The Legend of Vox Machina
Jun. 3rd, 2026 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
settiaiThe first three episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina Season 4 are available, so it's time to start watching and see just how many changes they've made from the campaign this season.
( Spoilers for 4x01 under the cut. )
( Spoilers for 4x02 under the cut. )
( Spoilers for 4x03 under the cut. )
( Spoilers for 4x01 under the cut. )
( Spoilers for 4x02 under the cut. )
( Spoilers for 4x03 under the cut. )
Critical Role
Jun. 2nd, 2026 06:40 pmsettiaiI really, really, really need to get caught up on Critical Role, but it's just so hard to find the time. 🙃
On Monday and Tuesday evenings, by the time I make it home from work, my brain is done for the day so watching something new-to-me is off the table. Then I have D&D on Wednesdays and Fridays, so watching anything longer than an hour or two isn't possible. Which means Thursday is my only real day to watch things after work, but it's also usually my day to run errands so... yeah.
Theoretically, I should have time on the weekends, but I've been using them to catch up on sleep lately.
Luckily, things seem to be calming down at work again as the big rush from May grads is dying down, so I'm hoping that I'll get to the point where I can start watching an episode or two throughout the day when I'm working from home and not on phone calls. I'm not holding my breath it will get to that point this week, but hey. Anything's possible.
On Monday and Tuesday evenings, by the time I make it home from work, my brain is done for the day so watching something new-to-me is off the table. Then I have D&D on Wednesdays and Fridays, so watching anything longer than an hour or two isn't possible. Which means Thursday is my only real day to watch things after work, but it's also usually my day to run errands so... yeah.
Theoretically, I should have time on the weekends, but I've been using them to catch up on sleep lately.
Luckily, things seem to be calming down at work again as the big rush from May grads is dying down, so I'm hoping that I'll get to the point where I can start watching an episode or two throughout the day when I'm working from home and not on phone calls. I'm not holding my breath it will get to that point this week, but hey. Anything's possible.
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Jun. 1st, 2026 10:56 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceQuick note that post-by-email and comment-by-email is (sometimes?) failing silently without actually posting right now! I'm pretty sure this is related to last night's shenanigans and will be fixed once Mark can finish the full fix for it, which he's working on, but if you've posted or replied by email in the last 24 hours, fish it out of your sent folder to check if it posted!
EDIT: This should be fixed as of around 7AM EDT! We *believe* everything that was stuck in the plumbing has been sent along to your journal or the comment thread it was meant for; it's definitely not where it was stuck anymore, at least.
EDIT: This should be fixed as of around 7AM EDT! We *believe* everything that was stuck in the plumbing has been sent along to your journal or the comment thread it was meant for; it's definitely not where it was stuck anymore, at least.
My Goodreads review: Paradox
Jun. 1st, 2026 05:00 pmankh_hpl
Paradox by Douglas PrestonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the second in Douglas Preston's new Cash & Colcord series (following Extinction), and the first co-written with his daughter Alethiea. Though set "in the world of" the Colorado Neander situation from Extinction, the plot runs in quite a different direction, focusing on the theft of a relic from the Vactican and a series of gruesomely imaginative murders. Oh, and a society dedicated to one particular theory about alien visitation . . .
In short, this is a well-crafted Preston thriller, with the trademark touch of weirdness and a fascinating tangle of subplots to resolve. The new Frankie Cash (a CBI agent) and Jim Colcord (Eagle County sheriff) partnership has a lot of potential, with a refreshing lack of flirtation in favor of a professional friendship. I'm not sure I enjoyed this one quite as much as Extinction, but I'll definitely be sticking around for whatever comes next in this series. Colorado residents (such as myself) may find it particularly interesting.
View all my reviews
The Legend of Vox Machina
Jun. 1st, 2026 12:38 amsettiaiHow is June already? Seriously, how?
(Yes, it's only a little past midnight for me. It still counts.)
On a related note, Season 4 of The Legend of Vox Machina starts airing this week, so I did a marathon of the first three seasons while I was working on various things around the apartment this weekend. I made it through the first two seasons on Saturday, and then I picked up with the third season late this afternoon and just finished up a bit before midnight.
It's been ages since I watched the entire series back-to-back like that, and it really made it stand out just how much the characters have grown and evolved over the course of those three seasons. As much as I love Campaign 1 of Critical Role, the animated series really does a better job at telling the story of Vox Machina in a lot of ways. Which makes sense, as the D&D series was essentially the rough draft of the story while the show is the version that's been cleaned up and edited.
Now I just have to wait for Season 4 to get here.
(Yes, it's only a little past midnight for me. It still counts.)
On a related note, Season 4 of The Legend of Vox Machina starts airing this week, so I did a marathon of the first three seasons while I was working on various things around the apartment this weekend. I made it through the first two seasons on Saturday, and then I picked up with the third season late this afternoon and just finished up a bit before midnight.
It's been ages since I watched the entire series back-to-back like that, and it really made it stand out just how much the characters have grown and evolved over the course of those three seasons. As much as I love Campaign 1 of Critical Role, the animated series really does a better job at telling the story of Vox Machina in a lot of ways. Which makes sense, as the D&D series was essentially the rough draft of the story while the show is the version that's been cleaned up and edited.
Now I just have to wait for Season 4 to get here.
(no subject)
May. 31st, 2026 10:00 pmdenise posting in dw_maintenanceRobby has managed to put in a temporary fix for the site errors and things failing to refresh or not showing up where they should! The permanent fix is going to need Mark's experience, and unfortunately -- seriously, this literally never fails -- Mark has been on an international flight all day, because of course he has. (Never. Fails. He and I are not allowed to both take vacation at once.)
The site will work just fine with the temporary fix in place, things just might be a little slow here and there. We'll keep you updated.
(no subject)
May. 31st, 2026 08:59 pmdenise posting in dw_maintenanceWe're aware of site traffic issues and are working to fix them for the people who are having problems! (The tactics the damn bot traffic uses are endlessly shifting, and they're really good at looking like real traffic, sigh.)
Dreamwidth Issues
May. 31st, 2026 02:48 pmsettiaiIs anyone else having issues with Dreamwidth today?
I made a a post earlier today, but when I went to my journal it wasn't there. I assumed that I'd done something wrong, so I tried again. The post also disappeared and didn't show on my main journal page, nor did it show on the Edit Entries page.
Then I looked at my Reading Page, and both entries were there. I tried clicking the Edit button on both of them so that I could try to delete the duplicate, but when I do it says that the entries don't exist. They're still clearly showing on my Reading Page, though, even though they're not showing on my journal or in the tags attached to the posts.
Since something was clearly wrong, I tried putting in a support ticket, and I got the various confirmations that it was submitted. When I click the links that you're supposed to use to track the ticket, though, it simply says "Unknown support number." So I'm not 100% certain whether or not the ticket was even submitted properly or not despite getting the confirmation that it was.
Also, just to be clear, I don't have beta testing turned on. This is just the vanilla site.
So... is anyone else noticing odd things happening, or am I just the lucky one today?
I made a a post earlier today, but when I went to my journal it wasn't there. I assumed that I'd done something wrong, so I tried again. The post also disappeared and didn't show on my main journal page, nor did it show on the Edit Entries page.
Then I looked at my Reading Page, and both entries were there. I tried clicking the Edit button on both of them so that I could try to delete the duplicate, but when I do it says that the entries don't exist. They're still clearly showing on my Reading Page, though, even though they're not showing on my journal or in the tags attached to the posts.
Since something was clearly wrong, I tried putting in a support ticket, and I got the various confirmations that it was submitted. When I click the links that you're supposed to use to track the ticket, though, it simply says "Unknown support number." So I'm not 100% certain whether or not the ticket was even submitted properly or not despite getting the confirmation that it was.
Also, just to be clear, I don't have beta testing turned on. This is just the vanilla site.
So... is anyone else noticing odd things happening, or am I just the lucky one today?
Arlathan eXchange
May. 31st, 2026 02:22 pmsettiaiThe Arlathan eXchange, a Dragon Age exchange focused on elves, went live earlier today. I ended up getting not one but two lovely gifts this year.
First up was imagination calling mirrors for you, a F!Mahariel/Morrigan fic. 1,057 words. It's focus is the Dark Ritual from DA:O and how it could have gone if there was a way to magically make F!Mahariel the "father" of Kieran.
Then there was baby, put some faith in me, which focuses on Davrin/Lucanis and Davrin/Lucanis/Spite. 5,169 words. It's set during "Inner Demons" but with Davrin being the one who Spite pulls into Lucanis's psyche rather than Rook.
Both fics are Explicit, ratings-wise.
First up was imagination calling mirrors for you, a F!Mahariel/Morrigan fic. 1,057 words. It's focus is the Dark Ritual from DA:O and how it could have gone if there was a way to magically make F!Mahariel the "father" of Kieran.
Then there was baby, put some faith in me, which focuses on Davrin/Lucanis and Davrin/Lucanis/Spite. 5,169 words. It's set during "Inner Demons" but with Davrin being the one who Spite pulls into Lucanis's psyche rather than Rook.
Both fics are Explicit, ratings-wise.
Testing needed in advance of code push!
May. 28th, 2026 04:10 pmdenise posting in dw_maintenanceIt's been a while since we've done a full code push rather than just hotfixes for bugs, so we are well overdue! Depending on availability, we're aiming to do one sometime soon; we'll let you know specifics once we've worked out good timing for everyone who needs to be available.
However! The reason it's been so long is we kept trying to get some of the stuff that's pending to "really finished" instead of just "mostly finished", and then we once again looked around and went "oh no, this is a really big code push with a lot of changes". Those make us nervous, because while we do a lot of testing ourselves, y'all are really creative in how you use the site and we inevitably find a bunch of edge cases when we let you loose on new code with your real-world data!
So, if folks have some spare time in the next few days, it would be a huge help if you could spend half an hour or so using the site the same way you normally do but with the "Site-Wide Canary" beta features flag turned on. Canary mode is a sort of "live testing" mode: it's your real data, but running the most up-to-date code.
Canary mode always does have a few glitches -- there may be missing text strings or errors about missing database properties, which is a limitation of how we run it. We don't need to know about those, but anything else weird that you run into, leave a comment with what you were trying to do and the error message you got.
I'll repeat that the "here be dragons" caution that's on the beta features page: some things may be broken, so don't use it for when you're doing something important. But a few more eyeballs on it before the push will help the push go more smoothly for everyone.
For folks who want to concentrate on what's changing, we haven't finished the second code tour of what's going to be in this push, but the ffirst one has a good chunk of what's going to be going live. (We'll get the second half done ASAP!)
However! The reason it's been so long is we kept trying to get some of the stuff that's pending to "really finished" instead of just "mostly finished", and then we once again looked around and went "oh no, this is a really big code push with a lot of changes". Those make us nervous, because while we do a lot of testing ourselves, y'all are really creative in how you use the site and we inevitably find a bunch of edge cases when we let you loose on new code with your real-world data!
So, if folks have some spare time in the next few days, it would be a huge help if you could spend half an hour or so using the site the same way you normally do but with the "Site-Wide Canary" beta features flag turned on. Canary mode is a sort of "live testing" mode: it's your real data, but running the most up-to-date code.
Canary mode always does have a few glitches -- there may be missing text strings or errors about missing database properties, which is a limitation of how we run it. We don't need to know about those, but anything else weird that you run into, leave a comment with what you were trying to do and the error message you got.
I'll repeat that the "here be dragons" caution that's on the beta features page: some things may be broken, so don't use it for when you're doing something important. But a few more eyeballs on it before the push will help the push go more smoothly for everyone.
For folks who want to concentrate on what's changing, we haven't finished the second code tour of what's going to be in this push, but the ffirst one has a good chunk of what's going to be going live. (We'll get the second half done ASAP!)
Experiments in Cooking
May. 28th, 2026 12:08 amsettiaiI've been eating a lot of pasta lately what with it being cheap and filling, and after some experimentation I've figured out the best way to make store-bought pasta and sauce (tomato-based at least) taste significantly better without adding much to the cost.
Basically, while the pasta is cooking on one of the eyes of my double burner, I put the sauce in a pan on the other and let it slowly heat up. Once the pasta finishes, I put it in the pan with the sauce, add some of the pasta water, plop in a pat of butter or some olive oil, and let it simmer on high for a few minutes. Then I sprinkle some parmesan and Italian seasoning on top and add another splash of pasta water if needed.
Once the sauce is at the consistency that I want, I transfer everything to a plate. Then I put some black pepper and more parmesan on top, drizzle it with a bit of olive oil, and call it a day. It's quick and easy, uses things that I have on hand, doesn't increase the cost of the meal very much, and makes it taste at approximately 10x better than it would otherwise.
Basically, while the pasta is cooking on one of the eyes of my double burner, I put the sauce in a pan on the other and let it slowly heat up. Once the pasta finishes, I put it in the pan with the sauce, add some of the pasta water, plop in a pat of butter or some olive oil, and let it simmer on high for a few minutes. Then I sprinkle some parmesan and Italian seasoning on top and add another splash of pasta water if needed.
Once the sauce is at the consistency that I want, I transfer everything to a plate. Then I put some black pepper and more parmesan on top, drizzle it with a bit of olive oil, and call it a day. It's quick and easy, uses things that I have on hand, doesn't increase the cost of the meal very much, and makes it taste at approximately 10x better than it would otherwise.
My Goodreads review: Tillinghast
May. 27th, 2026 04:49 pmankh_hpl
Tillinghast: A Novel by Clare CavenaghMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The initial question behind a certain kind of horror novel is: What if it's real, after all? In the case of Clare Cavenagh's debut novel Tillinghast, that question involves the New England vampire panic of the late 18th-19th centuries. Fueled by the spread of tuberculosis ("consumption") in families, it assumed that living family members were being drained of life by their deceased loved ones. The grim folk remedy involved exhumation, dissection, and sometimes decapitation of the body. This went on until at least 1892, with the well-known Mercy Brown case in Rhode Island.
Cavenagh's vampire -- though he never speaks of himself as one -- is the Reverend Stutley Tillinghast, last survivor (by at least a century) of strict nonconforming Protestant family. Finally returned to his home in Rhode Island after decades of wandering, he is struggling with the current century and terminally depressed. In a series of confessional writings, he lists those he's killed to serve his appetite, rebukes himself for his sins, and recalls his single encounter with the woman who made him what he is. He also tries to maintain the Tillinghast Church, though he lost his faith long ago. Above all, he is deciding how to die.
As he is preparing to burn down his house (and immolate himself), however, he gets a call from an angry hotel owner in town about a sick "young relative" creating trouble and trashing her room. Will he please come collect her? Tillinghast's reluctant decision to do so propels him back toward life. The relative is one Sarah Tillinghast, who bears a strong resemblance to Tillinghast's maker. She may also be his daughter, though the chronology for this is seriously skewed and never explained.
Tillinghast's attempts to help Sarah -- whose symptoms he recognizes all too clearly -- and snippets of Sarah's own viewpoint keep the plot moving, but this novel is weighted heavily toward character. Unfortunately, both Tillinghast and Sarah have oddly muted personalities. Despite their violent actions, they seem almost ambivalent about survival.
More than a vampire novel, but not quite a literary novel, Tillinghast offers fine writing and an intriguing premise. What it did not deliver, at least for this reader, was a coherent and well-paced plot. YMMV, always, and those who prioritize detailed characterization and atmospherics may be well satisfied.
[My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with ARC in exchange for an honest review.]
View all my reviews
Memorial Day
May. 25th, 2026 11:22 pmsettiaiWelp. I ended up being kidnapped by a friend for a large chunk of the day, so there went all of my plans to catch up on things that I'm behind on.
I need to get up early to head into the office tomorrow, but I'm currently wide awake so we'll see how things go. My sleep schedule always gets out of whack when I have a long weekend, so I'm not going to be surprised if I end up staying up half the night, get 2-3 hours of sleep in, and then crash for a few hours after work. Maybe my body will surprise me, though.
If it does as I'm expecting it to go, at least I'll have a few hours to try to catch up on some things before I get tired enough to actually fall asleep.
I need to get up early to head into the office tomorrow, but I'm currently wide awake so we'll see how things go. My sleep schedule always gets out of whack when I have a long weekend, so I'm not going to be surprised if I end up staying up half the night, get 2-3 hours of sleep in, and then crash for a few hours after work. Maybe my body will surprise me, though.
If it does as I'm expecting it to go, at least I'll have a few hours to try to catch up on some things before I get tired enough to actually fall asleep.
Air Fryer Fun
May. 24th, 2026 11:34 pmsettiaiFor the record, I've discovered that cooking hot dogs in the air fryer on 385°F for five minutes (turning them over halfway through) makes them turn out absolutely delicious.
I normally either boil them or cook them on my George Foreman grill, but I decided to experiment this weekend. It took a bit of trial and error, but the temperature and time that I mentioned above turned out to be the winner. I mainly only eat them in the summer, but it's good to know that I've found a quick and easy way of cooking the considering they're one of those foods that's filling but cheap.
Also? I dipped potato chips in melted chocolate, which was an A+ idea that I should definitely make again sometime.
I normally either boil them or cook them on my George Foreman grill, but I decided to experiment this weekend. It took a bit of trial and error, but the temperature and time that I mentioned above turned out to be the winner. I mainly only eat them in the summer, but it's good to know that I've found a quick and easy way of cooking the considering they're one of those foods that's filling but cheap.
Also? I dipped potato chips in melted chocolate, which was an A+ idea that I should definitely make again sometime.
