schneefink | Reading

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For the eleventh anniversary of Kittening Day, Hestia was made much of with ham and petting and tomorrow when the day is less frenetic, there will be salmon. Her brother is celebrated in memory, my flower-clawed movie cat.

I will not be attending the reenactment because my plans for tomorrow all involve absolutely not getting out of bed until after noon, but it is true that despite it being the first naval battle of the American Revolution, I had never heard of the Battle of Chelsea Creek. Then again, apparently I have to find out from the internet that I transatlantically pronounce "penalize." An envelope full of lino-printed stickers arrived in the mail from

asakiyume.

Current Music: Dispatch, "Whisk Me Away"

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

DEAR ABBY: My dear friend, "Sandra," is married with two children. She and her husband have a 4-year-old son together and another son from her husband's first marriage who is 14. The 14-year-old's life is tough, much like Cinderella's. Sandra treats him very badly. She has him doing all of the housework in their home, belittles him constantly and is very vocal about how much she dislikes him. Her 4-year-old can do no wrong.

The older boy's mother has weekends with her son, but Sandra is open about not liking her either. I feel bad about how the boy is treated and want to talk to Sandra about it, but I don't know how to bring up the sensitive subject and maintain my relationship with the family. Her husband is completely on Sandra's side, so he does nothing to help the boy have a better life. Can you offer any advice? -- FEELING FOR HIM IN WASHINGTON

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conuly

She can put weight on her foot, but after she walks for a while she doesn't want to. Still, it's recovering pretty rapidly, that's the important thing.

***************

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kalloway

I had really ambitious plans for the year re: zines and while I'm sure I'll fall a little short, I feel like there is still plenty of hope.

The original plan was one zine per month, while also basically doing updated/edited versions of all my old zines at the rate of also ~one per month. This sounds like a lot and it both is and isn't. (Right now it sure is!)

At some point, I'll probably take an extra long weekend or two and do some more catch up. (I have no real vacation plans again this year because look at the world on fire; I might as well make zines.)

Anyway- so far for 2025:
Dragon Stories (Jan) - done, copies available
Rimokon #2 (Feb) - partly done
Tiniest Tales #1 (March) - done, copies available? (might have to print more)
Cemetery Zine #0 (April) - partly done
Lost Dawn & The Box of Dreams (May) - partly done
Chic Musique #9 (June) - I know I had some vague notes for this but ???

Reprints:
Gods of Agassia (Jan) - from 2023, done, copies available
No Creature With Wings (Feb) - from 2007, needs edit + fix art/covers
Chic Musique #1 (March) - from 1998, will need to be retyped and reformatted, graphics might be tricky/will do my best
Chic Musique #2 (April) - haven't even looked at
Rimokon #1 (May) - haven't even looked at
Knocking Boots (June) - haven't even looked at, will probably just need an edit?
The Small Fandom Survival Guide (Unassigned) - from 2009, eight-page Yaoi-con panel extra, probably just needs a quick edit

Weekend plans include catching myself up through February, which just means an edit + fixing art on No Creature and, uh, writing like ~~ten~~ six more pages of a twelve page zine. Not actually impossible! (Big pictures, the secret is big pictures!)

musesfool

I'm so tired of people blowing their deadlines and making it my problem. But at the super last minute, it did finally come together so I was able to log off at 3 pm (it's the first Summer Friday of 2025, and we get to sign off at 2:30 until Labor Day).

My sister is having a birthday bbq tomorrow for my oldest and youngest nieces, who share a birthday, and one requested Smitten Kitchen confetti cookies (even though I told her I found them too sweet) and the other requested brownies (which is why I asked about brownie recipes yesterday - I don't make them often anymore so I don't have a go-to recipe). I couldn't lay hands on dutched cocoa for love or money today, but it turns out that the King Arthur "triple cocoa" or whatever it's called, works in recipes calling for dutched cocoa, and I have that. *hands* But like, nobody even has Hershey's special dark! I was surprised by that. Anyway I ended up making these King Arthur Fudge Brownies and they smell fantastic, though next time I will probably try the microwave to melt the butter instead of doing it on the stove - I did it in a pot on the stove and even on low heat, it got so hot that I had to wait like 30 minutes for it to cool to the temperature required by the recipe (110° - 120°F), so it took a lot longer than I planned for. Other than that, the recipe is really easy. I guess because you beat the cocoa into the eggs, you don't have to worry about the hot butter/sugar mixture scrambling them (you laugh, but that happened to me once with the old mascarpone brownies recipe when I added the melted butter!).

I hope they both enjoy them!

I also bought a banana squishmallow for Baby Miss L, because her response to them has been A++ hilarious every time.

Hopefully the weather tomorrow cooperates. It has rained here so much. Today it rained all morning and then the sun came out late in the afternoon, and then...it poured while the sun was out for a while, and the temperature has lingered in the low 60s. I mean, I'll take the cooler temps for sure, especially at night, but I'm really tired of the rain.

