zorealis

This is the fourth and final part of my book club notes on A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. [Part one, part two, [part three.]

I missed this meeting because I was totally exhausted and doubted my ability to form words. I did read the stories, though!

"Daughter of the Sun" by Shevta Thakrar

( This love story had a lot going on and I didn't understand it well enough to summarize it. )

"The Crimson Cloak" by Cindy Pon

( A dawn goddess falls in love with a human. )

"Eyes Like Candlelight" by Julie Kagawa

( A kitsune falls in love with a human. )

"Carp, Calculus, and the Leap of Faith" by Ellen Oh

[Note: This story is included only in the paperback edition, not the hardcover or the ebook.]

( A girl whose mom is pressuring her to become a doctor gets support from her dad. )

the end

There were some really cool stories in here and I'm glad we read them. Not everything was to my taste, but the quality of writing was high. It was great to explore folklore outside of Western traditions and see the connections and contrasts.

The group will continue with As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, which is a title that might be relevant to the interests of a few of you here! It's a brand new collection that just came out this year and I'm really looking forward to it.

pauraque

Last month I finally got off my ass and put up bird feeders in the yard. Moving is a process, okay?

small bird with a green back, gray wings and tail, yellow belly, white face, and black cap perches on a vertical tube feeder full of mixed seed and nuts

small bird with a green back, gray wings and tail, yellow belly, white face, and black cap perches on a vertical tube feeder full of mixed seed and nuts

Black-capped Chickadee. Despite being our most common backyard bird, they are kind of my favorite. (Don't tell the others.) I love the color palette of their plumage. They can't open seeds with just their beaks, so they will often take one and fly away to bang it open using a tree branch. Sometimes they are clever/lazy and bang them open against the feeder perches.

( more birds [8 photos] )

( not birds [4 photos] )

denise posting in

dw_news

Hello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means

karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )

Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.

On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.

pauraque

In my ongoing journey to play games from as many countries as possible, I ran across this early example of a game from Hungary. It was developed by Pál Balog with music by Zoltán Mericske, and was brought to English-speaking audiences by the British company Andromeda Software, who specialized in producing English localizations of games made in the Eastern Bloc. (They were the ones who introduced Tetris to the West.)

white bird carries a twig to a nest in a tree

white bird carries a twig to a nest in a tree

Bird Mother (or Madár mama in Hungarian) is, as you might guess, a game where you play as a mother bird who must build a nest, feed her babies, and protect the young while they fledge. (It's also an early example of a game with a female protagonist!) You might also guess from the release date and the English subtitle "Life's a Struggle" that the game is hard, and you'd be correct in that as well. I was actually impressed by how uncomfortably infuriating the game is to play.

( more about the game and a little info on personal computers in Communist Europe )

You can play Bird Mother in your browser if you wish to be reminded that whether you build your nest in the First World or the Second, life truly is a struggle.

pauraque

A couple of weeks back I did the fic title alphabet meme and discovered I was missing J, K, X, and Z. Here's J!

Just a Cool Guy (200 words) by pauraque
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Fellowship (2025 video game)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rime (Fellowship), Elarion (Fellowship), Sylvie (Fellowship)
Additional Tags: Double Drabble, Friendship/Love, in a totally neurotypical way
Summary: But not that kind of cool.

Apparently I thought the optimal way to make my glorious return to AO3 after over a year would be to write a silly, inside-jokey ficlet for a video game that just started early access and as yet has no story, no worldbuilding, no relationships, and no characterization except for a few voice lines and a paragraph of nebulous backstory for each playable character. I appear to be the first person to write anything for this fandom; I can't imagine why? (Too bad I just missed

bethefirst, though I guess I can start planning for

launchtheship.) Anyway, this one goes out to my loyal Fellows

dragonque,

sdk, and

zorealis, aka the only three people who know what the hell I'm talking about. ♥

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Reading

A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, ed. Ellen Oh & Elsie Chapman (2018) [part 4]

pictures for November

Look! I remembered to post before December started this year!

Bird Mother: Life's a Struggle (1984)

fic title alphabet meme update: J

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