Books read in October

Nov. 8th, 2025 10:27 am
valoise: (Default)
[personal profile] valoise
Flashes of Brilliance by Anika Burgess
An excellent history of the development of the art and science of photography from the late 1830s. I've worked with archival collections that contain examples of these images, but now I have a lot more understanding of how they were produced.

The Old Man's War and The End of All Things by John Scalzi
Ten years after the last book in this series Scalzi has just released another. I decided it might be a good time to read the first and last books to refresh my memory before I plunge into the new one.

Crusts: The Ultimate Baker's Book by Barbara Elise Caracciolo
A huge book (over 800 pages) I've been reading it bit by bit for a few months. Her focus in on profiles and recipes artisanal bakers and bakeries around the world. I've flagged several things that I want to try.

Accomplished Ladies Rich Closet by John Shirley
Dipping into the pdf collection of 17th c. cookbooks I downloaded a couple of years ago, this book from 1690 was very expansive in scope. The bulk of the book is devoted to instructing young women on how to conduct themselves in their lives and their households. Also, an impressively large collections of medicinal & cosmetic recipes.

A Village Lost and Found by Brian May and Elena Vidal
I bought this when it was published in 2009, but had never read it. May, a lifelong stereoscopic slide lover and collector, and Vidal, a curator who helped catalog May's collection, publish a set of 59 slides originally published in 1856, complete with a folding slide viewer. The images depict life in a rural English village. Their research identified the name of the village. Using survey maps of the area from the 1870s they were able to identify the location of buildings. May even took new stereoscopic images of extant structures. I really loved this book.

Day Seven: nanowrimo

18 Nov. 7th, 2025 05:48 pm
lobelia321: (Bana/Pitt)
[personal profile] lobelia321
( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )
radiantfracture: Two cat characters from the 1985 anime lean out the train window (Night on the Galactic Railroad)
[personal profile] radiantfracture
Who was it who said something like -- in a way all books are games, whether they are actual gamebooks or not, because all readers engage with a novel (I feel like they said novel?) with some level of imaginary wiggle room, constantly envisioning alternatives?

Queer reading is one form of this, but any reading contains some aspect of this push-pull. I think this person said that this is in fact an inevitable part of reading a story, this alternate acceptance and refusal, this shimmering of possibility, such that (famously) you can read a story over and over again and still always hope at a particular point that a character will make a different decision?

(I may have asked this before, because it is an idea that intermittently preoccupies me.)

(Possibly several times, because it might be in my notes from 2023, but who can find those?)

(Now I feel paranoid that I never stop asking this question)

(Also I got double vaccinated today and I am a teeny bit feverish)

§rf§

Alphabet Fic Game III: Fic

Nov. 6th, 2025 07:11 pm
extrapenguin: Woman in pre-Tang Dynasty official's garb reads officially. (xia dong reads)
[personal profile] extrapenguin
Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

This is part III: Fic, finally. Stuff chosen is stuff where I think the title has a nice cadence, or idk people might otherwise want to look if nothing super stands out. I also noted how many fic titles I have starting with that letter for some sort of, idk, Deep Thoughts potential, but ended up having none.

For each work, I've noted the fandom, ship/main character, and whether it's porn. I think everything's under 10k, too, except for Questions at Dusk and Sing Dead the Dark.


A: Aflame With Need; TGE femslash porn (21 fics; apparently I love beginning titles with "And" or "As")

B: But for Me It Was Tuesday, for [archiveofourown.org profile] tuesday; MDZS Wangxian (16 fics)

C: Calling the Lost Sheep Home; Guardian Zhu Jiu (23 fics, including two called "Control")

D: Darkness Brings; MDZS Yu Ziyuan (23 fics; very happy with the titles in this section)

E: Escape the Story of My Life MDZS Wei Wuxian (12 fics)

F: Fell High from the Zenith; MDZS Star Wars AU (23 fics; "For" and "From" are apparently very nice initial words)

G: Give Your Kingdom; OW F/F porn (7 fics)

H: Hand to Mouth; OW F/F porn (18 fics)

I: If I Must Leave the Long River of Time; basically-OW gen (20 fics; a lot of "In the" and a few "In this"