In other news, last night I fell asleep on the couch when I was trying to read, so when I woke up, I decided to just go to bed, and for once, couch sleepy did translate to bed sleepy and I ended up sleeping for almost 10 hours last night! It was glorious! But I don't think I can realistically make myself go to bed at 10:15 every night. *glances at clock* I mean...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

*

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Mets vs Dodgers on tv

flaskbringer posting in

fandomcalendar

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china_shop posting in

sid_guardian

I picked up a Guardian pinch hit for

unsent_letters_exchange. I had two ideas for it, so when reveals were delayed, I wrote the other one as a treat. The first is set over three successive nights before and during the Hanga arc, and the second one is established relationship, with Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei passing notes during a state meeting in Dixing, in handwavy everyone-lives post-canon.

Title: a pocketful of change (4771 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Set before and during the Hanga arc (episodes 9 to 11), unsent letter, Pre-Relationship, Mutual Pining, SID politics, Epistolatory format: Letter

Summary: Lost in the past, Shen Wei shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. His fingers met small hard balls on smooth sticks and recognised them instantly. Heart clenching, he withdrew the pocket’s entire contents: three lollipops, a little ziplock bag filled with dried fish, and a wad of pages torn from a notebook and roughly folded. The outside of the paper was unmarked, but its surface texture bore evidence of the handwriting within.

He was still wearing Zhao Yunlan’s jacket. Whatever was written on these pages wasn’t meant for his eyes.

Title: A Passing Grade in Diplomacy (4062 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Politics, meetings, Established Relationship, Banter, passing notes, Warning: internalised slut-shaming, just briefly tho

Summary: Next time, bring lollipops! Zhao Yunlan jotted in a spare corner of his page. He underlined it twice and went back to doodling more leaves on his tree, which was bushy and verdant like the new plantings in the streets near the Dragon Gate. He was experimenting with vines and curling tendrils when characters appeared out of nowhere, beneath his reminder.

Check your right-hand jacket pocket.

china_shop

I picked up a Guardian pinch hit for

facethestrange in

unsent_letters_exchange. I had two ideas for it, so when reveals were delayed, I wrote the other one as a treat. And then reveals were delayed again, so I ended up doing my compulsive last-minute checks while also trying to finish my 520 Day fics, lol.

Anyway, the first of these is set over three successive nights before and during the Hanga arc, and the second one is established relationship, with Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei passing notes during a state meeting in Dixing, in handwavy everyone-lives post-canon.

Title: a pocketful of change (4771 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Set before and during the Hanga arc (episodes 9 to 11), unsent letter, Pre-Relationship, Mutual Pining, SID politics, Epistolatory format: Letter

Summary: Lost in the past, Shen Wei shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. His fingers met small hard balls on smooth sticks and recognised them instantly. Heart clenching, he withdrew the pocket’s entire contents: three lollipops, a little ziplock bag filled with dried fish, and a wad of pages torn from a notebook and roughly folded. The outside of the paper was unmarked, but its surface texture bore evidence of the handwriting within.

He was still wearing Zhao Yunlan’s jacket. Whatever was written on these pages wasn’t meant for his eyes.

Title: A Passing Grade in Diplomacy (4062 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Politics, meetings, Established Relationship, Banter, passing notes, Warning: internalised slut-shaming, just briefly tho

Summary: Next time, bring lollipops! Zhao Yunlan jotted in a spare corner of his page. He underlined it twice and went back to doodling more leaves on his tree, which was bushy and verdant like the new plantings in the streets near the Dragon Gate. He was experimenting with vines and curling tendrils when characters appeared out of nowhere, beneath his reminder.

Check your right-hand jacket pocket.

lannamichaels

Unsure how I feel about having 22 minute episodes (sorry, "30 minute episodes"). On the one hand, short and quick enough to watch. On the other hand, this entire episode is essentially half an episode: In Which Our Heroes Travel To DeltFall And MurderBot Looks Around.

Enjoyable, but this kind of episode feels like it is meant for watching entire seasons all at once, where it would just blend in to the before and after. They spent too much time arguing in the shuttle for it to feel like it stands alone at all.

The security footage of what the Gurathin and Bharadwaj are doing back home was pointless, but I guess Character Building or something.

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6713 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #959..
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

conuly

So no vet trip, I guess!

infinitum_noctem posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: Demands Are Not Welcome Here, Turn and Walk Away
Fandom: The Legend of Korra
Pairings: Korra/Asami Sato
Characters: Mako, Tenzin
Rating: G
Length: 80 words
Summary: 3 sentence fic. The Avatar finds a moment of peace with the ones she loves.

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petra

Rudest tag I have seen in a month of Sundays:
( Life on Mars (UK) spoiler for the finale )

Compare with ( The Untamed spoiler for the first episode )

Which is kinda like ( Shakespeare spoiler )

When it could've been ( Bigger Shakespeare spoiler )

( Greek myth spoiler )

Current Mood: silly
Current Music: Every language easy, easy as the recipe for making Jell-O

dhampyresa

This artbook is the "collection of pretty pictures by various people" type of art book rather than the "includes tutorials by a single artist" type of artbook. I like both these types of artbooks and own multiple of each, as well as "collection of pretty pictures by single artist" and "includes tutorials by various artists".

