Reading

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Book review: The Black Fantastic

Title: The Black Fantastic
Anthologist: Andre M. Carrington
Genre: Short story anthology, science-fiction, futurism

I don’t know how I keep timing these so that I finish my audiobook and my paper book one right after the other. This weekend I also wrapped up The Black Fantastic, an anthology compiled by Andre M. Carrington. Thank you to pauraque for bringing this one to my attention! This is a collection of “Afrofuturist” stories by Black authors. If you want more detail, Pauraque has done individual reviews of each story which you can read here; I won’t get that specific.

With the usual caveat that all anthologies vary in quality, I enjoyed this one. There were a lot of very different stories, from some really fantastical stuff to ones that are just a little bit to the left of the world as it stands. On the high end of things, pieces like A Guide to the Native Fruits of Hawai’i by Alayna Dawn Johnson, where the protagonist grapples with her decision to collaborate with a group of vampire invaders to prey on the locals (and the metaphor of vampirism for the way Hawaii is treated by wealthy Americans is not lost in the shuffle); or The Orb by Tara Campbell, which was both strange and unexplained, choosing to focus not on the “why” or “how” of the situation but again on the moral quandary of its main character.

On the lower end, ones like The Ones Who Stay and Fight by NK Jemisin, which felt…narratively unclear, to say the least. It is either a satire of the kind of utopia writers create where its status as utopia is essentially dependent on eliminating any disagreement or contact with the outside world…or it’s a whole-hearted endorsement of that view. And if I can’t tell which, I tend to think the author’s failed at their purpose; or Ruler of the Rear Guard by Maurice Broaddus, which seemed to end just as it was getting to the plot.

Overall, I had fun with this anthology. SFF short story collections, done well, are such a scintillating showcase of creativity and I felt that here.

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Background sync.

On IRL background music.

I went through a phase a couple of years ago of discovering sync/production music, and spend a good couple of months listening to it in fascination. Remnants of this time still occasionally pop up on iTunes, and one of the things that’s very noticeable is how, uh, basic it is, and how you train yourself out of noticing that if you listen to it a lot. Like, songs that I remember thinking were fun when basically everything I was listening to was sync absolutely do not hold up when you listen to them alongside more traditional an-artist-made-this-to-put-on-their-album style music. Which isn’t to say the songs are bad, exactly — as the article points out, they’re made by real humans with real talent — so much as they’re designed to be hooky accompaniments to other things. Stuff that fuzzes your brain while sliding off your ears.

As someone who is listens to music a lot but is in no way talented in the area — I played trumpet in the school band for like four years and I don’t think I could even read music any more, is how much none of that penetrated — the way I would describe it is, like. Pick a song you really like. Any song. Now listen to it with your eyes closed. Really listen to it. See how your attention shifts to different parts, how each part is in itself interesting to listen to, and how what your attention is on at any one point subtly changes the texture of the whole song. Take note of all the things the song makes you feel; maybe a strong emotion, or a strong sense of time or place, a real-world memory of part of your life you associate with it. Even a smell or some other abstract sensation. And note how you can do this with basically any piece of music — from the most complex and lauded and high-brow composition to your high school best friend’s brother’s garage band that never went anywhere — and do it no matter how much or how little formal music training you may or may not have. This is, in fact, arguably why humans like music in the first place. And we sure do like it; it’s one of the universal human traits, present across all times and cultures.

And sync music? Sync music is intentionally designed not to do that. It gives one thing, then it slides off.

And this isn’t bad, exactly. It has its place, as all art does. But, like I said, you can very easily train yourself into not noticing how insubstantial sync is, if it’s all you’re listening to. And the thing is, there are services out there who would really, really like you to train yourself into this. Services like Spotify, for example, who would really like to get you listening to the cheapest music available, to maximise their own profits.¹

And that? That, I think, is a real problem, and would be a real loss. For culture, for humanity, and for ourselves.

