Seasons of Drabbles
May. 3rd, 2026 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snickficDrabbles are revealed! I had hoped that this would kickstart my writing again after a month off and that I would write lots of treats, but in fact I only wrote my assignment, alas.
However, I got SIX incredible gifts, and I highly recommend them all. They are not getting enough love yet in my opinion. ;__; 100 words unless otherwise noted.
pickled, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel. So cute in that specific Gallagher way.
Five Hauntings of John Pelham Ratcliffe, Kyle Murchison Booth stories, Booth/Ratcliffe. 500 words. Five drabbles about Ratcliffe before, during, and after "Drowning Palmer," and every one of them is perfect. What a great mix of tones, with some amazing lines.
Gilding, Kyle Murchison Booth stories, Booth & Claudia Coburn. A creepy/sweet/funny drabble.
Counterproposal, Ready or Not, Grace & Ursula meet before Grace marries Alex. The possibilities!! 👀
Field of Play, Ready or Not, Ursula & the Lawyer. I can SEE Elijah Wood's smarmy little lawyer smirk in the last line of this.
Down to My Last Cigarette, Ready or Not, Ursula/Grace. Another possible divergence, and full of hot little details. 👀👀👀
However, I got SIX incredible gifts, and I highly recommend them all. They are not getting enough love yet in my opinion. ;__; 100 words unless otherwise noted.
pickled, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel. So cute in that specific Gallagher way.
Five Hauntings of John Pelham Ratcliffe, Kyle Murchison Booth stories, Booth/Ratcliffe. 500 words. Five drabbles about Ratcliffe before, during, and after "Drowning Palmer," and every one of them is perfect. What a great mix of tones, with some amazing lines.
Gilding, Kyle Murchison Booth stories, Booth & Claudia Coburn. A creepy/sweet/funny drabble.
Counterproposal, Ready or Not, Grace & Ursula meet before Grace marries Alex. The possibilities!! 👀
Field of Play, Ready or Not, Ursula & the Lawyer. I can SEE Elijah Wood's smarmy little lawyer smirk in the last line of this.
Down to My Last Cigarette, Ready or Not, Ursula/Grace. Another possible divergence, and full of hot little details. 👀👀👀
i want you to take a look at this picture
May. 3rd, 2026 05:05 pmmusesfoolHey, I have actually read a couple of books!
what I just finished
First Witches Club by Maisey Yates, which was cute and fast but relentlessly heterosexual. It's about 3 women whose husbands have left them coming together to learn that magic is real. The community building is nice. This is kind of a beach/airplane read, but it was the first new-to-me book I was able to stick with in a while.
The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It's kind of a picaresque about Tao, the titular fortune-teller, and the friends she meets along the way. It's pretty cozy, but things do happen in it.
what I'm reading now
Saint Death's Daughter by CSE Cooney, which I am enjoying. It's as if The Locked Tomb and Flora Segunda had a sunshiny necromantic daughter. I wouldn't have thought you could make necromancy twee, but Cooney sure does try.
what I'm reading next
Likely Saint Death's Herald, the sequel to the above. And then in just over a week, Parade of Horribles comes out and I will be reading that immediately.
*
what I just finished
First Witches Club by Maisey Yates, which was cute and fast but relentlessly heterosexual. It's about 3 women whose husbands have left them coming together to learn that magic is real. The community building is nice. This is kind of a beach/airplane read, but it was the first new-to-me book I was able to stick with in a while.
The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It's kind of a picaresque about Tao, the titular fortune-teller, and the friends she meets along the way. It's pretty cozy, but things do happen in it.
what I'm reading now
Saint Death's Daughter by CSE Cooney, which I am enjoying. It's as if The Locked Tomb and Flora Segunda had a sunshiny necromantic daughter. I wouldn't have thought you could make necromancy twee, but Cooney sure does try.
what I'm reading next
Likely Saint Death's Herald, the sequel to the above. And then in just over a week, Parade of Horribles comes out and I will be reading that immediately.
*
Movies!
May. 3rd, 2026 01:15 pmsnickficI've been to the theater a bunch recently!
