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Hawkeye: Slice of Life by aimmyarrowshigh

Fandom: Hawkeye, MCU
Pairings/Characters: Clint Barton, Kate Bishop, Bucky Barnes
Rating: teen
Length: 5k
Creator Links:

aimmyarrowshigh
Theme: food, team,

Summary:

“I’m not saying you need to decide right now. Or any time soon. But someday, you might want to walk away. And you’re luckier than most of the… superheroes… that I’ve ever known because you know what normal looks like. You know how to be normal. You can go back to normal if it’s what you want. And I know it’s not what you want right now, and I respect that, but I’m glad that it’s an option.”

Or, Clint and Kate challenge each other to prove they're the better New Yorker because they know the best food spots. Truths about superhero life and life in general come out along the way as they eat through the five boroughs.

Reccer's Notes: I love the humor and the support, and the way Clint mentors Kate.

Fanwork Links: Slice of Life

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Batman: Scheherazade by Cerusee

Fandom: Batman
Pairings/Characters: Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth
Rating: Gen
Length: 12k
Creator Links:

Cerusee
Theme: food, trauma, family, angst,

Summary:

Alfred angles himself so he can stir the diced pancetta, sizzling away in the pan, and watch Jason at the same time. “You’ve never shared the particulars of your…missing years.”

"Yeah.” The rhythmic thunk thunk of the knife against the wood falters. “The missing years."

"I wish you would.”

Or, the one where Alfred drags the tale of Jason’s death and resurrection out of him piece by horrifying piece.

Reccer's Notes: There are a lot of stories about Jason reconciling with his family and them learning all the things that happened to him from his death and resurrection onwards. This has a lovely focus on Alfred, and the trauma that Jason suffered, and their relationship

Fanwork Links: Scheherazade

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DS9: Hunger Pangs, by AuroraNova

Fandom: Deep Space Nine
Pairings/Characters: Kira Nerys
Rating: Gen
Length: 871 words
Creator Links:

AuroraNova
Theme: food and cooking, worldbuilding, trauma & recovery, old fandoms, gen, female characters, backstory

Summary: Starfleet personnel mistake minor inconveniences for real suffering. Kira knows the difference all too well.

Reccer's Notes: This is short, but it packs a punch and explores the differences in perspective between Kira and the rest of the command staff in a very visceral way.

Fanwork Links: Hunger Pangs

Entry tags:

media: books

Some fairytale-inspired reading

Sometimes I pick a reading theme on purpose, and other times a theme happens by accident. This is the latter. I've never taken much interest in modern fairytale retellings, but perhaps I should - I really enjoyed these ones, anyway!

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher: Marra, the superfluous third princess of a small, precarious kingdom, is shipped off to a convent while her elder sisters marry into the royal family of a powerful rival kingdom to stave off their land's destruction. The eldest dies mysteriously mere months into her marriage; the next eldest, Kania, replaces her, and the mystery is solved when her husband Prince Vorling proves to be a brutally abusive sadist. Armed only with the skills in praying, embroidering and goat-stall-mucking that she learnt at the convent, Marra sets out on a quest to kill Vorling and rescue her sister from gilded sex slavery.

T. Kingfisher is the adult fiction alias of Ursula Vernon, whose work I've never actually read, but it somehow doesn't surprise me that Nettle & Bone was written by a children's author - and I mean that in a good way! It brings a sense of whimsy and wonder to the very blackest subject matter. Along the way, Marra puts together a rescue team made up of the dregs of a traditional fairytale: there's an elderly Granny Weatherwax-ish gravewitch and her demon-possessed chicken; a reanimated skeleton dog; a troubled ex-knight turned slave to the Fair Folk; and a bumbling fairy godmother who is actually (by aptitude) a wicked fairy but can't bear to hurt anyone and prefers to be borderline useless instead. Their adventures are a lot of fun and the ending is both satisfying and sensitive to the complexity of Kania's situation.

