skiamachy - Tumblr blog

[skiamachy]

“Something out of memory walks toward us, something that refutes the dictionary, that won’t roost in the field guide. Something that once flew and now must trudge. Call it grief, trailing its wings like a shabby overcoat, like a burnt flag. Call it ghost. Call it aftermath. Call it remorse for its ability to bite and bite again.”

— Don McKay, from “Angel of Extinction,” Angular Unconformity: Collected Poems 1970-2014 (Icehouse Poetry, 2014)

[skiamachy]

I'd say Discord is the popular modern equivalent, though closer to the IM side or chatrooms than blogs/forums.

Although the downsides imo are 1) the majority of Discord servers tend to be more insular, private, and difficult to access except thru word of mouth--you usually can't just google '[niche craft/interest]' and find the community you're looking for these days.

and 2) Discord tends to promote more chatty/temporary/in real time communication and less of the carefully constructed, thoughtful essays that (...occasionally) pop up on forums or (more frequently) on blogs, for example.

Tumblr has a decent mix of both in terms of post content.

(Not that all of the above platforms can't descend rapidly into flame wars, obviously. But I do think faster-moving conversations tend to get more impulsive--and sometimes more catty--responses.)

The other thing is that platforms like tumblr and twitter put some of the focus on 'curating' both your own follow list and your public page/profile.

Whereas messaging servers don't have a personal page people can view to decide whether or not to follow you (or in some minds--particularly teenagers'--whether or not they like/respect you.)

And I do think the purpose of DNI lists for at least some percentage of users is a peer pressure effect, to show your peers that your values are Good and Righteous. The whole moralizing of media shtick going on right now.

And so platforms that aren't 'social media' (if we consider platforms where users have a curateable public profile to be social media) aren't useful for their purposes.

Though I'm a bit too old to relate to that demographic so I can't say much from personal experience.

It occurs to me, looking through a bunch of DNI lists and carrds (although it has surely been observed before by others), is that what the people who make these want is not unreasonable per se. Rather, what they are asking for is unreasonable, because what they want is to not be using social media. They want to be using forums, or group chats, or instant messenger, or blogs; they want online communication spaces that are moderated, that are topic-specific, that are limited to existing/vetted members. And these this desire is not unreasonable, but it does not match modern social media.

And because so many of the people who make these seem so very young, I wonder how many of them even realize that spaces that do what they want can (and used to, and still somewhat do) exist, realize that social media can't do what they want it to, but that social media is not the only way for the internet to be.

[skiamachy]

chekhov's firing squad is great

but i usually end up with schrodinger's gun (which of these conspicuous items of foreshadowing are red herrings and which is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece? not even i know until it goes off)

Some day I want to see a show that does the “no filler episodes” thing from the opposite direction. Just a whole season worth of low-stakes character pieces that seem to move the overall story absolutely nowhere, then episode 26 pulls all the triggers at once and this massive Rube Goldberg machine of a plot the show’s been quietly setting up in the background the whole time hits you like a truck.

[skiamachy]

Fuck whatever the post-blavatsky occultists we're doing the Bacchics did magic right: Get thrashed fuck hard dismember strangers.

[skiamachy]

[skiamachy]

just realized i signed up for @hpdrizzle with the tumblr account i haven't used in 10 years...... gotta love accidentally doxxing myself lol

anyway, this is my fic, it's a lot of fun, all the prompts were amazing, check it out

DRIZZLE FIC: The Apokalypsis of (Flobber-) Wurm

Title: The Apokalypsis of (Flobber-) Wurm Author/Artist: @halcyonnon Prompt: # 26 Pairing(s): Harry Potter/Theodore Nott/Luna Lovegood Word Count/Art Medium: 6745 Rating:  T Summary: It’s raining flobberworms across Britain.

(The Apokalypsis of (Flobber-) Wurm)  

[skiamachy]

I'm a bit late to the party, but yea, Drowning With Others isn't so much a ship manifesto... possibly because I hadn't even read a Jegulus fic before writing it.

(But, as a non-Jegulus shipper, I can second your recs--working my way thru and I <3 what I've read so far!)

😍, 🏆 and 🤷 please!

Hello, love! Yes, of course!

😍 What is your favourite fic trope? Oh I have several, but lately I've read so much sad stuff. I blame the Kill Your Darlings fest but my gosh, I've read some heavy MCD and sometimes it's just time for sadness and angst, y'know? So, right now, love stories with unhappy endings is my obsession.

🏆 What do you wish more authors in your fandom would write about? So many things have already been written, but I would like to read more fics that incorporate mental illness and different kinds of disabilities. I know that there are some out there that are good, but there could be more.

🤷 What thing that your fandom loves do you just not “get”? I don't mean this in a bad way, but one thing that seems to be on the up that I don't get is Jegulus. Like. I don't dislike it. I have read it. I just...don't get it. It doesn't do anything for me. Which is bizarre because I love James and I love Regulus but, just, together? No.

Send me an emoji ask

[skiamachy]

Week Two Round Up.

[PODFIC]

Podfics for drizzle 2022 are not anonymous Title: Lovely Weather for a Sleigh Ride (Together With You) READ BY: roseszain | Author of Fic: Drarrelie Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Summary: The snow is glittering in the sun and the Eighth Years can’t resist heading out to savour it, revisions and essays be damned. Only question is, can Harry coax his roommate to join them?

[ART+ FIC]

Title: Under the weather Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Summary: Harry Potter arrives on a Friday afternoon. Spring is beautiful this year, Draco thinks, and yet, there’s a dark grey cloud, rumbling ominously and leaving a big puddle right in the middle of the staffroom. The cloud appears to be right above Harry Potter’s head.

[ART]

Title: Mustelid Marauding Pairing: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy Summary: Hermione helps Draco speed up the animagus process, to join her in mustelid marauding.