(BTW, the reason I see so much in the theater these days is because I have a monthly subscription to one of the big theater chains, which means I get to see basically any movie I want for free. This works out to be worth the cost if I see at least two non-matinee movies a month, which is pretty easy when there's a new horror movie pretty much every weekend.
And between my local chain theater, which has an outsized number of screens for its location and therefore shows a lot of weird indie stuff just to fill space, and the slightly further away indie theater that also by definition shows a lot of weird indie stuff, it turns out I'm able to see just about anything with a 100+ US theater release.)
Over Your Dead Body (2026). Samara Weaving and Jason Segel star as a married couple who go for a weekend at their secluded cabin, each with the intention of killing the other, and are interrupted by the some escaped convicts (including Timothy Olyphant) and their equally unhinged former prison guard (Juliette Lewis).
This particular brand of "people hate each other, comedically" is not really my thing, but a friend wanted to go because the director was involved with Lonely Island, and in fact I had a good time. Samara Weaving is always delightful, and it was fun here to have her using more or less her natural Aussie accent. There were a lot of funny bits, both lines and slapstick. Things get quite gory at the end, in a fun way if you're into that sort of thing. The movie also did some things with nonlinear storytelling that were fun without feeling overly clever.
I will say I could really have done without the extended comedic scene of one of the convicts attempting to rape Segel's character. I also was both unpersuaded by the couple's motivations for wanting to kill each other and not entirely sold how things ended between them.
Still, it wasn't hard to just ride along with where the movie wanted to take me. If you're in the mood for a frothy, kind of mean-spirited comedy with occasional attempts at being heartwarming, you could do worse.
--
Hokum (2026). Writer Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a writer haunted by his mother's death who takes his parents' ashes to the inn in Ireland where they honeymooned, which might be haunted.
This was directed by Damien McCarthy, whose previous movie Oddity I thought was just okay, mostly because I found it overly linear with no surprises. This, on the other hand, has enough moving pieces that it sometimes felt to me like it didn't leave itself enough room to be scary. There are for sure some jump scares and creepy bits, but overall my main interest was in how various plot obstacles would be solved, which, combined with the writer main character, made it all feel a bit Stephen Kingian.
I will say ( spoilers )
Overall I had a good time. The plot is engaging, Scott is great, and McCarthy does a good job of spooling out his plot at just the right pace. I just didn't ever feel a strong emotional connection to it.
--
Mother Mary (2026). Troubled pop star Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) goes to her bitter former collaborator and fashion designer Sam (Michaela Coel) for a dress for her first performance in years.
On one level, this movie is absolutely magnetic. Sam is chockful of vitriol, and Coel acts her ass off. Even when other characters are present (all of which are women; I don't think there's a single man with lines), it feels like Sam and Mary are the only characters in the scene. Everything is filmed tight and close and claustrophobic, with dim lighting and lots of shadows. The psychological tension basically doesen't let up for the whole two hours.
All of which is good, because on another level, very little happens in this movie, lol. If you're game for toxic psychological drama between two women, this is For You. If you're not, boy are you going to be bored. The A24 experience!
The movie also has a lot of visual interest. We get to see a ton of Mother Mary's pseudo-religious costumes, some only for a shot or two. There are clips of her concert performances and an extended a capella modern dance sequence. As the movie goes in, the line between flashback and present, between reality and dream, gets thinner and thinner, and the imagery gets ever more surrealistic and dramatic.
On paper, all of this should be my jam. I think the main problem I have with the film is that Sam is borderline unhinged in her fury and resentment, and meanwhile Mary feels so defeated the whole movie, a bedraggled, exhausted person struggling for purpose. The huge difference in their energy makes the whole movie feel unbalanced. This isn't helped by how the source of Sam's all-consuming resentment is basically that Mary stopped answering her texts, or by how despite Mary's dramatic iconography, her actual music that we hear is the most basic, generic, nearly hookless pop music imaginable. (Also I thought it was super funny that when someone quotes the attendance figures at one of Mary's concerts, it turns out she's just playing arenas, not the stadiums one would expect from her supposed stature an artist.)
I think in writing this review, I've talked myself around to liking it more. I'm definitely not mad I watched it, and I really respect the director's ambition, even if it didn't all quite land.
