Forces Between Worlds

2026-Jan-10, Saturday 04:24
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Posted by Mandalore_the_Atreides

by

The Force works in mysterious ways. A hero from the Old Republic has brought together heroes from Gravity Falls, Amphibia, the Boiling Isles, and the Galactic Republic to watch their pasts and the future of the galaxy far, far away so that they may prevent it and save all their worlds from certain peril.

Words: 3139, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

(no subject)

2026-Jan-11, Sunday 00:31
[personal profile] ciacconne posting in [community profile] addme

Name: Ciacconne

Age: Mid 30s

I mostly post about: My life, health, and fandom stuff.

My hobbies are: Writing, reading, gaming, and art.

My fandoms are: Harry Potter, FF16, FF7, Frieren, Slayers, Gintama, Kekkai Sensen, YGO— basically game and anime fandoms.

I'm looking to meet people who: Share my interests and fandoms.

My posting schedule tends to be: daily/weekly/monthly/sporadic/etc — I post daily, or will try to post daily now.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: People who are antis.

Before adding me, you should know: I focus a lot on my health, be it mental or physical.
geraineon: (Default)
[personal profile] geraineon
Hope you all had managed to have a bit of a restful end of the year and beginning of 2026 (despite 2026 starting off with such trashfire awful news).

The start of the year is commonly a time everyone does new year resolutions but somehow, the very act of making something my resolution makes it extra hard for me to achieve ("I do NOT tell me what to do!!!!). However, I have seen a new year bingo thing going around on fedi on things that will give joy in 2026 and thought that it's a fun low-stakes idea! But I didn't have 24 things to put on a 5x5 bingo card so here's a list, in no order, of the things that if I do in 2026, will probably bring me joy:

  1. Update my DW once a month (stretch goal: once a week)

  2. Send postcards once a month

  3. Finish 3 novels (I started many, finished very few last year)

  4. Consistent exercise regardless of intensity

  5. Watch a local musical/play/etc

  6. Start and finish a visual novel game in Japanese (2026 is the year I go back to JP otome games, maybe!)

  7. Go back to consistently self-learning Chinese (yep, I dropped it again after moving last year)

  8. Organize a LoGH/other anime watch party


And things that will be useful to me but might not necessarily bring me joy:
  1. Make a professional site for myself, and building a "professional identity."

  2. Build a "professional identity", which is basically, where I want to go from here and work towards that path

  3. Publish from my dissertation


Some reflections on 2025 )
sholio: Chess queen looking horrified (Chess piece oh noes)
[personal profile] sholio
I don't think I posted about this at the time, but there was an absolute odyssey involved in getting the original batch of B5 script books that I ordered.

The original process was this:

I'd known about the existence of the B5 script books vaguely for a while, but hadn't really thought of buying them before. In October, when I came back from traveling, I googled it and found a massive site called "B5 Books" that had authorized editions of all the B5-related books available, which was a lot of them, not just the script books but tons of other stuff as well.

They had closed yesterday.

But wait! They were staying open through the weekend (like 2 more days) because they'd had technical issues. So I splurged and ordered an absolute ton of books (about 2/3 of the total script books out there, mainly focused on episodes I especially wanted to read about). I would have preferred to order just one to find out a) what the books were like, and b) what their customer service was like, but ... closing in 2 days! So I gave them my credit card info for a quantity of books that I don't want to think too closely about.

A month went by.

I got a shipping notice and a tracking number, and and then a box arrived .... with 2 books in it.

I contacted customer service (a bit nervously, in the hopes they'd still actually answer). To their credit, they were very quick to respond; evidently there was a second tracking email I hadn't received for some reason, for the box with most of the rest of the books in it. (They sent me a free digital book to make up for the emotional distress, too - they were really nice.)

This was back in December, and I was leaving on the 13th, Saturday, so I periodically checked the tracking info for the box. It showed up in Fairbanks over the previous weekend, and showed that it was supposed to deliver on Monday.

