Reading

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: Frankenstein meets the Spacemonster

Entry tags:

books,
challenge

Since I did nothing interesting

and I'm dreading tomorrow, let me just put forth all the rest of the book stuff (as I'm not smart enough to make records of communities I want to rec)

So Books I read last month. There aren't that many but if you're interested in any of them, let's talk. I love doing that

The Witch's Orchard mystery

West by God. Horror

A Spell to Wake the Dead YA urban fantasy

Dark Entry horror

Anima Rising historical fantasy

The Smoke in His Voice. urban fantasy LGBT

Verses for the Dead mystery

I also finished

kingstoken's book bingo. I managed a black out. I can't find my graphic fore this so have the original post. You can play along too

I'm just going to list (but not link) my reads. (I'm running low on time)
Over 300 pages - Of Manners and Murder by Anastasia Hastings
Book in a series - Verses for the Dead by Preston & Child
LGBT = Disco Witches of Fire Island by Blair Fell
From your TBR pile - West by God by Tyler Bell
Recommended= Hormones, Hexes, & Exes by J.C. Blake

POC author - Silent Are the Dead by D.M. Rowell
Multiple points of view - The Ten Worst People in New York by Matthew Plass

YA - You Must Not Miss by Katrina Leno
Ebook Another Fine Mess by Lindy Ryan
Classics - The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Female author - Silent Evidence by Clea Koff

SF/Fantasy - Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis
Anthology - Minstrels in the Galaxy: Stories in the Key of Tull, Volume 1 edited by Sam Robb (hey I’m in this one!)
Biography/memoir- The Paranormal Ranger: A Navajo Investigator's Search for the Unexplained by Stanley Milford Jr
Friendship - Last Dance Before Dawn by Katharine Schellman
Banned Book - Under This Red Rock by Mindy McGinnis
Name in the title - H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P Lovecraft and manga adaptation by Gou Tanabe
Movie/TV tie in Murder by Cheesecake by Rachel Ekstrom Courage (a Golden Girls mystery mash up)

With a woman protagonist - When the Bones Sing by Ginny Myers Sain
From the library - The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
Thriller/Suspense - The Lost House by Melissa Larsen
Set Somewhere you’ve been Lackadaisy vol 1 by Tracy J. Butler
Crime/Mystery - To Slip the Bonds of Earth by Amanda Flower

Non human pov - The Mushroom Knight Vol. 1 by Oliver Bly

Entry tags:

Light Black #19, Realgar #8 [The Fulcrum]

Name: Lost
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Light Black #19: Endure, Realgar #8: Pause
Styles and Supplies: Life Drawing, Graffiti (Disability Pride Month), Brushes (July 3 2025: Desultory), Calendar Page (StartTheConversation Day)
Word Count: 2793
Rating: PG
Warnings: Discussion of slavery
Characters: Setsiana, Liselye, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.1.1-3
Summary: Setsiana tries to find a place for herself in 1912.

( Lost )

(no subject)

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Entry tags:

into the void

Into the Void

For new friends, personal posts not on Tuesdays are called 'Into the Void' as in 'Screaming into the Void'

THANK YOU to everyone for the well wishes on the new job. I will respond individually but I just wanted to do a quick blast of thanks now. Orientation went well. I have clients starting MONDAY! I am low-key terrified, but that's to be expected with something so new. So my schedule will be 8 am to 2 pm with going from one client's house to a second client.

Lots of deep breaths...

THANK YOU!

Manga (Anime) series info?

I'm writing a story where my main character stops his friend, a dad to a 13-ish year old boy, from purchasing some ~~anime~~ manga books because the main character knows the book series is too adult (sex, violence, both) for a 13 year old. The main character then recommends a different series because the story line is more appropriate for the age of the teen.

The story is the relationship between the main character and the dad, so this is a small piece of the larger story. But I know absolutely nothing about anime (or manga, obviously!) and would appreciate some recommendations of titles that would fit those categories.

Thanks!

ETA: I'm looking for currently available titles and perhaps where they are best purchased (a bookstore, a comic book store, a specialty shop, online?)

ETA2: I'm looking US-centric here.

Entry tags:

!promotion

Promotion: Seasons of Fandom

And today a tiny bit of promotion for a landcomm (not mine) which offers so much fun. Check it out!

PROMOTION

The multifandom landcomm 'Lands of Magic' is back under a new name for more challenges and games.

