Reading

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Media Roundup: Bits and bobs

Well I haven’t gotten very far with my pile of graphic novels from the library, and in fact I’ve put holds on even more of them so the pile is only getting bigger. But did finish enough things that it feels worth posting another media roundup.

Goat Magic by Kate Wheeler—Another graphic novel, this one with very cute goats. The art for this one was so cute and charming. I did feel a little bit frustrated with the politics, where there was some confusion about bad people vs bad systems. Also the romance kinda came out of nowhere (It didn’t help that I thought one of the main characters was like 12) Still a pretty fun book overall.

The Two Towers—Watched this with the kid and R, who as mentioned have recently finished reading the books. It’s fun to discuss the changes between the book and the movie with the kiddo! Also I forgot how good the armor details are in this! However a three hour movie with some chatting is a lot for me – at the end I was hitting sensory overload and needed to go sit somewhere quiet by myself for a while.

The Legend of the Demon Cat (2017)—I watched this movie with my group watch. It’s about a cat demon but also features Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi and various other historical figures. It was really good, though I’m having a hard time explaining why. It has a really big emotional range – some bits are creepy (and there is a bit of gore), some bits are sad, but some bits are really fun. And Bai Juyi’s character in this is great!

Unboxing Libby by Steph Cherrywell—My kid’s school is doing an optional book club, and this was the most recent book. I’ve been reading the books along with the kid and this is the third book this year. It’s about robots made to be kids toys who end up being used to simulate a human community on Mars. I really liked it! the friendship stuff was complicated and good!

Remember how I was all like “I guess I don’t read much original fiction anymore but I’m at peace with it” in my post about my 2025 media? Yet somehow I have read 10 books this month? They are mostly graphic novels which are quicker and easier for me, but still books are books. I don’t really expect to keep this up but it's nice for now.

Current Mood: blank

Multi fandom icons

Movies: A Home at The End of The World, My Policeman, Wake Up Dead Man:A Knives Out Mystery, All of Us Strangers, Sense and Sensibility, The Avengers, Iron Man, Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness
TV:Schitts Creek, Kath and Kim, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Andor, Supernatural, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Anime/Disney: Tuexdo Mask (Sailor Moon), The Little Mermaid, Alice In Wonderland, Turning Red
Music:Tori Amos
Sports: Josh Allen (Buffalo Bills)

here

Knights of Guinevere

98 icons from the Knights of Guinevere pilot

available here

Happy Anniversary

It’s the 10th anniversary of the first broadcast of Lucifer, which is one of my top 3 favorite TV shows.*
I FEEL SO OLD 😭

*The other two are Star Trek the original series and Babylon 5, just don’t ask me in what order.

What makes you feel old or young?
What are your favorite TV shows?

Current Mood: annoyed

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Weekly proof of life: reading, gaming (!), weather etc.

There's little I can say about the political landscape. The news is horrifying pretty much everywhere. US friends in particular right now, especially in ICE-besieged spots, you're in my heart.

Reading: I haven't picked up a new novel since I finished Inside Threat. I'm still slowly reading Braiding Sweetgrass. And for my first non-work manga read of the year, since I'd really like to get back to actually reading manga, I reread vol. 1 of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, chosen largely because a newish Bluesky friend loves it and it's been so long since I read any of the series. Before the huge lull in it being published in English*, it and Yotsuba&! were the only manga I was actively keeping up with in terms of actually reading, as opposed to a few things that I've still been buying. (Looking at you, once-a-year release of Kaze Hikaru, which I will someday actually read.) But I've basically forgotten everything, so back to the start I go.

*Publication finally--technically--resumed with omnibus editions, and am I still mildly annoyed that to get vol. 15, I had to buy the fifth omnibus, thus rebuying vol. 13-14? Yes. Has any more come out since then? Nope.

Watching:

scruloose and I finished season 1 of Pluribus, which got even weirder than we expected, and in ways we wouldn't have guessed. Really, really good. (Also Yona watched the season finale with us, very intently tracking everything that happened onscreen. No idea why she was suddenly so fascinated.)

Playing: I put in a bit more time with I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and it's not really clicking for me; I think this style of game (RPG? A story that unfolds differently depending on your choices, Choose Your Own Adventure-style?) may just not be my thing?