[FIC]

Title: Raindrops and You Pairing: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley Summary: Luna and Ginny let the rain wash away their past and lead them into a future unknown. Title: Think Of Me Fondly Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Summary: He spends his nights wrapped around Ginny. But the mornings, the mornings are for Draco. Title: Full Moon, Falling Snow Pairing: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter. [GEN] Summary: The Marauders enjoy their first snowy full moon together. Title: spring rain in england Pairing: James Potter/Lily Evans Summary: There’s a small flood which makes James spiral a little. Fortunately, his wife is there to be the voice of reason. Title: Talk to the wind, talk to the sky Pairing: Remus Lupin [GEN] Summary: Remus had no idea if the storms or barometric pressure or whatever was really causing his migraine today, but he didn’t care. Title: The Apokalypsis of (Flobber-) Wurm Pairing: Luna Lovegood/Theodore Nott/Harry Potter Summary: It’s raining flobberworms across Britain. Title: After All, What Are Friends For? Pairing: Hermione Granger [GEN] Summary: It’s raining men at Hermione’s house. Wizards are just showing up on her doorstep one rainy weekend, all making proposals of marriage. What IS going on? Title: Rain or Shine, You’ll Still Be Mine Pairing: Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Potter Summary: Scorpius hates the idea of being second place in the heart of his best friend. He hates even more that his emotions are so evident through the weather. Title: The Great King Rat Pairing: Barty Crouch Jr. [GEN] Summary: Barty Crouch Jr. is determined to solve the origins of the mysterious fog. Title: one more time again Pairing: Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson Summary: While grieving her mother, Hermione finds herself coming face to face with someone she never thought she’d see again.

[skiamachy]

[skiamachy]

“Everything is random in publishing”

One of the ironies of this trial, industry magazine Publishers Weekly noted early on, was that “the government’s case relies in part on making publishers look extraordinarily savvy about the market in which they operate, in addition to benefiting from their sheer size.” For publishers to rebut that case, they in turn had to present themselves as essentially incompetent gamblers, risking the company’s money in an industry no one could predict, all for the sheer love of literature.

“Everything is random in publishing,” Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle told the court during his testimony. “Success is random. Bestsellers are random. That is why we are the Random House!” He went on to describe the editors and publishers of PRH as “angel investors in our authors and their dreams, their stories.”

Throughout the trial, publishers depicted the industry as one of chaos and romance in equal measure, a hazy and lovely space in which publishers routinely hand out large sums of money for great works of literature, unable to either predict or care whether they would ever make their money back. Within this space, publishers argued, the narrow slice of publishing that the government was focused on — books with an advance of $250,000 and above — was meaningless. There was no true correlation, they said, between the books that they paid high advances for and the actual sales figures of those books.

And so one by one, highly paid CEOs took the stand to argue that they had no idea what they were doing with all their money.

Don't link anything correctly, it's fine. Here's the actual link.

[skiamachy]

A refutation

[skiamachy]

and the final (late) @steterweek 2022 fic! a daemon AU.

He Thinks He’s in Love (Probably Just Hungry)

or, A Taxonomy of Souls & Things That Eat Them.

Stiles can be accused of many things, but a lack of self-awareness is not among them. He practically came out of the womb with a personality fully-formed. Precocious, insatiable, voraciously curious. Tricksy. A liar. A spiteful little shit.

Lis shifted like quicksilver. They’d joke that she wouldn’t settle ‘til their deathbed, ‘cause Stiles is far too opportunistic to give up the utility of a shapeshifting daemon a millisecond sooner than he has to. And he’s always been adaptable—when he wants to be. A mutable soul. (But never moldable.)

But Alicja was always going to settle as a fox. Stiles knows that. Lis… knew that.

It only makes this an even crueler joke. 

But, oh, is it a great joke. In a cosmic fit of high irony, so far gone that it’s circled back around to being synchronicity, instead, a total lack of irony, his daemon—his soul—is now… well.

[skiamachy]

Sometimes I’m looking for something online - often “how to” articles - and I want to filter for - like - a website that was clearly built in 2010 at the latest, which may or may not have been updated since then, but contains a vast wealth of information on one topic, painstakingly organized by an unknown legend in the field with decades’ worth of experience. I don’t want a listicle with a nice stolen picture in a slideshow format written by a content aggregator that God forgot. I want hand-drawn diagrams by some genius professor who doesn’t understand SEO at all, but understands making stir-fries or raising stick insects better than anyone else on this earth. I don’t know what search settings to put into Google to get this.

[skiamachy]

just browsing a museum catalog of historical items, in the 'public health & hygiene' section, and-- uh, what, now?

[skiamachy]

my week 1 @hp-flowers fic is now COMPLETE!

the goal was a morally ambiguous/flawed lily evans. (because she gets sanctified a lot.... and i wanted to burn it all?) and her variety of unhealthy relationships, including lily/severus and lily/james.

may day, mayday! (or, the hazards of love)

by skiamachy

Series: Part 1 of language of flowers

Lily wears lilacs on May Day. And aster, tucked in her braid. (For first love, says Mother, when you’re still unsullied, unconsumed.)

Lily feels chips of herself crack off everywhere she goes. Or, no, maybe like a ripe fruit, ripe for the picking, and everyone she meets passes her around and takes a bite.

So she learns to bite back. To consume.

To take everything she’s given and go back for seconds. To lie without lying, to win without cheating, to be greedy in the way they train out of girls how they break horses, so early, so easy.

To con a Slytherin into loving her.

[skiamachy]

someone has already posted this but buffy was definitely the funniest example of american tv using irish as a magical language for spells and the occult. mostly because this passage was very obviously copied and pasted from an article about a new bus lane

[skiamachy]