sciatrix | Reading

I was reading this morning's edition of Dan Rather's Substack newsletter, where he was writing about the song "Stand By Me". (Apparently he writes about a song or musician every Sunday.)

Anyway, he mentioned that "Stand By Me" was "numbered among the Recording Industry Association of America’s 25 Songs of the Century." This naturally got me curious: A ranked list of things? That's like catnip to me!

So I went to look for it. Turns out that there's no such things as the RIAA "25 Songs of the Century." What there is is the "Song of the Century" list, produced by the RIAA in conjunction with the NEA and Scholastic Inc. It's a list of 365 songs. So where did Rather get this idea of "25 Songs of the Century"? Because "Stand by Me" is #25 on the list, and the Wikipedia entry for "Songs of the Century" only includes the top 25 songs on the list. Apparently Rather (or, more likely, one of his research assistants) looked at the Wikipedia entry, didn't read the text carefully, and based on the table of songs assumed that it was a list of 25 songs.

If you read the text carefully, not only do you get the correct number of songs. You also start to question the RIAA's methodology for creating the list. According to the entry, "[h]undreds of voters, who included elected officials, people from the music industry and from the media, teachers, and students" were asked to select the songs. These voters were selected by the RIAA (and one is forced to ask "how many students does the RIAA know?"), and of the 1300 voters selected, only 200 responded. Seems kind of sloppy and haphazard.

Then, if you read the list, you see that the voters were rather sloppy and haphazard in their definition of a song: #7 on the list is the entire album of West Side Story, which is not "a song." Altogether there are 18 albums on the list: 11 Broadway shows, 6 jazz albums, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Obviously I don't have a copy of the instructions that the RIAA sent to the voters, but I think we can all agree that (with the exception of Thick as a Brick and possibly a few others) an album is not a song.

Also, just as an aside, I think 2001 (when this survey was conducted) was a bit premature to be choosing the most impactful songs of the 20th century.

All that being said, I think any other such list would be just as subject to being haphazard and subjective, and on skimming over the list I do think it would be an enjoyable and/or interesting list to listen to. Plus, unless you were born on February 29, you can figure out what day of the year you were born on and then look at the complete list and see what song your birthday corresponds to. (Mine is "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.)

goddess47 posting in

romancingmcshep

Title: LOUD
Author:

goddess47
Character(s): John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Pairing(s): John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Rating: PG
Length: 100 words
Warnings: none

Notes:

For

mcsheplets prompt #137 - silence

For

romancingmcshep 2026

For Fluffbruary 2026 prompt day 22 - sound

Summary:

John decided they needed new mission equipment.

LOUD on AO3

umadoshi

Reading: Last week I finished Stephanie Burgis' Wooing the Witch Queen (fun!) and read Heated Rivalry. I opted to just skip straight to the actual HR novel rather than first reading the Scott/Kip novel, which worked out fine, since I also had that context from the show. I enjoyed it a fair bit, but now I'm in the awkward position of wanting to see the next chunk for Shane and Ilya but no more urgently than after I finished watching season 1 of the show. The choices now are a) read the entire series (presumably doubling back to actually read book 1), b) skip ahead and read The Long Game, or c) hold off entirely and wait for season 2 of the show.

I also read a few more volumes each of Hikaru no Go and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but I'm still in rereading territory with both. (I think I've already read up to vol. 12 of Kurosagi, but for Hikaru, I think the odds are against me really realizing when I've hit new territory until I go to enter a volume in Goodreads and find it's not already on my Read list there.)

Watching:

scruloose and I are caught up on both The Pitt and Frieren, and we finished Midnight Mass last weekend (a very solid, intense ending).

With my crunch time at work starting, it's not an ideal time for us to start a show that's a significant time commitment or that's going to leave me desperate to see a next episode when work is eating most or all of my evenings. It's possible this will result in me just showing

scruloose Heated Rivalry, since it's apparently our key cultural export of the decade and all. *g* Only six episodes and I don't have to worry about being impatient to see what happens next or about being spoiled.

