Various:

--My mother tripped on her way to a concert (again) and fractured the bridge of her nose (again) and got up and went to the show anyway and enjoyed it while holding a plastic bag full of ice from the bar to her face (AGAIN). On the one hand I want to rage about her choice to just fucking carry on to the show, except on the other hand that's absolutely what I would do because I'm just as stubborn as she is, but back on the first hand she is seventy two years old and I am in the prime of my youth not. So I will just allow myself to be a little bit of a hypocrite about it, thanks.

--Melodifestivalen final is on Saturday. The lineup is mostly not terrible! I have no idea what the ultimate Eurovision pick will be, however, because I have given up on predicting the ~~mystery~~ that is the collective mind of Sweden (affectionate).

--I have been writing a deeply lemon-chicken fic for my new fandom but I'm fairly sure all the members of this fandom are too young to understand what it would mean if I tagged it lemon chicken. But I can glory in the tag in my mind. (Also I might not even finish it because there's no fun in writing an actual plot when I can just write my blorbo being hard done by.)

I took this challenge from ravensilversea here. I thought it would be fun!

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 14 (posted) fics and see if there’s a pattern!

I picked 14 because that's how many fics I've published, as of now, in 2026. They have all being crossposted here on dreamwidth (and since the start of this month I've begun doing the same with older ones).

Now, in reverse order of publication:

• "You and I should go to the Rivers Casino," Santos told her, blasé as ever. "Bet you're really good at counting cards." ace in the hole. The Pitt, Javadi/Santos.

• Kyle would think he must be dreaming —except for how he's never felt so present in his body, so keenly aware of the nerve endings in each of his fingertips. So exultant, and at once, fearful. carnal idolatry. Terminator, Kyle/Sarah.

• As it did every so often, Laura's mind drifted towards poor, ill-fated Bertha. hating me through death and after. Carmilla (J. Sheridan Le Fanu's novella), Carmilla/Laura.

• It's everything she could have dreamed, as if her world has expanded —not just around her, the world she can touch and hear and affect and be affected by, but on the inside; she's finally faced with a challenge, and for the first time she feels like she is all but stumbling, scrambling and struggling to catch up, under-educated and plainly naïve and oblivious. true thirst. Bridgerton, Eloise x academia.

• Tara is a bitch; she doesn't swallow her tongue or her pain like a good dainty woman —a model heroine, turning the other cheek with a smile for those who harmed her; she lacks that saintly forgiving heart. hearsay. DC comics, Tara Markov.

• "Pick another movie." bat-man and robins. Stranger Things, Dusteve pre-slash.

• The little girl didn't look much like Mia, for where she shared their father's features —compact but athletic build, hair like hay, chocolate-brown eyes, easily-tanned skin, sharp jaw—, the kid had grown to resemble her own ailing mother: lanky, porcelain-pale, with tight black curls and a moon-shaped face; but in her half-sister's eyes, if the wrong shade of brown, Mia spotted the same haunted quality that she'd seen in the mirror, over fifteen years ago. better than being the prey. DC comics, Mia Dearden.

• Her new body's palms are rough, something as extravagant as moisturizer undeniably foreign to them; bathrobe fallen on the ground, Josephine uses coarse fingertips to examine its imperfections —idle, she picks at the unevenly tanned skin; lingering, she rubs them against the leather rash in the inner tights; vicious, she nudges the tender bruise on the belly. pillage. The 100, Clarke/Josephine.

• The wool fell off Maika's eyes long ago; she knew Tuya intimately, the way you're bound to when someone cracked open your chest cavity and burrowed a place for themselves within your very bones, blood, and viscera. bloodless, Monstress (Image Comics), Maika/Tuya.

• Nona practices in the mirror. mimicry. The Locked Tomb, Nona x Camilla.

• When Helena startles awake, the last thing her eyes caught on were the elevator doors closing on their way to the severed floor, and the first thing they see now are the tiles on her father's kitchen floor; the second, him, gasping, desperate, choking on his own blood, the offending device in his hand; the third, the knife in her own blood-soaked hands. clean hands. Severance, Helena & Helly R.

• The dreams are all the more unsettling, eerie, because nothing wrong happens in them; Henry Creel comes to her as Mr. Whatsit —as a protector, as a friend, with a pleasant face and a gentle voice and a pair of warm hands, tucking her into bed and plying her with gifts and promises of safety and freedom and adventure. her arms, a fortress. Stranger Things, Holly & Nancy.

