recs

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

justice-turtle:

so has anybody got podcast recs? i’m up to date on kuec (twice), x-plain the x-men is on a three month hiatus, hidden almanac is… short. ^_^

the problem is, of course, i get hypersensitive about any little hint of -ism or – really anything at all upsetting, in my podcasts? cos i don’t have auditory filtering, so it’s like… the point of podcasts for me is to feel like i’m chilling with friends and listening to them chatter while i do whatever i’m doing.

so frex – podcasts i’ve tried that haven’t worked for me. “the thrilling adventure hour”, i think i mentioned that i just didn’t really click with the particular form of humor, but also i think scripted podcasts just don’t work as well for me as ones where it’s friends kidding around with the potential to go totally off the rails.

“journey into misery”, a dude explaining comics continuity to his girlfriend, WAY less mansplainy than that sounds – the podcast was her idea. loved it except that lbr comics are ALL FUCKSHITE and i can’t handle sentences like “they gang-raped plastic man’s wife and she died” no matter how much the podcasters agree that it was fuckery.

(note for some other post: despite never having been sexually assaulted, i get full-on triggered by sexual assault stuff? idek why)

“into it”, elle collins. a trans lady (i think? not 100% sure if binary or nonbinary) interviews people about various shit they’re interested in. excellent show, just a tiny bit too structured for me.

“the film reroll”, movies played as rpgs. mostly enjoyable, but in 12 episodes there’s been like… three really awkward jokes that weren’t called out? one super transphobic throwaway line – not even a line, a *phrase* – near the beginning of their epic wizard of oz four-parter, two ableist aspie/autism jokes. so i’m like “ehhhhh”, not quiiiite as comfortable as i like to be with my podcasts? :S also there’s only like 24 episodes so i’m already a good halfway through that one

“comicsverse”, too structured AND way too many people. i do best with two-person podcasts where the voices are pitched well apart, due to my auditory processing troubles. i can handle up to about four people if i don’t actually need to tell any of them apart. ;-)

*******

so. anyway. if you’ve recced me something and it’s not listed here i probably forgot to check it out. y’all know a bunch of my many and varied interests; i’d especially enjoy rpg-type podcasts, the summer specials on x-plain the x-men are some of my favorite comfort relistens, but you understand why i’m hesitant to just go guddling around in gamer nerd territory. ;P

Podcasts I listen to:

The Red Panda Adventures: I want you to like this one, because I love it and I would love to geek out with you about it, but I’m not sure you would like it. It’s scripted and has a largish cast*, so there’s those issues. (AFAIK, there are no public transcripts for you to check if you heard something right**.) It is reassuringly liberal, toning down 1930′s-era bigotry about as much as it can get away with, but “as much as it can get away with” isn’t “everything”. And one of the conventions of the particular superhero sub-genre they’re working in (which they explicitly embrace) is that the heroes never dwell on their own moral ambiguity. I mean, it’s good that they’re avoiding gritty grimdark stuff, but that does mean the occasional moment of being horrified by what the protagonists are doing while knowing it will never come back to bite them.

Talk the Talk: Linguistics podcast out of Australia. I’m still way back in the archives on this one. I think it’s only partially scripted: it definitely doesn’t feel all that scripted. Two hosts, plus sometimes a guest. They occasionally get a bit Discourse-y for my liking, but I think they’ve always been on the liberal side of the argument.

99% Invisible: About infrastructure and suchlike. I’m even further back in the archives on this one, only a couple dozen episodes or so in. One host, with one or two guests. Feels somewhat more scripted.

Science for the People (formerly Skeptically Speaking, but they changed it after realising their podcast hadn’t really been about skepticism for a while): Interviews on neat science things. Audio isn’t really a good format for me for this subject (I prefer to get my neat science things through text, and sometimes video), so eventually I got bored and stopped listening. (The number of trying-to-be-inclusive-and-failing episodes about sexuality was also a factor. I know my standards are too high, but it still bothers me.)

Speaking of, I also dabble in a few kink podcasts. TBH, though, I’m never even sure whether *I* like any of them, let alone whether they’re worth reccing to anyone else.

—

*Although, because each side actor plays several side characters, between episodes you are generally not expected to know who a side character is without context. (Within an episode you’re supposed to keep up, though.)

