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journal

waltzes back in, visibly disheveled

OOF, it's been a hot second since I last posted here. In my defense, finals + burnout + the general dreariness that is winter hit me like a truck. I don't know if I have SAD or if this is a year-round sort of thing—I should probably pay more attention to that. Ah well.

I think the only social medias I've actually managed to be consistently active on are Pillowfort and the fediverse, and honestly the latter more than the former. The main reason for this is because Tumblr has lost so much appeal for me that when another one of my childhood interests jumped adult me like a demon in the night—Spider-Man has been living in my head rent-free since September, sigh. Superheroes have captivated me mind and soul—that I didn't even bother to make another sideblog for it at this point. Like, on Tumblr, I make a blog for each of my interests that I actively participate in, but I don't really...want to do that. The interface is getting unbearable, the site itself is such a resource hog that my laptop starts sounding like a jet engine taking off every time I search anything up on it (or even just scroll through my dashboard), and despite the reputation it's picked up from being an unkillable cockroach of a social media site, I just do not have enough faith in its future to continue to put eggs in that basket. So all my Spider-Man posting has primarily been on Friendica (I've developed an obsession with the Frutiger Aero aesthetic and have edited the CSS on there in a poor attempt to match it, btw) and then cross-posted to Pillowfort :P I should probably cross-post some of them here, too.

I think I'm also just tired of getting bombarded with content every two seconds? I've reached the point where Tumblr's constant notifications for both my own posts and updates to my dashboard are also beginning to bug me. I realize the bombardment thing is a hypocritical statement because I still use TikTok, but like. I just lurk on there sometimes for the funny videos. And new music discovery; it's extremely good for new music discovery.

It's whatever. I'm just kind of trying to go with the flow and have fun at this point. University-based burnout is so real. I've just got this semester and the summer semester until I graduate, but I kind of just want to lay down on the floor and never look at another assignment page on Canvas ever again. Gahhhhhhhh

Also, have you guys ever noticed how broken the Bluesky UI is? I opened it back up to scroll through what people were saying about Discord's new age verification requirements, and I can't open two posts or scroll through a single search without it bugging out in some wild way. On both desktop and mobile! Wild to me.

Anyway! Hope you guys are doing well. I'll cross-post some posts here.

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🌈BL Manga Check-in: "Kanawanu Koi no Musubikata"

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Prompt: #481 - Roar

This week's prompt is roar.

Your response should be exactly 100 words long. You do not have to include the prompt in your response -- it is meant as inspiration only.

Please use the tag "prompt: #481 - roar" with your response.

Please put your drabble under a cut tag if it contains potential triggers, mature or explicit content, or spoilers for media released in the last month.

If you would like a template for the header information you may use this:

Subject: Original - Title (or) Fandom - Title

Post:
Title:
Original (or) Fandom:
Rating:
Notes:

If you are a member of AO3 there is a 100 Words Collection!

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puchao

Puchao

I am once again asking, why is Ramune Soda Puchao so good? What gives it the right?

I used to think Hi-Chew was inferior. I was wrong, and I will atone for this. Hi-Chew has merit, due largely to its almost insane range of flavors. But Ramune Soda Puchao is the best and this is not up for debate.

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(no subject)

unsent_letters_exchange is running again this year, hurrah! Nominations open next week, Feb 18. Anyone up for playing with me?

~

I'll post more about this later when my listing is live, but I took the plunge and signed up to offer fic for the 2026 Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction. Because shit is rough out there right now.

My current fandoms are small enough that it was a little bit of a conundrum about what to offer, but I went with:
Broster novels, Hornblower, and Vorkosigan Saga.

Fingers crossed!

~

For a couple of years now, I've been reading The Flight of the Heron to

phoenixfalls over chat. We started at a sentence a day, mostly because she had gotten an idea in her head that there's a tragedy at the end and she wanted to ease into that slowly, idk. Sadly, one sentence a day was a miserable way to go through all the lyrical scenic exposition at the beginning; it was like wandering lost in a nightmare dreamscape with no way out. Also, it was really hard to build any kind of narrative continuity. I did what I could by posting multi-day recaps before each new sentence, but progress was still glacial.

Consequently, it wasn't too long before we decided on two to three sentences a day, with an option for four if I asked nicely first. (Always granted, for she is a gracious person.) That has gone much better.

It's been a lot of fun. It's a lovely excuse to say hello to Phoenix every day, and the novel bears up well to close reading. It's also encouraged me to look up all the things I gloss over at speed, which has had some interesting surprises. (When BCP suggests that letting Ewen accompany them to Lady Easterhall's will bring the party to four and make them a partie carrée, he is making a dirty joke! That they will be a perfect foursome, two men and two women! I imagine them all side-eyeing each other, trying to figure out who the women are supposed to be. “As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.) There's also been a lot of time to spin pet theories and get attached to minor characters. (Saunders, Lady Easterhall's servant with the cough, is a favorite.) I've also been able to introduce her to relevant fic as we went, which has also been an opportunity for me to revisit them, too.

Since we've been very consistent, only taking a break when I was in Japan, we have been making good progress. As of this weekend, I can report a milestone: we have just now completed Part II! Hurrah us!

With the move to Part III, Phoenix is anticipating a tonal shift and thus has authorised a whole paragraph a day. (With two or even three paragraphs authorized in dialogue sections!) So we will be cruising along, and finish in... well, it will still be years. But not as many years!

On to Part III! Hurt/comfort, here we come!

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writing

In this haunted vampire castle we support human writers

While doing research on plague doctors, I recently found an old self-published book (this one here) whose author essentially drove around Germany while spending the night at various castles and taking amateur photos. The writing isn't great to begin with, and the book is filled with typos and formatting errors.

But honestly, I think that's charming. This one goth nerd's weird labor of love is worth an infinite number of AI-generated books with perfect grammar and stylistic organization. And let me tell you. Amazon sure is gloated with an infinite number of AI-generated books these days, many of which are travel guides filled with what I can only assume is hallucinated misinformation. I'm now starting to see AI-generated writing appear in academic articles as well, and I'm not feeling great about it.

As someone with ADHD who's been bullied for being "lazy" about my writing, I have to admit that this is actually kind of validating. Like sure, my work might have an occasional typo or mistaken homophone or awkward bit of phrasing, but at least you can be sure it was written by a human.

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Dental double date

I was going to say 'double whammy' but in fact the general checkup and hygienist session both went off without any undue issues.

Going down the road to get to the Tube there was some kind of filming going on round about the parade of shops opposite the playing field - I did not linger as it was entirely chokka with mysterious vehicles and equipment.

Dentist, as stated, could not find anything wrong but has recommended some Extra Speshul Toothpaste, which normally you have to have a prescription for but they were able to sell me a couple of tubes.... not literally under the counter.

New hygienist, and as is the wont of hygienists, they have their own way of doing things - I was not expecting the whooshy water thing so early in the game - and also they find something that no other hygienist has noted that one should be doing, in this case involving a rare and unusual kind of toothbrush (which I have managed to source via eBay).

I was intending combining this jaunt with a couple of errands in Camden Town.

May I say I was deeply unimpressed with what Rymans has to offer in the way of seasonal cards, I thought they would have a far large selection. Managed to find something, but, grump.

Buying something from the pharmacy counter in Boots was stuck behind somebody apparently stocking up possibly for an expedition into the wilderness.

The threatened rain did indeed come on as I emerged from Boots, I had hoped that my weather app was looking on the gloomy side.

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News from the Resistance (Saint Paul edition)

loon piercing a fish labeled ICE (by Fayrn Hughes)

Image: A loon made of many eyes stabbing a fish labled ICE with the words: Gone ICE Fishing (by Fayrn Hughes)

No laser eyes, but, yes, loons STAB fish with their insanely sharp beaks. There is video. It is wild.

So, I know there is some concern about whether or not I should keep these posts public, but I would like to. I am very careful not to name names (especially after the whole Capclave misadventure), and, I guess, I would be surprised if ICE infiltrated Dreamwidth to track me (or any of the rest of you) down. Obviously, we would be vulnerable to a Google Alert, but I can't imagine what the Feds would search on. ICE in Minnesota is going to get a tremendous number of Google Alerts at the moment. I'm sorry if that cools anyone's enthusiasm to join the conversation. However, I do think it is worth keeping things open so that folks who might not otherwise see this news, will. And my Food Communists have actively been asking people to push out calls for monetary assistance on social media. So, like, going public is one of the ways we are fighting in this resistance.

Without further ado, here's what's been happening in my life.

Let's see. So, last Friday I was chatting with neighbors, as you do, when we were standing outside of our local mosque. A woman there asked if anyone would be willing to join a group that is trying to keep eyes on school pick-ups and drop-offs. I thought I might be able to help out, so I exchanged the proper Signal information, got on the right groups, and then attended an in-person meeting last Sunday. This group is not in my immediate neighborhood, so I travelled to a DIFFERENT Lutheran Church to sit with a bunch of folks and talk about what's going on. This was their usual neighborhood gathering and I was only there to get connected into the Rapid Response team. But, it was generally very fascinating.

Without going into technical details (and I really couldn't even if I wanted to because I am no one's idea of a tech head), I can say that there are neighborhoods in Saint Paul that are already planning for what happens if/when the government shuts down Signal or the Internet in order to stop our efforts to track them. Friends? We are living in the solar punk future and it gives me such hope, I can not even.

