webcomics

When I was watching the Grammys, I was intrigued by the nomination lists for classical and opera. So I thought I'd look them up.

Huang Ruo hits two of my cultures, Chinese and American, so we'll start with him. Here's An American Soldier on Youtube.

In case anyone's interested.

I'll add more links into this post as I find them, but first I'm listening to this one. It's in English. So I'll be able to follow the story as it unfolds. That's not a requirement for my opera enjoyment; I quite love listening to music in languages I can't understand at all, and languages I can only understand to a basic degree are enjoyable for their own reasons.

Okay, wait, look what I found! It's Huang Ruo playing a sheng. I own a sheng! He's making it sound like a pipe organ. I don't know how he does that. I can't get mine to sound like a pipe organ. I realize there is also a real pipe organ there, so, yes, I can see how the sheng looks like a tiny hand-held pipe organ. Looks like, no, that's precisely what it is. It's the pipes held right there in your hands.

Mine whistles too much. And the notes seem unreliable. There's nothing wrong with my instrument; it's all me. I need to fiddle with it some more. (No, it's not a fiddle.)

Cathy recruits Ella to help her confront Maurice

Cathy carefully composes a note in English, using her French-English dictionary. She presents it to Ella, who reads: "Please help me. Maurice wants for other people to desire him. He says this to me. I am not sufficient? Speak to him please."

Ella puts her arm around Cathy reassuringly. "Oh, Cathy, my amie, don't worry. I'll handle this for you. I'll catch him coming out of work."

She catches Maurice in the parking lot of Liquor Warehouse. "Hey, stud," she greets him, much to his confusion. "I need to talk to you in private."

"Okay," Maurice says.

"I just want to start by saying I'm not blaming you," says Ella.

"Oh?" Maurice looks a little bit alarmed.

***

My friend whose Gofundme I posted a few days ago is in a dire situation. The fundraiser isn't going to hit its goal. Her house got foreclosed on, her car was repossessed, she has two kids including one who has socio-emotional disabilities even in secure times, and she has 5 rescue cats that she is determined to hold onto because they're all difficult cases. I ran out of ways to help her, and I feel terrible. I wish I had a place to let her crash temporarily, but we have a full house here, and we can't allow the cats because Typhoon is vicious and horrible with other cats - we already tried twice to take in other cats and it didn't work. (I don't need advice on that front - I'm very experienced in cats with behavior problems and the rescue thereof, and it's just the layout of this house plus Typhoon being a Force of Nature with no 'off' button.)

I'm backing off from bothering my friend with my half-baked ideas, but I feel rotten about it. Her survival plan is not perfect, but it might have worked before all her assets were taken from her.

Life is tough all around. We'll all be affected in some way or other, some more profoundly than others.

Final post of reactions to The Rose Field. Spoilers throughout. Previous HDM-related posts on DW; see also The Reaction Posts of Dust on AO3.

Illustrated with TV-series screencaps again. Also, I decided to be self-indulgent and throw some of my own fanart in there.

I have a large but poorly-organized heap of “ideas about How To Fix These Books.” Might round those up and make a post about them at some point? TBD. For the main liveblog of the trilogy itself — this wraps it up.

( 80% of the way through the book is a little late to reveal their whole quest is fake. So where is this going? )

Oh no, I'm so far behind! This is a dump of all the daily comics I've done since last time I posted. I'll summarize it in the image descriptions, but I don't have time to do a full transcript. I'll copy and paste the translation transcript I did on the comic that's in French.

The two raver dudes who live downstairs from Ren Cathy and Maurice are arguing and Owen storms off and goes downstairs to sulk on the porch where Cathy is sitting reading a magazine

The two raver dudes who live downstairs from Ren Cathy and Maurice are arguing and Owen storms off and goes downstairs to sulk on the porch where Cathy is sitting reading a magazine

Owen tells Cathy that he and his boyfriend need couples counseling but he is afraid to seek it out because he is afraid of being discriminated against

Maurice and Ren approach while engaging in light banter and Owen whispers to Cathy that he thinks their height difference is amusing and then when they climb the stairs onto the porch Cathy tells them what Owen said

Owen is embarrassed but Maurice and Ren assure him that they have already noticed the height difference and are not offended

Two conversations happen at once Cathy and Maurice speaking in French here

French translation:
(As always, not guaranteed to be a direct translation, and errors and typos may occur.)

