magistrate | Reading

We made it to the little market down the road for the second week running and found the first vendor we visited down to his last several boxes of raspberries, so we bought two and headed back home. First raspberries of the season!

(I think yesterday was the first time I ever actually stopped and noticed why raspberries are called that.)

Reading: In non-fiction, I'm still reading through Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace.

On the fiction front, last week I read Cameron Reed's The Fortunate Fall, relatively recently (and finally!) reissued under her current name after its first life as an award-winning SFF novel under her deadname literal decades ago. (I believe her upcoming novel is her first since this one!) It didn't actually hit my emotional buttons very hard (which isn't indicative of how anyone else might react), but it's beautifully constructed and executed. I see why it's so beloved by so many people. ^_^

I also read We Are All Completely Fine (Daryl Gregory), which I didn't realize was a novella until I started reading, so it went by pretty quickly. Interesting horror worldbuilding, although other than the characters' specific histories it's almost entirely hinted at or nodded to; I, at least, came away with almost no actual idea of what's actually going on on a larger scale.

And I read the new Murderbot story ("Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy") that Martha Wells released for the show finale (note that Murderbot itself isn't actually present in the story).

Watching: No Leverage this week, I don't think.

scruloose and I have agreed to switch this to an "I watch this when I feel like it, and if they're around and feel like it, they'll watch with me" show rather than one we're Watching Together. They enjoy it, but don't feel a burning need to see every episode.

I kind of wonder if I haven't been started a show on my own for so long because I'm sort of subconsciously waiting to be able to watch the rest of Justice in the Dark whenever the whole thing is subbed somewhere.

We've seen the Murderbot finale, and I'm awfully glad the show's been renewed.

Beyond that, the two of us have now watched the very first episode of Silo, having had good luck with Apple SFF shows. I haven't read the books, so I know almost nothing about it.

(I have food stuff to talk about, but I think I'll call this a post and hope to write more later.)

Current Mood: okay

Watch on YouTube

I watched this like 4 times in a row. It definitely contain spoilers, but it's divorced enough from the actual plotline of the show that if you don't mind SOME spoilers and want to get an idea of what the show is like, this might be a nice one to watch. (Warning for some gore.)

On AO3

scioscribe gave me a delightful Murderbot TV-verse prompt, hidden because it's somewhat spoilery for the finale:

Click to view

Post-finale Gurathin, burdened with all these memories of Sanctuary Moon, still doesn't like the show but now can't resist getting into nitpicky arguments about it on futuristic forums, where he and Murderbot keep crossing paths and gradually realize who they're talking to and get very fond about it without admitting to anything.

( 600 words or so of future fan forum shenanigans )

I wrote another Murderbot 1x10 episode missing scene.

Echoes (gen, 2500 words, Gurathin-centric)
Summary redacted because of spoilers; basically Gurathin's POV on some of the events of the finale.

A few notes on the fic (spoilery for both fic and episode):

under here

• I kept tweaking Gura's final line to Murderbot, so it might be a bit different if you read an earlier version. (I felt like I needed to soften it from how it originally was. They are hard to write! Especially keeping their edge when they're so soft in the final scene.)

• We know Murderbot has trouble figuring out what it's feeling, but I also think it's very plausible that Gurathin has the same problem, if not as badly. He's repressed so much for so long. Asking himself to identify exactly what emotions he's feeling is something that some therapist or other taught him to do.

• This is not necessary context for the fic and it's entirely subject to interpretation, but what I was thinking when it wrote it is that Murderbot using "its" for augmented humans in its last line of dialogue to Gurathin is actually MB doing roughly the same thing (except more emotionally positive) that Gurathin is doing in the episode of the show where he's arguing with Mensah and calls it "he" and then corrects himself to "it." It's over-identifying and doesn't even realize that it's doing so; I mean, it's worried about Gurathin, obviously, and that's why it's here, but there's also a certain amount of "we are the same kind of creature" going on here, even though it doesn't realize it's relating to him on that level. It knows that he might have damaged himself with the data overload because it also knows that it might damage itself in a similar way, and he has much less storage to handle it. And it's just kind of subconsciously being concerned about him as it might be concerned about a fellow construct, or itself, having taken damage. Of course neither of them parses all of that consciously.

In other events, Terrible Temperature Troubles Flash Exchange revealed gifts tonight! I got two absolutely delightful gifts - An Official Complaint Against the Universe (Babylon 5, Vir & Londo, hypothermia and h/c) and Consequences of Cold (Biggles, Biggles/EvS, snuggling when chilled). I loved them!

And finally,

hurtcomfortex author reveals were tonight. I wrote Sleepover (MASH, 1700 words, Margaret POV) with huddling for warmth and light comfort after nightmares.

Posted by Sumana Harihareswara

http://harihareswara.net/posts/2025/you-can-just-show-up/

The weekend after the Presidential election in November 2024, I was seized by the need to meet some neighbors, face-to-face, to be in solidarity with. On a crisp fall morning, I made a sign that …

http://harihareswara.net/posts/2025/you-can-just-show-up/

( Finale spoilers )

( Brand new thought about the finale )

SEASON 2 WHEN

Finished the season finale, immediately turned around and wrote an episode tag.

Arrow (~2K words, gen, Mensah & Gurathin)
Set right during/after the end of the last scene in the episode.

I also saw on Tumblr that it's been renewed for a season two. Something delightful to look forward to!

I ended up nominating a few things for Enemies to Lovers (hush, I'm using it as a bribe for finishing my other assignments xD) and this made me spend some time thinking about which of my ships actually qualify - I had some trouble coming up with a third fandom, and trying to figure out where exactly I'd draw the line. (Like, I wouldn't call Sam/Bucky E2L - more like people who mildly antagonize each other to friends/lovers. But some might!)

So I got to wondering how other people define it. I selected check boxes since some people might have more than one answer. I mean, *I'm* not even sure where I fall in all of this!

Poll #33342

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 55

View Respondents

How would you define Enemies to Lovers? (or Enemies to Friends, if you're not a shipper)

View Answers

Must try to kill each other (or at least want to), or be on opposite sides of a conflict with life-or-death stakes
20 (36.4%)

Rivalries like sports rivalries are fine, but there needs to be a strong personal element and/or unhealthy fixation on each other (not just regular sports team conflict)
26 (47.3%)

Any kind of rivalry or antagonism will do
12 (21.8%)

For me it's about the Vibe™ - from distrust/antagonism to trust, whatever form that takes
23 (41.8%)

I do not accept it as proper E2L if there's any softening at all - they must remain antagonists
0 (0.0%)

I know it when I see it but don't get too fussed about definitions
9 (16.4%)

My thoughts are too complex for your ticky boxes (answer in comments)
1 (1.8%)

Not my trope so I don't care, but I want to click something.
3 (5.5%)

I have discovered Enemies to Lovers exchange. o deer.

THAT being said, I really need to put a cork in the new exchange signups for a bit. Summer of Horror and Temperature Flash both reveal somewhere around this weekend, as well as that being the Casefic submission deadline. I have a pinch hit, I have things to edit, and I haven't even started Just Married.

Today it's rainy AND smoky, a wonderful combination.

Ellie is a Lipan Apache teenager in a world where magic, vampires, ghosts, and so forth are known to be real. She’s inherited the family gift for raising ghosts, though she only raises animals; human ghosts always come back wrong, and she’s happy with the companionship of her beloved ghost dog Kirby, not to mention her pet ghost trilobite. But when her cousin, who supposedly died in a car crash, returns in a dream to tell her he was murdered, she finds that knowing who killed him isn’t as helpful as one might imagine…

