Daily Happiness

Mar. 22nd, 2026 08:55 pm
torachan: takatsuki & nitorin from hourou musuko (trans kids)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We had a great day at Disneyland this morning. So many tasty things to eat!

2. The weather today was similar to yesterday, though a little warmer and sunnier through the afternoon. But got very overcast and chilly at night again, whereas this past week it was staying warmer even at night, which I am not a fan of.

3. I finished tweaking the cat/house-sitting document (really just had to edit a bit from last year rather than write it up from scratch) and did a walk through with Alex and her girlfriend tonight. Last time we were only gone for a little over a week and the cats never did get too used to Nessie, but hopefully this time since we'll be gone two weeks, they'll feel a little more comfortable with her by the end. Alex comes over every Sunday for several hours a week, so they are chill with her, but they're used to us being there, too, and also Alex will not be the main one doing the cat sitting.

4. I got some really cute pics of Tuxie in the planter this afternoon.

2026 Disneyland Trip #15 (3/22/26)

Mar. 22nd, 2026 05:49 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
This week we made our reservation for Sunday rather than Saturday because today is the first day of a huge new Bluey-themed event at Disneyland.

Read more... )
[syndicated profile] ao3newstumblr_feed
Spotlight on OTW SystemsALT

OTW Systems volunteers published a postmortem about the issues behind the unplanned AO3 downtime in early March. Check it out on AO3: https://ao3-news.org/2v2en3bf

Posted: 16:51 UTC 22 March, 2026

2602 / Dark Winds, S1; The Pitt, 2.11

Mar. 22nd, 2026 12:50 pm
siria: (the pitt - robby purple)
[personal profile] siria
Thanks to [personal profile] melroseee, there's now a dedicated Jack/Robby community over at [community profile] robbyabbot—do go check it out!

Dark Winds, Season 1 )

The Pitt, 2.11, 5:00P.M. )

Daily Happiness

Mar. 21st, 2026 08:01 pm
torachan: maru the cat sitting in a bucket (maru)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It's still supposed to be unseasonably warm next week, but today seems to be a little break in the weather. When I went out for my walk this morning, it was a bit foggy (though it had burned off by the time I got home), and then while it was sunny for a while midday, around 2pm it got overcast again and has stayed that way. It was really foggy again when we took our walk tonight, too.

2. I made a rhubarb pie earlier and we're going to have some of that for dessert. We still have a bunch of baggies of chopped rhubarb in the freezer from when we were buying it from the farmers market last year lol.

3. Ollie loves to snuggle on my clothes. :)

Bienvenidxs a Latam!

Mar. 21st, 2026 09:23 pm
maevedarcy: van gogh's sunflowers (van gogh)
[personal profile] maevedarcy posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo
I've been looking for communities that want to center Latinx culture in their posting but haven't found any so I made one!

[community profile] latam is a new community for people to come together to talk about latinamerican music, films, food, culture, fandom, and more!

Everyone's welcome, no matter where you're posting from! And you can also post in your language (official languages of the community are Spanish, Portuguese and English!)

Come make friends! We have a friending meme going on right now :)

Weekly Reading

Mar. 21st, 2026 05:06 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
[personal profile] torachan
Recently Finished
Lucky Stiff
Third book in the Lillian Byrd murder mystery series.

The Cartographers
When the MC's father dies, she finds an old road map in his things, the source of a massive fight years ago that resulted in him cutting ties with her and blackballing her from the cartography world. In trying to figure out why her father would have kept the map, she learns about not only the secrets of the map itself, but about her parents. I enjoyed this but it was very slow for the first half or so.

The Hanging Tree
A woman goes on a writing retreat at a remote manor and learns of a local legend about a young woman who was hanged as a witch on the property and decides that's what she wants her next book to be about. The book is told in dual timelines with the present being about her research and the past being the actual events. I liked this, but there was way too much romance focus in both the past and present.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Graphic novel about the author's relationship with her parents, especially focused on caring for them in their final years. I really liked this a lot.

Huda F Cares? and Huda F Wants to Know?
Second and third books in the Huda F series of YA graphic novels about a very religious Muslim teen loosely based on the author's life. I continue to enjoy this series.

Hatsukoi no Tsugi vol. 3
Final volume in this companion series to Koi-iji. I liked this a lot.
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
It's a wrap! Or a warp. I like to offer you an informed choice. ;-)

Film: Nouvelle Vague, 2025, is US / French film about the making of A bout de souffle. So it's a Richard Linklater homage to Jean-Luc Godard - a movie god making a film about a god of cinema, or at least a godard of cinema. Exactly as you'd expect in every way. I felt it didn't quite deserve full marks due to minor blandness and predictability, but there are no actual faults with the film: the audience gets what it deserves. ;-) 4.5/5
P.S. That dance scene from Bande à part referenced again (but Le Week-End is still my fave recreation).
P.P.S. So, now I've mentioned the other film, Nouvelle Vague has a smart script with slick direction and cinematography and production... but it's also sorta shallow compared to Le Week-End, which gave audiences three truly great film actors* allowed space by the director to explore everyday human experience in depth. Both movies focus on trivia, one more intellectually and one more emotionally, but only one of them finds additional profundity. Quoting philosophical one-liners is not in itself a profound activity and any parrot can be trained to do it. Nouvelle Vague is a tribute, while Le Week-End is an original.
* Lindsay Duncan, Jim Broadbent, and Jeff Goldblum.

Film: Grass, a Nation's Battle for Life, 1925, US / Bakhtiari documentary film about the seasonal migration of 50,000 of the Bakhtiari (Lurs) and all their sheep, goats, cows, horses, donkeys, and dogs from exhausted pasture to fresh pasture, across several rivers including the Karun and over a snow covered mountain pass through the 4,221m Zard-Kuh subrange. Just crossing the river takes a week! (Spoiler for history: when the team considered remaking the film in 1947 they were told the migration was now done mostly in cars and trucks.) It is, of course, a silent movie, although the music track for the screening I attended was painfully ear-splittingly loud for no apparent reason. There are explanatory intertitles throughout, beginning with typical USian self-congratulatory racism about "Aryans" supposedly originating in West Asia and progressing westwards as civilisation progressed... with the implication that Hollywood is the peak of human culture, lmao (USians: so modest!). If you're wondering why the intertitles keep shouting "Yo, Ali!" it's because the Bakhtiari are Shia Muslims.
Presenter: Marguerite Harrison.
Conclusion: worth seeing on a BIG screen for the spectacle, but the commentary is as racist as most "Aryan" ethnography of the time. No rating.

Film: Köln 75, 2025, is a German film about... well, that's a problem because it doesn't know what it's about. Cut for moaning. )
Conclusion: the filmmakers and their male gaze didn't find Vera Brandes that interesting as a central subject, they couldn't focus on their hero Keith Jarrett, so they produced a confused hash spiced up with teenage girl sex-appeal for their chosen audience. No rating because the film is too inconsistent.
P.S. There's a documentary, Lost in Köln, 2025, which I haven't seen but I'm guessing would be a more worthwhile investment of time than... whatever this was that I watched.
P.P.S. Only fun if you understand German but... Floh de Cologne - Sei Ruhig Fließbandbaby.

* Piano tuners being a hot theme for movies made in 2025 for some reason?

movies: The Revenant and Stalker

Mar. 21st, 2026 11:58 am
snickfic: (Buffy Willow)
[personal profile] snickfic
The Revenant (2015). A wilderness guide (Leonardo Dicaprio) left for dead after being mauled by a bear goes on a revenge quest against the trapper (Tom Hardy) who killed his son.

As suggested by that summary, this extremely whumpy, if you're into that, to a point well beyond realism. Somehow our guy Glass struggles through total wilderness for tens of miles with myriad open wounds and a broken leg, and rather than dying of deprivation, exposure, or infection, he actually gets better. By the end of the movie he's barely even hobbling anymore. Also, the people in this movie spend so much time tromping through and even immersed in barely-melted icewater that I expected them to either die of hypothermia or lose some toes to frostbite in the first twenty minutes.

This is also an incredibly linear movie. There are no surprises here, no unexpected decisions or developments. No depths of character are revealed. It's also incredibly male-centric. The only female character with lines is Glass's wife, who's dead before the movie even starts, and the only other woman on screen is a Native woman-shaped Macguffin who gets raped on screen, then rescued, but never gets to speak. Even worse than that, to me, is that we get nothing of Glass's relationship with his half-Pawnee son at all. Other than simmering resentment over unjust treatment, we don't have any sense of the kid's personality or Glass's dynamic with him, which makes for a weaker movie and also makes it hard to believe in the movie's pretensions of giving a shit about the effect of European colonization on Native peoples.

I watched this for the scenery, and I will say it was great on that front. Lots of snowy crags, excellent! I also really enjoyed Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson, who round out the cast.

Cannot believe this beat Mad Max: Fury Road for best picture.

--

Stalker (1979). Wikipedia summary: a man called a stalker guides two clients through a hazardous wasteland to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the "Zone", where there supposedly exists a room which grants a person's innermost desires.

This is a Soviet movie by director Andrei Tarkovsky, who also did Solaris. If I'd realized that, I could have better set my expectations for this movie. I watched it because the premise gave me cosmic horror vibes and specifically because it felt like a precursor to a bunch of more recent cosmic horror that I've loved or at least loved concepts from, including Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy and movies like A Dark Song, Malefique, YellowBrickRoad, and Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made. (If you're not familiar, this a hilariously idiosyncratic list of widely varying quality, lol. There's a reason you probably haven't heard of most of those.) Maybe, I said, this is the original source of these other things I love!

Unfortunately, while this does promise many horrors, it delivers none of them. Very possibly it was an inspiration for those other things, but in the sense that other people watched this and were like, "okay but what if this were actually a horror movie."

The first hour or so is my favorite; I was genuinely shocked when the sepia filters of the real world give way to full color in the Zone, and there's some great tension as our stalker navigates the Zone using methods that hint at incomprehensible dangers. However, the longer we go without encountering any of those dangers, the harder it is to believe in them. By the time we finally arrive at the possibly magical room, I was more than half convinced that the dangers were all imagined, and the glimpse of two decaying skeletons came too late to change my mind. And then! We DON'T EVEN GO INTO THE ROOM. NO ONE GOES INTO THE ROOM. *flips over table*

Tarkovsky was not trying to make the movie I wanted to watch; he was much more interested in big philosophical questions and really long takes, and I gather this is considered an all-time classic for those reasons.

This was apparently an adaptation-in-name-only of the Strugatsky Brothers' novel Roadside Picnic, which I happen to have already have on hold at the library for unrelated reasons. I'm interested to see how it compares.

2601 / Fic - The Pitt

Mar. 21st, 2026 01:55 pm
siria: (the pitt - dana depart)
[personal profile] siria
Death leaves Us homesick, who behind
The Pitt | Javadi, Gen | ~1100 words | Episode fic for 2.11.

(Also on AO3)

It wasn't that she'd never seen death. Victoria had worked in a Tier One Trauma Centre for months. She'd seen death. )

(no subject)

Mar. 21st, 2026 10:22 am
skygiants: Rue from Princess Tutu dancing with a raven (belle et la bete)
[personal profile] skygiants
I've seen two Boston Ballets in relatively quick succession over the past month, both combo programs featuring two pieces; the first was "The Rite of Spring" (Elo's, not Nijinsky's) paired with Pite's "The Seasons' Canon," and the second was a premiere, Stromile's "The Leisurely Installation of a New Window," paired with Ashton's "The [Midsummer Night's] Dream."

Breaking with the actual curation of the productions, I'm going to talk about "The Rite of Spring" and "The Leisurely Installation of a New Window" together because they both came first in their productions, they had kind of similar vibes, and I experienced similar feelings of mild disappointment about both of them that were not technically the fault of the productions. I was really excited about "The Rite of Spring" because I wanted to see some ballet dancers do a dramatic ritual sacrifice, and I was really excited about "The Leisurely Installation of a New Window" because I wanted to see some ballet dancers slowly install a window. Instead, both of these pieces were kind of abstract explorations through dance of the Relationship between the Individual and Society, and I think both would have been enjoyable for fifteen minutes but ran a bit long at half an hour.

The description for "Window" in the playbill reads:

Eighteen dancers inhabit the work through distinct but interdependent roles. The Seeker stands close to tradition, moving with discipline and clarity. The People operate within shared systems, attentive to both order and its quiet tensions. The Reformers introduce disruption, not as spectacle, but as pressure applied from within.

This did help me understand better what was going on in the dance, as the Seeker stalked around holding a book and then portentously passed it off to some dueting Reformers, but also made it feel a bit like a LARP that I was not participating in. On the other hand Reeves Gabriel of The Cure was There and Participating in Ballet Music (and every bit of marketing wanted you to know that Reeves Gabriel Of The Cure was There and Participating in Ballet Music) and occasionally the music would get very thrillingly electric guitar and you'd be like "Hello, Reeves Gabriel of The Cure!" So it's not that I didn't have a fine time, I just would have been okay with somewhat less of that time.

However, after these very mildly disappointing openers, I loved both "The Seasons' Canon" and "The Dream" very much! The Seasons' Canon is, justifiably, a known Boston Ballet showstopper -- a huge piece with a huge cast, and as you guys know I often have trouble with a piece that is not trying to tell me a story but this piece is truly just Humans Make Big Shapes and it's riveting. Could not take my eyes off it. The trailer here gives a bit of a sense but of course is not that much like seeing it Actually On Stage, but it does let you see one of the things I found most striking about the piece which is how extremely non-gendered it is -- everyone on that stage is dressed identically in pants and nude tank that makes them look topless, the whole corps looks like one and moves like one and there is nothing to distract you from that. Really, really cool experience.

