Reading

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: YANTA - Girl (Tori Amos instumental cover)

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Next-gen Fruits Basket fans

Over the last...several months?...

wildpear introduced Pumpkin and (to different extents) a couple of other teenagers to Fruits Basket. Pumpkin got the double anime experience, starting with the 2001 anime and then going on to the 2019 anime, and while they were still working their way through the latter, they also restarted it to show it to two different people, including M, Pumpkin's agemate among our local friends' kids. Throughout,

wildpear texted me intermittent reaction updates, which was a delight.

Now that they're all finished (on the anime front),

wildpear brought Pumpkin and M over for an intergenerational fandom yard hangout last week! (Of the 2001 anime, M has only seen the very ending, in a sort of "must know what the horror actually is". For anyone who doesn't know, the original anime is mostly really charming and has a lot going for it, with most of its weaknesses being pretty understandable given when it was made and where the manga was at that point, but its ending is a straight-up travesty and an abomination.)

Jumping ahead a bit: you may notice the absence of the manga in the above, which has now been resolved! I initially had been like, "Well, I have a lending set, and its day has come!", but by the time the visit actually happened and I'd unearthed said set (a combination of the five 2-in-1 hardcover volumes Tokyopop managed to release, and the rest of the series in the standard Tokyopop edition), I'd talked sense into myself and decided to make it a gift instead. I'm not actually sure the lending set had ever gone out of the house (other than

wildpear, the only person who'd ever read my hard copy was my sister, and that predated the lending set, IIRC), and I didn't honestly need four sets* in the house, even if one of them is in Japanese. So that box has gone off into the world, and while I warned everyone that manga spines aren't as sturdy as anyone would like, they don't have to worry about keeping the books pristine for me.

Anyway! Seeing the three of them was lovely.

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Assorted things

This has me thinking (for that is the way I roll) 'who is the novelist that this has escaped from?': Alan Turing Institute accused of ‘toxic’ culture -

“The problems are deep-seated going back to the foundation,” said Lawrence. “If you create an institute that has a lot of money and spends that money on itself and a club of universities, you create a lot of politics.”

Could be a ponderous CP Snow tome, could be a Lodge or Bradbury send-up (Lodge of course already did academe/business collab, no?), or dear Sir Angus sniping acerbicly.

***

A more cheerful thing: Barbara Hepworth’s Sculpture with Colour saved for nation

***

More on heritage and reconstructing the past: The museum where history keeps repeating itself:

The easiest mistake to make in historical re-enactment is to create an era that never quite existed, by playing too closely to period. At Beamish, there is a real thoughtfulness given to how every age is a sort of palimpsest.

However, it doesn't appear that the author of this piece (known to me) has actually ridden in a sedan-chair (where would you get the bearers, even if a museum would let you try out one?): Jolted and Jumbled: Riding in a Sedan Chair in the 18th Century

***

And Dept, Here Comes the Silly Season:

This strikes me as in the fine old spirit of Stephen Potter and GamesManShip/LifeManShip etc: The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard of Slavoj Žižek: One weird trick to frustrate the hell out of a Marxist bro:

My advice is intended only for special occasions. It is for when you have an itch to scratch, and that itch is called, “a puerile desire to get on other people’s nerves.” All you do is stonily deny any knowledge of a person or cultural touchstone that you should, by virtue of your other cultural reference points, be aware of.... The game works best when you choose something that is normally the prompt for a great deal of intellectual posturing, of talking in a loud, bored voice.... Don’t do this to anyone who will be hurt by it, as opposed to merely irritated.

(I think Potter's 'plonking' could be invoked here perhaps.)

Whereas this has escaped from the era of Ealing Comedy, surely? Daniel Jackson was just 14 when he and his friends saw a strip of forest between Serbia and Croatia, and decided to claim it. Now 20, he is the president of Verdis, but has been forced to live in exile:

[I]t seems that men are more inclined to start a new country: 70% of Verdis’s citizens, and all seven of its government ministers, are men. This is not because of any kind of meninist agenda, Jackson assures me, and it is something he would like to address, but “it’s a lot harder to find women who are interested in getting involved”.

We wonder how many of that 30% of the citizenry are girlfriends who have been signed up to the project....

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fandom_general

1character: a character-focused fanfic writing community

the banner has the image of a blank notebook and a pencil on a white background, with a bullet point list that reads: Pick a character. Pick a theme set. Write 50 one-sentence fic. The title of the community, 1character, is displayed under the list.

