Miss Austen (Miniseries)

Sep. 20th, 2025 02:21 pm
selenak: (Max by Misbegotten)
[personal profile] selenak
Miss Austen: is a delightful four part miniseries. Now with the exception of the excellent Miss Austen Regrets, featuring Olivia Williams as an older Jane A., biographical media on Jane Austen has suffered from the usual flaw of biopics or bio series focusing on female authors, i.e. insisting on inflicting plots of their most popular work on their life. Miss Austen also avoids this, not least by the fact the titular Miss isn’t Jane, it’s her older sister Cassandra, played in middle age by a superb as usual Keeley Hawes and in flashbacks when young by SinnØve Karlsen, who is so versatile that despite having seen her being very good as Clarice Orsini, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s wife in Medici and superb most recently as Bayta in Foundation’s third season, I didn’t recognise her until googling her. (In addition to great acting, I blame the regency outfit and hairstyle in the flashbcks. *g*) Jane Austen is played by Patsy Ferran who is also great, both when being mischievous and witty, passionate about writing and her sister, and depressed (for various reasons, not least the early lack of success). In fact, this miniseries has led me to the conclusion that Jane Austen is like Benjamin Franklin in that the best way to treat her is as a supporting character where she can shine and leave the audience asking for more, whereas when Ben or Jane get the main character treatment, the increased focus reduces their charisma and attraction.

(This is also why back in my Highlander days, I never wanted a Methos spin-off, despite being as fond of the character as any other fan. He is perhaps THE example of a character who needs to remain a recurring guest star in order to maintain what makes their charm and mystery.)

Attend the saga of sisters and a sister-in-law… ) The script manages to avoid the obvious quotes while coming up for Austenish sounding things the characters to say, and does great both with the social comedy of manners and the emotional drama. All in all really superb. Anyone either German like me or French: I watched it on ARTE, which also offers the undubbed, original version. Enjoy!

Mid-Nominations Notes

Sep. 20th, 2025 11:40 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Thanks for all your nominations so far! 2732 fandom choices have been submitted so far (note that if two people nominate the same fandom, that counts twice towards that total).

Nominations will close at 9pm UTC 26 September. If your fandom requires evidence, please also submit it by that time. We can't give a decision on all fandoms on the Evidence Post by close of nominations, but the sooner you make your case, the better your chances of a swift answer.

We've seen some very large fandoms among the nominations! Yuletide is an exchange for rare fandoms. We will reject all of the fandoms below, so if one of them is your nomination, please choose again:
  • Baldur's Gate (Video Games) - I & II will be approved, as per evidence, but this label will be rejected

  • Actor RPF

  • Andor (TV)

  • Baldur's Gate (Video Games)

  • Black Sails (TV)

  • 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)

  • Deltarune (Video Game)

  • Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)

  • Downton Abbey

  • Gravity Falls

  • Horizon (Video Games)

  • House M.D.

  • 전지적 독자 시점 - 싱숑 | Omniscient Reader - Sing-Shong

  • The Pitt (TV)

  • プロジェクトセカイ カラフルステージ!| Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE! (Video Game)

  • 斉木楠雄のΨ難 | Saiki Kusuo no Sai-nan | The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

  • Star Trek: Enterprise

  • Undertale (Video Game)

  • Warframe


We also won't approve "All Media Types" or "& Related Fandoms". If you've nominated any of the following fandoms, please either pick a specific piece of media, or argue your case on the evidence post.
  • Ender's Game - All Media Types

  • History Boys - All Media Types

  • Midsomer Murders - All Media Types


We've seen nominations for relationships, original characters, or Reader characters. Please only use the Character field to nominate specific characters who appear in a canon. For exceptions, see the eligibility post.

We've also seen many well-formatted nominations and nominations we are excited about! Please keep them coming.

We are happy to answer questions about nominations.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth


Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

latest spinning

Sep. 19th, 2025 07:19 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Ah, the art yarn of it all. :3

handspun yarn

2-ply from these singles:

Alien: Earth 1.07

Sep. 18th, 2025 04:28 pm
selenak: (Agent Brand by Likeadeuce)
[personal profile] selenak
In which it's very useful to know the numbers of pi by heart. Or eye.

