non-binding pol re: Ninefox hobby mode reboot/AU format
Jul. 21st, 2025 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Best format for hobby-mode Ninefox reboot/AU shenanigans
Ninefox MUD
0 (0.0%)
Ninefox text-only browser-based chapter-based adventure (Inkle Studios' Ink)
10 (55.6%)
Ninefox VN
4 (22.2%)
Ninefox comic (this one is happening regardless)
9 (50.0%)
Ninefox animation (Candle Arc is happening regardless because MFA project)
4 (22.2%)
Ninefox reboot/AU serialized novel (prose) [1]
7 (38.9%)
None of these! Something else I will explain in comments.
0 (0.0%)
In terms of sustainable effort:
MUD: medium-high bar if using existing codebase.
Ink serialized web-based text adventure: medium-low bar. Probably chapter by chapter releases.
ETA #1: Wait a second! You can compile Inform 7 to release for playing on the web! Either this didn't exist ca. 2007 or I suck at reading documentation. That's my choice, then. I enjoy writing parser IF (interactive fiction / text adventures) more than choice-based formats. Yay!
VN: high bar.
comic: I'm doing this for myself so it really doesn't matter what anyone thinks, but maybe people prefer this.
2D animated short (we're talking 5-10 minutes): SLOWEST. VERY SLOW. 2D hand-drawn animation is just slow. But I've proposed this for my final major project starting in 2028, so I'm doing this no matter what anyone else thinks.
[1] serialized reboot/AU novel (prose): This would require negotiating with my publisher, which has an option on further prose works. I control the relevant rights for other formats.
Discussion with Solaris suggested they would be happy to talk about a different Machineries trilogy with a new plot and a new set of characters but the two ideas I have aren't trilogy-length and I don't have a sense that any reader wants this! It's theoretically possible Solaris might let me play with a newsletter (etc) serialization if it's something they wouldn't have an interest in offering for and they are assuming zero risk since I doubt anything I do here would tank sales of the existing books. However, there are negotiation complications here that may make this Not Possible rights-wise so I'm hoping no one wants this and I can stop thinking about it with a clear conscience.
I'm sitting on something like 100,000+ words of disorganized prose bits (not a coherent single narrative, it's a bunch of different POVs) and I want to write about that crashhawk unit and Gödel's incompleteness theorems in hexarchate numerology. I have an outline.
But also. For health and family reasons, I'm not signing a book contract in the near future; any prose-format writing is going to be on spec or similar if at all, and if the answer is that it's just noodling that stays on my hard drive, it is what it is. Meanwhile, I have orchestration homework to do, ta!
Monday, July 14: Lair o' the Bear (Part 2)
Jul. 21st, 2025 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
There's a short drainage tunnel at Lair o' the Bear that goes under the roadway, which is just off the trail, but at least slightly secluded. It's a popular place for graffiti, including a few pretty impressive pieces. Most of what was there this time is stuff that's been there for a while, but I still like seeing it, ha.
One of the new pieces that I hadn't seen before. Eye and flower.
This one has been there for a couple years now, but it's impressive, and I still love the way the vines drape over it.
Nine more pictures:
(I still wonder if "Piss off Karen" is addressed to the Karen, or to the viewer. I also like the little figure drawn above the X.)
Face + squirrel?
This one has been there for a while, but I like the raccoon.
Looking back.
Another that's been there for a while, but glad it still is. Also like the silly little dog on the corner.
There is one swallow nest in the tunnel, which has inspired some art:
Yup!
But also:
Lol, it's not wrong.
And I do love art that's in conversation with the other pieces:
"Birds aren't real."
Not real.
(I was glad the swallow eventually obliged me, and posed next to the label, haha. Though the colors show up much less well from a ways away and at an angle.)
There are other tunnels that are much harder to access from the trail, so I'm sure there's art that I've never gotten to see, ha.
Monday, July 14: Lair o' the Bear (Part 1)
Jul. 20th, 2025 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I'm splitting this one into two posts, too. Most of the pictures will be on this post, but I'll do a second one of the current graffiti in one of the tunnels. Too many pictures, as always!
I really like this one of Bella. Such soft eyes!
A surprisingly cooperative pygmy nuthatch. Not a species I see super often, so that was exciting. (It was a good birding day in general.)
I really liked these flowers. They were so bright.
Eighteen more pictures:
There used to be a sign right by the trailhead, talking about a homestead that used to be there. There are a couple pieces of the foundation that are still out in the field. I do say "used to be," because the sign is completely gone, now. The field is super overgrown, and none of the remains are visible from the lot. I guess they decided that if no one can tell it's there, they don't want to draw attention to it.
I still wandered out through the grass to look. One time there was a neat snake over by the old chimney. No snake this time, though.
