New Murderbot Short Story

Jul. 10th, 2025 09:33 pm
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
The new Murderbot short story is up at Reactor Magazine:

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy

https://reactormag.com/rapport-martha-wells/

Edited by Lee Harris, art by Jaime Jones.


And Murderbot was renewed for a second season!

https://deadline.com/2025/07/murderbot-renewed-season-2-apple-tv-1236453764/

“We’re so grateful for the response that Murderbot has received, and delighted that we’re getting to go back to Martha Wells’ world to work with Alexander, Apple, CBS Studios and the rest of the team,” Chris and Paul Weitz, said in a statement Thursday.
rynling: (Mog Toast)
[personal profile] rynling
I wrote a short fluff story about Barret and Cid for the Romancing Barret fan week event on Tumblr (here). The story is called “Good Old-Fashioned Grunt Work,” and it’s on AO3 (here).

This is me getting way back on my bullshit about “engineer husbands,” which started with Setzer and Edgar from Final Fantasy VI. I actually deleted those stories from AO3 because they only had a small handful of kudos, but maybe I should repost them. Maybe.

One of the most common pieces of advice for creatives is that you shouldn't worry too much about the reception your work receives. To a certain extent, that's true. Art exists for its own sake, as well as the joy of the process for the creator. Speaking personally, my own sense of self-worth has very little to do with how many likes or kudos my work gets, which is (almost entirely) stochastically random.

At the same time, we live in a society. I don't judge my work by its numbers, but other people do. It goes without saying that people will adjust their behavior toward you depending on how they view your rank in their community, and reception metrics are the most visible indicator. There's also a snowball effect in which people are more likely to "like" or share or comment on something that already has high numbers. So for me, it makes sense to weed out and delete my more poorly received stories from the archive.

Speaking of deleting things, I also uninstalled FFVII Rebirth from my Steam Deck. I've tried to play the game twice now, and both times I've gotten bored after the opening section in Nibelheim + Kalm. I loved FFVII Remake, but maybe Rebirth isn't for me. I just think that maybe I enjoy the fanfic more than the actual game. And that's cool.

UC-X-Men Prompt Meme: First Date

Jul. 8th, 2025 03:59 pm
senmut: modern style black canary on right in front of modern style deathstroke (Default)
[personal profile] senmut
First Date (400 words) by Sharpest_Asp
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Marvels [2023]
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Hank McCoy/Maria Rambeau
Characters: Henry "Hank" McCoy | Beast, Maria Rambeau
Additional Tags: Drabble Sequence
Summary:

First Dates can be interesting.



First Date

Maria had spent time touching up her nails, dithering over which outfit to wear, deciding on the shoes that looked best with it.

Hank, for his part, had done all he could to tidy his appearance, currently stuck in 'blue', 'furry', and 'large', but he knew those factors didn't matter to her.

He showed up promptly — actually early but didn't approach the house right away — and rang the doorbell. She answered it, her smile lighting her eyes in a way that made Hank feel almost normal again.

"Shall we?" he invited, pointing to his car.

An explosion answered for her.




After dealing with the alien being chased by space cops — not Carol's set, thankfully — Binary and Beast sat up on a rooftop, drinks cups and to-go containers of food between them.

"For a date, it was a little rocky," she offered, smiling despite the bruise darkening her face.

"I promise you, I can do better," he replied, self-consciously smoothing singed fur on his arm.

She reached out and covered his hand. "Why don't you take me back to your place, and we'll see about the aftercare first?" Maria invited, and Hank had to suck in a deep breath of anticipation.




Treating each other's scrapes had led to their clothes being discarded, leading to a brazen challenge to see if they fit as well in a bed as they did in combat.

Hank was never going to feel anything short of awe for how easily Maria accepted his mutated appearance. He could only gasp and keep his hands on her lightly as she touched, petted, and kissed him. He laid back and let her have control… until she turned the tables, bringing his hand to her breast.

The half-slitted eyes gazing down as he touched her wrecked him, making her purr.




Maria could get used to the feel of Hank's body under her, the strength and dexterity he used in a fight leashed to their mutual desires. She might even welcome waking up with him… but she wasn't going to rush things. She knew he was struggling at times with who — what — he was.

