FIC: From the Chara To Be's chamber to the half-men's quarters (Tempestuous Tours)
Jun. 21st, 2026 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
duskpetersonContinuing our journey down the southern corridor of the East Wing, we reach, on our left side, the chambers belonging to the Chara's historian. The royal historian works in close cooperation with the royal clerk; indeed, it is traditional for historians to rise to the rank of clerk. The historian makes use of the documents room in the clerk's quarters, but he also has his own documents room, filled with books and papers only lightly connected with the Chara and his law, but offering important information on the history of Emor. Here you will find some of the earliest annals of Emorian history. I need hardly say that you need an invitation to visit these treasures.
Just beyond are the busy quarters of the court summoners. See the law chapter for more information on the exact work that these important men do. I will only say here that you really, really do not want to attract the attention of the summoners.
We have been looking, until now, at the work chambers on the left side of the corridor; only the Chara and his heir have taken rooms on the right. But now we reach a stretch of corridor that will be familiar to you if you have been invited to stay in the palace overnight: the guest quarters. Each guestroom has its own shape and charm, and some, such as the ambassadorial suites, are permanently assigned to regular guests of the Chara.
Beyond them are new, splendid quarters for the chamber steward. Now relieved of his unpleasant duties as the supervisor of hundreds of slaves, the chamber steward can devote his full attention to his remaining duty, which is assigning rooms to palace residents and guests. You will likely have already met this person and are aware that he is a eunuch. Or she; the chamber steward is happy to respond to either mode of address. That the chamber steward should be a eunuch is traditional, for disagreeable reasons that ought to be obvious to anyone who knows the details of a Slave's Death. Some condemned prisoners have their sentences commuted, after the first stage of a Slave's Death: the gelding. Most of these unfortunate former captives have chosen to live in the community of eunuchs that exists in the palace.
Which brings us to the half-men's quarters.
[Translator's note: In an earlier era, the chamber steward was known as the palace slave-keeper. You may meet them in Breached Boundaries.]
Code push shortly
Jun. 21st, 2026 01:50 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
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dw_maintenanceOlá de Lisboa! (I'm in Lisbon right now for work...)
Thank you everybody who has tested on canary - I'm about to push the code up to stable. I know that not everything has been tested and there's a lot in this deploy, so I expect some things to break or be weird. We have ported a lot more of the "older" pages to the newer formats, so there will be some UI changes in a few places, but it shouldn't be anything too major.
Watch for: One thing I know will require tuning, we now have added rate limits (which basically allows us to control how rapidly DW pages are loaded.) This is a protection mostly designed against bots, but any time in my career I've rolled out new rate limits, I've learned someone is hitting them and they have to be tuned. So if you see them, please let me know!
Anyway please do comment and I'll work to fix things today. We also have a rollback ready in case we need to (and I'll be honest, I expect we may need to... we really should do more frequent deploys.)
Known Issues
- Fixed: Search has gone walkabout.
- Fixed: Some UI weirdness with Manage Tags.
- Fixed: Login redirects are not working.
- Fixed: Login page sometimes returning 'invalid form submission.'
- Fixed: Rename keywords checkbox on icons page also gone walkabout.
- Fixed: Uploading large icon files erroring / not going to the image editor.
As always, thank you for your patience and supporting our scrappy little service!
Hit the Ground Running 12 : Third Time Lucky
Jun. 20th, 2026 01:16 pmphaineofcatzShe did NOT in fact, “kick his ass,” but she’s working on it. She even won three games this time! Three out of seven, but all of the games she lost were close this time. Jason stuck around until Duke and Damian got back from school, but then quickly made his excuses and buggered off. She’s pretty sure they have a watch schedule so she has a bat around at all times. She can’t really blame them, she doesn’t exactly trust herself right now.
Alfred, true to his word, brings back a variety of cloth and thread along with the boys. He brought WAY more fabric than she needs, but she supposes the household isn’t exactly known for being frugal. As she and Tay begin looking it over and talking through their design considerations, Alfred once again, exceeds her expectations. Even though he had only made a few suggestions on the designs, he has a LOT to say about the construction.
“Since you plan to use your abilities to hold the suit together, why not, instead of constructing actual seams, finish the edges of your pieces in your decorative gold? You say you are able to sew with your powers, but that must take some amount of time to thread and un-thread. Simply sew false seams in advance and only use tacking and basting for construction. Surely removing and reapplying a few tactically placed threads would function better in an emergency.”