(BTW, the reason I see so much in the theater these days is because I have a monthly subscription to one of the big theater chains, which means I get to see basically any movie I want for free. This works out to be worth the cost if I see at least two non-matinee movies a month, which is pretty easy when there's a new horror movie pretty much every weekend.
And between my local chain theater, which has an outsized number of screens for its location and therefore shows a lot of weird indie stuff just to fill space, and the slightly further away indie theater that also by definition shows a lot of weird indie stuff, it turns out I'm able to see just about anything with a 100+ US theater release.)
Over Your Dead Body (2026). Samara Weaving and Jason Segel star as a married couple who go for a weekend at their secluded cabin, each with the intention of killing the other, and are interrupted by the some escaped convicts (including Timothy Olyphant) and their equally unhinged former prison guard (Juliette Lewis).
This particular brand of "people hate each other, comedically" is not really my thing, but a friend wanted to go because the director was involved with Lonely Island, and in fact I had a good time. Samara Weaving is always delightful, and it was fun here to have her using more or less her natural Aussie accent. There were a lot of funny bits, both lines and slapstick. Things get quite gory at the end, in a fun way if you're into that sort of thing. The movie also did some things with nonlinear storytelling that were fun without feeling overly clever.
I will say I could really have done without the extended comedic scene of one of the convicts attempting to rape Segel's character. I also was both unpersuaded by the couple's motivations for wanting to kill each other and not entirely sold how things ended between them.
Still, it wasn't hard to just ride along with where the movie wanted to take me. If you're in the mood for a frothy, kind of mean-spirited comedy with occasional attempts at being heartwarming, you could do worse.
--
Hokum (2026). Writer Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a writer haunted by his mother's death who takes his parents' ashes to the inn in Ireland where they honeymooned, which might be haunted.
This was directed by Damien McCarthy, whose previous movie Oddity I thought was just okay, mostly because I found it overly linear with no surprises. This, on the other hand, has enough moving pieces that it sometimes felt to me like it didn't leave itself enough room to be scary. There are for sure some jump scares and creepy bits, but overall my main interest was in how various plot obstacles would be solved, which, combined with the writer main character, made it all feel a bit Stephen Kingian.
I will say ( spoilers )
Overall I had a good time. The plot is engaging, Scott is great, and McCarthy does a good job of spooling out his plot at just the right pace. I just didn't ever feel a strong emotional connection to it.
--
Mother Mary (2026). Troubled pop star Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) goes to her bitter former collaborator and fashion designer Sam (Michaela Coel) for a dress for her first performance in years.
On one level, this movie is absolutely magnetic. Sam is chockful of vitriol, and Coel acts her ass off. Even when other characters are present (all of which are women; I don't think there's a single man with lines), it feels like Sam and Mary are the only characters in the scene. Everything is filmed tight and close and claustrophobic, with dim lighting and lots of shadows. The psychological tension basically doesen't let up for the whole two hours.
All of which is good, because on another level, very little happens in this movie, lol. If you're game for toxic psychological drama between two women, this is For You. If you're not, boy are you going to be bored. The A24 experience!
The movie also has a lot of visual interest. We get to see a ton of Mother Mary's pseudo-religious costumes, some only for a shot or two. There are clips of her concert performances and an extended a capella modern dance sequence. As the movie goes in, the line between flashback and present, between reality and dream, gets thinner and thinner, and the imagery gets ever more surrealistic and dramatic.
On paper, all of this should be my jam. I think the main problem I have with the film is that Sam is borderline unhinged in her fury and resentment, and meanwhile Mary feels so defeated the whole movie, a bedraggled, exhausted person struggling for purpose. The huge difference in their energy makes the whole movie feel unbalanced. This isn't helped by how the source of Sam's all-consuming resentment is basically that Mary stopped answering her texts, or by how despite Mary's dramatic iconography, her actual music that we hear is the most basic, generic, nearly hookless pop music imaginable. (Also I thought it was super funny that when someone quotes the attendance figures at one of Mary's concerts, it turns out she's just playing arenas, not the stadiums one would expect from her supposed stature an artist.)
I think in writing this review, I've talked myself around to liking it more. I'm definitely not mad I watched it, and I really respect the director's ambition, even if it didn't all quite land.
