implodingly | Reading

EDIT: found typos and formatting errors that somehow escaped all previous read-throughs. Will edit and replace. -_-

Hey, so... since we got a printer, and since our shoulder and eyeballs are increasingly reluctant to let us read long things on the computer, we've taken to slapping together little zines for our personal enjoyment of our favorite stuff. We also use them to fool around with typography and stuff. You know, just make fun little things.

And then we were like, "Hey... what if we shared some of these?"

So here's our newest fun thing: my love is strange: an anthology of eight hundred years of unusual care. It's just a commemoration of being together in ways my current society would like to pretend doesn't exist and never did. Alt-texted, illustrated with pictures from the public domain. Table of contents:

( I wasn't joking about it covering a swathe of eight hundred years by the way. )

Current Mood: exhausted
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/24022.html

buttonsbeadslace

I was a polite student and didn't derail class discussion about grammar to say this, so dear readers, you get it instead. A while ago in Spanish class we were talking about ways of expressing accidental or uninentional actions, and how Spanish uses a specific passive voice type of form for this, unlike English where you have to be much more direct about who did the accidental action.

The closest English equivalent I can think of for the Spanish phrases that we were learning is "The computer broke on me." The Spanish phrase has the object that got damaged doing a reflexive action to itself, and the person (who perhaps dropped it, or pressed the wrong button, or in some other way did break it, just not on purpose) appears as an indirect object of the verb. Us English speakers in class agreed that English does indeed do this very differently, since 99% of the time we would just say "I broke it," and that passive voice is very rare in English.

What I did not say in class is that there's one major exception to this rule, that's actually very common if you know where to look. If you want to see the passive voice in English used to downplay someone's responsibility for some negative action, you need look no further than headlines about police officers.

buttonsbeadslace

Photos on Tumblr here.
I don't see that I posted about it here, but I did also make a mini fruit slice.
( Read more... )

lb_lee

Winner of the 2026 fan poll! All text under this is text-only transcription of the comic.

( No Sneaks were involved in this sneak attack. )

Current Mood: happy
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/23710.html

lb_lee

We keep a little stack of books we're reading on the kitchen table and our roommates noticed that the spines lined up in amusing ways. This was accidental, but then we thought, "what if we did that... ON PURPOSE?"

And today, we trashed our room stacking books to make poems. We hope they amuse you!

( Seven book poems! )

Current Mood: creative
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/23459.html

armaina

There is a very frustrating thing that occurs when I say that I don't play or like PVP games and that's for someone to follow up with stating their particular game of choice 'isn't that bad' rather than just letting me be, it gets exhausting.

The only time I have ever played and enjoyed PVP is in closed circuit games where it's a lobby of just yourself and your friends and you're just goofing off with no real stakes or losses. Like old deathmatch arenas and fighting games with friends. There's no ranks, no stakes, and no progress to loose. Or the occassional 'party game'. And even then, I can only put maybe an hour or two into it and then I'm disinterested.

I am not 'great' at video games, I have to fail an awful lot to be any decent at it and even then I'm only mediocre. I'm fine with this. Failure on its own doesn't bother me. What bothers me is loss of progress and my teammates being upset with me because I fumbled. This only amplifies when PVP is involved. When it's free for all pvp, then it's frustrating because I'll just get no where because most people are better than me and I'll make no progress and have to sit through more and more matches just to meet bare minimum requirements to progress. Or if it's not match based but still solo PVP, the whole act of playing it feels on a razer wire because I could loose progress at any time and then what even is the point? And if it's team matches, then I have the anxiety of failing people in the team.

In parties of 4 it gets very easy to see who the weak link is, and because of the nature of PVP, people are very unkind to failure. People will claim that they're okay with it, but I hear it, I hear them trash talk their teammates when they're not up to snuff. Never giving space for people to learn or just be bad at something for a while until they get better at it. And they think that this doesn't effect the other people around them. I know what you all think of people that play poorly, and I play poorly, why do you all think that kind of talk would have no impact on me? So every time I loose in a team I think of how they would think of me, how they're angry at my failure, how they wish I weren't playing so they wouldn't be 'stuck' with someone so bad at the game. I am okay with failure, (unless I loose progress but that's it's own vector) but some people really, really are not. And in PVP, the need for success amplifies even more so than in co-op games because people's ranks are on the line. Take all that anxiety I already get with high stakes team play and then add the element that you're now also playing with other people, and that all gets amplified.

The only PVP I've been able to tollerate is ones with a strong PVE element which has only been possible in Gambit in Destiny 2, and World vs World in Guild Wars 2. Because in these I can largely focus on the PVE part and not the PVP part. Gambit's PVE is really important, so being good at that helps the overall match and I don't feel like a complete failure. Guild Wars 2's World vs World is a little less PVE intensive but the PVP part is handled by being in large swarms, so my personal failures don't stand out and I don't have people in chat yelling at me. More importantly, both games do not result in me loosing progress if I die. I can die dozens of times without penalty. That being said, if I could play those games without touching the game modes at all, I absolutely would. I only played those modes for certain progress requirements, not because I enjoyed them.