And that’s still talking about human-produced sync; what they’d really like you trained into tolerating is slop . . . ↩

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Book review: The Tainted Cup

Title: The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1)
Author: Robert Jackson Bennett
Genre: Fantasy, murder mystery

On Sunday I finished The Tainted Cup, the first book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett. This is a fantasy murder mystery with an element of political thriller.

The main character is Ana Dolabra, an eccentric but brilliant investigator, and I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen a woman fill this role. The wacky but effective investigator is of course a very well-known stock character, but has always been, in my experience, a man. I found Ana delightful; strange but not off-putting, and without coming off like the author was working to hard to make her quirky.

However, our point-of-view protagonist is Din Kol, Ana’s put-upon assistant, on whose shoulders falls the managing of her many idiosyncrasies. They’re a fun team to watch work, and in this first book we get to see their working relationship unfold, as they’ve only recently teamed up at the start. Din is fine, but mostly I appreciated him as a lens for Ana.

Bennett’s fantasy world is characterized by fantastical use and manipulation of plants and the human body. Din, for instance, has been modified to be an “engraver”—someone with an eidetic memory. For obvious reasons, this serves him well as aid to an investigator.

I think Bennett does a good job of throwing you into the world and letting you use context to figure most of it out. I get bored with SFF novels that feel the need to hold your hand, as if you might be a first-time SFF reader who never encountered a magic system before, so I was relieved when Bennett just started telling the story and letting me figure the world out as it went along. I’d rather be a bit lost at times than be toddled along, but I never felt lost here.

The novel touches on some things that I feel are pretty keenly relevant, like the ability of the wealthy to avoid justice and their willingness to inflict suffering on the rest of society to better their own position (and then justify it to themselves).

I don’t read a ton of murder mysteries, so I may not be the best judge of this, but I also felt that Ana worked well. It’s a tough trick writing a character who’s meant to be much smarter than the rest of the cast (perhaps even than the author!), and it can fail a couple of ways: the supposed “brilliant” deductions are obvious to the average reader, making the rest of the cast look painfully dull for not seeing them; or the machinations are so obtuse with so little evidence the reader simply won’t believe the detective could have figured that out without an ass-pull from the author. I didn’t think Bennett fell into either of these traps and every detail Ana referred to in one of her deductions was something that had been mentioned before.

I enjoyed this book and I plan to read the next one. Very interested to see where Ana’s adventures take her next!

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life

A worthwhile project.

I don’t actually currently own more than one set of sheets — a holdover from two decades of living with someone with an extreme aversion to dust, meaning everything always got washed and immediately put back on the bed without touching anything else along the way — but it is something I plan on investing in in the near future, and when I do, I will definitely be following this guide to try and, once and for all, conquer the mountain that is learning to fold a fitted sheet.

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Finished reading: Dai Dark Vol. 1

I read this ages ago in fan translated form, and really enjoyed it. So figured I should pick it up when I finally saw it in-store in an actual physical legit translation.

It’s weird, creepy, and joyful. Perfect combo.

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culture,
uspol

Ban STEM courses, honestly.

In a statement published last week, American Council of Learned Societies President Joy Connolly said, “Our lawsuit reveals this administration’s contempt for that principle and for public investment in research for the common good. DOGE employees’ use of ChatGPT to identify ‘wasteful’ grants is perhaps the biggest advertisement for the need for humanities education, which builds skills in critical thinking.”

On DOGEbros.

Like, I know it’s not exactly a novel insight but the main thing that comes across crystal clearly from watching these people is just how fucking dirtshit stupid they are. Like, not in the “not knowing things” way — lots of people don’t know lots of stuff, including yours truly, it’s totally fine — but in the Bonhoeffer way. And how stupid and how coddled; how everything they have was given to them because they look a certain way. And that’s the actual “secret” of the anti-woke crusade; in the way that’s not actually a secret, but definitely always bears repeating.

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Submissions for Premieres and Unfinished Business now open!