Cathy: "What are you saying?"
Maurice: "Owen is worried about embarrassing me because I'm a short man."
Cathy: "Oh!"
Maurice: "But I already know."
Cathy: "Yeah! It's nothing to be embarrassed about."

Maurice: "Eh, I suppose."
Cathy: "It's not a bad thing. I chose you."
Maurice: "Some people don't want to choose a man like me."
Cathy: "Fortunately! I'm not sharing."
...
"If you want the whole world to find you attractive, then, damn, what am I?"
Maurice: "Sorry! That was too much French for me."

And simultaneously:

Owen and Ren talk about Sammy whose name is actually Seth but he is thinking of changing it and Ren is intrigued by this idea

Owen and Ren talk about Sammy whose name is actually Seth but he is thinking of changing it and Ren is intrigued by this idea

Okay! Almost caught up. I always update the Alien Romance Patreon page first, so if you're in a hurry, you can always pop over there (and subscribe if you want, not necessary but certainly welcome). But it will all appear here on Dreamwidth too. Just sometimes with a delay. I've been quite overwhelmed lately and I'm not afraid to admit it. More overwhelmed than when I previously said I was overwhelmed. And will get increasingly overwhelmed in the foreseeable future. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Steam is doing a whole event centered around upcoming games, so I had a little browse and downloaded a few demos.

The first demo was a bust, despite a promising concept. The interface was difficult and I just wasn't enjoying myself.

The second game was much better. A mystery puzzle game called Secrets of Suburbia, it features an amateur teen detective in a late 90s setting, focuses on teens' online lives, and captures the spirit of the late 90s internet to a downright alarming degree. I haven't gotten far enough in the mystery to comment on that aspect, but its subject is a girl who went missing. The game is physically very dark, as in, even when the lights are turned on (there are light switches in every room) the light is still very low and washed out. There is also spooky music, so the low light is probably meant to enhance the horror/mystery vibes. It even starts with the teen protagonist home alone while the rest of the family is out.

I've also downloaded a demo for a game called I'm Making a Monster, but I haven't tried it yet.

Then there's Islantiles, a kind of deck-builder/city-builder type game, but I've been playing that demo for a while, so it's not new. The game is due out Q2 2026, so possibly soonish, and the demo just updated, too.

Rules: put your music on shuffle, and make a poll with the first 5 songs that appear to let folks vote for whichever they like best!

I was tagged by

gothyanki but I don't actually listen to playlists much these days, I either listen to specific albums/songs in a variety of ways, or the radio. Last time I did this meme I cobbled together a collection to randomise from, but this time I decided to just listen to the radio (specifically Double J) and write down the first five songs I like enough to theoretically listen to on purpose (though the only one I remember ever actually seeking out is "Weather With You" and then only because it was attached to other Crowded House songs I like more)

Poll #34287

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

View Respondents

Which do you like best?

View Answers

Promises: Mama Kin Spender
1 (20.0%)

Run: Flight Facilities
0 (0.0%)

The Bomb! [These Sounds Fall Into My Mind]: The Bucketheads
0 (0.0%)

Weather With You: Crowded House
3 (60.0%)

City of Angels: The Distillers
1 (20.0%)

Crossposted to tumblr, which means it has to be radio buttons. NO NUANCE as they say on tumblr.

We got a decent amount of accumulation late last night but there was no way i was going out to shovel

My cat Typhoon ventured out into the catio and made footprints in the drifts that were blown inside through the screens

This blizzard has a little of everything: high winds, thick snow, power loss, impassable roads. We still have our power, but unlike when we lived on the Cape, we're not tricked out for extended living without electricity. We had a wood stove there, and once we lost power for 4 days straight, and were able to keep warm and cook hot foods the whole time. Pretty comfy. Here, we have a fireplace that we never bothered to get into working order, and using your fireplace without getting it cleaned and prepped is how house fires happen.

There was a massive, devastating house fire the next town over. The building dated back to 1789 and two of the residents didn't make it. Worse, it was along one of those winding mountain roads where access is difficult. They had to truck water in because there was no water reserve, and they had to go the long way because the emergency vehicles wouldn't fit under the railroad bridge. It makes me extra glad we didn't end up buying that one cute little house up on the mountain, and ended up with this house near the center of town instead.