I was a little bemused by the author's note at the end explaining that the starting inspiration came from Princess and the Pea, because apparently that prince's desire to marry a woman who bruised easily has always struck Vernon as kinky and nefarious. That's not an angle that ever occurred to me! But I absolutely love what she did with it, anyway. Will definitely be reading more T. Kingfisher titles.

Burning Roses by S.L. Huang is a very short, novella-length mashup of European and Chinese folklore that centres on two middle-aged queer women. Rosa (aka Red Riding Hood) and Hou Yi (aka Hou Yi - I wasn't familiar with this half of the mashup, but a quick Wikipedia skim sorted me out well enough for the purposes of this novella) have left their respective myths behind and gone off together, slaying monsters in obscurity as self-inflicted penance for the bad choices that tore apart their respective families. Not a lot of actual monster-slaying happens on screen; mostly it's about the two of them reflecting on their failings and confronting the enormity of work that real redemption (as opposed to monster-slaying redemption) would demand of them. It's about bad mothers who love their kids but hurt them anyway. It's about bigotry and the road back from bigotry. It's about lesbians and trans women and interracial relationships with language and cultural barriers. It's about people getting magically transformed into toads sometimes. Tonally and thematically it's very different from Nettle & Bone, but it strikes the same balance of serious and whimsical that really works for me.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow: I'm putting this one last because it's my least favourite of the three, even though it's technically the one I read first. I did enjoy it! But it was a bit YA-ish in a "very young adult Discovers Her True Self and Purpose" way that just doesn't really resonate with me at this point in my life.

Anyway, it's a slightly longer novella about Zinnia, a young woman living with a congenital defect that kills 100% of sufferers by their early twenties, and her best friend Charm (-aine, but yes, really Prince Charming) who is ambiguously in love with her. Zinnia is obsessed with Sleeping Beauty because she finds the whole "beautiful young woman doomed to an irreversible sleep" thing cathartic. When Charm throws her a Sleeping Beauty-themed birthday party, Zinnia pricks her finger and is sucked into a sort of Spiderverse of sleeping beauties. Seizing the distraction from her own listless life, she gallivants off on an adventure to rescue this new dimension's princess from her fate while using her inexplicably still functional phone to regularly text Charm back home. The Spiderverse stuff was cool and Charm got a wonderful gay happily-ever-after (not with Zinnia; their love remains ambiguous) but it's not a story that I expect to stick in my mind like the other two. Still, a fun read!

Entry tags:

fics I have written

First: for my belly kink exchange that I ran in August, I ended up writing:
scenes in a stilltent, Dune (movies), Paul/Duncan, 1200 words, mpreg. This did not have nearly as much belly kink as I intended, but Duncan turned out to have so many feelings about the whole thing that it was a struggle to get to the kink. The recip seemed to really like it though. <3

And then, today I finished posting that WIP I've been nattering about for ages! \o/

postcards from, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 15k!!! of vignettes from first contact to the first gig of tour. Title is a riff on the video summaries like this one they've been doing at the end of their run at each venue. (They're less annoying on Instagram. IDK why they feel the need to do that stacked vertical thing everywhere else. ;__;)

I've never written anything quite like this before. There is obviously a general emotional arc from "not spoken in 12 years" to "going on stage together," but most of the scenes are intended to stand alone. There are very few callbacks between scenes. I also specifically set out to write only the vignettes I wanted to write, partly to avoid just getting totally overwhelmed, but for example that means that at no point during this fic do we seem them really hash stuff out or have big conversations. Presumably they had some, but those happen off screen.

I also mostly avoided writing denouments to scenes; they mostly end in the middle, or unresolved. Partly I was trying to write the opposite of one big scene where the characters work all their shit out in one long conversation, which I am sometimes prone to. And I think writers in general or prone to? It's convenient to take care of the whole conflict at once. Whereas here I kind of wanted to give these snapshots along the way, showing that repairing a relationship is a long process over time, often in the small moments. (But also I was lazy/intimidated about writing all the connective tissue, and if I'd tried that I wouldn't have been able to finish a fic, so.)

