|
Between a friend contacting me a couple of weeks ago for help setting up Accessibility at the new con he joined, and just tonight hearing about the absolute bullshit that's been going on at TwitchCon (no ramp for their Guest of Honor wheelchair user to get up to the raised stage to receive an award, third year in a row with no ramps for him as a GoH), I figure I may as well share this here.
It's far from perfect, since I'm still almost entirely self-taught, and I built it on the convention I used to run Accessibility for, so there's some stuff that's not exactly universal, but hopefully it'll help someone out there!
( Convention Accessibility Timeline and Jobs )
This is far from perfect and from comprehensive both, but if you work on Accessibility for a convention, or are looking to get started doing so, hopefully you can use this as a sort of template to build around or tweak to your needs. Suggestions in the comments are very welcome, though I don't know if I'll be up to incorporating them into the post. Questions are also very welcome; I'll do my best to answer how I dealt with things, but anyone who wants to is free to chime in!
I've got more info to share as well, but I'm going to hold off on that for another post or two, as this one wore me out a bit already đ
|
|
We keep thinking about how we should go to Knott's, but never going. We've only been once this year, during the Boysenberry Festival, and we really did want to check it out during Halloween, but their hours are so limited (even on nights when they don't have Scary Farm (which is not only a separate ticketed event, but one we have zero interest in), they close at like 6pm, which makes a dinner trip difficult to plan. But I had the day off yesterday, so we went down for lunch.
( Read more... )
|
|
Video appointment with chemotherapist today. I'm done with immunotherapy! The scan says I've been stable.
I still have:
* bone strengthening (not marrow encouraging) med every 12 weeks, infused
* Scans every 3 months
So that means a trip or two to the cancer center every 3 months, although if they keep it at 3 months for the one and 12 weeks for the other, they may fall out of sync.
I should probably celebrate this?
|
|
The president of Korea was speaking at the APEC meeting, live (a little before 9 PM our time). No subtitles available. I got a word every now and then. Not enough. One of the words was Kpop, though.
https://www.youtube.com/live/CKl3QKqmgE0?si=AYplJTbRbeiYmO1U
|
|
|
Oct. 28th, 2025 @ 08:40 pm
|
|---|
|
The journeyman I work with told me, before he left for vacation, that I was going to be in charge of the area/floor we've been working on while he was gone.
I laughed, because it sounded like a joke, but then he left and the bossman told me I was indeed in charge. Because, well, I knew what was going on and how it was supposed to be done and the bossman had been told that I was capable of being in charge.
So I was.
idk, like, I don't find it particularly hard to be in charge of two people (one of my cohort-mates and a fifth-year apprentice) (my cohort-mate kept getting pulled by the boss to do other things) who are perfectly content to listen to me since I did in fact know what's going on and have the specific subject knowledge. It takes more energy and effort and thought, sure, but it's not hard. It means fielding calls from the boss and calling him more when there are questions, and that's annoying, and it means keeping track of people and what's going on and what needs to be done next, which is... I dunno, I have a sense of that anyway? I just usually don't need to care?
Yesterday was the last day that I was in charge and we spent most of it in three different areas working alone because the boss had three things he wanted us to do. But also, like, in the afternoon I went and bothered the carpenters until they took down a sheet of drywall that they shouldn't have put up yet, put up the plenum that should've been put up earlier, and then got the carpenters to put their drywall back up with just enough time in the day to put up the vent that goes there.
And that's... dunno, it's not a thing I'm incapable of at other times, but it's not something I would've put as much effort into doing if I were not The One In Charge and therefore the one who is responsible for bothering other trades when necessary.
Yesterday I also heard like half a sentence of a conversation between my foreman and the electricians' foreman while I was heading to break, and then, after break, talked to the fifth-year apprentice who I was technically in charge of and who had been asked to fix a thing for the electricians. Told him what I'd learned from the electricians' foreman the week before when we'd talked about it and I'd gone "yeah, ask my boss about that". Flagged down the electricians' foreman, since I know him by sight now, got him to talk to the other apprentice and explain what needed to be done.
(Talked to that guy again today. He asked me how long I'd been growing my hair out, and said it was good to see more queer people on the jobsite. I signal that pretty visibly, since one of the few stickers on my hard hat is like "a queer person's place is in the union" sticker, but he's like the second person to mention it to me. Seems like a cool dude.)
just, idk.