Monday came and went. About mid-week, the tracking info showed that it had traveled out of Fairbanks again. (Why??) I had visions of the box going all the way back to the sender for some reason. Meanwhile, I had planned to spend the last couple of days before I left diving into my new books, but as the week ticked down and it continued to tease me ... I guess not. Finally, on Friday, I got an actual "out for delivery" notice, and then a notice that a "pick up at post office" slip had been left. Also, Friday was our last day of actual mail delivery (we'd put a hold on it until after Christmas that started on Saturday and went for 2 weeks, i.e. about the amount of time that the post office will hold a box - you know, this box with $100s of books in it). I was headed to the airport Saturday afternoon, but I figured it should be possible to stop by the post office on the way.

I picked up the mail.

No slip.

I thought, okay, maybe I picked up an early batch (yesterday's? our mailbox is on the highway and both the mail delivery and our collection of it is kind of haphazard) so when Orion got home a few hours later, I asked if there had been a slip in the mailbox.

Nope!

So now my package is on hold at the post office, I GUESS, with no ability to redeliver and our mail delivery not starting until after the approximate return to sender date. We hunted all around the mailbox just in case it had been dropped. No slip.

I ended up printing out the tracking number and taking that to the post office on our way to the airport, and that DID work and they DID have the box and I got it, YAY. (Orion said that the slip spontaneously showed up in the mailbox when he was headed home after dropping me off, so WHO KNOWS what was up with that.)

Anyway, all of that ended up working out in the end, and I enjoyed the books so much that I went on Amazon to see if I could find used copies of the ones I didn't have. I ordered a few more, and I just checked the shipping info and discovered that one of them - from a 3rd party Amazon seller - was sent via Fedex and supposedly delivered on Thursday afternoon, i.e. 2 days ago.

Guess what I don't seem to have!

Orion says that Fedex often leaves deliveries in random places around the yard - he's found them on piles of construction supplies, left at the door of the shop instead of the house, etc. Inauspiciously, it snowed a few inches last night, so everything is covered with fresh snow. Also, it was dark. Still, we took flashlights and went and hunted high and low in all the places that a package might be, ranging from likely (covered with snow beside the door) to unlikely but possible (at the doors of the various outbuildings like the greenhouse, on top of random vehicles in the yard) to the highly unlikely (at our road sign, in our mailbox). Not a single sign of it! I don't know if it was delivered to some other house, mistakenly marked as delivered when it's actually fallen under the delivery truck seat, or if a very soggy B5 book is going to turn up four months later when the snow melts, but seriously, WHAT EVEN. I've never had a book go missing like this in all the time I've been ordering used books off Amazon!

Anyway, further updates from the B5 script books are coming soon, and maybe I'll have this particular book eventually, or maybe not.

McDonald’s Brings Back Beloved Snack Rat

2026-Jan-10, Saturday 23:04
proustbot: (walk of shame/terror)
[personal profile] proustbot
I have several things that absolutely must be finished by Monday, and I dealt with those inflexible looming deadlines by once again downloading Inscryption and beating all twelve levels in Kaycee's Mod.

Such triumph, such victory.

I have once again uninstalled Inscryption.

Weekly Update, 1/10/26

2026-Jan-10, Saturday 19:40
yaaurens: (Default)
[personal profile] yaaurens
Whelp, it has been a week and a half of the new year and hoo boy has it been a doozy so far.

I don't really want to get into the politics of everything, but it surely has been weighing on my mind quite heavily.

I suppose I should mention at least briefly for posterity, because ugh. cut for politics )

ANYWAY on to the life updates and stuff. 

- I started doing the Hybrid Calisthenics workouts via the app, and oof. I am so out of shape, it's ridiculous. I looked at it and was like, hey, this'll be easy. HA. I did three days and had to take a break because I was so sore. And then the next day was a physio day, and I've decided that's going to be a non-HC-workout day anyway. Annoyingly, because my physio days move around, I can't just set my rest day on the app and be done with it.

