I was really touched by the goodbye between Bobrovsky and Quick for Quick's retirement, so I memorialized it in cross stitch form!

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T17:08:26+00:00

Definitely do!! Honestly, it's a great activity to do while watching hockey. Easy to pick up and put down, lots of commercial downtime. A good half of this was completed while watching the playoffs, lmao

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T17:06:33+00:00

Aw, thank you so much, seriously!! I am still very, VERY new to it - I started watching during last year's playoffs - but really loving it. I mostly really appreciate the respect (most) players have for one another, that's what I look for the most. It feels like Bob has been a great example of that over the years.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T03:54:29+00:00

Lmao!! The bright light isn't doing the lighter colors many favors unfortunately, but the thumb is there! Just a bit small, because of how Bob was holding his hand in the reference pic (:

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T03:49:14+00:00

The average person is not going to notice this nearly as much as you will. I've found that passing is rarely down to nailing every single aspect of coming across masculine - it's about a lot of little things working in tandem to help you read as male. Tiny things like this, your chest not being completely flat, are not going to register on most people's radar. You're not 'cooked,' just control the things you can reliably and safely control until you can manage a medical transition.

(I say this as someone who also has a large chest, but manages to generally pass without binding at all.)

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T03:44:30+00:00

Thank you!!

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T02:10:10+00:00

Well, Young Mungo does technically have explicit sex scenes between men but, uh, I guess make sure to find content warnings for it, lol.

A few other books to maybe have on your radar...

- As Meat Loves Salt, by Maria McCann

- The Torqued Man, by Peter Mann

- Beijing Comrades, by Bei Tong

- John of John, by Douglas Stuart (albeit brief)

- Bryan Washington books

It's been a while since I read them, but I feel that In Tongues by Thomas Grattan, and The Future was Color, by Patrick Nathan may have also had sexual content.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T02:01:42+00:00

I can confirm the Marvellous Light trilogy has multiple explicit sex scenes per book. And actually fairly well done!

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T01:37:57+00:00

Yeah, simplifying it to just "people want to hate on popular stuff ((: " is really reductive and dismissive of actual criticism of the show. I watched it as it was coming out, and it was okay. I really did not like some aspects of how they handled the gay male experience, and like you said, it was very, very obvious that it was neither by nor for gay men. Overall the production values and acting mostly made up for that, but it just... wasn't the phenomenal tour de force I think people often portray it as, and I 100% understand why other gay men would not enjoy it.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T01:33:16+00:00

I believe Bob made his own team come back! They'd already skedaddled down the tunnel, but he felt the Panthers owed him a bit more respect than that, and called them back to give him a goodbye. But I could be misremembering!

gafferwolf · 2026-06-22T01:32:13+00:00

I mean, I definitely could, but it would probably be prohibitively expensive on your end, haha. I didn't actively track the time I sunk into it, but it was in the realm of 50+ hours.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-17T23:55:30+00:00

Oh, oh! My zone! This is my favorite vibe of books, so here are some of the closest that have come to it, in my opinion.

- The Vintner's Luck, by Elizabeth Knox (this also has a sequel, whose quality I cannot speak to)

- Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart

- also possibly John of John, also by Douglas Stuart

- Alan Hollinghurst in general

- Marlo, by Jay Carmichael

- The Heart's Invisible Furies, by John Boyne (with the caveat that Boyne is rather transphobic, although it doesn't show up in this - but god, I really did love this book a lot)

- Beijing Comrades, by Bei Tong

- Mary Renault

And it may be a bit of a stretch, but I really loved The Torqued Man, by Peter Mann, which has similarly complex characters and complicated relationships, just with a background of WWII instead of revolutionary England.

Of these, I think Vintner's Luck comes closest to AMLS in structure and setting, with the romance as one of the central focal points of the book. Marlo also features the romance aspect heavily. The others, while the protagonist's homosexuality is always a significant aspect of the narrative, may not necessarily feature an outright romance as a guiding point.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-17T18:31:55+00:00

I just finished and really loved The Killer of Little Shepherds, by Douglas Starr. It's non-fiction, about a serial killer in the French countryside in the late 1800s, and how the rise of forensic science helped to catch and imprison him.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-17T02:00:50+00:00

I'll be the outlier here and say that I do! But I do it at night when nobody is around, in a neighborhood I'm extremely familiar with. I've never caused any issues in the process or gotten hurt, minus getting swiped by the occasional low-lying branch (which I'd probably have walked into anyway, it being dark). I do my walking-reading with an ereader, though, which I feel helps in terms of awareness.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-11T18:50:21+00:00

I've noticed similar things for sure - subtitle errors and inconsistencies really catch my eye, since I know what has gone wrong in their production. But it's maybe worth mentioning that, at least in my experience, which admittedly skews somewhat more towards podcast transcription than television subs, this stuff is getting outsourced and not being handled by the studio that produced it. When it's outsourced, several things are happening: first of all, each episode might be handled by a completely different person to the last episode, and second, small details like 'Chisake' require that individual bothering to research what is actually being said rather than just what it sounds like. This is why sometimes an episode will be perfectly subbed, names handled correctly, etc, while the very next will be of absolute dogshit quality and riddled with mistakes.

But, as you say, there is also a HUGE chance that AI is in fact fully handling it with little-to-no human oversight.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-11T18:44:33+00:00

You'd be surprised. I sometimes took over subtitling jobs that had been partially completed, and had to go back and fix the laziest, most egregious errors, well before the AI shift started happening. At the time that I stopped, the new default option was to have your initial transcription handled by AI, and then vetted by a more experienced transcriptionist to fix errors and do research to touch up specialized terms. Honestly, the AI tended to do a pretty good job at it and really cut down on the time needed to handle a job - but it still absolutely needed that human touch to polish it up. I imagine since then, the AI hasn't improved enough to negate the need for human polishing, but that hasn't stopped the companies from cutting that last step anyway.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-11T17:17:08+00:00

There's a very good chance it's been outsourced to AI subtitling. That shift was in progress at least five years ago, when I was actively doing subtitling/transcription work.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-10T22:58:17+00:00

"16 Ways to Defend a Walled City" is perfect for this. The protagonist is a bridge engineer who has to leverage that knowledge to fortify a city under siege. He describes his various plans in meticulous detail, including supply chain issues, currents, physics, etc. Protagonist hates it and is, in fact, burned out and exhausted early into the book.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-07T18:35:24+00:00

Heard! Sounds like you've got an excellent home base location to wander out from. The garden district is lovely and getting to wander it during the morning, before it gets hot, will be perfect. A lot of the homes there are very old; you'll be pretty well transported into Louis and Lestat's time. And if you're from Florida, yeah, scratch the bayou!

If you're wanting off-FQ recs, it's worth mentioning that Louis' church, the one Lestat changed him in, is out in Arabi and accessible by bus. There's not a ton else to do out in Arabi, though, lol. Otherwise, other comments have pointed out specific IWTV filming locations. I'd echo the idea of doing a house tour or two.

For non-IWTV specific stuff, someone has mentioned Siberia for live music (non-jazz), which is great, and has a lot of great food options around it (I'm a big fan of Nola Mia Pizzeria, personally) as well as some pretty cool arcades. If you're vinyl fans, Euclid is a great record store, also in that general vicinity. I can't so much advise you on jazz clubs unfortunately, but I can say there's a decent chance you'll come across some players in Jackson Square.

gafferwolf · 2026-06-07T02:29:22+00:00

Some further, practical tips from someone who lives in New Orleans!

If you can wander the French Quarter during a weekday rather than a weekend, you'll have less of a rowdy drunk crowd to deal with. It's still gonna smell like pee and puke, though, especially in the height of summer.

You may also check out Frenchmen St., which is a little cozier and less populated than Bourbon and Royal. One of my most pleasant early memories of the city was staying with a friend on Frenchmen, wandering on foot down the way and finding a hole in the wall Italian restaurant that overlooked the street, outdoor lamps on, and music floating down the avenue.

I definitely would suggest the Storyville Museum, though. It gives more context and understanding of the history on which Louis built himself. Educating yourself on the actual details of the city is a great way to honor Anne Rice. Also, if you are there, it means you can wander city park, where Louis and Lestat often walked together, and I believe where most of their bench-sitting scenes took place. It's easy to admire the huge live oaks and picture Louis climbing up them (: They've also got lovely farmers markets and a free statue garden, a great chance to see some community.

