vexercises | Member Posts

Found a nice gaming article on Bluesky (Three Tiers of RPG Publishing), which led me to another article, which I found insightful and clever (and a bit sad, as accurate talk about economics these days tends to be), and then hit the bit that blew my mind.

They Killed Normal and Called It Progress: "Julia Roberts, Applebee's, Bandcamp, your manager, and the death of everything in between. (Also, Sweetgreen is the A24 of dining and I will die on this hill.)"

Have you noticed that the middle is gone from everything? Restaurants, companies, careers, music, retail, the economy itself. What replaced it is a barbell: one enormous weight on each end, nothing in the center, and most of us trying not to get crushed by the bar.

And the replacement does look better every single time, I grant you that. The A24 film is better than the $40 million adult drama from 2007, yeah, we can all agree on that. The Sweetgreen bowl is better than the Applebee’s chicken parm, sure. Your favorite Substack is sharper than the mid-list magazine that folded in 2019. Every replacement is a genuine upgrade. But every replacement serves fewer and fewer people.

That's not the mind-blowing part. That's the thesis, the baseline, the part that he spends half of the ~3000 word essay explaining, giving examples of, making neat comparisons across different industries.

( It's amazing that it doesn't get boring because it truly is the same damn pattern )

extrapenguin

Over the past few days, I've rediscovered my drawerfic, All That is Solid Melts into Air (currently at ~65k). RotS canon divergence, TCW/Prequel Trilogy. I thought it was great, so I immediately went and bugged the author for an ending.

As it currently is, I'd written the setup for the grand climax, had notes for the grand climax, and had written a ~700-word epilogue chapter.* Why, then, was a I blocked?

I realized it was a matter of pacing. I could have hopped straight into the climactic battle, sure, but that would have been unsatisfying. I knew, instinctively, that I needed something in between to make the transition less abrupt, but not exactly what I needed to write to build the tension and anticipation. Now I have an idea for the necessary two scenes in there, after which I can write ~3 scenes of climactic space-and-ground battle, plus ~4 shorter scenes of wrap-up before transitioning into the epilogue chapter.

* I find epilogue chapters very useful if you're posting chapter by chapter and also want reactions to the climax. Usually, reader comments on the final chapter are less about the contents of the final chapter and more about the fic in its entirety, which can be a bit of a bummer if you did something cool in there and wanted to see people's reactions.

$radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)$

radiantfracture

As usual, true scholars, please forgive my dilettante's sense of discovery over things you have always known.

When searching for some examples of "pleasing the heart" as erotic joy, as per

sovay's information, I arrived at this (in the ETCSL).

( A love song of Shu-Suen )

§rf§

1. Well, a balbale, but the immediate internet is of limited use in defining this except as a form that uses variety in repetition.

2. For those interested, the transliterated Sumerian given for this phrase is ^dcu-^dsuen cag₄ ^dmu-ul-lil₂-la₂-ke₄ ba-ze2-be₂-en-na-ju₁₀.

I assume the subscript numbers refer to different versions of the cuneiform character. I dunno about the superscript d.

isabrella

i'm izzy, in my 20s, i'm queer (she/her or whatever), avid femslasher and aspiring novelist.
#1 crowning achievement: insanely long band au for deleted disney show.
#2 crowning achievement: liked chappell roan before she was cool <3 (i'm annoying about this fr fr).
#3 crowning achievement: being the person responsible for the caitvi kinktober in the hall of the mountain king vid.

please feel free to subscribe/comment on anything on here! i haven't used a livejournal/dreamwidth consistently before but i'm trying to move off tumblr before the inevitable heat death of the webbed site.

i am on AO3 and also using SqWA as a mirror - big supporter of the proliferation of archives. i'm also getting really into sunset, the femslash exclusive archive!

Main Fandoms: Willow (the 2022 TV show), currently rewatching Buffy and loving it (especially Faith my beloved), Deadloch (can't wait for tomorrow!!!), We Are Lady Parts, North of North... basically anything with a strong woman-heavy cast and a bit of humour. I love Dan and Phil, they're my dudes, but I'm not especially a shipper. Deeply obsessed with Little Mix, Renee Rapp and Towa Bird at the moment too...
Fannish Interests: I write fic - a lot of RPF, a lot of femslash!, I like reading meta (and being right... of course), I vid a little, I'm really interested in fandom archiving work and getting involved in fandom-first sites like Dreamwidth, Fanlore, and smaller archives. I call myself a fan of fandom itself!