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Fancake Theme for May: Journey & Travel
May. 3rd, 2026 09:18 amrunpunkrun posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fandomcalendar
fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules. This theme runs for the entire month. If you have any questions, just ask!
Golden Week Day 2
May. 3rd, 2026 12:05 pmprixmiumWas Sunday and I didn't have a sense of time pressure, so I went to church for the first time in a few weeks. I still feel more like it's a thing I do sometimes than a community, in great part due to the hour and ten minute travel time making it feel like I really don't want to get involved in other things throughout the week given my general exhaustion level when working. However, the female pastor mentioned a few small groups starting soon, one of which is for Grief, and it kind of tempts to at least try...
Afterward, I ate at a really good soup restaurant but still needed a little more food. Got some fries on the way home and a few other things from McDonald's, which is the closest food to my apartment. Went to sleep for hours after. I had a day of internet productivity yesterday and therefore didn't get a lot of sleep. I want to do more, but I also don't want to just be a lump. There's a lot of boom or bust about being physically active or active online that I wish I could balance when I am off work.
I need to make a plan for what food I am going to make next and go to the grocery store tomorrow afternoon, but I can't decide what to make. Maybe it's time for beef/veg soup again. I used to make it weekly. Recently, I've been making more Mexican-coded stuff.
I kind of would like to make a sort of Mexican-y chili but with whole beef instead of ground beef. Every time I find pure ground beef here, it is "from frozen" and because I stick it in the freezer until use it feels like the texture of gravel half the time. Dunno if that would work...??? I do have chili seasoning mix but I am unsure.
Watched this video and thought it was interesting: "Why 'It's Gonna Be May' is Weirder Than You Think"
Sometimes I daydream about actually studying linguistics. Oh to be a student again, I say while also loving not having homework.
Afterward, I ate at a really good soup restaurant but still needed a little more food. Got some fries on the way home and a few other things from McDonald's, which is the closest food to my apartment. Went to sleep for hours after. I had a day of internet productivity yesterday and therefore didn't get a lot of sleep. I want to do more, but I also don't want to just be a lump. There's a lot of boom or bust about being physically active or active online that I wish I could balance when I am off work.
I need to make a plan for what food I am going to make next and go to the grocery store tomorrow afternoon, but I can't decide what to make. Maybe it's time for beef/veg soup again. I used to make it weekly. Recently, I've been making more Mexican-coded stuff.
I kind of would like to make a sort of Mexican-y chili but with whole beef instead of ground beef. Every time I find pure ground beef here, it is "from frozen" and because I stick it in the freezer until use it feels like the texture of gravel half the time. Dunno if that would work...??? I do have chili seasoning mix but I am unsure.
Watched this video and thought it was interesting: "Why 'It's Gonna Be May' is Weirder Than You Think"
Sometimes I daydream about actually studying linguistics. Oh to be a student again, I say while also loving not having homework.
Parasites Are Eating Your Hobbies Alive by Mother's Basement
May. 3rd, 2026 11:17 amstardust_rifle posting in youtuberecsI have no idea how interesting this is going to be for people who aren't hardcore manga/anime fans, but if you want to see Logan Paul and scalpers/speculators in general get hyperbolically and humorously Dunked On, this is a good watch.
Catching up, in bullet points
May. 3rd, 2026 04:06 pmdolorosa_12I've been extremely busy, and consequently extremely tired, and haven't been around on Dreamwidth all that much in the past couple of weeks. Rather than one of my standard weekend wrap-up posts, I'm going to attempt to go through the various things that have been happening, in brief, in list form.
Two weeks ago, catpuccino came up to Ely to visit. She lives in London, we've known each other since the first day of high school, but what with one thing and another, I hadn't seen her in person since 2024. She's going through some tough stuff at the moment, so it was nice to be able to help her get away from all that for twenty-four hours, at least (and talk foodie things with someone who's even more plugged into that scene than I am).