What have you done? )

Raindrops keep falling on my head....

Sep. 16th, 2025 04:47 pm
selenak: (Ben by Idrilelendil)
[personal profile] selenak
RIP Robert Redford. A fantastic run of movies especially in the 70s as an actor, later as a director never made an uninteresting movie, founded a film festival of several decades running, and to the best of my knowledge never abused his fame and status and instead used both to help others.


lolnope

Sep. 16th, 2025 04:02 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
behold, a spammer

A particularly hilarious example of low-effort spammer/scammer.

Seriously considering how much spam I could effortlessly screen out if I set up my email to automatically delete ANYTHING with the word "Amazon" in it that isn't on a very small (like, a half-dozen people small) whitelist of family and close friends.

ETA #1 (2025-09-23): Ah, more spammers. Let's now add automatic deletion of ANYTHING with the word "Goodreads" in it as well! Blissful quiet.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
(cross-posted: [community profile] communal_creators)

earlier:
- part 0: preliminaries
- part 1: brief demo: engraving software (Dorico)



Brief walkthrough of the start of a fake piano sketch in Cubase Pro that I'll build into a hybrid orchestral piece using MIDI and VSTs. I don't claim this is good music, just something for demonstration purposes and to talk through some of the technical details. This is musically unexciting but covering DAW basics will make the later hybrid orchestra bits easier to understand, hypothetically.

(Sorry, the audio recorded in mono; I will look at my audio interface settings again.)

For those curious about my usual style(s) of music, my music reel.

To start the week with

Sep. 15th, 2025 11:59 am
selenak: (Music)
[personal profile] selenak
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finished its third season, and you may have deduced from the fact I didn't review the remaining episodes that for me, it did not take a turn for the better. The Ortegas episode was probably the most, in lack of a better term, Trekian, not to mention the long awaited one with a focus on Ortegas beyond "I fly the ship", but it shares with far too many ST: SNW episodes the way it is just incredibly derivative, of both other franchises and earlier ST. And the series finale chose to pick my least favourite DS9 plotline and scenario, sigh. To complete my turn to an old grouch, the feeling of this season as Star Trek: The Rom Com didn't help, either. Anyway. I'll always have Discovery and Prodigy in terms of new ST that manages to unite both affection for the past AND originality and the courage to try out new paths and characters.
*****

Given the daily horror show that is the news, it's all the more important to find joy in fannish things, so I was delighted to discover this new Sense 8 vid. Now there was a show celebrating joy and diversity:

Sense 8

Voice in my Throat

***

And on another joyful note: Yuletide nominations have started!

Nomination Coordination Station 2025

Sep. 15th, 2025 06:14 am
serenity_ribbon: An image of the 13th Doctor, on a pink background with heart doodles (Default)
[personal profile] serenity_ribbon posting in [community profile] yuletide

WARNING: Do NOT submit nominations here. Post for coordination ONLY.


This post is where people declare what they have nominated, or ask other people to nominate for them. So if you do comment and/or add your nominations to the spreadsheet, that's great, because it helps other people decide what to nominate, but it WILL NOT result in your fandoms or characters being in the tagset. The only place to nominate is the Yuletide tagset. Use the comments on this post and the coordination Google spreadsheet to coordinate nominations with others.

  • For information about nominating fandoms and characters, what is eligible for nomination, and other important links and announcements, refer to [community profile] yuletide_admin.

  • Nominations run Monday 15th to Friday 26th September. Nominations will be approved after that time.

  • Before tags are approved (after September 26th), you can only see your own nominations.

  • You can nominate up to 5 fandoms and up to 4 characters in each fandom.

Please copy and paste the following information to comment on this post. Every item is optional except fandom.

  • A nomination is something you plan to nominate. A request is something you're hoping someone else will nominate for you, because you ran out of slots.

  • View and edit the google sheet here: Yuletide 2025 Nomination Coordination Station.

  • If you can add your information to the spreadsheet yourself, please do! That would really help. PLEASE DO NOT SORT THE SHEET. If you want to view the list by nominated fandoms, use the autogenerated "sort by fandom" tabs.

