[personal profile] falena

So, I've already told you, as far as I'm concerned, KJ Charles is the queen of queer historical romance. My second-favourite book series of hers is the Doomsday Books Series, and in particular the first instalment, * The Secret Lives of Country Gentlmen*. Set in Georgian England, in the remote area known for smuggling called Romney Marsh, it focuses on the improbable love affair between a baronet and the head of a famous local smuggling family. Except my description doesn't do it justice at all. The synopsis on GoodReads is not bad. This has a tremendous sense of place, two flawed main characters who experience actual emotional growth, real high-stakes and problems, and lots of plot. Also, as someone who loves the English language with all her heart, I found the use of the local Kent dialect so interesting (no worries, if I got it all as a non-native speaker, anyone will). The sequel, A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing A Scoundrel, set in the same place, 15 years later and is about a minor character of the first book who gets to have his own romance with an earl and solves a mystery that was left unresolved in the first book. It's a lovely book too, I just love the two MCs for the previous book more.

Hearts Alive! by [archiveofourown.org profile] SpaceJackalope. 2.3K. Gen. Set two years after the first book. Fifteen-year-old Luke Doomsday asks Joss for advice about feelings and guys, because he's fallen hopelessly, embarrassingly in love for the first time...with Gareth. This is adorable and so in character. Poor Luke. Being fifteen sucks. There's also a podfic available!

Hearts Alive by [archiveofourown.org profile] innie. I haven't accidentally copied the same link twice, it's a different story, this is just a very popular Kentish exclamation in the books. :D 1.3K. Joss/Gareth, explicit. Joss gets his hands on Gareth The language and the character voices are perfect, it totally reads as a vignette from canon.

Jonathan's Regards by [archiveofourown.org profile] L_Monster. 8K words. Luke/Lord Corvin, explicit. This could totally be a short story bridging a gap in the canon we know of (i.e. when Luke was worked as a secreterary for Lord Corvin). Terrifically in character and hot.

The Pitt

IIRC, last time I recced a Mel/Frank story where Frank had issues and didn't treat Mel well. More in that vein, is this story be a better boyfriend than you by [archiveofourown.org profile] KH_Rogers. Mel/Shen. 31 K words. That’s what they’ll say, in the end: Dr. John Shen swooped Mel up, out of Langdon’s grasp. Good for him. Good for her, finally fucking higher on the food chain. Or, John asks Mel out on a date mid-Langdon turmoil. Mel/Shen wasn't even on my radar, before this fic, but I gave the story a chance because the author is that good...and man, I'm glad I did. KH_Rogers hasa fully fleshed-out version of Shen and he is adorable. Not to mention he doesn't come with all the baggage Langdon has. So, in this story Langdon is a bit of a bastard, if this interpretation sounds like something you can't bear, steer clear, please. However, you should keep an open mind and just read this.

"Ауф".

Dec. 13th, 2025 01:20 pm
piyavking: (Default)
[personal profile] erinptah

Continued liveblog as I read Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH, and make sporadic comparisons to the original Tokyopop translation.

Chapters 1-3 were covered here. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here. The rest of this post is the notes I microblogged in a Mastodon thread and a Bluesky thread.

Cover art of D sitting with a unicorn

 

 


[personal profile] lumemiruuuuuuuuuuu
nearly 2 weeks ago, i started my first job at a children’s clothing store (even though i don’t need it cause im sooo fucking rich the son of the owner of the store was ma bestieee/jk. well we never talked to each other but we did study together). is a simple part time one (and i dont have to stay much time there either, as legally the working hours for minors are at maximum 6), and so far, it has been pretty ok.