I post about: Things I'm reading/writing/watching. I'd love book/tv recs for sapphic/woman-heavy sci-fi, fantasy, romance, mystery, etc. Maybe my in-progress romance novel & the writing process! Pop music/culture ~~(don't forget I liked Chappell Roan before she was cool).~~

To quote an incredibly dated yet formative show for me, Faking It (2014): the best way to get to know me is to understand the things I hate. These include:

Genre fiction that gives lip service to queer politics but is ultimately politically conservative or regressive,
Everything that's going on with the proliferation of pull-to-publish fanfiction. Respect your roots!
Being anti-RPF but still caring about celebrities/not knowing the meaning of the word parasocial but still throwing it around,
The general hellscape of late stage capitalism and the panopticon,
Taylor Swift.

Current Mood: focused
Current Music: Sweet Melody - Little Mix

$radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)$

radiantfracture

This comes from Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora (2025, Ed. Holly Mason Badra), which I am reading and getting much from.

Object Exercise

First you must gather the objects.
Open the polish and polish each object
until every object is coded in polish,
a thin film that takes on the shape
of the object. Then dissect every
object with a circumstantial blade.
When the object is fully dissected,
remake it, but more in your image.
Then use concise scissors to prune
the object, removing what wilts
or yellows. Turn up the object
sound. Then dissect again. Hold
each piece to check for resistance:
if it withers, it's an object.
If it's shudders, it's a subject.

extrapenguin

Swan Lake is, after the Nutcracker, perhaps the most basic ballet there is. It's considered the peak of classical ballet (note: in ballet, the romantic era comes before the classic, so that while Tchaikovsky is a romantic composer, he is a composer of classic ballets), but I think the part of the reason for its longevity is that it has multiple ending variants, broadly divided into "villain wins" and "lovers prevail".

Short synopsis:

including the prologue!

[Prologue] Princess Odette gets kidnapped by an evil sorcerer, Rothbart, and cursed to become a swan who can only turn human by night. (He has a collection of women he's done this to.) Her mom turns up and cries so much her tears form the titular Swan Lake. Basically no-one performs this part anymore.

The Curse: a prince must publicly proclaim to love Odette and only Odette; if she is betrayed in love, she and all the other swan maidens are condemned to stay swans forever. Allegedly this will also happen if Rothbart dies before the curse is broken.

[Act 1 Scene 1] The production will probably start here, in a palace courtyard. Lots of partying and jolly dancing. Prince Siegfried gets gifted a crossbow. His mom tells him that tomorrow, at his 18th birthday party, he will have to pick a girl to marry.

[Act 1 Scene 2] Siegfried goes hunting! He sees a beautiful swan, who then turns into a beautiful woman. He is awed and they then fall in love. Corps de ballet is the other swan maidens, with divertissements of the four little swans and three large swans.

[Act 2 Scene 1] The birthday party. Lots of dancing in the form of divertissements. Siegfried turns down all the women his mother has thoughfully assembled, to everyone's shock. But then! The party is gatecrashed by a dude and his swan-y daughter, Odile – the black swan. The dude is none other than Rothbart, and Siegfried enspelled to see Odette when he looks at Odile. (In basically every production over, it's the same ballerina; all that changes is the color of the tutu.) Odette tries to fly in the window but is stopped. Siegfried proclaims his undying love to Odile, at which point Rothbart goes lol and draws back the curtains to reveal Odette behind the window, watching all this. Much drama ensues, Siegfried runs off, his mom faints, etc.

[Act 2 Scene 2] Back at the lake, Siegfried searches out Odette amidst the other swan maidens who have now all been condemned to an eternity as swans due to him. They meet and dance together. Then Rothbart shows up, and this is where things get interesting wrt potential ending variants. In a bunch of them, Rothbart takes Odette and she becomes a swan forever, and Siegfried tragically beseeches the audience etc (unless he's danced by Nureyev, in which case he drowns). In others, Rothbart gets defeated either by Siegfried killing him somehow, or simply by the True Love (TM) being so powerful it outpowers the curse; cue happy ending.

The Paris Ballet Theatre put on the happy ending which I believe is most popular in Russia: Siegfried steals one of Rothbart's wings (he is owl-coded), thus depriving him of his powers and defeating him. As usual, I bought the program, and this time they even had DVDs, so I bought one! Next up, buying an external DVD drive so I can rip it...

Dancing: Their principal danseur is very good at projecting this sort of naïve and innocent vibe, which fits Siegfried well. Their prima ballerina worked great as Odette, though Odile could've had a bit of extra spice. The costuming was amazing, with 109887 sequins on everyone, and I appreciated the slightly softer tutus (vs hardcore platter tutus) of the swans.

