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DejahEntendu

@[email protected]

DC area TTRPG gamer, geek, life-o-phile
Parent of an adult person.
I try to be nice and I can be taught.
Leaper before looker...
I love books that explore how people and societies react to/change with circumstances.
I have no patience for stories that celebrate prejudice.
I fall asleep listening to historical romances and never review them.

10th level office worker with the IT archetype and a specialization in Active Directory. Multi-classed into management.

Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/dejahentendu

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@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

Joan loves me.

Black cat facing the camera with her eyes mostly closed. I am in the background, obscured by her head and ear, scritching her cheek. She is cuddled on my chest
ALT
@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

One of my GMs posted this on another platform. It's beautiful and true.

B & His Tribe (02-07-2026)
We’ve been gaming together for close to forty years now (and one or two not quite that long, but no less important).

Forty years with the same people isn’t just “gaming.” It’s shared lives. It’s a mythos we’ve all built together, one lucky critical die roll after ridiculous plan after catastrophic plan.

Most groups don’t last a year.
Plenty don’t last a campaign.

1/n

DejahEntendu OP ,
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I bet most don’t survive the first scheduling conflict.

But forty years?
That’s a tribe.

Today has been rough and I needed a lift so I’ve been reading through all our stories today. The cantina massacre, the Rope Trick implosion, the cleric beatdowns, the NPC trauma, the Delta Green spirals, It’s obvious why we’ve lasted this long.

Because we weren’t just playing games.

What we’ve got is rare, I think. We still remember each other’s critical failures from 1987.

2/n

DejahEntendu OP ,
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We have running jokes older than some RPG systems. We have characters who still haunt each other’s nightmares (not really but close enough). We have war stories that get retold like legends. We have games where chaos is expected, welcomed, and weaponized.

Most people never get this.
Most people never even get close.
We’ve grown up together.
We’ve survived life together.
We’ve built mythologies together.

The fact that we can still tell

3/n

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

Kingfisher's homey feminism gives us another great one. The awkward princess wins the day, banishes the ogre, and rides off into the sunset for more adventures! A woman's work is never done, after all.

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

Attempt #3 at a soft sourdough loaf. Still hard on the outside. But probably not 1/2" deep this time (I hope). I'll cut into it tomorrow.

A sliced bread style loaf of sourdough bread. Fresh out of the oven on a cooling rack with all kinds of mess on the stove behind it. It is a lovely golden color.
ALT
DejahEntendu OP ,
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The crumb is good. And the crust softened up some. I'm pretty happy with this one!

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

For some reason, last night I remembered when my kid gave up their binky (pacifier).

They were around 18 months and had taken up flinging the thing away when they didn't want it any longer. Then later demanding it when they wanted it again. This resulted me having to boil found ones often and replacing from time to time. I got so tired of it.

One day, the kid grabbed the binky from their mouth and pulled their arm back to fling it. I looked at them and said, "don't."

1/2

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

My sister, who always manages to find the oddest and most frivolous things, got me this for my winter solstice gift this year.

Flamingos are an obsession of mine.

A flamingo lamp in profile. The belly is lit softly and the underside of the head more brightly. The coloring is surprisingly accurate. It stands with one leg lifted, as flamingos do, on a silver laptop. It is in front of a window with a yard in the background. A reflection on the bird shows in the laptop screen.
ALT
@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

OK, so let's see... we buckled down this week and made it through more than one encounter. We were not less random.

First, the gorallon (something like that) got loose on the ship and we were told not to kill it! We managed. Some of the group started looking into how it got out, but the captain didn't seem to care, so I just let it lie.

Then, when we were up on deck talking about what the rest of the team found, the GM asked me, "hey, do you lean back

🧵

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

One of the reasons I listen to books is that it's the best format for my flavor of ADHD. No distracting visuals or noises like with TV/movies. It being read to me means I can't wander off with my attention as easily as reading an ebook or traditional book.

And then they started making these "Graphic Audio" books with tons of background noise, ahem, "cinematic music and sound effects." We hates them.

I get that some people may prefer them, but can't the extraneous sound...

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to random

The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson

Re-read this for a SFF book club I go to. It did not age well. It was never one of my favorite of his books, anyway.

My main comment was that this was written in his techbro edgelord era. More on that later.

The Drummers - just completely cringe worthy. There were so many less problematic ways to create a "wet net." Orgies to share data? Aren't there simpler ways to share nanobots?

🧵

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DejahEntendu OP ,
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Of the bordello she went to work at about how they re-use scripts written for Vicky's. There is so much more!)

