latest spinning WIP

Sep. 3rd, 2025 07:47 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Sorry about the laundry in the background. Meanwhile, it's not even 8 a.m. and it's too hot already to stay outside. Nice sunny day means at least the laundry will dry quickly?!
malurette: (memories)
[personal profile] malurette posting in [community profile] glyfic
est-ce que j'ai miraculeusement levé mon blocage d'écriture ? non peut-être pas encore mais ça fait du bien quand même !

Titre : Déclin d'orbite
Auteur : [personal profile] malurette
Base : Yoko Tsuno
Personnages/Couples : Yoko & Khâny, Pol, mention d'Ingrid, Cecilia, Vic
Genre : un peu moche
Gradation : PG / K+
Légalité : propriété de Roger Leloup, je ne cherche ni à en tirer profit ni à manquer de respect

Prompt : Fic - Yoko Tsuno
Yoko/Khâny. En pleine “reconstruction” de Vinéa, Yoko doit repartir sur Terre une fois encore. Khâny ne le supporte plus. Conflit, hurt/comfort, avec Paul en comique de service qui tente de détendre l’atmosphère.
sur [community profile] obscur_echange

Continuité : vague ; après L'astrologue de Bruges mais refuse de prendre les suites du Septième code en compte (re: Emilia) et pourtant emprunte un peu à l'attitude plus récente de Khany ?
Nombre de mots : ~600

De mondes différents. )
[syndicated profile] icanhascheezburger_feed

Posted by Lana DeGaetano

Are you wearing your sunblock, cat mothers and fathers? I hope you are—the UV index on these adorable cat memes is off the charts, and the only thing that'll save you is chuckling as hard as you can at each and every one of these feline funnies!

My favurite time of the day is when I get to take a break and look at some wholesome animal content. Granted, I do this for work, but dedicated animal lovers know that around-the-clock animal funnies are necessary to get through the day. If I can't be with my cat, Cooper, in the coziness of my own bed, then this will have to do!

In cat world, it really is sunshine and rainbows most of the time. You'd feel the same way if you didn't pay rent, for your own food, and got belly rubs and chin scratches whenever you wanted. Cats are kings in their respective households, and cat lovers are happy to be their feline's little court jesters. After all, we wouldn't want anyone else being the main purrvider for our fuzzy freaks! Scroll below to shine some light on your feline funny bone today!

GET YOUR WEEKLY HIT OF WHISKERED PURRFECTION - SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER!

Reading (etc.) Wednesday

Sep. 3rd, 2025 07:24 am
troisoiseaux: (reading 7)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Currently on a non-fiction kick:
- 74% through Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson, a 1973 collection of articles originally written for Rolling Stone, chronicling the 1972 Democratic primary and U.S. presidential election in real time.
- 35% through Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya, a memoir about the author's lifelong love of reading and mental health struggles and the way those two things have intersected.

I also just started Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome, a 1889 travelogue-style novel about three friends (and a dog) taking a boating trip along the Thames. I'm only two chapters in, but enjoying this a lot— shades of P.G. Wodehouse. (Although, technically, the influence must have been the other way around...?)

In other media consumption, I finally caved to a friend's recommendation to watch Hazbin Hotel, an adult animation show that can be not wholly inaccurately described as "an edgy Hot Topic version of The Good Place", and spin-off Helluva Boss, about the workplace and romantic shenanigans of a trio of demon assassins. As someone who likes musical theater and dark humor (and saw one character's design and was like "welcome back, Grell Sutcliff"), I am pretty much the target audience here, but for reasons I cannot entirely put my finger on, while I was like "this is entertaining but I can take or leave it" about Hazbin Hotel, I finished Helluva Boss and then immediately went back to rewatch it from the beginning. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reading Wednesday

Sep. 3rd, 2025 06:55 am
sabotabby: (books!)
[personal profile] sabotabby
Just finished: Do a Powerbomb! by Daniel Warren Johnson and Mike Spicer. I'll describe the plot of this comic to you and I suspect you'll have one of two reactions: 1) why the fuck would you read this? or 2) I must read this IMMEDIATELY. It was described somewhat in snippets by some goth-type person sitting on the far side of the table from me at a bar and I heard just enough that I had reaction #2.

