expecto_patronum | Member Posts

I do not understand how steak tartare, which is just raw meat, is even legal to sell anywhere. And I don't understand why anyone would WANT to eat raw meat. If you want to eat raw meat, it'd be a lot cheaper to just buy a pound of raw hamburger and scarf it down like the animal you clearly are.

Slightly less gross, but only slightly, is people eating rare steak. What is so hard to understand about this simple fact: if it's rare, it is RAW. And raw meat is NOT safe to eat. Also, as human beings, we cook our meat. If you eat raw meat I'm going to call you Ug. No wait, I'll call you Lucy because even Neanderthals and Cro Magnons cooked their meat.

crown_of_antlers

A preview of the next installment of Flowers on the Plains, which will be featuring the Jackle-Thorn and the Silver Songbird. ;)
( Read more... )

Current Mood: chipper

crown_of_antlers

As of yesterday I no longer have to work and game on a small and somewhat dark monitor. Not only did the second 4k monitor my husband ordered arrive, but the first one he ordered from Amazon arrived through the mail. Since it was so big we had to pick it up at the post office rather than the mail carrier delivering it. It was undamaged after being lost for a few days.

My husband had cooled off enough that he has not automatically sent the Amazon one back. Instead he's thinking of setting it up with my computer. If there are issues and my current video card can't handle it (and I'm not so sure that it can), then my computer will get a new video card similar to the one in my husband's computer.

For now I'm using his old monitor which is a little bigger than the one I had that recently died. It's good to no longer feel like I need to lean close to the screen to see what's going on.

On another note, I found a mod that adds Decorative Lightshafts. They work sort of like paintings, allowing their height to be adjusted. They come in two levels of strength. Here's a screenie with one of them in the loft studio of Gloria's home.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: impressed

fayanora

"#WritingQThursday Let's talk your characters' names. What do they mean? Do they signify anything special? Does your character have any nicknames, and if so, what's the story behind those?"

I usually put a lot of thought into my characters' names. Everyone but the minor side characters has thought out names. "Random extra #47" gets a random name from a list of most popular names, if they get a name at all. Dalia, her name means "a strong branch," for instance. It's also a pun, because she's black and her name is usually pronounced the same as the flower, 'dahlia.' (Sometimes it's pronounced "Doll-yah.") Her middle name is Delphinium, which is the name of a genus of poisonous flowers because Morgana's family has a history of at least one of their names being named after poisonous flowers. (It's a goth thing for them.) Like Morgana's middle name is Belladonna (AKA deadly nightshade). Morgana's mother's first name is also Belladonna. (Her middle name is Hemlock.) Morgana also has a brother named Oleander. (Dalia canonically chooses her own first and middle name, after having her parents read a lot of possible names for her out of a baby names book. Chooli also chooses zeer own name, naming zemself after one of Nizoni's cousins, Chooli Peshlakai. Said cousin was the first person Nizoni came out as trans to.)

( Rest is VERY long )

Current Music: Night Club - Sad Boy

crown_of_antlers

While waiting for the new monitor to arrive, I'm working with a different temporary one. Although it's even smaller than the other temporary work, it's a glossy screen and images are much easier to see, so I've been working on the next entry for Flowers on the Plains.

The next installment has a lot of screenshots. Twenty seven to be exact, but it's worth it since the poses help bring these characters to life. One of the screenshots features Acacia making her entrance down the staircase. Darkfell was instantly hooked (while Aeronwen stood nearby and watched with amusement.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

fayanora

Potentially controversial take: a lot of what gets called "necromancy" is actually the domain of life magic. Resurrection? Life magic cuz you're restoring life. Talking with the dead? If that's possible, that means there's life after death, it's just a different kind of life. So, life magic because you're speaking with those whose spirits live after they've died. About the only form of necromancy I can think of that doesn't fit life magic is where you're just puppeting corpses around, and that's just glorified telekinesis.

crown_of_antlers

I came across a Sims 3 site called the The 9th Circle while looking for more music related poses and accessories, and my word did this site deliver. I found so many goodies I can't post them all. Selecting the tags "sims 3 poses", "Sims 3 Accessories", and "sims 3 rock band stuff" brings up pages and pages of goodies.

Not only did I find more poses for guitarists, I found a pose pack that had poses for drummers as well as a working link to drumstick accessories. This means Brolmir will be able to get in on the posing fun.

