Callipraxia

Knower of many useless facts and chronically late joiner of fandoms. Currently photographing cats and complaining about literary stuff and my writer’s block a lot. Relics of better times - mostly pretty good ones, even - can be found on AO3 under the same username, if that sounds interesting.

[callipraxia]

An Introductory Interview

Q: Who is writing this?

A: Call me Calli - it’s shorter than the whole screen name. I’m an asexual woman from the U.S.

Q: And what do you do online?

A: I’ve identified as a writer since I was eleven, and although it’s been about two years since I completed a story not started before that point, I still write a lot of essays and/or extended rambles analyzing books or TV shows I like.

Q: What are some examples of what those rambles might be about?

A: I joined AO3 and started writing Gravity Falls fanfiction under this name in 2021. A fair bit of it, even, for a while. As a result, this is still primarily known as a Gravity Falls blog, but I also go on tangents about Star Wars and Discworld fairly often. Other recurring interests I might go a year without mentioning but also might drop 5000 words about at any time include The Wheel of Time, roleplaying games whose sourcebooks I like, and various members of the Bronte family and their assorted works and also books written about either of those things. Other series and subjects come up if/when my attention lands on them for some reason.

Q: Any writing goals for the year?

A: Yes, but since I didn’t succeed in any of the ones I posted last year, I’m keeping the details classified this year. It makes me annoyed with myself, because it’s irrational, but I’m mildly superstitious about that kind of thing. It combines about as poorly as you’d expect with my much stronger tendency to ramble about anything I’m even remotely interested in to anyone who stands still a little too long.

Books Started And Finished This Year, 2025

1. Guards, Guards! - Terry Pratchett

2. The House of My Mother - Shari Franke (eb)

3. Men At Arms - Terry Pratchett

4. The Beginner’s Guide to Runes - Josh Simonds

5. The Korean Myths: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, and Legends - Heinz Insu Fenkl and Bella Myŏng-wŏl Dalton-Fenkl *

6. The Chinese Myths: A Guide to the Gods and Legends - Tao Tao Liu *

7. The Japanese Myths: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, and Spirits - Joshua Frydman *

8. The Japanese Yokai Handbook: A Guide to the Spookiest Ghosts, Demons, Monsters, and Evil Creatures from Japanese Folklore - Masami Kinoshita *

9. The Aztec Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Stories and Legends - Camilla Townsend

10. Discourses of the Elders: The Aztec Huehuetlatolli, A First English Translation - Sebastian Purcell *

11. The Egyptian Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends - Garry J. Shaw

12. The Norse Myths: A Guide to the Gods and Heroes - Carolyne Larrington

13. The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction - Jamie Kreiner *

14. Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe - Patricia Ranft *

15. Uncomfortable Conversations With A Jew - Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby *

16. How the Talmud Can Change Your Life: Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book - Liel Leibovitz *

17. Living Theravada: Demystifying the People, Places, and Practices of a Buddhist Tradition - Brooke Schedneck *

18. The Diary Keepers: World War II in the Netherlands, as Written By The People Who Lived Through It - Nina Siegal *

19. The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History - John Anthony McGuckin *

20. Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout - Cal Newport (eb)

21. Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors - Sarah Stodola (eb)

22. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work - Mason Currey (eb)

23. Cloistered: My Years as a Nun - Catherine Coldstream (eb)

24. Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany - James Wyllie

25. Writing After Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life - Bonnie Friedman

26. Candela Obscura Core Rulebook - Rowan Hall and Spenser Starke (eb)

27. Anybody Can Write: A Playful Approach; Ideas for the aspiring, the beginning, and the blocked writer - Roberta Jean Bryant

28. Odd Type Writers: From Joyce and Dickens to Wharton and Welty, the Obsessive Habits and Quirky Techniques of Great Authors - Celia Blue Johnson

29. The Writing of Fiction: The Classic Guide to the Art of the Short Story and the Novel - Edith Wharton (eb)

30. Becoming A Writer - Dorothea Brande

31. On Becoming A Novelist - John Gardner

32. One Writer’s Beginnings - Eudora Welty

33. A Writer’s Notebook: Everything I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Starting Out - John Scherber (eb)