• It takes a village to raise Diana: grown warriors, scholars, pioneers, who see her as the child they once indulged —yet her body changes and her desire grows, itching under her skin with melancholic jealousy, barred from the women's games and rituals. replica. DC comics, Diana/Donna.

• We want you open —like a flower whose petals desperately seek the warmth of the sun; like the loud pop of a yogurt's lid, then licked clean; like a patient's skull drilled into after the skin has been carefully split apart with a scalpel. communion. Pluribus, The Hive x Carol.

Well, one thing across the board is that I can string a long (but hopefully understandable) sentence lmao, but to be fair, all but four of these were for the three sentence ficathon. It's a feature, not a bug xD. You MUST do terrible things to punctuation. And on top of being strict about the just-three-sentence rule, I give myself an extra one by keeping the ficlets at precisely 100/200/etc. words.

Something else I've always noticed is that in fics that are meant to be humorous I do tend to start mid-dialogue. Snappy banter is the perfect tool for that.

Also, these are all very short ficlets (the longest one is Carmilla's, a triple drabble sequence of 900 words, and all the others have 300, 200, and mostly 100 words). So they're very to-the-point fics, as well as character-centric ones, where I immediately (or nearly so) dive into the character's state of mind. In many other stories I prefer to start setting-first, or action-first, to ground them in whatever I feel should get the focus to set the story, and in some of these you can see the barest bit of context like that, but short-form limits you. And yet, working within those limits to imbue each sentence with all the relevant information, trying to find the right spin on a description, is incredibly fun.

It could be interesting to do this again later on in the year, maybe when I have posted longer fics that aren't limited to drabble form (except one, which I kept 300 words long just for fun, all of these where either for the three sentence ficathon, or seasons of drabbles). I think there could be a lot of shorter first lines, stuff that's meant to paint a vivid but immediate picture on the reader's mind without so many twists and turns. I like to target the senses, too (smell, etc.) in order to achieve it, maybe using a bit of "shocking" imagery to get the point across. 

So I'm definitely keeping this meme in mind to go back to it later on ^-^

marchmetamatterschallenge is running this month. :D Here is my introductory post. So what is meta? Well, it can be a lot of things ...

( Read more... )

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

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Hovertext:
I need to do an upbeat comic week one of these days. They all end with hooray.

Today's News:

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Le Guin wrote a dozen or so picture books in her career, and several of them are out of print, including this one about a spider who spins artistic webs. I was able to determine that a library about an hour away from me has a copy, so I took a field trip. I couldn't check the book out because I'm not a resident, but since it's a picture book, I just read it, covertly took some photos, and then left.



The story is plainly an allegory for the life of an artist and her struggle to balance creative fulfillment, the desire for recognition, and the inconvenient reality that she also has to, like, eat. ( cut for spoilers, if spoilers for a picture book are a concern )

This book is certainly suggestive of Le Guin's early experiences as a writer and how she may have been feeling about where she was in her career at this time. I'm glad I went out of my way to track it down.

I continue posting the fics I wrote for last year's Cass Week!

Title: oracle's log: day 43 of no man's land.
Fandom: DC comics (Batman: No Man's Land).
Character/Pairing: Barbara Gordon & Cassandra Cain.
Rating/Warnings: T, none. Journal entry / first person.
Summary: Cass Cain Week, Day II: Alone | Together.
Word count: 200.

read more

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I went out because I felt so removed from the world I could’ve screamed.

Everything has been disconnected; I've begun recruiting informants, but it's painfully 19th century. I still don't know where my dad is, or if he's alive.

The cold’s merciless, but the sky’s beautiful. Clear blue like Gotham hasn’t seen since they erected her first factory.

Outside, a noise put me on guard. A young, petite girl, wearing a short-sleeved shirt; scavenging through the trash, a month late to find anything there.

"Are you okay?" I asked, my voice hoarse. Instead of replying, she observed me for so long it became unnerving.

Then she offered me a half-eaten sandwitch.

For a second, all I felt was revulsion. She looked down, ashamed.

I'm the one who should feel shame. Thinking of all the cans of beans in my cupboards, I extended my hand; she gave me the food, hesitant until I took a bite.