(I still don't feel actively fannish about HR at all, but am enjoying being adjacent to it and seeing all the fannish excitement and meta and such. I have saved many fic recs to my read-later list on A03, but have yet to actually read a single one [and may never, given how slowly I go through fic--there's still a steady stream of Guardian fic I haven't read that also goes on that list].)

Weathering/Working: We have what sounds like a significant nor'easter blizzard arriving at some point tomorrow, with heavy wet snow. Will this be where our luck fails for the season and we lose power for the first time? (I'm completely astonished that it hasn't happened yet. Probably it's not really because the generator and backup power are warding that off, like carrying an umbrella around...)

And of course the spring crunch is set to start tomorrow in the late afternoon, right around when the storm is likely to be in full swing. Will the weather have much impact? (Mainly, I guess, in terms of Those Who Speak all being able to make it there safely; I kinda hope that there's some kind of backup power in their actual building, but I don't know for sure one way or the other.)

asexualagenda_feed

Posted by Siggy

https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/on-asexual-as-umbrella-term/

http://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/?p=13199

I’m gray-asexual and an ace activist, so I recognize the need for umbrella terms. Asexuals, gray-asexuals, demisexuals, as well as other smaller groups have common cause, shared communities, and shared history.

Sometimes I hear newbies propose that there should be a separate asexual community that is *not* inclusive of gray/demi/etc. folks. I would go so far as to say that this idea is totally pointless. Usually the argument is that asexuals don’t experience sexual attraction at all, while gray/demi folks do. However, this argument is just factually incorrect. Some asexuals do experience sexual attraction, and some gray/demi folks don’t–something you would know if you listened to us. It’s reasonable to propose an ace space without sex talk, but such a space will not cut cleanly along identity labels.

Basically every space should be welcoming of the umbrella. As a result, when I talk about asexuality, over half the time I want to be referring to the umbrella. So what words do we use? Here are the options:

Asexual/gray/demi. Pros: Direct and unambiguous. Cons: unwieldy. It assumes that the only labels under the umbrella are the big three, when in principle someone might identify only as aegosexual or aceflux, which are the next most common identities after the big three.

Asexual spectrum. Pros: also completely unambiguous. Cons: still unwieldy.

Ace-spec. Pros: unambiguous… in text. Short and simple. Cons: A homophone with “a-spec”, the most common umbrella term for ace and/or aro. May not be understood by outsiders.

Ace. Pros: three letters, it doesn’t get much simpler than that. Lends itself to puns and symbology. Cons: Not always understood as an umbrella term. It competes with common usage of “ace” and therefore isn’t great for SEO.

Asexual. Pros: has the best SEO. Forces inclusion of the asexual umbrella as the default. Cons: Completely ambiguous whether you’re referring to the umbrella or the specific identity underneath the umbrella. From a demi/gray perspective, it looks like you have spent precisely zero effort and thought on including them. Some demi/gray folks made a deliberate choice to disidentify as asexual. Using “asexual” as an umbrella also tends to draw asexual ire towards demi/gray folks, as if we were the ones who came up with the idea.

(Note that “asexual” as a specific identity is also an umbrella, in that it encompasses, e.g. aromantic and homoromantic asexuals. This is another source of confusion, because when we say “asexual” is an umbrella term, it’s not clear whether we mean asexuality encompasses diverse experiences, or if we mean that it encompasses demi/gray identities. In this article, I am referring to the latter.)

I usually favor “ace” as an umbrella term. This is a convention advocated by David Jay, and which became popular in the early 2010s. It’s easy to say, which is good because I would like talking about the umbrella to be the default mode. It allows a clear distinction between “ace” and “asexual”, which is valuable, e.g. if I’m talking about an ace study whose participants are asexual.

But I also recognize the drawbacks of “ace” as an umbrella term. For SEO purposes, I would just use “asexual”, such as in “The Asexual Agenda”. If I want to make sure everyone in a broader audience is on the same page, I will spell out “asexual spectrum” in whole.

