Buzz Aldrin's No Dream is Too High: Life Lessons from a Man Who Walked on the Moon (co-written with Ken Abraham) was a spontaneous get from a clearance section, and when I picked it up I assumed that this was his memoir? It does have elements of a memoir, in that Aldrin tells little stories of his life experiences, but his actual memoir is titled Magnificent Desolation, which I will have to get another time. This book is more a presentation of neat little soundbites for the purpose of inspiring people, and especially younger people, who look up to him and want to pursue their dreams.

Aldrin clearly has a lot of feelings about doing as much as possible while he's still alive and able, and this book is part of the activism of trying to keep interest in science, space and space-faring activities alive. He wants to inspire excellence! Unfortunately that's not really what I'm interested in, speaking as someone whose dreams are much smaller, so reading this book was a case of "that's nice, but not really relatable" which is frustrating because not everything has to be relatable, but the book's prose is trying so hard to make ALL of it relatable, and urging the reader to Innovate! And Think Out of the Box! And Not Be Afraid of Rejection! Aldrin is so upbeat and positive, there's outright whiplash when he drops tidbits out of the blue, eg. how his mother died, before right on back to going, Surround Yourself With People Who Will Bring Out the Best in You! Don't Be Afraid To Think Out of the Box! Be Open-minded! Stand Up For Yourself!

I don't mean this to denigrate, and I totally get Aldrin's frustration that NASA stopped going to the moon, and efforts to get to Mars are taking so long, that he needs to pour that frustration into this book (along with other projects) to remind people of the best of humankind's accomplishments and capabilities and to be unafraid to pursue excellence even when times are hard... and have unfortunately become harder since the time this book was published almost ten years ago. For example, this book gets dated for his namechecking Musk and Bezos as innovators who make the world a better place.

For Aldrin's purpose, the book is what it is, a collection of anecdotes to inspire and encourage optimism, so there's a sense of flattening and simplification for that. There's only allusions to Aldrin's difficulties in and after NASA, his depression and alcoholism, or even his time in the Korean War -- which, as he writes it, he remembers that war fondly, and not much more than that.

Too rusty to even think about touching live action, but if anybody have any comic book covers or panels they'd like to see iconned, pop them in the comments?

+ Fishery has been so consistently bad there's talk of maybe heading home a little earlier. I wouldn't mind. I've been cope-eating my way through the whole trip lol. Pity I undid all the progress I made last trip, but I gotta keep my spirits up some way, and right now that's via candy and comics.

The weather is also kind of shit, and looking to get shittier. Like, no fishery and go seek shelter by the coast shittier.

+ I sometimes stop by creativenarket.com for their weekly batch of free goods, and this week they've got a 1300 pack of really versatile marker elements up for grabs. Lines, boxes, circles, icons... could do a lot of fun stuff with it!
(I haven't made icons in so long *sob*)

+ My dad had a skin cancer scare last week, but thankfully they caught it in time! (by which I mean, the doctor said it looked ok, he insisted they remove it, and then it turned out to be cancerous. So happy my dad's a stubborn one.) They've taken further tests and found no sign of it having spread, so he should be in the clear.

+ I did send him the link to this study: Daily vitamin B3 dose cuts skin cancer risk by up to 54%. Very large pool of participants, I feel more than sturdy enough to pester him about adding some vitamins. (I'll also have to push when it comes to sunblock *sigh*)
Overall, niacinamide – also known as nicotinamide, a vitamin B3 form found in food and supplements that supports cellular energy, DNA repair and healthy skin – was associated with a 14% lower risk of developing skin cancer. When people began nicotinamide after having earlier received a positive skin cancer diagnosis, the reduction in risk was 54%. What's more, the effect was seen in both basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, with the largest drop in squamous cell cancers.

+ Italian workers’ strike in solidarity with Gaza brings disruptions across the country.

+ House Arab.
I watched in real time as the consensus congealed; by Sunday morning, everyone seemed to agree that the events of the previous day could only be interpreted as senseless barbarism or perhaps an Iranian plot, but absolutely not as a legible expression of rage by a people the world had left to die.

+ With the Serial Numbers Filed Off: The Problem with Trad Pub Fanfic.

+ sholio posted a bunch of Murderbot fic recs, bless. Bookverse short gen and longer iddy plot fics, PLUS a fic of their own: Crime And Punishment, Mensah POV, 2500 words. I'm not allowing myself a break from my current book, but very excited to dig in after.

...I didn't have a Murderbot tag shame on me.