- I started ANOTHER part-time job, this time doing bookkeeping/accounting for a business someone I know just started. It's such a mess already, omg. It took me FIVE HOURS to fix the mess she made of her accounting software and get everything to balance and reconcile correctly. She also has zero clue what she's doing, because she sent me a message with a list of vendors that she said we needed to 1099, and I'm like... no? we don't? These are vendors, not contractors? She's just so clueless, and doesn't seem to have done ANY research into how to start a business/corporation, which is so frustrating to me. Like, who starts a huge, costly project like this without doing ANY kind of research to find out what you need?

- The good news is, with that new job, I can afford to go see Suzy Eddie Izzard's one-person Hamlet production, so we're making plans for that in a couple of weeks. Very fortunately, my work schedule is such that on Friday I get off at 1pm, and then don't go back to work until 3pm the next day, so being down in LA for an 8pm show will be doable and getting back late won't be harmful to my sleep either, haha.

- cohort and tax job continue; the other day I was horrified when only one person (me, humblebrag) answered a fairly basic question correctly. Seriously. Which of these four options counts as a capital asset, and NO ONE ELSE GOT IT RIGHT?!? How did these people qualify to be tax preparers? I also made the mistake earlier of telling the teacher that I had been an ATL and CSP prior, and now she expects me to know things. Whoops.

- discovered that the 1099s that the IRS sent us were very weirdly NOT carbon copies like they usually are, despite being formatted like carbon copies. Was I clever and did I discover this BEFORE I did all the typing? No, of course not. In any case, we have some time, so we're trying to get an account with the IRS to file them online rather than doing the typey-typey, because I always fuck up so many times. Our other option is to send in the forms we have, and use the PDF form to send to the contractors, but that requires so much more effort. Ugh. I am, however, doing better at tracking my work hours for mom, and I will Not Let Myself Fail to Invoice this year.

- health stuff! Got my PCP changed on my insurance to my actual PCP for the first time in literal years. I guess that's one nice thing about them switching IPAs; they all have to take new patients again, so I can sneak in officially. I also have an appt with my pcp for next week, so we can get the hand specialist worked out, and discuss all the other Things. I need to make sure I write up my list of things to bring up before then. Physio levelled up, they're giving me more resistant items to squeeze and pull and so forth, so that's nice? Progress is being made! Also had my yearly eye doc appointment, so I'm trying out different contacts since the ones introduced last year kinda sucked. We're also going back to same rx in both eyes because my right eye is right in between the two powers. This new brand of contacts seems better so far - the old ones seemed really flimsy, and would blink out super easily, or fold in my eye and jam up under the eyelid, which was no fun.

- I *almost* got to work as a handler at ALA this weekend, and then couldn't because of the dang schedule. I was trying So HARD to make it work, but then they found someone who could work all four days, and I could only do three. But they said they would put me on their list, so hopefully if they have shows with more advance notice (the discussion happened on Tuesday, the con started Thursday) I'll be able to do some more gigs. (I am also sad because a lot of my friends are work in New Orleans this weekend at a con, but I was not picked for it.) (more therapy fodder, yaaaay)

- Dad and I are watching Blood River as the evening show, but it hasn't really been holding my attention very well and I'm not sure why. Possibly because the story is sort of a prequel, but also sort not, because the writer realized he didn't like what he'd done with the characters originally and decided he wanted to re-work them? So things don't quite fit into what has already been laid out story wise. I joined a group watch tonight of the first six episodes of My Lady General, which is gonna be fun, and hopefully I'll be able to see the rest of the eps. Sunday was the B5 group watch, which is great fun because we're up to Babylon Squared and that set of episodes, which is just SO GOOD. 

Next week is going to be busy busy busy. I have my first tax appointment on the schedule; hopefully he shows up and has his paperwork so I can actually do the thing and get those first time jitters over with. Shakes comes back this week too; I asked everyone to please double check their schedules and let me know if they foresee any missed dates so I can go ahead and get casting done now while it's calm and not while I'm stressed with tax work. We'll see if that actually works, ha. I also have So Much Work to do for mom, that I really need to get done this week. Maybe I'll take one of my non-tax work days and go sit at the shop and do work there.

Goals for the upcoming week: Survive the tax appointment. Finish work for mom. Get in the habit of doing regular HC workouts.
Good things: fuzzy blankets (always). surprisingly good headshots for work. my elephant slippers.

Kathy Easter Egg

2026-Jan-11, Sunday 00:03
[syndicated profile] post_secret_feed

Posted by Frank

There are Easter Eggs hidden in the PostSecret Digital Museum of Secrets. One of them is a long article from PostSecret’s original mailcarrier – Kathy. If you have not discovered it already, go here and click on the mailbox. You can read Kathy’s story, and her secret. Here is the beginning. . .

As a mail carrier, I got used to seeing unusual things come through the mail. I have delivered ashes of deceased pets and humans to teary-eyed customers, tons of certified letters sent by bill collectors to equally teary-eyed customers, valuables in registered mail, live baby chicks, ducklings, worms, crickets, car tires and wheels, steamer trunks, and even packages that are broken and oozing with unknown materials. I have even been known to pick up a dog or two on my route, who had broken out of their yards and returned them to their owners. You’d think I’d be immune to odd things. But nothing prepared me for PostSecret!

In 2004, a customer of mine, Frank Warren, began receiving a few post cards in his daily mail. They were preprinted with his address and looked like a card that a dentist office would send reminding you of an upcoming appointment. It was just something I subconsciously noticed. There were only a few every day, and they all looked the same. I never turned them over to look on the other side. So, for a while I didn’t pay much attention. We deal with thousands upon thousands of letters during our mornings of casing our mail and don’t look to see who a letter is from or what it is. One day that all changed for me.

While handling one of Frank’s post cards, one fell out of my hands and landed upside down on the floor. I gasped when I read in huge bold letters, I LIKE TO HAVE SEX WITH STRANGERS. You can imagine my shock. That’s all it said. It had bold, bright coloring as a background. I’ll never forget it. I immediately showed some of my friends what I had found in the mail. One guy was so shocked he said, “Did a girl write it?” I was like, “how the heck do I know, who cares?” I then turned it over and looked on the address side of the card. I read the preprinted instructions next to Frank’s address. It invited you to participate in a group art project by writing a secret (that no one else knows) on the other side of this postcard and mail it anonymously to the printed address. I don’t have to tell you that I pulled the few postcards that were in his address slot that day and began reading them immediately! From that day forward, me, (and a few friends at work), began reading all the cards daily. I still didn’t really know what was going on, but I was intrigued. . . (continue)

I like to have sex with strangers

Dear Kathy – I sent in a secret saying that I was going to kill myself in the next couple of days after writing it. Then a day or 2 after mailing it, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that a mail carrier would read my postcard and not want me to die, even though they didn’t know me.

Maybe it was you – after reading your post I can see that you’re a special person. So thank you – I’m working things out.

The post Kathy Easter Egg appeared first on PostSecret.

paradox

2026-Jan-11, Sunday 00:00
[syndicated profile] merriamwebster_feed

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 11, 2026 is:

paradox • \PAIR-uh-dahks\  • noun

Paradox refers to something (such as a situation) that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is actually true or possible. It can also refer to someone who does two seemingly opposite things or who has qualities that are opposite; to a statement that seems to say two opposite things but that nonetheless may be true; or to the use of such statements in writing or speech.

// It is a paradox that computers need time-consuming updates so often, since they are meant to save people time.

// As an actor, she’s a paradox—she loves being in the spotlight but fiercely guards her privacy.

See the entry >

Examples:

“In some ways, I think the idea of a ‘serious lady’ might even be a paradox, if to be serious means to understand the world according to one’s own precepts, experiences, and observations, and to behave in a way that reflects this. A lady, on the other hand, follows rules that others have devised. How, then, can a ‘serious lady’ be anything other than a very peculiar and odd creature—which the women in this book certainly are?” — Sheila Heti, from the introduction to Two Serious Ladies: A Novel by Jane Bowles, 2025 (orig. 1943)

Did you know?

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. They combined the prefix para-, “beyond” or “outside of,” with the verb dokein, “to think,” forming paradoxos, an adjective meaning “contrary to expectation.” Latin speakers used that word as the basis for a noun paradoxum, which English speakers borrowed during the 1500s as paradox.



I speak machine

2026-Jan-10, Saturday 22:51
the_siobhan: (Sweetums)
[personal profile] the_siobhan
Still not King.

Did birthday dinner with the gf. I realized at some point like... maybe a month ago? That I spent the entire past year telling people I was the age I actually am this year. How am I SO BAD at dates that I get my own age wrong for an entire year? I can't even blame senility, I have always been like this.

***

Finally heard back from the permit wrangler. He spoke to the engineer and the answer is no, he will not sign off on the work. This doesn't shock me. He told me the fucking contractor didn't even follow the blueprints that were used to get the permits, so he has no confidence that the foundations were actually built to spec.

So permit wrangler says he's going to go back to the city and try once again to get in touch with the original contractor. I really appreciate his commitment to trying to find a better solution, but at this point I'm kinda resigned that I'm just have to tear up the floor. I just want to get it over with.

***

So in the meantime I'm still here just cleaning and de-cluttering the rest of the house. Got a wild hair up my ass to pull apart the corner of my office where my weight bench sits and was able to vanquish much dust and dried cat-puke.

I still have too much fucking stuff. This would be simpler if I didn't have such a huge aversion to just tossing stuff into landfill. This is partially the environmentalist side of me, and partially because there was a time in my life when a third-hand hotplate might have actually saved my life. So I have trouble throwing out a perfectly functional hotplate when somebody out there might be in the same position I was in 30+ years ago. But you know, figuring how to get rid of this stuff takes time and so... Things leave, but in much smaller boxes than if I just hired a bloody dumpster.

***

The plus side of not being able to do house construction work is that I have have been spending a lot more time on my b-list, which is 1) plants and 2) family tree. The kitchen island is so huge that I have been able to devote an entire half of it to a bunch of pots that I have seeded with herbs. I installed grow lights in the chandelier[1], so it's going to be an experiment.

[1]Hauled my wobbly ass up a ladder. Did not fall off. Victory achieved.

I had the brilliant idea that if I started tossing birdseed on the deck outside my office, I would give Lord Brock something to look at that would distract him from screaming at me for attention while I'm working. This has backfired spectacularly, because now he climbs onto the window-ledge and screams at me to make the birds happen.

***

On the plus side, digging through my family tree has led me to discovering the other out queer person in my family which is pretty cool. (Statistically I figured it was unlikely I was the only one, especially given just how big Irish Catholic families tend to be.)

A question I hadn't anticipated; I keep coming across generations where there are multiple people with the same name but different birth-dates. I'm trying to figure out if they are cases where one source I'm drawing from has the wrong birth year, or if there were families where they re-used names when babies died. Like there is a French branch were they seem to have named half the boys after the father but with different middle names. Was that real? Was that just Anglos fucking up non-English names? (That happened so often with the Irish names, I don't have any problem believing they also did it to the French.) Or am I finding birth records, but not their death records in families where infant mortality was really high?

Also, I have no explanation for how researching my family name led me to an Irish vampire movie, but now I really want to see this film.

gratuitous digital art

2026-Jan-10, Saturday 20:55
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
(selling prints via the local game store)

stylized digital illustration: a fantasy lady, peacock-themed

Digital painting in Procreate, at 11"x17" print.

Where North Korea is headed: Kim Ju Ae

2026-Jan-11, Sunday 02:37
[syndicated profile] languagelog_feed

Posted by Victor Mair

Androcentric China will have to live with this potentially formidable woman, just as they're having to deal with Prime Minister Takaichi.

"Is North Korea's 'princess' walking a path toward succession?", Nikkei staff writers, NikkeiAsia (11/25/25)

This is a most impressive article, based on AI analytics of more than 14,000 hours of footage that highlights the elevation of Kim Jong Un's daughter.

She's only 12 years old, but is poised, has good graces, and knows how to behave.  She appears to be intelligent, curious, and attentive.  Look at her gestures, her glances, her movements….

Just judging from this video-visual montage, Kim Jong Un picked the right "respected child" as his successor.

I think she is receiving excellent training from her auntie, Kim Yo Jung, Kim Jong Un's younger sister — Jung Un is a very impressive person, and so is Kim Yo Jung.

The Workers' Party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, features stories about Kim Ju Ae's activities mainly on its front page, referring to her as "loved child," or "respected child." Nikkei picked up references to jajebun, a word used to refer to Kim Ju Ae, from more than 6,500 pages of the newspaper between her public debut and the end of October.

자제분 (jajebun)

is a Korean honorific term meaning "your child" or "someone else's child," used to show respect for another person's son or daughter, similar to how "Mr./Ms." shows respect in English but specifically for a child. It's a polite way to refer to a child when speaking to their parents or elders, combining the respectful noun "분 (bun)" (person) with "자제 (jaje)" (one's own child, but used respectfully for others).  (AIO)

Mark Metcalf said that he was also interested in the significance of how Kim Ju Ae's name has been gradually modified over the years and the significance of such changes. Insofar as he recalls, Kim the Current's honorifics changed to indicate the increasing importance of his role.

BTW, did you know that, on 2/13/17, North Korea had Kim Jung Un's own half-brother, Kim Jung Nam, eldest son of Kim Jung Il, and once considered his presumptive heir, chemically assassinated (at the Kuala Lumpur Airport, no less!).?  

They take this matter of succession very seriously.  Almost bungled it with Kim Jung Il.

 

Selected readings

An afternoon with Steve

2026-Jan-11, Sunday 01:08
[syndicated profile] ao3_theowlhouse_rss_feed

Posted by Minai28

by

Hunter does not want to have discussion with ex coven head clawthorn, so when Steve comes by he takes the chance to go with him. A friendly familiar face offering some time together and baked goods.

Words: 1310, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of Small Horns AU

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Posted by certified_loser_boy

by

Lilith still feels guilty for her past, for what she did. She wants to make up for it… but before she can drive herself crazy, Eda pulls her aside and they have a talk. And maybe Lilith doesn’t feel so alone anymore. <3

A gift for the 2025 Owl House fic exchange!! For @Collectively-Crying

Words: 1478, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

[syndicated profile] languagelog_feed

Posted by Victor Mair

Knowing full well that 漢文 ("Sinitic Writing; Classical Chinese; Literary Sinitic") is pronounced Hànwén in Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM), Kanbun in Japanese, and Hanmun in Korean, I wanted to know how it is pronounced in Vietnamese, and was directed to this resource,  "Another Nôm Lookup Tool based on Unicode", where I learned that it is Hán văn.

I also learned that, pronounced háng, 漢 can mean "to stand with groin open".

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Bill Hannas, Steve O'Harrow, and John Phan]

CHECK IN: DAY 10

2026-Jan-11, Sunday 01:17
igenlode: The pirate sloop 'Horizon' from "Treasures of the Indies" (Default)
[personal profile] igenlode posting in [community profile] writethisfanfic
It's the end of the week, and the day when we have the chance to show off what we have achieved recently!
Does anyone have any excerpts/fanart/songvids etc. that they want to share?

The Savage She Hulk, Amity Blight!

2026-Jan-08, Thursday 21:53
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Posted by Infernalwriter, Windwolf9

by ,

Amity Blight was just a normal 19-year-old witch (with perhaps some suppressed anger issues and body dimorphism) who wanted to help her girlfriend. But when she gets caught up in an experiment gone wrong, she will find herself having to grapple with trying to control the monster she becomes when her emotions get the better of her, and if she really wants to control it. All the while, she has to contend with enemies both new and old, trying to hunt her down for their own gain.

Words: 1348, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Nun visits a nostalgia factory.

2026-Jan-10, Saturday 16:34
sistawendy: me in the Mercury's alley with the wind catching my hair (smoldering windblown Merc alley)
[personal profile] sistawendy
Weeks ago, the Tickler, got excited for Darkwave Mixtape's and Lovecats'* gig at Nectar, which happens to be in my neighborhood. And why? Because Lovecats were going to do an entire set of covers of the Cure, natch, and the Tickler is a huge fan of the Cure. (They're also a huge fan of Depeche Mode and can identify even the deepest cut of DM in about one bar.)

So down the hill we went, nomming at Made In House** and going to Nectar. I felt a bit underdressed with the kids all gothed up to the max, and some of the elders all dolled up normie style. But not to worry: the only table we found was in a drafty corner, so I put on the Coat and was fine.

Fidelity to the original? Uncanny. If the guy at the mixer board hadn't made some mistakes, I might have though they were faking it. I guess they knew their audience.

Spotted: C, Diminutive, [profile] aaminahlefae, and that whole gang. I believe they know people in at least one of the bands.

Do I appreciate the Cure more? Grudgingly, yes. The Tickler wrote down the playlist and gave it to me.

Dancer is here. Must dash!

*If that sounds familiar, it's because I've written here about Prom Date Mixtape, with whom Darkwave shares personnel. It's another 80's cover band.
**They do dinner these days. Aw, yeah.

How to Stay Invisible, by Maggie C. Rudd

2026-Jan-10, Saturday 15:19
rachelmanija: (Books: old)
[personal profile] rachelmanija


A middle-grade novel about a boy who lives in the woods, tagged as "A worthy successor to Hatchet and My Side of the Mountain."

12-year-old Raymond Hurley lives with his beloved dog Rosie and his neglectful, drug addict, emotionally abusive parents, who move constantly, have only cooked a homemade meal for him once in his entire life, and scream at him and stomp out when he cooks Thanksgiving for them. The one time he told anyone about this, he was temporarily placed in a children's home that was even worse than living with his parents, so he has decided to never tell anyone anything ever.

When they take off, ditching him and Rosie, he lives in the woods behind his middle-school. He continues attending school, as they feed him twice a day. Otherwise, he dumpster-dives after hours at the school, and fishes in the river. While this is all going on, he accidentally makes two friends at school despite his resolve to stay under the radar, accidentally befriends an old man who also fishes in the river, and accidentally tames a coyote (!), who he names Hank. But obviously, this is all unsustainable long-term...

This book isn't that much like the classic "kid survives in woods" books. It's not really about wilderness survival, it's about homelessness and the psychological effects of negligence. It doesn't have the vibe at all of something like Hatchet, where there's something satisfying and profound about living off the land and being in nature, even though it's hard and dangerous and uncomfortable. Raymond's life in the woods is just sad. It's closer to something like Homecoming, in which four kids abandoned by their mother make their way across the country in search of a home, but it's sadder and more aimless than that because Raymond is alone in his predicament and doesn't have a goal other than "stay out of the children's home."

The elements that are survival-y, like taming the coyote, clash with the overall feel of suburban social issue fiction. Especially because they're wildly unrealistic - you can't tame a coyote to the point of petting it and playing with it and having it play with your dog! A coyote will EAT your dog! (There's a key scene involving a venomous snake that also pinged my "it doesn't work that way" sense.)

I didn't really like this book, though it's not a bad book at all. I would have liked it better if it had fully committed to being a realistic book about a homeless child. I also would have liked it better if Raymond's big goal wasn't just "stay out of the children's home," but "stay out of the children's home because I hate it and they'll take away Rosie and who knows what will happen to her." He never once worries about that, which seems like a really odd thing to not be concerned about under the circumstances. If he'd been committed to protecting Rosie, it would have given him and the book more drive. I get that the writer wanted to have Raymond be more just drifting through life, but since he's putting a lot of effort into not getting caught, I think it would have made the book more compelling if the effort was connected to a living being he cared about.

The ending is an absolutely typical ending for this sort of book:

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Content notes: child abuse, homelessness, animal death.
aurumcalendula: Mirror Universe Philippa Georgiou in teal lighting (former emperor)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
Jan 10 - 'I think my main problem with Section 31 was that what was clearly intended as the first season of a show, plot wise, was hacked together to make the plot of a movie. Provided you'd knew in advance there would be only room for a Georgiou movie, and bearing real life restrictions in mind (i.e. guest stars from other Trek shows can only appear as they are today or have to be recast), what should a mirror Georgiou centric movie have been about?' for [personal profile] selenak

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(there are still slots open for the January Talking Meme here)

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