Finished since the last reading post
The Blunders of Our Governments, where the passing of time meant no very recent blunders were discussed, but also perhaps has changed the perspective on some of the things considered successes. The chapters discussing reasons for the blunders were perhaps even more interesting than the chapters on the blunders themselves.

How to Survive a Plague by David France, which covers some of the same ground as And the Band Played on by Randy Shilts, which I've read before, but more from a New York City and the ACT UP and related activist point of view. Very interesting, informative, and moving.

Currently reading
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, which has been a good bus read—my bus journey to work isn't really long enough to really get into a book, so anything with longer chapters tends to be a bit frustrating, but this one works really well.

Reading next
No idea—I've got a few books on the shelves I could pick up, some e-books as well, and I should have a library reservation coming my way at some point.

sunshine_revival '25 Challenge #1: "Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025."

My fannish goals for the rest of this summer include:

• Participate in everywoman, the fanfic exchange starring women characters, when it comes along. I will definitely offer D&DC, TLOZ, and BSG78; others' requests will influence what else I may list.


• Build a pattern of recommending something once per week on recommendation communities, and then including a wrap-up of my recs here in my own journal in my monthly "Enthusiasms" post. (Or give it its own monthly post?) Probably usually in recthething, but it could be any suitable recs community. (Is it appropriate to cross-post recs to multiple recs communities? Maybe at staggered intervals?)


• Finish writing and post an odd TLOZ piece I'm thinking of as: "Three Gerudo Ficlets in the Past of Tears of the Kingdom, Before Age of Imprisonment Totally Josses Them." ( Read more... )

At the end of the year, of course I plan to participate in hlh_shortcuts, the annual Highlander fanfic exchange.

Catching up on TV whenever, I plan to watch Andor (season two) and Ironheart (season one). I wish that they released one episode per week, not tranches of episodes! I find one-episode-per-week so inviting, and these tranches so overwhelming, that I end up putting off watching these, while I am of course wholly caught up on the current season of Grantchester. Back-watching TV, I will continue my one-episode-per-week first-time viewing of Babylon 5. (Again, if you mentally classify the special effects as meant for stage instead of screen, this show does much more than merely "hold up;" I feel that it beats the heck out of most of what we have today. Storytelling, acting, episodicness and continuity...)

I already have my pre-sale tickets for Superman (2025) and The Fantastic Four (2025), of course. (Please let me say again that folks should consider watching Thunderbolts*; it's rich and satisfying in multiple layers. I'm disheartened that so many people skipped it. It's well-made and deserves better.)


How about you...?

I wanted to share that Nintendo is having what I gather is a very rare sale on its online store, with many first- and third-party games discounted through July 9.

With the 30% discount on it, I went ahead and bought The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, which otherwise I would have waited on until I was ready to play it on my Switch 2. (There is no discount on either of the Wilds games, or the BotW DLCs, or of course I would have snapped them up.) I also thought about buying Stray Gods (the role-playing musical), which I've heard such amazing things about, but there are only so many hours in a day outside work, so I'm still thinking.

The last time I personally owned a console (purchased second-hand from Goodwill), my games were on cartridges (a brown bag full of them, also from Goodwill). I do understand that getting games in the Cloud is as risky as getting books or songs or movies or TV in the Cloud, that TPTB could revoke them at any time, and I'm hesitant about it, but a friend in the games industry and his wife told me that this is the way to go now for back-ups and future compatibility and the Switch 2's new sharing system. (I'm still considering getting the Wilds games on physical media, but...) So you will perhaps understand my surprise when I made my Link's Awakening purchase and realized that there was no sales tax* on it, because it is a "service" and a "license," and therefore not taxed the same way that a physical copy on a cartridge would be. I should have observed this many years ago with apps on my phone, shows on streaming, books on Kindle, and goodness knows what all, but I had gone on buying most things in physical form, and it had just never clicked, probably because all those things individually cost so little each, while a single game is expensive enough to notice (and Nintendo's check-out screen is unusually clear).

* Sales tax is set at the state and local level in the US. Your locality may differ.

And it's shooort!

Title: Serendipity
Author: lightbird
Prompt: Fa Mulan goes into a bar and meets... Toph Beifong (Avatar: The Last Airbender)!
Fandoms: Mulan (1998), Avatar: The Last Airbender
Word count: 872
Rating: T
Summary: When she walked into the tea shop, she immediately recognized the girl sitting at the table...

