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I attended minoanmiss’s online memorial yesterday afternoon. It was strengthening to share our sorrow. Witnessing the depth of our online connections bolstered my resilience. The children she co-raised loved her and knew her. I’ll link to the recording when it’s public.

~~One mourner~~ werpiper worked in public health for 40 years, and made it very clear that

minoanmiss had asymptomatic COVID which caused her death
that wasn’t documented in the hospital record and there’s almost zero chance to change that
many people are still dying due to COVID, which is systematically not being reported
continuing to mask is a fundamental contribution we can make to the health of our communities

The full text is at archiveofourown.org/works/82932386

There were lovely stories and slides and recipes — a poem and a song in the cut.

( Every Land and Acts of Creation )

ETA 21 April 26 to add in werpiper's pseud and text

rachelmanija

Natalie is a wildly successful trad wife influencer. She and her husband Caleb have a farm and six adorable children, and Natalie has parlayed carefully edited clips of her perfect life into a lucrative career. (She leaves out the two nannies, 30 farm hands, and the fact that Sassafras the cow is actually four sequential cows, replaced every time one dies, like goldfish.)

Then Natalie suffers a mysterious fall from grace. And then she finds herself in what appears to be an alternate version of her own life in the 1800s, with a husband very similar but not quite identical to her original husband, and children who claim to be her own. Has she time traveled? Is she delusional? Has she gotten kidnapped into a non-consensual reality show?

This is an extremely interesting novel that makes a good companion to Saratoga Schrader's Trad Wife. The beginning of the book is extremely similar, though Natalie is much more successful than Camille. Burke's version of a trad wife influencer deluding herself and lying to her followers about her supposedly perfect life is much better-written than Schrader's. But that's a double-edged sword, because it makes Natalie much more unlikable. She's an incredibly hatable character and the book is from her POV, and that makes a lot of the book not really enjoyable to read.

But the book turns out to be much more ambitious and clever than it seems at the beginning. When I finished it, I was glad I'd read it and appreciated it a lot. That being said, I enjoyed Trad Wife more on an emotional level.

I highly recommend not clicking on the cut unless you're 100% positive you'll never read the book. I really enjoyed the non-spoiled experience.

( Read more... )

Content notes: Domestic violence, rape (on-page, graphic), child abuse and neglect, farm animal neglect/poor caretaking (just mentioned), gaslighting, non-consensual drugging, current American right-wing stuff.

While attempting to buy Saratoga Schaefer's Trad Wife, I accidentally bought a different novel called Trad Wife by Michelle Brandon. And Sarah Langan is coming out with yet another book called Trad Wife in September. I am now on a mission to read all four trad wife books, to compare and contrast.

marinarusalka

In a fit of optimism, The Boy and I planted some cherry tomato seedlings behind our condo. Neither one of us has any knowledge or experience of vegetable gardening, so we're going by random internet advice and hoping that the San Diego climate will make up for our inadequacies.

Saturday morning, we went hiking in Torrey Pines, which has been reopened again after being closed all winter "to improve the trails." If there was any actual improvement, we didn't see it, but it was still an excellent hike, with lots of great wildlife views, including a Gray Whale hanging out unusually close to shore. We also spotted three brush rabbits at different spots along the trail, and a flock of migrating lazuli buntings.

( all photos courtesy of The Boy )

Current Mood: awake

james

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

tcampbell1000 posting in

scans_daily

JLE Giffen-Jones-Robertson, JLA Giffen-DeMatteis-Wozniak.

Storytelling is as much about what you don’t include as what you do. Giffen and company were often inspired in terms of what they left out or minimized. This appealed to a smart audience who could fill in the blanks.

But sometimes you leave too many blanks. Sometimes you cross the line between making your reader an enthusiastic participant in the storyline and making them wonder why they’re doing all your work for you.

___ ______ ________ ______ _______, and that’s why this final Queen Bee of Bialya storyline leaves too many blanks. ( ____________ __ __ ____ _____ ____ ___ _____ _______ __ ____ ___ __, ___ ______ ___ _______ ____ _____ ________ __ ____ ____ ____ ___ __ _________, _______ __ _ _____ ________ ___ _____ ____ __ ___ ______! ___ _________ ___ _____ ___ ____ ______… )

shakalooloo posting in

scans_daily

Yeah, I only bought this because of that variant cover (by Mike Spicer). But hey, the interior isn't bad!

( Read more... )

neonvincent

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Tinderly Twitch stream

sunnymodffa posting in

fail_fandomanon

... and unsure of whether or not it came before the chicken.

All the fail_fandomanon Rules and Information (and Ban Requests): https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/1076.html. The short version: no embeds, don't out people's real names, don't be that much of an asshole, body fluids are off topic, Mods reserve the right to freeze, screen, and delete the fuck out of stuff. FFA discussion covers a wide variety of topics and has a very flexible view of 'fandom' that includes politics, current events, and cooking techniques. FFA is a Choose NOT to Warn experience. Meme away.

