ojou-sama blog

[kcflowers]

Chapter 7 - Carmilla

Chapter 7 of my Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanfic, "And Thus The Heavens Wept" is now out! Did you know Tomoe Mami can play cat's cradle? How about Kyoko being the best DDR player in Kazamino? Well, the author of this story sure does. Read from the beginning here. "Chapter Image" is by MihifuHi on Twitter.

[blueey-jayzilla]

Home run show fr

[kcflowers]

Walpurgisnacht Rising Runes

As part of advertising for the new movie, Shaft had an installation that had a prayer shrine to Kyubey (yuck!) and bannerstands for the magical girls of the holy quintet (incl. nagisa, even if the name is wrong.)

Here's where it gets interesting though. The runes on the bottom of each banner are correct for each magical girl, the same pattern as shown on their soul gems when in ring form, and as shown in concept and production art.

Except Homura. Hers is written in latin runes, previously used for main series content only for her Nightmares inside her labyrinth, and only in their appearance in Magia Record (the gatcha game). Hers are legible as "English", and I suspect that's because, well.... she's a witch. She can read her own runes. So even the advertisement is heavyhanded enough to have as much listed.

(Photos taken from Reddit here)

[tomoyoirl]

hat!!!

[tomoyoirl]

Imagine if you will that you ordered some coffee last year, on Black Friday sale, as a treat (and maybe to hedge against inflation a bit). It is a subscription coffee service, a 12oz bag every month for 12 months.

It is now month 11 (you paused the subscription for a month earlier in the year) and the coffee supplier warehouse has made an error: instead of sending you 12 ounces as part of your 12 month subscription, they have sent you 12 bags, 144oz, 9lb of coffee, currently worth $360ish retail (with tax), which is more you ever paid for the subscription up front. (You were wondering why a signature was required.)

A fantastical and unexpected bounty!

But you cannot drink this much coffee in a timely fashion. It will go stale. You figure you can do four of them at most, if you postpone next month's delivery, and that's kinda stretching it. So you look around for friends to share it with. Some do not drink coffee. One roasts her own. One who you thought an easy answer has actually switched to a mushroom-based coffeelike blend. Another does drink coffee, but does not have a coffee brewer or grinder anymore, and so refuses on that account. (You contemplate buying a small grinder on Amazon just to make it happen anyway, but demur.) You even contemplate spending money to send some to your ex, who you are not even on good terms with.

You do finally manage to send one bag to one good friend who does not drink coffee, but does have some friends who do. She reassures you that you have not hurt her feelings by offering to send this to her, and this is good, because the last thing you'd want is to make her feel bad about this (or about her own hangups around accepting things that impact her enough already.)

You feel distant.

This not only happened, but also is a dangerously apt metaphor for much of my life.

[atwotonedbird]

Huevember Day 15: Madoka Kaname (Ultimate form) from Puella Magi Madoka Magica

[tomoyoirl]

i think i am reminding myself with this trip that I am very tired of exploring places alone

and that i would very much like to explore them with people, or for people, or just spending time with people... instead

[eternalfarnham]

Very belatedly:

1,000 kudos on Questing Beast. You're all lunatics. It's Homura/Kyubey xenofiction and it's already 100k words. I expected like three people to get into this, tops.

[tomoyoirl]

read this fanfic, it's better than mine

[tomoyoirl]

in which Tomoe Mami takes command of a spaceship

as it turns out I am a mad fan of Madoka Magica and have written about 300,000 words of fanfiction for madoka-fanfiction (yes that's second-order fanfiction).

this post is a rough draft of a fan-music concept for @ttshieronym's well-known To The Stars. I'm trying to get the general vibe of things right before I dive too deep into making a big score or anything.

Visit Original Link

My tentative instrumentation plan:

-> Human fleet can have all the brass it likes. -> Magical girls get traditional world-music instrumentation -> TTS protagonist Ryouko, as the voice of the Earth, gets the didgeridoo (the voice of the Earth)... if I can pull it off, anyway, it's a wild design choice :D -> the alien Ceph get the haunting vocals of Uyanga Bold. and gongs.