J: Jossain ruostuvat tykit; Guardian (3 fics; yes, this one is in Finnish, but of the Js, I am least unhappy with this one)

K: Ka-BOOB; OW F/F porn (5 fics)

L: Lightbringer; Star Wars Shmi/OFC (16 fics)

M: Mirror Dance; Machineries of Empire Cheris/Jedao (13 fics)

N: Needn't wake to answer; Guardian Weilan (21 fics, mostly a lot of "No" and "Not")

O: Operational Insecurity; Guardian Ye Zun (16 fics)

P: Papers, Please Star Wars Anakin & Ahsoka (14 fics)

Q: Questions at Dusk; MDZS Wangxian (1 fic!)

R: Rediscovery, Reconstruction; MDZS Wei Wuxian (18 fics)

S: Sing Dead the Dark; Star Wars Anakin Skywalker (51 fics!!!!)

T: There is no returning to; MDZS, WWX/LQR (30 fics; a lot of "Through" and "To (the)")

U: Undertow; Star Wars Mace Windu (5 fics, 3 of which start with "Under")

V: A Very Willing Envoy; Guardian Weilan (4 fics)

W: What Is Not Yet Will Not Be; MDZS Songxiao (31 fics; a lot of "What", some "While" and "When", only one "Who")

X:

Y: Yet the skies always sing to me; Star Wars Shmi Skywalker (4 fics, two of which begin with "You")

Z:

24/26, with 408 non-art non-vid works, but like 5+ of those are filk and fanmixes so let's round down to an even 400. It seems it's time for me to write about x-rays and zebras...

Top letters: S (51!!), W (31), T (30)
Single digits: QJVUKG
Missing: XZ

Books

Nov. 5th, 2025 02:46 pm
seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
[personal profile] seekingferret
The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis

This book, about the parents at an elite Connecticut private elementary school for magic users, was a blast to read. It had such a sharp sendup of the pressure for parents to make sure their young children are academically successful, and of parents playing pointless low stakes status games against each other.

I also enjoyed a couple of side digs directed at JKR. For all of its issues, the school in this book would make a much better place to send your mage-to-be or werewolf pup than that castle that shall not be named.

And I liked so many of the characters, this is a setting where I would definitely read further books about side characters... the badass werewolf matriarch, the vampire kindergarten teacher, the done with this shit former headmaster, the former warrior mage turned stay at home dad.


A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

A worthy followup to The Tainted Cup, this offered another satisfying mystery and investigation, and deeper worldbuilding and exploration of the Empire and both its virtues and failings.

Lisa and Lottie Erich Kastner

The original source for the Parent Trap! This was adorable.

The House of Found Objects by Jo Beckett-King

Thirteen year old girls go on a treasure hunt in Paris! Delightfully low stakes puzzle adventure with reasonable, fair puzzles.

The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

Read for Jewish Science Fiction Book Group. Eh...I liked it better than others in the group, I thought it had some good Sachar humor, and the moral enigmas were straightforward but tense. But it wasn't super memorable.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

A piece of garbage. Do not recommend.

so uh, how 'bout them Star Wars?

Nov. 5th, 2025 02:57 am
quinnish: a pair of beaten up brown combat boots at the end of white legs, standing on beige desert dust (boots on the ground)
[personal profile] quinnish
Hey, friends. Long time no see.

Any of you happen to be down to talk Prequel/Clone Wars-era Star Wars nonsense? I'm writing a thing and wow do I miss having active fannish community to support my bunnies. And in other ways.

(Alternately, Greenwing & Dart?)

Anyway, hope y'all are well. Miss you.

Alphabet Fic Game II: Vids

Nov. 3rd, 2025 09:19 pm
extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
[personal profile] extrapenguin
Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

This is part II: Vids.


A:

B: Begin Again (Star Wars) – despite stiff competition, this represents a breakthrough in Technique (TM) and I had to share. Perhaps the letter with the highest average quality imo.

C: Children of the Sun (Guardian) – again, stiff competition, but my first event/exchange vid!