Almost immediately after that, my father-in-law came over from Germany to visit for a week. He drove, and took the ferry, which meant he was a free agent, and could go out and do things while Matthias and I were at work, and he did catch up with some local friends a couple of times, but for the most part he seemed to just want to chill out in our garden, under the cherry trees. His regular daily life involves a lot of energetic grandchildren (my sister-in-law has three kids), and I think he viewed our place as something of an oasis of calm. My mother-in-law was the real Anglophile in the family — she came over to England on exchange as a teenager, fell in love with the place, and the two of them basically visited the UK almost once a year for their entire adult lives, barring the Covid years and my mother-in-law's increasingly fragile health. So coming back here alone after her death was a bittersweet experience for my father-in-law, stirring up a lot of complicated emotions, but I think he was pleased to have made the trip.
He left on Wednesday, and on that evening Matthias and I went to an author event with Andrey Kurkov, hosted by the local independent bookshop. (Ely is a sleepy small rural town, but it definitely punches above its weight in terms of literary events due to this fantastic bookshop.) He read from and chatted about his latest historical mystery novel (set in 1919 Kyiv), and answered audience questions with patience. (My favourite, somewhat left-field answer: '[In the final decade of the Soviet Union,] I graduated with a qualification in Japanese translation, and they wanted me to do my military service as a spy listening in to the Japanese in the Russian far east, but I didn't want to do this, since it would have prevented me from being allowed to leave the country. I asked my mother, who was a doctor, if she had any well-connected patients who could get me out of this, and one of her patients, who was a senior military figure, was able to instead transfer me to doing military service as a prison guard in Odesa. When the other guards found out I was a writer, one of them asked me to write his speeches for his meetings with the leadership, so I spent my military service reading propaganda magazines and rewriting the articles for him to reuse in his speeches.' This struck me as the absolute peak absurd Soviet experience.)
I've had a run of lots of timetabled, lecture-style teaching, which happens this time every year, but is always a bit exhausting: it's in a huge, echo-y wooden lecture theatre (when the students come through the doors, they slam loudly and make a massive amount of noise), it's to groups of 75 students, repeated three times to different groups, and it's with undergrads rather than the postgraduates and researchers I normally teach (who are a lot more work to keep focused), and I always feel completely flattened by the time the Friday class is over. The one nice thing is that these classes are in central Cambridge instead of out on the hospital site where I normally work, and I can buy decent food and coffee afterwards. I guess it's a good thing I don't normally work in that part of town, because I'd be so tempted to eat lunch out every day, and end up bleeding money.
I read Innamorata (Ava Reid), and with Reid I think at this point it counts as hate-reading, since my expectations are always so low, and they're always confirmed. This is her take on a gruesome gothic novel, complete with purple prose, and the literary equivalent of a child hopping up and down going 'look! look! did you see what I just did?' Did I see her obvious and intentional allusions to Mervyn Peake? Yes, yes I did. Am I shocked at all the gore, bodily fluids and shock value edginess? Shocked that I keep picking up Ava Reid books, maybe.
Then I read Almost Life (Kiran Millwood Hargrave) and Testament of Youth (Vera Brittain), and was a lot happier in my choice of reading material. The former is a novel about two young women who meet, hook up and fall in love in 1970s Paris, then go their separate ways, but continue to haunt and fall in and out of each other's lives, in a mess of intense emotions, difficult choices, and lost chances. The latter is both a memoir of the author as an individual (fighting the parental expectation to marry and instead attend Oxford as a young woman in the 1910s, then serving as a nurse in WWI and watching all the young men in her life be swallowed up into the maw of that terrible war), and a portrait of the absolute wrenching collective trauma experienced by her entire generation, and how impossible it was to go back to civillian life and go on living afterwards.
Then I read The Red City (Marie Lu), which had a great premise (clandestine underworld alchemist syndicates fight a global battle for dominance, operating much like real-world organised crime), and an absolutely wrenching depiction of intergenerational immigration trauma, but was written for absolutely no reason in third person present tense, which for me is the literary equivalent of someone chewing audibly near my ear. I only like present tense when it's used to evoke a sense of stream-of-consciousness-like immediacy, as if you're getting a glimpse inside a character's messy, unedited interior monologue (I prefer it much more in the first person), but when the whole story feels as if it could work perfectly fine in past tense, the use of present tense is distractingly grating.