**Brain: “Yet!”

Me: “We have more than enough other things to do and are not taking on ~60 hours of volunteer transcription.”

Tags:

#I stopped listening to Welcome to Night Vale because I got tired of the horror elements #reply via reblog #recs

Recommendation Spotlight: Too Like the Lightning

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://parhelioncomic.com/2017/04/17/recommendation-spotlight-too-like-the-lightning/}}

orbispelagium:

parhelioncomic:

Wrote up a recommendation of Too Like the Lightning!

If you like Parhelion, then please, by Christ, read this. (It’s not a webcomic, it’s a book that costs money and stuff, but holy shit.)

Here’s an overview that doubles as a capsule review of the thing I need to make fanart for.

Tags:

#I’ve been wanting to read this but haha what is free time #(hell I’m supposed to be working on my term paper right now) #(sometimes I hate when my brain is like ”no we have to write This Specific Thing Right Now”) #(anyway) #I binged the author’s entire blog archive a little while ago and it was fantastic #(though I feel a little…I don’t know if ”unnerved” is the right word) #(about how she is clearly capable of extracting much more pleasure from food than I can) #(I *can* enjoy food but I can’t get *fifty euros worth* of enjoyment out of a meal) #(but I mean that’s also interesting in itself) #(she’s got all this great history-blogging and scattered through) #(are also these occasional hints of different qualia) #basically what I’m saying is that ”written by the same person who writes Ex Urbe” #is enough on its own to make me want to read this series #the OP is just ganache on the cake #(I do not like icing) #tag rambles #Terra Ignota #recs #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

orbispelagium:

parhelioncomic:

Parhelion is one year old!

Thanks so much for your feedback, readership, and support! I’ve learned so much and had a wonderful time and met excellent people in this past year, and I’m so psyched to keep going. The story is a bit over a third complete by now, and hoo boy I’ve got some fun things for 2017 and beyond.

Also: January’s wallpaper is free for everyone right away!

(Catch this in full resolution here.)

My comic is one year old!

In that time, I got my tablet working again, realized that four shades of color work so much better than three, realized the benefit of editing passes and any sort of advance scripting, nailed down semi-coherent character designs, added color, got my own domain, and assembled a kickass readership.

Thanks so much for making this possible, every one of you! Even if one person cherishes it as The Weird Amorphous Gay Alien Pirate Comic, that is enough.

If you want to get in on it, here are some parts that stand alone fairly well:

Land of the Surprisingly Internally-Consistent Cannibal Altruists: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/part-4-page-1-the-most-good-you-can-do/

Dealing with long-distance relationships: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-4-page-1-ready-for-takeoff/

Horrid orb child gets a lucky break: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-3-page-1-data-mining/

Boltzmann Brain has special interests in math, and never being ruled by anyone: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-2-page-1-boltzmanifesto/

Dealing with pain-in-the-ass family: https://parhelioncomic.com/comic/interlude-7-page-1-family-business/

Tags:

#Parhelion #comic #recs #I have ~zero grasp of the plot but the worldbuilding and characters are fun! #(I might understand the plot too if I binged it) #(haven’t tried yet) #(I’m not good at keeping track of webcomic plots) #(this is why I mostly read comics where each post is its own entity)

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

justice-turtle:

As a matter of fact I mathed a while back and my transcribing speed on KUEC is well up to professional standards (I get through one minute of audio in about 6-7 minutes of work on average, last time I googled it said professionals vary from 4-10 minutes of work per minute of audio). I’m not sure how those figures would hold up when trying to transcribe people I haven’t already listened to literally hundreds of hours of, though, and if it had to have every “um, uh” and “I, I, I think” literal I’d definitely be slower. On KUEC transcriptions I cut out a lot of the verbal static that normal audio conversation has.

It’s worth looking into, though. What’s the pay like, what kind of material does one work on, what are the minimum/maximum productivity expectations, other questions like that? :-)

Background:

The company in question is called Rev. This is the job listing that brought it to Mom’s attention, which gives a short ad and a link to a bunch of generally positive reviews. (Mom, it turns out, is too hard of hearing: when they gave her a test recording to transcribe, she couldn’t even hear it well enough to finish the test, let alone pass. When she told me about this, after consoling her I said “Hey, I’m not hard of hearing, maybe I can do it.”)

