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Dec. 12th, 2025 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelChewy has a "Chewy Claus" thing around this time of year where you can help your pet(s) write a letter to Santa. How good they've been, whether they prefer treats or toys, and a free-answer "what would you ask for if you could have anything".
Last year I did it and at the end of December got a "sorry the sleigh missed you, here's a coupon code if you want to buy anything". And supposedly they donate food to pets in need for every letter submitted, so why not.
This year, I did it ... and today a box came addressed to Phoebe and Loki. (!!)
There was a dog toy that was a "lunch box" with a rope handle, and a green apple plushy and a juice-box plushy with Velcro to attach to the front of the lunchbox. Al three items contain squeakers. (So far, they are still intact, though the white parts of the juice box are rather, erm, dingy. That tends to happen with her toys, but it's impressive for 8 hours.)
There was a cat toy that was sushi themed (including a green wasabi packet) and has catnip in. Loki is mostly nocturnal these days but I put them in a cat bed that sits on my bed and when I came back in later, one was on the floor... so either he loves it or hates it, lol. Also a food purée treat thing similar to churu, though he's iffy about food.
There was an ornament, metal I think, with a sleigh and presents and "Chewy Claus 2025", which is now on my desk tree.
And there was a card with the cutest illustration of Chewy Claus helpers, and a handwritten note wishing them holiday cheer.
I'm a little astonished because I honestly hadn't expected to get anything, but it was a cute surprise!
Edit: Loki definitely likes. I may regret having them on the bed at the same time I am... lol
Last year I did it and at the end of December got a "sorry the sleigh missed you, here's a coupon code if you want to buy anything". And supposedly they donate food to pets in need for every letter submitted, so why not.
This year, I did it ... and today a box came addressed to Phoebe and Loki. (!!)
There was a dog toy that was a "lunch box" with a rope handle, and a green apple plushy and a juice-box plushy with Velcro to attach to the front of the lunchbox. Al three items contain squeakers. (So far, they are still intact, though the white parts of the juice box are rather, erm, dingy. That tends to happen with her toys, but it's impressive for 8 hours.)
There was a cat toy that was sushi themed (including a green wasabi packet) and has catnip in. Loki is mostly nocturnal these days but I put them in a cat bed that sits on my bed and when I came back in later, one was on the floor... so either he loves it or hates it, lol. Also a food purée treat thing similar to churu, though he's iffy about food.
There was an ornament, metal I think, with a sleigh and presents and "Chewy Claus 2025", which is now on my desk tree.
And there was a card with the cutest illustration of Chewy Claus helpers, and a handwritten note wishing them holiday cheer.
I'm a little astonished because I honestly hadn't expected to get anything, but it was a cute surprise!
Edit: Loki definitely likes. I may regret having them on the bed at the same time I am... lol
A most stressful week...
Dec. 12th, 2025 09:24 pmbrithistorianThis has been a super-stressful week. We had a somewhat lighter than usual round of medical appointments this week, but it was more than made up for by home repair appointments.
We had the garage door installation scheduled for Tuesday, which ended up not being completed that day, so the technician would have to come back Wednesday. Then Tuesday night I discovered that the basement drain was backing up whenever we used the washing machine, dishwasher, or kitchen sink, so I called the plumbing company for that, but they weren't able to send a plumber out until Friday afternoon.
Then Wednesday night, right after the garage door technician left, L. discovered that the washing machine was leaking (totally not related to the basement drain backing up). I tried to fix it, but ended up making it worse. So I had A. call an appliance repair service, who said they could send someone over Thursday morning.
Thursday morning the appliance repair technician came and fixed the dishwasher. Then I had to take A. to get allergy shots, then we went to Ricky's house, where I shoveled the 7-8 inches of snow we'd gotten over the previous two days. (He doesn't drive, but I had to shovel a path from the street to his door so Meals on Wheels could deliver and also to shovel his back stairs to he could let his dogs out.) I'm still sore from this.
Today I had a National Heritage Responders meeting (which went very well), then I had to wait for the plumber to arrive and fix the basement drain. We had originally had a noon to 3PM window for him to show up, which got pushed back to a 2:30PM to 4:30PM window and he ended up showing up at about 3:45PM.
All the house things have been successfully fixed, and we're planning to enjoy this weekend's cold weather from inside the house as much as possible. (It's -2°F out right now, and supposed to go down from here, then only to get as high as 0°F tomorrow, and not to get into actual positive temperatures until Sunday.) But anyway, that's why I've got a massive mental backlog of posts I want to make, and why I've got a folder in my email of comments from you that I want to respond to, and so forth. I hope you're all doing well.
Erin Reads: Pet Shop of Horrors, Collector’s Edition, post 2 (volume 1, chapters 4-6)
Dec. 12th, 2025 10:18 pmerinptahContinued liveblog as I read Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH, and make sporadic comparisons to the original Tokyopop translation.
Chapters 1-3 were covered here. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here. The rest of this post is the notes I microblogged in a Mastodon thread and a Bluesky thread.
Rec-Cember: Two recent short Murderbot gen fics
Dec. 12th, 2025 05:27 pmsholioAs I don't have the bandwidth for a lot of reccing tonight, here are two quick recs of short Murderbot friendship gen from the last couple of days that I enjoyed. Both of these are more bookverse than show-based.
Ransom by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
BoldlyNo (400 wds, Gurathin-centric)
Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.
The Truth, Bitter as It Is byHonorH (900 wds, Gurathin & Murderbot)
An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.
Ransom by
Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.
The Truth, Bitter as It Is by
An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.
A couple of links
Dec. 12th, 2025 03:51 pmsholioamperslashexchange just announced a collection delay and still needs pinch hitters! See if there's anything you can pick up here - there are some with bigger fandoms as well as some small fandoms.Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:
“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”
Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.
Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:
“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”
Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.
movies: Wicked 2, Dust Bunny
Dec. 12th, 2025 04:56 pmsnickficDust Bunny (2025). A little girl hires a hit man (Mads Mikkelsen) who lives across the hall to kill a monster under her bed. Or, Roald Dahl meets John Wick.
This is listed as a "horror thriller," which I guess is true in the same sense that the Barbie movie is a "political drama." I would be more inclined to call this a dark fantasy/action movie. It's also rated R, and I legitimately do not know why; this is like a mid-tier PG-13. I kept waiting for things to get gory and justify the rating, and they never did, so I recommend managing your expectations on that front.
The aesthetic here goes extremely hard. Their apartment building is an absolutely incredible art nouveau confection. We visit other locales with similarly heightened decor, but honestly nothing is nearly as visually stunning, which I think is fine, because the apartment building is the heart of the movie.
The acting here is all extremely good. In addition to Mikkelsen and the child actress, who is fantastic, we also have Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian, and someone I didn't know named Sheila Atim who is delightful.
This is fun ride and great time. I spent most of the movie having absolutely no idea where it would go next. If any of this piques your interest, I definitely recommend it.
