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Kaiju Girl Caramelise trailer!
Dec. 23rd, 2025 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stepnix posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
anime_manga(don't forget to kill the auto-dub)
I enjoyed what I read of the manga! Very excited to see this get an adaptation.
velociraptors were built like poodles
Dec. 20th, 2025 08:13 pmproustbotME: "Oh boy! It's the end of the year! It's going to be super simple to wrap up everything at work in a timely manner!"
WORK: "lol. lmao even."
Anyway, I've consumed a truly lethal amount of caffeine this week and averaged about three hours of sleep a night, but I think I am actually done with everything that needs to be finished before the end of the year. (In related news, I was grimly mulling over something today, and then I thought, Self, you've averaged three hours of sleep a night this week! You are not in your right mind right now! You don't need to re-evaluate a single thing in your life today! Today is a day for head empty, just vibes!)
Wake Up Dead Man (2025) -- This is a deliberate throwback to a very retro style of murder mystery, and I enjoyed it on the same terms I enjoy Agatha Christie novels (i.e. dumb as hell if you think about it too long, but very satisfying in the moment). It's also a piss-take on a Passion Play, which is fun if you're familiar with the format and usual characters.
Unfortunately, it has a distractingly weird portrayal of American Catholicism, complete with a priest who has apparently inherited the same parish as his grandfather? (Even aside from the priestly family, that kind of appointment would be pretty weird within the ecclesiastical bureaucracy.) And then we have that same priest delivering all these off-the-cuff fire-and-brimstone sermons from the pulpit, which is not...really the vibe in the Catholic liturgical calendar but which can be the vibe in the Wild West of evangelical Christianity. Surprise: director Rian Johnson is not Catholic but was raised in an 80s evangelical household. Yeah, man, me too, but despite that, I'm aware the Venn diagram of Catholic and evangelical institutional cultures does not have a ton of overlap.
Actually, I suspect that Johnson wanted to replicate a very typical kind of English mid-century murder mystery, which necessarily involves the Anglican Church. But there's no way you can transfer a murder mystery set in an Anglican vicarage to the United States; there's literally nothing in the pantheon of U.S. Christian institutions that equates to that specific host of associations. I can see why Catholicism might have seemed like an acceptable substitute at first glance, but the movie is so unnecessarily wrong about such little stuff that it kept breaking my suspension of disbelief.
On the other hand, Josh O'Connor excels in the lead role and nails the very specific personality of every young Catholic priest I've met in my life. So sometimes the movie achieves a moment of real, lived reality, and sometimes it's just lazy and generic and incurious.
Mass Effect (2007, PC) -- Beat it! It took me about 22 hours, and I did pretty much everything. I followed a mostly renegade path, which was unpleasant and sometimes lazily integrated with the game's plot. On the other hand, I liked that the game's writing doubled down on xenophobia and amorality in the grand finale, especially in Anderson's concluding speech about humanity taking control amidst a power vacuum. Gross but appropriate! I sacrificed Ashley at Virmire -- even though I think Ashley's character arc over the whole trilogy is fun and a lot more interesting that the stuff going on with Kaidan. (But, alas, I sacrificed Kaidan during my first playthrough, so I thought it was only fair to sacrifice Ashley this time.) Saved Wrex, of course, as he remains the standout character in the cast. I romanced Liara, somewhat reluctantly. The romances in this game are pretty bad, and I salute my younger player-self's purity of purpose in refusing to romance anyone at all. On the whole, I had a fine time, but Mass Effect has not aged particularly well. Its innovations have all been appropriated and refined in other games (not least among them its own sequel), and so now it just seems kind of clunky and hammy in its execution. I kind of think...Dragon Age is the better Bioware series?
Inscryption (2021, PC) -- After I uninstalled Mass Effect, I did not want to start a new game, but I did want to enter a game-playing fugue state. Enter, stage left: Kaycee's Mod from Inscryption, which is basically an endless version of the Act One card game. It took me 21 failed runs before I managed to beat the first iteration of the game, so everything is clearly going great. As a vehicle for dissociation, sacrificing squirrel cards has entered a pleasantly Tetris-like zone for me.
WORK: "lol. lmao even."