—

Note that despite that being a Canadian job-hunting site, the listed pay is in U.S. dollars. (The company is based in San Francisco.) Money-wise, what you see is what you get, and what *I* see is a smaller number than what I get. (My currency-conversion app has been getting a little more use lately.)

“Average monthly earnings: $241, top monthly earning: $1,440″: in other words, theoretically possible to make a living off it*, but most people don’t. (Of course, I expect a lot of people are just supplementing and aren’t aiming for a living wage, and that would drag the average down.)

So far, I have completed two transcriptions, for a total transcription time of 13 minutes, a total real time of slightly over two hours, and a total money of USD$5.76. (That is, as the old joke goes, $7.72 in real money.) However, I am a newbie and speed comes with practice. Also, people who have logged less than an hour of transcription time don’t get paid as much: 20% of what would otherwise be their pay goes to an experienced transcriber who double-checks everything to catch any beginner’s mistakes, for a pay boost of 25% (because fractions) once you finish the probationary period.

So yeah, the bad news is that it’s not minimum wage until and unless you get pretty good at it, and no benefits. Good news things:

There are no minimum productivity requirements. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re claiming jobs from the pool and then not doing them, but if you don’t claim any jobs for a while there’s no penalty (unless you count the natural consequence of not earning anything). There’s no official maximum, although I’d guess there’s some number at which they go “this is suspiciously ridiculous”, because it’d be strange if there weren’t.

As long as you have an Internet-connected computer, a set of headphones, and a reasonably quiet environment, you can work. No commute, sit in whatever chair you want.

—

By default, “umms” and “ahhs” and such are skipped. Customers can
request verbatim transcripts (my first transcript was verbatim), but
they cost(/you get paid) extra (an extra dime per minute, I think).

Payment for each calendar week is sent to your Paypal the following Monday. So I’m told, anyway: I haven’t gotten there yet. (I don’t think it will feel quite real until I see the money in my account. Then, I will be Employed.)

Material varies. Interviews, medical records, instructional videos, sermons, I’m told podcasts but I haven’t seen any yet… Audio quality varies a lot, and there’s been some I haven’t understood, but you can hear a recording without claiming it, and there’s a one-hour grace period after claiming where you can bail on it without penalty. (Also they have audio filter options that apparently help somewhat with recorded background noise.)

—

All in all, may or may not be enough on its own, but at the very least a potentially helpful supplement. If you have a spare hour and a half or so at some point, you might want to try applying; fair warning, they brag to their customers about rejecting 90% of job applicants (”only the best 10% work on your recording!”). I mean, who knows how many of that 90% were blatantly incompetent, but if it seems like something you might be interested in, it might be best to find out whether or not they’ll take you before you get desperate.

—

I feel like I might be missing something, but it’s past my bedtime. Let me know if you have any other questions.

—

*According to the cost-of-living figures in my head, which are based on averaged per-person cost for a family of four in southern Ontario circa 2014. YMMV by quite a bit.

Tags:

#in which Brin has a job #(even if it doesn’t quite feel real yet) #reply via reblog #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

yawpkatsi:

Concept: Some jackass shows Bucky how to make a blog and it becomes really popular. Not because it’s the blog of James Buchanan Barnes, American Legend, War Hero, Infamous Assassin, Alleged Terrorist. Nobody even knows it’s his blog. It gets really popular because people think it’s a really great shitpost generator or something. Because Bucky is just a Weird Fucking Person and everything he posts on his fucking personal blog comes off as somewhere between dril and Jaden Smith and people are like “this is some quality garbage right here” and thus Accidental Memelord Bucky is born.

 

hellenhighwater:

Bucky posts things like

“What is wrong with bananas. I ate a banana today and it was Wrong. America why”

“Every time I put on my eye makeup it gets bigger. My whole face is eyeliner now.”

“Why does friendship feel so much like punching”

“When I wake up in the middle of the night I am either thinking ‘who am I? does my life have meaning?’ or “did I already eat all of the plums?’”