as im a clothing seller, i was afraid that i would SERIOUSLY struggle at it, half bc of da tism, half bc i do struggle a bit at talking to people. also bc the store, while not big, has a very weird organizing system; for starters, there’s various…uhhh…let’s say clusters of shelves around the left and right side of the store, on one or two clusters (usually composed of 2 or 3 shelves, one at the middle of the wall and another one near the top) there is the clothes of a collection, and luckily they’re organized by a common set of sizes, which at least makes things less confusing for sizes from 10 to 16, why do I say this? cause the sizes are color coded, so ig the intended reason was so that it could be easy to know where to go if a client is looking for a certain size, which would be the case IF SOME SIZES DIDNT HAVE THE SAME COLOR. or even different ones!!! (IM LOOKING AT YOU SIZE 36 MONTHS. why tf is it colored as both size 0-3 months and 18 months 😭), and to make things worse, various items are placed on a certain shelve and a singular item is organized by SIZE, which for a beiginner like me 2 weeks ago (despite the fact spent my first 3 days organizing clothing racks like crazy, which should’ve left me with a fair knowledge about which color belonged to what size), makes the store look like a mess lol. luckily u get used to it. regarding the social part, i have a super cutesy secret weapon down my sleeve…mimicking my peers :D. no but seriously is all you need to do, and smile all the time, and make an effort to do eye contact (though i personally don’t do that one a lot as 1. i seriously don’t know if whether i look at people in the eye or not like i feel like im normal and 2. focusing on that ALL THE TIME is surprisingly tiring, specially as i interact with a lot of people, so eh whatever), which has resulted pretty well. same thing with my peers, ive simply used my super cool techniques to make a good impression i learned from me dad :D (im sure his were more accessible to me cause im 99% sure he’s autistic, just a very high masking one), which are useful, probably cause half of my co workers are women in their 40s, and im more natural with younger coworkers, which is not saying much as the youngest aside from me is 19 😭. all of them have been nice to me nonetheless, even though im sure one of the reasons why they are is cause they see me as a little girl who needs guidance and yk all that bullshit, but as long as I don’t get berated is fine ;).

most of the time, i either organize big amounts of clothing racks or i attend clients using my super cool mimicking qualities (thougih i still allow myself to not make eye contact, stim, and swear whenever any inconvenience happens), usually clients are nice, chill, utterly indifferent, or stereotypical tolimense women in their 50s with shitty eyeliner (generally a more corny and bitchy version of the indifferent client). clearly, plenty of families attend the shop, which clearly makes everything more messier than necessary, specially as my boss is very insistent of keeping an eye of each client as someone might steal clothes (im 100% sure it happened to her before) so you often end up doing 10 laps around the store, specially if it’s busy, though luckily the store isn’t busy aaallll of the fucking time so there’s usually time to rest. though i fear it’ll get worse (pray for me there’s a madrugón tomorrow 🙏), but luckily we haven’t had any incidents. surprinsingly, getting used to such a frenetic (for my standards, this is my first job be nice to me) rhythm of work wasnt as hard as I thought, is overwhelming, but not impossible to manage. in fact, the whole process of selling clothes ends up feeling repetitive, and logically speaking, must be somewhat redundant, as clients usually seek things we don’t have (full fledged oufits, expecting the pieces of it to be sold as a whole, which doesn’t happen unless you are on the baby discount section), and the we offer up half of the store in hopes of convincing them, which has obviously varied results, and we always offer up the same clothing cause the factory distributor can’t bother itself to bring formal clothing that everyone is looking for so their children can look good on christmas and new years but anywayyyy. sales are doing good ig, and there’s a higher amount of people than i expected, given the fact i work at a mall that ain’t a part of the Big 3 malls of the city, but hey, more money!!! also the mall has a shop of gothic clothes and 3 shops of geeky merchandise, which is pretty cool, once i get my wage i should get out of there asap so I don’t end up spending my well-earned money on figurines.

in conclusion, im happy this was my first job hehe, cause at the end of the day, the people there respect me and the job isn’t impossibly hard for a beiginner. only downside is that it didn’t fix my speech quirks as my family and i expected, much less my tendency to count with my fingers to slow down, but anyway, IM the one making money, and im pretty good at it, so whoever judges me should die 🤑🙏/hj.

also look forward to a massive media log these week as im having an experimental film marathon tonight!!! i kind of got in the mood of it by watching bee movie last night and im pretty hyped up. anyway it includes a hiroyuki imashi film, why wouldn’t I be hyped:)
Tags:

If gaslighting had a table of contents.

