I think I'm giving up cross-posting to Livejournal.

If you want to keep following me, I am on Dreamwidth as Sunnyskywalker and also on Archive of Our Own as, yes, Sunnyskywalker.

I think I've mentioned Film Crit Hulk and his interesting essays a couple of times recently. Here's a video essay that's especially interesting: Why Star Wars Works: A Scene-by-Scene Breakdown. (The closed captions on the video seem reasonably decent, but you can also read the scriptIt doesn't focus on the themes or meaning or lore, but on the ( Read more... )

I've enjoyed most of Kate Elliott's books, so of course I checked out her new novella The Servant Mage as soon as I could. I...mostly really liked it. Fellian is a Lamplighter, a fire mage bound to indentured servitude under the relatively-new Liberationist regime. The Liberationists overthrew the dragon-elemental Monarchy in the name of equality ( Read more... )

Two years ago, back in 2020 Part 1, I got ahold of a couple of alpine strawberry plants--Fragaria vesca, a different species from the big garden strawberries. They stay in nice little clumps about a foot wide and don't send out runners, so they're easy to grow in pots and would make a nice edging for a path or patio. They can be divided and ( Read more... )

How have I not recommended this already? The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein is great. Sadly, it is not yet finished, but it sounds like the next two books are coming in the near-ish future. Something to look forward to!

Rowan is a steerswoman, which is kind of like what would happen if you look everyone who said, "I want to be a traveling ( Read more... )

I've been alternating between watching episodes of the 1980s Miss Marple with Joan Hickson and the 2000s Marple with Geraldine McEwan, and it's been fascinating to compare their approaches to adapting the books. The Hickson version is mostly faithful, with a few tweaks here and there, most of them things to dramatize something that might have been ( Read more... )

For anyone in need of a break from everything for a few minutes, check out this interesting reconstruction of an Anglo-Saxon love song.

Warning: long and, as the title says, a polemic.( Read more... )

Short version: this book is really fun and well-written. If you are at all interested in the adventures of sixteen-year-old Leia, read it!

A few minor spoilers, but I've mostly tried to avoid them.

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My most recent book club book got me thinking about the difficulties of writing science fiction set only about twenty years in the future. If it's set "five minutes from now, with one wild card invention," you can write the world pretty much as it is. If it's set fifty or more years in the future, it's far enough out that any number of changes in ( Read more... )