Odd to think about how the framing of responsibility changes what I am and am not willing to do? I can enter this mindset easily once it's asked of me; I just usually don't if I don't have a need to.
There's something in there about rising to expectations but, like, it's more... It's easier to be confident when the people around you explicitly tell you that they believe in your skills and trust in your ability to do shit. The vibe of ~rising to expectations~ is different, to me. People say that more often in contexts where it feels like someone is below the standard or going above and beyond or something. This is more... "I know you are capable of this, you've proven that already, so I will continue to give you responsibilities commensurate with your demonstrated ability".
And if that comes with the bossman being amused by my willingness to talk back and correct him on shit, that's fine. xD He likes me because I listen, retain information, and do what he asks. He seemed pleased by how the last week went and how much got done, and so does my journeyman partner, who came back from work today and was like "yeah I really did tell the boss that you should be in charge while I'm gone, because you know what's going on and that's more important than that you're a third-year apprentice."
(also the bossman has finally proven what I have suspected for weeks: that we're missing some of the pieces we need for the finish work he's got me and my journeyman doing. and also the two apprentices I was given, who haven't yet been taken from us again, so I think we get to keep them and have a four-person crew on this piece of the work? that's nice. things will go faster with more hands.)
|
|
I was in elementary school when the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. The next day they were a big topic of conversation. Most people I knew decided that Paul was their favorite. Why did we need a favorite? I went along with Paul, although over the years that started to seem silly - they were all good at their jobs, they were all nice looking (if that was what mattered), they all together were better than they were without the other Beatles. Paul has had the longest career, I think (it helps to not be dead) and I like that one of the most famous people in the world (?) is a vegetarian. When I started KPop fandom, I learned the expression "Bias," again seeming to be one's favorite (or crush object? hard for me to tell). People in the space I hang out in work hard to make it clear that while they have a bias, their main priority is the group as a whole. People who are just into one person, not the group, are called solos, and are scorned. It seems a little silly to me. On the couple of occasions that someone has asked for my bias (you can have them in each group), I say "Paul McCartney," because that was my original little kid thought.
Then I watched this opinion piece by Ethan Hawke, and kind of agree that there is no such thing as a favorite Beatle. "To say I have a favorite Beatle is to say I have a favorite ventricle of my heart.'
https://youtube.com/shorts/uhKXyIcbupg?si=MUv-Ls-7vlo6h4GS
|
|
If by any chance you read my book Traitor, the final book in The Change series, a review anywhere would be fantastic. It doesn't have to be positive or appear literally on my birthday.
Sherwood and I managed to release it on possibly the second-worst date we could have, which was October 2024. (The worst would have been November 2024). So a little belated publicity would be nice. I'd be happy to provide a review copy if you'd like.
|
|
I meant to crosspost this earlier; where did the month go?!
scale to feather, skin to skin (997 words)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Zhu Hong & Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Zhu Hong, Ya Qing
Content tags: Yashou transformation, non-human sex, Post-Canon, Post-Fix-It, Enemies to Lovers, background implied Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Summary: Ya Qing, half-transformed, had feathers down the side and back of her neck. They covered her shoulders and arms, curving along the sides of her bare breasts.
|
|
â Secret Post #6871 â
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01. 
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #981.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
|
|
What did I spend August doing instead of reading? Writing, mostly.
Play date, Alex Dahl. Elisa lets her daughter Lucia have a play date and spend the night with a new classmate - but Lucia isnât returned in the morning, and when Elisa goes to the house where she dropped Lucia off, itâs a rental being cleaned out and thereâs no trace of the people she met. Who has taken her? Why? Will they ever find her etc etc. I liked that this was set in Scandinavia but otherwise itâs pretty clunky and the twists are irritating.
Love in the afternoon, Lisa Kleypas. Cyrano de Bergerac style het historical romance. Quirky nature-loving Beatrix takes over writing back to the dashing soldier Christopher when her much sought after friend Prudence canât be bothered - and, as war takes its toll on Christopher, the letters grow more intimate. He comes back intending to marry the woman heâs fallen in love with, but Prudence seems fonder of the decorated war hero than the man who wrote the letters⊠This was okay. I liked what Kleypas was doing with Christopherâs PTSD but it didnât always mesh with the romance, and Beatrix is both super certain of herself and yet determined not to tell Christopher who she is. Thereâs a great dog in it, though.