Other posts on meme:

Personal Issues, Off Topic Conversation, Religion, & Everything Else post (PP #32)
Fic and WIP Post
Book Clubs, Watchalongs, & Readalongs
Prompt & fill fests: for FFA Post #1000, FFA's 10th anniversary, FFA Post #1500, & FFA Post #2000

Search

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Meme rules do not require spoiler cuts. But here are two ways to make them:

HTML-5 (recommended)
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Alternative for inline spoiler-cuts - details here
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These topics are banned:

'Which topics belong on main meme'
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Only one clearly named top-level thread for each of the following topics:

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Discussion of UK politics related sexual abuse and rape culture should go into one properly labeled subthread.

sholio

Space Swap revealed today, and I got a lovely gift!

Not Their Hero (Murderbot books, gen, 9K!!)
SecUnit and Gurathin accompany Ratthi to a scientific conference, where they end up accepting a request for assistance against a corporation. It goes about as well as one might expect, given Murderbot's history.

I was amazed and delighted to find out that I had received a 9K gift, and it was a great time - plotty casefic with a dash of h/c, very canon-feeling, with interesting OCs and worldbuilding, fun character dynamics, and a great Murderbot voice.

(I have *no* idea who wrote this and cannot wait to find out.)

myrmidon posting in

fandom_icons

Resident Evil Requiem (2026)
[ leon s. kennedy ]

[ here @

axisandallies ]

erinptah

Finally got a chance to see the Wonder Man TV series.

(It’s already renewed for season 2, which is delightful to see. Come on, MCU, let more of your characters have ongoing arcs again.)

Spoiler-light reactions:

It’s good! Funny, charming, with a great weird-but-somehow-it-works (even in spite of [spoiler]) friendship between the two leads.

There were a couple episodes where I was bracing myself for some heavy embarrassment squick, and then the scene went in a whole different direction and didn’t hit it at all. Refreshing.

I kept expecting Trevor Slattery to be the full-blown “Planet of the Apes was amazing, they taught monkeys to act!” doofus we saw in Shang-Chi’s movie, and he’s not. Still a bit of an airhead, lots of fun comic relief, but he’s surprisingly competent when he makes an effort. The character is consistent enough otherwise that it works if you headcanon he was high for most of the movie — the show even goes into his backstory about problems with getting high on-set, which fits right in.

There’s a side character who has a connection to the Darkforce! Nobody in the show uses the word — none of them are in a position to know it’s called that — viewers can just recognize it from other Marvel properties. (Other MCU appearances, even.)

I always like this kind of sidebar, making the MCU feel textured and lived-in. It’s not solely populated with Main Characters, who get cool dramatic origin stories and end up joining the Avengers. It’s filled out with bit characters, who also sometimes touch the improperly-sealed hazardous waste in a Roxxon dumpster, they just mostly keep doing their day jobs with bonus superpowers.

We get some nice leveraging of “Disney can freely put references to Other Things They Own in Marvel shows now.” A+ use of Josh Gad, no notes.

Since we’re already guaranteed another season, and since the status of [spoiler] is left a mystery at the end, I’m sorta hoping Simon will end up rescuing them in S2. Not setting my hopes too high — we don’t see him actively planning this rescue, or even thinking he could do it — but it would be thematically very satisfying if he eventually figured it out.

—

…So the rest of this post is complain-y.

In the sense of “the show missed opportunities to do these cool things,” not “the show did bad things and I’m mad about it.”

One of the main plot threads is, Simon Williams is trying out for the lead role in a remake of the (in-universe) 1980 Wonder Man movie. Other characters pay some lip service to the idea of “updating a vintage superhero story for the modern age will be a great opportunity to reflect on the change in culture, now that superheroes are just a part of our everyday lives.”

And then…we never see that in action. How does the writing change? How do everyday people in the MCU react to a fictional superhero in the post-Blip world? We have no idea!

It would’ve been so easy to give us a clip of, say, J. Jonah Jameson ranting against “Hollywood liberal pro-superhero propaganda.” But nope. Nothing.

The movie itself doesn’t have much to do with Avengers-type superheroes anyway. It’s straight out of the Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon genre: a man from Earth gets stranded on another planet, has swashbuckling space adventures, rubber-suit aliens get shot with ray guns, etcetera. If anything, that’s a setup for a cultural commentary on human-alien relations, now that “alien refugees are the ones stranded on Earth” is also a part of MCU humanity’s everyday life.

But the show isn’t interested in exploring that either.

All we really know about the movie is enough to establish “Simon and Trevor are auditioning for the roles of two characters whose relationship mirrors their real-world relationship.” Look, as a narrative parallel crafted by the MCU writers, that’s fine. But in-universe it’s a coincidence, and I still want to know what decisions those writers are making, how their job is shaped by the world they’re in.

Also! Simon is auditioning to play a human character stranded among aliens. This is the perfect setup for him to worry “what if the reason I have superhuman powers is, I’ve been an alien stranded among humans this whole time?” Trevor…okay, Trevor is still doofy enough not to think of it, but agents at the DODC should’ve had the same suspicion. When grade-school Simon first showed super-strength, his parents should’ve worried “did the hospital accidentally switch our biological son with a secret baby Asgardian?”

Again: no! This whole obvious question is never floated by anyone.

Note that 616 Wonder Man doesn’t have much in common with either of these guys — Wonder Man the 1980s space adventurer, or Simon Williams the present-day Haitian immigrant with a struggling acting career.

