Official Burst Of Summer
Apr. 16th, 2026 11:50 pmIt got hot enough today that I turned on the AC in my car coming home! O.o Not expecting to have to do THAT in April! But yeah, according to the dashboard, it was 88F when I got out of work, so -- kind of had to be done! Fortunately, my window fan is doing the work in keeping my room cool tonight, which is good. And tomorrow the cooling trend begins, with temperatures only expected to get up to about 75F. We'll see if that happens or not -- it sure as hell wasn't supposed to get up until near 90F today, after all!
Anyway -- here's how the rest of my day went:
Work – Was another pretty quiet day at work today, with my main accomplishments being:
A) Posting two more batches of Easter Collection money – one in the morning, and one in the afternoon
B) Writing up a memo to Fiscal about how I found more newspaper office gifts and how they needed to issue a check to said newspaper office for the amount of said gifts, then taking said gifts off our system (since they weren’t meant for us)
C) Helping a guy update his card on his recurring gift (previous one was compromised)
D) Pestering our credit card company to PLEASE upload a missing Capital Campaign payment, and our main database contact to PLEASE finish validating and posting a batch of credit card gifts
E) And going through the returned pledge cards with credit card information from our processors to see which ones had been redone already, which donors I needed to contact, and which ones had special errors that I had to tell our credit card company about
Nothing particularly special, but it was nice to FINALLY get all those newspaper office gifts off the system! Like, seriously, I’ve been meaning to do that all week. We’ll see what comes my way on Friday, and what I’m able to accomplish as a result!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped back on the bike again this evening and managed to pedal my way through –
A) The rest of “CaFae Legends: Fairies - Part 1” by C. M. Alongi! The final twenty-odd minutes (since I didn’t watch the Patreon backers “credits crawl”) of Chris’s video on the depiction of fairies and fairy-adjacent creatures in the folklore and mythology of the Medieval British Isles included:
I. A bit more discussion on what the supernatural beings in all these stories were called before “fairy” became their common name (instead of just a descriptor of what the looked like, or the name of their home realm) – a lot of communities apparently didn’t have specific names for them, because they simply didn’t care that much about categorizing the mysterious magical folk (they had other things to worry about, and besides, with communities being more isolated, it wasn’t like their names for things would necessarily be accepted in the next town over), but when they did decide to name them, they were called either demons, dwarves, or elves
II. A discussion about where the word “elf” came from – Old Norse – and the elves and giants of Norse mythology, with the latter being intelligent and crafty supernatural beings who were good at using illusion magic to cause mischief and play tricks on people (Chris cited a story where one giant used such magic to mess with Thor for the lolz, like making the ocean look like a horn of mead), and the former being divided into the gorgeous “light elves” who live near the sun and the “dark elves” who live underground (presumably with all the other fairy beings previously discussed) – Chris was of the opinion that the light and dark elves ended up smooshed together in the British Isles folklore to create just one race of elves...until D&D came along and made “dark elves,” aka drow, a thing again :p
III. A discussion about how, for quite a long period of time, “elves” and “fairies” referred to the same beings – apparently, the famous fairies of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream were called “elves” in a German translation in the 18th century, so yeah – and how the two groups becoming distinct categories of being was mainly the result of the creation of the modern Santa Claus myth (with his workshop of not-particularly-fae-like elves at the North Pole) and the publication of The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien (with his elegant, immortal, benevolent, archery-and-nature-loving elves setting the new standard for elf-kind in fantasy)
IV. A discussion about how people felt about fairies in everyday life, based on the stories they told – basically, the average medieval person, according to Chris, would NOT have wanted to catch the attention of a fairy, as they were BAD NEWS. They were tricksters, played cruel pranks on people, and made deals like demons (which they were often confabulated with, meaning it was believed that stuff that repelled demons, like the ringing of church bells, could also repel fairies). There were even stories about how fairies gave humans as sacrifices to Hell on the regular – thus forming the basis of stories like Tam Lin, where a woman must save her beloved from becoming one of those sacrifices by holding tight to him while the cruel fairies turn him into different forms. Though there were also stories of more morally ambiguous or heroic fairies as well – like the ones in a couple of the stories of The Canterbury Tales who help out their respective protagonists with their redemption arcs, or the stories of those who helped a fairy somehow and were rewarded handsomely. Still, it was always best to be careful, because fucking up around them even a little could result in tragedy – cue Chris retelling the story of the midwife who got fairy ointment in her eye while delivering a fairy baby and thus the ability to see through glamours...until she unwisely revealed she could see through them to the fairy father and had her eye ripped out. D: (I am so glad that the version I read when I was young was of a kinder variant where the woman was just temporarily blinded in that eye, and it was framed as being karmic justice for being a snoop in her neighbor’s house!)
