RatCreature's Journal

It isn't all that cold here, but I dislike wearing socks indoors, and am not that fond of wearing layers constantly either, OTOH I'm not thrilled with huge heating bills and rather enjoy getting a little of my advance payments back. So winter is a time of constant compromise and dilemma. Also blankets. Unlike socks I don't mind using blankets. So now I'm wondering how cold (or comfortably warm) other people are at their place. (If it's summer right now where you are, just remember your last winter.)

I don't always read the announcements on the ff.net mainpage, so I only now noticed the update from January 5th which says "We are redesigning the storymarks (story bookmarks) feature and unfortunately the new system is incompatible with the current setup. If you have existing storymarks, please save them at your earliest convinence [sic]." What on earth are these "storymarks"?!? Do they mean the favorites list? I do have favorites bookmarked that way, though most are old, and more recently I've just used the the story alert feature, but I'd still save them, only it doesn't seem like you can export them as bookmarks. Or do they mean some other feature I'm not aware of? I have never seen the term "storymark" on the site before in all the years. Why can't they call things in their announcements like they are called in the site navigation?

ETA: sholio explained to me that they are apparently something separate from the favorites (phew!). I still can't find the feature (maybe they are already gone?) and don't recall ever seeing anything called that, but at least I won't miss the feature. Also I can see why they need to redesign it, if the feature was so hidden as to completely escape any notice by a regular user.

So I've read about the English Wikipedia being blacked out today to protest that internet legislation, and wanted to see how it looks, but I can see it like always? So do they only black it out in the US? I'm confused.

Unrelated, I was totally right about the formula "McAvoy + sloths = insta-popularity".

First, how hard it is to follow a simple discussion with more than two participants. (I know, not what Tumblr is built for, but people still use it for that.) I mean, even if you ignore the unfortunate formatting, that makes it so hard to attribute what is quote and who said what, as soon as a conversation branches, you are never going to see all threads in a single of the reblogs, and if you go to the notes of the original post you can see all the responses and reblogs (i.e. the "A reblogged from B and added" bits) but there they are cut off and shortened, so you have to click and end up with a gazillion tabs to read one post with three comment threads. It's maddening. Unless there is some other reading method I missed to find and display responses? *nurses futile hope*

Second, a more subjective dissonance for me, is how Tumblr is one of the places where publicly celebrating popularity numbers is done by some (on dA it also happens, there with page view milestones mostly). I mean, from what I can tell you can't see the follower numbers like you can on LJ-clone platforms as default with friend-of/subscriber lists, so maybe that's why some people make posts going "yay over 4000 followers!" or the like instead. But of course only the ridiculously popular people do this as far as I can tell, and I can't help feeling kind of crushed in comparison. Though perhaps I wouldn't take notice so much if on Tumblr you weren't seeing "reblog/like" numbers all the time, that draw attention to the audience size constantly, even without extra action.

Which on the one hand I know is silly, because it's not like without these kinds of follower-numbers squee posts I would be unaware that someone else is very popular and has cool content, but still. I mean, with the LJ/DW model that moment of comparison is there whenever you subscribe, but you become aware of a range of numbers, and also then it fades somewhat from awareness for me. However on Tumblr you (or at least I) mostly notice the really popular numbers. For example I'm hardly going to celebrate my next Tumblr milestone which would be if ever the number of followers inched up to a round ten instead of currently eight. And I assume most other people with non-popular Tumblrs feel the same, so the impression gets distorted.

It's of course a completely irrational response to feel bad to have less audience than cool Tumblr X, but at the same time not even do anything to attract more people. If I wanted non-embarrassing follower milestone posts to happen, I would probably need to switch my topics from "mostly crappy doodles" to something with popularity potential, like say "James McAvoy with baby sloths" or something (as a side note, does that already exist? it should, I'd probably follow that), and post consistently and do all the other things that make a Tumblr attractive.

basingstoke asked me to draw John as a duck from her Sherlock story The Regent’s Park Regulars:
( Read more... )

I've seen More Joy Day! linked several times in my circle today, so I thought, why not offer you drawbles to spread joy?

As usual: I'll do my best for any fandom I'm familiar with, or random stuff (monsters, steampunk machines, animals...) or I can just pick prompts from your interests. I don't draw porn though, and I'm not good at portrait likeness. Also keep in mind that these are quick doodles, so for a prompt that is a description of some epic scene you've always wanted to see realized in fanart the results aren't going to very satisfying for you (or much fun for me).

If you want to see the quality (or lack thereof) you can expect, look at the drawble tag. I don't make any promises for results or a timely delivery, but the past I've usually managed to draw something for everyone who prompted me for these non-demanding, open drawble offers.

Thanks to the awesome yue_ix who gave me not just a Facebook screencap, but a file made from it with the elements already sorted in layers and prepared for the names, I was now able to make my recent Pinky & the Brain story illustration appear on a fake Facebook site like it was in the story.

( image behind the cut )

Since a few people seemed interested, and I already wrote some of it in previous comments to other entries, I thought I'd post a guide to swearing and insults in German after all. However, please keep in mind that for fiction this can't replace language betas, and personally I think that in many cases actually the better choice is not to litter your story with foreign language fragments to begin with. It also ended up being somewhat rambly.

( Still you might want to swear in German for one reason or another... )

When you post a work and filled in the "inspired by" field, does the author of that get an automatic alert of some kind? (as default setting, I mean, I suppose you could turn off all notifications) Or do you need to check the "gift for" field? I'm asking because so far I haven't heard anything from the author of the Pinky & Brain story I illustrated, not even a kudo or anything, which is slightly discouraging. But then I didn't actively comment on their story with a link to the picture, I just assumed they'd get a notification of "ratcreature posted X inspired by yours" and then see my illustration, but didn't mark the extra gift ticky box. Along similar lines, I guess the author needs to approve related works somehow before they get linked from theirs to prevent trolling or such? Because I notice that my illustration is not just automatically linked from the bottom of the story. Of course they could simply be offline over the year-end period.

I got a Steampunk AU story that included so many of my favorite things: atmospheric descriptions and hints of background story and worldbuilding, both Erik and Charles using their powers, with Erik being all competent while stealing a dirigible, plus Charles/Erik sex that works for my mindcontrol kink. (And the unfortunate typo in "canon" in the header is not indicative at all of the spelling competence of story, so do not let that deter you.)

So go read: The Case of the Missing Dirigible, or a Romance of Chance Meetings

Here's a list of books I've read this year. They are more or less arranged in the order I read them, but also grouped by series. You'll notice that the second half is rather dominated by German titles which is mostly because I was too broke to buy books due to all the vet costs I've had, so I was limited to the library selection. Thus I've read a mix of fantasy, historical YA and mysteries.

- Crown of Stars Vol. 6 & 7 (In the Ruins, Crown of Stars), by Kate Elliott
- Evernight series (Evernight, Stargazer, Hourglass, Afterlife), by Claudia Gray
- Mercy Thompson series 2-6 (Blood Bound, Iron Kissed, Bone Crossed, Silver Borne, River Marked), by Patricia Briggs
- Hendrik Bischop mysteries 1-5 (Der Tote im Fleet, Der eiserne Wal, Die rote Stadt, Der blaue Tod, Die Schattenflotte), by Boris Meyn
- Der Bilderjäger by Boris Meyn
- Ghost Story, by Jim Butcher
- Midnight Riot and Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch
- Broken Kingdoms and The Kingdom of Gods, by NK Jemisin
- Julians Bruder, by Klaus Kordon
- Trilogie der Wendepunkte (Die roten Matrosen oder ein vergessener Winter, Mit dem Rücken zur Wand, Der erste Frühling), by Klaus Kordon
- Rosina mysteries 1-4 (Tod am Zollhaus, Der Sommer des Kometen, Lorettas letzter Vorhang, Die zerbrochene Uhr), by Petra Oelker
- Krokodil im Nacken and Auf der Sonnenseite, by Klaus Kordon
- Geschichte eines Deutschen, by Sebastian Haffner
- 1848, by Klaus Kordon

I also reread the Allison Kaine mysteries by Kate Allen and some by Patricia Cornwell.

I hope you are all having a good time, whether you celebrate or not, and plenty of cookies, just like Cookie Monster:
( a Cookie Monster holiday card )

Verschlimmbesserung, i.e. a portmanteau of Verbesserung (improvement) and Verschlimmerung (deterioration/worsening), to describe intended improvements or upgrades that end up making everything worse. Also used as a verb ("verschlimmbessern"), cousin to the equally useful "kaputtreparieren" (repair/tinker with a thing to the point that it becomes broken). Not entirely unrelated to this language observation, I'm still trying to decide whether I should opt to display everything on LJ in my style (which I find confusing, because I'm used to comms and journals all having their layout), or deal with the new comment pages on comms that have not disabled them, which unfortunately includes a number of fest comms I'd been browsing.

...that I finished the picture for secret_mutant and with a few days to spare (deadline is the 22nd), however now I have to think of a title to fill out the submission template. When not forced by templates, I don't title my artworks, precisely because I can never think of anything. Argh.

Leo
28.9.2009 - 15.12.2011

Leo was euthanized this morning. The antibiotic-resistant myco pneumonia he fought tenaciously for so many months finally worsened so much that he couldn't eat or breathe right anymore. The death of his brother Noah just over three weeks ago had not helped either, and maybe he just didn't have the strength anymore to hold on longer. But two years and almost three months is not a bad age for a rat. He was clingy this morning like last night, preferring to sit on my arm or huddle against my neck, even in the vet's waiting room with all the dogs, instead of staying in his transport box and be petted there. So I held him there and then until the end as he got the injection. He's now buried next to his brother.

Leo had lived with me since he was five weeks old, and he lived up to his name. He was the first of the three little ones I had gotten to venture out of hiding and to explore, the first one to dare to go on all levels of the cage and then outside, and as a young rat he was the one who always tried and succeeded to escape the room they were allowed in and to try to explore elsewhere. So several times I had to fish him out from under shelves in the not rat-safe room, covered in dust bunnies, because I had missed how he had managed to get across the doorway barrier again. He was bold, but never aggressive, and the liveliest of my last three. Even as he got older and was already sick with myco, he loved to climb everywhere and to run around and check all his favorite spots. He would jump on my bed in the evenings, though his patience to just cuddle was often limited. He was still a sweet rat, and liked to be petted and to groom you back if you scritched him. He had a strong will to live, and so he survived with the pneumonia far longer than I had dared to hope when the last antibiotics failed way back in April. Since then he got twice weekly injections for most of the time to help symptomatically, but he didn't let this keep him down.

( here's some photos of Leo )