Dec. 12th, 2025 07:55 pm
goodbyebird: IWTV: Louis inspecting his pictures, the ghost of Lestat can be seen in the background, watching. (IWTV snapshots)
[personal profile] goodbyebird
Well, that was a DUMB amount of scrolling. Remind me to keep up to date on fanart recs, BlueSky is not all too helpful. But I did get to make a variety of happy faces as i re-discovered some fanarts I'd forgotten about. We really are spoiled with IWTV. And to look forwards to: I pre-ordered the BLOOD & BROCADE fanart zine. Wanting to experience the first hand in physical format, I'll have to wait until February. And after that? Well, the rumor is s3 will premiere in April. At least, going by a verbal slip and a couple of deleted cast posts. Not too long now!

Anyways, have a bunch of fanart recs featuring pretty vampires.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 12


Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology. For all eternity. )
[personal profile] raisedbymoogles
i feel like i've simultaneously run out of writing juice and desperately jonesing for 3SF. i guess none of my current projects are sparking joy post-Prime Time so i've got startitis? (last night's writing project was starting yet another outline of a video game i'm never gonna make. i did 1k words almost exactly.)

anyway i signed up for next year's GYWO. i did hit my pledge goal for the year last month but i doubt i'll be seeing much more progress on my wordcount this year. so i don't think i'm ready for the next tier up. XD
Tags:

Big day!

Dec. 13th, 2025 02:50 am
tyger: Head and shoulder of Yuuko, some sort of scaly dragony fish thing in the background (Yuuko - dragonfish)
[personal profile] tyger

Went into town and met up with A today! It was a lot of fun! We derped around poking at stuff a lot, particularly art stuff, which is always fun! :D

And then there was multiplayer Terrarira when I got home! Which was ALSO fun! Just, both of those things in one day was a lot.

However! I did manage to get an SD card, and it booted as an install device and... um. Pretty sure the entire computer is running off the SD card, and it can't see the freaking internal SSD. Which is a problem! So tomorrow there will be Some Research. But also I'm going over to catsit for A overnight - she's going for a family Christmas thing that's too far away for a day trip - so idek how much I'll actually get done. Still! Progress has been made, which is always nice! :3

Also even if I don't have an actual fix tomorrow I'll get to poke around the new desktop environment and see if I DO actually like it, which is also important! (The place I have it set up for installing the OS is also not great for actually using the computer, simply due to the fact that if I'm installing an OS I want to have my desktop on as well so I can Do Computer while waiting for shit to download/unpack/install, heh.)

Anyway, bed now. Am very sleepy! Hopefully I can get to sleep without pulling the blanket out since I'm... not gonna be here tomorrow night and who knows what the weather will do... it's Quite Warm and I suspect I will melt in my usual doona.

[personal profile] elyusion
I've commented in [community profile] vsynthrecs and [community profile] vampiremedia, and I'm seriously considering participating in [community profile] moodthemeinayear next year, but not the yearly challenge -- probably a monthly one or the bingo -- but uhh. Hey, these are mostly the same comms I participated in last time! I hope next time will be different, LMAO.

This is probably related, so I'm going to talk/ask about my plans for the visual kei community here. If that seems like the kind of thing you'd be interested in, read more and vote in my poll here if you haven't already. I really do hate sounding like an attention-seeker, but, well... I kinda need a little attention right now xD I don't want this community to be dead on arrival, you know?
Imagine me sitting at a large desk with my hands folded in front of me. )
[personal profile] cimorene
That week of ultimately unhelpful jobseeker course three weeks ago not only wrecked my energy for cleaning, any projects, and my daily stretching and exercise routines, it also left me with too little energy (focus? Even with methylphenidate!) to update my pet photos or interior design blogs on Tumblr. Or to shop for holiday presents for my parents and sister.