So, this comic is about a girl who wants to be a pro-wrestler because her mother was basically the best. Only, no one will train her because her mother died in a ring accident. She's recruited into a tournament by a necromancer, and the prize for the tournament is that he will resurrect one person of the winner's choice. Only catch—it's tag-team, so she has to find the one person who will also agree to resurrect her mother if they win: the masked luchador heel who killed her mother. He agrees for reasons more complex, as it turns out, than guilt, so off they go to the necromancer's castle in space, only to realize that Earth is the only planet on which kayfabe exists; everywhere else, it's for real. The story ends with spoiler )

If you read that and went "fuck yeah! that sounds metal!" this comic is for you. I don't read many comics anymore but this is one of the best I've read in ages. IMO more stories should be about wrestling in a necromancer's space castle.

Currently reading: Notes From a Regicide by Isaac Fellman. This is the second one I've read by him and I think he's one of those authors who writes books that are very laser-targeted at my particular tastes. It's about a young trans man, Griffon, who was adopted at 15 by an older trans couple, Etoine and Zaffre, both of whom are artists. This is in some kind of far-off, post-climate collapse future; transphobia is definitely still a thing, and Griffon's biological father is a real piece of shit about it, but isn't quite expressed in the same ways. Etoine and Zaffre are originally from a city-state called Stephensport, ruled by a prince and frozen in time, and have come to New York as refugees/emigres. Their little family was happy together, but his adoptive parents don't talk much about their pasts. After their deaths, Griffon reads Etoine's diary, kept when he was imprisoned awaiting execution, to try to find out who his parents really were. Where I'm at now, Etoine has made a career as a portrait painter, starting with an "elector," who is some kind of undead woman who lives in the stone yard. Do I know what that is? No, but I am intrigued whether or not we find out.

Everything about this is fucking awesome. Fellman writes this deep-seated pain and ever-present threat of violence in a way that's poetic and reminiscent of 19th century literature, the descriptions are strange and comment on their own strangeness, and his worldbuilding is deft—just enough to make you intrigued and never at the risk of a lore dump or anything so prosaic as that. It's the antithesis of the cute queer found family story—yes, they are wonderful characters who I love immediately, but no one talks about their feelings or processes their trauma. I'm so into it.

Adverbial adjective of the month

Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:35 am
[syndicated profile] languagelog_feed

Posted by Mark Liberman

Or maybe "adverbial noun"? Or "adverbial verb"? Anyhow, "Long-closed Calif. mountain route surprise reopens after years", SFGate 9/2/2025:

A long-shuttered stretch of highway that cuts straight through Angeles National Forest above Los Angeles has finally reopened.

A roughly 10-mile stretch of Angeles Crest Highway, which runs roughly east-west through the national forest for over 60 miles from the wealthy suburb of La Cañada Flintridge to the small mountain town of Wrightwood, reopened with little notice on Friday after being closed for several years. Before the surprise return on Friday, the portion of the two-lane highway had been closed since the winter of 2022-2023, when “relentless storms” collapsed roadways, caused rockslides and damaged retaining walls, according to Caltrans.

The Wiktionary entry for surprise offers Noun, Verb, and Interjection sub-entries, but no Adjective or Adverb examples. It's normal for nouns to be used as nominal modifiers, but verbal modification by a noun is much rarer.

Comment from C.B., who emailed the quote and link:

I was surprised to see the following on the SFGate website, a news website run by the San Francisco Chronicle (although separate staff from the newspaper), specifically the phrase "surprise reopens." I realize it's headlinese, but still…

I don't have time this morning to find the relevant sections the Cambridge Grammar or other sources, assuming that such sections exist. And no analogous examples come to mind, though readers will no doubt oblige.

The obligatory screen shot:

Update — CuConnacht in the comments suggests that "It reads to me as a noun used as an adjective used as an adverb. That is, I think that "surprise reopening" is somewhere in the background." That makes sense — but the pattern is not a general one, so that a "surprise discovery of X by Y" would probably not be headlined as "Y surprise discovers X". And someone's surprise appearance would probably not be described by saying that they "surprise appeared".

 

 

[syndicated profile] icanhascheezburger_feed

Posted by Ayala Sorotsky

Good meowrning, fellow feline fanatic fans. At least we're pretty sure it's morning already. The sun is out, our cats are looking out the window to hunt bird with their eyes and ekekek at them, so yeah - we're pretty sure the morning is already here. We wouldn't know, because our cats woke us up when it was still dark. They meowed and pawed at us like something Very Impawrtant™ is happening, we didn't even had the chance tolook at the clock and see what time it was. Apparently, they needed us, right there and then, to lift them up for a bug that made its night's rest on the kitchen ceiling. And won't let us go back to sleep.