She had experience managing that, and was still growing accustomed to her powers.

Now, resting in what was hopefully a brief respite, she ran a finger along his cheek fur, making him shift into the touch.

"Next date, fewer aliens."

He chuckled, and then saw to kissing her.


Written for uc_xmen drabble-a-thon/prompt meme on Dreamwidth, prompt: MCU - Hank McCoy/Maria Rambeau - (any), it was supposed to be date night

How do spiders see?

Jul. 8th, 2025 03:03 pm
rynling: (Default)
[personal profile] rynling
Is a spider's vision stitched together like ours?
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a0v8wy/is_a_spiders_vision_stitched_together_like_ours/

So, it's reasonable to suppose that information from the spider's primary and secondary eyes is integrated in the spider's brain, and in whatever way a spider has visual experience - which is certainly inconceivable to us - it experiences all its eyes in a single integrated frame. I think you'd kind of need a reason to suppose that spider vision is not integrated.

It's very cool that there are people in the world studying things like this. And, personally speaking, I would love to have secondary eyes. I love perceiving light and motion, no joke.

I'm doing this research for the story I want to write for the Bloodborne zine (here) btw. Sign-ups for contributors are open until June 20 if you're interested.

New desk, more tasks

Jul. 9th, 2025 12:27 am
ljwrites: Carefree whistling. (whistle)
[personal profile] ljwrites

A couple of days last week went by in housework to get my new desk set up and change the furniture arrangement. This was after an all-nighter to send in my Soul-Sucking Neverending Work Assignment of Doom From Hell in the morning followed by a nap to sleep it off, so that was certainly a choice I made.

In the afternoon I rose from the dead to clear out the old desk and brought in the assembled pole-mounted desk, wiping down the desks and floor in between. I also moved my secondary Dell monitor from the old desk-mounted monitor arm to the new pole-mounted one (after snapping a pic of the old setup so I can sell the old arm on the flea market app Danggeun), then moved my computer housing to serve as a side desk. More wiping because the inside of that housing had gathered some dust over the years. The monitor was plugged in on its brand-new arm, and I turned it on to check the power supply-

And nothing! The monitor wasn't turning on! I wasn't sure if the monitor itself had somehow met its demise while being moved to its new mount or something was wrong with the power supply. So I dragged our cable hoard out of storage to see if I could find a matching power cord, which there was. Two of them, actually. Changing the power cord got the monitor working again, whew. Maybe I'd kept the monitor power cord too tightly curved on the old mount, or maybe its time had simply come.

Anyway it was a good thing we had the extra cord on hand, but the cables had become a tangled mess in storage and I somehow had the energy to group them into different plastic bags and tag them by categories like "power cords" and "charging cables." It doesn't make an immediate difference right now, but future-me will thank past-me the next time a cable needs to be found.

The old, bigger desk wasn't being dumped; rather, it replaced the side table of the living room couch. The couch-side table had been hanging on in bad shape for years after a younger Tater had jumped up and down on it, tilting sadly and precariously from a missing wheel, so it was a mercy really. (Why are kids?) I dismantled the old couch table and replaced it with the one I'd been using in the office. Also wiped down the living room floor while I was at it. After putting away or tossing a bunch of stuff, the new setup was more or less complete. I even took a night to do a deep-clean of the keycaps and board, a process I live-tooted on fedi.

Before and after pics! )

I'm very satisfied with the new setup, despite all the work it took. The desk layout is more compact than before, the computer housing no longer gets between me and the monitor, and everything I need is within reach when I'm sitting at my desk (or desks, rather). The change was a while in coming and I'm relieved to have it over with.

queenlua: (steller)
[personal profile] queenlua
Okay, yeah, as people watching my Tumblr may have already noticed, I gave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a try on a whim (mostly because of this post tbh) & I had a grand old time & now I'm here to dump some thoughts about it before I lose them forever.

Full disclosure, a big reason that I got SO into this game (devoured it in ~2 weeks) was because Bird Guy got into it too, at exactly the same time, and did you know it is VERY fun to blast through a big bombastic game in Your Favorite Genre alongside the love of your life? Highly recommend it. We were heckling each other and swapping strategy protips and speculating wildly about the plot together the whole time; it was SO weeby in our household lol.

