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filé

filé (fi-LAY, FEE-lay) - n., a spicy herb seasoning made from the dried and ground leaves of the North American sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum).

Used in Louisiana Creole cooking, usually as a garnish added after cooking, especially to gumbo. I've never had it, but I can attest that young sassafras leaves are tasty and spicy. Sassafras is also used in another food: rootbeer is flavored using the bark of sassafras roots (or rather was, as the bark contains safrole, which is a possible carcinogen and so banned from commercial use). Filé is from French filé, past participle of filer, which has many meanings but the relevant sense is to turn into threads/become ropy -- filé is a thickener, useful when ocra is not in season.

---L.

Current Mood: contemplative

Exposure to Burn Injuries Shaped Human Evolution

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Golden Sunlands by Christopher Rowley

Federal Ranger Cracka Buckshore's efforts to keep irate parents from lynching handsome Fodo Bathin are complicated when Cracka, Fodo, and everyone else on the planet are kidnapped and taken to an artificial universe.

Golden Sunlands by Christopher Rowley

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book log challenge

Revisiting my 2018 Reading List

Last time I posted one of these reading lists,

asakiyume noted that I’d already read, like, half the books, and I decided that it might be the path of wisdom in the future to try to post these lists BEFORE I started reading the books on them. So! Behold! The authors I intend to revisit from my 2018 reading list!

Juliana Horatia Ewing - the university library has Mrs. Overtheway’s Remembrances (memories of early nineteenth-century England), The Story of a Short Life (unclear, but I think a child soldier dies valiantly?), and Lob Lie-by-the-fire ; Jackanapes ; Daddy Darwin's dovecot (three short stories, possibly fantasy). Any preferences?

Ngaio Marsh

Jerry Pinkney

Rosemary Sutcliff - We Lived at Drumfyvie, on the basis of

regshoe’s review

Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Head of the House of Coombe

Roald Dahl - I’ve read the most famous ones (Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), plus his memoirs Boy and Going Solo. But I’ve barely skimmed the surface otherwise. Recs?

Caroline Dale Snedeker

M. T. Anderson - Nicked. Recced by multiple people!

D. E. Stevenson - Mrs. Tim Flies Home. The last of the Mrs. Tim quartet.

E. M. Delafield - technically The Provincial Lady in America is next, but I’d have to get it through ILL, whereas the library has The Provincial Lady in Wartime. Will probably get Wartime unless someone feels strongly the books must be read in order and/or the America is wonderful and I simply mustn’t risk missing it.

Elizabeth Enright - Spiderweb for Two. Wrapping up the Melendys!

Rick Bragg - I really liked his food memoir The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table, so I meant to try some of his other books, but… I have not. Any suggestions?

Daphne Du Maurier

Edward Eager - Playing Possum (the last of his little-known picture books)

Deborah Ellis - One More Mountain, the newest Breadwinner novel, published in 2022

Fyodor Dosteovsky - The Brothers Karamazov. Thoughts which translation I should get?

Jacqueline Woodson

Eliza Orne White - I, the Autobiography of a Cat. I am including White on this list solely because the archive has this book, and how am I supposed to resist a title like that?

Zilpha Keatley Snyder

C. S. Lewis

Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton or Ruth, probably.

Dorothy Gilman

E. Nesbit - The Wouldbegoods

Thanhha Lai - When Clouds Touch Us, the sequel to Inside Out and Back Again. Always nervous about sequels but going to give this a try.

Vera Brittain - Testament of Youth. Another book I’ve meant to read for AGES.

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Multifandom: Domaystic 2026

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Current Mood: still waking up

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dreamwidth: community thursday

Community Thursday

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Media consumption: SPY×FAMILY S01–S02

Personal rating 9/10

SPY×FAMILY is one of those manga that's been to my to-read list for long enough that it got adapted into an anime and I still haven't gotten around to reading it 😂 But I decided to finally start watching the anime in November because I went to buy milk tea from Serenitea and I saw that they had SPY×FAMILY reusable bags for sale and who am I to ignore a sign from the universe?

The series starts by introducing us to Twilight, a highly competent super spy who is assigned to work on Operation Strix. The goal of Operation Strix is to prevent a war breaking out between Westalis, Twilight's home country, and Ostania, where he's currently located. To do that, Twilight must get close to politician Donovan Desmond. And to do that Twilight must ... create a pretend family and have his pretend-kid enroll in the same prestigious school as Desmond's son. It's a premise that's ripe for shenanigans! And spy shenanigans were had. But also, family and friends fluff, and a sprinkle of serious contemplation.

