The Left Hand of the Pillar of Darkness

Software engineer, dabbles in speculative fiction writing. Fellow creature. Older than the dinosaurs. Atheist who loves and sings religious music. I write about writing, choral music and Sacred Harp singing, occasionally parenting, programming, and books.

[raindoor]

Software engineering gothic

Modeled after the Texas gothic, graduate school gothic and similar memes.

* * *

The new release is deployed. You reload the application in your browser, and your screen fills up with lorem ipsum data. This is what all your customers are seeing now. Your conference bridge lights up with a flurry of panicked messages. "The devs forgot to replace the mock API calls with the real ones," says a manager.

An emergency fix is quickly rolled out. You refresh your browser. You still see Lorem ipsum, and so does everyone else. Where is it being cached? Everybody clears their browser cache; the mock data is still there. Your teammates dig deeply into their AWS management consoles, going through every setting that controls the caching. You know it's futile; the mock data has killed the real data and is doomed to be there forever.

* * *

The disaster recovery test is on Saturday night, but the manager's email says it's on Friday. No one reacts, no one asks questions. You are afraid to ask; you don't want to find out what would happen if you broke the silence.

Just to be safe, you join the conference line on Friday night: you can't sleep anyway. The conference line is silent. There is not even static. Then you hear a beep, as if someone has joined the line, but no one speaks. Another beep, then another. After listening to those beeps for ten minutes, you are afraid you are starting to discern a pattern. You hang up before you can hear the next one. You can't let them complete the pattern.

* * *

A patient has two insurances, but your software won't let them access the second one. "This feature was implemented a year ago," the team lead complains, "what happened?" You find the old JIRA ticket for this feature; it was marked as having passed the tests and signed off by QA and product owner. You dig through the code, and here it is, deep in the bowels of a SQL query. The query is hardcoded to check just the first insurance provider. The QA and PO that signed off on the feature are long gone. The HR database has no records of their existence.

[animate-mush]

Since tumblr is currently very excited about versions of Project Hail Mary we made up in our head, an interesting thought experiment might be: what would Rocky sound like if lexicologized and translated by someone else?

The meat of the story is linguistics being done by a non-linguist, which means that Rocky's use of language tells us something about Eridian language but tells us way more about Ryland Grace's translation choices.

Fffffffffff this dovetails so well with my unwritten space story where the team linguist is NOT the archeologist but rather the techie. Dr Zeke Arnolds my irritating beloved, you coulda been played by Ryan Gosling *wipes tear* .....man, Zeke woulda been so rude to Grace about literally everything. [Zeke Arnolds is of course named after the legendary Arnold Zwicky, styled after my irl colleague REDACTED, and fueled by the sort of linguist rage and pedantry you can only acquire in graduate school. Ah, memories...]

On a side note, Rocky is named after a common noun of English that presumably has nothing to do with whatever meaning is name has in Eridian. The name "Rocky" is corefferent with his actual name but it does not translate it. What if Grace's name is the same way? The name Rocky gives him doesn't mean grace, it means This Guy. But the point of the story is that these guys are exactly the same, so what if Rocky assigned him some epithet that was a common noun in Eridian, based on the substance he's composed of

Rocky: can't proceed. Grace all over floor.

Grace: I - what?

Rocky: not human Grace. Just grace.

Grace: ...describe what that word means

Rocky: small liquid contained. Grace.

Grace: ....

Grace: YOU NAMED ME PUDDLE

....okay this was in no way the point of the post but my new headcanon is that Grace's Eridian name is "Puddleglum." Because he is a sad contained liquid.

Grace: actually my name means "divine mercy freely given"

Rocky: Understand. Humans bad at names

[fandomwithbenefits]

Fandom with Benefits - Comment Bingo

It is time to spread the love with our June 2026 Comment Bingo. Try and fill four in a row, column, or diagonal, or let all the creators out there know how much you appreciate them 🤍🩶🖤 and go for a full black-out!

(textual version behind the readmore ↓)

Brag about your progress and inspire others to follow in your footsteps! Use the #fandomwithbenefits and #FwB2026 Comment Bingo tags to make your post findable.

As a reminder of our general rules, there is no deadline to contribute, if you wonder 'Is X allowed?' the answer is probably yes, and we highly appreciate all kind of works—not just fanfic or fanart!

If you have any questions or feedback, drop us an Ask or a DM! ❤️ Need even more inspiration? Check out our previous events.👀

The comment prompts are listed in order of the grid (rows 1 through 4, columns A through D):

1A: user's first work

1B: a drabble (exactly 100 words)

1C: comment more than 100 words

1D: a work you have bookmarked or saved

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2A: written before canon (jossed)

2B: less than 500 hits

2C: non-fic (audio, art, poetry,meta,...)

