marinarusalka: (marinarusalka: purple hummingbird)
[personal profile] marinarusalka
There were a lot of those too!

soooo many photos )

Also, The Boy's photo gallery is here, and if you see my photos are cool, you ain't seen nothing yet.
stonepicnicking_okapi: cleaning (cleaning)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
1. Last night there was a massive leak in the boys' bedroom and I had every bucket, trash bin, baking sheet, and towel out. We called the emergency maintenance twice and got an AI voice telling us that it sounded like something that could be dealt with during business hour. Fuck you, you miserable pieces of shit.

So the drip-drip-drip all night drove me insane.

We even banged on the door upstairs but she wouldn't open the door!

I put the boys in my bed and I slept on the floor for about 2 hours. Then around 430, I got up, meditated, made the boys' lunches and packed a bag and went to the car. And slept for about an hour.

The ceiling crashed in about 7 am as the boys were getting ready for school. It's a mess. It's a complete and utter shite fest.

Then I fled and let the boys' father handle the maintenance and building management.

tw: cutting )

We had put in maintenance requests about the leak but of course they ignored them.

I am getting sleepy so I may go back to the car and take a nap. I suppose I could take a nap in the library but...I feel like getting in the car and going to a hotel and starting fresh with a new name and a new identity.

2. The job hasn't called me back, but I think I submitted all the paperwork.

This is my new favorite YT Garron Noone, the Irishman.

pauraque: bird flying over the trans flag (trans pride)
[personal profile] pauraque
Note: Stronach came out as trans after this book was published, so earlier reviews may misgender her, as does the cover bio.

In this first book of a planned fantasy trilogy (of which two books have so far been released), we're introduced to the city of Hainak, a seaport that's just been through a political revolution, as well as an alchemical-biological magitech revolution. Our main character is Yat, a naive cop who wants to be a hero, but instead she's just been demoted for being queer. As her life crumbles into a haze of drugs and disillusionment, she stumbles into the doings of a secret faction, gets murdered, and finds herself resurrected with new powers that allow her to manipulate life force with her mind, all of which gives her a very different perspective on what a hero is and what she actually wants to fight for.

So... I really wanted to like this. I did enjoy the Māori-inspired worldbuilding and the author's vivid visual imagination, filling the city with a profusion of bizarre wonders as well as a strong sense of place. I also liked a lot of the characters and cared what happened to them. But ultimately I found the book didn't have enough structure to hold together.

It's being marketed as akin to Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, and I think that comparison pinpoints the problem. Many aspects of the book do seem similar—there's magic with body horror, fantasy with sci-fi, loads of queerness... as well as byzantine political intrigue, misdirections about characters' identities, conversations that don't specify what's being discussed, and long monologues from unidentified speakers. But the reason all the confusing stuff works when Muir does it is that she does eventually provide enough information for you to fit all the pieces together, and on re-reading you discover that all the things that initially confused you actually make complete sense and Muir had a plan all along. And maybe Stronach also has a plan in her head, but if so it didn't make it onto the page. The book ends in a muddle of events that seem superficially dramatic but don't actually explain that much or draw the needed connections between the disparate plot elements.

The part of the book that's presented the most clearly is Yat's journey of realizing that the police only protect the powerful and serve the status quo, so if she wants to be a hero to the downtrodden then being a cop isn't the way to do it. Which would be a perfectly reasonable character arc, except that Yat's backstory is that she was an orphan living on the streets and she saw firsthand on a daily basis what cops are like, so why is her story about her "realizing" something she already knows? I guess she's supposed to be in deep denial, but it just didn't make any sense to me.

Some reviews I read had also led me to believe that the book has a lot more pirate content than it actually does. I mean, it does have pirates! But I felt cheated that we didn't spend more time with them, both because pirates are awesome and because the backstory of these specific pirates was super intriguing but criminally underexplained. I often felt like the book was barely intersecting the outskirts of a way more interesting story centered on the pirate captain and her crew, and wondered why they weren't the main characters.

Anyway, I think there was a lot of potential here but it didn't cohere enough for me to want to continue with the series. Too bad.

Stuff.

Jun. 10th, 2025 03:45 pm
netgirl_y2k: (Default)
[personal profile] netgirl_y2k
Just had a lovely walk with Freya around the park. Met a dog called Elmo, a dog called Fenrir, and a dog called Gus, which cover all three of the platonic ideals of dog naming, 1) this is a muppet, 2) this is a wolf, and 3) this is an elderly human.

Freya and I also took a little trip last weekend up to Inverness to hang out with [personal profile] tamoline and her wife who were on holiday up there, which was a lot of fun, not least because Freya accidentally tobogganed down their stairs, got herself trapped in their kitchen, and then decided that she wanted to live with them. If you are ever meeting online friends for the first time and are worried that it might be a little awkward I can highly recommend taking a stupid wolf with you as a conversation starter.