Now the reason I’m explaining all this, is because I’ve seen a lot of people say “asexual” is an umbrella term. Again, I think “asexual” as an umbrella term has its place. It makes sense to me that orgs have names like “Asexual Outreach”, “Asexual Visibility and Education Network”, and “Asexuality SF”. This blog follows the same convention.

However, there’s a loss of context. People have been advocating “asexual” as an umbrella without caveats, extending to situations where it just doesn’t make sense.

This is most baffling when it occurs in academic literature. I’ve seen this done by multiple authors, with Canton Winer explicitly recommending that authors use “asexual” be used as an umbrella term.

May I ask why? In academic research, clarity should be the priority, so I would advocate just saying “asexual spectrum”. Using “asexual” as an umbrella term makes extremely unclear whether researchers have included asexual spectrum participants in their study, or just asexual participants.

Canton Winer is active in ace social media so it really makes me wonder what is going on in those spaces that makes people think that “asexual” as an umbrella is a good idea independent of context. I have little hope of changing what people say on social media, but academics of all people should be able to self-reflect and realize that this choice of words is maladaptive.

https://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/on-asexual-as-umbrella-term/

http://asexualagenda.wordpress.com/?p=13199

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Rating: Explicit
Length: 59,047 words
Content Notes: Bullying and homophobia.
Creator Link:

harriet_vane
Theme: Inept in Love, Pretend Couple, Friends to Lovers, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters

Summary: Will needs a date to his mom's wedding. Mike volunteers.

"I have an idea," says Mike.

Ice cubes form in Will's stomach. "How dangerous is it? Like, should I call Dustin to talk you down, or should I call Nancy to be ready to drive us to the hospital?"

"No," says Mike, "you can't tell anyone or it won't work."

"Or what won't work?" Will asks. It's like picking up a rock you know a spider will be under.

Mike gets up and closes Will's door. Hopper doesn't make them keep it open but sometimes Will does anyway, because every now and then lying around alone with Mike on his bed just makes his chest ache too much. If the door is open he can tell himself You can't do anything right now, someone will see.

Mike leans back against the door. His eyes are lit up with that special maniacal gleam that the Wheelers get right before they do something insane, like when Nancy says, "Then we have to go kill Vecna ourselves," or whatever. "Take me to the wedding," says Mike.

"Yeah," says Will slowly, "you'll be at the wedding. Obviously."

"As your date."

Reccer's Notes: They've fixed Hawkins' Upside Down problem (though this predates the final season), and it's the kids' senior year, and Will is worried his mom is worried about him, so Mike hatches a plan to be Will's (fake) date to Joyce and Hopper's wedding because of course he does. That means we've got Will pretending to pretend he's into Mike and Mike playing gay chicken against himself and...losing? winning? both?? Neither of them is doing a great job (or any job) communicating, but their fake relationship thrives and does what all the best fake relationships do, becomes real. A sweet friends-to-lovers romance with just the right amount of agonizing feelings.

Fanwork Link: Roll To Charm Person

conuly

So, you got my opinion on Heated Rivalry, but I gotta say, I will never not read fanfics structured like ongoing internet sagas.

Also, gotta love the one dude, BostonSportsBro69, who posts in both /r/relationship_advice and /r/hockey going around in /r/hockey saying "Uh, no, it's just normal sportsbro rival stuff, you're all reading way too much into this" ~~when~~ because he absolutely knows better. (I don't think he's supposed to be one of Ilya's teammates, just a fan.)

***************

( Links )

liv

I want to talk about the education privilege meme that's been doing the rounds. On the one hand I love old-school memes that encourage lots of cool people on my d-roll to talk about their experiences growing up. But at the same time, I'm kind of frowning at this particular iteration.

( thinky thoughts )

Anyway, hopefully this is an adequate substitute for the meme and you don't need me to tell you in detail how absurdly precocious I was in reading and maths.

