but effective investigator is of course a very well-known stock character, but has always been, in my experience, a man. I found Ana delightful; strange but not off-putting, and without coming off like the author was working to hard to make her quirky.

However, our point-of-view protagonist is Din Kol, Ana’s put-upon assistant, on whose shoulders falls the managing of her many idiosyncrasies. They’re a fun team to watch work, and in this first book we get to see their working relationship unfold, as they’ve only recently teamed up at the start. Din is fine, but mostly I appreciated him as a lens for Ana.

Bennett’s fantasy world is characterized by fantastical use and manipulation of plants and the human body. Din, for instance, has been modified to be an “engraver”—someone with an eidetic memory. For obvious reasons, this serves him well as aid to an investigator.

I think Bennett does a good job of throwing you into the world and letting you use context to figure most of it out. I get bored with SFF novels that feel the need to hold your hand, as if you might be a first-time SFF reader who never encountered a magic system before, so I was relieved when Bennett just started telling the story and letting me figure the world out as it went along. I’d rather be a bit lost at times than be toddled along, but I never felt lost here.

The novel touches on some things that I feel are pretty keenly relevant, like the ability of the wealthy to avoid justice and their willingness to inflict suffering on the rest of society to better their own position (and then justify it to themselves).

I don’t read a ton of murder mysteries, so I may not be the best judge of this, but I also felt that Ana worked well. It’s a tough trick writing a character who’s meant to be much smarter than the rest of the cast (perhaps even than the author!), and it can fail a couple of ways: the supposed “brilliant” deductions are obvious to the average reader, making the rest of the cast look painfully dull for not seeing them; or the machinations are so obtuse with so little evidence the reader simply won’t believe the detective could have figured that out without an ass-pull from the author. I didn’t think Bennett fell into either of these traps and every detail Ana referred to in one of her deductions was something that had been mentioned before.

I only have one real criticism and that is about how unrealistic the sword fight scene was. I simply don't think it was necessary to showcase what the Bennett was trying to show us about Din, and <spoiler>having an untried swordsman defeat three--almost four--trained imperial soldiers on his own (partially because they do him the courtesy of attacking one at a time)</spoiler> was so unrealistic it jarred me right out of the scene. As Milgen points out later in the book--fighting is not just about memorizing the right moves.

I enjoyed this book and I plan to read the next one. Very interested to see where Ana’s adventures take her next!

Pride's Solace, a Dragon Age exchange focusing on Solas, when live a little while ago. I ended up getting not one but two lovely gifts from it!

First up is a fleeting moment, focusing on Lucanis & Solas & Spite post-Tearstone Island in DA:V.


Then there's Garden of Statues, focusing on Solas & Tarquin with Tarquin meeting Solas sometime pre-DA:V. There's also a lovely bit with Ashur towards the end.

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

Nothing makes you feel old like looking at your AO3 profile, glancing at your user ID, and suddenly remembering that it's a really fucking small number because you technically joined before they were even in open beta. By, like, a day. But still. I remember the length of the queues back then.



Seriously, I was still living in Tennessee when I made that account. That's terrifying.

The Great Panjandrum Himself by Samuel Foote

In nonsense perhaps matched only by Lewis Carroll's The Mad Gardener's Song. An actor said he could memorize anything in one reading, and this was the attempt to defeat him.

The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy by Ronald Hutton

A long topic

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In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off, because the DM's internet died again (as the game's start was already delayed because of internet issues).

omg I swear this is what did it. My life has changed over the past week, I feel like a new person, and I feel crazy about it because I swear it's because I splurged on a new soft throw blanket. Something about touching that blanket healed me, y'all. It's a UGG Euphoria blanket, and I spent like 60 bucks on it. I didn't really have the money but I splurged anyway, and it is SO SOFT, and it does something to my brain. Like it tickles my brain when I rub my hands on it. This needs to be studied.

I doubt new improved me will last forever, but I'm doing what I can while I'm feeling this way.

Believe me, I know how crazy it sounds that a blanket has 'cured' my depression.

Unexpectations (2345 words) by Settiai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kelly Chambers/Samara
Characters: Kelly Chambers, Samara (Mass Effect)
Additional Tags: Complicated Relationships, Developing Relationship, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Not Actually Unrequited Love, One Shot, Spectre Requisitions Rare Pair Exchange
Summary: Looking back, it wasn't something that came out of nowhere.

Falling Apart, Coming Together, and Everything In Between (1975 words) by Settiai
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, Thane Krios/Female Shepard, Kaidan Alenko/Thane Krios, Kaidan Alenko/Thane Krios/Female Shepard
Characters: Female Shepard (Mass Effect), Kaidan Alenko, Thane Krios
Additional Tags: Break Up, Developing Relationship, Getting Back Together, Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, One Shot, Polyamory, Spectre Requisitions Rare Pair Exchange, Thane Krios Lives
Summary: Falling in love had been as easy as breathing.

I'm very, very, very behind on Critical Role at this point, and I'm very heavily considering starting Campaign 4 over the from the beginning to ease back into it and hopefully properly catch my attention again. Things were so hectic late last year that I was only half paying attention at times, which is really not a good thing for me when it comes to a new show and is probably why I've been struggling to get caught up. And, for all intents and purposes, CR4 is a completely new show from the previous campaigns despite still technically being Critical Role.

Things at work are quickly calming down, as this is one of our off periods, so right now I'm hoping that I can curl up on the sofa this weekend and properly watch at least the first few episodes ago. The hope is that will help get me re-interested in everything so that I can more easily marathon through the rest of it once I properly care for the characters again.

We'll see how it goes?

Hi, all!

My mood has improved, and I've had energy for the past 3 days. Out of nowhere. I actually got some much-needed cleaning done, and it's been very beneficial to my mental health. I've been eating healthier leading up to my first Ozempic shot, so that might have something to do with it, but it hasn't been a HUGE change yet, just little stuff. But I guess it could have still made a difference. idk, I just feel great. It's so weird!

Ooh, it looks like there's an Animorphs TV show in development over at Disney+.

I'm a little worried that Disney might make them sugarcoat some things, since at its heart the whole point of Animorphs is basically "war is bad and destroys lives," and it doesn't exactly pull punches on that front. But, you know, I'm willing to be cautiously curious at this point.

On a related note, I still have all of my books from the series. They were one of the things that I pulled out of storage when I moved recently. Maybe I should do a re-read...

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Puritanism and the Wilderness: 1629-1700, The Intellectual Significance of the New England Frontier by Peter N. Carroll

What the Puritans thought about wilderness as they came to New England. . .

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