Ellie’s cousin Trevor told her the name of his killer, Abe Allerton from Willowbee, but he didn’t know why or how he was killed. Ellie enlists her best friend, Jay, a cheerleader with just enough fairy blood to give him pointy ears and the ability to make small lights. More importantly, he’s good at research. They learn that Willowbee is in Texas, near the town where Trevor lived with his wife, Lenore, and their baby. Jay brings in help: his older sister’s fiancé, Al, who’s a vampire.
All of them, plus Ellie’s parents and a ghost mammoth belonging to her grandmother, play a part in the effort to solve the mystery of Trevor’s death and bring his murderer to justice. And so, in a sense, will a major character who’s long dead (and not a ghost) but who’s a big presence in Ellie’s life: Six-Grand, her great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, the last person to have a gift as powerful as Ellie’s… and who vanished forever into the underworld.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I mean, come on. GHOST TRILOBITE. GHOST MAMMOTH. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s heartfelt, it has lovely chapter heading illustrations, and it’s got some gorgeous imagery - I particularly loved a scene where the world transforms into an oceanic underworld, and Ellie sees a pod of whales swimming in the sky of a suburban neighborhood.

It's marketed as young adult and Ellie is seventeen, but the book feels younger (and so does Ellie.) I'd have no qualms handing it to an advanced nine-year-old reader, but it also appeals to adult me who misses the time when "urban fantasy" meant "our world, but with ghosts, elves, and so forth."

"The Gate of the Feral Gods" and "The Butcher's Masquerade." I'd say this series is pretty solidly scifi now, so I'm tagging it that way.

( Random spoilers )

Moving on soon to book 6, "The Eye of the Bedlam Bride"! No future spoilers, please!

Posted by Pamela Rentz

https://www.pamrentz.com/2025/07/summer-berry-pie-with-chocolate-surprise/

https://www.pamrentz.com/?p=4340

I had so many berries, desperate measures were needed. I made this pie twice over consecutive weekends. Once to experiment and the second time for company.

I am not a recipe developer – I just love pie and make a lot of it. This is the result of reading about 20 recipes plus my experience of things I’ve tried and liked.

I use this crust recipe.

For the filling I mixed raspberries, blueberries, and Marionberries and erred in favor of more blueberries. I have found that too many raspberries makes it too seedy.

I aimed for about 6 cups of berries for a 9 1/2 inch pie.

Mix all the berries and add 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 t. cinnamon and a good squeeze of lemon juice. 1-2 T.

The first time I added a bit of lemon zest — maybe 1/2 t. The second time I added a bit of orange zest — maybe 1/2 t. I think you could get away with a heavier hand on this depending on how you like it

Finally, I mixed with baking tapioca. The first time I used a 1/2 cup and it seemed like a lot so the second time I used 1/3 cup and it seemed better. Then I let the prepared filling sit for at least 30 minutes.

While the fruit was resting I made a bottom crust and blind baked at 375 for about 15 minutes. When I took it out, I sprinkled about 2 oz. of chopped dark chocolate in the warm crust and let it melt a little bit and then used a little spatula to spread the chocolate in a thin layer over the bottom. Resist the urge to overdo the chocolate. It’s really best as just a hint with the fruit.

When that was done I added the fruit and made the top crust. I have never added a top crust to a blind baked bottom before. I was sure how much it would “seal” so I just did my best and then made those giant slashes to give the berry juice plenty of room to bubble out so it wouldn’t come out the sides. It seems like it worked.

Also I should note that I had a timer malfunction so it was left in a tad too long. It tasted fine.

Let it cool before slicing. It’s really delicious — the chocolate is a nice surprise taste with the berries. I stored in the fridge.

https://www.pamrentz.com/2025/07/summer-berry-pie-with-chocolate-surprise/

https://www.pamrentz.com/?p=4340

scruloose and I did make it to the little farmers' market down the road for its opening day of the season, and even managed to get there earlier than later! (I think it's open from 8 to 1, and we probably were there...a bit after 10?)

We made it home with two quarts of strawberries and one of cherries, new potatoes, a dozen eggs, and boneless chicken thighs, plus a bee balm for the garden, which we quickly tucked into a fairly open space in our little garden bed yesterday evening. (What was there before? UNKNOWN. Will I manage to reconstruct it from old posts or something? Also unknown. But hey, a plant!)