We historically have somewhat divergent tastes in video games (he plays FPSes, Soulsbornes, and grand strategy games; I tend more toward turn-based tactical RPGs, narrative-driven RPGs, stealth-action games, and platformers). There's also a lot of places where our tastes overlap (we both love a good puzzle game, hence both of us getting oneshot by Blue Prince a few months back, and we both enjoyed e.g. Breath of the Wild), but up until now I don't think he's ever liked anything in the (admittedly fuzzy) space of "big, bombastic, narrative-heavy 90s/00s-style RPGs."

a list of all the ways this game is a big fat love letter to A Specific Era Of RPGs )

So, yeah, the game nailed a 10/10 on "bottling up a bunch of highlights from the RPGs-of-a-specific-era into a modern Essence Du Jour." This will probably make me sound either sappy or deranged or both, but I really do feel like it let me share something precious and lovely with my husband in a way that finally got him to enjoy it too, and I'm pretty grateful for that. Sort of like the first time I took him to see fireflies in Kentucky because he, a west coast boy, had never seen them before.

Combat, however—combat is very different than any mainline Final Fantasy game, and it rules, actually.

what the combat is like )

The plot's another thing I was a little apprehensive about going in. The premise sounded a little stilted/weird/cheesy to my ear, and the vague rumblings I'd heard about the game online made it sound like it was all going to be some sort of philosophical-dilemma-disguised-as-a-story sort of deal, which is just not interesting in to me. (I very seriously entertained majoring in philosophy; I've taken classes on "what if we were a brain in a vat tho" kind of dilemmas; I get the appeal. I just don't find it as appealing these days :P)

Without spoiling, I'd say it doesn't really demand deep philosophical wrestling any more than, say, Christopher Nolan's Inception does—it's there if you want it and I'm sure forum nerds are arguing about it at we speak (<3 you forum nerds, you are my people), but it's mostly focused on some broader thematic concerns and the attendant characters. I don't think the characters or their world are quite as juicy in terms of their interpersonal dynamics or as fully-fleshed-out-in-relation-to-their-world as, say, the Final Fantasy 10 cast... but they're interesting enough (Verso and Maelle prove particularly chewy), there's good synergy in the ensemble, and the game REALLY leans hard into the light-and-dark interplay suggested by the title. The bright/charming bits are SURPRISINGLY goofy and silly and disarming for it; the grim bits are grim in a PG-13 way but no less satisfying for it.

Okay that's al lthe general stuff. Some more spoiler-y and off-the-cuff thoughts below—no major spoilers but if you're like "I do not even wish to Know The Name Of Potential Bosses In The Game," yeah, here's your chance to stop reading.

vaguely spoilery stuff )

oh god also i forgot to mention the soundtrack. straight bangers, every single one of them. i have the sheet music for "alicia" and "verso" sitting on my piano as we speak. truly it is the 90s again and they got their own damn Uematsu lol

Heads Up!

Jul. 7th, 2025 06:51 pm
senmut: modern style black canary on right in front of modern style deathstroke (Default)
[personal profile] senmut
[community profile] sylph_and_asp is members-locked access now. Just. I've got a lot of political posts over there from previous years, plus, as good as dreamwidth does try to protect us from crawlers, I feel better locking my writing down.
piratequeen: From the manga One Piece, Nami in traditional Japanese painting style (Nami in Painting Style)
[personal profile] piratequeen
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

[Goodreads | Storygraph]

3.5 / 5 stars

More under the cut )

July 4 Flood Relief

Jul. 7th, 2025 11:42 am
marthawells: Atlantis in fog (Atlantis)
[personal profile] marthawells
Kerr County Flood Relief Fund

The Kerr County Flood Relief Fund supports relief and rebuilding efforts after the flood of July 4, 2025. Your generosity helps our neighbors recover.