“Why are you so grumpy” they ask me. they do not realize this is just my Face.”

“I know i said i would give my left arm for a cup of coffee but i am more awake now and i would like my arm back please”

“I guess I must have done something horrible in a past life. I mean. I definitely did something horrible in this life, so. “

 

yawpkatsi:

OMG I LOVEEEE

 

mewwitch:

YEEESSSSSSS!

“Guy in front of me won’t move his car seat up. I think that might still be upset about all those times I tried to kill him.”

“Got lectured by a guy who had been complaining about how things were Back In The Day. I don’t understand why he got upset. I too lived through the Great Depression and was drafted for the War.”

“The economy in this century sucks. Who exactly though another Stock Market crash was a good idea?”

“Apparently, it was Rude™ of me to pitch in my two cents on a conversation I happened to overhear, despite agreeing with them. On an unrelated note, I am no longer allowed in the ceiling vents.”

“‘If you don’t behave we’ll send (mutual) after you.’ Jokes on them. I’m the one who trained them to be an assassin in the first place.”

“Tried to buy a Chicken Dinner candy bar at the supermarket today. Turns out they were discontinued 54 years ago. Super bummed.”

“Wait. People were on the moon?! We got into space? There is a way off of this rock?! Why am I only just hearing about this?!”

“’Have you been living under a rock the past 50 years?’ No I was cryogenically frozen for 70. I don’t appreciate your tone young man.”

“My friend likes convincing people that I’m the Reckless one in our friendship. As if he won’t find an alley behind a bar to pick a fight in if I take my eyes off him for two seconds.”

 

hellenhighwater:

“Why would i want to get a haircut when instead I can look like i just returned from a 12 year jaunt in the wilderness every time i grow a beard”

“was having a hard time finding noodles in the grocery store & asked a clerk for help. she looked at me like a crazy person. lady, it’s not my fault you don’t speak russian”

“what kind of idiot thinks dancers are sissies? literally every ballerina i have ever met could kill an adult man with just her legs”

“today i discovered Conditioner. the future is a miracle and my hair like a cloud now”

“apparently just jumping on to a moving bus when you are running late is not a thing people do anymore. please stop yelling at me.”

“went to a club last night to see what the hip kids were into. apparently the latest thing is just having sex standing up with your clothes on in a room full of people.”

“on the one hand, people dressed much nicer in the 40s. on the other hand, yoga pants.”

“rode in a car with heated seats today. it is my house now. i live here.”

 

hellenhighwater:

“i have acquired a small bear. i am putting a collar and leash on him. he is my dog. no one tell animal control”

“i am working on this whole Good Guy thing but anyone who cuts me in line at starbucks deserves to have their kneecaps shot out okay”

“why did they have to make escalators so terrifying to get on and off of? from now on I’m just jumping off the mall balconies. none of this awful moving teeth staircase”

“i don’t care if it’s a ‘priceless historical artifact,’ punk, i didn’t wanna do the dishes and it makes a pretty good spaghetti bowl”

“hoodie pockets are so great. i can fit like three sandwiches and a grenade in there and my hands are still warm”

“i really though we would have flying cars by now. the future is such a letdown.”

“changed sam’s ringtone to jesus take the wheel.”

“do you know that feeling when you go to lean on your short friend’s conveniently arm-rest-height shoulder but you forget they had a huge growth spurt and you just awkwardly lean your elbow into the middle of their bicep”

“i swear i didn’t know your girlfriend was coming over. i always ominously clean my assault weapons on the coffee table like that. it had nothing to do with you.”

 

yawpkatsi:

“anyone else got that one limb that’s super fuckin loud yeah buzz buzz i get it now buzz off ya jerk”

 

hellenhighwater:

This post has continued to gain momentum, and some of you people have followed me over it. So I made a separate sideblog: Bucky, King of Memes.

http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/

it’s literally just bucky shitposting. 

 

yawpkatsi:

OH MY GOD

 

jukeboxemcsa:

I just picture all these people following him and really getting into his posts and then seeing, “Fuck all this, going back to bed until they invent a way to stop me suddenly wanting to kill people,” and getting really worried.

 

thestoryofaslut:

Fucking amazingly brilliant.

 

hypno-sandwich:

Awesome!

