Starfall Stories 50

Oct. 23rd, 2025 08:22 pm
thisbluespirit: (viyony)
[personal profile] thisbluespirit
I've left it a while since I did a crosspost for [community profile] rainbowfic, which was because I was doing a very long sequence divided up into five parts and wasn't sure what to do about it now it's complete - it's something like 28k altogether (this is what has been absorbing my whole writing time for four months, when I've had any). Anyway, I've decided I might as well crosspost all the parts at once and move on. People certainly aren't obliged to read any of it, let alone all of it.


Name: Calla Island
Word Count: 5053
Rating: PG
Summary: Viyony visits Calla Island, the ancestral seat of the Allin family.


Name: Dazzled
Word Count: 5364
Rating: PG
Summary: Viyony explores a sacred cave and gets considerably more than she bargained for.


Name: Assignations
Word Count: 8293
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Death, blood, injury.
Summary: Viyony arranges an assignation with Leion, but she's not the only one with plans for midnight.


Name: Storms
Word Count: 5326
Rating: PG
Warnings: Threat of drowning, sea-sickness.
Summary: Viyony's determined to get Leion off the island.


Name: Harbour
Word Count: 5079
Rating: Teen
Summary: Leion takes Viyony home.

Speedreading video

Oct. 21st, 2025 09:23 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
After spending so much time referring to YouTube's auto-generated transcripts to try to decipher Russian (they are basically a timestamped listing of all the auto-generated subtitle text, I think, so they enable you to look back at the context of an entire phrase as opposed to just the handful of words visible on the screen at any one time), it dawned on me a couple of days ago that it is of course possible to read the transcripts of *English* text as well. Which is particularly useful in the case of videos which are basically a voiceover with marginally-related images screened for visual appeal, because it is possible simply to read the transcript and not bother to actually listen to the speaker at all, especially if the title appears to be clickbait :-p

It's the equivalent of playing the sound back at 6x speed, without the high-pitched gabbling effect :-) Of course the text isn't formatted into neat sentences and proper names are often weirdly mangled, but it makes it possible to skim through to the actual relevant content, if any, and/or go even faster in order to ascertain that there isn't any...

In Russian, ironically, reading the transcript is actually considerably *slower* than simply listening to the entire video. Read more... )

Splitting up

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:15 am
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
After the windowsill-pot flooded during Monday's heavy rain due to having no drainage holes, I finally got round to pricking out the remaining kale seedlings (of which I shall now have far too many, save that the plants are still being devoured by caterpillars).

Annoyingly, I lost my second expensive 'new' cycling glove, after having lost the first one only a month or two after I bought them this time a couple of years ago; those gloves just seemed to be that little bit too bulky to stay safely in my pockets compared to the old ones. So having been wearing one new glove and one of the old ones I am now down to two worn-out gloves, although it's just as well I did keep them...

I went back to look for it, but looking for a single black glove at midnight in the rain with fallen leaves heaped along the gutters and cars parked on the road was a fairly hopeless task, and even though I walked for a mile or so searching from the pavement, then cycled back all the way up the hill to retrace my route from the carriageway side, then cycled back down again, I didn't find anything and wasn't surprised not to do so :-(

Dear Yuletide Letter 2025

Oct. 20th, 2025 08:47 pm
thisbluespirit: (writing)
[personal profile] thisbluespirit
Thank you for writing for me! This letter is bound to be long, so tl;dr: I love all kinds of different things at different times, I love these fandoms and characters, and I'm sure to enjoy whatever you come up with.

Any prompts are intended purely for inspiration, not to restrict your choices. Take what's useful and leave what isn't. I hope you have a lovely Yuletide.