In huge-for-me game news, Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven has dropped. It's the first really major expansion (priced as a full game, which makes sense given the scope) after several smaller expansions, and I'm overwhelmed by the number of new things I suddenly need to do to keep my little cult happy and thriving, but am having fun.

Weathering/Householding: It's currently very cold by local standards, esp. with the windchill, and tonight we have a lot of snow rolling in that's expected to keep falling all through tomorrow and possibly into Tuesday. Yesterday NSP (the power corporation) (*hisses*) announced that the grid is under an unusually heavy load (presumably due to people heating their homes?) and asked everyone to try to minimize power usage. It is very cold, yes, but not freakishly so, and public sentiment about NSP is...uh...very fucking negative, what with their profits and their constantly skyrocketing fees and their data breach and, oh, the rickety fucking grid that we are all paying through the nose for while fully expecting to lose power every time a breeze picks up. So we're putting off laundry, at least (one of the usual Sunday chores), and I'd had notions of actually baking something (!), but that may not happen; if it does, it'll probably involve something like mixing up cookie dough and only baking a handful in the toaster oven, or seeing about doing the actual baking with supper also in the oven (less likely; we'll probably just avoid the oven entirely).

("Please use less power" is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but the combination of garbage infrastructure and the level of energy poverty in this province makes it insult to injury.)

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Slo-Mo Rewatch: Guardian episode 10, part 1

Zhao Yunlan sprawled on a couch, grinning at his phone. The background shows a purply sky with stars. Text reads "Slo-Mo Rewatch. Guardian - half an episode per week @ sid-guardian.dreamwidth.org."

Hi, and welcome back to the Guardian drama Slo-Mo Rewatch. Watch half an episode a week, at your leisure, and then come and chat about it here in comments. Or you can just jump into the comments without rewatching, of course!

Here are the previous weeks' rewatch posts.

Episode 10, up to 22:09

Summary
Zhu Hong wakes Zhao Yunlan with the news that everyone's been drugged. Shen Wei comes in, and they deduce Wang Zheng is the culprit. Meanwhile, Wang Zheng finds Sang Zan's glowy pillar in the caves. As well as the execution flashback, we see their happy past, dancing in a meadow, and talking together there too. In the present, they reunite through the pillar. Sang Zan's agitation (? or his attempt to free himself?) triggers an earthquake, and in the village, people run for safety. Zhao Yunlan charges Zhu Hong with keeping Shen Wei safely at base camp and goes into the mountains with Chu Shuzhi and Guo Changcheng to find Wang Zheng. Zhu Jiu arrives at the pillar and menaces the lovers. Shen Wei tries to leave the hotel (in Zhao Yunlan's jacket), but Zhu Hong hypnotises him into staying. Chu Shuzhi uses his dark-energy strings to open a door into the mountain, and Zhao Yunlan goes in alone. He's facing off with a Youchu, once more unable to fire his gun, when the Envoy finds him. The Envoy dispatches the Youchu, and together, he and Zhao Yunlan hurry through the cave system in search of Wang Zheng.

Wang Zheng tearfully embracing Sang Zan's pillar.

Wang Zheng tearfully embracing Sang Zan's pillar.

Quote
Zhao Yunlan: Everyone at 4 Guangming Rd is mine. We can't just ignore them.

(Unbeknownst to him, he's saying this to Shen Wei who he's repeatedly tried to recruit.)

Detail
I'd forgotten that even the ghost soldiers aren't on board with Zhu Jiu's treatment of Wang Zheng. One of them protests, "She deserves to die, but what you're doing is too cruel!"

Questions
Do you have a stand-out favourite scene or quote from the first half of episode 10? When Shen Wei asks, "What is your purpose in coming here?" does Zhao Yunlan answer? (There's a scene break there.) Is Shen Wei tempted to put an extra dark-energy whammy on Jiajia and Xiao-Quan to make sure they don't wake up during all the excitement? Was the heart of candles in the flashbacks Sang Zan's idea or Ge Lan's? How much stuff does Guo Changcheng have in his satchel? If Zhu Hong hadn't deployed her hypnotism eyes, how long would Shen Wei have continued to play along? Did Zhao Yunlan know in advance that Chu Shuzhi had researched the Hanga tribe, or was he just lucky? On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy is Zhao Yunlan to see the Envoy in the caves? On a scale of 1 to 10, how much is Zhu Jiu projecting when he tells Wang Zheng, "You were betrayed before. You are always fated to be abandoned!"