V. A discussion of the fairy realm (which has fifty million names, apparently – Chris declined to list them all XD) – starting with Chris sharing the original story of King Herla! You know, everyone’s favorite bitchy leader of the Wild Hunt? The human king who attended the wedding of a fairy friend, only to emerge back into the human world and discover centuries had passed, causing his horrified friend to gift him immortality and leadership of a Hunt? Yeah, turns out Chris SOFTENED his backstory when she introduced him into CaFae Latte – the ORIGINAL Herla did indeed venture into the fae realm to attend the wedding of a fairy dwarf he met, but when HE left, his “friend” gave him a bloodhound puppy and told him and his men not to get off their horses until the dog did. They agreed, but were confused when the dog didn’t get down once they emerged from the cave that served as an entrance into the Fae Realm. And THEN, upon questioning a nearby shepherd and learning 200 years had passed, a few of the knights jumped off their mounts in shock – only to immediately crumble to dust. Meaning the main reason Original Herla leads the Wild Hunt is because he can never get off his horse. ...Yeah, Chris was like “okay, the dwarf clearly KNEW about the time shifting bullshit, or at least suspected, so let’s change that in my version, even if it means getting rid of the dog.” (At least one comment is in favor of Herla’s bloodhound showing up in a future skit. :P) Anyway, the rest of the segment focused on:
a. How the timey-wimey stuff isn’t featured in every story about visiting Fairyland (and how the whole “eating and drinking fairy food will get you into trouble” thing didn’t seem to come around until much closer to the modern day)
b. How the Fae Realm is supposed to be a place of endless beauty and riches, where no one ever grows old or gets sick, and everything makes you feel blissfully happy (meaning, if your loved one goes into the woods and never comes out again, you can comfort yourself by believing they wandered into the Fae Realm instead of the more probable “they got eaten by a bear” – well, unless you believed that the Fae Realm was akin to Hell, given the whole “fairy kind of equals demon” thing going on at the time)
c. And how the Otherland is generally located underground, though sometimes it’s under water, on some sort of enchanted island, or even just randomly in the woods (remember Pwyll? He literally just wandered in while walking through a foggy forest)
VI. A discussion about where the concept of having to be super-polite to the Fae came about – Chris admitted that she could only find one story, written in the Victorian Era, that specifically warned that you had to be polite to the fairies, but felt that it was probably just a common-sense warning. After all, the Medieval era was a time when someone insulting their lord could result in all sorts of gruesome punishments, and honor was to be defended not only with words, but with violence, lest you be thought a coward. It only made sense that people would default to being polite to the fairies, and tell others to be the same – fairies were even more dangerous than your average lord, after all! She also mentioned the story “Elidor and the Golden Ball,” about a boy who is often invited to Fairyland to play with the prince there, until he tries to steal the prince’s golden ball and is kicked out forever (because stealing from your host is a dick move), citing it as the only story where she could find a direct reference to fairies being unable to lie before the modern time (aka, “the age of the internet”)...though she then admitted that she couldn’t find any stories featuring fairies OUTRIGHT lying either, so maybe their inability to lie was just always implied. She wasn’t sure.
