Books read, late August

Sep. 2nd, 2025 04:46 pm
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains. This is the most like Oliver Sacks of anything I've read since Oliver Sacks died, and one of the ways in which that's the case is that Anand is writing from her own experience as a neurologist but also as someone who has gone through relevant symptoms and has a particular perspective, so: in the tradition of Sacks rather than attempting to clone him. If you like "weird things brains do oh goodness" stories, this will be your jam, and it sure was mine. Also Anand is meticulous about gender: if there are relevant studies that talk about the occurrence of a particular condition among trans women as compared to cis women, cis men, or trans men (or etc. with other groups in the spotlight), she will note them as clearly and calmly as she would something about cis women, treating it all as part of our composite picture of how the brain works and what affects it. Highly recommended.

Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster. This book completely wrecked me. It's in some ways a gentle story about subtle and small-scale magic and about human relationships in our own structurally substantially unequal society. It's also about long-term grief where most stories that touch on grief are fairly short-term (months or 1-2 years) or muted somehow, and it's the only recent book I recall really delving into helping your parent with their grief while you, an adult, deal with your own differently-shaped grief for the same person. It's really beautifully done, I wanted to be doing nothing else but reading it once I started reading it, and also it was emotionally devastating in parts.

Scott Anderson, King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation. Sometimes I feel like the most confusing parts of history are not the really distant ones--who doesn't like a good Ea-Nasir joke--but the things that happened just before you arrived or as you're arriving. They're simultaneously foundational to a bunch of the world around you and happened while you weren't looking, in ways no one thinks to teach you formally. For me, born in 1978, the Iranian Revolution is one of those things, so when I spotted this on the library's new books table I picked it up immediately. This is a detailed history from someone who got to interview many of the Americans involved, and who is committed to not oversimplifying the benefits or detriments of the shah's reign. I could have wished for somewhat deeper Iranian history, though there was some, and stronger regional grounding, but also those things can be found elsewhere, it's all part of the process. The fact that there's an American flag on the cover of this book as well as an Iranian flag is not an accident. A book that was focusing on Iranian relations with for example France in this period would have a very different take.

Stephani Burgis, A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence. Discussed elsewhere.

Robert Darnton, A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution. This is a microhistory of booksellers and their job routes and wares in the pre-Revolutionary era. Of all of Darnton's books, I'd say this should be low on the list for people who are not deeply interested in the period, least of general interest. Luckily I am deeply interested in the period. So.

John M. Ford, From the End of the Twentieth Century. Reread. Satisfying in its own inimitable way. Those poor skazlorls.

Karen Joy Fowler, Black Glass. Reread. And the threads Karen was pulling out of the genre/literary conversation at the time were so different from the ones Mike did, I hadn't intended to read them in close proximity to compare and contrast but it was kind of fun when I landed there.

Gigi Griffis, And the Trees Stare Back. This is not my usual sort of thing--creepy YA with eventual explanation--except for one major factor: it's set in the lead-up to the Singing Revolution in Estonia. Really great integration of historical setting and speculative concept, bonded hard with the characters, loved it. Most of the historical fiction I read has me reading through the cracks of my fingers, wincing at what I know is coming but the characters do not. This was the opposite, I spent the entire book super-excited for them.

Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of the American Prairie. I am always disappointed to find out that I am already pretty expert in something, because I learn less that way. The American Prairie! Soil restoration, water conservation, habitats, farming...it turns out I already know quite a lot about this. Darn. If you don't, here's a good place to start.

John Lisle, Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA. Ooooof. This is another "I saw it on the library's new books shelf" read for this fortnight, and its portrayal of CIA misbehavior was...not a surprise, but having this amount of detail on one project was...not cheering.

Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age. If you internalized the idea that historians should be effaced as completely as possible from the writing of history, in the pretense that the history wrote itself really, this will not be the book for you. Ada Palmer is as major a factor in this book as Machiavelli or any of the Medicis. If, on the other hand, you enjoy Ada's classroom lecture voice, it comes through really clearly here. There are some places where I was clearly not her target audience--I honestly don't have a personal investment in what Machiavelli's personal religious stance was, so the chapter about why we want him to be an atheist was speaking to a "we" I am not in. Still, lots of interesting stuff here. Including, surprisingly, cantaloupes.

Jo Piazza, Everyone Is Lying to You. This is a thriller about social media influencers in the group that would have been called "Mommy bloggers" a generation ago, set in the Mountain West. It's very readable, and if you know anything about tradwife influencers you'll see lots of places where it's spot on. I think people who read a lot may find the twists less twisty, but it doesn't rely solely on twists for its appeal.

