sashajwolf | Network

Posted by DaveB

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1404-and-i-would-walk-63500-light-years/

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=8399

It’s safe to say this guy’s stride to inseam ratio is an outlier. You need special mathematical notation to indicate how many standards he deviates. Cases like this are why functions like “trimmed mean” are necessary.

So yeah, dude went out for a stroll. From somewhere, probably in or near our galaxy, on a celestial object, presumably orbiting the galactic center in a certain direction at a certain speed, onto a ship that is almost definitely moving in a different direction and at different speed. A FTL speed. It’s safe to say this guy slays at hopscotch.

I’m not really sure what else to say that doesn’t give away who and what this guy is, even though to me, it seems fairly obvious. }cough{

Oh, one other thing. Originally this was a standard sized page, but I’m really getting tired of cramming important moments into panels the size of 1/9th of a page. So I expanded this one, and I will probably do it more in the future. It doesn’t necessarily mean I can make those big panels all crazy high detail or anything. It’s not like I suddenly have a team of background guys that can draw 3-point perspective cityscapes for me while I concentrate on foreground art. I just want to give the important moments a little more weight, and in comic lingo, that usually means more page real estate.

But in expanding the now final panel, I wound up cutting the planned final panel. Originally, he shows up and looms as you see here, then there’s a panel of him leaning over Sydney, looking at the orbs, and that’s when he says Curious, etc. That panel made it clear he’s 1) there to check out the orbs, and 2) no one can see him. I think this version of the page is slightly more ambiguous in those regards, but not so much that I think it’ll throw you guys into a maelstrom of confusion, cats and dogs, etc.

A hint that he can’t be seen is that while he is backlit by the viewscreen and so is Sydney, he’s not casting a shadow on her. Which made me realize that if you could be invisible and somehow still see yourself (you wouldn’t be able to) you’d either be absolutely pitch black, because light would be bending around you and you would therefore not be illuminated, or you would be fully lit, without any shadows or ambient occlusion, because light would be passing through you equally… but there’s no way you’d be able to see yourself like that. Or see at all, really. But still, you’d look like a 3D model that was evenly globally lit.

Yes, yes, a magic spell that made you invisible could include an illusion that only you can see of yourself so that you can still pick locks or whatever non-fumbling-around-blindly activity you need to do. But then that illusion would have to make some decisions about illumination.

There’s also the option of not being invisible and just blocking people’s perception of you. That’s difficult because you have to block perception of footprints, cast shadows, B.O., etc. Not that standard invisibility block odor or anything. And there’s also the complication of perception blocking in a world with electronic cameras. It’s one thing in a fantasy world, but if blocking the perception of digital eyes requires a whole other level of hand-waving.

But then you have a guy who can amble a jillion parsecs like it’s nothing, and you don’t even need to try and justify anything. They’re at the “dude can do some shit.” level, and that’s all the explanation needed.

Ooh, look! A new vote incentive! And it’s updated with color!

Well, in progress, obviously. I have another one that’s actually a bit further along, but everyone was all, “Sydney Kobold vote incentive!” So I switched to this one. Plus the other one was a multi-character picture so it will actually take me longer to finish. I hope to have an update for this one each week, so stay tuned. There is a slightly higher res version on Patreon.

By the way, this gunmetal blue-ish background and teal pencils are how I draw the comic. I set it up this way so I don’t have to spend all day staring into a bright white blank page.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1404-and-i-would-walk-63500-light-years/

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=8399

spikedluv

I had a chiropractic appointment this morning. My sciatica felt okay today until I was sitting in the evening. Hopefully we are reaching the end of this issue. I hit Walmart (mom needed more dramamine) and the Pharmacy while I was downtown.

I drove mom to her treatment, did a load of laundry, hand-washed dishes, went for a couple walk with Pip and the dogs, baked chicken for the dogs’ meals, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and scooped kitty litter. I also filled the gas tank, hit the bank drive-thru, placed an online order, and grilled steak for Pip’s supper.

I took a short nap and watched some HGTV programs. I want to start writing a fic, but so far it’s all been in my head and nothing has reached paper/laptop.

Temps started out at 28.4(F) and reached 48.9. It felt really cool out despite the presence of some sun. I’m not liking this.

Mom Update:

Mom was doing okay today. ( more back here )

conuly

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

**********

Link

conuly

Boo.

(Wait, and also nearly Halloween! Boo!)