D: Die Like a God (Star Wars)

E:

F:

G:

H: Hope Never Dies (Guardian)

I: Is There Anybody Out There? – this one is full length, rather than a vexercise, and more recent

J:

K:

L: Leave This Place Alive

M: My Nemesis/My Only Friend – for all fans of Shen Wei and Ye Zun's relationship

N: Northwest Passage

O: Open up the Gates – yes, this is not actually the work title, simply the title of one of the vidlets, but tbh I really want to extend it into a full length one. I should get on that at some point this decade actually...

P: The Past Clings Tight

Q:

R: Reincarnation – again, some choice, but this vid is my magnum opus and I will be linking it until the heat death of the universe, sorry not sorry

S: Shadows Crawling – my very first full-length vid, so I gotta choose this one, despite, again, heavy competition

T: A Turn of the Wheel

U: Until Eternity

V:

W: Whips & Chains – I chose this one over the other Ws because let's face it, everyone likes Shen Wei suffering, and here it is eroticized!

X:

Y: You Know My Name

Z:

Total: 16/26, with 32 vids, not including the one multividder collab! (I'm also sitting on a few unpublished ones. One of the ones not for any event should knock out one of the unused letters once I, uh, figure out what to put in like the last missing 5 seconds.) A bit surprising that it's basically the same as my fanart, but I guess I just love the letter C for vids or something.

Looking at my music library, J is going to be hard (only 3 songs). Q expectedly only has one song, same for Z, and nothing for X save for one pinyin title which technically starts with 小, rather than a letter of the Latin alphabet. Plenty of stuff for AEFGKV, though!

Most popular letters: C (6), W (4), BRST (3 each). OVER ONE SIXTH of my vids have a title beginning with C! Does anyone else have such a skewed distribution of beginning letters of titles?

A-Z meme

Nov. 2nd, 2025 06:48 pm
tafadhali: ([su] meep morp)
[personal profile] tafadhali
I've seen this floating around and wanted to jump on!

Fic = any fannish work (copying that adjustment from [personal profile] colls since most of my works are vids)

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fanwork title? One per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fanworks count.

A: Achilles, Come Down, Les Mis vid
B: Beautiful Dirty Rich, Columbo vid
C: Celebrity Skin, Child's Play vid
D: Desaparecida, Carmen Sandiego vid
E: Eat Them, horror multifandom vid
F: Fortunate Son, Star Wars vid
G: Golden Boy, OFMD vid
H: Hail Satan, Stranger Things vid
I: INHUMAN ILLUSORY SOUL FUSION MAGIC, Steven Universe vid triptych
J: Jagged Little Slayer, BtVS vid album
K: the killing moon, I Saw the TV Glow vid
L: Limerical Losers Club Valentines, IT limericks
M: Man on a Wire, Hannibal vid
N: La Noyée, Portrait of a Lady on Fire vid
O: Obsessed, Rebecca vid
P: Pynk, femslash multifandom vid
Q: The Queer Gospel, queer multifandom vid
R: Rose Bride My World, Utena vid
S: Sound the Bells, IT vid
T: Teenagers, Dimension 20 vid
U: Umbrella, Singin' in the Rain vid
V: Voice in My Throat, Sense8 vid
W: Waters of March, Miyazaki vid
X:
Y: Your Woman, Ted Lasso vid
Z:

Score: 24/26 from 147 fanworks. 

Alphabet Fic Game I: Art

Nov. 2nd, 2025 04:26 pm
extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
[personal profile] extrapenguin
via [personal profile] rachelmanija

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

Since I'm multimedia, I decided to separate out into Art, Vids, and Fic! This post is just about the artwork I've posted onto AO3.

A: [Art] of War (I left out the [Art] prefix from all the other artworks, but for this one, it's part of the title)

B: Bombad Sith Lord

C: Confounding Variable

D: Drive I to the Dark

E: Eat the Competition

F: First Contact

G:

H: Hot Pool

I: Intrusion Into

J:

K:

L: Lava Pillow

M: Moongazer (lots of M art!)

N:

O: Octopus EVA

P: Professor Fuzang and the x-ray machine

Q:

R:

S: Snail's Daydream

T: To Do: Steal the Sun

U:

V: Volcanic Eruption

W: Womanly Rage & Knife Violence

X:

Y:

Z:

Total: 16/26, with 29 artworks. I mostly took the opportunity to update some of the broken image links from Discord changing its file hosting stuff. Did I get all of them? Probably not. Enough? Sure.