“I was actually kind of worried about that too. I know I can do some of the work while you focus elsewhere, but to have the gold be solid enough to be high viz, it’d definitely be too much to change on the go.”
( Read more... )
FIC: The Chara To Be's chamber (Tempestuous Tours)
Jun. 15th, 2026 02:45 pmduskpetersonThe semi-attached bedchamber I mentioned before is assigned to the Chara To Be – that is, the heir to the Chara.
For centuries, no women except the Consort and the High Lord's wife have lived in the East Wing of the Chara's palace. Any children of the Chara and the High Lord have been raised elsewhere in the palace. The current High Lord visits his children daily, often spending entire evenings with them.
The one exception to the rule against families dwelling in the East Wing is that, upon reaching the age at which he can read, the Chara To Be is moved to the bedchamber directly next to his father's quarters, so that he can begin to learn the law. He is tended by servants and, in recent decades, by a tutor assigned to him. The tutor lives elsewhere in the East Wing; however, the Chara To Be may enter the Chara's quarters at any time, and he is permitted to spend time playing with the scribe-boys across the hall. He is thus less isolated than were earlier Charas To Be: young boys who were expected to quietly read law books all day.
The previous Chara To Be is now Chara. He is young enough that he has not yet married, but presumably he will do so and will install his own heir in the bedchamber.
The bedchamber is guarded by the same men who guard the Chara. Do not approach that door in the corridor.
[Translator's note: The Ambassador first came to know the Chara To Be's chamber during the period of Re-creation.]
Hit the Ground Running 11 : Cracks in the Dark
Jun. 13th, 2026 09:09 amphaineofcatzA lot had gone wrong with the op. Every teleport out of a lab had resulted in obvious and identifiable damage to the surrounding architecture, so no one had thought that they would be teleporting INTO the lab to change shifts. It seemed that their tech was more stable for large groups than Tim had given it credit for and the damage to the building was related to teleporting out the already set up equipment that was partially bolted to the structure. On the bright side, this lab had cameras everywhere. They had good quality footage of the machine, the crews, the scientist, and even the process of the machine activating and Phaine and Tay escaping.
Looking at the footage of her little rampage she could understand why someone would think she was a shoggoth now, even if she didn’t know why they had thought that before. The combination of her and Tay not agreeing on a course of action and their usage of powers for movement made her look like some horror creature wearing a people suit rather than and actual human. She thought she’d gotten used to seeing how uncanny their movements can look with the shell, but it was a bit different seeing them going all out on the security footage.
“I’ll say this, kid, you give movie monsters a run for their money.” Jason and Tim have been scrubbing through the footage while Phaine stands numbly nearby occasionally opening a slit in her mask to drink the cocoa Alfred had brought her.
( Read more... )
Looking for the Full Moon review type thoughts
Jun. 12th, 2026 07:49 pmstepnixwhat a weird show. I'm so glad it exists
Looking for the Full Moon is a throwback: a 2002 magical girl hearkening back to the magical idol series of the 80s. A young girl, Mitsuki, gets a magical chance to become a pop star... because she's dying of throat cancer, and the reapers take pity on her for her last year to live. Genuinely this feels like an edgy web serial mahou premise, not something they would actually put on tv, but here we are.
Unlike Creamy Mami or LuluttoLilly, the other magical idols i'm experienced with, Full Moon takes a fairly limited approach to the supernatural. The shinigami are the source of the magical transformation, and nearly all magical intervention in Mitsuki's life is their doing (compare Yuu/Mami stumbling across a new magical creature every few episodes). This gives Full Moon a pretty unique niche, where it can focus more on the often-brutal realities of the idol industry. It's not quite a neverending misery parade, Mitsuki gets a fair number of wins. But it never quite lets you forget that this is an extremely difficult path to travel, even as Mitsuki frequently succeeds by being the Goodest Girl Ever.
The ultimate ending feels like a sigh of relief, not just a cheap victory. the Child Mortality Magical Girl Show of all time
I'm on da (Rascal) news
Jun. 11th, 2026 01:11 pmstepnixI wrote the manifesto like a year ago, pleasantly surprised it made an impression!
oh and here's the actual manifesto link if you wanted that