It's published by YBY Éditions, with text in both French and English. The text is titles for the illustrations and sometimes a few sentences about the content.

My favourites were (featured here as pictures of the pages):

I like the use of light to portray intimacy.
Eros and Psyche, by Robbuz
( Eros and Psyche )

The minimalist use of colour here is really neat.
Doctor Faustus, by Couple Of Kooks
( Doctor Faustus )

The green and purple work so well together!
Blind Love, by KME
( Blind Love )

I love the multiple light sources.
Moonlight, by Sara Deek
( Moonlight )

Transmasc/transfem yin/yang is so cool!
Yin and Yang, by Mathilde Périé
( Yin and Yang )

The book contains 46 illustrations total and I enjoyed all of them.

primeideal

I'm not really into horror, but I kickstarted this anthology published by Apex, gotta support SFF short fiction presses :D

The standout story for me was "The Salt," by Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv, set at the end of the Dead Sea scrolls era (parallel with early Christianity). Agent XII is an operative from the Imperial Office of Incognita Natura; what others understand to be divine, world-shaking events, he interprets as punch-clock bureaucratic issues.

From there I made my way by land to Jerusalem, which sits atop the mountains and is a small, dismal sort of place, filled with rebellious Jews, dodgy expatriate Romans, dangerous Nabatean merchants, and lecherous Greeks--in short, a place much like any other in the Empire.

This forms the frame story to the recollections of "Joseph Son of Amram," who comes to the Qumran community as a spy for the religious authorities in the city.

Various messiahs in different times, anywhere between the return of the Israelites to Canaan and the completion of the second temple, claimed to have prevented a calamity, to have argued with God and averted the end of the world.
Others claimed that the end of the world has already happened.
As weeks and months passed, the pattern became clearer. The world has already ended. Numerous times.
The world ended with Noah. The world ended with Lot.

I'd recently heard a discussion about how Abraham's argument to spare Sodom and Gomorrah is in some ways the quintessential story of the Jewish scriptures--arguing with God for the sake of righteousness--so it was neat to see that theme reframed through a horror lens.

There are a lot of recurring themes--the real horror is misogyny/racism/small towns dying out and being left behind by economic change; infodumping legends about the backstory. A couple stories avoided the "here is the legendary version of this town's past" trope by intercutting between a past and a present-day storyline, with parallel themes. I think this plot device can be effective, in that it does a lot in a relatively short format, but there's no need to italicize every single flashback when the flashbacks amount to half the story!

Shoutouts to "Map of the World" by Pan Morigan, which displays world maps with many of the location names penciled in, surrounded by evocative images from the stories; a violinist, a panther, a woman gagged with soil and vines in front of a narrow cave entrance, generations of ancestors who continue to watch over living generations.

Bingo: Published in 2025, Five+ Short Stories, Small Press...presumably Hidden Gem but it might still count as "new release" so probably not that one.

thebrightsessions_feed

Here are never-before-heard bloopers from the first two seasons of The Bright Sessions! Thank you so much to everyone who attended our livestreams celebrating these seasons and we hope to see you at the next! Visit atypicalartists.co/10years for more info.

And for an extended version of this and all reels, please consider supporting us either by subscribing to Atypical Plus if you're on Apple Podcasts or by becoming and Atypipal at atypicalartists.co/support

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

torchicwpip posting in

smallfandomfest

(Ignore the fact that I only submitted one prompt for this series and then forgot to do more before the deadline whoops)

Rhythm Heaven is a series of rhythm games published by Nintendo. If you know the Warioware series, it’s kind of like that: a bunch of wacky minigames where you hit the buttons (or the stylus, depending on the game) to the rhythm of the music. But what kind of minigames can you expect? Well, we’ve got:

- A monkey and a mandrill (his name is Mandrill) coach you in golf
- You, an astronaut, must translate a Martian’s message to the people of Earth
- You, a Martian, must translate a farmer’s tinder profile to the Martians back on base
- You are a little seal that must step and roll
- Tap dancing with monkeys!
- a watch operated by high-fiving monkeys (this is a great game for people who like monkeys)
- ping pong in space!
- baseball in space!
- a guy who has been stuck in the basement until he masters karate (in French it’s been 55 years)

You can earn little tidbits of lore for doing well in minigames, in the form of Reading Material and Rhythm Items (the latter is a Megamix-exclusive). But the fandom also makes a lot of their own headcanons, lore, and ships!

As of writing this, there are four games in the series: the original game for the Game Boy Advance (known in the fandom as Rhythm Tengoku, as it was never localized outside of Japan, and Rhythm Heaven Silver, named after a popular fan translation), Rhythm Heaven for the DS, Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Wii, and Rhythm Heaven Megamix for the 3DS.

The downside is that the physical copies of the games are notoriously difficult to get nowadays. Luckily, it’s very easy to hack your 3DS (for legal reasons I cannot confirm nor deny that I have homebrewed at least 3 game systems).