Yesterday was Eel Day in Ely, which involves, among other things, a giant cloth eel on a frame being paraded through the town, trailed by an incongruous juxtaposition of local groups (think Morris dancers followed by a girls' rugby club, followed by musicians playing steel drums, followed by a Scout group, etc). We were in the market buying vegetables, so missed the actual parade, but did witness all these various participants marshalling in front of the cathedral beforehand. We did a quick swing around the stalls afterwards, but it was pretty hot, and we'd already eaten lunch, so we didn't stay long.
We watched the recent Wuthering Heights adaptation yesterday, and I regret to report that it was 90 per cent vibes and dramatic scenery, and I was not particularly impressed.
As it's a long weekend, there was a food and craft fair outside the cathedral today, and Matthias and I wandered around, eating lunch from one of the stalls, people- and dog-watching, before meandering on home, having picked up a box of macarons to eat over the course of the week with our tea and coffee.
We've made a start at booking tickets, etc for our summer holiday, which makes it start to feel a bit more real. I love the planning stage — investigating food, activities, transport, and so on, with the days of the holiday unfolding, and given greater shape.
catpuccino came up to Ely to visit. She lives in London, we've known each other since the first day of high school, but what with one thing and another, I hadn't seen her in person since 2024. She's going through some tough stuff at the moment, so it was nice to be able to help her get away from all that for twenty-four hours, at least (and talk foodie things with someone who's even more plugged into that scene than I am).Stanley Cup Playoffs Thoughts
May. 3rd, 2026 10:38 amseleneheartNow that we are in the second round, and I don't have to stress about the Stars anymore, here is what I want to see for the Stanly Cup Final:
VS 
It should be obvious why I want this result - despite other connections, there's only one thing these teams truly have in common.
The Wild have the tougher road to get to this place, so I doubt my hope will pan out. *sigh*
VS It should be obvious why I want this result - despite other connections, there's only one thing these teams truly have in common.
The Wild have the tougher road to get to this place, so I doubt my hope will pan out. *sigh*
More technical difficulties
May. 3rd, 2026 09:09 ammissizzyI streamed as usual Saturday. I did note from the summary afterwards I hadn't gotten watched nearly as much as I was last week, which felt sad. But it didn't feel like the drop needed a real explanation; viewership still was about at the level it's often been at during the month I've been doing this now.
Then, while preparing for this morning's stream, I took a look at the video, and discovered OBS has suddenly stopped picking up the desktop audio! No wonder my viewership dropped. Honestly, I'm a little surprised I apparently still got 35 minutes worth! I kind of wish one of the five presumably non-scamming viewers who came in and out at various points according to the summary had pointed it out, but they might have even thought I'd turned the audio off on purpose. That's far from unknown on Twitch, though usually the streamer then turns music on.
I was forced to let Windows update Friday morning, and I'm pretty certain that's the cause, and that they turned something off in the settings. Unfortunately, I current have no idea what. I've posted in the OBS discord and hopefully someone will tell me by Friday, although my streaming then was up in the air even before this.
ETA: Figured it out on my own. This time.
Then, while preparing for this morning's stream, I took a look at the video, and discovered OBS has suddenly stopped picking up the desktop audio! No wonder my viewership dropped. Honestly, I'm a little surprised I apparently still got 35 minutes worth! I kind of wish one of the five presumably non-scamming viewers who came in and out at various points according to the summary had pointed it out, but they might have even thought I'd turned the audio off on purpose. That's far from unknown on Twitch, though usually the streamer then turns music on.
I was forced to let Windows update Friday morning, and I'm pretty certain that's the cause, and that they turned something off in the settings. Unfortunately, I current have no idea what. I've posted in the OBS discord and hopefully someone will tell me by Friday, although my streaming then was up in the air even before this.
ETA: Figured it out on my own. This time.
aikido aikido aikido
May. 2nd, 2026 07:43 pmshadaras1.
Apparently if you point a camera at me while I'm doing aikido my posture and form immediately improves, as my friend E discovered on Wednesday while we were practicing jujinage and she handed her phone to a dojomate who was sitting out that set.
This does not surprise me, because I'm generally quite camera-aware and will push for more clarity and precision of demonstration when it matters to show-case it and I'm not going "this is near the end of class and I'm tired".
Also we got some really nice photos out of it, including a couple where E's completely in the air such that there's the illusion that she's being held upright by her ponytail alone.