Current Mood: cynical

lunafleurette posting in

addme_fandom

Name: Luna
Age Group: 25+
Country: Philippines
Subscription/Access Policy: 18+ at minimum, 25+ preferred. My journal is public, but I can and will post about explicit topics and have them appropriately labeled and with warnings. Will not interact with Harry Potter fans.

Main Fandoms: Alien Stage, Honkai: Star Rail, The House in Fata Morgana
Other Fandoms: Genshin Impact, The Haunting of Hill House (Book), Love and Deepspace, This Monster Wants to Eat Me (Watatabe), Kino no Tabi, Haibane Renmei, Hetalia, Our Life: Beginnings & Always, Blooming Panic, Bustafellows, Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk (and Black Butterfly), Hakuouki, Funamusea (The Gray Garden and Wadanohara), Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, Mo Dao Zu Shi, Frieren
Fannish Interests: writing and reading fic, creating original characters, worldbuilding and lore discussions and analysis, yumeshipping/oc x canon
OTPs and Ships: MiziSua, HyuLuka, IvanLuka, MyPhaiDei, NeuviFuri, MikoShioHina, RakkaReki, Eleanor Vance/Theodora, Baxter x OLBA MC, Caleb (Xia Yizhou) x LADS MC, BingLiuShen, BingQiu, QiJiu, BingLiu, LiuShen, MoShang

Before adding me, you should know: I can and will shut any interaction down if it ventures into ship discourse. If you have trouble discerning between real human beings and fictional characters, we will not get along. If you are uncomfortable with such content as incest, pseudo-incest, toxic relationships, yanderes, omegaverse, teratophilia, noncon/dubcon, then it might be best for you not to subscribe/interact for your own peace. I don't care what people do or don't ship, just don't make it my problem.

Current Mood: calm

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

My daughter “Melody” is in the midst of the terrible twos. Five or more meltdowns per day over normal frustrations/limits are typical. Recently, my mother-in-law, “Darlene” took Melody and my 6-year-old son out to run errands, and true to form, Melody had a blow-up. It was how Darlene handled it that has me seeing red. She told Melody that she was leaving her in the store and that she could find her own way home, and left her screaming on the floor! She then moved off with my son, out of my daughter’s view, and waited for several minutes before coming back for her. I only learned of this later when my son told me what happened.

When I confronted my mother-in-law, she claimed her method was helpful because Melody behaved afterward. And she said Melody was “never in any danger” because she kept her in sight at all times. After this, I no longer feel safe with Darlene going places with the kids without my husband present or me. Sadly, my husband is no help. He agrees that this was a good “lesson” in behaving for our daughter and that his mother used to do it to him and his sister when they were kids! Please tell me I’m right in telling Darlene her days of taking the kids solo are over.
—Pissed

( Read more... )

shadaras

1.
I'm far enough from the coast that the blizzard spinning up to hit the Northeastern USA tomorrow/monday is ~only~ going to be a major storm, but still, man. Forecast of another foot of snow when not all the snow from the last big storm has been cleared? And this time wet snow and wind? It isn't going to be fun! I don't expect a power outage but it sure is a possibility, and I expect work to be cancelled on Monday because of this. (I wistfully hope for Tuesday as well but it doesn't seem likely in this industry; so long as the roads are clear-ish and the parking lot and site are plowed enough to get in, it'll be open.)

2.
Went to the other local dojo (not mine, but our cousin dojo; they're about the same distance from where I live now, but that was not always the case) this past Thursday out of "I have Energy right now and also god I miss people and the practice." Absolutely delighted all of them by showing up, and when I was like "yeah Thursday evening fits my schedule better right now" they were all "soooo you're gonna keep coming then?"

And, well, yeah. I will! I like those people! Also I'm going to be taking nidan in a few months and I should be taking class once a week at least in the lead-up to that, just to keep the practice in my body even if it isn't practice dedicated to that test. The sensei there will kindly give me some opportunities to practice with an eye towards the test, especially since his own yudansha like training with me, but it isn't something he needs to do. Neither is the yundansha offering to stick around after class to do specific training with me; that's out of the kindness of their hearts and friendship, and it is truly lovely.

3.
Sometimes I think about what "being good at X" means to me and then sigh about how yeah okay I am generally comparing myself to people who I personally perceive as being "good at X", which tends to mean "better than I am", which means that it is going to be a skewed perspective.

This brought to you by thoughts about cooking. xD.

Thought A: going "...wait if you're asking about salt because you normally salt your rice, please eat some before you do because I salt the rice water (a thing I hadn't realised you don't remember to do)" at a friend last night.

Thought B: ...yeah okay the ability to eyeball pancake ingredients and their ratios and make proper pancakes without needing to keep adding more wet/dry ingredients is a learned skill and speaks to Knowing Things About Cooking. (didn't add enough leavening agent but also I do not actually care if I eat flat pancakes xD they don't need to be fluffy so long as they're Good Flavor.)

Thought C: my belief that if I cook something I will like the thing I cooked even if I was going "idk this is probably a good combination of flavors/stuff" rather than following a recipe, and that the main thing keeping me from being better at cooking is "having more kitchen gadgets" and "bothering to look up recipes to follow instructions" and not "an inability to pull that off", is not a mindset that a lot of people have? I think? Which seems odd to me but I do just Like Cooking, even if it isn't a Major Hobby the way it is for some folk I know.

4.
I spent like all of Tuesday dead of migraine and didn't feel human until maaaaybe Wednesday evening but realistically Thursday morning when I woke up and was like "oh wow I was Out Of It". I am dearly hoping that this nor'easter blizzard isn't going to lead to something similar, but, well. It's the sort of thing that likely will anyway.

5.
Relatedly, I have not written much this past week because of brain being melty and also Doing Things With People. Weird.

But people are good, and I like hanging out with them once I get myself to actually Do That. Initiation/activation energy is the harder part than socialising, and I usually remember this consciously but that doesn't make it easier to apply that knowledge consistently.

6.

hafnia started running the short-form airship heist Eberron campaign I've been hyped about for like six months. xD Finally got to play my Warforged Cleric last weekend! And started getting a sense of the Eberron as it's interpreted for this campaign world, which also means starting to have feelings about what I want to do for the long-form campaign that'll happen after. (Half-Elf, wings, Mark of Detection. Normal stuff! Probably a soulknife rogue or a circle of the moon druid, possibly a bard of some sort; depends on LORE and also if I can bear to part from skillmonkey nonsense.)

The Warforged Cleric is a fun character, though, and it's always a joy to start playing a character and see them start turning into a Person rather than a Vague Concept. I hear that some people can plan things more? But nah, I write a sketch of backstory and a few prominent character traits and the rest can develop through play and interaction.

Conduit (it/its) is a Cleric who, like pretty much all Warforged, served in the Last War. Since the war ended, it and its squadmates have been building a Warforged enclave/outpost in the lower reaches of Sharn, and have recently been going "wait fuck there are organics who want to live here too because we've made a safe place" and realising that this requires More Money than they have. So Conduit, as one of the community leaders and someone oriented towards healing/caretaking anyway, is very willing to take a moderately sketchy job stealing an airship when it's offered.

This surely will not have Consequences!

The next session (for my group; this is being run for a few different sets of players) is tomorrow, in a feat of "wow everyone has two weeks in a row free?" that is rarely managed xD The Consequences will begin coming to roost then, I'm sure, and force all of the PCs (who have no particular attachment to each other) to interact more and give a shit about something other than the coin and their personal lives.

7.
In utterly unrelated fannish things, I am excited for the Witch Hat Atelier anime! It has a full trailer and an air-date now! It is making me want to reread the manga, especially since I think I'd have an even better time with it going in with expectations of "slow-burn story about insular mage cults" rather than "cute slice-of-life mentorship story". (It is both of these things. I like both of these things. Only hearing about the latter when the former begins taking a greater share of the plot is a very ??? thing to experience when one binge-reads manga.)

anyway here's the trailer!