The official greeting committee! I think this is a young red-winged blackbird. It was not terribly disturbed by people walking by.
Some nice flowers.
The creek.
Neat old willow tree.
Spittlebug nests!
Bella by the creek.
Bellflowers!
Bella again!
Nice view of the creek.
Alex and Bella. <3 Even Alex was happy enough with this picture. (Minus the light flare... creek must be haunted, it's obviously a ghost.)
A fast-moving section of the creek.
Honeybee on milkweed! :)
And a bumblebee on a sunflower.
A flycatcher of some type... a pewee, I think.
Chickadee!
The trail goes down next to some private property, which includes a rentable... castle. Lol. The first time we saw it it was a bit of a surprise.
A very fairytale-looking bridge, for sure.
We used that as our turnaround point. I was impressed with how well Bella was doing! It wasn't as hot a day, and she got a bunch of wading breaks, but she made it pretty far before she started lagging any.
And finally, a mushroom on a tree! Only a little inappropriate looking, lol.
This was a really pleasant walk, and it was a great day to be out.
sunshine_revival Challenge #6
Jul. 20th, 2025 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Challenge #6
Journaling prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?
Creative prompt: Write a story/fic around the theme "game night".
I'm not a video gamer at all, and while board games can be fun I never went out of my way to play them. My nephew, on the other hand, is really into games of all kinds, so every time he and my family visit we've always played board games. Apples to Apples is a fun game and probably my favorite. Uno is fun, too, but depending on who you're playing with, it can be frustrating, lol (my father's wife once played with us and she was the most annoying person ever to play the game with - she was a generally a terrible person and there are worse, more serious examples than Uno, but I digress, lol). I also enjoy crossword puzzles and quizzes, which tend to be a solo gaming thing.
Sporcle has some fun quizzes, so I try those out sometimes. I like the enormous crosswords best, but there are all types of quizzes there.
Previous Days
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Check-In #2
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The complete writing is due in one week, on July 27th. You can find more information in our FAQ about what it means for writing to be complete. Writers can either email us a link to a shared version of their text that their podficcer has access to (for example a shared Google Doc) or post the text to the Pod_Together 2025 collection on AO3. The collection is moderated and set to "unrevealed" so the stories will show as "mystery" works until the mods reveal them on the scheduled posting day. If your podficcer is not included as a co-creator on the AO3 post, please contact a mod when you submit your writing to confirm that your podficcer has access to the completed text. You can find full posting instructions here.
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The last 24 hours have been a whole year
Jul. 19th, 2025 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Again.
It's an abandoned/defunct factory; this is the... fifth? time it's caught on fire in the last couple of years. (The owner who acquired it after the previous owner died has been trying to sell it for far more than anyone wants to pay.)
2. Discord. This morning: Skipped my GURPS game (sigh) for round 3 of 4 of the Seattle Worldcon virtual business meeting. 3.75 hours of intense Roberts Rules neepery wrapped around 16 action items. 14 passed, 2 failed. I took notes on (1) everything that happened and (2) How To Bog Down A Worldcon Business Meeting, should I ever be so inclined.
There are a substantial number of people involved for whom Roberts Rules is apparently their main fandom. The Worldcon Business Meeting is their Pennsic. Some of them get annoyed at people who aren't interested in RRONR procedures as much as they want changes to Worldcon rules.
Also I have volunteered to be on two committees; we'll see if I get accepted to either.
3. Confusion. Family birthday party. Eldest daughter came over to cook tacos yay. Much bustling around a small kitchen with people no longer used to having three butts in a one-butt sized space.
Tacos were yummy. Cake and ice cream were yummy. French-press coffee was yummy; I wound up thinking "I should do that more often" and then remembered why I don't - because the cleanup is a hassle, and also, I prefer the coffee hotter than the press makes it. (5 minutes of sitting in a glass cylinder is cooler than I prefer.) But it's nice once in a while.
4. Bureaucracy. 2 hrs of OTW Board public meeting. (The meeting is 1 hr, but I'm involved as a volunteer, so had to be there in advance.) It ran short - instead of the normal "dozen questions emailed in advance + 10-20 questions asked in session," it was "5 questions sent in advance and only 4 more asked in session." All questions answered during the meeting; none left over to get posted on the website later.
5. Aftermath. Kid the Elder has gone home with doggo via Lyft; I am trying to catch up on the several chat channels with all sorts of stuff in them. Also now trying to figure out what writing deadlines I have pressing that have been shoved aside during prep for these two meetings.
New Community for Fan Writers!
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Tuesday, July 08: Hudson Gardens (Part 2)
Jul. 19th, 2025 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Here is Part 2: The Critters!
Mostly, I'd been hoping we would see frogs, because there were loads of tadpoles when we were there in the spring, but we were too early for frogs.