As it happens, however, the Rapid Response team did not meet until the very end when I needed to run off, but I happened to sit in a pew next to one of the "guys in the chair," (a volunteer dispatcher), who showed me all the how-tos before I had to run.

Monday was my first patrol and... it was a bit of a technical nightmare at first, but I got connected to the live call eventually... and, I am happy to report, all my students got off their buses safely. There was a tense moment when Saint Paul police happened to be doing parking enforcement at the same time. They aren't SUPPOSED to be aiding ICE, but I did let dispatch know of their presence and that everything seemed legit (and, in fact, was.) That was, as others have probably talked about when they go "commuting," both an extremely tense half hour of my life, and also an extremely boring half hour of my life.

My patrol does cut into the amount time I'm able to spend vounteering with the Food Communists, but Mason has been going with me and picking up my slack. I'm also not planning to do the patrol every day of school. I could? And they absolutely do need people at my particular corner, but, I don't think it would be good for my ability to endure.

I am trying to strike a balance to make sure I stay committed to the things that I started with, like the Food Communists. There are a lot of us in this fight? But there are still plenty of roles to be filled! When I filled out my volunteer shifts for the bus patrol, there were more blank spaces than filled.

I worry that people are getting exhausted. I worry that Americans have already moved on to the next thing.

I do believe many of us will keep up this fight no matter what. We were here before Renee Good was murdered and we'll be here long after the last of the news cameras moves on to the next horror.

SHE IS HERE! No, really, She is Here is here!

Posted by Nicola Griffith

https://nicolagriffith.com/2026/02/10/she-is-here-no-really-she-is-here-is-here/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=98231

I’m in the UK—home later this week—but in honour of She Is Here’s book birthday, I’ve changed this website’s avatar to one of the drawings in the book, “Happy Hound.” To see the other drawings—and poems! And essays! And stories!—you will, of course, have to read the book. Which you can! Because it’s out!

The Seattle Times today has a nice feature—part interview, part review—along with a reminder of my first official book event next week at Third Place Books, Ravenna.

Buy! Read! Enjoy!

https://nicolagriffith.com/2026/02/10/she-is-here-no-really-she-is-here-is-here/

http://nicolagriffith.com/?p=98231

Current Mood: tired

Three from the news

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For the record

Here's my personal opinion on Gen-AI:
I don't like Gen-AI. I hate to see it. I wish it didn't exist.

( Read more... )

In conclusion:
I don't like Gen-AI. I hate to see it. I wish it didn't exist.

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Zewu-jun’s secret vacation (a 100 cql/mdzs ships fic)

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Current Mood: enthralled
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/13887.html

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These Words Are Magic: Bacigalupo and Countersorcery

Mori: we are still plugging away at Thunder Shaman: Making History With Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia by Ana Mariella Bacigalupo. It’s super interesting and opening our mind in all sorts of cool new ways, but it’s really dense and about a people we had never known about prior, who have a vastly different cultural context, so we have to take constant breaks to just think about it. (Also this book really could’ve used a glossary; we’ve had to handwrite our own in the blank pages and have filled two already.)

The chapter we are on now talks about Mapuche ideas of text and books as ritual objects, and written law and documentation as sorcery to be countered and appropriated. And at first I went “what?” But then I thought about how the legal disability system controls the romantic relationships, job potential, and finances of those it identifies, how it fucks with the heads of those under it, and I went, “hey, you know... where’s the lie?” There’s a lot of talk about subverting the colonial legal system as acts of countersorcery, how the Mapuche make their own counterhistories not recognized by the state, and it got me thinking about how we’ve used story ourself.

Even as it was happening to us as kids, large swathes (the most IMPORTANT swathes) of our life was deemed “not real.” The concept of reality, objective fact, was used as a tool to control and harm us: crazy child can’t be trusted! And if it ever became our word against our attacker’s, we insta-lost because of who we were, no matter the circumstance. Sorcery indeed!

We couldn’t say directly what happened or was happening to us, because then we’d get caught and it’d get erased. But we could make our own twist on being unbelievable narrators: we could write fiction! And we could imbue it with all the shadow narrative of our truth that we could, interspersed with loads of nonsense, distraction, and noise, so nobody would suspect. We were, to the best of our ability, keeping our own history safe for our future selves. Though lots of sifting and salt is required, we still rely on those shadow histories today for records work! We have found ways not only to hang onto our “fake” history, but to spread it around so other people can use it and hang onto it too! So many of our comics and zines are just us trying to keep our life from getting derealized out from under us again!

And much like how the Mapuche aren’t above trying to use the legal system and its documents to their own purpose, we too use “real” records: dated photos, medical records, school calendars and report cards, etc.

