Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge:
"as soon as it lightens up I shall start downriver with two of my men in a boat we have built indoors, after some horse thieves who took our boat the other night to get out of the country with it." 'Theodore Roosevelt, Deputy Sheriff.'
'Theodore Roosevelt and Frontier Lawman.'
"He even appointed several of them to positions in federal law enforcement—prompting the press of the era to refer to them collectively as "the White House Gunfighters."...so imagine my delight upon discovering that one of TR's closest confederates from his Dakota days was Seth Bullock, onetime Sheriff of Deadwood." However. 'Teddy Roosevelt and the dark side of American history.' Teddy Roosevelt's Fght Club.
1910.
"There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done"
"On the New Nationalism'
Shiori Oumi This Monster Wants to Eat Me, Episode 2
With the library remodel going on, I’m not getting to watch much anime. I started out with good intentions, but I don’t have the time. I’m watching way fewer episodes than usual. I’ve had to prioritize. Here’s a quick summary of the shows I sampled – and which ones are getting attention.
At least one of the links was from coth; most I have no idea - some of them have been in my 'read later' for a very long time. There were also stories from All of Tor.com’s Original Short Fiction Published in 2022, which I'm guessing I've started working through before, but didn't remember what I'd read previously (18 short stories, 13 novelettes, 1 translation) (and didn't finish this time either)
Loved it!
Smoke and Sweetness by Zhui Ning Chang, from Jan 2025 - gentle, sweet, slice of life with touches of whimsy and sadness, set in a floristry
Fruiting Bodies - Kemi Ashing-Giwa, from Jan 2022 - very much body horror, in a far future on a different planet. Not quite zombies.
The Chronologist by Ian R MacLeod, from Feb 2022 - atmosphere and character and kind of an apocalypse
The Last Truth by Anamaria Curtis, from Feb 2022 - bittersweet, about how how losing oneself a memory at a time leaves nothing behind.
Not bad
Bone by Karl Gallagher, from May 2025 - heavy on the science, clunky on the rest.
If a Digitized Tree Falls by Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim, from Sept 2025 (novelette) - snatches through time, as the ways in which the world is modelled by digital tech changes, and AI assistants evolved. I found myself distracted and unmotivated to finish, although it is beautifully written
Model Collapse by Matthew Kressel, from Oct 2025 - very clever body horror about the AI takeover.
Not for me
Saving the Gleeful Horse - K J Bishop, from March 2010. - creepy. But I managed to get distracted part way through, and then had to come back to finish it.
Synthetic Perennial by Vivianni Glass, from Feb 2022 - normally I like myself some surreal / magic realism details, but I just found this one disorienting. Not for those with medical trauma.
Hush by Mary Anne Mohanraj, from March 2022 - I get what this one is saying, but it is just a tad too real w.r.t fascism and racist supremacy. Unreliable narrator who thinks they are one of the good guys didn't help.
The Long View by Susan Palwick, from April 2022 - this went too close to farce for me. Seemed to be both attempting to be Meaningful and Funny.
DNF
Victory Citrus Is Sweet by Thoriay Dyer, from Sept 2022 - couldn't deal with the narrative voice
This poem is spillover from the October 2025 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from readera. It also fills the "Dark Side" square in my 10-1-25 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the Frank the Crank arc in the Big One thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "The Clearest Signal," so read that first or this won't make as much sense.
Characters in romantic/sexual ships should be 16 or older, regardless of the rating of the fanwork.
Fanworks of younger characters in relationships are allowed IF the characters are about equal in age and development AND the fanwork is rated General Audiences or Teen and Up. Mature or Explicit fanworks of underage characters are not permitted. For non-human characters or characters with unusual rates of ageing, please use your best judgement.
We've also added in our policy on AI/LLM content (which was previously announced here). Please check that policy if you are including AI/LLM-generated content in your entry. We will tag these works "filter: ai content".
Achievement Badges
Added to the Challenge Streaks:
Streak Aid If you have a year-long (or more) streak, and you miss a deadline, you can claim a Streak Aid. With a Streak Aid, you can post a work for the missed prompt by the end of the next round, and we will consider your streak unbroken.
