Title

So 'giant stuffed crab' tied for top of the poll, which is convenient for me because it's one of the shorter write-ups, lol.

The backstory to this is the convergence of two things: 1) reading priest's novel Can Ci Pin/The Defectives, in which one of the two leads (who, to be clear, is an adult man, and also very relatable ADHD engineer vibes) has a 1m long stuffed crab he uses as a pillow sometimes, and 2) getting into Rust, a programming language that has an adorable crab named Ferris as it's unofficial mascot.

And someone had a pattern for a DIY stuffed Ferris. What if, I thought, I made a stuffed Ferris at the scale of Lu Bixing's giant crab plush. So I did.

I started by tracing the pattern to a vector in Inkscape, which I then scaled so that the bottom piece was 1m wide (though I forgot to account for the fact that stuffing things makes them taller but also narrower), and then printed it out tiled across a bunch of sheets of paper that I had to tape back together. The main body is cut out of Minky (in the color 'rust', appropriately). The biggest challenge for this was leaning to use Ink/Stitch to create embroidery files for the eyes and for a little hidden nod to Can Ci Pin on his belly (陆林, the hanzi for the main ship in the novel). I opted for solid eyes rather than adding the highlight, both because it was easier for me to digitize and also looked cuter to me.

He's 'only' 80cm instead of the full meter, but the spirit is there, and he now lives on my bed - I haven't used him as a pillow yet, but it would be possible.

Questions from yhlee - much as I would like to be a cool person who pays memes forward, the fact that it has taken me three weeks to get around to answering these is a sign that I unfortunately am not reliable enough for that right now.

1. What is your favorite underrated fountain pen?
So my dirty fountain pen secret is that... I have not actually tried all that many pens. I found a few really like and then just went straight to buying way too much ink. I do really like the Moonman/Majohn A1 though, even if it is largely just a VP clone.

2. How did you get into comics?
This one I can blame on Andy and LJRP - she played a number of Western comics characters, and did so compellingly enough to make me want to read their source material. I think Stormwatch was the one I started with, and it spread from there. I had read some stuff before that - Sandman for sure, and maybe Transmetropolitan by that point? But Stormwatch was the start of like, actually buying single issues and keeping up on new releases and stuff.

3. If you could manifest the ereader of your dreams with every feature you wanted (including magical ones), what would it be like? Does it already exist?
Hmmm. I think the big things that aren't quite there yet are:
- a built-in browser with like, reader mode and pagination.
- easy to sync files/articles to (I know Kindle kind of has this, but they've got other drawbacks)
- comfortable to hold for long periods of time - the Kobo Libra 2 is pretty good on this, but I feel like it could be better.

4. What is the naughtiest thing a cat has ever done to you?
Storm, my last cat, loved food, including people food. She was usually not super aggressive about it, but once she jumped up in my lap and took a big bite of the BBQ pork bun I had in my hand and was in the process of moving towards my mouth.

5. What's the most hilarious and/or impressive cosplay or sewing feat you've ever pulled off?
I think the closest to hilarity, in that I was absolutely clowning myself, was knitting the worst sweater. I think at the moment 'most impressive' goes to either finally getting silk painting right, or convincing my embroidery machine to do fake jacquard, both on Shokudaikiri Mitsutada, which I don't have good photos of yet because I have been extremely disorganized this year.

I managed to get my Halloween decorations up a whole week ahead of time this year! Major improvement on my part, though I think I need to get some more lighting. We had a sizable turn out, despite it being a chilly Tuesday night here - I'd guess somewhere in the 120-130 range in terms of kids. I've decided mini Nerds are the ideal intersection of 'candy kids like' and 'candy I like'. I also got a cheap pack of plastic bugs for kids with allergy concerns or who just really like plastic bugs, and they proved more popular than I was anticipating. Best moment was when a small child held up a neon yellow plastic scorpion and excitedly declared 'Look, I got a lobster! I got a lobster'. To which I just kind of nodded like, yep, that sure is a lobster all right!

I also got a lot of compliments on my outfit, which was supposed to be 'Skeleton Grill Dad' but I think mostly just came off as 'Skeleton'. Proud that the make-up is remotely okay, because I decided on this last-minute and then discovered that I had neither black nor white greasepaint, and was forced to use a very old container of MAC creme eyeliner and a Nyx white eyeshadow pencil.

( I did, however, glow in the dark. )

I think my favorite costumes of the evening where a pair of teen girls dressed as the sun and the moon, or day and night - I didn't think to ask. Metallic skirts, fancy makeup, fancy hair pieces - one was in gold and white, and the other was in silver and black. Really pretty and creative!