The Community Foundation - a 501(c)(3) public charity serving the Texas Hill Country - will direct funds to vetted organizations providing rescue, relief, and recovery efforts as well as flood assistance. The Fund will support the communities of Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort. All donations are tax-deductible, and you will receive a receipt for your gift.

https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201


And Kerrville Pets Alive! is taking donations for rescue and fostering lost pets.

https://kerrvillepetsalive.com/?link_id=3&can_id=588b5a597b5d30fd7e36b213e5ba6987&source=email-freedom-is-fought-for-not-given&email_referrer=email_2803907&email_subject=how-you-can-help-texas-flood-victims&&
rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
[personal profile] rynling
I'm putting together a slideshow about the contemporary glorification of Japanese wartime imperialism in otaku media, and.

Like obviously I don't think it was in any way good for Japan to commit genocide on the Asian continent, or that it was fun times for Japan to force its own citizens into a military that was, by all accounts, nothing less than hell on earth. Obviously. But listen. The aesthetic of that era was sick.

Read more... )

I say with nothing but sincerity that I'm against authoritarianism in all forms, but also I'm starting to think that progressive movements need better propaganda.

Now Collected in One Post

Jul. 6th, 2025 08:50 pm
senmut: a bright blue tribal seahorse (General: Tribal Seahorse)
[personal profile] senmut
Unwanteds (41367 words) by Sharpest_Asp
Chapters: 30/30
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Original Universe, Superheroes, Post-Apocalypse, Rebuilding, Asexual Character(s), Queer Relationships, Magic-Users, Future Technology, Age Difference
Summary:

In the aftermath of the Collapse, life finds new ways, making new paths, and there are heroes rising from the ashes --

-- just as villains remain to tear it all down again.



Content Notes: Fascism as history and antagonist, liberty with cultural mythology, comic-book level violence

Author's Note: This universe has been built from the ground up with many influences of pop culture and history. It was began in 2005. I posted the last main part of the story in 2023. There is a prequel and sequel both forming in my plans for the future. When I began crafting it... we were not so far down the fascism slide in real life. I very nearly did not touch it again after 2016. Ultimately though, I needed to let the good guys win.

On Dreamwidth, must join comm (Click and scroll to the bottom for the beginning. SqWA account needed to read it in chaptered format at link above)

2025 Writing Log, Part 26

Jul. 5th, 2025 07:22 am
rynling: (Mog Toast)
[personal profile] rynling
Read more... )

If you’re thinking, “Wow that’s a lot of writing, are you okay,” the answer is that work has been uncommonly infuriating this week, and it’s better that I write pornographic fanfic than an unhinged manifesto. But also, I just really enjoy the weather this time of year. Praise the sun!
piratequeen: From the anime One Piece, Nami in profile (Default)
[personal profile] piratequeen
The Floating World by Axie Oh

[Goodreads | Storygraph]

3.5 / 5 stars

More under the cut )

What We Weading Wednesday

Jul. 2nd, 2025 02:46 pm
white_aster: stacks of books (books)
[personal profile] white_aster
 

Not...dead...yet.  

Forget where I was, but here's what I've finished lately.

  • Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes - I liked this!  I liked Dead Silence (great vibes) and HaTEd Ghost Station (because so much of it didn't make sense to me, plotwise).  I felt this was also in the "fun creepy vibes" category.  The resolution was kind of simple, but hey, solid space horror.
  • Into the Broken Lands by Tanya Huff - I...am glad I read this.  Unsure if I "liked" it, but it was kind of a strange book.  Imagine...Murderbot in a fantasy setting, with mages who broke part of the world and left it a reality-challenged wasteland, but not before they left behind a lot of very powerful mage-engineered devices, including some humanoid engineered "weapons".  That was the part I liked, because it did have some interesting (though kind of overwrought) things to say about defining personhood, and the "weapon" got much more POV than it usually does (Murderbot notwithstanding).  There was also one of the most delicately done and interesting corruption arcs I've ever seen done, and that got it up out of 2-star territory for me, but overall it sat around 3 or 3.5.  I felt it touched on things I liked but consistently didn't quite hit the beats square enough to get to 4 stars.  It wasn't helped by having a very, very annoying set of characters that I hated having to see so much of.
  • The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong.  I liked this a lot.  Cozy, but not too cozy in my view:  there was tension and problems and emotions and yes, everything worked out, but that's why I'm over reading cozy anyway, so I felt that was fine.
  • The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher.  Solid ending to this duology, though it felt very slow for most of it.  The ending was a banger, though, and raised it back up into solid 3.5 star territory for me.