Description: Pick one character as your focus in this fic writing community in the style of

1sentence, choose from 1 of the 6 theme sets, and make your claim - then, write 50 one-sentence fic inspired by the prompts to share on the comm! This is an ongoing activity, open to writers for all fandoms, as well as original characters. Claims are good for three months, and you can get an extension of one month if needed.
Schedule: Ongoing
Links:
On Dreamwidth:

1character

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Multifandom: 1character writing community

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(no subject)

Happy birthday,

wandra!

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Daily Happiness

1. The area manager who has been out on maternity leave for three months is back to work today. I'm glad to have her back, but wow there was a lot to catch her up on while she's been gone. I feel like I did so much talking today lol.

2. Tomorrow I have a meeting in the afternoon, but can have a leisurely morning, which I am looking forward to, as today was spent almost entirely with the aforementioned catching up and then an afternoon meeting, and I got home lateish and didn't really have much time to do other stuff, either work or personal.

3. Tuxie loves curling up under these plants.

[ SECRET POST #6800 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6800 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #971.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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The Disaster Days, by Rebecca Behrens

13-year-old Hannah, who lives on a tiny island off Seattle, is excited for her first babysitting job. Then a giant earthquake hits, cutting the island off from the mainland... and leaving Hannah alone in charge of two kids in a devastated landscape.

Hannah is not having a good day. She was recently diagnosed with asthma, forcing her to drop out of soccer and always carry an inhaler. Her best friend Neha, a soccer star, is now hanging out more with another soccer girl than with Hannah. Hannah forgets to bring her inhaler with her to school, and her mom doesn't turn around the car to get it as Hannah is desperate not to be late. When she arrives for her babysitting job after school, minus her inhaler (no doubt looming ominously on the mantelpiece at home, along with Chekhov's gun), she gets in a huge fight with Neha over text and the girls say they no longer want to be friends...

...just as a giant earthquake hits! Hannah gets her charges, Zoe and Oscar, to huddle under a table (along with their guinea pig) and no one is injured. But the windows break, the house is trashed, and the power, internet, and phones go out. The house is somewhat remote, an all-day walk from the next house. What to do?

Hannah is a pretty realistic 13-year-old. She's generally sensible, but makes some mistakes which are understandable under the circumstances, but have huge repercussions. She enlists the kids to help her search for her phone in the wreckage of the house, and Zoe immediately is severely cut on broken glass. The kids freak out because their mom (along with Hannah's) is on the mainland, and Hannah calms them down by lying that she got a text from their mom saying that she's fine and is coming soon. The next morning, she lets Oscar play on some home playground equipment. Hannah checks the surrounding area, but doesn't check the equipment itself. It's damaged and breaks, and Oscar breaks his leg. So by day one, Hannah is having asthma attacks without her inhaler, Zoe has one arm out of commission, Oscar is totally immobilized, and there's no adults within reach.

Well - this is a HUGE improvement on Trapped. It's well-written and gripping, the events all make sense, and the characterization is fine. It was clearly intended to teach kids what can happen during a big earthquake and how to stay as safe as possible, and the information presented on that is all good.

But - you knew there was a but - as an enjoyable work of children's disaster/survival literature, it falls short of the standards of the old classic Hatchet and the excellent newer series I Survived.

The basic problem with this book is that it has a very narrow emotional range. For the entire book, Hannah is miserable, guilty over her friend breakup and the kids getting hurt, worried about her parents, and desperately trying to keep it together. The kids get hurt so seriously so early on that they never have any fun. Even when Hannah tries to feed them S'Mores to cheer them up, nobody actually likes them because they're not melted!

The I Survived books have much more variety of emotional states and incidents, as typically the actual disaster doesn't happen until at least one-third of the way into the book. The kids have highs and lows, fun moments and despairing moments and terrifying moments. This book is all gloom all the time even before the disaster! Hannah eventually saves everyone, is hailed as a hero, and repairs her friendship, but we don't get that from her inner POV - it's in a transcript of a TV interview with her.

The information provided in the book is very solid, but I would have preferred that it didn't have BOTH kids get injured because of something Hannah does wrong. (That is not realistic! ONE, maybe.) It also would have been a lot more fun to read if the kids' injuries were either less serious or occurred later. The situation is desperate and miserable almost immediately, and just stays that way for the entire book.

Still, there's a lot about the book that's good and there should be an entertaining book that provides earthquake knowledge, so I'm keeping it. But I'm not getting her other book about two girls lost in the woods.

