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jrberkeley.bsky.social
John Berkeley Grout 🏳️‍🌈🔶
@jrberkeley.bsky.social
1.3K followers 580 following 650 posts
John (he/him) aka. John Berkeley; Leovinas. UK-based writer of SFF, player of RPGs, Classics/archaeology/ancient history PhD, process/telecoms specialist.

The sort of gay lefty Liberal your mother warned you about. Views my own, etc. (no TERFs or AI, ta)
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jrberkeley.bsky.social
😭
A screenclip of two skeets by John Scalzi about the apple pie mac & cheese he made with cheese & apple grilled sandwiches.
November 13, 2025 at 7:17 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
I've had worse views during breakfast.

Highly recommend Coffee Under Pressure in the churchyard of Reading Minster, should you wish to partake yourself (of either breakfast or the view).

Not pictured: the bells.
A picture of a limestone amd flint chequerboard gothic church tower against a brilliant blue sky, with a tree scattered with golden autumn leaves in the foreground. A brightly backlit Union flag is flying atop the church tower among the finials and crenellations. The tower is of Reading Minster, St Mary's, built in 979 AD.
November 2, 2025 at 12:29 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
The new Archbishop of Canterbury is a woman, which is great, but am I the only one who finds the constant use of "female" a bit creepy? She's not a holly bush and you're (probably) not a Ferengi.
October 3, 2025 at 12:28 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Very thoughtful of the @libdems.org.uk to switch their colour scheme to match my jumper this year!

I even got slagged off by Quentin Letts in the Daily Fail for this speech - made my week! 😅

Lovely to see everyone. See you at the next one. 🧡
A picture of me standing at a lectern with the Liberal Democrats name and bird-of-liberty logo in white. Virtually everything else is violently tangerine orange, except for a vertical stripe of the stage setting which has various interesting icons in it like Big Ben and a heart. I'm halfway through saying something but don't look too gormless.
September 24, 2025 at 12:03 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Have a little fun! Or be a little emo. Quote post with your own dramatic black and white selfie 🖤

(Messed up the timing with this one but I kind-of like it?)
Me with my eyes closed in front of a small waterfall against dark rocks. I have long hair and am wearing a knitted jumper with a white stripe across the shoulders, and have a leather strap with a buckle visible.
July 25, 2025 at 9:17 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Gods, but I have learned to detest the sight of this:
A screencap of a Microsoft loading window in white, with the subtext "Updating Microsoft 365 and Office, please wait a moment...", which inevitably precedes me ruthlessly scouring it to make sure it's not snuck AI into my computer when I didn't ask it to.
July 19, 2025 at 12:23 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Danger Mouse.

(I'd have supplied a GIF if the only ones weren't either crap, or flashing and thereby crap)
Danger Mouse, an anthropomorphic white mouse with a black eyepatch and red belt, points skywards while Penfold, a nervous bespectacled hamster in a suit, peeks out from behind his legs.
July 13, 2025 at 9:07 AM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Please dispose of your summer responsibly, in the bin provided.
A large blue dumpster style rubbish bin by a path, with a large label duct-taped to it reading "TEMPORARY SUMMER BIN"
June 23, 2025 at 12:01 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
This @jd-rivers.com stunner arrived in the post today.

I did the usual "huh, I don't remember ordering anything - oh WAIT" thing as I opened it. A gift from past-John. Can't wait to read it. 🩵
A copy of The Salt in the Sea by JD Rivers, on a blue cloth. The book has a cover design of a tall, darker young man and a shorter, blonde young man embracing, the taller kissing the forehead of the shorter, with a huge redsun like disk behind them, a star over their heads, and surrounded by scrolling, sweeping waves.
June 12, 2025 at 10:04 AM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
It's lovely - worth a trip! 😁
A picture of a red brick Georgian house in an English village. It's on the corner of a lane, with a tiled roof and a stretch of grass between it and the road, with a rambling old pub opposite and an English flag on a pole by the garden wall,in front of a huge old yew tree. The sky is gloriously blue. It is Jane Austen's house in Chewton, Hampshire.
May 1, 2025 at 1:36 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
I've been thinking about this picture a great deal lately, and I think it increasingly reflects my general mood.

#BeLessShit
A black and white picture of mostly young people at a climate protest in Australia, in front of a large building with neoclassical pilasters between its windows. I the foreground, a young person with long dark hair squints up at a hand-painted sign reading "We'll be less activist if you be less shit"
March 11, 2025 at 3:44 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
I'm an autumn person first and foremost, but spring will do.