  • During the nomination period, the spreadsheet will get re-sorted by username daily at (approx) 6PM GMT, to keep the data tidier.


Help Wanted


If you have a few minutes and enjoy a bit of data entry, please volunteer to update the spreadsheet with information the comments in this post! If you do, add the data from the comment to the spreadsheet and reply to the original comment with Added to spreadsheet.

(h/t to [personal profile] ashling for the original coordination station post text and spreadsheet!)

Yuletide 2025 Nominations Open

Sep. 14th, 2025 09:07 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Why should I nominate?
To create the pool of fandoms available for this year’s Yuletide. More at AO3.

What can I nominate?
Up to 5 rare fandoms and 4 characters you want to request or offer. See what’s eligible here.

When can I nominate?
From now until 26 September, at 9pm UTC. Please check the date and time in your own timezone! Until then, you can also edit your nominations.

Where can I nominate?
Tag set.

Who can nominate?
People with AO3 accounts who intend to take part in Yuletide. You may use only one account for nominations. If you don’t have an AO3 account, add yourself immediately to the invite queue or email the mods.

How do I nominate?
First, check what's eligible. Then go to the tag set on AO3, and make sure you're logged in. Click "Nominate" at top right, enter your fandom and character choices, and click Submit at the bottom. Check the results on the page to make sure you entered them correctly. You don't have to submit all your choices at once - you can change your mind and add or edit your nominations until nominations close.

If you need to explain or argue for your fandom, please make a case for it on the Evidence Post as well as nominating on AO3.

Do I have to use fandom tags that exist on AO3?
Please do, unless:
  • There is no tag for your fandom (it's totally okay to nominate something with no fic!). Make one up, following this guide.

  • The tag that exists on the Archive describes a larger fandom with many parts and your fandom is one distinct part or subset. In this case, instead of using the tag that exists already, please use a tag that describes your specific subfandom.

  • The tag that exists on the Archive has the words 'All Media Types' or '& Related Fandoms' in it. Please don't use a label that includes those words without arguing for it on the Evidence Post
  • .

Please label fandoms according to the Archive's wrangling style. If you’re not sure how to label your fandom, please ask.

When will I see what was nominated?
Not for a while, sorry! You can share what you've nominated and coordinate with other participants at [community profile] yuletide. Moderators will approve tags starting approximately 28 September, and will release the tagset in early October. We will post questions about nominations between now and sign-ups, so please keep an eye on this community.

The Additional Tags at the bottom of the tag set are a new feature from 2023. Here is a post explaining how they work and some background (1, 2).

Disambiguation
When a character name could appear in more than one fandom, or is common, or short, please put information in brackets after the name to show where it belongs. For example:
-Bonnie Parker (Bonnie and Clyde 1967)
-Robin Hood (Prince of Thieves)
-Tulku (The Shadow 1994)
-Leonardo da Vinci (Da Vinci's Demons)

Disambiguation will also solve your problems if you receive the error message: “This character was rejected because it was nominated in another fandom.” If that happens, add more information to the name and resubmit.

Worldbuilding "character"
In most fandoms, you may nominate worldbulding as a character tag, in the format Worldbuilding (Your Fandom Name). However, mods will not accept "worldbuilding" nominations for RPF fandoms or where it is nominated without explanation for a purely mundane canon - there should be a clear fictional element to worldbuild around. See 2021's discussion post about worldbuilding; you may also find recent requests helpful to see how people have used this option.

Other character tips
If you submit a character that is new or rarely used on AO3, a suggestion from AO3 may appear in bold and in brackets next to your nomination after it has been submitted. This is okay, and does not mean that your nomination will be automatically changed. However, if you don't have any disambiguation information in brackets after the name, you may want to add it, because there may be another character with that name. Even if your character has two names, such as “Harrison Chase” or “Elizabeth Burke”, that name may appear in multiple unrelated fandoms.

RPF and Anthropomorphic fandoms must be nominated with characters. Other fandoms will be approved without characters if none are nominated.

Superhero and similar names may belong to more than one character. For example, Batman’s Robin could mean Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, or Stephanie Brown, among others. Please make sure it’s clear which one you mean - in cases where it’s ambiguous, please use their “wallet” name.