VIII. A discussion about changelings and their whole deal – typically believed to be fairies who swapped places with human infants and children, though the reasons varied (fairy just wanted their child to be raised by a human; fairy child needed human milk to survive and thrive; fairy was dropping off an ELDERLY fairy to be looked after until they passed). Chris noted that the idea might have been inspired by how highborn children were often fostered by families not their own, as part of peacekeeping efforts between families (if they had each other’s children, they’d be reluctant to start shit), and/or used as a way to explain early infant deaths from a variety of factors. And then went on to note how the traits of changeling children often matched the traits of AUTISTIC children – in particular, descriptions of their bad tempers and screaming and crying fits sounding like descriptions of autistic meltdowns. Leading to a lot of kids having to learn how to mask to survive when this prompted their families to start abusing them in an attempt to “have the fairies bring the original child back.” *grimace* Not fun! As you might imagine, though, learning this is what inspired Chris to add the character of Nicole into CaFae Latte – her first appearance was to ask Bob if she might be a changeling (with Bob explaining that no, changelings in this verse were just chunks of wood enchanted to look like babies so her brethren could steal real kids and raise them as slaves).
IX. And a discussion of iron and why it hurts the fairies – Chris admitted to not knowing EXACTLY where the idea came from, but said there was a case for it being part of the spread of Christianity around the area during Medieval times. Because, again, fairies were often confabulated with demons, and there were stories about demons being repelled by iron – or, specifically, horseshoes, thanks to St. Duncan managing to injure a disguised Devil by spotting his cloven hooves, offering him a shoe to help a limp, and then slapping a red-hot iron horseshoe onto his hoof until he agreed to never enter a domicile protected by a horseshoe. She also talked about the stock story of the “Fairy Bride” that was around during this time, where a man marries a supernatural woman who warns him she will have to leave if he does a certain thing, only for him to do that certain thing and thus lose her – and how some of these stories featured the bride telling the husband that she will have to leave if he ever hits her with iron. And how these stories not only demonstrated the fae weakness to iron, but also the “fairies always follow the letter of the law” trait – with the bride having to leave even if her husband hit her with iron by accident (such as throwing her a bridle to help get a runaway horse under control). Her final note was about how the whole “harmed by iron” thing might have something to do with fairies being very closely tied to nature, and iron tools being very much man-made – they’re just not sympatico!
And that wrapped things up for this part! The next part will apparently cover how fairies changed during the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and evolution of the Modern Era, becoming creatures fit for stories for children...until the romance authors got their hands on them. XD Fun!
B) And the entirety of “PROJECT HAIL MARY All Movie Clips (2026) Ryan Gosling” by Entertainment Access! A whole bunch of clips of the movie...which I will have to tell you about tomorrow, because it is late and I have to go to bed. Just be assured there were lots of cute Rocky moments. EDIT 4/17/2026: Okay, it’s the next morning, let’s do a quick sum-up of the clips in this little collection:
I. One of Ryland Grace and Rocky’s first meetings, before Grace managed to find a way to translate Rocky’s chitters, with Rocky putting on a little puppet show for Grace to indicate “I would like you to go back in your ship for the moment, please” – Grace was like “aw, but I just got here” but reluctantly left
II. The clip of Rocky arriving on Grace’s ship in his hamster ball and running around all excited to see what it was like
III. The clip of Rocky grossing Grace out with his eating and proving that he could hear Grace no matter how softly he whispered (aka the “personal space is at a premium” “who Grace talking to question” clip XD)
IV. Grace and Rocky picking Rocky’s computer voice from a variety of options, rejecting such things as a spooky deep voice, a worryingly-breathy female voice, and a snooty British voice before settling on – well, Rocky’s puppeteer’s voice :p
V. Ryan Gosling talking about his character Grace in the movie (how he’s an ordinary guy who ends up in space with amnesia, and slowly recalls that the reason he’s up there is because the sun is dying and this is a “hail mary” mission to try and save it, and then goes on to make friends with an alien who’s on the same mission for HIS planet) and the directors and producers talking about how Ryan carries the film with his endearing personality, and how it’s a film about feeling like you can do anything and how it has a lot of spectacle but also a lot of heart
