snacky | Network

icon_uk posting in

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

Happy Lantern Festival, as the first Full Moon of the Chinese New Year dawns... or dusks... you know what II mean?

Those of us hoping for at least one month of the current US Presidemcy which wasn't an entire new verse of "We Didn't Start the Fire" were disappointed again when the US and Israel decided to bomb Iran. And those wondering "Why" have the disturbing benefit of multiple choices answers, as Trump, Vance, Rubio and Netenyahu all appear to have different explanations.

The fact folks were instantly able to point to a series of tweets from 2012 when Trump speculated that Obama would, because of plummetting popularity declare war on Iran as a distraction has not gone un-noticed.

Sigh...

We bid a sad farewell to co-creator of Red Dwarf, Rob Grant, who passed away at the age of 70. "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!"

I've not watched the new Monarch: Legacy of Monsters episode yet, but I have high hopes.

I did watch the latest Starfleet Academy which is a strange mix between working through grief via "Our Town" (a 1938 meta-textual play which, as far as I am aware, has no real pop culture relevance outside the US) and a rather beautiful subplot (Which was a lot stronger than the actual plot IMHO) with Robert Picardo's Doctor and SAM.

thawrecka

In a surprise turn of events, this weekend I started watching the Prince of Tennis anime from the beginning. Honestly, it's charming and well paced! I can see why I was so into it... 20+ years ago. I wouldn't say it's particularly mature; it is definitely a story about a 12 year old beating almost everyone at tennis and everyone talking about how cool he is. The adolescents are very adolescent - Kaido hissing like a snake is classic awkward 13-year-old behaviour.

I mostly remembered the important parts: the tennis and the cat. I had forgotten everything about Echizen's sleazy dad, and I would happily forget that all over again. I also forgot how long they drew out not letting you see how Tezuka plays tennis - I've watched 24 episodes, and I don't think you actually see him play until episode 25. There is a ton of filler, but the filler is all one episode fillers IIRC, so in that matter is vastly superior to, say, the endless Bleach filler arcs.

Overall it's feeling like light nostalgic fun.

conuly

And, incidentally, freaked the fuck out of my sister

I did tell her there was a fox!

dark_kana posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) Going out for a walk in the sunshine with a colleague

2) My parents are coming over dinner

3) If I still have some time afterwards, I'm going to work on my photo's of 2025

conuly

and on the packaging it says:

"This product is not a toy and is intended for collection or use by individuals aged 14 or above"

They're superhero stickers! 14 and above! What do they think kids are doing, eating them!?

***********************

( Read more... )

shallowness

Miss Scarlet and the Duke - 3.2 Arabella

( Read more... )

shewhostaples posting in

girlmeetstrouble

Chapter 1 introduces Lucy Waring, an actor who is staying with her sister in Corfu after her play has finished its run disappointingly early. Phyllida, her sister, is married to a rich Italian, and pregnant: the book opens with the sisters discussing baby names. We also meet Miranda, who works at the house, and discuss Miranda's mother (ditto) brother, Spiro (who works for a photographer, Mr Manning, at the house at the other end of the bay), and father (gone to Albania). Also reclusive neighbour, and tenant of the family castle, Julian Gale - a name that Lucy immediately recognises as a very distinguished actor.

In chapter 2, Lucy goes swimming, and the action gets going. ( Read more... )

In chapter 3 Lucy returns to her sister's house, for yet another shock. ( Read more... )

So - plenty to get our teeth into right from the off! Have at it in comments.

Chapters 4 and 5 for next week.

dine

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

landingtree

During the first covid lockdown,

ambyr introduced me to Sean Stewart's book Clouds End, and I wrote her some fanfic for it. I vaguely intended to write it a tidier ending and post it online, but never did. It came up during

ambyr's visit (which she has just posted about and I also mean to get around to posting about, it was lovely), and I reread the fic and thought 'I still like this. And why should it need to be tidy, given the title?' So I got her to send me photos of the parts I hadn't kept, and here it is.

A Frayed End

tcampbell1000 posting in

scans_daily

The feelings General Glory inspires in me are…mixed. I think he was useful as comic relief in the JLI’s last year-and-change, when the stories were otherwise leaning toward heaviness. I don’t miss him at all, but I think he’s fun in small doses.

A five-issue introductory arc is nobody’s idea of a small dose, and “Glory Bound” has some logical flaws on top of that. But Giffen and DeMatteis are interesting even when they go astray, Linda Medley knows her stuff, and the plot gets off to a promising start.

( Like the priest at Mister Miracle’s funeral, this is a Kirby tribute that I suspect left Kirby more annoyed than gratified. )

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: Earthlings
Author: Sayaka Murata
Translator: Ginny Takemori
Genre: Fiction

The second book I finished this weekend was Earthlings by Sakyaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Takemori. This book is about Natsuki, a girl who's always felt she doesn't quite belong with humans. This has been book #16 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.

I've struggled a lot with what to say about this book, or whether to say anything at all. First, as many other reviews note, the book description does not in any way prepare you for the trigger warnings that may apply, so if you have no-gos for reading, do have a look around for a list before you crack this one open.

There are a lot of things you could take away from this book. The lifelong impact of childhood sexual abuse. The damage of a child having no safe adult to confide in. The pain of feeling alienated from society. The pain caused by strict social expectations that leave no room for individuals to pursue other modes of living. The danger that refusing to allow deviations from the "norm" will lead individuals incapable of conforming to that norm to reject society altogether. The idea that rejecting smaller social rules eventually leads to complete anarchy and amorality. The suffocating impact of the absence of privacy and the extremes to which it may drive people.

It is an exploration of the harm done, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who don't "fit" into the mold of society. How much of it is reality and how much of it is Natsuki's imagination is also up to the reader.

It's also a book about interrogating taboos, which leads to the trigger warning above. Natsuki's choice not to marry or have children is in and of itself, violating a taboo of her culture. Her feeling that violating this taboo does no harm to her or anyone else naturally leads to questioning other taboos, and you can't write a book about questioning taboos and then say "but not that taboo, that's too taboo!" so the book does go some dark places as Natsuki and her companions ask themselves if there's anything rational in refraining from theft, murder, and assault.

The translation is well done, particularly in dealing with a number of sensitive subjects.

I'm not sure what I ultimately take away from Earthlings. Perhaps how much damage societal rejection has on a person's psyche and the harms that can spawn from that. We are, in the end, social creatures. Feeling from a young age that you don't belong is bound to have detrimental developmental impacts.

cahn

Time to update on the kiddos! ( Screen time; E's classes; math competitions; A's school is not visibly a dumpster fire which is I guess progress; A is growing up )

rocky41_7 posting in

books

The second book I finished this weekend was Earthlings by Sakyaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Takemori. This book is about Natsuki, a girl who's always felt she doesn't quite belong with humans. This has been book #16 from the "Women in Translation" rec list.

I've struggled a lot with what to say about this book, or whether to say anything at all. First, as many other reviews note, the book description does not in any way prepare you for the trigger warnings that may apply, so if you have no-gos for reading, do have a look around for a list before you crack this one open.

There are a lot of things you could take away from this book. The lifelong impact of childhood sexual abuse. The damage of a child having no safe adult to confide in. The pain of feeling alienated from society. The pain caused by strict social expectations that leave no room for individuals to pursue other modes of living. The danger that refusing to allow deviations from the "norm" will lead individuals incapable of conforming to that norm to reject society altogether. The idea that rejecting smaller social rules eventually leads to complete anarchy and amorality. The suffocating impact of the absence of privacy and the extremes to which it may drive people.

It is an exploration of the harm done, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who don't "fit" into the mold of society. How much of it is reality and how much of it is Natsuki's imagination is also up to the reader.

It's also a book about interrogating taboos, which leads to the trigger warning above. Natsuki's choice not to marry or have children is in and of itself, violating a taboo of her culture. Her feeling that violating this taboo does no harm to her or anyone else naturally leads to questioning other taboos, and you can't write a book about questioning taboos and then say "but not that taboo, that's too taboo!" so the book does go some dark places as Natsuki and her companions ask themselves if there's anything rational in refraining from theft, murder, and assault.

The translation is well done, particularly in dealing with a number of sensitive subjects.

I'm not sure what I ultimately take away from Earthlings. Perhaps how much damage societal rejection has on a person's psyche and the harms that can spawn from that. We are, in the end, social creatures. Feeling from a young age that you don't belong is bound to have detrimental developmental impacts.

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: The Seep
Author: Chana Porter
Genre: Sci-fi/fantasy, grief processing

This weekend I finished two books, the first of which was The Seep by Chana Porter, which has been on my TBR for years. In this book, Earth has been peacefully invaded by a parasitic alien which goes about solving all of Earth's problems in exchange for insight on what being human is like.

If you're looking for a SFF book with heavy world-building, this is not it. Very little explanation is ever given about the Seep (the alien, not the book), how it works, how it got here, what its initial invasion was like. The practicalities of the Seep are not what this book is about; this book is about its protagonist, Trina, learning to live in a world where the Seep dominates everything, for better or worse.

The Seep itself could be an allegory for any number of things, but to me, it correlated strongly with modern technology, especially since the advent of AI, although the book was published in 2020, before AI hit the public market. The way Trina's misgivings about the Seep are brushed off as a sort of Ludditism, an old fogey being old (Trina is 50 for the better part of the book), the way even Trina acknowledges a lot of the good the Seep does but no one is willing to seriously discuss what's being lost, the way it has so quickly and totally seeped into every aspect of life on Earth so that those who choose to live without it are relegated to an isolated, ostracized community roundly mocked by everyone else.

However, while the book starts off with something to say about Trina feeling lost, about being unwilling to give everything up to the Seep, it peters out at the end without anything really to say about Trina's society (and by extension, our own). It floats around the idea that friction in our lives is good--various characters admit, under pressure, that they miss some of the more difficult aspects of life before the Seep, perhaps the sense that accomplishments meant more when you really had to work for them. Now everyone does whatever they want and it's easy, everything's easy. It hints that Trina, who is trans, has some resentment about how easily people are able to modify their bodies now with the Seep--friends walk around with angel wings, cat ears, change gender by day of the week--while Trina had to fight so hard to become who she is and feels that struggle is part of what made her who she is. It makes salient points that part of freedom is the freedom to chose wrong (the Seep is fixated on keeping humans from any unhealthy behaviors, and Trina longs for the days when she could have a drink without the overwhelming sense of alien disapproval, or the chance to grieve as she wishes to without someone trying to fix it for her). It implies that immortality takes some of the meaning out of life, because part of what makes our experiences meaningful is knowing that we only have so much time for them.

Yet the climax lacks a follow-through to these premises, in my view. When a book starts off with such strong opinions, I expect it to conclude with a solution, a criticism, a proposal...something. But here, Trina makes her speech to the Seep about why each person's individual experience shapes them and why we're all unique, but she also returns to the fold of the same community she left before, which, I think, substantially failed her in her grief for her lost wife, and partakes in the social rituals they had been demanding of her. Her end feelings on the Seep aren't even clear. She just sort of...goes on with life as she was doing before her wife's departure. Which would be perfectly fine if the story was only about grief, but this one felt like it was about a lot more than that.

I still think The Seep raises interesting, and very relevant in today's world, points, but I wish it did more with them in the end. However, the book is quite short, so I do still think it's worth the read.

rocky41_7 posting in

books

This weekend I finished two books, the first of which was The Seep by Chana Porter, which has been on my TBR for years. In this book, Earth has been peacefully invaded by a parasitic alien which goes about solving all of Earth's problems in exchange for insight on what being human is like.

If you're looking for a SFF book with heavy world-building, this is not it. Very little explanation is ever given about the Seep (the alien, not the book), how it works, how it got here, what its initial invasion was like. The practicalities of the Seep are not what this book is about; this book is about its protagonist, Trina, learning to live in a world where the Seep dominates everything, for better or worse.

The Seep itself could be an allegory for any number of things, but to me, it correlated strongly with modern technology, especially since the advent of AI, although the book was published in 2020, before AI hit the public market. The way Trina's misgivings about the Seep are brushed off as a sort of Ludditism, an old fogey being old (Trina is 50 for the better part of the book), the way even Trina acknowledges a lot of the good the Seep does but no one is willing to seriously discuss what's being lost, the way it has so quickly and totally seeped into every aspect of life on Earth so that those who choose to live without it are relegated to an isolated, ostracized community roundly mocked by everyone else.

However, while the book starts off with something to say about Trina feeling lost, about being unwilling to give everything up to the Seep, it peters out at the end without anything really to say about Trina's society (and by extension, our own). It floats around the idea that friction in our lives is good--various characters admit, under pressure, that they miss some of the more difficult aspects of life before the Seep, perhaps the sense that accomplishments meant more when you really had to work for them. Now everyone does whatever they want and it's easy, everything's easy. It hints that Trina, who is trans, has some resentment about how easily people are able to modify their bodies now with the Seep--friends walk around with angel wings, cat ears, change gender by day of the week--while Trina had to fight so hard to become who she is and feels that struggle is part of what made her who she is. It makes salient points that part of freedom is the freedom to chose wrong (the Seep is fixated on keeping humans from any unhealthy behaviors, and Trina longs for the days when she could have a drink without the overwhelming sense of alien disapproval, or the chance to grieve as she wishes to without someone trying to fix it for her). It implies that immortality takes some of the meaning out of life, because part of what makes our experiences meaningful is knowing that we only have so much time for them.

Yet the climax lacks a follow-through to these premises, in my view. When a book starts off with such strong opinions, I expect it to conclude with a solution, a criticism, a proposal...something. But here, Trina makes her speech to the Seep about why each person's individual experience shapes them and why we're all unique, but she also returns to the fold of the same community she left before, which, I think, substantially failed her in her grief for her lost wife, and partakes in the social rituals they had been demanding of her. Her end feelings on the Seep aren't even clear. She just sort of...goes on with life as she was doing before her wife's departure. Which would be perfectly fine if the story was only about grief, but this one felt like it was about a lot more than that.

I still think The Seep raises interesting, and very relevant in today's world, points, but I wish it did more with them in the end. However, the book is quite short, so I do still think it's worth the read.

impala_chick

Browsing is open at Fandom Trumps Hate here! I find it easiest to navigate using the fandom tags list.

Here is my offering. I'll write 5-10k fic for Raven Cycle, Band of Brothers, or Masters of the Air. I'd love to write a rarepair or a poly fic, but I'm open to lots of other things. Feel free to ask questions if you have anyway!

ranalore

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: eating a mug cake and watching taylor tomlinson

kaiyote posting in

vidding

title. god loves you, but not enough to save you
fandom. iwtv/tvl
character. lestat de lioncourt
song. "sun bleached flies" by ethel cain

what i wouldn't give to be in church this sunday; listening to the choir, so heartfelt, all singing: "god loves you, but not enough to save you." lestat character study vidlet. (spoilers for s3 trailers/promos.)

dw | youtube

merryghoul

I might start crossposting fics on my blog again. I do have some things I’ve written and downloaded from AO3 that I can look at but I have to wait and add the other fics.

Looking into Squidgeworld but tbh I feel if everyone that went to AO3 posted there it would suffer the same issues as AO3.

mific posting in

fanart_recs

Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Content Notes/Warnings: none
Medium: digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: semi-artomatic on tumblr
Why this piece is awesome: A nicely moody version of the nightclub scene with the boys staring hotly at each other. Atmospheric!
Link: this is not enough , backup link here

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a little snacki snacc

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back to the present time

back from a fantasy

Network

Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

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Fox went out on a chilly night, prayed to the moon to give him light

Tuesday 03/03/2026

I ordered some stickers

Miss Scarlet and the past

This Rough Magic: chapters 1-3

there are always flowers for those who want to see them

Happiness and fanfic

Generic Story: JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #46-47 (JLI 64)

Book review: Earthlings

(no subject)

Recent Reading: Earthlings

Book review: The Seep

Recent Reading: The Seep

Fandom Trumps Hate!

just a teensy post to say

vid. iwtv/tvl | god loves you, but not enough to save you

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this is not enough by semi-artomatic (SFW)

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January 2026

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