--
Wicked: For Good (2025). First, props, the subtitling is clever. Anyway, this is the second half of the story of a good witch and a bad witch fighting/collaborating with the machine while pining for each other and also some guy who's just kind of there.
Honestly, "just kind of there" describes a lot of this movie. It doesn't really expand on any of the political motivation from the first movie, so I had trouble remembering exactly WHY the wizard and his henchwoman have decided to demonize the animals and by extension their defender Elphaba. Fiyero the awkward third wheel, whom I actually found quite charming in the first movie, got almost nothing to do here. No animal character got any kind of significant development; the closest we got was one of the flying monkeys, who didn't even get any lines for plot reasons. There's a subplot involving Elphaba's disabled sister becoming increasingly more unhinged and embittered by her romantic disappointment and probably ableist society at large, but then, you know, she dies from a house falling on her, so that's the end of that. There's a Big Reveal about Elphaba's parentage that literally everyone saw coming, but which Elphaba herself doesn't even get to find out about or react to. There are barely even any big musical set pieces and basically no dance choreography at all. The only song that made a real impression on me was Elphaba's big heel turn song No Good Deed, and I hear from the theater folks that it was kind of weaksauce compared to the live musical version.
All that said, this is the Elphaba and Glinda show, and they're great, honestly. Ariana Grande's comic timing is impeccable. The pining truly is spectacular; there's an amazing scene towards the end that must be seen to be believed. The shippers feasted.
This is listed as a "horror thriller," which I guess is true in the same sense that the Barbie movie is a "political drama." I would be more inclined to call this a dark fantasy/action movie. It's also rated R, and I legitimately do not know why; this is like a mid-tier PG-13. I kept waiting for things to get gory and justify the rating, and they never did, so I recommend managing your expectations on that front.
The aesthetic here goes extremely hard. Their apartment building is an absolutely incredible art nouveau confection. We visit other locales with similarly heightened decor, but honestly nothing is nearly as visually stunning, which I think is fine, because the apartment building is the heart of the movie.
The acting here is all extremely good. In addition to Mikkelsen and the child actress, who is fantastic, we also have Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian, and someone I didn't know named Sheila Atim who is delightful.
This is fun ride and great time. I spent most of the movie having absolutely no idea where it would go next. If any of this piques your interest, I definitely recommend it.
--
Wicked: For Good (2025). First, props, the subtitling is clever. Anyway, this is the second half of the story of a good witch and a bad witch fighting/collaborating with the machine while pining for each other and also some guy who's just kind of there.
Honestly, "just kind of there" describes a lot of this movie. It doesn't really expand on any of the political motivation from the first movie, so I had trouble remembering exactly WHY the wizard and his henchwoman have decided to demonize the animals and by extension their defender Elphaba. Fiyero the awkward third wheel, whom I actually found quite charming in the first movie, got almost nothing to do here. No animal character got any kind of significant development; the closest we got was one of the flying monkeys, who didn't even get any lines for plot reasons. There's a subplot involving Elphaba's disabled sister becoming increasingly more unhinged and embittered by her romantic disappointment and probably ableist society at large, but then, you know, she dies from a house falling on her, so that's the end of that. There's a Big Reveal about Elphaba's parentage that literally everyone saw coming, but which Elphaba herself doesn't even get to find out about or react to. There are barely even any big musical set pieces and basically no dance choreography at all. The only song that made a real impression on me was Elphaba's big heel turn song No Good Deed, and I hear from the theater folks that it was kind of weaksauce compared to the live musical version.
All that said, this is the Elphaba and Glinda show, and they're great, honestly. Ariana Grande's comic timing is impeccable. The pining truly is spectacular; there's an amazing scene towards the end that must be seen to be believed. The shippers feasted.
(no subject)
Dec. 12th, 2025 05:05 pmskygiantsThe Ukrainian fantasy novel Vita Nostra has been on my to-read list for a while ever since shati described it as 'kind of like the Wayside School books' in a conversation about dark academia, a description which I trusted implicitly because shati always describes things in helpful and universally accepted terms.
Anyway, so Vita Nostra is more or less a horror novel .... or at least it's about the thing which is scariest to me, existential transformation of the self without consent and without control.
At the start of the book, teenage Sasha is on a nice beach vacation with her mom when she finds herself being followed everywhere by a strange, ominous man. He has a dictate for her: every morning, she has to skinny-dip at 4 AM and swim out to a certain point in the ocean, then back, Or Else. Or Else? Well, the first time she oversleeps, her mom's vacation boyfriend has a mild heart attack and ends up in the ER. The next time ... well, who knows, the next time, so Sasha keeps on swimming. And then the vacation ends! And the horrible and inexplicable interval is, thankfully, over!
Except of course it isn't over; the ominous man returns, with more instructions, which eventually derail Sasha off of her planned normal pathway of high school --> university --> career. Instead, despite the confused protests of her mother, she glumly follows the instructions of her evil angel and treks off to the remote town of Torpa to attend the Institute of Special Technologies.
Nobody is at the Institute of Special Technologies by choice. Nobody is there to have a good time. Everyone has been coerced there by an ominous advisor; as entrance precondition, everyone has been given a set of miserable tasks to perform, Or Else. Also, it's hard not to notice that all the older students look strange and haunted and shamble disconcertingly through the dorms in a way that seems like a sort of existential dispute with the concept of space, though if you ask them about it they're just like 'lol you'll understand eventually,' which is not reassuring. And then there are the actual assignments -- the assignments that seem designed to train you to think in a way the human brain was not designed to think -- and which Sasha is actually really good at! the best in her class! fortunately or unfortunately .... but fortunately in at least this respect: everyone wants to pass, because if you fail at the midterm, if you fail at the finals, there's always the Or Else waiting.
AND ALSO all the roommates are assigned and it's hell.
Weird, fascinating book! I found it very tense and propulsive despite the fact that for chapters at a time all that happens is Sasha doing horrible homework exercises and turning her brain inside out. I feel like a lot of magic school books are, essentially, power fantasies. What if you learned magic? What if you were so good at it? Sasha is learning some kind of magic, and Sasha is so good at it, but the overwhelming emotion of this book is powerlessness, lack of agency, arbitrary tasks and incomprehensible experiences papered over with a parody of Normal College Life. On the one hand Sasha is desperate to hold onto her humanity and to remain a person that her mother will recognize when she comes home; on the other hand, the veneer of Normal College Life layered on top of the Institute's existential weirdness seems more and more pointless and frustrating the further on it goes and the stranger Sasha herself becomes. I think the moment it really clicked for me is midway through Sasha's second year, when ( spoilers )
shati described it as 'kind of like the Wayside School books' in a conversation about dark academia, a description which I trusted implicitly because shati always describes things in helpful and universally accepted terms. Anyway, so Vita Nostra is more or less a horror novel .... or at least it's about the thing which is scariest to me, existential transformation of the self without consent and without control.
