I'm walking down the hallway when I hear my roommate from their room:
Roommate: "You want a lil' slappy-slap? A lil' of the ol' butt action?"
Me: "I really hope you're talking to one of the cats!"
Hisako Ichiki is a perfectly normal Japanese school girl with perfectly normal social anxiety and depression and perfectly dreadful marks. Hisako also has a stalker.
Customer: "I'm shocked you're open on Christmas Day!"
I smile and scan. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to say.
Customer: "Why are you open today? Of all days?"
My boyfriend is Indian. I am a very white American. Early in our relationship, we went to an Asian grocery store to pick up some ingredients for a recipe. It had a decent selection of fruits and vegetables not typically found in the big chain grocery stores (some of which I recognized, some of which […]
I dropped my car off at a shop (a chain store) at 4pm to get a diagnosis for an issue. They told me to come back at 6pm. Well, as a german I of course am punctual and arrive exactly at 5:55pm. Unfortunately I was then a little delayed because I was unable to pay […]
So season one is over, and we have to wait a year and a bit for season 2, because the script isn't written yet (whereas a year ago Jacob Tierney had the S1 script completed). I've already watched the existing eps at least twice, some three times, and have watched popular scenes many more times than that, in gifs.
Watching episode six was such a trip as by then I was fully immersed in the fandom. It dropped here at 7pm each time, and I made myself wait until after 9pm when it was dark before watching, as I like to be cocooned in a lighted bubble with the show. Then after the ep was finished I went to tumblr for the gifs, reactions, and meta, and today I rewatched it, picking up several small things others had noticed and blogged about. I'll rewatch the show again off and on - it's a comfort watch for me now - and while we wait for season 2 there'll be art, and fanfic.
(A customer calls the front desk of the dealership where I work. We do have two dealerships in our name, and customers confuse the two, so I a list of extensions for both stores.) Customer: I’m looking for my salesman. Me: Okay, what was his name? Customer: I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling you! […]
After so many stories of hair-in-the-food scams, I have one that flips the script. I’m eating by myself at a fast-casual restaurant I’ve never been to. My food comes out, and a few bites in, I find a long – at least 8 or 10 inches – black or dark brown hair. I stop eating […]
I’m paying a visit to my parent’s house, and we’re watching an episode of Jeopardy! on TV. I don’t remember the exact clue, but it was in the category “Las Vegas Residencies”, and it described the singer as a “Rocket Man”. My mom: Who is Liberace? Contestant: Who is Elton John? Ken Jennings: Correct! Me: […]
My work uniform is unisex grey shirt and black pants. I’m on break at work, using the restroom before returning. I come out of the stall to find a tiny, maybe 6 or 7 year old girl diligently washing her hands. She glanced back at me with wide eyes and I smile at her. My […]
It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.
Fandom: Game Changers book series, Heated Rivalry Characters/Pairings: OFCs, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter/Kip Grady, Hayden Pike, Troy Barrett, mentions of many HR characters Rating: Teen Length: 6937 Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply. Some mentions of homophobia and slurs. Creator Links:corsi on AO3 Themes: Outsider POV, Unconventional format & style, Epistolary, Worldbuilding, Fans and fandom
tried to get oomf into hockey and now she's obsessed with FUCKING HOLLANOV? THEY'RE 50 YEARS OLD
Or: Ten years, as seen through fandom.
Reccer's Notes: This is courtesy of a rec in cathexys' journal. It's another fic told through snippets from invented social media posts across about ten years, following the development, within the universe of Heated Rivalry, of hockey rpf fandom, mainly focusing on Hollanov (Ilya/Shane). It's extraordinarily well done, and although the story of Shane and Ilya's decade-long love affair is the core thread, the real tale is of the rpf fandom, specifically a few devoted fans. The poignancy and brilliance of this fic is the portraits it paints of fanwriters and young fans, immersed in the fandom while they grow and develop, moving through their own life stages and dramas while posting about the hockey players they love, especially Hollanov. And in the end, of course, the Hollanov truthers are resoundingly vindicated. The formatting makes it clear that we're seeing posts on tumblr, livejournal, AO3, Reddit, Twitter, etc., with different types of fandom on each platform. Hilarious and touching, this is a wonderful read, and the details are meticulous and very funny. PS: It may help to know in advance (as these may be hockey rpf terms with which I was unfamiliar) that 2481 is code for Hollander/Rozanov (their jersey numbers), and 2435 is Hollander/Pike. MHL is the Major Hockey League, HR's version of the NHL. Some details in the fic will probably only make sense if you've read the books. PPS: Also, there's a fictional recs list by "ice knives" partway through, and I want to read ALL OF THEM!
Fanwork Links:Love Takes Miles (read it in creator's style if you can, for the formatting)
Comic for Saturday December 27th, 2025 - "Unlikely allies" [ view ]
On this day in 1995, Kell had just finished explaining to Kevin how hard it is for her to lose those extra pounds after the holidays when suddenly... [ view ]
Today's Daily Sponsor - Today's comic strip is sponsored by: Hubert Hoefer. [ support ]
A little bit: Genghis Khan (1438 words) by Petra Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: DCU (Comics) Rating: Mature Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage Sex Relationships: Bruce Wayne/Everyone's Mother Characters: Bruce Wayne, John Grayson, Mary Grayson, Barbara Eileen Gordon, Jim Gordon (DCU), Sheila Haywood, Catherine Todd, Willis Todd, Crystal Brown, David Cain, Sandra Wu-San, Oliver Queen, Bonnie King-Jones, Sandra Moonday Hawke, Diana (Wonder Woman), Clark Kent, Talia al Ghul, Isis (DC Comics), Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Janet Drake Additional Tags: Pairing Tags in End Notes, Bruce Wayne Has a Superpower, Bruce Wayne's A+ Parenting, Drabble Sequence, familial duty, Extremely Dubious Consent, Sex Pollen, Catbaby - Freeform Series: Part 18 of Fandom Bicycle (One Character/Everybody Else) Summary:
In which the parentage of various heroes is elucidated and the answer to "Who's your daddy?" is definitively: "Batman."
Current Mood:as me as it gets
Current Music:But you can't be free, 'cause I'm selfish, I'm obscene
Every year I'm like "I should really read the Neon Hemlock novellas" and then perhaps I actually manage to get around to reading one of them, but this year I ... thought I had read all of them because I thought there were only four published but it turns out in fact now that I check there were several more than that. Well! I read four of them! They were all very gay and very tropey; under these subheadings, I enjoyed two of them quite a bit, one of them didn't hit for me, and the last one I found incredibly frustrating, for personal reasons.
The two I liked were No Such Thing as Duty, by Lara Elena Donnelly, and The Oblivion Bride, by Caitlin Starling. Both of these have a definite air of fanfiction about them: No Such Thing As Duty is a 'what if my favorite historical guy met a sexy vampire' fic, the favorite historical guy in question is W. Somerset Maughan. I have come to the conclusion that I'm really quite charmed by this sort of thing as long as the favorite historical guy in question is not a pre-existing big seller like Christopher Marlowe or Charlotte Bronte but someone who I actually have to look up:* the author's real victory is in making me Wikipedia their special historical guy and go 'whoa, sure, lot going on here actually'
*I'm aware this is very subjective and there are many people out there who don't have to go to Google to know basic things about W. Somerset Maughan. But they ARE a lot fewer I think than the people who don't have to go to Google to know basic things about i.e. Lord Byron. That said, if you are experiencing boredom at the idea of Yet Another Sexy W. Somserset Maughan fic, I'd love to know about it.
The Oblivion Bride meanwhile is a classic Lesbian Arranged Marriage fic that, per the author's note, appears to have grown out of a Dishonored fic the author wrote several years back. I don't know anything about Dishonored so I can't tell you much about that. What I can tell you is that she's a normalgirl cadet member of an important family who's been thrust into an important political position because all her actual aristocratic relatives have mysteriously died, she's an icy cold Murder Alchemist General and also Magical Detective who's marrying her by order of the prince to solve the mysterious deaths and keep the political assets in the hands of someone loyal to the throne; could they actually fall in love? The answer will shock you! Anyway, I like tropes, and I like lesbians, and I like that Caitlin Starling is never afraid to lean into her id; I was as happy to read this in novella form as I would have been on AO3.
The Dead Withheld by L.D. Lewis is the one that didn't quite hit for me -- it's a supernatural noir about a PI who can talk to the dead investigating the cold case death of her wife, and it is doing exactly what it says on the tin but something about it never quite grabbed me. Too short? Not enough oomph? Anyway, it might grab you!
and The Iron Below Remembers by Sharang Biswas drove me up a wall, in large part because the worldbuilding it's doing is extremely playful and interesting and fun -- it's set in an alternate universe where a South Asian empire was the major early colonial power instead of Rome, and their abandoned artifacts and technology power contemporary superheroes. The protagonist is an academic dating a superhero; the text is heavily footnote-studded and 50% of the footnotes are really fun and interesting little explorations of this alternate history. Unfortunately for me, the actual plot laid on top of this rich worldbuilding is all Gay Superhero Relationship Drama and the other 50% of the footnotes are gossipy anecdotes about the protagonist's sex life. This is certainly going to be a feature for some people but was, alas, a bug for me; every time I went through the effort to click through the annoying footnotes format on my digital edition I was really hoping to get a meaty paragraph about what happened after Siddhartha marched into the city of Rime and did not feel rewarded any time I got a smug half-sentence about shibari instead.