You can join the community HERE. When signing up, you will be asked to choose a team. I am from Team 'Spring', and because this team still needs new members, it would be great if you would join us. Please make a note that I, Prisca, sent you here, and I will earn some extra points for Team Spring. (Just saying: if you prefer to join Team Summer, Team Autumn, or Team Winter, that's fine, too)

Entry tags:

bingo

Bingo card - Winterfest in July

This has to be one of my favourite

allbingo challenges. This year I chose the Holidays theme to give me:

Winter Solstice	Christmas Day
New Years Eve	St. Nikolaus Day

Current Music: Weakened - Peatbog Faeries

Entry tags:

Bad Sisters: The benefit of cracks in an otherwise perfect wall

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Entry tags:

!thursday recs,
bts

Community Recs Post!

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanvids/fancrafts/podfics/fics/fanart/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

Cerys Hafana - Helynt Ryfeddol

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(no subject)

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Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: Daft Punk - Georgio by Moroder

We're over the halfway line - Late June 02025

Let's begin this entry with One Hundred reasons Not To Die, which starts with oranges and moves through the ways that communities come together in the face of disasters and help each other. Which stands in stark contrast to the ways that having more wealth than could possibly be earned or expended in one lifetime (at least, not without seriously screwing over everyone and everything you can) has altered the way that the richest think of how they should be allowed to rule without fetters, that their ideas are always the smartest, and the rest of us should be beholden to them for everything so that we can't stop them or tell them no.

Ask most people who go through a university program where there's at least some amount of sport, and they'll tell you that the sports parts of the university are almost always the things that get the most money and what they want the fastest. A non-tenured professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder doesn't make nearly as much as the football head coach, and very little of the money that the football program makes ever finds its way back to the academics, nor does it seem that the football program (or other programs) can be decalred to be self-sufficient and their budget allocations moved over to other places that could desperately use it, like salaries for those doing the teaching. This is the perpetual issue with universities that have well-known athletics programs - they bring in a fair amount of revenue, but a lot of that revenue then gets spent improving the athletics portions and the rest of the university is left to figure out how to get their own funding. (My university was at least fairly explicit that a lot of the revenue from their "revenue-generating" sports is used to ensure scolarships and other materials for the "non-revenue-generating sports," which means that the football program often provides the operating budget for much of the women's sports available at the university, which is not a terrible thing to do with that cash. It also helps that it was a university with a fair number of alumnae who have gone on to prestigious jobs, so there's a lot of regular donations and endowments that they can use for capital and operating expenses. They still don't pay everyone on the teaching side enough, though.)

Harvard University employed someone to find descendants of slaves who had a history with Harvard's founders and prominent people. For doing the job admirably, thoroughly, and well, Harvard fired him, because he was finding far too many people with the associations than what the university wanted to acknowledge. They were willing to peek beneath the hood, but not to fully look at what was found there.

( International Affairs, Domestic Fascism, and the occasional piece of good news )

Out of this post, McSweeney's says "Happy Father's Day, fools" with a post about just what it takes to be a dad.

And the need to remember that you don't know the gender of the person in front of you unless they've told you, which means a lot of habits that people have about gendering people based on things that don't actually say what their gender is need to be unlearned, both in person and in things like describing the contents of photos or other archival content.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Entry tags:

neil gaiman allegations

Not a GREAT week when it comes to ending sexual violence.

The whole Diddy thing. It doesn't matter how much proof there is.

Brad Pitt, who is known to have struck his wife and his children then perpetuated lawfare on them for years to the point where several of his kids no longer want contact with him, has the number one movie right now. Best opening weekend of his career. Most of the coverage doesn't even mention the violence.

On the anniversary of Tortoise Media publishing allegations of rape and sexual assault against Neil Gaiman, Netflix is dropping season two of The Sandman. Meanwhile, Gaiman is forcing one of his victims into arbitration. Not because she's libling him, but because she broke an NDA. Everything's gone very quiet, which I assume is what he wanted.

Some thoughts from smarter people:

Rebecca Solnit: Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action.

Tarana Burke: Tarana Burke doesn’t define #MeToo’s success by society’s failure.

Some people want to judge the movement on specific outcomes, so when a case is overturned, Burke said, “people are like, ‘Oh the #MeToo movement has failed.’” Instead, she said, such outcomes are proof of the difficulty of the work.

“It’s not about the failure of the movement; it’s the failure of the systems,” Burke explained. “These systems are not designed to help survivors, they’re not designed to give us justice, they’re not designed to end sexual violence.”

“When we bind ourselves to the outcomes of these cases, we are constantly up and down with our disappointment, our highs and lows,” Burke continued. “What they tell us is just how much work we need to change the laws and the policies but most importantly, to change the culture that creates the people who commit, who perpetrate acts of harm.”

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: Midsomer Murder

Entry tags:

Sunshine 1

Before I get into it, just wanted to say I made it back to Pittsburgh for the rest of the summer (in theory)

Challenge #1

Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.
Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community.. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

For July I have two open calls I want to write stories for. And I have two

wipbigbang stories I must finish and I do need to work on my

fandomtrumpshate story. In the meantime I'm working on some story that bit me yesterday. In fact on the 4 hour trip today five stories were trying to take dominance in my brain as I drove.