Plowing the streets will continue to be challenging. My little side street isn't a high priority, but at least it's wide and there aren't many cars parked on the street. So we'll probably get pretty well cleared by this afternoon. Some of the neighborhoods, though, are tightly packed with multifamily homes and inadequate driveways, and they've already been buried in snowbanks from the storm last week. Our massive snowbanks have hardly melted. The town had a bunch of local businesses taking their Bobcats and fitted pickups out to try to continue the snow removal, and the really big mountains of snow that made intersections so dangerous got reduced to something a little safer (though there's one intersection we use a lot that still has lousy visibility) and here we are getting another 12" (30cm) on top of that! Where are the snowplows going to push the snow now?

So, if you're not in the Northeastern US, I hope this was an adequate illustration of how our life is going!

At least we're not in Boston or NYC. When I lived in Boston, after having grown up in points north of there and basically being raised to cope with severe winters, I found it humorous how little snow would shut the whole city down - at least until they could haul all the snow to the harbor and dump it in the ocean. Seriously, there were dump trucks all over the city, empty and heading inland, and full and heading toward the water. I'm sure they still do it that way.

Sick today. Managed to finish grocery shopping before I got too exhausted. Now I'm hungry for some of the food I bought, but I don't have much appetite.

Another 10 inches of snow is coming tonight. I'm watching the flurries while I draw in bed. They look lovely. I feel bad that some of the acorns I'd saved for the squirrels got moldy. I had 3 batches and 2 were fine. I should have kept them in a paper bag. Live and learn!

The hawthorn tree has been picked clean. I think we need a couple more of those! Well, it keeps putting up runners so I guess it'll be easy to end up with more hawthorns.

I'm on a scene where Maurice is making pizza while wearing his biker jacket. Because he may be a domestic goddess, but he's still a guy.

Day 5 of a cursed head cold.

I'm thinking of renaming the little township that two of my characters are from. It's generally in the Midwest, although the state could be anything from New York to Indiana, probably not any further west than that. I'd originally had it set in upstate NY, but then ended up modeling the college town somewhat after Columbus, OH.

The tiny township was Munro, originally, but Monroe is a common town name in many US states, so whichever state you think Alien Romance takes place in, will likely already have a place named Monroe or Munro.

Some of my contenders:

Malby, named after Malby, Sweden.
Maybe something about Burke, one of the established families there. Burke Path, Burke Bend, Burke Mill, Burkeville, just Burke
Lambert is another one. Lambert Mill?
Luddy, named after, I don't know, sounds cute and awkward and maybe a surname of a founding family. Then I can name some characters Luddy!

Opinions welcome! Additional suggestions also welcome.

Watch on YouTube

I didn't watch Dunc and Egg but Cam did, and he found himself thinking about how fun it could be to have a story where a somewhat loner knight (disgraced/unproven/just antisocial, whatever) takes on a determined and surprisingly knowledgable page, who he eventually realises is a girl in disguise, and they have Adventures (but no romance, preferably)

He asked if I knew of any stories like that, since it feels like a really obvious premise, and I felt like I must have seen something along those lines by Tamora Pierce/ Mercedes Lackey etc but nothing came to mind. eg the Alanna series has the crossdressing page part but not the loner knight, Kel doesn't have the cross-dressing, etc.

So I come to you! At this point we're mostly just curious if it exists at all, but actual recs are definitely not unwelcome. Books/tv/movies, whatever.

I drew some more horses. I've been feeling burnt out but maybe horses are a nice break. These were grabbed from FB so I don't know if they'll show up.

Start of Part 3. As of this point, I had 40% of the audiobook left to go, and 1 week until it returned. So these next 2 posts will cover the final 2/5 of the book.

Light spoilers for the whole book in my annotations; comments are a free-for-all. Previous HDM-related posts on DW; see also The Reaction Posts of Dust on AO3.

Didn’t bother putting screencaps in this one. Too much of it was either “new elements introduced in the sequel trilogy” or “things that didn’t get visually adapted in the TV series.”

Onward.

( Tiny Gryphon is good-guy-coded, so her idea of “who needs to die” is presumably correct and unproblematic in every way )

Help my friend and her two kids buy an RV.

Late-stage capitalism comes for us all eventually, some sooner than others. My friend Cat has done everything right - left a toxic relationship, protected her kids from grief and trauma, aimed for the stars career-wise (literally - she worked for NASA before going into the private sector), bought a house to escape the infinite-rentals trap, and used her resourcefulness and survival skills to keep her finances under control.

But her whole industry is being gutted by recent developments, and now she's scrambling to avoid becoming homeless/houseless by any means possible. In her case, buying a used RV and a truck so that there's at least a roof over her family's head.

She is, as we say in Boston, wicked smart, and doesn't seem like a likely early victim of the distressed economy, and yet here she is.