I also wrote this so fast, at least for me. I wrote the first 10k in three weeks, mostly in August, and then wrote the remaining 5k in the four weeks since.

Also, I decided to post a vignette a day, which was fun. I've never been able to do that with a fic before, but a lot of the vignettes were very short, some in the 200-word range, so one a day felt right. I accidentally timed it so the final chapter went live this morning, a few hours before Oasis performed their first gig in a couple of weeks. A commenter congratulated me on my deliberate timing, but no, that is definitely just how things fell out. (Nerdily, my priority was to get the fic all published within one calendar month for the sake of my stats keeping.) Also, look at me, posting fic outside an exchange!!

I'm still not sure what I actually think about it as a fic, because it's so different from my norm, but I had fun writing and posting it, and that's the whole point, right? There are a lot of lines I'm really happy with. Also it's my second fic this year over 15k, which feels fantastic after last year.

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9/27/2025 North Lake SF // Emeryville Marina

This morning U and I went to chase rare migrants around North Lake in Golden Gate Park. Driving out Fulton reminded me just how enormous that Park is! Anyway, we parked about 7:45 and walked clockwise around the Lake, then retracing out steps from the northeast corner. There were quite a few birders and photographers looking for the Chestnut-sided Warbler and the Blackpoll Warbler that had been reported there, and while we dipped on the Blackpoll we found some folks who'd found the Chestnut-sided and got some diagnostic if not wonderful looks. I'd see Chestnut-sided before - in winter they have an amazing hi-viz yellow-green head - and was more excited by the Black-headed Grosbeak that I heard and that was later seen by others. ( The first list: )

Back in the East Bay we stopped at Emeryville Marina to look for the Palm Warbler that's being reported. (Like so many warblers they are hilariously misnamed: they breed in Canada.) Some folks were on it when we arrived but I think the photographer pushed too close and the bird flew off. We wandered around for a while without luck, and when U said she was going to make a final loop I said I'd go back to where it had been when we arrived, and there it was: rufous crown, yellow below, and bobbing tail. So we both got pretty good looks. ( Another little list: )

Again, we'd seen this bird before at the edge of Berkeley Meadow, and I was more impressed by the long lines of Brown Pelicans and the Osprey fishing just off shore. What a wonderful morning!

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fandom: dc

fandoms past

Forgot to include this in my last post: I've been getting a bunch of comments on my Ted/Booster long fic, so I thought maybe there was new canon for them. After realising that most of my old resource sites have changed since I was last in comics fandom, I turned up that DC doesn't seem to have done any major comics with either character in about ten years. I feel like DCEU (and maybe even James Gunn) teased a Booster Gold TV show a couple times? And Ted was in the Blue Beetle movie that immediately got made non canonical. But nothing recently.

Then I reread the long fic (I'm doing school work, I swear!), and remembered how much I loved my stupid boys, and also how rushed that fic was, and that it maybe needed another editing pass or five. Oh well. Heady days of early fandom love and tight exchange deadlines.

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Sherlock: you are what you eat (and you know what that is) by coloredink

Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Pairings/Characters: Sherlock/John
Rating: Mature
Length: 3044 words
Creator Links:

coloredink
Theme: Food and cooking

Summary: He just wanted John right down to the amino acids that made up his body, and he wanted them in his own body.

Content notes: Cannibalism. Sort of.

Reccer's Notes: This fic exemplifies what I loved about Sherlock fandom: the potential to explore rather uncommon ideas and concepts of love. Like Sherlock wanting to actually consume a physical part of John because he loves John so much. Coloredink is a fantastic writer on the sentence level, and they perfectly capture the energy of the Sherlock/John dynamic while also being funny as hell.

Fanwork Links: you are what you eat (and you know what that is)

Entry tags:

Scattered Thoughts (Mostly fandom, & 2 recs)

Democracy Now: Black Liberation Activist Assata Shakur, 78, Dies in Cuba After Decades in Exile.

I'm grateful for all the work she did, and all the people she inspired. I'm sorry she never got to go home. I don't know what she believed about death, but I hope she's home now.