And then there's the matter that I just don't enjoy it. Sure I could triple up on anxiety meds and maybe not feel like my chest is caving in when I play a PVP game, but it's also just not enjoyable. Why waste my time on the potential that I might feel a high with certain big stakes when I could, instead, play a game I actually enjoy playing without the crushing weight of anxiety. So not only is it anxiety inducing, it's also just not my idea of fun.

So all that said, it gets really exhausting, when I say I don't play PVP and someone still tries to sell me on their PVP game. 'Oh it's not that bad', 'Oh I don't usually like pvp but'

I DON'T LIKE PVP!!
FULL STOP!!!
IT IS NOT FUN FOR ME!!!
STOP TRYING TO SELL ME ON YOUR PVP GAME!!!

Stop trying to apply your perception of mild aversion being the same as my intense level of discomfort and anxiety I have around the game type. What might be 'not that bad' for you, is still pretty dang bad for me and I'm tired of it being brushed aside like my discomfort and ability to enjoy it a all isn't even a factor worth incorporating.

Current Mood: annoyed

lb_lee

Finally finishing the Reverend Alpert book, which has been stalled at around 80% completion for YEARS now
Expanding Quick'n'Dirty Plural History into a proper paperback, because the zine sells shockingly well for such a niche subject, we have a lot more info now (though not on the newest slapfights, ha, no, we're talking older, cross-cultural stuff, and spirit marriage/headmate relationship stuff) (if you want us to wade into the hottest new plural communities on Discord or Bsky or what the fuck ever, you're going to have to pay us real money, and in ADVANCE)
Finally kicking Rogan's ass into inking Loyal Forever, a comic that involves the muscle car beloved from Crazy Boys Get Money)
Expanding Xenogals into a book-length thing, the Mori and Rawlin version of Alter Boys In Love (Xenogals in Love?)

Oh no, all but Loyal Forever are big beefy books. But well, the Xenogals and Plural History ones would replace their floppies, and Reverend Alpert would probably end up a short run anyway.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/23274.html

buttonsbeadslace

A translation/expansion of what I wrote for my open-topic presentation for my Spanish class.
Basically what is shape note music?
- A genre of folk music from the United States.
- Not very widely-known even in the US.
- Grew out of Protestant Christian music with influence from other genres of folk music.
- Began in the 1700s, but unlike some music and other traditions from that era, it is not a re-creation from historical evidence but instead a "living" tradition- people have been singing and writing shape note music from the 18th century to the present day.

How is it different from other types of folk music?
- Sung by groups of singers with no instrumental accompaniment.
- Tends to make all voice parts equally complex, rather than viewing them as melody + backup singers (not all the time, but like, moreso than some genres of music.)
- Emphasis on written music (although there are still some unwritten rules, and some ways people apply their own interpretations to the songs.)
- A social activity, not a religious service and not a performance- the expectation is that if you go to a shape note event, you're there to sing, not to listen.

Why is it like that?
- It started with a movement to improve music in churches, which meant teaching churchgoers to sing and to read music.
- Consider the context: Before radio and recorded music, the only way to learn a new song was to hear it in person, or to read it in a book. The United States in the mid-1700s was not particularly well-endowed with infrastructure or education systems, and many people lived in relatively isolated rural areas, so both seeing musicians in person and finding a music teacher could be difficult.
- The solution that arose to meet this need: Travelling singing teachers.
- Their sales pitch: Take a short class with this New Improved Method that makes learning to read music easy! Then buy our book Music For Dummies* and continue practicing on your own. In fact, our system is so easy that if you can't get to a class, you can teach yourself just from the book! Buy Yours Today!
- What was this wonderful innovation? Pairing a simple solfege system with standard music notation by using differently shaped note "heads" to represent each solfege syllable. Thus, shape notes.
- There were other similar systems, but this is the one that attained the most popularity.
- These temporary singing schools mainly taught religious music, that people might use in church services in the future, but they were social events organized by professional teachers or groups of singers. The form of the events stayed the same, even as more people learned the music and they stopped serving the same educational function.

(To be continued with: what is shape note singing like today?)
_
*Actual title: The Easy Instructor. Actual quote: "an improved Plan, wherein the Naming and Timing of the notes are familiarized to the weakest Capacity."

lb_lee

Mori: nobody jumps out of bed going, “Good morning world, today I do my TAXES!” with a big smile on their face, but man alive, is it neat to see what sold and what didn’t, when and where.

( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/22940.html

buttonsbeadslace

- My Russian classmate explaining ski mountaineering to us in Spanish, limited by the fact that neither I nor the prof had ever seen or heard of it before (it was a new event at the winter Olympics this year) and that in Spanish it's called "esprint skimo" which does not convey much meaning to the uninitiated. We eventually found a video online (after I pointed out to the prof that "eskimo" means something else.)
- Talking about laundromats and whether people in the US actually use them (yes) and why US apartment buildings have communal laundry rooms, unlike here where having a washing machine in every unit is standard (I could only guess it might be because US clothes dryers need a higher voltage electrical outlet than standard, and Americans expect a washer and dryer, so installing them in every unit is more work?)
- Most of my classmates were absent today so I gave my little presentation about shape note music to an audience of zero Americans, zero Protestants and zero musicians of any kind.
- I went home and looked up statistics and found that Spain is 53% Catholic, 40% atheist/agnostic/non-religious, and 3.7% Every Other Religion And Every Other Christian Denomination. Hashtag I don't know what I expected.

lb_lee

Mori: Heads up y'all, I'm doing our tax prep, which means I'm going through all our titles, seeing what sold and what didn't, and deciding what gets weeded. In a week or so, I'm going to be removing the following ebook listings from sale, so if you want them, now is the time to get them:

The Homeless Year (sells great on paper still, that'll stay)
Alter Boys in Love
Coming In Or Staying Out (also sells great on paper still, will stay on paper)

(Rogan's Aphasia is also barely hanging in there, has been for years; for some reason every once in a while people will buy another copy of it, just BARELY keeping it in the running.)

(Also I figure, just as a note, we do this every year. I tally up everything what sold, and shit that sold less than five copies gets weeded. I'm trying to get us more regular about saying when we're removing something from print, since some folks might miss out otherwise. And hey, if enough copies sell, it'll stay up for other folks!)

Current Mood: working
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/22657.html

lb_lee

This is a messy post about death and love.

( content warning: abuse. )

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/22277.html

buttonsbeadslace

I remembered that I had a bunch of paused holds on ebooks in Libby, so I unpaused them, and "Did I Leave Feminism?" by Jude Doyle came in today. I'm only a couple of chapters in, but my main feeling is nostalgia for the era of blogs. I just missed his writing!

buttonsbeadslace

The downside of Spanish's very straightforward spelling system is that some words that differ from each other in spelling (and sometimes pronunciation) in English and/or their original languages, end up being spelled and pronounced identically in Spanish.

Mild example:
Recently we were talking about neologisms in class and I had to look up information about the prefix "eco-". In Spanish, eco- as in ecology and echo- as in echolocation, which come from two different Greek roots, are spelled and pronounced the same.

Spicy example:
A while ago, when we were talking about Catalan holiday traditions on the walking tour, our fearless leader wanted to tell us that the Catalan people have a very "scatological" sense of humor, and of course then he had to explain this word, which turns out to also have another very different definition in Spanish. Because. It's merged with eschatological. That pesky Greek χ!

Example that made me and all my classmates bluescreen in class today:
"El lasaña no sabía bien."
(ETA intended meaning: "The lasagna didn't taste good."
What it looks like it should mean: "The lasagna didn't know better.")

This one apparently is justified because the Latin roots of Spanish sabor (flavor) and saber (to know) are actually related- through the idea of having "good taste". But I was not emotionally prepared to learn this at 11:30am today after spending all morning struggling through the eight different uses of the simple and compound conditional tense.

buttonsbeadslace

Today I did my presentation for my Spanish class on Completely Open Topic - for which I chose the Great Lakes - and I consider it a success because

1. Somebody said that the photos of the beach on Lake Michigan look like an ocean beach in the Caribbean (which is true! it does!)
2. Of course our Russian classmates weren't really impressed, but this photo (and my explanation that the water is freezing as soon as it hits the ground & trees, it's at the freezing point and the only reason the lake doesn't freeze completely is because the water is moving) made the teacher shiver.

These are really the only takeaways that I wanted people to have, so, success!

I also ended up extemporaneously explaining about entrapment in sand dunes, which I had not planned on but it suddenly came to mind.

lb_lee

vaguelyautonomous linked us a cool survey Sprites made regarding death and dormancy among plurals: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wARJSMVDVYhX1v4WKAdrCbS_f6hIdXvpHNw810gSOhA/mobilebasic

Too bad we didn’t know about it while it was running; death is a large part of our inner workings and we have strong opinions on it. (I am also utterly baffled and deeply annoyed that apparently headmate death is STILL considered impossible or an “endo thing”; I guess they never read When Rabbit Howls. I’m sure I could find earlier medical references if singlet death wasn’t currently devouring my attention.)

Very interesting was to learn we’re apparently in a major minority in that we don’t really experience dormancy! (Except arguably Rawlin? But she was imprisoned in the deep bowels of headspace for years, so it’s not like she was GONE, just we lost track of her. She eventually went into hibernation because what else was there to do in solitary confinement for decades?) We lose access to people from elsewhere, but they aren’t dormant; our metaphorical rail just doesn’t go to their stop anymore and their lives just continue without us.

Current Mood: tired

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Page generated Mar. 22nd, 2026 05:06 pm

Aw, life, no.

A system doing system things.

Reading

Zine: my love is strange

The passive voice was studied by us

Knitting Update - finished the Regina Marie shawl!

Comic: Sneak Attack!

Book Spine Poetry

When I say I don't like PVP, I Mean It

Potential Future Projects We're Kicking Around

Explaining Shape Note Music

Books and Bytes

Spanish class experiences of the week

Last Chance for Ebooks; get 'em before they're GONE!

The Secret Legion

Lace reads nonfiction again

Fun Spanish Facts

Spanish class things

Plural Death and Dormancy Survey

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June 2017

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