Joe Mungo Reed, Terrestrial History. I haven't had a satisfying generational epic in a long time. This one spans Earth and Mars, with point of view characters in four generations and multiple points on their partially shared timeline. My preferences would have been for more of everything, more all around--for a generational epic this is comparatively slim--but still very readable.

Sophy Roberts, A Training School for Elephants: Retracing a Curious Episode in the European Grab for Africa. The subtitle calls this a curious episode. It is instead a staggeringly depressing demonstration of how colonialism was fractally horrible. Zoom in a little closer! more horrors! hooray! No. Not hooray. And Roberts is clearly not claiming it is a cause for celebration, but...well. For me this microhistory was more upsetting than illuminating. Maybe I should stop looking at the new books shelf at the library for a minute.

Jessie L. Weston, The Three Days' Tournament: A Study in Romance and Folk-Lore. Kindle. Comparison and contrast of different appearances of a particular legend throughout western/northwestern Europe and England. Nostalgic for me because I used to read a lot more of this sort of thing.

Darcie Wilde, A Purely Private Matter, And Dangerous to Know, A Lady Compromised, A Counterfeit Suitor, and The Secret of the Lady's Maid. This is not all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries there are, but it's all the Rosalind Thorne mysteries my library had. If you like the first one, they are consistent, and I think you could probably start anywhere and find the situation and characters adequately explained. Regency mysteries! Do you want some of those? here they are.

I Guess I Have A Lot Of Blood.

Sep. 2nd, 2025 07:02 pm
rionaleonhart: okami: amaterasu is startled. (NOT SO FAST)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Glancing at the watch I'm not wearing, I see that it is once again time for me to lose my mind over something ludicrously niche.

Danganronpa: Despair Time is an unofficial Danganronpa fan series on YouTube, mimicking the style and concept of the Danganronpa games: sixteen talented young people are trapped in a building and forced to murder each other. I was a little sceptical, but I thought I might as well give it a try.

I'm really impressed! This fan series nails the Danganronpa tone, I like the characters, and it's so dense with interesting plot developments and revelations. I tore through the whole thing and had a great time.

Below the cut are the increasingly rambling and invested notes I made while watching everything that exists so far: the prologue and the first two chapters. At one point I fall hard in love with one of the characters within the space of a few seconds for extremely predictable reasons, i.e. that character being The Worst.


Notes on Danganronpa: Despair Time, up to the end of chapter two. )


I'm already impatiently looking forward to more. Why have I done this to myself?

Zoom alternative!

Sep. 2nd, 2025 11:41 am
ioplokon: TRUST YOUR TECHNOLUST (technolust)
[personal profile] ioplokon
I've been increasingly annoyed at Zoom kicking me off calls after 40 minutes and finally started looking at alternatives. I recently had a great experience with Framatalk (a project among others!) , a browser-based version of Jitsi Meet. It has clear audio & video, plus screen sharing. The one irony is that screen sharing only fully works on Chrome, when the whole mission of the Framasoft suite of tools is to "DeGoogle the Internet" (for what it's worth, I believe this is a problem on the Firefox side rather than the Jitsi side. I want to experiment with the desktop version of Jitsi meet, but it looks like this isn't really supported anymore.

But for simple video calls where you don't need to screen share with audio, Framatalk (a project among others!) is a really serviceable, free tool.
karel: (volke ► thievery)
[personal profile] karel posting in [community profile] fire_emblem
please, she's perfect in your design (ongoing)
tellius | volke/ilyana
explicit | 6582 words
overall story cws for canon-typical violence, arguably underage sex, relationship nonsense of the unhealthy and undernegotiated variety

Ilyana bit her lip, looked away.

"Hey… I'll go with you! We go track him down, you tell him-"

"He wanted some space," she said, quietly. "I'll tell him… when he comes back. He promised he'd come back."

Heather's expression softened. "Ok… huh. That's not very dirty novel of you, but.. hehe, it's probably better. Give him some space, and then when he's back, explain it all. Yeah! Yeah, girl, that's good. Look at you, making more grown-up choices than I woulda!"

She cackled, laying back on the bed.

[ After the war, Volke picks up a new hobby, and it's unraveling why Ilyana is so hungry all the time. Ilyana's new hobby is him, and being the vessel of a god.

Ch 10-11 | Volke licks his wounds, Heather tries to help in her own way, Ilyana has a really, really uncomfortable (and then not so uncomfortable) time. ]

Authors now revealed!

Sep. 1st, 2025 01:01 pm
littlefics: Three miniature books standing on an open normal-sized book. (Default)
[personal profile] littlefics posting in [community profile] seasonsofdrabbles
Authors are now revealed! Many thanks to all who participated in this round, especially our pinch hitters. <3

Reveals doesn't mean you should stop reading and commenting (or indeed treating), so we hope you continue to enjoy the haul of drabbles this round.

