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anti-ICE demonstration this afternoon

We went to the Boston anti-ICE demonstration today, one of many throughout the United States. Cattitude and I got there slightly after the nominal starting time, and managed about an hour before the cold got to me. Yes, it was above freezing and not windy, but standing still on a large open plaza is chillier than moving around. Adrian came to the demo with some of her comrades from Havurat Shalom, and arrived before we did. The crowd was large enough that we didn't try to find her until we were all preparing to leave.

It was a good-sized crowd, but the acoustics and sound system were abysmal; I could only make out a few scraps of what the speakers were saying.

I wore a winter coat, wool socks, and light-weight long underwear, which was too warm while we were on the trolley.

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Fic: One Two THREE Force Born?!

AO3 Link | One Two THREE Force Born?! (1609 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu, Sheev Palpatine | Emperor Palpatine | Darth Sidious
Additional Tags: Crack Treated Seriously, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kriffing Sith Plans
Summary:

It's Padmé with the nightmares, and a plan to head it all off.

One Two THREE Force Born?!

Padmé Amidala was a woman on a mission. Anakin might be completely in a panic over the pregnancy but she was going to head this off. It was just too convenient that she was now being plagued with dreams of her own death, the very night after an unavoidable dinner with the man she had a growing distaste for.

And, deep where she would never tell her husband, she had a nasty suspicion he was trying to shove Anakin off a cliff of irredeemable violence. The Chancellor might not have commented on her state, but his eyes were not as easily fooled by their shared heritage of concealing fashion.

Today, she was going to go enlist the aid of the Jedi, while Anakin was tied up being the poster boy of the GAR. She had all of her diplomatic shields in place, and had the perfect cover story to do this with.

After all, with Jedi having lost so many, surely the Force would be interested in adding a few more children to the future.

Vokara Che was every bit as imposing in her domain as Anakin had said. However, her status as a long time ally had convinced Master Fisto to bring her down to the Healer's Wing. She had pleaded with him, and the healer, that there could not be a father, not when she was a mature woman who knew how to guard against such!

"You were correct that the pregnancy is heavily Force-influenced," Vokara said after several minutes of making Padmé wonder if the healer was going to break her constructed version of events. "You are carrying two very healthy, very Force-active fetuses."

Two. TWO?!

She was not going to faint like the damsel of a holo-drama. "Thank you, Master Che. Given my precarious positioning within the advocates for peace, and past attempts, I could not, in all honesty, acquire medical aid in the typical fashion. Given how my dreams are affected, and having such strange hunches of late, I turned to your Temple in hope."

"A wise choice." For a long moment, Vokara held her eyes, and Padmé knew that the healer was not actually buying the spontaneous pregnancy. A twitch of the lekku, however, indicated the secret was safe. "These hunches, I believe that Master Windu should possibly help sort them out with you."

Oh. Well, that might be the right way to go as well.

Kit, even before the appointment in medical had ended, had gone to find his age-mate. He did so in one of the botanical rooms. "Master Windu," he began. "And Master Yoda," he added to be polite, despite the ancient peering at one of the plants intently.

"Hmm," came over top of Mace's cautious "Master Fisto", and Kit grinned a little that his creche-mate had already detected the mild mischief Kit was feeling.

They all needed a little bit of amusement.

"Senator Amidala has come, and is being tended to by Master Che," Kit began, and both men looked sharply at him. "I do wonder about that old prophecy that was discussed when Master Jinn found a boy on a desert world with no father… as she is here to see about a Force-induced pregnancy as well."

Yoda's ears went flat, Mace's eyes narrowed, and Kit merely smiled.

Mace looked at the woman who had been a solid ally, and the subject of not a small part of gossip. He did not, for a moment, believe the story of no father, but in her political setting, it was for the best to go along with it.

"Master Che said you have been plagued by hunches of late, ones that play out true."

He set a mild tisane in front of her, and took a second one for himself.

"I think the Force has concerns about the path we are on, despite recent developments. After all, if the Count has been neutralized, and Master Kenobi is on the trail of their general… who will keep the momentum up to line pockets with war money, and build such sizable powers through war-time legislation?" Amidala asked, meeting the man's eyes squarely. "I am all but certain you and your peers have had the same intuitions."

Was she — had she —

Maybe Skywalker had been more circumspect than Mace had believed. For all that Amidala was firmly an adherent of a peaceful resolution, her physical and vocal cues were running in tandem with the Council's own suspicions.

"Perhaps we are looking in that same direction," he said.