We were not too early for frogs this time! This was my favorite bullfrog of the day, who was surprisingly chill about me taking pictures.
Found along the lake shore, a fairly recent shed snake skin! Almost certainly a garter snake.
Seventeen pictures of various critters, lots of frogs and crayfish, plus others:
Over past the beehives, the little holding pond is full of water and plants again! We heard one tell-tale "eep! plop" of a bullfrog, but upon looking closely at the pond, discovered there were also quite a few of the tiniest possible froglets.
What is that between the plants?
Let's look a bit closer...
Hmm...
Eeeeeven closer...
The tiniest frog!!
Another tiny!frog. (Just below the stem of the lily pad in the middle, the one with the curled leaf.)
Two more tiny frogs!
The tiny frogs are far too small to be bullfrogs. I feel like they're even a bit too small to be leopard frogs, based on what I remember of the one I raised from a tadpole when I was a kid. They could be toads like Berry Mad, since I think they do start out very small, or possibly chorus frogs.
The other thing there were a ton of...
Baby crayfish! So many baby crayfish! More baby crayfish than I have ever seen!
Still some big bullfrog tadpoles, too.
Another fun aquatic baby: a damselfly nymph!
A kingfisher!
Then up to the lily pond...
A nice big bullfrog under the lily pads! And such stripey legs.
A much smaller bullfrog.
Another shot of the very big, very chill bullfrog from above the cut.
A nice big crayfish, marching along the water line.
Not as intense as the claws I found up at Pine Valley Ranch, but you can see the blue claws!
Another bullfrog, sitting on the waterfall between levels of the pond.
On a fence post, a cicada husk.
One last big bullfrog, on the muddy bank.
One last bonus picture,
of a black widow at my mom's house:
This is "Esmeralda" or "Esme" for short. She lives in the window well outside of my mom's basement. My mom sent me this picture the same day we went to the gardens: Esme had three big egg sacs! (According to mom, she has since laid a fourth.) She is an attentive mother, rotating the egg sacs and moving them around the web over the course of each day. My mom has been enjoying watching her.
My mom said that her research on black widows and their egg-laying said that they only live about a year once they're fully mature, which makes me feel slightly better about how short a time I had Ophelia... perhaps it really was just her time.
Bleach fics
Jul. 20th, 2025 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ishida Uryuu & Kurosaki Ichigo
Characters: Kurosaki Ichigo, Ishida Uryuu
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Post-Thousand Year Blood War Arc (Bleach), Family Feels, Cousins, group hug
Summary:
In the wake of the Quincy war, Ichigo drags Ishida home.
Asking the Question (1599 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abarai Renji/Kuchiki Rukia, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ayasegawa Yumichika/Madarame Ikkaku
Characters: Abarai Renji, Kuchiki Rukia, Ayasegawa Yumichika, Madarame Ikkaku, Matsumoto Rangiku, Kurosaki Ichigo, Kurosaki Isshin
Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Marriage Proposal
Summary:
Renji asks for life advice and finds most of his friends unqualified to give it.
Piercing Moment (697 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abarai Renji/Kuchiki Rukia
Characters: Abarai Renji, Kuchiki Rukia, Ayasegawa Yumichika
Additional Tags: Piercings
Summary:
Rukia and Renji have a moment over an ear piercing. Yumichika is also there.
Just Create - Monitor Edition
Jul. 19th, 2025 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Book review: "The Goblin Emperor" by Katherine Addison
Jul. 19th, 2025 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Author: Katherine Addison
Genre: Fantasy
I first read The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison last year, but I never got around to reviewing it, in part because I didn't know what to say about it. My friends had loved it, and while I'd found it enjoyable, I was still percolating on what I liked (or didn't!) about it. Listening to The Witness for the Dead, a book in the same universe, got me thinking about TGE again, so this month I gave it a re-read. This time, it all clicked.
This book is truly such an enjoyable read. The basics of Maia's tale are not unfamiliar—a seeming nobody is thrust into a position of power no one ever expected them to have—but Addison puts her own fascinating spin on it. It has the same feeling I got from The Witness for the Dead, where the story prioritizes doing the right thing and many if not most of the characters in it are striving to be good people (whatever that means for them). It makes a nice contrast to the very selfish, dark fantasy where you know from the start every character is just in it for themselves (and I do enjoy those too, not to say one is better than other!) The protagonist Maia in particular is put in any number of positions where he could misuse his power for personal gratification—such as imprisoning or executing his abusive former guardian, Setheris—but he, with conscious effort, chooses differently. That is not the kind of person—not the kind of emperor—Maia wants to be. And honestly—there is very gratifying fantasy, particularly today, in the idea of someone obtaining power and being committed to some kind of principles of proper governance, of having some code of honor above their own personal enrichment.
2025 Posting Instructions
Jul. 19th, 2025 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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