************

( Read more... )

china_shop

There will always be constraints—time, budget, materials and equipment. If you’re waiting for all of the roadblocks to be cleared before you begin, you might be waiting all your life. So stop waiting. Just do your best to put something into the world that wasn't there yesterday. We can do that. I hope you begin something today, maybe something you’ve been putting off or waiting on the just-right conditions for. Forget just right and try right now instead. You don’t have to know what you’re doing or how it will turn out. Just start.

– Maggie Smith, via Substack

My day 30: I added another 530 words to my WIP (and did a couple more Youtube art tutorials: a dragon and a black cat). Depending on how my arms are in a couple of hours, I might go to UK Writers' Hour and keep working on my WIP. It would be good to get it done.

One more day in October! Reminder that

alightbuthappypen has offered to host for November.

The tally
( Tally )

Day 28:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 29:

china_shop,

badly_knitted,

cmk418,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

When you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.

fairestcat

So, as I mentioned in my Festivids letter, I am currently in Hawaii. Hilo to be specific. I have been here since October 10th and I genuinely have no idea when I'll get to go home.

My mother was diagnosed with congestive heart failure five years ago, but this fall she got significantly worse and also developed pneumonia. She was in the hospital for two and a half weeks and is now in a short-term rehab working on getting back her ability to do exciting things like walking across a room without getting shaky-legged and out of breath and using the bathroom unaided.

I'm in an itty bitty postage stamp sized airbnb room in Hilo, since my mom's place is a nearly two-hour drive away. I can't go home until we figure out what happens next for my mom. I don't think she can go back to the place she's been sharing with my sister. My sister is also disabled and not really able to help my mom with stuff, their tiny house is cramped and crowded, has built-in steps and is a constant tripping hazard, and honestly my mom and sister are driving each other completely mad.

Hawaii is beautiful and all, there are certainly worse places I could be stuck indefinitely, but I really want my own bed and my own spouses and my own pets and my own time zone.

cmk418 posting in

sweetandshort

Title: A Mistake Worth Making
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Character: T'Pol
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Mistake
Summary: The Trellium exposure has quite an effect on her

( A Mistake Worth Making )

skygiants

The other Polly Barton-translated book I read recently was Asako Yuzuki's Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, which I ended up suggesting for my book club on account of intriguing DW posts from several of you.

Butter focuses Rika Machida, a magazine journalist, on the cusp of becoming the first woman in her company to break the glass ceiling and join Big Editorial, who decides that her next big feature is going to be an insider interview with the infamous prisoner Manako Kajii. Kajii is accused of murdering several men that she met on dating sites after seducing them with a fatal combination of sex, personal attention, and French cooking; in the eyes of the public, however, her greatest crime is that she somehow managed all this femme fatale-ing while being Kind Of Fat.

After a tip from her best friend Reiko -- a housewife who quit her own promising career in hopes of starting a family -- Rika, despite having no previous interest in cooking or domesticity, writes to Kajii about getting her recipe for beef stew. This opens the door for a connection that gets very psychologically weird very fast; Kajii, behind bars, tests Rika with various little living-by-proxy challenges -- eat some good butter! go to the best French restaurant in town! eat late night ramen! after having sex! and tell me all about it -- and Rika, fascinated despite herself, allows herself to be manipulated. For the interview, of course. And also because it turns out good butter is really good, and that eating and making rich food for herself instead of working to keep herself boyishly thin (the prince of her all-girl's school! One of the Boys at work!) is changing her relationship to her body, and her gender, and to the way that people perceive her in the world and she perceives them.

This is more or less what I'd understood to be the plot of the book -- a sort of Silence of the Lambs situation, if the crime that Clarice was trying to solve by talking with Hannibal was societal misogyny -- but in fact it's only about half of the story, and societal misogyny is only one of the big crimes under consideration. The other one is loneliness, and so the rest of the book has to do with Rika's other relationships, and the domino-effect changes that Rika's Kajiimania has on the other people in her life. The most significant is with Reiko, which is extremely fraught with lesbian tension ( spoilers I suppose ) But there's also Rika's mother, and her boyfriend, and the older mentor that she has secret intermittent just-lads-together meet-ups with in bars to get hot journalistic tips; all of these relationships are important, and usually ended up in places I didn't expect and that were more interesting than I would have guessed.

Not everything landed for me about this book, but this was one thing it did pretty consistently that I appreciated -- Rika would think about something, and I would go, 'well, that was didactic, you just said your theme out loud,' and then the book and Rika as protagonist would revisit it and have a more complicated and potentially contradictory thought about it, and then we'd go back to it again, and it usually ended up being more interesting than I would have thought the first time around. It's a long book, possibly too long, but it's equally possible I think that it does need that space to hold contradictions in.

