Needles & Nilbogs

 Spoilers abound! Thoughts are unfiltered and spoilers everywhere.  I LOVED THIS ONE SINGLE-HANDEDLY GOT ME BACK INTO THE FANDOM BRAIN

Aka, I’m desperate for more city spies fans. 1. Found family with problems who try to do better and fix those problems In the Murderbot Diaries, Dr. Mensah and the rest of PreservationAux are Murderbot's found family. They purchase it, but because they don't have the opportunity to talk things over, things go badly and it runs away. But by Exit Strategy, they're trying to treat it better --- Pin-Lee sneaks it stuff to help it run away, Mensah explicitly tells it she handled things very badly, all the humans make sure it has time now to make its own decisions.  In the same way, all of the City Spies screw up in their attempt to become a family. From the beginning, Mother handles Charlotte badly and doesn't tell the others. Then he and Brooklyn don't tell the others about a project, and Sydney gets jealous of Brooklyn, and they have to handle so much emotional drama beyond just the stuff with Mother's family. (By the way, it's really hard to provide spoiler fr...

 Warning, spoilers for City of the Dead ahead! I GOT THE BOOK AND I LOVE IT. So I wrote down all my reactions and now here they are, by page number so you can avoid spoilers. No explanations no nothing. Back blurb: I am DESPERATE to know what's going on here PLEASE Page 7: Hi Kat, I love you. Page 23: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OMG I LOVE THEM P27: Garfield is giving me magpie vibes P33: oh, Rio. Oh, Rio.  P38: awww, Kat, stop pretending you don't have feelings. Also AAAAAAAAA SIBLING LOVE and aaa this is something mb would say P49: Brooklyn's birthday is November 20th dang it this has already ruined one fic P54: HEY WHERE ARE MONTY AND MOTHER (also AAAAAAA SIBLINGS) P58: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA P64: AUTISTIC KAT REAL P69: definitely undiagnosed autism there kat my girl P74: oh, Brooklyn. Oh, child.  P77: six years since team!  P79: oooooh P80: well, guess we know when the book is set lol (post... 2017 I think) P84: IF SHE ISNT TALKING ABOUT CLEMMIE ILL EAT MY COPY O...

 I haven’t decided if I’m ever going to actually post the city spies soulmate au that’s been rattling around in my brain since (*checks draft creation date*) February of last year (technically: 2/16/22, 9:19 AM, hah), but I want the book 1 outline out of my drafts before book 4 comes out (THREE DAYS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA), so this is a proposed outline for a city spies fic that has about 1/2 of book 1 written, all of book 1 planned out, and a loose outline for books 2 and 3.  This was the original idea: It's the one where whatever you write on your body appears on theirs in the same spot, starting at age 10, and it's just the person who completes you whether it's romantic or platonic; also, fate guarantees that it's someone you will have contact with even if that comes from finding out you're soulmates, you're always going to meet in person at least a bit. Often have mannerisms in common. Rio and Brooklyn get closer platonically through their notes while fighting in...

 TWO WEEKS TILL RELEASE DAY AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Things we know now: IT’S A KAT BOOK THIS IS NOT A DRILL WE ARE GETTING KATHMANDU GIBBS-MONTGOMERY PERSPECTIVE AND I AM HERE FOR IT. (Also does this mean book 5 will be Rio POV????!!!!) Also, looking at a summary and a pre-reader’s review: ARE WE GETTING A NEW SPY?????? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! I can’t wait!!  ( All of my fics that are post-canon or nebulously so are going to need tags to say when they were released, won’t they. Not excited about that part.)

 Like I said the other day , I want to talk about my writing more because there’s a lot that I want to say that I don’t want to put in authors notes (usually cause I think of stuff in the shower and then don’t remember to edit it in when I’m at my computer later), but there’s also no better place to put it. Also this is an official threat (not in a violent way) that if you ask me a question about something I wrote I will answer, and answer in depth.  So this is about my latest fic, once and for all , which is a city spies and murderbot crossover, and it’s basically an excuse to do a roleswap but across universes and also to drag in multiverse shenanigans in general (one of my favorite things). Go read it, right now it’s pretty short, and while this isn’t spoilery for the fic, it doesn’t really make sense without that context. And I had this idea in the shower last night and absolutely have to talk about it somewhere at some point   This… *drumroll*… is backstory.  ...

Sorry it’s been a while, college apps and finals and whatever, blah blah blah, okay time to YELL EXCITEDLY ABOUT CITY SPIES AGAIN (spoilers ahead I’m not gonna mark anything except the big stuff). You can find my last round of yelling about book 4 here . Okay! So!! In the last few weeks we’ve gotten a lot of news about book 4, City of the Dead (CotD), and it’s all been absolutely fascinating. From Instagram, we have: slide 8 of this Instagram post   about Ponti’s year in review [slide 8 ID: a picture of Ponti’s computer screen with the prologue for book 4 partially visible and marked up], the book trailer  and the previous trailer  [video IDs: various pictures of Egypt intermixed with pictures of the city spies doing their thing], a p iece of trivia from November 4  [ID: a slide with a picture of an Egyptian boy and a pyramid, saying “100 years ago today, King Tut’s tomb was discovered by this 12-year old boy”], and the cover announcement which is what the fir...

 I’m thinking about halloween already. I know it’s kind of early, but I wanted to do something really detailed this year. I’m going to try to be one of the characters from a book series I like, the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. And given that weapons are a no for this, it has to be one of the humans, which means I need a feed interface.  Interfaces clip into the ear, and they can look like anything. I made one with pull tabs from soda cans and some thread, plus the clips off of a pair of clip-on dangly earrings. Yes, I should have been spinning. Yes, I promised myself I’d only spin this month. No, I haven’t been spinning.  On my right ear, showing where to put the clips (it’s not exact) and what the shape looks like Lying on my bedspread The process was pretty simple, although this is definitely a multi-craftual, complicated project. I’m not sure how well I can explain, but I’ll do my best.   To do something similar, you’ll need three of the pull tabs (the thing...

I’ve been reading a lot about antique/vintage crochet lately, so I’m going to review one of the books I’ve been using as reference. The book is Civil War Ladies: Fashions and Needle-Arts of the Early 1860’s , and it’s a collection of articles from Peterson’s Magazine, coming mostly from 1861 and 1864. I got it from a friend of my grandfather’s, who was also very fond of older patterns and craft history.  Overall, my general impression is definitely good; it’s very clear that the patterns are not reproductions, they’re original. This does mean the patterns are hard to understand sometimes, and they occasionally look odd to my modern eyes, but I can follow most of them.  The subject matter is mixed. Peterson’s published patterns for all sorts of fancy work, alongside poetry, songs, and fiction (mostly cut out from this book). There’s embroidery, patterns for sewing, knitting, crochet, netting, the occasional tatting project, and some that are unclear or useable for multiple craf...

The City Spies series by James Ponti is getting a new book sometime in February! It will be called City of the Dead, and it’ll be the fourth book. I shared these thoughts and predictions for it on my personal instagram on Monday, but this is a slightly more edited essay-format. ( Instagram announcement  for the curious; it has the cover and the name.) Fair warning: spoilers for City Spies, Golden Gate, and Forbidden City ahead. I will try to mark anything really terrible, but just read the books please. I want to talk about them with people, aaaahhh!  My initial hopes on reading the announcement were for a book about Rio or Kat, given the cover. Personally, I’m hoping for Rio because of the fanfic I’m working on that’s currently about him, Brooklyn, and their friendship, but I would also enjoy a book about Kat because she has a really interesting point of view, and I’d love to see more. The way each book has been focused on one kid so far means that there’s probably going to b...

 Chag Sameach Purim! Happy Purim! I’ve had a very busy and exciting week, and I have plenty of hamantaschen as well. And some cool photos from a trip to Monterey. Purim is a Jewish holiday that celebrates that the evil Persian vizier Haman, adviser to Xerxes I (aka Ahasuerus), didn’t kill all the Jews because of the brave actions of the clever Jewish Queen Esther. We celebrate by dressing up and bringing food to others, among other things. So my family made A Whole Lot of Hamantaschen, the traditional cookie. It’s a butter cookie shaped like a triangle and filled with jam, chocolate, poppy seeds, etc.  Plenty of hamantaschen Ours are regular butter dough, filled with strawberry or apricot jam; chocolate dough, filled with chocolate chips; cheesecake filling in regular dough, drizzled with chocolate; and regular dough, filled with Nutella or chocolate chips and drizzled with chocolate. We made … probably too many, so I’m bringing them around today to all my friends. (Sorry, Rus...

Tuesday I got my preordered copy of a book I’ve been waiting for since forever!!!!! It’s the third book in the City Spies series by James Ponti, and it is just as good as the first two (maybe better. We’ll see). The really frustrating thing, though, is that there is literally no City Spies fanfiction. None. Go check, I’ll wait.  See, no fanfic (seriously, I google it regularly and can’t find anything). I’ve written some, but so far it’s only been for my sister, who also loves the City Spies. But since there isn’t any out there, and I’m now really excited to write city spies fanfic again, I’m going to put it here so that there’s something. Depending on what people think of these (and what I want to do) I may share more or I may not. These are links to google docs so that scrolling through won’t take forever, and my author’s notes are here too. I welcome comments on these and I hope that even if you haven’t read the books that you give them a try. Middle grade books can be amazing fo...