34. Trail of Cthulhu Rulebook - Kenneth Hite

35. You Are A Writer (So Start Acting Like One) - Jeff Goins (eb)

36. Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent - Mary Lavan

37. Call of Cthulhu: Secrets of New Orleans - Fred Van Lente et al

38. The King In Yellow (Pushkin Press edition) - Robert W. Chambers

39. Call of Cthulhu: Ripples From Carcosa - Oscar Rios et al.

40. Star Wars Age of Rebellion: Cyphers and Masks: A Sourcebook for Spies - various

41. World War Cthulhu: The SOE Handbook: Tradecraft and the Ungentlemanly Art of Sabotage in World War Two - Scott Dorwardvabd Martin Dougherty

42. Star Wars Sourcebook, Second Edition - Curtis Smith and Bill Slavicsek

40. Call of Cthulhu: Berlin - The Wicked City - David Larkins, Mike Mason, Lynne Hardy

41. Can Such Things Still Be?: A Complete Literary Guide to the King in Yellow - various

[luna-azzurra]

Chaotic gremlin best friends!!

⟢ "I need an alibi for Tuesday." - "What time." - "You didn't ask what I did." - "What time."

⟢ "Hypothetically." - "No." - "You didn't hear the question." - "Hypothetically no."

⟢ "I did something." - "Scale of one to ten." - "Depends who's asking." "Me." - "Seven." - "Police." - "Four." - "God." - "Thirteen."

⟢ "We need to leave."- "Why." - "I'll explain in the car." - "Why." - "I'll explain in a different country."

⟢ "This is your fault." - "You literally came up with the idea." - "I have bad ideas all the time, you're not supposed to DO them."

⟢ "Okay hear me out." - "My lawyer has advised me not to hear you out." - "You don't have a lawyer." - "I'm getting one specifically for conversations with you."

⟢ "Nobody got hurt." - "Physically." . "Nobody got physically hurt." - "Yet." - "Nobody has gotten physically hurt yet, which is a win."

⟢ "I have a type." - "Yeah?" - "People who are bad for me and you specifically." - "That's not a type that's a pattern." - "Same thing."

⟢ "What's the worst that could happen." - "I have a list. It's laminated. I made it specifically for when you say that."

⟢ "Rate my decision making." - "Historically or right now." - "Both." - "Zero. Consistent zero across the board."

⟢ "You're the only person I trust." - "I dropped your birthday cake last year and told you it arrived like that." - "Yeah but you still got me a cake."

⟢ "I need your honest opinion." - "It's bad." - "You didn't see it yet." - "I've met you. It's bad."

⟢ "Why do you even keep me around." - "Honestly? Entertainment. And you're warm in winter."

⟢ "I wasn't thinking." - "First time for everything." - "I resent that." - "Statistically valid though."

⟢ "On a scale of fine to not fine." - "Remember that time in Prague." - "We don't talk about Prague." - "That fine."

⟢ "Nobody panic but." - "I'm already panicking." - "I haven't said anything yet." - "I know you. I'm getting ahead of it."

⟢ "Promise you won't be mad." - "Absolutely not, that's a trap and I won't fall for it."

⟢ "I have good news and bad news." - "Good news first." - "The car is fine." - "And the bad." - "Define car."

⟢ "You're my emergency contact." - "I know." - "You're listed as my next of kin." - "I know." - "You're also listed as my therapist, my lawyer, and my spiritual advisor." - "I know." - "Do you want to talk about that." - "Nope." - "Cool."

⟢ "I'm a responsible adult."- "You once called me crying because you got your sleeve caught in a door and didn't know what to do." - "I was panicking." - "For forty minutes." - "It was really stuck."

⟢ "I regret everything." - "No you don't." - "No I don't but I feel like I should." - "Same honestly."

[callipraxia]

I return to the Internet from the weird world of painting custom action figures because others need to suffer through the thing my brain just concocted: the Star Wars prequels as early 2000s teen…comedy?

So I painted Captain Panaka yesterday, and putting him on the mantel to dry with the rest of the Battle of Naboo figures I made recently made me think “they look like they’re marching into the Big Cheerleader Competition at the end of a movie circa 2008,” and then….

Movie One:

Setting: high school. Nute Gunray, a rich kid who goes to private school, has his lawyer dad pay off the judges at a Model U.N. convention to spite Naboo High’s star delegate, Padmé Amidala. While everyone was partying and letting off steam at Sheev Palpatine’s place afterward, her buddy Panaka came up with the idea to solve it all through betting on a dance competition between the newly-formed dance teams at both schools:

Nute Gunray, as the snotty opposition captain: “Nice squad you’ve put together here, Panaka. You brought…that weird girl who volunteered to take shop class [Eirtae], Soapbox Sadie [Padme], and America’s Next Top Con Artist! [Rabe] Oh…and who can forget the chick who dropped out of band camp for this solely because of her massive lesbian crush on Sadie?”