It was however quite funny to read this shortly after Taiwan Travelogue -- another book I have not written up and should probably do so soon -- and also shortly after What Did You Eat Yesterday and also seeing a lot of gifsets for She Loves To Cook and She Loves To Eat ... fellas, is it gay to be really into food? signs point to yes!

davidgillon

Hidden Legacy Series, Ilona Andrews

(First trilogy reviewed here. As a quick primer, magic has existed since the mid-1800s, runs in families called Houses, led by the overpowered Primes, and mundane law enforcement mostly refuses to get involved with their feuds).

Diamond Fire

Book 3.5 as it's a novella, and Nevada Baylor, protagonist of the first trilogy, is about to marry billionaire Connor 'Mad' Rogan. But they're two wedding planners down and Nevada's middle sister Catalina has decided she's going to make this wedding work if it kills her, or if she has to kill someone else. The problem is, someone already has killing in mind, a major theft already happened, and prime suspect for that is probably one of Connor's mother's family. So it's shy, brilliant Catalina against a dozen spoiled Spanish aristos.

I like Catalina as protagonist, but I think my favourite character is the utterly irreverent Runa Etterson, a Prime specialising in poisons: "Yes, the frosting is definitely poisoned - everyone grab a spoon and dig in!"

Sapphire Flames

Catalina has now replaced Nevada as head of House Baylor and the Baylor PI agency, on the grounds it's the only way to stop Nevada working herself to death. Summoned on a mission of mercy, to lure a grieving teen off a ledge, Catalina is horrified to discover his sister is Runa Etterson, and that they are the only surviving members of their family after their mother and sister burned to death in a house fire. Runa is convinced it was murder, and as the new head of House Etterson, she wants the Baylor Agency to find out who did it. Meanwhile, her mother had her own safeguard in place, and has hired an assassin to avenge her, an assassin Catalina is horrified to discover is billionaire playboy Count Alessandro Sagredo, subject of her teenage crush. In person Alessandro is arrogant, entitled, and annoyingly, evenly shockingly competent. It's love at first hate.

Emerald Blaze

"Holster your weapons, and step away from the monkey!"

Nine months on from Sapphire Flames and Catalina is mostly over Alessandro walking out on her in pursuit of his personal obsession. But when both she and her secret boss, the grandfatherly Linus Duncan, aka the scary Warden of Texas, are attacked by summoned creatures, Linus decides that the attacks mean Catalina needs to take point on the investigation of the murder they may relate to. Which is when Alessandro reappears, strangely stripped of his arrogance, humbled even, and swearing to protect her. Which considering the investigation means going face to face with not one, but four combat Primes, the prime suspects in the murder, and a bunch of assassins, might be just as well.

Ruby Fever

A year on from Emerald Blaze and the Speaker of the Texas State Assembly (ruling body of the Houses) has just been assassinated, while someone walked through Linus Duncan's overpowered security to leave him comatose, which means Catalina Baylor, Deputy Warden of the State of Texas at the age of 23, is on her own when it comes to who is running the investigations. But that doesn't mean she's on her own for actually getting stuff done, because she has the full assistance of her family aka House Baylor, and her fiance, Alessandro Sagredo. Plus an annoying Russian prince. And she's going to need all the help she can get, because this time it's war.

Okay, these are David-candy, and I had to ration myself by insisting I read each book twice before moving on to the next, otherwise I'd have blown through the whole double-trilogy in three days. There's a definite pattern to the two trilogies: Book 1, best of frenemies, Book 2, reconciled lovers, Book 3, partners. But Nevada and Catalina are different characters, possibly overly defined by their older sister/middle sister roles, and if their partners are both dangerous billionaire bad boys, they're at least different dangerous billionaire bad boys - Connor as a soldier and Alessandro as, well, Zorro.

They're very much about family - the Baylors start as the three sisters, their mother, their two male cousins, and Grandma Frida, all working together, but also found family, because by the time the second trilogy wraps they are up to somewhere around twenty characters considering themselves to have family ties - and all but a couple of the younger kids with fully developed characters.

The world-building is equally good, as is the plotting, with underlying arcs binding the trilogies together. I think I caught a couple of things that were raised and not developed, but nothing major. They even covered a point in the Baylor heritage where I initially thought they'd missed the scientific implications.

Impressed.

