lomonaaeren: (Default)
[personal profile] lomonaaeren
Title: The Firebird’s Son
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theo
Content Notes: EWE, mild angst, creature!Theo, Hogwarts “eighth year,” discussion of past violence and torture
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry, seeking some solitude on the Hogwarts grounds, is startled to find Theo Nott seeking the same—although in Theo’s case, it’s to express his firebird heritage from his mother. Harry is fascinated.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics that I’m posting between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have two parts.

Read more... )
delphi: An illustrated bee positioned over a rainbow-striped circle. (wax and wings)
[personal profile] delphi
Love Letter from the Afterlife
-Andrea Gibson (August 13, 1975 - July 14, 2025)

Stars Without Number, With Adventures

Monday, July 14th, 2025 08:33 pm
schneefink: Babylon 5 (Bab5)
[personal profile] schneefink
We've now played four half-day sessions of our "Stars Without Number" campaign and I'm having a lot of fun.

Our party owns and operates a mining ship, and our first two sessions featured quite a bit of asteroid mining, and also a rescue mission and exploration. Then the space pirates attacked! Not us directly but the space station we are currently based at, so we helped fight them off. And then our latest session was mostly shopping & intel gathering & planning: it sounds like there's an entire fleet of pirates, likely from outside the system, and they've sabotaged and possibly taken over several stations/planets/routes. We'll find out more next time!, which sadly won't be until September because of vacations.

I really like my character. I'm a teleporter! (Talk about wish fulfillment.) Partial psychic/partial expert, because I thought being a full psychic would be overwhelming and I was mostly interested in one discipline anyway. Being able to teleport is so cool. I can teleport 1000 kilometres already and take three people with me.
I'm also really happy with my role in the party. In our main campaign I'm the youngest cat in a group of older and more headstrong cats, which I found difficult sometimes. This time I decided to play a character with more authority, and I've enjoyed it a lot. While all of our party members own the ship together and have equal say, on the bridge I'm the captain; and more importantly, I'm the one keeping track of our money and inventory. (Idk why our GM was surprised that I made a budget and business plan after the first session ^^ )
Our DM told us to prepare back-up characters in case we die, and I did, but I really hope I survive. I even ordered a nice mini figure for her :) As a party I think we've good odds of survival: we have a medic, a biopsionic (=healer), and I can teleport us out in emergencies. Fingers crossed.

I also really enjoy the system, both the setting and mechanically. Playing in a sci-fi world is a welcome contrast after around three years playing in a fantasy world as cats. And playing someone with supernatural abilities feels especially cool after three years as a non-magical archer.
One thing I didn't expect to enjoy this much is leveling up. In our previous system we earn adventure points and we can spend those on improving abilities/skills/etc., but it's more gradual, which tbh makes more sense in-universe. Buuut, leveling up just feels cool. Especially when I can pick new abilities.
What I like less is how ship combat works. So far it's been a little tedious as it seems like half the party always has very little to do; but I suspect that's also because our combat options as a mining ship are limited. We'll see how it goes. We just upgraded our weapons because of the pirates.

Once again our GM has underestimated how long it'll take us to get through his plot so we'll have to see how far we get/what happens when our fifth cat comes back from her year abroad. But until then I really look forward to our next adventures.

sky

Monday, July 14th, 2025 08:05 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
Okay, should be able to post more regularly again -- or at least regularly enough to run a theme week, which this time will be words for the skies, starting with:


sky (SKAI) - n., the expanse of air over the earth; (often plural) the appearance of the upper atmosphere, esp. regarding the weather; the celestial regions, the heavens; the highest level or degree.


blue sky with thin clouds and moon
Thanks, WikiMedia!

This, as you might expect for a very basic word, is a very old one -- attested to around 1200 in Middle English forms sky/skie/ski, also used to mean cloud/mist, which unexpectedly came not from Old English but rather Old Norse skȳ, cloud (the Old English word for sky, heofon, instead became heaven), which ultimately goes back to a PIE root meaning conceal/hide. Interesting semantic shift there.

---L.

The Institute

Monday, July 14th, 2025 09:19 am
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
I just saw this show mentioned and the poster alone reminded me of another show I'd watched so I checked out the summary on IMDb. Are they just doing a remake of The Pretender, or what?