I happened to mention to my mum later that I'd gone up north to spend the day with some online friends who were up from England, and after a long pause she said '...I thought your internet friends lived in Germany?' To which I indignantly pointed out that I'm personable, people like me, I have more than one friend; this was met by a more sceptical look than you want from your mother.

We watched the series finale of Doctor Who, to which my reaction was, and still remains, holy, hail Mary pass, Batman! I am generally of the school of thought that spreadsheet dorks are a curse on most forms of entertainment, but I also kind of want to go to the pub with a Disney accountant just so that after, like, three drinks I can go 'So, Doctor Who, how's that math mathing?'

I also have gripes about how heteronormative the finale was, but that's increasingly the new normal, isn't it? I love living through a time of enormous backlash to any and all social progress orchestrated by history's greatest fuckwits.

In gayer news, here are some books that I have been reading:

The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Linz McLeod - Publishing a series of lesbian romances about Jane Austen characters is God's work, so I don't want to criticise it too harshly, not least because as a f/f regency romance it is perfectly delightful, but as a piece of Austen fanfiction it was, eh, Charlotte Lucas felt really true to character, but Mary Bennet could have been anybody, she felt half author's OC, half thinly veiled Lizzie.

That said, I will be picking up next year's The Miseducation of Caroline Bingley as soon as it comes out because God's work.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh - I was so excited for this because Tesh's previous facist punching novel Some Desperate Glory had easily been my favourite of that year, so I was kind of bummed that I didn't like this one as much. Maybe it was the genre change, instead of sci-fi it was magical realism set at a contemporary magic school; maybe it was my class chippiness, I'm not entirely sure that private school pupils don't deserve to be eaten by demons; maybe it was that it was heavily talked up as having a central f/f relationship, which honestly felt kind of tacked on, while much more time was spent on the het relationship with a dude that the reader realises is the villain, like, a hundred pages before the protagonist.

Like, it's fine, it's good even, my expectations were just a bit out of control. Also, go read Some Desperate Glory.

The Vengeance by Emma Newman - Pirates, and werewolves, and vampires, and lesbians, oh my! Our protagonist has spent her life at sea during the golden age of piracy when she discovers her "mother" is no such thing, and embarks on a fish out of water road trip through pre-revolution France, running from werewolves, kissing girls, and fighting vampires.

Is it a lot? Yes. Is it totally awesome? Also, yes!

TV Tuesday: Pride Memories

Jun. 10th, 2025 12:09 pm
yourlibrarian: Who Brian Is (QAF-WhoIAmbymaiaj)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] tv_talk

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk



As it's Pride month, what are your memories of LGBTQI representation in TV shows? Do you have favorite characters, episodes, or shows that were significant in their depictions? How have you seen audiences responding to broader views of the population?

Prodigy

Jun. 10th, 2025 12:48 pm

The Demon #6

Jun. 10th, 2025 05:49 pm
iamrman: (Sindr)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Words and pencils: Jack Kirby

Inks: Mike Royer


It’s a werewolf story, let’s goooo!


Read more... )

tyger: Roxas, smiling as he fades away in the KHII FM+ extra scene.  Text: XIII (Roxas - smile)
[personal profile] tyger

Big thing I did today was clean the bathroom; I got the steam cleaner out and everything. It's been needing a go with that for a while, but I REALLY didn't want to get it out when it was still hot XD XD XD Humidity woulda killed me then!

Also put my new pins and badges up on my pin banner - still gotta take the older ones I took down away, but I'm avoiding that. Mainly because I need to reorganise the shelves so that the thing they're stored in is easier to get at, etc. etc, and I'm trying to uh. Not start any more reorganisation projects until after I've dealt with the ones that're in progress...

Decided to make room for some of my new prints by taking down some of the ones that've been up for ~15 years, but I haven't actually put them up yet because I'm out of goddamn sticky dots. -_-;;; I'll probably pick some up tomorrow, or the day after if not. Should be tomorrow, though, planning on going shopping with Mama. (I thought, when I got my new pj pants, I didn't need new pj tops as well. I was _wrong. Sigh.)

...but for now I gotta go to bed because whoops it's late and Mama prefers to shop in the morning, before the crowds. (I do not blame her! Just. Ugh, mornings.)

The Dark Touch by Beth Ross

Jun. 10th, 2025 05:41 pm
profiterole_reads: (The Secret Circle - Diana Adam Cassie)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
The Dark Touch by Beth Ross was excellent! In the United Republic of Britain, Nova finds out that witches are not extinct and that she is one of them.