We don’t accept group nominations if the group contains named, distinct characters (for example, under Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, we wouldn’t accept The Five Gods as a character). However, we will allow distinct groups that do not contain individual, named characters. If it may be difficult for us to determine whether this applies to your nomination, please comment in the Evidence post.

Check your nominations!
After submitting, check that your nominations have gone through: click away from the tag set, click back, and, if still logged into the same account, you should be able to see "My Nominations" at top right. Check the spelling and formatting! You can edit your nominations until the nominations period ends.

Enjoy!

PS: as pre-approved nominations can only be seen by mods, consider discussing your nominations with other participants on [community profile] yuletide or at the Discord. In particular, please see this year's RPF discussion post.


Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth

Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
(cross-posted to [community profile] communal_creators)

Earlier:
- part 0: preliminaries (includes partial glossary of terms)



I know there are a lot of people who haaaaaate being forced to sit through video but since audio playback is inherent to the enterprise...This is under a minute, promise.

This is a brief demonstration of the opening of one of my compositions partially engraved (~sheet music typesetting) in Dorico. The two industry-standard engraving apps in media composition scoring are Dorico and Sibelius; Finale used to be a third but was sunsetted to much consternation.

If you come from classical music (especially classical orchestral music), you may be ??? about the score formatting. This is because scores for session orchestra and concert/classical orchestra have different formatting! (See part 0: preliminaries for more detail as to why). Differences for session orchestra you see here include:

- Score is in C (NOT a transposing score for the conductor - nota bene, transposing is "allowed" for octaves), but we won't have e.g. horn in F or trumpet in Bb. Read more... )

As for playback:

- Guess what, Dorico and Sibelius at the level of orchestral scores are spendy. :]

- I'm using NotePerformer, which is the standard higher-quality playback engine, especially if you don't have time to mock it up in the DAW (or you're an art/concert composer for whom a mockup is not part of your workflow). But that's also money (~$130 USD).

NotePerformer is pretty credible with a lot of orchestral instruments. You still have to massage its output. For example, in Sibelius [not shown] you can set playback to molto espressivo (LOTS OF FEELING) vs. senza espressivo (NO FEELINGS EVER!!!) (etc). My experience is that particular instruments can be less "real"-sounding and the "vocalists" (both SATB choir and associated "solo" voices) are absolutely terrible, as in "my vacuum cleaner sings more credibly than this" terrible.

Aside: There are some good vocal VST libraries for specific use cases. I hate that I am often able to straight-up identify "Oh yeah, XYZ floating ethereal ~Celtic Twilight vibes soprano 'ahhh' ululation in this trailer/score/whatever was $SPECIFIC_VST_LIBRARY" because, apparently, I have no life; but this is not unusual in this field.

I know at least one full-time composer/orchestrator/musician who straight-up bounces NotePerformer output and then processes that in the DAW (reverb etc) and, you know, this person makes a living doing this. So that's one route one can take.

Why, you ask, can't we just export this score-stuff into a DAW with all the fancy (...spendy) VST instruments and "paste in" nicer/more individualized instruments? Dorico (and Sibelius) do in fact export to MIDI and MusicXML. [1] This is a very reasonable question that will be the topic of the next walkthrough (part 2), mainly because it's a surprisingly (annoying) complicated topic as to why this is rarely straightforward. (Let me tell you all about negative track delay...)

[1] Missed these glossary items earlier! brief explanations of MIDI and MusicXML )

Happy to answer questions, although I have no idea if anyone else finds this interesting. :p

not good spinning demo: EEW 6.1

Sep. 13th, 2025 01:04 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Dreaming Robots' Electric Eel Wheel 6.1 e-spinner with some sacrificial Rambouillet/Gotland wool blend. Sorry about the mess; too hot to go outside with this. I don't claim this is good spinning, just a brief demonstration of Getting The E-Spinner To Do A Thing.

bikes and stuff

Sep. 13th, 2025 01:17 am
trobadora: (Default)
[personal profile] trobadora
(So much for that daily posting thing - I've already skipped a few without meaning to. /o\)

Today I rode an e-bike for the first time. Useful for the hills, for sure, but it wasn't as much fun as a regular bike, so I don't see myself doing that often.

