Rat Creature's Journal

...to find a new WIP update notification in your mail and then, when you go to read it, AO3 is down.

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/603949.html. | comments

Why is there an annoying, pixelated, pooping horse on my Tumblr dashboard? It is not even April 1st yet. How can I make it go away? Why is Tumblr doing these things?

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/603774.html. | comments

Why is there a stupid confetti animation disrupting my dashboard? I guess it is because it's Tumblr's tenth anniversary?

I suppose it is totally in the site's spirit to make themselves even more unusable as celebration.

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/602392.html. | comments

Recently I talked with my niece about Harry Potter, Star Wars, the MCU and fiction in general, and apparently she's dissatisfied with the genre convention that in the end the "good guys" always win.

Now I don't get that at all, because for me one of the main draws of fiction, and genre fiction in particular, is that it is escapist and less depressing than reality, so I pretty much only like genres that for the most part abide by the convention to deliver a happy ending, i.e. I like fanfic, romance, YA, mysteries, and the kind of SF&F where heroes win, and am much less into e.g. horror or "literary" fiction or other genres where that isn't the convention. Even when I read stuff like apocafic or such, I ultimately want it to end hopeful for at least the main characters.

So I don't really have any recs for media (books, movies or tv series) that end badly for the heroes overall, because even when I encounter the situation of just some of them not making it (like in HP) I'm on the look out for fix-it fic. But I wondered whether others might have recs that I could pass on to my niece to satisfy her odd (to me) preference for some variety and a more fraught fictional experience.

Though I'm not sure whether she wants depressing stuff or more things along the line of the fanfic type revisionist AUs with perspective shifts, because she mentioned that she was kind of rooting for Loki and Tom Riddle and such, i.e. where the story just takes the bad guys' side and for them it is okay, even though the world is then in the hands of a megalomaniac. I mostly dislike that type of fanfic as well. And I don't look for that kind of "twist" in original fiction either.

It would have to be stuff that is available in German and at least somewhat suitable for an eight year old.

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/602167.html. | comments

I watched the Legion pilot and I'm quite confused.

It started with me trying to figure out when this was even supposed to be set. Obviously it's not supposed to be present day, but it's not the 1960s, 70s or any other consistent era either. And even more disorienting, David's childhood flashbacks didn't seem to be offset in an earlier era than the main story either.

I mean, clearly both the design, the psychedelic interludes and the disjointed story telling are all intentional, but I'm not sure that this works for me. I had a really hard time trying to decipher events and understanding what was going on in between the hallucinations, flashbacks and the body switching in the present? Or was that even body switching? I'm not clear what actually happened with that mental hospital escape.

Though I'm willing to stick with the series for a bit longer.

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/601929.html. | comments

This Rivers of London vid posted in festivids is beautifully fancast and constructed. If I didn't know otherwise, I would assume that there was a Rivers of London tv adaptation the vidder had as source.

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/600790.html. | comments

I probably should just try to have fewer open tabs, but thus far my solution has been a Firefox tab group extension, so whenever things get too crowded my main browser window, I shove some tabs into other groups (like "stuff to (maybe) read in fandom x") and deal with it later (or not).

Only now I've seen a notice that because Mozilla changed the underlying framework for the extensions or something, the Tab Group Extension I'm using will stop working later this year with Firefox 57, and apparently it's not feasible for the developer to switch to the new system.

I know there are multiple tab group extensions, but I assume that in the background most started like my current one from the Mozilla code that used to have this as standard feature, and use the same methods that will become deprecated in the near future.

Do you know of any that will continue to work? Is there a way to tell from the add-on descriptions as a user if there isn't an explicit notice on this issue?

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/600390.html. | comments

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This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/599810.html. | comments

...but apparently I now know enough Russian to stumble over obvious automatic translation errors in fanfic in yet another language, even though I do not know enough to have even simple conversations.

But I can distinguish some verb forms, and the author in this particular case clearly wanted an imperative (it had an exclamation point and everything) but put in an infinitive form. Not that I knew that particular word (my vocabulary is still very pathetic). Of course in English both look the same (except for the 'to') but in Russian you conjugate more -- only google translate for example won't, even if you add the exclamation point.

They could label a language acquisition stage after this -- it comes way before even A1 proficiency (which in case you are not familiar with the European language reference framework means more or less the ability to understand and produce simple, formulaic conversations in familiar contexts).

I have no idea why authors feel the need to sprinkle other languages into their fiction without knowing the language very well or getting a beta who does. And even then, as a reader it annoys me unless I also read the language at least decently. I loathe not being able to follow all story parts. And yeah, there's hover text and what not, but that won't work on mobile devices or e-readers, so you are stuck with disruptive footnotes...

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/599780.html. | comments

Okay, so this probably has happened to many of us, that you read a story, that intersects with your life or experiences in some way. When that happens to me and I start writing a comment, my own experience is then what's in my head as reaction, and basically I recount whatever episode or life experience resonated with that story. Only then at the end of this, I come to the realization that my comment on the story doesn't actually talk about the story as such at all, but just about me. Then I feel really awkward, and more often than not I don't post that comment, and just click the kudo button instead.

However, most authors seem to like comments better than kudos. Does this still hold true for comments that don't actually talk about your story as such but are more or less (over)sharing of personal experiences a story resonated with?

Like okay, say you wrote a roadtrip fic where your characters look at a giant ball of rubber bands or whatever, and then you get a comment that is along the line of "here's my roadtrip experience of looking at a giant rubber band ball". It's not totally unrelated to your story, but not about praising your great characterization, awesome writerly skill or perfect timing either. And of course often it's not about a rubber band ball but some more personal resonance.

What do you think about such comments? Awkward? Still better than kudos? Better not posted because you don't really want to hear random strangers' anecdotes?

This entry was originally posted at http://ratcreature.dreamwidth.org/599412.html. | comments