Also this is basically the Ballets Russes reborn. They dance Vaganova/Russian style, the dancers got their training in places like Armenia and the Komi Republic (in Russia), were soloists in places like the Bolshoi Theater and the Ural Opera (both in Russia), and the maîtrisse de ballet is Belarusian. Also the live music, The Orchestra of Budapest, is basically an international company formed out of almost exclusively Eastern European musicians, with a Belarusian conductor.

Note to self: rows G-P probably the best for seeing stuff, since it's far enough up that you can see the back of the stage/some of what the corps de ballet is doing formation-wise and aren't upskirting everyone nonstop, but close enough you can see expressions.

naye

Having been a One Piece fan since 2004, I was INCREDIBLY surprised when I went from "but why would you do that?" about the then forthcoming One Piece live action adaptation to head over heels in love with the writing, acting, production, and music. I was absolutely psyched for season two, which came out on Tuesday. My old friend

shayera suggested getting together to watch it, so she came over to hang out with

doctorskuld and me this weekend. We've all been into One Piece for 20+ years, and are fans of the magnitude where we have all written One Piece fic and made One Piece vid, as well as gone to events in Japan. (Seeing Oda Eiichiro live and getting to be in the crowd shouting "Arigatou!" at him is forever going to be a highlight of my fannish life.)

Which is to say: we are probably the worst kind of audience to try to please. But, of course, we all loved it. It is a tour de force in every way. THIS is how you adapt a manga! This is how you pour your heart and soul into making something so good it's impossible not to be won over by it.

I really was excited when the incomparable Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli released two tracks from the S2 OST (not yet released) ahead of the premiere. The first was the absolutely epic Pray to the Sun, featuring none other than THE HU as well as Declan de Barra. Listen to that sound! That is 100% what Elbaph music sounds like! It's got such a wild range of instruments, from Nordic nyckelharpa to Mongolian morin khuur, and those lyrics are - well. Let's just say that if you're up to date on the anime they will mean more than you may think.

Then they released their collaboration with baritone saxofonist Leo P, Whiskey Peak Saloon. Amazing energy! Amazing fun! I highly recommend Sonya Belousova's Instagram for lots of informative (and enthusiastic!) behind the scenes information on the OST.

As for the eight episodes - I am so glad season 3 is already in production, because I need more immediately. It's so bonkers and fun in the best way, at the same time as it manages to capture both the emotional heart of the story. And the production is so good?? Not just the amazing quality of everything from costume and props to sets, but the level of details that goes into everything - and also the way they've adapted the story...! There were so many great easter eggs, shout-outs, and treats for fans of the manga and anime, and I've put several on Tumblr already. Let's see...

This moment, when Dragon turns around in episode 1, and the camera focuses on the man standing behind him? Yeah, I made a teakettle noise of surprised delight. I also think there may be a relevant Wanted poster very out of focus in the background when they enter Loguetown.

Another fun Loguetown background thing that actually comes back in episode 5 is Hero of the Marines: The Musical about Garp. Just. The amount of namedropping that happens in the legible part of the review of said musical is astounding.

There's also a lot of legible text in the Baroque Works files that we see in episode 5.

Finally, for fans who've watched through Wano there is a huge easter egg standing around on Dorry's chest in episode 4. (I believe for fans up to date on the manga there are two Easter Eggs.)

...I say "finally" though I am pretty sure I am not done with discovering fun things in OPLA. I mean. I haven't even made a gif set for it yet...!

jjhunter

I asked a women named Sonnet
director of a poet's palm conservancy
what it was like to be in asynchronous conversation
with someone who was no longer there
the poet had risen each day to meditate in silence
and wanted silence for his mornings planting palms
now many unpublished manuscripts were being found
(as were many loving post-its from his wife Paula
working around his need for morning silence)
and his late-life handwriting was slowly, painstakingly
being decoded and transcribed
was it like finding seeds waiting like time capsules
for someday growing in the forest floor
or was it like being haunted

She spoke of the hundreds of books needing care
after decades' nurturing in that humid house
opening a book of eastern philosophy almost beyond saving
riddled with holes from book beetles' eatings
and finding on the next page a note in the margins from the poet
addressed tenderly to the beetles, saying
'you can have the binding, but please leave me the pages'

The palms he spent his life planting
and the poems he spent his life planting
and the pages of all those silent mornings seeding words
we are eager to hear now
may they continue growing in their season
may William and Paula Merwin's names stay living on our tongues

===

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

$radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)$

radiantfracture

The raccoons are fight-dancing, upright,
with outraged, horrible noises.
The night is illegible,
the streetlights dead staves.
You move into each orbit of darkness
like an extinction.

Time the storyteller is tired.
She begins many stories
but loses track of the endings.

What will happen to the angry raccoons?
In the morning, count the cats,
count the birds, count the worms,
count the earth.