Reading: I finished Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 (M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi), which was fantastic. On the fiction front, I followed it up with Tamsyn Muir's novella Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (not really my thing--I continue to rarely bond with novellas, I guess--but interestingly done), Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country (marvelous), and Sofia Samatar's The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain (again, didn't really bond emotionally, but it executed what it was doing beautifully).

Non-fiction: David Chang and Priya Krishna's Cooking at Home: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Recipes (And Love My Microwave), which is, like...primarily actually a David Chang book that Priya Krishna did a ton of heavy-lifting assisting on (which may be very normal for co-written cookbooks, but in this case she was interjecting and clarifying in her own voice as well as doing a fair bit of the actual writing in his voice, and it was all very transparent that it was being done that way, but also a little odd to read). I think I bought this as a sale ebook before hearing that Chang (the Momofuku guy) is something of an asshole, but then when I was reading it, it felt really promising as a book that might be genuinely useful for me (and even by cookbook standards, its ebook is terribly formatted), so I was pleasantly surprised to readily find a used half-price hard copy available on line, which is winging its way to me now. I've also made sure that Krishna's own Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family is now on the wishlist where I keep an eye out for ebook sales.

And now I'm reading An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler, which is a cookbook mostly in the form of essays on cooking as a thoughtful/mindful practice.

Watching: One more Murderbot episode to go in this season, and oh, I hope we get a second one. I'm going to miss this little show.

We finished watching the second season of Kingdom (the historical zombies k-drama), which I found very satisfying. The ending very much sets up a subsequent season, and there's a movie out that fills in the backstory of the person/people we glimpse at the end of season 2 who would presumably be extremely central in any further season, but I don't think we feel inspired to watch said backstory movie unless a third season of the show is ever announced and it becomes relevant in that way.

I've finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33!

( Spoilers up to the end of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. )

Overall verdict: what a game! The concept is interesting, the scenery is gorgeous, the battle system is fun and the soundtrack is absolutely extraordinary. I don't think it's a perfect game, but I think it comes very close.

hurtcomfortex released today! I happened to be driving a backcountry highway with no cell service at the time (coming home from Mom Things), but it was lovely to find my gifts waiting for me when I got back.

Hold a Candle To (MASH, 3400 wds, gen) delivered some lovely Charles drug withdrawal h/c with teamy affection, and A Way Out (Biggles, 4400 wds, gen) let me roll around in excellent Biggles & von Stalhein enemies-era reluctant cooperation and sympathy. Truly a lovely haul!

At the start of the month I entertained the fleeting thought of trying to post every day in July, especially with

sunshine_revival (in which I have in no way participated) going on, but. Well. *gestures at current date* And as we all know, something-something-only-perfect-results-matter, etc. etc. etc.

But here. It's Friday. The world is terrifying, but at least for this moment the sun is out. I spent most of my workday in a style guide meeting, which was genuinely pretty fun; tonight we're seeing Ginny and Kas because this week it's better for them than our usual Saturday hangout.

Tomorrow the (very) wee farmers' market that's only a few blocks away is getting underway for the season. I have ambitions of actually rolling out of bed and walking over in hopes of strawberries, even though tomorrow and Sunday are also Eevee community day in Pokemon Go, so I'm also hoping to leave the house those afternoons. Leaving the house twice in one day is not exactly a thing that happens often, and as a result, the prospect of it is exhausting. ^^; But here's hoping!

There's been zero doubt for a long time now that my only actual investment in Pokemon Go is the pursuit of shinies, and community days are the best chance to get shinies of a given critter, and Eevee, see, has EIGHT possible evolutions, so if there's any faint hope of ever having a full set of shinies of those, well, it's this weekend.

(I can't remember if I've said here that this is a crystalized perfect demonstration of why it's really, really good that I don't gamble. I'm usually pleased when I catch a new-to-me Pokemon, but it's pretty minor. But rather than setting the game aside, since it mostly hasn't resulted in me actually getting outside and walking much more than I had been, the hope of catching a shiny critter keeps me opening it back up. Nobody get me into slot machines, okay? [That sounds facetious, but I mean it very seriously.])