This isn’t inherently a bad thing (after all, 616 Steven Grant doesn’t have much in common with either Steven Grant the Indiana Jones knockoff, or Steven Grant the present-day London gift-shoppist)…

…But I really wish the 1980s movie character was just a direct riff on comicverse Simon Williams. That way, it would be so easy to make contrasts with “the career in-universe writers imagined a super-powered guy would have in the 1980s” vs “the career in-universe writers imagine for a super-powered guy in the post-Blip MCU” vs “the career a real super-powered guy is having in the post-Blip MCU.”

sovay

I had to quit out of this afternoon's virtual memorial for

minoanmiss right after the singing of "Lift Ev'ry Voice" in order to meet my mother for advance birthday baking, but I got to hear remembrances in the form of stories, poems, an illuminated manuscript of a slide show, a painfully pertinent lesson in public health, songs both folk and filk, and people just talking with love and grief and anger that she need not have died; she did not consent to the sacrifice. She had formed an incredible constellation of interests and affections that her mourners flared to life. It is just that one wants the person herself and not only the space left between her stars.

In memoriam: the braided liberation of Anthony Russell and Veretski Pass' "Lift" (2018). The queer shift of Jake Blount's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" (2020). Kadra Ahmed-Omar in late-nineties Goth haute couture. A Graeco-Armenian papyrus from late Roman Egypt. Apparently people need reminding that Carthage was bad-ass. The election news from Hungary. The full-body college flashback I experienced on hearing Aimee Mann's "Say Anything" (1993) on WERS. Earth.

I cried when I got off the Zoom and then I made myself a bowl of angel hair pasta with lemon and pepper and sardines and thinking of food among her love languages went off to turn a recipe into a savory pie. I am glad she was remembered so well and so fully. I will always want to have seen her art for Artemis II.

Current Music: Cornershop, "Brimful of Asha"

muccamukk

Whoever wrote this has read a non-zero amount of The Comfortable Courtesan.

pauraque

In the grim future year of 2021, safety is found only in certain walled communities, while lawlessness prevails in outlying areas. While driving through the California desert to visit family, a doctor and his twin teenaged daughters are captured by members of an isolated cultlike group whose founder was the sole survivor of a deep space mission to Proxima Centauri. The prisoners expect to be killed if they don't escape, but it might be even worse—the former astronaut and his followers carry an alien pathogen that gives them strange powers and bizarre compulsions, and they want to infect their three captives.

This was the last-published book in the Patternist series, but the third one I've read, as I'm following the suggested chronological reading order. I was warned that in this reading order it's totally opaque how this book relates to the others, which certainly is the case! The only apparent connection is Clay Dana, a minor character from Mind of My Mind who is said in this book to have invented interstellar travel using his psionic abilities. But the other characters don't seem to be aware of the telepathic Patternists as a group, so it seems that in the intervening decades they've managed to continue influencing society without fully revealing themselves.

Reading it basically as a stand-alone, the book seems to be about what it means to be human. It questions the dichotomy of human and monster, as the "ordinary" humans of the lawless desert prove more brutal and violent than the infected half-aliens are. The characters assume that allowing the pathogen to spread across Earth would be a bad thing, but when you see what human society is becoming, you wonder if altering more people's nature might be an improvement.

I felt that the book was too long, which is surprising at just over 200 pages. The characters are strongly written (as expected from Butler) but I think there might be too many of them, and sometimes the same events are needlessly reiterated from multiple POVs. I also had trouble with the level of violence. I didn't think it was gratuitous since it seemed necessary for the book to make its thematic points as I understood them; violence is just hard for me to read and there's a lot of it here, including rape and the constant threat of rape.

It'll be interesting to see how my perspective changes once I've read the whole series and seen what readers knew of the Patternist universe when these prequels were published. Worth noting that I will indeed be reading Survivor, a book in the series that's been out of print for ages because Butler apparently hated it. Very curious about that one.

mific posting in

fancake

Fandom: Hockey RPF
Characters/Pairings: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni (Geno) Malkin, Alexander Ovechkin, Shea Weber, Joe Thornton
Rating: Explicit
Length: 15,934
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: thehoyden on AO3
Themes: Arranged marriage, First time, AU: royalty, Secret identity

Summary: It’s actually his father who suggests it.

“Take the rest of the summer for yourself,” he says. “Do something fun.”

“Fun,” Sidney repeats blankly.

Reccer's Notes: I'm into hockey fics now! This is a classic, already reccd here ages ago and worth revisiting. It's a royalty AU with added hockey, which is where Sid meets Geno. There's a fun, hot and charming initial romance, then Sid has to get on with his life of obligations, including the frustrating search for a suitable royal-lineage husband to cement political ties. Ultimately, love wins, of course, and it's a satisfying, well written story.

Fanwork Links: You're the One That I Want (locked to AO3)

sholio

It's really too early for me to feel like doing a full Babylon 5 rewatch yet, so instead I had a possibly cursed idea, which is to watch IMDB's top 10 and bottom 10 rated episodes and report back on them. And in fact I think I am going to do exactly that.*

*Unless I get distracted by something along the way, as often happens.