At the start of the book, teenage Sasha is on a nice beach vacation with her mom when she finds herself being followed everywhere by a strange, ominous man. He has a dictate for her: every morning, she has to skinny-dip at 4 AM and swim out to a certain point in the ocean, then back, Or Else. Or Else? Well, the first time she oversleeps, her mom's vacation boyfriend has a mild heart attack and ends up in the ER. The next time ... well, who knows, the next time, so Sasha keeps on swimming. And then the vacation ends! And the horrible and inexplicable interval is, thankfully, over!
Except of course it isn't over; the ominous man returns, with more instructions, which eventually derail Sasha off of her planned normal pathway of high school --> university --> career. Instead, despite the confused protests of her mother, she glumly follows the instructions of her evil angel and treks off to the remote town of Torpa to attend the Institute of Special Technologies.
Nobody is at the Institute of Special Technologies by choice. Nobody is there to have a good time. Everyone has been coerced there by an ominous advisor; as entrance precondition, everyone has been given a set of miserable tasks to perform, Or Else. Also, it's hard not to notice that all the older students look strange and haunted and shamble disconcertingly through the dorms in a way that seems like a sort of existential dispute with the concept of space, though if you ask them about it they're just like 'lol you'll understand eventually,' which is not reassuring. And then there are the actual assignments -- the assignments that seem designed to train you to think in a way the human brain was not designed to think -- and which Sasha is actually really good at! the best in her class! fortunately or unfortunately .... but fortunately in at least this respect: everyone wants to pass, because if you fail at the midterm, if you fail at the finals, there's always the Or Else waiting.
AND ALSO all the roommates are assigned and it's hell.
Weird, fascinating book! I found it very tense and propulsive despite the fact that for chapters at a time all that happens is Sasha doing horrible homework exercises and turning her brain inside out. I feel like a lot of magic school books are, essentially, power fantasies. What if you learned magic? What if you were so good at it? Sasha is learning some kind of magic, and Sasha is so good at it, but the overwhelming emotion of this book is powerlessness, lack of agency, arbitrary tasks and incomprehensible experiences papered over with a parody of Normal College Life. On the one hand Sasha is desperate to hold onto her humanity and to remain a person that her mother will recognize when she comes home; on the other hand, the veneer of Normal College Life layered on top of the Institute's existential weirdness seems more and more pointless and frustrating the further on it goes and the stranger Sasha herself becomes. I think the moment it really clicked for me is midway through Sasha's second year, when ( spoilers )
The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Dec. 12th, 2025 01:45 pmrachelmanija
After a wet-bulb heat wave kills thousands in India, the UN forms an organization, the Ministry for the Future, intended to deal with climate change on behalf of future generations. They're not the only organization trying mitigate or fight or adapt to climate change; many other people and groups are working on the same thing, using everything from science to financial incentives to persuasion to terrorism.
We very loosely follow two very lightly sketched-in characters, an Irish woman who leads the Ministry for the Future and an American man whose life is derailed when he's a city's sole survivor of the Indian wet-bulb event, but the book has a very broad canvas and they're not protagonists in the usual sense of the word. The book isn't about individuals, it's about a pair of phenomena: climate change and what people do about it. The mission to save the future is the protagonist insofar as there is one.
This is the first KSR book I've actually managed to finish! (It's also the only one that I got farther in than about two chapters.) It's a very interesting, enlightening, educational book. I enjoyed reading it.
He's a very particular kind of writer, much more interested in ideas and a very broad scope than in characters or plot. That approach works very well for this book. The first chapter, which details the wet-bulb event, is a stunning, horrifying piece of writing. It's also the closest the book ever comes to feeling like a normal kind of novel. The rest of it is more like a work of popular nonfiction from an alternate timeline, full of science and economics and politics and projects.
I'm pretty sure Robinson researched the absolute cutting edge of every possible action that could possibly mitigate climate change, and wrote the book based on the idea of "What if we tried all of it?"
Very plausibly, not everything works. (In a bit of dark humor, an attempt to explain to billionaires why they should care about other people fails miserably.) Lots of people are either apathetic or actively fighting against the efforts, and there's a whole lot of death, disaster, and irreparable damage along the way. But the project as a whole succeeds, not because of any one action taken by any one group, but because of all of the actions taken by multiple groups. It's a blueprint for what we could be doing, if we were willing to do it.
The Ministry for the Future came out in 2020. Reading it now, its optimism about the idea that people would be willing to pull together for the sake of future generations makes it feel like a relic from an impossibly long time ago.
ficwip's 2025 in review
Dec. 12th, 2025 12:12 pmtheemeraldgirl231. Including WIPs, how many fics have you worked on since January 1st? Original fiction counts too!
I worked on 17 fics and 3 original works this year!
2. How many did you post for other people to read?
I posted 12 of them.
3. What's something NEW that you tried in a fic?
I used different styling elements to add sign language into one of my fics.
4. What piece of media inspired you the most?
XO, Kitty. Also, real life (actor and idol behind the scenes videos, performances, reactions, photos).
5. How many fandoms did you write for?
I wrote for nine fandoms! (Genshin Impact, LE SSERAFIM, The Pitt, LOONA, Thai Actor RPF, TWICE, XO Kitty, My Safe Zone, Girl Meets World)
6. What ship(s) captured your heart?
LE SSERAFIM: Kazuha/Yunjin
XO, Kitty: Kitty/Yuri
7. What character(s) captured your heart?
Yuri Han, Nakamura Kazuha, Park Chaewon, Ganyu, Victoria Javadi, Trinity Santos, Lena Lorena Schuett, Miu Natsha Taechamongkalapiwat
8. Did you write for any new fandoms or ships?
XO, Kitty, Thai Actor RPF, Genshin Impact, The Pitt, My Safe Zone, LOONA, and Girl Meets World are all new this year! The only fandoms I've written for previously are TWICE and LE SSERAFIM.
Kitty/Yuri, Ganyu/Keqing, Riley/Maya, Milk/Love, Fay/May, Lookmhee/Sonya, and Chaewon/Hyeju are all new ships for me!
9. What fic meant the most to you to write?
Well, I started it two years ago and it's still on-going, but I posted the first three chapters of Welcome to Le Café. It's my most meaningful work so far as it deals with disability in a way that I haven't written before and I really want to do my best in representing that fairly.
10. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?
My XO, Kitty season 3 imagining Finding My Seoul! It's just so fun to write something I know is not going to happen, but what I want to anyway!
11. What fic was the most satisfying to finish?
For sure let love take control. It's not posted yet as of writing this, but man it felt good to get that out there.
12. What fic was the most challenging to work on?
Definitely, Welcome To Le Café. There's a lot of moving parts I have to keep track of, but that's also the most rewarding part.
13. What's the most interesting topic you researched for a fic?
I haven't gotten to implement it yet, but I would say researching Korean wedding traditions was super interesting.