Currently I'm reading Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove, and after a wobble at the start where I was kind of unsure if I was going to like the main AI character, it GRABBED me and I've loved it ever since.


rynling: (Gators)
[personal profile] rynling
I bitch and moan about GenAI, but I think it’s important to emphasize that it’s not all one thing, and that many applications of these programs can be super useful. Like in language learning, for instance, or in helping researchers in STEM fields organize and present data. Just because some people are evil and stupid and lazy doesn’t mean the technology is “bad” by default.

Read more... )

For me at least, that really hammered down the point that the “enemy” isn’t necessarily the technology itself. Rather, it’s how institutions use the technology to exacerbate pre-existing inequalities related to labor.

Work stress and furniture

Jul. 2nd, 2025 07:40 pm
ljwrites: animated gif of person repeatedly banging head on keyboard. (headdesk)
[personal profile] ljwrites

My current interminable work assignment is draining the soul out of me. Like I need the work and am grateful to have it, but also just ughhh. I'm just barely keeping myself functioning by mainlining the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, plus all kinds of music from my collections that I haven't browsed in a while.

Another way I'm relieving stress is by obsessing about furniture of all things, specifically a new desk that'll replace my current one which has been oversized ever since I changed things around to a split-desk layout for more comfortable seating. Changing the furniture is one of those middle-aged female coping mechanisms I didn't understand when I was younger, along with a taste for trashy drama about getting comeuppance in the face of unjust family situations. I'm turning into my mom in my middle age and I guess that's not a bad thing lol.

rynling: (Ganondorf)
[personal profile] rynling
Just for shits and giggles (and also inspired by the brilliant fanwork of a friend), I decided to write a few quick stories about Tenna, the villain (sort of) of the recently released Chapter 3 of Deltarune. I thought the idea of shipping him with Spamton, the villain (definitely) of Chapter 2 was funny for a hot second before actually becoming intrigued by the dynamic. What if they were both awful and made each other worse, that sort of thing.

The problem I had initially was how to write Tenna, who we only ever see speaking to an audience. How would his voice translate to a more intimate situation? To get a sense of fandom tastes, I pulled up fic for the ship on AO3 as sorted by the number of bookmarks, which I hoped would filter out most of the slop.

But alas. There is. A whole lot of slop. Very clearly written by GenAI. And people love it. Apparently.

I don't understand this at all. These stories all follow the same beats and use the same vocabulary, and the characters don't speak in their distinctive voices. There's no attempt to engage with the story or lore of the original game, and there's no specificity at all. Why would so many people bookmark fic like this?

Meanwhile, my university has been aggressively integrating GenAI into its software licenses and digital infrastructure, which has been causing huge problems for everyone. To give an example, many incoming students from East Asia or with East Asian heritage can't upload their photos to their university profiles because the software flags them for using AI-generated images. Because all Asians look fake to the algorithm I guess?? At the same time, the East Asian language teachers have been asking the university to pay for licenses for region-specific GenAI tools that might potentially make huge advances in language learning, but the university (which has more money than God) has been ignoring them. Because why would a university want to use GenAI for actual education and pedagogical innovation amirite.

TLDR: This is dystopian and I hate it.

June Happiness

Jun. 29th, 2025 08:29 am
rynling: (Terra)
[personal profile] rynling
This is what’s been making me happy this month:

Read more... )

Firefox AI Removal

Jun. 28th, 2025 01:55 pm
krait: Yuri Plisetsky's face, looking outraged (outraged Yuri)
[personal profile] krait
Firefox, my web browser of choice, just updated and dumped a bunch of new "AI features" that are enabled by default.

If you, like me, hate this nonsense, I found this very helpful guide to removing it. It took about one minute, and seems to be working - I no longer see the 'AI link preview' popup window when I hover over a link, for instance.

Please feel free to pass this on!

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raisedbymoogles

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