Slugfest, Gordon Korman. Yash is a fantastic athlete but unfortunately the fact that his middle school has been sending him to play on high school teams comes back to bite him when he doesnât have the state-mandated PE credit for 8th grade. Heâs sent to the summer school PE program, which is nicknamed Slugfest because itâs usually populated by non athletic losers - can they all come together as a team? Multi pov, and a satisfying story with just enough surprise to keep things interesting. Not one of my all time Korman faves but I can see myself re-reading this sometime.
Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons. I went along to the first meeting of a local book group in a spirit of enquiry, which was serially dashed by a) the person who said she didnât want to analyse books like we did at school and probably half an hour of book talk would be enough, after which we could talk about things like what Netflix series we are all watching b) the person who said she reads five books a week but ONLY real books not those e ones and only motorcycle club het romance, fostering stories and cosy mysteries c) the person who said sheâs written a book, itâs amusing things her children have said interspersed with parenting tips and sheâll bring us all a copy next time d) everybody in their introductions except me saying they didnât like sf/fantasy (weâd been told to bring a book weâd recently enjoyed and I was waving around my e copy of Black Water Sister) and e) the person who was telling one end of the table about how her teenage daughter had decided she was trans and now wouldnât talk to her and how unreasonable this is.
Despite this really rather appalling start, there were two other people there I vaguely knew & liked, and one of them seemed to be capable of talking about books. One of the more organised people there came up with a choice of three possible books to read for each meeting, and although I missed the next one due to other commitments I decided rather belatedly to go back at least once more, which meant I ended up having an afternoon to read either Ann Patchettâs Tom Lake, William Faulknerâs The Sound and the Fury, or Kaye Gibbonsâ Ellen Foster. I have largely avoided Faulkner apart from a few short stories and saw no reason to change this, so I borrowed the other two from the library and started on Tom Lake. I think Patchett is a great prose writer who writes books I donât like - I was not wild about Commonwealth - and although I enjoyed the opening few chapters of the process of casting for a production of Our Town once I realised the book set up was going to be mother tells daughters about her past fling with now famous Hollywood actor I was almost entirely disengaged.
So I read Ellen Foster, which is about a poor white girl growing up in the American South in (probably) the 1970s, whose father is abusive, whose mother overdoses and dies, who has a Black friend (Starletta) to whom she is racist, etc, etc, etc, all told in non standard English. Itâs readable and Ellenâs voice works well, and it isnât as unrelentingly miserable as Iâve made out, but it âs in a weird space book-wise where Iâd probably rather either have a memoir or something explicitly fiction (as Iâm typing this, what I really want to do is re-read the Tillerman series by Cynthia Voigt). One other person at the follow up meeting had read it and hadnât loved it (two of them had read Tom Lake, the motorcycle foster cosy person hadnât been able to bring herself to leave her comfort zone, another person was immured in Lucinda Rileyâs Sister series, and everyone else cancelled at the last minute). Will I go again? Hmm.
|
|
Robert Bringhurst's remarkable reference work, The Elements of Typographic Style, provides a full semester of type history in less than 400 pages. It's not just the book's elegant design nor well-chosen exemplars that so thrilled me I read both the 2nd and 3rd edition, dropping more than 50 stickies along the way. The current edition, version 4.3, is out of print and still focuses exclusively on printed material.
Bringhurst is a poet and translator. That last vocation has brought him into regular contact with non-Latin alphabets, and the Elements of Typographic Style provides the best advice I've ever seen in English regarding how to set type with accents, diacritics, and other "analphabetic characters."
( context: why I care )
( Archived links )
I drafted this review a decade ago, and I still believe it, so itâs a proof of life post.
|
|
Not sure these links are particularly appropriate, but maybe so.
Well, I do remember her saying she scarcely noticed The Change, though she did nuance that statement by adding that she had so much else going on at the time (eldercare and other stuff) she didn't have time to notice:
Yet more on monetising the menopause: Menopause getting you down? Donât worry, the wellness industry has a very pricey solution for you.
