Swiped from dolorosa_12! As someone who is over very educated (PhD in engineering) with parents who are decidedly... not (high school graduates), I thought it'd be interesting to talk about, if a little depressing.

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I'm part of a panel later this month of people with "unusual paths to graduate school." I imagine I'm going to bring up a lot of this stuff there; I hope it resonates with at least one person in the audience. I have a whole stew of feelings about my background, to the point where it's difficult to even articulate. It's hard not to think about how my life might've turned out if my parents had been more involved, or educated themselves, or at least not constantly wrapped up in their own problems. But ultimately, it made me what I am, and I found my way eventually, even if I was stumbling around in the dark for a while.

I just bought more books again! This time it’s The Death of Halpin Frayser by Ambrose Bierce and The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. They were really cheap, so why not.

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I feel like a lot of people overestimate the lesbian and gay audience in yuri and BL while underestimating the bisexual audience for both genres. I’m convinced lesbians and gay men are actually the minority compared to bisexual readers. For example, in Japan I’ve seen plenty of fudanshi with wives and yuripig woman with husbands, so it’s not far-fetched to think some of them could be bisexual (of course, they could also be straight).

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Since starting antidepressants, my mood has improved, but I still struggle with impulsiveness and focus. My psychiatrist recently increased the dosage, so I’m hoping that helps.

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The world is getting worse and doesn't help certain pedophile president from USA bombing Iran because he's afraid he got caught raping children, this is definitely will fucked everything. God, I need to start saving, all foods, and material will get price increase over this.

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I also need to buy a pedicure kit because I keep getting calluses, and I don’t want to keep spending money at a salon.

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Lately I haven’t been sleeping well either. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, which really sucks.

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I’m not really into JoJo or Tron, but I love seeing Soraya Saga nerd out about them on Twitter. Finding out she even has a Transformers tattoo was honestly great.

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/wow-3

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Still better than the time I got divorced via a pop-up book.

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https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/wow-3

Thanks everyone who voted! And the best MV to feature a horse or horse-adjacent concept is...

NMIXX - High Horse!

fffx is a multifandom gift exchange where the standard minimum of a gift is a fanfic of 10,000+ words or fanart in panelled comic style of 40+ panels.

We've passed the deadline and have 5 remaining pinch hits, mostly requiring a half-length gift of 5,000+ words (fic) or 20+ panels (comic art).

Please take a look if you think you might be able to post a gift of this kind by 11:59pm EDT, Thursday 19 March.

My participants and I are very grateful for your interest!

Pinch hit #32 - fic - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (TV), Murder She Wrote, Jem and the Holograms (Cartoon), G.I. Joe (Cartoon), Voltron: Lion Force (1984)

Pinch hit #39 - fic - Stargate Atlantis, Kolja | Kolya (1996), Cesta do pravěku | Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)

Pinch hit #62 - art, fic - 少年歌行 | The Blood of Youth (Live Action TV), 莲花楼 | Mysterious Lotus Casebook (TV), 琅琊榜 | Nirvana in Fire (TV), 伪装者 | The Disguiser (TV), 少年白马醉春风 | Dashing Youth (Live Action TV), 杀破狼 | Sha Po Lang - priest )

Pinch hit #65 - fic - Columbo, Criminal Minds (US TV), Grey's Anatomy, Miss Marple - Agatha Christie, NCIS: Los Angeles, SEAL Team (TV), Sherlock (TV) The Professionals (TV 1977)

PH #67 - art, fic [varies by request] - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Video Game), Original Work, Crossover Fandom [Brooklyn 99 & The Labyrinth], Hades (Supergiant Games Video Games)

Used my anime TBR boardgame.

I finished 4/5 for my last challenge, dropped one. Had a mostly great time!

Avatar:

Dr Stone 
Skill: Beat the trap time once!

Roll #1:

A 2, prompt: costume on cover. Me pondering what exactly counts as a costume. I guessss I'll watch another ep. of Magic Kaito.

Roll #2:

A 9, prompt: watch a donghua! More Legend of Exorcism.

Roll #3:

A 4, prompt: fire on the cover - Cardfight!! Vanguard!

Roll #4:

A 7, prompt: flowers on the cover - Akagami no Shirayuki-hime.

Roll #5:

An 11 and the generate from PTW tile... Okay finally done moving/deleting things, #75 is Chou Kaguya-hime!. I heard bad things about the manga adaptation so the anime is what I'm watching. And I just realized this is a movie! Rare for me to watch and enjoy anime movies outside of Ghibli.

Roll #6:

A 7 and the end, reward, well I can't resist more Bikkurimen.

Changelog: Turned on 'avoid repetitions' for the prompts so that two in a row doesn't happen.

The skill wasn't needed what a waste.

Most looking forward to: Bikkurimen
Least looking forward to: Magic Kaito

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/serve

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I need to do an upbeat comic week one of these days. They all end with hooray.

Today's News:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/serve

Le Guin wrote a dozen or so picture books in her career, and several of them are out of print, including this one about a spider who spins artistic webs. I was able to determine that a library about an hour away from me has a copy, so I took a field trip. I couldn't check the book out because I'm not a resident, but since it's a picture book, I just read it, covertly took some photos, and then left.



The story is plainly an allegory for the life of an artist and her struggle to balance creative fulfillment, the desire for recognition, and the inconvenient reality that she also has to, like, eat. ( cut for spoilers, if spoilers for a picture book are a concern )

This book is certainly suggestive of Le Guin's early experiences as a writer and how she may have been feeling about where she was in her career at this time. I'm glad I went out of my way to track it down.

Damn that title is a mouthful. One of many things that could have used a lot more work in this game. In VTMB2, you play as the Nomad, an Elder vampire recently awoken with a mysterious mark. For regrettable reasons, the Nomad chooses to go by the laughable name "Phyre" (pronounced "fire") in-game.

I went into this without any familiarity with the first game, which released in 2004, or the tabletop RPG on which the series is based. I first heard about VTMB2 years ago when it was just a flicker in the developers' eyes in Game Informer. It looked very cool! A customizable vampire character to run around Seattle and ally with various factions in a political fight? Sign me up!

Unfortunately the game is a real disappointment. I can't imagine how it must feel for fans of the original game to wait more than 20 years for this.

First, the game sells itself as an RPG, but there's very little of that, either on the combat or the narrative end. Your ability to customize Phyre is very limited--you can choose their gender, change up their hair a little, put some make-up and piercings on them, and change their outfits (the outfits, admittedly, are fun), but otherwise, Phyre is Phyre.

In terms of combat, you unlock the five powers associated with Phyre's clan pretty early in the game; you have the ability to unlock the other clans' powers too, but you can only ever equip four at a time, and none of them upgrade from where they start. Aside from one power I swapped, I kept my Phyre's original Brujah set equipped for the entire game.

You get various popups about how an NPC feels about what Phyre just said or did, but these ultimately have no impact. There are only a couple of late-game decisions that have any influence on the ending, and your relationships don't matter at all.
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Shows can change over time, for better or for worse. Which show with an excellent first season shouldn't have gotten a second/more seasons? Which shows had a great comeback season after a disappointing first season?

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/good-cop

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The other option is good cop, cop pretending to be a fish on the floor that keeps flopping around but won't die.

Today's News:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/good-cop