If you use a Streak Aid, you cannot claim another Streak Aid for at least 12 months.
If you have any questions, please let us know. :-)
Belos has been defeated and Hunter is trying to navigate his new life. After being enrolled at Hexside, a class project forces Hunter to confront memories he’s spent months burying. When panic drives him to burn them, Luz and Willow enter his mindscape to repair the damage.
But some memories were destroyed on purpose… and Hunter’s mind won’t give them back without a fight.
A darker, Hunter-centric parallel to Understanding Willow
The Switch is a tiny little 1-season, 6-episode comedy about a trans woman living in Vancouver. It’s part quirky workplace comedy, part quirky roommate comedy, and part “she moves in with her ex who’s secretly an assassin, who spends the whole season trying to dodge the investigation for an executive they recently killed, but, like, in a funny way.”
Half the cast is trans, a ton of the crew is trans, so it’s a big part of the show in a way that feels genuine and natural. Even though the show in general has a fun heightened-reality vibe. (The original Kickstarter campaign mentions a sorceress character. She’s not in the final cut at all, which I kinda suspect was a broader “oops, we’re trying to stuff too much in 6 episodes, we need to cut the magic subplot” decision. But, listen, if they had made a second season where Sabrina the Teenage Witch moved in down the hall, it wouldn’t feel out-of-place.)
FFA did a rewatch of season 1 in the leadup to season 2, so I rewatched it along with that. Then ended up watching S2 as it came out (dropping two episodes a week), because now I’m invested enough that I didn’t want spoilers.
(Couldn’t totally avoid them, because…listen, there is a deep vault of Fandom Lore here, which I have never actually looked at. So there were regular comments like “sure, we already basically knows Plot Point X, because of the leaks/interviews/character designs posted on DA in 2012” where I had no idea about X at all. It worked out fine, though, because sometimes the fandom was wrong! And I had no way to predict when.)
All the music is good, and some of it is great. Their animation budget must be incredible, and you can see it paying off — Vox Populi showcases some amazing dynamic tracking shots, and the reprise Vox Dei has them just showing off. It has the same overstuffed pacing as S1, where they’re trying to pack about a thousand different character beats into eight episodes — there are setups that never get payoffs, and payoffs to things that weren’t actually set up — but the central arc of the season does hold together, and all the individual moments are fun to watch.
There’s a recurring theme of “look, this is shameless pandering to the iddiest of fandom desires” that goes so hard, you have to respect it. The saddest woobie with the softest vulnerable heart gets manhandled in all-new ways!
The most Tumblr Sexyman spends multiple episodes tied up and gagged, strapped to a chair, in his jealous rival’s bedroom!
There are moments that honestly feel like “the show won’t bother going too deep into this, because they know they can just toss the idea in front of their audience, and wait for a million fics to fill in the gaps.” And given the size of the fandom, I don’t think they’re wrong, either.
…The size of the fandom means there’s an overwhelming number of Youtube videos. But a lot of the ones I’ve watched are, well. Bad? Like “hidden details you missed” but it just lists basic plot points, or “fixing the character designs” but it’s fixating on things that aren’t problems.
Have a few recs, because these deserve to be watched without viewers having to dig them out of the heap first:
The regulation — titled Pest Control of Food Establishment By-Law — states it recognises the "local custom of unclean hands" and it was "forbidden" for women to operate and prepare food at stalls and roadside markets during their menstruation.
The same act also notes that enforcement officers have the power to cancel food stall permits if the requirements are not met.
Women found in violation may face a fine of up to VT20,000 ($250), imprisonment for up to three months or both, it read.
"We call on the Shefa Provincial Council to work smarter and find better avenues to generate revenue for the province, rather than resorting to such ludicrous and discriminatory regulations," said Mr Napat, asking instead to promote the economic empowerment and dignity of women in Shefa Province.
The head of the Vanuatu Association of NGOs (VANGO), Dr Willie Tokon, said the ban was "penalising our women", particularly mothers struggling to put food on the table and pay for school fees.
He also questioned how an enforcement officer would know which women were and were not supposed to be preparing food.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
metafilter_feed
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