As for the missing letters, some aren't that surprising, but I'm a bit huh at G, N, and R. I guess I can use this as a guide for how to title the next time I'm trying to pick a title for something?

11 Recs from October

Nov. 1st, 2025 10:27 pm
tafadhali: ([su] meep morp)
[personal profile] tafadhali
I joked to Tessa that all I was reading this month was fic about autistic human meets autistic robot and they experience self-recognition, only one pair of them immediately fell in love about it and the other are Murderbot and Gurathin. So, I read a lot of robot-human porn in the Dimension 20 fandom in October, and then a lot of prickly Murderbot gen...except for this first rec, which really bridges the gap between the two:

 ❖ Privacy Breach by all-systems-dead (Murderbot, Murderbot/Gurathin, 7k): "Gurathin has downloaded an unusual new program for his augments. Murderbot wants to know what it is." This is a very rare venture into reading shippy fic for this fandom for me, but I was on such a kick of reading robot porn and this was such an interesting take on sex between two touch-averse asexuals with connections to a tech feed. Has some light D/s dynamics and manages to do breathplay in a way that didn't make me immediately back button due to safety concerns, lol, so that is also a rarity!
 
And then there is Maxwell/Torse, from "Cloudward Ho!", the most recent season of Dimension 20. Like many viewers I was instantly taken with the dynamic between Maxwell Gotch, uptight "gentleman fister," and Torse, the tragic clockwork automaton NPC with knife hands. Sometime between their friendship ritual and Gotch forging brass knuckles out of Torse's literal heart, I read pretty much everyone on AO3 about them. Here are a few recs in one place, in case you have no interest in D20 and want to skip over it OR conversely if you are only here for the robot smut recs and want to know where to look:

 ❖ get told to maybe dial it back by mosttroubledbird (D20, Maxwell/Torse, 5k): Demented, hot, very funny. This one has wonderfully zany but in-character moments for all the rest of the crew.

 ❖ Mechanical Difficulties by poppy5991 (D20, Maxwell/Torse, 6k): "In which Scrapsylvanians love colloquialisms, Zern doesn’t have them, and Marya unknowingly becomes the captain of an entirely different ship."

 ❖ with my own blood in my mouth by Dansnotavampire (D20, Maxwell/Torse, 7k): This fic asks the important question of what happens if you hit a robot with sex pollen.

And here is a grab bag of fic recs in other fandoms:

didn't see it coming, now it's everywhere i go by dante_kent (9-1-1, Buck/Eddie, 22k): "Buck confesses his feelings. Eddie’s straight. If he spends all his time thinking about Buck and looking at Buck and wanting to be around Buck, well, that’s just being a good friend, isn’t it? He’s being so normal about this, actually."

everything happens for a reason. sometimes that reason is that you are stupid and make bad decisions. by suzukiblu (DCU, Clark/Lex & Kon-El, 1k): The first part in a short ongoing series where, to quote the summary, "Unfortunately, Lex takes one look at Cadmus’s progress report on the newly-crafted Experiment Thirteen and realizes he has paternal instincts." Cracky, very fun, only a bit shippy. I appreciate the author's ongoing commitment to asking "WHO is going to raise Conner Kent?"

 ❖ Hands wide open by alfgifu and SunInGlory (Nine Worlds, Fitzroy/Kip, 55k): "On the day of his retirement from the Zunidh Civil Service, on the day he's meant to return home to the Vangavaye-ve on one of the monthly public sky ships, Cliopher Mdang stands at the foot of the Last Emperor’s bier for the last time." A canon-divergent AU by two really wonderful authors in this fandom. For me, this story picked up and absolutely gripped me once Fitzroy has to go on a quest to the Old Woman Who Lives in the Deep of the Sea to rescue Kip — it captures the mythic feel of the books so well.

Heat, Wait, Steep, Repeat by Haicrescendo (Avatar, Zuko & Iroh gen, 3k): Lovely character study of Zuko and lessons he learned from Iroh and from brewing tea. Made me cry!

