WorldCon has Loaded (ISH)

14/08/2025 10:11
muccamukk: Natasha lowering her sunglasses to see over the top. She looks alarmed. (Marvel: Shades)
[personal profile] muccamukk
They seem to have fixed the technical issues (*knocks on wood, scratches a stay, turns around three times*) and I have gone to several panels! Both a virtual one of Nigerian authors and a filmed one of an in-person panel.

ETA: Both 10:30 panels I want to see either not streaming or not with sound.

ETA2: Caught the back half of one 10:30 panel (idk if the other one ever worked), and the sound was back for most of the noon panel, though it dropped out completely ten minutes from the end. Folks attending have been amazing with posting running notes to the discord, linking to works mentioned by the panellists.

strange AO3 glitch

14/08/2025 11:09
[personal profile] chanter1944
Anybody else getting persistent SSL handshake failure errors when trying to visit AO3? Or is it just me? The issue's been popping up randomly for the last week or two, but today it's near-constant, if not entirely so.

WorldCon 404 Not Found

13/08/2025 13:34
muccamukk: Lt Bush looking incredibly sceptical. Text: "Oh, you have to be kidding me." (HH: You Have to Be Kidding me)
[personal profile] muccamukk
So technical issues have taken out the Seattle WorldCon streaming platform, all recorded panels didn't get recorded, and no streaming panels are currently being broadcast. (Apparently some of the earlier streams happened? I missed them.)

The first half a day just got wiped out.

So glad they committed to expanding the virtual experience due to people not being able to attend for Politics reasons. It's off to a flying start.

ETA: It did start working about half way through the fourth panel slot.

ETA2: Panel slot five has video but not sound.

ETA3: No audible sound on the Martha Wells q&a. Giving up for the day.

FF:FS timeline thoughts.

12/08/2025 06:37
muccamukk: Doctor Rao studying while everyone else parties. (Marvel: Study Hard)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Not sure if anyone else here is into this movie. I'm picking away at the sex pollen fic, but I haven't written fic in long enough that it was slow going the first few days, and now I'm afk while visiting my parents (elder millennial has not warmed to writing fic on phone). Meanwhile, I'm trying to work out the latest backstory.

It's been long enough since I read any F4 comics that I read the wiki to remember the origin story (since the movie just summarises it). The following is a vague stab at a timeline?

No real spoilers )

Thoughts? Corrections? Anyone just want to talk about the movie?
chanter1944: Star Trek's Commander Sonak, on a swirly green and pink background, one eyebrow raised (TOS - Sonak: for life's sake)
[personal profile] chanter1944
Evidently, there's been an underground fire downtown - giant kerboom, black smoke pouring from blown manhole covers, power outages - and the epicenter of the mess is riiiiight in the segment of the square and surrounds I tend to frequent. One of the most affected roads is a main stem for me, travel-wise, and a coffee shop I frequent is on a corner that's now in the temporary exclusion zone. Yikes! There but for the grace of God, and my slightly early decision to make a grocery run, go I! Maybe someone benevolent was whispering in my ear yesterday?

I haven't heard of any injuries or above-ground structural damage, thankfully, but there've been road closures and detours all over that area. I suspect at least some of the outages were deliberate power cuts while workers put the fire out. We lost Internet service over here on the near west side, because our service provider is smack in the middle of the mess, but it's now up and rolling again, which is a good sign for folks downtown. Still, though. I could easily have been in the thick of some serious chaos had I gone that direction today, as I often do on the weekends. I actually considered it, but then the Brewer game was on and engaging, and I said... nah. Someone benevolent whispering in my ear indeed.

Anyway. Safe, well, and grateful. If any other Madison folks are reading this, check in, please?

Just a thought...

09/08/2025 07:34
muccamukk: Maria gestures wildly. (Avengers: I have a point!)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Ben + Johnny + Sex Pollen = fic.

Which, surprisingly, I haven't seen in any version, though it's probably on LJ or something.
muccamukk: Steve standing with his arms folded, looking disapproving. (Avengers: Judgy Arms)
[personal profile] muccamukk
As a follow up to bitching about this in the last post, I thought I'd look and see where I was with watching some of these. The movies are in order they came out. The TV shows are sorta just stuck in there for the year they started, rather than breaking them up by season. I'm too lazy to look up the details of exactly when they aired (especially as I don't even remember some of these existed). I'm only including live action films and tv shows. Long list is long )

Superhero Summer of 2025

08/08/2025 13:34
muccamukk: Supergirl determinedly flying forward. Text: "Here we go again!" (DC: Here We Go Again)
[personal profile] muccamukk

Going to the Movies!

(Success Rate: 1.5 out of 4)

In May, we tried to go to Sinners at Local Theatre #1, only to find none of their caption machines were working.

In June, we didn't bother trying.

In July, we tried to go to Superman at Local Theatre #2, only to find that they didn't have caption machines at all. In 2025.

Later in July, while visiting my parents, we went to their Local Theatre to see Superman, only to have multiple caption machines crap out part way through the movie, leaving Nenya to finish it on their speech to text app (an imperfect experience).

This week, I went back to Local Theatre #1 and asked in person if the caption machines were now working (they neither answer the phone, nor call people back if you leave a message). Being assured they were, we booked tickets to The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The first caption machine Nenya got didn't even turn on, but the next one made it through the whole entire movie! Diversity win! (Or something.)

Actual movie thoughts aren't that deep, but it's superhero films, so...

Superman (2025)

So I'm more of a Marvel Girl, though I did like the first Wonder Woman movie and Blue Beetle, but Nenya grew up on the Christopher Reeve movies, and this had been advertised as More Like That, so we decided to give it a go.

