forestofglory

Title: I Walk the Line
Fandom: 暗处 | The Unseen
Music: I Walk the Line by Halsey
Summary: 'you give me cause for love that I can't hide'
Notes: Premiered at World Wide Slash 2026!
Warnings: flashing and strobing lights, violence

AO3 | bsky | DW | tumblr | YouTube

(Would it be possible to get a tag for The Unseen?)

aurumcalendula posting in

baihe_media

Threads for chapters 41 though 45 are below!

(chapters 1 to 5 are here)

(chapters 6 to 10 are here)

(chapters 11 to 15 are here)

(chapters 16 to 20 are here)

(chapters 21 to 25 are here)

(chapters 26 to 30 are here)

(chapters 31 to 35 are here)

(chapters 36 to 40 are here)

torachan

1. I'm pretty much over my cold. A little bit of lingering cough, but otherwise all right.

2. We had planned to go to Disneyland today, since Carla hasn't been in a couple weeks while she was out of town, but with her train being so delayed, we decided to just stay home and rest and do an after-work Disney trip tomorrow instead.

3. Chloe kisses!

kaberett

Reading. I have started both The River Has Roots (Amal el-Mohtar) and Weathering (Ruth Allen), which latter is by someone who has a PhD in geology and then went on to retrain as a therapist. I spotted the book Some Time Ago at the library; I wanted something to read on my phone; I ... have managed all of two pages. But so it goes!

Watching. Was it this week that I watched the Avatar Aang trailer? Maybe? I am sus but not so sus that we won't probably watch it.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac! We have met, and bid farewell, The Fathers! I think I managed to not actually sleep through any of it this time!

Cooking. It has been Too Warm. I think the most cooking I have done is boiling new potatoes for salad. We have eaten a lot of potato salad.

Eating. JOSTABERRIES. Mulberries! Ongoing British strawberries.

Broccoli fu yung worked out pretty well as Protein + Green for a short-notice takeaway dinner from somewhere I didn't pick.

The Cookies & Cream whey powder makes an... adequate hot chocolate, for my purposes. (A bought me a whizzy stick, by which I mean a handheld battery-powered milk frother With Travel Case.)

Growing. Some of the direct-sown squash have made it approximately to adulthood! I have my first Very Ripe poblano picked and I should really dry it some (and also work out if I actually want to do some incredibly inefficient smoking, one pepper at a time...)

redbird

I just got a fraud notification from my credit card company, so I'm going to have to go through the whole business of replacing my credit card, and updating stored payment information, again.

I just put my other credit card in my wallet. I don't use it much, but right now I'm glad I have a backup.

ETA: I called the credit card company, and the fraudulent charge they caught and asked me about wasn't the first, but at least the fourth. The one they caught was from Walmart, and after the rep listed another Walmart charge, I told him that all charges at Walmart were fraudulent.

The original message said I'd be getting a new card in the mail, and the person on the phone said it would be arriving by UPS in 1-2 business days. I didn't ask him to expedite it, but am glad he's doing so.

Current Mood: annoyed

oursin

There was still a substantial amount of cornbread left, so no bread made.

Friday night supper: penne with bottled artichoke hearts in oil + chopped red bell pepper sauteed in some of the oil.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft roll recipe, Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour, maple syrup, raisins - turned out a little stodgy, I think using up the bag of flour because it was just past its best before may have made the proportions a bit off.

Today's lunch: kedgeree with smoked cod, served with padron peppers and baby pak choi stirfried with star anise.

atamascolily

Well, I'm in love with my makeshift air filter - in addition to cleaning out smog, it also decreases smells and noticeably improves indoor air quality. I am making 2 more as soon as I get home and also switching to MERV 13 filters for the house - I was at MERV 9, and had recently upgraded to MERV 11, but the difference is palpable and worth the extra costs, even if I have to special order them since they're not always in stock locally. My general rule of thumb is increasingly "If I am going to spend so much time inside, I'm making it nice, goddamn it".