Yeah. I got sick. I’m too behind and also too grouchy to put anything together. I can offer either nothing (in that case stop here) or really really old (January 2021) murderbot diaries fanfic I wrote that’s not horribly embarrassing hopefully, only cause that’s what I’ve got hanging around my local storage. It’s based off of opera (le nozze de figaro), written because I could, and from back when I had something like free time. Written in markdown, but it doesn’t seem to transfer from drafts very well. Stuff in underscores is supposed to be in italics.

 I have a minor obsession with the Murderbot Diaries books, in case that’s not clear to anyone. And I needed a ship for a d&d game last week. So I drew a preliminary sketch of ART/Perihelion (the ship MB is somewhat friends with, depending on your feelings about what exactly friendship is) as a kind of guide for what the players would find. Then, of course, the players went elsewhere, and I didn’t use the map after all.  However, I did add to it, and then redraw it nicer so it looks like an actual schematic that ART would have. Because I could, and I was bored, and I was forced to sit through a very boring presentation yesterday. Also, I’m sharing it because it’s nearly Christmas season, so a lot of my crochet work is presents, which I’ll share after Christmas when it’s not a spoiler.  The whole thing Logo on the top left. Transcript: Deep Space AI Division, Est. CR 2371. Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland.  Close up of the front part of the ship. Th...

 The title says most of it. I’m down with what’s either a cold or (quite possibly) the flu — not COVID, I think, but I’ve got a crazy cough and a mild fever, and I’ve been out since Tuesday. This should tell you how bad I’m feeling: I haven’t crocheted more than half a round on the Current Shawl Project (no, you haven’t missed anything, I haven’t talked about it much) since I woke up Tuesday. That’s bad, for me.  So I’m just going to put random stuff here and not bother making anything coherent. Sorry, but I don’t feel well enough for anything else and if I did, I’d make up the work I’m not doing.  No pictures today. I haven’t taken anything for a while. No gaming stuff. I can’t be bothered to do anything right now. And no buffer to use to fill this week cause I used the last one a few weeks ago when I was swamped.  Here, have stuff I’m reading. I’m reading Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, 14th edition (cause it ties into something I’m doing); City Spies (a middle gr...

 So I was up late last night (we went to see the musical Hamilton [!!!], which is playing around here) and don’t have anything to talk about really, and I’m just going to dump a whole list of ideas I had a while ago for role playing games (both actual game-games and story ideas or campaigns, also characters), because I’m running on not enough sleep and I just don’t have the will to write anything more. If you want to use any of these game ideas, feel free to do whatever with them; I’d appreciate credit for them but honestly nobody really reads this anyways so I doubt anyone would use them and it really doesn’t matter. 

 I’m kinda tired. We got back from our road trip on Saturday, then we unpacked, then it was my birthday just a couple days ago, and I’m exhausted from everything.  So I’m just going to dump a bunch of random photos here from our trip, roughly in chronological order, and see if there’s anything I want to say about them. Featured within: the Regal Cardigan I started and finished (link to the Ravelry project page) during the trip (and the Olympic Games, so it qualified for the Ravellenic games too!); random scenery things; and a handful of random drawings I did, including a bunch of characters from the Murderbot Diaries books.  Blogger does weird things on pictures from a computer for some reason, so these may be rotated in random directions. No idea how to fix that, though, so my apologies if it’s hard to read. Also, this is image heavy, obviously. 

This is going to be a kinda weird and random post, since I’ve been pretty busy this week, and we leave for a road trip tomorrow. Speaking of that, I picked a project! Last week I was really unsure what I wanted to bring on the trip. 

Monday, someone in my house was singing “Alligators All Around”. Originally, that was a book by Maurice Sendak, and in 1975 (according to Wikipedia), alongside other Sendak books, it was turned into the animated special Really Rosie . So we watched Really Rosie, just because. Tuesday, I had a bunch of the Really Rosie songs stuck in my head, and I’ve been humming them all week. And as I hummed them (and sang them), I started to recognize some of the things the songs are teaching me about RPGs. 

Over last weekend, I went camping with my family. It was nice to be out in the fresh air and with people I love, and I got to play with fire a bit, so it was very fun. But it got me thinking about books, because lately, I’ve been reading a bunch of young adult (YA) and middle grade literature, and I brought a few amazing books on the trip to (re)read. And because the library’s Summer Reading Challenge starts this week and I realized just how many books I’ve actually read lately.