What can we say, cats will be cats, fur sure. They'll meow and yowl at blank walls (until the ghosts are gone), they'll climb up to all the places they shouldn't be (and then ask to be gently helped down), and they'll demand treats even if they've already had eleventy (only this morning). But it doesn't matter - cats will always be our loveble, cute, and delightful little fluffballs. We love our cats so much, and no amount of chaos will change that.

Is your inbox feline too professional? Add some cats falling off counters. Subscribe here!

[syndicated profile] icanhascheezburger_feed

Posted by Mariel Ruvinsky

You know those moments… when you are chilling with your cats, and everything seems completely fine, but out of nowhere, your cat will just jump for no reason? Yeah, we love those moments. They are just kind of funny to us. It can happen anytime and for any reason. You never expect it. You can never see it coming. But every single time that it happens, every time your cat gets spooked by literally nothing, you laugh about it afterward. Just because it's funny. 

Cats are so easily startled, and they get startled by the silliest things. In fact, there is a whole section of the internet that talks about the silly things that spooked their cats today every single day. Those things range all the way from someone sneezing to humans walking next to a window to… just nothing. And each and every post of that kind makes us smile and reminds us of just how much we love our own little scaredy cats at home. 

Is your inbox feline too professional? Add some cats falling off counters. Subscribe here!

[syndicated profile] icanhascheezburger_feed

Posted by Mariel Ruvinsky

In an era when the thing that we see most often on the internet is drama and insanity, wholesome stories - genuinely wholesome ones - are rare. Roommates and pets seem to always cause drama. Roommates lock cats in their rooms even though the cats are not theirs. Roommates adopt cats just to post pictures of the cat on social media, without actually taking care of them properly. Roommates demand that you get rid of your cats for no good reason. It happens all the time. It's like we cannot avoid the drama no matter how much we try. 

And then, we come across this story. And we think to ourselves: "here we go again". Except not. This story, wherever you think it's going to go, we promise you that it doesn't go that way. It's one of the most wholesome stories about cats and roommates that we have seen in a long, long time, and it made us smile so genuinely that we simply had to share it with all of you guys as well. 

Is your inbox feline too professional? Add some cats falling off counters. Subscribe here!

Knightfall: Detective Comics #663

Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:37 am
iamrman: (Sindr)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Chuck Dixon

Pencils: Graham Nolan

Inks: Scott Hanna


Batman must save the mayor from a flooded tunnel after the Joker and Scarecrow left them to die.


Read more... )

Here we are half-awake

Sep. 2nd, 2025 10:50 pm
sovay: (Silver: against blue)
[personal profile] sovay
The second-best part of this highly mediocre day was a gyro on which I put a phenomenal amount of tzatziki, to the point that by the end of it the meat was probably the condiment. The best part was taking a walk with [personal profile] spatch right before sunset. I remembered to bring my camera.

A blizzard in the midst of a sunny day. )

I am not sure that Series 13 of Doctor Who holds together at all, but since Kevin McNally was playing essentially Marcus Brody if he had started in parapsychology instead of classics, I enjoyed him very much.

More books, more tv

Sep. 3rd, 2025 09:48 am
selenak: (Six by Nyuszi)
[personal profile] selenak
More books:

Stella Duffy: The Purple Shroud. The sequel to her novel Theodora, this one covering the time from when Theodora becomes Empress to her death. It's as readable as the first one, though I have a few nitpicks. Not about what I feared - the novel Theodora keeps morally ambiguous, and it confronts head on that once you are in power, you cannot simultanously be "one of the people", no matter how low you were originally born or how disadvantaged a life you've lived until this point. Doesn't mean your decisions can't benefit the disadvantaged, but you yourself are no longer one of them. So far, so good, and in case I hadn't mentioned it before, Duffy's characterisation of Narses is my favourite after Gillian Bradshaw's, and Thedora's relationship with him, ditto; they're firm allies from before she married Justinian, but they also sometimes have different opinions, and his ultimate loyalty is to Justinian, not to her. Also, Antonina (Belisarius' wife) in several lhistorical novels of the period tends to be presented as a none too bright promiscuous tool of Theodora's, and not so here, where they are friends, but up to a point, and Antonina has her priorities which are neither about her sex life nor about Theodora.