I asked her to follow me to the clocktower. I don't think she understands me, but now she’ll have a coat; a pair of boots from two sizes ago; the gloves I started knitting for Sarah, before… before.

With her here I feel less alone.

STU48's brand new single is released to-day! What do you mean you didn't realise STU48 were still releasing singles? As established, I have spent a lot of money this week, but I still ordered both copies of Sukisugite Naku because last year's single, Kizutsuku Koto ga Seishun da really made an impact on me. The centre of this new single is not, however, Takao Sayaka, but rather the third draft's Nakamura Mai.



Arriving in 2017 alongside NMB48's Abe Wakana and AKB48's Omori Maho, the third draft went into effect in 2018 and MaiQ made her first appearance with the relatively new group. She is there in the senbatsu for STU's second single, the delightful Kaze wo Matsu, and since that moment, despite not even being in the group's first generation, she has been a regular feature in every release since, acting as one of three centres in 2022 for Hana wa Dare no Mono? alongside Takino Yumiko and Ishida Chiho; outside of B sides and stage performances, however, this is MaiQ's first time as the centre of a new single, and whenever this happens in one of the smaller 48 groups, the provincial 48 groups, I immediately look to see if it is a consolation prize for that particular member's graduation. Good news, everyone! It doesn't look like that's the case here!

For the longest time, it has felt like MaiQ's apotheosis to centre has been on the cards. From as early as 2018, with the release of AKB48's NO WAY MAN, she appeared with other members of the sister groups aged under 19—including former NGT darlings Kato Minami and Takakura Moeka—on B side Ohayo Kara Hajimaru Sekai, a song which to, my mind, has more heart than the A side it accompanies, offering more of a glimpse of the flavour of what the provincial groups might become.

Despite being in the draft pool together, MaiQ and Oki Yuka did not become friends until they both joined STU, a missed opportunity that they soon made up for, the two of them often referred to as OkiMai by fans, both of them setting the tone for what STU would be as Okada Nana returned to her main activities and the group was left to stand on its own. Against all odds, the girl who inherited her nickname from school due to her lips, making her apparently like the titular Obake no Q-Taro, has become one of the most familiar faces in the group, and this centre position for the new single feels long, long overdue. Congratulations, MaiQ! 🎉💖

Damn that title is a mouthful. One of many things that could have used a lot more work in this game. In VTMB2, you play as the Nomad, an Elder vampire recently awoken with a mysterious mark. For regrettable reasons, the Nomad chooses to go by the laughable name "Phyre" (pronounced "fire") in-game.

I went into this without any familiarity with the first game, which released in 2004, or the tabletop RPG on which the series is based. I first heard about VTMB2 years ago when it was just a flicker in the developers' eyes in Game Informer. It looked very cool! A customizable vampire character to run around Seattle and ally with various factions in a political fight? Sign me up!

Unfortunately the game is a real disappointment. I can't imagine how it must feel for fans of the original game to wait more than 20 years for this.

First, the game sells itself as an RPG, but there's very little of that, either on the combat or the narrative end. Your ability to customize Phyre is very limited--you can choose their gender, change up their hair a little, put some make-up and piercings on them, and change their outfits (the outfits, admittedly, are fun), but otherwise, Phyre is Phyre.

In terms of combat, you unlock the five powers associated with Phyre's clan pretty early in the game; you have the ability to unlock the other clans' powers too, but you can only ever equip four at a time, and none of them upgrade from where they start. Aside from one power I swapped, I kept my Phyre's original Brujah set equipped for the entire game.

You get various popups about how an NPC feels about what Phyre just said or did, but these ultimately have no impact. There are only a couple of late-game decisions that have any influence on the ending, and your relationships don't matter at all.
( Read more... )

+ Very much had a plan to tidy my bedroom 100%, but then my dryer was like, "nah I'm not going to function" and I derailed completely. There's a couple more things I want to try to see if I can get it sorted, but if not I'll have to call for a repairperson ugh.

...so today I'm focused on cleaning the visible parts of my apartment instead lol.

+ Actually had lunch with a few of my friends today. It's been a while. Like, I didn't manage to meet a single one of them properly before Christmas even. How they all put up with a shut in like myself all these years, I just couldn't tell you. We tried a new noodle place, the food was excellent, I tried a marinated egg for the first time, and we were all laughing and enjoying ourselves.

One of my friends had helped clear out an apartment a couple of days ago, and when she saw the official and un-official guides for The X-Files in the donations box, she decided to grab them for me instead. Very sweet of her, and funny considering she did not know I'd just started watching s1 again.

+ Since AO3 seems to be fairly unstable atm I got some requests to do a new round of ao3_isdown, so come on over.

+ I've been fiddling with the idea for fannishtarot and running a Make Your Own Fandom Tarot event for a good long while now, gathering some quotes and such here and there. I think it would be such a rewarding way to deep dive into the tarot and also your own fandom(s) and fannish inclinations. Like, who or what would The Fool be to you in your chosen fandom? I think it'd be an excellent way to internalize a bunch of significators, etc. But I am not getting that started until I have a bunch more prep under my belt lol. I'd basically have to amass six months of posts beforehand, to make room for work schedules, travel, the occasional downtime/brain crash.

But it would be SO cool. I just hope some people will join in.

+ My Dune tarot will be arriving tomorrow, and I'd love to play with it a bunch. Let me know in the comments if you want me to do one of the book's spreads for you.

Akane-banashi #196: Okay, so I feel like Akane is being set up a little bit for failure narratively-- at least with regards to stealing the show from Issho. I don't think that that's something she's capable of yet, and her need to make Issho admit he was wrong set off some alarm bells in my head, because that is just never ever a good idea or works out how the person intends it to. I also feel like it's about time for Akane to deal with a setback or frustration of some kind like this. I want her shinigami story to be excellent, and even beat Kaisei, but I want her to experience a failure in the sense of Issho still coming out on top. I won't say that Akane is getting arrogant, not at all, but I think that her short term goals have been getting bigger and bigger, and to me it would be narratively satisfying to see Akane struggle and fail with one of these big goals, while still improving at her rakugo to the point that it's not really a setback as much as a reality check for her that she still has a ways to go before being able to beat Issho at his own game. 

Alien Headbutt #4: Yeah, wrestling manga fights but with aliens! I'm into this now, I like seeing the wrestling moves depicted. It gets more and more solid as it continues, and I like how it's shaping up. 

Hima-Ten! #80: My need for throuple fic continues to grow. I want to try and write it myself, but I've been in a fallow phase lately when it comes to writing lately, so we'll see if that ever manifests. I'm glad that Tenichi is being honest with Honoka! I'm glad that she took it well. The characters all feel so unusually sensible for a WSJ romcom, which is maybe why I just want them to be a throuple. 

Kagurabachi #113: Honestly I couldn't tell if this information about the new island and material was a flashback or covering what happened in the timeskip. Regardless, this is mostly a worldbuilding chapter, so I don't have much to say about it. I'm looking forwards to seeing Chihiro again soon! 

Kinato's Magic #5: Man, this one has been a rollercoaster. Last week I was newly invigorated about it after a disappointing third chapter, and now I'm dropping it once again because the girl who had been obsessed with being a knight for a princess is now obsessed with making Kinato her knight while she's the princess. Boo!!!! Blegh. 

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/good-cop

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The other option is good cop, cop pretending to be a fish on the floor that keeps flopping around but won't die.

Today's News:

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I woke up late today, and consequently feel like the day has already run away with me, but holy carp did I need to sleep last night. Not that I slept well, but I slept for longer than usual, so hopefully something evened out somewhere.

I just. My last three shifts at work (all long ones) have exhausted me. Luckily, the next three are all short, and none of them are morning starts \o/

I've got another week off coming up at the end of the month, and whoooo boy do I feel like I need it already.

In other news, I have been watching a lot of quilting and clothes making videos on youtube while not posting on here. And for the last four or so days, I've been binge watching someone who I used to subscribe to, but then recently unsubbed because I hadn't watched her in years (and I don't even know why). But then I started watching her clothes/costume making videos, which I hadn't seen before (because of the not watching her), and MAN I AM INSPIRED. Not that anything I make for myself will be anything like she makes (I mean, she likes dresses and skirts for starters, and I Do Not). But I'm inspired, and it's good! Not that I needed the inspo, but I guess it will help in the long run? IDK.

I don't know if I will resubscribe to her once I'm done bingeing, because her chaotic way of making videos was driving me up the wall. Though that may just have been because I was tired a f. WHO KNOWS. It mystery!