For anyone who read Mansfield Park and wished that poor Fanny had been given a third option.
Our Groves Were Planted to Console (17711 words) by ChronicBookworm Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen, AUSTEN Jane - Works Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fanny Price/Original Male Character Characters: Fanny Price, Original Characters, Mrs. Norris (Mansfield Park), Edmund Bertram, Sir Thomas Bertram Additional Tags: Courtship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family, Family Dynamics, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers Summary:
Dr Grant receives a prebendary at Westminster before Mr Crawford can propose to Fanny. Fanny likes the new occupant of Mansfield Parsonage much better than the previous ones.
Customer: "Today is Boxing Day, and that means everything is supposed to be on sale today!"
Me: "Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t have a sale covering our whole store. We have our expanded sale section where we’ve done some great markdowns and some great promo—"
Customer: "—No, you don’t understand. Boxing Day is about sales."
Back in 1990, I discovered storytelling more or less by accident. I lived in Los Angeles and I got the regular course / event catalogues from the University of Judaism. One catalog listed a full day Jewish storytelling event, a mixture of workshops and performances. I decided to go, largely because I’d had a conversation several months before (at a wedding, if I recall correctly) in which somebody had mentioned storytelling to me.
Aside from the official learning activities, I heard stories from all of the people leading the event. One of those people was Doug Lipman, who told a Jewish story called “The Sword of Wood,” which made a big impression on me. I also met a lot of people and learned that there were storytelling groups throughout the L.A. area, including one that met quite near where I lived. I took flyers about those groups. I also took a flyer about a weekend workshop Doug and Jay O’Callahan were doing a few months later somewhere in the Inland Empire and decided to sign up for it.
Not long after, I gathered my courage and went to Community Storytellers. I don’t remember if I told a story that first time there, but I know I did fairly soon and before long Community Storytellers was on my monthly calendar of things to do. I met great people there and I remember feeling relieved when I went to Doug and Jay's workshop and one of those people was also there.
The stories I had been telling up to then were largely original fairy tales and my takes on folklore. But the workshop emphasis was on personal stories. At any rate, there was one exercise that had to do with a memory about a place. And a place that I had not thought about in 20 some odd years immediately popped into my head, in amazing detail. It’s the basis for the story I’m telling in the upcoming New Year’s Eve event.
I ended up signing up for another workshop (and another and another) with Doug. His coaching style, which started out with appreciation for the teller, was very effective. And his reactions were full of unrestrained joy. His spontaneity was also a delight. When he led workshops at Wanna’s house in Pasadena, we’d all go out to lunch at Souplantation (a soup and salad bar restaurant) and he wrote a song that included lyrics about “working hard at the soup plantation.” I also remember driving home from his workshops so full of what I'd learned that I missed my exit on the freeway two nights in a row.
Overall, Doug was someone who had a huge influence on my storytelling - and my life. And I can’t count how many other storytellers I’ve met who have said the same thing. He was a special person and I will always be grateful to have known him. He died today but he will always be a part of so many of us.
was thinking that there should be a universal day of observance of the common kinship between humanity, like all the best parts of the christmas carols but shorn of their religious trappings so they were more universalist in character. but then i thought such a concept could only result in a bloodless and anodyne holiday of a very generic “International Fraternity of the Human Race Day” type. and then i thought, wait, no, we could work with that. all the songs could be clunky hymns as written by early 20th century internationalists. sung in failed auxlangs like ido and volapuk. the holidays decorations could feature some generic blue orb that represents the world. everybody wears business suits, the attire of the high modernist international order. you could set up a giant orb in your house and put gifts under it. the presents would all be food items from around the world, representing the safest and most milquetoast method of repackaging other cultures for foreign consumption. and when you get blind drunk and get into a screaming match with your family, you have to do it in esperanto.
Caller: "Your store is closed."
Me: "Yes, ma’am. They’re closed until tomorrow."
Caller: "But today is December 26."
Me: "Yes, ma’am."
Caller: "Christmas is over."
The classic Jewish Christmas is a movie and Chinese food. Because my friend, Cindy, is out of town and wants to see the same movie I want to see (Song Sung Blue), the movie got postponed to Sunday. But my chavurah did an early dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I hadn’t been to Hot Peppercorn in Springfield before. It turned out to be an easier drive than I’d expected it to be - pretty much right off the Beltway.
The food was good. In particular, the vegetarian hot and sour soup was excellent. Their garlic sauce (which you can get with pretty much any protein) was also good, but not as good as that as some other places I’d been to.
More importantly, the company was good and the conversation was lively. And the price was pretty reasonable.
I passed on the dessert reception at one person’s house, because I had too much to do at home. I did manage to get almost all of my laundry (which I’d done earlier in the day) put away. But I still have too much to do.
Me: "Hmm, it’s 8:45. Why have none of the senior partners logged in yet?"
Coworker: "Yeah, it’s not like them."
Me: "Can you ping one of them?"
Coworker: "They’re like five levels above me in the hierarchy. [Office Manager] should do it."
Me: "Hello, sir. What can I do for you?"
Customer: *Slams a device on my desk and starts screaming.* "This piece of s*** was sold to me last week, and it's faulty. You've ruined my daughter's Christmas!"
My mother has today loaned me some knee-high compression socks in a fun design and... the amount of presyncope I've been getting on standing up from squatting is approximately None, despite feeling while squatting like It's Gonna Be A Bad One When I Stand Up. So I'm probably going to be buying myself more of them as my mother's present to me for this winterval.
Obviously I was delighted when I got to page 7 and found the rainbow...
New Hire: "Why do we need to water the trees?"
Me: "To keep them as fresh as possible. Customers buy them right up to Christmas Eve, so—"
New Hire: "—wait, these are real trees?"
Customer: "See that $139 item over there? How much is it now?"
Me: "$139."
Customer: "No, I mean the sale price."
Me: "The sale price, as in the price it's on sale at, is $139."
The holidays have been calm and quiet for me so far, but I've spent them with my mum, so somehow almost all the time was filled up anyway. *g* Tonight I finally found the time to properly settle down with my Yuletide gifts! I got three of them, two in the main collection and one in Madness. ♥ ♥ ♥
Here they are:
Nicky and Gwarha from Ring of Swords, completely spot on, in an episode mentioned but not described in detail in canon:
Summary: The purple jungle adventure, from Gwarha's point of view.
The Nantucket Trilogy, a few generations later - future history my beloved:
Portraits of the Past (1371 words) Fandom:Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Kenneth Hollard/Raupasha, Kashtiliash/Kathryn Hollard Characters: Raupasha (Nantucket Series), Kashtiliash (Nantucket Series), Original Characters Content Tags: Post canon, Canon as Seen Through The Lens of History
Summary: A new exhibit opens at the Athenaeum...
More Nantucket Trilogy - a Raupasha drabble about her arrival on Nantucket:
Her New Future (100 words) Fandom:Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationship: Kenneth Hollard/Raupasha Characters: Raupasha (Nantucket Series), Kenneth Hollard Content Tags: Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational, YUMADRIN 2025, Drabble, Post-Canon
Summary: Raupasha reflects on the future.
I'm so pleased! So far I'm having a fantastic Yuletide. :D
Now I'm looking forward to diving into the rest of the collection! How's everyone else's Yuletide so far?
Coworker: "Yo, can you work my shift tomorrow?"
Me: "Christmas Day? Hard pass."
Coworker: "But it's not like you even celebrate Christmas!"
Me: "Huh? What makes you think I don't celebrate Christmas?"
Customer: "I was extremely unhappy with the quality of this turkey! It was too dry and ruined our Christmas dinner!"
Me: "I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am, but what exactly can our store do about it?"
Customer: "You can give me a complete refund, obviously!"
Me: "I'm afraid we can’t do that, ma'am. This turkey is in Safeway packaging, so they would be the ones to deal with any refund claims."
It's gift card season and there are a couple sorts of books I would like to get with mine, but I don't even know what sorts of terms to start searching on.
1) Something about different legal systems and the philosophies that go with them. How they shape how people think about what the law is even for, and so forth. Would prefer to focus on modern systems, but historical examples are fine if they help illuminate the present. (E.g. I have come across mentions a few times that things work in such and such a way in France or its former colonies because they were shaped by the Napoleonic code.)
2) How the governments of really huge cities/metropoles work.
Blogs or newsletters are okay too. But no podcasts or YouTube series unless they're scripted, please.
+ I was going to do my yearly 5 icon slots as a gift to myself, and it turns out 550 is a hard limit and I can't have any more. No fair. I got DW money some other way but boo.
+ Fallout is apparently back! I watched both episodes yesterday and enjoyed them. We're getting more zany vault culture and I'm here for it. Also a delightful actor appearance, big plus there.
+ Absolutely fell behind on rec_cember. My brain has been Tired from being social every day. I do have a few more planned, fingers crossed they actually happen?
+ Christmas Eve was an absolute success. The food was lovely, everyone was healthy and in good spirits, and since there were no kids we took our time and opened one package at a time. I finally have a working vacuum again \o/ A foldable foot bath, and a ginger preserve I'm quite excited to try out. Some creams, tea, and a gift card for RITUALS. All useful things.
+ Joined my brother in picking up my dad from the airport earlier. Now to figure out what will happen for my birthday, then my friend's birthday the day after, and THEN New Year's. I'd like a nap tbh.
I’ll probably delete this post later but I just need to share – this is probably my favourite painting wip ever. I’m so scared I’ll ruin it if I do more work on it. what if the finished one doesn’t look derpy anymore.
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