- I managed to lose my Kobo... somewhere? Did not realize it was gone until I was packing my bags at the end of the trip. There's some hope it accidentally ended up in one of my hotelmates' bags but unlikely (there were no irreplacable files on it so mostly it's just me feeling stupid about it).
- Going to Vendors on Friday was, perhaps, a mistake, in that I ended up with three different blisters on my right foot, BUT I did get a super cool cyberpunk tarot deck
- Vash was basically the only cosplay I wore that really got recognized, which is about what I was expecting (everything else was obscure and/or casual fashion AU stuff)
- Con was, unsurprisingly, heavy on the Barbie, followed I think by Star Wars in second place.
- Masquerade was less painful to watch than in past years, though there were still a handful of... rough acts (the D*C masq is best described as 'talent show for nerds' and is frequently about the same level of cringe)
- Only made it in to one panel, but it was a neat one about advanced fabrication techniques and machines in cosplay! Turns out you can do dye sub stuff at home for... not all that much money, relatively speaking.
- Went to Margaritaville for the first time which uh also ended up being Jimmy Buffet's last day on this mortal coil. I know we did not kill Jimmy Buffet by going to Margaritaville in Trigun cosplay but MAN.
- Every convention my portable Switch setup evolves, and I think the next addition is going to be a portable speaker, because we discovered that the tv was permanently set to max volume (the remote instead only controlling the volume on the magic hotel box).
- The mattresses in the Marriott kind of suck. Too firm, and no movement isolation.

Last batch! Review of the 7S English translation to come... soon.

( 26) SPL as quotes or scenes from another media? )
( 27) Underrated charater )
( 28) Best Gu Yun moment )
( 29) Best Changgeng moment )
( 30) Songs that make you think of SPL )

After a bunch of digging through compiler errors, I finally managed to pull in the upstream Plato updates and rebuild my app. No new features, this is just support for new devices.

If you do not have a Sage, Libra 2, or Clara 2E, I recommend installing the previous version. There's some minor bugs in the new one I haven't had time to work out yet, name:
- rotating the display makes the app crash
- works aren't getting proper styling for title/author/etc so all the text looks the same.

If you are willing to go forward with that, you can grab the 'one-click install' file.

The original install instructions work for both versions.

Look there is a reason I am not doing these daily, lol.

( 11) Favorite official art! )
( 12) Favorite antagonist )
( 13) Favorite changgu moment )
( 14) Favorite romantic ship )
( 15) Favorite fan artist/writer/fic )

shapolanq posted a 30 day SPL question challenge meme she created, and I figured that given the first volume is due out in English at the end of this month, I might as well give it a whirl. Probably in batches, because I am crap at daily posting, and most of the questions are fairly short answers.



( Masterlist of questions )
( 1) How did you discover SPL? )
( 2) First impression vs current )
( 3) Favorite thing about SPL )
( 4) Favorite arc & favorite scene )
( 5) One scene you want to see in the live action )

Man, the OTW stuff is really just like, a fractal constellation of awful, huh? On multiple sides and levels, honestly. niqaeli made the very apt metaphor the other day that OTW is like the Centralia coal fire - it's been burning for a long time even when it's not visible on the surface, and generally making the place miserable.

(I've seen people say they feel betrayed by these revelations, but I've been vaguely aware of organizational dysfunction for nearly as long as the OTW has been active, which is why I don't give them money, lol)

I have mostly been taking time to work on other things in the midst of this - working on my basement reno, getting Lolibrary set up for translation, working on some little personal projects, and getting a bunch of Dreamwidth work done which hopefully will go live Soon. And I've ended up with friends-plans the last three weekends - two weeks ago I went to Six Flags for the first time, last weekend was Pride, and today a friend had a little backyard brunch because she wanted to see people after finally coming out of the haze of the first month of New Baby.

Also been reading a bunch of books! Last finished was New Suns 2, which had a lot of really fantastic stories in it - I'm going to have to check out longer works by some of these authors in the future. I'm now back to slogging my way through Stendhal's The Red and the Black which I am... largely not enjoying, but I'm bad at abandoning books midway through, and there's enough little gems to keep me going. Next will probably be back to some modern SFF though I haven't decided what yet.

I am very sorry for everyone who has made well-reasoned posts on the 'End OTW Racism' thing and accidentally flipped over the rock under which all the past Ao3 organizational drama had been hiding (of which I can only personally speak to the technical side of but I have Heard Things from other people).