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Audre's Adumbral Alcove

Reader mode
I have absolutely no idea how to use threadmarks, but I thought I'd give them a try for the purposes of organization. I figured that since I'll be interspersing this blog with posts about Dash (and probably his sister too) I may as well try to have some way to collate these posts somehow. ...Although, now that I am actually typing this, and realizing that I have Mod Powers (by the way, I'm super honored to be a mod for the Writers Workshop, especially since I've not been on these forums for a long time), I think I may move those posts into a new blog thread specifically about my OCs. I haven't really decided what I'm going to do now that the idea has made itself known to me. If I do end up moving those posts, I will most likely add an adendum to this post for record-keeping purposes (for me).
 
I genuinely believe that if Lucian were to fully exist as a real person, I can't help but imagine him thoroughly engrossed in David Markson's tetralogy. The sheer volume of literary, artistic, and historical allusions peppered throughout these not-quite-novels would, I believe, captivate Lucian's erudite mind.

I must confess: my progress through Reader's Block has been delightfully hindered by frequent pauses—moments where I simply must stop to ponder the wealth of references and their implications. The text appears scattered and fragmented at first glance, yet isn't this precisely how the writing process unfolds for many? It's a beautiful chaos: the gestation of a novel laid bare. Of course,I have every intention of continuing on with this series after this book; once I've savored the last page of Reader's Block, I'll eagerly dive into the remaining works in the tetralogy: This Is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point, and The Last Novel.
 
We had a power outage so I spent some of the time reading the first volume of Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian. I'm not very hopeful that the anime will be dubbed into English (the first episode drops July 3) so it looks like the novels are all I've got for now. I've been enjoying it a lot; Alya is a very likeable character, as is Masachika. Although, one extremely tiny nitpick regarding her name: if Alisa's mother is Japanese and her father is Russian, then her name should be Alisa Kujou Mikhailova. "Mikhailovna Kujou" would indicate that her father is Japanese while her mother is Russian. But again, it's a tiny nitpick.



In writing/fanfic news, I seriously can't wait for Monday! Gift reveals for the exchange I participated take place in the afternoon, and I can't wait to read more content with my beloved literary darlings! As well, I've signed up for another gift exchange, this one focused on drabble variants. It's one whose rounds (they host quarterly rounds) I've participated in quite a number of times since I began posting to AO3 back in 2022, and I've enjoyed both writing for my recipients and reading my gifts.



Well, è tutto questo che ho da dire. Buona serrata!
 
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Oh, I've seen some audio clips of that show on YouTube, I believe! Apparently the voice actress can speak fluent Russian, she seems quite talented... maybe this'll be my excuse to watch / read it, perhaps? Excuse my question, but do you use your screen reader with web / downloaded versions of the manga, or are there really neat Braille printed manga I haven't heard about? I did a quick search in JP and couldn't find anything, so I'm assuming it's the former, but I'm glad you're able to have fun with reading them in the first place!

I think participating in gift exchanges would be fun, I hope you update on how you like what you'll receive! Makes me excited to hopefully throw one here in the near future ehehe...
 
Firstly, I love my three gifts! And I love my literary darlings!

Secondly, today, while AO3 was down for maintenance (I had woken up a few minutes into the start of it, just after midnight), I decided to read some Mariangela Gualtieri. I ended up falling in love with L'incanto fonico: L'arte di dire la poesia (Phonic Enchantment: The Art of Reciting Poetry), and Le giovani parole (Young Words). Both books had sections which genuinely made me re-read the same few lines tens of times, quietly reciting them aloud to myself, savoring them. Books are so wonderful in that way, aren't they?
 
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Yes, I'm still writing. No, I have not abandoned this little alcove of mine.

I've been participating in Battleship throughout the month of July, and I wrote a total of 8 gifts for 8 different participants while receiving 2 gifts in return, which both feature my OTP and literary beloveds! The works have been revealed but are anonymous for now; author reveals will be in two weeks so once that's taken place I'd be delighted to post a link to the series I've compiled to house all 8 gifts in another post of this blog!

On a tangential note, today I was lurking in my team (Tunnel represent!) chat channel on Discord and someone posted a huge post just full of collated snippets of poetry, both indexed by word and by author (seemingly for title and inspiration purposes) and through that I've discovered poets I've never heard of from the 19th and 20th centuries. Maybe, if I can, I'd love to share a little poetic excerpt every now and again in the Writers Workshop Newsletter as a little food for thought or an inspiration/kickstarter, not unlike that of Beth's Word of the Week? Mm, just a half-baked thought.

Anyway, è tutto che ho da dire. A presto!
 