Spoilery Nitpick is Spoilery Because Not Historical )

Naomi Novik: Spinning Silver. I've heard many good things about this one but didn't get around do reading it before now. Turns out it is absolutely worth the hype. I had been charmed by Novik's Temeraire saga, though less so the more books were published and stopped reading before Laurence and Temeraire got to Australia. This novel, by contrast, didn't just charm me but made me fall in love and start it all over again as soon as I was done. Rather unusually for what I've read of Novik's novels so far, almost the entire main cast is female, and she even pulls off multiple first person narrations without this reader getting confused as to who is narrating which passage (note: in my copy, this isn't marked with "Name of Character" to signal a pov switch), because the individual voices are that individual.

The setting is vaguely Russian, using various fairy tale elements (Rumpelstiskin, Cinderella, Baba Yaga) to weave something new. The main narrating ladies are: 1.) Miryem, daughter of a Jewish moneylender who isn't very good at moneylending due to being too kind and exploitable by his antisemitic village, who takes over the moneylending business, makes a success out of it and makes the fateful for fairy tales boast of being able to turn silver into gold, which gets overheard by a Staryk (= essentially fairy for the purposes of this novel) Lord who decides to take her up on it, 2.) Wanda, downtrodden but strong and determined daughter of a drunken and abusive farmer who is in debt to Miryem, which causes her to work for Miryem, 3.) Irina, daughter of the provincial Duke who through a plot device involving Miryem's business with the Staryk lord sees a chance to gain power by marrying Irina to the young Tsar despite said young Tsar's very sinister reputation. There are more first person narrators among the supporting cast, but these are the three main characters who drive the narrative, who have to use their wits to first survive increasingly dangerous situations and then get a step ahead and actually defeat the cause of said situations, and who along the way form relationships with other characters (and each other) that help them achieving this. It''s really, spinning metaphors being inevitable, a fantastic and brilliant yarn, and every time I thought "hang on, I can see where this is going, but how does that work with Character X' previously established behavior", the novel surprised me by making it work in the best way.

More tv:

Alien: Earth, episodes 1.01 - 1.04: Not a sequel but a prequel, setting wise, though made with an awareness that most of the audience will be familiar with at least the first few Alien movies. Mind you, with the heavy emphasis on AI beings already introduced in the pilot I thought, hang on, to which Ridley Scott cult movie is this supposed to be a prequel to? (Four episodes later: leaving aside the four years limit on the life span of Replicants in Blade Runner, this actually would work in a kind of shared early Ridley Scott films universe.) Not that Alien and its sequels don't have robots (robots here being used as a collective noun for various different AIs in human shape) as important parts of the plot, of course, but this show really puts them centre stage (perhaps recalling David was one of the key elements of Prometheus that worked even for people who disliked the movie?), and it absolutely works. It also so far provides a good remix of core elements. Ripley in I think not one but two of the Alien movies said that the company (not just Wayland-Yutani which she originally worked for, but also its successors in the movie plots) were the true monsters, given that the Xenomorphs "just" follow their instincts but Wayland-Yutani et al sacrifice fellow human beings for greed. If this was late 1970s and early 1980s scepticism of capitalism and where it's going, well, now we the audience live in the world of tech bros and politicians not even trying to hide their corruption anymore but boasting of it, and so this tv series so far doiubles and triples down on Ripley's observation. Not just the good old Xenomorph but newly introduced creatures like the T-Ocelius deliver the creeps, horrors and scares, sure, as they go after their organic victims, but the character you really loathe and with every episode more wish to fall to an extremely unpleasant fate is the resident main tech bro billionaire, Boy Kavalier (what he really calls himself), so covinced of his own brilliance, so utterly unconcerned with any empathy whatsoever, and seeing both human and synthetic workers as his property.

(Future eras may write their film and tv thesis about tech bro villains from Glass Onion onwards.)

But any genre that involves horror needs sympathetic characters as well, characters the audience cares for and wants to survive, not getting torn apart by the Xenomorph (and other murderous species). Which is where this show also excels, but saying why gets too spoilery to talk about it above cut. )

World building wise, the Earth as presented by this show no longer has nation states, it's run by five cooperations (this reminded me of what Mike Duncan did for the Mars part in his Podcast Revolutions, and he couldn't have known), with Weyland-Yutani as one of the older powerful ones and Boy Kavalier's company, inevitably named Prodigy, as the newbie which together with another new company changed the "Triumvirate" to "The Five". Democracy, of course, is also a thing of the past. For once, North America isn't a location (so far), instead, the Weyland-Yutani vessel in the series pilot crashes down on what used to be Thailand, and Boy Kavalier's lair seems to be located somewhere in South Asia (Vietnam, I'd say, given the scenery) as well. We all know how a Xenomorph looks in the various stages of its existence by now, but the design team came up with four other creepy species as well which are new and are excellent at bringing on body horror. Though like I said: the truest revulsion is created by human greed. Contrasted, which makes it compelling and not nihilistic, by the capacity of doing better than that, by artificial and human beings alike.