*Sabe’s face slowly lights up*

Sabé: “Of course! I’ve been wondering what to do with that flute ever since I quit band. I know now! I’m going to make you eat it!”

*Nute processes this, then runs, conveniently being chased around long enough for Anakin to quietly sabotage the elaborate machinery the opposition was hinging its whole dance routine on*

Anakin: “Nobody but me gets to be known for engineering things or win America’s Next Top Con Artist.”

Movie Two:

*when Nute’s lawyer dad is challenging the Squad’s right to the dance-off victory despite them officially having nothing to do with Mr. Jinn from the social studies department or his two weird foster sons who just happened to be underfoot and somehow broke all the opposition’s toys that day:*

Padmé: “Now do you see why I wanted to solve this at the regional Model U.N. convention instead of doing all those dance team shenanigans? This is the fourth time we’ve re-litigated this, and now Sheev’s talked to Windy and Windy talked to Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan’s weird little brother is stalking me or something to make sure Nute and that guy they call Count don’t sabotage my senior civics project.”

Anakin: *now a high school freshman, cycles through embarrassment, anger, and sadness in the background, aware he probably could have tried slightly harder to conceal his massive precocious crush on Padmé*

*later, after Anakin goes on a bender and starts and wins a massive brawl at summer camp*

Padmé: “Everything is wrong with this. Why am I now finding you less creepy and actually kinda hot?”

Movie Three:

Anakin: “We’re finally going to beat the Separatists for the football championship this year! It’s too bad you won’t go to Homecoming with me.”

Padmé: “Look, Anakin, I love you, but it is not appropriate for someone in her junior year of college to date someone in his senior year of high school. We can’t go public now. It would tank my internship chances forever - “

Anakin: “You’re sure that’s what it’s about? And not just you secretly cheating on me with my brother?”

Padmé: “…are you sure everything you’ve been smoking is legal? Because that’s ridiculous.”

Anakin, who is, in fact, high as a kite on this new designer drug, “Dark Side,” but is trying to conceal it: “Sheev told me he saw you and Obi-Wan talking outside your dorm last week.”

Padmé: “You’re going to listen to literally anything Sheev says these days? He’s just butthurt that I signed that petition for a city ordinance that would break up his weird house parties for teenagers last week.”

*later, while they do drugs together*

Anakin: “You’re the only person in this town I even trust anymore, Sheev.”

Palpatine: “…all according to plan!”

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Anakin were framed as “Mr. Jinn’s foster kids” in the first one, so I suppose Mr Jinn got Mauled by something during the dance competition and social services (the Jedi Council) inexplicably allowed Obi-Wan, at eighteen, newly graduated from high school, to retain custody of his gifted-but-troubled adoptive little brother. So Obi-Wan had nothing to do with this really, but he and Padmé were friendly at college while he desperately tried to pretend she wasn’t the secret girlfriend of his teenaged brother-slash-ward. Sure she skipped like three grades in elementary school, but…it’s still weird and problematic and he just doesn’t want to deal with it until…

Padmé, catching Anakin at Club Mustafar: “Obi-Wan was right. You’re doing drugs again!”

Anakin: “Don’t talk to me about him!”

knocks her down and is seen by Obi-Wan, who followed her there trying to find Anakin after finding drug paraphernalia and a weird voicemail from Sheev in Anakin’s room.

Obi-Wan: “Dude! What the hell?!”

Anakin: “I hate you!”

*they have a fight which ends when Obi-Wan gains a height advantage on the stoop and uses it to clock Anakin over the head with a bottle. He then, thinking he just killed his brother and realizing what two people on the ground and him standing will look like to the cops even before they hear the love triangle rumor, flees for the gang-ridden urban desert of Tatooine City, as this series has suddenly jumped the shark and now makes Degrassi look cheerful and undramatic. Everyone also now knows Sheev - who they always thought of as just this cool guy who would let the high schoolers party at his house - is actually a drug kingpin, but since he’s already basically bought the local government with all the money he made selling Dark Side and he has no competition in town since Anakin just shot Nute and his lawyer dad for him….

[ryan-sometimes]

As an autistic/adhd person going through the job search process I’ve learned to phrase my autistic/adhd traits as corporate friendly things. Here’s some examples:

I have trouble reading between the lines and picking up on implicit information? Actually, I’ve learned the importance of giving and receiving precise, specific instructions in order to avoid time consuming miscommunications.

I’m easily bored with only one task? Actually, I have a curious mind and thrive in places with a wide range of tasks as I prefer dynamic environments where I can contribute to many projects.

I have trouble with white lies that are merely social niceties? Actually, I prioritize a transparent work environment where we can tackle issues head-on.

This way I don’t have to lie, but rather just spin my truth in a way that’s palatable to them.

[callipraxia]

*scribbles notes*

Though I still wonder how much I really have to lose, if I ever just snap and write down something along the lines of “I want this job because it’s one of the less-painful-sounding ways to get money that I have run across lately. If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time. When you’ve got no more money, honey, I’ll have no more time, but until then, I would like a relationship where I consistently input work and you consistently output checks and that’s it.”

Another reason to finish the book. If I somehow make a really good book deal, I’ll just be honest on a job application, just to see what happens. Admittedly a long shot, but a girl can dream….

[gobusto]

saw someone mix up "abysmal" and "abyssal" today, so as a reminder:

her skills are abysmal = she is unskilled

her skills are abyssal = her abilities draw upon the forbidden power of the dark void

[witchinatower]

More ADHD Mabels! 🩷 The executives are dysfunctioning...

[callipraxia]

“I’ll just do my homework in the last minute panic” - ADHD life. At least until you fail once and the world doesn’t end, at which point life becomes ten times more difficult. Hopefully Mabel can skip that part….

[enotfantaser]

Another attempt to crawl out of the art block😅🥲

[songbird-is-crying]

i think peak historical fiction is when there is a random ass major historical figure but as a comedic relief side character. like geoffrey chaucer being a naked gambling addict in a knight’s tale or leonardo da vinci being cinderella’s fairy godmother in ever after. like. nothing can top that.

[morriganwarrior]

Next best thing are historical fantasy shows that name-drop or have flashbacks to when characters interacted with historical figures, and they are shown as being somewhat (or vastly) different from their historical presentation. BEING HUMAN when someone praised Paul Revere in Aidan's presence and Aidan mutters, "What a tool". The show version of SLEEPY HOLLOW when Ichabod Crane had facial expressions that screamed like a random test of the emergency alert system, with an accompanying flashback, every time Thomas Jefferson was mentioned. Or, Castlevania when Alucard sees the Mona Lisa and chuckles, saying how Leonardo never thought it was one of his best and a few minutes later he's interrupting a meeting Robespeare is having in Paris to throw a severed vampire's head at him.

[kyraneko]

Reblogging this version because the description "facial expressions that screamed like a random test of the emergency alert system" is sending me.

SPECTACULAR imagery. I have never seen whichever version of Sleepy Hollow you're talking about but I can feel this in my soul.

[callipraxia]

New idea: “The Fisher King as Metaphor For What You Might Get With A Chosen One With Untreated ADHD.”

[callipraxia]

Back Again

...I knew I had been out of it, but I haven't posted on tumblr since last September? Eek. It's worse than I thought.

I'm just finishing the second of two ice storms in two weeks, all of this after I had my first and hopefully last-ever seizure last year and managed to destroy my laptop in the process. So many things I'm reconstructing from the ground...but so it goes. The loss of a good number of documents may, though, explain why I got distracted by a whole new hobby, which is...taking action figures and repainting and kitbashing them into the protagonists of the original novel I've been working on since October. Might share some of the resulting photographs, we'll see, but alas - this hobby was kinda expensive, so I'm back to writing.

What am I writing? Er...

...I suppose there still is the original novel, but nobody wants to read that, so...we'll revisit this question...soon. Hopefully. Still need to finish the Star Wars AU, and have so many Gravity Falls ideas that didn't get written before my brain turned on me, surely, now that I am more or less used to New Laptop, I can get somethin done with that many options.

Hope everyone's doing well, and to pick up the habit of socializing properly again soon!