14. What were your shortest and longest fics?
My 4 drabbles I posted are the shortest at 100 words each, and my on-going XO, Kitty season 3 imagining Finding My Seoul is the longest, currently sitting at ~33,000 words.
15. What was on your writing playlist?
I Like Me Better by Lauv was a big hitter.
16. Where did you write? Was there a favorite spot?
I typically wrote at home, but I liked the library, campus hallways, and classrooms before class.
17. What’s your favorite title of the year?
Loved the double meanings of Finding My Seoul and let love take control.
18. Share your favorite opening line
I can't choose just one! So have three!
"All walking through Times Square reminds Yunjin of is the time during the Easy, Crazy, Hot tour when Kazuha tried to get someone to do a dance challenge with her while wearing a dinosaur costume. It’s a bittersweet memory now."- for a while
"In the Incheon airport stood two best friends about to be separated by 11,088 kilometers for a year."- never too far away (11,088 kilometers)
"A car was supposed to be safe. It was a vehicle with many complex parts. It weighed tons, with a protective metal coating around the exterior. Or at least, that was what famous ballet dancer Nakamura Kazuha thought."- Welcome To Le Café
19. Share your favorite ending line
Have three once again!
"They stared at each other, their eyes reflecting each other. Emotion swirled in pools of brown, and that was honesty. The eyes never lied. Mina was always more than just a muse. Chaeyoung didn’t need to say it. So, instead, she leaned in. Actions always spoke louder than words, anyway." - GIRL
"Hyeju kissed Chaewon, and everything except the taste of salt and mint fell away. The fact that they were in the middle of the airport didn’t matter. After all, some of the best love stories started in an airport." - never too far away (11,088 kilometers)
"Milk smiled, snuggling close to Love. It spoke louder than any words. They had each other. Damp hair, aching bones, and all." - let love take control
20. Share your favorite piece of dialogue
“What is it? Nothing can be that weird after everything we’ve been through,” Yuri said.
“Can I practice Korean with you?”
“Like right now?”
“Just tell me if I sound atrocious.”
“It can’t be that bad, but sure.”
Kitty took a deep breath before starting. “Hello. It’s nice to see you again. How have you been? How is your work going? Any interesting stories?”
“It’s a little stiff and formal, but it doesn’t sound terrible. You just need practice,” Yuri said.
“I bet Min Ho would’ve stopped me in the middle of my sentence. So, thank you. I guess I just need to loosen up.”
Yuri lightly nudged Kitty in the side. “You need to embrace your Korean side more, Song.”
Kitty hated how the nickname made her heart skip a beat more than “Covey” ever did. Maybe Min Ho was right to have his reservations. She always teetered so close to the edge of risking it all, of making another mistake, of going back on all her promises when Yuri was next to her. But she couldn’t afford to relive that blissful moment.
Looking down at the brick beneath her feet, Kitty sighed. “Easier said than done.”
“Wasn’t your whole goal in coming here to do that?” Yuri asked.
“Do you think my mom is proud of me?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Why wouldn’t Jina be proud of you?”
“Why wouldn’t Eve be proud of you?”
“Touché.”
“So, are you going to knock on the door?”
21. Share the funniest line(s) you wrote this year
This one made me laugh.
“They’re doing well! They still ask about you sometimes, you know? ‘I wonder how that Kazuha girl you always talked about is doing.’ I never know how to respond. I want to say you’re well too, but somehow that feels like a lie.” Yunjin gestured towards Kazuha’s prosthetic. “You lost a leg, for God’s sake!” - Welcome To Le Café
22. Did you get frustrated with a fic at some point? What happened and how did you get past it?
I was frustrated with how to work through chapter 3 of Welcome To Le Café for a while, but I found a work around by finding that the phrase I wanted to convey had a different sign that sent across the same message.
23. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?
Finishing my Fandom Trumps Hate 2024 obligations!
24. Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing something?
No, not really. I always have more things to work on.
25. Did you create fanworks other than fic? Show one off!
I recorded two podfics!
[Podfic] my heart is a traveler for celli
[Podfic] When Words Fail for ThatBitchMabel
26. How many fannish events did you take part in? Things like bangs, exchanges, ship weeks, zines, prompt memes, etc. They all count!
This year I wrote for Kpop Ficmix, ficwip's the fic that haunts you, ficwip's A Picture's Worth 1000 Words, ficwip's drabble prompts, scarygirlynight, Sapphic Stocking Stuffers, Yuletide, and fandomtrees. I also finished Fandom Trumps Hate assignments from 2024.
27. Think back on everything you've worked on since January and give yourself a compliment. A real one! Be nice to yourself.
I made a real comeback in 2025 and I'm so proud of myself for having my second most productive writing year on AO3 to date!
28. If this were an awards show, who would you thank?
Thank you to my friends in ficwip and kpop multimuses, and my real life friends and family for always supporting me through everything. I love you guys!
29. What’s left on your to-do list for 2025?
Nothing. I completed everything I wanted to this year. I'm taking the rest of the year to study for the LSAT.
30. What would you like to write next year?
Next year, I want to finish writing Finding My Seoul, I want to write another M/M fic, and I want to participate in a fandom event that I haven't done before (this one's in progress with Small Fandom Big Bang, but another one would be nice).
I worked on 17 fics and 3 original works this year!
2. How many did you post for other people to read?
I posted 12 of them.
3. What's something NEW that you tried in a fic?
I used different styling elements to add sign language into one of my fics.
4. What piece of media inspired you the most?
XO, Kitty. Also, real life (actor and idol behind the scenes videos, performances, reactions, photos).
5. How many fandoms did you write for?
I wrote for nine fandoms! (Genshin Impact, LE SSERAFIM, The Pitt, LOONA, Thai Actor RPF, TWICE, XO Kitty, My Safe Zone, Girl Meets World)
6. What ship(s) captured your heart?
LE SSERAFIM: Kazuha/Yunjin
XO, Kitty: Kitty/Yuri
7. What character(s) captured your heart?
Yuri Han, Nakamura Kazuha, Park Chaewon, Ganyu, Victoria Javadi, Trinity Santos, Lena Lorena Schuett, Miu Natsha Taechamongkalapiwat
8. Did you write for any new fandoms or ships?
XO, Kitty, Thai Actor RPF, Genshin Impact, The Pitt, My Safe Zone, LOONA, and Girl Meets World are all new this year! The only fandoms I've written for previously are TWICE and LE SSERAFIM.
Kitty/Yuri, Ganyu/Keqing, Riley/Maya, Milk/Love, Fay/May, Lookmhee/Sonya, and Chaewon/Hyeju are all new ships for me!
9. What fic meant the most to you to write?
Well, I started it two years ago and it's still on-going, but I posted the first three chapters of Welcome to Le Café. It's my most meaningful work so far as it deals with disability in a way that I haven't written before and I really want to do my best in representing that fairly.
10. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?
