Daily Happiness

Mar. 21st, 2026 08:01 pm
torachan: maru the cat sitting in a bucket (maru)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It's still supposed to be unseasonably warm next week, but today seems to be a little break in the weather. When I went out for my walk this morning, it was a bit foggy (though it had burned off by the time I got home), and then while it was sunny for a while midday, around 2pm it got overcast again and has stayed that way. It was really foggy again when we took our walk tonight, too.

2. I made a rhubarb pie earlier and we're going to have some of that for dessert. We still have a bunch of baggies of chopped rhubarb in the freezer from when we were buying it from the farmers market last year lol.

3. Ollie loves to snuggle on my clothes. :)

Sucreabeille: Wake The Dead

Mar. 21st, 2026 07:55 pm
brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)
[personal profile] brigid
I'm making an effort to try new things and one of those ongoing new things is trying different scents.

This is more of a challenge than it might seem to most people because I am utterly repulsed by some very common scents, and also some very common scents are major migraine triggers. A lot of it is "chemicals" like room spray, especially bathroom spray, and cheap aerosol perfumes but some natural stuff like stargazer lilies also trigger them. It's fun! It's a fun time! (It's not a fun time.)

Perfume oils don't tend to have the same effect, maybe because I'm so rarely exposed to them. They cling close to the skin, an intimate secret. That intimacy is another reason I like perfume oils - I don't want to make other people smell me, whether it's a scent I think is pleasant (perfume) or one I don't (body odor, garlic sweat, etc.).

I've been getting subscription bags from Sucreabeille (no, that's not a referral link or anything) which means I've been getting fun little surprises. It's a nice thing to look forward to and so far I've had at least one perfume I've really liked out of each batch. And since each subscription bag costs about the price of one perfume, and has more than one perfume... it's good odds. Also I am a sucker for gacha pulls.

It's early spring, but one of the scents I got is Wake The Dead: Spanish coffee, bitter caramel, lavender syrup, soft amber, spice .

It doesn't quite smell like autumn, but it smells autumn adjacent if that makes sense. It's a warm heavy scent, soft, almost snuggly but with a bit of an edge to it. It's a scent I could sink in to; it's the olfactory equivalent of a comfortable sweater.

I don't pick up the coffee scent at all, unless "Spanish coffee" is something I'm not familiar with that's different from drip coffee/espresso. The bitter sweet absolutely comes through. I don't pick up on the lavender syrup much, unless it's adding to the sweetness - if there's anything floral here it's lurking in the background. The spice is nice and mellow.

I'm looking forward to wearing this when it's cold again, but right now I'm more in the mood for light smells. Not so much florals perhaps, but petrichor and green things and maybe honey.



Perfume Master List

Weekly Reading

Mar. 21st, 2026 05:06 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
[personal profile] torachan
Recently Finished
Lucky Stiff
Third book in the Lillian Byrd murder mystery series.

The Cartographers
When the MC's father dies, she finds an old road map in his things, the source of a massive fight years ago that resulted in him cutting ties with her and blackballing her from the cartography world. In trying to figure out why her father would have kept the map, she learns about not only the secrets of the map itself, but about her parents. I enjoyed this but it was very slow for the first half or so.

The Hanging Tree
A woman goes on a writing retreat at a remote manor and learns of a local legend about a young woman who was hanged as a witch on the property and decides that's what she wants her next book to be about. The book is told in dual timelines with the present being about her research and the past being the actual events. I liked this, but there was way too much romance focus in both the past and present.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Graphic novel about the author's relationship with her parents, especially focused on caring for them in their final years. I really liked this a lot.

Huda F Cares? and Huda F Wants to Know?
Second and third books in the Huda F series of YA graphic novels about a very religious Muslim teen loosely based on the author's life. I continue to enjoy this series.

Hatsukoi no Tsugi vol. 3
Final volume in this companion series to Koi-iji. I liked this a lot.

movies: The Revenant and Stalker

Mar. 21st, 2026 11:58 am
snickfic: (Buffy Willow)
[personal profile] snickfic
The Revenant (2015). A wilderness guide (Leonardo Dicaprio) left for dead after being mauled by a bear goes on a revenge quest against the trapper (Tom Hardy) who killed his son.

As suggested by that summary, this extremely whumpy, if you're into that, to a point well beyond realism. Somehow our guy Glass struggles through total wilderness for tens of miles with myriad open wounds and a broken leg, and rather than dying of deprivation, exposure, or infection, he actually gets better. By the end of the movie he's barely even hobbling anymore. Also, the people in this movie spend so much time tromping through and even immersed in barely-melted icewater that I expected them to either die of hypothermia or lose some toes to frostbite in the first twenty minutes.

This is also an incredibly linear movie. There are no surprises here, no unexpected decisions or developments. No depths of character are revealed. It's also incredibly male-centric. The only female character with lines is Glass's wife, who's dead before the movie even starts, and the only other woman on screen is a Native woman-shaped Macguffin who gets raped on screen, then rescued, but never gets to speak. Even worse than that, to me, is that we get nothing of Glass's relationship with his half-Pawnee son at all. Other than simmering resentment over unjust treatment, we don't have any sense of the kid's personality or Glass's dynamic with him, which makes for a weaker movie and also makes it hard to believe in the movie's pretensions of giving a shit about the effect of European colonization on Native peoples.

I watched this for the scenery, and I will say it was great on that front. Lots of snowy crags, excellent! I also really enjoyed Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson, who round out the cast.

Cannot believe this beat Mad Max: Fury Road for best picture.

--

Stalker (1979). Wikipedia summary: a man called a stalker guides two clients through a hazardous wasteland to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the "Zone", where there supposedly exists a room which grants a person's innermost desires.

This is a Soviet movie by director Andrei Tarkovsky, who also did Solaris. If I'd realized that, I could have better set my expectations for this movie. I watched it because the premise gave me cosmic horror vibes and specifically because it felt like a precursor to a bunch of more recent cosmic horror that I've loved or at least loved concepts from, including Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy and movies like A Dark Song, Malefique, YellowBrickRoad, and Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made. (If you're not familiar, this a hilariously idiosyncratic list of widely varying quality, lol. There's a reason you probably haven't heard of most of those.) Maybe, I said, this is the original source of these other things I love!

Unfortunately, while this does promise many horrors, it delivers none of them. Very possibly it was an inspiration for those other things, but in the sense that other people watched this and were like, "okay but what if this were actually a horror movie."

The first hour or so is my favorite; I was genuinely shocked when the sepia filters of the real world give way to full color in the Zone, and there's some great tension as our stalker navigates the Zone using methods that hint at incomprehensible dangers. However, the longer we go without encountering any of those dangers, the harder it is to believe in them. By the time we finally arrive at the possibly magical room, I was more than half convinced that the dangers were all imagined, and the glimpse of two decaying skeletons came too late to change my mind. And then! We DON'T EVEN GO INTO THE ROOM. NO ONE GOES INTO THE ROOM. *flips over table*

Tarkovsky was not trying to make the movie I wanted to watch; he was much more interested in big philosophical questions and really long takes, and I gather this is considered an all-time classic for those reasons.

This was apparently an adaptation-in-name-only of the Strugatsky Brothers' novel Roadside Picnic, which I happen to have already have on hold at the library for unrelated reasons. I'm interested to see how it compares.

Varsity!

Mar. 21st, 2026 11:58 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

This time a week ago I was on the ice with fellow Cambridge alumni for "Alumni game 1", kicking off Varsity. Photos (from one of my Warbirds teammates!) that actually make me look good are over at my hockey insta but here's my personal favourite, capturing a moment in motion:

Rachel in University of Cambridge ice hockey kit, knees bent and stick in the air

After about an hour on the ice (2 periods running clock, 4 lines), I had a quick shower, and then spent the next ten or so hours mostly on my feet, doing music and announcements for my Huskies teammates, and scoresheet and in-game announcements for Women's Blues and Men's Blues. Final scores were:

  • Alumni game 1: 1-1
  • Alumni game 2: not sure, but we won
  • Huskies: 3-8
  • Women's Blues: 0-1
  • Men's Blues: 5-1

The alumni games were a great vibe: we cared, but it wasn't that intense. A whole load of the women I played with in 2022-23 came back, and for me that was really joyful, plus I got to make some new friends. A couple of the older guys in game 1 had played with my old work colleague Brian Omotani back in the day. Although he didn't play, he was there to watch, and he made time to come and find me for a brief catchup later in the day.

The rest of the day though was a different gear. The Huskies game was especially tough to watch, and I felt every goal against my teammates. The Women's Blues game was incredible, the team worked so hard and it was probably the best I've seen them play. And the Men's Blues winning so decisively was delightful, especially as the first goal came from one of the two ex-Huskies (and they both got an assist each later). The whole day was incredibly intense. And then I took my kit home to hang it up, changed, met up with everyone at Mash, danced until the club closed, went to Maccies (and realised just how much my feet hurt) until that closed, and sat on a bench gossiping with two of my favourite people in the club while one of them finished his burger. Eventually we all cycled home. I didn't want the day to end, but I had things to do on Sunday.

That is, very nearly, the end of the season with just the Nationals weekends in Sheffield to go. We've finished the league games, we've had Varsity, we're shifting to "summer ice" open practices, and even had the very last "S&C" gym session on Thursday this week. Some people will graduate and leave soon, and I will miss them so much, but I am so grateful for this university season and the time I've had with these wonderful people.

Happy spring! (morning writing)

Mar. 21st, 2026 07:54 am
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
[personal profile] elainegrey

The small multi-flowered yellow narcissus are still blooming, while the later narcissus in pale butter yellow and white haven't started yet. It has not been a good spring for daffodils -- yet? It's finally time for the native flowers: violets are rioting, the red buds are beginning to shimmer with color. One red bud i had transplanted some years ago on the south berm has blossoms. The volunteer at the other end of the berm seems strangely inert. The surviving dogwoods are opening their white bracts to the sky. I've lost some creeping phlox to a combination of weeds and drought. The spice bush blooms seem to have been lost this year, overwhelmed by the grey-green leaf-out of the invasive autumn olive and possibly their own leaves. The Chickasaw plum had so many flower buds, but i think rain and freezing weather limited the show. A juneberry in the woods by the driveway has a few high blossoms. The one i have planted still waits for the right time: perhaps it still needs a few years.

We have been in "severe" drought since January, the longest since we moved here, and the most severe since a terrible "exceptional" drought in 2007-2008. (None of this like California drought, which was "exceptional" from 2014 to the end of 2016.) No indication of any frost chance for the next ten days, barely any rain.  I've probably wasted all the money i have spent on grass seed.

It was overcast last night so i missed the moon-Venus conjunction and any chance of dim aurora.

I am intending to see some family at lunch today, and to dig and assemble my new raised beds. I hope to get the complicated parts -- assembly, leveling the site, trenching the French drain and adding coarse gravel, a screen, and finer gravel mostly done this weekend. Then i think smaller efforts trundling fill from various sites will be easier.

The Thomasville citrangequat has been ordered; tabs open for two pineapple guavas and a yuzu. I've ordered seeds of goat's rue (Tephrosia virginiana), a native legume with showy flowers, as a nitrogen fixing cover crop. I am imagining adding a few artichokes to act as a cover, too, until the trees fill in. Maybe a lavender.

My performance at work this week was not good, much frittering, and that needs to pull around.

2026 Writing Log, Part Eleven

Mar. 21st, 2026 07:00 am
rynling: (Mog Toast)
[personal profile] rynling
Read more... )

I’m slowly clawing my way out of a horrible pit, but I’m starting to feel the sunlight on my face. Here’s to brighter days and warmer weather ahead. Eid Mubarak! 🌿

fannish things

Mar. 20th, 2026 10:23 pm
snickfic: (Xander latin)
[personal profile] snickfic
- For fic reasons, I've been watching the first night of Knebworth 1996, and gosh, the footage is gorgeous. Incredible that they sat on it for almost thirty years. Here's an example:


- Speaking of Oasis, did you know the mangaka of Chainsaw Man also wrote a one-shot about two young female mangakas? And more importantly that the title Look Back is a direct reference to the Oasis song Don't Look Back in Anger? Yes.

- Have a silly video about the Oxford comma, among other punctuation. Really takes it up a notch in the second half.

- Trailer for Dune Part 3!! My perspective of the Villeneuve Dune movies is that the visual spectacle is incredible, but they're a little too self-serious and not weird enough. The books also take themselves very seriously, but make up for it via frequent batshittery. However, I'm definitely interested to see how Villenueve finishes things up, especially since he'd started going off the map by the end of part 2, and part 3 appears to all be taking place in the gap between the end of the first novel and beginning of the second. Here's hoping for lots of Jessica. 🙏🙏🙏

- They cast Jason Momoa's son as Paul and Chani's kid. Let the Paul/Duncan mpreg headcanons begin.

- You can now filter your AO3 bookmarks by wordcount!!

- IDK how it never occurred to me before that the bugging scene in The Matrix would spawn a whole new kink, but it absolutely did, and I stumbled across that corner of deviantart earlier this week. Bless.

- I'm not going to do a whole Oscars postmortem, but horror movies got EIGHT awards, which has got to be an all-time best, including two of the four acting awards. I'm especially happy for Michael B Jordan and Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw.

- Tough week for Buffy fans. I'm relieved that the reboot appears to be DOA; I was going to watch it, but I wasn't hopeful. Meanwhile, sucks about Nicholas Brendon. Losing him and Michelle Tractenberg a year apart, when they were both so young, is fucking rough.

Daily Happiness

Mar. 20th, 2026 08:19 pm
torachan: aradia from homestuck (aradia)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It is the weekend! Today was fairly hassle-free, work-wise, and I got home by like four or so, which was nice, but it's even nicer to not have work tomorrow.

2. I found a new puzzle site to order from and I really like that they mark their puzzles with a no AI guarantee. (Not all of their puzzles have this guarantee, but you can filter for it and the majority of them seem to be.) I hope other sites implement that as well, because it would definitely make me more likely to order from a site that did that.

3. Carla got a catnip chew rope the other day and all the cats have shown some interest in it, but Molly seems to especially like it. No one's that into actually chewing it, though, just rubbing and writhing lol.

rionaleonhart: goes wrong: unparalleled actor robert grove looks handsomely at the camera. (unappreciated in my own time)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
I think this is the worst title I've ever given a fic.

Fun fact: I've now officially posted an entire quarter of the Robert/Chris fanfiction on AO3. I think this means there's not enough Robert/Chris fanfiction on AO3.


Title: Mixed Beans
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 14
Pairing: Robert/Chris, with references to Robert/Celia
Wordcount: 2,700
Summary: Robert books a romantic getaway with Chris's mother. There is a misunderstanding.

Mixed Beans )

The Friday Five

Mar. 20th, 2026 09:09 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila
The preceding two weeks of Friday Five questions didn't pique my interest, but this week's are great. Love a bit of meta-blogging. Thank you for the opportunity to navel-gaze.

  1. What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?

    I started off on LJ in 2001 because everyone was doing it. I created an account and then let it sit for a couple of weeks while I figured out what it was for. I think it was victorine who prodded me into posting regularly and then I just…never stopped.

  2. How many DW or LJ communities do you subscribe to?

    A few dozen in total. Most of them are dead, the LJ communities in particular. The only one I participate in regularly is DW community [community profile] awesomeers, because I'm one of the two people who puts up the daily “Just One Thing” posts. I find it easier to write a short comment about my day there than to write up a full post, especially during the work week.

  3. Do you have a favorite community or one you check out often to see what's new?

    See above. I also enjoy [community profile] thefridayfive, and I like reading [community profile] threeforthememories during its annual spate of activity.

  4. How did you pick your user name?

    My current username is a play on my actual name. My original LJ name was “lilith” as that's the pseudonym I first adopted when I started interacting with online communities back in the 90s. Eventually I felt I'd outgrown it, and I've been nanila ever since.

  5. If you could change your user name, would you?

    That would genuinely be a big decision after more than 15 years of using this one, in a lot more places than DW and LJ. I'd have to do substantive additional navel-gazing to work out what it would be.

weekend stream plans

Mar. 20th, 2026 03:11 pm
althea_valara: A screenshot of my main Final Fantasy XI character. It's a close up, and she's wearing the Teal Saio robe set which features a golden circlet. The character herself has black hair in a ponytail and brown eyes. (ffxi)
[personal profile] althea_valara
Okay folks! I'm still catching up on sleep and am otherwise not up to doing anything strenuous, but I *would* like to stream this weekend to get back into it as it's been a few weeks!

Final Fantasy XI stream! (tonight)



Therefore, tonight's Final Fantasy XI will be a "Chill & Chat" stream! I plan to just grind levels on one of my non-main jobs tonight. What job? WELL, THAT'S UP TO YOU!

Feel free to vote on the poll even if you don't intend to watch the stream. Wanna watch? I'm at https://twitch.tv/altheavalara

Poll #34390 FFXI Job to Level?
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 0


What Job Should I Level in FFXI?

View Answers

Warrior (Currently level 1)
0 (0.0%)

Red Mage (Currently level 55)
0 (0.0%)

Ninja (Currently level 37)
0 (0.0%)

Dancer (Currently level 40)
0 (0.0%)

Monk (Currently level 1)
0 (0.0%)

Black Mage (Currently level 50)
0 (0.0%)

Thief (Currently level 53)
0 (0.0%)

Scholar (Currently level 52)
0 (0.0%)

What other job(s) should I unlock tonight?

View Answers

Paladin
0 (0.0%)

Dark Knight
0 (0.0%)

Beastmaster
0 (0.0%)

Bard
0 (0.0%)

Ranger
0 (0.0%)

Samurai
0 (0.0%)

Dragoon
0 (0.0%)

Blue Mage
0 (0.0%)

Corsair
0 (0.0%)

Puppetmaster
0 (0.0%)



You can read about the different jobs here: https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Category:Jobs

Final Fantasy XIV Stream! (tomorrow)



Tomorrow, I also plan to take it easy. We'll be doing the latest Hildibrand, then clearing out more open quests from my journal. I also might just keep an eye on the discords and hop around to FATEs or hunt trains. Whatever looks interesting and chill.

Start time is 7:30pm for both streams -- or later. Lately, we haven't even started dinner until 6:50pm (much to my displeasure, but can't be helped). I'm also not sure how long I'll stream, but I figure it will be at least 60-90 minutes?
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
[personal profile] elainegrey

Yesterday was far more peopling than usual: a day of meetings and then went to see my niece play the protagonist in Mean Girls: the High School version -- that goes on forever. (I think it's the full theater version but with softened innuendo.) It might be less painful if someone knew how to set the gain on the mics. My niece and the antagonist both have powerful voices. I wish i liked musicals but recent exposure because of my niece has not improved my opinion of the format.

I continue thinking about my relationship to "doing", and refocused on time not intentionally spent. I've realized by "intention" i have excluded things i will do anyway, which historically included journaling  (although for a number of years that has not been as true as perhaps i need). And meals, and relaxing with Christine. Time dealing with physical irritations and discomfort. Digital irritations: application forced upgrades and restarts.  There are many other things in that category, but i think i generally accept that they exist. The solution isn't adding more overhead -- more decisions about priorities and mucking about with lists -- but allowing for the time in intentions and valuing it.

I'm recognizing there are (at least) two other types of time not intentionally spent: avoiding and escaping. I think once upon a time i was "better" with my avoiding time. When work was so hard for me i believe i spent more time journaling and understanding my feelings, framing my frustrations, and clarifying why i was upset -- and then i could move forward. There were also more of the classic "procrastination" behaviors of doing X instead of Y, which i seem to have subverted in some ways. Now neither of Y or X get done.

I think some of the weight -- disappointment? dissatisfaction? --  i am carrying lately is more about how much time i spend in avoiding and escaping. I may be in a viscous circle where having become more aware of intentional vs avoiding vs escaping time i cannot become unaware. As the avoiding feels increasingly out of my control, my frustration escalates, feeding into the emotional demand to escape. In the past, it seemed i could just escape into one novel, and then feel "reset" and get back to business as normal, but that sense of reset seems far less accessible now. All 11 novels in a series later, still not "reset," rereading a trilogy still not "reset."

Ah yes, another type of time not intentionally spent is distraction, which is possibly a variation on avoiding and escaping, but i think its another class altogether.

Gay Chaos

Mar. 20th, 2026 07:24 am
rynling: (Default)
[personal profile] rynling
Delivery Robot Dogpiled on the Streets of Philly
https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/delivery-robot-philadelphia

It’s tough to be a robot on the mean streets of Philadelphia. Infamous for brutally destroying an experimental hitchhiking robot in 2015, residents in the city of brotherly love are now sharing their sidewalks with a new kind of pedestrian: delivery robots.

A video recorded by Philadelphia street photographer Hugh Dillon late Saturday night shows that the city’s reputation as a haven for robophobia hasn’t improved much over the years. In the 30 second clip, the little bot is kicked, sat on, laughed at, and even humped by a crowd of onlookers as it prattles along to its destination.


Hell yes. Destroy them all.

They've also tried to introduce Waymo self-driving vehicles to Philadelphia, and that's going about as well as you'd expect. The graffiti vandalism has been highly amusing, and I actually have a newfound respect for Amazon drivers for deadass plowing into Waymo cars to knock them off the road.

Daily Happiness

Mar. 19th, 2026 08:30 pm
torachan: charlotte from bad machinery saying "oh the mysteries of the moth farm" (oh the mysteries of the moth farm)
[personal profile] torachan
1. All week I have consistently felt like it was one day further into the week than it was, and not for any reason I can pinpoint (like there wasn't anything that was on a different day than it usually is or anything), so there were a couple times today when I was like, glad it's Friday and then realized there was still another Friday, but now tomorrow is actually Friday for real and then the weekend! And in two weeks from today I will be on a plane to Japan!

2. It was so hot today I could barely take a half mile walk today at lunch, but I did stop and get a delicious teriyaki beef sandwich and freshly made lilikoi malasada while I was out.

3. Chloe really loves relaxing on Carla's bed, especially on the top half. She's got this nice window there, too.

sarasa_cat: Corpo V (Default)
[personal profile] sarasa_cat
Rather than repost it all here, follow the link to my tumblr: https://sarasa-cat.tumblr.com/post/811560165423923200/pure-speculation-but

Feel free to discuss, add info, or speculate over here, down below.

New K-9 fic: Vigil (Ren)

Mar. 19th, 2026 07:31 pm
vriddy: K-9 Volume 1 Cover (k-9)
[personal profile] vriddy
300th fic posted on AO3 :D
(overall, I mean. Not just for K-9!!!!!!!!!! ;D Not yet 😌)

We've seen multiple times in canon now how Ren always waits for teenage girls to wake up after they get involved in Sin-related incidents usually way bigger than they are. Even if she has nothing to say, even if she knows her encouraging words won't be enough. She waits, says something kind, doesn't mind if she gets talked to rudely, then goes on her way, back to her work trying to fix all this.

Another thing I like to do when I'm tired of thinking about K-9 directly (haha as if) is trying to analyse the story structure, how information gets drip-fed to us, what kind of information. What questions are raised, which ones get answers, what new questions those bring up. I am enchanted. May I write such fascinating stories with fascinating casts when I grow up :D <3


Vigil | K-9 | Ren | 300 words | rated T

Summary: Ren always waits for the girls to wake up at the hospital afterwards, like no one did for her.

Read it on Dreamwidth or AO3.

Media Roundup: On the Mend (I hope)

Mar. 19th, 2026 11:53 am
forestofglory: E. H. Shepard drawing of Christopher Robin reading a book to Pooh (Default)
[personal profile] forestofglory
I’ve been sick for the last week or so which meant there was a lot of time to sit around reading but I didn’t have a lot of energy to write things up. But now I’m doing better so have a media roundup! (This isn’t everything I read while sick because some of it I didn’t have the energy to write up, and also I’ve been slowly reading Batman: No Man’s Land and if I write something about it, I’m going to do so after I finish the whole story. )

Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi— For kiddo’s school book club. This is so not my kind of book and I wouldn’t have read it if the kiddo hadn’t insisted. I just find contemporary books with political themes really really stressful! So this book about a Syrian-American boy in 2016-2017 was really not my cup of tea. So I think it was doing ok at being the book it wanted to be, but that book is not for me. Also the whole book was in poetry, and I don't think that actually added much – but also I’m not really a poetry person.

Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton by Ryan North and Mike Norton— Since I've been reading a lot of superhero stuff an algorithm showed me this, and it's got a cute dog and is written by Ryan North so I thought I'd check it out (What has Ryan North been up to since Squirrel Girl? Maybe I should find out. Maybe I should reread Squirrel Girl)* This was a bit darker than I was expecting! And did really feature the elements of North’s style that I remember enjoying alot (witty dialogue and certain wacky over the top-ness) Though still mostly a sweet story. (Content note: abusive training/animal harm, animal death, children in peril)

Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks and Lumberjanes: Campfire Songs— These are single issue Lumberjanes stories by a bunch of different writers and artists. I enjoyed the variety! I think my favorite story was the one that had Last Unicorn vibes (Look I watched that movie a lot as a kid)

Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass by Lilah Sturges, polterink, et al— Lumberjanes original graphic novel – this was honestly a little disappointing, I didn’t feel like it really captured the vibe of the original comic. It did not help that this was one of those graphic novels with a very limited color palette (black, white and green) and I really missed the colorfulness!

Lumberjanes: The Shape of Friendship by Lilah Sturges, polterink, et al— Another lumberjanes graphic novel – I liked this one a lot better. It probably helped that my expectations were lowered after the first one but I do think it was a better story overall as well.

The Ribbon Skirt: A Graphic Novell by Cameron Mukwa— A middle grade graphic novel about Anang, a two-spirit and nonbinary Anishinaabe kid, who wants to wear a ribbon skirt to an upcoming powwow. This is very sweet! There are talking turtle spirits! There’s also Anang’s friend who is uncomfortable with Anang’s identity and kinda transphobic about it as heads up

* after writing this I did look up what Ryan North has been up to, some library holds have been placed. Also I noticed that he has PDF’s of all of his academic papers available on his website and I think that’s very charming and helpful of him.

Profile

justira

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags