allen | Network

I'll be reading "Let There Be Fashioning" on the Thursday, April 30 Rattlecast. (The show had to be delayed from Monday because of a tech outage.) The prompt was: "Write a poem that uses the present tense as one of the ways in which it creates tension."

Organizing my mom's sewing box for the last time, 2008

The direct link to the live show (8 pm ET / 7 pm CT): https://youtube.com/live/nyJJLxIBX_U

Upcoming singing:

Tennessee Statehood Day

Old Harp (New Harp of Columbia) singing at Tennessee State Museum, 10:00 - 11:30 am

Sacred Harp singing at Tennessee State Archives, 12:30 - 2:00 pm

Nashville Symphony Chorus (you can spot me to the right of the yellow overlay on the banner)
Free community concert, June 7. The program will include some Alleluias (Elaine Hagenberg, Randall Thompson et al.), Alice Parker/Robert Shaw settings, and the like.

Recently watching:

I've been sitting in on a fair number of student recitals this semester, in part to color in some corners of some creative projects in other realms, and in part because the kids are great and there's a ton of fabulous repertoire I hadn't previously encountered. Last night's harp recital by Phoebe Lin ended with a cover of Teresa Teng's "Ye Lai Xiang" (Tuberose) that I frankly liked better than the original; Riley Hale's percussion recital last Sunday included Vasco Mendonça's "Small Print," which is impressive and fun to see live:

Watch on YouTube

Current Music: Camino de Vida, "Danzar"

pitchblackrenegade posting in

3weeks4dreamwidth

I've never created a meme of my own so I thought I'd give it a try.

Come get a line of poetry from yours truly! I have too many poets and poems I just adore, so I thought why not share some with the DW community?

Current Mood: curious

vriddy posting in

3weeks4dreamwidth

bnha_fans is hosting another Themed Rec Fest to celebrate Dreamwidth this year :) If you're a fan of Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia, consider popping by to share your recs and enjoy other members'!

james_davis_nicoll

It's a case of limitations leading to more interesting plots and settings...

Is Science Fiction Better Off Without Torchships?

squidgestatus

First, our little datacenter went down with a power issue overnight. We were down about 6 hours total, but things should be back up and running. If you see any issues, please don't hesitate to contact us.

That said, it's a good time to address something in our Terms of Service. We invite you to use all of our services, and even suggest more services that we might be able to bring to the community. We prohibit the use of "Patreon" or "Ko-Fi" and other links within profiles, stories, etc., because doing so jeopardizes our 501c3 non-profit status with the government. I bring this up because this week we found someone was hosting drawings (NSFW and non-NSFW alike) on Squidge Images - which is fine. But, they were using said images on a Patreon, making people pay to see said images.

That's the clarification. You can use our services as you wish - but as it says in our Terms of Service that you cannot use it for moneymaking purposes. If you're going to run a Patreon campaign and charge people for access, Squidge can not be part of the conversation. You'll need to find elsewhere for hosting.

I'm going to add this, because I know someone is going to ask. If you're a commission artist and you want to host your stuff on Squidge Images, that's fine. But you cannot actively promote "pay to play" actions like Patreon or the like while using Squidge property because, as I said, it can jeopardize our non-profit status.

And if you're curious, when we found out about the Patreon thing, we gave the person 12 hours to clear out before we banned them. We're not animals here - we're people, just like you.

althea_valara

So lately I've been going to bed between 9pm and 10pm, partially due to Dog, partially out of boredom or tiredness. This means I have ALSO been getting up early. Well, last night I stayed up until past 11pm, doing the new Main Scenario Quests in Final Fantasy XIV, which meant I was TIRED when finished and went straight to bed rather than post this.

1. one creative thing I did today

Nada, it's patch day! Okay, I did answer one question on Ravelry. But I didn't do any creative work myself because I didn't have time. I'm fine with this.

2. one thing I'm proud of today

Well. I had intended to get up early and do the Alliance Raid before starting work, but then I didn't sleep well and got up later than intended. I considered doing the raid anyway, because I *do* set my own hours and thus they are flexible, but I thought, "Wouldn't you feel better doing the raid after having gotten some work done, so raid is now a reward?" So I chose to do work first. I'm pretty pleased with myself for having done so.

3. video game progress

PATCH DAY PATCH DAY PATCH DAY!!!! I did indeed do the Alliance Raid in the afternoon, and then MSQ after dinner. I had fun with both, but think I enjoyed the raid more (though MSQ's trial was FUN). This is not to say MSQ was bad! Just that the raid hit more of my pleasure centers from being a former FFXI player in its heyday.

I must link this tumblr post, which

lassarina shared with us. It's about the recent keynote, not the patch:

Yoshi P should bring back Alaimbert of the Spiked Butt as a boss and give him a move called Butt Slider so he can say to fans: "Well? This is what you asked for, right?"

--verodynamix on tumblr

I wheezed laughing at that!

And now, SPOILER TIME! Here's my notes and reactions from the patch.

First up, alliance raid. This is very detailed, listing the bosses you face and some of their moves, so SPOILERS AHOY!

Alliance Raid SPOILERS

Alliance Raid clear! I rolled 99 on minion, whee!

first boss is Shantotto - There is no trash before her. She is quite formidable, as one might expect. I didn't recognize the music but I'm guessing it's from A Shantotto Ascension, an add-on scenario. I was tripped up by two mechs. First, she puts BLM's uh, sigil thingy they stand in, all over the arena. You need to dart into the one she's in and then follow her to other ones quickly. I didn't realize this at first and died. Also died twice to a move that I thought was a symbol that meant action was happening ON ME to the ENTIRE RAID, but I think everyone sees it on themselves? It's a wind move. Before she does it, she days a Tremor or Quake move that juts out pieces of the arena, you have to go in an alcove so you don't get blown away. This really confused me and I panicked first time and just stood there because it looked like it would affect EVERYONE and I didn't know the safe place to stand, if that makes sense. I finally got it after getting blown off a second time. Lots of deaths in this one, and I basically floor tanked.

next is Aht Urghan: BESIEGED!!! I was squeeing because I loved Besieged back in the day. It's a server-wide battle people can join and fight in. This is just a series of trash, but harder than normal trash.

then you get transported to Nzyul Isle and face Alexander, the boss of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expac, leading someone to say "HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO KILL YOU?" hahaha. I felt most of the moves for him were self-explanatory, just had difficulty DOING them. Wifh practice I should do better.

Next up is the Ru'met Gardens area where first you have some trash, but again, a little more difficult. There are pot-like enemies (not magic pots, more like obelisks I guess but we always called them pots). They have eye-like symbols painted on them, and just like FFXI, will do an attack in the direction they're gazing, so stay out of the AoEs,. I'd focus on them first. They're a Ae'ryn (SP?) add too, but that is not that bad. The pots are worse.

next boss is Promathia, the final boss of the Chains of Promathia expansion. - During the middle of this fight, you're transported/shifted to Promyvions, a dark creepy area. You will be fighting adds named Memory Receptacles. They do a move called Empty Seed, a knockback that you need to position yourself so you end up in one of the four corner walls. Besides that, this fight has a LOT of dodging, so stay nimble

last boss Phase 1 is Shinryu. Unfortunately, I had technically difficulties and blackscreened after the CS, so I missed the phase 1 fight (I had to crash the game and get back in). 🙁 I did make it back for second half! I won't spoil transition cutscene or final form, but again, there is a lot of dodging, and I think some moves will feel a little familiar.

I would be happy to go again with anyone who wants company ❤️

OMG I GOT CASTING HANDS TOO!! I had some RDMs in the party so I didn't expect to get it, with my poor roll. but yay!

also the cutscenes are gorgeous

And here's some reactions to MSQ:

MSQ reactions! SPOILERS!

first quest, bit of snark: man am I glad my glam is the Isle Explorer's outfit with the backpack so that when I retrieved the key, I could pretend I was pulling it out of the backpack and not my ass

still first quest: okay, what's with the dirt on Tataru's nose? It was immediately noticiable to me. guess I play more and see if they explain it!

second quest: dungeon already? okay then

post dungeon, on moon - livingway: "I don't foresee any major problems." gate: ROAR!!! Livingway: "Oh. Nope. We're doomed." I laughed very much at her delivery of that

unlocked trial, MUSIC TIME!!!! <3!!. Also, I chose the "no time to explain!" answer to Zero's "What are you doing here?" and she said "Leave it to you to state the obvious." and I laughed at that, too. I knew we'd see her again, but glad we ARE, because I missed her

whaaaat, why is queue 30 minutes? I expected a fast queue, but I guess everyone's hitting it at the same time and clogging the servers, boo

trial over: that was fun, and I don't think I died once, YAY!

I might natter more about it later, but right now I have to get ready for gym with mom.

Current Mood: pleased

james_davis_nicoll

Saya's infatuation with Prince Tsukishiro is but another move in a long-running struggle on whose outcome existence itself depends.

Dragon Sword And Wind Child (Tales of the Magatama, volume 1) by Noriko Ogiwara (Translated by Cathy Hirano)

mrissa

Posting a bit early because I will be on vacation until it's time to do another one of these, and doing a whole month at once is too daunting.

K.J. Charles, Unfit to Print. Quite short mystery and m/m romance, with intense conversations between the characters about what kinds of pornography are and are not exploitative. Not going to be a favorite but interesting at what it's doing.

Agatha Christie, The Unexpected Guest. Kindle. I've read Agatha Christies before, and this sure is one. Absolutely chock full of loathsome people and not particularly great about disability. Jazz hands.

Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Kindle. I finished reading this just so I could complain about it accurately. My God what a terrible book. I wonder if I should be skeptical of all "new histories of the world." I suspect so. The thing is that he does such a completely terrible job of actually talking about the Silk Road that this is still largely a book about the British and American empires, but not a detailed accounting of their presence in the region. Partition of India? never met her. Chinese Communist Revolution and Cultural Revolution? how could that possibly matter, probably not worth the time. What. Sir. So many things I would like to know about Central Asia and still do not know, because Frankopan fundamentally does not care. Not at all recommended, I read it so you don't have to.

Alaya Dawn Johnson, Reconstruction: Stories. Kindle. Some really lovely and vividly written stories here. Not all to my taste, but it's rare that a collection is.

Ariel Kaplan, The Kingdom of Almonds. I really just love getting to write "the thrilling conclusion." I really do. Don't start here! This is the third book in its series, it is the thrilling conclusion! Start at the beginning, the beginning is still in print, and this is going to wrap things up nicely but you won't know how nicely if you don't read the whole thing.

E.C.R. Lorac, Death Came Softly and The Case in the Clinic. Kindle. Cromulent and satisfying Golden Age mysteries, with Golden Age assumptions but not as bad as in your average, oh, say...Agatha Christie.

Megan Marshall, Margaret Fuller: An American Life. Kindle. Well-done bio of a fascinating person, lots of what was going on with the Transcendentalists, early American feminism, loads of people you'll want to know about and then Fuller herself trying to fight her way through a system entirely not set up for people even remotely like her. She's part of how that changed, and she died a horrible death fairly early all things considered, and Marshall handles that reasonably as well.

David Thomas Moore, ed., Not So Stories. Kindle. The real stand-out piece for me in this book was Cassandra Khaw's, which opened the volume. What a banger of a story, and how perfectly she nailed the Kipling-but-modern brief. Worth the entire price of admission. (Okay, this was a library book, so my price of admission was free. Still, though.)

Anthony Price, The Hour of the Donkey, The Old Vengeful, and Gunner Kelly. Rereads. I am finding the middle of this series less compelling on reread than the early part. I don't remember the individual late volumes well enough to say whether it just went off a cliff never to return or whether it will bounce back a bit before the end. One of the problems is that I am just not that keen on his WWII stories (The Hour of the Donkey), and he keeps trying to write women and doing it badly. Anthony, apparently you spend all your time with plain women thinking how plain they are, but it turns out that many of them have other things on their mind, and thank God for that. Sigh.

Una L. Silberrad, Princess Puck. Kindle. What a weird title, it's a nickname that one character gives the protagonist and only he uses. This feels like...it feels like it's got the plot of a Victorian novel but even though Queen Victoria has just died five minutes ago, Silberrad can no longer really take some of the Victorian axioms quite seriously. She is very thoroughly an Edwardian at this point, in all the ways that felt modern and challenging at the time, and as much as I love a good Victorian novel, I'm all for it.

Maggie Smith, Good Bones. Kindle. I always feel odd when the best poems in a volume are the ones that got widespread reprinting, but I think that's the case here. And...good? that many people should have seen the best of what's in this? I guess?

D.E. Stevenson, Spring Magic. Kindle. This is such an interesting reminder that during WWII people were still writing upbeat contemporary novels sometimes. A young woman goes and finds a life by herself, away from the crushing control of her aunt, near a military outpost during World War II, and nearly all the other characters are highly involved with the war. But it doesn't have that fraught feeling that books with that plot would have if the war in question was over. We have to be sure that the proper characters will have a quite nice time, because the target readers are in the same situation and would prefer to think more about introducing small children to hermit crabs, figuring out something useful to do, and resolving romantic difficulties than about, hey, did you know that death is imminent? So. Possibly instructive for the present moment in some moods. Not a hugely important book, which is fine, they don't all have to be.

Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds. Kindle. Dischism is when the author's interiority intrudes on the narrative, and gosh were there several moments when I could see Trollope's own mental state peaking through regarding the titular objects. "She was tired of the Eustace diamonds." "He wished he had never heard of the Eustace diamonds." Shh, it's okay, Anthony, we get it. Because yes, this is not a title tossed off about something that's only peripheral to the story. The Eustace diamonds are absolutely central to the narrative. The thing that's fascinating to me is that the entire plot depends on a sensibility about heirloom and ownership that was as completely foreign to me as if the characters had been going into kemmer and acquiring gender. They are fighting about whether the titular diamonds are properly the property of a toddler or of the mother who has full physical custody of him. And Trollope makes that fight clear! It's just: wow okay what a world and what assumptions.

Darcie Wilde, The Secret of the Lost Pearls. Kindle. This is not the last in this series, but it's the last one I got a chance to read, and honestly I think it's the weakest of the lot. Wilde (Sarah Zettel) still and always has a very readable prose voice, but it felt a bit more scattered to me than the others--so if you're reading this series in order and wonder if it's going downhill, no, it's just that it's quite hard to keep the exact same level for a long series.

aurumcalendula

I just saw that Rise plushies are now available on NASA Exchange's website!

javert posting in

3weeks4dreamwidth

In honor of Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I'm hosting a little Pokémon prompt meme on my journal, like I did back in 2024! It's 18+ only, but open to all mediums, ratings, and Pokémon subfandoms! Come join us!

linaewen posting in

writethisfanfic

Hello on Wednesday! How are things going in the world of fic?

Did you write?

- Yes!

- No!

- Not yet!

If yes, what kind of writerly activity did you engage in? How do you feel about it?

If no, what were the obstacles/situations that affected your writerly pursuits? What will you do differently tomorrow to get more writing done?

If not yet, because the day hasn't gotten going yet, what kind of writing activity are you planning (or hoping) to accomplish?

badly_knitted posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: Irrational
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Bester, Byron.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 300
Spoilers/Setting: Phoenix Rising.
Summary: Telepaths are feared and distrusted.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 513: Amnesty 85, using Challenge 38: The Other Side.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.

( Irrational... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

pensnest

I spent the weekend at Nottingham University, doing Harmony College with my fellow female barbershoppers. It was good. It was informative, interesting, and fun. And I won't bore you all with the details unless anyone is fascinated to find out more. Barbershoppers are really good at sharing knowledge and educating one another.

Alas that I now have clusters of red bumps on my person, where tiny, unseen creatures have feasted on my flesh.

*

I read a probably unhealthy amount of 'other people's problems', and I have concluded that if one could only be brief in reply, these are four answers that would cover perhaps 90% of the problems:

1. Get over yourself.

2. Run away. Terribly fast.

3. A small water pistol.

4. Have you considered a paid assassin?

dine

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

torachan

1. Last night when I took a shower the water never got that hot, and I thought it odd because while Carla had taken a shower, it was hours before and should have warmed back up within 15-20 minutes. Then this morning I did dishes and the water never got above warm-ish, and that was even having it fully on hot and not using the cold tap at all.

I went out to check the water heater only to find that sometime between when it was installed (eight years ago, according to my journal) and now, the sort of shed/add-on thing that it's inside had shifted slightly so that the door was now sitting below the adjoining back steps and couldn't open at all. Thankfully the door is wood, and we have a small saw, so I sawed off the bottom bit of the door so it could open (it is old and crappy anyway, so this is not damaging it or anything).

The water heater has a thing on the front that helpfully tells you what the issue is if the light is red and blinks X number of times. It was blinking 7 times, which is gas or valve failure, so we called a plumber and they said that replacing the broken part would cost like $400 plus over a thousand in labor, which seemed ridiculous. A new one is about $800, and they said we could go get one and they could install it, but they were quoting like $1800 for the replacement and removal, which again seems ridiculous. In my journal entry eight years ago, we were charged for one hour labor and free removal, which was a different plumber. I know prices have gone up a lot in the intervening years but that seems excessive.

So since I didn't think we'd be able to get a water heater in our car to bring it home anyway, I told them we'd just pay for their diagnostics today and get back to them. I ordered a new water heater from Home Depot and they delivered it today and we called the plumber from last time to have them come out tomorrow. They couldn't give us an estimate over the phone, but I feel it can't help but be cheaper than today's guys.

Anyway, we still have some warm-ish water we can at least use for washing dishes, and maybe just save the showers for tomorrow after they install the new one.

2. I was already planning on working from home today, which worked out well for all the plumbing stuff.

3. First puzzle finished since getting back from vacation:

This one was a lot of fun. I think when I bought it I saw some other similar ones, so I might have to check those out.

4. I've been sleeping better and waking up at my usual time again for several days in a row now, so I'm feeling a lot better about that. Now that I have this morning walk routine, it was really throwing me off to be waking up so much later.

5. Cutie Molly.

asakiyume

In spite of near crippling pre-trip nerves, my visit in Leticia was wonderful!
--I was a passenger on a motorbike multiple times!
--I swam in a river! (Not The river, but a river)
-- I saw a pink river dolphin and many gray ones!
--I made asaí juice!
--I did a craft project with the kids of one of my friends and played chase games with them!
--I made the acquaintance of a truly grandísima ceiba!
--I visited a shelter for stray dogs run by a friend of one of my friends!
--I saw a parade for the 159th anniversary of Leticia's founding!

But probably the thing that people would most enjoy seeing at this point in time is... an encounter with a pet capybara. He was a sweetie ^_^

Watch on YouTube

Current Music: Amira Syahira: No Toques Mi Corazón

olivermoss

The demand for PWHL teams right now is nuts. It's possible cities that were considered shoe-ins due to strong bids wont be approved. 11-12 cities are in the mix and 2-4 will get it. The PWHL has said they expect to only approve 2-4 bids this summer, but there is a rumor they are considering a summer 2027 expansion as well.

After this summer's expansion they need to freeze hard. They can't be putting teams in a blender every season via expansion drafts. Also, the talent pool needs to refresh. (In expansion drafts, new teams get to yoink players from existing teams. Established teams can only protect a few players from getting sniped.)

( Ramble about the PWHL and why they are going to need to break hearts by rejecting most of the strong bids for new teams and freeze... which I do expect them to do. The demand is more than the league can handle, and the problems with the current expansion teams show that. )

highlander_ii posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: filter
Fandom: Marvel Comics - 616
Rating: G
Content notes: None apply
Summary: icons of Foggy Nelson with a 'warm' filter

( filter )

james

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simplyn2deep posting in

1word1day

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Avatar (noun)
avatar [av-uh-tahr, av-uh-tahr]

noun
1. Hinduism. the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.
2. an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life: Her complete loss of confidence was particularly unsettling, because generally she is the very avatar of hope.
3. Digital Technology. a static or moving image or other graphic representation that acts as a proxy for a person or is associated with a specific digital account or identity, as on the internet: My friend always chooses warriors as his video game avatars. | Now that spring's here I've switched my Instagram avatar from a stack of books to a robin's egg.
4. Also called avatar mouse,. Also called mouse avatar. a mouse that is implanted with cells or tissue freshly extracted from a human being, as to test drug therapies for an individual patient or to study a disease process: Researchers transplanted samples of the patient’s tumor into specially bred avatars.
5. (in science fiction) a hybrid creature, composed of human and alien DNA and remotely controlled by the mind of a genetically matched human being.

Related Words
apotheosis, archetype, epitome, exemplar, expression, personification, realization, symbol

See more synonyms on Thesaurus.com

Origin: First recorded in 1775–85; from Sanskrit avatāra “a passing down, descent,” from ava “down” + -tāra “a passing over” (akin to Latin trāns “across, beyond, through”; see also through ( def. ))

Example Sentences
The tool has a face and a name: Sky, an AI avatar that appears as a woman with short hair and a blazer in its first iteration.
From Barron's • Apr. 22, 2026

Kendi is an avatar for the battered and bruised fight for racial equality in this country.
From Slate • Apr. 13, 2026

A brainwave interface translating these signals into computer instructions then allowed her to convey which of these movements she wanted her mixed-reality avatar to dance in real-time.
From BBC • Apr. 10, 2026

The movie calls him the Lost Man, a bid for everyman philosophical relevance, and Ninomiya is indeed a sympathetic avatar.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 10, 2026

Aech’s avatar was a tall, broad-shouldered Caucasian male with dark hair and brown eyes.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline

spiralicious posting in

endings

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

kaberett

Last week I:

finished weaving in the ends on A's gloves (before we hit site for the first event of the year)
read more She's A Beast
ate a bunch of food I didn't have to cook (current experiment: do Lichfield brownie bars only taste That Good in a field?)
explored Steeplechase LRP Centre when it had PEOPLE on it (and also when it didn't)
including seeing a green woodpecker!
and SO many birds of prey
made a bunch of unilateral decisions about where tents would go directly affecting two other departments in response to external constraints, and redesigned internal tent layout on the fly in response to different external constraints, and... it all worked???
rethought several steps in the lost property process and goodness that works way better and is much less stressful

and then today has been about half and half "sleep" and "endless lost property paperwork". And Now: To Bed.

twistedchick

I called today to check -- the parts have come in! Calloo, callay! So I may get the call to come pick it up tomorrow or Thursday, definitely this week.

That's such a relief. I had asked a friend to check on when I needed to pay rent on my place in Second Life and it has two weeks to go (it's a three-month thing). Probably the first thing I'll do once I get the computer back, and upload the backup just in case, is go inworld and put down more Lindens (local currency) on that. It's a little Irish-style thatched stone cottage with a fireplace, on a hill next to an Acorn stop (think cable car), and I'd really hate to lose it.

vivdunstan

Continuing my Twelfth Doctor rewatch, and going into spoiler space to discuss some more specific spoilery details.

( spoilers )

immortalje posting in

dailyicons

Today's prompt is: first

• You have 2 days time to submit an icon for this prompt (in other words, until prompt 2834 gets posted)!
• Prompt 2830 has been closed.
• If you have any questions regarding the prompt, feel free to ask in a comment.
• To submit an icon you simply reply to this post with the following information:
Icon:
Claim: (only necessary if it's a specific claim)
Status: (e.g. #1/10 - number of icon completed/table size)

Pre-formatted

tinny

I always have fun making Wu Lei icons, so I signed up for another round at

celebrity20in20. Enjoy. :D

Teasers:

( Wu Lei - by definition this time :) )

Concrit welcome! Comments adored! Credit appreciated! Take and use as many icons as you like. If you want to know whose textures and brushes I use, take a look at my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

james_davis_nicoll

The third Traveller bundle for this week, the Traveller Mercenaries Bundle, features soldier-for-hire supplements and adventures for the 2020 2nd Edition Traveller SF TTRPG game line from Mongoose Publishing.

Bundle of Holding: Traveller Mercenaries (from 2023)

oursin

Though I went and looked up that Love Among the Butterflies Victorian lady who had a very close relationship with her dragoman and that was based on diaries discovered in the 1970s, so very much an outlier.

And possibly Jane Digby does not qualify as a lady explorer? though she covered a lot of ground as well having a really spectacular love-life.

Female explorers of the 19th century demolished Victorian notions of stay-at-home women. But why were they so vehemently anti-feminist?

(And do we in fact have to invoke Wollstoncraft even if she did publish a travel journal???)

Article tends to argue that it was partly in the cause of maintaining an aura of the feminine in spite of their masculine pursuit and partly in order to dissociate from the shadow of Wollstonecraft (which also loomed among suffragists, do admit).

Maybe.

And maybe they were invested in being Not Like Other Gurlzz and therefore not identifying with the Struggles of Their Sex.

Or maybe they were doing that thing whereby if a lady-person does something notable in one sphere, she had to balance that out in some way by not being an all-rounder, or doing careful respectability-maintenance, or whatever. (Translating Greek and being able to cook....)

Also, surely C19th British women explorers (wot no Isabelle Eberhardt?) were a very small group - not enough for a subset to be designated 'many'? Do they include e.g. missionaries or those women like Isabel Burton who followed their husbands?

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/28/the-big-idea-marie-vibbert-3/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60417

Though humans have a strong desire to be an individual, slightly stronger is our innate need to not be alone. Humans are not solitary creatures, so why do we try so hard to act like we are all just individuals with no ties or connections to those around us? Author Marie Vibbert wonders if we wouldn’t all be better off as a hive mind in the Big Idea for her newest novel, Multitude.

MARIE VIBBERT:

Over 11,000 tons of discarded clothing lie in the Chilean desert. These are garments that never sold, from low and high brands, and almost entirely made of petroleum-based fabrics: rayon, polyester, acrylic. It’s a major environmental problem. The clothes catch fire, leak chemicals and microplastics, and just… keep coming.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, they are looking for new, industrial applications for wool because this renewable clothing resource that doesn’t spontaneously combust sits rotting in warehouses, unable to compete with the subsidized price of polyester.

Humanity has a problem. A communication problem that creates wasted effort and wasted resources. Food being thrown out while people starve. Diseases like cholera running rampant when their cures exist. I could go on and on with examples. Why can’t we put our efforts where they are needed? Why do our systems dictate so much cruel irony?

When you look at humanity as a whole, we are tearing ourselves apart, starving ourselves, killing ourselves. We don’t seem to understand that we are us?

These were my thoughts going into a project whose first note was: The Borg, but friendly?

I thought it would be a short story. Something quick. Get in and get out. A hive mind comes to Earth, tries to communicate with humans as a hive, fails, and sees what a mess we are. Nudge the reader toward empathy, toward seeing problems between “us” and “them” as an insufficient definition of “us.” I figured it’d hit about 2,000 words long. But the more I thought about it, the bigger the problem became. How to show the perspective? How to encompass humanity and then move the camera back to show us in perspective?

How do we look, to a hive mind? What would they expect?

Humans are, in many ways, a collective creature. A single human can no more build a skyscraper than a single ant can build a mound. Even writing a novel is a collective act, when you consider that this language that I am using is a vast collection of consensuses on symbols, meaning, and parsing. English, on a certain level, is a stack of inside jokes passed down and expanded every generation.

Beyond that, every work of fiction builds on and reacts to those that came before. I am writing in a genre, science fiction, defined by all the works labelled as such, and in turn defined by the pressures and uncertainties of our society that caused the first authors to write things not of this world, the first readers to like that and want to emulate it, and on, and on.

I was on a panel at WorldCon on Hive Minds in Science Fiction when it occurred to me that an assumption I hadn’t seen tackled yet was that collectivism automatically meant a repression of individuality. It seems an easy conclusion? If my family votes democratically on dinner, my individual desire to eat nothing but spaghetti every night is subordinated. Yet, the four of us are still individuals as we enjoy my spouse and child’s preferred chicken and rice.

Why wouldn’t a hive mind contain room for the individual? Does a Borg stop loving spaghetti once it absorbs the thoughts of thousands of chicken fans? Wouldn’t it be more of a conversation than a dictatorship? If it’s truly collective, why would there be dictators? And, come to think of it, don’t we, as large groups, change our opinions over time? Americans once ate more chipped beef on toast than chicken fingers. We thought the Edwardian S-bend corset and the mullet were a great ideas. We went from loving elephant leg jeans to skinny jeans. Collectively. Like an individual goes through phases of loving fly fishing or obsession with one particular series of books, societies go through a group fondness for orange or dark wood paneling.

At the risk of making this blog post nothing but rhetorical questions, why do we assume innovation is a characteristic of the individual? Why do we assign conformity to the collective alone?

I tried to imagine myself a hive-member. Many advantages came immediately to mind. I wouldn’t have had to gamble on picking a college major; I’d have access to the needs of the society around me to help find work that was needed. I wouldn’t be competing for the access to share my stories, I’d just tell them, and my hive would hear them and like them or not.

Competition is not just the “healthy” activity of small businesses or inventors, of students seeking academic awards. It’s also war. All around the world, humans are killing humans so that they can avoid sharing resources. Humans are defining others, drawing lines around some of their siblings and excluding others, to limit access to resources. Yet to a non-human observer, we are one species, one sprawling community, alike in our needs and wants and behaviors.

And humans can be so kind, too.

In 2023, I had to travel to New York City because I had to get a Visa to attend my first Hugo awards as a nominee, and as I sat in Central Park waiting for my appointment, admiring the unnatural warmth of the post-climate-change day, I saw a middle-aged man patiently leading a group of elderly people. He looked so happy. I dashed off four pages in my journal about him, imagining his life taking care of elders. I wondered why my science fiction stories weren’t as easy or as fun as simple character portraits. I enjoyed the flashes of lives I’d seen in short stories by Mary Grimm or Maureen McHugh, or the prose poems of Mary Biddinger.

I used to love to climb into a character’s head and walk around, show her worries and fears and daily chores, and then I’d show my work to science fiction writers and be told I had no plot, or perhaps I was “just” a poet. Because of this critique, I chose to wall off the desire to write the way that came most naturally, eschewing character-study and stream-of-consciousness in favor of sentences that “did something.” (My own term.) I began to focus on ideas, on technology, on concrete consequences and violent action.

Eventually, I got pretty good at it, good enough to feel its limitations. I opened up my old “plotless” stories and found them not so plotless, after all. Rather, they reflected my own sense of helplessness as a teen and early-twenties writer, and that point of view was uninteresting to the science fiction editor of the 90s and 2000s, who focused on competent characters moving the plot by choice.

At the young age of 47, I revised one of those 20-year-old “plotless” stories and sold it to a market paying the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association’s professional rate of eight cents a word. Not to brag. (Yes, to brag). In some ways, the genre itself has moved on from rigorously espousing action and certainty from its heroes, but also, I had learned how to structure a story through the mechanics of action, and this helped me see the similar structuring of non-action-based stories.

Part of the literary legacy my writing depends on is science fiction’s desire for logical, action-driven plots, but the origins of this project are the literary flash fiction piece, rooted in character and moment, and my desire to return to it, now that I have proven myself in the plot mines.

Which brings us back to the beginning: How better to show the individual in the collective of humanity than through a series of very short point of view pieces? The result is an introspective novella I wrote in thousand-word chunks around other projects. More than any other book I’ve written, I feel naked in its pages, exposing my deepest, most personal self. I felt free to do this because it was something I thought would never sell: too literary, too experimental.

Well, I sent it to Apex Books and they disagreed. I hope you enjoy, and be kind to my Space Cephalopods.

—-

Multitude: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author socials: Website|Bluesky|Instagram

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/28/the-big-idea-marie-vibbert-3/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60417

teaotter posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: the same deep water as you
Fandom: Wiseguy (tv)
Content notes: I noticed the matching pinky rings somewhere around episode 6; otherwise, no spoilers.
Challenge: Obstacle
Length: ~300 words

Summary: Another present.

( Read more... )

rachelmanija

This was Robinson's first novel, one of a set of three set in future Orange County, Californias, exploring three different futures for America. The second one is about a future much like the present day, hyper-capitalist and dystopian. The third is set in an ecotopia which apparently involves lots of softball. (I've only read The Wild Shore, and gleaned this information from reviews of the others.) After reading The Ministry of the Future, I thought I'd give Robinson another try, and this book sounded most relevant to my personal interests. (I've attempted Years of Rice and Salt multiple times and never gotten very far in. It sounds so interesting!)

The Wild Shore is set about sixty years after the US was shattered by multiple neutron bombs, then quarantined by the rest of the world. It's now a bunch of extremely small, struggling towns which are kept separated from each other as the rest of the world uses satellite imagery to bomb them any time they attempt to do something like build railroad tracks. The California coast is patrolled by Japanese vessels who prevent them from sailing too far out. No one in the book has any idea who bombed the US or why, but given the quarantine I assume the US started the war and someone else finished it.

The book is narrated by Henry, who is 17 and lives in a village of 60. He hangs out with a bunch of mostly-indistinguishable other teenage boys. (I spent three-quarters of the book thinking Steve and Nicolin were two different boys. They are not. I wish writers wouldn't randomly call characters by their first or last name.) They fish and farm and trade with scavengers. Henry is the prize student of Tom, one of four elders who recall the pre-catastrophe days. It is immediately obvious that Tom's teachings are a mix of real and complete bullshit, but as the younger generation has no context or means of fact-checking, they tend to think it's either all true or all bullshit.

The village gets contacted by the remnants of San Diego, which wants to build a rail line and fight back against the quarantine. Henry gets sucked into this, with disastrous results.

This book is SLOW. I often like books that are mostly about daily life, but Henry's daily life was not that interesting - he spends a lot of time hanging out with boys and talking and thinking about girls and daddy issues, and you can get that in any contemporary novel about teenage boys. The only real character is Tom - everyone else is lightly sketched in at best. Girls and women are only present as girlfriends, potential girlfriends, and moms. (There's one girl who's the leader of the farmers, who are mostly women - the men are mostly fishers - but she doesn't get much to do.) The book was just barely interesting enough that I finished it, but it didn't end anywhere more interesting than the rest of it.

( Read more... )

Content note: Characters use racial slurs for Japanese people.

swan_tower

When I sold my twentieth poem recently, I found myself wondering: how many poems have I written?

Several other questions instantly followed in its wake. How far back am I counting? (All the way to that poetry book we did in second or third grade, that I only remember because my parents found it when they moved?) Do I count failed-but-complete drafts of poems I later wrote very differently? (Or are those the same poem . . .) What about incidental things I've tossed off that don't really feel like they should count, like that senryu about jet lag written while, yes, horrifically jet-lagged? (There are probably things in this category I don't even remember: I keep good records, but not perfect ones.)

I finally decided on three rules:

1) Only poems written since I Began Writing Poetry (with "The Great Undoing") count.
2) Early failed drafts of later poems do not count.
3) To count, I must consider the poem "successful" -- meaning worth either posting online or submitting to markets.

By those metrics, I had ninety. And then I asked myself the last, fatal question:

When did I write "The Great Undoing," anyway?

The answer, my friends, is April 2021.

A mad plan instantly proposed itself. I had eleven days left in April, and I was a mere ("mere") ten poems away from one hundred in five years. (Ish. I've attempted to find out when in April I wrote "The Great Undoing," with no success. I decided the anniversary month was good enough.) Could I get myself to that line before the month was out -- understanding that I needed not only to write ten more poems, but ten I considered successful?

As you can guess from this post, the answer is "yes." In part because I got a sizable boost when I remembered four haiku/senryu I'd written for an exchange last summer, which I'd never done anything with; upon examination, I found they were in fact not bad and I should send them somewhere. But I've written six poems I think are successful in the last week: a rate that would have seemed inconceivable to me just a few years ago, when one a month was about all I could manage. And I didn't go only for low-hanging fruit, either; this includes a garland cinquain, elegiac couplets (a Latin meter English does not play nice with), a fifty-six-line nonce form that rhymes throughout . . .

. . . and a sestina. Specifically, the sestina that has been my white whale since 2007, long before I Began Writing Poetry, when my crit group gently told me that a flash piece I'd written was not very good but yes, my vague thought that maybe it should be a poem? was probably right. I've taken several runs at it over the years, though none in the last five. So of course I decided it needed to be Number One Hundred. (Quoth my sister: "Call Me Ishmarie.")

I finally did it. And so, in celebration, I leave you with Poem #101, with apologies for hopping on a bandwagon only slightly less overloaded than Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah":

This Is Just to Say

I have written
the poem
that I've failed at
for nineteen years

and which
had become
my
white whale

Actually
it turns out
it wasn't
that hard

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/hhzpX6)

reeby10 posting in

fandomcalendar

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thewayne posting in

ebooks

Today is his birthday, Amazon and the Apple bookstores are selling the Discworld ebooks for $1.99. I don't know if this offer is only good in the USA.

reeby10 posting in

fandom_on_dw

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marycatelli posting in

books

Alchemist of the Wilds: An Ex-Assassin's Guide to Cozy Romantic Brews by A. T. Valentine

A slightly misleading subtitle -- but only slightly. The first volume

( Read more... )

lettersmod posting in

yuletide

unsent_letters_exchange is an exchange for in-universe correspondence! We have some post-deadline pinch hits.

Requirements: 1000 words of fic, of which at least 500 words should be in a requested epistolary format
Due date: May 1st, 11:59PM UTC

Requirements: 1000 words of fic, at least 500 of which must be in a requested epistolary format.

PH 1 - Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's x2, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Metal Fight Beyblade | Beyblade Metal Saga, ベイブレードバースト | Beyblade Burst (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime 1997-2023), ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

PH 2 - Minecraft: Story Mode (Video Game) x2, The Protomen x2, Bionicle (Generation 1) x2

PH 8 - Dune (Movies - Villeneuve), Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson, The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard

PH 17 - Thoroughbreds (2017), Succession (TV 2018), The Secret History - Donna Tartt

PH 18 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Crossover Fandom, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), TMNT (2007)

For more details, or to claim: https://unsent-letters-exchange.dreamwidth.org/27840.html

Thank you for your consideration!

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/28/moseying-around-cincinnatis-asian-food-festival/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60350

I still have more posts to do over my trip to Colorado (I cannot seem to get through that dang trip!), but I wanted to post about my experience at Cincinnati’s Asian Food Festival because it just happened this past weekend and I thought some fresh content was a good way to get me into a writing mood.

I was so excited for this festival. I had it on my calendar for two whole months prior because I couldn’t wait for it. I told multiple friends about it out of excitement. I ended up going with Kayla, Brad, and Bryant, and we went on Saturday, since it’s only a two-day festival and Saturday just worked better for everyone instead of Sunday.

The Cincinnati Asian Food Festival has been going on for fifteen years, with this past year surpassing 125,000 attendees, and they have over 60 different vendors. Most of these are food and drink vendors, but there’s also some other goods for sale and even a ZYN station set up, just in case you really needed your nicotine fix.

I am sad to say I didn’t have a super positive experience at the festival, despite my initial excitement for it. As you can imagine from hearing the words “125,000 attendees,” it was very crowded. On one hand, I’m happy that something like an Asian Food Festival would be a popular event and that all these businesses are getting a ton of traffic, but on the other hand, when you cram that many people into a three block radius, it gets very difficult to walk around.

Long lines impede the flow of foot traffic (what little flow there is) because they jut right out into the street everyone is trying to walk down, every line to order is at least twenty minutes long and then you have to wait to actually receive your food. If you’re with your friends you will absolutely lose them in the crowd unless you’re literally holding hands. You will get shoulder checked by multiple people and almost kick a pug you didn’t see. There is absolutely nowhere to sit and eat or even stand and eat. There’s also almost no shade.

For what it’s worth, these issues are not limited to just the Asian Food Festival. This is pretty much all food festivals ever. And I go to a fair amount of them. I’m honestly very tired of these issues, and I feel like the Asian Food Festival just so happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. You can’t have a literal food festival and then have nowhere for people to eat. You need to figure out better line control so people can actually differentiate between the line and the sea of people, and where the end of the line is.

At one point, I ordered something and then tried to move to the “pick up” area to wait for my food, but it was so intensely packed that I couldn’t move from the ordering spot. I tried to step to the side in the other direction but was met with another wall of people. The cashier ended up telling me to move, and I got frustrated because I was actively trying to, but there was nowhere to move to! Like, yes I am well aware of the line behind me, I promise I’m not just standing at the register for fun.

I mean look at this!

A large sea of people in the middle of the street. A huge, daunting crowd that seems insurmountable to get through.

Imagine trying to get through this if you have a stroller, or are in a wheelchair? You’re gonna have to run someone over if you want through. There were so many points where literally just nobody was moving. Like a traffic jam, but just people standing completely still and there’s no way around anyone. So you just stand there and wait a few minutes until you can continue taking tiny-half-shuffle-steps and try not to step on the back of the shoes of the person in front of you.

Also, I know you’re probably thinking that I just happened to go during the busiest time. Well, it was open from 11am to 10pm on Saturday, and I got there at 11:45am and left at 7pm. So I was there for a hot minute. I’m sure 9pm might’ve been less crowded, but I’m also sure a lot of places would be sold out or closing down for the night by then to prep for Sunday.

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten my population qualms and lack of seating issues out of the way, let’s talk about the actual food and drinks I got.

Oh, I almost forgot, parking in a public lot nearby was $30. So, that fucking sucked. And, yes, there’s more financially savvy options of taking the bus or walking, but I live two full hours away from the Court Street Plaza where it was held, so yeah, I need somewhere to park my dang car.

It always takes me a couple passes of everything to figure out what I want to try first. I knew I wanted to start off with a coffee, and Lotus Street Foods had a Thai Iced Coffee for six dollars:

Bryant's hand holding out my Thai Iced Coffee.

Bryant so kindly modeled my beverage for me because I was holding the actual food item I got from Lotus. Here’s their Asian fried jerky for nine dollars:

A small container holding a few pieces of Asian jerky and a small mound of white rice.

I actually really liked the flavor of the jerky. It had a sticky, sort of sweet glaze, but it was definitely hard to bite through and chew. Wasn’t quite the same texture as jerky but wasn’t the same texture as regular meat. The rice was unfortunately cold and extremely bland. Great flavor on the meat though!

For the coffee, I would’ve liked a little more condensed milk in it. It wasn’t quite creamy enough for my taste and was just a little too plain coffee-y flavored. I like a sweeter, creamier coffee though, so I know I’m not the best judge of coffee when it actually tastes like coffee. I just think the balance was a little off. And for what it’s worth this wasn’t my first time trying this drink, so I have some sweeter ones I’ve had in the past to compare it to.

Kayla really wanted to try the elote from LALO Chino Latino, especially since it wasn’t listed on their online menu that it was going to be offered:

A cob of corn covered in a light orange sauce and some cilantro.

She said it was totes delish last year, but sadly this elote missed the mark this time around so bad that she barely ate half. She let me try a bite and yeah, it was rough. The corn itself was cold and had no flavor, and was tough and almost rubbery in texture. It felt like something you shouldn’t actually be chewing on. The sauce was lackluster, and honestly if the corn itself isn’t good then the dish isn’t going to be good no matter what you put on top. So that was unfortunate.

However, I did get the Vietnamese Birria Beef Taco from them for six dollars, and their horchata coffee, also for six dollars:

A small birria taco and a side of dipping sauce being held by Bryant. He is also holding the coffee in the other hand.

I didn’t finish the Thai coffee, so I was hoping this horchata coffee was going to be the redeeming caffeine fix of the day. While I did like the horchata coffee better than my first coffee, I can confidently say it was totally lacking in horchata flavor. There were some notes of cinnamon in there, but I would not go so far as to label this as “horchata” coffee. Kayla got one too and agreed that it’s more like if you added a little bit of cinnamon to a regular latte. So that was a little disappointing.

As for the birria taco, it was so good! I know you can’t see the inside, but there was plenty of tender birria, and the cilantro and onion on top was nice and fresh. The consommé had a lot of good flavor, the outside was golden brown, and I was wishing I had got a second one.

The next place I stopped was Evolve Bake+Shop. Though it was only about 1:30, this stand was almost completely sold out of baked goods. By the time I did another once through the street, they were sold out and had gone back home to bake more goodies for Sunday. The owner was so sweet and apologetic, but honestly I’m thrilled for them that they sold out so quick. I managed to get my hands on two of their few remaining cookies: their gluten-free ube crinkle cookie, and their strawberry matcha oatmilk cookie for four dollars each:

Two cookies, each one being held in one of Kayla's hands. They both are in plastic packaging. The ube crinkle one is purple with a white crinkle top, and the other one is green with a white drizzle and some pink chunks visible.

I actually didn’t know until I looked them up on Instagram for this post, but all their baked goods are 100% vegan/plant-based! It’s nice to know there are some vegan options at the festival.

I shared the ube cookie with everyone, and the consensus was that it was pretty good, but the gluten-free aspect of it made the mouthfeel just a little bit odd. Gluten-free stuff tends to have that sort of sandy texture sometimes. But it was dense and had good flavor.

As for the strawberry matcha cookie, I had that all to myself (as I am writing this post) and it was the bomb dot com! It’s super moist and soft, and has a great balance of sweetness and earthy matcha flavor. I think these cookies were well worth the four dollars. Evolve also won Best Desserts for the third year! I’m glad for them.

For years, it has been a dream of mine to try Tang Hu Lu. If you don’t recognize the name, I’m willing to bet you’ll recognize it when you see it. It’s hard to mistake the glassy, shiny, iconic strawberries on a stick. I got this Tang Hu Lu from Tenji Sushi for ten dollars:

A big kebab stick with four sugar covered strawberries on it and one green grape at the end.

I was a tiny bit disappointed by the presentation of this, because the pictures they had of it showed it having mandarin orange slices and more grapes, so only getting one grape and no orange slices was a bit of a letdown, but honestly I can’t be too mad because these strawberries were so good. They were juicy and sweet and perfectly firm without being that hard unripe texture. If you’ve ever had an urge to eat glass shards and not get hurt, this is the perfect food for you. The glassy sugar coating shatters apart and crunches so damn good, sort of like rock candy. I do think ten dollars was a lot for four strawberries and one grape, but at least I finally got to try the street food I’ve always wanted to.

There was no shortage of different Asian cuisines that were represented at this festival, including Indian dishes. Kayla ended up getting these chicken lollipops and cheesy naan bites from Khaao Macha, who were the Best of Yums winner last year:

Two flaming hot red colored chicken lollipops and one basket of cheesy naan.

I didn’t try the chicken, but Kayla said it was good (I did sniff it and it smelled like Taco Bell’s mild sauce packets). I did try some of the naan and it was definitely yummy. I mean, you really can’t go wrong with cheesy naan. The chicken was ten dollars and you got two of them, and the naan was seven dollars. I would say the naan was sizeable for the price, and good for sharing.

At this point, we took a little break on food and watched some of the free entertainment on the main stage:

A taiko drum performance, each of the performers wearing a matching red uniform.

I think taiko drums are cool so this was really awesome to see, and then there was a Nepali dance performance right after this. It was very neat to see different culture’s traditions and performances. I like that the entertainment is free and they have such a variety of performances.

Back to snacking, I finally got to try my most anticipated item from the online vendor menu, Chhnagnh’s Pot Ang (roasted corn with sweet coconut sauce). I also tried their lemongrass beef skewer, and Kayla got their chicken skewer. The skewers were six dollars each and the corn was seven.

Two meat skewers and one corn on the cob, roasted and covered in creamy white sauce with green onions on top.

I can honestly say I’ve never had Cambodian food before, but this looked very promising. I absolutely loved the corn, it was roasted so perfectly and had great flavor. The coconut sauce wasn’t really giving coconut, but it was sweet and creamy so at least it added some texture and flavor, and weirdly enough the green onion went really well with it all. It just added a nice fresh component without overpowering anything flavor-wise.

Kayla let me try her chicken skewer and it was pretty good but the chicken was just a little dry. The beef was so delish though. It had just the right amount of lemongrass flavor in it without being overwhelming and was very tender and warm. This was my favorite savory food I tried all day.

The last thing I ate was from Fusako, and I hate to totally bash a place, but y’all. What I was presented with was egregious.

Here’s the menu on their truck:

A menu for Fusako, detailing three items: street corn gyoza, Japanese curry Coney, and a hash brown sushi fusion sort of dish. Everything looks totes delish and decked out.

This looked so good and impressive. Everything looked filling and decked out in garnishes and sauces and I had high hopes. I got the Mexican street corn gyoza, which was supposed to be crispy fried dumplings stuffed with sweet corn, with cotija cheese, a chili-lime aioli, lime zest, and green onion. Sounded amazing. Here’s what I got for eight dollars:

Two tiny dumplings covered in sauce and corn.

Two tiny gyoza, covered in a mess of sauce and corn, with no lime zest or green onions in sight. It looked so haphazardly thrown together. It was totally cold and the gyoza were tough instead of crispy. The entire thing lacked flavor, and the wait was so long. I was really disappointed.

I hated to leave on an L, but it was getting late.

Oh, and earlier in the day I had a really terrible yuzu mule for ten dollars.

In total, I spent $88 dollars before tip (I bought Kayla’s chicken skewer and a Thai coffee for Bryant), and usually I just chose the 15% tip option but I’m not gonna do all that math. We’ll just say around a hundred bucks.

Overall, I just wasn’t really impressed with the food or drinks I had gotten throughout the day. There were some good things but my experience overall with how crowded it was and the prices and lack of seating just kind of made for a less than ideal experience. They clearly need to open up more blocks for the festival to spread out.

I always get so excited for food truck festivals, and I keep being let down by them. Is it me? Am I the problem? Am I just not cut out for the food truck lifestyle? I hate waiting in lines and I hate standing to eat. I don’t prefer fast, casual service, and I usually like my food to come on real dishes. Oh no. Maybe it is me.

Huge shout out to the Library Square public library for keeping me from having to use a Porta-Potty. Very happy to use actual toilets and wash my fucking hands. And get some AC for a second.

I am glad I got to experience something new and hang out with my friends, but I think I won’t return next year unless they implement some kind of crowd management or cap tickets.

What sounded the best to you? Have you been to any of the previous years of the festival? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/04/28/moseying-around-cincinnatis-asian-food-festival/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60350

aurumcalendula

Since I've recently fallen into Wiseguy, I figured I'd start there with my fanvid recs:

Nights in White Satin by Lynn C and Tashery S (1993)

(You Don't Have To) Play Me Backwards by Gayle F &

morgandawn (1997)

Only the Good Die Young by

killabeez & Merricat (2001)

Take Me Out by

barkley &

destina (2006)

(inspired by

colls' post in

vid_bingo, I'm going to make an effort to post vid-related stuff over the next few weeks)

james_davis_nicoll

The Shaa conquered the universe. Soon, there will be no Shaa. Who will take their place?

The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall, volume 1) by Walter Jon Williams

aurumcalendula

I'm kinda annoyed that NCIS: Hawai'i only has season 1 on Blu-Ray (season 2 and 3 are only available on DVD for some reason).

I'm almost halfway through season three as of the other day. Unfortunately, I'm not invested in Sam's subplot and I'm annoyed that a bunch of recurring characters aren't going to get any screentime this season, going by imdb (Jane's daughter Julie, Jane's ex-husband Daniel, Jane's love interest Joe, Kai's father Wally, and Kai's friend Hina) and that Jane's son Alex only gets one scene this season.