Disney_20in20 • Round 12

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Tvmovie20in20 • Round 19

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Dreams and Mayhem: Hodge Podge!!!

Description:
It's one part dream.
One part disaster.
And absolutely 100% fandom.
It's Your OTPs/Fandoms combined with our chaos.

Schedule: From now until October 12, 2025 when our first challenges closes.

Links:
On Dreamwidth:

innitmarvelous_og | Hodge Podge

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Dreams and Mayhem: Hodge Podge

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Multifandom: Fic In A Box Nominations Sign Ups Open

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For people who like this sort of thing, this is what they like?

The Benson Diary by AC Benson review – musings of an Edwardian elitist:

His outlook is that of an Edwardian clubman; and indeed, the only England Benson knew well, apart from Eton, Cambridge and the court at Windsor Castle, was the smoke-filled rooms of Pall Mall, a world largely without women. Benson did not much like women and was not at ease with them, preferring the company of handsome young men. The editors go to great pains to argue that Benson, while certainly homoerotic, was not actively homosexual. But, really, who cares?
....
In truth, these diaries are a monument of misplaced scholarship.

Okay, I am jumping up and down going BURN! because one of the editors is someone who wrote a ghastly retro piece of work within my own Field of Endeavour which I had occasion to review back in the day.

(The Literary Review was kinder)

But also, while I guess Bensons are a minor fandom of mine, the diaries I would be interested in reading are those of Minnie (Sapphic romps at Lambeth Palace!) and of naughty Fred, EF Benson, author of the camp classics about Mapp and Lucia and the Edwardian bromance David Blaize. Though once attended conference paper claiming that the M&L novels were essentially romans a clef about his circle, so maybe he didn't need to write a bitchy diary as well.

I think we already had as much of AC as anyone would wish to know in that Goldhill volume on the family, which had a bit too much AC for my taste to begin with.

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books

thestoryinside

If you're anything like us, you'll no doubt have a mountain of books that you just never get around to reading. Well, that's where

thestoryinside comes in - have someone choose your book for you!

The process is simple: join the community, and each month sign up to be partnered with a buddy, who will then choose a book from your 'to read' list. At the end of each month there will be a community post to discuss your thoughts on the book(s) you read!

However, we're putting a twist on the traditional 'pick for me' routine and each month we'll vote on what genre of book we'll be reading; now, of course this is open to personal interpretation, for example, if the genre is horror and you're not a big fan, you could go for a Goosebumps book, or even Twilight. There will be an opportunity in each voting post to ask any questions you might have.

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Multifandom: First And Last - An Alpha/Omegaverse Exchange 2025/2026

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Daily Happiness

1. We had a nice time at Disneyland this morning (overcast and low temps most of the time and very light crowds) and successfully got the Kuzco sipper! We try not to collect the popcorn buckets and sippers because they don't actually get used and are just decorative, but take up a lot of space, but Kuzco's poison is always a must buy.

2. I don't have to go to Irvine at all this week, which is nice. I do have meetings in Gardena every day, but that's like less than half the drive.

3. Jasper looks so solemn!

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disney

2025 Disneyland Trip #56 (8/17/25)

We made sure to get to the park right when they opened today because the Kuzco sipper goes on sale today and based on how fast the glow cubes sold out last year, we knew we had to act fast.

( Read more... )

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Multifandom: Jump Scare

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wychwood: has a problem

so many good books so little time

I have had a nice restful weekend, in which I caught up with perhaps 1/3 of the chores that I intended to. Oh well. I added a new book to my bedside pile, and then read it; between that and the realisation that my next book group meeting is approaching, I was then inspired to read at least a chapter of each book in the pile, which was nice. I set myself a to-do list target a few months ago of reading at least one chapter of each per week, which would keep me actually moving through even if I didn't then end up picking anything up and reading more of it.

Unfortunately mostly what happens is that the overdue item sits there and stares at me on the list. It's annoying, because I do in fact! want to read all of these books! and also most of the ones on the to-read shelves in the spare room. I just somehow don't. However, I've not been in much of a computer game mood in the last few days, and that's freed up some time for reading that isn't fanfic (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

Basically there is too much stuff in my life that distracts me from reading, and if only I didn't need to e.g. earn money I could finish more books. But then I wouldn't be able to go on book-buying sprees, and that would be sad.

In other news, I ordered my new mattress, just as my old one started causing me actual back issues, so good timing me. It's not due until the end of the month, and I'm very impatient.