Watch on YouTube

siderea

If you live in the BosWash Corridor, especially in NYC-to-Boston, you need to be paying attention to the weather. We have an honest to gosh Nor'easter blizzard predicted for the next 3 days, with heavy wet snow and extremely high winds – the model predicts the damn thing will have an eye – which of course is highly predictive of power outages due to downed lines.

Plug things what need it into electricity while ya got it.

Whiteout conditions expected. The NWS's recommendation for travel is: don't. Followed by recommendations for how to try not to die if you do: "If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle."

I would add to that: if you get stranded in your car by snow and need to run the engine for heat, you must also periodically clear the build-up of snow blocking the tailpipe, or the exhaust will back up into the passenger compartment of the car and gas you to death.

As always, for similar reasons do not try to use any form of fire to heat your house if the regular heat goes out, unless you have installed the necessary hardware into the structure of your house, i.e. chimneys, fireplaces, and wood stoves, and they have been sufficiently recently serviced and you know how to operate them safely. The number one killer in blizzards is not the cold, it's the carbon monoxide from people doing dumb shit with hibachis.

NWS says DC to get 2 to 4 inches, NYC/BOS to get 1 to 2 feet. Ryan Hall Y'all reports some models saying up to 5 inches in DC and up to three feet in NYC and BOS.

2026 Feb 21 (5 hrs ago): Ryan Hall Y'all on YT: "The Next 48 Hours Will Be Absolutely WILD...". See particularly from 3:30 re winds.

If somehow you don't already have a preferred regular source of NWS weather alerts – my phone threw up one compliments of Google, and I didn't even know it was authorized to do that – you can see your personal NWS alerts at https://forecast.weather.gov/zipcity.php , just enter your zipcode. Also you should get yourself an app or something.

conuly

The evening darkens over
After a day so bright
The windcapt waves discover
That wild will be the night.
There’s sound of distant thunder.

The latest sea-birds hover
Along the cliff’s sheer height;
As in the memory wander
Last flutterings of delight,
White wings lost on the white.

There’s not a ship in sight;
And as the sun goes under
Thick clouds conspire to cover
The moon that should rise yonder.
Thou art alone, fond lover.

***************

Link

petra

This post is about Erotica 4 Barbarians, a challenge to write smut in words of one syllable.

I neglected to include all the Marvel characters I could write, in part because I did not think it through, so -- Wade, I already mentioned, but also Steve, Nat, Bruce, Thor, Clint. (I just heard

minoanmiss cheer and punch the air.)

Anybody who wants a flashback to 2012 Avengers fandom, The Avengers Kink List Team Bonding Sessions: the files is a collaborative project that happened in my comments back in the day, in which we played with all kinds of Avengers pairings.

If anyone wants more in that vein, I will see what I can do to scrape off the rest of the MCU and chill in that headspace. In words of one syllable.

\o/

Current Mood: out there
Current Music: The last time I heard the Avengers theme was at a work training

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Carolyn: I know you love dogs, but in a reasonable way, so I figure you’re a good person to ask. Is there a “normal” amount of pets for someone to have? I never had dogs or cats growing up and didn’t want them in our home when our children were young.

All my children at times asked for a pet but grew to accept my aversion, except for my youngest daughter. When she used to insist she couldn’t wait to move out and get a pet, I took it with a grain of salt. She did get a dog in the house she shared with friends in college, and her obsession has only grown since then. The last time I saw her, she excitedly told me she’s a foster parent to a litter of puppies now. I’m not sure how that works, but it brings the number of dogs in her house from two to six, and she also has two cats.

I asked if she was going to get kicked out of her house, since her township can’t possibly allow that number of animals in a small home and yard, and she just laughed at me. She apparently doesn’t understand the law or care how this all must affect her neighbors.

Could this possibly be the start of some sort of mental illness? Should I try to intervene further?