And "The Dream" -- look, I'm a simple soul, and what I have discovered is that I love Ashton's silly panto-esque ballets. They are fun and they are funny and I love it when people get to be funny in dance! Dance jokes are good actually! Titania ballet-hopping her way towards Bottom in a way that manages to be simultaneously fairy-like and hilariously sultry, the arguing lovers constantly picking each other up and pirouetting a partner firmly Away from them Thank You, the rude mechanicals!! we wanted more rude mechanicals but I was so glad we got what we got. A+ Midsummer Night's Dream, would see again.
mific: John sheppard looking sad or worried against stone wall, half out of frame (Shep - sad)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: Dave Sheppard, John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, Sam Carter, Radek Zelenka
Rating: Teen
Length: 7998
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: busaikko on AO3
Themes: Siblings, Family, Post-canon, Outsider POV

Summary: Dave Sheppard learns more about his brother and gets drawn into a tangle of secrets and truths.

Reccer's Notes: This is from Dave's POV, as he and John cautiously reconnect via emails, then more, after their father's funeral. I really like Dave here, separated from his wife and still in love with her, baffled by John and wanting to understand him better. They do gradually reconnect, and eventually some Trust shenanigans lead to Dave meeting all John's team and being read in about the Stargate program. The characterisations of Dave and John are excellent, with Rodney's relationship with Jennifer Keller, then with John, happening in the background. One of my favourite Dave Sheppard fics.

Fanwork Links: Just So Long and Long Enough on AO3
And there are two podfic versions: by juniperphoenix and by cookiemom6067

fannish things

Mar. 20th, 2026 10:23 pm
snickfic: (Xander latin)
[personal profile] snickfic
- For fic reasons, I've been watching the first night of Knebworth 1996, and gosh, the footage is gorgeous. Incredible that they sat on it for almost thirty years. Here's an example:


- Speaking of Oasis, did you know the mangaka of Chainsaw Man also wrote a one-shot about two young female mangakas? And more importantly that the title Look Back is a direct reference to the Oasis song Don't Look Back in Anger? Yes.

- Have a silly video about the Oxford comma, among other punctuation. Really takes it up a notch in the second half.

- Trailer for Dune Part 3!! My perspective of the Villeneuve Dune movies is that the visual spectacle is incredible, but they're a little too self-serious and not weird enough. The books also take themselves very seriously, but make up for it via frequent batshittery. However, I'm definitely interested to see how Villenueve finishes things up, especially since he'd started going off the map by the end of part 2, and part 3 appears to all be taking place in the gap between the end of the first novel and beginning of the second. Here's hoping for lots of Jessica. 🙏🙏🙏

- They cast Jason Momoa's son as Paul and Chani's kid. Let the Paul/Duncan mpreg headcanons begin.

- You can now filter your AO3 bookmarks by wordcount!!

- IDK how it never occurred to me before that the bugging scene in The Matrix would spawn a whole new kink, but it absolutely did, and I stumbled across that corner of deviantart earlier this week. Bless.

- I'm not going to do a whole Oscars postmortem, but horror movies got EIGHT awards, which has got to be an all-time best, including two of the four acting awards. I'm especially happy for Michael B Jordan and Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw.

- Tough week for Buffy fans. I'm relieved that the reboot appears to be DOA; I was going to watch it, but I wasn't hopeful. Meanwhile, sucks about Nicholas Brendon. Losing him and Michelle Tractenberg a year apart, when they were both so young, is fucking rough.

Cat ...

Mar. 20th, 2026 10:10 pm
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
... Make better choices.


Yellface went into Mila's room, hid under a table, beefed with Mila in some fashion, and was hauled ignominiously out.


As for me, my rescheduled retina appointment went fine. Some of the issues have cleared up. Prognosis very good. I had to transfer between power chair and clinic chair three times. As I told them on the final occasion: I have a bad knee and a worse knee. Trying CBD ointment in addition to Voltaren, on the advice of my now-former primary care. (And I know who my new primary care is going to be, yay.)

It's possible that my retina appointments this year are cursed. On the last attempt, my car was so low on battery that it died at an intersection and there was a whole drama with a guy who scared the whole block and tried to open my car door. This time we got there okay, but Belovedest suffered a flat tire while out with [personal profile] alexseanchai later in the day. This wrapped up with Thorn having to come rescue that Toaster with a wrench that actually fit the nuts. (Cue penis measuring jokes.)

Daily Happiness

Mar. 20th, 2026 08:19 pm
torachan: aradia from homestuck (aradia)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It is the weekend! Today was fairly hassle-free, work-wise, and I got home by like four or so, which was nice, but it's even nicer to not have work tomorrow.

2. I found a new puzzle site to order from and I really like that they mark their puzzles with a no AI guarantee. (Not all of their puzzles have this guarantee, but you can filter for it and the majority of them seem to be.) I hope other sites implement that as well, because it would definitely make me more likely to order from a site that did that.

3. Carla got a catnip chew rope the other day and all the cats have shown some interest in it, but Molly seems to especially like it. No one's that into actually chewing it, though, just rubbing and writhing lol.