My other goals are to see some of the sites I've been trying to get to for years. It doesn't look good. Sigh. No one cares what my work goals are (including me if I'm honest)

I DO have something I'm proud of. Two somethings that I spent most of June working on. Both are from the Hazbin Hotel fandom (so mind the tags, this is the most violent musical animated comedy ever I swear)

Dandelions This is my

unconventionalcourtship story. I am very proud of how this one turned out and have gotten some nice comments about.

The Power Play series is something I created for the

getyourwordsout Yahtzee challenge. I am a little disappointed at how much this is flying under the radar. That said, I think it's a very good one that I enjoyed doing.

I'm going to break the book report into two days because I'm hot, tired and cranky. (and that story wants me to get back to it)

What I Just Finished Reading:

Dark Entry - a short suspense/horror novel I got last year, not bad but predictable

Verses for the Dead - a pendergast novel from Preston & Childe. enjoyed it but the ending was too hollywood

Chasing Evil - this is written by an FBI agent (ex) and his professional relationship with psychic John Edward (wish there had been chapters by John too)

What I am Currently Reading:

Kill You Twice - a pretty graphic (i don't mind) police procedural but it's a tad soap opera for me

I Need You To Read This - an arc of an advice columnist trying to solve the murder of the woman she's replacing. It has a neat cover, sleek red with the title as keyboard keys but they're tactile.

War Child - a Deep Space Nine Novel

Pantomine - an LGBT (intersexed main character) fantasy

What I Plan to Read Next: something for popsugar

Entry tags:

"The Witness for the Dead" by Katherine Addison

You know that feeling where you're enjoying inhabiting a book so much you don't want to reach the end? This week I finished The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, and that's how I felt.

Witness is a companion novel to Addison's breakout novel, The Goblin Emperor (TGE), which I read for the first time last year and never got around to reviewing. You don't need to have read TGE to enjoy this one at all; Witness focuses on a minor character from TGE and his adventures after the events of that novel. Thara Celehar is a prelate of the god Ulis, and his role in elven society is something like a cross between a priest and a private detective. He has the ability to commune, in a limited fashion, with the dead, and he is employed by the city to provide this service to the people. This may involve reporting a deceased's last thoughts to a mourner, asking a deceased to clarify a point on their will, or seeking answers from a murder victim to bring their killer to justice.

( Read more... )

Orange (Tiger's Eye 08: Eerie Empty Spaces) The Lovers

Name: narrownights
Story: The Lovers
Colour: Orange (Tiger's Eye: 08. Eerie Empty Spaces)
Supplies and styles: Embroidery
Wordcount: 601
Warnings: PG13? Mentions of death

"Have you heard the news?"

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

The Way Up is Death, by Dan Hanks

In a prologue that's very Terry Pratchett-esque without actually being funny, an enormous floating tower appears in England, becomes a 12-hour wonder, and is then forgotten as people have short attention spans. Then thirteen random people suddenly vanish from their lives and appear at the base of the tower, facing the command ASCEND.

I normally love stories about people dealing with inexplicable alien architecture. This was the most boring and unimaginative version of that idea I've ever read. Each level is a death trap based on something in one of their minds - a video game, The Poseidon Adventure, an old home - but less interesting than that sounds. The action was repetitive, the characters were paper-thin, and one, an already-dated influencer, was actively painful to read:

Time to give her the Alpha Male rizzzzzzz, baby!

The ending was, unsurprisingly, also a cliche.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

Wednesday Reading Meme -- We're Already Halfway Through the Year!

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Entry tags:

books,
reading

Wednesday reading

Finished since the last reading post
The Blunders of Our Governments, where the passing of time meant no very recent blunders were discussed, but also perhaps has changed the perspective on some of the things considered successes. The chapters discussing reasons for the blunders were perhaps even more interesting than the chapters on the blunders themselves.

How to Survive a Plague by David France, which covers some of the same ground as And the Band Played on by Randy Shilts, which I've read before, but more from a New York City and the ACT UP and related activist point of view. Very interesting, informative, and moving.

Currently reading
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, which has been a good bus read—my bus journey to work isn't really long enough to really get into a book, so anything with longer chapters tends to be a bit frustrating, but this one works really well.

Reading next
No idea—I've got a few books on the shelves I could pick up, some e-books as well, and I should have a library reservation coming my way at some point.

Entry tags:

post type: weekly: read-in-progress

Read-in-Progress Wednesday

This is your weekly read-in-progress post for you to talk about what you're currently reading and reactions and feelings (if any)!

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*