My XO, Kitty season 3 imagining Finding My Seoul! It's just so fun to write something I know is not going to happen, but what I want to anyway!
11. What fic was the most satisfying to finish?
For sure let love take control. It's not posted yet as of writing this, but man it felt good to get that out there.
12. What fic was the most challenging to work on?
Definitely, Welcome To Le Café. There's a lot of moving parts I have to keep track of, but that's also the most rewarding part.
13. What's the most interesting topic you researched for a fic?
I haven't gotten to implement it yet, but I would say researching Korean wedding traditions was super interesting.
14. What were your shortest and longest fics?
My 4 drabbles I posted are the shortest at 100 words each, and my on-going XO, Kitty season 3 imagining Finding My Seoul is the longest, currently sitting at ~33,000 words.
15. What was on your writing playlist?
I Like Me Better by Lauv was a big hitter.
16. Where did you write? Was there a favorite spot?
I typically wrote at home, but I liked the library, campus hallways, and classrooms before class.
17. What’s your favorite title of the year?
Loved the double meanings of Finding My Seoul and let love take control.
18. Share your favorite opening line
I can't choose just one! So have three!
"All walking through Times Square reminds Yunjin of is the time during the Easy, Crazy, Hot tour when Kazuha tried to get someone to do a dance challenge with her while wearing a dinosaur costume. It’s a bittersweet memory now."- for a while
"In the Incheon airport stood two best friends about to be separated by 11,088 kilometers for a year."- never too far away (11,088 kilometers)
"A car was supposed to be safe. It was a vehicle with many complex parts. It weighed tons, with a protective metal coating around the exterior. Or at least, that was what famous ballet dancer Nakamura Kazuha thought."- Welcome To Le Café
19. Share your favorite ending line
Have three once again!
"They stared at each other, their eyes reflecting each other. Emotion swirled in pools of brown, and that was honesty. The eyes never lied. Mina was always more than just a muse. Chaeyoung didn’t need to say it. So, instead, she leaned in. Actions always spoke louder than words, anyway." - GIRL
"Hyeju kissed Chaewon, and everything except the taste of salt and mint fell away. The fact that they were in the middle of the airport didn’t matter. After all, some of the best love stories started in an airport." - never too far away (11,088 kilometers)
"Milk smiled, snuggling close to Love. It spoke louder than any words. They had each other. Damp hair, aching bones, and all." - let love take control
20. Share your favorite piece of dialogue
excerpt from Finding My Seoul chapter 3x6: To Bukjeon, With Love
“This is a weird request, but…” Kitty trailed off, not being able to admit her fear.“What is it? Nothing can be that weird after everything we’ve been through,” Yuri said.
“Can I practice Korean with you?”
“Like right now?”
“Just tell me if I sound atrocious.”
“It can’t be that bad, but sure.”
Kitty took a deep breath before starting. “Hello. It’s nice to see you again. How have you been? How is your work going? Any interesting stories?”
“It’s a little stiff and formal, but it doesn’t sound terrible. You just need practice,” Yuri said.
“I bet Min Ho would’ve stopped me in the middle of my sentence. So, thank you. I guess I just need to loosen up.”
Yuri lightly nudged Kitty in the side. “You need to embrace your Korean side more, Song.”
Kitty hated how the nickname made her heart skip a beat more than “Covey” ever did. Maybe Min Ho was right to have his reservations. She always teetered so close to the edge of risking it all, of making another mistake, of going back on all her promises when Yuri was next to her. But she couldn’t afford to relive that blissful moment.
Looking down at the brick beneath her feet, Kitty sighed. “Easier said than done.”
“Wasn’t your whole goal in coming here to do that?” Yuri asked.
“Do you think my mom is proud of me?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“Why wouldn’t Jina be proud of you?”
“Why wouldn’t Eve be proud of you?”
“Touché.”
“So, are you going to knock on the door?”
21. Share the funniest line(s) you wrote this year
This one made me laugh.
“They’re doing well! They still ask about you sometimes, you know? ‘I wonder how that Kazuha girl you always talked about is doing.’ I never know how to respond. I want to say you’re well too, but somehow that feels like a lie.” Yunjin gestured towards Kazuha’s prosthetic. “You lost a leg, for God’s sake!” - Welcome To Le Café
22. Did you get frustrated with a fic at some point? What happened and how did you get past it?
I was frustrated with how to work through chapter 3 of Welcome To Le Café for a while, but I found a work around by finding that the phrase I wanted to convey had a different sign that sent across the same message.
23. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?
Finishing my Fandom Trumps Hate 2024 obligations!
24. Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing something?
No, not really. I always have more things to work on.
25. Did you create fanworks other than fic? Show one off!
I recorded two podfics!
[Podfic] my heart is a traveler for celli
[Podfic] When Words Fail for ThatBitchMabel
26. How many fannish events did you take part in? Things like bangs, exchanges, ship weeks, zines, prompt memes, etc. They all count!
This year I wrote for Kpop Ficmix, ficwip's the fic that haunts you, ficwip's A Picture's Worth 1000 Words, ficwip's drabble prompts, scarygirlynight, Sapphic Stocking Stuffers, Yuletide, and fandomtrees. I also finished Fandom Trumps Hate assignments from 2024.
27. Think back on everything you've worked on since January and give yourself a compliment. A real one! Be nice to yourself.
I made a real comeback in 2025 and I'm so proud of myself for having my second most productive writing year on AO3 to date!
28. If this were an awards show, who would you thank?
Thank you to my friends in ficwip and kpop multimuses, and my real life friends and family for always supporting me through everything. I love you guys!
29. What’s left on your to-do list for 2025?
Nothing. I completed everything I wanted to this year. I'm taking the rest of the year to study for the LSAT.
30. What would you like to write next year?
Next year, I want to finish writing Finding My Seoul, I want to write another M/M fic, and I want to participate in a fandom event that I haven't done before (this one's in progress with Small Fandom Big Bang, but another one would be nice).
Sci-Fi Outside the Spotlight Book Club Reflections (Part 2)
Dec. 12th, 2025 11:09 amjs_thrillIn this post, a follow on to this recent one, I'm going to reflect on the middle three anthologies we read:
separation anxiety, Evie Shockley (2000) — This is a story set in a dystopian world where people (particularly ethnic minorities, who are the characters in the story) live in highly segregated and controlled communities that are walled in and allow for some in- and out- migration, but only with permission of the white government. The main characters are siblings who have a strong attachment to each other, but the primary protagonist wishes to pursue life beyond the walls of this controlled community, and her sister does not. Several times that we would come across sibling dynamics in other stories or later volumes, I would be reminded of this story, and how it managed to portray affection, closeness, and conflicting perspectives, all along with the story's nuanced treatment of the societal/racial issues shaping their conflict. This may be the story I've referred back to most in relation to other stories we've read in later volumes. Shockley is principally a poet (something that was true of a number of contributors to the Dark Matter volumes, iirc), and, unfortunately, has not written any other short stories.
Greedy Choke Puppy, Nalo Hopkinson (2000) — This is a story about a soucouyant (a creature from caribbean folklore), and as I was reading it, I had the distinct feeling I had read it before. I am not sure when or where I would have, but I don't think I was just predicting how the story would turn out, it really felt like I was remembering the ending. Maybe we read it in an English class in college? At any rate, Hopkinson's prose is excellent, and she manages to create very effective tone/atmosphere, as well as a compelling story. "Hopkinson can write a good story" is probably not news to people, but it was definitely one of the stories that stuck with me.
The Evening and the Morning and the Night, Octavia Butler (1987) — Again, "Octavia Butler is good at writing" is not something to stop the presses over, and I had definitely read this story before, because I had read virtually everything she had written over the year or so prior to the book club getting to this volume (I started with Mind of my Mind, and then just kept going). The primary threads in the story that connect with other of Butler's work (in my view) is a) her interest in situations where one has internal conflict between what you might call biological or other subconscious compulsion to behave one way, and one's conscious identity (in this case, there is a genetic disorder that manifests a number of behavioral compulsions for those who have it, and which have traditionally uniformly led to serious self-harm, but we also learn that it is responsible for other behavioral tendencies in our protagonist, some of which she is unhappy to accede to and does not initially want to embrace), and b) groups that don't naturally fit into existing social structures successfully, and the social structures that they would adopt if given the reigns.
Gimmile's Songs, Charles Saunders (1984) — The rare instance of one I am including that stuck with me because of how much I wound up disliking it. This is a story that had a ton of potential. It's a sword and sorcery story, we have an awesome protagonist—Dossouye—who is riding some sort of cool animal companion, and dispatching enemies with ease (you can tell from my affinity for that CL Moore story, and Russ's Alyx story, that I am totally a sucker for this genre), but the story is basically about her running into a guy with roofie magic (via music), and then when the roofie music wears off, she is like "oh that's totally cool, because I would have been down for that anyway." And like, what I would give to be an editor who could go back and make this be a better story/series, because ugh, why squander such a cool protagonist on such misogynist garbage?
Dark Matter Volume 2
The Glass Bottle Trick, Nalo Hopkinson (2000) — I don't want to flood with Nalo Hopkinson, but I definitely remember our discussion of this piece. It's a retelling of a bluebeard and it has a lot of nice subtle things going on with the presentation and the prose.
Jesus Christ in Texas, WEB Du Bois (1920) — Some of the stories we read are doing subtle things, but this one is not being subtle. A very effective piece and also a piece with a fairly clear and loud message ("confront your prejudice, and live up to your own professed tenets"). As we read these books, we often wondered why certain pieces were included and then we also wondered about why pieces were arranged in the order they were. With The Future is Female volumes, the answer was clear for the latter, the pieces were in chronological order of publication. Sometimes we had interesting thematic juxtapositions and maybe that reflected something about the time period those pieces came out in, but it might also have just been noise emerging from the random sample of two pieces chosen by the editor. As you can see from this sequence of stories, Dark Matter was not organized chronologically. So, why were the pieces put in the order they were? Your guess is as good as mine. Sometimes adjacent stories would have thematic similarity, but often not. This is another place where editorial apparatus is helpful. If we had notes from the editor saying "I chose to include this story because" it would give the reader a way to place the stories into that kind of context instead of just grasping for it. (Not this particular story, but I mention it here, because it's sort of an odd one out in terms of the stories that stuck with me).
Maggies, Nisi Shawl (2004) — Having looked over the rest of the stories, this is the only other ones that really stuck with me at all. It was a story about a child's relationship with the genetically engineered (iirc) nanny that lived with the family in a terraforming colony situation. The story does a good job with the relationship dynamics but leaves a lot of the worldbuilding underdeveloped.
Overall, I think the second Dark Matter volume was not as strong of a collection as the first (though both had several good stories including some I didn't mention here). One notable feature is that both had entries that either were poems, or were short fiction/flash fiction that bordered on being poems, which, while interesting to read, were definitely less plot oriented than I tend to prefer.
Wandering Stars
Trouble with Water, Horace Gold (1939) — A second entry in the "stuck with me for bad reasons": this story was just so goofy. The Wandering Stars volume had a lot of unfortunate stereotypes crop up throughout the stories (nagging wives? you betcha!), but this story really felt like a silver age Jimmy Olsen Comic (the era when he routinely turned into, e.g., a giant turtle, or similar), the premise is a guy who offends a water imp and gets cursed to not be able to touch water, and so the water moves away from his body whenever he would come into contact with it. This is played for...shenanigans mainly? Like, his concession stand is going to go out of business because it won't rain near him (maybe? I have trouble remembering the actual details). So it's not horror like "oh no, how will he drink? Will he die of thirst?", it's more slapstick, like "but how can he take a shower without making a mess". It's not a good story, but it is the one I am most likely to think of and giggle about, I guess.
Paradise Last, George Alec Effinger (1974) — In a future where people are strongly discouraged from being openly Jewish, the protagonist's relationship to his grandfather leads him to retain his Jewish identity, at the cost of being shipped off to a super remote planet. He winds up being assigned a more activist jewish wife (who is unhappy about this diaspora-based approach to undermining Jewish identity), and coming to to resist the authoritarianism somewhat. I think this is the piece in the volume that I spent the most time thinking about, and probably the character that I identified the most with.
Jachid and Jechidah, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1964) — I have probably read some Singer before this, but I don't know specifically what. I liked this piece a lot. It has a folkloric quality to it, and a somber beauty to the prose and the story.
Overall, this volume was not my favorite of the things we read (though, not my least favorite, either), and I wonder if that's because I didn't have enough distance from the subject matter, or if it's just that the anthology is somewhat dated, and a more recent, more comprehensive anthology would have landed better for me? I am still glad we read it, but I think partially, if I had just read this one on my own, I would have gotten a lot of the same things from it that I got from reading it with the group, whereas, reading the other books with the group has generally been more eye-opening and informative about the stories, other stories that are doing similar things, reasons why the stories might not be working for me, that aren't just "the story isn't good" (or the situations in which we all sort of agree "nope, that story just isn't very good").
Okay, in a couple of days, I'll retrospect the other three volumes that we read, and maybe decide whether these stories have been about man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, or man vs. Donatello
- Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
- Dark Matter v. 2: Reading the Bones
- Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction
separation anxiety, Evie Shockley (2000) — This is a story set in a dystopian world where people (particularly ethnic minorities, who are the characters in the story) live in highly segregated and controlled communities that are walled in and allow for some in- and out- migration, but only with permission of the white government. The main characters are siblings who have a strong attachment to each other, but the primary protagonist wishes to pursue life beyond the walls of this controlled community, and her sister does not. Several times that we would come across sibling dynamics in other stories or later volumes, I would be reminded of this story, and how it managed to portray affection, closeness, and conflicting perspectives, all along with the story's nuanced treatment of the societal/racial issues shaping their conflict. This may be the story I've referred back to most in relation to other stories we've read in later volumes. Shockley is principally a poet (something that was true of a number of contributors to the Dark Matter volumes, iirc), and, unfortunately, has not written any other short stories.