The best/worst lists are hidden in case you want to preserve the element of surprise.

The 10 best episodes according to IMDB, starting at the top

1. Severed Dreams 3x10
2. War Without End Part 2 3x17 (Since Part 1 is also in the top 10, I'm just going to watch them together, I think)
3. Z'ha'dum 3x22
4. Endgame 4x20
5. Sleeping in Light 5x22
6. The Long, Twilight Struggle 2x20 (By about this point I will probably have died of Drama and Tragedy. RIP me.)
7. Point of No Return 3x09
8. The Coming of Shadows 2x09
9. The Fall of Night 2x22
10. War Without End Part 1 3x16 (will be combined with part 2)
11. No Surrender, No Retreat 4x15

This looks fun! (For Babylon 5 values of fun.)

And as an escape from all of these heavy episodes, apparently I will be watching, in order of worst to ... slightly less worst:

IMDB's lowest rated

1. TKO 1x14
2. Infection 1x04
3. Secrets of the Soul 5x07
4. The Gathering 1x00
5. Grey 17 is Missing 3x19
6. Grail 1x15
7. The Long Dark 2x05
8. Strange Relations 5x06
9. The War Prayer 1x07
10. Survivors 1x11

Genuinely surprised that they're not even all from season one and five! Absolutely unsurprised that most of them are! I do genuinely like some of these, and at least one of them, I skipped most of when I was originally watching season one, so it will be interesting to see what I think of it now.

Not starting this tonight (probably) because I have other things to do, but Soon™.

senmut

I still haven't found a new fandom to immerse in.

FTH 2026 is proceeding apace:

~ 3,371/5k - 1st auction (Doctor Who)
~ 2,350/5k - 2nd auction (Multi-fic fulfillment [thank you so much, recipient!] that has a completed Highlander fic. Toying with my options for the next part.)
~ 2,030/5k - 3rd auction (Also Multi-fic fulfillment, but all will be DCU comics)
~ 3,006/5k - 4th auction (Star Wars, pre-Prequels era)
10,757/20k - OVER HALFWAY!

I only have one work in progress, a sequel to a previous fic, that is going to be at least twice the length of the original. Just having too much fun playing with different dynamics for the Do'Urdens.

I think, given how much my new Queensryche playlist is soothing me, I am going to be making more dedicated artist playlists. As many of my FAVORITES still have albums I can't stand, or songs I skip every time. Corey Hart will likely be the next one I make in this fashion.

Trying to decide what book to read again. No, nothing new. I am... not coping with new books. I need a tried and true. Clan of the Cave Bear was very happy-making to revisit, but not sure I want to read any of the others. Maybe a McCaffrey or a Heinlein... or back to Barsoom again.

Sense8 rocked my socks. Some difficult moments to get through, but then Black Sails was the same. No fic vibes in my soul for either fandom. Hey, wait, maybe I can start watching Ted Lasso and see what happens, since I already drabble in it.

flareonfury posting in

fandom_on_dw

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

sheliak posting in

icontalking

Better late than never, right?

( A year of icons )

snickfic

(I guess I'm letting out all my bottled-up words today...)

A collection of essays on feminist topics. I've been meaning to read some Solnit ever since everyone was reading her book Hope in the Dark during the first Trump administration. I randomly was in need of an ebook to read, and this was the book of Solnit's available through my library, so here we are.

On one hand, I did not find this a challenging read. Most of what Solnit had to say, I've encountered in some form or another before, and most of these essays are surface-level examinations of their topics. OTOH, there's something to be said for having thoughts laid out in a coherent essay format when one has previously only encountered them via social media, haphazardly and in fragments. And even though the collection had a strong feminism 101 feeling for me, I did highlight a bunch of quotes, which I am putting below under a cut, mostly for my own use. So, clearly I got some value out of the book!

IMO, by far the strongest essay is the one where she gets into specifics, and that's the final essay, "Giantess," about a 1950s film called Giant starring Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. I feel like I might vaguely have heard of this movie, and although it doesn't sound like my usual jam genre-wise, the politics sound progressive even today, so I'm tempted just from a point of historical interest.

( quotes )

olivermoss

Happy 100th (and possibly final?) meeting of Sid and Ovi to all who celebrate.

Neither team is my team, but I am feeling to a pull to watch anyway... must resist, I need to get some stuff done today

umadoshi

Our impending new raised planter is still showing as scheduled to arrive tomorrow while we're both home/not working, so here's hoping!

We just spent a while sifting through some seed listings on the Halifax Seed website (and I mostly kept myself from looking at tomato seeds, since we are not growing any tomatoes from seed*).

*I really wish there were some indication of what tomato varieties will be offered as seedlings, and also wish I knew if the different plant nurseries tend to offer similar varieties of tomato seedlings or not. (ALSO-also, we need to decide whether to focus on trying a few different types to see how we like them vs. focusing on a few determinate plants with the intention of just processing most/all of the fruit into sauce.)

(The seedling sale from a relatively nearby nonprofit that I'm hoping to make it to does offer a short list of potential varieties of things, with the caveat of "These are all the options that we have intended to grow but as all farmers and gardeners know, not every crop pans out. We apologize in advance if some of these options are unavailable, or not ready." For tomatoes, it says "Roma, Brandywine, Scotia +more! / Tropical Sunset, Sungold, Red Torch +more!")

