@floofpaldi #BoostingIsSharing #AcademyMuseumofMotionPictures #photography #photo #photos
Here is a bonus gif (Wigglegram) from Beauty and the Beast (live action) exhibit by the designers of Anna Karena and Barbie the Movie. The actual delicately cut crystal and frosted table used (not the rose) and concept art behind it.
End of Thread.
@floofpaldi
From the Academy Museum of Motion Picture Cyberpunk exhibit.
The image showing a scene from the Matrix also has a QR code where you can learn more through interviews, etc. The image is full-size, baring Masto resizing so it should be scannable, but here it is anyway: https://guides.bloombergconnects.org/en-US/guide/academyMuseum/tour/e98fa81b-057e-4d6b-a11d-46a9ae0bf3bf
@floofpaldi
From the Academy Museum of Motion Picture Cyberpunk exhibit.
@floofpaldi
From the Academy Museum of Motion Picture Cyberpunk exhibit.
@floofpaldi The spouse wants to go back next Wednesday. I'll post some photos then.
Oops. I went, took pictures, then life. Right? I'll post exhibit pix here in this thread as I soak in a newly repaired hot tub. All from the Academy Museum.
#PennedPossibilities 737.001 — Since Spooky Panda is putting Paws on tonight's question, what paws would your MC put on as a spirit animal or in a dream?
The devil-girl would dream of being a sinewy tigress able to blend in to the underbrush and disappear silently into the dark depths of the forest for solitude, or to saunter, outrageous orange and black striped and lithely feline, for all to see that she's dangerous enough not to idly challenge, but well worth the fight if they have what they think they need to best her.
@floofpaldi: Hope ya don't mind? 
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#PennedPossibilities 736 — MC POV: Do you or did you once admire your parents? Who do you admire today?
I admire my mother, who was an international music and theatre star; she would always sing for me.
Same for her manager, who likely fathered me though nobody said. He took care of me like an uncle, played with me, took me places, even read to me whenever they were in town because my mother couldn't.
My mother was like me [autistic]. Every face she showed the world was an act, studied, choreographed, perfected, performed impeccably—and she was so amazingly good at it. The same each time. Like a recording. She was a star.
But, she knew she couldn't do mother for me; the performance would be fake, was fake, and she had learned her baby daughter saw through it into nothingness, so she didn't try anymore. Instead, she sang for me and that wasn't faking it, never was; it was her heart shining through. I knew that, and loved that, and her.
They died when I was five.
If her records are played in a restaurant, I walk out. I don't cry in public.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#PennedPossibilities 733 — Tell us what your MC’s home is like. CW: Long.
I will take this question as not where she is living, but rather what the MC would think of as being the home she ran away from.
When her mother died—killed actually, and surprisingly got named a hero and got elevated and thus so did her daughter—her guardian had an appropriate abode built for her, matching her future station as a head of government and an army.
The town wall got broken out and extended around pasture lands subsequently turned into manicured gardens. A mansion of intersecting grand limpet-like domes and looming convection towers got built in less than a year by an legion of artisans and laborers. Palaces and princes don't exist in her world, but this edifice might as well be described as such, and as having been built for one.
She remembers the grand staircase of white marble swirled with black, with brass clad carved dark wood railings. The expanse could have covered the footprint of the three room house she'd spent her first five years in: a bedroom for her opera star mother (and her manager who is probably her father), her own room, and the music room / dining room / kitchen.
In the mansion, she got her own room, of course. In an odd touch of kindness, it had been constructed to exactly match the same as her old one—if you subtracted the baths and dressing room—into which her plain furnishings, goth girl curios, and even her draperies were moved that jarring day of transition when she was six.
However, being a mansion it also had a dojo, an armory, a dance studio, an exercise room, three different instruction rooms for schooling in music and art and science, a solarium, an observatory, a working laboratory with vent hoods and chemical storage, a pool room containing an indoor olympic-sized pool capable of making waves to swim and struggle against, a cinema, multiple dining rooms to host from 12 to 144 guests (and host them she did, often, as practice, from the age of seven), and a ballroom for grand parties that often included very grand dances (think quadrilles and waltzes) she had to lead. It included residencies for guests of high as well as low station that could rival eastern city hotels, including aeries for day angels—and a special suite for Rainy Days, the Director of Home and the Nine Outer worlds (she's the main series antagonist), though the MC was never informed of its existence as it might have made her rebel prematurely.