This particular piece pays homage to Lyrical Nanoha's soundtrack, specifically Gin no Tsubasa "Arthra", as the original example of Meguca Can Into Space. (Well, at least the first one that I know of in the sense of having an organized space fleet and all that technology and such: something like the transient abduction of Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel isn't the same sort of thing doesn't really count, and neither does Usagi Saga's adventures in Crystal Tokyo and the sailor's eponymous Moon.)

[tomoyoirl]

i am cute and domestic and know how to make food

[wonderstruck]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[greyscale-manta]

I don’t think it has a tag ( ;-.-)

“How The Questing Beast Chased, and Caught, Her Own Tail” on AO3

It’s a xenofiction from the perspective of Kyuubey from Madoka Magica, set during the Wraitch Arc.

[tomoyoirl]

hmmmm lessee here

last fanfic: Sous-chef (Madoka fanfic, short)

last original online story: Electric Emily (short)

last long online work partway read: also Questing Beast, per above

last book in progress (electronic format): Sailor Moon (manga)

actual physical book (random reading with no plan to finish): Texas Letters (nonfiction / depressing)

actual physical book (reread): Cardcaptor Sakura vol. 1

last actual normal physical book, still reading: The Sparrow

(nonfiction reference material for weaving patterns doesn't count)

[tomoyoirl]

October Three cake

Happy October 3 to those who celebrate!

Featuring:

shortbread

strawberries

homemade matcha whipped cream

a little powdered sugar

and also:

the raspberry

the apple

the cheese

the pumpkin, full of seeds

the melon

[matupito]

perpetually grieving child

art commission sheet

almost forgot to draw her ring.. twice

[tomoyoirl]

... thiiiiiiiiiiiiis hits *way* too close to home 😭

[sailor-moon-rei]

by 포댕댕

art republished with artist’s permission

[tomoyoirl]

Adventure report 04/05

Dual excursions into Marin. I had an appointment near San Rafael and wanted to see what crossing would be like on a motorcycle, so for the first occasion I headed out on a Friday afternoon. Bianca performed admirably, even uphill in a headwind, and I determined I would try another adventure. Thus it was that I went up CA-1 as the sun set.

If you have been here yourself you may understand the implications: *some* of the sharpest turns on the edge of ocean cliffs have railings, but most don't. It is the wildest and windiest stretch of road I have been on in my life. I made no speed records, but gave no reason for traffic to be frustrated with me, either.

These pictures cannot do it justice.

The return visit did not see me on this route, but I can report that for the southbound trip the sight of the white cloud as I approached the bridge was stunning. I wish I could have a picture, but I was kind of busy riding :)

This land is a beautiful one.

[tomoyoirl]

The machine god is old hat

The book for our times is a CS Lewis novel written in 1945 that you've likely never heard of. You should read this book.

I say this ardently, but with reservations. My exhortation to read it is not because it is a good book. Orwell famously thought it was pretty okay, at least "by the standards of books these days," but that it was flawed and he could do better, and then he wrote 1984. He might have been right. Also, it is the third in a trilogy, but you are probably not here for Christian philosophy: skip the others by default. The text, like many old ones, is problematic and you should not agree with all that Lewis has to say. He is dated at best, and a little sexist, and quite heteronormarive; his portrayal of the villianous evil lesbian chief-of-secret-police is kind of hilarious (after all, one does not usually expect Clive Staples Lewis and lesbians in the same sentence, let alone one having her way with a "fluffy little girl" down in the cells) and she is a little bit more than a shallow villainous caricature (our protagonist Mark actually thinks she's surprisingly cool)... but she is not much more.

But everything old is new again. Segregationists are fêted openly, empathy called a sin. Read, then of the conflicts of old that afflict us still. And this is a book about the rise of fascism (here envisioned taking place in polite society of postwar England.) This is a book about the men who will build the machine-god, pronounce humanity obsolete, and set out to rule Earth.

In our world today, are these not our stakes?

