Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

500 followers 310 following 12K posts

https://wandering.shop/@klara
40s
🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
she/her
Chicago
still masks
misses WisCon book recs
knows math / ancient history just well enough for jokes

Profile pic: Girl AF Klara, of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (Jeff Liu)

Banner: 🙊 (nyxtastic on Tumblr)

Posts Replies Media Videos

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

"Post your favorite Transformers character. Wrong answers only."

I mean come on. What did you expect.

The Utena car, from the Utena movie. Pretty early on, I think? Like right out of the gate, or right when Anthy turns the key? I dunno, I've probably posted this before but I didn't bother to check my archives.

I thought about posting the Wakaba car, but they did say "favorite" in the meme prompt.

December 1, 2025 at 1:24 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Doesn't talk about all the block-pushing puzzles, but otherwise I feel like this really captures the core experience of playing Vagrant Story.

Cc: @iris-of-ether.bsky.social, @cidolatry.bsky.social, @tcdohl.bsky.social, I forget who else needs to see this

Vagrant Story is about exploring the mystery of a long-abandoned city that holds a power that should never be given to anyone who covets it. The most important of those mysteries is the attack damage formula.

Attack = (total STR) * (100 + [(Class + Affinity + Type + WeapPP% - WeapDP%) / 4]) / 100

November 26, 2025 at 11:46 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

This doesn't really sound like me. But maybe they didn't have a "pocket sand" result.

The result of this quiz that's for "tactical knife", which reads as follows:

"Guns for show, knives for a pro" - this is a phrase that has meaning to you, somehow. You have probably spent way more money on a piece of stamp steel with an off-spec picatinny rail attachment point on it than you would care to admit. People calling your knife a ka-bar bothers you in ways you don't really have time to explain to them. You are the Tactical Knife Gay. Try extending people a little more grace when they are slow to answer your texts. After all, they don't have a combat knife.

November 22, 2025 at 6:32 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Backed a kickstarter and this bit had me lamenting what an awful trap the Internet has become for normal people.

Like, I know what's going on here. I get that these are Link (or whatever) and Kickstarter proper, respectively. But no wonder most users are unwittingly creating new accounts every day.

A screenshot of part of a web form, with one check box for "save my information for faster checkout" and another for "remember this payment method".

The checkboxes are slightly different sizes, which is one of your only clues that your credit card number would be saved with completely different entities depending on which of these you check. (Also I think the upper, smaller one only appeared after I entered my credit card number?)

November 12, 2025 at 12:35 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Of course women don't like the Cybertruck.

Women only want one thing, and it's a girlfriend who's never lost her nobility even as she's set aside the parts of her youthful idealism that were holding her back from connecting with other women.

The Utena car, from the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie, freshly out of the car wash.

October 22, 2025 at 3:31 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Sometimes the timeline does such a thing.

Three Bluesky posts, in order:

- drilbot saying "getting my dick sucked in Unreal Engine 4. wow [repeated many times, followed by a bunch of unmatched end brackets]"

- leguinbot saying (and I don't know where this is from, unfortunately) "Love that wants only to get, to possess, is a monstrous thing."

- springfieldians posting an image of the fly-headed Bart (that is actually a fly but that the family treats as a mutated Bart) from that one Treehouse of Horror episode, sitting at the kitchen table with an empty plate

October 19, 2025 at 9:54 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Impulse bought a book today on account of hearing two (possibly trans?) queers talk it up at Unabridged Books.

The words "The Thing but horny" were used.

The front cover of Sarah Gailey's book Spread Me, with quotes by Chuck Wendig ("terrifying and tantalizing") and Grady Hendrix ("made me blush so hard I cried") visible.

The art is of a dome building with a lot of... roots? tendrils? underneath, entwining with the letters in the title.

Also my hand is visible, if you're into that. Nails are relatively short but you can see some purple hair dye under them still (even though it's been weeks since I had it dyed).

October 4, 2025 at 11:20 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Utena (looking forward and distraught) and Anthy (looking pleasantly neutral while keeping an eye both on Utena and on the scene they're watching), from Revolutionary Girl Utena episode 21 (i.e., the episode in which both characters appear the least).

This is right before Anthy says that heartbreaking line about how when you love someone, your feelings don't matter; you just keep lying to yourself no matter what it takes. They're watching Nanami and her followers, and particularly Keiko, who is back in the group and laughing off her behavior during, you know, the whole rest of the preceding episode, where it comes out how much she resents Nanami and secretly longs for Touga.

October 1, 2025 at 7:15 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Finally found the time to set up that CubieTruck!

The silliest hurdle was the lack of a spare USB keyboard, but luckily I found images that already had sshd set up.

I think connecting an old laptop drive is a lost cause barring a very specialized cable, but I probably don't need >100GB for music.

A tiny, open, single board computer, atop a cabinet, with loose cables including a network cable that leads to a retro-style Linksys router. Below is my laptop screen, verifying that I did indeed ssh into that tiny device.

You can also see the other contents of the cabinet (light bulbs, candles, etc.) and a record player on top, but those aren't important. Nor are the other things on my screen, which reveal an XFCE desktop and a few haphazardly placed files, including that gay starfish porn I've enthused about a few times.

September 28, 2025 at 9:47 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Love you.

A text exchange;

> send me newts

[a newt]

> no... like a sexy pic

[another newt, on its back with spread legs]

"my plundering ass thought this was a vessel upon the high seas"

It's a cheesecake with a blueberry topping, and one piece has been taken out of it, thus making the whole thing look boat-y.

1940s Detective: It was a hot night in the city of angels when a leggy blond walked into my office. She had 13, maybe 14 legs. Way too many.

"That's a lot of legs for a Dame" I suggested to her eldritch form.

She glanced my way, and rolled her eyes at me.

I picked them up, and rolled them back.

Ready for bed?

tired, but can't fall asleep?

try: staying up for 3 or 4 hours

surely you won't regret staying up for 3 or 4 hours

3 to 4 hours yay

[There are skeletons and clocks and an egg dog indicating how fine this is. Also a phone reading "3 to 4 hrs fun". Because it's fine. Nothing could go wrong.]

September 27, 2025 at 3:48 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Also some of these other stats surprised me.

(I was worries about the starter pack on account of the stories I hear about mass-following nightmares, but it turns out it was just something @facilitatrix.bsky.social made, so it's fine.)

A little stats report from that app, telling me that I have a bigger following than 98% of the people on this site (how), I'm among the first 1% of Bluesky users (ugh), and I'm listed in exactly one starter pack (eep, but it turns out it's fine).

September 25, 2025 at 11:07 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

The benefits of having a slightly lower Bluesky score [from bluefacts.app if you don't want to click all the way through for the link] include* that you have so many different games to compare yourself to. Like these were very far from the only winners.

* but are assuredly not limited to

The Metacritic page for Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster on the PC, which got an 8.1 ("generally favorable") user score and an 87 metascore.

I have this on the Switch but have never played it. Honestly I've never finished any of my replays of FFVI, since I always get sidelined by having A Plan about who should learn which spells, and then that gets boring. So I've never seem Shadow survive into the World of Ruin.

Maybe this time, though. Whenever I wanna replay something familiar, that is. Don't hold your breath.

The Metacritic page for Professor Layton and the Last Specter on the DS, which got an 8.1 ("generally favorable") user score and an 83 metascore.

I remember liking this one! A good part of that was Emmy Altava, who remains a personal favorite (though I haven't played the 5th and 6the games), but also I feel like they integrated the puzzles with the story in more varied ways this time. Not every small town can be just crawling with puzzle lovers, you know?

The Metacritic page for The Beatles: Rock Band on the Xbox 360, which got an 8.1 ("generally favorable") user score and an 89 metascore.

Remember when Guitar Hero and then Rock Band were big, and every time you visited a bunch of old friends in one city or other there'd be someone who had one of those games, and you all would stay up late and trade off playing/failing? There were enough of them that I never got particularly good at any game's selection, but that meant I never got sick of them either.

I don't know if there's an equivalent these days. I can't visit people en masse like that anymore because of Covid, and the people I do visit often can't afford to spend that kind of money on video games. Mostly they show me their favorite streamers and YouTubers.

I think a lot of the people who used to throw those impromptu home rhythm game parties have kids now.

September 25, 2025 at 10:59 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Yes, for example, whatever was going on here.

Akio, from Revolutionary Girl Utena episode 35, lying on the floor with his shirt open, surrounded by small potted cactuses. A purple rose emblem (the kind that would be spinning, but this isn't a GIF) is in the lower right corner.

He's talking to Touga (off-screen) about the weird competitive thing the two of them had going on about Utena, which Touga is clearly losing. This is also represented by how Touga (who's shirt is also of course open in this scene) only has one cactus, which he's holding. (It does bloom over the course of the conversation, though. We all know what that symbolizes!)

September 20, 2025 at 3:29 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

The kind of girl I apparently am these days, apparently.

I'll write more about the book eventually. It was a good read, though definitely written for people better educated on those parts of history than I am. I ended up checking Wikipedia a LOT.

[Thank you @tabbysable.bsky.social for the record.]

Pierre Chuvin's A Chronicle Of The Last Pagans (Chicago Public Library copy) next to the Mountain Goats' Songs For Pierre Chuvin (on vinyl).

There's a bookmark in the book, the kind with the little tail tied into the top, peaking out just enough that you can see a friendly yellow flower, with eyes and an inscrutable expression, peaking out of the top. I think it was a Kickstarter bonus for an art book by Undertale fans.

September 10, 2025 at 12:47 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

I eventually gave up trying to find the Chrono Cross version of this line, which makes me feel like a bit of a quitter. I'm sure I could've screencapped it off some YouTube video or other.

Magus, in the alternate Chrono Trigger ending "What The Prophet Seeks", in the Undersea Palace, facing upwards toward a doorway, I think, though his exact destination is covered by his speech box, which reads:

"If history is to change, let it change! If the world is to be destroyed, so be it!"