No doubt we will find all the endings
in the end.

valoise

Only three books last month, although I also spent a lot of time reading short fiction at Uncanny, Apex, Clarkesworld, Reactor, and Lightspeed.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl
A really excellent book told with transcripts of counseling sessions, narrative flashbacks of the protagonist's life as a potential scavenger of alien artifacts, and various documents interspersed throughout the book. I'd, of course, heard of Pohl but never read anything by him. I'll definitely look for more.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
This is making a lot of people's Hugo noms lists and I've liked her books, but I won't be adding it to my nominations. The time travel gimmick here felt a bit forced and contrived and the book just didn't work for me.

The Compleat Servant-Maid or Young Maiden's Tutor
Published in 1670 for young women looking for work in service in wealthy or noble houses, the emphasis on being literate, having fashionable handwriting, and knowing math to assist in keeping household accounts had me reassess what I had assumed about literacy for women in 17th century England who were neither noble or wealthy.

extrapenguin

Went to the ballet again last weekend; will report on that tomorrow I think. Meanwhile, for the music meme, today's prompt is for an underrated song. This is a somewhat hard choice when working with new songs, as something that is new is discovered or undiscovered; overrated and underrated require a certain maturity. So I chose a song from 2023.

an underrated song
Elysion - Crossing Over

Watch on YouTube

prompts under the cut

a song you discovered this month Lady Gaga - Disease
a song that makes you smile Catalyst Symphony - Eden
a song that makes you cry Stratovarius - Shine in the Dark
a song that you know all the lyrics of Deep Sun - Storyteller
a song that proves that you have good taste Synthwailer - Iron Arch
~~a song title that is in all lowercase~~ newest release FlowerLeaf - The Wake
a song title that is in all uppercase Illumishade – ELEGY
an underrated song
a song that has three words
a song from your childhood
a song that reminds you of summertime
a song that you feel nostalgic to
the first song that plays on shuffle
a song that someone showed you
a song from a movie soundtrack
a song from a television soundtrack
a song about being 17
a song that reminds you of somebody
a song to drive to
a song with a number in the title
a song that you listen to at 3am in the morning
a song with a long title
a song with a color in the title
a song that gets stuck in your head
a song in a different language
a song that helps you fall asleep at night
a song that describes how you feel right now
a song that you used to hate but love today
a song that you downloaded
a song that you want to share

naye

Recently I've been on a free art kick, browsing images of paintings, sketches, sculptures, photos, needlework and so many other types of artworks that various institutions have digitalized. Here are two such fantastic resources.

The Met Collection
Travel around the world and across 5,000 years of history through 490,000+ works of art.

This is where I found this absolutely fantastic 19th century sketchbook. The artist is unidentified - the only information available is that they must have been Japanese (even though the sketchbook was marked "Chinese Drawings"). I loved their art so much I have turned two of their pieces into embroideries! (But that's a different post.)

And then I learned about the Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan, (ColBase) where you can find treasures like THIS!!

Painting of a tabby and white cat licking it's paw. It's got its ears back and its eyes focused on the paw. It's originally a painting by emperor Huizong of Song, this copy is by Sakuma Gantaku. It has so much personality it's amazing.

Painting of a tabby and white cat licking it's paw. It's got its ears back and its eyes focused on the paw. It's originally a painting by emperor Huizong of Song, this copy is by Sakuma Gantaku. It has so much personality it's amazing.

See it here on ColBase.

ColBase is a database containing the collections of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan. It encompasses the four National Museums in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Kyushu, the two National Research Institutes for Cultural Properties in Tokyo and Nara, and the Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan.

About ColBase & (very generous!) Terms of Use.

I have spent so much time doing random browsing, and I've found so much lovely art - and several amazing pieces I kind of want to call "ye olde shitposting" for lack of a better term for something that is clearly a little weird and maybe meant to provoke a reaction in the viewer?

Or what else would you call He's Made Up of Many People, which. Yes. That is indeed what's going on here.

But that kind of stuff is in the minority! It's all art that is out of copyright, but some of it still feels very modern, like this painting of Mount Hiei from the 1920s.

Anyway, I can definitely recommend art scrolling as an option to doom scrolling!

jjhunter

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

=

Signal-boosting much appreciated!

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Vidding Exercises for Creative Distraction

Member Posts

The Missing Middle

Returning to a WIP last touched in 2023

more stumbling through ancient poetry

Welcome!

Poem Post: Tracy Fuad, "Object Exercise"

Ballet Experience: Swan Lake

A little bit OPLA S2 stuff

Poem: "Memories of Merwin"

Today's poem

Books read in February

Monday Music Meme

Free art!

How Are You? (in Haiku)

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September 2024

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