The only one I didn't find poses for are the bass player, but it's easy enough to just have Basnik use guitarist poses and give him a "bass guitar" accessory.

A pack that really made me squee was this Accessory Violin and Pose Pack. While having Aeronwen try the poses I realized that there is another reason why poses are better than just trying to get screenies of the sims playing the instruments. Not only do you not have to worry about them changing positions and expressions before you're ready, you don't have the floating notes around your sim. Those are such a pain to edit out of screenshots.

Anyway, here are some screenies with Aeronwen. It looks like the secret to getting her to loosen up and have fun is for her to play her pretty white violin. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: pleased

crown_of_antlers

The moment - and I do mean THE moment - that I added these two to the Grouch household Gilvoth and Neloth stopped what they were doing and wanted to play with the cats. They had a ball with the laser pointer. It was so funny to watch these two old grouchy crabs doting on the purring fluff balls.

But the real question is...are these two really domestic house cats, or are they Alfiqs who have found the perfect way to coast through life?
( Read more... )

Current Mood: amused

fayanora

I just finished a book by T. Kingfisher called "Snake-Eater," which is a horror story in which Selena, the protagonist, runs away from her life after her mom's death to unwind in the American Southwest, and in the process runs afoul of Snake Eater, who is basically the god of roadrunners.

Now, if your only knowledge of roadrunners is from the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons, well... apparently real roadrunners are fucking terrifying. They're basically evil little feathered dinosaurs that are wicked smart predators with enormous talons and a beak like a shiv. They apparently have zero fear of human beings, since they know they can outrun us (but cannot, IRL, outrun coyotes; real coyotes are twice as fast as real roadrunners). If one decides to attack you, they will fuck up your shit, leaving you with great talon gouges and pecking the back of your skull in an effort to kill you the same way they do to the rattlesnakes that are one of their favorite prey animals. (Yes, these feathered fuckers hunt venomous snakes!) And because they're so fast, they can attack you faster than your brain can process that they've started moving.

And she faces the GOD of these things. (Or a very powerful spirit. Either way...)

Anyway, that's not my review of the book. This is my review, from Goodreads:

This book is in a sub-genre I would call "cozy horror," because it's mostly a sedate book about a neurotic (and possibly autistic) woman and the series of toxic relationships she gets away from, and how she grows a spine to stand up for herself with the help of some friends she makes at the tiny town her aunt lived in. Most of the book is a slow burn, with a few sprinkles of foreshadowing here and there, and a couple bursts of supernatural action before reaching the very satisfying ending. It took like 70 pages to get to the first burst of action, and another hundred for the second burst. But it's the rest of the story that's the star of the novel: the characters, their connections with each other, Selena's thoughts as she disentangles her mind from her toxic relationships, and the new bonds of friendship and community she makes. The horror elements serve mostly to move the character development along.

Over the course of this book, I fell so in love with the setting, the characters, and the vibe of the book that I could easily read a sequel that had even less supernatural or horror elements. Which is saying a lot, for me, because I very rarely read anything that could be considered conventional fiction.

My only remaining question is why it seems to take place in the year 2051 or later. It was very subtle, little odd things here and there that finally came together with a single sentence spoken before the second major burst of action. It was extremely subtle until that point, though I did learn a new word ("arcology") and then saw that word show up like five times in the book. I got the impression maybe humanity was finally wising up and fixing climate change somehow, but honestly I'm still not sure why that was included. It doesn't take anything away from the story, it's just a minor mystery that was never really given a satisfying resolution because at no point in the book (not even the afterword) was this directly addressed. It's like we were just dropped into the story and left to pick up on those subtle clues on our own and draw our own conclusions. Again, not complaining exactly, just... I'd like to know what that was all about. Nothing about the story struck me as needing to be set in any particular year. I thought it took place in 2025 or so until I started picking up on those occasional breadcrumbs.

Anyway, excellent book, and I would give it seven stars if I could.

Harry Potter's Guide to Self Care

Member Posts

People are disgusting

Riding through the Hills

Monitor Update

Character names

"Acacia's Entrance"

Necromancy is actually life magic

Did Someone Say Musician Poses?

The True Rulers of the Grouch House

"Snake-Eater" by T. Kingfisher

Profile

Custom Text