+ ‘Andor’ Writer Dan Gilroy On Disney Suspending Jimmy Kimmel & Hollywood Facing “Venomous Evil”.
Their goal is to instill fear, to make you feel helpless, hopeless, to break you down. Don’t let them. Educate yourself. Organize. Speak truth to authority. Because the story’s not written — the pen is in your hand.
(they did decide to reinstate Kimmel. And then announced a price hike hours later 🫠)

+ The ‘blue dragon’ is back from the brink and Global Conservation Protection of Calakmul Helps Increase Jaguar Population by 30%. More pretty dragons and pretty cats \o/

+ The US town that pays every pregnant woman $1,500.
The town of Flint made headlines a decade ago when pediatrician Mona Hanna discovered lead levels in local children’s blood had risen dangerously after the city switched its water supply to the Flint River. The coalition that came together to protect children then continued to advocate for children after the water crisis resolved, Hanna said.

I was going to start watching Bloody Game season 3, but while browsing Netflix on my phone, I got a promo for Crime Scene Zero.

HUH, said I. Does this have anything to do with Crime Scene, the murder mystery variety show that I love? A quick click on the show's info (the show itself hasn't dropped yet) seemed to imply that it's a continuation of the same show????

I went to the show's wiki page to double-check, and sure enough Crime Scene Zero is mentioned there as a fifth season of the show.... but just before that, the article says that there was a fourth season LAST year, called Crime Scene Returns.

WHAT! Despite my acceptance that the show is labour intensive and difficult to set up and run, they've made another two seasons? I checked the usual places on reddit, and have now watched episode 1 and 2 of Crime Scene Returns, as it seems that this season has changed the format some by splitting each case into two episodes each.

Sure, the comments on reddit are more levelheaded, with criticism of the new episodes' pacing and the roleplaying skills of the cast, but meanwhile I'm over here watching episodes 1 and 2 while being gleeful, joyous, excited, grateful, delighted, ecstatic, and laughing until my asthma kicks in. (When ep 1 first started I went aww Park Ji-yoon didn't come back? But then she came walking in as the detective and I went YAY!!!!) I am so happy, I have to stop myself from bingeing the whole season, though I probably will.

I got Karen Armstrong's memoir The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness from a book fair ages ago, but kind of avoided reading it because although I knew that Armstrong used to be a nun and that informs her perspective of religion, I was nervous that knowing Armstrong better might make me enjoy her other books less. As it turns out, knowing a bit more about life experience has indeed changed the way I view her books that I've already read, but in ways I wasn't expecting, and most of the guesses I'd made from her style of writing turned out to be pretty close.

( Cut for length. )

Anyway, great read, enjoyed myself even through the difficult parts, I have a better understanding (I think) of the ways that Armstrong thinks that differ from my own, but still illuminate routes that are useful to think about.

It took me so long to finish Bloody Game season 2! (Looks like I started somewhere in July.) There was a stretch of a few weeks where I was three episodes from the finale and just couldn't get through, the pace and editing was SO BAD in the second half of the season. Made worse because at the same time I was watching Taran's The Genius season 1 commentary, which further made me appreciate how crisp the editing is in that show, even during its slower first season.

(Tangent: Taran paused his The Genius commentary to commentate over Survivor: Australia - Australia vs. the World, which I ended up watching because I figured that his commentary would be interesting enough to cancel out my general disinterest in Survivor -- speaking as someone who followed season 2 and 3 really closely back in the day. Taran had way less to say because he doesn't have as much game strategy to analyse, but it was fun to get a glimpse of Survivor fandom lingo and meta discussion about "player edits" and "social currency".)

I finally forced myself to finish Bloody Game's season 2, in the hopes of getting to the reportedly better season 3. It's been literal months since I first started season 2, and at one point I accidentally deleted my post on the earlier episodes when it was in a dreamwidth draft, so I'll try to recall what my thoughts were.

Why couldn't I have fastforwarded through season 2 the way I did season 1? Because Hong Jin-ho was a player. Dammit, Jin-ho! Though a lot of the time I let the show play in the background while I did other things. It is fun seeing Jin-ho, who "rescued" The Genius's debut season, appear almost ten years later in Bloody Game as a veteran (and thus letting go, fashion effort wise) in a mostly younger-than-him cast.