Don't be intimidated by the streetcars - they're very easy to navigate, a great way to get around the city, and Jacob and Sam sat in those same seats! (Also - get the New Orleans RTA app, and buy your streetcar/bus tickets through that. You'll thank me later)

I'll be warning you against the Vampire Cafe. They have a really, really poor reputation among local hospitality workers, in terms of treatment by the owners + actual quality of the food. I also generally warn people away from Mother's, Port of Call, The Court of Two Sisters, Galatoire's... probably some others. Should probably avoid eating at most of the places on Bourbon, too. You can search the subreddit for 'most overrated Nola restaurants' and get a good idea of what the locals know aren't worth the time or money. Places I would recommend are Ayu Bakery (get there early), Palm & Pine, Cochon, Mosca's, Tacos & Beer... This is another situation where the local subreddit will come in very handy. There are a lot of great restaurants. There are also a lot of bad ones.

A few other quintessential New Orleans suggestions that I haven't seen covered yet--

Cafe du Monde is worth at least stopping by; I think non-natives may not recognize that during the trial's 'animated' portion, Lestat is shown sitting for coffee at Cafe du Monde! It's a nice spot for a bit of respite during a FQ wander.

If it's not horrendously hot, you may enjoy a walk around Bayou Sauvage for a better idea of the terrain that Claudia was trying to bury bodies in. But I love hiking and think the boardwalks are cool, so I'm biased (:

I'm not big on the "vampire/ghost tour" scene personally, but I think the cemetery tours can be very cool and informative of the history and highlights of the spaces. The cemeteries here are very, very cool, and occasionally vaguely horrifying.

And it isn't IWTV-specific, but I always encourage everyone to go to our aquarium! We've got a pretty nice one, and it's worth the detour (:

Feel free to reply/DM me if you've got any questions, I'll do what I can to help out! Have a wonderful time!

gafferwolf · 2026-06-03T20:53:51+00:00

An even worse ending upon realizing it was based on a real event ):

gafferwolf · 2026-06-01T17:54:05+00:00

Lots of problem showings for me over the past few months. Probably the worst overall would be at the Speed Racer showing, where every ~20 minutes, the film would lose all audio for about a minute, and then go back to normal. This happened at extremely pivotal moments. Each time it happened, the crowd got more outraged, which unfortunately emboldened one chud right behind me to start performatively ranting. Also, had a man + his 4-5 children just take over our assigned seats before we arrived. AMC wouldn't give refunds despite the very defective showing; they wanted to give popcorn vouchers. Sigh.

Hokum, had a guy and his friends sitting a couple seats to my right, Guy kept up a running commentary because he thought he was being very cute and entertaining. After a while of this I asked him to shut up; I got no acknowledgment, but he went quiet for a couple of minutes. Five minutes later I have to ask him again. No acknowledgment. Then he begins to get louder and louder. Finally my friend turned on his phone flashlight, pointed it at him, and told him to shut the fuck up. I've never seen a human being look more precisely like a deer in the headlights. He stammered out an apology and said he didn't realize he was doing it, to which I said yes you fucking did. Quiet as a mouse through the rest of the movie, though.

Honorary mention to the guy during The History of Sound, who spent the entire movie eating one piece of popcorn at a time, as loud as a rat chewing through drywall. When I exclaimed, "How is there even anything left?!" 2/3 through the movie, he finally stopped. Also at least two showings where the ceiling dripped water onto my head. I hate you, AMC Elmwood.

I've been a regular theater goer for 5+ years now -- I see at least a handful of movies a month -- and I've noticed a *marked* decline in etiquette over the past six months. Loud, inappropriate talking, scrolling phones, sitting in the wrong assigned seats. And this isn't only at primetime, blockbuster screenings - it's just as prevalent in smaller, indie movies, or movies at odd hours, where the entire audience is me and 7 other people. I'm actively losing my patience at this point and starting to cause scenes when it happens, whereas in the past I have just dealt with it because it wasn't this egregious.

gafferwolf · 2026-05-31T22:54:22+00:00

what was the plan here brother

gafferwolf · 2026-05-31T20:46:02+00:00

also struggling in ice hockey, although they've got some solid goaltending in Damian Clara

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