Because it is Lewis, an academic, writing the story, much of this is set at a university, but it is easy enough to see industrialists today interested in exactly the same things.

What things? Oh, you know.

"We have found how to make a dead man live. He was a wise man even in his natural life. He live now forever: he get wiser. Later, we make them live better--for at present, one must concede, this second life is probably not very agreeable to him who has it. You see? Later we make it pleasant for some--perhaps not so pleasant for others. For we can make the dead live whether they wish it or not.

Eternal life. The power to grand and withhold it. The power to build Hell and punish your enemies. Dominion over Nature herself. The next step beyond humanity, and the power to declare humanity as we know it obsolete, fit to be discarded.

You know. The same garbage that Silicon Valley execs are spewing? It goes back to Federov, if you want to get down to it.

Lewis's villians, of course, do not speak of Rationalism. They will encourage you to break down all your prejudices and notions of right and wrong submit to the pure logic (the logic of power) using the name "Objectivity."

"Before going on," said Frost, "I must ask you to be strictly objective. Resentment and fear are both chemical phenomena. Our reactions to one another are chemical phenomena. Social relations are chemical relations. You must observe these feelings in yourself in an objective manner. Do not let them distract your attention from the facts... A circle bound together by subjective feelings of mutual confidence and liking would be useless. Those, as I have said, are chemical phenomena. They could all, in principle, be produced by injections... In so far as there must be social relations between members of the circle it is, perhaps, better that they should be feelings of dislike. There is less risk of their being confused with the real nexus."

(No word on using Harry Potter fanfic as training material. That's modern innovation.)

Because it is Lewis, also, the craftsmanship of the words is exquisite, and on display we will find his appreciation for the beautiful, old, natural things, domestic things. A true romance, a love of the simple things in life, pervades all his works:

Edgestow itself, for those who had reached it from London, had all the appearances of a terminus: but if you looked about you, you might see presently, in a bay, a little train of two or three coaches and a tank engine--a train that sizzled and exuded steam from beneath the footboards and in which most of the passengers seemed to know one another. On some days, instead of the third coach, there might be a horse-box, and on the platform there would be hampers containing dead rabbits or live poultry, and men in brown bowler hats and gaiters, and perhaps a terrier or a sheep-dog that seemed to be used to travelling. In this train, which started at half-past one, Jane jerked and rattled along an embankment whence she looked down through some bare branches and some branches freckled with red and yellow leaves into Bragdon Wood itself and thence through the cutting and over the level-crossing at Bragdon Camp and along the edge of Brawl Park (the great house was just visible at one point) and so to the first stop at Duke's Eaton. Here, as at Woolham and Cure Hardy and Fourstones, the train settled back, when it stopped, with a little jerk and something like a sigh. And then there would be a noise of milk cans rolling and coarse boots treading on the platform and after that a pause which seemed to last long, during which the autumn sunlight grew warm on the window-pane and smells of wood and field from beyond the tiny station floated in and seemed to claim the railway as part of the land. Passengers got in and out of her carriage at every stop; apple-faced men, and women with elastic-side boots and imitation fruit on their hats, and schoolboys. Jane hardly noticed them; for though she was theoretically an extreme democrat, no social class save her own had yet become a reality to her in any place except the printed page. And in between the stations things flitted past, so isolated from their context that each seemed to promise some unearthly happiness if one could but have descended from the train at that very moment to seize it: a house backed with a group of haystacks and wide brown fields about it, two aged horses standing head to tail, a little orchard with washing hanging on a line, and a rabbit staring at the train, whose two eyes looked like the dots, and his ears like the uprights, of a double exclamation mark.

Lewis's characters insist that there is something older, more spiritual, and better connected to Nature, the counter to all that is unnatural, and depicts it in the quest for the lost knowledge of Merlin, and in the end, Lewis places his faith in divine providence, with a one faithful company to stand against the darkness.

Tell me, for I wish to know: is this a serious answer today? And what should be our answer to the hideous strength?

[tomoyoirl]

weaving of the moment