Current Mood: Primed

isis

What I've recently finished reading:

Europe at Midnight and Europe in Winter, the second and third of the Fractured Europe Sequence by Dave Hutchinson. The first was a reread (and again, I was surprised at how much I'd forgotten in the 10 years since I read it the first time), but I really enjoyed the SF aspect of

spoiler for the cool reveal at the end of the first book, which is explored in the second book

the Community existing as a private England overlaying Europe in another dimension; the idea of the map (somehow) becoming the territory is just fascinating!

The third book went into more detail about Rudi's family background, and about how the actual mechanism of [spoiler] is basically the biggest and most important secret in the world, and about the Coureurs and their function.

I actually requested this for Yuletide, and one of my prompts was "worldbuilding - what's happening in the US?" and...one character meets with someone who has a Texas passport, so, there's a whole lot hinted at by that tiny detail right there!

What I'm currently reading:

Europe at Dawn, the finale of the series. This one feels more like various vignettes set in this universe, though I expect everything will come together eventually. I do like how the Situations that the Coureurs handle are all matter-of-fact cloak-and-dagger: a woman walks up to our POV character and says something fairly banal, and he responds with a similar sentence; when she's gone, he finds a slip of paper in his pocket with the name of a hotel in another city; he goes there and checks in, and there's another slip of paper in the bedside Bible; he finds the car with the number plate on that paper and he gets in and drives across the border and leaves it in the parking lot of a certain cafe, then he takes the train home. It's all very mysterious! and fun! (and leaves me wondering why go to all that trouble to hide things in places in so many steps, but...)

(B is reading the Fourth Wing series and enjoying it. I'm kind of gobsmacked.)

What I started watching and abandoned:

The Fall of the House of Usher, which, okay I liked the transposition to a very modern gothic story about ~~the Sackler pharmaceutical empire~~ a family which developed and heavily marketed an extremely addictive opioid, but I am not a fan of horror and gore and shows in which everybody is a horrible person. We lasted 3 episodes.

What I'm watching now:

Season 3 of The Diplomat, which got off to a magnificent and twisty-turny start!

yourlibrarian

1) I enjoyed watching Emma Thompson's arrival on Colbert's show, and also her rant about how AI keeps trying to change her writing. "“And so I end up just going, ‘I don’t need you to f**king rewrite what I’ve just written! Will you f*** off? Just f*** off" "Colbert then jokingly suggested that Thompson show her computer the Academy Award she won for her screenwriting on the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility, which made her the only person to ever win an Oscar for both acting and writing."

2) Watched a Donna Summers' documentary, which was pretty uninformative. I knew little about her career so some of the info was new, but hardly anything was explored. ( Read more... )

3) Also saw the new 2025 documentary about LiveAid. I already knew a fair amount about it but given there were new interviews there were still some new bits. ( Read more... )

4) Had an afternoon with everything higgledy piggeldy. Got a call mid-afternoon from the leasing office that the utility company needed to make repairs to a transformer by our building. It would mean a 2-hour electricity cut off. So I got off the computer and decided to run the TV and finish exercises while I was waiting. But despite being told the power would be off in about 15 minutes, we still had power an hour later. My partner wasn't sure whether to stay late at work or come home. And if he did, we'd have to either eat snacks or wait for power to come back since we wouldn't want to open the fridge or freezer. ( Read more... )

5) A bit of hope that major money can be gotten out of politics, via a legal case. "Corporations exist with the express permission of the state in which they are incorporated. They are legal inventions, statutorily-created entities. They only have as much power as the states grant them.

That means the answer to Citizens United may be staring everyone straight in the face. After all, the states—and this Supreme Court majority is for “states’ rights” after all—by definition have the final say over what corporations may do in their states. As noted by the Center for American Progress, which backs campaign finance law reforms, “Corporations are pure creatures of state law. And for more than two centuries, the Supreme Court has affirmed that states have virtually unlimited authority to modify and withdraw the powers they grant to their corporations.”

Why couldn’t that authority include never granting corporations the power to spend money on political contributions in the first place?"

Poll #33772 Kudos Footer-547

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princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: discontent

otter posting in

thisfinecrew

I'm not even sure what to ask, say, or do about this.

I have services from an ARMHS worker and provide services via IHS and PCA. It's about half of my monthly income.

"The Association of Residential Resources in Minnesota, which represents 200 organizations that provide disability services, said pausing payments for the Medicaid programs could “destabilize an already fragile care network.”

“Pausing payments to legitimate providers for up to 90 days is not an accountability measure, it’s an existential threat to the care infrastructure that keeps Minnesotans with disabilities safe, housed and supported in their community,” ARRM CEO Sue Schettle said in a statement.