This contemporary novel mixes an alternate history, urban fantasy and some elements of activism (women's rights, including abortion, and queer rights). A large tapestry of characters are introduced little by little, making it relatively easy to learn who's who. There's no cliffhanger, but I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Nova has a bi awakening at 23 (same!), there are sapphic characters of various orientations and there's major f/f. Abigail is on the autism spectrum.

(no subject)

Jun. 10th, 2025 10:42 am
seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
[personal profile] seekingferret
The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza

I wasn't quite sure what this book wanted to be, it was doing three genres of middlebrow novel all at once and not quite pulling any of them off, but in the end I was not too unhappy to have kept with it.

Sara Marsala, our heroine, is the daughter of a messy Italian-American family. She is dealing with a divorce, the failure of her restaurant, and a general sense of failure and helplessness. When her beloved aunt dies, her aunt's will sends her back to the Old Country of rural Sicily, to Find Her Roots and see if an old deed for a plot of land in Sicily, passed down from her great-grandmother who never made it to America, is still valid. When she arrives in Sicily she is informed that her great grandmother was Murdered, contradicting family lote, and the plot is afoot.

The book tries to be a historical fiction novel about life in early 20th century Sicily, an action packed murder mystery, and an eat pray love European adventure, and the three visions of the book war with each other, not helped by lazy plotting with unjustified expository leaps obscuring story details I wanted to see fleshed out.

But it's the wanted to see fleshed out that frustrated me, because the story concept works and there are some really great characters both in the historical flashbacks and the modern narrative and I really was hoping that things would get worked out with just a bit more craft.

Daily notes

Jun. 10th, 2025 10:33 pm
fred_mouse: a small white animal of indeterminate species, the familiar of the Danger Mouse Evil Toad (startled)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

Today (Tuesday)

  • second day of uni - more focused. Met two other PhD students, and a said hello to another who didn't actually talk to me, so I'm not sure if they are staff or student (we are in a locked office space, because of research reasons, which is quite nostalgic. The card scanner makes the same beep as the ones at the Telethon Institute did)
  • I'm kind of keeping up with other parts of my life, but not in any way that makes it look like I have my shit together. The lounge has a teetering mound of clean washing, there is a pile of stuff on the bed I need to sort before I can go to sleep (by which I think I mean 'dump back on the floor'). I've taken some of the necessities in to the new office, and tomorrow I'll organise a locked cubby for keeping things in, which means I can bring any books in that make sense.

Yesterday

  • Didn't quite make it to bed before 11pm last night, but it was close. Awoke naturally at 6:50am, which meant that I could relax for a little bit and laze about until the alarm went off. I didn't, in the end, getting up after about 2 minutes, and getting in the shower.
  • Past me had a work day morning packing checklist, which was greatly appreciated this morning, as there were a couple of things that I would otherwise have forgotten. There are a couple of items that I've managed to misplace, and maybe I'll have time to sort them tonight, but I'm not optimistic about that. I was enough slow getting ready that I missed the 7:45am bus, so [personal profile] artisanat dropped me at the train station. Youngest gave me two options for public transport from there--either the circle route (longer, relies on Leach Hwy not being clogged), or train to Canning Bridge and either the 100 or 101 bus. I did the latter, and once I found the right stand at the interchange, got the first bus that came past.
  • Good meeting with supervisors, I have ideas of what is to come. I spent more time sorting out logging in to things than I had allowed for, including a trek to the library IT help desk, where it turned out that what I was assuming was one problem turned out to be four separate issues, one of which was solved by changing my password in Outlook. I also went and asked questions of the Library Helpdesk person, who gave me a personalised tour of all the things on the Library Webpage that might be of use to me, and pointed at things to follow up.

Sunday

  • Went boating on the river with [profile] buggs_jenny, their partner P, and their parents (G, K). This was a somewhat last minute invite, they organised for there to be a kayak for me to use, and I had a lot of fun. I hadn't allowed for the timing of how it would all fit together with the fact that it was a recorder group Sunday so it was a bit of a rush to head off and I didn't help with the clean up. I now have to work out how to get involved and go more often (this is not an every weekend thing; I could at best do the off weeks from recorder) given that the car we are looking to sell is the one with the roof racks, but I can't get our kayak on to it on my own. Although, having said that, it is some years since I've moved that kayak and I have no idea how heavy it is relative to my current strength--it is possible that all the shoulder work that I've been doing would be enough.
  • Recorder with G and [personal profile] ariaflame; L has injured their shoulder and P isn't yet back from visiting their sibling in the eastern states. G is now calling us the A minors; I gather this is a joke that is related to the name of another group they are in. We worked through several trios that I'm not sure that aria has seen before, with some swapping around of parts so that they were sight-reading the easier of the C recorder parts (ie. soprano or tenor).
  • Dinner with [personal profile] chaosmanor. One of those weeks where it turns out that we have gone through the veggie stash much faster than usual, and I under measured the amount of cabbage to cut to fill the gap for the stir fry. Fortunately, chaosmanor wasn't all that hungry, artisanat was out dancing and got dinner there, and Youngest and Eldest are able to raid the fridge if they are still hungry. And I had had one serve of each of the options at afternoon tea at recorder - G had made two things, and aria had brought one, and I have no ability to resist that kind of temptation. Particularly when G had made a serving specifically for me, because they had made a Bakewell tart (which is similar to the version I make but didn't have coconut in, which might mean that I've conflated two recipes) but had realised at the last minute that their pastry wasn't GF, and had cooked a generous serve in a ramekin.

Blue Beetle #9

Jun. 10th, 2025 02:31 pm
iamrman: (Franky)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Len Wein

Pencils: Paris Cullins

Inks: Dell Barras


Why has Angie Revere been stealing from Ted Kord? All will be revealed!


Read more... )

From This Day Forward by John Brunner

Jun. 10th, 2025 09:00 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The sudden, shocking, return of Shockwave Reader. Will the living envy the dead?

From This Day Forward by John Brunner

Black Panther #4

Jun. 10th, 2025 12:30 pm
iamrman: (Buggy)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Words and pencils: Jack Kirby

Inks: Mike Royer


Who are the Collectors?


Read more... )

Batman #488

Jun. 10th, 2025 10:31 am
iamrman: (Nightbutt)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Doug Moench

Pencils and inks: Jim Aparo


Knightfall prelude.

Robin tries to teach Jean-Paul Valley how to be an effective crime-fighter.


Read more... )

flo_nelja: (Default)
[personal profile] flo_nelja posting in [community profile] obscur_echange
Titre : Comme un goût de cendres
Auteur : Géis (Participant.e 4)
Pour : Gangcheol (Participant.e 8)
Fandom : Mythologie japonaise
Persos/Couple : Izanami
Rating : T
Disclaimer : La mythologie japonaise appartient au domaine public et au peuple japonais
Prompt : Izanami. La mort d'Izanami, son arrivée à Yomi et comment elle est finalement devenue la déesse des lieux.
- Comment a-t-elle notamment appris qu'il lui serait désormais impossible de quitter ce monde après avoir consommé de la nourriture ? Comment a-t-elle vécu la putréfaction de son propre corps ? Peut inclure la venue puis la fuite d'Izanagi et comment elle l'a vécu.
Notes : La légende d’Izanami et Izanagi est un des premiers mythes que j’ai lu et j’ai toujours été frappée de l’injustice de son sort tout au long de cette histoire. Merci de m’avoir donnée une opportunité d’écrire sur ce personnage fascinant. J’espère que la réponse au prompt aura l’heur de te plaire.

Read more... )

Beta edit preps: COMPLETE

Jun. 10th, 2025 09:31 am
vriddy: Studious, smiling Eri (studious)
[personal profile] vriddy

...Just the preps, I haven't started on the actual edits yet XD But I have a roadmap and an extensive list of actionable steps, and I'm glad I do. Working offline using Pomodoro, like I mentioned the other day was super effective.

A disadvantage, I suppose, is that I can't have conversations back-and-forth in GoogleDoc comments, which is something I dearly enjoy doing with fanfic (either as beta-reader or beta-readee!). I think maybe it's just too much, on a turnaround of 40k words at once. Also because I needed to let it rest, folks might not be so interested in a reply 6 months later on a reaction they don't remember having about a story they fuzzily recall 😅 Having said that, I did write to folks after chopping their feedback into the roadmap, to thank them again and share a general reaction to their reactions :D

Stuff to ponder )

It took me 17h41 to go through all 7 beta-readers' feedback. (Thanks again everyone for offering, I am so grateful :D). I'm going to have a brief interlude now (well, brief is the plan XD). Ideally, I'd like to use that time to write something original but SHORTER so I can bask in the self-indulgence of inventing fun worldbuilding, which I loooove doing. But on the other hand, Wind Breaker Volume 22 just came out and drove me insane with the OT5 vibes so I may have to write something for that instead XD

I 100% intend to break down the work and take regular breaks when I start actually following the roadmap, if only to make the structural changes then giving it a bit of space so I can make sure the major changes didn't break something else important. I expect overall it'll likely take longer than the 17h41 prep time, so I better pace myself! I think I should learn very interesting things throughout the process. I'm already thinking about what to be careful about in the Soul Thief story, when I get back to it.

Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

Jun. 10th, 2025 08:41 am
icon_uk: Mod Squad icon (Mod Squad)
[personal profile] icon_uk posting in [community profile] scans_daily
In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

Honestly, not the best week for trying to see the lighter side of things, and I know there's still a Pride post to make, but I know I can rely on you to provide some engaing discussion, so go for it!

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