Sunshine Revival Challenge #5
Jul. 17th, 2025 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sunshine_revival's next challenge is:Carnival Barker
Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.
Creative prompt: Write a fic or original story about a character reluctantly doing something they are hesitant about.
My favorite show is, as it has been since 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's my go-to comfort watch. I'm not big on blanket recommendations since, hey, I don't know what you like! But here are five of the things I love about it:
- Competence porn. These people are the best at what they do and excel under pressure. I never get tired of watching them work together like a well-oiled machine.
- A crew that loves each other. The chemistry among the crew just gets better as the show goes on and they grow into their relationships and comfort with each other. Interesting friendships, earned respect and trust, and a lot of different kinds of love.
- An optimistic future. The core premise of Star Trek is that in the future humans will stop fighting each other, learn to value diversity, and travel into space on missions of peaceful exploration. I need this kind of hope in my life.
- Ethical dilemmas. How do you write stories with conflict when everyone likes each other and is on the same side? Ethical quandaries! Some of my favorite scenes involve people who respect each other seriously discussing and/or passionately arguing about what the right thing to do is, and the answer isn't obvious. This is catnip for me.
- Nostalgia. The show was a fixture of my childhood (and adolescence, since reruns are forever) so that's obviously going to be a factor! As decades have passed and we've entered the era of streaming prestige dramas—which are great in their own way, don't get me wrong—I find that revisiting an earlier era of lower budgets and leisurely season lengths has an increasingly appealing old-school charm.
(morning writing)
Jul. 17th, 2025 07:23 amelainegreyYesterday storm cells passed around us. I picked elderberries to the sound of much rumbling thunder, and while driving to the grocery i saw a faint double rainbow over the Fearrington farm and inn. After groceries i put the elderberries on the dehydrator and ran them over night. I dried them on the stem: i think separating the dried berries from the stems will be less messy - and has less of a time pressure.
--== ∞ ==--
The challenges continue, but at least not with me going to emergency rooms.
Dad was experiencing some intense fatigue on Tuesday, and was advised to go to the emergency room. He was there until late and was found to be in great shape other than the heart issue, which hadn't progressed to an emergency. (There's a blood test for heart failure.) He was en route to leaving before i had to go to bed -- i was planning on joining him early in the morning. So, some adrenaline and cortisol there.
And yesterday sister L-- texted my brother and i letting us know her distressing situation has progressed to stage S . That had me experiencing a rare challenge in falling asleep, but turning on a sleep meditation seemed to help (i don't recall anything after the first instruction).
Dad's health and L's situation are longer haul issues. I need to teach myself to not hold myself in ready mode for months and months. I still need to recover from everything else.
[From Litha to Lammas]: Creatures of Faith, These Creatures series, gen, 2/6
Jul. 16th, 2025 08:34 pm
Future Events: Feedback
Jul. 15th, 2025 04:51 pmtorino10154 posting in firewhiskeyficI've been thinking for a while that perhaps it's time for a change in how we do these events. It's a little too complex for a poll though.
Some of my thoughts--definitely less focus on HP but as I have no other fandoms, I don't know what kind of prompts and themes we should have. Also, do we want to keep it a "competition" and anonymous? Or post the submitted entries not anon? Or not even submit entries?
Please feel free to leave detailed thoughts about what you think works well, what could be improved, what you want to see, etc. We're all friends here and I'd love to be able to have some kind of ~gathering every few months, even if it looks different than it's been in the past.
Solar Winds (1993)
Jul. 15th, 2025 12:35 pmpauraque
I have intense nostalgia for one specific aspect of this game. Interestingly, in retrospect I think it is probably also the worst aspect of this game.
( Namely: in space everything is extremely far apart. )
Solar Winds is not commercially available, which is slightly surprising given the developer's later high-profile work. But if you are so inclined, you can play part one and part two in your browser. I've read that the game was heavily inspired by Star Control II, which I haven't played, but I would be interested to check it out and compare.