And, finally, three vid recs:
 
❖ 🎥 Chasing Cars by Rhea (Given, Mafuyu/Uenoyama, Mafuyu/Yuki): A simply perfect vid concept for this fandom. Deals so beautifully with grief and with slowly coming out of depression—"show me a garden that's bursting into life." Rhea's other new Given vid, Light On, is also stunning and I'm so pleased I was able to help beta both.

❖ 🎥 Equal Rights by Nestra (9-1-1, Eddie-centric): "Gay or straight, straight or gay, it's all okay" First of all, I just saw Popstar for the first time and was like "Someone MUST vid this song," so thank you, Nestra. Second of all, this is SO FUNNY.

❖ 🎥 You're Gonna Go Far, Kid by JetpackMonkey (Mission: Impossible, Ethan-centric): I normally do ten recs but (a) rules are fake and (b) what, I'm going to leave off this great new M:I vid? Imagine Tom Cruise running and imagine this song and then immediately go and watch this vid to see that vision realized to perfection. Such a fun, high energy look at all the stunts and spy gear! Great action editing.

Jagged Little Slayer finale!

Nov. 1st, 2025 10:12 pm
tafadhali: (Default)
[personal profile] tafadhali


AO3 | Tumblr

Title:
You Learn
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Co-Vidder: [personal profile] periru3
Music: "You Learn" by Alanis Morissette
Length: 3:59
Summary: Wait until the dust settles.
Notes: Part 12 of Jagged Little Slayer

This is our finale — a love letter to all of the finales and the ways the characters live, cry, grieve, choose, and learn.

We have also posted the full vid album edited together here. I feel like I should make a whole post for that — maybe Tessa and I will write some commentary and do a more in-depth post in the coming weeks.

Poem: "One Big Beautiful BS"

Oct. 31st, 2025 11:26 pm
jjhunter: silhouetted woman by winding black road; blank ink tinted with green-blue background (silhouetted JJ by winding road)
[personal profile] jjhunter
One Big Beautiful BS -
that the sludge of the past could ever be forever burned without consequence

Whose bones are they breaking today
drilling out the marrow of our good earth
emptying out communities to collapse in upon themselves?

perhaps they expect neighbors will be eating neighbors the very next day
all these hoarders so eager to end good governance by the people, for the people

boys in masks waving guns )

___
Last edited: 01Nov25

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Oct. 31st, 2025 11:36 am
radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)
[personal profile] radiantfracture
I am trying to remember a quotation that may or may not exist.

It is a bit like Kiss of the Spider Woman's "This dream is short, but this dream is happy."

Something like "this is a (something) story for bad times."

Any contenders?

{rf}

New Vid: Mary Jane (BtVS)

Oct. 29th, 2025 10:50 pm
tafadhali: ([btvs] every little thing she does)
[personal profile] tafadhali


AO3 | Tumblr

Title:
Mary Jane
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Co-Vidder: [personal profile] periru3
Music: "Mary Jane" by Alanis Morissette
Length: 4:44
Summary: Well it's full speed, baby, in the wrong direction
Notes: Part 11of Jagged Little Slayer


Just realized I hadn't gotten around to posting this here yet! This is the penultimate vid in our vid album (the finale comes this Saturday) and I think it's perhaps the vid that works best in conversation with the vid before it. We've never loved the "magic as addiction" metaphor of season 6, but are fascinated in the way magic enables some of Willow's bigger, deep rooted character flaws – and this song gave us a deeply empathetic vehicle for exploring that.

Cardigan nights

Oct. 28th, 2025 06:05 pm
radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)
[personal profile] radiantfracture
There's a gorgeous windstorm going on. Beautiful for listening to, not so great for trying to hear the UPS truck.

Like a fool who thinks it's 2015, I ordered clothing online from the United States and have been fretting about it ever since. All shipping interfaces were as incoherent as you might expect.

But Blamo was having a deep-discount flash sale and I have been drooling over this non-species-specific sock-animal onesie for... a long time.

Sadly, that magnificent garment was not on sale and incidentally profoundly impractical. So I ordered this Completely Normal Cardigan(tm) instead:



... it happens to have this hood:





(Not sure why the resolution is so crap here.)

There did end up being tariff charges, but not that bad.

I... feel more whole as a person.

§rf§

PS I swear it did not have to be a rabbit.

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