Last spring I signed up for a local rent-a-bike service, and ever since then I've been riding bikes a lot again, after a break of something like 15 years. (That was about when my bike got stolen, and I didn't buy a new one because I didn't and still don't have a good place to put it.) I still like biking a lot, though I'm glad I no longer have to in the winter, the way I used to when I was still biking to uni. *g*

I've also been walking a lot again this summer, so overall I've been getting a lot more exercise than I used to! Which, alas, did not turn out to be an unmitigated good. (Turns out that more physical activity makes me hungrier - shock, horror! - but not exactly in proportion. I'd really rather keep fitting into my clothes, and also I don't want not be constantly hungry. So less activity might actually be better. Since we're heading into winter and I don't like going out very much when it's wet and/or cold, I guess I'll see!)
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Ashford Traveller (single treadle although you can see that, Scotch tension). Spinning mulberry (bombyx) silk from combed top.

Alien: Earth 1.06 und Foundation 3.10

Sep. 12th, 2025 01:32 pm
selenak: (Demerzel and Terminus)
[personal profile] selenak
Alien: Earth:

The internet tells me Sigourney Weaver is watching Alien: Earth and is as enthralled as yours truly. Now if that isn't a compliment to Noah Hawley et al, I don't know what is.

Spoilers are on a quest to use the creepiest Peter Pan quotes in every episode )


Foundation

Is the first season finale necessitating that the next season has to start without a century like time jump. Also, yowsers.

...while the worst are full of passionate intensity )

spinning WIP

Sep. 11th, 2025 05:21 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Or: if your goal is threadweight/cobweb, why silk fiber is not quite as profligate an expense as you might think:



The white is mulberry bombyx silk; the tawny stuff was my briefly foraying into eri silk. This is for personal use/enjoyment (needle lace) so it's fine that I'm wandering off like this. This is several hours of admittedly inefficient spinning, since I take frequent breaks so there's a very start-stop nature to it, but because the spin is so fine, this bobbin is...not very full.



This is what I have REMAINING in 2 oz. of mulberry silk combed top (about $25 USD). It exploded out of the package (typical) and also, it barely looks like I've even used any of it. As it stands, I suspect I'm going to be spinning this combed top for the next 30,000 years. :)

That said, silk is my absolute favorite to spin and I prefer spinning threadweight, so this is not a hardship.
yhlee: a fox with the label FOX YOU! (fox you!)
[personal profile] yhlee
Ex Tenebris: a gothic space opera TTRPG [Kickstarter, already funded!].

Beyond the dark emptiness of space, beyond dreaming, lies the Tenebrium. Only you can unearth its mysteries, defeat the twisted horrors that lurk there, and keep humanity from becoming prey.

In Ex Tenebris, you play a ragtag team of investigators, protecting the Republic of Stars from terrifying supernatural threats. You will face sorcerers and cults, dark technology from lost civilisations and the slobbering terrors lurking in the nightmare realm of the Tenebrium.

Ex Tenebris is a complete TTRPG containing all the rules, setting and scenarios that you need to embark on adventures amongst the stars.

[...]

Ex Tenebris takes inspiration from the grotesque imagery of the Aliens movies, the existential dread of Event Horizon, the mysticism of Dune, the dark gothic setting of Warhammer 40,000, and the weird science/magic fusion of Ninefox Gambit.


- Josh Fox, lead designer & writer
- Becky Annison, writer
- Juan Ochoa, illustrator
- Nathan D. Paoletta, layout and graphic design
- Andriy Lukin, logo design
- Jog Brogzin, cartographer
- Chirag Asnani, writer
- Sarah Doom, writer
- Eleanor Hingley, writer
- Kieron Gillen, writer
- Yoon Ha Lee, writer (howdy!)
- Tejas Oza, writer
- Galen Pejeau, writer

alpaca adventures, cont'd

Sep. 10th, 2025 04:49 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Test spin of small experimental alpaca floof batch.

For lagniappe, the completed smol woven object made from my handspun that's headed to [personal profile] eller, mostly wool/silk/angelina blends (both colorways). :3

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Beth Winter

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