But as noted yesterday, we don't plan to put tomatoes in the actual planter anyway. Thoughts for the actual planter so far: ( thoughts + variety notes )

Current Mood: hopeful

neonvincent

I found a much shorter video from CBC News to open Artemis II for Yuri's Night.

NASA's Artemis II mission in 20 minutes.

Watch on YouTube

The monumental 10-day Artemis II mission, which sent four astronauts on a record-breaking flyby of the moon, has concluded. Watch highlights of the mission from NASA, from the launch countdown to the astronauts' recovery after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: O'Hare Airport stream

cyberghostface posting in

scans_daily

( Scans under the cut... )

olivermoss

One the Kraken's baby goalies got their first NHL start last night and I need to talk about it

* He won, with a .963% save average. He had a bit of a softball opponent, but that's a good thing for a first game. He made some insane glove saves, stopped play by throwing himself at the puck. He's still cooking, but that was a splashy debut.

* He made a lot of solid passes to our Ds, very active goalie.

* Kokko passed to Kakko. Our announcers had to mention both Kaapo Kakko and Nikke Kokko in the same sentence repeatedly, and man I've wanted that all season.

* Other team pulled their goalie, so Kokko went for it, he took a shot on goal in his debut. He didn't get it, but it was a solid try. Then...

* In his post game interview was like "I tried to score before Joey, that was it" Joey is our main goalie, who famously regularly practices shooting in full goalie gear because he wants a goalie goal. He has the most NHL points of any goalie, and has taken multiple shots in the same game. And the kid make a stab at beating him to the punch.

He got the start, the win, first star, fish yeet and the helmet. And then teased the face of the franchise. He had an insane night.

The other thing that is nuts is why *neither* of our goalies for yesterday's game had a single NHL start before last night. They are both call ups. The Kraken roster 3 goalies, which is unusual. We got criticized for it a lot at the start of the year, but people quickly shut up. Between it being an Olympic year, everything about the state of the goalie market and one of our goalies getting a serious injury and being out most of the season, it was clearly shown to be a good move. Other teams have had some drama and ongoing problems with their netminders.

But it gets worse. We've got an usual amount of contracted goalies overall, not just on our NHL team. Last night our AHL team had to dress one of their goalie coaches for the game. We've gone from an overflow of goalies to nabbing people from the support staff. It's not any one thing. Murray has an undisclosed family situation. LaFountaine is sick. Gru took an on-ice injury and got pulled mid-game and is still out. Joey took an on-ice injury and played through the pain to a win, but is now recovering from that.

Goalie is a very specialized position. Ds and Fs are in much larger pools, and you can always run one less D or make a D play F. 4 out across the franchise is insane. We aren't the only franchise with goalie problems right now, but in our case it's just... shit happens. And the good news is that the chaos lead to a goalie having an amazing debut. The assumption that Nikke will replace Gru in a few years, he's being developed to help anchor an NHL team. So, that debut and running an all-rookie line was a look at where things are headed.

senmut

The Cat's Perspective (1979) (2743 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Alien (Original Movies 1979-1997), Alien Series
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jones the Cat & Xenomorph Characters (Alien Series)
Characters: Jones the Cat (Alien Series), Xenomorph Characters (Alien Series), Ellen Ripley
Additional Tags: POV Jones the Cat (Alien Series), Cats, Retelling
Summary:

Jones comes from a long line of hunters.

And there is a new prey on the ship.

This? Is fantastic.

snickfic

Assorted items:
+

seasonsofdrabbles spring round signups close today!

+ Having posted the fic below, I seem to have gotten all my Oasis feelings out for the moment, or maybe just all my writing feelings. I spent the last couple of weekends going to art museums, and I've also finally found the brain space and desire to read again. It feels really good. I've finished two books in the past week! Amazing!

+ Currently actively reading:
- In the Forests of Serre by Patricia McKillip
- It's Not a Cult by Joey Batey (thanks to

troisoiseaux, who passed their copy on to me <3)
- The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit

I wrote a fic! Not even for an exchange!

doughnut hips (6511 words) by Snickfic
Fandom: Oasis (Band)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Liam Gallagher/Noel Gallagher
Additional Tags: Chubby Kink, sensory play, Light CBT, Light BDSM, Anal Sex, Porn with Feelings, Oasis Reunion (Band), Sibling Incest, Crying, Weight Gain, Kissing
Summary:
Liam settled his hands on Noel’s hips and then wondered if he shouldn’t, but there weren’t a lot of places for him to touch Noel that weren’t softer than they’d been sixteen years ago.
Noel cleared his throat. “I didn’t think you’d care if—you know. If I put on a few pounds.”

This was supposed to be a quick kink-focused one-shot, but it almost immediately grew a bunch of reunion feelings and became a lot more emotionally dense than I planned, and it ended up taking me about five months to write (across 19 days of writing). It was really satisfying to finish, and I feel like I did all the things I set out to do.

On the theme of "every kink applies to Gallaghercest," this has my first ever CBT and sensory deprivation. I've never had even the faintest inclination to write those before, did not go in planning to write them here, and yet: here they are.

I'm calling this a fill for

crackthewip, which makes it the first fic I've finished for that event, despite having run it for three years (and then passed it on to

chacusha). Yay.

This fic really filled a niche, apparently, because I got the most feedback on this that I've ever gotten in the first week of posting an Oasis fic (not counting the one last year that I was posting in daily installments). It's so gratifying to write things that people want to read. ;______;

snickfic

Exit 8 (2026). A man who has just found out his ex-girlfriend is pregnant gets lost in a seemingly infinite subway tunnel.

This is a Japanese movie based on a Japanese video game that was apparently a huge hit a few years ago. It's also the second movie this year based on an essentially non-narrative video game with long stretches of "yup, this sure feels like I'm watching someone play a video game." Like Iron Lung, they really have to work here to stretch their premise to a 90-minute runtime with an actual story. Things get pretty repetitive after a while, since the tunnel acts essentially as a spacial time loop (as elegantly depicted by the movie poster).

That said, I mostly enjoyed the experience, in large part because of the lead actor Kazunari Ninomiya, who is great. I've learned he was a beloved Jpop idol 20+ years ago, and I believe it, because he has loads of charisma while acting basically alone for the first 2/3 of the film. I would absolutely watch him in more things.

The movie is also occasionally really stylish. The opening scenes are IMO the best part of the film from a filmmaking perspective, starting with our guy on a crowded train listening to Bolero to the camera-eye POV first loop through the subway tunnel (as a nod to the game being a walking simulator).

However, I think my favorite part of the movie is the interlude where we see the backstory for the other recurring character in the subway tunnel, a man walking robotically with a briefcase. That's easily the best horror material in the film.

--

Forbidden Fruits (2026). Three women named after fruits who work in a mall fashion boutique tentatively welcome a new member into their girl-power coven.

This movie is kind of all over the place. It leans a bit too hard into satire, which loses me sometimes, while also not seeming to have a clear idea what it's trying to say about female relationships. In my opinion Lili Reinhart as the coven leader is one of the weak links, although I've seen a lot of people say the opposite. On the other hand, Victoria Pedretti as the airhead recovering alcoholic stole the show for me. I didn't even recognize her at first because Cherry is so different from the Mike Flanagan characters I've seen her play, but she's hilarious and heartbreaking.

The movie is also very stylish, and the fashion is incredible, like truly impossible to describe, you have to experience it for yourself. Each of the four gets their own consistent look: glam seductress, gothy femme, girl next door, sexy baby.

The movie also, after an hour and fifteen minutes of campy satire, suddenly goes extremely hard. It gets gnarly, you guys. It fucking commits. It must have been a real challenge to market this film, because if you're watching it as a horror movie, it takes over an hour to get there, but if you're not into horror, you are in for a nasty surprise at the end.

Put this on the list of "wasn't quite for me, not mad I saw it, happy it exists." It had style and ambition, and that goes a long way with me. (Typing that out, I realize it has a ton in common with last movie's football horror movie Him, with a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. So if you were into that, try this.)

delphi

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

darths_and_droids_feed

https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/2764.html

Episode 2764: Shifty Panel Trap

Academia can be an interesting setting for a game. For full-on fantasy academia, look at Unseen University from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the Strixhaven setting from the card game Magic: the Gathering, or Morgrave University from the Eberron Dungeons & Dragons setting. For modern day fantasy, there's of course Harry Potter, or Brakebills University from Lev Grossman's The Magicians series, or Camp Half-Blood from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, among others.

In science fiction we have Star Trek's Starfleet Academy, Star Wars's Jedi Academy, or the Bene Gesserit Schools of Dune.

Any of these or the many other examples in established fiction would make a great setting for roleplaying. In fact some of them have existing roleplaying games where you can do just that. You can also invent your own academic institution and have students or teachers engage in investigation, conflict, discovery, and other shenanigans. It's very fertile ground for interesting adventures, as you can see by the number of examples that already exist.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

And here's another life event come to interrupt the game. Unfortunately, it's another bad event. I guess once you've found a job you like, there's not a lot of surprise messages from the job that'd be good news. Hopefully nothing comes from the misconduct panel that'd cause more trouble for Jim.

Anyway, looks like the red stuff in the transit isn't causing trouble for the Resistance fleet. I wonder if we'll see the craziness of that comet escape near the start of the movie again at this point. There's not going to be much in the way of opportunity for ships to hyper-jump once the fight starts. This'll end up being the last major space battle, whatever happens, I think. We're in Episode IX at this point, this feels like set-up for the final fight, and yet another an escape would hardly lead to a good outcome. Even if it feels rather impossible at the moment.

Transcript

https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/2764.html

delphi

The first episode of the newest Dimension 20 campaign premiered on Wednesday, and I am so on board for this one.

City Council of Darkness is in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade, the tabletop roleplaying game most commonly set in the modern day, where vampires belonging to various clans and bloodlines engage politically in their home cities while trying to manage their own bestial urges, avoid the vampire hunters of the Second Inquisition, and above all keep the existence of vampires secret from humanity at large. City Council of Darkness is about what happens when a group of ambitious San Francisco vampires' bid for attention from the vampiric elite goes comically wrong, resulting in them being banished to the town of Purpee, Oregon, and forbidden to leave until they establish vampiric dominion there.