I have enough energy to spend that time on the computer, but just not to focus on what to post/buy. 😭 I am planning to try again today. Wish me luck.
[personal profile] archangelbeth
https://johnsnowproject.org/primers/sars-cov-2-leaves-a-lasting-mark-on-the-immune-system/

"2. Twenty months later: recovery but not to baseline"

(This means that masking, even after a covid infection, is worthwhile because it will help lower infection from other diseases. Dosage matters! The fewer infectious particles that get into the body, the easier it will be for the immune system. even weakened, to contain them.)
[personal profile] ari_linn

Тут люди интересуются, почему некоторые другие люди постоянно опаздывают. Мол, разве опоздуны не понимают, что этим они не уважают... и заставляют... и бла... и бла... Как человек, который постоянно опаздывает, вот что я имею сказать по этому поводу.

Почему я постоянно опаздываю
Сочинение

Итак, я постоянно опаздываю потому что... я ненавижу людей. И я ненавижу ту хуету, которой они страдают. И я отлично знаю, что если моя встреча со страдающим хуйнёй человеком, которая кровь из носу должна состояться в 13:30, не состоится, то ничего не произойдёт и ничего не изменится. Вот абсолютно, сука, ничего. И никто не умрёт. И примерно в 30% случаев человек на эту встречу вообще не явится. Это, к слову, при том, что для встречи иногда даже не требуется никуда физически перемещаться, потому что она запланирована в онлайне. Через день человек скинет мне на почту какое-нибудь жалкое вымышленное оправдание, почему он не явился. Или не скинет и вообще будет меня игнорировать. И он так делает потому, что превосходно знает, что ему за это ничего не будет. >>> )

updatish

Dec. 12th, 2025 10:27 am
mergatrude: Steve and Sam, text = "if they're shooting at you, they're the bad guys" (CA2 - if they're shooting at you)
[personal profile] mergatrude
My handwritten daily journal is as empty as this DW one. I haven't really wanted to write about anything while dealing with the ongoing restructure at work. It's a lot of energy and emotions and attention. *breathes in pink, breathes out blue*

Reading: I noped out of two audio books recently. cut for rambling )

At a local bookshop I like browsing titles and then checking them out at the library. Recently, I was intrigued by The Seeker and the Sage, by Brigid Delaney. It's an introduction to Stocism, and listening to it has been a good reminder that I am the source of at least half of my suffering. *g* The audio book is enjoyable, even if I want to roll my eyes at the woman a good two thirds of the time.

I also browsed Plain life: on thinking, feeling and deciding by Antonia Pont, but I haven't managed to open it yet, due to all my reserves coming in at once (again!) and me being overwhelmed.

The only other book I have opened is one on making friendship bracelets. I want to make some as gifts for my work colleagues, given that we won't be working together once the changes are implemented.

Watching: Dude and I continue to inch our way through season 5 of Super Store, not missing Amy as much as we thought we might. We also watched Stranger Things 5, Part 1 and are okay with it. The Honest Trailers video is (as usual) pretty spot on.

Gaming: I haven't been playing much on my own. Dude bought Sonic Racing Crossworlds so we've been playing that (is it better than Mario Kart? Maybe?), as well as Sackboy: A Big Adventure. It's adorable! I've also been sucked back into Merge Dragons, though am avoiding spending money on it.
[personal profile] erinptah

Just got the first two volumes of Seven Seas’ new PSOH Collector’s Edition. (Here’s my list of the series on bookshop.org, for anyone who wants to buy them in a way that gives a kickback to (a) local bookstores, (b) me, and (c) not Amazon.)

I already had the whole series in the original Tokyopop edition, but wow, the print quality on this new release is such an upgrade. The lineart, the toning, it has so many fine details and subtle gradations that didn’t get to shine nearly this much in the first version.

It’s also a brand-new translation of the text. I’m resisting the urge to do a whole line-by-line comparison — I want to just read and enjoy the stories, without looking back-and-forth between two books on every single page — but I keep getting curious and spot-checking individual lines/panels…

Guess I’m liveblogging this now, huh.

(Thread on Mastodon, duplicate thread on Bluesky, I made those by copying this post as I wrote it, bit-by-bit.)

Cover art of D hugging a mermaid

 

Dream and Despair and Daughter, under the cut )

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