The adjunct dome, closest the town, got built out as governmental offices, conference facilities, and an audience room, mostly to train her to run the prefecture she'd was to be granted stewardship over. Of course, her mansion had plenty of servants quarters, kitchens, and workrooms, which she knew as well as her own room, as she often snuck into them (okay, fled to) when her life of constant training became unbearable. She learned to enjoy simplicity and simple duty there, as well as sticky not very sweet vegetable breads, butter pumpkin becoming very comforting and her favorite.
She thought it was an escape, but it was further training. Of course it was.
The grounds, the gardens, the parade field, the woods, and the tenant farms beyond them were a whole different matter, and sadly more familiar in her early teens as she had to intern managing them.
What her home didn't have were proper facilities for learning and teaching how to work miracles and practice the relevant revelation. That was belied by the contents of her enormous private library, but if there is one defining characteristic of the devil-girl, it's how she can be obtuse and blind about certain details until they hit her upside the head. Her home missing what she needed to learn The One Thing she was most interested in was insufferable.
"It isn't lady-like," her guardian would explain when asked.
She ran away from this grand estate, and lands that stretched from the piedmont to beyond the shore fisheries at sea, and responsibility, to learn how to wield reluctant energies and forces (let's call it magic, to simplify the concept), as well as to find the one friend she had once had, whose words had made it possible for her to work her miracles, and who had betrayed and abandoned her.
Still.
Go ahead.
Ask her about home.
She barely lived there a decade, but it's her room in that mansion that comes to mind, and her meeting her cold butler-like guardian (who she detested) waiting for her on that staircase of marble and bronze every morning to begin her grueling instruction.
She's glad she ran away.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#WordWeavers 2025.07.21 — As a reader, how much detail do you want on characters’ appearance?
I really don't want much detail. For starters, if there is too much detail I simply won't remember it, and whilst that is a failing of mine, it is annoying that I might be expected to remember it all later in the book, especially if it is repeated down the line and I misremembered, which can shock me out of the narrative. Less is more. What I want is a characteristic [pun intended] that says something important that I can associate with the character, and has meaning to the story, as I paint my own internal image of the person.
As you might expect, I keep character descriptions simple in my own works, and scene descriptions experiential, taking care to make it obvious what's important and what's color.
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#PennedPossibilities 732 — Is your WIP a singular novel, a series of books, serial fiction, comics, or fanfiction? (Or something else entirely? Explain.)
Of that list, I've written everything except comics. I've no talent as an illustrator and don't know someone I could approach. I've set fanfiction aside for now, but I wrote extensively there to perfect my style (and because I needed immediate feedback).
Let's see what I'm up to:
Yet, I am not writing continuously. Maybe I should dream up another project to add?
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CW: #politics #uspol #uspolitics
Feeling passive-aggressive today, especially after watching a documentary about how today isn't all that different politically than the mid-1900s for white ethnicities and disfavored religions, and most of the century for POC. I'd thought it had gotten better in the new millennium. I felt safe. But apparently money and lies sway the gullible and envious far too easily, handing power to mean petty people, who then use it to create fear to control the rest of us—and, apparently, it always has. That money and lies might do so far into the future shatters many of my illusions.
Thanks to the above, I suddenly well understand why I write the stories I write. I hope it'll boost me to completing them.
I found this montage of photoshopped images and am positing it.
Hat tip to @taursndhaus
#WordWeavers 2025.07.18 — The home of your MC is on fire. They can retrieve one item. What is it and why?
The devil-girl would say, "Let it burn. I carry the only important things with me at all times, which are my ancient thaumaturgy primer and notebook. If you need help putting out the fire, I'll help."
Thorn Rose's family lives in a day angel-cultured home tree that resembles a grove of ancient ficus benjamina whose massive trunks have grown together into a city block-size mass, divided into a dozen "townhouses." As daemons living in a day angel neighborhood, the only place her family could rent belonged to a day angel who rebelled against the daemon-majority government a century ago. Though the former abode of a cultural hero, day angels won't live there in fear of becoming noticed by the government. If the tree went up in flames, the neighborhood would pitch in to put it out. Thorn Rose would frantically want to retrieve everything, but even her pictures of Streak with Rainy Days, or the model she calls Big Streak, could be replaced since she has access to the source of both. She wears the jewelry given her by Streak at all times (horn tips and a gold nose ring). Really, all she'd miss would be her notebooks, but she knows they aren't worth much if the knowledge isn't already in her head (which it probably is). Nevertheless, she'd make herself frantic, needing Streak to calm her down.
Day Angel Streak would think of saving his bed frame, built from the stake bed of the first cart he ever got to fly through the sky. It was a piece of crap given him by his uncle who wanted him to fail to fly it to convince him to stop making a nuisance of himself at the family warehouse—only Streak has an innate talent for levitating things behind him, even heavy and unwieldy lorries; he learned to "pull" that day, even as parts of the cart fell from the sky as he landed it. The boy made his bed frame from the wreckage, and even Thorn Rose likes it for what it meant to him.
Day Angel Bolt (where she's the MC) would go nuts trying to get her camera kit from her aerie. It's the only thing she values at the start of her story, and considering how dismal her life has become, perhaps more than life itself. I envision this would not end well.
Wintereyes (the wolf-raised woman forced to attend university) doesn't understand possessions at all. If Mother Wolf wasn't trapped in the fire, or anyone she could help save, she'd only be sad for the people or beasts who lost their shelter or livelihoods and try to comfort them in her quirky shy way.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#PennedPossibilities 730 — 2nd Anniversary Edition: Share a blurb, summary, or tiny snippet explaining your WIP to everyone in the hashtag.
Congratulations, @floofpaldi Two years of prompts is pretty dang amazing! Since you were asking for a tiny snippet explaining my WIP, I actually got pulled to a steamy single paragraph that oddly puts the book into perspective (or so its author would claim). I decided that without permission, I'd not post that to the hashtag. 
This instead here's a blurb providing the gist (maybe) of a novelette I'm trying to get started, which is taking up my head space at the moment.
Bolt was framed for murder and forced to fly messages for the mob; she wonders often if going to prison might have been the better choice. She's blacked out her memories of bad things for a dozen years. She lives for the rare moments she grabs for her street photography—the capturing of the faces and the camaraderie of a normalcy her stupidity denied her. When a newspaper reporter breaks his camera and Bolt is hovering at the scene of a weird disaster, with a perspective to see more than she should, her quirky photos end up on the front page and seem a ticket away from a life of apathy toward friendship. When her mob boss wants her to shadow the unusual teenage woman she photographed walking out of the erratic star gate, she learns the secret of her blackouts. Boss Mead knows the teenager, whom Bolt soon realizes has whole different take on apathy, one that endangers her reporter friend, her horrible job, and likely the city itself.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#PennedPossibilities 728 — Write about something your antagonist
(or villain)frequently forgets.
Rainy Days frequently forgets how difficult and painful giving birth is, especially when she's distracted in the moment.
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#PennedPossibilities 727 — MC POV: Do you remember your 21st birthday? Describe it as best you can.
The devil-girl pretty much spilled the beans about her age in The Wanted Poster in 1st person POV, which is pinned to my profile. Consider reading the 540 word tootfic for a taste of her autistic deadpan humor and the situations she fervently doesn't want to get into but does because she has the back of people she's responsible for, to a fault. As for her age, these two paragraphs set up and provide her answer.
[I] read [the wanted poster] further, "Wanted for questioning in regards to the Old Harbors Post Office and the Three Forks Bridge explosions. Suspected of transporting illegal goods and wanted persons, assault, racketeering, attempted murder, and terrorism. Goes by the name Gelding and other aliases. Aged between 15 and 35."
I muttered, "A two-decade range? I'm not even two decades old." I really worked on disguising myself, and it paid off.
She doesn't remember her 21st birthday, yet…
PS: The age of majority in her world is 24.