Stephenson posits a post-cyberpunk (as in living in the after-effects of that societal change) world where people have sorted themselves into groups (claves) based on what's important to them. Race, politics, religion, some combination thereof. This world is verging on post-scarcity, but not there yet. His main theme is around education, familial love, and how the two interact...

DejahEntendu OP ,
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And here's what I'm still chewing on...

I know Stephenson does satire. But when he writes about tribal affiliations and uses trite stereotypes, but doesn't talk about the impact of the stereotypes on the people they're about, does it still read as racism? I've come to the conclusion that it does, but I'm still kinda on the fence. The reason I'm on the fence is that he doesn't write aspirational fiction. He takes who we are, and what's going in technologically and then extrapolates...

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to bookstodon group

Babel by R.F. Kuang

An intense and difficult read (for a white person). But well worth the time. A diverse group of 4 translators in the same year at Oxford bond over their classes. But life isn't simple and as they each grow, at varying rates, there is friction. Set in a fantastical, but eminently realistic, Colonial Era Britain, there is a lot for Kuang to build on, and I feel she did an excellent job of bringing us a tale of

1/

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jzb ,
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@DejahEntendu bookstodon@a.gup.pe icon bookstodon group it’s an amazing book. She’s got an incredible gift. I need to read it again, I’m sure there’s much more I’ll get out of it on the second read.

DejahEntendu OP ,
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@jzb bookstodon@a.gup.pe icon bookstodon group

I was a little nervous starting this one, as I DNF'ed The Poppy War. The violence was way too graphic for me. I get that the era she was worrying about was graphic, but I just can't handle that level of description. I'm glad she avoided it in this one, because it really was a wonderful read!

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to bookstodon group

Brother Bronte by Fernando A. Flores

Sort of three stories that are tied together.

This is set in, what, a post-governmental-collapse Texas, part of the former United States, in a small corporate town that outlived its usefulness? There's a lot to unpack in this world.

From the deep misogyny of making mothers rights-free, and women in general to a lesser extent, forcing them into corporate slavery simply because they're mothers

1/

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DejahEntendu OP ,
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to the outlawing of books and eradication of education, this paints a deeply disturbing world of nearly feral people turning on one another for the smallest of reasons. And yet there's still love and support of neighbors to a certain extent. Small acts of social support in defiance of the hierarchical, capitalistic society they're living in. The story is super focused in on a handful of people in this small town in Texas,

2/

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DejahEntendu OP ,
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so we never get the larger picture of how this happened. Or what infrastructure still exists. But some clearly does, though from our eye-level of the poorest, it hardly seems possible. In the end, there's an escape to something better for those who can live with it.

I'm not sure that I actually liked the book, but it was an interesting read.

3/3

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@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to bookstodon group

A Road Back from Schizophrenia: A Memoir by Arnhild Lauveng

I have very mixed feelings about this book. It was a moving, intense memoir of sleeping who was deeply broken for a time in her life. And beautiful, hopeful message for those who are or know someone who is affected by psychosis. Lauveng is careful to be clear that this is her story and not a roadmap for everyone.

All this being said, much of what Lauveng talks about being

🧵

@bookstodon

DejahEntendu OP ,
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how to enable this outcome, you won't get them. Unless you need to be told to treat patients with respect and dignity, and to honor their choices.

She said, right in the closing chapter, that schizophrenia outcomes divide into thirds: healed, living with peace but not healed, and living with trauma and not healed (my words). I need to follow up on that, as this is news to me.

3/3

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DejahEntendu OP ,
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Ah, she was talking about remission, from what I can tell.

@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to bookstodon group

A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen

Chen is excellent with emotions and interpersonal dynamics.

The book was written during the 2019 pandemic. And it shows. It's a very grim prediction of what would happen after a truly devastating outbreak, worse even than the Black Death in Europe. I enjoyed most of the story, though it wasn't anything overly special. Chen gave it an upbeat ending. One brighter than I expected. That kinda disappointed me.

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@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to bookstodon group

The Future of Another Timelibe by Annalee Newitz

I loved the writing mechanic used to share changes to the timeline! It made the changes clear without hitting you over the head with them.

This was a very intersectional feminist book with a lot of pondering about how we can all affect our lives and the lives of those around us in a positive manner by pushing back and sharing our views. It was a well-rounded out world with

1/2

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DejahEntendu OP ,
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some interesting thoughts on time travel and cohesive characters revealed in a slow-burn. It was worth my time.

CW: incest

2/2

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@DejahEntendu@dice.camp avatar DejahEntendu , to bookstodon group

River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

What happens when you need to choose between love and duty? in a world where grammar is magic, maybe the answer lies in riddles. This gorgeous, lyric fairy-tale gives us the answer in song. The audiobook is just under 3 hours long and so worth listening to.

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