The Day in Spikedluv (Sunday, July 13)

Monday, July 14th, 2025 06:40 am
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
I left for mom’s a little before 10am; but before I left I did a load of laundry (Pip’s uniforms; washed, dried and hung in the closet), hand-washed dishes, cut up chicken for the dogs’ meals, and scooped kitty litter.

I stayed until my new usual time of 3pm and stopped at Stewart's on the way home. I didn’t have to make supper because, again, Pip didn’t want anything hot, so he had leftover steak, cold. I hand-washed more dishes and showered.

I watched the current ep of Countdown, read more in Amelia Peabody, and started a different cozy on my Kindle app.

Temps started out at 70.0(F) and reached 93. It was hot. Thankfully I didn’t have to deal with it because I was inside at mom’s the hottest part of the day, until I got home.


Mom Update:

I left for mom’s a little early to help her stir up cookies for my brother’s birthday because I didn’t think she could do it on her own. Spoiler alert: she did it on her own. more )

June Reads and Pride Shenanigans

Sunday, July 13th, 2025 10:55 pm
tjs_whatnot: (Asexuals for a Less Populated Tomorrow)
[personal profile] tjs_whatnot
The only (slight) downside of reading primarily queer books all year long is that June hits differently for me. I want to go big, but how? How can I differentiate it from any other month? Ho hum. * ponders * But anyway… on to this month's mixed bag of delights.


June 2025 ) Oh, but speaking of Pride. I should probably make another post for this-- but I know myself enough to know I won't-- so here, have some pictures I took in my medium-ish city's Pride Parade:



So, this is the first Pride since moving back to my hometown last summer (did I ever tell you guys I moved across the country? No? Ooops, sorry).

Anyway, I did not know what to expect, but I was excited because they didn't do any pride related things when last I lived here (but that was like 30 years ago, so that wasn't too rare) and it's a middle-ish sized big town, but it's in a red side of a very blue state, so who knows that that means.

But it was lovely! They had a parade, then a festival and at the end, since it was on June 14th, a No Kings rally. I went to the parade and then volunteered at the booth my employer had there and that was great fun. Then I hung out at the protest before taking the bus home. It was a great time!

(no subject)

Sunday, July 13th, 2025 11:57 pm
tellshannon815: (victor)
[personal profile] tellshannon815
Challenge #4

Fun House
Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.
Creative: Write from the perspective of a house or other location.

There is one house I can think of that must have seen a lot over the years, would have stories to tell if it could, and that is Colony House in the TV show From.

Title: No One Here Is Free
Fandom: From
Characters: Colony House, Jasmine, Smiley, Old Lady Creature, Donna, Victor, Ellis, Fatima, Jade, Boyd, Nicki, Acosta, Kevin, Clara
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers all through S3, mentions of character deaths
Summary: Colony House was originally a family home.

Read more... )

Help the gacha got me

Sunday, July 13th, 2025 02:19 pm
volkameria: Britz (Fuga: Melodies) being so happy and sweet and AAAAH (Default)
[personal profile] volkameria
I thought with quitting Genshin Impact back in 2022/2023 (whenever they introduced the place Nahida is from, the green one) I was done with gacha games.

And then... Steam told me about Uma Musume. 
help. I'm hopelessly enthralled by coaching my horse girls on.

It's Alive!

Sunday, July 13th, 2025 09:48 pm
dhampyresa: (Default)
[personal profile] dhampyresa
Gonna run the Ukraine auction again.

If anyone wants to run a similar event (watermelon_auction?), I'm happy to share whatever I can (my backend post-automating code is already available here, though I haven't used it since).
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
I'm pulling these out and posting them separately (out of order of when they were actually read) or my Wednesday post will be Very Long.


Book 58 of 2025: Lantern in the Lighthouse (The Inn at Holiday Bay) (Kathi Daley)

Enjoyable story. spoilers )

Marshmallow fluff, but that’s all I was expecting, so I’m giving it five hearts.

♥♥♥♥♥



Book 59 of 2025: Hint in the Hashtag (The Inn at Holiday Bay) (Kathi Daley)

Pretty good. spoilers )

I mostly enjoyed this story; I’m giving it four hearts.

♥♥♥♥



Book 60 of 2025: Pawn in the Pumpkin Patch (The Inn at Holiday Bay) (Kathi Daley)

Good book. spoilers )

I enjoyed this story and am giving it five hearts.