"If the other Sith, the one Dooku spoke of on our side, is out there, I am certain he would try to harm those touched so firmly by the Light Side as ones fathered by the Force," Amidala told him. "I shudder to think of what such a being might have done had they had access to your Knight Skywalker for all the years of this phantom menace over us."

That, Mace decided, was both accusation and… an invitation to look more closely at how the cards were laid out.

And he had to admit she had a point.

"Anakin!"

"Chancellor."

"I do hope the scandal hasn't harmed your friendship with the Senator."

"What scandal?"

The exchange, handled in the hearing of several itinerant reporters, brought their elder statesman up short, until someone added the right question.

"That she's pregnant with no father in sight," the reporter with blood money in his pockets called out.

"You really think Senator Amidala would stoop to such petty, low-brow nonsense?" Anakin asked them, in his best 'are you kidding me' voice, and he caught the frown on his old 'friend'. He was so glad Saesse Tiin had been able and willing to explore the past several years in his head. "She's having children as the will of the Force, and we Jedi take that kind of thing very seriously."

He then kept walking, leaving the Chancellor stewing, the reporters trying to digest how to spin this, and a feeling that he could not have handled it that way without the Council all suddenly intent on supporting him. He didn't know what had changed there, but he couldn't wait to tell Obi-Wan all about it.

And the Force Twins, because he had to admit, he really hadn't had a lot of time, and they both used precautions.

Chancellor Sheev Palpatine was in a fury. He had primed the well perfectly, and somehow… somehow every insinuation and control he'd put in place had been cut off in the Chosen One. All because of some insane story concocted by the woman that had long since outlived her usefulness.

Any day now, that wretched Kenobi would be returning, and Sheev would have to find a different way to acquire everything he wanted… unless he acted now? He went to his desk to find the comm unit. He needed to provoke the right circumstance, to make it clear he was saving them from the Jedi, but what would it take?

The comm lit up in his hand.

What?

With the Force, he flipped the hood of his cape up, securing it to conceal his features, and turned it on.

"What do you know, that frequency is picked up, Commander," came the very annoying, should-be-dead voice of the Togruta menace. He hastily turned it off, throwing it into the back of the locked drawers.

The knocking at the door that came next, including a call of 'Coruscant Security' sent chills down his back.

He wondered idly if his own Master had felt this the night Sheev had gleefully murdered him.

Mace pinched the bridge of his nose, then looked over at the newest Master of the Council who was pretending he didn't want to hurry out and see a certain Senator. He then looked at Kenobi, who was waiting to be briefed on how and why the Chancellor had been killed in the midst of being served with detention papers.

"A tip from an ally told us to double check Skywalker for undue influence," Kit said, looking entirely too merry in the telling.

"Padmé," Anakin offered cheerfully. "She's having Force twins."

Mace did not groan. It really did sound like Skywalker believed that.

"Removing that," Saesee said, "let us more clearly see the shape of a possible end game, orchestrated to cast us all as traitors."

"Meanwhile, Skywalker's commander had been working on another angle of the endgame," Agen said.

"Leading him and Tano to turning up a plan to make the man expose himself, using the very tools meant to kill us all," Kit said, "by triggering a comm device he should not have had while we were keeping him very securely under comm surveillance with Naboo's and CorSec's cooperation."

"How did you get CorSec to agree to such?" Kenobi asked.

"Amidala implied that she had noticed a malevolent presence while dining with the man, and could they please keep it under wraps that there could be such a threat near the center of government?" Shaak Ti said, eyes dancing with mirth.

"A very tidy end, I suppose." Kenobi then looked at Mace with a deadpan face. "So, how are those prophecies handling the idea of three Force-fathered children?"

Mace did not, as he wanted to, flip the man's hood over his head with the Force.

Padmé smiled, despite fatigue, as she held her daughter, and Anakin held her son. Eventually, they might admit the farce.

Then again, listening to Anakin telling Luke all about the wonders of what the Force could do…

… maybe it was better to leave it at this. What really mattered was that they were all saved from the Sith.

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weekly update

Me-and-media update

Previous poll review
In the Comfort food poll, 55.6% of respondents said their preferred comfort food is chocolate, and 46.7% said savoury carbs. In ticky-boxes, 'juicy intricate poetry words' and 'pushing on through' came second equal (40% each) to hugs (80%). Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
I listened to half an m/m romance audiobook that I selected for one of its readers (Will Watt), but the overuse of "fucking" as an intensifier (and in particular, the repeated phrase, "he was so fucking hot") kept making me roll my eyes. It might be a faithful reproduction of the inner monologue of a first-year uni student, but I don't read romances for verisimilitude. So I switched to The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, read by Carrie Hope Fletcher and Kwaku Fortune, seen mentioned on my flist. I'm halfway through and enjoying it immensely. ETA:

Warnings.

Contains past emotionally abusive relationship, stalking, and PTSD.

A little more Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in hardcopy. Nothing in ebook.

Kdramas
Andrew and I have nearly finished The Guest. I want to ship the OT3, but I don't really care about the priest. (Sorry, priest guy! Alas, you are not my type.) Still, it is a great (gory/horror-y) show, and I've conveniently forgotten some of the developments. We just have one episode to go.

A bit more of While You Were Sleeping, a few episodes of Cashero (I'm not sure I'm in the mood for established relationship, but otoh, Junho! ♥), and a marathon-running BL called Mr. Heart, which was sweet but extremely slight.

Where is the next Love Scout/Family by Choice/whatever??

Other TV
Finished Stranger Things, which got so complex that I lazily stopped following the logic and just watched it as a collection of scenes. But I enjoyed those well enough. So glad they got their victory lap.

Three episodes of Heated Rivalry.

Minor spoilers; tl;dr not my thing.

Wow, I'd heard it was fanficcy, but I wasn't prepared for the total absence of anything resembling an external plot. Like, not even a figleaf. Not even a hockey arc. How??

Anyway, my prediction that it's probably not for me has proven correct. Like, I can tell that the show is made of crack (in the addictive sense), but I'm not into super-buff dudes, and I didn't like the 'fucking but feeling kind of miserable about it' vibe I was getting from Hollander. He deserves better.

But I kept going for episode 3, and I'm really glad I did. There was the ~~coffee~~ smoothie shop not-AU and ♥Kip♥ and his friends and family. And Scott, who fell for Kip in 2.3 seconds like a parched man stumbling into an oasis and, okay, is messed up, but at least self-aware and ~able to communicate~ and ~say nice things~! They were such a breath of fresh air! All the "smoothies" for both of them!

So that (predictably) is me. And I'm actually kind of relieved, because while the show is compelling and well-acted, it's not what I want in a fandom, and anyway, I'm hardly even managing to keep up with my quiet corner of Guardian fandom atm.

I may watch the last three episodes at some point, idk. Wishing those of you who're into it all the very best with your new addiction!!

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Cross Party Lines, Letters from an American, more of Our Opinions Are Correct (Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz's podcast) including the Murderbot episode, Tech Won't Save Us, the starts of a few other things.

Writing/making things
I've been practising drawing, and picking up art supplies in bits and pieces. The moldable eraser is magic.

Have a couple of sketches.

Pencil sketch/outline on a grid of Zhao Yunlan sprawling on an invisible barstool.

(Imperfect, but I think it's identifiable, which is not nothing. I darkened the linework a little in Paint.NET.)

For my future reference, this all started because I wanted to draw Bingo from Bluey!, which led me down a Youtube Art Videos For Kids rabbit hole. Then I bought new colour pencils and was noodling around with them, and people said nice things about some of my doodles... :-)

Art Youtube For Adults is also really lovely, btw -- full of super-talented people being encouraging and helpful.

I've written a treat for

fandomtrees, but I need to make some edits, and I have no attention span. Chances of my finishing it are about 90%, and chances of any further treats are more like 30% at this stage. Maybe one day I'll be able to make art gifts...

Life/health/mental state things
My arms are gradually improving, but I'm anxious about them. Andrew's having an operation this Thursday; I'll need to be able to bike and drive and cook and so on, and I'm still sore half the time. So I've started swimming again. (I stopped partly because I was avoiding public spaces where I couldn't mask, and partly because my long post-lockdown hair stays damp all day. But the outdoor pool is open for the summer, so I'm going for it.)

I just bought a small $2 desk at a junk shop so that I have a workspace to retreat to downstairs while Andrew's recuperating on the couch in the living room. I'll see how that goes.

I have a hand-me-down mini air fryer from my parents which I still haven't taken out for a spin. Quick/easy meal suggestions very welcome, especially if they're things I can throw together late at night, post hospital visits. (NB: I don't do onions or brassicas.)

Good things
Andrew, swimming, drawing, Kdramas, Guardian, Zhao Yunlaaaan, modern medicine. Cat:

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

A black and white cat rolling around on a concrete step, photographed from above. Her tail is curled up into a circle.

Poll #34068 Om

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

View Respondents

Do you meditate?

View Answers

yes, regularly
4 (8.0%)

yes, from time to time
11 (22.0%)

I used to
6 (12.0%)

I used to occasionally
4 (8.0%)

what you mean by 'meditate'?
7 (14.0%)

no
21 (42.0%)

other
3 (6.0%)

ticky-box of being squeamish about fingernail clippings
2 (4.0%)

ticky-box full of hockey show squee
6 (12.0%)

ticky-box full of feeling kind of zonky
20 (40.0%)

ticky-box full of skipping across treetops and dancing through the clouds
23 (46.0%)

ticky-box full of hugs
37 (74.0%)

Random Sports Stuff

Yes, from me.

IDK if you can see

CBCSports in other countries, but they're currently playing my preferred type of figure skating (the recent nationals), which consists of:

Individual single short programs (long programs are usually too long for me to want to watch a single dance routine, and I also don't want to watch hours and hours of the stuff).

Of just the top competators (so I don't have to feel bad when they fall down or do poorly, also see above about attention span).

With the music directly onto the broadcast (rather than echoey rink music).

Without commentary, except maybe a few notes before the dance starts (because I neither know nor care what a triple toe loop or whatever is, and equally do not care if the skater did a double instead.)

Anyway, youtube has figured this out and is giving me random Canadian children gliding around the ice.

(Randomly my only sports icon relates to cricket.)

Current Mood: ditzy
Current Music: nothing now

Acquisitions.

One of my favorite things about the local library's used book sales is that every so often, a "for your consideration" awards screener pops up in the DVD section. It speaks to the neighborhood having someone who gets them to begin with, and it's fun to grab a copy of something like The Queen's Gambit because it's there. So I did, and now I don't have to mess around with any piggybacking on my mom's account or other sites to watch it.

It's too bad FYC discs are something of a thing of the past - it's the only physical release some of these movies and TV shows ever get. I know the idea of owning the media's foreign to the companies because a physical sale is a single purchase and means you can't keep stringing someone along with a long-term lease. It doesn't mean I can't dislike how a company deciding to remove something makes piracy, or morally dubious used DVD sales, the only way to watch it.

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art: procreate

gratuitous digital art

(selling prints via the local game store)

stylized digital illustration: a fantasy lady, peacock-themed

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

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admin

Challenge 503: Sock

Our new challenge is:

SOCK

As always, you can interpret the prompt literally or figuratively, in whatever way works for you.

Each work created for this challenge should be posted as a new entry to the comm. Posting starts now and continues up until the challenge ends at 4pm Pacific Time on Tuesday, 20th January. No sign-up required.

Mods will tag your work with fandom and challenge. When you've posted entries to three consecutive challenges, you will earn a name tag, and we'll go back and tag all your previous entries with your name.

All kinds of fanworks in all fandoms are welcome. Please have a look at our guidelines before you play. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to contact a mod. And if you have any suggestions for future challenges, you can leave them in the comments of this post.

You can view stats for

fan_flashworks entries and search and filter them via the Community Report and Creator Report. See our FAQ post for more details.

Also, keep an eye out for the next

ffw_social post, which will go up in the next couple of days. If you haven't joined the

ffw_social comm, it's never too late to come and check it out. (Posts are locked, which means you have to join to see them.)

Entry tags:

admin

Admin: Challenge closed

The Sand challenge is now closed. Here are the entries:

Stranger Things: Fanfic: Sand by

wearing_tearing
Original: icons: sand by

lilly_c
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Fanfic: In a Grain of Sand by

alexcat
due South: Fanfiction: Sandy Boots by

lucy_roman
Sherlock Holmes (ACD): Fanfic: Beneath the Sand by

smallhobbit
Terraria: Quatrain: A Prize to be Won by

infinitum_noctem
FAKE: Fanfic: Wishful Thinking by

badly_knitted
no fandom: icons: Sand by

highlander_ii
Multifandom (TV): Icons: Life’s a Beach (9 icons) by

veronyxk84
S.W.A.T.: Fan Fiction: Looking Forward To Most by

darkjediqueen
US Politics: poetry: the sand in the gears by

teaotter
Torchwood: Fanfic: Newsworthy by

m_findlow
Heated Rivalry: Fanfic: Sweaty, Salty, Sandy by

seeyouontheice
子非鱼 (Zi Fei Yu): Fanfic: the same soul (make the ocean wider) by

bluedreaming

Also, congratulations to those who earned badges and name tags this round:

teaotter earned The Unstoppable (SILVER) (36 challenge streak).

\o/ \o/ \o/

Thank you to everyone who participated! You're now free to post your entries to your journal or wherever else you'd like. If you're archiving on AO3, you can add your work to our fan_flashworks collection there.

The Community Report and Creator Report will be updated shortly with the entries from this round. See our FAQ for more details.

Next challenge coming right up.

Entry tags:

rant,
shiny

Simulant and synthetic diamonds (and others)

So I'm going to talk about one of my major fandoms (that I don't usually talk about here), shiny things, because I can! (I started this post more than a month ago and it is high time to actually finish and post it.) In particular, I want to talk about diamond simulants and lab diamonds (although there's also very recently been some cool stuff about lab sapphires too). The funny thing is, I've never been a super fan of diamonds in general. I mean, I'm not going to say no to them! they are very shiny, and they have some cool dispersion (splits light into component colors, like a prism, so you get little rainbow flashes if it's cut well), and I love that they're super hard and come in octahedral crystals, but I have always been a colored stones kind of kid. But! In the last ten years there have been a ton of developments in this fandom relating to diamond simulants and lab diamonds, which I think is very neat.

First I want to define what I'm talking about.
Natural diamonds / earth-mined diamonds are diamonds that occur naturally in the Earth's crust and are mined from the ground.
Diamond simulants are not diamonds, but other substances that look enough like diamonds that they are used in jewelry that might otherwise use diamonds. I'll talk about cubic zirconia and moissanite as diamond simulants later on.
Synthetic diamonds / lab diamonds are chemically identical (*) to natural diamonds but are made in a lab.

( Apologies if you happen to love diamonds, but I find the whole natural diamond thing kind of obnoxious in several ways. )

( Brief discussion of cubic zirconia, and the rise of moissanite )

( The rise of lab diamonds )

( Lab ruby/sapphire: Some recent cool news on the lab sapphire front )

( Photos )

(*) There are little things that can be different, so generally speaking lab diamonds can be distinguished from natural diamonds by a laboratory, but basically they're both made of carbon and look identical, especially if you have the same "grades" in one as another.
(**) When I refer to "carat" in the context of diamond simulants in particular, I will always be referring to "size of an ideal-cut diamond," which is about 6.5mm in diameter for a round diamond. Simulants will have different weights than a carat, of course, but generally the industry refers to a "1 ct moissanite" as something that mimics a 1 ct diamond, even though the corresponding cubic zirconia will actually be heavier than a carat and the corresponding moissanite will be lighter! Of course, "carat" when referring to colored stones just directly means the weight of that stone.
(+) www.diamondcz.co.uk came along in 2004, importing well-cut cz from China, and took well-cut cz from a relatively expensive niche market to super cheap!
(***) And even less (<~$300/ct last I looked) if you're willing to deal with Chinese companies directly -- it turns out there are whole subreddits devoted to both moissanite and lab diamonds that have instructions on this.
(****) Also emerald and garnet! Lab emerald in particular is a very big thing, very popular these days among people who buy lab gems, though emerald is not as much my thing so I don't know as much about it. Lab garnet can also be doped to get a lot of different colors, which is fun. Emeralds can't be made by the super cheap processes so they've taken a couple of decades longer to get cheap enough to be popular, but nowadays you can easily get them cheaply.

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aunt celli nights are the best nights

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

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poetry in motion

poem for the day

Stumbled across this one again, and it's still so good.

Catch a Body
by Ilse Bendorf

Salinger, I’m sorry, but “Don’t ever tell
anybody anything” is a string of words
I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink
to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract
by laser from the ribcage of all of us
who ever believed it, who felt afraid
to miss someone, to be the last one
standing. “Tell everyone everything” is
not exactly right, but I do believe that if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so. We are islands all of us,
but we are also boats, our secrets flares,
pyrotechnic devices by which we signal
there’s someone in here we’re still alive!
So maybe it’s, “don’t be afraid.” We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.

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disney

2026 Disneyland Trip #2 (1/10/26)

We got down to the park right when they opened, so the crowds were very low. Unfortunately they recently reduced the number of restaurants that open when the park does, so we had time to kill before breakfast (even though we were both very hungry).

( Read more... )

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three moments

This is from a visit to my parents in Pennsylvania in May. I had a difficult trip with delayed and cancelled flights and a mad dash from one end of the Charlotte airport to the other to try and catch a plane. I was stressed and starving by the time I landed. Seeing this mural was just a tiny bit cheering in a moment when I really needed it.

( Read more... )

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How to Stay Invisible, by Maggie C. Rudd

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:

( Read more... )

Content notes: child abuse, homelessness, animal death.

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The Empty Netters rock!

I finally got around to watching the Empty Netters podcast on YT, their breakdowns of HR eps 1 & 2. It's such fun watching them get caught up in the show while still critiquing the hockey details (two of them are brothers and previously high-level hockey players, now in what they call "the beer leagues". And as they get more and more invested in the show they don't care as much about the minor mistakes and unrealistic hockey-world details. Also, the comments are great, very positive and with no trolling or bigotry at all that I've seen so far (maybe they curate that?).
My initial main takeaways from these first two eps are:

The team logos were analysed. Shane's is M for the Metros (a bottom), and Ilya's is a cannon for the Raiders! (obvious symbolism). That has to be deliberate, right? Also hilarious!

Then these two comments, that added details I hadn't known.

I won't do a full transcript but the first says Reid wrote a bonus chapter on her website (a remix of the Vegas penthouse chapter, end of S2 in the show) with a bit more about Ilya's thoughts and feelings, his conflicts about returning to Russia and why he treats Shane badly. Here's the link.

The second comment clarifies that Putin only cracked down on gay people just before the Sochi Olympics. Before 2013 Russia had apparently become reasonably progressive. So Ilya would have been especially paranoid and freaked out at Sochi and would definitely have cold-shouldered Shane, as in canon. Also a nice pick-up that although Carter Vaughan means well, assuming the ice skater is gay was a microaggression, worse for Shane as Carter blithely assumes he's straight (and for Scott, but the Empty Netters don't know about Scott yet!).

I'm going to watch all the Empty Netters vids, but not right now. Jesus, I have to do something other than wallow in HR stuff all the time!

Current Mood: accomplished

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Photos: Contorta Willow

I took some pictures yesterday but didn't have time to upload and post them until today. The night before, a windstorm blew down the contorta willow sapling that used to stand between the house yard and the south lot, near the big maple tree.

( Walk with me ... )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Photos: Contorta Willow

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子非鱼 (Zi Fei Yu): Fanfic: the same soul (make the ocean wider)

Fandom: 子非鱼 (Zi Fei Yu) - 林盎司
Rating: T
Length: 100 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: The title is from THE SHAPE OF THE OCEAN by Jiang Hao, translated by Ming Di and Afaa Weaver.
Summary: Ji Leyu belongs to Lin Fei.

( Read more... )

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cheese quest

Cheese Quest 1

Before New Year's, E and I went to the HEB at Lincoln Heights which is fancier than a regular HEB, but not as fancy as Central Market. I was looking at cheeses while E was in the bakery and the cheesemonger gave me a coupon for 20% off any of their cheeses in that section. So I went with one I knew I'd like and two that were experiments.

The one I thought was a sure bet was the Chimichurri Gouda because I love gouda. I was hoping it would be a bit spicy, but despite tasting of pepper and chilies it was more earthy than spicy. It was also sharper than I expected, but it was good.

My favorite was the white cheddar dill which was a surprise. I love dill, but I'm not a fan of cheddar at all. It's generally way too sharp for me. This one was very herbal and salty and just delicious.

My least favorite, and the one I wouldn't have bought if I hadn't had a coupon, was the smoked cheddar. I took a chance on it because I do like smoked gouda and smokiness in general. However, this was very hard, almost crumbly, and it was way too sharp for me, I'll probably take it to my parents and see if they want it, because I tried it again a couple of days after the first taste and I just don't like it. And honestly I didn't even realize cheddar came in that consistency.

The only other cheese I've put in my analog cheese journal is HEB Monterey jack with jalapeño and habanero which is something I have with my lunch every day during the week. So, obviously, extremely good!

This week we are having enchiladas, so I will be journaling about oaxaca and queso fresca, both of which are delicious. One of the best things in the world is thinly sliced pan sauteed potatoes topped with mole poblano sauce and queso fresca.

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f: heated rivalry

Heated Rivalry: Fanfic: Sweaty, Salty, Sandy

Title: Sweaty, Salty, Sandy
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Length: 234 words
Author notes: post-beach and post-hotel room in Florida
Summary: Shane doesn't like mess. Ilya doesn't want to kill the mood just yet.

( Sweaty, Salty, Sandy )