( More thoughts about Bloody Game's season 2. )

A few of you may remember "Score: Q to 12," in which Sherlock refuses to confine himself to the Scrabble Official Club and Tournament Word List, and Joan refuses to spend any more time trying to make him. (Elementary, Joan & Sherlock, 453 words)

At the prompting of a friend, now there is a sequel, "Score: i√2 to 𓅧," in which the game has continued to evolve. (Elementary, Outsider POV, 221b ficlet)


While I was posting last night, I also archived the DVD commentary I did for "Score: Q to 12" back in 2014. Last month, mific in fan_writers was bemoaning the death of the DVD commentary on AO3. And I thought: I've written a bunch, they're just not on AO3; they're all on tumblr and DW. I usually link the main story to them, but I haven't been actually archiving them on the archive site, as I haven't wanted to clutter up the main story with a bunch of extraneous material. But based on that fan_writers convo, I thought I'd pull this one over as an experiment. Depending on how it goes, I might pull over the rest of my "DVD extras" -- commentaries, deleted scenes -- for other stories, too.

+ Relooted has a demo up! Reclaim real African artifacts from Western museums in an Africanfuturist heist game! I won't be able until I get home, but I've been super excited since I saw the trailer.

+ Denmark close to wiping out leading cancer-causing HPV strains after vaccine roll-out.

+ Longer, heavier periods are long-term symptom of Covid, study finds.

+ These are the 1st images of humpbacks having sex, and they're both males.

+ Buffy the COVID Slayer: Sarah Michelle Gellar posts masked selfie on set of reboot. (SMG is a very small part of the article, but interesting nonetheless)

+ Scientists found the missing nutrients bees need — Colonies grew 15-fold.

+ In Defense of Despair.
We are also reading Aracelis Girmay’s “You Are Who I Love,” in which the speaker unfurls a list of people they love, people they want to see survive, people doing what those not committed to close and tender attention might call the daily tasks of living: a person stirring a pot of beans, a person selling roses out of a cart, a person crossing a border, a person carrying their brother home, a person singing Leonard Cohen to the snow. You, reader, do not personally know these people, but their motivations spark a familiar feeling—here is someone trying to survive in a world that can render a person unable to get out of bed. You, too, may love a person who cannot get out of bed, which is why you cherish the things that convey, I am trying to stitch together enough small moments to have a life for a little bit longer.

+ No Platonic Explanation.

I have to admit that when all the hubbub of him being cast in Winter Soldier happened, I was entirely out of the loop. He didn't have much presence in my life growing up, despite me devouring movies. But it's been nice to read about his life since yesterday. I never knew about all his activism.

Robert Redford, Environmentalism, and the Most Prescient Movie Ever Made by Dave Leviton is a good write-up.

I may look into a few of his movies when I get home. Meanwhile, here's a All The Predident's Men vid: Me and Bernstein down by the schoolyard by findmeinthealps.

eta Sneakers is a movie that's being mentioned a lot, I may seek that one out. Here's a writeup at PC Mag (makes sense, as it's about cyber security, I believe?)

I bought Alexander Freed's novelisation of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story back when the movie first came out and I was fannishly excited over it, but I didn't read it. I think it's because most of the time novelisations don't really work for me, either by overexplaining what I prefer to be open, or going for characterisation choices that I disagree with. This novelisation does both! But enough time has passed, and Andor has opened the world further into its own thing, that I can process the novelisation as a product of a specific point in time.

Also, good thing I didn't read it back then because it completely undoes my missing scene fic, in the usual ways that crack me up, eg. my thinking that the timeline as seen didn't make emotional or plotworking sense in order to accomplish all the things that film needed to do during the Yavin 4 interlude, but the movie script, and from there the novelisation, disagreed with me.

The novelisation itself was interesting, and I suppose scratches that itch for world details and setting the scene. But its blank spots are funny, eg. Cassian really has nothing going on emotionally, except (1) mission and (2) Jyn, with the second point overtaking the first pretty quick; no insight into Chirrut's headspace at all, since he only gets the one scene (where he dies) since everything else is given to Baze, I think due to limitations in being able to flesh out the Guardians of Whills lore; Bodhi really does not get his due for what he actually did and sacrificed in order to get the plans out. The movie's already a little waffly on the last part, and I get that the story is wholly Jyn's, but... the novelisation's Jyn is not the movie's Jyn either, so I couldn't really pin emotional investment there either. The broad strokes of the character are the same, but the novelisation (and the script's?) Jyn is way angrier, conflicted and traumatized that movie!Jyn's heartbroken stoicism. So there's that! But I did like the imperial bureaucracy and Orson Krennic parts, which I suppose are difficult to get wrong.

I've been working on this for more than a month, and I've been posting this as a WIP on AO3 with one chapter a day this week, which was fun and useful in finally getting myself to finish it.

But yesterday when I woke up and opened my doc to prep the final chapter, it had reverted to an earlier version where more than half the final chapter was gone. After sitting there for a second or two in horror, I scrambled through finding different solutions... and eventually realized that the latest file was still in the folder, but for some reason when I let my computer do a windows update the night before, it seems to have logged in to the dropbox cloud without my say-so and renamed the files due to the update conflicts. But at least the file was still there! Phew.

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Pairing/Characters: Steve/Tony
Genre: Steve POV, Pining, Sexual Fantasies, Getting Together, First Time, Humor, Mild Angst
Rating: Explicit
Words: 13,000+
Crossposting: AO3
Summary:

“What are you thinking about?” Tony asks.

Steve knows that Tony expects him to say something mundane or boring. Propelled by the perpetual urge to throw Tony off-balance, Steve tells him the truth: “I’m thinking about sex.”

( Hose Him Down )

+ No Man's Sky had an update adding customizable shared space ships, and now I'll have to jump back in. Anybody else here still play NMS from time to time? Farting around in a communal decorated base sounds like so much fun.

(I saw one ship shaped like Clippy lol)

+ Or if you'd rather base build and hang in a desert planet, Dune Awakening has a free demo weekend. I honestly didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but the environment is lovingly crafted, and the story surprisingly robust.

Sadly I don't have enough internet at sea to dl the update myself. I'm missing out on a stunning mural 😔

I'm on Europe Lynx / Sietch Yaracuwan, it's been fairly free from bothersome trolls. They've added a bunch more events and story characters as well, so I'm diving back in when I get home. In case somebody wants to buddy up for base building? I'll have to start almost from scratch because I suuure didn't put anything in the bank like I ought to have.

+ And Marvel Rivals is adding Angela!! I don't want to be interested in a hero shooter but HOT DAMN

I use the same name everywhere so I am beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.

I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

General Likes and Dislikes

other things to keep in mind:

• I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when the characters and/or actors are marginalized. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
• I don't like it when marginalized characters get relegated to the sidekick/supporting/helper role so that it can be All About The White Dude.
• I like it when female characters are more than just the Strong Female Character(tm) or The Nurturer.
• I like fluff
• I like angst with a happy ending
• I like stories that make me think about things in a new way.
• I like to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
• I like unreliable narrators.
• I like acknowledgment that different people can have different points of view without either of them being wrong.
• I like stories that engage with problematic aspects of the source, and which deal with privilege in one way or another instead of sweeping it under the rug.
• Worldbuilding is my jam, I am pretty much always up for explorations of why the world is the way it is. I love hearing about the economics, the politics, the religion, the clothing, the history, the folklore, all of that kind of stuff. And I want to know why it matters--how is all this cultural background stuff affecting the characters, the plot, everything. You don't have to do deep worldbuilding, but I'll enjoy it if you do.
• I don't like it when plots hinge on characters being selectively stupid, or selectively unable to communicate. Like, if they are stupid or a himbo or whatever in general, or have problems communicating in general, that's fine! Or if they canonically have a blind spot in that area, again, it's fine. But if it's just "the only way I can think of for this plot to work is if the character spontaneously and temporarily loses half their intelligence and competence," then I'm going to spend the rest of the fic wondering why the character didn't just ____?
• I like AUs, but not complete setting AUs (i.e. no highschool or college or coffee shop AUs, and especially not mundane AUs--nothing where you keep characters but drop most of the worldbuilding). I like fork-in-the-road type AUs, where one thing is different and the changes all result from that one thing, and you explore what might have been if such-and-such happened.
• I like the concept of sedoretu marriages.
• I like historical AUs, but only when the author actually knows the history period in question and does thoughtful worldbuilding to meld actual culture of the time with the canon.
• Crackfic is really hit and miss for me, sometimes I love it and sometimes I can't stand it. Basically, if it's the characters we know and love in a ludicrous situation, that's great. If they're OOC or parodied in order to make something funny ... it's not funny to me.

I like plotty, gen stories, and plotty stories in general. I don't care for explicit sex, particularly when it's just thrown in for teh porn. I'm asexual; a lot of the time I don't even bother to read the sex scenes. Romance is awesome (as long as both are in character and the romantic plot doesn't hinge on one or both of them being an idiot). I love it when friendship is held up as important and not secondary to romantic relationships and blood ties.

Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end." I define incest as siblings and/or parents, cousins don't count.

I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.

Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.

I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.

( Fandom for Robots )

( Peter Wimsey )

( Rivers of London )

( DS9 )

( TOS )

( TNG )

( Oh, My General )

( Thrawn Trilogy )

( Goblin Emperor )