(no subject)

Aug. 21st, 2025 11:12 am
nundinae: michiru, mirror (Default)
[personal profile] nundinae
 This is so depressing: the number of people reading for pleasure in the US has fallen by 40% in the last 20 years. This kind of news makes me so down every time I see it, and of course it's hardly limited to the US. There are all kinds of reasons for this happening, and personally I think that being overworked is ignored far too often: it is so difficult to find pleasure in anything at all when you are so tired you just want to veg out (which of course will not help you relax, deceptive as it is). And it takes effort to reach the level of ease with reading that allows you to read for pleasure at all: it's really just like any kind of physical activity. But if you do manage, it's just about the most brilliant thing in the world, which is something I would love to be able to say in a persuasive manner to as many people as possible in the probably vain hope that they will read something and have fun with it, but well. Books are fun! Reading is awesome!

WWW Wednesday

Aug. 20th, 2025 09:00 am
duckprintspress: (Default)
[personal profile] duckprintspress

1. What are you currently reading?

I'm still 14 pages into The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett so uh. Technically I'm currently reading that, I guess. I'm going to pick it back up and read it next, tho, now that I'm home from last week's travel.

2. What have you recently finished reading?

  • novel - The Wizard by Shi Wu: all in all, this was fine. Everything felt like it wrapped up very quickly and surprisingly neatly, given the promised angst levels, but eh.
  • novels - Lout of the Count's Family vol. 2 and 3 by Yu Ryeo-Han: uh. my mom gave me money to buy books, and here we are, lmao.
  • Dinosaur Sanctuary vol. 1 by Itaru Konshita: this is SO cute. slice of life at a dinosaur zoo, my beloved.
  • Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba vol. 21 - 23 by Koyoharu Gotouge: finally done with this shounen series! It was fine when all was said and done. Wasn't expecting quite so many characters to die.  Also I wish we'd gotten a little more backstory on the main villain.
  • The Moth Keeper by K. O'Neill: this was a very sweet (and quietly queer) middle grade fantasy graphic novel. K. O'Neill has delivered on everything I've read.
  • My Beautiful Man vol. 4 by Yuu Nagira: given how toxic everything is, this has grown on me to a startling extent. Genuinely thinking I'll read the light novels.
  • Undead: Finding Love in the Zombie Apocalypse vol. 1 and 2 by Fumi Tsuyuhisa: quick BL duology that's exactly what it says on the tin. The second volume tried to do too much and wrapped it up too neatly considering how dire the situation was but it wasn't, like. bad.
  • Sakamoto Days vol. 4 by Yuto Suzuki
  • Haikyu vol. 39 by Haruichi Furudate
  • Our Not-So-Lonely Planet Travel Guide vol. 1 by Mone Sorai: modern mlm. I've kinda procrastinated reading this for no reason I could put my finger on, but I liked it. I'm interested to find out some of the reveals that have gotten teased about the backstory of the mcs relationship and what illness half the ship is recovering from.
  • Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries: sci-fi mlm. I really liked this, but I wish it hadn't gotten quite so abstract at times. really appreciate the nbd trans mc.

3. What will you read next?

The Tainted Cup, obviously. For graphic novels from the library (physical), next in the pile is the third and last volume of Clementine by Tillie Walden. I gather people who are in TWD fandom weren't thrilled with the first two vols but from an outside perspective (I've only read TWD vol. 1 and seen the first few episodes of the show) I liked them fine, so expect this to be about the same and about as sad. For graphic novels/manga from the library(ies) (digital), I'm pretty caught up right now (nothing due imminently), so I'll probably read Far Sector by N. K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell next; it's not due soon but 6 people are in line behind me so returning it quick feels like a courtesy. :D


Dear Rarepair creator

Aug. 20th, 2025 02:48 am
trobadora: (Huo Wensi - hypnosis)
[personal profile] trobadora
Dear [community profile] rarepairexchange creator,

thank you so much for writing a story or creating art for me! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships I requested, and everything important is in the requests themselves, but if you'd like even more info, general likes etc., here you go,

My AO3 account is [archiveofourown.org profile] Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms and relationships

In somewhat alphabetical order - note that some sections are expanded compared to the sign-up form:

Jump directly to:
绅探 | Detective L: Huo Wensi/Luo Fei )

Grimm: Nick Burkhardt/Sean Renard/Juliette Silverton )

镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Ya Qing/Zhu Hong )

Grimm/Guardian crossover: Renard/Ya Qing )

Legend of the Seeker: Cara/Darken Rahl )

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Anastasia/Jabberwocky )

Time Engraver Crossovers: Time Engraver/Zhao Yunlan, Time Engraver/Jiang Yang )

长公主在上 | Eldest Princess On Top: Li Yunzhen/Gu Xuanqing )

Next-gen Fruits Basket fans

Aug. 19th, 2025 04:12 pm
umadoshi: (Tohru & the pretty boys (flamika))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Over the last...several months?...[personal profile] wildpear introduced Pumpkin and (to different extents) a couple of other teenagers to Fruits Basket. Pumpkin got the double anime experience, starting with the 2001 anime and then going on to the 2019 anime, and while they were still working their way through the latter, they also restarted it to show it to two different people, including M, Pumpkin's agemate among our local friends' kids. Throughout, [personal profile] wildpear texted me intermittent reaction updates, which was a delight.

Now that they're all finished (on the anime front), [personal profile] wildpear brought Pumpkin and M over for an intergenerational fandom yard hangout last week! (Of the 2001 anime, M has only seen the very ending, in a sort of "must know what the horror actually is". For anyone who doesn't know, the original anime is mostly really charming and has a lot going for it, with most of its weaknesses being pretty understandable given when it was made and where the manga was at that point, but its ending is a straight-up travesty and an abomination.)

Jumping ahead a bit: you may notice the absence of the manga in the above, which has now been resolved! I initially had been like, "Well, I have a lending set, and its day has come!", but by the time the visit actually happened and I'd unearthed said set (a combination of the five 2-in-1 hardcover volumes Tokyopop managed to release, and the rest of the series in the standard Tokyopop edition), I'd talked sense into myself and decided to make it a gift instead. I'm not actually sure the lending set had ever gone out of the house (other than [personal profile] wildpear, the only person who'd ever read my hard copy was my sister, and that predated the lending set, IIRC), and I didn't honestly need four sets* in the house, even if one of them is in Japanese. So that box has gone off into the world, and while I warned everyone that manga spines aren't as sturdy as anyone would like, they don't have to worry about keeping the books pristine for me.

Anyway! Seeing the three of them was lovely. cut! )
duckprintspress: (Default)
[personal profile] duckprintspress
Text and black silhouettes of a flying dragon and a biplane on the background of a Rainbow Flag. The text reads: 12 Queer Books for Aviation Day.
12 book covers on the background of a Rainbow Flag. The books are: Brooms by Jasmine Walls; The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui; Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard; Stars of Chaos by priest; The Flying Ship by Jem Milton; The Dragon by Tai Yangjun; Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone; Dragon Falls by Davis Lavender; The Angel's Cut by Elizabeth Knox; On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden; All Systems Red by Martha Wells; Temeraire by Naomi Novik; Havemercy by Danielle Bennett & Jaida Jones.

Today, August 19th, is National Aviation Day in the US!  We asked our contributors to recommend us their favorite books that prominently feature aviation, but instead of adhering to the strict definition of operating an aircraft, we decided to expand it to piloting all sorts of flying machinery and devices, as well as riding on the backs of fantastical creatures that soar above the clouds (yes, we did get a lot of dragons). The contributors to the list are: Nina Waters, Dei Walker, Shadaras, Tris Lawrence, Linnea Peterson and an anonymous contributor.

Find these books on our Goodreads book shelf or buy them through the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page.

Looking for a great place to discuss books? Join our Book Lover’s Discord server!


FIAB 2025 Exchange letter

Aug. 19th, 2025 11:21 pm
nemainofthewater: (Default)
[personal profile] nemainofthewater
In progress, will complete before sign ups end

another post? already?

Aug. 18th, 2025 06:27 pm
yaaurens: (sad pouty LFS)
[personal profile] yaaurens
Yeah, it feels weird after so much time not posting.

BUT. When one spends three hours in the ER, one has much time to ponder.

I didn't really ponder that much, because I was in pain, but y'know. It ended up not being anything super serious; I woke up earlier than usual on Sunday with some lower-right-side abdominal pain. It was annoying, but whatever. But it didn't go away, and it kept getting worse, and started shifting around to my side and back. Nothing I did helped, and by late afternoon it was probably a good 7 on a 1-10 scale. Mom was like, Try Tylenol (did that in the morning), and Dad was all, Let's get you to the ER. Soooo off to the ER we went, just in case it was appendicitis. 

Surprisingly, the visit wasn't too awful? Like, everyone was nice, the wait wasn't too long. The longest wait was for the results of the CT scan, I think. Everything else happened within what I would consider reasonable periods of time. Obviously, if I had been higher on the pain scale, I may have had a different view on things, or if I were bleeding all over, but y'know. The staff were all very polite and relatively chatty which was a nice distraction. 

Long story short, not appendicitis, but a kidney stone. Not had one of those before, or a CT scan before, so that was... fun? They gave me the good drugs for the pain, IV fluids, antibiotics because my body is weird (the CT scan was like, you might have an infection in your kidney? and I came in with a fever, but the blood/urine tests were negative, so they were being careful), and something that helps dilate the urethra to make it easier to pass the stone.

Which seems to have happened overnight/early morning? I was up a lot in the night, but by morning is when I finally was able to sleep comfortably (cuz they didn't give me any overnight painkillers? why?). So thankfully, the pain is basically gone, just a little sore, and very tired. Which saves me a little in med money, cuz now I don't have to take the painkillers, anti-nausea meds, or the dilation meds, just the antibiotics. 

Is it sad that I'm mostly annoyed that this is throwing off my "work this week and reassess on Friday" plan? And that I'm more likely to stick it out at the job for a while longer because of how much I had to pay for the ER visit copay? Sigh.

Anywho. Dad and I finished Legend of Zang Hai and have started in on Beyond Evil. So far it's very intriguing; we're about halfway through and I am very much uncertain as to where we're gonna end up.

No work again tomorrow, yay? But mom wants us to do stuff for her business and I'm like... can I please stop. I have never WANTED to do this work, and I still really don't want to. She'll make these comments about "that's why you get paid the big bucks," and I'm like... no, I really don't. 

Anyway. Back to sleep, because wow this whole event kicked my butt. Oh, wait, first I must take my once every twelve hours antibiotic, cuz I sure wasn't gonna do it at 1:30 when it arrived at the house, because I am not waking up or taking pills in the middle of the night, thanks.

Losing By Winning The Wrong Argument

Aug. 18th, 2025 01:41 pm
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
[personal profile] unspeakablehorror
I think a common way to lose an argument is a way that superficially looks like winning. And that is to substitute one's real argument for one more palatable to the opponent. The problem with this is that not only does this cause the arguer to actually lose the argument with their opponent as the opponent is not accepting or even challenged with the original position, but it is actually a win for their opponent as they will tend to internalize their new argument because of the reward of greater personal power, even while they decrease support for their original argument (and not only with themselves, but with anyone who aligns with them).

It's far better to have no agreement in a stalemate than to attempt a "compromise" where the opposing side stays right where they are while you move ever closer to them.
profiterole_reads: (Nü Er Hong - Shi Yi and Hua Yu Tang)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
A Wild and Ruined Song by Ashley Shuttleworth was amazing! It's the fourth and final book of the Hollow Star Saga, a modern story mixing fae courts and Greek mythology.

This was a splendid finale from start to end, tying up many plotlines from the previous novels and making all the protagonists shine at one point or another.

There's a new non-binary main character, major f/f and double m/m, with one of the m/m pairings being ace4aro.

Weekly proof of life: mostly media

Aug. 17th, 2025 10:56 am
umadoshi: (fancrone - china_shop)
[personal profile] umadoshi
Reading: [personal profile] scruloose and I finished listening to Artificial Condition and have started Rogue Protocol (but only barely--we've listened to however much of chapter 1 we could get in over supper on Friday before [personal profile] scruloose had to be doing something else).

We'll Prescribe You a Cat (Syou Ishida) was a very quick read and hard for me to pin down. It's a story in the vein of "~mysterious~ place provides X [often wishes granted or strange/deadly creatures, as in xxxHOLiC or Pet Shop of Horrors], but the actual cats being prescribed mostly appear to be just ("just") cats. I think this is the first in a series. Alas, I find the prose of the translation awfully flat, and can only hope I would've found the book more engaging in different hands.

I also read The City in Glass, which was my first time reading Nghi Vo. Gorgeous prose, a neat concept, and a great read overall.

Watching: We're six episodes into The Summer Hikaru Died (which is, I suppose unsurprisingly given the premise, touching on a significant existential question from Newsflesh [and from plenty of other places]). It continues to be very good. ^_^

I think we also saw an ep. of Silo sometime last week.

And on Friday I started watching Glass Heart on my own. As so often turns out to be the way, choosing it from my horrifying to-watch list was mostly random. Sometimes the choice is made simply because something is short (ten episodes, in this case) and I've seen several friends talking about it very recently. I'm six episodes in now.

I knew going in that Machida Keita is in it (who I knew only from Cherry Magic). I did not know in advance that Satoh Takeru is one of the leads, and then couldn't place him until I caved and looked up the cast. (He played Kenshin in the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies [of which I've still only seen the first], and was impossibly good in the role. I keep meaning to rewatch the first and watch the others, despite my feelings about the franchise overall being irrevocably poisoned now by the horrible revelations about the creator. I still need to offload my set of the manga. >.<)

Weathering: The drought continues. Parts of the province are on fire, although the uncomfortably-close-to-me wildfire is under control, last I heard.

Planning: We don't have tickets yet, because there aren't yet showtimes for it, but the plan is to see Dongji Rescue late in the week. *fidgets*

Icon Drop June and July

Aug. 16th, 2025 11:48 pm
tinny: Commandant Karadec from the French series HPI, looking perplexed (as always) in rose-brown soft colors, with the text "so hot when he gets angry" (hpi_karadec hot when he gets angry)
[personal profile] tinny
Here are the icons I made in June and July - most of them are HPI, and most of them were made for [community profile] land_of_art. Hope you enjoy!

Teasers:


58 total, most of those HPI )

Comments are love - and concrit, too. <3 Take and use as many icons as you like, credit is appreciated. Texture and brush makers: here in my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

High School Survival

Aug. 16th, 2025 11:32 am
sartorias: (Default)
[personal profile] sartorias
A recent book review by [personal profile] rachelmanija reminded me of a forgotten, and now unmourned, novel I wrote somewhere between tenth and eleventh grade, about a high school that barricades itself in a "revolution" for a time. This wasthe mid-sixties, when student unrest was a news item. The escalation of the Vietnam war--the concomitant intensification of what we called the military-industrial complex--'Don't trust anyone over thirty'--no jobs for women except service (secretary, nurse, grade school teacher), and those underpaid--and meanwhile, the ferocious overcrowding caused by the world trying to squish the baby boomers into existing spaces while conveying, repeatedly, the message 'There are too many of you, you don't matter, you'll never have meaningful jobs'--you have the atmosphere.

But this high school revolution was really about the hypocrisy of teenagers using the news as theit excuse in their hierarchical battles with each other. What I was going for, in my clueless sixteen-year-old brain, was the lethal artificiality of being locked up with a few thousand of your age mates, which prepared you for. . . . what? In the workplace (or marriage, supposedly the destination for women) you weren't having to negotiate crowd of age mates suffering from the same hormonal chaos as you were.

But what came out was teenage boy violence for the sake of violence--something I knew firsthand--and the more insidious violence of mean girl crowds. My small friendship circle and I, experts at drifting into the woodwork to avoid attention, divided our gender into two groups, the indes and the pakkies. Indes--inde, for independent--were frequently the targets of the pakkies, the ones who roamed in packs, looking exactly alike in their teased behives, layers of Twiggy eye make-up, short skirts and t-strap shoes. They took over the bathrooms at every break and lunch, filling the air with hairspray and cigarette smoke, and the meanest would target any loner who dared to go in to try to pee. So you got used to holding it all day.

The novel had plenty of action, but central were the heroic indes, who of course knew how to survive, and when they didn't know what to do, they went to their retreat, the library. It all came to a satisfactory close, but I knew at the time that therre was something crucial missing, so I never typed it up and inflicted it on a New York publisher after scraping together postage from babysitting, the way I'd been doing with various other projects.

I finally gave it to a friend to rewrite, which was kinda cool, seeing what someone else would do with your story, but unsurprisingly the friend just doubled down on how great the indes were, and how stupid the rest of the kids. And so it finally went into a box, with varous other things piled on top over the years.

In culling all that old stuff, I rediscovered it. Glancing through, I wondered if there was any hope of resurrecting it as a period piece, but five minutes'perusal made it plain that it'd have to be completely gutted: the non-indes were all one type, even though on a personal level I knew better. The indes had no arc whatsoever, except in the wish fulfillment sense--they were the despised cool ones at the outset, then the heroes at the end, but Revenge of the Nerds did it better twenty years later (making me wonder if the originator of the idea was a peer). The story's potential interest would have to focus in on the pakkies, who would have to confront the very conformity they were trying to enforce. There was a possible story worth telling.

So out it went to the recycle bin. But it was fun to look back and remember the fierce pleasure I got in writing it and reinforcing the conviction that geeks are cool.

Uneven Reasoning

Aug. 15th, 2025 04:34 pm
unspeakablehorror: (Default)
[personal profile] unspeakablehorror
One thing I think is very common is for people to be very meticulous with their reasoning in some matters while disregarding it almost entirely in others. I think this is something to try to be more aware of, whether in ourselves or others.

Because sure, some people might gravitate towards one extreme or the other, but I think a lot of people end up somewhere in the middle, being very thoughtful about some things while hardly considering other things at all.

Chinese or German

Aug. 14th, 2025 10:13 pm
smmg: A circle containing the flags of the six Celtic nations, with a pair of crutches crossed over the top. The disability pride flag is in the background. (Default)
[personal profile] smmg
Can't decide whether I want to continue Chinese or start German next semester. Theoretically I could do both, but I can only do one for free per semester and I might be doing too many languages if I did both. I'm leaning towards picking Chinese I think. I'd really like to do the HSK1 exam as well. But the only Chinese class available at my level clashes with my wind band rehearsals, so maybe I'll do a semester of German instead then... Or maybe I'll get back into Italian actually, who knows.... I'm not the biggest Romance language fan but I did enjoy doing Italian.

I know I could just do Chinese on my own and wait until there's a class next year or whenever at a better time for me, but I want to be around people, I want to talk to people :(

Happy Love Your Bookshop Day!

Aug. 14th, 2025 01:33 pm
duckprintspress: (Default)
[personal profile] duckprintspress
A graphic with text that reads "Our Favorite Bookstores for Love Your Bookshop Day." Below this is a clipart of a shelf of books, showing their spines.

August 14th is Love Your Bookshop Day, and man do we have a bunch of bookstores we love! The contributors to this list are: Neo Scarlett, Rhosyn Goodfellow, Mikki Madison, E. C., Shadaras, theirprofoundbond, Nina Waters, YF Ollwell, boneturtle, Shea Sullivan, Rascal Hartley, Dei Walker, Shannon, Owl Outerbridge, Alex, Terra P. Waters, Sanne, D.V. Morse, Annabeth Lynch, and Linnea Peterson.

Europe and Canada

USA


Watch my brother's film!

Aug. 14th, 2025 08:13 pm
qian: Tiny pink head of a Katamari character (Default)
[personal profile] qian
I posted about watching my brother's first feature-length film Hungry Ghost Diner (2023) under access lock, but then found out it's available in the US/UK on Apple TV and Prime Video. I feel like my DW network has quite the concentration of people interested in c-ent, so thought I'd post publicly to draw some attention to it!

Hungry Ghost Diner is a supernatural family drama/comedy about a food truck operator, Bonnie, who has a difficult relationship with her dad, and has to balik kampung/go back to small-town Perak, where her dad runs a kopitiam/coffeehouse, when her uncle dies. Her dad is closing down the coffeehouse; it's Hungry Ghost Month and there are lots of ghosts about, and family issues that need resolution ... It's unusual among the c-ent you might have watched before in that it's Malaysian, so features multiple languages -- I think Cantonese gets the most screen-time, but Mandarin, Hakka, Hokkien, English and Malay are also spoken.

I am obviously not remotely objective, but having just finished watching it yesterday, I thought it was good and if anything I felt one might enjoy it even more if one was not related to the director lolol. It got a positive critical reception in Malaysia when it came out a couple of years ago and has won awards at film festivals, and you can see why. It's beautifully shot, quirkily scored, and very Malaysian -- the charm of the accumulated details of (Chinese) small-town Malaysia is impossible to resist if you have any connection to such places, and probably still hard to resist if you don't know Malaysia personally. I thought the cast all delivered strong performances. I was particularly taken with the lead's sweet maternal uncle (played by an actor who sadly died suddenly not too long after the film was released). The lead was impressive, too: she played the main character with directness and sincerity.

And the film's such a heartfelt homage to Malaysian Chinese culture, from the beverages ads in Bonnie's dad's kopitiam to the Potehi glove puppet performances (I found these very interesting, I'd never seen them before). I think it's a film that would interest anyone who follows me on DW, or has read my books, or is generally interested in world cinema!

Evelina again

Aug. 13th, 2025 06:50 pm
sartorias: (Default)
[personal profile] sartorias
I don't know how many times I've read this, but as my book group is meeting Saturday, I dug it back out of the box and have been rereading it. The influence on Jane Austen is clearer with each reread. Astonishing that it was considered so genteel at the time, with all the thoughtless animal cruelty as well as abuse of the characters set up as comic villains.

The hero and heroine are dull as ditchwater, of course; she is unswerving in her maidenly modesty (and beauty) and purity, and he remains at a distance, regarded by all as a cynosure, and ever ready to rescue her though they scarcely have an actual conversation. But there's too much delicacy to actually get to know one another as people; she has to know that he's a gentleman, and he has to know her virtue before the wedding bells can ring.

The fun is in the secondary characters in all their vulgarity, and in the minute descriptions of life in London in the 1770s.

I'm halfway through, maybe more to come.

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