Anyway, I've consumed a truly lethal amount of caffeine this week and averaged about three hours of sleep a night, but I think I am actually done with everything that needs to be finished before the end of the year. (In related news, I was grimly mulling over something today, and then I thought, Self, you've averaged three hours of sleep a night this week! You are not in your right mind right now! You don't need to re-evaluate a single thing in your life today! Today is a day for head empty, just vibes!)
Wake Up Dead Man (2025) -- This is a deliberate throwback to a very retro style of murder mystery, and I enjoyed it on the same terms I enjoy Agatha Christie novels (i.e. dumb as hell if you think about it too long, but very satisfying in the moment). It's also a piss-take on a Passion Play, which is fun if you're familiar with the format and usual characters.
Unfortunately, it has a distractingly weird portrayal of American Catholicism, complete with a priest who has apparently inherited the same parish as his grandfather? (Even aside from the priestly family, that kind of appointment would be pretty weird within the ecclesiastical bureaucracy.) And then we have that same priest delivering all these off-the-cuff fire-and-brimstone sermons from the pulpit, which is not...really the vibe in the Catholic liturgical calendar but which can be the vibe in the Wild West of evangelical Christianity. Surprise: director Rian Johnson is not Catholic but was raised in an 80s evangelical household. Yeah, man, me too, but despite that, I'm aware the Venn diagram of Catholic and evangelical institutional cultures does not have a ton of overlap.
Actually, I suspect that Johnson wanted to replicate a very typical kind of English mid-century murder mystery, which necessarily involves the Anglican Church. But there's no way you can transfer a murder mystery set in an Anglican vicarage to the United States; there's literally nothing in the pantheon of U.S. Christian institutions that equates to that specific host of associations. I can see why Catholicism might have seemed like an acceptable substitute at first glance, but the movie is so unnecessarily wrong about such little stuff that it kept breaking my suspension of disbelief.
On the other hand, Josh O'Connor excels in the lead role and nails the very specific personality of every young Catholic priest I've met in my life. So sometimes the movie achieves a moment of real, lived reality, and sometimes it's just lazy and generic and incurious.
Mass Effect (2007, PC) -- Beat it! It took me about 22 hours, and I did pretty much everything. I followed a mostly renegade path, which was unpleasant and sometimes lazily integrated with the game's plot. On the other hand, I liked that the game's writing doubled down on xenophobia and amorality in the grand finale, especially in Anderson's concluding speech about humanity taking control amidst a power vacuum. Gross but appropriate! I sacrificed Ashley at Virmire -- even though I think Ashley's character arc over the whole trilogy is fun and a lot more interesting that the stuff going on with Kaidan. (But, alas, I sacrificed Kaidan during my first playthrough, so I thought it was only fair to sacrifice Ashley this time.) Saved Wrex, of course, as he remains the standout character in the cast. I romanced Liara, somewhat reluctantly. The romances in this game are pretty bad, and I salute my younger player-self's purity of purpose in refusing to romance anyone at all. On the whole, I had a fine time, but Mass Effect has not aged particularly well. Its innovations have all been appropriated and refined in other games (not least among them its own sequel), and so now it just seems kind of clunky and hammy in its execution. I kind of think...Dragon Age is the better Bioware series?
Inscryption (2021, PC) -- After I uninstalled Mass Effect, I did not want to start a new game, but I did want to enter a game-playing fugue state. Enter, stage left: Kaycee's Mod from Inscryption, which is basically an endless version of the Act One card game. It took me 21 failed runs before I managed to beat the first iteration of the game, so everything is clearly going great. As a vehicle for dissociation, sacrificing squirrel cards has entered a pleasantly Tetris-like zone for me.
fanmix_monthly
Dec. 21st, 2025 10:17 ammatsushima posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_community_promo
fanmix_monthly is a new fanmix community on Dreamwidth! Posting is now open. Optional prompts will start in January 2026.
Just Create - Yokai Edition
Dec. 19th, 2025 10:25 pmsilvercat17 posting in justcreateWhat are you working on? What have you finished? What do you need encouragement on?
Are there any cool events or challenges happening that you want to hype?
What do you just want to talk about?
What have you been watching or reading?
Chores and other not-fun things count!
Remember to encourage other commenters and we have a discord where we can do work-alongs and chat, linked in the sticky.