A feedback post will be up soon with a couple specific questions, so keep an eye out for that!
pumpkinkingmod: (pic#8274963)
[personal profile] pumpkinkingmod posting in [community profile] trickortreatex
Welcome back to Trick or Treat! Nominations are open until September 8 at 7:59 PM EDT/23:59 UTC. Please read this post before nominating!

Countdown until nominations end.

Here is this year's tag set! You may nominate up to 8 fandoms with 8 characters or relationships in each.

Nominations format

You can nominate characters and/or relationships under each fandom you nominate. For AO3 matching algorithm reasons, both characters and relationships are nominated under the “Characters” slot in the tag set, and relationships should be specified by including “Ship:” in front of the pairing, whether romantic/sexual or platonic.

All fandoms in the tag set need to be nominated with at least one character or relationship tag under that fandom.

For all tags:
Please nominate original works under the fandom Original Work. If you don't specify a character's gender in the tag, you're leaving it up to the creator to choose.

Please avoid using pipes where possible and do not use diacritics/tone marks where unnecessary.

All character and ship nominations must be disambiguated. (See below for an explanation!)

Please use the name order as in the canon ("Given Name Family Name" for most western canons, "Family Name Given Name" for most Asian canons).

For relationship tags:
Relationships must include "Ship:" in front of the pairing.

You may nominate / or & relationships. "A/B" is a romantic or sexual relationship; "A & B" is a platonic relationship.

Please alphabetize ships by family name.

Please nominate crossovers under the fandom Crossover Fandom, with ships in the format:
Ship: Yuri Plisetsky (YOI) & Rajah (Aladdin).

You cannot nominate both / and & in a single tag. This means any nominations like "Ship: Aerith/Tifa & Cloud (FFVII)" will be rejected.

What is disambiguation?

This means adding the fandom in brackets after your nomination. Some examples:

Sakurayashiki Kaoru (SK8)
Leia Organa (SWOT)
Luke Skywalker (SWST)
Ship: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC Sherlock)
Ship: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (Sherlock Holmes - ACD)
Ship: Mia Fey/Phoenix Wright (Ace Attorney)
Ship: Enoshima Junko/Tsumiki Mikan (DR Hope's Peak)
Ship: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers (Marvel 616)

Before nominating, please check if your fandom is already in the tagset, and what disambiguations were used. Your nominations get approved faster if they are already in the correct format.

Specific Fandom Nomination Guidelines

Updated per feedback for 2025: Please nominate all MCU movies and Marvel TV shows under Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Updated per feedback for 2025: Please nominate Dimension 20 campaigns separately according to continuity.

Updated per feedback for 2025: Please nominate FFVII Remake/Rebirth separately from Compilation of FFVII.

Marvel Comics should be nominated by the characters' native universe, e.g. Marvel 616.

DC Comics should be nominated together under DCU (Comics). You may specify timeline (e.g. Pre-Flashpoint) in the disambiguation.

Arrowverse TV shows should be nominated together under DC's Arrowverse. Superman & Lois is separate.

All DCEU movies should be nominated together under DC Extended Universe.

Baldur's Gate games should be nominated together as Baldur's Gate (Video Games). "Tav" or "Dark Urge" are the main character of BG3. "Charname" is the main character of BG1 or 2. "Original Character(s)" are not player characters.

Buffyverse (TV) consists of the television shows for both Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) and Angel: The Series.

Doctor Who is divided between 1963, 2005, and Torchwood.

Danganronpa has the original continuity ("Danganronpa - Hope’s Peak Arc") while Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is separate.

Dragon Age should be nominated as Dragon Age - All Media Types.

If you've read this far down the post, please comment with your favorite spooky creature. This doesn't mean anything, it's just for fun.

Star Trek should be divided by show, with Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies) separate.

Star Wars should be divided into Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, the standalone movies, then the individual properties, e.g. The Mandalorian (TV).

Ace Attorney and The Great Ace Attorney are two separate fandoms. Please use localized names where applicable, i.e, "Miles Edgeworth" and "Herlock Sholmes."

August Language Roundup

Sep. 1st, 2025 11:43 am
lebateleur: A picture of the herb sweet woodruff (Default)
[personal profile] lebateleur
It sure is frustrating when the owl's periodic language path updates wipe the results of all your hard work off the board. I know the real goal is to maximize user's time-on-app vice the user's experience, but I don't see how resetting someone's progress from Unit 26 to Unit 6 would encourage them to spend more time engaging.