Submissions for Premieres and the Themed Vidshow (Unfinished Business) are now open! You should see both options (plus Vidder's Choice) when logged in to your dashboard. Deadline is on Sunday, 19 April. We'd love to see your vids! Find out more about how to submit yours HERE. You need to be registered to submit.

Reveals!

Works have been revealed! Time to dive in and enjoy!

Thank you to all participants, especially our wonderful pinch hitters, who helped the collection reveal on time. Creators will be revealed in one week.

Everyone has a gift!

Thanks to the heroic efforts of our pinch hitters, everyone has a gift and the collection will open on time! *\o/*

Launch imminent at 17:00 CEST! (in your timezone | countdown)

Sunday @ 2:27 pm

Magpie on a deck chair in dappled shade.

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The case of the missing notifications

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

Sunday @ 10:57 am

So having always assumed myself to not be a particularly social person, the last six months or so have forced me to reconsider that, actually, maybe that was just the burnout from constantly masking talking, hey.

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Sunday @ 8:39 am

Oof. Twinged my back yesterday helping a friend pack to move and tl;dr this might be a "lying on the floor having a sook" day, hey.

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Sunday @ 12:39 am

Love getting woken up at midnight by what sounds like a fucking invasion just outside my window???

Is it gunshots or is it just the local Greek Orthodox Church setting off illegal fireworks for Easter again? Who could possibly fucking say???

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Current Mood: mellow

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The Friday Five for 10th April 2026

1. What was the last book you read (or are currently reading)?

Light Me Up, a grumpy/sunshine M/M romance by Christie Gordon. I loved Silas, he's just so insulting and sarcastic but is such a good guy underneath, and he's in all the other books in the Rock U series. I've read a lot of books by this author, she also writes hockey M/M stories like the Heated Rivalry series.

2. What was the last movie you watched?

Unfortunately it was Borderlands, a kind of Mad Max/action/comedy which had a great cast including Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart. A bounty hunter searches for the teenage daughter of a millionaire and picks up quirky allies on the way. Very silly but some nice twists.

3. What television series are you currently watching?

The Other Bennet Sister. I adore this series, it is so clever by the author to focus on Mary Bennet and her life after Pride and Prejudice ended. I haven't watched it all but it seems to be a Cinderella type story.

4. What are some of your favorite blogs or communities online?

Dreamwidth! AO3. I'm not on many websites, I like to keep my online life manageable.

5. What social media do you belong to and check often?

Mastodon. I do look at other social media but I don't have an account so I can't read much. But I'm not joining those sites after previous bad experiences on them.

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browser games

👓

As someone who currently needs to clear my actual, physical glasses, I take this as a personal insult.

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Current Mood: content

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Friday Storytime- Downton Abbey/Maurice crossover

As it is the quiet season on Dreamwidth, I decided to post another of my storytimes. I think this fic is appropriate for the seasons of spring to summer.

___________

A Different Path

~~Downton Abbey/Maurice crossover

~~Mature

~~M/M

~~Thomas Barrow, Alec Scudder, Clive Durham, Maurice Hall, Simcox, random servants, Anne Durham, Mrs Durham

~~Tags: Season 1 of Downton Abbey, Gossiping, Friendship, Internalized Homophobia, Secret Relationship, Romance, Masturbation, Class Differences, Social Commentary, A Happy Ending Was Imperative.

___________

Summary:

Thomas gets frightened by the death of Kemal Pamuk, and decides to make a fresh start away from Downton Abbey and any possible repercussions. He takes a job as footman at Pendersleigh Park, home of the Durham family.