Did you see any parallels in these scenes with other parts of the drama? If you're familiar with the novel, any thoughts about how the drama adaptation compares, if at all?

(As usual, these are all just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like! You don't have to be keeping up with the rewatch to join in. We'd love to hear your thoughts!)

And here is our schedule -- if you can, please sign up to host a post!

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by me: pictures

Nature and Bunnies!

These are all taken with my phone, but some of them turned out okay, and I figure it's a good time for nature and bunnies?

( Ten pictures: Some nature, one cat, one rabbit, the northern lights )

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multifandom icons.

Fandoms: Bad Behaviour, Dynasty, Good Trouble, Heated Rivalry, Mako Mermaids, Neumatt, Namib, Nancy Drew, One Trillion Dollars, Skymed, Stranger Things, Supergirl, What It Feels Like For a Girl

rest HERE @

mundodefieras

Where do you get your coffee beans?

*sigh* I was just reminded that Peet’s Coffee is owned by a larger corporation now (has been for some time). I‘d rather support a smaller company. If you make coffee from ground beans at home, what is your go-to source? Bonus for fair trade and all those other green, good-citizen buzzwords.

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Reading Whatever's Day (Holiday Reading Recap, Part II)

Canada Reads 2026 short list is out. Thoughts? Feelings? I've only read one book and didn't like it. Very excited that Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a champion. I could stare at her face until I die.

Cinder House by Freya Marske
This was getting hyped up by someone at my bookclub, and I probably should've known better (not because they don't have great recs, just that I'm more miss than hit on fairytale retellings), but it was a novella, so I thought I'd give it a go. I indeed should've known better.

It's a cute idea: the step mother murders both Cinderella and her father on the first page, and the rest of the story is about Cinderella's ghost haunting the house. I appreciated a lot of the little twists on the story (which seemed pretty closely linked to the Disney version, but I also haven't read a tonne of other versions, so maybe not). There's some neat worldbuilding around how society treats magic, and the author did a good job incorporating the history and politics of the country without info dumping. I liked how the glass slippers worked.

Unfortunately, I had a difficult time connecting with it, and I'm trying to work out how to describe why. The story had a certain smugness to it, maybe? Like it was aware that it was telling the version of the story that would appeal to someone who thought a bisexual ghost polycule was the solution to every love triangle, where of course the other woman was a secret badass, because this is the kind of story that has Awesome Women who Subvert Tropes. Which is something that I ought to enjoy, and have enjoyed in other contexts, but not here. Maybe it was just that it should've been a novel with a few more subplots to hold it up, but either way the emotional beats never felt all that earned to me. What should've been crowning moments of awesome kept feeling like they were happening because this was the kind of story where they had to happen? It's all very clever, but never felt like it had any grounding in real emotion.

I thought this was a first outing, but it looks like Marske has written a bunch, so maybe she's just not my thing.

Leave Our Bones Where They Lay by Aviaq Johnston
Found this in a library display of books advertised as short reads to help you make your year-end goal, which made me laugh.

Short stories set inside a framing device: every season, an Inuit man travels into the wilderness to meet with a monster, and every season he must tell the monster a story. As he grows older, he struggles to find an heir to continue the tradition, but his immediate family is shattered, and won't go, so he ends up leaning on a young granddaughter. The stories are a mix of twists on traditional Inuit legends, and contemporary snippets of life in the high arctic, with or without supernatural elements.

The chapters are also interspersed with line art of traditional Inuit tools, and beautiful full page black and white photographs of lichen. It's physically a really beautiful book.

Both the frame and the stories examine how colonisation has affected Inuit society, and the ways families and individuals figure out how to recover their culture and even thrive. There's a mix of horror, humour, and quiet sadness. Johnson had originally published some of the short stories independently, so there isn't an explicit connection between the stories and the frame. However, they are arranged so that the stories fit with who's telling them, and match the tone of the frame story, so it never felt cludged together.

I loved the conclusion, and finding out who the monster was, and why we were telling it stories, and the tender relationships between all the characters. Really beautiful, hope Johnson keeps publishing.

Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold, narrated by Kate Reading
Third time through this (maybe fourth?), and I still get new things out of it every reread.

Our heroine is middle-aged mother who has recently been freed from a curse, and now has to figure out if she's going to take another shot at having a life, or if she's just going to sink back into helplessness (which is a valid choice, considering how the rest of her life has gone!). She goes on pilgrimage, mostly to get out of the house, and then the gods get involved.

It's all about trying to figure out how to make choices, especially when your history with making them has been utterly catastrophic. It's also coming to understand that the narrative of your life has been told by other people, and maybe they didn't have your best interests at heart, even when they said they did. I also love how unrepentantly horny our heroine is. She hasn't gotten laid in a good twenty years, and is starting to think she should do something about that.

There are also a handful of beats about how women navigate in a patriarchal society, for good or ill, that largely avoid the way that a lot of books in these settings shame women for wanting power. Some characters we initial dismiss turn out to be capable of heroism, if someone thinks to ask it of them.

I just really love this duology.

Wounded Christmas Wolf by Lauren Esker
(Know the author disclaimer.)

A new series, with slightly different rules for the shapeshifters, which I enjoyed, and am interested in seeing how it builds out in future books.

I enjoyed how cheerfully over the top the set up was, with a family matriarch who was so into Christmas that the kids all have Christmas-themed names, and there's aggressively Christmas-themed cabins on the property, which is also a Christmas tree farm. And that the natural reaction to the relatively normal-person hero is, "Holy cow, this is all a lot." Which it was, and all the characters admitted it was, but we're just rolling with it now.

We have a classic Esker hero who's not sure where his place is in the world, or if he has one. He's got a whole traumatic backstory to heal from, and just falling in love isn't going to be enough to fix him. (I thought the fire theme could've used a little more set up). And a heroine who's also at loose ends and second guessing herself. The sparking romance built naturally around their foibles and hesitations, and was really sweet. I liked what we met of the rest of the family, especially the heroine's dad, and look forward to them getting their own books.

Vid: "House" [The Black Phone]

Title: House
Music: House - Charli XCX feat. John Cale
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: ". . . other houses, the lights were dim, and with some houses they were almost out and I didn’t know the people who lived there. I’d get a feeling from these houses of stuff going on that wasn’t happy. I didn’t dwell on it, but I knew there were things going on behind those doors and windows." - David Lynch
Warnings: Canon-typical abuse and violence against children; suicide by hanging
Links: On AO3 | On Tumblr | On DW

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tv: heated rivalry

New Vid: Gimme Sympathy (Heated Rivalry)

Title: Gimme Sympathy
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Music: "Gimme Sympathy" by Metric
Pairing: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Summary: We're so close to something better left unknown

AO3 | DW | Tumblr

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(no subject)

01-12 the x-files s1

H E R E

01-04 stranger things
05-08 good trouble
09-15 wheel of time
16-16 babylon 5
17-25 comics
26-28 pluribus
29-41 interview with the vampire

H E R E

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fandom: music

Music Monday

Watch on YouTube

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Links Lists: The Angry Political One

Mostly posting these without commentary.

Uncategorised Stuff:
CCF: Anger is beautiful. Anger is generative. Anger is ancestral. By Chantelle Ohrling, a justifiably angry defender of Turtle Island.

dolorosa_12: Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure: suggestions for concrete actions.

Technology and Media Criticism: ( L.L.M. slop, gender-based violence, transphobia. )

Canadian News That's Pissing Me Off ( Various human rights violations. )

The United States Immigration Stuff: ( No images of violence, but cutting for folks already burned out. )

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Slo-Mo Rewatch: Guardian episode 9, part 2

Zhao Yunlan sprawled on a couch, grinning at his phone. The background shows a purple sky with stars. Text reads, "Slo-Mo Rewatch. Guardian - half an episode per week @ sid_guardian.dreamwidth.org"

Hi, welcome to this week's instalment of the Guardian drama Slo-Mo Rewatch! Watch half an episode a week, and then come and chat about it here in comments. Or you can just jump into the comments without rewatching, of course!

Here is last week's half-episode. On to the second half!

Episode 9, from 22:52:

Summary: Everyone arrives at Qingxi village. Outside the guesthouse, Xiao-Guo finds a skull, and Wang Zheng explains her tribe's customs, disguised as rumours she's heard. A villager in a mask and wig tries to scare them away; the village head explains that a guard was murdered two days ago and everyone's wary of outsiders. He takes Zhao Yunlan and Zhu Hong to the crime scene. They see a light and explore further, and Zhao Yunlan reveals he has the Sundial with him when it starts resonating. Zhu Jiu tells the Hanga tribesmen to kill Wang Zheng, blaming her for their being trapped by the Awl, and they attack the guesthouse. Wang Zheng tries to sacrifice herself, but no one will let her. Zhao Yunlan and Zhu Hong arrive, and she has to take the gun from him and fire herself because he's paralysed by flashbacks of his mother's death. At night, Wang Zheng leaves on her own and goes into the mountain. Zhu Jiu is pleased - it's all going according to his plan.

Quote:

Zhao Yunlan to Wang Zheng: "See, what do I keep telling you? Don't keep dieting all the time, being skinny isn't good for you!"

Detail:

This episode gives us an update for who was in which car when! I'll put all of it here for completeness' sake, even though it includes stuff from the first half of the episode:

1st leg (Dragon City to car breakdown):

Zhao Yunlan's jeep: Zhao Yunlan (driving), Da Qing (passenger seat), Wang Zheng and Zhu Hong in the back
Other SID car: Chu Shuzhi (driving), Lin Jing (passenger seat), Guo Changcheng in the back
University group car: not shown, but presumably Xiao-Quan driving since he assumes he'll drive after the breakdown

2nd leg (car breakdown to checkpoint):

Zhao Yunlan's jeep: Lin Jing (driving), Zhu Hong (passenger seat), Wang Zheng and Guo Changcheng in the back
Other SID car: not seen, but must be Chu Shuzhi and Da Qing
University group car: Zhao Yunlan (driving), Shen Wei (passenger seat), Jiajia and Xiao Quan in the back

3rd leg (checkpoint to Qingxi village):

Zhao Yunlan's jeep: Chu Shuzhi, Guo Changcheng, Zhu Hong, Wang Zheng (shown waiting at Qingxi village when the other two cars arrive)
University group car: until the jacket-sharing stop, Lin Jing (driving), Jiajia (passenger seat), Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan in the back. After the stop, not shown. (We do see all of the above plus the village head after they got out, but that's not conclusive.)
Other SID car: not shown, though it arrives behind the university car, and there's a shot with a blurry Da Qing in the background, outside on the passenger side. (If the village head did ride with all the others, the third car was Da Qing and Xiao-Quan only, and maybe Xiao-Quan got to actually drive for this leg! *g*)

Questions: What's your favourite bit in this half-episode? Which SID character gets the best moment? When Shen Wei questions Wang Zheng, how much does he already know about her? Would you like to go on a field trip with Shen Wei, even though he might end up hypnotising you? Do you sympathise with the villagers? Is speechifying Zhu Jiu's greatest talent? If you've read the novel, any thoughts on about how the drama compares?

(These are all just conversation starters - feel free to answer all, some, or none, and to say as much or as little as you like! You don't have to be keeping up with the rewatch to join in!)

Here is our schedule for the current batch of episodes - please do sign up to host a post if you can!

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My latest Guardian fanworks: fandomtrees edition!

All fics: 3x drama, 1x novel, 1x rpf. :) (There were also other Guardian and Guardian-adjacent works created for

fandomtrees, including but not limited to gifts I received, so check out the collection. :D)

The Arrangement (604 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Arranged Marriage, Alternate Black-Cloaked Envoy | Hei Pao Shi Identity Reveal, Early in Canon, but vaguely after episode 8, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Summary: "If I had never met you, I'd say that Hei Lao-ge is far more than I would ever deserve. And he is, but I have met you, and—"

Shen Wei swallows, and Zhao Yunlan feels the sudden need to backpedal. "I don't mean that I would propose to you right now. I just wish we had more time."

Twice (331 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: set between the Envoy reveal and the time loop reveal, Secrets, Reveals, Tenderness, Kissing
Summary: "Shen Wei-ah... Have we really met before?"

I'll Do It (313 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ye Zun & Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei & Ye Zun & Zhao Yunlan, Background Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Ye Zun (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Ye Olde Haixing Era, Hair Braiding, Trauma Recovery, Ye Zun is rescued and safe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Friendships, LanZun can be read as pre-relationship or platonic
Summary: "Gege did this for me," Ye Zun says, trying to sound offhanded but clearly gauging Zhao Yunlan's reaction. "I bet he has never done anything like this for you."

For Now (343 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen San/Shen Wei (Guardian), Da Qing & Shen San & Shen Wei (Guardian)
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Shen San (Guardian), Da Qing (Guardian)
Additional Tags: Domestic, Cuddling & Snuggling, Bittersweet, Not-So-Accidental Cat Acquisition
Summary: "Yao-xiong, look what I found! This little fellow just followed me home, I couldn't possibly say no."

Skilled (344 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, Chinese Actor RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Characters: Bai Yu (Actor), Zhu Yilong
Additional Tags: Interview, Implied Sexual Content, Light-Hearted, Long-ge has many skills that occasionally make Bai Yu distracted and one-track-minded, Established Relationship
Summary: A thousand thoughts per second cross Bai Yu's mind, none of them relevant— No, most of them are extremely relevant. Alas, none of them are appropriate during a live interview.

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Links Lists: The Fandom Recs and Fun Stuff Edition

(I've got so many links right now I'm splitting it up. The depressing shit one to follow in the next few days.)

magnavox_23: The One With All The Icons From All The Fandoms...
These are gorgeous! All the fandoms being: Good Omens, Our Flag Means Death, Doctor Who, Xena: Warrior Princess, Reservation Dogs, Star Trek TOS, Heated Rivalry, Hazbin Hotel, Hellava Boss & What We Do In The Shadows...

With the Dawn by

SweetSorcery
Fandom: Kidnapped! (Davie/Alan)
Word Count: 1,300
Rating: General
Summary: Alan's own safety is worth very little to him, if it means leaving David behind ill and defenseless.
Notes: I've missed so much fic in this fandom, and was really happy to read this one from last year. The sweetest lil h/c missing scene from the book. Great voices for both of them, and very tender.

The Worst Part of Waking Up by

Sanguinity
Fandom: Hornblower (William/Horatio)
Word Count: 6,600
Rating: Teen
Summary: At the end of "Loyalty," Bush is too late to save Hornblower. With his dying breath, Hornblower requests a kiss from Bush… …only to wake up a week later and discover he's going to live after all. Damnit.
Notes: More very excellent h/c featuring Horatio Hornblower being Olympic levels of Bad at Feelings. Also extremely sweet, once he gets his shit together. I love the tag: "When He Made This Bed He Wasn't Expecting to Wake Up In It"!

ThatDisasterAuthor: Put the light out. | Turn the light on.
Gorgeous Lighthouse | Fire Tower art!

Tractor Beam: The Valley in Thaw by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall and Xiang Yata.
Beautiful graphic short story about a soil remediation robot and a band of humans who survived the apocalypse. More like this, please.

Humble Bundle: Fierce Women of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror.
Great selection, open for another couple weeks. You get epubs, not the weird kobo link thing.

CBC Books: The Canada Reads 2026 longlist is here.
I really wish they'd announce this earlier so you could take a proper shot at the long list before they drop the shortlist. I'm like half way through one of these. Lots of hockey books this year. Hmmmm.

University of Pennsylvania (for some reason?): "Introducing Myself", 1992 by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Extremely funny and extremely gender.

Fantastic Mr. Fox on Bluesky: A Recipe for Disaster.
This meme is such a whole entire mood.

Current Mood: blank

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Weekly proof of life: mainly media again

I finished Chuck Wendig's Wanderers (which according to the acknowledgements clocks in around 800 pages in hard copy) and wound up in that all-too-familiar place of "that was interesting, but I don't think I'm going to bother with the sequel". (Although by definition, I imagine the sequel must be telling a very different kind of story.) No idea why it is that I can often tell only partway through a book that I probably won't pick up its sequel and yet still want to finish the current one.

I also just read Inside Threat, the sixth of K.B. Spangler's Rachel Peng [see icon] novels. There's one more planned, and then that's it for this novel series; I think she's still intending to write a third Hope Blackwell novel (some of the events of that probably-someday book directly influenced what happened in this one, but the whole 'verse is a very twisty pretzel in terms of chronological vs. publication order). And this reminds me--I don't think I ever mentioned here that Act III of the A Girl and Her Fed comic, the core of the whole thing, wrapped up a few months ago, ending the series. (IIRC, Spangler does have ideas that could eventually turn into a fourth act of the webcomic, but has no current plans to pursue doing it. It sounds like AGAHF and the associated works understandably got harder and more exhausting to do over the last decade as the real-world US political situation got worse and worse and worse.)

There isn't a whole lot I can say about a sixth novel in a series, but Spangler's descriptions of the series when she's doing promo on Bluesky always entertain me. Yesterday she posted "It's book launch week! Spend the weekend catching up with my bargain basement cyborg hivemind. Murder, mystery, and a detective who just wants to be left alone with her poetry and bad romance novels"; here's her "what's this series about?" Bluesky thread from a few days ago.

So once again: highly recommended, and it's entirely possible to just read this set of novels without reading/knowing the comic. It means not knowing a lot of things about the world overall, but they're things that Rachel herself doesn't know at this point (and doesn't learn about until Act II of the comic, which starts after her books have wrapped up). I enjoy the comic and other material very much, but the Rachel books are by far my favorite.

And that bit got long, so just quickly:

--I'm a few more chapters into Braiding Sweetgrass and haven't picked up a next novel yet.

--

scruloose and I are current on the new season of The Pitt and four episodes into Pluribus, and just watched the season 2 premiere of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. (Now to just hope this season covers past vol. 10 of the manga, since after we finished season 1 in 2024, I read volumes 7-10 before deciding to stop reading ahead and stick with the anime. It'd be nice to get at least a bit of new-to-me material this season, given that. Anyone know offhand how many episodes S2 will be?)

--And I've technically started a new (!) video game, in the form of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (on Switch), but am not very far at all yet.

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Media Roundup: Sequential Art

Here’s another Media Roundup after not months and months! Hopefully I’ll be reading and watching things other than fic a bit more often and thus post these media roundups more often than I was.

I seem to have gotten into the habit of reading a lot of graphic novels in December and January. I currently have a big pile out from the library – and I’ve read a few of them, and hopefully will get around to even more of the pile.

Lu and Ren’s Guide to Geozoology by Angela Hsieh— A very charming graphic novel about two girls on an adventure. Featuring charming art and very cute geo fauna! (As a Mandarin learner I did find the almost but not quite hanzi characters a little bit frustrating)

The Pale Queenby Ethan M. Aldridge—Another YA graphic novel, this one featuring an f/f romance. I really liked the fae in this book – they were a good mix of beautiful and scary. The art is also lovely!

Crush of Music— I’m still watching this very slowly, the subtitles have mostly been better for the last few episodes –so that’s nice. I’m enjoying seeing Liu Yuning and Zhou Shen interact in this – at one point they played the kazoo together!

Various Batman ect comic—So I mentioned in my 2025 media review post that I accidentally acquired a new fandom, that fandom is batfam. This is embarrassing for me because for years I've been prone to what R calls “the Batman rant” where I complain that punching people in the face is a dumb way to reduce crime rates. Plus I just feel like superhero comics are a space that's pretty hostile to me and my values. But apparently if you give me fic about a family of 3-8 adopted siblings finding each other/bonding and don't make me think too hard about the moral foundations of the universe then I'm willing to suspend my moral disbelief.

Anyways I got sucked in enough to be curious about the source material and have been reading stuff on hoopla. I'm fairly impressed with their comic reading interface too, it has a nice flow. (It doesn’t play well with my RSI issues but then neither does turning pages) The actual stories vary in quality, but some of them are surprisingly good. Even the not very good ones are surprisingly more-ish. I’m bringing a lot of emotional investment in these characters from my fic reading which also helps make the comics more engaging.

The Cross-Dressed Union—I thought that if my media theme at the moment is comfort that I should really start a new crossdressing girl drama since that's a big comfort trope of mine, So I asked around for recs and started this drama about an arranged marriage between a crossdressing woman and crossdressing man. It sounded fun but so far I’m pretty meh about it. I think my biggest problem is that the ML is the main character, and for these kinds of stories I prefer more focus on the FL. Also it's not doing enough with gender