lucymonster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lucymonster) wrote2022-03-15 06:25 pm
lucymonster) wrote2022-03-15 06:25 pm
Entry tags:
Things I've been enjoying
Times have been hard recently, on pretty much every level (personal, national, global...) so I've been taking my joy where I can get it. Here are some nice things! There's no theme to them, unless you count 'made Lucy smile recently' as a theme.
🖤 This military historian's extremely in-depth, six-part analysis of the Siege of Gondor. I'll let the blurb speak for itself:
If you love Lord of the Rings, military history, and/or taking fictional worldbuilding too seriously, this series is a must-read. The author specialises in ancient Rome (more specifically the aspects of ancient Rome I carefully tailored my studies to avoid having to learn about, so full credit to him for being a sufficiently compelling teacher to make the word 'logistics' non-horrible) and is also broadly knowledgeable about warfare ancient and modern. I'm now chewing my way contentedly through his companion eight-part analysis of the Battle of Helm's Deep, which among its many attractions boasts what is no doubt the first recorded use of the word 'wargry' (like cavalry, but with wargs!).
🖤 Burmese pickled tea (lahpet, laphat, laphet, lephet, leppet, or letpet, according to Wikipedia; apparently the Burmese language doesn't transliterate easily). So delicious! I can't afford to live off pickled tea rice from the Burmese restaurant I tried recently, but I need to find (or maybe make? Can it be made at home?) some pickled tea so I can prepare it more often for myself. If I can just get the supplies it'll be another one of those easy win meals for days when there's no time to cook but I still want something delicious.
🖤 The huge vat of borscht I cooked the other night. I can't link a recipe, because what I did was skim several recipes and sort of loosely aggregate their instructions, but the common link seems to be a Ukrainian cooking technique called zazharka which is basically mirepoix but backwards: instead of using your veg as a base, you sautee them separately and add them in towards the end. It came out very tasty, and was a great way to save the dry-brined steaks I’d planned a couple of nights prior that ended up oversalted because I ran out of time to cook them.
🖤 La Morsure du Christ by Seth. Blistering black metal with beautiful melodic and symphonic notes; I've been bored with black metal in general lately, but this album is irresistible. Alas, my rusty French is no match for this vocal style: I keep hearing one of the lyrics from the final track as 'je suis la tarte tatin', which somewhat spoils the gravitas. (The correct lyric is 'je suis le tentateur'.)
🖤 The character creation screen from Elden Ring. I haven't yet found time to do much more than create my character, but I'm deeply pleased with the Souls-y aesthetic and the fact that most of the customisation options revolve around how bone-weary and Done With Life you want to make yourself look. The devs have also made an effort to be good about gender: your base body template choices are labelled Type A and Type B rather than male and female, and none of the physical attributes, even the conventionally gendered ones like facial hair and makeup, appear to be locked to either model. (Disclaimer, I only took a cursory look at these options, because I was busy constructing the same Ebony Dark'ness fantasy self-insert with tousled black hair and tastefully arranged scars who I play in every game that gives me the choice.)
🖤 This military historian's extremely in-depth, six-part analysis of the Siege of Gondor. I'll let the blurb speak for itself:
This series aims to introduce a number of military/historical concepts in a fun, Lord of the Rings candy-coated package. It discusses the distinction between tactics, operations and strategy, presents some of the basic problems of logistics, introduces defense in depth, infantry cohesion, pre-modern siege and cavalry tactics, and most importantly the impact of morale on the battle.
If you love Lord of the Rings, military history, and/or taking fictional worldbuilding too seriously, this series is a must-read. The author specialises in ancient Rome (more specifically the aspects of ancient Rome I carefully tailored my studies to avoid having to learn about, so full credit to him for being a sufficiently compelling teacher to make the word 'logistics' non-horrible) and is also broadly knowledgeable about warfare ancient and modern. I'm now chewing my way contentedly through his companion eight-part analysis of the Battle of Helm's Deep, which among its many attractions boasts what is no doubt the first recorded use of the word 'wargry' (like cavalry, but with wargs!).
🖤 Burmese pickled tea (lahpet, laphat, laphet, lephet, leppet, or letpet, according to Wikipedia; apparently the Burmese language doesn't transliterate easily). So delicious! I can't afford to live off pickled tea rice from the Burmese restaurant I tried recently, but I need to find (or maybe make? Can it be made at home?) some pickled tea so I can prepare it more often for myself. If I can just get the supplies it'll be another one of those easy win meals for days when there's no time to cook but I still want something delicious.
🖤 The huge vat of borscht I cooked the other night. I can't link a recipe, because what I did was skim several recipes and sort of loosely aggregate their instructions, but the common link seems to be a Ukrainian cooking technique called zazharka which is basically mirepoix but backwards: instead of using your veg as a base, you sautee them separately and add them in towards the end. It came out very tasty, and was a great way to save the dry-brined steaks I’d planned a couple of nights prior that ended up oversalted because I ran out of time to cook them.
🖤 La Morsure du Christ by Seth. Blistering black metal with beautiful melodic and symphonic notes; I've been bored with black metal in general lately, but this album is irresistible. Alas, my rusty French is no match for this vocal style: I keep hearing one of the lyrics from the final track as 'je suis la tarte tatin', which somewhat spoils the gravitas. (The correct lyric is 'je suis le tentateur'.)
🖤 The character creation screen from Elden Ring. I haven't yet found time to do much more than create my character, but I'm deeply pleased with the Souls-y aesthetic and the fact that most of the customisation options revolve around how bone-weary and Done With Life you want to make yourself look. The devs have also made an effort to be good about gender: your base body template choices are labelled Type A and Type B rather than male and female, and none of the physical attributes, even the conventionally gendered ones like facial hair and makeup, appear to be locked to either model. (Disclaimer, I only took a cursory look at these options, because I was busy constructing the same Ebony Dark'ness fantasy self-insert with tousled black hair and tastefully arranged scars who I play in every game that gives me the choice.)