( Read more... )

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife, “Lourdes” and I have a 2-year-old daughter, “Mackenzie.” Mackenzie was a difficult baby (long crying spells, difficult to soothe, hypersensitive to sound, fussy about solid food, etc.), and my wife has a low threshold for frustration. So most of Mackenzie’s care fell to me since Lourdes said she “couldn’t deal with it.” The result has been that our daughter is closer to me than she is to her mother. Well, Lourdes said something disturbing regarding our daughter recently.

Mackenzie had a meltdown when my wife tried to get her dressed for daycare, so Lourdes told me I needed to do it because of her theory that our daughter “hates her” and “the feeling is mutual.” Mackenzie has a routine of putting her clothes on in a specific order. Lourdes is aware of it, but wanted to do it her way, which set her off. Mackenzie has her quirks, and if you work with her (her daycare providers follow them and have reported no issues), everything is fine. The trouble is that my wife is accustomed to people doing things her way, and she does not react well when her expectations are not met. I’m seriously concerned about her relationship with Mackenzie, especially because right after her mother tasked me with dressing her that day, she said, “Mommy is mean.” Lourdes balked when I suggested counseling. How am I supposed to resolve this?

—Daughter Division

( Read more... )

conuly

And lemme tell you, my team picking was solely on the basis of "Are people in this team active" and "Do they have an open slot for me", because active team members send you more lives and you're more likely to win prizes in the team competitions, but most teams are 100% people who joined and never play.

But you can talk to each other, great, except that there's this one person who is very active and posts every single day about how they've changed the game so she can't win, she sucks, she is always stuck, she doesn't like it anymore, she's gonna quit - this all prompts a flood of "Oh, don't go, please stay" responses, and I can't help but wonder if that's the sole reason she posts like this.

One day I'm going to tell her that if she really feels that way she ought to quit, or at least shut up about it, because her posts bring my enjoyment of the game way down. Don't know what sort of response I'll get from everybody else who isn't her, but I can't be the only one who's itching to say it.

********************************

( Read more... )

conuly

Oh boy....

rydra_wong

can, to some small degree, be simulated by a blindfolded person trying to push buttons while someone else shouts confused and panicked instructions at them:

Watch on YouTube

(Except that these guys mastered jumping WAY faster than I did.)

It's hilarious and delightful to me to watch people having an experience of Dark Souls which is not wholly unlike mine. In a weird way I feel kind of #represented.

In later vids, they have (like me) discovered the joys of the halberd as adaptive technology for people who are bad at spacing and aiming.

sholio

Cannot BELIEVE I still have an SPN icon!

Anyway ... I first started making fanvids for fun in 2002, but I began posting them on LJ in 2006, and since 2026 is therefore my 20th anniversary of posting the first one (#what) and I've been wanting to get more of them on AO3, I decided to make that a project for this year!

So here's my 2006 one and only Supernatural vid, Life is a Highway.

This isn't the first one I put online, but of the 2006 vids I think it's probably one of my favorites and a good one to start with. Contains clips up to late season one because that's all I'd watched at that point and most of what was available. Here's the original LJ-imported-to-DW post. Please enjoy this dive into ~~an alternate reality~~ a moment in time when season one of Supernatural was literally All There Was.

Some notes if you'd rather read them afterwards

Obviously at this point all I have is the exported file rather than the original vidding files (as this was at least 5 computers ago) so 2006 quality is what you're getting, including some slight wonkiness with jerky video and slightly odd cropping (I was screencapturing the video, which explains both the slight borders that occasionally appear - I got a lot better at cropping later - and a few instances of jerkiness as my 2006 computer struggled to render the video). The credits also include my original 2000s-era LJ name, which some of you may remember.

IIRC, I was making these earliest vids on a really old copy of Adobe Premiere that I had absconded with from my college computer lab in the 1990s.

Watch on Vimeo

Also posted on AO3.

If you want a 12 Mb download in 2006 quality, you can download it here!

Also, an interesting bit of context on the 20th anniversary vidding project - I discovered recently that I uploaded a bunch (most? all?) of my older vids to Vimeo in 2016 on the private setting, so apparently I was planning a *10th* anniversary vidding project, but got derailed somehow. What is time.