VI. And a trailer for the film showing Rocky and Grace’s first meeting – including Grace, upon realizing Rocky is imitating his movements in an attempt not to get clobbered with a wrench, making Rocky dance and dab – and their growing friendship and attempt to save both their suns, which includes some of the action sequences and Rocky declaring he wasn’t going to let Grace die (because, well, rock alien has some trauma from watching his own crew die and being unable to help)
Good stuff – I’m going to have to actually watch the film at some point, I think. XD
2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I had a bit of a slow start tonight, I admit, but in the end I made it onto page 54 of 67, covering:
A) Alice talking about the Antediluvians, Caine, and signs of Gehenna with Beckett, agreeing with him that the unpleasantness against thin-bloods was unwarranted (especially if they HAD invented some kind of “thin-blood alchemy,” since treating them like shit just encouraged them to keep their secrets for themselves) and that a Kindred-driven end of the world was much more likely than a Caine-driven one
B) Beckett asking Alice her thoughts on the purpose of vampires, and Alice jokingly responding that “we’re here because the jellyfish will it so” before more seriously pondering the idea of vampires just being natural predators of humans, here to keep them on their toes and thin their herds – Beckett said that he’d heard that theory before, but it didn’t have a lot of evidence backing it up (as vampires hid from humans and mostly did their best not to kill them)...though he still preferred it to “vampires are the result of a divine punishment for manslaughter” (Alice: “not murder?” Beckett: “if I remember correctly, Caine didn’t actually MEAN to kill Abel, so…”)
C) Alice and Beckett sharing a nice moment over their shared inability to believe in higher powers (Beckett because he has trouble accepting things without evidence, Alice because she finds it hard to believe in anything but herself), then parting ways because, well, there’s no sarcophagus, so there’s no reason for either of them to stick around – though Alice had to ask Beckett how he got down there, since she didn’t see him on her route; cue Beckett revealing he can turn into a mist and Alice being like “damn, I thought super speed was going to be the Discipline I most coveted”
D) Alice leaving the workshop space with the help of a few directions from Beckett before he misted away again and heading back toward the surface via the parking garage – where she met Van, Terrence, and Mercurio waiting for her with a big old van, ready to help her move the sarcophagus; cue her having to tell the boys there had been a bit of a change of plans…
E) Alice and the boys arriving at LaCroix’s office and – after nobody wanted to be the one to open the door and tell LaCroix the bad news – being ushered in by the Sheriff; cue Alice having to listen to LaCroix pontificate on the burdens of leadership while the boys hung back, and learning that the blood hunt would be called on Nines (which at least removed his Dominated compulsion from her tongue)
F) And Alice reluctantly telling LaCroix that the sarcophagus had been already stolen before she arrived, and LaCroix flying into a brief but frightening rage...before realizing that the likely culprit was Gary, the Nosferatu primogen, and tasking Alice with going to Hollywood and making contact with the Anarch Baron there, Isaac, so she could then find Gary and ask him where the hell the sarcophagus was – and not to come back until she had it in her possession
Whew – pretty good chunk of story, I think you’ll agree... But I’ve still got plenty to go – we’ll see how far I get tomorrow evening!
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – again, didn’t have time with everything else I was trying to get done. *shakehead* Story of my life...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while there was nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, a scan of the VTMB tag did get me something that I could put into the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue for tomorrow – a bit of Beckett fanart by vitasine, showing off his anatomy (specifically, showing half his regular face, with the over half being split into a depiction of his brain and other eyeball, and his skull’s jaw). I know that sounds kind of gross, but it’s a pretty striking and interesting piece, and I thought it would go well with the other VTMB stuff I reblogged this week. :) Still gotta sort out Song Saturday, but that can wait until tomorrow!