Cc: @emilianadarling, @enscenic @theleeallure

 

mindmadeofmagicandmusic:

Oh memelord Bucky, how I’ve missed you.

But now there’s a blog!

Tags:

#Marvel #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

cosmic-llin:

little-brisk:

Y’ALL. i need your help with ds9 fic recs that are not spoilery beyond the end of s5! tumblr user @replicarters beloved of this blog is like starving and we need to help her. she especially wants kira fic and kira/dax (or kira & dax) fic and fic about dax and sisko. probably also just dax fic in general. 

i have already recommended to her @singlecrow‘s ‘malice aforethought’ one of the best ds9 stories of all time, @starstarship‘s brilliant series ‘not for money and not for food’ among others, and recommend them to you also

help us out!

I can mostly only recommend shortish fic but here are a few ideas off the top of my head:

Old Habits by @mylittleredgirl, a cute first-season Dax and Sisko story

Confident Sutures by pipistrelle, missing scenes from Invasive Procedures

Trompe L’oeil by @brinnanza, Kira/Dax loveliness set during The Way of the Warrior

The Ache in Every Song by Thistlerose – more nice early Kira/Dax

What You Will Know by @little-brisk – delicious Kira/Dax set early in canon

Rebuilding by @eponymous-rose – sweet Kira/Dax earlyish in canon

I have nothing to say regarding the actual topic, only this: what is it with people named Brin (or spelling variations thereupon) and terrible name puns? Other Brins I have encountered include “brinconvenient” and “Brynncognito”. I don’t have a pun in my username, but my blog title is “Brinens and Things”.

Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #recs #names #tangents #reply via reblog #puns

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

responsible-reanimation:

queenshulamit:

batmansymbol:

batmansymbol:

welp

here it is

the final damning evidence that i have no life whatsoever

lyrics at the original post here

so uh, by popular request, mp3 now downloadable here. second from the bottom

I think @davidsevera joined tumblr too late for the period where we were all reblogging this constantly (because everyone had agreed to “always reblog”) and that’s a real shame.

Anyway, let’s bring this song back for 2016.

I forgot about this masterpiece, let’s enjoy it again.

I remembered this masterpiece, but let’s enjoy it again anyway.

(Plus, this way I won’t have to dig back in my archive as far next time I feel like listening to it.)

Tags:

#philosophy #music #death tw

Anonymous asked: What if Harry Potter, the chosen one, had turned out to be a squib, how do you think history would have turned out differently?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ink-splotch:

It was Mrs. Figg who suspected first.

She noticed many things, sitting on her side of her fence with her cats chasing butterflies and nuzzling her ankles, Mundungus and the other watchers dropping by for tea now and then.

Mrs. Figg noticed that Petunia was a nosy bit of work with insecurities hanging from her every harsh angle. She noticed when Dudley learned the word MINE– the whole neighborhood noticed that one. She noticed that Vernon glared at owls.

She noticed that when Petunia gave Harry a truly horrendous haircut one year, it grew back in at a normal rate. Harry was uneven and weird-looking for ages, hiding under beanies when he could.

When Mrs. Figg had Harry over for carefully miserable afternoons of babysitting, she noticed nothing moved that shouldn’t. He didn’t accidentally make flowers out of fallen leaves, or levitate anything during tantrums, or turn toys funny colors.

Mrs. Figg called up her mother, interrupting the wizarding bridge game she was winning against the nursing home staff, and asked her how she had known, decades back, that her youngest daughter was a squib.

When Albus Dumbledore received Mrs. Figg’s letter he wrote back a polite thank you and then went to talk with Minerva McGonagall, who inhaled sharply in horror when he told her the news.

Finally, McGonagall gave a gathered sigh. “I suppose we can ask one of the wizarding families to homeschool him,” she said. “We can’t have the Boy Who Lived not knowing about his own world.”  

“No, he’ll come to Hogwarts,” said Dumbledore.

“Hogwarts is not a place for–” Her voice fell. “–squibs, Albus.”

Dumbledore shook his head. “Harry must be taught.”

“Be taught what, Albus?”

But Dumbledore just sighed and offered her a lemon drop.