Greedy Choke Puppy, Nalo Hopkinson (2000) — This is a story about a soucouyant (a creature from caribbean folklore), and as I was reading it, I had the distinct feeling I had read it before. I am not sure when or where I would have, but I don't think I was just predicting how the story would turn out, it really felt like I was remembering the ending. Maybe we read it in an English class in college? At any rate, Hopkinson's prose is excellent, and she manages to create very effective tone/atmosphere, as well as a compelling story. "Hopkinson can write a good story" is probably not news to people, but it was definitely one of the stories that stuck with me.
The Evening and the Morning and the Night, Octavia Butler (1987) — Again, "Octavia Butler is good at writing" is not something to stop the presses over, and I had definitely read this story before, because I had read virtually everything she had written over the year or so prior to the book club getting to this volume (I started with Mind of my Mind, and then just kept going). The primary threads in the story that connect with other of Butler's work (in my view) is a) her interest in situations where one has internal conflict between what you might call biological or other subconscious compulsion to behave one way, and one's conscious identity (in this case, there is a genetic disorder that manifests a number of behavioral compulsions for those who have it, and which have traditionally uniformly led to serious self-harm, but we also learn that it is responsible for other behavioral tendencies in our protagonist, some of which she is unhappy to accede to and does not initially want to embrace), and b) groups that don't naturally fit into existing social structures successfully, and the social structures that they would adopt if given the reigns.
Gimmile's Songs, Charles Saunders (1984) — The rare instance of one I am including that stuck with me because of how much I wound up disliking it. This is a story that had a ton of potential. It's a sword and sorcery story, we have an awesome protagonist—Dossouye—who is riding some sort of cool animal companion, and dispatching enemies with ease (you can tell from my affinity for that CL Moore story, and Russ's Alyx story, that I am totally a sucker for this genre), but the story is basically about her running into a guy with roofie magic (via music), and then when the roofie music wears off, she is like "oh that's totally cool, because I would have been down for that anyway." And like, what I would give to be an editor who could go back and make this be a better story/series, because ugh, why squander such a cool protagonist on such misogynist garbage?
Dark Matter Volume 2
The Glass Bottle Trick, Nalo Hopkinson (2000) — I don't want to flood with Nalo Hopkinson, but I definitely remember our discussion of this piece. It's a retelling of a bluebeard and it has a lot of nice subtle things going on with the presentation and the prose.
Jesus Christ in Texas, WEB Du Bois (1920) — Some of the stories we read are doing subtle things, but this one is not being subtle. A very effective piece and also a piece with a fairly clear and loud message ("confront your prejudice, and live up to your own professed tenets"). As we read these books, we often wondered why certain pieces were included and then we also wondered about why pieces were arranged in the order they were. With The Future is Female volumes, the answer was clear for the latter, the pieces were in chronological order of publication. Sometimes we had interesting thematic juxtapositions and maybe that reflected something about the time period those pieces came out in, but it might also have just been noise emerging from the random sample of two pieces chosen by the editor. As you can see from this sequence of stories, Dark Matter was not organized chronologically. So, why were the pieces put in the order they were? Your guess is as good as mine. Sometimes adjacent stories would have thematic similarity, but often not. This is another place where editorial apparatus is helpful. If we had notes from the editor saying "I chose to include this story because" it would give the reader a way to place the stories into that kind of context instead of just grasping for it. (Not this particular story, but I mention it here, because it's sort of an odd one out in terms of the stories that stuck with me).
Maggies, Nisi Shawl (2004) — Having looked over the rest of the stories, this is the only other ones that really stuck with me at all. It was a story about a child's relationship with the genetically engineered (iirc) nanny that lived with the family in a terraforming colony situation. The story does a good job with the relationship dynamics but leaves a lot of the worldbuilding underdeveloped.
Overall, I think the second Dark Matter volume was not as strong of a collection as the first (though both had several good stories including some I didn't mention here). One notable feature is that both had entries that either were poems, or were short fiction/flash fiction that bordered on being poems, which, while interesting to read, were definitely less plot oriented than I tend to prefer.
Wandering Stars
Trouble with Water, Horace Gold (1939) — A second entry in the "stuck with me for bad reasons": this story was just so goofy. The Wandering Stars volume had a lot of unfortunate stereotypes crop up throughout the stories (nagging wives? you betcha!), but this story really felt like a silver age Jimmy Olsen Comic (the era when he routinely turned into, e.g., a giant turtle, or similar), the premise is a guy who offends a water imp and gets cursed to not be able to touch water, and so the water moves away from his body whenever he would come into contact with it. This is played for...shenanigans mainly? Like, his concession stand is going to go out of business because it won't rain near him (maybe? I have trouble remembering the actual details). So it's not horror like "oh no, how will he drink? Will he die of thirst?", it's more slapstick, like "but how can he take a shower without making a mess". It's not a good story, but it is the one I am most likely to think of and giggle about, I guess.
Paradise Last, George Alec Effinger (1974) — In a future where people are strongly discouraged from being openly Jewish, the protagonist's relationship to his grandfather leads him to retain his Jewish identity, at the cost of being shipped off to a super remote planet. He winds up being assigned a more activist jewish wife (who is unhappy about this diaspora-based approach to undermining Jewish identity), and coming to to resist the authoritarianism somewhat. I think this is the piece in the volume that I spent the most time thinking about, and probably the character that I identified the most with.
Jachid and Jechidah, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1964) — I have probably read some Singer before this, but I don't know specifically what. I liked this piece a lot. It has a folkloric quality to it, and a somber beauty to the prose and the story.
Overall, this volume was not my favorite of the things we read (though, not my least favorite, either), and I wonder if that's because I didn't have enough distance from the subject matter, or if it's just that the anthology is somewhat dated, and a more recent, more comprehensive anthology would have landed better for me? I am still glad we read it, but I think partially, if I had just read this one on my own, I would have gotten a lot of the same things from it that I got from reading it with the group, whereas, reading the other books with the group has generally been more eye-opening and informative about the stories, other stories that are doing similar things, reasons why the stories might not be working for me, that aren't just "the story isn't good" (or the situations in which we all sort of agree "nope, that story just isn't very good").
Okay, in a couple of days, I'll retrospect the other three volumes that we read, and maybe decide whether these stories have been about man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, or man vs. Donatello
Friday open thread: earliest experiences using the internet
Dec. 12th, 2025 06:19 pmdolorosa_12This is my second time taking a December talking meme prompt and using it for a Friday open thread. Today's prompt comes from thatjustwontbreak and is: talk about your earliest experiences using the internet and how it felt to you.