What can also wait until tomorrow -- spacing. I mean, I have to edit this thing anyway to add in a few notes on the Project Hail Mary video, so...yeah. See you then -- night all! EDIT 4/17/2026: All sorted, enjoy!
Anyway -- here's how the rest of my day went:
Work – Was another pretty quiet day at work today, with my main accomplishments being:
A) Posting two more batches of Easter Collection money – one in the morning, and one in the afternoon
B) Writing up a memo to Fiscal about how I found more newspaper office gifts and how they needed to issue a check to said newspaper office for the amount of said gifts, then taking said gifts off our system (since they weren’t meant for us)
C) Helping a guy update his card on his recurring gift (previous one was compromised)
D) Pestering our credit card company to PLEASE upload a missing Capital Campaign payment, and our main database contact to PLEASE finish validating and posting a batch of credit card gifts
E) And going through the returned pledge cards with credit card information from our processors to see which ones had been redone already, which donors I needed to contact, and which ones had special errors that I had to tell our credit card company about
Nothing particularly special, but it was nice to FINALLY get all those newspaper office gifts off the system! Like, seriously, I’ve been meaning to do that all week. We’ll see what comes my way on Friday, and what I’m able to accomplish as a result!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped back on the bike again this evening and managed to pedal my way through –
A) The rest of “CaFae Legends: Fairies - Part 1” by C. M. Alongi! The final twenty-odd minutes (since I didn’t watch the Patreon backers “credits crawl”) of Chris’s video on the depiction of fairies and fairy-adjacent creatures in the folklore and mythology of the Medieval British Isles included:
I. A bit more discussion on what the supernatural beings in all these stories were called before “fairy” became their common name (instead of just a descriptor of what the looked like, or the name of their home realm) – a lot of communities apparently didn’t have specific names for them, because they simply didn’t care that much about categorizing the mysterious magical folk (they had other things to worry about, and besides, with communities being more isolated, it wasn’t like their names for things would necessarily be accepted in the next town over), but when they did decide to name them, they were called either demons, dwarves, or elves
II. A discussion about where the word “elf” came from – Old Norse – and the elves and giants of Norse mythology, with the latter being intelligent and crafty supernatural beings who were good at using illusion magic to cause mischief and play tricks on people (Chris cited a story where one giant used such magic to mess with Thor for the lolz, like making the ocean look like a horn of mead), and the former being divided into the gorgeous “light elves” who live near the sun and the “dark elves” who live underground (presumably with all the other fairy beings previously discussed) – Chris was of the opinion that the light and dark elves ended up smooshed together in the British Isles folklore to create just one race of elves...until D&D came along and made “dark elves,” aka drow, a thing again :p
III. A discussion about how, for quite a long period of time, “elves” and “fairies” referred to the same beings – apparently, the famous fairies of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream were called “elves” in a German translation in the 18th century, so yeah – and how the two groups becoming distinct categories of being was mainly the result of the creation of the modern Santa Claus myth (with his workshop of not-particularly-fae-like elves at the North Pole) and the publication of The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien (with his elegant, immortal, benevolent, archery-and-nature-loving elves setting the new standard for elf-kind in fantasy)
IV. A discussion about how people felt about fairies in everyday life, based on the stories they told – basically, the average medieval person, according to Chris, would NOT have wanted to catch the attention of a fairy, as they were BAD NEWS. They were tricksters, played cruel pranks on people, and made deals like demons (which they were often confabulated with, meaning it was believed that stuff that repelled demons, like the ringing of church bells, could also repel fairies). There were even stories about how fairies gave humans as sacrifices to Hell on the regular – thus forming the basis of stories like Tam Lin, where a woman must save her beloved from becoming one of those sacrifices by holding tight to him while the cruel fairies turn him into different forms. Though there were also stories of more morally ambiguous or heroic fairies as well – like the ones in a couple of the stories of The Canterbury Tales who help out their respective protagonists with their redemption arcs, or the stories of those who helped a fairy somehow and were rewarded handsomely. Still, it was always best to be careful, because fucking up around them even a little could result in tragedy – cue Chris retelling the story of the midwife who got fairy ointment in her eye while delivering a fairy baby and thus the ability to see through glamours...until she unwisely revealed she could see through them to the fairy father and had her eye ripped out. D: (I am so glad that the version I read when I was young was of a kinder variant where the woman was just temporarily blinded in that eye, and it was framed as being karmic justice for being a snoop in her neighbor’s house!)