___________

Chapter 1: His Troubles Now Behind Him

Thomas arrives at Pendersleigh Park, and makes a very unlikely new friend.

~~~~

Thomas shivered as he remembered Lady Mary’s cold tone when she warned him to never, ever say anything about the death of Mr Pamuk. She’d heavily implied that it could mean his dismissal, and even that she knew he’d propositioned the handsome Turk, which could lead to even worse consequences. So Thomas had searched for another position as footman, even though he’d prefer working as a valet, and left Downton as soon as he could. He needed a change of scene, and for men like him it was better to keep moving on before anyone got suspicious.

So he’d applied for the post at a country house in Wiltshire, owned by the Durham family. It was a lot smaller than Downton Abbey but the weather was much warmer and near to the picturesque towns of Bristol and Bath. It should suit him nicely.

At last the train drew up at the final station and the exhausted Thomas was relieved to be able to take the small private line to the estate of Pendersleigh. It had been a very long journey from Yorkshire, but he hoped his troubles were now behind him.

It was late when he arrived, so he just met the butler, Simcox, and the housekeeper, Mrs Wilson, then went straight to bed.

***

The next day, he was introduced to the rest of the staff, a much smaller group than at Downton. As well as the butler and housekeeper, there was a mass of women comprising the cook, two kitchen maids and two house maids. Then two other footman—the stuck-up sandy haired one appeared to be older than Thomas, the nervous blond one younger. Then two gardeners and two gamekeepers, all unkempt and brawny, one blond and three dark-haired, ranged from mid-twenties to mid-forties, and ranged from attractive to downright plain. Thomas tried not to look as if he was assessing them and arouse their suspicions but he couldn’t help it.

Then that was the introductions done and he went straight into work. As an experienced footman, he took it in his stride, literally. The fetching and carrying, the jumping to the sound of every bell…it was so familiar but not as far to walk in the smaller house. It was alright here.

He even found a place to smoke—behind some outbuildings again, he didn’t know or care what they were. When he took a break, he had time to reflect as well. Especially as he no longer had Miss O’Brien to talk to.

Apart from thinking about his new job and colleagues, there was only one subject on Thomas’s mind: what had happened at Downton. So Mr Pamuk had died in Lady Mary’s bed, they’d moved him back to his own, and somehow Mary had worked out Thomas had propositioned the man. What a mess it was, thank god he’d escaped in time before someone else had realised he was kind of an accomplice to moving the body. He shuddered. What if Pamuk had accepted his proposal, he’d been in bed with him and died then? Thomas would have woken up with a dead body and no doubt been given his notice on the spot.

“Got a light?” said a voice, making the footman jump a few inches.

Thomas turned to see the under gamekeeper, the pretty one, standing a few yards away. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! Give a bloke a heart attack.”

( Read more... )

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116 ☆ witch hat toxin? marriage atelier?

Witch Hat Atelier anime is out!!!! 🎉

It's sooo beautiful, I'm so happy. Two episodes dropped at once so we got to see a little bit of the other girls in episode 2, I can't wait to watch more... Obviously it will never be quite AS good as Shirahama's masterful work but the animation was so nice, I think they did a really good job with everything. Coco is so cute! And Qifrey my love...

I hate watching ongoing anime ughhh 20 minutes once a week is not enough!!

Also the anime for Marriage Toxin aired this week too which I totally forgot was happening, but I watched the premiere and I think it was pretty good. We'll see how the next few episodes go, the manga genuinely makes me laugh out loud at times so I hope they get the humor right. Basically the premise is that the heir to a clan of Poison Masters needs to get married and have babies so his gay sister isn't forced to (gay ally Geto canon) but he sucks at interacting with women so he enlists the help of a con artist who commits marriage fraud. It's very silly and very fun.

( minor spoilers for the twist revealed in episode 1 )

Anyway! Assuming both WHA and MT hold up to their manga counterparts, I recommend giving them a go! WHA if you like fantasy worlds with strong worldbuilding and cute characters and themes of like, power and responsibility in society and how regular people/minorities get screwed over. MT if you like romance action comedy shounen lol. This is like a hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby situation lmaooo I promise they're both good at very different things!!

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pinch hit

Post-Deadline Pinch Hits

We still have 4 post-deadline pinch hits available!

Due date negotiable. To claim, comment on this post with your AO3 username and the pinch hit you want to claim.

PDPH #1: Claimed!

PDPH #3: Claimed!

PDPH #5: Claimed!

PDPH #6: Claimed!

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type: meme

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

It's Wednesday! What are you reading?