The CSS crimes of Dreamwidth locals
Dec. 19th, 2025 10:09 pmmalymin posting in eggbug_clubI've found it. The holy grail. As I'd mentioned before:
I know the full degree to which Cohost enabled CSS *crimes* isn't quite possible on any other social media. However, it seems like there is a small community of people on here who are wringing the site's inline CSS capabilities for all of their worth. They're not shitposting with it the way the #css-crimes scene on Cohost, was, though.Rather, it seems like getting fancy with in-post CSS seems to be most popular with the roleplay community on here. Some of the roleplayers get very #aesthetic with how they format their lists of RP accounts, book-keeping for different threads across the website, et cetera. Not *all* of them are doing this, but enough are that it seems noteworthy.
Well. I've found some very impressive ones. Some even made me laugh. XD
Sources:
- IT'S OK I GUESS - a steam review mock up code by @10billionghosts
- Wespace.com by @vigilanting
- CODE ✦ VERIFY. by @lucavi
- DREAMWIDTH NITRO by @lucavi
And below, an edited sample.
Horses at night
Dec. 20th, 2025 01:28 amigenlode posting in little_detailsIf my characters have made camp in a wood for the night while travelling on horseback, what will the horses be doing?
I was sort of picturing them standing dozing together under a tree somewhere nearby -- possibly tied, possibly hobbled, possibly just being a herd together -- but poking around on the Internet suggests that if not shut up in a stable horses are actually quite active by night. (Which messes with the story, as quite apart from anything else nobody is going to be able to hear anything while keeping watch if the horses are busy foraging around!)
I was sort of picturing them standing dozing together under a tree somewhere nearby -- possibly tied, possibly hobbled, possibly just being a herd together -- but poking around on the Internet suggests that if not shut up in a stable horses are actually quite active by night. (Which messes with the story, as quite apart from anything else nobody is going to be able to hear anything while keeping watch if the horses are busy foraging around!)
Three for the Memories Coming Back Next Month!
Dec. 17th, 2025 05:25 pmyourlibrarian posting in dw_community_promo
3 for the Memories' 2025 session will be open for posts on January 3, 2026 and will run for 3 weeks until January 24. Event participation is as follows:
1) Three photos only per person during each annual session. Members are encouraged to discuss the reason for their choices.
2) Photos can be hosted at Dreamwidth or elsewhere, and should not be larger than 800 px width or height.
3) All three photos should be in the same post. Cut tags should be placed after the first photo.
3 for the Memories is not a competition, and entries are not being judged. Rather, participants are encouraged to share photos they took in 2025 that they find meaningful in some way or which represent how they experienced the year.
Questions? Visit the announcement post at
threeforthememoriesAll the Colors of the Apples
Dec. 16th, 2025 01:33 pmlizvogel posting in little_detailsFor Reasons, I need three colors of apples in my story. I'm looking for a bright, deep red; a strong yellow/gold; and an intense, bold green. (All when ripe, preferably.) Right now I've got good ol' Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith, but I'd like somethng more exciting (and more strongly colored) for at least two of them.
The setting is technically modern-day Illinois, but it's a post-apocalyptic scenario with a lot of supernatural stuff going on, so exotic varieties from other climes would be entirely feasible. I have a character who can be an apple expert if it's a variety so unusual that most USians wouldn't recognize it. Grafting, planting, import/export, and pretty much any other limitations can all be readily hand-waved by the aforementioned supernatural stuff.
TIA, Malus enthusiasts!
The setting is technically modern-day Illinois, but it's a post-apocalyptic scenario with a lot of supernatural stuff going on, so exotic varieties from other climes would be entirely feasible. I have a character who can be an apple expert if it's a variety so unusual that most USians wouldn't recognize it. Grafting, planting, import/export, and pretty much any other limitations can all be readily hand-waved by the aforementioned supernatural stuff.
TIA, Malus enthusiasts!
Dyslexia
Dec. 15th, 2025 05:49 pmelisheva_m posting in little_detailsMy female main character just told someone she's dyslexic. News to me, but that's how my characters roll <3 and it may perhaps help ground something else about her as a secondary consequence of childhood struggles with reading.
I've read a lot but it's all professional overviews and such, not enough from people who actually are. Right now I'm looking for small things I can tuck in which will suggest dyslexia to attentive, aware readers without spelling it out. She is 32 and those who are closest to her will be well used to working with her needs.
A few childhood memories can be tucked in as well.
