Rain Dog @Leucrotta@awoo.space

So I got to see The Wild Robot. Visually it's gorgeous, and predictably I wound up weeping at points, but the story's kind of disjointed. It's sort of like Dreamworks trying to make a Studio Ghibli film so there are places they pull punches and it feels disingenuous where a Miyazaki film would hurt like hell.

The initial storyline about a stranded robot and her fox companion moving from taking care of an orphaned gosling until he can survive by migrating during the winter REALLY works. The robot's just seeking a meaningful task, the fox trying a new scam, and the gosling is limited by being a runt, and all of them actually grow beyond their "programming."

Then there's an added storyline about the gosling becoming some sort of brave goose leader and the island's animals joining together during a terrible snowstorm, then to help the robot fight agents of her less than altruistic manufacturer when they come to retrieve her, and afterwards the animals are united by those experiences, and it's just a little *too* happy an ending and sort of misses with me if that makes sense.

Have a #drawing from today!

made enough spicy noodles with bok choy for a lunch later this week and most of lunch/breakfast today. Baked a couple of breaded pork chops for later.

plan now is to take a nap, watch a movie intended for a much younger audience and probably cry about it, idk about the rest of the evening.

Colored one #drawing today using some new know-how about the fill tool, which shaved about an hour off the process. Coloring something with one very bright lightsource took a *lot* more time than I figured on initially.

https://youtu.be/vvTzbvbPLN4?si=prxKkpIqQoI8-mc4

and because it still counts as Metallica;

15 15 11 18 11 08

oh man this character ROCKS! Not quite good enough for 1e bard but this is definitely multiclass material

instinctively raising a non-extant lightsaber in front of my face in salute whenever the Force Theme plays

even more ridiculous when it's the ska version

let's just say Obi-Wan's death had a profound effect on me as a kid

Tall and [bleep] and [censored] lovely
The girl from Ipanema [redacted]
And when she [censored]
Each one she passes goes [bleep]

holy fuck I think we need to face the fact that, if you add any seasoning to them at all, spinach and chick peas are a winning combination

further; this shit's HUGE. There is no Hollywood ending where everything gets nicely tied up after 2 hours (okay, 6-9 if you're doing a trilogy and include extra director's cut stuff etc). Regardless of what I now know to be much greater agency than I'd been accepting in myself, the big stuff is going to grind along for a long time, hurting people and I'll be included in that. To some extent, I'm stuck facing that next year I'll be right back here, asking forgiveness for having seen complex big situations through the lens of being incredibly pissed off, and saying Kaddish for even *more* people who went into the meatgrinder.

in trying to accept Yom Kippur as meaningful (there are a lot of ways I could see the holiday as exactly the WORST parts of my issues, and I used to; I'm never exactly going to LOVE this holiday, it's not easy and it's not supposed to be, but I don't want to resent and hate it anymore) I've started seeing it as essentially forward looking.

ANY coming year is full of challenges and here facing them involves accepting my failings (lojong slogan "Drive all faults into one"), accepting or trying to remember connection to a larger world beyond getting caught up in my immediate experiences, and that part of the larger world is that people have a lot more going on than just the part I immediately see and judge. I can think of a fair number of places where I run right up against irritation, fear, fatigue and self hate on the regular, places where I could go reeling off into all kinds of mara.

However the year I'm about to go into is full of big places where I could be upset, and where I can be (and at some point WILL likely be) profoundly hurtful, thanks to a contentious election which yes, involves trying to most compassionately react to people I hate saying and doing things I hate (it's going to be difficult no matter who wins, since that's "trying to retain some sense of compassion while desperately scared" - it's just how the desperately scared aspect plays out); a horrifying war where it would be very easy to dismiss actual peoples' pain, grief and needs through taking a side (and I really worry about my gut level reaction to folks here); and on a far more personal level, my mother's declining health and my father's related role as caretaking making both of them simultaneously more difficult to be with and more VITAL to be with them.

Let's be careful out there.

Please be patient! Baby on board driving carries no cash.

Dedicating Your Foes to Odin As a Bit

“What do Space Marines do in their spare time?” Let’s see Ultramarines help cats cross the street and rescue little old ladies from trees, Salamanders catch up on their smithing, and Space Wolves manufacture and consume lutefisk in heroic quantities.

YT shorts while logged in at home; why does it keep showing me this one dude’s videos about 40K I don’t even LIKE Astartes *clicks on another primarch short*

YT shorts while logged off at work; *suddenly filled with an unreasoning hate for humanity *

Still in a bad mood, here’s yesterday’s #drawings

Osprey's "Warrior" series on Carolingian cavalrymen turns out to be an ehh book on cavalry and a really awesome book on Carolingian/Ottonian military in general. Has a really good bibliography which if I had access to a university library and lots of time I'd poke into.

“Huey! I want you to squeeze these people! I want you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. Give me Spice! And then I’ll send you, Dewey-Louie… lovely Dewey-Louie… where’s my doctor?” #DavidLynch #1984 #Dune

on his way to school, Paul hides from bullies in a bookstore. Sneaking away with a book called "Dune," he reads about a far away planetcalled "Arrakis" threatened by the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonen and his nephews, Huey and Dewey-Louie Harkonen. When Paul has a waking dream about being the book's legendary Kwisatz Haderach, he realizes his ability to manipulate the events of the book allow him to ride a giant Luck Worm into battle, overcome the great evil, and wed the beautiful Princess Irulan.

the Spacing Guild and its Navigators whom the Spice has... mutated over 4000 years use the orange Spice gas to fold space, that is, to get burritos without ever leaving the couch

A customer just bowed to me and I bowed automatically, so clearly watching all those jidaigeki had an effect.