In other news, it's still smokey; I tried going for a walk this morning and my eyes couldn't stop watering so I had to turn back around and retreat indoors. It's looking like any AQI over 150 makes me fucking miserable at relatively low exposures even with an N-95, courtesy of my delicate constitution, as they would say in a Victorian novel. Bleargh. I could probably deal with it if I had to, but my attitude is increasingly, "if it sucks, hit da bricks" and this definitely qualifies.

I also moved to a different room for a change of scene, which helps.

profiterole_reads

Netflix's movie Heartstopper Forever adapts the end of the story instead of a full Season 4. Consequently, it focuses on Nick and Charlie and doesn't dedicate much time to the f/nb, trans female and aroace rep.

Apart from that, it was good, of course. Alice Oseman is a great writer. I especially liked Elle's scene about the current state of trans rights in the UK.

ofearthandstars

One of my goals for the week was to read some poetry, and in addition to paging through Devotions, I had some lovely poetry delivered directly to my inbox. I feel like poetry is almost always worth sharing.

Sea leaves, Mary Oliver

The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry.

Please Use AI, Shawn Smucker (IG carousel, 7 images).

tinny posting in

c_ent

And while we're on the topic of The Long Ballad, here are all 120 icons I have made of the show so far:

1-5

( the remaining 115, ordered by episode number )

All of my icons are free for the taking, credit is appreciated.

If you would like to see more of my icons, feel free to browse my icons tag.

tinny posting in

c_ent

Ashile Sun being smitten with Li Changge on The Long Ballad

There's already a fan here in this comm who has posted fic for this drama, so maybe I'm a bit late with this rec now. ;) But this drama is one of my favorites, so I really wanted to make this rec post. Here goes:

Dilraba Dilmurat plays the titular Li Changge (literally "long song"), daughter of the Da Tang emperor, whose life gets tragically interrupted by her uncle usurping the throne and killing her whole family. She goes on the run disguised as a man. Two young men from the palace follow her, one of them to help her, the other to kill her (played by Alen Fang/Fang Yilun and Liu Yuning). Wu Lei plays a grasslands prince called Ashile Sun. Their lives intertwine and he falls in love with her, saving her life multiple times, while she is consumed with the thought of revenge against her uncle and to restore peace in Da Tang. But she's not constantly a damsel in distress: she's smart and well-educated, and makes relatable decisions. In fact, it's a very character-driven drama, the main relationship is healthy and happy, and the political shenanigans are all mostly believable and didn't bore me.

It's very much a growing-up story, with Changge at first thinking she knows everything, to her slowly learning that she knows nothing at all. Oh, and there's her friend and cousin Leyan (played by Zhao Lusi), a pampered princess who somehow gets lost in the wilderness and has her own growing-up story.

The drama is based on a manga, and some of the most intense scenes are represented by animated scenes, which takes a bit of getting used to. I'm not sure if they just wanted to call back to the manga origins of the drama, or if they really had no money to film the large battle scenes. (Or whether it was covid-related. The drama was filmed in 2020.) This is my only real complaint about the drama, everything else worked fine for me.

How long is it? 49 episodes of about 45 minutes each. (Not too long. I did not want it to end.)

Is it a rec? Yessssss! You can watch it for the plot that holds together pretty well, but there are also a lot of shallow reasons: Wu Lei's beautiful braids, for example, or Dilraba crossdressing, or Zhao Lusi and Liu Yuning as the second pairing.

Does it have a happy ending?

ending spoilers

Yes! Changge and Ashile Sun live happily ever after on the grasslands. (They never get married on screen, but I don't care about that.) The secondary couple, Li Leyan and Hao Du, get married and she becomes a wise ruler. The third couple does not get a happy ending (which is why they're the only ones who get a kiss. natch).

Where to watch? You can watch it on Viki or Youtube (or everywhere else omg). There's also a really fun BTS playlist.

More detailed thoughts and a picspam at my journal.

puddleshark posting in

common_nature

Summer meadows at Acton, near the Purbeck coast. A tiny village of old quarry workers cottages, set in a landscape of stone quarries and thin-soiled rectangular fields bounded by dry stone walls. I like setting off from Acton early. Before the inhabitants of the cottages are out and about, the village seems to belong entirely to the sparrows chirping from under the eaves, and to the swallows chattering as they swoop round the chimney pots.

( Read more... )

ysabetwordsmith posting in

flaneurs

Today we went up to Champaign-Urbana for the Middlefork Markets event Middlefork at the Mall at Lincoln Square Mall. This is our favorite flea market, born from the ruins of Gordyville, which fills most of the wide aisles at the mall. The market runs Sunday too, but not as late in the day.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

torachan

1. I was poking around at the maps app on my phone to see what nearby seemed interesting for lunch and that prompted me to go to Pollo Loco, which was a very good decision. I really like Pollo Loco but hardly ever eat there anymore (well, we don't get fast food in general as often as we used to). I got the street corn chicken quesadilla, which is pretty much what it sounds like and was delicious.

2. I got some strawberries and grapes at the farmers market this morning. The grapes are from the same place as last time and they had fewer varieties this time, but I think they were all different ones! At least one of the ones I got was different for sure, and I think the other was as well, though it's possible that the taste just changed a bit in the intervening two weeks and it's one of the ones they had before. Supermarket grapes are still pretty dire, as are all the strawberries I've been seeing, so I was glad to get some stuff that actually tastes good.

3. Carla is home safe and sound but her arrival was delayed by about 8.5 hours. Everything was fine as of last night, but sometime in the middle of the night there was flash flooding around the Arizona/California border area and the train was stopped for hours until the rain stopped and then the tracks had to be cleared of standing water as well. Then even once they were able to move, they couldn't go at the usual pace (which is not fast to begin with) because there were other trains backed up ahead and also I think they just had to be extra careful checking the tracks. So instead of getting here at 8:15am it was 4:45pm. Thankfully she had a roomette, which is basically like a small private compartment for your seat, rather than an actual room, but is still much nicer and more comfortable than a regular seat in the main carriage. She was very glad to finally get home, though!

4. I wish I had noticed when taking the picture that the focus was on the tree rather than Tuxie so I could have taken a second one with him in focus, but I still really like this one.

aurumcalendula posting in

c_ent

atamascolily

The air quality has improved from Thursday's "so extreme it's breaking the scale" to yesterday's "hazardous" to today's "extremely unhealthy" so I went to the hardware store and bought duct tape and MERV-13 air filters. Unfortunately, they only had a size that didn't quite fit my box fans, but with duct tape all things are possible, so I made it work.

I would have preferred to make a cube, but it turns out that if you get a 4- or 5-inch filter (which was all they had left), you can just duct tape it directly to the box fan instead and you get roughly the same effect. I made a prototype and it seems to be working okay; I have no idea how it's actually affecting indoor air quality, but it made me feel better and that was helpful. I'll do the other box fan later tonight.

Today, the sun is visible but the air is still yellow filtered and smokey, and it felt like my eyes were watering when I was outside. I wore a N95 mask and long sleeves and pants and took a shower and washed them when I got home, and hopefully that helped reduced my exposure to whatever nasty invisible shit is in the air. At times we smelled smoke, but it had noticeably improved by the time I got back.

I saw a few people wearing masks when I was out, but mostly people were just going about their normal lives and doing stuff outside, and I guess they live in different worlds than I do.

The real question I'm wrestling with right now is sunk cost fallacy - at what point do I and the people I'm with cut our losses and go someplace else if conditions do not improve? I don't love the idea of cutting my vacation short but breathing in wildfire smoke indefinitely is also Not Great, so all the options suck. At least I can leave - lots of people have lost their homes and entire towns have been burnt to the ground, but aside from the smoke there's no danger to my area. I guess we'll give it a few days and see what happens, especially since it's not entirely my decision.

2026 has already sucked so much that that part of me is like "this might as well happen" even as the other part experiences the full spectrum of human emotions about everything.