I had different ideas for my assignment for this challenge, but every time I sat down to write I could not even get one word on the page.

I've finally written a story. And fortunately we had an extra week this year because the mod had something going on the day it would normally be due. So instead of last Sunday, it's due tomorrow.

The story is very rough and I don't feel like it's a very inspired idea. It also feels a bit of a cheat. And there's no time to get it beta'd. I'll spend the next few hours going through to see where I can fix it, tweak it, then post.

At least I got something written though, and I can always fix it afterward. And I have an additional entry into my Mulan/AtLA series.

I'm still enjoying my way through The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom! I know that some folks don't relish that its combat is mostly ranged, with mage Zelda instead of fighter Link, but I'm finding it entirely natural. They fixed the menu inconvenience with the Switch 2 upgrade; you can favorite/star echoes now, and there are more sorting pre-sets. And I've found several side scenarios that I was not at all spoiled on.

Mild spoilers for a 17-30-hour game that's been out for 9 months...

Having started with Gerudo Desert and explored it thoroughly while saving its people from the rifts and monsters, I then went to Jabul Waters and did the same. I'm afraid that I found the Zora region a little less interesting, challenging, and satisfying than the Gerudo region, which left me wondering whether I should have done them in the opposite order. The story, side quests, and follow-ups with the Zora just weren't as engaging for me, personally, as those with the Gerudo, which had more personality and pathos. For example, at this point in my gameplay, everyone in the Zora region, including in the Hylian village, is completely content as well as wrapped up, with the possible exception of the one Sea Zora who is secretly either crushing on or fangirling her chief, Kushara. Over in the Gerudo region, though, there's still one woman actively suffering from having been in a rift, and many characters expressing new hopes, dreams, fears, and projects after I fulfilled their side quests... and of course I'm still working on the Mango Rush mini-game (I know it rewards a new outfit with a stats effect). Do I smell different writers for each region? That's pretty customary, right?

After both of those, and as much side-exploration as I could manage to sweep up all the NPC situations and open up the map , of course I cleared Hyrule Castle and moved the story forward. I then did as much more free-exploring and side-questing as I could without triggering the next main story phases, and finally climbed Eldin Volcano, where I am now.

( Some loose fanfic inspirations from the game )

Trivia, for the record, as I'd wondered about it here before:

As you may know, Tri is the companion character in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom: a floating ball of primordial golden energy, a bit bigger than a softball, with some immobile black markings that suggest a face (but may actually be characters in a language, or just stripes, spots, whatever Tri's kind has), and a tail (or ponytail) of triangles that measure out Tri's magic. While the in-dialogue evidence for Tri's gender and/or sex, if any, is scant and conflicting, one of the quest log screens uses "they/their" for Tri (Tri uses "I/my" when speaking). That's canon enough to make a call on which pronouns to use for the character, until/unless other evidence comes.

(Translation is often a lingering and fascinating issue in Zelda games. It's the whole focus of QuestWithAaron.)

I went to listen to the Reading Festival Chorus perform Elgar's Dream of Gerontius tonight. I'm not sure if I'd gone it if had been just them, but they were joined by Johanneskantorei and a youth choir from Düsseldorf (Reading is twinned with Düsseldorf) and Britain Sinfonietta, so I was curious, and the location was convenient. So I booked a ticket. And it was worth hearing, although it seemed to me the ratio of performers to audience was probably at least 2 to 1, if not more. It probably wasn't the best evening for a concert: today has been rather sweltering again and the venue doesn't come with any other method of controlling the temperature apart from opening the doors. It wasn't uncomfortably hot but not still not great.

I did a volunteering day arranged by work's charity foundation with The Conservation Volunteers at Horsenden Hill. I've been there a couple of times before, and on those occasions we'd had a reasonably big group. This time it was only about 12 of us. The number of people signed up was a bit higher only a few days ago, so perhaps people were put off by the very warm weather forecast. And it was warm, but our day was planned accordingly, and we finished earlier than we would have done if it had been less warm. The group I was in cleared out some vegetation off a path next to some pigs, laid down some woodchip on the path (hence the wheelbarrow), and sorted through some pallets and other pieces of wood into re-useable and recyclable. So we got something done, but it was certainly getting uncomfortably warm towards the end. But it was fun to be outside and do something different for a day.