Years later, the owls and the letters came to 4 Privet Drive. The Dursleys ran, dragging Harry with them, and the letters and one stubborn gamekeeper followed– none of this would change with a magicless Harry.

When Hagrid asked Harry in that little cabin on that little rock in the middle of the sea if weird things always happened around him, Harry couldn’t tell him about vanishing glass and setting captive snakes free, about ending up somehow on the school roof, or growing his hair out overnight.  

“Strange things always happen around you, don’ they?”

“Um,” said Harry, racking his brain. “Well… I live in a cupboard under the stairs…”

Harry could tell him about how snakes sometimes talked back, because that had never been Harry’s magic, but when he did Hagrid just blanched and changed the subject.

Hagrid held out hope, even against Dumbledore’s quiet warning explanations, until they made it to Ollivander’s Wands. Harry marveled at Diagon Alley, got his hands shaken in the Leaky, pressed his nose up against shop windows. Hagrid watched the scant boy– looked at James’s messy hair, Lily’s eyes, Harry’s own wandering gaze– and he wondered how this boy could be anything but magical.

In the wand shop, Ollivander said, “James Potter, yes… mahogany, eleven inches. Pliable. A powerful wand for Transfiguration.” He said, “And your mother, Lily…  strong in Charms work, ten and… yes, ten and a quarter, willow, swishy.”

Harry picked up stick after wooden stick. They remained just that– wood with bits of feather or scale or hair. Harry wondered if the creatures who gave these offerings were still alive– if they were given or taken. What did it do to your wand when they died? He waved a maplewood wand (unicorn hair, eleven inches) and a gust from the door opening blew some receipts off the counter.

“Well, said Ollivander. “I think that’s as close as we’re likely to get.”

He sent them out with the maplewood. Hagrid bought Harry a snowy owl and a fudge sundae and tried not make it too obvious that these were condolence gifts. The next day the Prophet’s headlines read: The Boy Who Lived– A Squib? Various magical medical experts weighed in on how it might have happened. Fingers were pointed at childhood trauma, at his upbringing, at his family lineage.

Harry still met Ron on the train– Ron was still smudge-nosed and Harry still bought enough candy to share. When Molly had helped him through the platform entrance, her voice had been a little softer, a little more pitying– but it was still better than the laughter that had been in his aunt and uncle’s voices when they dropped him here to find a platform they didn’t think existed.

Hermione Granger dropped by their compartment, looking for Neville’s toad, but got distracted when she spotted Harry. “I’ve read about you! In my books, and in the paper,” she said. “You’re the Boy Who Lived, and you’re a squib.”

Harry sank down in his seat. Ron hid Scabbers under a candy wrapper.

“Squibs have never been allowed in Hogwarts,” Hermione announced. “According to Hogwarts, A History, squibs try to sneak in now and then– the furthest anyone’s ever gotten is to the Sorting Hat before they got found out.” At eleven, Hermione still believed in expulsion being worse than death. Her voice was thrumming with sympathetic horror.

“But they already found out about me,” Harry said, alarmed.

“It’s alright, mate,” said Ron. “You’re Harry Potter. Oy, Granger,” he added. “What’s this Hat? Fred and George were trying to sell me some story about having to fight a mountain troll to get your House…”

Harry sat back and watched the countryside rush by. Yes, he was Harry Potter– his aunt’s useless sister’s useless child, the boy in the lumpy hand-me-down sweaters who named the spiders who lived in his cupboard. And here, in new world, he was apparently useless too.

When they got to Hogwarts, Harry clenched his fists and stood in line with the other first years. He barely twitched at the ghosts or Peeves, just stared ahead and thought about how far he would get before they turned him around and sent him back to Vernon and Petunia.

They opened the Great Hall doors. They called the first years one by one. Harry clenched his teeth and walked up to the Hat when they called his name.

As he turned to sit down on the stool, he really caught sight of the Hall for the first time– the hovering candles, the big wooden tables, the black robes that swallowed the light. Translucent ghosts gossiped with the students beside them. The paintings on the far walls– were they moving?

Harry’s jaw had unclenched, falling open. His fists curled open, curving around the stool’s seat as he leaned forward to stare. If this was it, if this was as far as he’d get in this world, then he wanted to drink it all in. The candles were floating, in mid-air.