I've been engaging in fandom very little, but here's a couple things I really loved:

The Tailor by

SoHeresDaThing
Fandom: The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Ben Grimm/Female Reader)
Word Count: WIP (34k and counting).
Rating: Mature
Summary: You were just a tailor. A nobody. An old friend of Sue's from college she happened to remember before her wedding. You'd helped her then, gotten them all fitted before the big day. That was... before everything. Now they were different. Now the world saw them different. And still, after it all, Sue's calling you again to come help her friend.
Notes: This is a WIP, but the author is updating regularly, so I think she's good for it. It's also readerfic, and if that's not your thing... maybe give it a try? There's no Y/N stuff, and the reader is more of a fully realised OFC than the ephemeral readers you get for say tumblr prompt fills, so this is basically a romance novel in second person. There's a plot and everything. The relationship is really sweet, and there's both lovely angst and a cool look at the team's life before the film.

As It Was by

GlendyLucast
Fandom: The Pacific (Andy/Eddie)
Word Count: ART!
Rating: NSFW
Summary: A mini comic inspired by Hozier "As It Was" featuring my favorite pair from The Pacific.
Notes: I don't know the song, but this art is really really beautiful, and really really sad. Bang on for this pairing. Love it! (Apparently this got their tumblr banned, so it'd be extra nice to send them some love on AO3.)

Is anyone else really enjoying the Deluxe* edition of Miley Cyrus' Something Beautiful? It's so 1980s and off kilter, like someone spun a Madonna album into slightly abstract electronica with a bunch of spoken word, but also kept some of the pop hits. Pitchfork complained that it's a "concept album without a concept" which is fair, but might also be why I like it so much.

The pop queens being into the 1980s is working for me, generally. We're getting it from Miley, Sabrina and Doja Cat this year, that I can think of off the top of my head.

RAYE's ramping up for a second album, and I don't know what to think. I love everything she does, of course, but there's no way she can/should try for the intensity of My 21st-Century Blues, and the singles so far seem like it's going to be more jazzy.

* I'm so tired of deluxe editions. This is why no one buys music anymore! You just roll out an album, and then days/weeks/months later there's the same album again but with more songs on it. What's the point? If you have more songs, and can't wait for the next album cycle, put out a fucking EP! It's not quite as obnoxious as the Album Part 1/Full Album Later thing, but it's still very annoying to me. I'm not blaming the artists, though, as I assume it's B.S. from the label.

Me: I'm trying to manifest more time to read non-school stuff by getting novels from the library.
Brother: Is that working?
Me: No. Now I just have a pile of library books.

I was really excited for the new season of Peacemaker, then haven't been watching it. Or anything else.

Tarot Spread for Mabon

Done somewhat belatedly, see card #3.

Reading as usual from

TheWitchOfTheForest: Mabon & Ostara (Someone still needs to talk to her about her special fonts, but oh well.)

1. What needs to be harvested in my life right now?
Six of Swords (Oh. Wow. Okay.)

2. How do I welcome and sustain more balance in my life?
Two of Pentacles (I mean... yeah. Fuck you, deck.)

3. What areas of my life need more balance?
Page of Pentacles (I'M AWARE!)

4. What good will emerge from the darkness?
The Moon (Oh. That's really beautiful.)

5. How can I continue to grow in the dark half of the year?
Three of Swords (And now I'm going to go cry.)

Entry tags:

alaska,
photos

A walk in the fire zone

This was actually around a week and a half ago - a week ago last Tuesday, Sept. 16 or so - but I've been deep in the word mines and I'm just now writing it up. (Click to embiggen photos.)

We enjoy doing walks in the fall when the weather is nice, and we decided to walk out and explore something interesting. I don't remember if I wrote about it at the time, but we had a little wildfire scare at the end of June, when a lightning-sparked wildfire started a few miles from our house. It got an all-hands-on-deck suppression approach (because it's so close to town and adjacent to several subdivisions), and was extinguished after burning about 15 acres or so. We watched the water tankers dropping loads on the blaze from our house.