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Under 99.9% of circumstances I do not and will not condone the use of AI, but one acceptable usage is for image description. I have this app on my phone that lets me ask questions after sending a photo and an AI answers it to the best of its ability. Is it always accurate? No, but it gives me a good starting point.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I learned that Olympia has NICE hair, Anistar City is by water, and the Sundial looks like a lotus-shaped structure.
 
Audrelite said:
Under 99.9% of circumstances I do not and will not condone the use of AI, but one acceptable usage is for image description. I have this app on my phone that lets me ask questions after sending a photo and an AI answers it to the best of its ability. Is it always accurate? No, but it gives me a good starting point.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I learned that Olympia has NICE hair, Anistar City is by water, and the Sundial looks like a lotus-shaped structure.
Click to expand...
A lot of Pokémon characters have really nice hair, but Olympia in particular certainly does doesn't she!

AI for accessibility purposes is great IMO! I'm heavily against it in almost any other case, but I'm glad you're able to get descriptions like that!! Thank you for sharing... *sparkles* It makes me happy that you'll be able to get to know the Pokémon world better that way... Shauntal is very very cute too, by the way!! I'd suggest putting an image of her in there next, if you already haven't...

Curious what you'll think about Lisia (Pokémon)'s design, selfserving for me to ask LOL, but I attached a photo of her official art.

6208BE4E-B65F-4575-AFE4-B8FF94778649.png
 
Hi @lisianthus! I asked Envision for a thorough description of Lisia's appearance, and this is what it gave me. I'm curious to know how much it got correct.

Lisia, the character in the image, has a distinctive and vibrant appearance. She has long, mint green hair styled into a high, side ponytail that curls upwards in a lightning bolt shape. Her hair partially covers one side of her face and is adorned with two blue hair clips, each featuring a small, light blue gem.

Her large, expressive eyes are a matching mint green, giving her a lively and cheerful expression. She wears a blue and white midriff-baring top with a starry pattern, resembling a night sky. Her top has puffed, cloud-like trim around the shoulders and a matching choker with a blue diamond shape in the center.

Lisia's outfit includes a short, flared skirt decorated with a similar starry pattern, with cloud-like puffs around the waist. She has thigh-high stockings that are blue and white, and her boots are a gradient from navy blue to light blue, adorned with puffy white clouds around the tops and crisscrossed blue bands near the ankle.
 
Hmm, it's mostly spot on! Her hair doesn't cover much of her face other than a small bang and part of her sides, though. The hairclips have a Key Stone for Mega Evolutions, but it's almost more like one connected long barette? She also has those cloudlike white puffs around her wrists and neck, and she only wears one long stocking, on her left leg! The other isn't visible, but it looks quite distinctive. Really, it's pretty accurate though, better than I could have done in describing I'd say. I'm glad you have that and that it's pretty on-point!
 
Pokémon Masters Ex Update 1: The only Sync Pair worthy of mention in my 5 (or was it 6?) summons was Jacq. Got another copy of Brendan & Treecko and Elesa (don't remember which) as well. Otherwise, just completed a couple of chapters of the main story which, even up until now I hadn't finished. Needless to say, the Gacha Gods did not smile upon me this time.
 
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Pokémon Masters Ex Update 2: I logged in to do a quick battle to refresh my memory (which went all right, considering I haven't played in years). Firstly, I think there's nighttime music at the Center I've never heard, it's so nice and calm! And secondly, I believe it was Caitlin who greeted me—or maybe Shauntal? The voice was hard to place, though you'd think I'd recognize Caitlin after how many times she's greeted me in the morning. (Fun fact: she was the first person to ever greet me at the start of a New Year; it was 2020... Holy shit!) Although, now that I'm thinking about it, there was a fall Caitlin that released I think in 2022, but I don't believe I have her so who knows? In any case, whenever Caitlin is in the Center I always have a great day somehow. Is this a sign?!
 
Pokémon Masters Ex Update 3: I'm realizing that I'll be making little update posts more frequently than I thought I would, ahaha. At any rate, I thought it'd be an interesting experiment to see if I could take a screenshot and use Envision to see how it'd describe what it sees. Specifically, i took a screenshot of the main map screen, where you can access the main story, Battle Villa, Sync Pair Stories, etc. I learned so much through its descriptions—yes, I fed it the same photo and rephrased my question in multiple conversation attempts to see how its answers differed. Sufficed to say, I learned that the game really wants me to do the Battle Villa, and to that I say, "No thank you! My 2020 teams are not up to snuff." I was also told that I have 941 of... I'm going to guess stamina?