I have a vague idea for a couple vids, but haven't gotten very far in brainstorming songs for them yet. I might end up making icons for it at some point too.

badly_knitted posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: Religious Icon
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: G’Kar, Ta’Lon.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 300
Spoilers/Setting: The Ragged Edge.
Summary: G’Kar had never intended knowledge of his writings to become so widespread.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 513: Amnesty 85, using Challenge 14: Performance Anxiety.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.

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Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

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https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-signal-april-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=284237

Every month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works.

In the News

A discussion on NPR Radio centered on a growing debate: should fanfiction have remained tucked away in private internet forums and zines, or was its advance into the mainstream inevitable and even beneficial?

That conversation seems to reflect a broader cultural shift, indicated by several recent news stories describing fanfiction as not only a major force in pop culture, but also a legitimate creative endeavor.

For example, in an article for Vogue, Alexandra Romanoff describes how fanfiction gave her the incentive to immerse herself in romance in her writing while helping her better understand story structure and how to develop a complete narrative.

I had such a specific vision in my head for how these people interacted, how they felt about their world and each other. Eventually, there was nothing to do but to start typing it all out into a Word doc.

This growing legitimacy is also reflected in fanfiction’s increased visibility in publishing and the media. In How fan fiction went mainstream, Danielle Hewitt and Noel King explain that after a wave of commercially successful books and films which began as fanworks, from 50 Shades of Grey and The Love Hypothesis to Heated Rivalry, publishers are now actively scouting fan spaces for talent—a dramatic reversal from earlier attitudes that treated fanfiction as something to hide.

I think part of it is just a broader mainstreaming of fanfic, and that people are kind of waving that fanfic flag proudly in a way that they hadn’t a decade or so ago. And if we’re understanding the structures of traditional publishing, whether it is the editors who are acquiring works or literary agents, a lot of these people are people who grew up on fan fiction, right? So they might not have the same hangups or ideas about fan fiction that previous generations had. They’re interested in it, and they see it as a legitimate form of writing.

Beyond publishing, fanfiction is also being recognized for being, at its core, a collaborative community. Writers create and share stories not for profit but for connection, creativity, and mutual enthusiasm. In a story for the University of Tennessee’s The Pacer, author Bethany Collins emphasizes this aspect, portraying fanfiction as one of the internet’s most honest and participatory forms of storytelling.

Fan fiction is unapologetically sincere. People are not pretending they are above caring. They are not hiding their excitement behind layers of irony. They are saying, very openly, “This story mattered to me, so I made something in response.” That kind of vulnerability can look embarrassing from the outside, especially in a culture that often rewards detachment and sarcasm. But it is also what makes these communities feel so human.
In fandom, emotion is not something to be hidden. It is the entire point.

An article published in The Harvard Gazette describes how the Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University’s primary location for East Asia-related collections, is building a unique collection of K-pop fan merchandise to chronicle the global rise and cultural impact of Korean pop music. The collection, which includes items from the 1990s to today, includes things like posters, magazines, and other fan goods tied to idol groups.

The project was inspired in part by a course on “Korean Stars” taught by Professor Chan Yong Bu, who uses these materials to help students understand how fandom, celebrity culture, and media industries shape K-pop’s success.

The Harvard Gazette article emphasizes that K-pop fandom has historical roots going back to early 20th-century Korean celebrity culture and evolved through television stars in the 1980s and first-generation idol groups in the 1990s.

Overall, the collection treats fan merchandise not just as memorabilia, but as important cultural artifacts that reveal how K-pop’s global influence is built, marketed, and experienced by fans.

OTW Tips

Would you like to learn more about the preservation of fannish history? The AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP), a project of the OTW, is dedicated to the digital preservation of zines and other fannish artifacts, with permission from the creators and/or publishers. If you are interested in helping us preserve fanworks for the future, or if you have any questions about the FSHP, please contact the Open Doors committee!

We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-signal-april-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=284237

stonepicnicking_okapi posting in

endings

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mific posting in

fanart_recs

Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Shane Hollander (/Ilya Rozanov)
Content Notes/Warnings: sound might be a bit loud!
Medium: digital art, made into a gif
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: roger-rozander on tumblr
Why this piece is awesome: An amusing gif made from the artist's digital art, celebrating the infamous tuna meltdown. Make sure to check out this artist's portrait of Ilya with a red background too - it's a stunner.
Link: Tuna Meltdown, backup link here

oursin

Happy birthday,

felinejumper!

dine

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rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: Cuckoo
Author: Gretchen Felker-Martin
Genre: Horror

Wrapped up yet another horror novel last night, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Cuckoo. This book is about a group of kids in 1995 who are sent to a conversion camp, experience The Horrors, and then reunite many years later to have another crack at taking The Horrors down.

First, I have to say the decision to set a horror novel in a conversion camp is kind of galaxy-brained, because it is a place that by design is traumatizing and horrifying. This book will make your skin crawl and your eyes tear up well before the monster enters the scene. There are seven protagonists and they come from all walks of life—gay kids, trans kids, kids from Christian families, kids from Jewish families, white kids, Asian kids, Latino kids, fat kids, mentally ill kids—but they all come from families who were willing to stuff them, sobbing and kicking and begging, into the back of a van and ship them off with a bunch of strangers to be “cured.”

And then there’s the monsters.

Generally I’m not a fan of “body snatcher” kind of horror stories, in the same way I’m not a fan of conspiracy theory stories, but I think it largely works here, because this is what the families want isn’t it? For their problem child to go away for a while and come back a new person, without all those icky traits mom and dad didn’t want. For the teens, watching the queer kids around them succumb to “curing” would feel like a kind of body-snatching—who are you and what have you done with the queer person I knew?

The book is also very gross, and I mean that not pejoratively, but factually. If you have a low tolerance for grossness, this one may not be for you. The monster and its ilk are nasty galore (see minor complaint below) and Felker-Martin does not pull punches about the grossness of human existence, particularly as an angry, horny, repressed teenager in a desperate situation. The characters here puke, piss, make out in public bathrooms, masturbate amidst their sleeping peers, eat pussy during menstruation, and are generally grody in the way teenagers are grody. I think grounding the book in these bodily realities works well given the nature of the horror, which is incredibly personal and physical.

I liked the teens themselves and I felt like they represented a decent spread of attitudes and behaviors from people in circumstances both similar and diverse. They exhibit many of the kinds of irritating and off-putting behaviors you’d expect from a group of young people who’ve already learned they must hide their true selves or be punished for it.

There were a couple of things that didn’t totally land for me though. First, I think the descriptions of the monster(s) are overdone sometimes. Not because it grossed me out too much but because yes okay, we get it, the thing is nasty, it’s ugly, it smells bad, it’s inchoate; can we move on? Also, I never felt like I had a real idea of what the thing(s) looked like, despite all the descriptions.

Second, the book jacket description makes it sound like the majority of the book will be the teens as adults, returning to the horrors they faced when they were young, but two thirds or more of the book is the actual events of the conversion camp. It makes the final third in their adulthood feel somewhat rushed.

However, on the whole, I liked this book and I’d be open to reading more from Felker-Martin. There are so many moments here where you want to hug these kids and take them somewhere safe, and I enjoyed the book’s balance of the power of love with the grim reality of the cost of life.

rocky41_7 posting in

books

Wrapped up yet another horror novel last night, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Cuckoo. This book is about a group of kids in 1995 who are sent to a conversion camp, experience The Horrors, and then reunite many years later to have another crack at taking The Horrors down.

And then there’s the monsters.

1. one creative thing I did today

2. one thing I'm proud of today

3. video game progress

Today's prompt is: first

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