That's all I've got right now. Stay well, friends.

Current Mood: pensive

whooooo wants DISTRESSING SNOWGRAVE FANFICTION

For the moment, this fic is exclusively available on my blog! I'm holding off on posting this to AO3 until tomorrow, because a) AO3 is currently sorting out some bookmarking issues, and b) I suspect Americans are going to be Fourth of Julying instead of reading fanfiction. Consider this a sneak preview!

Title: who you are and what you want
Fandom: Deltarune
Rating: 14
Pairing: Kris/Noelle
Wordcount: 1,400
Summary: The soul can't take any action that hasn't crossed Kris's mind, apparently. So why does it keep treating Noelle like this?
Warnings: Spoilers for the Snowgrave route in Deltarune, up to chapter four. Intrusive thoughts. Deals heavily with consent issues, although there's no sexual contact in this fic.

( who you are and what you want )

This show is such a freakin' delight.

( Spoilers )

In a prologue that's very Terry Pratchett-esque without actually being funny, an enormous floating tower appears in England, becomes a 12-hour wonder, and is then forgotten as people have short attention spans. Then thirteen random people suddenly vanish from their lives and appear at the base of the tower, facing the command ASCEND.

I normally love stories about people dealing with inexplicable alien architecture. This was the most boring and unimaginative version of that idea I've ever read. Each level is a death trap based on something in one of their minds - a video game, The Poseidon Adventure, an old home - but less interesting than that sounds. The action was repetitive, the characters were paper-thin, and one, an already-dated influencer, was actively painful to read:

Time to give her the Alpha Male rizzzzzzz, baby!

The ending was, unsurprisingly, also a cliche.

( Read more... )

Technically this was yesterday, but I climbed a hill and had an eagle fly past me. (The hill is the Bodenburg Butte in Palmer, AK.)

Photo from a high vantage point, looking down on farms and fields stretching to blue mountains with their tops covered in clouds. Small figure of an eagle is visible against the clouds.

I realize the eagle is more like a dot, but if you've tried to take a quick photo of a bird, this is without zoom (I was just trying to snap a fast shot without completely losing the experience of having an eagle flying in front of me) so it is actually very close! After it flew past, I turned around and two teenage guys were standing above me, having just descended from the top and watched it too. "Sick," one of them said in obvious delight, and we nodded at each other.

I'm down in Southcentral doing Mom Things. Mom has been moved out of the rental where she was living since last August, and she was supposed to go home via helicopter today, but the weather was a problem. But that's why I reserved two extra days at the Airbnb beforehand, just in case. Tomorrow we try again! She was very respectful of my space today - I think she recognized that I was planning on having the evening to myself tonight and it didn't happen - and I wrote both fanfic and original fiction, and took a long walk to sort some plot things out in my head. Thursday I go home, and perhaps drive the Denali Highway on my way, if the wildfire smoke isn't too bad.

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magistrate

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March 2024

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Page Summary

umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: mainly media
sholio - Murderbot fanvid rec: Bohemian Like You
sholio - Murderbot fanficlet: Sanctuary Moon forum flame wars
sholio - Another Murderbot TV fic, Temperature Flash, and Hurt/Comfort-Ex
sumana_feed - You Can Just Show Up
sholio - Murderbot season finale (1x10)
sholio - Starting to think I need a Murderbot icon
sholio - Enemies to lovers
sholio - (no subject)
rachelmanija - Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger
sholio - Dungeon Crawler Carl books 4 & 5
pamrentz_feed - Summer Berry Pie with Chocolate Surprise
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: mainly media (shocking everyone)
rionaleonhart - Our Problems Will Still Be There In The Morning.
sholio - Hurt/Comfort Exchange
umadoshi - Idle Friday post that turned out to be half about Pokemon Go
rionaleonhart - Fanfiction: who you are and what you want (Deltarune, Kris/Noelle)
sholio - Murderbot 1x09
rachelmanija - The Way Up is Death, by Dan Hanks
sholio - Start July as you mean to go on

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