♥♥♥♥♥



Book 61 of 2025: Secret in the Santa (The Inn at Holiday Bay) (Kathi Daley)

Good story. spoilers )

This story was enjoyable enough that I’m giving it five hearts despite the inconsistency.

♥♥♥♥♥

The Day in Spikedluv (Saturday, July 12)

Sunday, July 13th, 2025 07:40 am
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
I got in a walk around the park and a walk with the dogs at home, during which I picked some black raspberries! There were a ton on this one bush, but I didn’t feel like getting all scratched up, so I just picked what I could reach easily. (About a cup and a half, I’m guessing.)

I also did two loads of laundry (both washed, dried AND folded), hand-washed some dishes, made egg salad, and scooped kitty litter before I left for mom’s a little before 11am. I picked up some books at the library on the way there. I left at 3pm as has become the norm and did another load of laundry (mom’s, washed, dried and folded since I have to return it today) and hand-washed more dishes. I didn’t have to make Pip’s supper because it was too hot for him to have anything hot, so he snacked on an egg salad sandwich (open-faced) and hard salami.

I read fanfic, the new Murderbot novella and another Holiday Bay cozy, and watched two eps of Smoke.

If you haven’t had a chance to read the new Murderbot novelette Rapport (which is one of those ‘takes place in the Murderbot Diaries ‘verse’ stories) you can find it for free at Reactor Magazine or purchase it from Amazon (on Kindle for $1.99). Or both.

Temps started out at 71.8(F) and reached 92. We had two rounds of thunderstorms during which it rained very heavily and ended up with an inch of rain.


Mom Update:

Mom is finding it easier to get going in the morning, but then she gets tuckered out. more back here )

Whale path, swan road

Sunday, July 13th, 2025 11:36 am
dolorosa_12: (ocean)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
I returned home last night after a week's holiday in Shetland, where the weather was a delightfully consistent 14-15 degrees, the views were dramatic, and the ocean was a restorative and constant presence. Thank you to all who offered advice a few posts back — between your tips and our own research, Matthias and I enjoyed a trip that was a perfect mix of outdoorsy walking and views, museums and learning, and good food and serendipitous wandering.

I did journal a little bit while I was there, so if you want more details of what the trip involved, click behind the cut to see the transcript.

The girl and the sea )

I would highly, highly recommend Shetland as a place to spend some time, especially if you live in the UK, and will happily expand on any of what I've written above in the comments, if you're interested. I've also got a lot of photos up over at [instagram.com profile] ronnidolorosa — it's a very photogenic place!

The Day in Spikedluv (Friday, July 11)

Saturday, July 12th, 2025 07:23 am
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
I went downtown like ‘usual’ and hit CVS (I needed one item that I have gotten there in the past and they didn’t have it!), Price Chopper (for a couple of veggie items to go with meals), and the Bakery (for Pip’s deli meat). I also got in a walk around the park and stopped at the veterinarian on the way home for Ti's special dog food.

After unloading the car and putting everything away, I got to mom’s ~10am and stayed until ~3pm. Today’s chores, before and after I went to mom’s, included: two loads of laundry (both washed AND dried, one folded), hand-washed dishes, hard-boiled eggs, grilled steak for Pip's supper, scooped kitty litter, and shaved.

I started and finished the next two Inn at Holiday Bay cozies and watched the current ep of Murderbot.

Temps started out at 65.7(F) and reached 93.7. It was hot. Thankfully I didn't need to spend much time outside.


Mom Update:

Mom had just finished cleaning the bathroom when I arrived! more back here )

TV Talk: Murderbot

Friday, July 11th, 2025 03:41 pm
spikedluv: murderbot forehead against wall (murderbot: head*wall by tarlan)
[personal profile] spikedluv
Good season finale! spoilers )

As it says on the tin: Good news, stupid humans: Murderbot has been renewed (avclub.com) [The big question is, who is going to play ART?!!]

fettle

Friday, July 11th, 2025 08:00 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
fettle (FET-l) - v., (UK) to prepare or arrange (something), to put (arrangements) in order; (north UK) to sort out, to mend, to repair; (metal.) to line (a furnace) with loose material such as sand prior to pouring in molten metal. n., condition, state, usually only in the phrase "fine fettle."


I wanted only the verb, but the noun really is better known, especially in North America. Goes back to Middle English fetlen, to bestow/fix/prepare/put in place/prepare (oneself) for battle/shape, after which the trail goes cold, with several possible Old English roots suggested.

---L.

May 2025

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