Among the 14 affected programs: Integrated Community Supports, Nonemergency Medical Transportation, Peer Recovery Services, Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services, Adult Day Services, Personal Care Assistance/Community First Services and Supports, Recuperative Care, Individualized Home Supports, Adult Companion Services, Night Supervision, Assertive Community Treatment and Intensive Residential Treatment Services.

https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/walz-pauses-payments-for-14-high-risk-medicaid-programs/

jesse_the_k posting in

access_fandom

When I started working on WisCon access in 2007, some kind soul (name lost) gave me a black teeshirt printed in tactile gold--with both Latin letters and braille. It sang the praises of ELECTRICAL EGGS, who advocated for handicap accessibility in the 1970s and 1980s. I loved the shirt but didn't know their history.

So I was thrilled when the September 2025 Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, volume 14 number 2, starts off with Eric Vero's article:

Oral History of The Electrical Eggs: Science Fiction, Disability Activism, and Fan Conventions

https://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/article/view/1262

The journal offers PDF, HTML, and "simplified HTML" versions of each article; all are open access, peer-reviewed, and Creative Commons licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

ABSTRACT

Before the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990, American science fiction fans in southern states organized, collaborated, and practiced accessibility at conventions. This grassroots movement began with the work of Samanda B. Jeude and a coalition of other science fiction fans who fought for visibility and access to convention spaces. In this oral history of their organization, “The Electrical Eggs,” I interview two key members decades after their participation in making conventions accessible. I complement these oral sources with brief histories of the role of eugenics and ableism in science fiction and the rise of disability activism in America. Although, the science fiction fandom still faces historical forces like ableism that have been present since its beginnings, the work of the Eggs is a testament to the power of collective action to provide accessibility in fan communities.

mindstalk

Previous post. I did more traffic counts today, a bit after 5 PM so should be around peak busy-ness. ( Read more... )

Gratifyingly consistent results, of 7-8 cars per lane-minute. Might be a coincidence that the signalized intersection falls in the same range.

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: worried

badly_knitted posting in

everykindofcraft

Hello, everyone! With Halloween just a couple of days away, I thought I'd show off my knitted pumpkins...

( Pics here... )

More can be seen at my journal HERE

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing. Such a surprise.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Imperial #4, X-Vengers #1 )

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. So many books, so many migraines. Books are not happening.

Current Mood: tired

elrhiarhodan

Well, after 205+ years of loyal service, it has died.

I doubt anything I will purchase to replace it will last as long or function as well.

(And now I feel like my father as I say, "they don't make them like they used to...")

Profile

Sasha

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March 2017

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Page Summary

grrlpowercomic_feed - Grrl Power #1404 – And I would walk 63,500 light years…
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 30-10-2025
spikedluv - The Day in Spikedluv (Wednesday, Oct 28)
conuly - This Is The First Thing by Philip Larkin
conuly - It's that awful time of month again.
china_shop - Write Every Day: Day 30
fairestcat - Stuck in Paradise for the Foreseeable
cmk418 in sweetandshort - 10 out of 20 - Star Trek: Enterprise - T'Pol - A Mistake Worth Making
skygiants - (no subject)
davidgillon - Recent Reading
isis - wednesday reads and things
yourlibrarian - One of Us
princessofgeeks - The Diplomat S3
otter in thisfinecrew - Minnesota fraud investigation
jesse_the_k in access_fandom - We're part of a movement: The Electrical Eggs
mindstalk - City street lane capacity: 2
minoanmiss - Big whirl little island
badly_knitted in everykindofcraft - Knitted Pumpkins
sineala - Wednesday Reading Meme
elrhiarhodan - RIP Loyal Space Heater

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other dreams

Network

Grrl Power #1404 – And I would walk 63,500 light years…

Interesting Links for 30-10-2025

The Day in Spikedluv (Wednesday, Oct 28)

This Is The First Thing by Philip Larkin

It's that awful time of month again.

Write Every Day: Day 30

Stuck in Paradise for the Foreseeable

10 out of 20 - Star Trek: Enterprise - T'Pol - A Mistake Worth Making

(no subject)

Recent Reading

wednesday reads and things

One of Us

The Diplomat S3

Minnesota fraud investigation

We're part of a movement: The Electrical Eggs

Oral History of The Electrical Eggs: Science Fiction, Disability Activism, and Fan Conventions

ABSTRACT

City street lane capacity: 2

Big whirl little island

Knitted Pumpkins

Wednesday Reading Meme

RIP Loyal Space Heater

Profile

March 2017

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