Er, sorry, did I say Magus? I meant the mysterious prophet who came to the Kingdom of Zeal a bit before the Undersea Palace was complete. You certainly can't tell that it's just Magus in a hat.

September 9, 2025 at 4:51 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

Amethyst and Steven, of Steven Universe, watch Garnet and Pearl chat with Bismuth about their weapon upgrades while visiting The Forge, in the episode "Bismuth".

This is the start of their "I don't know. Same joke twice?" / "Well, it'll be really funny if she does it a third time." bit, which. The payoff for that line. Oh man. Absolutely perfect, in my opinion.

August 31, 2025 at 7:47 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

"Hard Mode Quiz! If you were a NON-LEGENDARY creature, which would you be?"

Unfortunately I haven't played Magic since I was, like, 13 or so.

The "Fool" card from Dominion, which shows a man with a hat and a bindle, heading out on a journey. He looks like he's going to head through a gap in an old stone wall, towards some shapes, which certainly doesn't bode ominously in a fairytale sense.

The card's main text reads: "if you aren't the player with Lost in the Woods: take it, take three Boons, and receive the Boons in any order." Which is to say, it's a terminal action, but you get three random small good things, and then the card becomes dead weight in your deck until someone else plays a Fool. (Though during that time you get Lost in the Woods' bonus, which lets you discard a card at the start of your turn to receive a Boon.)

The card costs three, same as a silver-- and in games where the Fool is in the spread, you replace one of your coppers with a "lucky coin", which gives you a silver when played-- and, despite only providing one money itself, has a cost of four on it (making it much nicer to upgrade), but that's neither here nor there-- I guess maybe encouraging you to spend your three-coin turns on other things? Like Fools? It has the types "Action" and "Fate" and is from the Nocturne expansion (as indicated by the crescent moon).

Anyway, of course Fool's utility depends on the spread, like any card, but it's kind of betting on your opponents matching you in Foolishness to be maximally useful. It's kind of the opposite of, say, a lot of Attack cards in that way, which are at their most effective if you're the only one who invests in them.

None of these mechanical reasons are why I picked the card, though. Search for posts containing "fool" from me if you wanna know what I'm on about. And I guess watch Revolutionary Girl Utena for the full context? (I know, I'm always recommending people do that, but it really is good. The only anime I can think of from the 1990s that has aged perfectly and only needs content warnings for things it's doing on purpose and thoughtfully.)

August 29, 2025 at 9:20 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

I don't usually do this "Letterboxd Friday" "last four watched" thing, but my current ones are pretty good! And actually accurate as to what I've watched recently.

(I left my faves in because why not, I like the vibes they suggest for me. I'm letterboxd.com/anbaric_gare... over there if you care.)

My Letterboxd recent activity: Let the Right One In; Groove; Go; and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, & her Lover. They all have the little "review" indicator under them, but no heart or ratings, because that's the way I'm using that site.

Also my Letterboxd favorites: I Saw the TV Glow; Moulin Rouge; The Muppet Christmas Carol; and Desert Hearts.

August 29, 2025 at 8:47 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

As you know I no longer live with a cat, but here's an old photo of Zoey from 2014!

An old photo of a tabby cat on a black futon, curled into a sleepy cat circle shape but having rolled to expose her belly that way that cats do when they're happy.

August 26, 2025 at 7:30 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

The "but no one came" message in EarthBound. Ness (original name kept) is fighting three weird punks, one with skateboard, one with a pogo stick, and one with a hula hoop.

The "but nobody came" message in Mother 3. Flint (original name kept) is fighting an ambulatory tree stump.

The "but nobody came" message in Undertale, with no one visible on the battle screen. The fallen human has been named "Chara".

The "but nobody came" message in Deltarune. Kris (no one can choose who they are in this world) is fighting alone against some sort of [[Big Shot]], in front of a strange graphical effect that looks like weird tear in the dark background.

August 17, 2025 at 7:02 PM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

"If you see this, post a bad woman you love."

Just doing my part to spread this quote meme around the sapphic parts of Bluesky, don't mind me.

Normal unsuspicious innkeeper and supportive girlfriend Selene from The Wheel of Time season 2, episode 3, enjoying a drink and possibly contemplating insurance fraud and/or her exciting new problematic age gap relationship.

August 11, 2025 at 3:46 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF??? ACCORDING TO [[Encyclopedia of]] [[Being Afraid]]
THERE'S NOTHING TO FEAR EXCEPT
...
... can anyone hear me? Help...
HUH??? WHAT?? NO, I DIDN'T HEAR ANYTHING JUST NOW!!!
... BUT IT SOUNDED LIKE THEY WERE TALKING TO YOU.

August 1, 2025 at 2:19 AM

Klara commits to the cause

@klara5.myatproto.social

"If you inherited a movie theater, what's your first double feature?"

Feels a little more predictable than clever, but I think it would be a good time.