We never considered this a battle of sorceries, but it’s a fascinating new lens with which to look at this stuff. Because if our digging around in archives has taught us anything, it’s that derealization, that erasure and erosion of history and reality, is constant. What gets buried, or retracted, or forever prefaced with “alleged” “identified as” or “perceived as,” what gets endlessly converted into symbolic metaphor instead of flat statement... it’s here all the time, and it affects us. I do believe that an objective reality exists, though I dunno that any one human can perceive it, but what becomes “history” and what becomes irrelevant footnotes is about way more than that objective truth. It’s so much harder than that (or the reverse of believing whatever damn fool thing your brain tells you no matter what).

We’ll probably post more about this book; I think Rogan was like, “I’ll do one big post when I’m done,” but there are so many angles and things to pursue in this book, that ain’t gonna happen. I didn’t even TOUCH the Mapuche concept of multitemporality and how it’s affected our ideas on memory work yet!

Current Mood: geeky

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Another rewatch thought--Heated Rivalry

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tales from editing

Still amused at the line I had to revise a few days ago: "She left right before [rest of sentence]"

There was nothing wrong with that sentence except. Except. "She left right".

So I had to revise and this line haunts me :P

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2026,
assignments

Deadline Has Passed!

The deadline has now passed! Don't worry if you don't have a gift yet, we have a few extensions and some unclaimed pinch hits.

Post deadline pinch hits will be posted to Dreamwidth in a few hours! The collection will not reveal until everyone who requested 3 unique fandoms and turned in a complete assignment has received a gift that meets the minimum assignment requirements.

Work reveals will be on February 17th at 8PM PST, but may be delayed if all mandatory pinch hits are not claimed and filled.

Treats are welcome for anyone who has not opted out of receiving them in their sign up! Browse requests using the autoapp here. Treats do not need to meet the minimum wordcount but must meet all other assignment requirements.

Make sure to finish up any edits you want to make before the collection reveals!

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at traumaticexperiencesmod@gmail.com.

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Space Swap: A Multimedium Multifandom Fanworks Exchange

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As always, I hate having my period

( Cut for poop )

**************

( Read more... )

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.fanfic

Day 10: Fic - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - Dorothy Shaw, Lorelei Lee

Title/Link: Playing Dumb
Fandom: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Character(s): Dorothy Shaw, Lorelei Lee
Rating: G
Prompt: acting the fool
Summary: Playing dumb was not Dorothy's style, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

Current Music: If you find yourself ridiculous, sit down next to me

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In which there are my 5/5 and 4/5 reads, January 2026

- Unwise Wording of the week: "Romance delivered in as little as 60 mins with Morrisons Now. Free delivery on your 1st order, use code: freedelnow. Choose Now". o_O

- Pre-Wednesday Reading: 18 books in January 2026 (no dnfs). These were my faves.

1. REDACTED fantasy novel (series), 4/5
Reminder, don't stan for creeps: when a rich and powerful 60-something is accused of sexually abusing his employee, who is 4 decades younger than him, the issue isn't whether she "consented" or not, the issue is why a 60-something is aiming himself at an employee (and with a notable age-gap).

2. Between the Stops, the view of my life from the top of the number 12 bus, by Sandi Toksvig, 2019, non-fiction autobiography and localised histories, 4/5
Fascinating, amusing, readable in short chunks (appropriately for both the subjects :D ). Another excellent suggestion from my book club ladies.

( 3. redacted & 4. children's picture book )

6. Spent, Alison Bechdel, 2025, slice of life comic, 5/5
An updated and reframed set of episodes continuing Bechdel's DtWOF series. Doesn't do exactly what it says on the tin but is entertaining and edifying anyway. Probably partly inexplicable to anyone unaware of DtWOF, and also anyone even mildly conservative.
(Thanks again to white_hart for this rec.)

9. Bandette vol.5, The Wedding of BD Belgique, by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover, 2025, lighthearted crime-caper comic series (best not read as a standalone), 4/5
My love of the Bandette series is well known and this is another delightful episode.

10. REDACTED historical biography comic, 4/5
Who knew there were two Jane Austen biographical "graphic novels" from mainstream publishers? I also have the other one To Read before I formulate valid opinions.

( 11. reread & 12. you don't need my opinion & 13. reread )

14. This Much is True, by Miriam Margolyes, 2021, non-fiction autobiography, 4/5
After reading Between the Stops I wondered what else the library might have in the same classmark and luckily my eyes alighted on this volume. Margolyes, who is Ashkenazi Jewish, details her family history which she has researched meticulously, explains how she became the respected person she is (not a National Treasure but a National Trinket as she herself jokes), and goes on to share scurrilous but generally harmless celebrity anecdotes (only one of which I disbelieved as overly embellished from whatever original event occurred). If you've seen Margolyes on various chat shows then you might find some of this book repetitive and her second, Oh Miriam!, is rather regurgitative of the same material but it was new to me and I enjoyed this first one.