Batgirl (2000) #2

Sep. 3rd, 2025 07:37 am
iamrman: (Buggy)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writers: Scott Peterson and Kelley Puckett

Pencils: Damion Scott

Inks: Robert Campanella


Batgirl fights to save a dying man from a remote prison.


Read more... )

flo_nelja: (Default)
[personal profile] flo_nelja
Catégorie : Seriez-vous capable de l'arrêter ? (Thriller - Enquête - Suspense - Identité - Philosophie - Paradoxe - Manga)



Six jeunes adultes, qui étaient ensemble au lycée, se retrouvent pour visiter et critiquer un nouveau parc d'attraction. Très vite, cela bascule dans l'horreur, et leur seule façon de survivre est de trouver la sortie. Mais non seulement les "attractions" sont horribles, mais en plus, elles semblent basées sur leurs traumatismes personnels...

C'est une BD webtoon qui a eu assez de succès pour être publiée, et on ne trouve plus sur Webtoon que les 14 premiers chapitres, qui sont tout ce que j'ai lu. Je n'ai pas été happée. Cela comemnce comme un film d'horreur très classique, avec des persos stéréotypes de lycéens américains, les mascottes qui font peur et autres poupées tueuses... Oui, les flashbacks sur leurs traumatismes qui sont exploités dans le parc les rendent peu à peu plus intéressants et moins cliché, mais pas assez pour moi. Peut-être qu'ils auraient dû laisser plus de la moitié de la première saison sur le site.

Ceci dit, il est clair que la personne qui a créé le parc les vise personnallement, et la question de qui et pourquoi est intéressante. Mais pas assez pour que le paie pour la suite.
vriddy: Endeavor deep in thoughts (thinking)
[personal profile] vriddy
Is anyone else having issues around images not loading on Dreamwidth, lately? For a few days (couple weeks?) I've noticed that my reading page often only shows the alt-text for pics especially for images hosted on Dreamwidth, though not only that (for example there are AO3 news on my reading page at the moment, but the logos don't load unless I open the original page).

It's particularly visible on my [community profile] vriddywrites writing comm because none of the icons load, nor the header image. Does it all look fine for most of you? I rebooted my home router in case I had landed on a banned IP or something, but no dice. The background image on my journal here also loads just fine in general... Icons also have no problems. Huh... 🤔
flo_nelja: (Default)
[personal profile] flo_nelja
Titre : L'héroïne d'un conte
Auteur : Nelja
Fandom : Notre-Dame de Paris
Persos : Gringoire, Djali, Esmeralda
Genre : Fluff et humour
Résumé : Gringoire retrouve son inspiration d'auteur. Il a un rôle tout trouvé pour Djali.
Rating : PG
Disclaimer : Tout a été créé par Victor Hugo
Nombre de mots : ~900
Notes : Ecrit d'après un prompt de Jyanadavega : Gringoire est vraiment reconnaissant à Esmeralda de l’avoir sauvé, il lui est encore plus reconnaissant de lui avoir permis de rencontrer une chèvre aussi intelligente que celle-ci. Humour, Fluff.

( Lien vers AO3 )

haven't done this in a long time

Sep. 2nd, 2025 10:56 pm
finch: (looking up)
[personal profile] finch posting in [community profile] addme

Name: Jack/Jackdaw

Age:44

I mostly post about: writing, life, parenting, school, work, sometimes politics, sometimes other hobbies

My hobbies are: writing, drawing, web stuff, reading, misc fiber arts

My fandoms are: at the moment, Fourth Wing with a side of the Untamed and All For the Game

I'm looking to meet people who: do interesting things, share interesting facts, recommend interesting books, etc... mostly I'm just looking to add some people to my friends page.

My posting schedule tends to be: sporadic. sometimes it can be multiple times a week, and sometimes I will absolutely forget dreamwidth exists.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: life is too short to deal with people who just want to argue with me. I'm trans and neurodivergent and pagan and a parent and if any of those would bother you, well, now you know.

Before adding me, you should know: two unrelated but occasionally controversial things: we're a plural system and we still mask in crowded public spaces. Neither comes up often on the blog but both have turned out to be dealbreakers for other people before.

August 2025

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