2D: liveblog in comments

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3A: quote your favorite sentence

3B: a genre or trope you've never read before

3C: first comment on work

3D: one of oldest 20 works in a fandom or ship

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4A: anonymous work

4B: describe how it made you feel

4C: an old fandom of yours

4D: by user with less than 10 works

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Credit: background image by Eva Bronzini @ pexels.com heart vector by kjpargeter @ freepik

[lacnunga]

One of my least favourite tropes is when humans meet non-human characters (or in certain circumstances, other human characters) who use numbers as names and immediately insist on giving them word names because numbers are degrading. Its such a surface level pundit take that immediately demonstrates that you consider your culture universal and - worse - don't even know it.

[raindoor]

I'm not sure if I've ever read this trope, but it makes me feel validated in preferring to be given a number at a deli for picking up my order, rather than my name. I'm always nauseated to hear my name bellowed across the restaurant, mispronounced to unrecognizability. I would much, much rather be a #38 or whatever.

[contentedreader]

It had never occurred to me until this moment that when Starbucks asks for my name I could tell them it is some completely random number, like, say, 47b.

[ukfrislandembassy]

A while back I decorated both my Sacred Harp and my Shenandoah Harmony, because why not. It's nice to sing from a book that you've marked as your own.

[mi4tis]

[unquietgravekeeper]

Why must so many cereals carve their names in the roof on my mouth like death row cells

[rosieandthemoon]

ruins of St Andrews Cathedral in Fife, Scotland

[raindoor]

One of my acquaintances from non-shape-note circles, who sings in various choirs, recently found out about shape note singing at an experimental classical music festival. That was about a week ago. I've been to that festival in the past, but did not go this year, because it is outdoors, and in the end of May in Texas it means you would be cooking alive.

Turns out, one of the ensembles performed what my acquaintance called "ummm… shape singing?", and after asking her to clarify, I found out that yes, they were talking about shape notes. Apparently the performers gave the audience a crash course of shape note singing, and then they all sang together with the audience. (If I understood correctly.)

What's strange is that I don't think any members of that ensemble ever came to our Sacred Harp group (though we have a few people who sing professionally, so it would not be out of the realm of possibility). Nor did I hear anyone in the local Sacred Harp group mention that festival. But maybe they talked about it when I wasn't present. It is, in any case, an interesting disconnect.

[wigglybunfish]

breq playing that stringed instrument at strigan's!! picturing it as something alike to the himalayan dramyin. (not pictured: seivarden half dead in the bg)

“A wooden box sat on a table in a corner, a long oval with a carved, pierced lid and three strings stretched tight across. The wood was pale gold, with a waving, curling grain. The holes cut in the flat top were as uneven and intricate as the grain of the wood. It was a beautiful thing. I plucked a string and it rang softly.”

[lacnunga]

One of my least favourite tropes is when humans meet non-human characters (or in certain circumstances, other human characters) who use numbers as names and immediately insist on giving them word names because numbers are degrading. Its such a surface level pundit take that immediately demonstrates that you consider your culture universal and - worse - don't even know it.

[raindoor]

I'm not sure if I've ever read this trope, but it makes me feel validated in preferring to be given a number at a deli for picking up my order, rather than my name. I'm always nauseated to hear my name bellowed across the restaurant, mispronounced to unrecognizability. I would much, much rather be a #38 or whatever.

[animate-mush]

"Hugh said let's sing such and such and I said 'oh we don't do that one.'

And Hugh said:

🎶 FA🎵 "

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

do me and you a favour tumblr & tell me in the tags about a memory that makes you happy, from any point in your life. just the happy memory, without caveats or regrets.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

this is so nice guys i want more of these

[avi-mation]

Earth’s Scapegoat and her Sacrificial Lamb

[a-very-lost-lily]

“The man of business gave a short laugh — laughter which was clearly directed at Mr Honeyfoot, yet Mr Norrell did not reprimand him either by look or word, and Mr Segundus wondered what sort of business it could be that Mr Norrell entrusted to this person. With his long hair as ragged as rain and as black as thunder, he would have looked quite at home upon a windswept moor, or lurking in some pitch-black alleyway, or perhaps in a novel by Mrs Radcliffe.” -Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke

As you can see I was not quite done, though this is more of a glorified sketch I’m happy with it.

I’ve been drawing horses so often I really did apply for a job at my local stables. Here’s to hoping. Also can you tell I love John Bauer.

Need I say more.

[a-very-lost-lily]

He deserves to have this moment immortalized.

Rather, he deserves everything.

Anyway.. I’m known to be a babbler, so babble I will.

This scene really spoke to the child in me, the child I was and hope to save.

"Do the magic, Mr Segundus.”

And oh how I wished I could. Any child would pretend, I believed with my whole heart aching. I still do, when the mood strikes me. And often do such moods strike magicians.

As much as I may think myself to be a merely theoretical.. I can think of many ways to be practical. I may not weave my own iron cross and lift a fairy curse, but I can still make beautiful things happen and that is magic enough.

"So Mr Segundus did the magic."

Furthermore,

I wonder if you can tell who (one of) my most favorite character(s) is.

I may try to paint this sketch another day, but it gave me such trouble when I first attempted it. But I must do the magic!!

[rowanisawriter]

write insane shit that’s way beyond your perceived ability and skill level even if you don’t finish it even if you think it sucks