Fandoms: Enigma (2001), Indigo Saga - Louise Cooper, The Schoolmistress (BBC Radio), & Wish Me Luck (TV) )

A blind alley

Oct. 18th, 2025 02:20 am
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
It doesn't work to have Aramis responsible for pushing Athos into this (and I'm not sure it works to have a Raoul who is *not* Athos's own son as being the start of it all; if he is going to take in an unprecedented foundling at Aramis' insistence then it would need a whole lot more detailed backstory to explain how Aramis argues him into it). So having written this section I then deleted it and replaced it with an alternative version that is less heavily based on the canon scenario where dealing with Raoul basically pulls Athos out of depression ;-) In the current version, the 'school' is implicitly something he goes into by his own choice, which makes more sense of Aramis teasing him about it... and requires less explanation at a point where it ruins the pacing of the chapter!
Read more... )
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
I've just come across the Romanian version of the film "Ma-ma", or the tale of the wolf and the five little goats (made as a tri-lingual production, from which I've seen clips in Russian of Boyarsky as the Wolf, and about half the film in its BBC English version); it is noticeably different not only in the soundtrack but in the lighting, timing and composition of each shot. So it's true that they really did re-shoot the film three different times on the same set, exactly as in the days of early sound films when stars like Anna May Wong or Buster Keaton were required to repeat their performances in multiple languages -- and apparently with different directorial choices to suit the target audience...! Read more... )

Dear Yuletide Author

Oct. 14th, 2025 08:59 pm
evandar: (Default)
[personal profile] evandar
Dear Author,

Hello! Thank you so much in advance for writing for me. I can't wait to see what you create.

This letter contains a list of Likes and DNWs as well as a couple of prompts. If none of the prompts catch your eye, then write whatever you like. As long as it doesn't hit any of my DNWs, we're good.

Read more... )

Okay! So that's it, that's the letter. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you create for me <3

Bozbash with quince

Oct. 13th, 2025 10:12 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
Since I now have another batch of real quinces (after making japonica jelly last week) I made a recipe from my Russian cookery book -- technically speaking now a Soviet cookery book, I suppose, since it takes it for granted that you will be interested in recipes from all the now independent parts of the Soviet Union!

Azerbaijani bozbash bears a probably not coincidental resemblance to Persian cookery and to lamb plov, Read more... )
(Similar recipe online: https://bestrecipes24.com/recipe/azerbaijani-style-lamb-bozbash-soup-with-chickpeas )


"Little Gentlemen" is coming along quite nicely, although the style is in danger of becoming stilted and verbose -- not very Dumas!
I have now successfully introduced my young OC Venya (playing the 'Nat Blake' role, with Raoul taking on the role -- and vocabulary -- of the cheerful Tommy Bangs who introduces him to everyone and everything) into Athos's house, which is at least fifty per cent of the material envisaged, and am attempting to finish the scene in which Athos reads the accompanying letter (also establishing AU material). Read more... )

A new category

Oct. 13th, 2025 06:07 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
Done! I managed to negotiate the email request system and get a new category on fanfiction.net created expressly for my three "Yellow Poppy" fanfics (and any that might theoretically be written by someone else in the future), so that they no longer need rest in the faceless limbo of "Misc.Books".
Should be visible here: https://www.fanfiction.net/book/Yellow_Poppy/
(although not to me, because after that brief window of access I am unable to view any part of the site again!

New bulbs

Oct. 11th, 2025 05:47 pm
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode
I have been given half a dozen tulips ("Plant from August onwards") which need to go into the ground as soon as possible and be planted 4 inches deep, which rules out most of my available pots, especially since I still have tomatoes in seven of the biggest of them. So I decided to empty out the wildflower trough as previously planned, even though the feathery thing there was still green and growing despite having been taken indoors last week to dry out -- it was definitely the right decision to start all over again with this, since after I had cut down all the top growth the remainder came out of the pot as a single tightly-packed ball of roots with almost no earth left between them! I ended up putting the whole mass into an empty compost bag to dry out and ideally break down a bit over the next few months, and then emptying all sorts of other pots as a result in order to put their earth (and the accompanying wildly jerking worms) into the now-empty trough around the tulip bulbs.

Swan River daisies, rudbeckias and evening primrose )

Rocket )

Kale and basil retained )
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