***

Roleplaying for two!

On a slightly less dire note, my friend Ossandra made this cute booklet for a different kind of roleplaying experience.

The Partner Handbook: WILLOWISP Duo Journaling RPG Zine A fun set of games for two people to play together, set in the mysterious sci-fi world of WILLOWISP spies, lies, and surprise!

Support her kickstarter to get a copy in paper or PDF, and support hard-working POC, women, independent creators.

I saw this friday five and thought, I can do that, and also I can tie it to my other post for one mega post, why not???

When did you last:

Scrounge for change (couch, ashtray, etc.) to make a purchase?

Been a while. If we are counting for quarters for laundry machines, maybe when we lived in Ottawa. Before that, laundry coins when we lived in Esquimalt, and before that probably college for vending machine lunch money. Every couple months I dig thru the junk drawer for a new cart quarter bc they seem to like wandering off!

Visit a dentist?

Earlier this month! I have to get a crown for an old root canal and a tiny filling but they're waiting for word from my insurance to do them at the same time.

Make a needed change to your life?

I feel like I have one of these coming soon. I hate change, lol. Maybe quitting instagram last year??? Though I've replaced with bluesky and now youtube shorts which are harder to avoid, so. Now I have to quit those too :P

Decide on a complete menu well in advance of the evening meal?

I do this often. Not every day or anything, but I'm the food guy here. There's some amount of winging it but not too much or it would be chicken fingies and your vegetable is ketchup every night. Also, my war with the grocery stores. When they try to claim the regular price is higher so the sale looks better?? I know your scams!! Anyway the point is that I have to plan meals around (actually good) sales, so the forward thinking is necessary.

Spend part of the day (other than daily hygiene) totally/mostly naked?

My soft soft clothing protects my skin from the TEXTURES of the world 🤢

Anyway, my in progress post was about how I was doing tier lists the other day because it's better than doomscrolling, and having a lot of fun. A lot of the food ones are turbo American though, so I went for straight fruits and veg.

( FRUIT AND VEG TIER LISTS, also Batman )

Two characters standing in a field with a horse

I was going to draw all the horses for Tết (Lunar New Year), but I'm falling behind.

"Weee are the champions, my friend," sings Ella as she triumphantly enters her flat, fists pumping. Cathy glides in behind her, showing off her shiny tiny driver's license.

Jon, offscreen, exclaims, "You got it? That took hours! What happened?"

He's in his wheelchair again, taking a break from the ordeal of hopping about on crutches, favoring easy mobility in the small space.

"They failed her at first," Ella explains, " but I was the squeaky wheel and got them to change their minds!"

"That's great," says Jon.

"Plus a trip to the police station to file charges," adds Ella. She's brandishing a slip of paper herself. "And I got this citation for disturbing the peace!"

"Wow," says Jon.

He sits passively and lets Ella collapse in front of him, laying her head on his lap. "Now I just want to sleep..." Ella mumbles, "for ten billion years."

"The earth will be consumed by the sun by then," Jon points out.

"Yes please," says Ella.

Cathy is curled up on the couch. I'd like to think that in a minute or two, they notice her there and go over to comfort her. Cathy is often a puzzle to them, but they can easily figure out what she's going through this time.

I'd like to think that they're sensitive friends and won't let her down.

If they aren't, nothing different will happen. Cathy will power through, by inertia if by no other means. All she has to do is to not leave, and not present herself as being too needy, and that shouldn't be too hard when she can't articulate her thoughts too deeply.

People sometimes ask me why I don't write out Cathy's innermost thoughts. But... I do! I insist on never breaking the language barrier, because that's a key element to the story. But her heart's on her sleeve. Even if she's wearing a sweater.

I had a dream for the third time this week about watching the 1980s live-action Batman show with my sister so I figured it was worth a DW post :P

If you don't know the 1980s live-action Batman that I apparently watch in my dreams here's a quick overview:

It was a weekly one-hour show that ran for about three seasons. It predates the age of season-long arcs but it had more than the usual number of 2- and 3- part episodes and some character growth even.
It's clearly intentionally following up on the legacy of the 1960s show because it revels in the fundamental absurdity and plays for comedy, but it was also determined to not get pigeonholed as a kids' show - it has non-cartoon violence and solid emotional arcs.
For example instead of all the silly Bat-Gadgets, they had Wayne Enterprises (TM) machines. There's a running bit where Tim always makes sure he has access to a Wayne Enterprises (TM) Automatic Soup Dispenser (TM) and nobody can tell if he's just really into soup or if he's modding it to dispense other things.
Oh yeah, despite being called Batman, it's actually mostly about Tim and Dick. Bruce shows up in every episode for at least a few minutes but is rarely the focus. (Yes, I know the 1980s is early for comics!Tim - I assume the comics character was based on the show character? - and there's no Jay in this continuity, which lets it be a little more lighthearted about their relationships with Bruce.)
Tim became Robin after Dick "retired" and Bruce finally noticed how neglected the neighbor boy actually was. In the show he's mostly traveling around playing poor little rich boy and Robinning with a rotating guest cast of Teen Titans (nearly every episode is in a different city - they must have had a huge travel/sets budget.)
Dick is 100% a civilian these days he swears. He's technically in college but never appears to attend. He's always showing up to "hang out" with his little bro, or following Kory to a show, and then having to secretly superhero it up without a costume or name. The show is constantly teasing that this is the episode he'll finally become Nightwing and never follows up.
When Bruce shows up it's usually not as Bruce, or even Batman, but as his even more useless cousin "Kenneth Wayne", who only shows up in the tabloids when he's done something so ridiculous Bruce has to send Alfred to bail him out, and therefor has an excuse to be places Bruce can't possibly be. He has absolutely 0 natural authority over the boys, who treat him as an embarrassingly untrustworthy uncle, and enjoys the hell out of this.
Dick is dating Koriand'r, but they insist they're not girlfriend and boyfriend because "Tamaraneans don't have boys and girls, she's just my Kory and I'm her Dick". This is never explored beyond that at all. (Also Kory looks a lot less human and more like Ron Perlman's Beast* (except as a hot not-girl, of course.)
Tim spends every episode excited and/or worried about the main plot interfering with or facilitating a possible or planned date with a girl. The girls are never named or shown onscreen. Dick teases him about this.

The episode we watched last night involved Tim and Dick renting out an old mansion/party house in Philadelphia that was haunted by a very lazy demon shaped like a yellow cartoon rabbit, a very large monitor lizard who was wanted by the Mob, a bunch of people having to shelter overnight in a Victorian-themed cafe in the zoo, and every single character having to dress up as Matches Malone in the same bad wig at the same time. Also the Three Stooges guest-starred. I hope I get to watch more later, I don't think there's an official DVD release.

*did I only have this dream because I did that "name all the animals" game right before bed and was thinking about Golden Lion Tamarins??

I fell behind on Alien Romance posts! I keep up better on my Patreon page. It doesn't have the transcripts but it has additional commentary that I don't post here. Then again, here has commentary that I don't post there.

( I'm putting this one behind a cut even though it's meant as catharsis because I know I have some friends here who have had metoo experiences. )

Profile

Webcomics discussion and promotion

December 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Page Summary

gs_silva - Opera 2026: Grammy nominees
gs_silva - Alien Romance, the daily comic strip
erinptah - Erin Reads: The Rose Field, Part 3b (chapters 31-36)
gs_silva - Alien Romance, the daily comic strip
lea_hazel - games games games
alias_sqbr - Music Meme Poll
gs_silva - Blizzard 'Calvin'
gs_silva - Health and snow
lea_hazel - (no subject)
gs_silva - Name of tiny rural township
alias_sqbr - Music: Full Flower Moon Band – Smoking ft. Drunk Mums
alias_sqbr - Fantasy story with loner male knight and cross-dressing female page
gs_silva - More horses
erinptah - Erin Reads: The Rose Field, Part 3a (chapters 23-30)
gs_silva - Promotion post
omens - friday five, fruits and veg, batman
gs_silva - Happy new year
gs_silva - Alien Romance, the daily comic strip
melannen - Batman: the 1980s TV show
gs_silva - Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Style Credit

Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Au Lait by chiming

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Feb. 28th, 2026 07:21 am

Discussion and Review

Member Posts

Opera 2026: Grammy nominees

Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Erin Reads: The Rose Field, Part 3b (chapters 31-36)

Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

games games games

Music Meme Poll

Blizzard 'Calvin'

Health and snow

(no subject)

Name of tiny rural township

Music: Full Flower Moon Band – Smoking ft. Drunk Mums

Fantasy story with loner male knight and cross-dressing female page

More horses

Erin Reads: The Rose Field, Part 3a (chapters 23-30)

Promotion post

friday five, fruits and veg, batman

Happy new year

Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Batman: the 1980s TV show

Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Profile

December 2025

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags