strange_complex

I was fascinated to read Jo Walton's post on How to read sixteen books at once at all times, because I have recently - and somewhat inadvertently - set up something similar for myself.

In mid-February I got fed up of all the half-read things in my ebook reader, so I went through and tagged a bunch of them - things I wanted to read, things I meant to get around to, etc - in a special collection, and then said "OK now you can only read things from this collection". I started out with 25 books, but added a few more either because a) they were new Dick Francis books that I wanted to read (2 books), or b) they were for a book group meeting that I had suddenly realised was approaching (2 books). Since then I have read only one ebook not in that collection (another book group! but a chapter-by-chapter one, so I don't want to read the whole thing yet), one paper book (oh look for a different book group), and a few chapters of other paper books, and the collection is down to 12.

It's actually been tremendously productive as an approach ( rambling about my reading habits )

In conclusion, it's been great for my reading but terrible for my booklog, which is sadly behind even though I've been working on it reasonably regularly.

susandennis

My federal tax refund arrived. Thank you, past me, for so generously over paying! Washington state has no state income tax as of right now so I'm all done for the year. Nice.

Today is the public Food and Beverage meeting. The blush is off the rose here. It's just old ladies bitching about the same shit over and over again. Half want a dining room dress code that makes them dress up for dinner and half do not and it will never happen so shut the fuck up. There are 3 women who do nothing but bitch about salt. The Food & Beverage director says they use a modest amount of salt in cooking. These three women was zero salt used (cause why have flavor?). So they bitch every month and the response is always the same. What is the grade of beef used? This question is asked and answered every month. In fact, all of the questions asked and answered every month are the same.

So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Ha!

I'd really like to make my Goodwill trip today and I could do both but tomorrow's better for Goodwill.

I'm just cranky for no reason. And Biggie needs attention.

On my way back from the pool this morning, I spied this hilarious camouflage. I don't know these people. They moved in about a year ago with a teeny tiny adorable puppy.

pauraque

This Flash game by Argentine developer Daniel Benmergui presents a scene with a woman in a rowboat looking up at a man sitting on the moon. As the player you can snap photos of different portions of the scene and move them around, leading to different resolutions of the scenario.

*Is this some sort of romantic game that I'm too aro to understand?*

I do remember this game making the rounds in the late 2000s and being held up as evidence on the pro side of the burgeoning "can video games be art?" debate. Personally I have always found this debate tedious and misguided, proving nothing except that "art" is a poorly defined term which is used to arbitrarily judge elements of culture as worthy or unworthy. So that's probably why I never clicked any of the links to I Wish I Were the Moon.

Coming to it now, my strongest impression is that it doesn't demonstrate anything about art, but it does demonstrate (yet again) that I am extremely aromantic. The game is supposed to be a representation of a love triangle; I do know that. But it makes my brain do the thing that it's been doing my entire life, which is to interpret romantic scenarios that I don't understand as anything other than what they are intended to be. (My brain does this especially with songs, which tend to be worded vaguely enough that it's easy to do. This breakup song could be about a friendship turning sour! This passionate love ballad could be about any kind of love and it doesn't even have to be about a person! It could be about a city or a fandom or a celestial body!!)

So what is the moon in this game? It's something the man loves which is separating him from the woman in the rowboat. Who says it has to be a person? It could be his career or his faith or his family or just about anything! I guess you could argue that one of the essential qualities of art is that it's open to interpretation, but let's not and say we did.

The 2008 version of I Wish I Were the Moon is playable in a Flash emulator here. In 2022 the developer also offered a free remaster on his itch.io page here, but I have to say I think it lacks some of the charm of the original.

cakewrecks_feed

Posted by Jen

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/someday-well-find-it-and-press-charges-2026

First there was the Rainbow Erection:

Then there was the Rainbow Ejection:

And now, presumably a good 30 minutes later, our nation's bakeries give us this:

The Marshmallow-Topped Drippy Rainbow Wang... Confection

(AND IT STILL RHYMES!)

Thanks to Myra D., Aimie T., & Diana W. for making us wonder just how long bakers can keep this up.

*****

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/someday-well-find-it-and-press-charges-2026

larryhammer

A few more musical links:

Funk covers of Linkin Park hits. The happy kind of funk. (via YT sidebar)

Tiny Puppet Sound spins up a 1-hour set of French house in a Korean workplace breakroom. Puppet DJ = joy. (via)

Tycho’s Burning Man sunrise mix for 2025: Joie de Vivre. Hopeful like the sunrise. (via following Tycho)

(Meanwhile, I’m glad to see that Krill Waves Radio is still putting out the chill.)

---L.

Subject quote from Been Undone, Peter Gabriel.

summersgate

She found and accepted it pretty quickly and now it's her favorite spot.

Today is Meals on Wheels day when I help Candy navigate to her clients' houses.

Roswell has a flat tire and Dave went into town to help with it.

Cold. Only 10F this morning. But the roads are clear so that's good.

james_davis_nicoll

I lead an active life so I am sure I have the physique of a 64 year and 11 month-old.

james_davis_nicoll

Nobody is sure who the enemy is, where they come from, or what their goals are. Still, they are the enemy and it’s up to the United Earth Surface and the Allied Orbital Forces Command to show the enemy what’s what.

The Proposal by Myung-Hoon Bae

rionaleonhart

Yet more fanfiction for The Goes Wrong Show!

Here's a game you can play: see if you can guess what Chris named the main characters in his play before you read this, on the assumption that Chris just asked himself 'what names do gay men have?'

Title: Ad Libitum
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 14
Pairing: Robert/Chris
Wordcount: 1,800
Summary: Chris and Robert play lovers on stage. Things do not go as planned.

( Ad Libitum )

oursin

Happy birthday,

james_davis_nicoll and

perennialanna!

sholio

... resulting from making that vid this past week.

One thing that I was thinking about is the sheer challenge of costuming this show, because most of the costumes are directly patterned after their manga/anime looks. So whereas most of the time in most shows, you can probably source the characters' everyday wear from basic mass-produced clothes or even vintage or secondhand shops, aside from really specific superhero costumes or whatever, this is more like a historical production in that everything has to be made from scratch. (Only, if possible, worse, because unless you're doing an unusual time period, normally you could probably go to the warehouses of Elizabethan or Regency costumes or Roman togas that no doubt exist.)

Here, even the relatively normal clothes are directly echoing something specific, like the patterns on

season 2 character's

Tashigi's

distinctive shirt, or

another season 2 character's

Miss Valentine's lemon-patterned

dress.

Anyway, it's just interesting to think about. Even the simplest costumes are more complicated than they seem, because it's not just an unusual shirt that the costume people found at a vintage shop; they're having to explicitly pattern-match or color-match or style-match items from the manga and anime.

( More specific spoilers about characters' fighting skills )

shipperslist

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

tamaranth

2026/039: Piper at the Gates of Dusk — Patrick Ness

The god comes screaming through the trees, shoving them to each side like matchsticks, breaking and burning them as it thrashes its way out of the woods... [opening paragraph]

In the original Chaos Walking trilogy (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men) Todd was thirteen, dealing with life on an alien planet and the constant phenomenon of Noise -- the constant thoughts and feelings of the men (all the women are dead) in the colony -- and the threat of the alien Spackle. Piper at the Gates of Dusk starts a generation later,( Read more... )

Current Mood: enthralled

slashmarks posting in

pinchhits

goreswap is a multifandom exchange for fic and art, featuring gore. Assignments must be at least 500 words or a sketch on unlined paper, and contain significant gore content.

Rules | AO3 Collection

Current Pinch Hit Post

For details or to claim, see the pinch hit post above. These assignments are due April 12 at 11:59 PM EDT.

Pinch Hit #1: Art, Fic - The Starving Saints - Caitlin Starling, Trigun (Anime & Manga 1995-2008), Blue Eye Samurai (Cartoon), Dredge (Video Game), The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

Pinch Hit #3: Art, Fic - 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), 镇魂 | Guardian - priest

Pinch Hit #5: Fic - Night Prince - Jeaniene Frost, グノーシア | Gnosia (Visual Novel), Dracula Rising (Cartoon)

Pinch Hit #8: Art, Fic - Ice Nine Kills (Band), Resident Evil (Movies - Anderson), Cardinal (TV 2017), Shall We Date?: Obey Me! (Video Game), Harrow (TV), 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020), Tracker (TV 2024), Murder Drones (Web Series), Original Work

Pinch Hit #9: Fic - Anne Rice's Talamasca: The Secret Order (TV 2025), Interview with the Vampire (TV 2022), Loki (TV 2021), The Night Manager (TV 2016), D.Gray-man (Anime & Manga), Merlin (TV)

Pinch Hit #10: Art, Fic - Undertale (Video Game), Deltarune (Video Game), The Owl House (Cartoon)

sholio

So this is apparently the latest installment in an accidental series about gardens. This is based off some bits in

hauntinghouses's lovely post-canon fixit Out of the Woods (not necessary to read before this one, but you should read if you like Londo & G'Kar stuff; it's lovely, with some neat Narn worldbuilding), which was in turn inspired by one of my older ones. This is not meant to be in direct continuity with either hauntinghouses' fic or the other fic it was inspired by; it's off happily living its best life in its own AU 'verse.

Green Growing Things (Londo & G'Kar, 2800 wds)
It is post-canon, and there are gardens.

( Fic also posted under the cut )

( Bonus extras from Tumblr )

dine

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

myrmidon posting in

fandom_icons

Dune: Part Three (2026)
[ teaser trailer ]

[ here @

axisandallies ]

asakiyume

It's been more than a week since I posted! Part of that's just life being busy; part is that

osprey_archer is here!

Today we went to Bright Water Bog, swung on a swing, ate some cranberries, and saw ice forming. It was sunny, but a cold wind was blowing, and a few flurries of snow came down.

(We also went to the Smith College Botanical Gardens, but this is a drive-by post! So there's only the one photo.)

troisoiseaux

Read The Stranger by Albert Camus and spent the entire time thinking about the Ben Affleck smoking meme, or perhaps a little cartoon man smoking a cigarette and muttering bah in a French accent, which is to say I had a deeply unserious reading experience. I found this book to be surprisingly (darkly) funny, because the main character/narrator, Meursault, just floats through life— including his own trial and forthcoming execution for murder— by responding to everyone and everything with abrupt and odd statements about how nothing matters, actually. Promotion at work? It's all the same to him; nothing matters. His girlfriend wants to get married? Sure, if she wants to; it's not like anything matters. The blurb describes this as the "story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach," which led me to expect that Meursault would be an accessory to murder, or perhaps framed for a crime he didn't commit— especially as, early on, a shady acquaintance has him (Meursault) write a threatening letter to his (the acquaintance's) ex— but no?? He literally just shoots a random guy multiple times at close range for no reason?? Because Life Is Absurd And Nothing Matters, Actually????

In a rare (and only very, very loosely book-adjacent) movie update, I saw The Bride! (2026, dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal) last weekend and it was SO much fun. It is not a particularly coherent movie— it does feel like a sort of Frankenstein's monster in itself, cobbled from about three different premises ("what if Bride of Frankenstein was Bonnie & Clyde?"; "Frankenstein 2: Mary's Revenge, A Feminist Retelling", etc.)— but as a fan of campy horror and classic Hollywood I felt incredibly catered to. I also watched National Theatre's Ncuti Gatwa-led The Importance of Being Earnest, which is in fact as absolutely delightful as it looks. (It's available on YouTube through tomorrow, the 18th, and streaming on National Theatre at Home after that.)

Current Music: The Man I Killed - NOFX

starandrea

Me: Internet, how long do dahlias take to sprout?
Internet: Could be two months, but probably only one. Maybe as little as two weeks if they're the right variety in the right conditions.

It has been ELEVEN DAYS. 7 out of 22 containers have little dahlia sprouts, and by "little" I mean the biggest one has FOUR LEAVES ALREADY. I cleared off a shelf in the utility room and snapped my one spare magnetic grow light to the shelf above, plugged it into a Christmas tree timer* in the hallway, and squeezed in all but 7 pots. (The four that had sprouted by yesterday are still on their succulent shelves, and the three I judge least likely to succeed are sitting on a box near the light for monitoring.)

I did a little garden tidying, but the ground is still too frozen for digging (despite the daffodils coming up everywhere, plus some red sprouts that must be tulips, yay my daffodil protection circle worked) so bad news for the boxes of cannas by the back door: they are headed for the garage tomorrow morning. If I have to cart them back and forth from the garage to the house to keep them from freezing overnight I will, but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to insulate them enough that they can weather a few freezing nights on their own.

( plants and puppy )

*All the lights have to be on timers, otherwise it's like Wei Ying's tomatoes in that one where Lan Zhan is a wolf and keeps judgmentally turning his plant lights on and off for him. I have absolutely thought to myself, "oh I turned the lights on late this morning, surely I should leave them on late tonight to make up for it!"

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strange_complex

January 2026

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Page Summary

wychwood - voluntary constraint of choice: a rediscovery
susandennis - The tax Man payeth
pauraque - I Wish I Were the Moon (2008/2022)
cakewrecks_feed - Someday We'll Find It... And Press Charges
larryhammer - “like a wire on a spool i keep on unrolling / a single thread that seems to unwind and unwind”
summersgate - wednesday
james_davis_nicoll - 65
james_davis_nicoll - The Proposal by Myung-Hoon Bae
rionaleonhart - Fanfiction: Ad Libitum (The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Chris)
oursin - (no subject)
sholio - A handful of random One Piece Live Action thoughts ...
shipperslist - Reading Wednesday 2026, #11
tamaranth - 2026/039: Piper at the Gates of Dusk — Patrick Ness
slashmarks in pinchhits - Goreswap Pinch Hits - Due April 12
sholio - Babylon 5 fic: Green Growing Things
dine - Tuesday's child was wearing green
myrmidon in fandom_icons - Dune: Part Three [2026]
asakiyume - quick hello-I'm-alive post
troisoiseaux - Weekly reading (etc.)
starandrea - something about plants probably

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Page generated Sunday, 22 March 2026 08:24

The children of the night

Network

voluntary constraint of choice: a rediscovery

The tax Man payeth

I Wish I Were the Moon (2008/2022)

Someday We'll Find It... And Press Charges

“like a wire on a spool i keep on unrolling / a single thread that seems to unwind and unwind”

wednesday

65

The Proposal by Myung-Hoon Bae

Fanfiction: Ad Libitum (The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Chris)

(no subject)

A handful of random One Piece Live Action thoughts ...

Reading Wednesday 2026, #11

2026/039: Piper at the Gates of Dusk — Patrick Ness

Goreswap Pinch Hits - Due April 12

Babylon 5 fic: Green Growing Things

Tuesday's child was wearing green

Dune: Part Three [2026]

quick hello-I'm-alive post

Weekly reading (etc.)

something about plants probably

Profile

January 2026

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