( How did this get so long? )

You'd think the shenanigans, fluff, and seriousness would be too much, but I think SPY×FAMILY is able to balance it all nicely. I think my only nitpick so far is that I wish the serious Operation Strix subplot would move a bit faster.

Random stuff:

Me, seeing Damian for the first time: Ah, the rare male tsundere. ~~Don't quote me on this, I don't actually know the gender ratio for tsundere characters.~~
I am extremely fond of Bill Watkins, the 6-year-old that might actually be 30. At first I was, "Is no one concerned that this child eats steroids for breakfast?" and then I saw how cute(??) he was with his dad 😭 (who might be M. Bison???)
Yor during the Luxury Cruise Ship Arc! I'm so happy they gave my girl her time to shine. Wishing for more of Yor absolutely annihilating her enemies and anyone else who stands in her way.
The reactors I follow for SPY×FAMILY are not fans of Yuri 😂 They seem to take his siscon weirdness at face value which ... I don't think Yuri legit wants to marry Yor. (Though I also wouldn't be surprised if there are Yuri/Yor shippers. More power to them, it's not my ship but I respect it, etc.)
If Yor didn't exist, I would ship Twilight/Nightfall so hard. I legit teared up at the end of the episode where they introduced her and she was crying in the rain. I hope you find your own husbando, Nightfall!!

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Online attending conference

(This may get updated over the course of the day)

After struggling to get Zoom link downloaded and operating etc, managed to get into first session I wanted to attend, Foundling Hospital in early C20th, good grief, practices had not changed much in a century had they? Recipe for trauma in mothers, children, and the foster mothers who actually bonded with the children until they were taken away to be eddicated according to their station in life.

Then switched to a different panel and was IRKED by a lit person talking about the Women's Cooperative Guild Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915) which they had only just encountered ahem ahem - was republished by I think Virago? Pandora? in 1970s - and women's history has done quite a bit on the WCG since then so JEEZ I was peeved at her assumption that the working women were not agents but the whole thing was being run by the upper/middle class activists who were most visibly involved. And wanted to query whether working women thought it was very useful to have posh laydeez able to put their cases re maternity, child welfare and so on in corridors of power, rather than deferentially curtseying??? (I should like to go back in time and ask my dear Stella Browne about that.)

Also on wymmynz voices not, or at least hard to trace, in the archives, I fancy this person does not know a) Marie Stopes' volume Mother England (1929), extracts of letters she had from women about motherhood and b) based on 1000s of letters surviving and available to researchers. I could, indeed, point to other resources, fume, mutter.

Update Well, there were some later papers I dropped in on and enjoyed (and was able to offer comment/questions on; but I was obliged to point out certain errors in a description of Joanna Russ's The Female Man (really I think if you are going to cite a work you should check details....) (and I suppose Mitchison's work was just outside the remit of what they were talking about, so I was very self-restrained and failed to go on about Naomi.)

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ice hockey

Olympics!

The opening ceremony isn't until tomorrow evening, but women's ice hockey starts in about half an hour with Sweden facing Germany. Regrettably I have to do my day job, but I do have two monitors in the office ...

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

coffeeandink!

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Recent fic (mostly Babylon 5) on AO3

I reposted some of my longer 3 Sentence Ficathon fills on AO3.

An Immodest Proposal (Babylon 5)
State of Change (Babylon 5)
Hypotheticals (Gattaca)

And a new B5 fic, written a little while back because I had the idea, but not posted until now:

Reliquary (Babylon 5, post-canon, canon compliant, character deaths)

Reposted under the cut.

( Reliquary - Babylon 5 - 1500 wds )

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book log: reading wednesday

Reading Wednesday 2026, #5

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Current Mood: giddy

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my writing: fics: k-9

New K-9 fic: Clingy (Ren/Oboro/Fujimaru/Kagari)

Last week,

scytale commented in passing about how clingy these four are, which honestly is just a factual statement at this point, yet the universe immediately beamed a ficlet into my brain just based on that because this is what I am now.

Clingy | K-9 | Ren/Oboro/Fujimaru/Kagari | <850 words | rated M

Summary: This was all Fujimaru's fault. And Kagari's too. Maybe a little bit Yuushirou's, but he wasn't admitting to anything. Ren-san was perfect as always.

Yuushirou gets a boner during movie night.

Read it on Dreamwidth or AO3.