This fall, we decided to try to walk out and find the location and have a look at it. We tried it once and failed, but after looking at satellite maps we decided that we were headed in the right direction, just turned back too soon. It involves walking down an old road cut - utility access road? who knows - that mostly looked like this:

one-lane dirt road with fallen gold leaves

But occasionally more like this.

dirt road with huge puddle reflecting trees

And we found the fire zone! Once we were there, it was unmistakable. The rest of these pictures are under a cut because some might find them distressing, although I mostly found it eerie and fascinating; it was nothing like any place I've ever been before. (All burned trees, no vehicles or structures.)

( Photos under the cut )

Entry tags:

admin

New mod and new round in 2026!

I am pleased to announce that

chacusha will be taking over the reins of the comm starting in 2026. They have some new plans and a new schedule they will announce when the time comes.

I'm really happy the event will happen again, so thanks to chacusha for taking it on. :)

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Leverage: simple machines, by vexedquestion

Fandom: Leverage
Pairings/Characters: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Rating: M
Length: 61264 word long series (first work with 20345 words, second with 40919)
Creator Links:

vexedquestion
Theme: food & cooking, bisexual/pansexual characters, polyamory, series

Summary:
part 1: you do not have to be good.
Come hell or high water, Eliot is going to figure this out.

part 2: your place in the family of things
He's here, he's queer, he's sort of getting used to it, or, Eliot realizes that he still has some work to do on understanding himself. With bonus new!team members.

Reccer's Notes:

Bisexual/pansexual Characters

This story features an Eliot Spencer who might have, in the back of his mind, known that he wasn't fully straight, but didn't let it sink in until he got close to having a relationship with Parker and Hardison. Growing up with the background homophobia of his childhood, and then the Don't Ask, Don't Tell of the military, he didn't think about it, didn't apply labels such as "bisexual" to himself. So realizing that he indeed wants a relationship with Parker and with Hardison leads to some serious reconsidering and soul-searching as he works through that. It is very much a "coming out later in life" story. The first part focuses on coming out to himself and his partners, and the second part focuses on finding his place in the wider queer community.

Food & Cooking

These stories feature a copious amount of food metaphors in the likes of "bretzels", actually co-owning a brewpub, and Eliot working through his feelings in late-night visits to the kitchen, and showing Parker and Hardison he loves them by cooking them food. The second part of the series especially is set in the brewpub as kind of a home base and develops the location as a legit place of business. For example Eliot creates longdrinks for the pub that convey his feelings, and they each are described at the end of chapter, it's delightful.

Polyamory

I like how the story portrays it as a multidimensional three-way-relationship: Each of the duos have their own relationship, and also the three of them function together in a way that's different than their two-way-relationships. Much like in canon, actually. Eliot is the POV character, and he has important scenes with Parker along, with Hardison alone, and with them both.
The first part is about figuring out how they work as a relationship together, about Eliot figuring out his queerness in relation to Parker and Hardison. The second part is about how that interacts with the outside world, portrayed through some very nicely flashed out side characters from the brewpub as well as another group of (rather young, very queer) criminals they're recruiting. In the second part especially, the focus is on their polyamory in that outsiders learn about it, and especially Eliot learns to show his love for his people.

Fanwork Links:
simple machines series link, ao3-locked
you do not have to be good. part one, ao3-locked
your place in the family of thingspart two, ao3-locked

The Gentlemen's Club - Babylon 5

Title: The Gentlemen's Club
Author:

kanadka
Fandom: Babylon 5
Word Count: 23583
Rating: E
Warnings: None apply
Summary: Marcus' continuing adventures in the warrior caste's blend of deceit and sex clubs takes him to an affair of a different and more dangerous sort. Even if he thought he was done with the warrior caste, they're not done with him.

fic @ ao3

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Maria Maria - Santana

Entry tags:

thinking of ways to make it better

Slow Horses: Bad Dates: We are so back, baby! ( spoilers ) Very interested in seeing where this is going.

I am less on the bandwagon and more cautious and disbelieving about the Mets' playoff chances. They control their own destiny for now, but having to play the Marlins to cement their wild card spot is giving me very unhappy flashbacks to past collapses. Also, if Tyrone Taylor is not in CF the rest of the way now that he's back from the IL, then I don't even know what we're doing here.

Lastly, I will be pet-sitting overnight at my brother's tomorrow, so hopefully the new-ish dogs are okay with that. We'll see how it goes!

*

Entry tags:

talking 'bout the weather

Weather | A cookbook on sale

Woke up to a very classic autumnal bluster that made me just as glad to not have to venture outside, given the humidity. (One local on Bluesky: "It's a rainy day, and VERY warm. Expect individual ecosystems to form in your rain jacket this morning. Un-zipping the armpit holes for ventilation is a MUST this AM" Another local's response: "This is the sort of weather report I want. Not “plan for this temp or that precipitation”. I want “don’t straighten your hair, and make sure you have good armpit ventilation.”")

And our friendly local meteorologist measured 20.5mm of rain overnight--hardly drought-ending, but still very appreciated.

I don't know how widespread this sale is, but at least on Kobo Canada, the ebook of Margaret Eby's You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible is currently $2.99.

I've bought this book twice, when after reading it in ebook I really wanted a hard copy. Have I actually cooked from it? No. (No one is shocked.) But for a second rec,

runpunkrun reviewed it in a more informative way last month. (In comments there,

jesse_the_k noted that this subset of cookbooks--which includes other excellent books such as The Sad Bastard Cookbook--is called "struggle cooking".)

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Book review: Road to Ruin

I have a job again! \^o^/ This means I am back on the audiobook train and today I wrapped up Road to Ruin by Hana Lee, book 1 of the Magebike Courier duology. This is a low fantasy dystopian novel located in a place called the Mana Wastes, where protagonist Jin works as a courier transporting goods between protected cities. Jin runs a lot of odd jobs for various clients, but her most lucrative by far are Prince Kadrin and Princess Yi-Nereen. Jin has been ferrying love letters between them for three years--while hiding the fact that she's fallen in love with both of them. But everything changes when Yi-Nereen decides to run away and asks Jin to help her.

First, don't let the hokey title put you off. I started this one a bit warily, but it turned out to be quite a lot of fun! The worldbuilding is pretty light, but the novel seems aware of that and doesn't overpromise on that front. What is there serves its purpose well. It's not anything particularly novel, but not every book needs to be.

Jin, Yi-Nereen, and Kadrin are all wonderful protagonists; each of them has a distinct personality, perspective, and motivations, and I really enjoyed all of them. I was rooting for them the whole book and it was great to watch their various interpersonal dynamics unfold. If you're a fan of stories about mutual pining, this one is definitely worth checking out. However, if that's not really your speed, I didn't feel like the book spent too much time harping on about feelings we all suspect or know are requited. The romance element is definitely there, and it's a significant motivator for all three of them, but there's plenty else going on in the book too.

The book avoids falling prey either to the Charybdis of black-and-white morality where everyone who stands in the way of the protagonists is evil, or to the Scylla of "everyone is friends if we just talk things out," which is a relief after some recent reads. There's definitely a sliding scale of antagonism here, with some characters who are obstacles but not necessarily bad people, and others who run much darker.

I also enjoyed the presence of the "Road Builders." Jin and her peers inhabit the Mana Wastes, a treacherous desert wasteland where little survives and almost none of it without human intervention. They sustain themselves with "talent"--magical abilities common among humans, but becoming less common by the day--and travel along ravaged roads built by some culture who came before, about which Jin and her peers know very little. These are the "Road Builders" and are, I believe, strongly hinted at to be us. Lee keeps them a pleasant mystery humming in the background of everything else going on.

There were a couple contrivances near the end to aid a dramatic conclusion, but nothing so egregious I wasn't willing to continue to play ball with the book. Similarly, I'm on the fence about where this book leaves the relationship between the main trio, because it feels a little too much like Lee felt it was a necessary hook into book 2, but I'll reserve judgement until I've actually read book 2. And perhaps it's better that everything doesn't wrap up too neatly here.

On the whole, I had a lot of fun with this book and I will definitely read the next one.

Retreat, Move Forward - Scum Villain's Self Saving System (PG-13)

Title: Retreat, Move Forward
Author: Evandar
Fandom: Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
Word Count: 5026
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU - No Transmigration, Self-Esteem Issues, References to Depression
Summary:It’s on a whim that he checks his email inbox afterwards; he usually throws himself into writing straight away, desperate to get his words out and his deadlines met, but he was unexpectedly prolific yesterday and he can afford the pause.

He deletes most of them without thinking. He reads a couple of newsletters to remind himself that he used to be part of a community once, then deletes those too. His mouse is hovering over the mass delete function when a subject line catches his eye: Paradise Hills Writers Retreat: Your Reservation.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Entry tags:

2025

Astraze Ein [Gundam Model Kit]

Title: Astraze Ein
Creator:

kalloway
Fandom: Gundam Series
Numbers: 30+ Photographs & 3000+ word project log, in-verse fiction, and a bit of rambling.
Rating: All-Ages
Content Notes: None.
Summary: This is a fully-documented and photographed 'kitbash' 1/144 Gundam scale model from initial conception to finished piece.

thumbnail image of a black and blue humanoid robot scale model of the Astraze Ein surrounded by its weapons

Astraze Ein & Project Log on DW

Entry tags:

À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans; Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: Black Feasts, by Idlewild Designs.

Fandom: À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans; Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Duc Jean des Essientes, Gray Mouser
Rating: General Audiences (although most of the beverages might be deemed Mature, depending on your country.)
Length: 542
Creator Links: Idlewild Designs (archived); I’ve not succeeded in recovering a name for the site owner.
Theme: Food & Cooking, Book Fandoms, Meta, Pre-AO3 Works, Research, Old Fandoms, Small Fandoms

Summary: The two literary passages cited serve that purpose:

Dining off black-bordered plates, the company had enjoyed turtle soup, Russian rye bread, ripe olives from Turkey, caviare, mullet botargo, black puddings from Frankfurt, game served in sauces the color of liquorice and boot-polish, truffle jellies, chocolate creams, plum-puddings, nectarines, pears in grape-juice syrup, mulberries and black heart cherries. From dark-tinted glasses they had drunk the wines of Limagne and Roussillon, of Tenedos, Valdepeñas and Oporto. And after coffee and walnut cordial, they had rounded off the evening with kvass, porter and stout.

— a black feast held to mourn the loss of the Duc des Esseintes's virility in A Rebours, by Huysman

The collation on the little ebony table beyond the coffin consisted entirely of black foods. By sight and then by nibbling and sipping the Mouser discovered their nature: thin slices of a very dark rye bread crusted with poppy seeds and dripped with black butter; slivers of charcoal-seared steak; similarly broiled tiny thin slices of calf's liver sprinkled with dark spices and liberally pricked with capers; the darkest grape jellies; truffles cut paper thin and mushrooms fried black; pickled chestnuts; and of course, ripe olives and black fish eggs—caviar. The black drink, which foamed when he poured it, turned out to be stout laced with the bubbly wine of Ilthmar.

— Fritz Leiber, "Bazaar of the Bizarre"

Reccer's Notes: With Halloween impending, this seemed an apropos topic.

Idlewild Designs was a 2000’s Geocities purveyor of Gothic, fantasy, literary, occult, rustic, Art Nouveau, and otherwise Bohemian aesthetic living tips; here they expand and elaborate upon the two literary feasts described, with potential ingredients listed by category and outlinks to recipes. (The site was still very much under construction by the time Geocities shut down; I’m assuming the business, at least in that stage, is by now as dead as Bela Lugosi and that this post doesn’t violate the OTW’s advertising ban.)

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So what items might you add to the list? Some suggestions of my own:

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Fanwork Links: Black Feasts, by Idlewild Designs (archived.)