So far, it's been supremely silly in the best of ways, well-paced and plotted, full of mayhem, with characters and relationships that I'm looking forward to learning more about and an important reminder that the real monsters of San Francisco are Silicon Valley billionaires. I especially can't wait to see more of the friendship between Ventrue finance hustlers LaVonte Worthy and H.J. Wingstreet (joining Kingston Brown & Pete Conlan and Montgomery LaMontgommery & Olethra MacLeod as characters played by Lou Wilson and Ally Beardsley whose dynamic immediately grabbed me) and whatever the deal is between chaotic '80s(?) Brujah childe Zaeth Bondana and his respectable sire Koschei Severov.

Watch on YouTube

The series as a whole is exclusive to Dropout.tv or through Youtube membership, but I'm pretty sure that in the tradition of Dimension 20, the first episode of the campaign will go up for free on the Youtube channel's Season Premieres playlist.

post_secret_feed

Posted by Frank

https://postsecret.com/2026/04/11/sunday-secrets-597/

https://postsecret.com/?p=52846

The post Sunday Secrets appeared first on PostSecret.

https://postsecret.com/2026/04/11/sunday-secrets-597/

https://postsecret.com/?p=52846

post_secret_feed

Posted by Frank

https://postsecret.com/2026/04/11/postsecret-on-cbs-sunday-morning-2/

https://postsecret.com/?p=31438

Watch on YouTube

The post PostSecret on CBS Sunday Morning appeared first on PostSecret.

https://postsecret.com/2026/04/11/postsecret-on-cbs-sunday-morning-2/

https://postsecret.com/?p=31438

post_secret_feed

Posted by Frank

https://postsecret.com/2026/04/11/classic-secrets-607/

https://postsecret.com/?p=52819

The post Classic Secrets appeared first on PostSecret.

https://postsecret.com/2026/04/11/classic-secrets-607/

https://postsecret.com/?p=52819

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

foolish_m0rtal

band abandoned outdoor rehearsal in the park today for 20 minutes to go look at a hawk and send pictures to our band leader who is a bird guy to tell us about it. at one point the bird raised a talon to scratch itself and we were like 😮👀👀 📸 📸 📸

erinptah

Gonna start* a hot new internet game: “Someone has posted a fic on AO3 with this New Fandom Tag. Can we figure out what fandom it’s referring to?”

*(No guarantee when/if I’ll continue…but I’m titling this “post #1” in an effort to be optimistic)

When I see a fandom (okay, mostly the webcomics) on AO3 that’s been lingering for a while without getting a canonical tag, sometimes I’ll put in a request for it to be canonized. But only if I have sources to include. As in “here’s the website, here’s the creator’s social media, here’s a wiki page, here’s any other info to confirm what the original canon is, so we can be sure the fandom tag gets the fitting AO3-standard format.”

Here are some tags where I went looking for the original webcomic, and couldn’t find it. So I’m tossing the links in front of the wider internet, like some kind of fandom sphinx. Can anyone track down the answers to these riddles…?

“Absolution Program (Webcomic)” – The work (Dec 2025) has great character tags with full names, but googling them doesn’t turn up anything. Some of the vocab has me wondering if it’s Homestuck-related. [ETA: AbsoPro links+info here! It's...confusing.]

“DeMo (Webcomic)” – Another work (Dec 2025) with full-name character tags, but no webcomics in the results. Googling “demo webcomic” is unhelpful for probably obvious reasons. [ETA: Might refer to this unreleased project; there's no public info yet, but the fic author knows the project author]

“faust (webcomic)” – Work (Feb 2026) is tagged with a couple dozen fandoms, no characters at all. I don’t even know which part of the work corresponds to this fandom, heh. [ETA: Options include Faust by LIM, and Faust by Arechan. I won't be the one to read through them all and see if the quotes are in there.]

“Hellven (Web-comic)” – There are two findable webcomics with this title, HELLVEN – Lord Nomus (Webtoon) and Hellven – Luna (Tumblr)…but the characters in the fic (March 2026) don’t seem to come from either. Is there a secret third Hellven??

“Immortal (webcomic)” – Work (March 2026) is also a crossover with The Owl House and Undertale; all the character tags are from one of those canons. Always possible it’s a fancomic for one or both series. [ETA: Seems likely it's the comic being pre-planned on this blog]

Bonus note: If you’re curious how many of these there are, you can see all the not-synned-anywhere AO3 fandom tags in the Tag Search. (That list of results is “most-recent first”…so if you click on the last tag of Page 1 and look at the date the fic was posted, you’ll know “50 new fandom tags have been created since then.”)

sineala

Man, why do I not have a They Might Be Giants icon?

They just released a new album (The World Is To Dig), their 24th album, and, yeah, okay, I know I've been listening to them since I was in high school, but I am honestly impressed and pleased that they are still out there making music and also have (unlike most of the other bands I really liked in high school) managed not to do anything massively problematic that I am aware of and are just, you know, seeming to genuinely enjoy getting to spend their lives hanging out and making music.