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Multifandom: Goreswap Exchange 2026

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There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (SCP Foundation)

This book is hard to tag - it's basically cosmic horror, or horror scifi. It is also one of the creepiest and trippiest things I've read in a long time and maybe ever.

I kinda vaguely knew about SCP as a collaborative wiki project from the 2000s, with user-submitted descriptions of imaginary (and frequently extradimensional) objects. This book is based on it. It's about a group of characters who work for the Antimemetics Division of the SCP Foundation, a department most people don't know about (because it's impossible to remember it for more than a few minutes after finding out about it) that handles "antimemes," which are the opposite of memes - if memes are catchy and transmissible, antimemes are intentionally unmemorable, to an extent where you need to use extraordinary measures, such as memory-enhancing drugs, just to recognize that they exist at all. It's information that functions as anti-information. And it turns out there are living creatures with antimemetic properties, as well as weapons that use it ...

( Lots and lots of spoilers )

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Daily Happiness

1. It looks like I might be going up north to help out at the new store for a few days after all. The store is still ridiculously busy and they need extra help throughout the rest of the month. Nothing's finalized yet, but maybe the week after next I'll go for 3-4 days. I am curious to see the new store (and check out our Cupertino store while I'm up there, which I've also never seen), so I don't mind going. I'm very glad I didn't have to go for the grand opening itself, though!

2. I took Carla to a doctor's appointment this afternoon and while I was waiting for her, I took a walk and stopped in at a little bakery nearby and got a delicious cardamom bun.

3. Tuxie was back this morning!

4. These boys were having some nice cuddle time yesterday. As usual, Ollie was more into it than Jasper lol.

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fandom: k-9

Yuu and Satsuki from K-9, aka Leopard and Treeguy

Two more little guys from K-9 are really capturing my imagination at the moment. Look at 'em:

Satsuki from K-9 embracing Yuu from the back and keeping Yuu quiet with a hand on his mouth

You can't just show me two characters that comfortably handsy with each other and not expect me to go "Oh 👀"?! For anyone familiar with Wind Breaker, their vibes are massively similar to Togame and Chouji, especially early on. They're scratching my "murderous protectiveness" itch in just the right way.

Yuu, the blond chibi, can transform into a cute sort of hybrid leopard and loves to fight.

Yuu from K-9, jumping backwards in hybrid human-leopard form

Meanwhile Satsuki can create and control huge branches. He may appear calmer and more reasonable, but that mostly means his expression won't change as he threatens to crush you between branches or tear your limbs apart. That kinda guy.

Satsuki from K-9 creating huge thick branches to attack with

Obviously, I love them. For many reasons, too. But also aren't their abilities kind of ridiculous?! This is a world in which only criminals get a superpower, one related to the crime they committed!! What kind of crime do you commit that you can transform into a leopard?!

And thus, having thought about it way too much, I'm writing what will apparently become my first K-9 multi-chapter fic. With zero members of my beloved OT4 showing up XD This series is just ridiculous. I love it. The author is clearly having a ton of fun, and I love that for them.

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Music: Everclear - "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom"
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/12853.html

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lb makes:story

Autobio: Crazy Boys Get Money

Crazy Boys Get Money (D Stories)
Summary: Two teens in Texas hook and heist their way out of danger. True story.
Series: LB autobio (D Stories)
Word Count: 8100
Notes: Winner by a long shot of the February fan poll. Depending on how this story is received, I’ll be pulling out more regarding this period of my life, a series called “the D Stories.” Normally I would break it into 3 installments, but due to the nature of the content, I have chosen to upload it all at once. I feel professionally obligated to disclaim that this story is not appropriate for anyone under 18… but this was my life when I was younger than that, and it's both insulting and degrading to say that my youth is unspeakable to the very age demographic it happens to.
Content warnings for anti-black racism; coerced, underaged, bad sex work, and (separate) consensual, okay teenage sex, along with the circumstances surrounding both. More information is in the comments.

( I suck him like a hospital Hoover sucking shit off a bathroom floor. )

Binary Star

https://xkcd.com/3203/

The discovery of a fully typographical star system comes with a big asterisk.

https://xkcd.com/3203/

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dreamwidth: community thursdays

Community Thursday

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Posted and commented on bnha_fans.

Commented on booknook.

Commented on getyourwordsout.

Signal boosts:

For anyone who missed my previous post about it, if you're stuck about what to post about now that snowflake_challenge is over, have a look at the Stuff I Love: Top Ten Edition squee challenge for February that dreamersdare dreamt up ;D