(she was taking breakfalls, thus the hovering in mid-air. I was not, but only because I didn't want to; it looked from the outside like I was because I was being thrown in a way that definitely encouraged it.)
2.
"Aikido can be very technical," sensei said near the start of the seminar today, and what she meant by that was rather "it's very easy to get caught up in Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 and forget that aikido is at its simplest and most fluid if you make a connection and simply move."
We spent a lot of time focusing on extension: keeping one's arm reaching out kokyu (that word/term which means breath, but which is also a description of keeping one's arm/body engaged without being stiff, of being strong and unbendable not by muscle tension but by structure and directional intent). Which is important, because it does make technique easier to apply, but sensei also pointed out that for all that she was asking us to think about our arms and our posture, the actual application only worked if our feet were in the right place at the right time.
I think the technique that most visibly established this was the one where she was like "okay, I'm showing you two variations" and then proceeded to be like "So yes, you can do this technique in a very straight-forward [literally] way. We're going to practice the variation that forces you to do interesting footwork as a way of ensuring you're thinking about that too." (I loved this technique. It looks funky—anything where you go back-to-back with your partner does!—but the flow was really lovely once I got a chance to try it. Really did rely on the footwork being accurate, though!)
The whole seminar was really nice for just... being in the mix of a lot of yudansha [black belts] who I know from the seminar circuit and thus getting to be like "yup, definitely know plenty of stuff and have even more to learn".
Also fun: sensei deciding that we all needed to do some rolling practice and making everyone go back and forth across the mat for a while.
The seminar just... generally focused on elements of aikido that I've been thinking about lately anyway, which was really nice. A lot about connection and smoothness and seeing how little muscle you need to use. The flow of the technique. Blending with your partner in the opening. Things like that.
And then, y'know, two dan tests from people who I know. Nidan and sandan. It's... mm. I'm taking nidan at the end of this month. I watched these tests (both by older white men who started as adults) and spent the whole time thinking oh, I could do that at least as well, probably better, which...
idk. I've probably been capable of testing a rank ahead of where I place since I took first kyu, and I'm pretty sure I took shodan later than I otherwise would've because of covid, so...
It's not surprising. It's just a fact.
I've done much less specific preparation for nidan than perhaps I could, but also, like, I do know everything on the test. The bits that I'm like "but I could know this better" aren't about what's necessary; they're about what I know I'm capable of, since I was basically taught the nidan test when I took shodan. But since whatever I do for the test will certainly be more than enough—people just don't test unless their sensei think they're ready—there's no need to stress about it.
3.
The thing about test prep class when everyone who's testing is at the skill level required is that it mostly turns into a confidence-building exercise, which comes across in some really different ways depending on who's there and who's testing soon.
It's... sometimes a frustrating thing to facilitate. (A thing I do whenever the friend who really wants to run it is having fatigue problems or is out of town for family reasons.) Mostly because I don't have anxiety about tests/performances/being watched doing stuff like this? And so I'm like "yeah this is going to be fun" as soon as I'm certain I know all the stuff required. Which is not usually a helpful attitude for people who do have more anxiety.
But hey, at the end of the day it's all just about encouraging people and reminding them of how much they already know, and I do like that part.
Apparently if you point a camera at me while I'm doing aikido my posture and form immediately improves, as my friend E discovered on Wednesday while we were practicing jujinage and she handed her phone to a dojomate who was sitting out that set.
This does not surprise me, because I'm generally quite camera-aware and will push for more clarity and precision of demonstration when it matters to show-case it and I'm not going "this is near the end of class and I'm tired".
Also we got some really nice photos out of it, including a couple where E's completely in the air such that there's the illusion that she's being held upright by her ponytail alone.
(she was taking breakfalls, thus the hovering in mid-air. I was not, but only because I didn't want to; it looked from the outside like I was because I was being thrown in a way that definitely encouraged it.)
2.
"Aikido can be very technical," sensei said near the start of the seminar today, and what she meant by that was rather "it's very easy to get caught up in Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 and forget that aikido is at its simplest and most fluid if you make a connection and simply move."
We spent a lot of time focusing on extension: keeping one's arm reaching out kokyu (that word/term which means breath, but which is also a description of keeping one's arm/body engaged without being stiff, of being strong and unbendable not by muscle tension but by structure and directional intent). Which is important, because it does make technique easier to apply, but sensei also pointed out that for all that she was asking us to think about our arms and our posture, the actual application only worked if our feet were in the right place at the right time.