The Wanted Poster: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110136451462609798
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#WordWeavers 2025.07.12 2/2 — Are you comfortable promoting your own work [in person]?
GAH! Okay, having reread this prompt, I realized I attended an SF and Fantasy convention (BayCon / WesterCon 41) over the July 4th weekend. Do I like promoting my work. Again, I repeat, GAH! I am a shy person and the amount of mental energy necessary to roll that boulder up the hill and over the crest is Sisyphusian.
But.
I did it!!!
Strangely, turns out, as a number of you writer-author folk pointed out in your replies to me (thank you!), other writers, authors, artists, readers, and fans are or have been in situations that have made them supremely anxious, too. I was surprised at how many people asked questions or led me into conversations. I talked a lot that weekend, and asked questions that let me listen to also sorts of wonderful things about craft of writing, and living that life. My palms did not betray me and remained dry when I shook hands. I did talk about my view on gender and feminist fiction, and my works, and shared about Mastodon. I even ended up pitching a small press about Mars Needed Women (not actually realizing that I was) and got instructions how to submit even though they are not accepting submissions until next year. I'm hoping the beta readers give me enough feedback that I can make it acceptable before open submission time…
Wow. Okay, I won't say I was comfortable. It was work, and I burnt out for an hour here and there, but not in front of anybody I wanted to talk to. I. Did. Not. Blather, either. It was gratifying. I should work on having a higher opinion of myself and a kinder opinion of others.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.07.13 — How many ‘layers’ of interpretation do you seek to achieve in a piece of writing?
Interpretation as in deciphering what the words say?
I talk a lot about direct language and transparency, but nuance counts. Depending on the scene, I will make words perform double or even triple duty. If the reader pays attention, a passage can go from point-of-fact to romantic to explicit simply by reading a word differently. I love innuendo, double-entendres, vague words, and words with a dozen meanings.
No, I don't do that all the time! But I will admit using them in replies to challenge games like this one.
Interpretation as in recognizing the messages I am trying to get across?
I don't write a story without trying to say something. However, if I have a story to tell, it is always saying something. [Shrugs.]
I cannot get away with simply stating, "Relying on a gender role for your identity leaves you a common nobody." Ok, maybe in a post like this I can get away with that (and just did). Generally, I employ a lot more subtlety; I have the reader live through the characters' bad times and good, then leave it up to the reader's interpretation, but with plenty of hints. If I get a reader to think after finishing a story, I feel I've done my job.
In Reframing the Experience, the title hints at an interpretation of a story about how surviving adversity teaches lessons. The body of the story could be about how we can go through life oblivious to other's intentions and that maybe we ought stop playing the victim. It could be how putting all our effort into something will reap unimaginable rewards, and that trying is key. It could also be that a world run by women is simply a world run by people?
Ain't literary analysis fun?
https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112497915608418589
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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Illiterate youth cliff diving. Bad Decisions 101. See sign on left.
#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2025.07.11 — Talk about a time you sat down to write and nothing came out.
Nope. Not gonna. Not a day to remember. Ain't happening. Can't make me. Boo. 
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
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#PennedPossibilities 723 — Intelligence: Is your antagonist
(or villain)self-taught, or did they acquire most of their knowledge in school? Are they street smart or book smart?
Where and when Rainy Days was born, women were not educated except in the home. They almost never learned to read. Her autistic twin brother had difficulty learning and the traditional society they lived in discriminated against him heavily despite him being a brilliant thaumaturge. Seeing her brother as the only hope for their family's survival, she taught herself how to read, then taught her brother. Whilst not allowed inside the school (or unescorted where men congregated), she worked at managing him, keeping him attending class, and training him how to act acceptably. As he learned, he in turn taught her everything he learned so she could help explain from the books what he didn't understand. Thus she learned "magic" far advanced from simple household "magic" she learned from her peers (other women). Together they became special enough that they got noticed by powerful people who thought they could harness them to increase their own power..
The answer to the question is all of the above. During her long life, she's ended up writing many of the books, as well as inventing the field of violation physics. Along the way, she changed (ended) the civilizations that oppressed her and her brother.
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