Ahaha, stumbling around like this really shows how much I envy sighted people. It's so easy to just pick up the game and log in, get your daily rewards, scout if you have the gems, and maybe do some grinding. Ah well, I guess I have more to re-learn than I thought.
 
With the author reveals having taken place for the Battleship Exchange (which I believed to have vaguely mentioned in passing in the Garden), I am finally at liberty to share the series I've created collating the eight works I'd written for this particular exchange. The series can be found here.


To elaborate further: of the aforementioned eight stories, seven fall under the category of Original Work, while one piece belongs to the Pokémon fandom. Should any among you feel so inclined, you're most welcome to peruse these pieces and, if you wish, to leave comments. I've enabled guest comments for all of these works (as is the case for my entire body of work), allowing anyone to share any observations or thoughts—no concrit, if you please.


On a tangentially related note pertaining to my fanfiction, I've been, with a decidedly measured pace, cross-posting a selection of my fics to Fanfiction.net. Of particular note, I've posted the first couple of the ten Olympia-centric vignettes (from To Sacred Profundities, for those curious—a collection which, I might add, has been shared in full in the Workshop). My intention is to continue posting the remaining vignettes on a weekly basis, if only to set some sort of a schedule for myself. (My Fanfiction.net profile, along with everywhere else you can find my writing presence, can be found at the website listed on my profile here, though there isn't much on my FFN at present, especially in comparison to the over 100 works posted to my AO3.)


Well, that's all from me. A presto!
 
Pokémon Masters Ex Update 4: I hadn't logged in dayssince the last time I logged in, but knowing it was the 5th year anniversary gave me a reason to now. My brother helped me do a few summons and Sync Pairs of note I got were Olympia (squees in delight!), Looker, a third copy of Olivia, and Dana, who I'd gotten as a choice (because I like Regice).
 
Hello! It's been a while! It's almost the end of the month, too. How time flies, huh?

I've mainly been working on quite a few fics for gift exchanges I've signed up for, so a lot of the stuff I'm working on is hidden for now. Although, I have posted my very first attempt at creating a fanmix, centered on Cresselia/Darkrai. You can find the AO3 link to it here. There you'll find the links to both the Spotify and YouTube playlists, alongside lyrics snippets from the tracklist. I had put it together spontaneously and I started the project at around 11pm, completing it in about 5 hours. (Listen, if insomnia shall be my enemy, then I may as well do something creative to pass the time.)

Well, that's all for now. A presto!
 
Every so often, I like to change up what's displayed on the bio of my AO3 profile. What was displayed there before today is actuaaly on my About tab on this site, but frankly editing that is a fucking chore so I likely won't be doing any editing there unless absolutely necessary. Anyway, I wanted to share what I changed it to (or at least the top portion of it, as everything else is just a transformative works statement, a link to my links, and the John Koenig quote).

I’d like to believe that my writings reflect my logophilic tendencies, short as they may be. Most of them also present a certain idealized romanticism I eternally, deeply yearn for in my life.

...Yeah, that feels right!
 
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I've just come across an incredibly beautiful flash fic, and it’s got me spiraling into thoughts of lore.

It’s less than a thousand words—visceral, intense—and yet it explores the side effects of Mega Evolution in such a layered way that it stuck with me. Mega Evolution, after all, isn’t just a power boost; it’s a transformation that brings a great deal of pain. Some Pokémon don’t even want to undergo it, and with good reason. I mean, my own beloved OC's partner Pokémon is naturally pacifistic, practically allergic to combat, really, and that hesitation is baked into its species. Dex entries even state that the sheer energy radiating off the Mega form can literally kill anything faint of heart simply by proximity.

So, yes, I read this fic, and the author delved into the perspective of a Mega-evolved Pokémon—one that actually craved the power. This particular Pokémon, along with its trainer, was more than ready to Mega evolve, united by the bond required to harness such a force. Yet, as beautifully conveyed in both the fic and an episode of the anime, it lost control, ignoring its trainer’s commands entirely. The author, inspired by this episode, portrayed the Mega Evolution as almost an all-consuming transformation. There's that simultaneous, almost paradoxical, thrill and horror in a Pokémon gaining that much power only to feel it turn unwieldy, overbearing.

It’s got me wondering about the Pokémon's internal struggle—do they desire this change? Fear it? What drives them to accept it or dread it? The lore insists on a strong bond, but what if the Pokémon questions the cost of that bond, the physical toll it must endure simply to become what its trainer envisions? And, also of interest to me: the aftermath of Mega Evolution, especialy after the first few times...

… I don’t know.
 
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