The Hat dropped down over his eyes and blocked out the light.

Well, said the dry voice that had been hollering House placements all night. What do we have here?

Ron had been begging for not-Slytherin. Draco from the robes shop had been scornful of Hufflepuff, desperate in his disdain. Neville had begged for Hufflepuff, sure he was not brave enough for Gryffindor.

Please, thought Harry. Don’t send me back.

Keep reading

Tags:

#Harry Potter #recs

~ Brin ~ 3 Comments

ilzolende:

ozymandias271:

aprilwitching:

has anybody read the ted chiang short story “liking what you see”

its interesting sci-fi. i read it/am reading it today!

anyway, the reason im making this post is that the story made me realize i basically have the supposedly fictional condition that the story describes as “calliagnosia”? i think!

i mean, im not face-blind, but ive always known i had some perceptual oddities when it came to faces. the story seems to say that a normal person automatically has some kind of emotional or visceral response to seeing a really “beautiful” (or really “ugly”) face, and also that it is easy for a normal person to tell right away if another person is beautiful or ugly, without having to think about it. 

i dont have that, though! i asked @pipistrellus if it knew what that meant, to respond to human faces that way, if that was, like, a Thing. 

it didnt know, and then we commiserated over the shared experience of, like, trying to join in other peoples talk about cute boy band members or cute actresses or w/e, but not really being able to tell which ones were supposed to be cute

pip kind of associated it with asexuality, which makes sense, but im not asexual– i can definitely be physically attracted to people– and i still have this issue

and, yk, i can think someone is interesting or appealing to look at, for sure, but it doesnt really seem to map on to whether they’re…?? like, sometimes people call other people “striking” and i get that! i TOTALLY understand “striking”! when someone is unusual-looking, with a lot of character and presence and visual interest to them. and sometimes im really attracted to that unusualness, that interestingness, right away. but like… “interestingness” for me, when its really attractive, is as likely to involve highly visible scars or crooked teeth as it is to involve big eyes or long, shiny hair or something. and the attraction still isnt really like a “turn on” thing or even a pleasure thing, not initially and not just based on appearance. its more a fascination, like how i feel when i see a really weird-looking, cool giant bug and immediately wanna pick it up or draw it or something. plus, while im not really face-blind, i do have a lot of trouble telling people with similar features apart unless i know them pretty well. (if anything, i think this pulls me away from very conventionally attractive types a little bit, bc they can end up looking super indistinct/bland to me. sometimes i have trouble following the plots of movies if the actors look too similar in that way. its like im watching several copies of the man in the tan jacket– “well– he definitely had hair! and facial features!”)

anyway, i always figured most people look interesting and distinctive somehow when you look at them long enough, so i never really questioned those “everyone is beautiful in their own way!” and “if you have a really great personality, it will eventually shine through your physical appearance and you will look wonderful!” cliches. sure, i thought they were cheesy, and ineffective in actually changing social values/standards of beauty at all, and maybe a little misguided in the sense of why are we so focused on physical “good looks” over other stuff anyway. but i never felt like they were fundamentally untrue? i suppose a lot of people do though ( “well some people just ARE beautiful or ugly!”)

i remember telling someone about one of my many intense teenage crushes once, and i remember she said, after a really long, awkward pause, “well…im glad someone is really into [person]. im glad someone thinks [person] is cute. thats sweet.”

Ooh I definitely have an instinctive reaction of, like, “pretty face!” and “ugly face!”

It seems pretty uncorrelated to conventional attractiveness though? Like on one hand I go “pretty!” at girls with big breasts and lots of makeup and stuff, but on the other hand I also go “pretty!” at people with really kinky hair, or pudgy bellies, or big noses.

Also one of the biggest things for me seems to be, like, affect? Like there are people who are meh until you see them move or talk or, especially, smile, and then suddenly they are THE PRETTIEST and you want to stare at them ALL THE TIME.

And I *can* be sexually attracted to people who don’t make me go “pretty!” at first; like, I’ve definitely dated people where I can tell that they don’t have any of the traits that make me go “pretty!”, but also I am full of The Feels, and so they are SUPER PRETTY to me anyway.