Another question for those with dyslexia, if someone suggests reading novels out loud to her, would that be likely to work or might there still be difficulties with following everything? I understand there's a range of differences but I'd like to have her be fairly representative that way if I do include that sort of scene. Or maybe he suggests novels and she asks for short stories?
I'd like to do better than just 'trouble reading' and consequently struggled at school.
Her possibly relevant characteristics (things mentioned on the overview sites) which can't change - she is very adept physically and has excellent spatial awareness, reaction times, navigation skills and such. No dyspraxia or ADHD. If there's any executive dysfunction, it needs to be limited and compensated for well. She needs to be quick-witted, adaptable and confident she can hold her own in conversation with people who are trying to get the upper hand too.
But so far there's only one scene where she reads or writes anything and that can be altered. It's almost like she's been trying to tell me this all along.
I hope this makes sense. If you feel the need to tell me how wrong I am, please be gentle with your vehemence.
TIA for any help.
I've read a lot but it's all professional overviews and such, not enough from people who actually are. Right now I'm looking for small things I can tuck in which will suggest dyslexia to attentive, aware readers without spelling it out. She is 32 and those who are closest to her will be well used to working with her needs.
A few childhood memories can be tucked in as well.
Another question for those with dyslexia, if someone suggests reading novels out loud to her, would that be likely to work or might there still be difficulties with following everything? I understand there's a range of differences but I'd like to have her be fairly representative that way if I do include that sort of scene. Or maybe he suggests novels and she asks for short stories?
I'd like to do better than just 'trouble reading' and consequently struggled at school.
Her possibly relevant characteristics (things mentioned on the overview sites) which can't change - she is very adept physically and has excellent spatial awareness, reaction times, navigation skills and such. No dyspraxia or ADHD. If there's any executive dysfunction, it needs to be limited and compensated for well. She needs to be quick-witted, adaptable and confident she can hold her own in conversation with people who are trying to get the upper hand too.
But so far there's only one scene where she reads or writes anything and that can be altered. It's almost like she's been trying to tell me this all along.
I hope this makes sense. If you feel the need to tell me how wrong I am, please be gentle with your vehemence.
TIA for any help.
icon community promo: retro_icontest
Dec. 14th, 2025 11:43 amtinny posting in dw_community_promoretro_icontest - Blast From The Past Icontests - is once more embarking on
Are you ready to ride? Pack your satchel of art supplies and join us in another round of the Icon Quest!
Looking for more places to make icons? Here is the list of currently active iconmaking communities on dw: https://icontalking.dreamwidth.org/46317.html
a master flutist making that philharmonic cheddar
Dec. 13th, 2025 06:17 amproustbotTerry Pratchett, Jingo (1997) -- War keeps threatening to break out between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch, to the bedraggled annoyance of Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the City Watch.
I've been trying to read/reread all the Discworld books in order, but at some point I got mixed up and had to jog backwards for Hogfather and Jingo. Hogfather was great, but Jingo is the pits: plot incomprehensible, hacky jokes, and the kind of "ironic" racism that presumably read as progressive in the mid-90s and has, in the years since, aged like milk. It sucked! I guess its one redeeming value is that it makes me feel somewhat more tolerant in retrospect toward The Fifth Elephant, which I also hated. I didn't love The Fifth Elephant's handling of Angua, but at least she and Carrot get to be rounded and vulnerable characters in that one, unlike whatever the fuck is going on with them in Jingo. (Also, I suspect the climactic assassination at the end of The Fifth Elephant is meant to rhyme with Vimes's near-assassination attempt in Jingo, but Pratchett does not successfully pull it off in either novel.)
In conclusion, 1997-1999 saw the publication of Jingo, The Last Continent, Carpe Jugulum, and The Fifth Elephant. It was a rough couple of years for the Discworld series.
T. Kingfisher, What Moves The Dead (2022) -- A houseguest tries to figure out what's going on at the very strange House of Usher.
This novella-length retelling of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" feels unnecessary. Poe's weird siblings, Madeline and Roderick Usher, get reconfigured with a much larger role for Madeline, and the plot is remixed with a Lovecraftian horror lurking in the background, but What Moves The Dead does not use its source material in an interesting or illuminating way. I'm not a huge Poe fan (the first half of the 19th century was a particularly dire time in American letters), but this novella is a markedly unambitious take on Poe.
Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs (2003) -- In the aftermath of World War I, a former nurse sets up shop as a consulting detective in London.
This was an odd one. It has such a determined air of moral improvement and such an emphasis on constant virtue that I had to double-check that it was not published by a Christian press. It has the vibe of one of those very "clean" romance novels passed around by a grandmother's church group -- not because Maisie Dobbs is religious, and not because it features a typical romance-novel plot, but because its moral world is black-and-white and its characters are stiffly didactic. It's...a weird mode for a detective novel, a genre which is usually not chockablock with earnest homilies. The novel travels down an extremely mild and sedate track for most of the plot, only to spring a truly bonkers finale that seems straight out of a different and way more lurid novel. What a choice! What a weird book!
I've been trying to read/reread all the Discworld books in order, but at some point I got mixed up and had to jog backwards for Hogfather and Jingo. Hogfather was great, but Jingo is the pits: plot incomprehensible, hacky jokes, and the kind of "ironic" racism that presumably read as progressive in the mid-90s and has, in the years since, aged like milk. It sucked! I guess its one redeeming value is that it makes me feel somewhat more tolerant in retrospect toward The Fifth Elephant, which I also hated. I didn't love The Fifth Elephant's handling of Angua, but at least she and Carrot get to be rounded and vulnerable characters in that one, unlike whatever the fuck is going on with them in Jingo. (Also, I suspect the climactic assassination at the end of The Fifth Elephant is meant to rhyme with Vimes's near-assassination attempt in Jingo, but Pratchett does not successfully pull it off in either novel.)
In conclusion, 1997-1999 saw the publication of Jingo, The Last Continent, Carpe Jugulum, and The Fifth Elephant. It was a rough couple of years for the Discworld series.
T. Kingfisher, What Moves The Dead (2022) -- A houseguest tries to figure out what's going on at the very strange House of Usher.
This novella-length retelling of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" feels unnecessary. Poe's weird siblings, Madeline and Roderick Usher, get reconfigured with a much larger role for Madeline, and the plot is remixed with a Lovecraftian horror lurking in the background, but What Moves The Dead does not use its source material in an interesting or illuminating way. I'm not a huge Poe fan (the first half of the 19th century was a particularly dire time in American letters), but this novella is a markedly unambitious take on Poe.
Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs (2003) -- In the aftermath of World War I, a former nurse sets up shop as a consulting detective in London.
This was an odd one. It has such a determined air of moral improvement and such an emphasis on constant virtue that I had to double-check that it was not published by a Christian press. It has the vibe of one of those very "clean" romance novels passed around by a grandmother's church group -- not because Maisie Dobbs is religious, and not because it features a typical romance-novel plot, but because its moral world is black-and-white and its characters are stiffly didactic. It's...a weird mode for a detective novel, a genre which is usually not chockablock with earnest homilies. The novel travels down an extremely mild and sedate track for most of the plot, only to spring a truly bonkers finale that seems straight out of a different and way more lurid novel. What a choice! What a weird book!
Just Create - Ice Edition
Dec. 12th, 2025 09:31 pmsilvercat17 posting in justcreate What are you working on? What have you finished? What do you need encouragement on?
Are there any cool events or challenges happening that you want to hype?
What do you just want to talk about?
What have you been watching or reading?
Chores and other not-fun things count!
Remember to encourage other commenters and we have a discord where we can do work-alongs and chat, linked in the sticky.
Mood Theme in a Year Returns!
Dec. 12th, 2025 07:26 pmsoc_puppet posting in dw_community_promomoodthemeinayear is coming back in 2026 with a new twist: Creating a custom mood theme can now earn you Dreamwidth points!Mood Theme in a Year is a community that takes a laid-back approach to creating a custom mood theme. If you've always wanted to create your own mood theme (those little images that pop up when you select something from the drop-down "Mood" menu when posting), this is a great place to do it! Take your time creating graphics for anywhere between 15 and 132 moods, either following the community's suggested schedule or going at your own pace. (Though you need to make a minimum of 18 graphics to earn any paid time.)
The "official" schedule starts again from the beginning on January 1st, but you can jump in at any time during the year; feel free to challenge yourself as well with Bingo cards or the Mood Theme in a Month calendars! Learn more in the community pinned post or profile.
I hope to see you there!