#TinyJoys
Three purple crocuses with pale hearts and bright saffron stamens peek out of green grass. Behind them is a stand if tall daffodil leaves with some open daffodils facing left. In the background is a bush against a red brick wall. A blonde loaf cake with a crinkly sugary top sits on baking paper in a cake tin lid. It has a cut end with a heel leaning back, revealing a pale interior studded with lemon zest and blueberries.
March 7, 2025 at 2:49 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
A pair of stills from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). In the top frame, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) walks beside Saruman (Christopher Lee). Gandalf is unkempt and wears grey robes, with his head is bowed in thought, while Saruman is well-groomed in white and stares contemplatively ahead. The caption reads "Elves and Men started this war, we will sit down with Sauron and discuss which rare earth metal reserves and pieces of the Shire he would like in return for peace." The bottom frame is a close-up of Saruman speaking, adding "WHICH ISILDUR NEVER EVEN TRIED, BY THE WAY"
February 28, 2025 at 10:44 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
When did you know?
Ra (Stargate; Jaye Davidson) speaks menacingly to Daniel Jackson (James Spader) while his eyes glow. Jaye Davidson is so beautiful in this film that many viewers are unsure of the character's gender. Davidson, who is gay and has since become extremely hench, has said this was deliberate, but Ra was definitely male.
February 22, 2025 at 8:10 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Introduce yourself with 4 games!
The cover art of Arcanum: of Steamworks & Magick Obscura. Through a cog-shaped hole in a large metal plate is visible a burning forest, a steampunkish castle atop a forested ridge, and a large airship, behind a large portrait of a dark-haired, blue-eyed, pale elven woman with red tadpole facial tattoos in an inverted T shape across her eyes and forehead. Below her are a shadowy figure emerging from the burning forest, a dwarven man armed with a flamethrower, a human male mage wielding a staff and raising a burning blue hand towards the viewer, and a steam locomotive. At the bottom is the title of the game in riveted brass letters. The cover art of the StarLancer computer game. Sci-fi pilots, one male and one female, wearing green and silver uniforms with red and gold details, are in the lower left, while a scythe-winged anime-style space fighter craft zooms across the middle of the art, firing blue lasers off to the right. In the background is a banner of a diving eagle against a red-rayed field, with silver stars between the rays. The cover art of Civilization II: Fantastic Worlds, with the subtitle 'Scenarios and construction kit'. A tan background with a square cartouche beneath the title of the game, containing a myriad of pulpy scenes, including flying saucers in front of a bloated red sun, a looming green dragon with a distant ringed planet over its shoulder, a towering sandstone castle with a starry blue-robed, pointy-hatted beareded wizard spreading his arms over a gate spilling sunlight, dinosaurs grazing in front of First Nations teepees, a sword-wielding rider charging out of the sunlit gate into the tentacles of a giant, frowning octopus moving to engulf a bug-eyed steampunk submersible, and a glimpse of Classical ruins. The cover art of Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome Expansion, dominated by a golden painting of the Colosseum against a threatening dark-blue sky. Flames leap out of four of the dark arches with more fire visible over its lip and black smoke rising in the distance. In the foreground, two armies clash over a bloody field, the left side white and purple with black horses, tunic-wearing soldiers, and elephants and camel cavalry decked in blue, and the right side dominated by white-horse cavalry and Roman chariots carrying red-and-gold armoured soldiers.
February 16, 2025 at 6:07 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
It's #StandingStoneSunday, so here for your consideration is Pentre Ifan, a wonderful 5000-year-old dolmen near Newport in Pembrokeshire.

It's bracing there at this time of year but really lovely: I rented a holiday cottage with friends for a few days for a writing retreat and wrote 5,000 words. 😁
A vast, vaguely Star Destroyer-shaped stone is perched on three narrow vertical stones, with a fourth standing facing the camera to the side. All five stones are Preseli bluestone covered in lichen, and a mountain rises in the distance to the right beneath a grey sky crowded with clouds. There are green fields of grass and Barr trees in the background. The area beneath the dolmen is shale gravel marked by cobble-like boundary stones forming a threshold between the shale and the grass. A few other cobble-like stones are scattered around. A barbed wire fence merges with a gorsebush hedge in the foreground behind the dolmen - this is deep in sheep country.
February 16, 2025 at 2:01 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
I was cursing myself for being the sort of idiot who buys plums in February (gleaming, but liable to go from wooden to rotten without passing through ripe). Lesson learned.

Anyway, to change the subject completely, plum cake, anyone?
A large blond plum cake sits beside a knife on a wooden cutting board, on top of a cold glass hob, and is topped with cooked plums in syrup that have gone violently red and started dripping down the cut face. Pieces of plum can be seen in the cake itself. Two 45° slices of the cake sit in the foreground on white, blue and black reactive-glaze plates. The horror.
February 15, 2025 at 5:38 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy:
A black ink cartoon of a stylish Anubis wearing a turtleneck jumper, jeans and shoes, snapping his fingers at the reader while leaning to one sides and saying "Don't hate yourself, that's homophobic"
February 12, 2025 at 11:03 AM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Happy birthday to Gromit! 🎂🎉

#WallaceandGromit #Gromit
A dated colour picture of a grinning, fluffy red-haired younger Wallace (from Wallace & Gromit) with a glorious handlebar moustache presenting a tiny baby Gromit with a pink, bone-shaped birthday cake. Gromit is standing on a Gingham tablecloth and there is a '70s style starburst clock on the wall behind. A screen cap from a Wallace & Gromit film showing a 29-day February page of a wall calendar with the first 11 days crossed out in blue. The 12th is circled with a note in childish handwriting reading "Gromits birthday". Adult Gromit's shadow falls across the calendar.
February 12, 2025 at 10:21 AM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Well, that was bracing. A writing retreat with friends, on the Pembrokeshire coast in early February. Wonderful views and scenery, plenty of sheep, a fabulous Fishguard heroine discovered, and we even got some writing done between us too. My WIP is getting there... 👀
A photo of the craggy shale-and-slate cliffs of the Pembrokeshire coast between Dinas Head in the far distance and the Neven estuary. Waves crash against the shattered shale beach on the far left; the day is clear and the sky alternates bands of clear blue February sky and high, hazy white cloud. The sea is turgid and grey. A pointed, lichen-spotted gravestone stands in front of a stone-brick wall. It reads, in an embellished high Victorian font, "IN Memory of JEMIMA NICHOLAS of this Town, "THE WELSH HEROINE" who boldly marched to meet the French invaders who landed on our shored in February 1797. She died in Main Street July 1832, aged 82 years. At the time of the invasion she was 47 years old, and she lived 35 years after the event." Text at the bottom of the gravestone reads "Erected by subscription collected at the centenary banquet, July 6, 1897"
February 9, 2025 at 9:53 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Delighted to see that IWTTO has been longlisted for the @bsfa.bsky.social Award alongside a host of other wonderful works. Click the link in the OP - go and have a look (and a vote, if you're a member) - and maybe you'll discover some other great reading too. :)
The cover of I Want That Twink Obliterated! Edited by Trip Galey, Robert Berg & Cl. L. McCartney - a pulp cover featuring a young, scantily clad man with a sword being attacked by a tentacled creature from a crater on a lunar surface, with a phallic rocket base in the background as a dragon, scantily clad sorcerer and large, goateed cyclops loom in the background.
January 31, 2025 at 11:50 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
See below about my BG3 Tavs.

On the subject of Dragon Age, here are my DA:V Rooks (romancing Davrin and Lucanis respectively) - nary an elf to be seen! Didn't I do well? 😅

(why no Elves? Well, I'll give you one guess as to my canon Inquisitor from DA:I...)
Two player character's from Dragon Age: the Veilguard - A tall, slender, finely-boned male qunari warrior with swept-back, curving, pale horns, very long blonde hair, and black eyes with violet irises, wearing qunari Antaam bindings and wielding a four-bladed glaive. - A head-shot closeup of a male human mage with long, loose chestnut hair, heavy freckles and stubble, wearing a leather jerking showing a hint of chest hair, halfway through saying, captioned: Rook: "And Emmrich, so what if Harding is fine sleeping on dirt?"
January 31, 2025 at 4:33 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Case in point: my three Tavs from #BaldursGate3: a half-elf druid (romancing Gale), a tiefling sorcerer (romancing Wyll) and a drow barbarian (romancing Astarion).

Me thinking up the characters originally: these are all very different characters!
Me looking back at them now: yup, that tracks.
Screenshots of three custom player characters from Baldur's Gate 3: - A male half-elf druid with pale skin, long chestnut hair tied back loosely, freckles, and a faint knotwork-style tattoo around his brown and chin, wearing leather and leafy armour. He's standing indoors looking slightly down towards someone offscreen. - A male tiefling sorcerer with deep maroon skin, long black hair, twisting dark horns, and black eyes with violet irises, wearing a white leather waistcoat and red bracers with silver fretting. He's standing outside near a cliff-face looking into the distance. - A male drow barbarian with obsidian skin, long strawberry-blonde hair, violet eyes and starkly pointed ears, wearing a gold-wire chestpiece and red shoulder-length cloth gauntlets. He's standing outside in front of a rustic wall, frowning at someone talking to him.
January 31, 2025 at 4:22 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
Working on some writing stuff and notes - does anyone know why one of these files has a little grey X on its icon, and the other doesn't? It appeared a few weeks ago and it's been driving me loopy trying to work out how to get rid of it. (No, I've not done different things with the different files)
A screencap of two MS Word file icons. The one on the left is entitled 'Character Sheet (SJH)' and has a little grey X superimposed on the bottom left of the icon. The one on the right is entitled 'Character Sheet' and does not.
January 20, 2025 at 9:29 PM
jrberkeley.bsky.social
I see a strand in the wider 💿🐴 about a certain author has emerged focusing on the similarities between The ⛱️🚹 comics and Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth. I'm not sure how much there is in that, but it looks great and now's an excellent time to rediscover a cool female author. Have ordered.
A striking print-style cover of The Earth Is Flat by Tanith Lee (published by DMR), mostly rich black, blue and vivid white, of a small moon hanging very close to the limb of a vast terrestrial world, with what looks like black fighter jets spilling from the moon and some shadowy foreground characters flying on what appears to be a magic carpet.
January 15, 2025 at 5:38 PM