V. A discussion of the fairy realm (which has fifty million names, apparently – Chris declined to list them all XD) – starting with Chris sharing the original story of King Herla! You know, everyone’s favorite bitchy leader of the Wild Hunt? The human king who attended the wedding of a fairy friend, only to emerge back into the human world and discover centuries had passed, causing his horrified friend to gift him immortality and leadership of a Hunt? Yeah, turns out Chris SOFTENED his backstory when she introduced him into CaFae Latte – the ORIGINAL Herla did indeed venture into the fae realm to attend the wedding of a fairy dwarf he met, but when HE left, his “friend” gave him a bloodhound puppy and told him and his men not to get off their horses until the dog did. They agreed, but were confused when the dog didn’t get down once they emerged from the cave that served as an entrance into the Fae Realm. And THEN, upon questioning a nearby shepherd and learning 200 years had passed, a few of the knights jumped off their mounts in shock – only to immediately crumble to dust. Meaning the main reason Original Herla leads the Wild Hunt is because he can never get off his horse. ...Yeah, Chris was like “okay, the dwarf clearly KNEW about the time shifting bullshit, or at least suspected, so let’s change that in my version, even if it means getting rid of the dog.” (At least one comment is in favor of Herla’s bloodhound showing up in a future skit. :P) Anyway, the rest of the segment focused on:
a. How the timey-wimey stuff isn’t featured in every story about visiting Fairyland (and how the whole “eating and drinking fairy food will get you into trouble” thing didn’t seem to come around until much closer to the modern day)
b. How the Fae Realm is supposed to be a place of endless beauty and riches, where no one ever grows old or gets sick, and everything makes you feel blissfully happy (meaning, if your loved one goes into the woods and never comes out again, you can comfort yourself by believing they wandered into the Fae Realm instead of the more probable “they got eaten by a bear” – well, unless you believed that the Fae Realm was akin to Hell, given the whole “fairy kind of equals demon” thing going on at the time)
c. And how the Otherland is generally located underground, though sometimes it’s under water, on some sort of enchanted island, or even just randomly in the woods (remember Pwyll? He literally just wandered in while walking through a foggy forest)
VI. A discussion about where the concept of having to be super-polite to the Fae came about – Chris admitted that she could only find one story, written in the Victorian Era, that specifically warned that you had to be polite to the fairies, but felt that it was probably just a common-sense warning. After all, the Medieval era was a time when someone insulting their lord could result in all sorts of gruesome punishments, and honor was to be defended not only with words, but with violence, lest you be thought a coward. It only made sense that people would default to being polite to the fairies, and tell others to be the same – fairies were even more dangerous than your average lord, after all! She also mentioned the story “Elidor and the Golden Ball,” about a boy who is often invited to Fairyland to play with the prince there, until he tries to steal the prince’s golden ball and is kicked out forever (because stealing from your host is a dick move), citing it as the only story where she could find a direct reference to fairies being unable to lie before the modern time (aka, “the age of the internet”)...though she then admitted that she couldn’t find any stories featuring fairies OUTRIGHT lying either, so maybe their inability to lie was just always implied. She wasn’t sure.
VIII. A discussion about changelings and their whole deal – typically believed to be fairies who swapped places with human infants and children, though the reasons varied (fairy just wanted their child to be raised by a human; fairy child needed human milk to survive and thrive; fairy was dropping off an ELDERLY fairy to be looked after until they passed). Chris noted that the idea might have been inspired by how highborn children were often fostered by families not their own, as part of peacekeeping efforts between families (if they had each other’s children, they’d be reluctant to start shit), and/or used as a way to explain early infant deaths from a variety of factors. And then went on to note how the traits of changeling children often matched the traits of AUTISTIC children – in particular, descriptions of their bad tempers and screaming and crying fits sounding like descriptions of autistic meltdowns. Leading to a lot of kids having to learn how to mask to survive when this prompted their families to start abusing them in an attempt to “have the fairies bring the original child back.” *grimace* Not fun! As you might imagine, though, learning this is what inspired Chris to add the character of Nicole into CaFae Latte – her first appearance was to ask Bob if she might be a changeling (with Bob explaining that no, changelings in this verse were just chunks of wood enchanted to look like babies so her brethren could steal real kids and raise them as slaves).
IX. And a discussion of iron and why it hurts the fairies – Chris admitted to not knowing EXACTLY where the idea came from, but said there was a case for it being part of the spread of Christianity around the area during Medieval times. Because, again, fairies were often confabulated with demons, and there were stories about demons being repelled by iron – or, specifically, horseshoes, thanks to St. Duncan managing to injure a disguised Devil by spotting his cloven hooves, offering him a shoe to help a limp, and then slapping a red-hot iron horseshoe onto his hoof until he agreed to never enter a domicile protected by a horseshoe. She also talked about the stock story of the “Fairy Bride” that was around during this time, where a man marries a supernatural woman who warns him she will have to leave if he does a certain thing, only for him to do that certain thing and thus lose her – and how some of these stories featured the bride telling the husband that she will have to leave if he ever hits her with iron. And how these stories not only demonstrated the fae weakness to iron, but also the “fairies always follow the letter of the law” trait – with the bride having to leave even if her husband hit her with iron by accident (such as throwing her a bridle to help get a runaway horse under control). Her final note was about how the whole “harmed by iron” thing might have something to do with fairies being very closely tied to nature, and iron tools being very much man-made – they’re just not sympatico!
And that wrapped things up for this part! The next part will apparently cover how fairies changed during the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and evolution of the Modern Era, becoming creatures fit for stories for children...until the romance authors got their hands on them. XD Fun!
B) And the entirety of “PROJECT HAIL MARY All Movie Clips (2026) Ryan Gosling” by Entertainment Access! A whole bunch of clips of the movie...which I will have to tell you about tomorrow, because it is late and I have to go to bed. Just be assured there were lots of cute Rocky moments. EDIT 4/17/2026: Okay, it’s the next morning, let’s do a quick sum-up of the clips in this little collection:
I. One of Ryland Grace and Rocky’s first meetings, before Grace managed to find a way to translate Rocky’s chitters, with Rocky putting on a little puppet show for Grace to indicate “I would like you to go back in your ship for the moment, please” – Grace was like “aw, but I just got here” but reluctantly left
II. The clip of Rocky arriving on Grace’s ship in his hamster ball and running around all excited to see what it was like
III. The clip of Rocky grossing Grace out with his eating and proving that he could hear Grace no matter how softly he whispered (aka the “personal space is at a premium” “who Grace talking to question” clip XD)
IV. Grace and Rocky picking Rocky’s computer voice from a variety of options, rejecting such things as a spooky deep voice, a worryingly-breathy female voice, and a snooty British voice before settling on – well, Rocky’s puppeteer’s voice :p
V. Ryan Gosling talking about his character Grace in the movie (how he’s an ordinary guy who ends up in space with amnesia, and slowly recalls that the reason he’s up there is because the sun is dying and this is a “hail mary” mission to try and save it, and then goes on to make friends with an alien who’s on the same mission for HIS planet) and the directors and producers talking about how Ryan carries the film with his endearing personality, and how it’s a film about feeling like you can do anything and how it has a lot of spectacle but also a lot of heart
VI. And a trailer for the film showing Rocky and Grace’s first meeting – including Grace, upon realizing Rocky is imitating his movements in an attempt not to get clobbered with a wrench, making Rocky dance and dab – and their growing friendship and attempt to save both their suns, which includes some of the action sequences and Rocky declaring he wasn’t going to let Grace die (because, well, rock alien has some trauma from watching his own crew die and being unable to help)
Good stuff – I’m going to have to actually watch the film at some point, I think. XD
2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I had a bit of a slow start tonight, I admit, but in the end I made it onto page 54 of 67, covering:
A) Alice talking about the Antediluvians, Caine, and signs of Gehenna with Beckett, agreeing with him that the unpleasantness against thin-bloods was unwarranted (especially if they HAD invented some kind of “thin-blood alchemy,” since treating them like shit just encouraged them to keep their secrets for themselves) and that a Kindred-driven end of the world was much more likely than a Caine-driven one
B) Beckett asking Alice her thoughts on the purpose of vampires, and Alice jokingly responding that “we’re here because the jellyfish will it so” before more seriously pondering the idea of vampires just being natural predators of humans, here to keep them on their toes and thin their herds – Beckett said that he’d heard that theory before, but it didn’t have a lot of evidence backing it up (as vampires hid from humans and mostly did their best not to kill them)...though he still preferred it to “vampires are the result of a divine punishment for manslaughter” (Alice: “not murder?” Beckett: “if I remember correctly, Caine didn’t actually MEAN to kill Abel, so…”)
C) Alice and Beckett sharing a nice moment over their shared inability to believe in higher powers (Beckett because he has trouble accepting things without evidence, Alice because she finds it hard to believe in anything but herself), then parting ways because, well, there’s no sarcophagus, so there’s no reason for either of them to stick around – though Alice had to ask Beckett how he got down there, since she didn’t see him on her route; cue Beckett revealing he can turn into a mist and Alice being like “damn, I thought super speed was going to be the Discipline I most coveted”
D) Alice leaving the workshop space with the help of a few directions from Beckett before he misted away again and heading back toward the surface via the parking garage – where she met Van, Terrence, and Mercurio waiting for her with a big old van, ready to help her move the sarcophagus; cue her having to tell the boys there had been a bit of a change of plans…
E) Alice and the boys arriving at LaCroix’s office and – after nobody wanted to be the one to open the door and tell LaCroix the bad news – being ushered in by the Sheriff; cue Alice having to listen to LaCroix pontificate on the burdens of leadership while the boys hung back, and learning that the blood hunt would be called on Nines (which at least removed his Dominated compulsion from her tongue)
F) And Alice reluctantly telling LaCroix that the sarcophagus had been already stolen before she arrived, and LaCroix flying into a brief but frightening rage...before realizing that the likely culprit was Gary, the Nosferatu primogen, and tasking Alice with going to Hollywood and making contact with the Anarch Baron there, Isaac, so she could then find Gary and ask him where the hell the sarcophagus was – and not to come back until she had it in her possession
Whew – pretty good chunk of story, I think you’ll agree... But I’ve still got plenty to go – we’ll see how far I get tomorrow evening!
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – again, didn’t have time with everything else I was trying to get done. *shakehead* Story of my life...
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while there was nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, a scan of the VTMB tag did get me something that I could put into the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue for tomorrow – a bit of Beckett fanart by vitasine, showing off his anatomy (specifically, showing half his regular face, with the over half being split into a depiction of his brain and other eyeball, and his skull’s jaw). I know that sounds kind of gross, but it’s a pretty striking and interesting piece, and I thought it would go well with the other VTMB stuff I reblogged this week. :) Still gotta sort out Song Saturday, but that can wait until tomorrow!
What can also wait until tomorrow -- spacing. I mean, I have to edit this thing anyway to add in a few notes on the Project Hail Mary video, so...yeah. See you then -- night all! EDIT 4/17/2026: All sorted, enjoy!
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Date: 2026-04-18 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-19 03:52 am (UTC)