Liking What You See is also interesting from a youth-rights standpoint (and other standpoints I have), and it might be nice to discuss it that way sometime. In a post that started out being on that subject. I’ll write one later, perhaps, unless someone else writes one first.

@ ilzo: I’d be interested in that.

As for this conversation:

I’ve been considering the term “grey-aesthetic” regarding my relationship with beauty, and this seems to support that. Like, I can tell when someone (or something, I don’t feel like it’s different with faces vs objects) is pretty, and all else equal I’ll pick a pretty object over an ugly one, but it doesn’t feel…I usually don’t feel a pull towards pretty things, a desire to stare at it longer than I would stare at an aesthetically-neutral thing, a reward of pretty things doesn’t motivate me. I say I usually don’t feel a pull because every so often I do, every once in a while I’ll see a particular pretty thing that I feel an urge to stare at, and to possess if applicable. It’s always fleeting, though: before long (hours, maybe a day or two tops), it fades, and I’m back to “okay, so it’s pretty, so what?”.

(Actually, now that I think about it, sometimes it’s longer than a couple days with people; once it was a couple months, but that was someone I didn’t see very much. Perhaps the difference isn’t people vs objects, but rather level of access: a certain (fairly small) amount of time spent looking at the thing, however long it takes to get that much time in.)

(Also, on an unrelated note, this is the third Ted Chiang story I’ve been linked to (the others were “Hell Is the Absence of God” (broken link) and “Seventy-Two Letters”), and I liked all of them. Perhaps I should seek out more of Chiang’s work.)

Tags:

#storytime #recs #reply via reblog #(when I say it was a couple months I don’t mean it was *constant* for a couple months) #(just when he was around)

{{next post in sequence}}

#034 Thyme Cops

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

hypotheticalpoliceprocedurals:

PREMISE: It was the best of thyme, it was the worst of thyme… good thing these two cops can tell the difference. Thyme Cops follows the adventures of two police officers who are experts at identifying whether or not a particular herb is, in fact, thyme. The series was cancelled after just one season, as many viewers were disappointed that it was not about time travel. Viewers’ confusion was compounded by the fact that the show was advertised exclusively on the radio, and was almost never mentioned in print.

CHARACTERS: Kendra Zucco is a veteran detective and a thyme traveller–a thyme traveller being someone who travels in social circles with other people who really like thyme. Her partner is Vic Quail, a rookie cop who was has become lost in thyme–which is to say he spends every waking hour thinking about thyme because he likes it so much. Viewers rightly complained that the show’s creators seemed to be going out of their way to mislead people into thinking that the show was about time travel.

NOTABLE EPISODE:  In the pilot, Zucco and Quail have to use Zucco’s new invention, a thyme machine, to travel back in thyme to prevent a thyme paradox from causing a tear to appear in the very fabric of thyme. “Travelling back in thyme” refers to walking backwards through a field in which thyme is being grown; a “thyme paradox” is what Zucco and Quail call it when you get confused and your head starts to hurt because you can’t even understand why you like thyme so much; the “tear in the fabric of thyme” was a reference to the crimes of a rogue thyme enthusiast who was sneaking onto thyme farms to rip up all the plants; and Zucco’s “thyme machine” turned out to be a DeLorean whose trunk was filled to the brim with dried thyme. Viewers who had closed captioning turned on realized what the show was actually about immediately, but it took most people until the end of the episode to catch on, as the word “thyme” was only spoken, not shown, until the graphic with the show’s name appeared in the end credits.  (S01.E01 – “The Land Before Thyme”)

CATCHPHRASE: “It’s go thyme.”/“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the… thyme.”

TRIVIA/MISCELLANY:  The show received excellent reviews, even from those who stopped watching. In the words of one disgruntled viewer, “It was actually really good, I just felt tricked.”

See also: #012 Time Cops

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #puns #oh my god #I’m in the middle of reading the Hypothetical Police Procedurals archive #quality stuff #read it in chronological order for full effect #(this is the *third* show that tricked people into thinking it was about time travel) #(but the others didn’t do it as beautifully as this) #(wait sorry this is actually the second of the three chronologically) #(I only read it third because I didn’t start off in chronological order) #(but anyway this is great)