[callipraxia]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/68814326/chapters/185701326

Yay, a chapter! In which we are reunited with a character we haven’t seen in a while and watch her situation steadily move from bad to worse.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[callipraxia]

Chapter seven! A message is smuggled out of Aldera, a young woman is thrown into the deep end of a political crisis, and C-3PO and R2-D2 make an appearance!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[callipraxia]

Chapter Six...

...is posted. Queen Breha tries to act normal, Admiral Tarkin reluctantly entertains a guest, Sabé prepares for trouble, and Saché thinks she's already found some.

Star AUs, Episode V: The Runaway Princess - Chapter 6 - Callipraxia - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

[callipraxia]

Notes - Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Disc 1

I started watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars in (I think) late 2023...aaand then my grandmother broke her hip. Suffice it to say, I stayed wherever the heck I was in Season 3 without prospect of rescue for some time. Since I already got one annoying surprise from a sourcebook that means I pretty much need to go rewrite a decent chunk of two chapters of Empress, I figured I probably ought to finish watching the show*; since it's been quite some time, I figured I might as well start it over from the beginning. So I did. Notes and general impressions....

The 'Malevolence' trilogy makes retroactive sense of why Darth Vader was the least optimistic in the room about the undefeatability of the Death Star; Grievous thought the Malevolence's weapons were unstoppable, too, and that...didn't work out so well for him, did it.

Interesting way to introduce Padmé; Palpatine really either was virtually omniscient or else quite the gambler, because she could have gotten killed several different ways (including blowing herself and Threepio hangar-roof-high with the shuttle), and that might have been...bad, from a Lord Sidious point of view. The ploy did complete its primary mission ("make the fleet stop shooting at what's left of General Grievous'), but if Palpatine didn't have perfect foresight (which it's implied he didn't; he might have come close, but he doesn't seem to have anticipated his own disfigurement, much less his own death), then that was...risky: "I need you dead, woman, but not right now!"

Aw, heck, two disks of this a day are not gonna do good things for my blood pressure, are they? This is...one reason I usually don't watch action movies. Oh, well, at least I'll get plenty of exercise pacing the floor when I get too over-stimulated to continue sitting properly. There's eighteen disks in seasons 1-5 and who knows how many in 6-7, those are two different boxes I haven't opened yet. I do not have the confidence to wager on my life going right for eighteen straight days in a row, much less that plus another week or two to account for the last two seasons.

Hi Fives! Hi Echo! Good seeing you boys again, hopefully y'all's contributions to parts of the first three seasons not exactly being in chronological order won't be as surreal and brain-breaking for me this time as they were last time.

...'Kay, we were watching a grim kid's show, now we've got pinup girls, people getting shot repeatedly at point-blank range, the ensuing corpse**, heroic suicide, and they said the word "hell" twice in twenty minutes without it even being a particularly important bit of the scene. Frollo is spinning in his grave somewhere, and Xanatos is probably a little annoyed, too - he got away with saying that on Disney Channel, but he did it in 1994, in the Dark Age of comic books, iirc, and also only got to do it once on television, I think, and in the context of a place name, not a swear word. Though they did let them have "pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into hell," visible blood, visible bodies, and semi-realistic shootouts in the premiere, so Gargoyles is still holding its own in the Edgiest Disney Show competition.

They're all on DVD because I do not watch audiovisual media nearly enough to justify paying for a streaming service and therefore was still doing physical media a couple of years before it became cool again; the Mouse is gaining no additional revenue, and probably never got any from me anyway, since I bought these on eBay and I think I recall getting them cheaper than any self-respecting Big Corporation would have allowed me to get that much material for.

There was also a visibly dead person in the episode where Master Plo and friends were stuck in the pod in addition to the people we simply know were dead due to their circumstances, but since I thought it was a battle droid for a moment and it wasn't there much longer, so I feel justified in including this in the "...well, that happened" noted.

[callipraxia]

Star AUs, Episode V: The Runaway Princess - Chapter 5 - Callipraxia - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

In which Leia makes a deal, Luke reluctantly accepts some uncomfortable realities, and nobody knows what's really going on in Yoda's head.

[callipraxia]

Friend’s Book is published! See y’all in several hours….

[jewreallythinkthat]

I bring a sort of "no one deserves to to be murdered" vibe to the political discussion which a large number of people on both sides of the spectrum seem to dislike

[callipraxia]

Literally the first thing my whole family has agreed on politically in the past decade. You know the situation’s getting dire when my aunt is actually right about something….