In happier news, I also stopped in at the used bookstore on the way home - didn't buy anything, but it was fun to browse. There were a few things I was tempted by, but not enough to buy them on a whim; if they're still there when I get back, I'll consider it. I've mostly been reading e-books, but it would be nice to have some physical books as well (although transporting them will be kind of a pain if I buy the entire boxed set I was eyeing). TBD.

skygiants

A year or so ago I dug up my old copy of Michaela Roessner's The Stars Dispose from my parents' house to reread in preparation for a panel on food in fantasy because I vaguely remembered it as a Fantasy Novel About Renaissance Culinary Arts. However I did not get around to it in time and so I set it aside and

genarti picked it up and read it instead, and then we passed it on to another friend who was looking for books in the brief nineties trend of Fantasy Novels about Renaissance-ish Apprentices [a trend I am always hoping will be revived, so far in vain]. Now it has at last returned to me and I thought: well, I didn't read it for the panel on food in fantasy, but perhaps now I'll read it in time for the panel on centering the arts in alt-history --

Well, I didn't actually succeed in doing that either. But I have now reread it! What a weird and charming* book!

*with caveats

So, the fantasy premise of this book is that there are various parallel universes that all impact each other, and some bad parallel universe forces are Out to Get the City of Florence Specifically for ambiguous reasons. The fate of the Medici is all tied into this in some way so it's very important that beautiful wise clever baby Catherine de Medici (yes, that Catherine de Medici) (this isn't quite popehunk but it's not NOT that either) survive and flourish, so the city can flourish, and both the city's chief astrologer and Catherine de Medici's cook are doing different sorts of magic to ensure that happens despite the sieges and plagues and various other dangers that are constantly besetting Florence through this time.

This is the premise, and the plot, more or less, but it's not what the book actually cares about. What the book cares about is a young man named Tommaso (the son of the cook) learning how to cook beautiful Renaissance cuisine, and also then apprenticing in the art of Renaissance sculpture, and then bringing these two fields together for incredible innovations in the world of edible art. Approximately 70% of this book is rich, beautifully researched descriptions of Tommaso's coming-of-age as a young and gifted artisan in Renaissance Florence coming into his own artistically despite the plagues and the sieges and the breakdown in his parents' marriage, and then the other 30% is interstitial scenes reminding us that Tommaso's mom is very concerned about supernatural dangers from another dimension and they'll probably strike via the Pope's bad decisions for some reason.

Now, when I say coming of age, the book starts when Tommaso is eleven or twelve and covers two or three years of his life and, well -- by the end of the book, Tommaso has both graduated from his apprenticeship and is about to take over as a household head chef, and engaged in a sexual affair with Michaelangelo* which Roessner clearly wants us to see as very poignant and romantic .... great position for a promising eighteen-or-so year old food artist to be! Really charming as long as I was careful never to do any math about it whatsoever!

*Michaelangelo like Catherine de Medici is also vitally supernaturally important to the well-being of Florence

But I do think Roessner is interested in, and pretty good at, writing from within a sixteenth-century mindset rather than a modern one; she's certainly interested in and good at writing about the immediate details of carving a roast, casting a medal, baking an extremely fancy loaf of bread, and about the satisfaction of learning to do these things well. I miss this kind of fantasy. It can come back into fashion any day now.

rekishi

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

umadoshi

Reading: No change. (Still working on Ruffage and The Gate of the Feral Gods.)

Watching: A few more episodes of Widow's Bay. Three to go!

Foodstuffs: Farmshare, week 3: 1 green cabbage, 2 cucumbers (1 unagi, 1 Demeter), garlic scapes, fennel, carrots, and cherries. It turns out that'll be our final visit to that location; the farm/market we're supporting is about to finish their 700-meter move and will hopefully be back to business as usual in the new space as of Wednesday. (I say "finishing" their move because they already moved a bunch of fridge/freezer stuff sometime in the last couple of weeks.)

We cooked a couple of veggies via How to Cook Everything (tenth anniversary edition) this week.

scruloose used the oven-braised celery recipe for the celeriac root, and then yesterday I (I!) baked individually foil-wrapped beets in the toaster oven.

The beets had gotten a bit sprouty and rooty, but were still nice and firm and looked fine; they also may have been slightly overcooked, as the recipe was for medium or large beets with a time range of 45 to 90 minutes, and these got about 40 minutes. I mention all these details because I hated them, so I was hoping I'd gotten something wrong, but when

scruloose got home and tried one, they reported liking it fine and that it was about what they would've expected. (They got a sweet note that I didn't. Different taste detection? Difference between individual beets? Different because the one I tried was still warm and

scruloose's was out of the fridge?)

I'll still take it as successfully cooking, however basic the recipe.

Materialism: I don't think I've remembered to mention that I FINALLY (on the fourth try, I think, over several years) managed to spend my store credit with Fluevog. I've been eyeing these boots for a good couple of years now and the current sale is, I think, the first time they've ever gone on sale, so I risked it. I'm trying not to buy shoes with any heel to speak of anymore (and also, I basically never go out? So getting these is really kind of ridiculous? But look at them), but I was hoping that they'd work out since the actual rise between parts of the foot is relatively minimal...and they fit and I love them. I haven't actually worn them out of the house yet, and I think they'll take some breaking in (I really hope that works well), but it's hard to say for sure since my feet find basically all footwear uncomfortable these days.

I love them. If they ever get released in an amazing purple, I will be so screwed. (The only colorways they've had besides the orange are the pink you can still see and black. The fact that the black isn't there anymore makes me wonder if they're being phased out.)

Current Mood: busy

oursin

The transnational journey of Madras Curry reveals several intertwined histories, especially the complex interaction between colonialism and caste.:

Although curry appeared in English coffee houses as early as 1733, it became widespread only in the mid-19th century. The taste for “Oriental” food reflected a growing Western cosmopolitanism, initially confined to elite circles but later spreading more widely.
Historian Nupur Chaudhuri notes that memsahibs “were a major force in nurturing this newly acquired culinary taste.” But the culinary knowledge that sustained it came largely from lower-caste cooks, whose contribution has largely faded from view. Colonialism, however, helped global communities acquire a taste for what had once been dismissed as “pariah food”.

***

Pocket-sized Power: A feminist history of portrait miniatures: online exhibition.

***

I daresay we've all heard about Lord Byron keeping a bear in his college rooms, but really, he was totally an amateur compared to Frank Buckland:

Tiglath Pileser was a young bear. A pet that Buckland kept in his college rooms on Fell’s Buildings along with a menagerie of other exotic animals, snakes, marmots, chameleons and the like. A scientist with a fascination for the weird, Frank also possessed two beer drinking monkeys called Jacko and Judy, a jackal with a blood curdling scream and an eagle that regularly crashed the cathedral’s morning matins.

The whole family sound like eccentricity-maxxing, no?

***

Grosvenor Square reopens as biodiverse city haven:

One of central London's oldest and most famous public spaces is set to reopen on Monday following an "extraordinary transformation" that's been a year in the making.
The new-look Grosvenor Square boasts more than 150,000 new plants chosen to withstand rising urban temperatures, alongside 40 new trees, two new wetland areas, a café kiosk and 300 extra seats.

***

And more on biodiversity: Cambridge & Oxford join forces to unlock over a million biological records:

The University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford have announced a major new partnership to digitise over 1.1 million natural history specimens, creating a step-change in how researchers and conservationists access vital biodiversity data.
The project is part of DiSSCo UK (Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK) – a £155 million national programme to digitise and connect the UK's natural science collections.
Together, the universities steward over 12 million specimens – the largest natural science collection in the UK outside London and Edinburgh. Over the next two years, they will establish the Central England DiSSCo UK hub, a strategic network supporting 23 museums and herbaria to prepare their collections for a digital future. The project aims to contribute 1,195,419 specimen records to the national dataset using cutting-edge technologies, including high-throughput imaging and AI.

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forestofglory

July 2026

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Page generated Jul. 20th, 2026 03:26 am

Reading

A new The Unseen vid!

The Beauty's Blade Read-Along: Chapters 41 to 45

Daily Happiness

vital functions

here we go again

Culinary

(no subject)

Heartstopper Forever

Worth a read.

The Long Ballad icons

The Long Ballad (2021)

A walk by the Purbeck coast

Today's Adventures

Daily Happiness

New Vid: 暗处 | The Unseen

the ongoing dumpster fire, day 4

(no subject)

Amusing HR/post-The Long Game thought (a short one)

Weekly proof of life: veggies and (gasps) Fluevog success???

Mixed bag

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July 2026

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