Other than that, me and my work friend took some more stuff to the tip last week, so I'm glad that's gone. I haven't managed any house stuff aside from that, as I've been at work more than at home. I did manage to reclaim a whole load of 100% wool yarn from crochet squares that my gran had made (the yarn was too unstable for them to stay in that format), so I am going to knit it into blocks and felt it!

And that's pretty much it for now! I think! Time to go and have some dinner!

I’m going to put my reviews of these two together because to me, although they’re very different in tone and in novel structure (and intent), the introduction of Ekaterin and the change in Miles’s life make them two halves of a heterogenous whole. I’m going to skip back and forth a bit.

( First, Komarr )

A Civil Campaign puts us back on Barrayar, with a full cast of characters from previous books.

( A Civil Campaign )

The weekend was honestly nice.

Sunday was my mother's birthday and we surprised her after breakfast with flowers, cake, cookies, and her actual gift (socks! she asked for socks!) and she seemed really happy. I peeked out the doorwall in the living room and the snowdrops were up and blooming! (No sign of the crocuses yet, but none of us were expecting the snowdrops and those are always first.)

Saturday's nerd show was also good. If I could change one thing, it'd be moving the hours from 11-4 to, like, 9-2 or something. Big afternoon die-off.

It was sunny earlier, I had the energy to get quite a few chores done (or at least worked on) and got the all-fi set up. A few weeks back, I got about fifteen notices that the phone company is discontinuing landline service to this area. So my options were try their device that I assume uses the cellular network (yes I know that's not really what it is anymore, but for description's sake here) or go to the reliable and fast and absolutely miserable to deal with cable company. Their device, the 'all-fi', which sounds like a cult, has a free seven day trial to see if it'll work/have a signal so I finally got it and set it up. Unexpectedly, quite literally unexpectedly, I have a good signal and internet that's probably a hundred times faster than previous (not an exaggeration). I'm going to keep adding devices as I only have two tablets connected right now, but I think this is going to work out okay. (And the dire cable company is still always an option.) The set-up was obnoxious (an app that had to go on a phone, not a tablet) and I haven't entirely ruled out ornamental hermitude, but... so far so good.

Built: one small lotus flower brick kit from the nerd show, black Levinix, white Iglight (getting lots of customization, lol), dorky Zeta Gundam 'marble' shooter.

I'd also registered for CitrusCon but I really didn't do much with it because I was busy with the nerd show and also just... didn't really enjoy trying to communicate on the discord. Textual equivalency of being in a room with a thousand people yelling to each other.

The second book I finished this weekend was Earthlings by Sakyaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Takemori. This book is about Natsuki, a girl who's always felt she doesn't quite belong with humans. This has been book #16 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.

I've struggled a lot with what to say about this book, or whether to say anything at all. First, as many other reviews note, the book description does not in any way prepare you for the trigger warnings that may apply, so if you have no-gos for reading, do have a look around for a list before you crack this one open. 

There are a lot of things you could take away from this book. The lifelong impact of childhood sexual abuse. The damage of a child having no safe adult to confide in. The pain of feeling alienated from society. The pain caused by strict social expectations that leave no room for individuals to pursue other modes of living. The danger that refusing to allow deviations from the "norm" will lead individuals incapable of conforming to that norm to reject society altogether. The idea that rejecting smaller social rules eventually leads to complete anarchy and amorality. The suffocating impact of the absence of privacy and the extremes to which it may drive people.

It is an exploration of the harm done, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who don't "fit" into the mold of society. How much of it is reality and how much of it is Natsuki's imagination is also up to the reader.

It's also a book about interrogating taboos, which leads to the trigger warning above. Natsuki's choice not to marry or have children is in and of itself, violating a taboo of her culture. Her feeling that violating this taboo does no harm to her or anyone else naturally leads to questioning other taboos, and you can't write a book about questioning taboos and then say "but not that taboo, that's too taboo!" so the book does go some dark places as Natsuki and her companions ask themselves if there's anything rational in refraining from theft, murder, and assault. 

The translation is well done, particularly in dealing with a number of sensitive subjects.

I'm not sure what I ultimately take away from Earthlings. Perhaps how much damage societal rejection has on a person's psyche and the harms that can spawn from that. We are, in the end, social creatures. Feeling from a young age that you don't belong is bound to have detrimental developmental impacts.