Chinese — Finished 1/10 of Rookie Unit 8; legendary through Rookie Unit 6
Dutch — Finished 1/5 of Explorer Unit 2; legendary through Rookie Unit 3
Gaelic — Finished 1/5 of Explorer Unit 13; legendary through the Explorer Unit 10
Hindi — Finished 4/5 of Unit 1; backburnered to focus on the letters with the GC
Indonesian — Finished 2/5 of Explorer Unit 12; legendary through 2/5 of Explorer Unit 11
Japanese — Finished Traveler Unit 24; legendary through Traveler Unit 21
Korean — Finished 1/5 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through Rookie Unit 5
Latin — Finished 1/5 of Rookie Unit 6
Manx — Finished lesson 3 of the Loayr Gaelg 3 textbook
Welsh — Finished 1/5 of Rookie Unit 6; legendary through 1/5 of Rookie Unit 4

And, because, why not? Here's where things stood last month. )

これで以上です。
rionaleonhart: revolutionary girl utena: utena has fallen asleep on her schoolwork. (sort of exhausted really)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
I recently posted this meme to my Tumblr:

Ask me whether I’ve written a thing (ship, trope, dynamic, category of fandom, etc.) and if I’ve written it, I’ll link you. If I haven’t written it, I’ll tell you how I would write it if I did.

(The meme is called 'fic author Never Have I Ever', although obviously you can ask whether I've written something even if you've written it yourself!)

Here are the resulting questions, and my responses!


[personal profile] keltena: For Never Have I Ever – 2nd person?

Ooh, good question! I’ve only written second person a couple of times.

Caged (Deltarune, 2018) was my first Deltarune fic, written when only the first chapter of the game had been released. The narration of Deltarune is written in second person, so I felt it made sense to use second person for Kris’s perspective!

I can’t remember my exact reasoning for using second person in Astray (Life Is Strange 2, 2019), but I think I can make a good guess! Daniel Diaz, at the age of nine, is the youngest character I’ve ever written from the perspective of, and I was concerned about getting the right narrative voice for him. Writing in second person let me remove the narrative voice from Daniel slightly, so I didn’t have to worry so much about making sure it felt authentically nine years old. I did still try to capture some element of Daniel’s voice, though!


[personal profile] doreyg: Epistolary for the Never Have I Ever meme?

Note from the future: I actually misunderstood what 'epistolary' meant when I answered this! For some reason I’d got it into my head that epistolary fiction had to involve an exchange of messages (letters, emails, notes, telegrams etc.); I hadn’t realised it was just telling a story through documents of any sort. So it turns out that the Visitorverse chapter I mention below does, in fact, count as epistolary fiction!

Oh, I’ve actually never tried writing epistolary fiction! The closest I’ve got is this chapter from the Visitorverse (Assassin’s Creed, 2015), told in the form of in-universe documents: an email and three interview transcripts.

I’ve read some very cool epistolary fanfiction, but I think I’d struggle to write it myself. People have such different speaking and writing voices, and most canons don’t provide a lot of in-universe written material, so I rarely get the opportunity to familiarise myself with the characters’ writing styles!


[personal profile] runicmagitek: for the Never Have I Ever ask: arranged marriage fic?

This one I’ve really never written at all! Possibly because most of my ships don’t really lend themselves to being married. I don’t think I’ve ever written about characters being married if they’re not married in canon, come to think of it. (Well, there’s Aveline/Shay in the Visitorverse, but one of my cowriters had previously established them as married within our shared universe, so they were married in... fic canon?)

If I did write arranged marriage fanfiction... hmm. I think this trope could be fun in Death Note, actually. Light and L get an arranged marriage to each other; they ignore each other completely because they’re busy murdering and trying to catch Kira, respectively; they slowly realise that the person they’re married to might be their enemy.


[personal profile] marmolita: have you ever written sex pollen?

Sort of! I haven’t written literal sex pollen, but I have written characters having (fade-to-black) sex as a result of some sort of mind-altering influence.

In canon, just before transforming, the werewolves in The Quarry seem to get a little giddy, having their moods and urges amplified. It seemed like a good excuse to write a fic in which lycanthropy essentially functioned as sex pollen: Burning (The Quarry, 2023, Laura/Travis, non-explicit mutual dubcon).


[tumblr.com profile] goforthequill: Have you ever written a fic about culture shock?

Oh, interesting question! I think Overwritten (Severance, 2024) might qualify? Mark reintegrates, meaning that the half of him who’s spent his entire life in an office suddenly has to cope with being in the outside world, and he doesn’t really know how to handle it.


I really enjoyed doing this, so, if you're curious about whether I've ever written something in particular, feel free to ask in the comments!

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