It was really fun! I thought the casting was great, and I'm really enjoying the "superheroes' lives are inherently ridiculous" vibe we're currently going with. Also: death to origin stories! It was really nice to see the Justice League International gang (lol), and have a Superman who was doing the Big Blue Boyscout thing in earnest. (I thought [youtube.com profile] Princess_Weekes' video Quentin Tarantino Accidentally Broke Superman had great insights about why people got on the wrong track with the character.) It was silly and had heart, and didn't have joyless desaturation, and I'm here for all of this.

Will happily come back for the Supergirl movie, and am even more invested in season two of Peacemaker.


The Fantastic Four: The First Steps (2025)

I really liked the retro-futurist aesthetic, and was happy they didn't combine them with 1960s inequalities. Also: space! I haven't seen any of the cast in a whole lot, but thought they were great for the roles. Pascal was fully on point as Reed, and managed to capture his pathos without diving head first into manpain, and I really liked Reed/Sue here. I just like his face, also. They toned down Johnny's womanising into a low-key romance that actually worked for me, though even putting Natasha Lyonne in it didn't make Ben's crush that interesting (mostly because we got 2.5 minutes of time with that plot). Given all the natalism in the air, I'm a bit twitchy about movies focused around babies, but I liked that they didn't even consider that Sue couldn't go on the mission while eight months pregnant. I will riot if we don't get Valeria, though.

Which kind of brings me to the mid-credits scene. Spoilers for where this fits in the MCU? )

(Looking at AO3, it seems like people are into Eddie Munson Johnny het, either with the Silver Surfer or with Y/N. Though there is also some team!fic with woobie!Johnny. There's like two Ben/Johnny fic, which is surprising as they had a nice vibe in this, and it used to be the big ship. I'd also like more Reed!whump than I found, but early days.)


Department of "But It's Still Weird that It Happened Twice"

Mild spoilers for both films )
muccamukk: Nixon looking through binoculars. (BoB: Binos)
[personal profile] muccamukk
I've been knitting and watching shows, which has led me to try to find stuff that's good to watch while crafting, especially things on Kanopy.

I was going to do a bunch of these in a post, but the first got long, so stand by for further knitting show thoughts.

North and South (2004)

(I haven't read the book, though I keep meaning to get into Elizabeth Gaskell, who is recommended when you run out of George Eliot.)

A star crossed romance between Daniela Denby-Ashe as an impoverished daughter of an auto-defrocked churchman from Hampshire, and Richard Armitage as a self-made cotton mill owner in Lancashire "Darkshire"* (amazing name, thank you, Mrs Gaskell). He's in the middle of putting down a strike, and she's in the middle of being appalled by the violence of literally everything that's happening. The main attachment between them seems to be that they are both stunningly beautiful, and appear even more attractive when they are sad. Which they are a lot.

So... he's a strike-breaking mill owner in 1855, who sets the army on his workers? (Which they are careful not to show in detail because it might distract us from how very beautiful Richard Armitage is when he's sad.) Absolutely no one talks about where all the cotton's coming from, other than "America."† He does, later in the show, come to be more sympathetic to the workers, and start actually talking to them and shit, but the strikebreaking is a lot to get past. If you're likely to spend much of the show humming "The Internationale," then maybe give this a skip. If you don't mind/can ignore that, the pining is excellent, and the actors are very beautiful.

Quality as knitting show: 4/5, would knit to this again.

End Notes )
[personal profile] partypaprika

Dear Hamiathes Exchange Writer,

Thank you for writing for me! I’ve included some thoughts below on my preferences and fandoms. Please don’t stress too much if you’re inspired to write something else (although I’d prefer if you didn’t delve into my DNWs). I’ve given some specific prompts, but feel to take a general theme from my general likes if that’s more inspiring!

 I'm not active on LJ/Dreamwidth anymore, although you're welcome to poke around here. I'm slightly active on tumblr and you can also check out my pinboard. I'm on ao3 as partypaprika.

For this exchange, I’ve requested Eugenides/Irene and Helen/Sophos.

 

Read more... )

Wrong Guesses

02/08/2025 20:49
yourlibrarian: Chrisjen is burdened (Expanse-Chrisjen Burden -swannee)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) Just a quick follow-up note to the [community profile] sunshine_revival's Challenge 6 which asked about gaming. One thing I started doing earlier this year was crosswords. I'm rather surprised I never did them as a kid given how much I read and how verbal I was, plus I liked puzzles. I guess no one ever introduced them to me, though I suppose puzzles for kids was a less discoverable publication.

And trying them now I can see that even stuff labeled as "for the whole family" would have been too hard. One definitely needs to learn the conventions and accept that some clues are not only unguessable but the creators sure take a lot of license with words used. Read more... )

2) Have started posting photos of our stay in Agate Beach at [community profile] common_nature

3) Back in December I began having arm pain centered around each elbow which would radiate down to the right hand sometimes. I brought it up at my annual checkup in April, at which time I had already been doing PT exercises for it for months, wearing braces on both hands to sleep, to exercise and to type at the computer, and yet it wasn't any better. Read more... )

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Reading for Lughnasadh

01/08/2025 16:09
muccamukk: Arwen in a white dress in the candlelight. (LotR: Evenstar)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Reading from [instagram.com profile] thewitchoftheforest.

1. What needs harvesting in my life?
The Fool

2. What is blooming and coming to fruition?
Six of Wands

3. What needs more time to grow?
King of Discs

4. How can I nurture myself now?
Seven of Swords

5. Ways my harvest will help others.
The Devil

I love the idea of the Fool as a harvest, and the Devil as helping others.

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