I think the technique that most visibly established this was the one where she was like "okay, I'm showing you two variations" and then proceeded to be like "So yes, you can do this technique in a very straight-forward [literally] way. We're going to practice the variation that forces you to do interesting footwork as a way of ensuring you're thinking about that too." (I loved this technique. It looks funky—anything where you go back-to-back with your partner does!—but the flow was really lovely once I got a chance to try it. Really did rely on the footwork being accurate, though!)
The whole seminar was really nice for just... being in the mix of a lot of yudansha [black belts] who I know from the seminar circuit and thus getting to be like "yup, definitely know plenty of stuff and have even more to learn".
Also fun: sensei deciding that we all needed to do some rolling practice and making everyone go back and forth across the mat for a while.
The seminar just... generally focused on elements of aikido that I've been thinking about lately anyway, which was really nice. A lot about connection and smoothness and seeing how little muscle you need to use. The flow of the technique. Blending with your partner in the opening. Things like that.
And then, y'know, two dan tests from people who I know. Nidan and sandan. It's... mm. I'm taking nidan at the end of this month. I watched these tests (both by older white men who started as adults) and spent the whole time thinking oh, I could do that at least as well, probably better, which...
idk. I've probably been capable of testing a rank ahead of where I place since I took first kyu, and I'm pretty sure I took shodan later than I otherwise would've because of covid, so...
It's not surprising. It's just a fact.
I've done much less specific preparation for nidan than perhaps I could, but also, like, I do know everything on the test. The bits that I'm like "but I could know this better" aren't about what's necessary; they're about what I know I'm capable of, since I was basically taught the nidan test when I took shodan. But since whatever I do for the test will certainly be more than enough—people just don't test unless their sensei think they're ready—there's no need to stress about it.
3.
The thing about test prep class when everyone who's testing is at the skill level required is that it mostly turns into a confidence-building exercise, which comes across in some really different ways depending on who's there and who's testing soon.
It's... sometimes a frustrating thing to facilitate. (A thing I do whenever the friend who really wants to run it is having fatigue problems or is out of town for family reasons.) Mostly because I don't have anxiety about tests/performances/being watched doing stuff like this? And so I'm like "yeah this is going to be fun" as soon as I'm certain I know all the stuff required. Which is not usually a helpful attitude for people who do have more anxiety.
But hey, at the end of the day it's all just about encouraging people and reminding them of how much they already know, and I do like that part.
Updating.
May. 2nd, 2026 07:42 pmhannahGiven how much better my arm feels today, I'm going with having slept on it oddly.
I ended up not going to services, or to Brooklyn. I went to the library book sale and cooked a hacked-up gochujang dal out of stuff I had around my kitchen, which wasn't a bad use of the afternoon or the lentils.
Of note in regards to the stuff I had around my kitchen, I used up the last of some old grapeseed oil. I bought a new bottle of it yesterday, knowing how little I had left, and I checked the nutrition information out of curiosity. It's the same ingredients, same calories, but the older bottle lists 14 grams total fat at 21% of the ADV with 1.5g of saturated fat at 7%, and the newer bottle has 14g at 18% and 1.5g at 8%. The older bottle also specifies "packed in Italy" while the newer one says "product of Spain." I can't say what I think of the change in percentages, just that it seems worth noticing.
I ended up not going to services, or to Brooklyn. I went to the library book sale and cooked a hacked-up gochujang dal out of stuff I had around my kitchen, which wasn't a bad use of the afternoon or the lentils.
Of note in regards to the stuff I had around my kitchen, I used up the last of some old grapeseed oil. I bought a new bottle of it yesterday, knowing how little I had left, and I checked the nutrition information out of curiosity. It's the same ingredients, same calories, but the older bottle lists 14 grams total fat at 21% of the ADV with 1.5g of saturated fat at 7%, and the newer bottle has 14g at 18% and 1.5g at 8%. The older bottle also specifies "packed in Italy" while the newer one says "product of Spain." I can't say what I think of the change in percentages, just that it seems worth noticing.