The r/tmbg subreddit asked people not to rehash the same argument we have every album (that we have been having since the days of Usenet, as they pointed out), which is "why isn't this album more [X] like the last album?" and while I will say that it doesn't have any songs where I'm like "this is definitely the best on this album" (like "Brontosaurus" which was clearly the best thing on Book, their last album) I think "Sleep's Older Sister" (described by someone on reddit as "what if Taylor Swift was high" lol) is going to be stuck in my head, as is "Outside Brain," and "In the Dead Mall," so it's a little weird to me how most of my faves are Flansburgh songs this album, though I do like Linnell's "Character Flaw" and "What You Get." But this seems like a very good Flans album to me.

(I think most of the fanbase would say that Their most popular songs are Linnell's -- Birdhouse, Ana Ng, and so on -- and the Ratings on the wiki bear this out, as the top ten are Linnell. You don't even get to a Flans song on this list until what is currently #17, which is "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head," which I like a lot but I think is, you know, maybe not one of Their most well-known. So I am in kind of a weird position where I generally agree with the fandom consensus but also my absolute favorite TMBG song is actually "Sleeping in the Flowers," which is a Flans song.)

Because I guess it wouldn't be a TMBG album if I didn't have to look any words up while listening, I did have to look up two words. And I don't mean "I couldn't understand the words they were singing so I had to check the lyrics," I mean "I've never heard that word before in my life." So, yeah, I had to look up "galliard" (a Renaissance courtly dance, apparently) and "Coffey still," although in my defense I don't actually know anything about how distillation works.

So, yeah, new TMBG album. At least the world contains that.

Current Mood: dorky

sovay

I no longer owe my soul to the Malden Public Library, having returned the books that had become dramatically overdue in the midst of the latest nonsense. The loop of errands I was running allowed for the purchase of a Zagnut, which I continue to love in despite of Stan Freberg. It was gorgeous out and almost warm and I took a couple of pictures. I am trying to do more than just exist through my days.

( Happiness is just a street away. )

It would never occur to me to rescue and restore vintage Coach bags and purses, but I like knowing someone else has chosen it as their art. Speaking of art, I just heard about the Peabody Essex Museum's Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone. Speaking of things I like knowing about, Jin Shengtan's "Thirty-Three Nice Things" is in fact pretty nice itself.

Current Music: Brigitte Calls Me Baby, "Slumber Party"

goss

The online memorial for

minoanmiss (Ny/Rubynye) will take place tomorrow - Sunday, April 12, 1:00PM EDT (GMT -4).

Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83615091699?pwd=Goa5p0EbNbbl2Msd2GAQscu5uyWttd.1
Meeting ID: 836 1509 1699
Passcode: MinoanNy

You can sign up at the link below to indicate if you'll be attending:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0448A8A62BA6FBC34-63233152-nys/195490464#/

Profile

kitewithfish

April 2026

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Page Summary

jesse_the_k - Strength within Sorrow: minoanmiss’s Online Memorial
rachelmanija - Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke
marinarusalka - Weekend notes
james - Staycay!
tcampbell1000 in scans_daily - Bialya With Seeds in the Center: JLE #30, JLA #55 (JLI 82)
shakalooloo in scans_daily - Gail Simone presents April 'Pool's Day
neonvincent - Sam Heughan of 'Outlander' at the NYC Tartan Day Parade 1
sunnymodffa in fail_fandomanon - FFA DW Post #2463 - I like my metaphors like I like my PIs: hard-boiled, hard to crack
sholio - Space Swap
myrmidon in fandom_icons - Resident Evil Requiem [2026]
erinptah - Erin Watches: Wonder Man
sovay - From the morning past the evening to the end of the light
muccamukk - The Other Bennet Sister (2026)
pauraque - Clay's Ark by Octavia E. Butler (1984)
mific in fancake - Hockey RPF: You're the One That I Want by thehoyden
sholio - A cunning plan
senmut - Fannish Update
flareonfury in fandom_on_dw - Crossover Galore Challenge
sheliak in icontalking - Icon Progression 2025
snickfic - The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
olivermoss - (no subject)
umadoshi - Garden pre-PRE(?)-planning. Or something.
neonvincent - Replaced video for Artemis
cyberghostface in scans_daily - Batman: Secrets #4
olivermoss - Nikke Kokko
senmut - Space Swap Rec
snickfic - Oasis fic and other fannish things
snickfic - Movies: Exit 8 and Forbidden Fruits
delphi - Six Sentence Sunday
darths_and_droids_feed - Episode 2764: Shifty Panel Trap
delphi - What's Making Me Happy Today: Dimension 20 City Council of Darkness
post_secret_feed - Sunday Secrets
post_secret_feed - PostSecret on CBS Sunday Morning
post_secret_feed - Classic Secrets
denise in dw_maintenance - The case of the missing notifications
foolish_m0rtal - (no subject)
erinptah - Can You Find This Fandom, post #1
sineala - At least there's TMBG...
sovay - I bought Blue Velvet on a DVD
goss - Online gathering for MM tomorrow

Style Credit

Style: Ivory Alcea for Mobility by branchandroot
Resources: Mitsuba Aoi

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