I am probably being horribly cynical, but when somebody goes for a home birth after a first high risk experience of parturition, one does wonder if some kind of wellness woowoo was in the mix (âShe had read or heard somewhere that there was less chance of bleeding at home and that is why she wanted a home birth.â)? but this is a dreadful story: 'Gross failureâ led to deaths of mother and baby in Prestwich home birth.
This is also a really grim story about reproductive politics in Brazil: Two More Weeks: The Brutality Behind Brazilâs Reproductive Politics:
In complicated childbirth scenarios, when the life of the pregnant person and the fetus are in conflict, therapeutic abortion has historically been considered the last resort. But in Brazil, since the nineteenth century, this solution has been replaced by the cesarean operation. This was not based on medical reasons. Cesarean sections, up until the early twentieth century, were rudimentary procedures, almost always fatal to the birthing person. What motivated its adoption in Brazil was based on different logics: religious, legal, and moral. The cesarean became an acceptable alternative to abortion because it allowed the fetus to be born, even if the birthing parent died. The nineteenth-century theological and medical debates that gave rise to this sacrificial logic still shape birth in Brazil.
Synchrony between 'Catholic and fundamentalist Evangelical actors... promoting cesarean as a morally acceptable alternative to abortion' in present day.
|
|
Very scattered, some references to U.S. Politics.
On the YouTubes (and a Podcast)
![[youtube.com profile]](https://youtube.com/favicon.ico) Schmowd3r: PI Investigates the Blake Lively "Situation" (3:42h).
Probably not a lot of new information on the Blake Lively piece if you've been following the case, but it's well laid out. The first section is largely about trying to detect bot campaigns, and he has some really interesting thoughts there. Also, he's an entertaining presenter, and am adding him to my subs.
LilShopofAli: Some of yâall still donât understand desirability and it shows (1:40h).
This is a bit dated as it's about the topic du jour from a couple months ago, but I really like how Ali can take the discussion of the moment and expand it into a video about the wider cultural context. Very well done.
olurinatti: How âThis Didnât Age Wellâ Destroyed Media Literacy (0:42hr).
Great video about thought-terminating cliches and how they affect the way we talk about media.
ophie-dokie: censorship is coming for you next (& you're cheering it on) (1:02hr).
Can we stop running to cling to mommy's apron the state and demand stuff get cancelled? It's not going to end well.
Search Engine Podcast: A Dubai Chocolate theory of the internet (0:47hr, no transcript?).
If the medium is the message, and the medium is algorithmically-driven short-form video, what messages are we dealing with right now? Thoughts on Gen Z, and the world they're stuck in.
I Failed to Think of a Theme, and Failed, so Random Shit Posted in Order Bookmarked:
Kyrianna: Portraits.
Surrealist watercolour portraits of people with disabilities, manifesting symptoms of pain and restriction on their bodies. Really beautiful and affecting.
The Tyee: Unifor Undaunted as Amazon Ramps Up Its Anti-Union Fight.
"A union leader says newly certified workers are keen despite the companyâs legal counteroffensive."
Tom's Guide: How to disable Copilot in Windows 11.
This was quite easy, and I wish I'd done it months ago.
TGEU: International Day of Action for Trans Depathologisation 2025.
I thought the demand list was really well laid out. These folks are doing such important work.
Spitfire News: Survivors deserve better storytelling.
A call to improve how journalists and content creators talk about violence and abuse. There's an open letter linked, and Kat also helped set up ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png) survivorstoriesdeservebetter.
CBC: 'A healing event': Heiltsuk doctor performs rare delivery of Heiltsuk baby in own homelands.
An early labour in Bella Bella, B.C., where the hospital isn't equipped to deliver babies, had a happy ending.
The AV Club: Spotify stands by ICE recruitment ads despite artist backlash.
A growing number of artists have boycotted the service over its founder's investment in military AI.
|
|
I see the last time I properly did some little write-ups of anything I'd been watching was about June, and that was a catch up one, so I'm forever out of date, but I'll see if I can do better now!
Suspected Person (1942) - a UK B-movie thriller, which I recorded off TPTV because it featured Clifford Evans, Patricia Roc and William Hartnell, and indeed, generally, the only thing worth saying about it was that I did enjoy watching Patricia Roc and Clifford Evans play brother and sister, and William Hartnell did his best to try and steal the film in his scenes, but everything else was very meh and run of the mill. Fine if you want a bonus bit of Hartnell! Or CE & PR, but not of any note for anything else, really. I only wrote this here, because it does prove I still have judgment and therefore my comments on the rest might be worth more.
Death Valley (BBC TV 2025) This was one of the many cosy detective shows I watched over the summer, and it was pretty good! A bit uneven, in that the two main characters were great & so was their odd friendship, but quite a few of the mysteries were very so-so, even for this kind of thing, although they did get better. Gwyneth Keyworth as Janie Mallowan, socially awkward detective with issues, and Timothy Spall as John Chapel, reclusive actor who used to play Maigret/Poirot her favourite TV detective Caesar, were very good together, though & I enjoyed them a lot.
Stephen Poliakoff's The Tribe (BBC 1998), only available via somebody's VHS recording on YT, unless you live in R1, where you might be able to snag a DVD, but the BBC somehow didn't even include it on their Poliakoff at the BBC set. (Why, yes, I AM annoyed that I cannot have a DVD of the Stephen Poliakoff that stars Jeremy Northam, even if it seems reasonable even on small acquaintance with Poliakoff to suggest that it is second tier Poliakoff. Is that not what completist DVD sets for significant playwrghts are for?) It stars Jeremy Northam, Joely Richardson, Anna Friel, Trevor Eve & Laura Fraser, plus Jonathan Rhys Meyers & Julian Rhind-Tutt & is all about a very 90s collection of concerns - creating different kinds of living spaces and the hypocrisy of those who grew up in the 60s having the sexual freedom of expression and creativity that they refuse to allow the 90s to have.
( More details about The Tribe ) Anyway, it and its themes still linger in my head, so I'm very grateful to the YT uploader.
The Halfway House (1944), starring Mervyn & Glynis Johns and Esmond Knight. This is another film I recorded off TPTV because it's summary was "a bunch of strangers get stranded together." ( For WWII moralising and ghosts )
Anyway, I have no regrets over every film I've recorded off TPTV because of the summary being "bunch of random mid-century Brits get stranded somewhere," and I will continue to snag any others I see - if there are any more!
|
|
All Yuletide requests are now visible:
-at karanguni's app
-at the Yuletide 2025 collection on AO3
-in a spreadsheet
-in a text doc
Please check back later for pinch hitter prompts.
Enjoy!
Both the main Yuletide 2025 collection and the Yuletide Madness 2025 collection are open for posting works. Before posting your assignment, or posting a treat to either collection, please read the notes below.
( Posting, and to Which Collection )
Bonus!! Decoy questions/author questionsA few weeks ago, we made a post about the questions we send to recipients when authors need to clarify something about their recipients' preferences.
As a result of that poll, in a situation where an author has a fandom-specific question, we will now send questions for at least 3 fandoms in a person's requests, but will not generally make up extra/decoy questions for their full set of fandoms.
You suggested that curious authors could make up (some of) their own extra questions. While that could be helpful - if you want to - we ask you to keep the following things in mind.
- Clear questions are the best questions. Several times in the past we've received extremely confusing questions and it turned out a participant thought they needed to disguise what they were asking from the mods. Please do not.
- Avoid excessive detail, especially about plots you don't plan to write. Don't ask your recipient "Would you be interested in a story where they time-travel to meet five different generations of their ancestors, and also there are capybara zombies?" unless you are contemplating such a plot (and maybe not even then) - because you may make your recipient hopeful about something that won't arrive.
- Avoid being disingenuous about things that are actually clear to you. Try to ask about points of reasonable ambiguity. If you ask your recipient things like "You said you don't want any mention of hospitals, but is it okay if a character has a headache?" you could stress them out by making them wonder if they need to re-write their DNWs, or by making them wonder if you have wildly misinterpreted other parts of their requests. Decoy questions require a little creativity⊠but not too much. Save most of your creativity for the actual writing.
And again - you are not obliged to provide decoy questions! If you need to ask your recipient something, all we need from you is: 1) what information you need, and 2) who you are. That's great! We can take care of the rest.
Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app
Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.
|
|
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
happy
amused