( They looked towards the sun, and walked into the sky )
I imagine it won't be as ... so much as all that, but what about you? How do you define your first time using the internet, and what did it feel like?
thatjustwontbreak and is: talk about your earliest experiences using the internet and how it felt to you.( They looked towards the sun, and walked into the sky )
I imagine it won't be as ... so much as all that, but what about you? How do you define your first time using the internet, and what did it feel like?
Recent reading
Dec. 12th, 2025 05:54 pmregshoeA Murder of Quality by John le Carré (1962). The second Smiley novel is a murder mystery rather than a spy story—the spy thing is only directly relevant because Smiley is dragged into the murder mystery by a former spy colleague—and I like murder mysteries better than spy novels on the whole, so I liked this. It's set at a public school and is very interesting as a portrayal of that setting in the post-war period, though it's not at all a school story, the major characters being mostly teachers and their wives. It's also very much About Class: the murder victim is the wife of a teacher from an unusually lowly background, and much of the dramatic backstory revealed as the murder is investigated involves the tension around the husband having done his best to forget his origins and integrate into the public-schoolmaster class while the wife did not (religion is part of this: they were both originally Nonconformists, but he converted to the CoE while she continued to attend the local chapel until her death). I was annoyed by how everyone, including characters from the Midlands, kept referring to the Midlands as the North, and disappointed by the lack of Mendel (does he reappear in any later books?), and also what's with saying at the start that the action takes place 'as the Lent Half (as the Easter term was called) drew to its close' and then it later becomes clear from various seasonal references that it's actually not only (the equivalent of) Lent term but fairly early on in Lent term, what term/half system is this place using?, but otherwise enjoyed this one very much as a well-constructed twisty mystery with interesting setting and themes.
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless by Eliza Haywood (1751). A solid eighteenth-century brick following the adventures in London society and courtship of the young protagonist, who is kind, generous, good-hearted and not at all vicious but who is nevertheless rather—you'll never guess what Betsy's central character flaw is. (There is a lot of extremely unsubtle character naming in this book.) It's one of those books that I found interesting rather than liking exactly. Much of it is an illustration of a contemporary sexual morality which can accurately be described as victim-blaming and double standards and not much else; the early part of the book seems to shy away from portraying controversial subjects (one character attempts abortion but fails; another sets in motion legal proceedings to divorce his wife, but dies before the divorce can be completed), and later on there's a sequence which is kind of a shockingly bold repudiation of conventional morality and also kind of really isn't, which was a bit frustrating. Betsy is really a very likeable character, though, and there's a lot of enjoyable overwrought drama and fun eighteenth-century language. (Haywood consistently spells the possessive 'its' with an apostrophe, among other things.)
The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys by Forrest Reid (1906). A strange, dreamy, virtually-textually queer book that isn't a school story at all despite being about the relationship between two boys at school and very little else. (We see almost nothing of other boys, teachers, lessons, painstakingly-detailed cricket matches or school affairs in general; the one time the book acknowledges the wider world it's to comment 'democracy, how ghastly' and then move straight on.) The writing style is strikingly modern. I enjoyed it, although neither the style nor the relationship development is the sort of thing I really get attached to. Also, a gay relationship beginning with one character confessing to the other that they've already met them in a dream as a child is a weird thing for a book like this to have in common with Carmilla.
Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest (1984). I had to know what this lesbian detective genre was all about, but this book—in which lesbian police detective Kate Delafield solves the mystery of who murdered the world's worst boss in a big corporate office building, and also isn't the main witness in the case cute?—was a bit of a disappointment. I don't get on with Forrest's writing, I think; then police procedurals are not the kind of detective story I like, and the characters and relationships in this one were not appealing to me. (I can't say I was contrary enough to like Ellen's horrible girlfriend, who does treat her pretty badly, but I was annoyed on her behalf because Forrest was so clearly writing her as a cardboard villain and Ellen just blithely cheats on her and still hasn't come clean and/or broken up with her by the end of the book. That's not a happy ending!)
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless by Eliza Haywood (1751). A solid eighteenth-century brick following the adventures in London society and courtship of the young protagonist, who is kind, generous, good-hearted and not at all vicious but who is nevertheless rather—you'll never guess what Betsy's central character flaw is. (There is a lot of extremely unsubtle character naming in this book.) It's one of those books that I found interesting rather than liking exactly. Much of it is an illustration of a contemporary sexual morality which can accurately be described as victim-blaming and double standards and not much else; the early part of the book seems to shy away from portraying controversial subjects (one character attempts abortion but fails; another sets in motion legal proceedings to divorce his wife, but dies before the divorce can be completed), and later on there's a sequence which is kind of a shockingly bold repudiation of conventional morality and also kind of really isn't, which was a bit frustrating. Betsy is really a very likeable character, though, and there's a lot of enjoyable overwrought drama and fun eighteenth-century language. (Haywood consistently spells the possessive 'its' with an apostrophe, among other things.)
The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys by Forrest Reid (1906). A strange, dreamy, virtually-textually queer book that isn't a school story at all despite being about the relationship between two boys at school and very little else. (We see almost nothing of other boys, teachers, lessons, painstakingly-detailed cricket matches or school affairs in general; the one time the book acknowledges the wider world it's to comment 'democracy, how ghastly' and then move straight on.) The writing style is strikingly modern. I enjoyed it, although neither the style nor the relationship development is the sort of thing I really get attached to. Also, a gay relationship beginning with one character confessing to the other that they've already met them in a dream as a child is a weird thing for a book like this to have in common with Carmilla.
Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest (1984). I had to know what this lesbian detective genre was all about, but this book—in which lesbian police detective Kate Delafield solves the mystery of who murdered the world's worst boss in a big corporate office building, and also isn't the main witness in the case cute?—was a bit of a disappointment. I don't get on with Forrest's writing, I think; then police procedurals are not the kind of detective story I like, and the characters and relationships in this one were not appealing to me. (I can't say I was contrary enough to like Ellen's horrible girlfriend, who does treat her pretty badly, but I was annoyed on her behalf because Forrest was so clearly writing her as a cardboard villain and Ellen just blithely cheats on her and still hasn't come clean and/or broken up with her by the end of the book. That's not a happy ending!)
2026 Get Your Words Out Sign ups are open!!!
Dec. 12th, 2025 12:55 pmfadedwings
GetYourWordsOut: Year Eighteen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net
I did't do this last year but I've done it most years since 2017. For the last few times I've been doing habit goals instead of word count goals (counting days you write instead of words) but this time I'm going back to counting words for added motivation - I hope.
We were all there in the morning — we were there and we wanted to stay
Dec. 12th, 2025 05:44 pmdolorosa_12I don't normally do standalone book reviews these days, but a recent read was so extraordinary, so overwhelming, and just so unbelievably good at what its author was trying to do that I found myself haunted by it even before I'd read its final page. I reread it five times in succession this week, unable to pick up anything else: that's how much it got its claw into me.
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